Is the evaluation section of a paper a "contribution," if it only describes the performance of the proposed system with no novel ideas? Recently I was reading a paper where the authors include their evaluation as a part of their contribution. In general the paragraph I am referring to was something like this:

  Our contributions are a,b,c,d and e

Where e describes the evaluation.

In evaluation section, is about the performance evaluation of the proposed system. So the are running some simulations and benchmarks to show in which of the cases they perform better than the state of the art tools.

The evaluation (as a process) is not containing something novel, except from some modifications they did to adapt the benchmark / evaluation framework to their needs.

So, is this considered a 'contribution'? Is it 'good' to list the evaluation in the list of contributions?

There are no official standards for what constitutes a valid use of the term "contribution".  It's intrinsically a vague word, and authors can use it in many ways.  It would be inappropriate to list something as a research contribution if there's absolutely nothing at all original about it, but a small amount of originality could be enough (and opinions can differ as to where the threshold is).  Of course it would be foolish to highlight the less original parts of a paper as contributions when this might distract readers from the more original parts, but that's a different issue.

You haven't given enough details to say much about your particular case, but making small modifications to an evaluation framework could be considered a small contribution.


How to run two Postdoctoral fellowships at the same time? I have recently applied for two different Postdoctoral fellowships in the same host group and I got both of them. My host is very happy and suggests me to run both of them at the same time. However, there are some administration details that are not clear to me at all. For example, will the fellowship foundation be happy to known that I will be running another fellowship at the same time?

My current plan is to ask one of the foundation (I) to fund a technician and I could still ask the foundation II to support my own salary. In this case, I think I will definitely need to negotiate with foundation I because the change of personnel. Question is that how should I inform foundation II? In fact nothing is changed here, I feel like I am looking for troubles if I simply inform them (foundation II) that I got another funding to support a technician.

Your ideas/experiences about how to handle this situation will be greatly appreciated.

Generally foundations "request" that you inform them if you receive extra funding for the same budget. They probably expect that you apply to several foundations simultaneously. However, if you negotiate with foundation I to change the scope of the funding (such that it doesn't go towards your salary, which is presumably already covered by foundation II), then I think you're in the clear.

Alternatively, if foundation II didn't fund your full budget, then you could accept part of the funds from foundation I to cover the remaining costs, then inform both foundations of the arrangement. That should also be uncontroversial.


Changing citation reference systems I am writing a research paper for the first time and I submitted my paper to a journal, in which the references in my paper were addressed in parentheses, as follows:

".....be preferentially located in the nuclear interior (Saccone et al. 2002; Cremer et al. 2015), consistent with a less compact organization and an enrichment of long-range chromosomal contacts with other active TADs and potentially multi-TAD hubs (Yaffe and Tanay, 2011; Olivares-Chauvet et al. 2016)."

The journal rejected it, and I submitted it to another journal which wants the references as follows:

".....be preferentially located in the nuclear interior [1-2], consistent with a less compact organization and an enrichment of long-range chromosomal contacts with other active TADs and potentially multi-TAD hubs [3-4]."

Saccone et al. 2002
Cremer et al. 2015
Yaffe and Tanay, 2011
Olivares-Chauvet et al. 2016

In the current format I have, all my references have the name and year in the parentheses and the full references at the end of the manuscript. The new journal wants it as numbers in order of occurrence in the manuscript.

Does anyone know any easy way to change the formats, without buying any software? If this question is out of scope of this forum, is there an appropriate one where I should ask?

Any help would be hugely appreciated, thank you so much!

Cheers,

The easiest way to switch from one reference style to another is to manage the references using softwares. You may use Mendeley or Zotero, which are free reference management softwares. EndNote is another option but you need to purchase it. A free version of EndNote with basic functionality is also available.


What are the consequences of not disclosing all Conflicts of Interests (COI)? This is in follow-up with this question:

Clear explanation of Conflict of Interest with examples in journal articles

Apart from what it really is, it keeps me thinking why should authors disclose possible conflict of interests (for the publications that require them)?
To be clear, what could happen if they don't? Is it anything to do with unethical conduct or does stating them support the authors in any way?

According to the Committee on Publication Ethics, retraction is a possibility.  See their Retraction Guidelines, page 2:

  Retractions are also used to alert readers to [...] failure to disclose a major competing interest likely to influence
  interpretations or recommendations.

The Retraction Watch blog has questioned how often this is carried out in practice.


Is getting a second masters frowned upon? I recently read on stack overflow that getting two PhDs just shows that you're unfocused and you don't know what you want to do. However, I'm at a small school with a 5 year Computer Engineering bachelors/masters program I feel like I should take advantage of, but I'd also like to go on to do another part time grad degree in the same field or Computer Science at a larger, better established school, while I work.

If I went to a larger school like University of Illnois or MIT or similar, will having a masters and going back for another be frowned upon, or is this a non-issue?

I don't think it is going to help your career much, so I would only recommend to do it if you enjoy the classes.

I have never seen a job asking for two Masters. If any employer would be impressed by two Masters, it would be because they are in different disciplines. (e.g., a Masters in CS and a Masters in Finance might look good if you are trying to get a particular position at a financial company)
Two CS Masters is redundant. The only time I have seen this is when a PhD program gives a MS en route to a PhD and the student already had a MS.
Industry is going to value experience over multiple Masters

If you do just enjoy the classes, you might think about a different field that still interests you and is relevant to your day job (e.g., HCI or math).

Or you may just want to look into a PhD program :)

EDIT: According to the responses to this very similar qeustion, Can a masters student apply for a second masters in the same field at another university?, it appears that a lot of schools may not even accept a Masters student that already has a Masters in the same field.


Who pays for travel for a conference paper completed at previous job? I'm currently a Postdoc at Research Institute I.
I had a paper accepted at a conference. The conference will be in two months. I'm the single author.
Next month I'll start working as a Postdoc at Research Institute II.

Question: In this kind of situation who pays the travel? I should note that both research groups have enough money for travels.

On the one hand I'm hesitating to ask my current advisor to pay for a trip to a conference which I will attend after leaving the group. On the other hand, I'm hesitating to ask my next advisor to pay for a trip to a conference about a paper which was completed before I arrive there.

First of all, I would recommend that one never submit a paper to a conference unless you have some idea who will be going to present it and how their travel will be supported.  I would thus have advised you to discuss the possibility of travel funding with your current advisor before you submitted.  Of course, it is too late for that now, but it may not be for others who read this answer.

That said, depending on the particulars of arrangements, it could easily be either institution that pays for travel.  I have often known people to have one last trip paid for by their former advisor, since it is the completion of their last piece of work.  More often, however, I have known the new employer to foot the bill, as presenting at conferences is generally part of their work as a researcher---it's worth noting that the new employer will be paying for the trip in terms of your salary, even if they don't cover the travel expenses.  I have also at some points known people to end up having to pay for their own travel on a junction like this, but that is unusual and can indicate trouble building with the new employer.

Bottom line: it could be any arrangement.  The old employer may be willing, especially if you arrange before you leave. The new employer is more likely to be willing, if they are truly interested in your training as a postdoc and not just exploiting you for cheap labor.


Appropriate process for following up on university job posting I figure someone on here is involved in hiring in academia, so here we go.

A few years ago I left university work for private industry, and have since decided I hate it. I'm looking at moving back into a university. To that end, I found a job at a local school and applied 1.5 weeks ago. The job is now off the website.

I just found the managing director of the program on LinkedIn, and it's very tempting to follow up with him. In private industry this would be fine, but I'm not sure how this would work for a university. Would it be acceptable, or should I just keep refreshing my application on the university website? What is the appropriate process for following up on a job application in academia ?

Note: I'm assuming this is for a regular staff or research staff (lab tech/manager but not post-doc) position. I'm also going to assume you're in the USA.

We just ran a search for a staff position in my program at my large research university. The union rules for my university specify that we can must first open the search for internal candidates before allowing externals to apply. If there is an internal candidate, they get priority before any externals can be considered.

Internal candidate: Someone already with a position in the university staffing pools looking to transfer jobs or someone in the university layoff pool
External candidate: Someone who does not have a job with the university and was not laid off from the university in the last 180 (or so, union rules are byzantine) days

Although we had some good external candidates, we essentially could not consider them as we also had good internal candidates. Contacting the lab manager or program head (in my case) about the search via non-HR approved means would not have been productive.

You might as well try (what are they going to do, fire you?) but be prepared to be turned down or have your e-mail ignored as university hiring tends to be done strictly by the books in most American universities.


I came across plagiarism. Whom should I inform if at all? I have been reading a sample PDF of a book by a professor at a research university published in 2007 on the publisher’s website. For some reason the book’s title was not included in the PDF’s footer (as it should be) so I had to google a passage from the book with the hope that Google Books would provide me with the title. I was quite surprised when it provided me with two titles.

There was a second book by a completely different author (an engineer with a PhD who works in the industry) published in 2015. Not only was the passage there but the whole paragraph (possibly more) verbatim. And even though the second book had tons of references, the first book wasn’t among them.

Should I let someone know about it? If yes, whom?

Not to copy and paste my answer from another question, but...

