What if a faculty member is not successful in obtaining the summer salary from a funding agency? I am a postdoc in Physics areas and trying to get myself ready for applying for tenure track positions. However, the US academic salary system seems still mysterious to me.
In several salary surveys, a reasonably close figure for starting salaries of starting assistant professor positions emerge as $75-80K per year. The point is that, as far as I understand it, the salary is based on the calender year basis. However, the contracts for the assistant professors are usually academic year basis (except that probably in the first couple of years they may get this full salary in their start up package).
This means that practically they get $55-60K for 8-9 months. The rest of the salary, called the summer salary, needs to be obtained via applying to the respective funding agencies.

However, funding is obviously not guaranteed every year. So it is obviously out of question that people should be based on the full year salary amounts shown above. Truthfully, their salaries are $55-60k per calender year and if they are able to get some funding, they can get some bonus over the summer.

Now, the first question is: isn't it way too low of a starting salary for a PhD in STEM areas?! Especially, people are normally already in their mid 30s when they get a tenure track position so they usually have a family to support. Sure, there are many people survive with much lower salaries and also the stereotypical argument that you don't enter academia if you want to earn money is also around. But I am talking about skills, experience and qualification. Anyway, it just seems too low salary to me and I would really want to know if there is something crucial I am missing here.

Secondly, what do faculty members do if they don't get the summer salaries, what other options are there for them to compensate the money.

In the US, salaries for tenure-track positions are usually for the academic year; one might get the summer salary thrown in as part of the startup package for the first year or two.  So your academic-year (9-month) salary of $70K would translate to a full-year salary of $70*12/9 = around $93K.  The expectation would be that you would use those first two years to establish a research program, write grant proposals, etc., so as to be able to fend for yourself after that.

While it's true that grants are getting harder to get, remember that single-investigator grants are not your only option: you can also participate in larger multi-PI and collaborative proposals.  For example, you may be able to put together a collaborative proposal with your dissertation advisor while at the same time striking out on your own -- his greater seniority and track record may make it easier to land such a grant.

Finally, I would counsel against spending a lot of time teaching during the summer --- IMHO you'd be better off spending the time moving your research forward (remember why your initial summer salary was included in your startup package).  One reason (not the only one) is that having a solid record of peer-reviewed external funding greatly strengthens your case when you go up for tenure.


take visiting professorship or wait a year? I've been doing a post-doc in physics for the past 5.5 years or so and have unsuccessfully tried to obtain a faculty job at a University for the past 3 of them. On a whim I applied to a visiting prof. job at a nearby (pretty highly regarded) liberal arts school and got an offer. It's for a year with maybe extensions.

I am wondering if I should take it and if I do, do I shoot myself in the foot when applying for University positions in the fall? How will they look at it? The job entails one class and 2 labs/semester so I'm somewhat hopeful that I can continue a reasonably good research output in the year.

On the other hand, this experience will give me, hopefully, the necessary requesites to break into the lib. arts academic setting which I'm not to adverse to either.

This is ultimately a personal choice, but if you've spent the last five years as a research postdoc with no success in landing a tenure track position at a research university, then it's probably time to change your career strategy.

There are lots of permanent or tenure track positions at liberal arts colleges, regional comprehensive universities, and community colleges where little or no research will be expected of you and PhD and teaching experience are necessary to get a job.  If you want one of those jobs, then now would be a good time to start getting more teaching experience.


Is it alright to contact lab members of a lab you interviewed at for an update on your PhD application? I am international applicant for a PhD program in Molecular Biology. I have interviewed with a professor and have had a chat with all of the members of the lab I am extremely interested in working in. It has been over 4 months since I first got in touch with the lab as of now. I am trying to be patient, but is it okay to get in touch with a current PhD student in the lab to get an update on what impression I had left on them and if the professor is going to be considering me.
This is for a graduate program in Molecular Biology in Canada.
Thank you.

Contact the person who interviewed you, not a student. I doubt a PhD student will know anything about who is going to be made an offer.
It's perfectly fine (especially after four months) to send a short, polite email to your interviewer asking when you can expect to hear from them.


Negotiating PhD stipend I have been admitted to a PhD at an american university. The practice there is that the university provides the fellowship for the first year and thereafter the group you are working with gives you the stipend.

I have 4 years of relevant work experience in my area of research. I believe that I should get a stipend that's higher than the minimum requirement set by the university. How should I go about doing this at an american university?

(Note: I have already accepted the offer)

I came across this related question which is for a German PhD where he succeeded, but he had multiple offers which he used to negotiate this.
Safely negotiate a salary for a PhD offer - Germany

I must say that I am surprised with the answers here.

I am willing to bet a fair amount of money that you will not get a raise from your institution. And I can think of a million reasons. Here are a few big ones.

A part of my reasoning stems from my personal experience, where I had multiple offers to top-tier US universities, and also from a slightly lower level US university, which offered me a salary that was almost 10k higher. When I took this offer to other top-tier US universities, they shrugged and said, "Oh well. You can't have everything." Also, in my experience, the top tier universities offered similar amounts that were not worth negotiating.

Another reason is that grad students are very replaceable. You may have some relevant experience, but they can easily fill your seat with someone else (and never know what they're missing out on, because you haven't demonstrated any of your academic and research abilities yet) so it's not really worth it to the admission committee to try and negotiate your salary.

Also, note that you may not have been admitted without your relevant work experience, so you may have already "cashed out" from your experience.

Then there's the fact that a lot of grad students are admitted each year (as opposed to a couple of professors/postdocs). If the administration tried to negotiate salaries with 20+ graduate students a year, it would be a nightmare, not to mention that it would seriously hurt the morale of the student population to compare salaries and realize that there is some sort of a ranking amongst the grad students. Being in grad school is already damaging to your ego; can you imagine the student next to you getting paid a lot higher salary, and realize that you're not as wanted as her?

Anyway, I have never heard of grad students negotiating higher pay (unless you count getting federal funding, or research support from your advisor, or extra summer teaching etc.), and combined with the fact that you've already accepted your offer, I really don't see your institution increasing your salary. In fact, I wouldn't even try, because you're already committed to going there, and the people will remember you for trying something like that (OK, maybe it wouldn't hurt to ask once, but I wouldn't try very hard).

That being said, I am aware of a few cases where the grad students had two-body problems, and the institution was willing to accommodate that, but only in the cases where at least one of the two applicants were stellar.


What is some pre-requisite information one should know before applying to a CS grad school in the US? I am a junior who is going to apply to a CS grad school(hoping to specialize in programming language theory) next fall.

I had some generic questions about the admissions process that is not so easy to get the answer to -

Do all European PhD programs require a masters degree for admission?
Or are there programs where like the US if you have a 4 year
bachelor's degree, you can apply to the PhD program?
Since in the US, one applies to the program and not
the professor, one might end up wanting to/end up working with
anyway with another professor from the same department after they get accepted and spend some time in the program - so should I
even contact them pre-acceptance?
Do all (at least tier 2) CS PhD programs in the US come with
funding? If not, how do I figure out if the program comes with
funding?
Is it a wise idea to mail the admissions committee of the
Universities to ask if the application fee might be waived
considering I come from a 3rd world country?

I will give some guidance for the US only.

Here, you apply to a school or to a department. There is no need to contact professors beforehand. I would do so only if you have already set a research agenda and only a few professors would qualify to guide it. Most "blind" contacts are treated as noise by professors until you formally apply and are at least close to acceptance.

Funding in CS in the US is most likely to be from a TA position. One gets a very modest salary and (normally) waiver of tuition fees. It is enough to live on in most places (harder around Silicon Valley, where housing is outrageous). The tasks are helping professors with their courses, such as leading smaller question-answer sessions and grading. Those with more experience might get to teach intro courses. Normally you would apply for a TA position when you apply for admission. Ask each institution about the possibilities. In some subfields, in might be possible to get a research assistant position funded through a professor's grant. This might be good, but if the funding ends, so does the job.

You can always ask for fee waiver and probably should. It may be possible or not.  Things are very variable in the US as there is no national system of universities.


If I am building on results of my earlier works, do I have to include them in my bibliography? In my master's thesis I am building on two earlier works of myself.
-> One is a study project I've done together with two fellow students, -> the other one is an assignment I did on my own.

If I'm using results from these, should I include them in the Bibliography?

Arguments against including them might be:

They are not published, a reader of my thesis therefore wouldn't be able to
look these sources up. (They don't qualify as quotable)
Also the effort involved in this works was much less than the amount
of work I'm doing for my thesis. (Some doubts on them beeing worth quoting)
And finally I am the author or one of the authors of these works. (I am not using foreign thought material)

Nevertheless it feels somehow incomplete to just leave them out.

Are these works available in any published form or any other permanent online form, such as a technical report? If so then cite. If not, then there's nothing to cite. In my opinion, it would look strange to cite a project done in some previous course.

What you can do is put an acknowledgment in the back of your thesis/paper to your previous "co-authors".


