Can I reuse my problem statement? I am doing Master's of Research, and I am required to enrol in a number of compulsory coursework subjects for research candidates. In these subjects, I have submitted a number of assignments using Turnitin, which requires me to include the problem statement of my research.

Given that the problem statement hasn't changed every time I submit my assignments, am I supposed to write completely different problem statements every time I submit my assignments?

Typically, Turnitin is set to find similarities that are 3-4 words long at a minimum. So, is there a way to make minor edits so that your statement is slightly different each time? You can also ask your professor if it's okay to reuse your problem statements. Then, even if Turnitin flags it, your professor will know that they are still your words and ideas, since you discussed it ahead of time.


Submitted Assignment Late - Wrong to ask for in-depth analysis? So I've just submitted my first late assignment, and another one on the books. I feel absolutely terrible about it, but my time-management has been less than poor lately.

I really enjoy learning though, and if there is one thing that drives me, it's to aim for the highest result possible. As such, when I submit my assignments, I usually prod for further analysis as to where I was lacking, what I can improve, etc.

However, typing an email to my lecturer currently feels 'wrong'. I feel, because the assignment was late, that I put in a half-assed effort, and feel like asking for a more in-depth analysis is like asking for 'more' than I deserve. Should I surmise this 'idea' in my head to my lecturer when asking for the analysis of my assignment? Or should I just go about it the way I did before, just asking for ways to improve, etc.?

You submitted late and did half-baked job. It does happen to the best of us.

It does not, however, make sense to expect the lecturer to invest on a piece of work that you yourself consider subpar. Any information that they could give you would probably concentrate on the things you anyway know are problematic in this submission. If you did your best job, detailed feedback from the lecturer is valuable in refining your work.

But if you didn't, and you know it anyway, you would just utilize their time/attention to little effect and would take it away from students who did - in this particular instance - a better attempt.


Journal published a paper, ignoring my objections as a referee A few months back I received a request from a reputed journal to review an article. The article was in a fast-track mode because of its assumed importance. I did review it, and found that it makes some improvement over the existing models, and hence does not rate high on the novelty axis. Moreover, there were serious problems in the article both conceptual and mathematical. Lastly, the English used was erroneous. I wrote these things to the editor, and he made it a regular article and asked the authors to revise it.

They did, and the manuscript came back to me. Unfortunately, the mathematical problems were simply ignored by them, and only cosmetic changes were done. I wrote back to the editor about this, and requested him to ask another review with all the clarifications/modifications. But after that journal did not communicate with me. Today, I was surprised to see that the paper has already been published! I went through it, and found that some minor changes that I had suggested (like changes to a figure to make it more informative) have been done, but the main issues that I had raised have been pushed under the carpet. I find this to be a complete insult to the reviewer, and also a kind of scientific dishonesty. I thought of writing to the editor, but I just want to know if something like this is regular, and if it has happened to anyone. If yes, how should I proceed from here? Just shut my mouth and carry on?

EDIT:  The question has been changed since this was written.

Your key misconception is that the editor needs reviewers' permission to publish a paper.  Actually, the decision to publish rests solely with the editor.

In this case, you disagree with the editor, but we do not have enough information to tell who is correct.  If you think the errors in the paper are important, then once the paper is published you may be able to submit a comment to the journal.  Do not do that before the paper is published, because for most journals you must maintain the confidentiality of peer review.


What are the pros and cons of choosing my own research topic? (This question is one of three correlated questions: Can I get enough help? (first part), How should I do it? (second part).This is the third part.)

I am an undergraduate student (in Computer Science and Engineering) and I will be starting undergraduate research for my thesis. I have talked with many professors about possible projects and all the projects they proposed to me seemed interesting enough.

During summer, though, I read a paper and I was very interested and excited about it, but this paper was not for the projects that were proposed to me, but in a different area. I would like to do research in this area but I have some questions, because none of my professor is doing research in this particular field.

So, my questions are:

What are the downsides of choosing my own project instead of
doing a project that a professor is working right now (with his
Ph.D. students)?
How harder will it be to get something good out of it (in
comparison with doing a proposed project)?

P.S. I want to understand whether it will be beneficial to do a project that I want to do because of some paper(s) that I read or it will be better to do a project that was proposed to me. Also, I would like to go for a Ph.D. after I graduate.

Along the lines of earthling's answer, you do have a strong say in your topic, and you'll definitely want to be interested in the topic as you'll be putting a lot of work into it.

However, do realize that, as an undergraduate, you have far less experience in doing research than your advisor. You will save yourself a tremendous amount of work and effort by working closely with him on your project. One way to ensure that your advisor will be willing to invest that time in you is to work on a project that (1) interests him and (2) is related to his research. Even better, both. You are definitely free to choose whatever project you want, but it would be a good idea to choose something on which he can offer his expertise.


Appropriate time for contacting professors after PhD enrolment Assume that one has begun a PhD program at a university which allows a student to choose an advisor after his/her first year in the program and the student has narrowed down to a couple of potential advisors and has taken at least one course with each of them.

How early should one contact potential advisors? Just at the beginning of the program (early bird?) or after 6 months (after taking courses with each one) or right when you need to choose (don't make decisions till you have to?)?

As soon as is reasonable.

Think of it this way. There are possibly other students competing to work with this advisor, and they might have funds only for one new student. There might be other considerations - maybe the advisor is going on sabbatical, or isn't taking new students, and so on.

So as soon as possible, set up a meeting with the potential advisor, indicate your potential interest (and why!), and ask them point blank if they're taking students, and how they prefer to screen students (some do it through course work, some might like to work with you on an independent study project, and so on).

Depending on what they say, you can take further followup action - maybe they want you to take their class, and maybe they have a research group that has open meetings, and so on.

Bottom line: don't wait till your year is over, because it is quite possible that someone has made a decision already.

Caveat: if this year-delay is institutionalized, it might be that all advisors wait till the end of the year to even think about new students. I suspect this is unlikely, but in any case that first meeting will help clarify it.


What is the weight of GRE analytical-writing scores on math graduate-program admissions? I'll be applying to math PhD programs at the end of this year. I’m practicing for the math subject test, lining up letters of recommendation, etc. Along those lines, I just took the GRE general test.

What I've learned from math professors at some of my target schools is that the quantitative portion of the general GRE can only hurt potential applicants. No one in a math graduate admissions role will be impressed with a perfect quant score but a low score will absolutely raise flags.   What I didn’t ask, and what I’m now curious about, is the effect of an average analytical-writing score on an application.

From what I understand, I wont be the biggest fish in any candidate pool. The upcoming GRE Math Subject test is extremely difficult and weighed heavily for a candidate like myself (not from a traditionally strong undergraduate math program). There will be applicants from better schools and applicants with better subject scores. If I expect to compete, it will be because my application successfully signals a strong candidacy for a teaching assistant role.

To that end, do admissions officers in math graduate programs ever look at analytical-writing scores? What is the difference, hypothetically, between a 4.0 and a 5.0? I’m interested in analyzing the cost/benefit of retaking the GRE exclusively to improve my analytical-writing score.

I ran out of time and can likely improve (literally cut off mid-sentence, didn’t finish editing/deleting my outlined thoughts)
$200 is not a trivial cost but I would consider it given the possibility of a tangible benefit.
I’m not an international student.
I will have at least one submitted math publication by December.

I think the entire GRE General carries very little weight overall in admissions nowadays, except for the caveat that extremely poor scores might hurt you, because it betrays a fundamental weakness in the application (usually that language skills aren’t up to par). But language abilities if you’re an international student are usually judged using the IELTS or TOEFL, so it wouldn’t likely matter unless the school imposes a floor on the Analytical Writing score.

In STEM fields in general, including math, I can’t really think of a scenario where a strong writing score will bump a candidate from rejection to acceptance in isolation.


Is it legal to withdraw a signed offer letter from grad school? I am asking for my little cousin who is going to graduate school this year.

He has just signed an offer letter with school A, but just yesterday he got a better one from school B (may know school A quite well in the field). Is it legal for him to withdraw the signed letter from school A and attend school B, as long as he does it before the inter college deadline of April 15th? School A has also not yet issued any I-20 form to him (yes, we are international students).

The following answer only applies for graduate schools in the United States that are members of the Council of Graduate Schools, and have signed on to the CGS Resolution Regarding Graduate Scholars, Fellows, Trainees and Assistants. (Here is a list of these institutions.)

Furthermore, this agreement applies to offers of financial aid, not admission without aid. (Although many schools adopt a similar policy for offers of admission without aid.)

According to the Resolution:

  In those instances in which a student accepts an offer before April 15, and subsequently desires to withdraw that acceptance, the student may submit in writing a resignation of the appointment at any time through April 15. However, an acceptance given or left in force after April 15 commits the student not to accept another offer without first obtaining a written release from the institution to which a commitment has been made.

