What is an effective means to educate non-academic colleagues of the importance and time needed for Adjunct Lecturing research? My situation is, I am an Adjunct Lecturer (Physics); however, to support myself, I work full-time as a high school teacher.  Essentially, the situation is that an Adjunct Lecturer is working amongst non-academic colleagues, who unfortunately see the research as nothing more than a 'hobby'.

What is an effective means of helping these non-academic colleagues comprehend the importance and time-needed for the research involved with being an Adjunct Lecturer?

As @NateEldredge mentioned, technically research is probably not part of the duties of an Adjunct Lecturer.

That being said, you could explain that as an adjunct it is natural for you to develop your CV further so that you may be considered for teaching higher-level courses, increase in rank, service on interesting committees, etc., in which case research will be important.


when should I stop searching the literature? I'm seaarching the literature at the moment to write a literature review but I don't know when should I stop searching and start writing?

The facile answer is you don't stop searching the literature. Even as the review evolves, you should be including new references if they are noteworthy in addressing questions within the field. This process should continue as long as you are working in the field of the problem.

Of course, from a practical standpoint, you do need to select a cutoff. There should be a reasonable point in time in which you've set the outline of the review, and decided on the main topics and questions to be discussed. At that point, it would be fair to set aside adding more references, and stick to what's been published. However, you should continue to monitor the field, and if further revisions or updates of the text are necessary, then you should include the papers published in the interim as part of your updates.


Should I report cheating to my professor? If so, how? My professor reuses old tests. I have no idea why she told us this, but she did. In class today I noticed someone reviewing last years test, with the answers circled, on their computer in google drive, along with several other tests for this course that have not occurred yet. The test is in two days, and I know that this person will most likely have the answers memorized so it will be impossible to prove anything unethical is happening during the exam to a proctors perspective. Not only does this student have the exams, though, but many others. Apparently fraternities hold onto these and share them amongst each other.

When posting about this on Yik Yak, and my irritation with this, I received many yaks back threatening me should I turn people in, saying they would find me and hurt me. I have no reason to believe anyone knows what class I noticed the cheating in, or who I am, but this has me unsettled.

I have been studying and will continue to study for this test, and I find it infuriating that others don't need to bother with studying at all. I work hard for everything, and I do not want to get screwed over for this. The tests are curved so that the mean score for every test is a C+, and a large group of students who score well through cheating will undermine those who did not cheat on the curve.

What do I do?

The professor is free to decide to reuse questions from previous exams. It's a bit sloppy, but it's her business. She can't forbid students from learning the answers by heart, she would have no ways of enforcing this rule.

It would be unethical only if the previous tests were obtained by stealing them or any other dishonest way. If it's previous students making them available, it's just students investing efforts in a dubious way.

My answer is that you should suck up your furor, try to make the best learning out of the content (why not use these previous exams as an exercise?), and ace the exam your way. You will be much happier with yourself on the longer haul than those who will just have the quick thrill with the (false) impression of "gaming the system".

Also, don't take any more of her courses, and maybe mention in the teacher evaluation that you think the exam is not efficiently testing for understanding.

As a side note, people who succeed by learning answers by heart are only tricking themselves. They invest time and money in an education but don't take advantage of the learning. I think it's idiotic.


Do I need to cite a source when defining terms? In my research paper, I have set aside space to define terms (each having a bullet point). My confusion is how I go about defining these terms. Do I quote a dictionary, another research paper in the field, or do I paraphrase either one? I found one paper giving definitions, but the author doesn't cite any source. Does this mean the words fall under 'common knowledge'?

The purpose of defining terms is to make it clear to your readers how you are using these terms, for example because:

there is no consistent use of these terms in the existing literature,
because your paper’s audience is not familiar with these terms, e.g., due to coming from another field,
you created a concise term for some concept that you introduce in your paper.

First of all, this is not a case of common knowledge: If it were, why define at all? However, that does not mean that you must cite somebody. Instead cite somebody if:

You rely on a specific piece of work.
If you had to look up the definition instead of coming up with it yourself, this almost certainly applies.
Keep in mind that coming up with a useful definition of some things is a challenge and deserves credit.
On the other hand, as a rule of thumb, you do not need to cite if you would not know whom to possibly cite in the first place (possibly after a short literature search).
You want to affirm that you are adhering to some standard.
Using established definitions does not only make your work easier to read but also may make it comparable to other works or reüsable.
If nothing else, providing a source for your definitions may calm down Reviewer 2.

Some examples:

I would not cite in the following statement, which is essentially clarifying a well-known conflict between two common definitions (whose history I do not know):

  We here define the natural numbers ℕ to include zero.

I would cite in the following example, not only for giving credit but also for affirming my approach:

  We here define epilepsy as […].
  This is equivalent to the definition by Fisher et al (2008), except for […].
  This difference is due to the practical reason that […].