Conference with very few submissions I have submitted a paper to a conference in theoretical computer science in China, whose deadline was today 06/Mar/2016, 11:59 EST. It is not one of the mainstream conferences, but I have heard some serious computer scientists advertising it. In some conference ranking sites, this conference is ranked B. On the other hand there are some prestigious specialized conferences that are also ranked B. So I decided to submit to it.

Looking for the historic of the conference in previous years, I have seem that the average acceptance ratio is 30%, and that the number of submissions each year is above 100 (some years way above 100).

Now for my surprise, I submitted my paper something like one hour before the deadline, and my paper received a number below 10. The submission system was easychair, and there were some boxes where we could chose the subjects of research related to the paper.

My questions are:

1) Is it normal to have such few submissions at easychair
just one hour before the deadline?

2) Is it possible that this conference is artificially increasing the statistics for the previous years? One weird thing that I noted is that
in previous years the proceedings were published at lncs. However this year,
there is no information about where the proceedings will be published.

3) I'm seriously thinking about withdrawing, since I can't imagine how the conference will reach a reasonable number of submissions, even if the deadline is extended. Do you think I should do that?

Statistics could be artificially increased, but also the advertisements of the serious computer scientist could be faked (if they are on the website of the conference). Almost all of the scamming conferences use real, "famous" scientists that are supposedly chairing sessions and giving lectures, even though they themselves don't know anything about it.

If you really think it's a scam you could withdraw, however I don't think they will actually remove your abstract from the website.

I personally think the best way to avoid scams or second tier conferences is to just talk to colleagues / mentors / professors in your field, as you might also end up at conferences that seem interesting but are actually not completely about your field.


Is it realistic to apply to a Master at MIT, Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, Stanford with a Bachelor of a German Fachhochschule? I am a 31 year old German Bachelor-student in his 5th semester in a University of Applied Sciences, studying in Business Information Systems. The total time for receiving the Bachelor is 7 semesters.

I am starting to search for a good university for my Master (same area of studies) and I was thinking of the big ones like MIT, Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, and Stanford. Having checked on their websites, the costs got my main focus, as they are all quite expensive.

My question here is, whether there are studentships to support the costs. Does anybody know whether my idea of studies in these universities is realistic? How big can I expect my chance given my age, nationality, university in Germany, money situation?

tl;dr. I think it's unrealistic at this stage.

Note that the Masters degree in America is different than in Germany, in the sense that bachelors are typically longer and the Master and PhD are somewhat parallel in something called 'graduate school'. One question that arises is to what purpose do you want a Masters? Are you interested in doing research on the longer haul? Then it's a PhD you need. Are you mainly interested in the prestige?

My advice, if you are interested in doing academic research would be to already find a German university that will accept you in a Masters program (I don't know if it's possible...). You will be better armed to apply for a prestigious American graduate program.

More precisely about your concerns:

  my age,

It's fine, people start grad school later than that.

  nationality,

Nationality is a non-issue providing you are accepted in a program and have secured funding (see below). If anything it might take a bit longer for visa procedures, certainly not a killer criterion at any rate.

  university in Germany,

German institutions are generally highly regarded in America, the problem is not Germany, it's the type of your institution. A German 'university of applied science' (Fachhochschule) delivers vocational degrees. The focus is to give graduates a set of practical skills so that they can enter the workforce directly upon completion of the degree. It does not prepare you to enter a prestigious graduate school, whether in America or anywhere else. When applying, you will be competing with people who are far better prepared than you.

Top American graduate schools give a enormous importance to recommendation letters. It's already hard to find professors at German/Swiss universities who know enough about the American recommendation culture to write something competitive, I suspect few (none?) of the teachers at a Fachhochschule have experience in that matter.

  money situation?

You will need funding. For Masters you already realized how much tuition you will have to pay. Many student fund their studies with loans, and in the business schools it's common for employers to pay tuition. Departments sometimes pay tuition.

For PhDs, It's (almost) never the case that graduate students pay tuition out of pocket, that's also a reason why these programs are so competitive. Your potential adviser will have to secure hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay your tuition and stipend. For the reasons listed above, I think you will struggle to find funding, but it's unrelated to your current account balance.


Professor wants my "non-funded" master's data I have recently abandoned my master's program. Long story short, she was a very strict director who always put me down. I didn't get along with her, and she never gave me any emotional or financial support. Now that I have quit, she asks I do a backup of all of the work I have done for her. I don't think it is fair that I have to give it to her, especially since there was no funding AND she kind of forced me to quit. I can't find any rules that adresses this type of situation.

Should I give her what I have done since I produced those results while being her student?

Here are more details: After 4 semesters, she told me that I didn't have the abilities to complete the masters program, and that she didn't know what to do with me. While it is true that my work wasn't the best, there also were a lot of problems with the actual project which explains why we weren't going as fast as she would have liked. She went on to talk to the dean, and I went to see my co-director for some alternatives so that I can complete my studies. He came up with a new project,with less interactions with her and more with him, which she rejected. She said that seeing how I have "not produced a single result", she won't start a new project. if I want to continue with her, I have to complete a number of tasks (on the original project) within the semester, and if I fail to complete them, the project is over. Since I was (still am) in a deep depression from working with her, I refused to continue seeing how I don't want to get psychologically weaker. I left school and hoped to get all of this behind me, but she then writes to me saying that since I decided to abandon, I need to give her my all of the data, articles, and other works. I don't understand why she wants my work when she says that I was an incompetent student who hasn't produced any results.

She never did any investment apart from giving her time, I paid for all of my studies and did my own research alone. I don't think I owe her anything.

She never did any investment apart from giving her time

Whoa, there! That sounds like a significant investment, to me.  Indeed, it's hard to see what other investment you could reasonably expect her to make. She's not responsible for your funding; she can't do the work for you because it's supposed to be your master's project, leading to your degree, not hers.

Nonetheless, it is typical for an advisor to provide sufficient guidance intellectual contribution to the project that they could reasonably expect to be a co-author on most papers coming out of the project. This is joint work and it belongs as much to your collaborators as to you, even if you don't get along with your collaborators any more.

What does it cost you to hand over the material? Do you expect to benefit from it in some way that will be diminished by giving it to the professor? If it costs you little or nothing, it's hard to see any justification for not handing it over.  "I don't like her" is spite, not justification.  The main benefit that I see from handing it over is that you can expect to be a co-author of any paper that results directly from the work you have done. And, if you do hand over the data, you should make this a condition.

You should also consider the impact of your decision on your future career. If you intend to leave academia then it's probably minimal: you're unlikely to be asking for a reference from this professor and it's unlikely you'll have any interaction with her in the future. However, if you intend to stay in academia, you need to think carefully about this. People's perceptions of your actions will depend very much on who they think was at fault. If, for example, your professor has a reputation of being difficult, maybe you gain sympathy from the community. However, if she has a reputation of being reasonable, trustworthy and easy to work with, there's the danger that you acquire the reputation of being difficult to work with, falling out and torpedoing projects.


What level of math does one usually require before being able to publish a paper of their own At what level does someone become skilled enough in math to publish their work? I am an undergrad student currently in calculus 2. My dream is to publish work of my own, but I know that will come to fruition quite a while down the road due to my current level of math. I would appreciate any advice you have to give. Thank you in advance. Just to clarify I am asking about math papers.

This is something that varies with every individual. The best advice is to first get a broad mathematical education and then focus on some area of interest. But along the way to that broad education, seek insight into why things work as they do, not just the computational skill that you normally get in something like Calc 2.
Some people are able to publish as undergraduates, but it is fairly rare. However, an undergraduate math degree should get you to the point that you have actual insight into one or two areas (mine were analysis and topology) sufficient to dig deeply.
Research is normally very narrow, focusing on some tiny aspect of some small subfield if mathematics (or physics, or ...). But before you go narrow, first go broad, so that you have some sense of the possibilities. And also, some sense of the interconnections between things.
Working with a professor on some project of mutual interest will give you both a sense of what it is like to explore the unknown and also lets you take advantage of their insights. And letting them know now of your goals can help you attain them.
Solve a lot of problems. Get a lot of feedback. Look for the why, not just the how. Notice things. Keep notebooks. Ask questions.

This is, I know, more than you asked for, but you seem eager to learn and I appreciate that. Also note that whatever "research" I did as an undergraduate was, though attempted vigorously, laughably naive. Oh well. It came, eventually. And it was "hella fun".


Should one cite a dictionary for every technical term? The paper I am working on contains many medical terms -- particularly pathologies -- to which I write the description of each one along with related literature for their causes in a table. For this purpose, I refer a couple of medical dictionaries.

Should I cite each term with appropriate dictionary I am using separately next to each definition of the term? I believe this would overcrowd my reference section.

In some cases, I merge and use multiple dictionary terms to phrase my own description of the term.

Hence would it be better to just have a single reference to the dictionaries such as

The following medical dictionaries are referred for appropriate terminology: [15,16,24].

at a footnote or at the bottom of the table?

Should one cite a dictionary at all (for a survey paper)?

It depends on your target audience. If they are familiar with that medical topic, then it's not necessary.