So the answer is: he can withdraw (in writing) his acceptance of financial assistance offered by School A before April 15 (if School A has signed on to the Resolution).

However, for general reference: you should really refrain from accepting an offer until you hear back from all the schools you are seriously considering.


Creating a community around my research book I have written a research book on the topic of abstract pure mathematics. Now the book is in review with a scientific publisher.

In the book there are some conjectures formulated by myself. There are also some conjectures and problems at my site, which are not in the book.

I want to create a community of mathematicians around my book to solve questions I formulated and related issues.

Any advice to help build the community? Maybe should I ask the publisher to place a prominent URL of my site on the topic of the book on the book cover. (The URL is already present in the text of my book, but it may probably be more prominent if placed on the cover.)

I also think that it may be worth to redesign my Web page on the topic of the book to make it "problem oriented" (to place unsolved problems at the top of my page instead of the bottom as it is now). Well, on the other side serious researchers should anyway read my entire page and all links on it. What do you think?

Any other advice?

And a note: I am not a math professional, I am an amateur. (This means that I earn money in some other way than from my knowledge of mathematics.)

Instead of getting the community to approach you, I suggest that you be the one to approach the community.  As an amateur (one who is outside the academic mathematical community), you are at a big disadvantage.

I recommend that you attend conferences and interact with others who are doing work similar to yours.  In my opinion, the best way to get attention is to present papers in good conferences and to publish papers in respectable journals.  By doing this, your reputation will improve and your work will be better known.


Are reputations earned and questions answered on Stack community considered as worthy publications? Are reputations earned and questions answered on Stack Exchange community considered as worthy  publications?
Can they be included or considered as publications?

Useful work in academia (I'm coming from a US perspective; perspectives elsewhere I think follow similar trends but may differ a bit) falls into three broad boats:

Research
Teaching/education/mentorship
Service/outreach

Publications fall under the category of "research". Stack Exchange participation definitely does not fall under this category (except perhaps in the rarest of circumstances; I don't think those circumstances are much worth considering in any general answer given how rare they are).
Teaching/education typically considers activity within the university. That's the stuff that students pay for (or more generally, the university receives some compensation for the benefit of the students).
Service/outreach includes all the "extra" stuff academics do: it includes participation on faculty committees (service to the university) and also includes service to the broader community. If, for example, an academic volunteered at a local primary/secondary school, that would fall under "service".
Service is almost certainly the least appreciated of the academic trinity, and service to the whole world is probably not weighted as heavily as service to the local community. Service in a local community or to the university itself is more easily justified to other stakeholders, like government officials who control university budgets. That doesn't mean it doesn't have value, just that it has the most chance to be undervalued.
Stack Exchange participation might, at best, be seen as a form of Service.


I found another proof of my theorem. Can I present two different proofs in the paper? My area is mathematics. I have just found another proof of the main theorem in my paper. It is slightly more elegant than the previous proof that I wrote, but the idea is very different. When submitting this paper, can I include two proof in the paper, or must I select only one? Personally, I don’t want to delete either of them, but I don’t know how the editor will deal with this situation.

If the two proofs are sufficiently different, then it's entirely reasonable to include both of them in your paper.  You might, however, want to think first about whether the proofs might actually lead (easily) to different generalizations of your theorem.  If they do, then you get two benefits: It's then clear that the two proofs are genuinely different. And you have some more general results.


What does "post-secondary academic work" mean? While searching for PhD programs, I read a requirement that states I should send in my application an official transcript of all "post-secondary academic work completed to date". Surely this cannot mean all work, including published articles or lectures?

My question is: What does "post-secondary academic work" mean?  Should I send academic work from both my completed Bachelor and from the Bachelor I did not complete? (BTW, is this expression correct, "completed Bachelor"? What would be a better English expression?)

Thank you!

In your question, you say they ask for the transcript of all work.  They don't want all work, as no one has that kind of time to read it all, they just want to know your performance in each course/module/etc.

The reason they stress the transcripts of all work, is that sometimes someone may have, as in your case, completed one program but not another and they would like to see the performance from that incomplete program (or perhaps you did two programs —in full— but one was in an unrelated field, they still want to see how you did in both).

Transcripts, thankfully, generally aren't very expensive to have translated.


Excellence as an undergrad Econ major What defines excellence as an undergrad econ major?
I was talking to a few friends in CS and they seem to be very clear on excellence for them - straight As, widely used/well built programs, and a solid understanding of the math behind CS/algos (for interviews). However, I noticed that I am unclear about what excellence as an Econ major is.
Getting straight As is obvious, but I can't think of much more beyond that (perhaps a good senior thesis?). Yet, many people have straight As (or almost straight As) and asking for a groundbreaking paper as a senior thesis seems to be a bit much. Thus, how would I differentiate excellent undergrad econ achievement from merely good undergrad econ achievement?

Excellence demands outstanding performance, topping the class. Mastery of the subject is required. Best marks are likely, but not necessary; good marks suffice. Outstanding performance goes beyond marks. For example, a broad understanding of a discipline's application to the world, being able to apply knowledge to real problems, a thesis fit for publication (i.e., advancing domain knowledge). A good student will achieve good marks, perhaps the best marks; an excellent student will achieve something beyond marks, such as the examples listed.


Textbook publisher offers to pay me for a comparative review of textbooks I'm currently teaching a fairly large introductory class,
with about 500 students per semester (spread across multiple sections).

Recently, I received an e-mail from McGraw-Hill Education
offering me a few hundred USD to complete a comparative review
of our current textbook (also McGraw-Hill)
and another McGraw-Hill textbook.

I am not sure what to make of this.
On the one hand,
it definitely sounds nice to me
to spend an hour or two to look through a new textbook,
and write a comparative review,
and be somewhat well compensated for my time.
On the other hand,
it feels like they are trying to "bribe" me
to adopt another textbook,
which may perhaps be more profitable for them
than our current recommended textbook.

Should I be wary about taking the money and accepting this offer?
Is there something unethical about this?
Also, would my university be upset about such an arrangement?
I suspect this would happen at most once a year,
if it indeed happens in the future.

I see nothing fundamentally unethical about this. It would become unethical if the request included a requirement that you adopt a particular book, or that you write something that pleases them. But by itself, requesting a review and paying you for it does not seem wrong to me -- they may simply be interested to hear from people in the trenches how these two books compare.


Is it OK to submit the same post-doctoral fellowship application two years in a row? Last year, I submitted a post-doctoral fellowship application but didn't get it. This year, I thought about submitting basically the same research statement; slightly updated and refined, but having the same project in mind.

My thoughts are that my improved track record this year, and having two letters of invitations to top universities, which I didn't yet have last year, would make the difference.

Is it a reasonable/ethical/smart strategy?

I did exactly this and was successful, but I'm going to recommend against it. In my situation, I submitted essentially the same project to roughly the same range of funding bodies two years in a row. In the second year, I tweaked my proposal, I had more publications, I had a stronger CV, and I finally had my proposal accepted re-applying for a very competitive fellowship. However, I also got flat rejected from all other fellowships to which I re-applied (including those that longlisted me in the first round).

In my situation, what little feedback I received from rejections universally stressed that the project was strong but that I needed more publications to appear a suitably reliable candidate. I had only one publication for my first round of applications, but 3-4 for the second year. For the fellowship I received, the initial rejection basically said they thought the project ought to be funded but that they lacked enough funds that year and waitlisted me. I didn't get it in the end, but then when reapplying next year I was successful. As mentioned, I wasn't even longlisted for the other fellowships to which I re-applied, three of which had listed me in the first round.

It seems this will be field-dependent (I'm in the humanities) but will, as noted, depend most on the funding body. The instutition at which I finally won the fellowship was very invested in the project and wanted me to resubmit the same thing. Everywhere else was mildly interested at best.

To conclude, I'd recommend against doing this unless you have a solid reason to believe the same funding agency is likely to accept a project they rejected the first time. Having lots more publications, though helpful, is unfortunately not enough on its own.


Is it plagiarism to use another person's unpublished thesis? Consider a research work that is present in another person's thesis, submitted two years before at the university, but not published online anywhere. Can someone extend that work and submit it to a journal?

You can work on anything you want. If you publish you must:

cite the thesis;
give an accurate account of what work was already contained in the thesis, and what you added;
if you use passages of text or images taken directly from the thesis, identify them as such (as a quotation or similar). Extensive use of such quotations or images may also require permission from the original author and/or their university, depending on who holds the copyright.


What are the legal and ethical implications of "padding" pay with extra hours to compensate for unpaid work? I have come into a strange position and could greatly use some advice on how I should proceed. I am an undergraduate student at an American university in a computer engineering program. For the last several months, I have been hired as a student developer working for the university. However due to HR issues I have been working without any compensation. (I have so far worked over 300 hours for the university without pay.)