  Do I quote a dictionary, […]?

Regular dictionaries reflect the common non subject-specific usage of terms, which is by nature often broad, fuzzy, context-dependent, and different from academic definitions (if they exist).
This usage is also what you have to expect readers to understand if a term you use in a paper is not specifically defined and there is no established use in your field.
With other words, the dictionary definition is the fallback default anyway.

Therefore quoting a dictionary for definition is pointless in my opinion: it changes nothing and clarifies nothing.
If you think that a dictionary definition is the best guidance you can give to your readers, you may as well skip it.

(Note that field-specific dictionaries are a completely different thing.)

  Do I quote […] another research paper in the field, or do I paraphrase either one?

This may depend on your field, but I would refrain from paraphrasing definitions just for the sake of paraphrasing.
If I rephrase definitions, I risk changing it.
Therefore I would only do so with a good reason and when I can be confident that my changes do not affect the outcome, e.g., I could change symbols in mathematical definitions to match the conventions of my paper.

In all other cases and particularly in fields where exact words are important, I would rather use a huge quote than paraphrasing.
Still, conventions here may vastly differ between (sub)fields, so best check what is common in yours.
Either way, once you build upon somebody else’s work like this, you should cite.


What funding is available for undergraduate research in Japan? I wish to go to Japan for a semester-long research internship in the field of robotics. I am a Canadian citizen.

However, I am having a hard time finding what funding I can actually apply for.

I know the JSPS fellowships are out of question as they only apply to postdocs.
MEXT fellowships are out as well because they are only for a full 5 years.

What funding is available for undergraduate research in japan?

@Kayan and @fkraiem have provided links for general (undergraduate) fellowships in Japan. You'll note that most provide tuition and a living stipend (as well as airfare / language training in some cases).

What these fellowships do not provide is research funding -- if by this you mean equipment and supply costs. They will not provide funds if you want to build a robot, run experiments, or even to buy a laptop/Raspberry PI.

This is because research grants for equipment purchases go to university professor- and researcher-run labs. If you want to do research in robotics, you should write to professors/researchers and ask them if you can study in their lab for a year under the various scholarship/fellowship programs listed by the other respondents.


Post-Doc topic VS PhD topic Is the topic research for a post-doc position supposed to be more general than the research conducted towards a PhD degree? Or rather the opposite?

Getting a Ph.D. is establishing that you are capable of doing a significant piece of research.  A postdoc is then your opportunity to start defining the direction in which you are going to take your research, professionally.

As JeffE says, it is usually (though not always) a good idea to be doing something different in your postdoc than you were for your Ph.D.  The reason for this is that otherwise you risk getting "stuck" in your little niche and never really moving beyond whatever happened to be your thesis and into the wider worlds of research.

A postdoc, then, is a chance to broaden yourself, to shift your direction (within reasonable bounds), to build momentum in a direction, and generally to start spreading your wings and leaving the nest.  How exactly one does that is as varied as are the people who pursue science as their career.


What is the best way to respond to students adding teachers to facebook? As a teacher and a teacher manager, I noticed that the students frequently ask teachers for their facebook names or send them friend requests.

I think that students having their teachers' personal lifes on the facebook feed leads to situations inside the classroom that compromises the way students see the teacher.

How should I respond to a situation where teachers actually accept the friend requests?

UPDATE

Thanks to @JoBedard statement about the "age factor":

  It depends on the age class of people your teaching.

We considered useful to specify that the students are age 13 to 20 years old. I would like to add that they are 90% women and from the south-american society, which has different behaviors and educational principles.

Do as with any other person you don't want to have on Facebook: ignore the request or cast a silent no (pro tip: if you configure Facebook in pirate language, it becomes "begone, ye scurvy dog!").

Most people will get the idea: you don't want them there, and will not think further. If someone insists beyond reason, use Facebook's tools to report harassment (chances are you are not the first nor the last one). For anything in between (a message saying "would you like to be friends with me?"), a polite answer saying you don't feel it is appropriate should work.

If you are asked in real life about it you have two options:

Be direct and say "I prefer not to disclose it" or "that is personal".
If you want a more diplomatic indirect way, claim you don't use it much and change topic.


Should I mention teaching experience in my cover letter? I am applying for tenure-track positions in R1 (say, top 50) universities in Computer Science in the US.

When writing the cover letter, should I mention teaching experience and competence?
Or should I leave it for the teaching statement?

I've been on the faculty recruiting committee of my American R1 top-whatever computer science department for more than 15 years, including three years as committee chair.  (But my experience is only in one department, so take this with a grain of salt.)

To first approximation, nobody will read your cover letter.

It's quite common to get faculty applications that have no cover letter at all, or that include a plain-text email "cover letter" that reads "I'm applying for an assistant professor position; I've uploaded the requested documents and the contact info for my references.  Kthxbye!"  I have never seen this affect discussions about who to interview or who to hire.  Nobody ever notices.  Nobody ever cares.

