Why do highly successful people in computer fields say a degree in Computer Science is not worth to get "JOB"? I'm studying Engineering in India. In Information Technology, Many CS-friends of mine told me that that degree is not worth it and that none of the subjects will be useful in my computer science career.

I subsequently lost interest in studying until a friend filled me in on the uses of each subject included in our course. I started studying hard since I understood the importance/application of these subjects in the computer world. I scored well.

Also, I made projects which were included in course with Interest.

I wonder why people are giving less importance to the Computer Science degree and why they say that it is not important in the real world. I think if it is studied enough, it can definitely yield a job.

My answer follows the answer provided by @DmitrySavostyanov.

I also feel you are basing all your conclusions based on a false assumption and hypothetical facts.

I have done engineering in the same field as yours. I am working in a quite well-known place. And, trust me, all the things that I have studied in my bachelors are coming up every time I start my day. At least the Mathematics and Algorithm aspect of the courses.

Your friends are probably not clear about what are they doing and they are diffusing the same idea into your head. That happens in the engineering studies.

Further, your claim people are giving less importance to CS is baseless. I would stay with my above statements and exaggerate that CS at present is at the apex of anything. However, I do not see partition between CS, Electrical Engineering, Physics. At the end, everything is Science. So, based on that we can say that we must know our fields as much as we can and then think of expanding it further.

If you look at Computational Biology and Computational Fluid Dynamics (and such like), you would see massive use of Computer Science knowledge and mathematics.

TL, DR; Don't listen to such junks from your friends.


Should I mention in my statement of purpose that I am applying because of my girlfriend I am applying to a university for a PhD position because my girlfriend is a PhD student there. Our affair is quite serious and it is almost surely going to convert into a marriage. We might even get engaged in 2019.

I have been in touch with professors from this university. Moreover, I am using some of the results of another professor directly in my masters thesis. I have a lot to write in the statement of purpose from a technical point of view.

However, because of my girlfriend, this university becomes a top-priority for me against all other PhD offers I may get and I want to stress this in my PhD application.

Should I mention this in my SOP? How should I mention it, if the answer is yes.

I can't see any scenario in which that would help and can see many in which it would hurt you. The first question asked would be "Is this guy serious???" People are looking for people dedicated to the academic process, research, learning, etc. Personal reasons such as this, and many others, shouldn't be mentioned. Take about why it is that you want to work with this faculty and what  your long term academic goals are.


Equivalent of 'above/below the bar' I've just come across some academic positions in Ireland described as Lecturer above (/below) the bar. What should this be understood as equivalent to in other naming schemes?

(A basic search didn't produce a reliable answer.)

The academic grades in Ireland vary somewhat from one university to another. Something like the following is fairly typical:

  Professor (aka Full Professor)

  Associate Professor

  Senior Lecturer or Statutory Lecturer

  Lecturer (above the bar)

  Lecturer (below the bar)

The last two, which you ask about, may also go by somewhat different names such as as 'college lecturer' and 'lecturer' with no parenthetic qualification.

Most new academic staff are appointed as lecturers (below the bar). After a certain number of years' service, a lecturer below the bar is eligible to apply to progress 'above the bar'. An application form may have to be completed and these days perhaps even another interview may be required, but it is a largely straightforward process to progress in this way. (The next stage, becoming a senior lecturer or statutory lecturer, is far from straightforward and is generally competitive, so you may very well have mathematicians, Latin scholars, botanists and chemical engineers competing for a handful of posts.)

Note that the question of permanency (tenure) is a separate issue: an applicant may well be appointed as a Lecturer (below the bar) in a permanent capacity.

In summary:

  Lecturer (below the bar) and lecturer (above the bar) are generally the two most junior academic positions in an Irish university.

While this doesn't answer your question regarding other naming schemes, I hope this clarifies where these grades lie.


About approval of grant of potential mentor About three months ago I sent an email to ask a professor about postdoc position under her supervision. Her feedback on my cv was positive and she told me that she intend to apply for grant this year and consider me as a potential postdoc. She also mentioned that she keep me informed if the appîication for grant be successful.  Indeed, she told me she will inform me, but because of the fact that professors are busy people,  I do not know she remember me or not?
 I do not know whether I send another email to ask her about the status of availability of grant or not?  If so, what should be a proper context of email to ask that.

Definitely follow her and her team on the various digital networks that they may be on. Most teams have Twitter and university groups.

Figure out when the grant rounds are decided and published. Most national grants will have public websites etc. Private grant institutions may also have ways to follow them.

But what is more important for you is to know when your usual post doc dates and times are. Her grant may be after that time which may limit your choices. Keeping all the factors in mind is an important strategy.


How should a university non-academic employee's affiliation be like? A friend is in a situation where they obtained a PhD in one field in a different country, but now is working at a university in an unrelated field in a non-faculty, non-research position. However, they have got invited to a conference to present on matters relating to their PhD field. How should they list their affiliation? They use their current university's library facilities, etc, for their own private after-hours research, so they want to list their current university employer, but I feel that this is unethical, and "Independent Researcher" or similar would be better.

I've seen a number of similar questions here relating to how students or researchers should handle this, but I think this situation is sufficiently different to merit a new question.

I have faced this problem in a previous publication, and what I did was list my current employer as my affiliation, with an asterisk, stating that "Large part of this research work was carried out while I was with the ..."


What exactly does a citation alert from Google scholar mean? I have a Google Scholar profile and this morning, I got the following email (anonymised):

  Scholar Alert: New articles in my profile

  [CITATION] Here is the paper title
  [My Name] – The Proceedings are here …, 2015

So first I thought that someone has cited the paper mentioned in the email, but when I had a look, there were still zero citations. Then I thought, that maybe this article was added to my list of articles, but then I realised that it was already there before. So what exactly does this email tell me?

There are several types of Scholar Alert, which basically boil down to:

We found one of your articles
We found some articles that you should read
We found somebody citing your articles

When you get one that says "New citations to my articles", that's the one you're looking for.  In that email, the articles listed in it are the ones that cite you, not which articles of yours ones being cited (you have to figure that bit out for yourself).


Does the ND (NoDerivatives) clause forbid the distribution of any form of text or data mining based on papers with such a license? I was reading "Your Guide to Publishing Open Access with Elsevier"
(URL: https://www.elsevier.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/181433/openaccessbooklet_May.pdf  (mirror)) and saw this table on page 6:

Why does the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license in this Elsevier only allow "Text & data
min[ing]" for private use only and not for distribution? I understand one cannot make commercial use of it but does the ND (NoDerivatives) clause forbid the distribution of any form of text or data mining based on papers with such a license?

ND (NoDerivatives) is described by creativecommons.org as follows:

  If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.

It's not obvious to me that the output of a text mining or data mining program necessarily qualifies as a derivative.

According to the Guide to Mining CC-Licensed Material  (mirror), the answer may depend on what you produce with the text/data mining.  If you run some calculations and then write a paper describing what you learned, then that paper would not be a derivative work.  If you produce a data set based on the mining, then that data set might be considered an adaptation of the original work.  The guide does not propose a test for distinguishing between these possibilities.  If it matters to you, I expect you would need to consult a lawyer.

Incidentally, I wouldn't take Elsevier's table too seriously.  For example, it suggests that the CC BY-NC-ND license allows distributing a translation (since it doesn't have a "not for distribution" note there).  However, that just isn't true: the license (mirror)  explicitly lists translations as being adapted material that cannot be shared.


Is it appropriate to call professor? I exchanged an email with a professor on Thursday and he asked me if I am available to call him on a specific time next Monday. I replied the email to confirm the time but no reply from him. Therefore, I resent the email on Friday to re- confirm that he knows that I will make the call. However, no reply as well. So I am wondering if it is appropriate for me to call him at the time he indicated next Monday even without his reply?

Sure. You have booked a time, make the call. If you want to be sure, ask him over the phone if it is still a good time.

Academics are busy and slow responders, so since you confirmed your emails may have been given the lowest priority.


Does a conference talk in an invited session count as an invited talk? Here is the situation: Prof. X organizes an "invited session" at a conference (in the broader realm of statistics and economics), and asks my supervisor, Prof. Y, to give a talk there. Y does not have time and refers X to me (I am a PhD student). Therefore, X asks me whether I would be interested to give a presentation in the session, to which I of course say yes.

Now, my question is the following: Can I list the talk as an invited talk (or more precisely: as an invited conference presentation) in my CV?

Yes, you can list this as an invited talk.  Even though the first invitation was not to you, the second invitation most certainly was.

Here is another way of thinking about it that may make it clear: imagine that rather than inviting your professor, the organizer has simply asked your professor: "Who do you think would be good to invite to my session?" and your professor suggests you.  This would clearly be an invitation (albeit one where you benefit from your professional network, which often happens).  The only difference between this situation and yours is that the suggestion was preceded by a failed invitation of your professor.


What happens if your manuscript is accepted as a filler? I just got a response from a journal of the MAA that my manuscript is accepted as a filler.