However last week they have finally got around to filling out the HR paperwork to officially hire me. My immediate boss feels bad about me working all this time and wants to "make it up". He has suggested doing this by going and "padding my pay" by a few hours each week until the time is covered. However I have been told to not let anyone else know or there will be trouble for it. This feels very shady and I am really struggling over whether this is something that is acceptable or not to do.

I know the thing that most people are likely to comment on is “Why the world did you not just quit?” The reason for this is really twofold. The position is a really nice one, I am able to be doing development work to help build up my resume and pay for school as a freshman student. The second being that I really do need the money from the position to help pay for school, and I was told throughout the entire process that I would start being payed “Just next week”.

I understand that they probably were just taking advantage of my ignorance (this is my first job), but has anyone ever had any experience like this where they can give advice on how I should proceed? (Or if the suggested method of padding hours is acceptable?) I’m told that “People do it all the time”, but also being told “don’t tell anyone” just makes it seem somewhat suspicious.

Any advice that could be provided would be greatly appreciated. (Particularly concerning the legality and ethics of the situation.)

This question was originally posted on https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/78016/working-without-compensation-what-to-do
but as they said academics tends to look differently on "under the table" dealings, they recommended I try to post it here for a better answers.

Note that this answer is culture-dependant and my experiences will probably not fit directly with the situation in an American university, which you described to be enrolled in. However, the answer can help understand situations in which the described inofficial arrangements can work out, and also outlines why your situation is rather different from those.

As far as I know, it is very common to pad payment as described for smaller student jobs, so in the end the actual work hours and the actually received sum of payment match. Reasons include:

University administration/HR departments tend to be (considerably) less spontaneous than what is sometimes required for fulfilling certain research-related tasks. This can become particularly discriminatory towards foreign students, as they might have to wait for documents from other agencies outside of the university (e.g. the agency responsible for foreigners in the respective jurisdiction).
Workload created by ongoing research is by no means balanced in any way.
The time available to students is not balanced in any way.
In contrast to the two above points, student work contracts are often not sophisticated enough to account for that variation. They assume a uniform workload such as n hours a week.

Evidently, these issues can create a severe discrepancy between what is confirmed on paper (e.g. "4 hours a week for 3 months starting in July") and what both parties directly involved in the research want to agree upon to their mutual satisfaction (also with respect to not impeding the student's studying). Hence, it seems, distributing actual work hours differently to what the contract says is a way to counteract the negative effects of bureaucracy both towards research projects and the preferences of the people involved, and therefore not ethically problematic.

However, all of these arrangements usually work because they are conducted by people who responsibly handle the relatively large inofficial leeway. In your particular situation, I do see some warning signs that your superiors might not belong to that group, which indeed evokes the question “Why the world did you not just quit?” for me:

There was no clear agreement between your superior and you about the inofficial arrangement before it started. It seems your superior 'feels bad about [you] working all this time and wants to "make it up"' as late as you have been working for a considerable number of hours.
Your superior apparently did nothing to change things earlier. The contractual definition of work hours is, among other things, meant as a protection for the employee from negative side-effects (working too much; having too little time for studying; ...). It can seem justified to bend the rules for the reasons described above, but then the responsibility to protect the employee is passed on to the employer's "manual control". When they learn your officially paid hours are not just behind the actual working time by a week or two, but that no payment is in sight yet, it is up to your superior to tell you to pause working and to try and influence HR themselves.
Rather than knowing more or less the deviation between what the contract says and what actually happens, you were repeatedly told you 'would start being payed “Just next week”'. While it may have been HR telling you that, this should have been another reason for your superior to suspend the inofficial arrangement for the time being, because obviously it cannot be implemented within parameters known to both of you (given that the parameter of how long you will actually have to wait was totally unknown).

As a final remark, you say you "have been told to not let anyone else know or there will be trouble for it". It is not quite clear how this request was phrased and what is meant by "trouble", or especially, who the "trouble" would be directed at. If this is meant to be "trouble" for you you are right to consider this quite shady, as apparently, your superior is not going to take responsibility for the arrangement1 on the off-chance that anyone complains, and maybe also that the number of hours you amassed is substantial enough that someone might indeed bother to investigate.

1: At the very least, by describing the arrangement as a way to retroactively make up for the due payment the student missed due to unforeseen administrative issues. IANAL, but while probably a violation of procedures of some kind, it seems unlikely anyone would bother to create consequences as there is no tangible damage if the student is paid for the worked time eventually.


How do authors deal with figure copyrights when writing review articles? Assuming I'm writing a review article and I'd like to use figures
after [1]" or similar? How am I expected to deal with copyright?  Obviously a review article is going to use existing figures, more or less--that's the point.  It seems from sites like IEEE that the expected practice is to pay, per figure, for each graphic used.  Is that really how things work?  Or is there some "fair use" clause that can be invoked?

The rules vary widely by publisher here. It also depends on whose work you're "copying." If it's your own graphic, then there's usually no issue associated with it. However, if it belongs to someone else, then you should either request the permission from the rights holder, or redraw the figure yourself (if it's a schematic, then this would eliminate copyright issues).

Similarly, a journal or publisher may allow you to reuse people's work from within the same publisher's journals without fee. But again, this is something the individual publishers determine.


Would it be immature to ask my PhD advisor for more background for a paper they've asked me to help with? I am doing a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at a U.S. university and after taking Professor X's class this Spring, he has agreed to be my advisor. About a month ago, Professor X asked me to read a particular recent paper of his and prove a conjecture.
I have been reading his paper, and I can understand the logic in his proofs from one line to the next. However, I fail to see the big picture. I would have no answer to the questions such as "What is the motivation behind coming up with this theorem?" or "What is the motivation behind the proof of this lemma?". As a result, I feel like I don't even have the slightest idea of how to prove the conjecture he assigned me.
I think I know the answer to my dilemma: just keep reading and trying until you understand. However, it is possible that he has something else to add. Perhaps he might recommend me to read another paper for more background or something like that.
Would it be immature and not worthy of a PhD student to ask this question of my advisor?

This is a fantastic question to ask. It's where your advisor's expertise really has the chance to make a difference, and it's much more interesting to answer than "Why does line 4 follow from line 3"? Long term it's your hope to understand the big picture as well.
The best time to ask questions like this is after you've first taken a stab at it yourself: you'll be in a much better position to understand the answers! As you've done this already, I'd encourage you to proceed.


What should I do if I can't get a copy of original transcript from the institute? I saw an offer for a Ph.D. position in US where they asked for original transcript which directly should be sent from the home institute. When I asked my institute, they said they don't have these kind of options. In this case what can I do? Should I write the programme co-ordinator?

Yes, you should write the coordinator at the program you're applying to, explain the situation and ask for permission to submit a copy of your transcript (I assume you have one?) rather than an original. To remove doubt that you are playing some funny games, offer to append a notarized statement from you attesting to the authenticity of the document, and say you'd be willing to take any other reasonable measures they would like you to take to accept the document.

Since the school is in the U.S., I'm guessing they'll be reasonable.


Research statement for liberal arts college: how much detail should I go into? I am currently a math PhD student, and will be graduating next spring.

If I'm applying for a position at small liberal arts college, what should my research statement look like? How detailed and how long should it be?  I have heard/read that small liberal arts colleges are focused on undergraduate research. I am wondering how much of my own research I should talk about in the research statement. Should I go into as much detail as I would in the research statement for a postdoc?

(My advisor has never worked at a liberal arts college, so he doesn't really know the answer to this question.)

I don't know why @aparente001’s answer was downvoted. I teach mathematics at a liberal arts college, and when we hire, a detailed research statement is not very important, but a research area that has the possibility of involving students is a plus, and we’d like to hear about how you might do that. But chances are good that no one in the (very small, teaching-focused) department will be well-informed about your specific area to be interested in great detail.

What I look at first is the cover letter. If it’s nothing more than a summary of your CV, and/or mostly about research, my interest is diminished. If it’s not well-written (good communication skills matter, even in the math department) I’m worried. But if it elaborates sincerely and believably on “Your position interests me because I want to teach at a liberal arts college. Here’s why.” If it shows you did your homework and know some particular things about my university that attract you (and I don’t mean generic praise for “our excellent reputation” and “strong department”) I’m more interested.

We (I don’t know about all liberal arts colleges, but I might speak for many) want great teachers who will remain professionally active and engaged in their discipline, but that can be interpreted broadly and doesn’t have to include a fancy research program. We also like colleagues who are interested in other disciplines. Maybe you’re a world-class analyst, but we’d rather hear you tell us about the time you helped an art student study perspective for her thesis than tell us about your improved bound for some well-known (to analysts in your area) asymptotic formula, not that there’s anything wrong with that. We’d rather read your thoughtful blog on teaching or frequent, patient and carefully written answers on math.stackexchange.com, too.