Even if they are not familiar, citing dictionary is an inconvenient way to do it because i) the readers need to stop reading and get that dictionary, ii) most people who are not familiar with medical terms probably would not have easy access to a medical dictionary. For this reason, I will recommend having a glossary list/table or providing minimal but sufficient in-text definition. The list/table method is better for mixed audience so that the more technically inclined can read on without any problem; the in-text definition method is more suitable for generally less technically inclined audience.

I don't think you need to refer down to the page number and have multiple citations when you cite them. Dictionary is built in a way that you can find the word without page number. And if you use a list/table, then a combination of superscript symbol and a blanket citation in the footnote is also a convenient to deal with it.

In any case, seek out other similar reports or talk to the editor on how to deal with your problem. They would reveal perhaps the most common or best practices.


What should I do if someone is claiming my research on ResearchGate? I've got a case where 90% of my academic publications are being claimed by a professor at another university with the same name on ResearchGate.  I've sent several email requests both direct and through ResearchGate messaging to ask him to remove those publications from his profile.  This has been over several months with no response.

At this point, I'm thinking of sending a registered letter to the professor and his department chair to correct what I see as academic theft through inaction.  However, I realize that ResearchGate is mostly at fault here.  There is no mechanism to dispute ownership once assigned.

Thought about doing a DMCA takedown notice of the offending pages.

What is the best way to resolve this?

I think the most important part of your question is the bit about "with the same name".

ResearchGate has very loose and rather questionable practices in how they manage their citation data, which tends to err on the side of inclusion.  Moreover, their terrible user interface makes it very easy for somebody to do things like click "add all" and end up with a whole bunch of misattributed publications.  In the little bit that I played with ResearchGate before giving it up as basically useless, it kept offering to give me authorship of papers by people with the same last name---not even the same first name.  It will also automatically add papers to your profile in some circumstances.

What I'm driving at is that, given that you and this other researcher have the same name, it's plausible that they didn't even do this intentionally and have just written off the whole ResearchGate mess.  The fact that they didn't respond to your direct email is more problematic, but again not necessarily damning---you may well be going into their "headache pile" or even their spam folder.

Given all of this, what I would suggest is a two step solution:

If you think you have standing to do so, send a DMCA takedown notice to ResearchGate: it's fast, easy, and might get the content taken down.
After that, just start ignoring the whole mess.  It's not worth your time and energy.


Proper procedure when promised funding not given to Ph.D. graduate student I have a friend who was accepted into an interdisciplinary program at the University of Arizona a few years ago.

They are more than halfway to completing their Ph.D., however their advisor is indicating that they may not receive the full amount of funding this year.

Their offer letter and governing handbook all state that students will be funded at an annual rate of $25k for up to 5 years.

My friend has procured much of their own funding for many of the years through fellowships, so their salary was payed from outside money for over half of their time in the program.

The relevant handbook text is:

  The basic graduate stipend is $25,000 (pro-rated the first year due to
  August start date). Depending on the source of funding, you may
  receive this stipend in the form of bi-weekly paychecks or in larger
  lump sum amounts... In addition to your stipend, tuition is waived and
  single only health insurance is paid. Miscellaneous fees incurred each
  semester are the student’s responsibility to pay.

and

  All first-year students are funded from multiple university sources.
  By the middle of the second semester, students should have identified
  a dissertation advisor. From that point forward, financial
  responsibility for the student besides with the dissertation advisor.
  During dissertation research, students are typically paid as graduate
  research assistants (via payroll) for a period of up to five years,
  contingent on the availability of funds and continued satisfactory
  progress.

Now this was sold to them by the program recruitment as they would have complete coverage for 5 years at $25k salary, but the statement "contingent on the availability of funds," seems to be an escape clause here.

When a Ph.D. student is promised a certain level funding in the US, but legally the University can shirk that duty, what is the typical response, recourse, and avenues that the student should take when that funding is lowered or removed?

Note that my friend is still in negotiation about this with their advisor, and they may still obtain full funding, but I thought it would make a good question.

That "contingent on the availability of funds" is indeed an escape clause for the university, such that they technically have no responsibility to ensure funding.

However, it is entirely unreasonable for a Ph.D. student in a STEM field in the US to not be paid a living wage for their work.  Your friend needs to make the department aware of this situation, as departments often have resources that can be used to help to cover small gaps.  Now it's possible that neither the department nor the professor is able to obtain the necessary funds, in which case, I would recommend that your friend consider seeking paid employment in industry and finish their Ph.D. part-time.

Having a student do this would be quite embarrassing to most professors, so making it known that this is a possibility may help ensure that appropriate support can be obtained.

The situation, unfortunately, is much worse if your friend is not a U.S. citizen.  In that case, if they have the ability to seek employment through the training option on an F-1 visa, then they may be able to pursue the same strategy.  Some professors, however, will attempt to effectively enslave foreign students through visa-related threats, and this can result in very difficult problems.


Health issues in grad school - how many extensions are acceptable? I'm a graduate student in physics, and I've been having some major health issues.  For the sake of anonymity, I don't want to say what they are, but they are NOT mental-health related, though they certainly have caused quite a bit of depression as a byproduct.  I make this distinction not due to some prejudice, but simply because mental health problems come with their own specific challenges that are not always shared by other illnesses.  I chose to mention physics with the hope that someone with knowledge of the physics-specific culture could comment. Also, I think it's worth mentioning that physics seems to have a particularly brutal academic culture (though I haven't experienced that in my program...yet).  I'm currently struggling to complete my assignments on time, and it's very frustrating.  I've done well in all of my courses so far, but now I'm falling behind.

There is one class in which I'm particularly behind, and I asked the professor for a two day extension on a problem set.  That day came and went, and I still was not able to complete the assignment.  I would need another two days most likely, and if I can't complete it then I will have to drop the course.  I would like to ask for another extension, but I don't want to appear flaky or unreliable, and I'm concerned about gaining a reputation in the department since I've asked other professors for extensions in the past (which have been granted and I was able to get the work done). If I had an advisor already, I would be more willing to just ask for the extension, but since I don't have one yet, I'm very self-conscious of being perceived as one of the "good" students.  This class is not required for my program, but could establish me as a more capable student by going beyond the basic intro courses.  Other students my year are taking similar "above and beyond courses", so it seems to be a way of proving yourself to a potential advisor.  Plus, I just really don't want to drop the course, since it's interesting and I don't want to let it "beat me", silly as that sounds.

Is it acceptable to ask for another extension?  I've done well on all the other assignments, and I could explain what's been happening.  However, I'm also concerned that explaining my situation could backfire if having an illness could make potential advisors more wary of taking me as a student.

I would have some general conversation with the department, and with health services versus these atomistic requests for extra time on specific projects.
If the situation is chronic, perhaps you need to defer your studies as you are routinely unable to keep up.  But that depends on the specifics: frequency and duration of your issues, are they predictable (e.g. chemo timing) or random.  Likelihood to improve.  And of course if the situation is a genuine medical impairment or if you are struggling with content and using it as an excuse (not an accusation, just within the theoretical solution space).

P.s.  If the course is not part of the requirements, I would just drop it.  Seems like obvious way to handle the impairment.  You can still get your program done.  Just not with extra volume.


Is there any way to post my code on Code Review Stack Exchange and not be worried about plagiarism? I am doing my thesis-based master’s in computer engineering and am required to program a tool in C++ as a part of my research. I am quite impressed by the help offered on the Code Review website and am considering posting a big chunk of my code for suggestions and improvement. However, I am also worried that someone may plagiarize the idea contained in my posted code. This, in turn, might affect the credibility of my work.

I believe one solution is to post a minimal, verifiable and complete example for the code I want suggestions for. However, I am interested in knowing if it is possible to post my code as is and not be worried about it getting copied.

In addition to all the good answers you received so far, I should also point out that in general people's fear of being unethically scooped is vastly exaggerated. I would imagine that there really isn't a community of people scouring the Web for master's thesis level research that they can find and then, with considerable time disadvantage to the original author, copy. I say "with considerable time disadvantage" because even if somebody finds your work, they still need to reverse engineer a lot of what you already have and know to get to a publishable thesis or paper from your code alone. Unless you consider letting your work sit for half a year it seems unlikely that a copycat will end up publishing quicker than you, the original author.

Yes, being scooped sucks, but it usually does not happen because somebody stole your code, or even your idea. Scooping happens because there are multiple independent teams working worldwide on almost any mainstream research topic, and there usually only are a finite number of ways to attack any given problem given the current state of literature. Situations where two teams are working with similar approaches on similar problems are bound to come up.


Appropriate response to fellowship award notice via email I received an email notifying that my colleague and I have been awarded a fellowship, sent by an administrator but signed by the director of the programme which is a professor. The institution in based in the US. The professor and another administrator are copied in that email. The only instruction in the email was to contact an administrator notifying them of my acceptance.
What is the appropriate response? Should I reply to the initial email thanking for the fellowship in addition to writing the administrator? Should I include the director of the programme?
Being based in northern Europe, my initial impression is that a "thank you" email sent to everyone's mailbox would be an annoyance, but I'm completely ignorant of etiquette in American academia. Would a lack of a thank you email be seen as a lack of gratitude?