You should contact the editor/publisher of the book which plagiarized (book 2), present your claims, and be prepared to submit evidence. If there's no response, contact the editor/publisher of the original book (book 1) - they may be able to use legal means to force the matter.


Letting students grade their own homework I am going to teach a course in algorithms to 2nd-year undergraduates. The grade in this course is composed of 90% exam and 10% homework. The problem is, this year we do not have enough personnel to grade the homework.

Theoretically, it may be possible to change the grade struture and make it 100% based on final exam, but, this will reduce the incentive of students to study and practice during the semester, which I think will harm their learning experience.

So, I thought of the following scheme: the students will have to submit each assignment before the next TA session. The TA will explain the solutions during the session, and then each student will grade his/her own homework.

Sure, some students might be tempted to give themselves 100 on all assignments, but I believe this will not be very harmful since:

All assignments together compose only 10% of the grade, so every single assignment is less than 1%. Even if many students get 10% for free, the final exam is still sufficient to differentiate the good from the bad students.
The group consists of excellent students (the top 20%, based on their 1st year mean grade). I believe most of them want to succeed in the exam, so they will take this as an opportunity to track their own progress during the course, rather than an opportunity to just get some points for free.

What do you think about this scheme?

I have used a similar technique, albeit in a course for nonmajors and at a time late in my  career when I was willing to acknowledge that my grading was often pretty impressionistic even when I had a rubric.

To maximize what students learned from homework and to minimize the time I had to spend parsing their answers, I would go over the homework in class while the students still had their papers. I asked them to comment on their work, with a different writing implement than the one they used at home.

They could correct simple mistakes, flag serious misunderstandings, tell me which problems they were worried about. I encouraged comments like "I didn't understand this at home, now I do" or even "I didn't understand this at home and I still don't".

Then I collected the papers and read and graded them. That took much less time than it would have without their comments. It also gave me better feedback about problem areas.


I asked for a graduate student position from a professor. He replied "welcome". What does that mean? I emailed a professor, saying I'm looking for a position. I introduced myself and wrote about experiences that I thought would be relevant to his work. I read on his website that he was recruiting students in a few research fields, and I cited the two in which I was interested, and said I would like to know more about them.
After 20 minutes I received this: "welcome". What does that even mean? Should I take it as a simple "no"? How do I reply to this?
I'm interested in his work, but there are also other professors in this school with similar areas of research. Should I move on to them without replying to this professor?

EDIT: I did ask for clarification. I asked if I could look forward to a position in his group, and he replied with "yes, you can". However, I find it kind of strange because he didn't ask for any additional information or give any instruction. I don't know what I can make of this. Any suggestions on how I can proceed?

I'd be a bit wary of working with this person if this is really them and is really their communication style.

20 minutes is plenty of time to determine a student is not a fit and to politely deny them. 20 minutes is not really enough time to commit to supervising a student.

This level of communication might be typical from some professors, but I think those are the worst to have as advisors:

  "What do you think of my research ideas?"

"Good"

  "Where should we try to submit this paper?"

"Journal"

  "I'm worried I'm not making progress towards my thesis"

"Ok"

I would look at the admissions process for this university. If the process is such that you need to have some professor's sign off to apply, then maybe that's all they are trying to convey: that you get their sign off, and they aren't putting more effort in because the application process tends to winnow students.

In that case, clarify they are willing to sponsor your application, and go ahead and apply, but make sure you get a chance to meet further with this person before you take them as an advisor, and continue to apply elsewhere: you should not take this as a sure thing by any means, nor should you be sure yourself. If there are other people there you are interested in working with, by all means contact them.

Good luck.


What does happen to accepted posters if no author attend to present? One of our posters has been accepted with "Strong merit" at ACM DEV 2016. We have finalized the draft and sent the camera ready version to the authority. But this year's venue is Nairobi and a 5 days trip to there will cost about a lot of money. And as a student if I cannot afford to attend the conference, what will they do with my poster? Will they include in their library? If not will it be considered unpublished?

PS: All the co-authors of the paper are undergraduate students and none can afford to attend.

As someone commented, different conferences have different policies. For those I'm accustomed to, conference papers are usually not published in the proceedings if none of the authors show up at the conference.

If I understand correctly your situation, I would proceed as follows:

First, contact the conference secretary and explain your critical situation of undergraduate students with no university funding, asking whether they would be able to provide student support (e.g., fee waiving, cheap lodging in student's dormitory etc.) for one of the authors.
If the previous point is unsuccessful, try at least to find someone from your university who is going to attend and that could bring your poster to the conference, attaching it during the poster session on your behalf. Explain this solution to the organizers and hope for the best.


Is it recommended for a professor to not entertain advanced questions for a basic course? Recently I worked as a teaching assistant for a digital logic course. The topic for the day was full-adder. Professor explained the full concept of the full adder, along with question and answer session and then it is now the turn of TAs to clarify doubts of the students. One student asked me the question: what is the architecture of full adder circuit using currently in the most advanced CPU of laptops. I really had no clue about it.

But a new doubt raised in my mind that how should a professor react to such questions?

The professor may not know every aspect and every trend in the subject (s)he is teaching. If (s)he says that I don't know, then, the respect for the professor may go down. Else if (s)he says that it is beyond the scope of the course then the research aspirancy of the students may go down. Other methods are providing references later by saying I will send it to you/class later etc., but still, it is like saying I don't know, but indirectly. Because if one the student asks a question, then many people want to know the answer immediately from the professor. I feel that the professor should at least answer the question in a very short form.

So, the final question can be divided into two parts:

1) How should a professor react to the most advanced questions from
their students of a basic course, if (s)he knows the answer?

2) How a professor has to react in the classroom for the advanced questions that (s)he doesn't know the answer?

1) How should a professor react to the most advanced questions from her students of a basic course, if (s)he knows the answer?

I would distinguish between reasonable and obnoxious questions.

If the question is reasonable, then I would give a concise answer and encourage "offline" follow up. The question in your example seems reasonable -- it's essentially "how wide is the gap between what we're learning and what's actually used?"
If the question is obnoxious (e.g., student is just trying to show off), then I would consider giving a very concise answer (one sentence), or else explaining that you don't think the question is a good use of the available time (and, optionally, encouraging follow up in office hours).

  2) How a professor has to react in the classroom for the advanced questions that (s)he doesn't know the answer?

I'm not sure one has any choice but to say "That's a good question, but I have no idea" or "I have no idea, and I doubt it matters for the purpose of this exam."


Do I have to mention that a dataset I use is present in another paper? There are huge data sets available online, for example from KEEL. I read a paper in my field that used about 14 data sets from the KEEL repository. I used two of these datasets taken from the KEEL website. I am working on a related topic, but it is different. Must I mention that these two datasets were studied in another paper?

There is no rule of research ethics that tells you what papers you "must" cite in your own work --- this is a matter of using appropriate discretion to discern what literature is relevant to your paper, and what is not relevant.  Ultimately, you need to ask yourself whether the other paper is relevant to your own study.  Is it useful to your reader to know that these datasets were studied in this other paper?

It is generally desirable to draw a broad line here, and mention other papers that might assist the reader, even marginally, in understanding the data or research topic you are analysing.  However, if the other paper is using the data for a completely different purpose, you might legitimately decide that this is not relevant to your paper, and that it does not assist your reader.  In that case there is no reason to cite the other paper.


CV for PhD application: should I list a job I am yet to start? This is the position I am currently in: I finished a Master's a couple of months ago and I plan to start a PhD in a year's time. In the meantime I have applied for jobs and got a very decent and fixed-term one as a research assistant (so, perfect).

Before I start working I will have had to submit at least one PhD application which asks for a CV. My question is: should I mention this job at all in my CV (clearly stating that I haven't started yet), or just omit it?

This question is slightly similar to this, except that for a job instead of an internship, and the answers were quite mixed.

The way I see it, listing it would mean that (i) a good institution has accepted me to work in a good post, and (ii) unless things go very wrong, I will have gained valuable experience before I start the PhD. The possible drawbacks of listing it are (i) it's not really experience I have in the moment, so I can't be favourably judged on something I don't have, (ii) potentially not looking humble enough.

If you have formally accepted the position, you can use the word "starting" with your start date to indicate it. Either way, you will probably be asked about what you're actually doing while you're applying for a program, but adding it on there ensures that, at the very least, if you forget to update your CV or accidentally provide an older CV for some reason, your bases are covered and the viewer is able to see that what was a prospective job is now likely your current job.
Example:

Underwater Basket Weaver, Foo Inc., Oahu, HI
Starting July 2124

Don't add in stuff you do not 100% own.


Why are Ph.D admission numbers low? I am applying to a few Ph.D programs in mathematics and I found that most schools only admit about 5% of applicants. I know most programs fund students; some schools give stipends to all incoming students; some schools give stipends to only a fraction of students, but no one pays out of pocket.

Why not admit a larger percentage and have those pay their way through?