Related to your question is the issue of recommendation letters. All too often we get letters for new R1 Ph.D.'s that go on and on about research and assume we know all the best young recent Ph.D.s from that school (“Janet’s research is comparable to ”) and then barely mention teaching (“She gave a seminar talk that was very good,” or “She spends a lot of time with students during office hours.”) This, even though we ask for letters that specifically address teaching excellence or potential. Tell your letter-writers that you want them to address your creativity, your ability to explain, your cross-disciplinary interests, and so on. Perhaps even choose teachers you think you did great homework or exams with, or ones you T.A.’d for. Even a letter from a LAC faculty member who finished a few years before you, knew you well in graduate school, and has kept in touch with you.

Honestly, I find it incredible (not in a good way) that so many R1 senior faculty think the research-focused letters they write will be helpful at places like LACs. It’s more understandable that applicants don’t know what we want, but asking, like you’re doing here, is a great idea.


Editor didn't invite for a second review I recently reviewed a paper and recommended Major Revision. I provided a referee report with some detailed comments on what the revision should address. I can see from the system that the Editor gave a decision of Major Revision, the authors of the paper have been notified and they already submitted a revision four months ago. However, the Editor did not invite me as a referee in the second round. I have been refereeing for over seven years and this is the first time that I experienced such a situation. I have been obsessing that the Editor found my report incompetent or not useful. But, the overall recommendation was the same (Major Revision) and the same journal asked me to review other manuscripts in the same time frame. What do you think the reason could be?

There are always difficulties second-guessing from what others actions result from. The fact you did not get re-invited, is not strange in my experience (as reviewer and editor). First, I assume you do not know what the other (I assume the journal uses more than one reviewer) reviewer provided in a second review. It may have been minor revisions and the editor could make a decision to provide a major revisions verdict but go directly to accept if he/she thought the corrections were good enough. This is an editors prerogative.

It is always possible that an editor chooses a different reviewer for the reason you mention but given that you have done many reviews before, I sincerely doubt this is the case or reason. Another possibility is that the editor felt someone with different expertise was needed for some aspect of the manuscript, perhaps based on comments by the second reviewer. But, you will never know the details of the story and I would not think twice about the event. The fact that you keep getting requests shows your expertise is in demand.


Filling in gaps in lecturer's instruction I am studying a Honours level Reading Unit.
A Reading Unit is quiet unlike the traditional be lectured to type units.
It is based on the principle that everyone in the unit has mastered how to do research, and that teaching is the best way to learn.
Over the unit there are a number of areas to be examined.
For the first half of the unit the class is broken up into groups one group for each area, and ask to research and present on the topic.
(The second half is a project, and ensuring you know all the areas covered for the exam)

The unit has 5 hours of content lectures, in which it described the basics of all the topics, so that everyone has some context to start there research in.

In one particular topic area, the free lecturer admitted that he was less informed about it, than the other areas covered by the unit. Which is fair enough -- he was asked to teach this class with short notice after the normal lecturer went away.

I am well informed on this particular topic -- at least to the extent it will be covered in this unit. It forms basic knowledge that underlies my honours thesis, and I have studied a unit though a online university purely about it. I have made the lecturer is aware of this.

During the lecture on the basics of this area, I felt that there were some improvements that could be made to what/how it was covered:

A few times the lecturer hedged his statements. Saying things like "I think that...", "It is my understanding that", "I don't believe anyone does ...". Indicating his own uncertainty. I could confirm that he was right, or clarify this.
A few times he used a term that no one with in the field would use to describe the technique; because that term is used in-field to describe a different technique. It was a very apt way to describe it, but if anyone tries to research the term, they will get this other technique. As well, if anyone every tried to discuss it with a researcher in the field, that researcher would probably say: "no it isn't X, it is Y". (Infact Y uses lowercase x)
A statement in one of the slides was slightly misleading.

I resisted the urge to clarify him during the lecture, because I felt that would be disrespectful and would interrupt the flow of the class -- which was already on a tight scheduled.

Now I am considering what I should do. Options I see are:

Do nothing, hope that the students covering this section in more detail will make it clear for everyone.
Pass this information on the students covering the area, possibly also with some other useful recommended reading.
Post my clarifications on the the units online discussion forum.
Email the lecturer saying: "I feel I can clarify a few things", shall I post to the discussion forum? But not include full details in my email to him.
Email the lecturer saying: "Here are some clarifications of the area for your edification."

What is the correct way to go about making something more clear,
 that was not wrong, but might be missing or misleading from lecture content?

Remember that this is a postgraduate degree. The lecturers aren't there to serve it to you on a plate. You are a grown-up now, you're doing a higher degree. That means you should be expecting to do most of the work for yourselves, and to think for yourselves.

As there's an online course discussion forum, that seems like the perfect place to work with other students to fill out the richer tapestry of knowledge that the lecture was on; post something there about useful key terms to find relevant literature, along the lines of the following:

  I found these papers (give linked DOI or other robust form of link) on the Dunning-Kruger effect. My search terms to find them were: "cognitive bias", "self-assessment". I looked in these databases / used these search engines.

Fill in gaps. Don't try to look smarter than the lecturer. It's not at all likeable, and you're only risking looking foolish later.

So if the lecturer talked about solving a particular problem by applying X, and you've found examples of people doing it by applying Y, say just that. If you can link to a paper that compares X and Y, even better.

Please do bear in mind that the presence or absence of expressions of uncertainty ("I think that ...", "I don't believe that") do indeed often mark the difference between expertise and weak knowledge. But in the opposite way round to the direction you might think. Presence of expressions of uncertainty often indicate deeper knowledge and expertise. The person who says to fellow academics "I am sure that ...", "I know for a fact that ...", "No one in the world tries to tackle it this way ..." is often, in doing so, flagging up their own lack of expertise.

And yes, all lecturers are mortal, and not every statement they make will be accurate. And that's alright. A degree is an exercise in learning to think, at least as much as in acquiring knowledge. Develop your critical thinking on all materials provided to you, whether they are written, spoken or however they're delivered.


Is there a service that can store and mail official transcripts from any school? I have studied at a number of schools. Most graduate programs require "transcripts from all previous schools". The last time I applied for a program, I spent a full day applying for transcript requests, as each school has different forms, Web systems, payment methods, etc. Is there a service that can hold all student transcripts and mail out official copies when one applies to a new program?

To my knowledge, there is no such service. Receiving universities want their copy to be certified correct by your university and sent in a sealed envelope such that you could not have easily tampered with it. No university is likely to trust anyone but the originating university to handle this process, so such a service has not been created. It would be very easy for some third party to allow you to create a transcript with whatever grades and courses you liked, and only through careful auditing could a university be able to trust that your records were properly transmitted. As such, it's easier, cheaper, and more reliable for the Registrar at each university to handle this on their own.


Advancement to Candidacy, PhD in Computer Science As a PhD student in CS I will have advancement to candidacy soon.
I am looking for information which helps me on the advancement exam.
Particularly:

What does a committee expecting to hear from me?
What should I focus on during me presentation: should I tell them about work I have done or what I am planning to do?
If I need tell them what I am planning to do, then how to do that? I mean, research is vague, there is no clear guidance, and you don't know what will be in the end.

Any comments that help better understand what to expect and how to prepare are very welcome!

The only goal of the candidacy/qualifying/preliminary exam is to convince the committee that you deserve to pass the candidacy/qualifying/preliminary exam.  The passing criteria differ, sometimes radically, from one university to the next, from department to the next, from one research area to the next, and even from one committee member to the next.  It's the academic equivalent of Calvinball, only you don't get to make up the rules.  Do not question the mask.

The only way to determine how to prepare for the candidacy/qualifying/preliminary exam is to ask your committee members directly.  Individually.  In person.  I strongly recommend scheduling a one-on-one meeting with each committee member at least a month in advance of the actual exam.

Same goes for the thesis defense.


Is it possible to get a PhD in molecular/cell biology/genetics without work with mice? How to find such a lab? I don't want to kill any more mice, but my advisor insists that I must in order to get my PhD

I read the above post and I realized that I will be sailing in the same boat.

I am planning to get a PhD admission in molecular/cell biology/genetics.
I cannot stand the sight of mice. I get scared even looking at pictures of mice.

My questions are:

Is it possible to complete the course without having to work on mice?
Will it be very difficult to do?
How should I go about finding labs that don't work with mice?

Coursework that uses live animals is exceeding rare (unfortunately, IMO), so you should have very little trouble completing PhD coursework without using live animals

As to your research, this is an entirely different matter, but not all labs do in-vivo work. I suggest looking up faculty in the specific departments you are interested in, and seeing if there are enough labs that don't use mice to offer you a fair opportunity to land in a lab that doesn't.

Also, I recommend giving the animal work a try, possibly through a rotation.  Some students really change their minds once they start doing animal work.  This goes in both directions.  Some students find it to be not so bad as they thought it was going to be, and others who really thought they were to have a career doing animal research just have no taste for it when they actually try it.  Try not to let preconceived notions about how you will react dictate your research career.  Find a way to expose yourself to it in a small amount, and see if you're right about how you actually will react.