The correspondence reads:

  "The Editorial Board likes your submission and has asked me to move it
  to the "Filler Archives." Filler pieces are used only on a space
  available basis. Hence, it is now in a queue with other filler pieces
  awaiting publication. It is impossible for us to predict if or when we
  will use it, but if an opportunity to publish it arises, then we will
  let you know. If you choose to publish it somewhere else, please
  inform us so that I can remove it from the archives".

Since it is impossible to predict "if or when" they will use my submission, this could mean that I might wait "forever" for publication? I am a little bit confused and I would like if anybody has any similar experience to give me some advice.

What should I expect about the publication of my paper given its acceptance under "filler" status?

Yes, this is different from being accepted for publication (instead, it's closer to not rejected).  It means they might publish it soon, they might publish it at some point further in the future, and they might not publish it at all.  I have no idea what the statistics are, and they may vary depending on the current editor in chief.

Here's some background:

The Mathematical Association of America publishes several widely read, high-quality journals that focus on exposition rather than original research (most prominently the American Mathematical Monthly).  There's a lot of competition to publish in these journals, which means they reject many submissions, including almost all submissions to the Monthly.

The Monthly has a tradition of using short, interesting submissions as filler (and I think other MAA journals do as well, but I'm not certain).  This tradition arose in the print era, when it was more important to ensure that the number and layout of the pages came out right, and it has continued since readers enjoy the filler and there aren't many good places to publish pieces like this.  The filler articles are generally not considered particularly important, and they are chosen to fill the available space, to complement the main articles, or just because they caught the editor's eye.

So why would someone allow their submission to be used as filler?  One reason is that there may not be other good opportunities for publishing it, but I think the general reason is that the author doesn't consider it a big deal.  The typical filler article is short and entertaining, but not a major part of the author's career.  If your submission really matters to you, either because you would feel insulted to see it used as filler or because your career would benefit from having it published soon, then the filler archives are probably not a good place for it.  (You might get lucky and see it published immediately, but probably not.)


Desaturation of academic (TT) job market in Mathematics and the Sciences Although this question doesn't pertain to me so much, and I have my own suggestions, I wanted to ask this general question to the community. What solutions can be (relativity) easily implemented, to cure the problem of a lack of TT (Teaching + Research) positions in mathematics and the sciences? This is a major problem in academia now, and we can see individuals with PhD's in Mathematics (for example) who struggle to find suitable employment, end up in postdocs for many years, etc.,

I ask this because these solutions can hopefully be looked over and possibly implemented in the future, if we have an idea of what they are.

There are no "easy solutions" to this problem, but here are a couple things I have

Increasing the funding in STEM fields. Essentially, with more money, you can hire more people, and keep the "game" going a little longer. This is what created the Clinton-era boom in STEM jobs in academia - a surplus of money allowed the creation of low commitment soft money positions in Universities. The drawback to this is, of course, that it doesn't actually solve the problem as much as delay it.
Decrease the number of STEM graduates. The replacement of a single tenure-track professor in a field at steady-state size is 1. Even for a field that's doubling in size, it's 2. That's a very small number of graduate students who can actually be expected to find tenure-track positions coming out of a lab. Reducing the number of graduate students being produced stops this overpopulation problem. The problem with this solution is that you have a little bit of a Tragedy of the Commons problem - its really best if everyone else do this, and you don't, resulting in you having a massively productive lab. Right now, much of academia is built on large amounts of graduate student labor, and reducing the number of graduate students would mean figuring out a "new normal" for lab productivity.
Non-academic jobs. This is, essentially, where those students above replacement rate end up - but right now, many people in STEM view this as a lesser position, or a failure. That's not particularly realistic, and the fields would probably be well served by making sure that their grad students were aware of those options, and well-prepared for them. Some fields do better with equipping their students with transferable skills than others (biomed is particularly bad). The problem with this of course is that it's relying on tenure-track faculty to view the path they didn't take as one worth pursuing, and educate themselves on those options.


Listing Research Universities (Highest research activity) Universities' rankings are misleading, because various institutes publish their ranking results by taking various factors.

I have found a classification of research universities as R1 , R2 adn R3 here. How reliable is the listing?

The Carnegie Classification ranking system that you link to is fairly reliable. The details of how the rankings are calculated are here and include:

  research & development (R&D) expenditures in science and engineering
  R&D expenditures in non-S&E fields
  S&E research staff (postdoctoral appointees and other non-faculty research staff with doctorates)
  doctoral conferrals in humanities fields, in social science fields, in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, and in other fields (e.g., business, education, public policy, social work)

They then do a series of statistical manipulations on the numbers to get a final ranking. It seems that the weightings of the factors are less malleable than other rankings (e.g., US News and World Reports). The data seem to be collected from reliable sources (e.g., http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/). The choice of factors seems malleable and potentially unreliable. It seems like it is likely that if you were to replicate the process with the same factors, you would come up with a similar answer.

The real question, at least in my mind, is if the factors considered, are at all informative for your needs.


How should administration punish sexual abuse/trade for grade? It happens that some students offer sex for grade.
Just considering the fact that popularity of this strategy can strongly weaken the quality of education, administrators should take some actions to avoid this.

What should a department head do to control this problem in his department?

How to punish?
Who to be punished? Student or professor? Or both ?

I am not asking about legal actions or university policies or discipline matters. I just wish to know What should a head/dean do in this regard to preserve the education quality.

Initially, like xLeitix, my response to this question was "Say what?"

Then I did some reading. For those who are interested, here are some articles on the subject:

Sex, grades and power in higher education in Ghana and Tanzania
Kenyan tutor on 'sex for grades'
Teachers Demanding Sex for Grades
Liberian women battle against 'sex for grades' at universities
Sex for grades in Africa's academy

Given this context: if sex-for-grades is sufficiently "popular" in your department that it can "strongly weaken the quality of education," then you have a bigger problem then how and whom to punish the next time it happens.

  What should a head/dean do in this regard to preserve the education quality?

In a department where sex-for-grades is common, you can't stop it by punishing it in an ad-hoc manner. You have to create a comprehensive policy; educate students, faculty, and administration about this policy; and then enforce it.

If you don't have a university policy (or your university policy is not sufficient), you can create a school-wide or departmental policy, depending on the scope of your position.

Your sexual harassment policy should clearly describe:

Exactly what constitutes sexual harassment,
What the consequences will be for those involved,
and (the most important of all), How to safely report harassment.

In addition, you should then take steps to educate

Faculty, on how to protect themselves against sexual advances from students (steps such as: keep a strictly professional tone in emails and other communication with students, have meetings with students with office door open, etc.)
Administration, on how to respond to allegations against students/faculty with sensitivity and discretion
Students, on how they can report harassment without fear of retaliation

  Who to be punished? Student or professor? Or both ?

As for who to punish: any faculty or administrative staff member who

solicits sex from a student in return for grades, or threatens to fail a student who won't have sex with them, or
responds to an offer of sex for grades with anything other than a firm "NO"

should be punished.  Of course, it must say so in your policy and you must make sure to educate faculty about this policy.

Students are usually the disadvantaged group in this scenario, and punishing students could deter them from reporting sexual harassment. Therefore, I would advise against punishing students in most cases. I can think of a few exceptions, where it is appropriate to punish students: e.g., students who make repeated sexual advances, despite being warned more than once in an official capacity not to do so.

  How to punish?

depends entirely on what kind of punishment you can enforce, as a department head/dean. I have no idea what kind of power you have as a department head/dean in your educational system.

Typically in the U.S. it would be handled at a higher level, as   Nate Eldredge pointed out, because department heads in the U.S. don't usually handle disciplinary matters.


How to provide codes to reviewer without making it public I wish to provide codes and data to reviewer along with manuscript at the time of submission. I can upload the codes on a public repository, but it will bring it in public domain, I want to provided the codes only when the paper is accepted.

What is the standard practice?

My search directs me towards repositories: Dryad, Figshare and Zenodo. Which one of them provides secure code upload OR limited access?

As others have mentioned, some venues offer an option of submitting additional material.

If not, you have two options.

Include your code as a single file into your submission in the PDF/A-3 format. (I do not recommend this option that much, though, since special software is required.)
Put your code on a public site as a password-protected archive. Most compressors such as zip and rar allow you to encrypt and compress.  Put the archive on a public site but give the password only along with the submission. E.g.

  Bibliography

  [S18] Smith, J., Example codes, 2018, http://www.example.com/example.zip, protected with the password example_password.


What is the value of a Coursera certificate? I took up an introductory course to forensic science in Coursera, because it was actually the only forensics course I could find that was accessible, however I do wonder if it is worth anything in my CV, as a student it is obviously better than nothing, but is this something good enough to show?
How does it compare to courses completed directly through MIT open courses, or those from another famous university? And if these are assets to a CV, if I go ahead to complete enough for a degree, how does it fare in comparison to the proper degree from the corresponding institution?