Money is only a part of equation in academia. Other constrains are the following:

Supervision: A PhD student should be supervised, which requires a commitment of a Professor and often one or two co-supervisors. Supervising a PhD project is very time-demanding process, and even the most experienced professors can not efficiently manage ten or more PhD students without compromising the quality.
Space: A PhD student needs time in a lab, access to computing resources, or at least a desk allocated for them. Funny enough, even the latter can be a real issue and a good reason why universities can not hire twice as many PhD students as they like.
Success rate: Universities are keen to improve their position in various ratings, especially international. The success rate of PhD programs is a very important factor, which directly impacts the funding which university gets from funding bodies and (sometimes) government. Hiring a student who is happy to pay for their tuition is of course nice; however, if they do not complete the program, more money can be lost in the following years as the university goes down the ratings.

This can explain why the numbers of PhD students are not as important as their skills, excellence, and commitment.


Would my paper be published if I missed the conference due to visa-related problems? I have two accepted papers in one conference . The problem is that until I have not gotten an original invitation letter, a must to get a visa. I've sent over ten emails to the email addresses listed on the conference website to the organizers and chairperson asking for this letter; no response. I do not have anyone else who can present in my place. If I failed to attend the conference because of this, would my papers be published in the conference proceedings?

To be part of the proceedings, the paper needs to be presented at the conference.

I have seen two cases where the paper was presented despite physical absence of the authors. In the first case, the paper was presented by one of the authors via a Skype call. In the second case, a befriended researcher of the authors gave the presentation.


How much weight is given to letters of recommentation from developing country for Dphil at Oxford University? If one graduate at a developing country which lack highly ranked professors, how much weight should be expected to be given from Oxford University to recommendation letters for a Dphil? Do they weight it as much as letters of students with famous letters from famous professors? Are students with letters from famous professors preferred or they just access the content?

I doubt there are any statistics to support this, so this is my opinion plus some limited experience in selecting applicants to graduate programs.  A famous professor's letter is likely to have somewhat more weight, but not purely because they are famous; more because the fact that they are famous implies that they have more experience judging people.  If someone who has mentored two students says "This is the best student I have ever had", their ranking has less weight than the same claim from someone who has mentored two hundred.

On the other hand, a strong recommendation from someone who knows the applicant well will have much more weight than a vague and impersonal recommendation from someone who clearly doesn't know the person as an individual.  Remember that committees already have much information about the applicant as a student -- grades, C.V., courses taken, extracurricular activities should all be present in the application elsewhere. A recommendation that merely says, for example, "This student received a good grade in my course" is useless; we already can see that, it's redundant information.

A useful recommendation letter adds new information that the committee can't get elsewhere. A student may have received an "A" because they are slow, but diligent; or they may be brilliant but lazy. The student has published a paper -- Did they perform a technical but unimaginative role, or did they conceive of the idea and push it to a conclusion? The outcome will look the same on the other documentation, but the recommendation letter can tell the committee what actually happened. Similarly, committees look to recommendation letters to try to understand the applicants' personalities. Are they cooperative, argumentative, shy, stubborn, agreeable? There is wide latitude for personalities in graduate studies, but there are certainly some people who are unlikely to do well because of their personality, and a recommendation letter can help flag those who are likely to be great fits.

If that new information comes from a famous person who has had the opportunity to compare to many other students, so much the better.  If it comes from an obscure person, it is still far more useful than a mere recitation of the same information that's already present in the CV; and it's far more useful than unhelpful information, no matter how famous the person.

(I have seen cases where applicants included personal recommendations from senators and in one case the US president.  These letters not only did not help, they reduced the ranking of the applicants, because they were inappropriate and reflected poorly on the applicants' judgement and understanding of the field.)


Is it necessary to get permission if an article is to be summarized? I would like to open a blog on my company's website in which I would create posts to talk about different research related to a particular topic. The blog would be educational, however the company is for profit.

For example, a post could be about "does depression influence job performance?" and in this post I would talk about 3 or 4 papers that investigated this, how they did it and what conclusions they reached.

Would I need authorization for this type of use? (I'm just mentioning the facts, but I'm not quoting anything).

would I need authorization if I made a few small textual quotations?

I would logically reference the authors and the papers. But to obtain the authorizations of the companies that possess the rights of the article would be something tiresome.

As you describe what you want to do, you wouldn't need permission. You need to avoid plagiarism by citing and you need to avoid copyright infringement by not over-quoting. But your description is probably safe.

In particular, for purposes of analysis and criticism the copyright laws (most places) are a bit more lenient than otherwise. These normally come under fair use rules. But only quote when necessary. But you can describe what the papers found and how they went about coming to their results.

But note that the law is variable.

But if you are using papers of living authors it might make your blog more interesting if you seek comment from the authors and incorporate those comments into the posts. That would need their permission, though.


Why do universities take weeks to produce an official transcript? I didn't graduate from a university, so this question is more on behalf of friends of mine who have had the experience of waiting for seemingly ridiculous(in my opinion) periods of time for an official transcript to be processed.  It has been particularly frustrating recently for a friend of mine who didn't realize that a background check from a new employer would require her school to produce an official transcript.  The school didn't return calls to the background check firm until my friend got in touch with the school through a different channel, only to be told that the transcript would be produced in two weeks and the process could not be expedited(no exceptions).

The frustration is beside the point though.  Why must it take this long to produce an official transcript?  From what I can tell, an official transcript is one signed by the registrar of the school and is not a photocopy.  I could see it taking a few days for a graduate, but weeks?  It seems like a common enough thing that I'm wondering what the explanation could be.

The simple answer is that an official transcript is a legal document and hence the bureaucratic procedures that are implemented to get them to students favor making sure they are above suspicion rather than expediency. That underlying rationale can be the cause of such a variety of specific reasons for it to take so long that I don't think any more specificity would apply universally.


Does the bad (broad) master's thesis title have significant impact on graduate admissions? My Master's Thesis title will be something like "The clinical use of robots for individuals with X disorder" but I was actually researching perception of individuals with X disorder towards robots in a clinical setting. I needed to explain what is the aim of my research so I indeed wrote about clinical use of robots in X, still the title is too broad.

I have two concerns: (1) how bad is the impact of this title on my application for the Doctoral Program, and (2) can I somehow overcome this issue in my CV?

I need to add that my Master's Thesis isn't in English and I am not sure how much I can change my original title in the (English) summary. I tried to change my original title, but I couldn't do it and I don't know if I can somehow overcome this situation in my CV.

I'm not sure that having a broad title is likely to be particularly problematic. A title is just a title, and those reading your application are more likely to be interest in your ability to think critically and conduct research. Figuring out a title is a very small part of research.

If you are concerned that reading your title alone may not convey aspects of the content which are relevant for your application, then you may want to consider including a sentence or two in your CV which briefly describes what the thesis was about. This is not unlike listing duties responsible for under a job, or courses taken under a degree programme (both of which people occasionally do in a CV).

Alternatively, if you are required to include a cover letter or supporting statement then this might be the ideal opportunity to describe what your thesis contains rather than just what it was called.


Do grad schools look at the overall GPA in applications, or do they look at particular courses? I'm wondering whether it'd be worthwhile to spend an extra semester in my undergrad or two getting my grades up. Unfortunately I've taken all the courses relevant to my field, so this would mean using unrelated courses to boost my GPA.

But I'm not sure if the unrelated courses would actually serve to raise my GPA in the eyes of grad school application boards: would they be pleased with the higher GPA, or would they disconsider it since it was obtained using irrelevant courses?

My GPA isn't too bad, but I luckily can afford to spend another semester or two getting it up if it'd make me a more competitive applicant (and might as well if I get rejected from the schools I want to go to).

Edit: apologies, I had no idea that some countries don't employ the GPA measure. GPA stands for "grade point average" and is essentially your average grade across all the courses you've taken during your time in undergrad (and possibly Master's).

If this is the US, then it could be either, but the grades that are most important are the ones that relate to your background and aptitude for the program you apply to. Some others may also be weighted fairly heavily. For example, if you apply in CS, then your grades in a writing course might be considered significant, since writing is an important part of CS overall.

So, what is relevant and what is not depends on a lot of factors and is probably judged a bit differently by everyone who reads your application. But think broadly about relevance. Just because it isn't your major subject doesn't mean it is not valuable.

But, there is no reason I can see for you to avoid applying now but using additional coursework as a backup. You don't really know how acceptable you are until you get the application in front of some committees. And their view will depend on much more than a few numbers such as your GPA. Letters of recommendation, especially.

The view outside the US might be a bit different.


Does Google Scholar link to post-print PDFs lodged on academia.edu or ResearchGate? I'm a big fan of how Google Scholar puts links to full text PDFs of journal articles that are indexed on the internet next to the link the publication page of academic publishers. This means that people who find a reference to a paywalled article in Google Scholar that they do not have access to can still read a PDF from elsewhere on the web.

I've been preparing post-prints of various articles for this purpose. If I post them to academia.edu or ResearchGate, will Google Scholar index them?


How to write critique in a paper? As part of the introduction of a paper I want to write some critique on previous research which was published at some reputable conference. It basically amounts to their research methodology being invalid. Their results are useless, because they did some things which basically amounts to cheating their scores. However they claim to be state-of-the-art. Now it takes a couple of paragraphs to explain what was all wrong with their work, which might clutter the introduction. The audience of the paper may not be familiar with the reason. My intention of the paper is to present something with a correct methodology.

The main point is: if you have some critique on related work, how do you include this in the paper? How polite should you be about the previous work?