Why do researchers need universities? This is a follow-up question to How are junior professors evaluated for promotion? and probably an even more naive question. If I'm understanding the answer correct, professors need funding to do research, but once they get it, the university takes some of the grant as overheads (to pay for office space, electricity, etc), and the cut the university takes is substantial.

Given that then, why do professors need universities? One could just apply for the grant as per normal, and once one gets it, buy a slightly bigger house and convert one of the rooms into a lab. One loses nothing to overheads, gets to work from home, has zero teaching duties, can choose to settle anywhere (no two-body problem!), and can even monitor an experiment 24/7. This gets even easier if one works in a field that doesn't need a physical lab. Further, presumably the grant covers postdoc salaries, so one would still be able to pay for postdocs (although probably not PhD students since a professor without a university will not be able to award a degree).

The obvious answer is that one cannot apply for a grant without a university, but Google indicates that's not the case, e.g. NSA grants in mathematics only looks at one's previous accomplishments & potential applications of the research result, both of which are independent of the university. I suppose one could lose journal access, but there's always stuff like arXiv / ResearchGate, emailing the authors of the desired paper, or even Scihub (oops). It's conceivable that not working for a university loses one some prestige, since one can no longer claim to be a professor. However even then I'd expect at least some academics to choose this path, valuing the convenience & extra research funding over prestige.

If the answer to this varies from field to field, I'm most interested in the sciences.

If I'm understanding the answer correct, professors need funding to do research, but once they get it, the university takes some of the grant as overheads (to pay for office space, electricity, etc), and the cut the university takes is substantial

The number of services provided by a university is substantial, of which space and electricity are the least of them.

Maintenance, janitorial, and IT services - machines break, rooms get dirty, and technology has inexplicable problems.  Universities have infrastructure in place to deal with all of this.

Access to literature - Universities maintain subscriptions to the journals, standards, and other references a researcher needs.

Laboratory equipment and specialists - Most scientific research requires specialized equipment, which can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several million.  Universities can afford to maintain such equipment, and the expert technicians needed to run the equipment at maximum efficiency.

Other researchers - A university department provides ready access to and familiarity with other experts in your field for potential collaboration.  Additionally, it provides a way to find potential collaborators from other fields for the times when you find your research leaving the bounds of your expertise.

Students - an unfortunate amount of research is tedious.  A university provides a ready framework for delegating simple but time-consuming work to students so that a researcher can focus on the parts of the research that only they can do.

Contacts - Universities maintain contacts with businesses, governments, and other research institutions that can open more doors than any one researcher could do on their own.

Reputation - Being a member of a respected university means that people who trust that university will afford some measure of that trust as well.

Legal services and other expertise - While it would be nice if research could exist completely separate from the outside world, this is not the case. Universities have systems set up to support and advise their researchers when problems arise during their research.

Many of these things could be aquired by a solo researcher, of course. But doing so would cost time and money, likely amounting to more than a university takes in overhead. And things like contacts and reputation are difficult to purchase.


Incompatibility with the PhD advisor My PhD advisor liked me during the exams. Then, when I came with the thesis I wrote, he got very angry, maybe because I did not do what he suggested, maybe because what I did is not quite in his domain. The tension between us did not diminish with time, because I like my thesis and don't want to throw it away and start over. I proposed him that I move to another advisor, and he agreed, maybe relieved. But if I will ask another professor to be my advisor, this will raise suspicions on the reason I move. I don't want to make the current advisor look bad, and certainly I don't want to look bad (this is more likely to happen, because he is very respected), so I am in a delicate position. Possible issues which may trigger suspicions about my thesis (and maybe they are the reason my advisor got angry in the first place):

the main claim is considered a lost cause,
my solution is developed in a large number of steps which are difficult to understand.

Could you please suggest how should I approach the problem of finding and asking another professor to be my advisor?

Students change advisors all the time for all sorts of reasons. While it is important that advisors and advisees have to recognize that they are supposed to work on improving their relationships and fight through tension, sometimes it just doesn't work out or will not work out in the long term. I've changed advisors and during that process, I found several other students who have gone through the same experience.

It is important to recognize that this does happen for better or for worse and it is important for you to do what is necessary to do what is best for you. Despite what you would think, people (even academics) don't really put much weight on seeing someone change careers or direction so you shouldn't worry about such things being regarded as suspicious.

The first step would be to find a set of people that you can rely on for rational advice since this will likely be an emotional transition. Parents and close friends come to mind but also finding an older student, administrative staff, and understanding professors will be key. In my case, my co-advisor and one of my committee members were resources in addition to several senior graduate students who had changed advisors.

The second would be to start to find a new advisor. If you get along with your current advisor, he would make good suggestions, if you're switching behind his back, probably not so much. As you a mid-PhD student, you now have a much better understanding of what type of advisor/mentee relationship you want and you can narrow down advisors based on that reputation. During my search, I got in touch with senior students first asking them able advising styles (and availability of funding). Only after that initial conversation did I meet with the advisor themselves. Despite what you would think, advisors actually like picking up/stealing veteran graduate students from other advisors due to the expertise that they may add to the discussion.

Finally is the administrative side. You chair will have to know about this and your committee will likely be restructured. People don't have to know the reason why you've changed (my current advisor still doesn't know). If possible, try not to burn any bridges since you will likely need his (his/her for other people reading this) signature at somepoint on your thesis. Try to keep things professional since this really is a career based move rather than something personal although it really is.

The best news is that everyone I've known who have changed advisors are/were really happy about their new sitatuion. It's just a very stressful transition but it really wasn't as stressful as I was expecting.

(edit) I've noticed this about eykanal's answer regarding the timing. Yes, it is inevitably that you will lose some time especially if you're in the thesis writing stage of your career. However, if you're an earlier student in the dissertation/research phase (I was in my 3rd year), I didn't feel like I lost much time. Most of the first years of grad school are "wasted" relearning learning and taking classes. Especially in the sciences, most of the early years is developing various soft-skills and competence which isn't lost when you change advisors/research projects. Furthermore, spending an extra year to reconfigure a PhD is probably better than falling into ABD purgatory.


Is it OK to contact someone who is on my suggested reviewers list to discuss something unrelated? I submitted a manuscript to a journal. As it was required, I included a list of suggested reviewers. Of course, I don't know who of them have been selected by the editor. I haven't received any reviews yet. Several weeks have passed since the submission.

The problem is that I forgot whom I suggested as a reviewer. These were some people from my field and I have alerts on Google Scholar that notify me about their new papers. Recently, I got such an alert about someone's new paper. I found it interesting (but not really related to the topic of my submitted manuscript) so I wrote an email to the author. (I only met him once at a conference.) I thought that he found something similar to what I saw in a paper of yet another author. We exchanged a few emails. The discussion was totally unrelated to my manuscript.

Only after that discussion I realized he might have been a reviewer of my submitted manuscript. So I wonder whether it is OK to contact someone who may  be my reviewer? The review process is blind so I never know for sure.

The world of academia is small enough so that you'll likely get to know most (or all!) reviewers for your work. You can't be expected to stop communicating with your colleagues, just because one of them could be reviewing one of your papers right now.

So yes, go and discuss.


Cite a developed version of an algorithm (citation chain)? My work is based on algorithm A that is actually a developed version of algorithm B. When I cite algorithm A, should I also cite algorithm B?

Due to the conference page limit, I prefer not to cite algorithm B, as A has already cited B and I do have cited A. Does my this "citation chain" work?

Another dilemma to me is when algorithm C incorporates (not develops) algorithm B, given the fact that I have to cite C anyway and actually I have used algorithm B, can I choose to only cite C without B? (again, to save space)

Space savings aside, your choice in this must be guided by two factors: help the readers understand what your work is built upon, and acknowledge scientific contributions of your predecessors.
With those principles in mind, I would say the choice depends on the relationship between A and B, and whether either (or both) are well-known. Let's take two simple cases to illustrate:

if algorithm B is world-famous, and algorithm A is a not-so-well-known extension (e.g., because it is specially optimized for a specific type of data): you will have to cite both, as you cannot assume that all readers are familiar with algorithm A.

Herein we highlight an extension of the Abersmith algorithm,[ref A] which is itself based on the Borodin sort algorithm with specific improvements for the handling of p-adic input.

if algorithm A is very well known in your field, and algorithm B was an earlier algorithm that was almost completely superseded by A and little used nowadays (except for historical considerations): it is not useful to cite B.