There is no reason why you can't just reply-all to such an email, letting everyone know of your decision at the same time. Those who don't need the information can just ignore the mail. And include a thank-you with the acceptance.
If you decline it, then the same would apply, with "thank you, but ..." for the award.


How to avoid student favoritism in the classroom? FYI: I am teaching undergraduates, and am fairly recently out of grad school myself.

I find myself unconsciously treating/regarding students differently based on their engagement with the class. I find that I tend to favor students who do their work, arrive on time, and participate in discussions over those who do not.

By "favoring" I don't necessarily mean that I give them special treatment or higher grades - but I find that I do treat them better, visibly. I am more patient with them and speak to them warmly. Enough that students have noticed.

I believe I am having trouble being professional, having been in their position so recently. I can see that certain students are really enjoying the material and find the work to be exciting, and I respond emotionally to that energy.

I realize that it is inappropriate to treat students differently based on the level of their engagement with your class, so how, if you teach, do you not take it so personally?

[Since there will be very different views on this matter, I've kept my answer in first-person to indicate that this is my viewpoint and not a guideline of a sort.]

Whilst I agree with the comments that to an extent, it is perfectly natural to respond differently to different levels of engagement, I think a good strategy is to consider the world outside of the classroom and remember that behaviour in the classroom is a product of many causes.

I do this when I teach and I notice that I start disliking students for not turning up, lack of engagement etc. I then recall my first year at Undergrad level. I was severely depressed, attended barely 20% of my classes, just about managed to pass the year. I am sure I must have appeared absent, disinterested, the sort of student that my lecturers would ask "why would they be here in the first place if they don't attend anything?" - but my classroom behaviour (or rather, the absence of it) had absolutely nothing to do with the classroom itself, nor the teaching, not even the material.

My personal background helps me to consider such a scenario- but I think there are plenty of other things, such as:

undisclosed/not-diagnosed disabilities and/or illnesses affecting students
international students having to find their way in a very foreign world
related to 2., oftentimes young students and their first experience abroad, on their own
family background: crises at home, responsibilities for parents/grandparents/siblings that would not normally be considered
Perhaps just the natural way of things: students realise that what they thought they would love to study turns out to have been an illusion. They are not at the stage of dropping out (possibly due to parental/financial pressures) but are clearly not willing to

Whatever they do, I try to refrain from judgements on their character as much as I can. When a student is not responsive to my teaching, it does not necessarily imply a judgement on me, either.


What type of letter is Pierre Deligne talking about and why did he write a letter to other mathematicians? Today I watched a YouTube video interview of Pierre Deligne. I have some confusion about a statement given by Pierre (video timing: 56:33 to 58:20). Here is the outline of the statement in the video:

Interviewer: Would you like to write letters to other mathematicians?
Pierre Deligne: Writing a paper takes a lot of time. Writing it is
very useful, to have everything put together in a correct way, and one
learns a lot doing so, but it’s also somewhat painful. So in the
beginning of forming ideas, I find it very convenient to write a
letter. I send it, but often it is really a letter to myself. Because
I don’t have to dwell on things the recipient knows about, some
shortcuts will be all right. Sometimes the letter, or a copy of it,
will stay in a drawer for some years, but it preserves ideas and when
I eventually write a paper, it serves as a blueprint.

What type of letter is he talking about and why does he write a letter to other mathematicians?
I mean, there are many different types of letters out there. I mean, some love letters, friends letters, etc.

I just did something like this last month...
Well, with modern technology available, I didn't write a letter; I wrote up some notes, scanned them in, and attached them to an e-mail.  Keep in mind, though, that Prof. Deligne started his career in the days before e-mail, and telephone calls (from rotary dial phones attached to landlines) were expensive (like a dollar a minute.)
I had an alternate approach to proving a theorem in a paper I had read and thought perhaps the approach could also generalize beyond their theorem.  I wrote up a sketch of the alternate proof (for which some details I have not actually proved) in 3 pages of notes.  I scanned them, and attached them to an email to the authors that read something like "Dear X and Y, I hope you are well.  We talked about this at Online Conference Z and I'm attaching some notes.  I'm happy to meet by Zoom and talk.  Best, -me"
I didn't write up a paper because it would take 10 pages and at least a couple weeks of work to give precise definitions of everything, and any paper would only be publishable in a fairly low-tier journal (since the result isn't new and the approach also isn't new, having been applied to other problems before), which at this point in my career doesn't count for anything.


Search all Theses online Is there a way to search all openly published theses online?

Maybe there is a way for Google Scholar to ignore other types of articles?

I am aware of SCOPUS and Web of Knowledge, but unfortunately I do not have access to these services.

Edit: I talked to my librarian and we found a service called EThOS and additionally a service called openthesis.  Openthesis requires people to upload submissions, which would cover nowhere near as many as Google has indexed.  EthOS is for the UK only.

The only thing I can think of given the lack of other details is this They claim to be "the world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses." While that is not "ALL", it certainly is "MOST"?


Can I call myself an assistant professor without a PhD? I've recently gotten a job as lecturer and economics course module developer at a new university this fall. The position is intended as permanent. There is opportunity for funded research but that isn't an objective of the chairs due to the newness of the university.

What is strange is that the position is called "Assistant Professor" which  makes no sense due to the size of the institution and the lack of research required by it (It is a private university).

I am currently enrolled in a PhD program but have some time to defend my thesis. I'm wondering if it's fair to call myself an "assistant professor" or not being that I haven't been endowed with my PhD yet.

the position is called "Assistant Professor"

If you hold an appointment as an assistant professor, then you are an assistant professor. Still, I understand your concern....

  kinda makes no sense due to the size of the institution and the lack of research required by it...however this is a bit of a no-name brand institution

Context is everything.

I agree it would look foolish or pompous if you use your title in a way that gives the impression you are a professor at an R1. When meeting colleagues at different institutions, you may wish to describe yourself as a lecturer or say "my title is assistant professor, but it's mostly teaching" or something unambiguous like that.
On the other hand, everyone at your home institution should understand what an "assistant professorship" at that institution entails, so there is no issue with you using the title internally.
Similarly, non-academics don't know or care about the subtle differences in academic rank, "I'm an assistant professor" is fine in such contexts.

Regardless, your PhD (or lack thereof) is irrelevant.

Sadly, such overloaded terms in commonplace in Anglophone academia. Many of us with doctorates select the salutation "Mr./Ms." to avoid being confused for an M.D. ("real doctor"). Those with PhDs from online schools face a similar dilemma.


Is there a metric for the impact in teaching? There are different metrics like the h-index which try to measure the impact in research of a scientist.

Is there a metric which tries to measure the educational impact of a lecturer or a tutor?

TL;DR: yes there are metrics that evaluate standards of teaching, but there are many and they vary widely. For the UK, the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) collects performance indicators that include teaching outcomes. Because of these differences, the impact of these metrics vary, too.

There are two crucial problems. The first is: how you define impact? A good teacher can impact a student by inspiring to do great things- inside or outside of academia. If students leave university, how do you know what they do is a function of the teaching they have received? And even if it was that straight-forward, how do translate macro-level successes onto individual teachers? The second is: how do you compare such measures across institutions, disciplines, countries?

Most measures that try to evaluate the quality of teaching tend to be on the macro level. For instance, university league tables approximate quality of teaching using student-staff-ratio, teaching satisfaction and course satisfaction. See for example the Times Higher Education Ranking for US universities or the UK Guardian league table 2016. The THE explains here:

  the Teaching metric is measured by five performance indicators: a reputation survey, the ratio of staff to students, the ratio of doctorate students to undergraduate students, the number of doctorates awarded per academic staff, and institutional income

All of these are approximations and make some assumptions about what is affected by teaching. For example, the number of PhDs awarded per staff: is this a function of teaching? In the US, where PhDs usually encompass 1-2 years of classes, this makes some sense. In the UK, where PhDs are much shorter, this is already a problematic measure.

Internal feedback mechanisms

Many UK universities use internal systems: at the end of each course, every student receives a feedback form with questions about how well they though the course was run.

This differentiates lectures from seminars/classes/labs, differentiates Teaching Assistants (TAs) from lecturers (if applicable) and includes questions on how quick the feedback on homework was, how well-prepared classes were, whether or not the TA made the subject interesting, whether they felt engaged and so on.

In my institution, every lecturer/TA gets sent their evaluations after each term, in addition to the departmental average. This way you can gauge how well you are doing according to your own students, and how well you do in relation to your teaching peers. As with any questionnaire or survey, methods are imperfect (students that don't turn up don't get to take the questionnaire etc) but it serves as an approximation. How well you do does impact your chances of promotion (this is anecdotal, however- this will likely differ from place to place).