All the information we care about is already in your other application materials, your recommendation letters, and your papers.  In particular, recruiting committees already expect to see a detailed description of your teaching experience in your CV and in your teaching statement.  That's where everyone puts it, so that's where we look.  And we'll look there regardless of whether you mention it in your cover letter.  So why would we look at your cover letter?

In my experience, cover letters are only useful if they contain information that potentially changes the hiring process — like "I am applying for a tenured position at the rank of full professor." or "Please keep my application confidential." or "My spouse is also applying to your chemistry department."

Cover letters do play a more important role in some departments, because they want convincing evidence that you are seriously interested in a job there.  After all, if you're just shotgunning your application to every ivy-colored building in the country, then interviewing you is probably a waste of their time and money.  But this is much less likely to be a concern in a top-50 R1 department.  It's never been a concern at mine.


How to get a new personal academic webpage to show up in searches I recently create a new google sites-powered webpage for my academic page (after seeing discussions at this question and others).

However, being a brand new page, it won't come up at all if you search for my name (even with qualifiers such as 'math' or my institution).

What steps should I take to ensure that others can find my website?

I am specifically looking for answers that apply to academic pages, as I've heard that they may be indexed in a different way from normal webpages.

The usual approach would be to create links to the website from other prominent indexed websites. So for example, you might want to create a link to the page from your university profile page. You could also add links from ResearchGate, LinkedIn and other social networks that allow you to share a link to a personal website. You could start creating content and sharing it on social networks.

Then, you just have to wait a bit for the web crawlers (particularly Google) to find and index you. This might take a month or more.

If you are specifically interested in being indexed by Google Scholar, check out these guidelines:

  Individual Authors

  If you're an individual author, it works best to simply upload your
  paper to your website, e.g., www.example.edu/~professor/jpdr2009.pdf;
  and add a link to it on your publications page, such as
  www.example.edu/~professor/publications.html. Make sure that:

  the full text of your paper is in a PDF file that ends with ".pdf",
  the title of the paper appears in a large font on top of the first
  page, the authors of the paper are listed right below the title on a
  separate line, and there's a bibliography section titled, e.g.,
  "References" or "Bibliography" at the end. That's it! Our search
  robots should normally find your paper and include it in Google
  Scholar within several weeks.

  If it doesn't work, you could either (1) read more detailed technical
  guidelines in this documentation or (2) check if your local
  institutional repository is already configured for indexing in Google
  Scholar, and upload your papers there.


What are the process and practices of requesting for pre-submission peer review from field experts? I am an undergraduate student in the field of computer science, researching on my own. I have completed writing a paper for my recent research project and all set to submit it to a relevant conference. Since I worked on the paper and project by myself, I am a bit unsure about some parts of the paper, technical as well as presentational.

In my faculty, no one works on this topic so I am left a bit alone on the entire process, including reviewing the paper before sending it to peer review. Is there a practice in academia where I can send some other professor, not affiliated with my work asking help with the paper and some feedbacks on it, sort of a pre-submission peer review?

Is it a good practice? And what would be a good way to do so, if it is done?

If you are an undergraduate and this is most likely one of your first papers, then yes, it is a good idea to have someone check it.

Even if none of the professors or colleagues you work with are familiar with your specific topic, they might still be able to give you advice regarding style and dos and don'ts in your field.

I would suggest to ask around, ask your advisor, ask others from your lab. That should have a higher chance to succeed than contacting a random professor who doesn't know you; they tend to focus their energy more on their own students.


How good are "For Dummies" books in Academic Study? I am often faced with questions in areas which cross my boundaries of knowledge. For instance, as an engineer, sometimes I am needed to study the basics of Anatomy or something like that.

This might be a temporary interest or might be permanent (There is no way of telling beforehand)

During such times, there is an option:

Go for the "proper" textbooks used by the students in that field. (Say this one :: 960 pages) and study them well.
Get a Schaum's series, Demystified or For Dummies sort of book and get over with it. (Say this one :: 450 pages). Alternately, use this as an entry point for the "better" books.

My professors have always suggested against such books because they provide no motivation for the development of a certain concept but I see that as a valid point only it is your primary field of interest. If an engineer wants to know Statistics or Anatomy, I am slightly skeptical whether such grinding is necessary.

Are such books a good resource/entry point for a new subject?

Note: All of this is under the assumption that the student is within the confines of academia.

Those books are not only very useful, I would argue they are the best option in many cases, as they represent the best use of your time. You will find that, throughout your graduate studies, you will have to learn aspects of many different fields. In most cases, while it would be possible for you to embark on a thorough study I some other discipline, that would take weeks, if not months. These books allow you to quickly learn the basics, giving you a solid foundation of knowledge that you can expand with further study if necessary.