First of all, I do not like the tone of your question (no offense). It seems like you are having a personal vendetta with those authors, which is a) silly b) unjustified (they did not anything to harm you personally) c) counterproductive for your purpose of publishing your work.

Let's summarize some facts:

  However they claim to be state-of-the-art

Either they are or they are not. If this paper is not the state-of-the-art, you should compare your work against the "true" state-of-the-art. If they are considered the state-of-the-art by the community, you should acknowledge that fact. In fact, if this paper has obvious disadvantages, this is even better for you, since it will be easier to show why your approach is better.

  they did some things which basically amounts to cheating their scores

You are probably exaggerating. Some kind of overselling results is normal, but you are implying malpractice, which is not that common. So, tone it down and try to express a cold, neutral and objective evaluation of the other paper, with lots of arguments and experiments that back your opinion in your paper. Also, when you are objective and not trying to trash the other paper, reviewers will buy more into your argumentation. Also, consider that the authors of this paper might also be: a) your future reviewers b) your future collaborators c) your future employers. So, treat your "opposition" with respect. This makes it easier for them to treat you with the same respect and more easily acknowledge and digest the fact that your method is better and their method is worst (they are after all a part of the same community), which makes future collaborations easier and improves your visibility.

  As part of the introduction of a paper I want to write some critique
  on previous research

Critique is not a motivation. You should first discuss the problem, why it is important, very briefly what previous methods have done on this problem and then you say very briefly and in a very neutral way the shortcomings of previous methods (not just this one paper but all that have come before) and why your work will be better. Then you slightly augment this argumentation in the related work section (about their shortcomings) again neutrally. It is your experiments section that needs to truly show why your method is better and how much better it performs, only after very thorough and exhaustive experiments that will overcome every reviewers' doubts.

TL;DR. Keep your critique short, neutral and objective. There is not need to be humble about the advantages of your method but that does not need to be by trashing previous works.


Does a lecturer need to cite their teaching material? My lecturer uses powerpoints as a teaching material. During the first class she told me that we are using a book as resource for our class. But one day I realised that some parts are not from the book. So the question is: should she provide the reference she use? IMO, she should tell us what she is basing her teaching on.

As with writing, anything presented in a class without citation should be either the work of the presenter or common knowledge.  Your teachers are supposedly experts in the fields they teach, and so should have amassed quite a lot of the common knowledge in their fields.  For example, I'd happily describe the Bell-LaPadula model and its applications, mentioning Bell and LaPadula by naming the model, but without further citation.
For those courses I taught that had a textbook, I organized classes around the textbook, but certainly presented material not contained therein, often without citation, because, as Buffy has written in another answer, "It is known, even if not known to you and the other students."
If I had used only the textbook publisher's slides, I'd have felt I was cheating my students.  If a student had asked me the source of material in the lectures but not in the textbook, I'd have said, "Right out of my head unless specifically cited."  I expect your professor might answer the same way.
If the textbook were sufficient, professors could announce it on the first class, then say, "I'll see you in three months for the final exam."  The role of the professor is to explain, elaborate, and expand.  The latter two necessarily go beyond the content of the textbook.
With all of that said, I'm not sure I understand the goal of your question.  Do you believe there's a "secret source" that's somehow being hidden from you?  I doubt it.  More likely, there are many sources, accreted over years of study by the professor.
If you're looking for material to supplement the textbook, ask.  Professors want you to learn and if there are accessible supplemental resources, they should tell students about them.


How does a highschool student intern under a professor? I have read that interning under a professor can not only help you gain a better understanding of a subject but also it can look good on your college resume. I was wondering how I could possibly do this in ninth grade. Do I email the professor I want to research under or does he have to ask me or can it be both?

Your goals are laudable and do not be discouraged by naysayers who say high schoolers should not get research experience. I had research experience in high school working with biologists at an army base and National Wildlife Refuge when I was in high school.

Now, to answer your question. The short answer is do legwork and research nearby universities. Here are examples I know about:

Some universities have formal outreach programs for high school students such as this archaeologist program.
Some professor will take high school students as interns. For example, my advisor lists his high school interns on his CV. Note that CV is basically an academic resume.

Here are suggestions for finding these opportunities:

Try to find a "mentor" who is doing research. Ask them for an informational interview. This could be someone who works as a scientist or maybe one of our high school science teachers. You probably know someone who knows a scientist even if your personally do not. Ask your parents, high school teachers, family friends, scout leaders, people from church, etc. if they know anyone. Basically, tell them "I think I want to be a scientist. Do you know anyone who is one
that I could ask about their job?" Do not hound this person about their job or expect to get an internship with them. Instead, ask them how they would get an internship if they were in your shoes.
Browse and search homepages of universities and their academic departments and faculty. This will let you see what type of research exists at the school and might help
Look at the "Continuing education" or "public outreach" or similar programs such as Upward Bound.
Expand your search beyond universities. Look for internships at nearby industries or government facilities (e.g., government labs, state parks, wildlife reservoirs, fisheries centers, etc). All of these places employ scientists including chemists, geneticists, biologists, ecologists, and more.

Note in case you live in a rural area: Even if you are in a rural area or small town, people do research. You county likely has an extension agent (For example, Wisconsin has UW-Extension and your state if in the US likely has one too). Some people wrongly think of farmers as backwards people, but they are wrong. Modern farming uses lots of science. In addition to extension, look to ag for other scientific applications such as genetics and self driving cars. These companies have representation in rural areas. Even if you do not want to study these fields, seeing what they do would still help you to better understand research.


Master Thesis - use of cover illustration I'm currently writing my master thesis and would like an opinion on whether or not to use a cover illustration on the thesis.

I've noticed many students around me do not take the time to make the cover page attractive (e.g. a simple title is all).

What is the "standard" convention regarding the cover page of a master thesis?

Note that I have no restrictions from my university.

I'd like to provide a counter to the "content is what matters" advice. Of course the content is what it's all about, but I think that a great many people in academia underestimate the importance of presentation.

Look at the way people decide whether or not to read a paper. They look at the title. If that suggests that it's interesting to them, they read the abstract. If that's interesting enough they read the introduction and maybe the conclusion, and so on. That means that of the 4000 or so words in the paper, the five that make up the title are the most important. You're fully justified in spending as much time on the title as on 1000 words of the description of your method. The presentation of your paper is not just gloss, it determines the size of your audience. If your presentation is bad, your results have to be really exceptional to find even a small readership.

This translates directly to your Master's thesis. A nice cover shows that you care. What's more, the largest group of people that will come into contact with it, will only pick it up, look at it and put it back down again, without even really reading the title. Your cover illustration is the only opportunity you have of communicating with them and enticing them to read the title properly. From that, the summary, and from that the first paragraph of your introduction and so on.

Don't mistake presentation for gloss. Academia is all about communication, and communication is worrying about the details.


Reviewer changed their mind after positive earlier feedback I find myself in a very unusual situation. After sending the paper to a top journal, we received two positive feedbacks after 12 months, asking only for minor revisions.
We promptly did the revision and 6 months later we received the reports: one reviewer recommended acceptance and the other rejection, saying simply that the paper was not suitable for such a top journal.
The editor sent out the rejection to us saying that he agrees the paper is not suitable for such a top journal.
I wonder if this is a reasonable behavior of a reviewer (and editor). Is it reasonable to simply "change your mind" about the paper (without a justification)? I feel disrespected as a researcher for receiving their honest opinion on my work only after a second round of review.
My question is: Should I reply to the editor or not? What should I say?

Edit: I replied to the editor pointing out two things: i) How should I have replied to the minor revisions to meet the journal standard? ii) Asking for a third reviewer given the unusual radical change of mind of the reviewer
Edit 2: It turns out the paper has been handled by an anonymous associate editor. The editor in chief replied agreeing that the reviewer and the associate editor made a poor job in the first review. However, at this point, there's nothing that can be done.

The last time this happened to me, it was because one of the two original reviewers was unable to review the revision, but journal policy mandated two accept recommendations before acceptance. So the editor invited a third reviewer, who recommended rejection. I do think it's pretty unfair to the authors when this happens. After all, if the paper is not suitable for the journal, the journal ought to desk reject immediately and save everyone's time.
I suggest writing to the editor and asking them if they're sure of their decision. After all, they did say minor revisions in the first decision. If they say they're sure there's nothing you can do but submit elsewhere, but there's a chance they'll agree they have been unfair.