External measures of teaching

The UK government plans to implement the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), akin to the Research Excellence Framework (REF). See here the House of Commons report (Green paper):

Inside the report, page 5 reads:

  There is no commonly agreed definition of what constitutes good teaching in higher
  education. In a diverse higher education environment, we heard that excellent teaching may
  look very different across different subjects and across different autonomous institutions

Instead, the government wants to introduce metrics that can approximate the quality of teaching. The more recent white paper reads:

  We define teaching broadly
  - including the teaching itself, the learning environments in which it takes place, and the
  outcomes it delivers. Such things can be measured: students assess their satisfaction
  with their courses, retention rates are a good proxy for student engagement, contact hours
  can be measured, employers choose to sponsor some courses, or work with some
  institutions, because of the industry-relevance of their offerings, and employment rates
  can be measured

The TEF is not implemented yet and reactions have included many concerns about the usefulness of the proxies and the bureaucratic burden that collecting these measures will imply. The consequences of TEF include for example that universities can raise tuition fees if they do well.

Practical issues collecting teaching data: the example of retention

Since retention and drop-out rates (especially among minorities and working-class backgrounds) are very important in measuring teaching quality, the easiest way to collect that data is by recording student attendance. Both manual and electronic measures have their pitfalls: manually calling out 150 students in a lecture is time-consuming, electronic systems prone to failure or abuse.

Assuming that this is not a problem, the next question is: what to do with students that have missed classes? Recently, my institution has been obstructed to see to it that every student that misses two classes in a row, will have a personal meeting with their tutor. This has created huge pressures on tutors who have to see up to 60 students per week. A common problem of this system for example is that students missing classes due to illness are not recognised as such. Another question this raises is that perhaps vulnerable students drop out not due to lack of teaching engagement, but rather due to reasons that are beyond university control.

This example illustrates how difficult it is to 1. define measures of teaching and 2. to collect data on said measures. As with all measures, like the impact ratings of journals, they often serve a narrow purpose and should be used in addition to other pieces of information, and not replace them altogether.

Further difficulties arise from different types of universities (for example the difference between Universitaeten and Hochschulen in Germany, or Community & Liberal arts colleges in the US), and the differences between subject areas. A computer science class with many lab hours will require a different set of standards than the philosophy lecture accompanied by seminars. Many university rankings differentiate between subject areas, regions and age of university to counteract some of these issues.


What is the difference between Masters in Engineering Management vs. MBA? What is the difference between Masters in Engineering Management vs. MBA?

Also, I've been told that MEM degrees are not favored by recruiters and hiring managers relative to MBAs- what are the differences between these degrees that make one less desirable, if that's the case.

I haven't heard much of an MEM before, but it sounds like a quirky, industry-specific degree, which I think is the key here. An MBA is more established, general in scope, and applicable for management careers outside engineering. So recruiters would know what an MBA entails without needing to ask. Not so much with an MEM.

To me, the question isn't which to get, but whether you should be getting a management degree or not. The traditional advice for getting an MBA is don't, if you're a fresh grad or new worker/hire. From your question, it sounds like you fall into one of these categories.

Typically, the merits of having an MBA for job recruitment are vertical, not horizontal. It's key to moving up within a company, once you're in one, but it doesn't improve your chances of getting hired off the job market a great deal.
So the time you should consider getting an MBA is when you've been with a company for a while, and within the company, are ready for a promotion. In some cases, companies would even fund your MBA studies at this point.


UK Higher Education Academic Teaching Qualification I have come across a few questions similar to the following during academic job application process at UK HEIs. I think I understand and I am aware of the choices from 2 to 10. However, option 1 confuses me, I'll be more specific below.

  Please indicate if you have successfully completed a higher education
  teaching qualification or any other relevant teaching qualification

  Successfully completed an institutional provision in teaching in the higher education sector accredited against the UK Professional
  Standards Framework
  Recognised by the HEA as an Associate Fellow
  Recognised by the HEA as a Fellow
  Recognised by the HEA as a Senior Fellow
  Recognised by the HEA as a Principal Fellow
  Holder of a National Teaching Fellowship Scheme Individual Award
  Holder of a PGCE in secondary education, further education, lifelong learning or any other equivalent qualification
  Accredited as a teacher of their subject by a professional body
  Other accreditation or qualification in teaching in the higher education sector
  Overseas accreditation or qualification for any level of teaching

When I was a PhD student at a UK university, I completed a one-day workshop on “Survival Skills in Teaching” which was required before I could be TA. So, does this training satisfy option 1? In addition, I have attended two to three days faculty development trainings overseas (outside UK). Do these trainings allow me to pick any of the choices?

I will much appreciate if anyone could shed some light on this.

Option 1 is for training courses run by universities (mostly in the past, before most of them became HEA accredited) that are roughly equivalent to options 2 or 3, but that were not officially accredited by HEA. Their demands and standards used to differ wildly, but I am afraid none of them were a one day workshop on "survival skills".


Is copying an algorithm plagiarism? My question is very similar to this one, but I'm curious about algorithms. The accepted answer states that:

  Mathematical equations are not normally considered subject to plagiarism ...

I am wondering if the same would apply to algorithms. I think they are very similar to equations, except for the use of sentences (in the case of pseudo code). If it is made clear where the algorithm came from, would it be ok to copy?

Plagiarism is passing someone else's work as your own. If the source is referenced, then there is no plagiarism.

Quoting the whole algorithm verbatim may be considered as bad writing style, may be against a particular journal's rules, or may simply demonstrate a certain lack of creativity. However, this is not a plagiarism, as long as the source is cited.


To stay or leave PhD after having completed 4 years I apologize if this is too long a post, but I could really do with a few
pointers about my current situation.

I am 25 years old and I will complete 4 years of my PhD in a computational applied mathematics  program in the US in August 2013.

My bachelors was in pure mathematics.  I had gotten interested in numerical analysis in that time and so I had applied to my current PhD program. I have been under my adviser for 3 years now (the first year at my university is spent in coursework).  A PhD at my university is usually 5 years long.

Right now, I have almost nothing to report in the way of research, and consequently no publications , no conference submissions. I am getting increasingly nervous and frustrated about whether or not I will make it, even if I give myself an extra year by funding myself.

My adviser has consistently been making me work on uninteresting stuff, where most of the work involved is purely technical like writing brain-dead code, with almost zero chance for innovation.

BREAKDOWN OF MY PHD

After monkeying around reading research papers, in the first year under my adviser,  he got very confident about getting an industrial project and got me working on that, in anticipation that the contract would go through. At the end of the year we found out that we did not get the project.

In the second year, he said he wanted to get into GPU parallel computing
and to implement a few fluid dynamics algorithms. I slogged over many manuals, spent months and months writing and debugging code, all the time thinking that
this would be used to do some simulations he was interested in and get them published. But at the end of the second year my professor completely lost interest in these numerical techniques he was making my implement.

Seeing his capricious attitude, I almost wanted to quit then and there itself. But I decided to just stick it out, thinking it might be 'just a phase'.  Due to funding issues, he once more got me working in the third year on another project which essentially involved writing a lot of stupid code, and running endless benchmark tests.

I have basically ended up trying to do a PhD in mathematics without any mathematics in this PhD.

Finally, a couple of weeks back, I told him that I had had enough, and to give me some actual
problems/material to work with. After about an hour of discussion, and informing him that I was ready to fund my self if required, he finally gave me a couple of possible starting points for what I hope would actually turn out to be worthwhile research.

MY QUESTIONS

I do realize it was extremely foolish waiting for so long before putting my foot down, and not having the courage to speak up before. My adviser is well-regarded by colleagues in his field, and maybe I was subconsciously scared of
contradicting his handling of my PhD for pissing him off.

But even though he has now suggested problems which do seem interesting, after having had so many negative experiences  I am very skeptical about the future. How should I proceed, and what are the factors I should consider ?

Frankly, I am feeling very burned out.  In the way of future plans, I have been toying with the idea of dropping out,  getting a break for a few months and then sitting for some entrance exams for a Masters in Economics in some good universities back in my home country. I always found economics very interesting through my undergrad and more so these past few-months while studying it has a hobby.
Continuing would require me to stay on for an extra year till August 2015,
which leaves me about 17 months tops from now, before I start hunting in academic job market. This includes about 2-3 months I will have to spend doing literature review on the proposed topics and learning the requisite mathematical tools.

So if I decide to stay on, how should I re-structure my study/research time and the relationship with my adviser in these 17 months so that I can make some head-way.

Maybe 17 months is too short a time? Any suggestions would be really helpful !!

Firstly, no apology needed, your question is thorough and easy to read and understand.  It sounds like you are in quite an unpleasant situation.

Don't take any advice I may give as gospel, but in answer to your questions:

You are most certainly not foolish to wait until now to stand up to your advisor, you have had several leads and have given many chances for the project to kick into gear. You have every right and reason to feel skeptical about the current promises and project direction.

Ultimately, how you proceed is up to you (you're probably understandably sick of hearing that), but look at the following considerations (no doubt many other members will add to this):

The new direction could well be a winner, leading to papers, conferences and most of all, fulfillment.  It could also be a good one as now, you have made your feelings clear to your supervisor.
Could this be just another academic 'false positive'?

Perhaps outline a couple of potential papers and present them to your advisor (this is something I do).  This could be an ongoing thing, alongside your research - outline potential papers.