Value in an academic environment: zero. Everything you learn at Coursera you'd simply learn from a textbook in a few days if you needed it for your academic research or teaching.

Value to a non-academic employer: marginal, mainly as a signaling device (this person will sacrifice his spare time over a non-trivial amount of time to improve himself), but certainly lower than a certification in a field or skill directly related to your job.

Value to a prospective spouse (as suggested by earthling): depends. I'd certainly look favorably on someone who took a Coursera course instead of watching TV.

Value to yourself: again depends, but could be highest of all. I certainly know that those courses I took were mainly for my own pleasure and benefit.


Preventing authorship conflict As a PhD student I have been part of my fair share of projects where multiple students are competing for leadership and the first-author title of a paper. This is because project PIs often simply ask several students to go off and work on a problem, without any explicit designation of who should lead the work. Authorship is then only determined at the conclusion of the project when the paper is submitted.
While this causes stress, the advantage is that the competition can sometimes force students to push themselves and produce better work to 'outdo' other students. Additionally it can be hard to pre-assign authorship as this can cause non-first authors to be less motivated. And the pre-assigned first author may not necessarily be the most productive student.
As a graduating student who will soon be a PI of my own lab I would rather not create such competitive situations, but at the same time, there will be projects with multiple students that needs motivation. What advice do you have about defining projects in such a way to meet these requirements.

If it is possible to determine at the outset who will make the greatest contribution to the research, then you may do so, and set the author order in advance.
In the (more likely) case that you have to actually go through with the research in order to see who contributed the most, then it's probably best to save discussions about author order until the end.
I'm not sure I understand your concern about students competing to "produce better work." If students are overstating their own contributions or sabotaging each other's work, then that is an issue to bring up with the PI. But anything short of that can only be good for the research project, no? How inclined would you be help out with a project if you were told at the outset that you would be the lowest-ranked author?
Participating in the research for its own sake, rather than because you think that doing a little more will earn you the spot of second author instead of third, is an essential component of academic maturity. But because people aren't perfect, allowing the final author order to adjust in acknowledgement of participants' actual contributions is the best way to incentivize active research participation.
In some fields, you may also consider alternative author-ordering schemes such as alphabetical.


Lab tech had research project that is now being developed by honours student: Who deserves to be first author? I worked in a lab as a lab tech and developed my own research project that I've been working on for over a year. I'm currently only working part time as I have a full time job. My supervisor recently got a new honours student who's been working on collecting data for the same project and has expanded the project for her thesis. My question is, when our research gets published who should get first author? I developed the project, collected data, created a poster for a conference, and will most likely be involved in the writing process. However, the new student has expanded the research project, is collecting data (more consistently than I am, because I'm only there part time, and will be writing a thesis for her honours. Who should get first author if the project gets published?

There is no general rule on how you determine the order of authors. In some areas (like Mathematics, for example), the order of authors does not imply the relative size of their contributions --- it is typically alphabetical. This strategy has its benefits: for example, we are less likely to include "star" and "virtual" co-authors, because there is no way of distinguishing them from real ones. And of course it simply saves time and helps to maintain good relationships.

In some areas, the contributions of each author are explained at the end of the paper (e.g. "data collection: Dr A, Dr C; statistics: Dr B, Dr C; visualisation of results: Dr A; writing the manuscript: all authors").

If neither of the above helps, the best way to handle author ordering is to discuss it before you start working together. Definitely, by the stage you have your first draft everyone has to agree on this, and no last-minute changes can be done without full and active consensus.


Collaborative development of teaching materials and assessments I have been teaching for 10 years. During this time I have also been developing and contributing to open source software. The collaborative nature of open source projects and scientific research has contrasted strongly with my experience of teaching. People publish their research results in journals for peer review and they post their source on GitHub and other online repositories for review and collaboration, but there seems to be a dearth of collaboration on the development of good teaching materials and assessment. Am I overlooking a community somewhere where there is good peer review of teaching materials with a focus on current pedagogy?

I would like to be able to upload the pictures, notes and so on that I have developed to explain a particular concept and have other people critique it and make it better. Further, I would like to be able to contribute a question which assesses a particular skill and have it reviewed by peers and improved. This way we could build a repository of high quality materials and spread the load of development of new questions.

My specific field is chemical engineering process dynamics and control, but I would be interested in knowing if there is such a community somewhere in any tertiary education field.

It's a wonderful idea.

In the spirit of start somewhere, how about:

Publish these teaching materials (pictures, notes and so on that you have developed to explain a particular concept) on a website of your own, and open it up to moderated comments.  Invite others to contribute guest posts.  You might want to include something like this: "You are free to use these materials in your own teaching, as long as you acknowledge the source."
Borrow liberally from this and create one or more Wikipedia articles.
Consider asking your university to videotape your lectures.
Write up a more scholarly version for publication in a journal.


Should I put reading group coordination / participation on CV? I am an active participant in an academic reading group. I am co-coordinator, meaning I help pick topics, schedule talks, coordinate food, update the website, send emails, etc. I've also presented a couple times when we can't get presenters at the last minute. I think a link on my website is fine, but does this activity warrant a place on an academic CV?

(EDIT: I'm a second-year PhD student if that matters.)

Absolutely yes. This is an important and cool activity. You can write something like:

2016-18 Coordinator of Journal Club at XXX research group, YYY Dep. - Task: pick topics, schedule talks, present papers, on a weekly basis. 10 participants.


Should a dismissal from PhD in graduate application be listed as academic misconduct? I'm wondering whether dismissal / withdrawal from a PhD program should be listed as disciplinary action on subsequent applications. A Master's program application usually asks questions like:

  Have you ever been found responsible for a disciplinary violation at any post-secondary institution you have attended, whether related to academic misconduct or behavioral misconduct, that resulted in a disciplinary action?

I was academically dismissed from a PhD program after four semesters for not being able to maintain the minimum GPA. I plan to fully include this information in my application (e.g. through transcripts from the institution from which I was dismissed), and address why I was dismissed (and what steps I have taken to address academic concerns) in my Statement of Purpose.

Q: However, I am not sure if my dismissal counts as one that is due to "disciplinary violation" related to "academic misconduct or behavioral misconduct". I was simply dismissed due to not being able to maintain the required grades. Should I answer the above question in the negative?

"Academic misconduct" is not the same as "Lack of academic performance."  "Academic misconduct" is things like claiming undue credit, fabrication of research or sources, outright plagiarism, etc.  Simply not making the grades might reflect on your academic aptitude, but (unlike academic misconduct) does not necessarily reflect upon your character.


What does delegate registration mean in a conference? I saw on a conference website that the "delegate registration is up to the end of March".
I'm wondering what that "delegate" really means?

Usually, this definition is extended to all the attendees of a conference, not just the presenters. So the delegate registration would be for anybody wanting to attend the conference


Senior co-author is jeopardizing two years of work I have been working on a certain paper for about two years, the first year funded and the other one pro bono.

The data and methods were fixed during the first year. The data has high quality, the sample size is three times larger than in a typical study, and the papers that describe the methods I am using have been cited thousands of times.

Now one of my senior co-authors, for some reason that I do not know, is saying that the methods are essentially junk, and refuses to allow me to submit the paper to a good journal, though he would find low-rank journals just fine! I have rewritten the paper once already but it still does not satisfy him. The other seven authors have given generally positive feedback with good suggestions on how to improve it.

I will soon finish my studies, so I have little incentive to remake everything for a third time. However, it would be wasteful to discard the paper entirely. I don't know. I am very angry about this but I do not know what to do. My supervisors have been helpful but I feel I am not getting anywhere.

I could perhaps file a formal complaint and burn some bridges but then I would only lose more time in that. Any suggestions for further action?

I suggest that you get all of the co-authors together to have a discussion. When you organise the meeting, say something neutral like "let's get together to figure out what to with this paper".

If your senior co-author has a good point about the methodology being flawed, then the other co-authors may suggest a way to salvage the paper. They also have an incentive to get the paper published, if possible.

If the other co-authors don't agree with the senior co-author, then they can put forward their arguments, and hopefully a resolution will be reached.


Having a lot of papers published in unimportant conferences VS very few in good ones? I'm always confused when I see a lot of PhD students looking to publish papers, even if the papers are not so good. They publish them in not so important conferences or workshops. Is that a good thing? Is it good to have a lot of papers published even in not so popular conferences? Like what is better: to have 10 papers in not so famous conferences or workshops or 1 or 2 in a very famous and good ones?

I have never published a paper before and new to this.