How should I state a 'PhD dropout' in my CV? I was a final year PhD student (into the last quarter of year 4) in cancer research (passed my qualifying 2 yrs back) but was let go thereafter due to 'unsatisfactory progress' as my data is not sufficient for a PhD thesis. I have to admit here that I've gradually lost my enthusiasm in the project and kinda burnt up after year 3. I've completed all required modules with a decent GPA (4/5). My supervisor was lenient enough to recommend me to graduate with a MSc instead but am facing some 'cross-deparmental red tape' at the moment to say the least (no news of my MSc transfer after 2.5mths of appeal). I'm in the midst of preparing my CV for future job hunt but decided I should just state my current qualification as a 'BSc'. How should I address this 'failure/ 4-yr gap' in my CV?
I have no intention of applying for any academic research jobs but felt it's best that I stay in a relevant field (bio/pharma?). Any advise given would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Rule #1 in resume writing is to never lie on your resume. Never, ever, ever. That doesn't mean you're doomed with a scarlet letter, of course.
I had a similar situation in the past, and worked with quite a few people to hammer out the singular line of that issue. It is quite hard to write, and you will want to talk with someone who has resume-reading/recruiting experience to make sure it sounds okay. Make sure you account for all the time you can.
Here's an example:

Mathematics, Department of Mathematics, Foo Baz University, BB, (Performed four years of studies in pursuit of PhD before exiting program) August 2011 – March 2015
B.S. in Mathematics, Department of Mathematics, John Doe University, DD, June 2011

Try to avoid using words with negative connotation, such as "dropped out" or "failed."
Regardless of how you write it, people will ask you about it. However, it's much easier to defend your situation in an interview, especially knowing it's a question that will come up. I basically indicated that I no longer found it reasonable or practical to continue my pursuit of a medical degree and decided to focus on something that I was equally, if not better at, suited for, when I interviewed.
Since I don't know what your situation is regarding your MS, I've left that out, but if you're sure you're going to get it, you can add a line for that saying that it is tentative and to be awarded at a future point for work done during the PhD.


Do authors always have final approval over what gets published? After reading this answer, and the subsequent comments, I found myself wondering if it is a rule for publishers to get author approval after edits before publishing a paper? I would assume so because of copyright issues but I would like to know if there are legal or ethical guidelines in the publishing industry about this.

In my experience, editors will make edits but they have always asked me for my approval before actually publishing the edited piece.

In the answer you are referring to there is nothing to say that approval is not required. The issue is rather that an editor can request certain things can be removed from the paper so the author cannot demand everything written is finally printed. Editors have the right and obligation to weed out materials that are, for example, offensive just as we can flag posts that contain such phrasings on Stackexchange. Jokes, which was the point of the post you referred to, are not edited out by any means as a rule but can be misunderstood or considered offensive and might be more likely to be edited out than other material during the review and editorial process. In such a case, the author will certainly be part of the process and asked to revise or accept changes. the point here is that the editor has the final say through approval of the paper as well as a responsibility to make sure the publication is free from material that violates, for example, ethical of the publisher. As an example, in Sweden, where I reside, I as an editor am responsible by law for what is printed in "my" journal. This responsibility may lie with the publisher in other countries.

So, authors will definitely be part of the revision process and sign off on final proofs, it is just that some changes may not be subject to additional discussion and will have to be accepted. Does this happen often? Not at all. In my case, I have had to deal with this in heated "Letters to the Editor" where authors have been in a written, published, exchange over issues in a published paper.

Edit (to expand based on earthling's comment): Basically all changes except typos and changes to adhere to journal or publisher style are subject to an "OK" from the author (although it would not hurt to also get an OK on these). The publishing of a paper is a joint venture between an author and the journal, so with a functioning working relationship both parties should agree on changes. But, again, some changes are non-negotiable, which does not mean they can be imposed without the knowledge of the author who always has the option to go elsewhere to publish.

So changes can come in three forms, (1) those that can be changed without consent (e.g. typos), (2) those that must be made without discussion (subject to ethical considerations) and (3) those that can go either way after, say, clarification (most of the normal changes). In  cases 2 and 3 the author need to approve the changes it is just that for case 2 the option might be accept or withdraw the paper.


Straight To PHD or work with an MA as part time professor? So I've recently applied for my PHD in Economics and have found a a couple job offers to be a part time professor at a college (not a university) which only require an Masters degree. The contract is for 10 months.

I'm debating whether or not it is beneficial to my  academic career to delay my PHD for the next year for the sake of this teaching position as i am currently under then belief that it will improve my CV.

Which one is a better option?

This is an opinion question which is disfavored here. It is also a personal choice question which is also disfavored.

But I would think, in general, that there are better ways to start out on an academic career than with such a position. Unless money is a big issue, my advice, if I were your advisor, would be to get into the doctoral program now and try to pick up a bit of teaching experience as part of it.

But that is an opinion, worth just about exactly what you paid for it.


What should I take in consideration when planning a Design Science Research? I am planning a proposal for a thesis (on Forecasting Daily Energy Prices), in which I need to select the methodology and define its phases.

As I intend to develop new technologies and/or solve specific problems, I was investigating the most adequate, when I came across the article Design Science Research Methodology for Information Systems Research (read it here).

In that article one can read about investigation process Design Science Research (DSR) and its steps, and it seems appropriate for what I intend to do.

Assuming that DSR will be the methodology for my investigation, what should I take in consideration when creating the plan/defining the phases?

Talk to your advisor to determine if an artefact-oriented approach is the correct approach for your research questions.
Generally, there are three general approaches to research that different research methodologies can fall into: quantitative/scientific, qualitative/descriptive, and artefact-oriented. In the first you’re dealing with numerical data that you can statistically analyse to prove or disprove hypotheses; in the second, you’re dealing with descriptive information that you can classify and analyse with techniques like coding. With artefact-oriented research, you’re designing a system that you then evaluate compared to the state of the art.
One important consideration for artefact-oriented research is that there needs to be a production of new knowledge that is separated from the artefacts you produce; if you take away all of the datasets and computer systems, if there isn’t anything left, you haven’t been doing research, you’ve been doing development.


How common are romantic relationships between faculty and students? Romantic relationships between faculty members and students are often depicted in movies or books, and the student falling in love with his/her professor seems to be a bit of a cliché. But how common are such relationships in practice?

I've found a rather old survey (1982) of David L. Rowland, Larry J. Crisler and Donna J. Cox that claimed

  Of the 184 respondents (59.8%  female and 41.2% male), over
  one-third  of  both sexes reported flirting with their instructors,
  while 46% of females  and 32% of males felt that instructors had
  flirted with them.

Flirting is, of course, is not the same as a romantic relationship. Patricia A. Rupert and Deborah L. Holmes (1997) survey earlier studies of the sexual relations between faculty and students:

  in a survey  of  807 male faculty,  Fitzgerald,  Weitzman,  Gold, and
  Ormerod (1988)  found that 26% of the 235 respondents  reported
  having sexual encounters with students;  in a similar  study  of
  483 male and female psychology  professors,  Tabachnick,
  Keith-Spiegel,  and Pope (1991) obtained  a rate  of 11%. Although
  there was a considerable  difference  in these rates  no doubt in part
  due to the inclusion  of female faculty  in the second survey -
  both indicate that sexual encounters  between faculty  and their
  students  are commonplace  on our campus

One notable example is the marriage of Professor Philip Bobbitt (Princeton (A.B.), Yale (J.D.), and Oxford (Ph.D.)) and Maya Ondalikoglu,Columbia Law School graduate.


want to Pursue Phd in Philosophy? Want to pursue a PhD in Philosophy, but my Master degree is in Fine Arts (Painting). I want to know how likely will I be considered for the program? I have art history and Aesthetics, as my theory in Bfa and Ma.

Your above assertion truly postulates about the lack of appropriate trace for any effective and bold philosophical studies or research within your previous degree.

Composition of a coherent and powerful SoP sounds indispensable for you. You must pinpoint your motivation to switch from painting to philosophy, at first. Then, as Ph.D. studies and research in any field do need a robust background from the fundamental subjects, you could mention your self-studies within this territory to convince the admission committee upon your rather-structured mental background for pursing the new path.

In my estimation, the more functional approach would be digging into the other Master degree in philosophy, to construct your background in a fully-persuading fashion, and then taking the attempt into account for the Ph.D. admission.

Best of luck..


Paper Indexed by SCI One of my papers is online published with volume, issue, and page number. The journal is published by IEEE and SCI-indexed with high impact factor. I need a report from Web-of-Science to obtain the results that indicates that my paper is SCI indexed. But, unfortunately, Web-of-Science does not able to search the paper. The paper is online on October. It is non-trivial to estimate the time.

Possible duplicate: Here

Is there any other way to say that my paper is SCI-indexed?
Any expected time?
Any help from IEEE or Web-of-Science?

Web of Science has a lag of potentially several months before a given paper from an indexed journal is uploaded. There is (I believe) nothing at all you can do about this - it's simply a matter of their workflow taking time due to the level of manual involvement needed. I would normally say that you could reasonably expect it to be up after about three months - but I wouldn't in the least be surprised if it takes longer, especially if it was up as some kind of "advance publication" and its official publication date is later than October.

Howver, I've never heard of anyone asking for proof a specific paper is indexed - the decision to index covers the journal, not individual papers, so it's normal to talk about "a paper published in an ISI-indexed journal" in this context. I would point them to the entry for this title in Journal Citation Reports or similar, to confirm that it is included, which implicitly states your paper will be indexed as part of it.


X theorem or X's theorem I am always stuck by the randomness of some syntax rules in academic articles, hence I cannot infer a proper answer to this question:

  Is there a correct way to choose among "X theorem" and "X's theorem"?

I chose the word "theorem" for my concern comes from reading mathematics, but of course this questions stands for any reference to someone's work.