Edit: this applies to topics only ancillary to your main field of research; you should not use this book on your research topic itself, for the reasons outlined by your professor.


Am I capable of doing PhD based on my advisor's words? I am average student completed my under-grad and grad studies successfully. I am doing PhD since 4.5 years.

I was a hard-working student. I was a self-motivated student always wanted to do PhD and stay in Academia. I was hoping somehow my work will help to world.
If I compare playing tennis to a PhD studies, I feel like my advisor is breaking my racket to motivate me and I cannot keep up with a broken racket, which is my will to move on.

These are the some stuff that my advisor told me multiple times. I cannot forget or over-write them:

"You disappointed and hurt me. I don't know what am I going to do with you."
// One year later, during a meeting over zoom, when I told him that these words offended me and I do not want to hurt you anymore, he just closed the zoom meeting to my face saying I am not your psychologist.

"You are like a turtle. You can't even graduate in 20-30 years."

"You are bad at time management and always lost in details."

"Your model is junk. I won't write my name on top of this model."

"Even high-school students won't make the mistakes you do. Should I keep going?" [Me]: "No, please don't."

He threw a book at me and told me that: "You should learned from it"

He keep showing his other students Ph.D. saying: "See how good they are writing, you should write like them."

In front of all the jury members he also mentioned:

"I am giving you F to motivate you. I trust you keep working."
"I never helped that much to any of my student in my life. I don't know what I can do more."
"I start to understand the way he thinks and explains his work after 4 years. He is very complex."

Everything boiled up when I get F from my progress on my PhD studies. All lead to depression and anxiety.
Overall, I am not blaming my advisor, instead I chose blame myself and think over the following questions:

Where did I do wrong? What did I do to deserve all this?
Why did I start PhD journey?
Did I lost most important years of my life for nothing?
If I have chosen a different advisor, would it be the same?

All these let me to realize that I actually not capable enough mentally and emotionally to be successful in PhD or even in any job from now on.
=> Should I conclude that I am not capable enough to do PhD with the words of my advisor? or Should I give myself another chance?
Note: If this is not a proper question to ask, I can delete right away.

Though I can't relate to your situation, I have friends who were in a similar situation during their Ph.D. They were mentally abused and constantly demeaned by their advisors. Though this behaviour is predominant in South Asian universities. But it's quite prevalent in many western universities too. However, all my friends who went through such hard times, they did one common thing, they persevered.
They did not lose hope and did whatever was necessary to get the degree. After they graduated, they went their own way and are leading happy lives years after graduating.
What I trying to say is, you know that you are hard-working and a good student. What you are going through is because of your circumstances. You have worked hard for the past 4.5 years on your Ph.D., don't lose hope now. Do what's required for being eligible to defend and then change your circumstances.

All these let me to realize that I actually not capable enough
mentally and emotionally to be successful in PhD or even in any job
from now on.

Don't focus on something that hasn't happened yet. Your job now is to complete your degree. Don't worry about the success and job at the moment. Those will come. You are capable, that's why you are in a grad school.


Reuse published images I recently wrote an invited book chapter containing figures from different of my own papers that were previously published at ACM conferences. Can I reuse them (with citations to the original papers) without permission, or do I need some type of permission from ACM?

You almost certainly need permission. Check the publishing agreement you signed for each of the articles. They're probably all the same, but you might double check the copies you saved if they were in different years.


What is the IEEE style for a translated quotation? I am writing my thesis in french but most of the references I have are in english.

Sometimes, I would like to  incorporate a direct quotation into a sentence but since my text is in another language, I usually do a literal translation (because I don't want to change the author's words). In this case, what IEEE's style should I use?

IEEE is based on the Chicago Style, so whenever you do not find any guidance directly from the IEEE, it is best to consult the Chicago Style Manual. In Chapter 11 of the Chicao Style Manual, titled "Quotations and Dialogue", you can find some relevant directives. For instance:

First, make sure your audience really needs a translation from
English sources; if you audience is an academic one consisting of
researchers who perhaps publish themselves in international journals,
then I am not sure whether translations are really necessary:
'Whether to provide translations of quoted passages depends on the
linguistic abilities of the likely readers' (11.86).

Second, you can simply quote the sentence in your translated version (in the usual form you use to quote another source), but consider putting the original text into a note
(11.88): 'In many works, quotations from a foreign-language source
need appear only in translation. Should the original be necessary, it
can be placed in a note.'

Third, credit the translation to a published source of the
translation with all bibliographical details. If such a source does
not exist, then the Chicago Manual (11.89) states: 'Authors providing
their own translations should so state, in parentheses following the
translation, in a note, or in the prefatory material—for example, “My
translation” or “Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my
own.”'