Can I become a professor if I were expelled from the uni? I’d just like to know your opinion on this issue (whether you think it is ethical or not).
The point is, for three years, I was a straight A-student. But towards the final year, I simply started to burn out, but then I didn’t know how to handle the situation and my mental and physical health deteriorated.
As a result, I got an F. At our university, if you get an unsatisfactory mark (F) you have to take summer classes. Even though it was the final year, students were still allowed to take them.
I didn’t consider taking a leave of absence since the reason is not considered serious enough in my country.
Then I thought about taking a year off by withdrawing. But I was recommended to stay since a few years of my studies were financed.
This year, the rules were changed and now, as it is the final year, those who got unsatisfactory marks are expelled. So was I.
In my country, however, one is allowed to be enrolled in the college again, retake some classes and get a diploma. And this doesn’t prevent you from getting into grad school.
So the question is, do I still have a moral right to become a professor at another university?
I think that if I’m going to pursue Master’s degree in another university and (on condition that my performance is great) this university is interested in having me as an academic, I should be transparent about this fact.
Or do you think that it is better for me not to pursue academic career at all?
Would a student like that have a chance in your country?
Update: I was eventually given the opportunity to withdraw (since the documents are yet to be signed) and enrol in the same university next year.
Thank you everyone for your answers!

Yes, you can become a professor. Your expulsion (for unsatisfactory marks) seems equivalent to failing your degree. Failing a degree doesn't preclude becoming professor. But you'll (likely) need a degree to become one. (The definition of professor varies between countries.)
From comments:

[is] failing a degree...dishonourable...something [to] be ashamed of?

Failure isn't shameful nor disgraceful: A professor who hasn't failed, hasn't challenged themselves enough.

Do you think, as a professor, you have the right to keep it to yourself or be transparent?

In the immediate future, universities and employers will want to know why you dropped out, failed, were excluded, however you want to phrase it. Just be honest. Explain your situation. You were burning out, deteriorating mentally and physically, these aren't shameful/disgraceful events.
A professor (depending on definition) probably need never mention distant failures: In the future, historic details (even failing a degree) become irrelevant.


What is the difference between academic and administrative department heads? In a comment, it was quoted that some universities have administrative or academic department head. I sensed this difference before (but do not remember specifically), but I always thought that the latter is the case: one of the faculty members of a department is appointed as the head or hiring a new faculty member to serve as the department head (or vice versa in some sense).

How and why are administrative and academic heads different?

An administrative head of department heads up the administration of the department, and will typically have little or no involvement in the direction or the content of the research or teaching.

An academic department head leads the academic direction of the department. This often include somes administrative duties. Well, they nominally lead the academic direction of the department. In theory, they guide the direction of the department's researchers and teaching. In practice, that's like herding cats.


What citation style is this? It has numeric reference, title in quotes, "Last, F.F." name style A style I'm required to follow, unfortunately unnamed:

  [1]   Last, G.L., Loo, B.F., Mooo, C.C., “My wonderful title” Int. J.
  Heat Mass Transf., 32(19-21), pp. 234-245, (2001).

  [2]   Moobar, A.D. and Been, D., Book about pink ponies, New York:
  Wonderful publisher, pp. 34–41, (2003).

Features....

numeric numbering in []s
First, L.L. name style
article title in quotes
year in braces at the end

The closest I could find is MLA Seventh edition, but it never does numeric references.

To answer some suggestions below: I didn't find a style file with the publisher. And no clear style description exists, other than the examples provided. (There is a few more, but the features I listed are the main thing in common.)

Again more information: http://spie.org/x14101.xml#Word is the instructions to follow. They provide an example MS Word file with manually typed citations. While I can use the LATEX file, I already have the paper in .DOC and need a citation style for that. So this is a question of its name.

The system of referencing using numbers is called the Vancouver system. As alluded to by aeismail in his comment, each journal has some form of style based on this format. Hence, you need to know how the specific journal style works in terms of ordering the different bibliographic fields, for example, author, title, publishing year, journal, volume number, page numbers, doi etc. If no clear style description exists you can try to adhere to the specific style by looking at other published articles that use the same style.


How do textbook authors and professors cook up homework/assignment questions? I was looking around on the internet and I found some notes with homework appended to them (for those interested, it is math). What struck me is that these questions are not only lengthy, notationally challenging, but also appears to be quite complicated. For a biology course no less.

Can any authors or professors illuminate as to how (i.e. the process) these assignment questions are developed? I thought about this and found several scenarios which are quite interesting to think about, but at the same time, ridiculous to me.

For professors/authors:

scenario a: the professor/author goes home and quietly sits in front of a fireplace and starts brain storming weird scenarios and writes down these random thoughts

scenario b: the professor/author demands his graduate students to pump out 10 questions on a weekly basis, the rest is history

scenario c: the professor/author picks up another book and make adjustments to questions that looks interesting and then puts into his own book. But then this sort of becomes a chicken-egg problem. What about a completely new field that no one has touched before?

scenario d: there exist a large central depository of problems that professors submit to it, and draws question from it, a massive database out of reach of any students. This is some fringe conspiracy theory.

scenario e: The Hamilton approach. Ideas just flies out at random say when you are taking a shower, or buying some groceries and then you jog them down very quickly and then send it to a depository. Kind of like scenario a but much more random.

What about people who are cross discipline and working on their own field? Are there dedicated personnel who is neither an author, nor a professor, but just works on developing these assignments all day? This question just opens up a can of worms.

Please feed my curiosity, I would love to know how they are developed because maybe I will also develop my own someday. I know there exist some distinction between authors and professors (although the two coincides on a great degree), let me know if things done differently between different professions.

You missed scenario f, which I suspect is the most common:  The professor has been teaching this class and refining the textbook/notes for years, and developed homework questions out of problems that have come up over the course of that extended period of time of engaging with this material.


Why are external PhDs considered to take "decades"? I have just finished my master degree (TU Vienna) and I am working 20 hours per week. I have talked to several professors in my field of interest and they said that the earliest position for a PhD would be in December, because of funding.

However, I think I could take the route as external researcher and do my PhD by working 20 hours per week and devoting the other 20 hours to my research.

By browsing some posts here I have read that a lot of you consider an external PhD as inefficient (it takes a long time, etc.). Why? What are the reasons for that? Can't such a PhD be done within 3 years?

  UPDATE

PS.: What are mostly the reason that it takes so long?

Being a PhD student is a full-time job.

True, "officially" you may be assigned to 20 hours of "study" and 20 hours of "work" by the university, but this is just a way to determine your salary, and does NOT reflect the amount of time you actually spend on research studies.

In the U.S., the nominal time for PhD is about five to six years average. This assumes the student is a full time student. While some people finish their PhD in three years or less, this is truly exceptional. The average is six. (This was the case at least in the school I attended, in the Computer Science department. Length may vary in other departments.) It also depends on what you aim for in your PhD: is graduating after publishing just one paper good enough for you?

Now let's do the math. If it takes about six years to finish a degree, assuming full time, then how much time would it take for a part-time student? Take into consideration also 20%-30% extension of time due to context-switching, but also reduce 15%-25% of the time due to being more efficient  (it's easier to waste time when working full-time, in my opinion).

You arrive at 10+ years.

Then again, I know people that worked part-time and studied part-time, and were able to complete their PhD studies in four to six years. I also know people that took five to six years to finish their MSc degree (which nominally takes two years), due to having another full-time job.. It depends mostly on your abilities and aims from PHD (but also quite a bit on your luck).


Are there any organisations which approve or manage open science projects? Are there any organisations/foundations/hubs which manages/approve independent open science projects which are accepted and well recognised within mainstream scientific circles?

For instance, what if the published project doesn't make any sense and its calling it-self the open science project?

In other words, what kind of organisations/community ensure quality of the published data so it's accepted as reliable 'open science' project or anybody can publish anything and call it 'open science project' (for instance publishing open data of correlation of the number of pirates with global temperature)?

Yes, try looking at the Center for Open Science and their study management website, the Open Science Framework.  They primarily deal in psychology and cancer biology studies right now, but I'm sure other areas of science are welcome or will be soon.


When to include degree classifications on a CV I've looked at some CV's from colleagues and superiors that I've worked with in academia, and one interesting thing I've noticed is that most of them don't mention if they've graduated with distinction (cum laude, first class etc), but for me it's crucial to mention. At what point is it not necessary to include? Does some amount of academic experience such as publications trump whatever the honors one received when graduating to the point where it's not necessary to include? Is this done because potential employers aren't interested after the person has a solid enough background in academia post graduation and degree conferral or is it simply not worth the whitespace?

I would mention it and leave it on your CV going forward. It is recognized and awarded by your university. Some people might discount it and others might not.
It is a minor thing, however, as it is normally simply a reflection of your GPA. And in applications that contain the GPA, that is a more precise indicator of where you wound up.
But it is an accomplishment, nevertheless and it is valid to be proud of it.


Unsatisfactory grades for unsatisfactory reasons I am currently doing Algebra in a college in India. The professor asks students to note down solved examples in class, and then poses the very same questions in the tests.

I don't go to class for these very reasons. Hence, I end up writing alternate proofs for such problems. The professor is incompetent to the extent that he does not understand proofs written by an undergrad, and gives me zero on all those answers.