As for the timeframe, 17 months - I would not be too worried about that - I have been able to get three papers published in less than ten months, with a 4th on the way and the 5th planned (I finish my Ph.D. at the end of the year).

I hope this helps, and I hope it all gets sorted out for you.


How to effectively get a post-doc position The question is really an attempt to ask for help and advice from academic staff members, industrial research staff or anyone who has had personal experience with Post-doc job applications.

Obviously there are lots of websites that list post-doc positions, and some are dedicated just for that. However in reality these positions have a lot of hidden intricacies that might lead you down a path that has been a dead end for a long time. The applicant however learns about this just at the very end of the process.

This is somewhat frustrating since most of the people I know about looking for a postdoc are in the final stages of their PhD and really cannot afford to waste too much time on the wrong thing.

Some ideas that raise my concern into the straightforwardness of a postdoc application are:

Many Post-Doc positions are advertised just for the sake of advertising the position, however sometimes the successful candidate had been chosen already, even before the position was open !
A lot of advise I get is that i should contact the concerned Professor/person directly and not wait for a position to be open, being proactive
Some positions are just out of reach for fresh PhD graduates because other previous post-docs are also applying for the same position and so the competition becomes unfair

I am hoping that this question leads into real world, clear and effective advice for people looking to get a Post-doc position

I would recommend both applying for the postdoc positions advertised, and also writing to professors with research groups that you are interested to join.

Applying for a postdoc is similar to any other job application. You are responsible for sending out the applications or reaching out the future employers. A pro-active approach will invariably be beneficial to the applicant.

As an applicant, I would not recommend worrying about the fairness of the jobs advertised. Just apply.


Applying for post doc position when letter of recommendation from PhD advisers not available I did my PhD in Electrical Engineering with supervision from three people. Very hard times during PhD as there was not much supervision from the three. Presently, I am working in an industry doing R and D, but look forward to apply for post doctoral positions. One of my advisers have told me he won't recommend me for any university in the foreign country, the second one is not reachable and the third is very rude fellow. In short, I wont get recommendation from any. What are chances for a post-doctoral position in a reputed university.

I have 3 international journals (2 Elsevier and 1 IEEE) and 3 conferences from my PhD work. I also have a Best Paper Award from one of the main IEEE conferences (EMBC 2014). I can manage reference letters from my masters advisers. Will recommendation from my masters advisers sufficient for applying to post-doctoral studies? Chances of getting a recommendation from any faculty from the university where I did PhD is very low.

Depends on the field. Still try the very rude fellow. Perhaps they are at least forthcoming? Also the recommendation letter maybe requested AFTER you have an offer depending on the country, which basically means your Master's supervisors would be game.


Does reusing my own code from one project to an other count as plagiarism? I am currently a under graduate and will be going into my final year of a Computer science course in October.

The final year consists of a large programming project. Over the last 6 months I have been working on ideas for the project. To the point where I have a nearly finished application.

If I was to use large chunks of code that I have written over the last 6 months in the project would this count as Plagiarism? It doesn't feel right been able to just copy and past code to get a head start on the project even though I had written the code in the first place.

Ask your professors. Your senior project professor/adviser/committee probably has specific expectations about the work they expect you to do, and this is going to vary from university to university.

My feeling is that you'd be OK using this code as long as it was developed for this project and it hasn't been submitted for credit in another class. Even if it has, re-using code from a previous class is not necessarily a bad thing if you can show how the new application is substantially different and worthy as an independent credit.

If your only goal is to avoid punishment then note that many schools have "honesty policies" not "plagiarism policies". It's not enough just to avoid plagiarism, but you must be honest in how you conduct your work. Finishing a project in six months and pretending like it takes you another six months to finish might be just as punishable as plagiarism. Finishing a project in six months and telling the professor that you think you've met the requirements and you'd rather focus on finishing your other classes is not dishonest, although your professor might disagree.


Resumé – how to include grant awarded to my undergraduate project but is part of a bigger grant? I am aware of similar questions, but they don’t really apply to my situation. I’m applying to graduate schools and I would like to list a grant I received as an undergraduate on my resumé.

The problem is, my grant (in the form of a stipend) is only part of a big NSF grant awarded to my PI and his project, and I’m working on this project. I have the NSF award number and the project name, but since (apparently) I don’t get all the grant (which is a great amount of money) but only a small part of it, how should I list it on my resume?

What I did was list it as “NSF Grant” with the award number, but how do I make it clear so that people won’t misunderstand?

My immediate reaction is that if you weren't involved in the writing of the grant, you aren't responsible for the awarding of the grant; rather, you were hired to a position that happened to be funded by that grant. Therefore it would be misleading/unethical to list the grant on your CV/resumé, but you can and should list this position, along with your responsibilities, skills you learned, any results or publications, etc.

(Incidentally, it would be a terrible idea to list the full amount of your PI's grant. Not only is it unethical, but it would look laughable that an undergraduate had been awarded a six- or seven- or eight-figure grant. The result would be that the committee would view your entire application with suspicion.)


What to do when publishing a paper about mistakes in previous literature? Two years ago I read a paper in which the "Methods" section did not report enough information to reproduce the analysis presented by the authors.

I contacted the first author in order to have more information and he provided me the code he used to analyse the dataset presented in that paper.

I found out that in the code there was a conceptual mistake in the way some algorithms were used. However, I did not have a solution for the mistake. So, I just ignored the fact and started working on a different problem.

One year later, while working on the new problem, I found a solution that could permit to avoid the conceptual mistake that I found in the above-said paper. As in the meanwhile I stumbled across to another paper doing the same methodological mistake, I thought to write a letter to the journal in which the first paper was published to underline the problem in those two papers and propose a solution. The paper analyses a simple dataset in order to show the differences between the results obtained with the old method and with my new method. I also (of course) point to the fact that the data presented in the two papers should be re-analyzed, as a data analysis containing that mistake can produce misleading results.

The peer-review process went smooth, with constructive comments of the reviewers. At the end of this process the Editor informed me that they also requested a signed review by the first author of the paper published in his journal. So, the same person who originally provided me his code.

The recommendation that he gives on my paper is of major revision. His comments are (in principle) constructive but he requires me to cancel from the paper the reference to his paper because: i) the re-analysis of his dataset with my method (re-analysis that he did not share) does not show significant differences; and ii) the criticism of his results is not justified as the Methods section in his paper does not contain sufficient details to infer the error. Do you think that these request are justified?

During a private conversation with me he also made clear that it is his interest to make sure that his original paper "would not be destroyed" and that he does not consider to publish a re-analysis of his data. This is particularly nonsensical because the results affected by the error are just a rather small part of the results presented in his paper and could only be found out by inspecting the code.

Given this context, I think that his requests are quite unfair. It is clear that he is just trying to preserve his publication record. It also makes clear that all his positive comments in the review are just an attempt of bargaining a positive recommendation for the publication of my paper in exchange of erasing the reference to the error in his paper.

Therefore, my conundrum is if I should just give in to his requests for an easy publication (nice thing during a PhD) or do not bend, argument against his comments and get a rejection recommendation. What would you do?

To begin with, I find it highly problematic that this journal has a policy of inviting authors to review any paper that criticizes their work. That seems to me to be highly inhibitory of criticism and likely to produce situations exactly like the one that you are facing.

I find it doubly problematic that this author has chosen to communicate with you outside of the review process in order to persuade you to change your writing. His communications can easily be interpreted as an unethical quid pro quo request: you drop your criticism of his paper, and he'll drop his criticism of yours.

What is not clear from what you have written, however, is just what the journal intends to do with the review that they have received. Surely the journal must understand the potential conflict of interest here.  So is the review mainly to allow an author to point out errors in the critique that those less familiar might overlook, or are they going to treat it just like one of the other reviews?

I would thus recommend taking the following approach:

Write to the editor and let them know that the author has approached you separately with what you are concerned may be an unethical proposal --- the editor needs to know about this and should be able to make their approach clear to you. Ask the editor how they would like to proceed.
In parallel, use all of the constructive parts of the criticism to improve your manuscript.
Consider slightly softening the language in your criticism in the manuscript. I do not know how you have written it, but it's often possible to use slightly less definitive language to make the same point, e.g., changing "Papers [1] and [2] should be re-analyzed to see if their results are affected." into "As it is possible that results might be affected, we would recommend considering re-analysis of papers [1] and [2]."  Same substance, but less confrontational and allowing you to write that you have adjusted the paper in response to the review.

Hopefully, the editor can provide you some clarity as to how to navigate the difficult situation that their journal has created for you, and judicious adjustment can allow you to pass peer review without compromising your ethics. If not, there are other good journals out there that will not have this unusual conflict-generating policy.


Justifying the small size of a dataset due to collection difficulties I'm working in an empirical field and have recently had a paper about a data collection effort and subsequent analysis thereof which was provisionally accepted, conditional on revisions. The negative remark most difficult to address is that the dataset I acquired was considered relatively small; How can I justify the small size of the dataset in a sound manner due to practical difficulties in acquiring data?