How do researchers handle hypotheses? In my field (biology), the end of the introduction in a research article generally ends with a list of hypotheses that the researchers tested. A common structure of this part of a research paper is:

 'We tested (1) hypothesis X (2) hypothesis Y and (3) hypothesis Z'.

The research papers I read often test between two and four hypotheses. I'm interested in how the researchers generally arrive at this list of two and four hypotheses. Do they start with a list of 10+ hypotheses, and tick off the ones that they fail to say anything useful about? Or do they stick with the same two to four hypotheses throughout a research project? Or do researchers not begin with any hypotheses, and fit some suitable hypotheses after checking their results?

In my field, Physics, I have only focussed on a single, yet detailed, hypothesis.  This has been true for my thesis and published papers.

I find that it has been and is easier for me to concentrate and explore one single hypothesis thoroughly, any new hypotheses that arise from from this form the basis of several sie projects and further research.


Pursuing other PhD offers, after accepting one too early I have accepted a PhD offer too early (offer was made on jan. 18, acceptance on jan. 25), mostly because I was pretty sure which university I wanted to go to.

However, I've received a very good offer at another university, and I want to visit it and see what it's like.

But after reading similar threads to this, I'm worried about the ethics of this.

Can I still go visit the other university, and potentially reject the offer I accepted?

Should I email my advisor and the graduate school and tell that I made a quick decision and I would like more time? Or should I just keep quiet and visit, so as to not look unreliable.

Am I making a big deal? I think I'm in my right to reject the offer I accepted (if I turn out to prefer the university I want to visit) because I shouldn't have made a decision prior to April 15 according to US regulations.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks

edit: This is all in the US. At the university I already accepted I only have a stipend and tuition waiver. At the other offer I have the same thing but I also have a fellowship (exempts me form working) and don't have to pay for my health insurance.

I got an offer from the professor himself, and the graduate school in both universities.

Policy Answer

As both an answer to this question and as a PSA, most major universities in the US are signatories to the "April 15th resolution," which gives students until April 15th to accept offers of admission/financial aid. A full list is here: http://cgsnet.org/ckfinder/userfiles/files/CGSResolution_RevisedOct2017.pdf

As part of that policy, most relevant sections bolded:

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

Assuming the universities you are interested in are on that list, then, you can still change your mind according to policy. What remains to consider is the personal relationship with the institution/professor whom you have already accepted an offer to.

Interpersonal Answer

The institution itself is unlikely to care all that much since you are likely one of many graduate students - but do inform them quickly once a decision is made. Ideally it is most polite to give them as much time before April 15th to offer your funds to another prospective student. This might be different if it's a smaller program. Some professors at the institution might be a bit offended, but many will also understand the attraction of a fellowship over an assistantship, especially if the fellowship comes with any prestige. If you have accepted a position with an individual professor, that person is the person most likely to be offended, but this will depend entirely on their personality and how much stake they had in bringing you to their lab.

The ideal course of action would have been to wait to accept anything until you had all possible offers in-hand. It's unfortunate that no one gave you this advice while you were applying, but somewhat understandable that you would make this mistake simply because people don't typically apply to graduate programs more than once or twice in their lifetime.

Personally, I would probably not inform the school where you accepted simply that you are interviewing at the other school to avoid causing bad blood if you end up staying with the initial offer after all, but if you change your mind you must inform them immediately.

For your particular situation, consider also the duration of the package offered and the field you are in - a fellowship is nice, but in some fields a research assistantship effectively pays you to do your own research, and is only marginally better than a fellowship (besides any prestige of the fellowship). A one-year fellowship may be hardly worth changing your university choice. In other fields, a fellowship is a huge deal because RAs are not typically part of your personal research and degree progress.


Self-Plagiarism in PhD thesis I am a final year PhD in UK in a scientific discipline and I am writing my thesis. I have already published 2 journal papers and I have submitted 2 more papers for publications. My department does not allow a "publications-based" thesis so I need to write a thesis in the context of a book etc.

As I write my thesis in a couple of places, especially in the literature review, I tend to reuse sentences from my publications. I try to restate them a bit, maybe change some words for their synonyms etc. but it is practically me writing about what I wrote before. It goes without saying that I cite/quote me at the end of a passage if I say something non-obvious (I found that slightly funny. :) ). The problem is that occasionally I am just explaining for instance how a certain estimation technique works; in that case I cite the original authors and not myself. The syntax in those occasions though is practically the same as the original passage I used in my publication; as I have explained it once and was consider good, I find no reason to reinvent myself (I do a mild rewording as I mentioned but that is quite insignificant). Same things goes for listings. I do cite my paper in the beginning of a big list as the list's source but the list itself is almost identical as the one in "my" paper; in those cases I don't use quotations, just attribution "[]".

Is there an obvious guideline? The basic definition of plagiarism "reproducing the work of another person's as your own" is not (directly) applicable to me because I am the other person (almost *); if I am using other people's work I do cite them but I don't cite myself, citing them, in quotation marks!