In health and medicine, there is a concerted effort to move away from possessive attributive eponyms. Thus, instead of Alzheimer's disease, it's now Alzheimer disease. The same is true of Parkinson disease, Gram stain, Cushing syndrome, etc.


How was the Doctorate/PhD title awarded in Italy in the 1980s and now? when can someone apply for Post-doc? One of the top Italian research centre for applied physics, the Area Science Park located in Trieste, just elected its new president.
The president's CV can be found here:
https://ginko.unipg.it/ws/sitopersonale/cv.php?humanid=caterina.petrillo&tipo=EV
By reading it, I discovered she got her Physics degree in 1984, starting in 1985 a post-doc bursary at an Italian institution.
Is it still possible to apply for post-doc bursaries&fundings in Italy without having completed a PhD?

The doctorate in Italy (dottorato di ricerca) was officially instituted in 1982, and the first courses started in 1983, so it was definitely not a common thing in the 1980s. People even got full professor positions without having one (since it did not exist).
Post-secondary education was not standardized across nations then like it is today; Italian scientists did their first research experiences with other research contracts, 'assistantships' (assistente) and other early-career positions that just weren't formally a PhD and did not end with discussing a thesis.
Regarding that CV, the most likely explanation is that "post-doctoral fellowship" is a liberal translation of the name of the Italian position she held. Note, though, that another non-standard practice of Italian academia is that people can legally be called dottore as soon as they get any university degree, even a 3-year bachelor. (although in the 1980s university degrees came after a single 4- to 6-year course, which was roughly equivalent to a BSc+MSc course with today's standards). So maybe in the eyes of the translator that position was "post-doctoral" because she was already a dottore (although not a dottore di ricerca).
As for your last question, it depends on the exact kind of position, but for instance I think you can still apply for a RTD-A (non-tenure-track assistant professorship) without a PhD [EDIT: not anymore since 2017; thanks @MassimoOrtolano for the correction].


Are there instances where citing Wikipedia is allowed? For example, suppose you're writing an article about triangles, and you want to include a short proof of Pythagoras' theorem, but you can't quite remember how to derive it, so you pop over to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem#Algebraic_proofs and check the proof there. It works mathematically, makes sense and is as far as you can tell, correct, so you include it. Now the proof on Wikipedia doesn't have a citation because probably someone has been taught it and copied it over to Wikipedia, but it's still correct. The only thing you could cite for the proof would be Wikipedia, would a citation be ok or should it just be copied down without a citation?

Edit: Ok, there have been many responses. Most with a firm "no", but some giving the reason: "Just get the proof from a book" since it's so common, but suppose then it wasn't a common proof of something. Maybe it's not very well known or something but suppose there is a small Wikipedia page with the correct mathematical proof. How much effort are people going to go to to find a proof in a book when there's a (correct (which we know, becuase it's maths and we can check it)) proof on Wikipedia? Why is it so bad to say: "I found this proof on Wikipedia, and the maths checks out so it doesn't matter who wrote it, it is correct, but that's where I found it." Or if you do find it somewhere else why not say: "Proof taken from Wikipedia and verified by the proof shown in "Triangles and their properties, Nature, 2014, p113 etc..."

Are there instances where citing Wikipedia is allowed?

I'm not going to try to answer the question of "is allowed" or "isn't allowed" but instead I'm going to try and answer if citing Wikipedia is, in general, a good idea or not for research papers.

Here's five points I can think of for and five points against.

Good idea:

If Wikipedia is your source, and you learn something from what Wikipedia's editors have provided, then citing Wikipedia is the Nice Thing To Do™.
Wikipedia is a convenient, well-known, easily and freely accessible source (vs. final-copy published papers that are pay-per-view if not out of your wallet, then indirectly out of your university's).
Content aims to be written in an accessible manner targeted at a wide audience (vs. arguably the bulk of technical articles published in journals and conferences). Plus there's clickable links for jargon! Sweet!
Notable or Featured Articles will probably have undergone more scrutiny from experts (w.r.t. bias, technical correctness, sources cited, etc.) than your average peer-reviewed article on a similar topic.
At least with Wikipedia, readers should know where they stand with such a citation. Compare this with the artifice of citing papers for claims made in poor-quality journals or conferences that can be considered authoritative solely on the basis of being "peer-reviewed".

Bad idea:

A Wikipedia article is subject to frequent editing and the content you cite it for may not be there when the reader goes looking for it (adding a date-accessed only partly addresses the issue since it will be difficult for the reader to start going through versions edit but as per the comments below, you can use a citing service within Wikipedia to cite a specific version of a page).
Relatedly, the content may have been correct at the time of citing but errors may be edited into the content at a later point, making you look bad by association (edit, again, citing a specific version could work around that)
There is no minimal guarantee of the quality for most Wikipedia articles (which peer-review, at least in theory, should provide, depending perhaps on the venue).
Wikipedia is not a first-party source: in theory, no new knowledge is "created" in Wikipedia. Where feasible, you should try to attribute knowledge to those who create it (and optionally thereafter add a reference to those who report it or better describe it in a book or survey)
Attribution for the content of a Wikipedia article is difficult: multiple editors may be involved in a certain piece of content, many editors are anonymous, etc. This means that there is no culpability for information (unlike peer-reviewed papers where authors have something to lose by publishing crap). This opens up further possibilities, such as authors anonymously adding content to Wikipedia that they can cite to support the claims in their paper.

Okay, back to academic convention and "isn't alloweds" and "is alloweds" ...

  Maybe it's not very well known or something but suppose there is a small Wikipedia page with the correct mathematical proof. How much effort are people going to go to to find a proof in a book when there's a (correct (which we know, because it's maths and we can check it)) proof on Wikipedia?

According to Wikipedia policies, it should have a reference to an original source. Cite that.

If it doesn't have a reference, or if you copy how the proof is expressed directly, I would recommend to add a footnote (rather than a formal citation) stating the Wikipedia article you found the proof on and how you verified it (and the CC-BY-SA licence if you copy the expression).

Generally avoid citing web-pages (unless they are normative online standards or something) if only to avoid getting your hand bitten off by a reviewer. Using footnotes is much safer in this regards and serves a similar-ish purpose (though it won't be counted as a formal citation).

In research, if enough reviewers believe something isn't allowed, then de facto it isn't allowed.

  Or if you do find it somewhere else why not say: "Proof taken from Wikipedia and verified by the proof shown in "Triangles and their properties, Nature, 2014, p113 etc..."

Why not say "Proof sketched for me by Fred, the guy who sits next to me, who had previously read it in 'Triangles and their properties, Nature, 2014, p113 etc...'"?

In other words, what's important is the reference, not how you found.


Trying to finish a paper with a professor, but also needing to let them know I switched advisors I need a bit of advice. I am currently in my third year of a math PhD program.

I have been working with Prof. X for about 2.5 years now. He thinks he is my advisor but I have also been working with Prof. Z who is my chosen advisor for many reasons. In short, Prof. Z a much better advisor for me (nicer to me, better at helping me learn, more available, supportive for me to attend summer research programs, etc.) and I want to work in the research area of Z and not X. I know that I will be successful with Prof Z.

Last semester I was traveling most of the time doing research related to Prof. X's work. In that time, I solidified that X's area is not the area I want to study. I am trying to finish a paper with Prof. X though.

I need to tell Prof. X that I want to finish the paper but then work with only Prof. Z.

I am thinking that telling Prof. X in person is best; however, I am also worried that Prof. X will have a bad reaction (due to his personality). Maybe it is better for me to tell X over email so that the initial reaction doesn't happen with me there.

Any advice would be really helpful on how I should tell him.

Thanks!

Update: Hey all. Just as an update. I told him today. I thought he would be mad but it was more of a sad reaction. I felt bad, but I know I’m making the right choice. Thank you all for your time and help with this :)

Having been in a similar situation before, I can say this: Prof. X may not want to finish a paper with you if you're changing advisors, and Prof. Z may not want you to continue spending time on unrelated research.  Does Prof. Z even know of your intentions?  You should make sure Z actually wants to be your advisor first.  Does Prof. X know you've already been working with Z?  He will probably feel betrayed, and there's nothing you can do to avoid that.  You will have to have in-person conversations with both professors, maybe even both at the same time, if the two are on friendly terms.  (If they aren't on friendly terms, then things will get more complicated, and you may need a mediator.)

In any case, I would not explain the situation via e-mail, but I would e-mail to schedule an appointment and say that you need to discuss something important.  This will allow Prof. X to mentally prepare and also ensure that everyone has set aside time to focus on the issue.  I would spend some time writing out what you want to say, maybe even bring the notes with you, but also anticipate that you may need to have multiple conversations.  If Prof. X is notoriously belligerent, see if you can arrange for a mediator to be present.  Finally, try to think of what you really want out the interaction-- working on a project with someone you've just told you don't want to work with can be quite miserable for both parties, and it may be better to cut your losses and move on.


Is it a requirement that at least one of the authors of a paper holds a PhD? The editor of a journal asked me “Please confirm the title of XXX XX, Mr. or Dr.?” His title is Mr., as the manuscript was written by two students alone, without a supervisor or anyone with the title Dr.

I replied with this information to the editor’s email. After 10 minutes I got a kind email saying that the manuscript had been rejected by the editor. So did the title of the authors impact the editor’s decision? Does there have to be a professor or someone with the title Dr. on the manuscript?