People do things for a variety of reasons. Even writing a paper for smaller workshops has some benefits for everyone (from a PHD student to a professor)

Good reason for the affiliation to cover expenses for the suggested trip. Usually CS workshops are co-located with important conferences and even a workshop paper may cover your expenses (not every time if you continuously abuse the system) to actually watch the entire conference.
Workshops have limited attendance but may still be organized by reputable professors / scientists close to your area of interest. So, they are very good for networking. In a major conference, it is easier to get "lost" inside the many participants.
Practise makes better. If you write 5 papers (even when some of them were for a workshop) writing your 6th paper is going to be easier, instead of trying to write your "seminal" paper.
Reviewers have the "strange" habit of sometimes rejecting your paper. In this case, sending your paper to a smaller workshop (after rejection in 1-2 major conferences) where it gets accepted, lessens the sense of rejection and still "patents" your results on which you can expand later.
Workshops sometimes have a "best paper award" which may even lead to journal publication, when the same paper might not had a chance in a bigger conference. In workshops the competition is smaller (usually 10-15 accepted papers), so you have something like 5-8% chance for something like that.
Sometimes when you work on a specific project you  might discover something that although is not good enough for a major conference or later expansion, is still a compact solid idea that may help others. So, a good workshop paper may disseminate this idea to a larger audience.
Unfortunately, although quality should beat quantity, this is not the usual case. In some research projects, grants applications it is better to state that "A is the author of more than 50 scientific papers with an h-index of ... " than "B is the author of 2 papers". Same when you look at the Google Scholar / DBLP record of an author. It is better to see 50 papers (which among them are 10 really seminal papers) instead of just 10 perfect papers that usually leave a gap in the author's bibliography (blank years).

In this sense, even workshop papers serve their purpose if you treat them as professionally as the rest of your papers (they are well written and still scientifically solid and correct).


Should I tell the university supporting my fellowship application if I apply for other jobs? I am a postdoc currently looking for a faculty level position. I have recently started preparing an application for a grant scheme in the UK. If the application were successful, the grant would pay my salary for 5 years and give me some money to start up a research group. I have contacted a University (let's call them University A), to ask if they would be willing to be the "host institution" for my application. They have agreed, and have been very supportive of my application in terms of giving me help and feedback in preparing the proposal.

Yesterday, I noticed a job advert for another UK University (University B), who are advertising for a lecturer position, specifically seeking someone in my field. I am considering applying for this position.

If I do apply to University B, should I tell University A that I am doing so? In particular, if I were to get the job at B and therefore have to back out of the grant application, having not told A about my application beforehand, will I be seen to have acted in bad faith?

I am in two minds about this. One the one hand, if I was straightforwardly applying for an open position at both A and B, I certainly wouldn't bother informing each of my application to the other. On the other hand, A is investing some non-trivial effort in helping me prepare the grant proposal  so perhaps I owe them more consideration.

A subsidiary question: if I do tell A that I am applying to B, is this likely to dampen their enthusiasm for supporting my grant application?

No.  You are a postdoc.  Everybody knows postdocs need to apply for multiple jobs because the success rate is low.  There is no need to say what other jobs you are seeking.  Treat your fellowship application like a job application.


How to assess the chance to get accepted to a master's program in the United States? Currently I am a student in the Netherlands following a bachelor program in computer science. I am currently considering applying for a master's program in the United States. It is hard to asses my chances, because of the large difference between the systems in the Netherlands and the United States.

There are a few factors which probably affect my chances.

I cannot directly compare my grades with grades used in the United States. In the Netherlands we use a 1-10 absolute grading system. I currently have a grade average of 8.0, only had 7s, 8s and 9s.
One thing I noticed is that in the United States a bachelor program is not naturally followed by a master's program, unlike in the Netherlands where this is the default.
The duration of a bachelor program in the Netherlands is three instead of four years.
Currently I do not plan on applying for a Ph.D position.

Do these factors significantly effect chances to be admitted to a master's program in the United States and how do I asses my chance to get accepted?

I don't think that there's a huge enough discrepancy between the technical content of the European three-year bachelor's and the four-year American bachelor's to make that a big concern.

However, where you may run into problems is that your GPA might not be considered competitive for a top program, if it's only in the 8.0's out of 10. (It might get translated to a 3.3 or so, which would be problematic.) What will make up for this is some statement that you're near the top of your CS cohort, and good letters of recommendation will also help.

Where you'll also need to do some research is on whether the departments you want to apply to offer terminal master's programs; if not, it will make it a little more difficult, as the expectation would be that if you are admitted to the master's program, you will then continue on to the PhD program thereafter. (At such schools, a stipend is typically offered during the master's phase of the program; at schools that offer a terminal master's, the funding sources for the master's degree-only candidates is usually quite distinct, if it is available at all.)


how can i know the journal still covered by Scopus ( include 2018 year ) how can I know the journal still covered by Scopus, for example when I check it on Scopus site " Scopus coverage years: from 2008 to 2018 " what its mean?

To check if the journal is currently indexed in Scopus, follow these steps:
1- Go to https://www.scopus.com/sources
2- Search for your target journal by title
If you find no results, then the journal is not indexed by Scopus
If you find your target journal, click on it to see the coverage years; if the coverage years are from 2008 to 2018 taking into consideration that we are now in 2021, so the journal is already discontinued. If the coverage years are indexed till present, so the journal is currently indexed.
I have shared a copy of the title list of Scopus journals here (last update October 2020)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/146wsDZcQyFenVQGYcTHs_PiRNw9Z-otm/view?usp=sharing
Resources:
https://www.scopus.com/sources
https://blog.scopus.com/posts/titles-indexed-in-scopus-check-before-you-publish
https://www.rasayely.com/how-to-check-if-a-journal-is-indexed-in-scopus/
https://www.ilovephd.com/how-to-identify-isi-scopus-or-scimago-indexed-journals/


Choosing PhD advisor in a field different from your undergrad research? I am applying to grad schools now, in physics dept. I have been doing my undergrad research on high energy and astrophysics. But recently I have started to gain a lot of interest in condensed matter physics. If I get accepted to grad school, I will be selected on the basis of my massive undergrad research which is mostly focused on high energy physics. But, I want to do my PhD on condensed matter. But one of my main concern is finding an advisor. I am worried that the professors in top tier universities may not comply with it.

Is it possible to persuade advisors in condensed matter to guide me? (especially in a top tier university)

If yes, how easy is it ?

I am not so sure about it....But is this thing really common among grad students?

You are talking about what you did as an undergraduate. When talking to a potential supervisor, you have to remember that you are still going to be a student. You will be learning things. A supervisor will see your previous research and your potential for additional research.

As an undergraduate, I'm pretty sure that you did not become a world expert in astrophysics. So it's not like that you will have "wasted" knowledge, now that you will switch to a different topic.

Also, it's not like you're changing from biology to physics. You are staying within the realm of physics, and any skills that you gained doing your ("unrelated") undergraduate research will only benefit you when doing your graduate research.


Developing casual relationship with advisor I'm currently working for a professor in a research institution. The typical interaction with my advisor is as follows:

  Me: Hi! How was your weekend/conference/trips?

  Prof: Good. Do you have any results to report to me?

  Me: (Frantically take out my report) I've done this, that, and that like what you've told me.

  Prof: Good. Keep working on it.

  Me: (Immediately leave the scene and get back to work)

While I understand that I cannot force him to have any casual conversation with me, it's bugging me that we talk about nothing but research everyday. I have almost no clue about who he is or what he does outside research.

Based on other questions that I've read in this site, I have a feeling this is a norm in academia, though my relationship with my undergrad research advisor was much more friendlier and casual than my current advisor.

My question is: How can I develop a more casual relationship with my advisor? Is this even desirable in academia?

Perhaps this is just my personal preference, but I'd like to have a more casual relationship with someone that I see everyday and talk to everyday. His office is located 5m away from my workspace, and I report to him 1-2 times a day. We also bump into each other numerous times in the corridor, and exchange awkward hi. I don't like to work with someone if I view him as an authoritative figure that only demands results from me, and I often get fearful to see him or talk to him, which I don't think is healthy.

He is not a super-introvert that doesn't like talking to people, because I often see him laughing, talking, and joking around with other professors. That has never happened between two of us.

Somewhat related, but not really: How to deal with an advisor who wants a “friendlier” relationship with me than I do?

How to maintain a good relationship with advisor when there is no need for it but I want it?

EDIT: This is in US, and he does not have any students right now, though he has had students in the past.

You stated a key point

  Perhaps this is just my personal preference, but I'd like to have a more casual relationship with someone that I see everyday and talk to everyday.

It could very well be that his personal preference to take time to foster the kind of relationship that you describe - it could also be a case of him not feeling comfortable have a casual relationship with his employees/advisees. There is no way to really know how long he has known the other professors that he speaks and laughs with.

You can not and should not force it. This is very important, some people recoil when people try and force these kinds of things.

To be honest, based on the conversation snippet, it sounds like he is not being rude at all, but just is focused on the task and on maintaining positive progress.

It is not a bad thing to have a strong working relationship - a polite and productive relationship is beneficial to many working relationships. I would suggest to focus on that aspect.


When is a supervisor unable to request paper retraction if a paper gets published without her consent? If a ex-PhD student publishes a paper from his thesis without his ex-supervisor's consent, the paper gets retracted upon his ex-adviser's request to the editor.

My question is: Could there be any exceptions from this rule?