I am a bit "fuzzy" about how not to plagiarize myself in my thesis (I have had no problem regarding my journal publications).

(* In all publications mentioned I am the first -but not sole- author.)

Even if your department does not allow a "stapler" thesis, it is entirely reasonable to expect that you should be able to freely use this material in a thesis. In general, I would expect that you would have to include a copyright statement similar in form to hose that would be used were you to copy the entire paper outright.

To cover against charges of plagiarism, I would simply acknowledge something like "Some passages have been quoted verbatim from the following sources," and list them. Also, when you reuse figures, I'd include the "reprinted with permission" tag.

Finally, ask your advisor or other members of your department for guidance! Since you're not the only person subject to this restriction, they've gone through this situation before, and can provide you with information on how former students have handled this.


Slides for conference talk with no affiliation It is (of course) a rule that the speaker's affiliation appears alongside their name in their presentation at a conference.

What's the best practice in the case of no current affiliation? Did you have personal instances, either as speaker or audience?

(Please note: The question is not about publications, which has already been discussed e.g. here.)

EDIT:

Saying that one can simply write their name and nothing else should be obvious and straightforward to everyone. What the question is about is suggestions that either look better than this "trivial solution", or address the fact that it is unusual.

I will base my answer upon a statement from the OP's comments:

  In a conference though, mentioning an affiliation which is not current would be a quite serious mistake.

As I have expressed before in another answer, I do not see any reason why an "affiliation" needs to be something explicitly formalized, or why affiliations need to be mutually exclusive.
As such, I disagree with the above statement.

At least in fields where the conference paper is an actual publication, and the presentation is simply a part of paper publication via the conference, basically, the author details (including affiliation) in the conference presentation on a paper should be the same as those indicated on the paper.
Some information can be added, though:

The author who presents the paper in the conference may be highlighted.
If someone other than one of the authors presents the paper, their name may be listed on the presentation (in such a way that it is clear they are the presenter and none of the authors).
And, to address this question, if someone would like to update their contact or other details, they can indicate the changes during the presentation.

Lastly, for what it's worth, when you present a paper on a conference and that paper was created as a part of your work in your previous job, you are affiliated with that previous employer by the very act of presenting on behalf of your former position.

Therefore, I suggest the following course of action:
List your affiliation as it is stated on the paper.
Next to that, add something like "(now independent researcher)".


May I reuse my own figure without coauthor's permission? I'm writing an editorial and would like to use a figure that I published with a coauthor a few years ago.

The copyright agreement (see #4) with the publisher allows the authors of the paper to reuse any of the work in any derivative work, as long as proper attribution is given, including a DOI.

Given the above, I would have permission from the publisher to include this figure in the editorial with proper attribution.

The coauthor and I, however, have had a falling out, and if I did ask permission he would almost certainly say no. He did not make the figure for the paper, I did, and I am first author.

Given that I produced the figure, and the publisher would allow me to use my work in any derivative work, am I required (even ethically) to ask permission of my coauthor to publish this figure in an editorial that I'm writing?

More generally, when copyright terms from the publisher are such that the author(s) may use their work in derivative works (with proper attribution), as is common in my field, must authors always obtain permission from all coauthors to republish orginal or derivative works?

You -- and your co-author -- have, most likely, assigned your copyright in the paper to the publisher.

Without knowing all the details of your copyright agreement, your copyright agreement seems to allow you, and your co-author, the right to re-use the work, and that right applies to each of you separately. The right to re-use the work requires you to reference the original paper and all its authors.

I see no reason why you shouldn't use the figure, even without the permission of your co-author, as your copyright agreement with the original journal appears to allow this. I see no ethical argument against re-using the figure, either.

P.S. I have a qualification in intellectual property law, but I am not a lawyer.


Does the Online Learning Platform bring down the importance of Courses and GPA in terms of PhD Admits? (CS USA) Background: CS undergrad applying for FALL 2022 CS USA PhD Programs
By the time I apply for the programs, I will be finishing 3 and a half years of coursework/labs/tests. Out of this, 2 years of coursework/labs/tests has happened through Zoom and etc.
Main Question: Does this bring down the value of coursework and GPA for a PhD Panel?
Sub-Question: Does it provide more importance for other things like research/projects/internships than from before?
Note: Please assume standardised tests are not required for admissions. (Many programs have told that they will not be required)

Since most doctoral level admissions decisions are made by humans, it is impossible to say in general. Some will consider online course grades less relevant, others won't. But admission in the US has always (in my memory) been based on a wide variety of things with letters of recommendation rated fairly highly. Grades need to be "good enough" but other things are also given heavy emphasis. What do you say in a statement of purpose? What exceptional things have you done (research, writing, ...)? What do your professors think of your likelihood of success.
Another factor here is that it is still too early in the general disruption of the pandemic for general policies to have emerged in lots of places. So, committees are "making do" with what they have.
But, yes, research and such is highly valued as it has always been.
The "complete picture" needs to be good. A few wrinkles around the edges won't be a big handicap for most. And professors hate having to depend on zoom as much as students do, I think.