It is not possible for me to collect any more data in terms of money, manpower or even time... which all add up to more or less to "research capital". I have seen other datasets used which are not much bigger, but there are also corpora which are bigger by a significant margin. Likewise, some datasets are quite similar while others are completely unrelated to mine. Finally, while some corpora are freely available, for the majority of the papers in my field, it is quite rare for publications to explicitly state how one can acquire the data for their own purposes, and so the actual ability to even aquire data second-hand seems to be spotty.

Basically, I would need to reformulate the paragraph above into some form which I can put into the paper which needs revision; What can I do?

As has been said, a satistical analysis of your data set will clarify with how much confidence and accuracy you can  conclude your findings. This an essential part of the scentific process

In the natural sciences particularly, data collection can be problematic and limited by time and budget,  but the community are aware of this, as should be your reviewer.

All that is required is that you report your findings appropriately  even if you don't necessarily like the answer! In extreme circumstances you may have data sets that are so scant or varied you simply do need more work. It happens.

Science progresses with knowledge which includes less than optimal data,  as does helping those that come after you do better by explaining in your paper how you could improve your own approach.

I agree the reviewer is probably asking for this kind of analysis and not why you were unable to do as much work as you would have liked


What would be the acceptable procedure (if any) for creating a Google Scholar page for someone else? When doing research to answer this question, I would have loved to see the Google Scholar page of Nobel Laureate Martin Karplus. However it does not exist. There is a Google Scholar page for Richard Feynman, and for Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, most likely not created by themselves. Clearly it's possible to make a Google Scholar page for someone without a "verified email". How does one do this?

I understand that the examples I gave were not for living people, but I wonder if there is a way to make a page (or to request a page) for a living person, without using a fake email address.

I did search online before coming here, and the best I could find was the article "Can I create a google scholar profile for someone else?" and this did not satisfy me as being a complete search.

The pages for Feynman, Einstein, and others (probably including Freud) were set up manually by the team behind Google Scholar back before the service launched in 2011, as evidenced by this blog post. Without their access, I believe you need to provide an (possibly fake) email address, as done for Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell, see this question. I would, however, suggest you not to attempt creating a profile for any living person besides yourself (including Karplus) without their consent. Them not having a profile could, after all, be an active choice.


What to do about not receiving credit in a paper (lack of acknowledgment) Recently there have been a few instances of preprints I've seen on arXiv where I felt that I didn't receive due credit (an acknowledgment or at least a mention) for certain things. Here are a couple examples:

I mentioned a fact to a collaborator at a conference. It wasn't a deep, just an interesting construction that was surely bound to be useful in certain situations. A year or so later I see a paper by the collaborator on arxiv, where one section of the paper involves developing this construction and applying it (in ways that were certainly new to me). However I wasn't acknowledged or mentioned.
To another collaborator I wrote an email, with another construction and a formula that I expected it to satisfy with some strong evidence. Several months later I saw that the collaborator wrote a paper where the definition plays an almost central role and a version of the formula is proved. No acknowledgement again.

Basically my question is what is the best way for me to deal with situations like this? I am a young post doc recently out of Phd. I don’t like to be the one who wants credit for everything. However it does feel annoying when even close collaborators don’t have enough respect for me to not steal my ideas (ok, maybe that’s a harsh wording choice). But the core of it, now that I write this question, is really that I feel disrespected. Especially, since I tend to acknowledge people quite freely.  It’s obvious to me that if I was a senior and/or well-known mathematician, they wouldn’t have “forgotten” to acknowledge me.  The only options I can think of are:

ignore and move on. Don’t change my behavior, just learn to accept this accept of academia culture.
Ignore and move on. Be more protective of my ideas in the future. Be more proactive about writing down and publishing my ideas as soon as possible. Choose different people to collaborate with.
Confront the people in question and ask them to acknowledge me. I don’t like this option because I’m a non confrontational person. And I don’t want to damage good relationships. Also, i don’t want to get a reputation for being someone who asks people to credit him with things.

By my nature I’m leaning towards option 2. But it saddens me to realize how cynical I become since starting my Phd when I imagined the mathematics community to be so kind and generous.

In my opinion, aknowledgements are not important enough to get bothered about. Very few people would have even noticed the acknowledgement, and your career would not have been helped in any measurable way.

But at least in your second example, which was more more of an "idea for a paper" than a "helpful comment," I do consider it a breach of etiquette for your collaborator to write the paper himself without offering to involve you as a coauthor. Perhaps in the future, you could phrase such helpful emails as more explicit invitations to collaborate. That way you won't have to be stingy with your ideas, but you'll still get credit.


Submitting conference paper to Google Scholar when proceedings not available I presented a paper at a conference but the conference never got around to publishing their proceedings. They kept saying it was going to happen "soon" but after six months, I have lost hope.

Is there any way to submit such a paper to Google Scholar? It's not hosted anywhere and Google is an indexing service, not a paper repository. That makes me think the answer is no. However, I know the minds here will have the answer.

The paper is in education so Arvix is not really a solution here.

This is not to your question, but:

You are too impatient. In the publishing industry, 6 months is not an incredibly slow turn-around time.


Does a gap of 10 months after Master's degree affect my chances for a future academic career? I am soon to submit my PhD thesis and I am currently looking for postdoc positions. I would eventually like to stay in academia and was concerned if my past gap year would harm my chances in getting a position.

After my master's degree, I got an R&D job and worked there for 4 months before quitting it as I did not enjoy it there. My plan was to join my master's lab as a research fellow, and I had an offer for that from my advisor. But, I got a bad disease and I fell ill for 3 months. I was not hospitalized, but had to live with my parents for the period.
As I always wanted to pursue PhD, I was searching for a position in the meantime. During the 3 months, I gave GRE (scored poorly, thanks to my illness) and applied to universities and professors. I got a positive response and I was sure of getting a PhD position.

However, it was already February and if I were to join a PhD program, I would have to wait till September. Also, the visa process and other formalities take time. So, I decided to not go further with the research fellow, and take time to complete the visa processing, spend time with parents and travel around.

I had a blast of time. Learned so much during that time. But, I don't have anything concrete to show for that 9-10 months period.

My concern is, how much will that affect my future career?

This will have essentially no impact on your career. Clearly it has no impact on your research productivity. So I don't see why anyone would take issue with it. Many professors have taken circuitous routes to get where they are, thus suggesting there are no expectations you complete all your degrees without any breaks in between.


How do you search for related articles? I am a junior researcher.
Recently I was able to prove a result in Graph Theory. I wish to know whether this result is already known in the existing literature of Graph Theory. I am not an expert in searching articles. I used Google and browse through some of the articles in vain.

I shared my result with my advisor. However, since he is not an expert of this field, he couldn't answer to my query.

I was wondering how academic reasearchers tackle this kind of situations. How do you make a good search to find the articles as close to possible to a related work?

For physics, google scholar and Inspire prove to be the best option(Inspire also list the "cited by" section, where you can see where an idea in a paper was applied/extended, and is very useful from this point of view, since for most journals this section require a subscription). These two also includes new papers which in high energy physics appear first on arxiv. However, for other sciences, different search engines are expected.


Email to potential PhD supervisor I am a PhD applicant and I am preparing to send an introductory email to a potential supervisor.

I have two questions:

I am self-funded. Should I mention this in the initial email?
Is the following sentence grammatically correct?

  I would be delighted to undertake a research project under your supervision, kindly let me know if this might be a possibility; I have attached my CV and academic transcript for your consideration.

You could mention self funding or not. However, it is important that you give some indication of why you are interested in this person and what it is in your background that might interest him/her in you. Mentioning past research projects in the same specialty would be helpful. Your statement is fine, but only as an opening.

In particular, you should investigate the background of the potential supervisor, including publications and past students. In mathematics, for example, the Genealogy project can give you information about where the person fits - advisor and students. For famous people, even wikipedia will give you information.


How long after first contact, where editor says "manuscript is still under review", is it okay to enquire again about status of manuscript? About a year ago I submitted a paper to a very good math journal.
After 10 months I asked the editor for its status,
and he said it is still with the referee, and that he will remind him about it.

Two more months have passed. Should/could I write the editor again? or am I risking annoying the editor/referee? How much time should I wait between such inquires?

As an editor of a number of mathematics journals, I would be pretty irritated to receive two queries from an author within two months. What exactly is achieved by emailing a journal to ask for an update in the first place? Mostly, it helps on the (perhaps not so rare) occasion where the paper has fallen through the cracks, as happens when someone agrees to review the paper but then forgets about it. What would be achieved by emailing the journal twice in two months? It's hard to imagine it resulting in your paper being reviewed any sooner, and easy to imagine it annoying the editor. I would wait six months between queries.


Referee reports I have written in tenure packet? I’m currently preparing a tenure packet. I have reviewed a few papers for journals in the last few years. I am wondering how I should include this activity.

Certainly I will be including evidence of this professional activity (e-mails with the editors acknowledging the receipt of the report, etc.), but I presume that it would not be standard practice to include the reports themselves. It already feels a little odd to quasi-publicly acknowledge that I was an anonymous referee for some papers that didn’t get published (Hmm, I wonder what my report was like), but this seems like the right way to go.