I can see three main reasons why a PhD student would require permission from the supervisor to publish a paper:

Because the supervisor contributed to the paper enough to deserve authorship.
Because the supervisor is listed as a co-author.
Because university regulation stipulate that students require permission before publishing.
The supervisor is responsible for ensuring that external obligations are met (e.g. ethical handling of medical data; confidentiality agreements with third parties; etc etc.)

Now the third reason does not really affect the journal, but only the internal relationship between student and university. If the student lists the university as affiliation, they may demand to change this, but would not really be in a position to demand a retraction.

If the second case applies but not the first, again a correction of the misleading metainformation needs to be done, but this would probably not be grounds for a retraction.

The first case does merit demanding a retraction, but for this it is irrelevant that the objecting co-author is the former PhD supervisor of the publishing co-author. In particular, it would not really matter how exactly the collaboration of the two broke down.

In the fourth case, the missing permission by the supervisor itself would again be irrelevant for the journal. If the objection however is due to say lacking ethics approval for experiments required those, then the latter circumstance would be cause for retraction. Here, too, the details of the relationship between advisee and advisor are irrelevant, only the potential ethics infractions should impact the journal's decision.


How do I recognise a peer-reviewed journal article? I have lots of research papers, but can I tell which of them are peer-reviewed. Also, on Google Scholar, is there any way of finding only peer-reviewed articles?

The cynical answer is that in borderline cases it's impossible to be certain what is peer-reviewed without a lot of investigation.  Fraudulent journals claim to be performing peer review, and it's hard to disprove their claims (you have to distinguish between no peer review, incompetent or corrupt peer review, and genuine peer review with a very low requirement for how interesting the papers have to be).  Sometimes someone gets a clearly absurd paper accepted (see SCIgen and follow-up projects such as Mathgen), in which case we know something is terribly wrong.  However, there are other cases where we just don't know for sure, even though nobody really trusts the journal.  It takes a lot of work to investigate, and there are tons of ridiculous "journals" operating on the web, so nobody has the time or energy to look into every case.

On the other hand, this doesn't come up except with pretty weird journals.  Everyone working in a field has a pretty good idea of which organizations and journals are reputable; if an expert doesn't know what to make of a given journal, then that's a bad sign.  I don't know of any systematic way to make this judgment other than based on experience and mentoring, although Beall's list is a useful tool to flag highly questionable publishers.

In particular, I know of no automated tool to do searches only for peer-reviewed articles, and I see no prospects for building a reliable tool of this sort (given that some publishers are simply lying).

This makes the situation sound much worse than it is.  I've never run across a paper I was even remotely interested in where I had any doubt about its peer review status.  However, it's a hard problem if you go dredging through junk journals.

Incidentally, in mathematics it would be a bad idea to limit your reading to peer-reviewed articles.  Preprints are not yet peer reviewed, and if you ignore them until they are formally published, you may never catch up to the state of the art.


Do Publishers Search Academia.edu for Potential Articles etc.? Has anyone heard of someone getting their work published by a journal, or some other form of publication, because their unpublished draft was discovered on Academia.edu?

There's a role in publishing called acquisition editor, sometimes also called commissioning editor (the roles of these two are, strictly speaking, different, but they're almost synonymous). The job of these people is to find things to publish. This could, for example, be an otherwise unpublished paper suited to the publisher's [journal], or perhaps commissioning an author to write a review on [topic].

How does one go about doing these things? Different acquisition editors will do things differently. Searching academia.edu is definitely a reasonable way. If one finds an unpublished article on academia.edu that's 1) a good paper and 2) suited to one's journal, one could certainly write to the authors asking them if they want to submit. So although I don't know any paper that went through the process you describe, it's possible.

Caveat: these papers still have to be peer reviewed. I'd be skeptical any paper went directly from being discovered to being published.


Academic affiliation on papers written while between jobs There have been many questions in the past about choosing an affiliation to write on your papers. This one has a nuance that is a bit different from having two jobs.

I am currently between two jobs (PhD student and postdoc) and currently not academically affiliated to either. I am currently writing a paper and I am trying to figure out if I put my PhD affiliation or my postdoc affiliation.

The reason for the PhD affiliation is because a lot of the work was done there.

The reason for the postdoc affiliation is because then anyone could contact me for correspondence with respect to the paper.

I feel there must be a hard and fast rule to this, so I was hoping someone could enlighten me.

Thanks!

I suggest using the postdoc affiliation (precisely for the reason you mention and also because you will probably still be there while the paper will be reviewed) and thanking for support the university where you did your Ph.D. in the acknowledgments.


Are university counseling services usually able to help with the professional troubles that PhD students face? The thing with PhDs is that it often takes someone who knows the politics and people of the field in order to really understand (or help) a PhD student's troubles (if any arise). At the same time, there are many similarities.

If they don't, who are the other best people to talk to in case issues arise?

In general, university counseling should be aware of how to deal with PhD student affairs as well as undergraduate issues. (Perhaps different staff or the two groups, perhaps not.) However, I'll focus on the "if they don't" part of your question.

There is usually a graduate "officer" in most departments, who is tasked with making sure that graduate students complete the requirements of their studies, and that departmental regulations and policies are being followed. This officer should be the first person to talk to if something goes wrong, and the problem can't be resolved between the parties directly.

Beyond that, the members of the thesis committee have an obligation to intervene in the case of severe conflicts that could disrupt the program. Ultimately, though, the chair of the department would be the last "internal" stop before you would have to go to the university-level administration (the office of the dean of graduate students, or a similar position).

If you are looking for advice from fellow students, perhaps you can get information from the student committee that is present in most departments.


How to balance application for a faculty position between exceptional and ordinary? Following the opposite factors described in answers to the question What makes securing faculty positions difficult?, I came to conclusion that an application for an academic position should be balanced. It is understandable that there is a high competition for faculty positions, and a qualified applicant may be not even invited for interview; thus, everyone tries to even overestimate his/her achievements.

However, the interesting points in answers to the above-mentioned question was that too good application might scare the committee, then preferring not to take a risk. Thus, an exceptional application will be simply ignored.

In addition to obvious evidences in the CV, how to highlight exceptional features in the cover letter? For example, potential research achievements, which are not obvious in the CV, promising plans, etc.

Or the strategy must be in this direction to convince the committee that this superstar applicant is a good chance for your department!

One non-surprising way to help your application rise to the top is to have your advisor or another letter-writer contact a colleague they know at a school you're interested in and give you a good word in person (obviously not always an option).

If you are really in the position where you are "too good," then you should follow the advice in the other thread you mentioned, and explicitly spell out in your cover letter why you want to work at a particular institution.


Why do papers not have a table of contents? Most papers (at least in maths, but I believe this applies to other subjects as well) don't have a table of contents (TOC), but dedicate the last paragraph of the introduction to essentially the same purpose. What's the rationale behind this?

I think TOCs are a much better solution. They minimise the burden on the author (no need to come up with creative ways of structuring a TOC in plain text) and are easier to skim as a reader (I know precisely what information to expect in a TOC, as compared to plain text where the author might hide additional information among the TOC stuff).

The purpose of an overview paragraph and a table of contents are different:

The table of contents serves to quickly find a specific section of a document so you can start reading there or extract a specific information. This is something that rarely makes sense with most papers, except if you start at the conclusion/discussion, which is however easy to find anyway. Even if you want to do this, finding the table of contents would cost you more time than it saves you, given the shortness of most papers. So my answer to your titular question would be: Because there is no need for it.

The main exception to this are long review papers, which however usually have a table of contents.
The overview paragraph serves to briefly summarise the paper and explain its semantic structure to the reader, usually somebody who is reading the paper from back to front. This serves to address certain expectations the reader may have had after the introduction (“don’t worry, we didn’t forget this important aspect”) and draw connections between sections (“our work in Section 3 provides us with a framework to evaluate our method in Section 4”). All of this is not possible in a table of contents.

Now, some papers just have a straightforward structure, and there is nothing about it that needs to be elaborated to the reader. In this case an overview paragraph would indeed be nothing but a written-out, tedious-to-read table of contents and should be skipped in my opinion.


Is "party ranking" a genuine ranking system? From some discussion here, I surprisingly found (by googling) that there are some ranking for top universities for partying. From USA Today and Time to Playboy, they list top universities for party and nightlife.

I understand that there are not quantitative factors to make such rankings, but are they genuine rankings or just practical jokes?

It is a fact that some students go to university to have fun, and care about such activities in their future university. Thus, such rankings can attract some students, which is still good for a university.

My question is: Do university take such ranking seriously? I mean, are top party universities proud of this feature and advertise to attract interested students?

Universities are proud of their athletic teams, and use their achievements for advertisement, but what about partying? (I ask because this is the first time I heard about naming top universities for party).

NOTE: I do NOT exclusively mean partying. I general mean any ranking considering extra-curricula activities, any ranking based on factors other than education and research.