Correct typo in paper title? One of my published papers has a typo in the title. I have found errors of various kinds in my other papers (who hasn't) and never cared to make corrections, but I often refer people to this particular paper and the fact that there is a typo in the title feels somewhat akward to me. Should I ask the publisher to change it? I think they might update their database and the paper webpage on their site, but I doubt they would change the pdf and they will obviously not change the printed version. Hence there would be some discrepancy.

Update: my request was denied.

You could ask, although it's likely the publisher will be reluctant to make changes, for the reasons you mentioned: it creates a discrepancy between the different versions of the paper.

I'd honestly not worry too much about it. Yes the typo in such a visible place is embarrassing, but hardly unique. It doesn't threaten the veracity of the paper's results, and readers learn to ignore typos (lots of papers have typos!). If there ever is a "second edition" of the paper then yeah, correct it, but otherwise it's just not worth the effort.


Two papers rejected from conference. One of them was judged based on the other I have recently submitted 2 papers to a top tier IEEE conference; both were rejected.

The reviews for paper B included two accepts and one reject.

However, some of the comments the reviewer who rejected gave us seem to relate to paper A. In fact, he actually named an algorithm appearing in paper A (in his review for paper B), saying its evaluation "is not convincing".

While there's definitely a possibility both options were not good enough, shouldn't they each be judged based on their own merit? Should I mail the PC chair about this?

I think you should mail the chair. It may be to no avail, but the chair will at least be informed of the practice.

Like you, I believe each paper should be judged on its own merits. Don't reject Paper B because you didn't like something in Paper A. That's truly ridiculous. But it could be a new rater who's unfamiliar with the process.


What should I do if the editorial process 'may' cost me my publication? I have submitted a manuscript on COVID-19 to a scientific journal in mid-2020. Since then, I have not heard from the journal, although the status says 'Under Review'. As the publication is related to COVID-19, I believe that it is imperative to disseminate the publication as soon as possible once it is accepted. However, as it has been more than half a year, I am afraid that my manuscript's findings are obsolete once it is published, especially considering that evidence related to COVID-19 is quickly expanding.
I have posted the paper to a preprint database. However, I believe that it is important for the peer-reviewed publication to be disseminated at the earliest. In this regard, I have tried contacting the editorial office several times, but I have not received any replies yet. I am afraid that the editorial process may cost me my publication, especially considering that it has been more than half a year since I gathered the evidence.
Is there any suggestion on what I should do?

Based on the discussion in the comments, i.e. given that your primary concern is that the paper might be rejected after a very slow editorial process and then be hard to get accepted at another journal because it is no longer relevant/"hot"/topical/etc ...
I think you have only two (not entirely distinct) choices.

As suggested by @EthanBolker, try the editorial office again (politely but firmly).
Contact the editorial office and let them know that you're withdrawing the paper from review. Unfortunately, this means that you have to start the review process all over again at another journal (you should probably explain the history of the paper in your cover letter). If you are willing to sacrifice impact factor for speed, you might try an 'open' venue like Faculty of 1000 Coronavirus papers or (if you or one of your collaborators has Wellcome funding) Wellcome Open Research.


Counting the number of peer reviews in the CV Sometimes I review papers that require more than one round of referee reports (e.g., first round was a "major revision", second round a "minor revision", and ultimately acceptance in third round). When listing the referee activity in my CV, I count these set of referee reports written for the same manuscript and the same journal as a single peer review. I believe that this was the common practice.

However, since the raise of services like Publons that allow to credit each individual referee report that is carried out by a reviewer, I wonder if researchers now tend to emphasize more the number of referee reports in the CV rather than the number of peer reviews (somehow giving an impression of a higher peer reviewing activity).

My question: is the common practice nowadays to list in the CV the number of peer reviews or the referee reports?

I have served on several search committees lately for faculty members, and, honestly, I haven't seen one CV structure the peer review section in this fashion.

In my personal opinion, doing so looks like CV padding. We all know that the reviewing process can have multiple read throughs and comments, so I do not think it is necessary to include the number of times you have done the process for each individual manuscript.

Just my two cents.