Absolutely not.  Referee reports are confidential, especially for papers that were rejected.  Including them in your tenure packet would violate that confidentiality.


How to get feedback on a paper most effectively Suppose that a PhD student is writing a paper by themself. A person who is an expert in the area offers to read the paper and give feedback. The expert explicitly mentions he is fine with getting unpolished paper for feedback. When should the student send the draft for feedback. Specifically, is it better to get it relatively polished before sending it, or should I send it earlier? Or when it is completely finished? The expert is only going to read it and give advice once, so it's not possible to do multiple iterations.

The answer is really "it depends".
What kind of feedback do you need? If you're worried about the overall structure and the correctness of the results, sooner is better, but don't make your reader struggle with fragmentary work. Make your best guesses, write a draft, and provide marginal questions ("do I need more detail here?", "should this section be omitted, or merged with an earlier one?").
If you're comfortable with your second or fourth draft and want just polishing, send the paper when you think you are nearly finished.
If you know the potential reader well enough you might ask what kind of feedback they are willing to provide.


Is mathematics becoming more applied, while engineering is becoming more math-y? Is mathematics becoming more applied, while engineering is becoming more math-y?

I’m seeing curriculum changes at our school that has pretty good math, physics, and engineering departments, and it seems that the vision is that soon math majors will be taking courses in both the mathematics and engineering departments.  And likewise, it seems that some engineering research will be done collaboratively with mathematicians.  So I'm wondering if this is a general trend that is happening, at least for universities in the U.S.

Are there any references that support or oppose this trend? For example:

Bibliometric studies.
Publications of professional societies.
Official statements by departments, faculties, or universities.

I agree with all the comments, that engineering has become more mathematical because of the rise in computers and similarly applied mathematics is growing because of its well poised position to aid in many developing engineering problems.

While I could not find any studies to back this up, I made some graphs of my own from the Web of Science.  The first two compare Applied Math
 and Pure Math.  The volatility of the Pure Math graph leads to a difficult comparison.  Similarly, I took screenshots of Engineering with Math and All Engineering. Which I believe more clearly shows a growth in engineering-math publication in the past five years or so, as compared to all engineering whose rise began earlier.

Similarly I looked into Arxiv, as it supplies a nice single source of data.  These results are for number of uploads/publications.

------------------ 2000-2004 ---- 2014-2017 ---- Growth
App. Math --------- 577 ------------- 5456 ------- 9.45
Pure Math --------- 253 ------------- 1399 ------- 5.52
Eng. Math --------- 14 --------------- 476 ----------34
All Math ---------- 14,408 --------- 102,382 ------ 7.1

While these figures are based on publications, and therefore could be caused by changes in publishing practice I think they do give decent, data-driven evidence for the claim that math is becoming more applied and engineering is becoming more mathematical.


How many manuscripts should I agree to handle as an associate editor? I've been asked by a peer-reviewed journal whether I'd be willing to act as an associate editor for them. The question How to act as an editor? has some useful hints as to the tasks associated with that. But I am still wondering how much time these tasks would typically take.

The form where I accept to be an editor allows me to indicate how many papers per month I'd be willing to handle, and I am not sure what number to give there. My questions is how much time I should expect to take for each paper in the first or second year as editor?

I would start by asking the journal rep how many manuscripts (MS) other have agreed to, or what is typical. I would think that is what the journal reps would consider "normal". You probably have a sense of whether they need you for something very specific, in which case a lower number might be quite acceptable. Once you know what they tyically load on their editors, you should think hard about whether you find the workload acceptable. There is usually no guarantee that the workload is evenly distributed unless all editors are able to handle pretty much all submitted MS.

As editor you will likely need to at least browse the MS when you receive it, chase after persons willing to review, read the reviews and the MS carefully to provide feedback to the author, review the authors revisions, poissibly run the MS around again and then make a suggestion or decision on accept/reject. All this is within some time frame and chasing late reviews and authors who do not return revisions will take some time. I can also add that it will be the problematic papers that will take up most of your time, the good ones usually are not difficult to handle. You thus do not know how much time you will spend on any particular MS. A really good one could take half a day in total; a poor may take at least a day or more. So having slightly scared you with this, I will add that the work also has potentially tremendous rewards (reading brand new research and getting in contact with new persons).

So, in short, how many MS per month is really impossible to answer, it will strongly depend on how you feel about the work and how you think you can accommodate the workload in your own time. I will leave you with this slightly unsatisfactory answer, but urge you to try to get a sense of what the journal expects and what they consider normal. You could also ask to how much time they think the workload corresponds.


What should I do now to go ahead and restart my aspirations to become an appropriate candidate for a Ph.D. program? According to Dr. Daniel G. Amen, each person has his personal definition of success. Therefore, you can't argue with anyone regarding their personal definition of success. My personal definition of success is to have a Ph.D. in CS and become a teacher in a university. To me, not having a Ph.D. is like living as an incomplete human being. I have become so obsessed with the idea of having a Ph.D. that I have already sacrificed various things for this ambition, and I am prepared to sacrifice more.
Now, for me the problem has been, due to my undiagnosed clinical depression and, apparently, insufficient math background, I dropped out of two Masters in CS programs from two different EU universities. Now, I am taking the medication regularly, and in a stable situation.
I never wrote a thesis before, and don't have any publications.
What should I do now to go ahead and restart my aspirations to become an appropriate candidate for a Ph.D. program?

Do I need to go return and complete my MSc degree in order to get accepted into a Ph.D. program?
If I must go back to an MSc degree, would a 1-year MSc suffice given that the MSc programs I dropped were of 2 years in length?

A comment by Peter caught my eye:

obviously, I can't tell with certainty because I don't know OP but mental health issues, an obsession with completing a degree just for the sake of the title, and subpar math skills are not a promising combination.

I would like to reply this.
Firstly, if I were not stuck with my health issue and math skills, I wouldn't have come to academia.SE, and probably would be answering this type of question for others. academia.SE is here to give suggestions.
Secondly, I am having my medication regularly, and I am having good health now. That is why I am thinking about restarting my journey.
Thirdly, I have been studying college and graduate-level mathematics for the last three months. I have been improving. Probably, I will sit for the GRE Math subject test at the end of this year.
Fourthly, yesterday, I have received a national scholarship from an EU-country to work on a research project. So, I think, I still have something in me.
Fifthly and finally, read Napoleon Bonaparte's story about Line of Fate. This is probably a fictional story, but you get the idea.

Your post does not explain the broader motivation for your goal to complete a PhD program, and it also sounds like you have some problems that are going to make that an arduous (and possibly unsuccessful) journey.  Candidature in a PhD program is often difficult and stressful even for the most elite students with no accompanying clinical depression.  For that reason, I recommend you take a moment to reflect on whether you really need to complete a PhD in your field in order to achieve your broader life goals, and whether this period of your life is the appropriate time to do that.  Nevertheless, I will take the premise of your question as given, and try to give some basic advice on how to achieve your goal.
As with the acheivement of any goal where you have already made failed attempts, it is important to identify the impediments that are presently preventing success, and then overcome those impediments.  Your post identifies two impediments to your success: (1) depression; and (2) insufficient maths background.  I will leave it primarily to medical people to assist you with the first, but I will just mention that you might find some wisdom and assistance in reading some of the philosophy of the Stoics (particularly Epictetus and maybe also Seneca the Younger).  As to your insufficient math background, the simplest way to improve this is to undertake revision on all your previous mathematics courses, with particular attention to the mathematics you encountered in your previous MSc program.
You mention that you do not have any academic publications, and I think it is premature to attempt this.  However, once you have learned some more of the base material in your field you could start out by trying to publish small posts about it on relevant websites.  Since you are already using StackExchange, once you learn some more mathematics you could attempt to answer some questions on Math.SE or CS.SE.  Another possible activity here is to write some blog posts explaining the mathematics you have learned to other students at your level.  These are all "publications" in a minor sense (though not academic publications), and they are a reasonable way to practice making public posts about mathematics that can be subjected to critical feedback from experts.
In these circumstances, where you are already struggling, I think it would be beneficial to complete your MSc program before attempting entry to a PhD program.  The main reason for this is to give you an opportunity to complete postgraduate level coursework and improve your skills (including your math skills) up to a level that would make you competitive for entry into a PhD program.  A secondary reason is that you may then obtain some ideas for possible research projects (and supervisors) that you could pursue as a first attempt at academic publication.
To finish, I will just make two last points.  It is possible for weak students to improve and later be competitive students for higher-degree programs.  That is usually a long and difficult process, but it is certainly possible for a student with sufficient diligence and commitment.  Having said this, it is also important to ensure that you are setting reasonable life goals that are actually going to lead you where you want to go.  Some students (and I am certainly not saying you are in this category) look at the PhD program as a kind of elite social-proof and they pursue it as an end in itself, rather than taking a realistic view of what it will actually add to (and subtract from) their career or life.  Take some time to reflect on your broader life goals and consider what you really need to be successful in your life.  Good luck.