Universities aren't pleased about ranking highly in such competitions they didn't ask to participate in. That is at least their official position. As it might help with recruiting, some people dealing with attracting students might quietly approve; but in the same way it attracts certain people, others will be repelled. The university in the above link has a great academic reputation as well, and would probably do just fine if it didn't have this other one.

Other than "being known as a 'party school' ", or appearing in 'rankings' such as Playboy's, I don't think there is any publication that evaluates extra-curricular activities. However, schools greatly value to be seen as a good place that people like to spend their formative years at. When I was accepted for graduate school at NYU, I got hardly any information on their academic side, but a beautiful hardcover picture book on Greenwich Village. Places that don't have natural advantages still care about presenting the school and its surroundings as desirable living locations. The tongue-in-cheek "Where the hell is Grinnell?" slogan comes to mind (it's in the middle of nowhere, but both the town and school are rather beautiful). In addition to mere location, social activities on campus are certainly highlighted in information about the school, and when visiting on site.


How to address a professor in person at US universities? At US universities, how should one address a professor while talking to him or her? In my home country, we usually address the professors as either "sir" or "madam" while talking about our queries in person.

What's the norm at US universities?

"Professor Lastname" is a sensible default, unless and until the professor asks you to call them something else, or you become aware of local customs that are different.

"Sir" and "Madam" are normally not used.


How to proceed when a professor's timekeeping error hurts my course grade? My professor had said the midterm was 2.5 hours. This was told by all the students for weeks. The midterm comes, and there is no countdown for when submission is required, thus meaning the midterm is unlimited. I followed academic integrity and submitted at 2.5 hours; however, many students were submitted at 3+ up to 4 hours. I did not have enough time to finish 2 questions (10 marks total), because I submitted them at the correct time. This caused me to fail the course by 0.28%, meaning I would have needed 1.5 marks on the midterm to pass. This will result in me being held back a year and retake the course. My professor had not made a bell curve, neither a grade adjustment for the error she had made because there was "statistically no significant difference between students who submitted early and those who had extra time."
My question is, what are some reasonable courses of action in this situation?

Let me restate what happened:

The professor informed students of the exam rules.
You followed the rules and failed the course.
Other students did not follow the rules.
The professor, as far as you know, has not punished the students who did not follow the rules.

Certainly, the professor should have punished students who did not follow the rules.  I would expect that students who turn in an exam late would get a grade of zero.  However, punishing other students will do nothing about the fact that you have failed the course.
Your reasonable course of action, as the student, is to retake the course.


Exemption from language requirements for MSc? My friend found a MSc program in Germany whose professors guaranteed to him full English courses plus they would let him write his thesis in English. However, the admission office at the University asks for a high level (C1) of German language proficiency.

Up until now he did not have any luck in explaining this to the people in the Admission office. My question is - is it possible for an exemption of the language requirements to happen, or would you advice that this sounds like a time wasted? Have you heard of any case that this was a obstacle, but it got solved?

Based on my experience with German universities, your friend attempting to convince the admissions office will be near hopeless. One of the professors he has been in touch with could have a decent chance though.


About the name of suggested reveiwer I am going to submit a short math paper to a journal. During the process of submission I am asked to suggest the Editor \ Reviewers. In this respect, can I write the name of my co-advisor of my Ph.D as a potential reviewer? Need to say, we have a joint paper with my co-advisor.

Recent joint papers are one of the first examples of conflict of interest most journals mention, see for example here and here. Being your advisor is also explicitly mentioned as a conflict. I would avoid suggesting this person as a potential reviewer, this will at the very least raise eyebrows unless you have a very convincing reason.


Found a severe error in a conference paper after presentation but before the proceedings I am a final year undergraduate student and had worked on a very fundamental project(there is no available literature on this field presently) during my sophomore year. The results obtained were quite interesting but there was no available literature to back up my results. My supervisor suggested me to submit it to a conference and get reviews on the work.

I did the same and when I submitted the final paper, I got a strong accept with quite positive feedback. I presented the paper at the conference and was also appreciated by my conference chair who said that it was an interesting finding. However, while working on the journal version recently, I discovered a severe error in my paper which completely invalidated the claims I had made in my work.

The conference was highly reputed and delegates from all over the world were present. I feel really ashamed of presenting the wrong work at such a big stage. I discussed this with my supervisor and he told me that we will decline for publication by stating the reason when they will send the copyright form for inclusion in the digital proceedings. This gave me a sense of relief.

However, I cannot stop thinking about having presented the wrong work and seems like I should not have gone for it in the first place. Please suggest me what should I do. I have a deep interest in research but I am in constant fear that my habit of premature celebration will land me into trouble someday.

Let's see:

You wrote a paper of sufficient writing quality that it was chosen for presentation at a conference and publication.
None of the peer reviewers noticed anything wrong with it.
None of the people in the audience questioned it.
Your supervisor saw nothing wrong with it.
You gave an excellent presentation.
You found a flaw in a paper that had already been accepted for publication.
You had the integrity to withdraw your paper from publication.

That's a long list of things to put on your "plus" list.
Most undergrads don't achieve even one of them.
None of them should be seen as a negative.

Be warned that you'll become more jaded as you progress.

I remember as a grad student being asked by my supervisor to review a paper that had been sent for him to review.  It was well written and obviously the result of a lot of hard work, but I found a fundamental oversight that would have allowed the entire problem to be reduced to something very trivial.

We told the publishers about this, and they wrote back requesting that we recommend it for publication anyway.  My supervisor said that the author could publish another paper later that would re-analyze the problem and present it differently.

That's one (of many) reasons I eventually didn't bother finishing my own PhD.


Reference to the unpublished lecture notes I doubt about the following situation.
There is a kind of lecture notes, which contains really valuable examples on which I want make a reference from my paper (I cite some of them and reuse some of them).
But this work wasn't officially published, and it is not listed in the list of the works in the CV of the author. The only one place where this document appears is this link:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/95a3/cb63b80c3416879d534f41eedcd174b40159.pdf

So what the proper way to deal with this situation? Give a link like on web-resource as MISC or UNPUBLISHED or do not make reference at all?

At the moment citation of this work looks like:

M. Kanazawa, Context-free tree grammars, SemanticScholar, URL https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/95a3/cb63b80c3416879d534f41eedcd174b40159.pdf, 2012.

which doesn't look very nice.

HINT: I'm not asking for a specific TeX or BibTex advice!
Below just a convenient formal view of the reference which I'm going to put.

@MISC {kanazawamakoto2012,
    author   = "Kanazawa, Makoto",
    title    = "Context-free tree grammars",
    HOWPUBLISHED= {SemanticScholar},
    month    = "feb",
    year     = "2012",
    URL = "https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/95a3/cb63b80c3416879d534f41eedcd174b40159.pdf"
}

In APA (6th) citation style, it would look like this:

Kanazawa, M. (2012). Context-free tree grammars. Lecture, Place/University. Retrieved 4 May 2017, from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/95a3/cb63b80c3416879d534f41eedcd174b40159.pdf

The Place/University should be corrected. Could be SemanticScholar.

Nevertheless, I'd check (before citing this lecture note) whether the information you want to cite is included in one of the given references.

Note: Since the desired citation style is not clear, I used APA as default. I can change the citation style, if the desired one is added to the question.


Does repeating a second course to bring my GPA up 0.05 points help or hurt for graduate admissions? So, I previously repeated an undergraduate course and I am graduating next semester with only two courses left to take. I recently realized that if I repeat another course from my first year, I can bring my GPA up from 3.85 to 3.90 and graduate summa cum laude, but I wonder if repeating too many courses for GPA (two in this case) would reflect badly, so is it worth it?

As an admissions-committee person for an R1 math dept, this would look to me like an obsessive-compulsive waste of time.

For most people the years they're in undergrad school are an enormous transition, and things that happen freshman year are (hopefully, and, mercifully) not strongly related to what happens later. People understand this, and often look with some interest on the very contrast between "freshman year" (and maybe sophomore) and what happens junior and senior year.

While it might seem virtuous to "go back and repair" a bad performance early on, this is a vastly sub-optimal investment of one's finite time and energy. Look forward, not back. Learn new things, don't worry about perfecting things that really don't need perfecting.

And, indeed, grad admissions people exactly try to appraise candidates' sense of "forward" rather than "back"...


Seeking Research Opportunities I have been a teacher for 17 years and am looking to change careers. I earned a Master's Degree in International Relations with a concentration in East Asian Regional Affairs in 2004 and want to find a job with this.

I know I need to get my foot in the door, so in the mean time, I wanted to start to research and write.  I am also going back to school for a Master's Certificate.

How do I find companies/organizations to research and write for?  I really want to become noticed so I can get a job in International Relations.

Honestly, you just have to do the old Google search and linkedin trawl for everything you can think of. It's never easy, and there aren't any shortcuts.

I'd suggest asking around if you could volunteer your time with a smallish research organisation that fits nominally into your plans. It might be a local organisation, but you can always look abroad for centres that might value your native language skills.