If a journal wanted to impose such a rule they would most likely state it plainly. But I think that is very unlikely. It isn't the qualifications of the authors of a paper that make it important, but what the paper actually has to offer. Of course, editors like to know that the authors know what they are writing about, but that is the job of the reviewers to determine and normally reviewers will spend more time with the paper than with the credentials of its authors.

In fact, a paper by an independent researcher without an academic credential might be especially "interesting" if the arguments and conclusions are sound. It might even introduce new ideas into a field. When Einstein did his early work he wasn't well respected by the established intelligentsia of the day. That only came later.

And on the other side, a paper by a brilliant and credentialed researcher that seems to spout nonsense can cause quite a stir.

But, I suspect that in this case, there is some flaw in the paper that the editor noticed independent of its authors. Maybe it was just a poor fit for the journal, or even for the editor's current needs.

One further thought. A restriction on who can publish in a journal, such as requiring a doctorate, would, over time, have a pernicious effect, lowering the quality of the journal. It is the restriction itself, actually any sort of restriction, that leads to some high quality papers not being submitted at all and other, lower quality, ones filling any gaps. The effect would be small, but additive over time.


Invitation letter Phd from Sweden Recently I have been interviewed and gone through a writing task for phd position in Sweden. After that, My supervisors told me that they hope to show their labs and city to me in a visit to Sweden and they like to here my research intrest in a presentation ( that is optional).They will cover travel and accomadation. I am not from the Europe and from east Asia. They already send a invitation letter to me indicating the visit and saying I am one of the top candidates for position and therefore they would like to invite me for the arrangements of position. I could not understand this. Will they offer position for me? Anyone have experience?, thanks in advance.

They want to meet you face-to-face. This is always a good sign - it means they're seriously considering your candidacy. It doesn't mean they're offering you a position, but it does mean you're one of at most a handful of candidates they have.

If you aren't busy with something else during that period, you should probably go. You get to meet them face-to-face too. You get to see the atmosphere in their department firsthand. You get to experience the city, a sense of how expensive it will be to live there, check out potential places to stay, and so on. If they're covering travel & accommodation you won't even have to pay much to go. Worst case scenario, you could treat it as a holiday in Sweden.


Strategy for teaching in a room that is laid out "wrong" I teach a mixed undergrad/grad course that has lecture (300 people) and seminar (15 people) components. Thankfully for me, only the grad students get seminars. I have 2 TAs that assist with the seminars allowing us to break into 3 five-student 1-instructor discussion groups. The problem is that thanks to the miracle of central time tabling this year I have been given a tiered lecture hall that seats 25 people for the seminars. How do you run discussion groups in a cramped lecture hall?

In a tiered lecture hall that has the long continuous tables with chairs, rather than auditorium seats, was the gather students around one end of the long tables and basically have students on one side sitting backwards. The room I did this in has chairs that swivel 360 so this was not actually uncomfortable for them. And then you sit on the end of the table with 2 or 3 students on each side from your point of view. This generally works for small enough groups like you have.


Why would professors pay to publish in a good journal? The journal that I think of specifically is Physical Review Letters.  I've heard that professors pay pretty high amounts to get published in this journal, which is considered a good, if not top-tier, journal.

When then would profs use their funding to pay for this?  If the work is good enough for a good journal, why not just submit it elsewhere, where there are no fees?

Note: as pointed out by Pieter Naaijkens, PRL indeed has a publication fee, making most of the original answer incorrect. I've rewritten the answer as a result.

When one pays a publication fee that isn't open access, one is effectively paying the publisher to distribute the paper. Most (subscription) publishers and journals are quite content to distribute the paper for free - a publication fee is bound to reduce submissions, which the journal needs to function. In this sense, Physical Review Letters is very unusual.

I have no knowledge of the internals of PRL, but I will guess that they have more expensive costs than normal because of the numerous full-time PhD scientists they have on their journal staff. They are presumably offsetting some of the costs by charging a publication fee. Cynically, they're able to get away with it because 1) APS is perceived positively by people (even though their open access APCs are on the high end of the market rate) and 2) they're such an important journal (note other APS journals don't have such a fee).

Why would professors pay the publication fee? I imagine the most important reason is because they really want the prestige that comes with publishing in PRL. Other lesser factors could be they like the review process, and because PRL as one of the premier journals in physics has a very wide distribution.


Career advice – mathematics I really need some opinions/advice on my situation.

My background

I'm studying for my master degree in mathematics. I have always (since I was 14) wanted to do my own research one day. As I grew older, I knew that mathematics was what I wanted to do. So I went to the university to study mathematics. After having encountered a course in group theory I knew that I belonged to the algebraic part of mathematics. I did my bachelor project in group theory and when I became a graduate student (September 2013), I took courses and made a project supporting my interest in algebra.

Along the way I created the vision that I would finish my master degree as a dedicated student in algebra. In order to realize this vision my plan was to study abroad for one semester taking new algebraic courses.

The situation

My situation today is that my study abroad semester begins tomorrow. As mentioned my dream is to do my own research, but more generally/important: I want to develop new ideas and be dedicated to something and I would love to follow/explore my passion.

My first thought (as many other students): I should get a PhD. So I did some research and figured out that there was an available position at the university I'm currently studying at in geometric group theory.

I don't know much about geometric group theory, but I do know that I love group theory. So I would really like to know if this is an opportunity or if I should just forget it.

I don't want to pursue a PhD for anything in this world. I just want to stay focus on creating a meaningful work life around my passion.

Any advice?

Further remarks

I'm a student from Denmark and I'm studying abroad in Austria for one semester. After my study abroad semester I still have to study one year for my master degree in Denmark. However this year consists of a half year with elective courses and a half year where I'm making my master's thesis.

I don’t know much about the PhD position. I found it from a Google search (: “PhD position group theory”). There is only given a starting date and an e-mail address for contact. I’m going to attend a course held by the supervisor of the project, so the whole thing is a coincidence.

I have investigated my opportunities for a position at my home university. One of my supervisors, a professor in group theory, told me that he couldn't offer me a position, since it was a question about money, but would like to recommend me. I don't think the university accepts PhD students without a master degree and the positions are without project descriptions.

However there is also another university (in Denmark) with a talent program where it is possible to get a PhD position without having a master degree. I contacted them and they told me I should apply after my study abroad semester (because I would have a stronger profile). But I don't know my chances.

I'm having a lot of trouble nailing down your question.  After reading it several times, I think you mean that you have an opportunity to go on to study a PhD in geometric group theory at your current university.  (Is it specifically relevant that you are going abroad tomorrow?  How does this fit in with the rest?)  From this I am guessing that you are not in the US, because in the US one would not have a position in "geometric group theory" specifically; one would just apply to the entire math department.  It could be helpful to know what country you are studying in.

So I think you are really asking whether you should go on to do a PhD?  You say that your motivation is to do mathematical research: for that you essentially need a PhD, yes.

  Along the way I created the vision that I would finish my master degree as a dedicated student in algebra.

Yes, okay, you're studying algebra.  I feel like I'm missing some nuance here: what's the "vision"?

  As mentioned my dream is to do my own research, but more generally/important: I want to develop new ideas and be dedicated to something and I would love to follow/explore my passion.

Again, I feel like I'm missing a nuance.  Doing your own research means precisely to developing your new ideas and being dedicated to something.  Doesn't everyone want to "follow/explore their passion"?  That comes off sounding mean, which is not my intent: rather, I feel like you're trying to say something here and I'm missing it.

  I don't know much about geometric group theory, but I do know that I love group theory. So I would really like to know if this is an opportunity or if I should just forget it.

It seems clear that a PhD in geometric group theory is an indeed an opportunity to do everything that you said you wanted to do...in geometric group theory, which is a subfield of the field that you say you like.  Whether you will like GGT specifically seems best answered by learning some and finding out.  If the PhD program is so specifically invested in GGT that if you find out you don't want to do GGT per se then you'll need to leave the program, then you should study GGT on your own / during your master's degree first in order to find out whether it's interesting enough to you to spend years of your life on.  (I think GGT is really interesting.  If I hadn't done arithmetic geometry, I think I would have had fun with it.  So I assure you that there is nothing wrong with that subsubfield of mathematics!)

  I don't want to pursue a PhD for anything in this world. I just want to stay focus on creating a meaningful work life around my passion.

Huh?  This time I don't understand at all.  Please elaborate/rephrase.


Having decided to become a researcher after long career in industry, should I work independently or start a PhD? I'v been doing software development work for almost a decade. I really love doing research work but I am always doing programming work in companies. I could join a PhD program 15 years ago after my MS. degree in US. But I did not continue at that time for reasons (want more money, find a job for green card, etc.).

Recently I decided to follow my true heart on sciences, instead of being a "seasoned company guy" all the way to my retirement.  The machine learning/deep learning/big-data are thriving in these a few years. I cannot sit here just watching this big revolution in computer science.