When applying for grad school, I will have bad grades in Algebra and other math subjects (I suspect). How do I convey the this to the Admissions committee when applying for a PhD?

I believe this is relevant to a lot of students studying in the sub-continent.

This is a supplement to aeismail's and JeffE's excellent answers.

I understand it may be hard to drop the class or move to another class for some reasons. For your best interests, it's better to follow the instructor for now.

  The professor is incompetent to the extent that he does not understand proofs written by an undergrad.

I have a suggestion for you. Sign in to our sister site Math SE. Present your proofs. See what people think. After you verify your proofs, you'll know your professor is incompetent or not.

If your professor is indeed incompetent, you should seriously consider dropping the class. You don't want to waste your precious time. However, if it turns out that you do have serious flaws in your proof, I would listen to my professor if I were you.


Is a student eligible for PhD in Mathematics from top US universities with just B.Tech (Bachelor of Technology) in Electrical Engineering? I have completed by B.Tech (Bachelor of Technology) in Electrical Engineering from India,  and I have since then been teaching Mathematics to the students aspiring for the IIT-JEE examination for almost 3yrs now.
I now want to pursue a PhD in Mathematics from a top university in the US. I have worked on some papers on alternative proof of Pythagoras theorem and another paper on new perspective into Catalan Numbers (which are yet to be published).
Please guide me and provide some valuable suggestion which would help me to become eligible for PhD programs in top universities in the US. Thanks in advance!

You are eligible to apply to any doctoral program, but acceptance is a different matter. Everyone seems to want to join a top university's doctoral program according to many questions here. Think about that for a minute. You have thousands of competitors for relatively few slots. Many, not all, top institutions have relatively small math programs.
Like anyone else, if you make an application it will be evaluated. If you show clearly that you are likely to succeed in the program, then you will be considered. This means your application will be moved to a large pile of those that need further scrutiny. But many of the applicants are coming from good (maybe "top") mathematics programs and so have all of the "expected" courses.
I don't mean to discourage you, but the task, given your desire for a "top" program, is very hard. If you want to study for a doctorate in math, pretty much anywhere, don't focus too much on a narrow set of universities. Cast a wide net. Apply to several universities, including a few "top" institutions, but not only those. Make sure you meet their stated requirements and make sure, in the US that you have very good letters of recommendation.
The fact that you have been trying out some research ideas in math will certainly be a plus. But the individual admissions system will have to judge whether they have sufficient merit to move your application to the "further consideration" pile, and then what occurs thereafter. Make your case, but cast a wide net, also.


Abbreviation of qualification What is the correct abbreviation for National Certificate in Financial Planning? NatCertFP or maybe NatCertFinPlan?

The two abbreviations you mention yield respectively 2 and 0 results in a Google search. Do not abbreviate that name.


How Are These Diagrams Made? I'm working on a my first paper right now which has quite a few diagrams. So far I've been able to get by using tikz, but my last two digrams are quite a bit more complicated than the first two and I'm afraid I wont be able to get the look I want from tikz. I came across this blog post where they were able to achieve the look I want, but I cannot find any references to how they made their diagrams. Could anyone point me in the right direction? It seems to be less about machine learning and more about academia so I figured here is the best place to ask.

Here is the blog post: http://jalammar.github.io/illustrated-bert/

Hi thanks for all the comments!

I asked the author on Twitter and it turns out the he uses Keynote to make those diagrams, and not some obscure library written in python or TeX.


Writing grant applications as a new academic/faculty member I am a new faculty member at a University. In the last 5 months since I started, I have applied (or in process of applying) 4 research grants (2 internal applied, 2 external in the process).
What I have found difficult is that for the current two external grants, I feel I need to do a lot of research myself, learn new topics, techniques, and/or algorithms. The call-for-grants do not exactly match my existing research expertise, though the domains are the same.
My question is about spending a lot of time researching to learn new techniques/tools/algorithms to be able to apply for a grant. Is it normal, or is my approach wrong and I should not apply for those grants? I am feeling a bit lost. It seems challenging to decide if it is wise for me to spend my time writing grants for calls not exactly matching my area.
Researching for my applications and writing them does not leave enough time for me to do my own publishable research (in a publish-or-perish culture) as I have to do teaching as well as other non-teaching services at university.

My mentor told me, "If you aren't getting rejections on your grants, you aren't submitting enough applications."  That is true, with some caveats.  I think you ultimately need to be focused on a particular area.  You can move toward the boundaries of your area -- but, be careful about "chasing" money.  To develop as a scholar, you should think about creating a coherent portfolio of research.  When you look at grant opportunities, consider the likelihood of getting funded and whether that is an area you are really willing to invest your time.
The other thing my mentor taught me:  "Work to live. Don't live to work."  Keep that one in your back pocket.


Asking University to reimburse renting a car I'm shortly going to a conference which is held at a centre pretty much in the middle of nowhere (or, to be more precise, in the middle of a hiking region). The suggested way of reaching the destination is by taxi, and the public transportation is nearly non-existent.

Me and a group of other junior researchers (PhD's and PostDocs) have decided to hire a car to make transportation easier and to take full advantage of the attractive region. Split four ways, the cost is quite affordable.

I am wondering whether it is acceptable to ask my university for reimbursement. We have an allowance for travel expenses, so there is certainly an available source of money. However, I have two problems with making the request. First is a moral one - can I ask the university to reimburse a car which we'll partly use for our own enjoyment? Second is more practical - is the university likely to agree? Will they be able to process the kind of receipt car hire company will issue? How do I explain that I paid exactly 1/4 of the quoted price?

Yes, this is acceptable.

At many universities, adding a few days stay at your conference location in a far-away country (using your own accommodation arrangements) is allowed and sometimes even encouraged. Especially when this allows you to take cheaper flights. This would be something similar, using the car because it's required anyway, and adding a few extra recreational km you'd pay for yourself.

Renting a car might be an issue for some European universities, as they have rules to encourage public transport usage. The 1/4 share of the car is something you'll have to discuss with your administrative staff. They might want to reimburse 1 person for the whole thing, or split it over multiple projects. Just ask to clarify, they'll also be happy to know exactly how and what they're reimbursing.


Should I mention collaborators in the job talk abstract? I will be giving a job talk and I need to submit an abstract for the research job talk. I was wondering if I should mention my collaborators and their affiliations in the abstract? The only thought that's discouraging me is that the talk is on my PhD work which may go against me because I have 3 years of postdoc experience. So ideally they may expect me to present my most recent work.

Note: it is not research focussed school. It is a teaching and undergrad research focussed state school.

I think it's good form to mention your collaborators in the abstract if you're talking about joint work.  It's not as completely mandatory as mentioning them in the talk itself, but it's still good form.  Mentioning their affiliations, on the other hand, seems pretty weird to me and is not usual at all.

You're not going to be able to hide what paper your job talk is about, somewhere that's thinking of hiring you is going to know your paper list!  It is a bit of a red flag to me that you're thinking you can mislead people hiring you about when your research happened and who it was done with.

(It's perhaps worth noting that sometimes job talks, especially in the last few minutes, touch somewhat on how the work you're focusing on connects to the rest of your research program.  It's not necessary to restrict yourself to a single paper.)


How does a candidate look like when he applies for another PhD program while being enrolled in a program? Suppose, someone is enrolled in a PhD program in a university 'X' in, say, Serbia (totally hypothetical and suits my analogy).

After one year, after publishing 5-6 research papers, he thought that a West-European or North American PhD has greater brand value. So, he applies for a different PhD program in the same discipline/topic.

How would the selection committee perceive about this particular candidate as opposed to someone just came out of a masters degree?

Wow. Five or six papers in the first year???? My alarm just went off. I don't know of any field, actually, in which that is possible and have those papers have much merit. If they are good papers, the candidate will be sought after nearly everywhere. But I'm going to doubt without evidence, including who published the papers. (see caveat below)

However, many students change universities in the middle of doctoral studies and for many reasons. Wanting to change countries or even regions of the same country is a common reason.

This person will be judged in the same way that everyone else is: are they highly predicted to be successful in this program and what is the evidence for that. The background coursework will be considered as well as how they did. Any research experience? How good are letters of recommendation, etc.

Those papers, if they exist, would be evidence, of course, but possibly not positive evidence. But even zero papers in the first year is unlikely to be of much importance in most fields. Association with a lab that produces hundreds of papers a year and each paper has hundreds of co-authors would be an exceptional case, of course. But most of those co-authors play a relatively minor part in the advancement claimed in the papers.

Any application should be focused on those positive predictors of success, not the fact that the person is changing and not on the reason they are wanting a change.


How should I express theorems without a proof in a research paper? What do you do when you have a conjecture, and you run experiments that confirm your conjecture, but you are unable to provide a formal proof (perhaps because it's too complicated)? Do you name them as conjectures or observations or... what?