It doesn't matter if you're just proofreading some of their work or helping sort files - it'll help get your foot in the door for future positions. More than that, most places will give you more responsibility as soon as they see you're trust worthy.

Lastly, when applying, you must always, always apply personally, and not with a blanket email. This isn't just about changing a few lines - take time to read about their research/organisation and say specifically what you can do to help. Talk about a particular project they're doing, and discuss how it aligns to your plans.


What should an unpaid research fellow do when they thought they would be writing papers but are instead writing grants? I am an unpaid research fellow in a mainly clinical research lab. One can call it a "volunteer research position".

I thought my goals prior to the fellowship were to write papers, help with clinical trials, but I am being asked to write a lot of grants by both my PI and his colleagues, colleagues I have never met and have never worked under. Is this normal? And not small grants, fairly big grants that take hours upon hours to write.

Is this ethical on the institution's part?

I think the answer to this is pretty field and country dependent since there is variation on the frequency of unpaid post docs. In terms of ethics, I am going to ignore the big issue of whether it is ethical for you to be doing an unpaid post doc and focus on the grants/papers issue.

Despite how it may seem, most PIs do not go out of their way to take advantage of people. The PI probably thinks it is in your best interest to be writing grants and not running experiments or writing papers. One reason for this might be that getting if the PI, or one of the PIs collaborators, gets a grant, then they could pay you. There does not seem to be anything unethical about trying to get an unpaid person into a paid position as quickly as possible.

As for what you should do, you need to talk to the PI. Make sure he understands where you are trying to get to. Then work with him on an approach that gets you there. It might be writing more grants or maybe you need to switch to papers.


Would a good AP Calculus exam score help for admission to mathematics graduate programs? I have had a privilege of knowing what concerns the admission committee about my applicant's file for pure math degree. As of right now, the most significant concern expressed was my weak performance on the GRE subject test (in math.) My question is, would the committee care about the perfect performance on AP Calculus tests, AB and BC? Could it somehow help to mitigate the less-than-appealing GRE math score?

I would say a graduate admission committee in pure mathematics would consider AP Calculus scores completely irrelevant.

Good scores (even perfect scores) on these exams show only that you are (or were) competent at high school / freshman calculus; if this were not the case, you probably should not be applying for grad school in mathematics at all.  As a mathematician would say, calculus competence is necessary but not sufficient for success in a grad program.  Of more direct relevance is your preparation in more advanced, proof-based subjects (abstract algebra, real and complex analysis, etc), of which the GRE is a better (thought not necessarily good) measure.  You must have observed that these courses are of a very different flavor from calculus, with much more theory and less rote computation; at the graduate level this trend will only continue.

Even if you are brilliant at calculus, math professors know that this does not necessarily carry over into more advanced subjects.  They really want to see what you have been doing lately.

(Disclaimer: I am a mathematician but have not been on an admission committee.)


Should a postdoc talk about his depression with his mentor? I am a postdoc in mathematics and I work in the US. Two months ago I was diagnosed with moderate depression. In retrospect, I can  say that I must have starting suffering from it last spring, though I was completely unaware of it at the time. I am currently under treatment, and symptoms are getting better. In particular my work rhythm is back to be  usual. Anyway, I was told that I should continue the treatment for a few other months for safety.

I was wondering whether I should talk about this to my mentor, coauthors or somebody at the department. On one hand, my concern is that they might have realized my slowing down and thought that I was lazy or that I was not interested in doing research on our projects; on the other hand, I am afraid of being stigmatized in the future as a non-reliable person because I had depression.

I'm a tenured faculty member with chronic depression. Even though one of the flareups was in my early twenties, I didn't tell anyone in graduate school. Because of the stigma involved, I'm  unsure even now whether I would advise telling your advisor about this unless you were absolute sure that he would be receptive. The worst case is that he could view you as less than capable and won't push you when he should. Even now (when I'm relatively open about this), I have  used the gloss of personal or family issues when going through particularly difficult times.

But you should also not struggle alone. Your school should have mental health services. There may also be an ombudsman for student affairs. You may also find many of your peers also have mental health concerns. Create a strong support network for yourself.

I also agree with one of the commenters that depression is a chronic condition. I've had several severe bouts through my 20 year career -- and moments when the sun came out and everything felt great. I no longer hold the illusion that any sunny period will last and that I'm free of depression forever. The OP should also plan on what they will do if their depression is chronic, pharma-resistant, or remitting.  That being said, I believe that some aspects of academia are good for people with depression (flexible schedules and being able to work from home for some of us) although there are obviously a lot of negatives as well (toxicity in some departments, incessant deadlines, stress before tenure, contingent employment etc.).


A paper is published in a book, conference and its proceedings, should I cite it as book, conference or conference proceeding paper? I use Mendeley reference manager and sometimes import articles from browser to my Mendeley Library using browser extension. Import is totally fine but I am having two confusions after importing:

Some conference papers are published in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) and many other related Lecture Notes series of Springer. When I add it to Mendeley, it categorizes that paper as "Book" although it was originally published in a conference. So should I cite this paper as

an article in a book titled LNCS or
Conference in which it was published or
Conference proceedings in which it was published?

Please refer to following image as an example of this. First screenshot is from Springer site and second is from Mendeley Desktop paper details section.

If I have to cite it as a Conference proceeding, then what should be name of the Conference Proceeding,

the name written as "Proceedings of International Conference on XYZ" or
the actual title of proceeding as "XYZ"?

Taking the above picture as an example: Here, the title of conference is "International Conference on Human Centered Computing" and Proceeding name is "Human Center Computing". Should I refer title as "Proceedings of International Conference on Human Centered Computing" or just "Human Centered Computing"?

If that paper is Workshop paper of that conference, in this case, what would be citation style, workshop title, Conference title or proceedings title?

Please help me understand this. Thanks in anticipation.
PS Pardon me if all three of the above should be posted as separate questions but I think these all all related to one another like an IF/ELSE condition and may help in reaching a conclusion.

If you are writing a journal article, follow the journal's instructions.  If there are no instructions, imitate papers they have recently published.
If you are doing homework or writing a thesis, ask your professor.  Do not be surprised if they do not care.
So long as the paper is easy to find from the citation, any of these approaches is reasonable.


Can anyone provide insight on a Master's student struggling with research? I just finished my first year of my Master's program in Atmospheric Sciences, and during this time I was a teaching assistant. Now that the summer has arrived, I'm starting as a research assistant with my advisor at the university I'm enrolled at, as well as a research assistant with a government organization. I'm currently working at this government organization, but I'm still getting paid equally between my two advisors.

Getting to the point, my research is a bit ambiguous at the moment. My advisor from my university doesn't have a clear project for me to work on, and my other advisor has provided some insight into what I can work on, but it isn't much better. I'm worried that the summer will be unproductive, and my chances of graduating on time (2 years total for me degree) will be put into jeopardy. Can anyone offer advice/insight into this? It would be greatly appreciated.

I would say this is your opportunity to explore and find a (hopefully small) gap in the literature that you can fill. Reading literature reviews is the best way to start. I had a similar experience a little earlier in my degree (masters), and I was able to pick a topic that I loved, and it kept me going; I am almost finished, and it has been, IMO, a successful endeavor.

If you are applying to a PhD program after, you will have experience exploring a little on your own. Your advisor will be able to say in their recommendation letter that you took initiative in your research.

The difficult part will be carving out something meaningful that you can do in 7-9 months (1 month to research and decide & 2-4 months for thesis writing and defense at the end). Your advisor should be able to help you to narrow the scope to something manageable.


Is there a repository for academic slides? Open access repositories like arXiv make it easy to archive one's papers at a stable place where everyone can download them.

However, in my field (computer science), many publications are conference publications, and they are presented by giving a talk (in addition to the paper). The slides of the talk can often be very helpful to understand the paper (or refresh one's memory, when one attended the talk). In addition, keynotes, tutorials, invited talks, course material, etc., are also many other reasons why academic prepare slides about their research.

Academics sometimes put their slides on their professional webpages (or on the websites of conferences, workshops, etc.), but these are not stable and often go offline after some years (e.g., when academics change institutions). That's a pity: one would imagine that there should be a website like arXiv but to deposit slides, keeping information about when the talk was given, which paper the talk refers to, etc.

Does such a website exist?

For computer science, the video lectures site is very helpful, VideoLectures

This site includes a bunch of videos from well-known researchers in the computer science world from the top conferences in this field like KDD, NIPS and many others. Along with the videos of the presentation, you can easily download the slides material of the presentation (although you can't download the video files from this site).
I recommend you to see this site.


How many hours on an average do academics in business and technology spend consulting for businesses? Early stage startups and entrepreneurs often look at those with experience and knowledge for help in areas such as finance, management (HR), marketing and technology.

How many hours per week/month on  average does a faculty member spend consulting/advising/coaching businesses?

I would say the mean over all of academia is very low, almost zero. I would even go so far as to say that the median amount of time is zero. However, this includes all professors from all fields. It is not impossible for a Professor of German Romantic Poetry to find businesses that need their expertise but I would image them few and far between.