Money is always an issue but will not be a big issue for me. I have accumulated quite a bit of money in the past 10 years hard working.  I can be mortgage free in a few years even in this most expensive city (Vancouver, Canada). My wife has a good job too. She “granted” me 2 years to do a starter’s non-profitable work on my own.
Hear is the plan: Doing part-time work to earn half salary to support the living cost and the remaining mortgage.  The rest of my band-wise will be dedicated to my research work. The question is, how to start?

Option 1: be an independent researcher and developer. Spend the next year to do online study including all the necessary math/statistics skills. Become an expert on certain field. And starting to publish papers, contribute to open sources or have some software inventions/products.

Option 2: apply a PhD program and spend the next 5+ years with professors to build up the foundation to become a truly powerful researcher. I am 42 now. Do I have that much time to spend?

Option 3 is to dedicate the first year to invent and develop a software product (iPhone App, Cloud service, etc.) and try to make money on it. And use the earning as the funding to support myself on the research work. In the mean while, try to get some investment and government funding.

None of the above will be an easy way. It is not a common career path, especially for a forty years old guy with a job/salary, wife and a kid...etc..  This will be a venture. I will spend years being dedicated /obsessed ( hopefully not half-crazy) in a house at the foothill of Canada north mountain, learning/reading/drawing/typing.....

Which way to go...?

A PhD is training for research.  There's a whole lot of things that happen along the way, but the point of the process is that you gain skills in conducting research.  In addition, you gain the 'worldview of a researcher': how to think critically, assimilate information, analyse data, collaborate and come up with new ideas.

It is, of course, possible to do all these things without doing a PhD.  But the advantage of the PhD is it gives you opportunities that you might not otherwise have: access to resources, specific programmes (eg internships or field studies), people to collaborate with, exposure to new ideas.  Those opportunities can be open to PhD students in a way that they aren't to random members of the public.

A big part of research is interacting with other people, not just working on your own single path.  PhDs force much more interaction than you might do on your own (though it varies by subject).

The other side of 'training for research' is that, once you've come out of the process, you have simple proof that you have been trained.  That's what the letters 'PhD' are code for.  While the experience can be very different at different institutions, a PhD means the holder has untaken a major research effort and it has been validated by their peers, and learned some of the skills of research along the way.

That's the reason that many academic jobs expect you to have a PhD: they don't have time for a free-form assessment of your research skills - the PhD is proof that somebody else has already done that assessment.

By doing research without a PhD, you force people you interact with to do more work to assess your skills.  You can do that by building up a good body of peer reviewed research, which itself is unlikely to care whether you have a PhD (especially if the review is blind).  But in superficial contexts (eg screening for a job, a grant application or an invitation to some event) you're likely to find yourself at a disadvantage.

One advantage with working inside academia is you have more collaborators, but also as you become more senior you can build a research team: when students work for you, you (collectively) can achieve more.  That's difficult to do when you're working independently.

Finally, we can all come up with examples of brilliant people who started working on their subject without a PhD.  I suspect that's much less common than it was in the twentieth century, for two reasons:

Supply and demand: there were many fewer researchers, and the process was much more informal.  Now every tenure job gets hundreds of applicants. Why would you pick one missing critical training?
War and social upset: when you have to work on radar/antibiotics/aeronautics/nuclear physics/intelligence/cryptography at short notice for the war effort, all employment norms go out the window.  When those people came back to civilian life, they already had skills they could use in research.  Or, alternatively, they proved their worth in opportunities available because everyone who would normally take them was away fighting.

(Side note: I come from the UK where PhDs are 3 years on paper and often more like 4 in practice.  The North American process seems like a much more drawn out affair, and the time tradeoffs may be different)


Accuracy issue on conference paper I am working on improving an existing deep learning model which was published in last year A* conference. The code and datasets are made available on GitHub. When I ran them the accuracy was less than what they cited on paper I ran code 10 times answer changed a little(>1%) but the difference of cited score and actual scores are like( approx 5%). what should I report in my paper actual one or one I am getting

P.S: I tried contacting all the authors and also opened an issue on github repository of code

The first step when there is a discrepancy between the published work and attempts to reproduce the work is generally to email the authors. Let them know what is happening. Maybe there is a bug in the shared code or something about the initial conditions you are missing. Hopefully they will be able to help you resolve the issue. If not, you should probably publish both numbers and a statement that you could not reproduce their values.


Is there a tool to check citations over time across disciplines? I'd like to see how a given paper has impacted its own discipline and then spilled over to others.

Let's take Nash's paper on Equilibrium points in n-person games as an example. This work has eventually yielded him a Nobel prize and has +6k citations on Google Scholar.

I'm assuming it must have been first cited primarily by other mathematics papers; but over time, scholars from other disciplines would increasingly cite it.

Are you familiar with any tool/method that would provide this kind of information? It would be the most useful if it's possible to visualize the data.

You may try Microsoft Academic for that. They have an interesting semantic-web approach to finding answers to your queries and they also aggregate a lot of context information. This includes citations that can be filtered in various ways.

Have a look at this search regarding your questions's example: https://academic.microsoft.com/paper/2067050450/citedby/search?q=Equilibrium%20points%20in%20n-person%20games&qe=RId%3D2067050450&f=&eyl=Y%3C%3D1956&orderBy=0 (you were right: initially, most citations were from mathematics).


Reports arising from math workshops I've attended a few workshops consisting of some talks, and then maybe 10-15 hours of "group work" over the course of a week.  At one, my group more or less solved the question we set out to answer, which was mildly interesting but not particularly ambitious.  (Essentially, it was a computation a few of us had wondered about over coffee at previous conferences.)

The organizers are hoping the groups will write up and post (arxiv+journal?) reports on the outcomes of the work.  My impression is that most people in the group were on board.  It's possible to imagine a continuing project in this direction, but I think everyone has better things to do.

In any case, we do have something to write up, and the result is even mildly amusing.  But if I'd worked it all out myself, I certainly wouldn't arXiv it or submit anywhere.  I'm faced with the possibility of being on a slightly embarrassing, very-many-author paper.

1) is there any polite way to opt to keep my name off of it? (the others are mostly more senior, but I can't really claim I didn't contribute)

2) if this thing does see the light of day, would it be acceptable to omit it from my CV, or list it in some different section?

My perspective is that of a postdoc who will be on the market a couple years from now.  How are these sorts of papers viewed by hiring committees? (My impression is that they are not uncommon these days.)

From my point of view (as someone whose eyes are still tired after reading 180 application packets...), having this on your CV would not be a negative thing.  It should of course be on a separate list from your peer reviewed journal publications along with other technical reports, conference proceedings papers, etc.

The positive aspect of this is that it shows that you worked collaboratively with other people at the workshop.  This is a particularly valuable thing for an applied mathematics faculty member, since our department (and our dean and VP for research) want to see faculty in applied mathematics who collaborate with other mathematicians and more importantly collaborate with scientists and engineers on inter- (or trans-) disciplinary research.

In short, don't try to avoid being listed as a coauthor, do list this on your CV in a section separate from your peer reviewed journal articles and don't worry about it hurting your chances of getting a job.


Can a high school student involved in a college credit program get an arXiv endorsement? I'm 16, homeschooled, and I am taking dual credit at LoneStar. If I wanted to write a paper, unlikely, but I've toyed with the idea, would I be able to get a suitable endorsement from a mathematics teacher at LoneStar? I was considering submitting on arXiv.

My guess would be no, but I don't know much about how this works, so I'd be interested to learn more.

Endorsement is not a service offered by a college, like academic advisement or career placement. Endorsement is an indication that the endorser knows you and believes you are not a crank, or has read your paper and believes it is a reasonably appropriate paper. It's not like just by having a connection to the college, you could automatically be eligible for an endorsement from a professor there.

A program through which high school students can earn college credit does not necessarily give its students increased access to mathematics faculty. So this "connection" may or may not be of use to you in gaining an endorsement. Instead, I recommend reading What to do with research results while being in high school? and How to find an arXiv endorser for suggestions on what to do with your paper, should you choose to write one. The latter explains how to find names of people who are eligible to endorse in a given area. (There may or may not be anyone in the college you are connected to who is eligible in your area.)


How do I handle my teammate who does his task related with project very late just before the deadline? Scenario

I am in college and in group projects. We have to work together with other team members to architect the design and dividing the tasks. Once the tasks are assigned to each person and when it’s over, we have to combine each other's task into a single system, which might need redoing and correcting some tasks.

Problem

I am the kind of person who wants to finish his task early before the deadline and avoid anxiety at the end. How do I deal with people who do their task just before the day and integrate all tasks just hours before the deadline, thus causing huge work just hours before the deadline? Could someone enlighten me on how to handle this scenario or correct my approach to the problem?

The question might be out of scope, but I will give you my opinion.

You can't control what your teammate does. Working in a group setting, you will different approaches to the work, people who are like your teammate, people like you, people who never show up for example. The goal here is whether or not it will impact the bottom line: making sure that the project is:

Turned in
Of high quality

If you work together in the future, address this issue and schedule team sessions ahead of time and manage your time well. What I did when assigned a group project was to literally schedule all of the meetings for the entire semester (or quarter for you) this way, they don't have an excuse for not showing up and doing the work. Weekly meetings will allow you to check in periodically with your individual contributions and direct how the overall strategy would look like.

If you won't, then it will not affect you. Move on.