This is in the context of a CS theory paper.

In mathematics and TCS (which is really a branch of mathematics), if you don't have a proof, you don't have a theorem.  (You write "experiments", which I will assume means "computer calculations".  Please let me know if this is not the case.)  Doing some computer calculations can be interesting and even sometimes publishable, but it does not constitute any kind of proof, formal or otherwise.  (Added: Well, unless it does, of course.  You can prove a theorem by reducing it to a finite calculation and doing that calculation by hand or by computer or some of both.  You can't prove a theorem which pertains to infinitely many cases by doing finitely many of them and claiming "and so on".) Also, although the word "confirm" is often used in this way in empirical science, in mathematics to "confirm a conjecture" means to prove it.

I see two possible questions here:

How do I write up computational evidence for a result that I cannot prove in a paper?
Can I publish a paper in which I do not prove my conjecture but only have computational evidence towards it?

The first question is more straightforward.  You state the conjecture -- i.e., the statement that you think is a theorem but can't yet prove.  Some discussion of the provenance of the conjecture is probably a good idea but is not strictly necessary.  However, if you got the conjecture from somewhere else you must indicate that.  Then you document the calculations you made.  Finally, you probably want to make some remarks about why the calculations make you confident in your conjecture (if that is the case).  Here sometimes informal reasoning can be helpful: e.g. if your conjecture is that for two sequences of integers a_n and b_n that a_n and b_n are always congruent modulo 691, then if you check this for the first 100,000 terms then in some naive sense the probability that this happened by accident is (1/691)^{100,000}, which is vanishingly small.

The second question is much more complicated.  It can be hard to publish papers in which you do not prove a theorem but "only" give computer evidence...but not as hard as it used to be.  Mathematics is slowly becoming more enlightened about the merits of computer calculations.  I would say though that you need to understand the field much better to be able to predict whether a paper primarily containing computations would be publishable than to publish a more "theoretical" paper: many, many referees and journals will say "no theorem, no proof, no paper", so you should expect to work much harder to sell your work.


Would a paper on neuroscience make an impact for the Computer Science PhD application? I'm pursuing a master's degree in Computer Science, and have no background in computational biology and bioinformatics. Although the paper I'm talking about does not propose any original, interesting computational model/method, it successfully combines two proposed approach -in a very trivial way-. I will be the co-first author of that paper, which is very likely to get published in a very impactful journal (IF>5k), since I dealt with all analytical and computational donkey work all by myself.
This paper is quite biology-oriented. I'm wondering about the impact of this paper if I apply for computational biology and bioinformatics PhD programs in US. It is obvious that my coursework does not focus on computational biology and/or bioinformatics.

Such a paper can't hurt and might help. CS is a pretty wide field with both theoretical and applied aspects. Your paper seems to describe applications. That would be more of a boost in some programs than in others.
But in the US, doctoral admissions is based on a wide variety of things, including letters of recommendation. Your co-author(s) may be able to help you there.
In any case, the paper is (about) done, and can't be a negative, so certainly include it in the CV and if applied CS is your goal, you might have something to add to your Statement of Purpose. Expect a lot of competition for slots in those schools, of course. You increase your chances if you widen the search a bit.


What to do if I'm afraid that my idea will get stolen during review process? I have an idea that I would like to publish. However, the idea is so simple that basically everyone in the field could reproduce the experiment that shows its benefit within a day or so.

What can I do to ensure that my idea is not stolen during the review process by a reviewer, for example?

If the reviewer holds back my paper and publishes it himself somewhere else, is there something I can do to prevent this?

Assuming the journals you publish in allow it, you can submit your work to a preprint archive such as ArXiv.org. You can also put it up on a personal website.

Even if someone tries to scoop you, if you work is ever published, the date it was submitted for review should appear in the final article, giving your work precedence on any other. As for your concerns about reviewers stealing your work, there is not much else you can do besides the above. The peer review system is based on good faith, and hopefully you end up with ethical reviewers.


How can an undergraduate be recognized for work done on a paper, with a fellow PhD student and a professor? I am an undergraduate student, and recently I was introduced a PhD student in my university's math department.

In a brief interaction with him, he mentioned that he was doing work in Differential Topology, an area which I happen to be self-studying at the moment. I asked him about his research problem, and mentioned what I was self-studying, and he offered me an opportunity to work with his PhD advisor (a former professor of mine), and himself, and stated that they were looking to publish a paper in mid 2018, and I could possibly be listed as a co-author.

He has yet to run the idea past my former professor, but he has stated that my former professor would be all on board with the idea. My former professor likely does not know or remember me, we only had one brief interaction during a class on Discrete Mathematics (coincidentally the interaction was about Differential Topology and some other Differential Geometric stuff, because he saw me reading a book on it before class commenced).

However, my university has no official undergraduate research program, so everything (i.e. any research conducted) will likely be done on an informal basis. My main question is this, how can I protect the work that I do on a project like this? What measures can I take to ensure that whatever work I do is credited, if the paper containing my work is published?

Firstly it should be noted, that regardless of whether or not my work will be recognized on the paper (if any contributions to the paper are made by my part) I still intend to take this opportunity and work with the PhD student and my former professor, mainly as it will be a good learning experience for me on how to properly do research, the possibility of being listed as a co-author is just an added bonus.

Also I'm well aware, that it's probable that I may not make any contribution at all, however I am asking this question in the event that I do contribute some work towards the paper.

If it's of any importance, I have a good relationship, and am somewhat well known by other faculty members (Topologists) in my universities' math department, as they have previously allowed me attend lectures for their courses which are only reserved for students in years above me.

The best thing you can do to ensure your work is recognized and credited is to have honest, open communications with the other people you’re working with. So long as everybody’s clear on who is doing what, and everybody is acting ethically, you shouldn’t run into problems.


Plagiarism and Authorship in a Translation My colleague's article was translated by another person and republished in the translated language. My colleague became the first author, and the translator became second author. Did my colleague or the translator thereby plagiarize the original article, as they published the same paper twice?

Publishing a translation of your own article is not plagiarism, or any other kind of misconduct, as long as it is clearly identified as a translation.  Usually this means that the first page of the article says something like "Translation of [original title], published in [journal, volume, date]".  The editors of the new journal should be aware that it is a translation, not a new paper.  The publishers of the first journal should also give permission (this may be legally required if the author has transferred copyright to them).

The author should not try to "count" the translation as a separate paper, or otherwise mislead people into thinking that they are two independent papers.  For instance, his CV should show one paper as a translation of the other, or list them together as a single publication.

However, translators are not normally credited as authors, unless they have made an intellectual contribution to the text of the paper, beyond simply trying to translate it faithfully and idiomatically.  Likewise, the translator should not try to take credit for the translated paper as a publication on a CV, etc (unless as a separate section from papers they authored).


professor pushing me to get result when nothing is right! Background

My professor assigned me a project as part of a course. The project is part of another student's thesis and has several flaws. I explained the problems of the project to my professor. However, the professor seems to believe that I just don't understand the project and don't know how to code.

The professor now sent the other student on a work trip for seven or eight months, starting in 10 days.

In the meantime, the professor asked me to fix the project and produce the results.

Unfortunately, the project is so flawed that I can't produce results with it. I believe that it's the other student's responsibility to fix the project. S/he also knows the project and it's issues much better than I do.

The professor still doesn't consider my concerns and just pushes me to finish the project. He wants to grade the course based on a publishable paper from this flawed project. (My other classmates already have required information to design a controller, and assigning this flawed project and grading like this is not fair.) Meanwhile, the professor does not even want to talk about a topic for my own thesis. I feel taken advantage of and don't know what to do.

Questions

What can I do to convince the professor that I should no longer waste time on another student's broken project but rather start my own? Would it be okay to refuse to work on this project?

The case as I understand it is:

(1) You are taking a course and the assessment is based on      producing a publishable paper based on a pre-assigned topic.

(2) The topic assigned to you is not your research interest and appears to be broken, whereas other classmates have been assigned more appropriate topics.

(3) You feel that you are forcibly being roped in to fix someone else's problem.

Point (1) means the professor has the right to set assessments as per his judgement. There's nothing you can challenge here. No, you can't refuse to work on it (unless you forego the grade).

Point (2) is unfortunate, but it's inevitable that some inequality will exist between students. You can voice your objections, as you have already, but it's entirely the prerogative of the professor to act upon them. I would suggest making a calm and composed case mentioning only the perceived differences in difficulty of your project vs other projects. Don't talk about what flaws the project has. It might be a good opportunity for you to try correcting them. Maybe you were assigned this because you have a particular aptitude. Don't fight it before trying everything at your disposal.

Point (3) is a serious charge amounting to ethical misconduct. If true, this should be reported and escalated to the relevant authority. However, keep in mind that this is your interpretation only, possibly subject to bias. If you choose to act upon this, do think long and hard first, being as objective as possible.