There is also the issue of contractual obligations. My current professorial contract states that during the academic year I cannot work for another institution as more than a "part time job" but during the breaks I could work for someone else full time. While this does not give concrete limits it is presumed here to be about 10 hours per week as a general maximum.

More applied professors I have met were officially funded by outside corporations so their research counted double as both consulting work and as their normal work load. So for them even during the academic year it could be over 40 hours per week.

So what I mean to say is that to get a useful answer you should probably be more specific about which fields you are interested in.


YouTube video assignments? A professor at my university has recently started grading students partially based on assignments delivered as YouTube videos. These assignments are basically the usual exercises that a teacher would give students for practice or to hand-in for grading. Students however, are being required to film the problem solution paper and explain it, so the voice is recorded but the students face may be left out of the video.

This raised my brows, so I'd like to inquire about the good practices around it, particularly:

Should it be publicly or privately posted on YouTube? From my understanding, the videos are being made public.
What advantages with respect to simply asking for the paper to be handed physically or scanned and e-mailed?
Does it provide good proof of authorship? I.e. people can hardly re-use a handwritten paper delivered to the teacher, but knowing that the student's face is not on the video and the teacher may not recognize the student's voice, I'm unsure it gives reasonable confidence that the student is behind the microphone doing the work. Maybe a student reposts an old (deleted) video if the exercise has been used in the past.
It this nice for one-shot experiences, or is it functional for continued usage? I.e. could a teacher give the same video assignment over several years? Possibly with the same exercise problems?
Are there any intelectual property or image rights concern? I.e. for music/movies, performers/actors are continuously paid for exhibitions of their performances, while intellectual properties such as the contents of one's thesis are often waived to the university. What if these videos are later included for paid online courses?
Is there any advantage for the professor with respect to simply asking the video file to be delivered on a Dropbox folder or similar cloud storage method?

Should it be publicly or privately posted on YouTube? From my
  understanding, the videos are being made public.

Private, and the instructor should be telling students how to do this and reprimanding them if they are not.

  What advantages with respect to simply asking for the paper to be
  handed physically or scanned and e-mailed?

well, the student seems to be explaining their thought process in the video. this could help the professor correct students who are astray. Something that will be hard to do when students are remote.

  Does it provide good proof of authorship? I.e. people can hardly
  re-use a handwritten paper delivered to the teacher, but knowing that
  the student's face is not on the video and the teacher may not
  recognize the student's voice, I'm unsure it gives reasonable
  confidence that the student is behind the microphone doing the work.
  Maybe a student reposts an old (deleted) video if the exercise has
  been used in the past.

This seems like it could be an issue, but I feel as though it would be about as big a problem as other forms of cheating with "in person" assignments. If teachers can recognize two similar papers, there is a pretty high chance that they would remember an entirely copied video. You also should be able to notice if someone isn't able to explain the work they did properly.

  It this nice for one-shot experiences, or is it functional for
  continued usage? I.e. could a teacher give the same video assignment
  over several years? Possibly with the same exercise problems?

Functional for continued use, although the instructor should still be teaching each week. I had an instructor record each lesson and upload it to a private YouTube playlist for review. If class was missed he would simply take a previous years video and upload it, and then ask if there were any questions. It was insanely helpful as a student and I think almost every teacher should do it (I still go back to some of those lectures for review and the class was over a year ago).

  Are there any intelectual property or image rights concern? I.e. for
  music/movies, performers/actors are continuously paid for exhibitions
  of their performances, while intellectual properties such as the
  contents of one's thesis are often waived to the university. What if
  these videos are later included for paid online courses?

Yes there are, but if the videos are private and only used by students in the class, you should be fine. Videos like this should only accompany an in person class, different things should be done for a completely online class.

  Is there any advantage for the professor with respect to simply asking
  the video file to be delivered on a Dropbox folder or similar cloud
  storage method?

YouTube is probably easier for students but Dropbox is probably a little more secure. By that I mean the only security private YouTube videos have is that you can only find them if you have the proper link. In theory students could share the link and work ahead, or someone outside the university could have access to the class. I have known some teachers that won't record lectures because of this (god forbid learning takes place).


Do I need to include citations when writing my own lecture notes, if I make them public? I am a graduate student in mathematics, writing my own notes in my spare time on a topic I'm interested in. I find it helps me understand things if I write things out in the style of lecture notes (although to be clear I haven't taken a course in this topic). These notes consist of information from a huge variety of sources, including books, math.stackexchange, wikipedia etc. and since it is for my personal understanding I haven't been citing anything.

There is a chance, however, that I would like to upload these notes on my webpage for anyone who may find them useful. Is it acceptable to only include a paragraph at the beginning saying that none of the following is my own work, written purely for personal benefit and taken from a variety of sources, without citing anything specifically? Obviously there is a huge difference here to plagiarising work that would be considered for publication somewhere 'official', but would it still be considered unacceptable practice?

Thanks in advance.

First, I think we should maintain good standards of ethics and scholarship for all public/published documents, regardless of whether they've been through peer-review.

Thus, even for "standard" material that's visible in many textbooks, it is "fair play" to acknowledge what you looked at to inform yourself. Indeed, this bit of information does also impart something useful to potential readers.

So, at the least, I'd have a bibliography, and, if not constantly citing those sources, at least some bibliographic notes explaining in some further detail how you used them. This could be a part of an introduction, for that matter, rather than putting it at the end.

(While it is certainly true that at some point(s) one can no longer remember where one first saw something-or-other, so it's difficult to give accurate credit, it is still possible to do a bit of historical research to find out something of the origins of an idea...)


Should someone continue with their PhD if they fail the core courses in master's? A friend of mine had failed core courses during his master's program. He had to retake the exams and passed them with minimum grade. However, his research output was good and he was able to publish a journal paper (first author, IF~4).
Now he has been accepted for a PhD in Canada on the same topic as his master's. He will be working with application of the courses he had failed in.
Should he continue with his PhD journey? At the university he will be carrying out his research, they don't have to take any coursework. So, he would have to continue with his research without having to take any courses.
Is he suitable for PhD? As far I know, PhD students are supposed to be proficient in the coursework.

I'm going to answer here as if you are the "friend."
If the university accepts you into a doctoral program they have fairly high confidence that you will be successful. Otherwise they are just wasting scarce resources, including money, space, and faculty time.
It may be that you have some deficiencies and I hope that the educational system in place gives you the time and opportunity to fill any gaps, but you probably also have some compensating points in your favor.
It is good, of course, to try to figure out why you had issues in the past and to correct what can be changed.
But doctoral work is different from coursework and the skills required are not the same. Trust the people who admitted you to the program that you can do it.


Course assessment for programming courses Next year,
I will be teaching a course that has a significant programming component.
While I have taught other courses before,
it will be my first time teaching a programming course.
Consequently, I was wondering:
what is a typical design of the course assessment for a programming course,
e.g., intro to Java/Python programming?
In particular, how many assessment tasks are there, and how are they weighted?
The assessment tasks that I have in mind would include
individual assignments, group projects,
and individual assessment (quizzes or a final exam).
Are there other assessment tasks that are typically present in a programming course?

(I have taken a few programming courses in the past---unfortunately that was more than 10 years ago so,
so my memory of my classes is quite hazy at this point.)

Response to comment: ask your colleagues who have taught similar courses

Unfortunately,
my department is focused on an academic discipline where programming is not central,
thus, most of the courses in my department do not involve any programming at all.
Also, the course that I will be teaching is a new course
that I am in the process of developing,
thus I have a lot of freedom about deciding how to design the course assessment.
Nevertheless,
Nate Eldredge's suggestion is helpful in that I can ask the one or two colleagues in my department
who are teaching programming courses (different contexts, different languages)
how they assess students.

As a background, I have a BSc in Applied Informatics in Physics, and I have followed many programming courses in C, C++, Java, UML & Design Patterns, Matlab & Simulink, Xilinx, etc. Usually at my institution the final grade is composed by the following sum: 40% final exam(which can be also practically some problems in 3 hours, or more theoretically on paper), 30% individual project, 30% group project. The individual homework have a deadline to be proposed, usually at the half of the corresponding semester. Concerning the group project, I have to say that this is the most problematic. Many times I had to do almost the core of the project of it by myself, since the other members were not so focused. Hence, the bigger the group, the bigger the problems within the group. But I have to say that there were some group projects which turned to be a very collaborative, and this highly depends on the group members and their motivation. Concerning the curricula, the best would be to adapt it on their background. For example, it would be easier for them to follow a course in Java if they have already a strong background in OOP(C++/C#). Either way, from my point of view the only weakness in our faculty programming courses is that the transition from academic usage to industry is not very well performed. In particular, we haven't had many courses where the basic frameworks in different programming languages were presented and studied practiacally. Of course, that would require a lot of time, but the knowledge gained by the students increase very much and helps them adapt immediately to industry.