Biostatistics vs Statistics I am thinking of pursuing a degree in Biostatistics (instead of just Statistics).
I am wondering if such decision will limit my career prospect to the field of Biostatistics. Is it feasible to think that somebody with a Biostatistics degree can work as, say, a quantitative social researcher or a data miner? The reason why I am considering Biostatistics program is because I get to take an epidemiology course, which to me sounds interesting. However at the same time I don't want to limit my career prospect strictly to the field of biostatistics....

thank you :)

I'm assuming you have a math background?  If so, I would say go with regular stats and see if you can gear your course of study more towards the medical side of things (by taking a course in epidemiology or other medically related courses, and doing a research project in the biomedical field).  I think you will leave more doors open this way.  I think that Biostats is generally geared more towards biomedical research.  You collaborate with doctors and scientists.  Taking statistics would allow you to go this route if you desire, but also leave doors open to the quantitative social research/data mining that you mentioned in your post.  Then again, take what I say with a grain of salt.  Do more research on each subject to find out what is best for you.


Is it preferable to list the limitations of the presented method in the paper? I don't remember I have seen authors (in CS) explicityl listing the limitations of their approaches. Most of the cases, the approach is presented as complete solution of the addressed problem*. Authors (including myself)  usually mention in future work a potential solution of another problem (specifically, a higher level of the problem* being discussed).
Obviously, every method has limitations on the addressed problem. Is it preferable to list the limitations of the method? as I believe the authors are the most knowledgable people about their approach. Also, does "listing the limitations" hurt the acceptance chances of the paper? (I don't think I would be influenced by the fact that they are listed when I review papers, but not sure how other reviewers would react)

Actually, in every field, limitations should be mentioned. Otherwise the paper gives an incomplete account of what is known and what is not.
But that assumes that the author(s) recognize the limitations and that may not be an easy thing to do in some fields. In some situations, however, the limitations may be obvious to the reader, and thus are omitted. Some limitations might be trivial, though I'm having trouble coming up with a quick example of that. And, in statistical studies, the limitations are well known from the methodology used; sample size and such.
But including limitations should not negatively affect the likelihood of acceptance. Quite the opposite, I think. A reviewer, noticing an unstated, but important, limitation would be likely to comment on it and suggest an update.


Applying for a 2nd MS degree - Should I mention my previous MS in the statement of purpose? Graduate application season is about to start and I would like to apply for MS programs within the US. Ideally, I should apply for a PhD since I already have a MS degree in Inorganic Chemistry. However, I've applied to three different PhD programs in the US and Canada this year and have been rejected to all three, I guess the main reason is that I don't have any publications and I am also a foreign student (from Brazil); hence I decided to try a 2nd MS degree to strengthen my CV and increase the chance of being accepted to a PhD program later.

The question is: should I mention in my application this previous MS in Inorganic Chemistry or should I proceed as if it was going to be my first graduate experience?
There are four different scenarios I can think of:

-I mention the MS in my application and it will be considered a plus, increasing my chance of receiving an assistantship.

-I mention the MS in my application and it will be considered a plus by the admission committee, but they won't be able grant me funding (as teaching or research assistantship) since this will not be my 1st MS degree.

-I mention the MS, but the admission committee thinks it is inappropriate to accept me as a master's student since I already have a degree and I would be rejected.

-I don't mention, I won't have the extra experience on my application but my chances of receiving funding are bigger in case I get accepted into the program.

Do my reasoning seems logical? Apparently there are no restrictions about a 2nd degree anywhere I've searched within the departamental websites of which programs I intend to apply, but I'm still not sure how they would ponder this situation.

There are several factors you should consider:

1) check if you are obliged to inform the university about all your previous degrees (this mainly depends on the policy of the university). For example, I know that in some European countries it is highly important to declare it due to financial issues, where students with similar degrees cannot get funding support. In some African and Asian countries, it is not allowed at all to join a program with similar degree due to insufficient pedagogical seats. For this be careful not making a false declaration.

2) in case you are not obliged to declare such an information (Note that it does not mean lying about it), it is better to check if you can make it as a positive point. This should be mentioned in your motivation letter, by intuitively indicating your motivation for the applied program and how its combination with your previous MS will help you to solve difficult problems in the labour market or doing PhD.

If you cannot find such a connection between the two programs and you find that the motivation is not sufficiently convincing, you can hide your degree as long as you are not obliged or asked to declare it.

Overall, everything will be based on how you illustrate your motivation.


How to respond when insulted by a grad student in a different department? I'm a lecturer at a small university. In a class I taught last year, one grad student disagreed with his grade and complained as high up in the university as possible. The result was the grade stayed the same.

I see this student on campus from time to time, and he usually ignores me, which is totally fine. However, this week I saw him on campus and as he walked by he said something insulting. Nothing awful but certainly disrespectful (along the lines of "you suck"). The student was also disrespectful during class. I'm thinking about discussing this with the chair of his department. Is this an over reaction? What would an appropriate response be (if any)?

I'd probably document it (make a dated note to yourself someplace noting what occurred and exactly what was said, while you still remember it) and then ignore it, unless it becomes a pattern. The purpose of documentation is to start a record in case the behavior turns into something more regular.

The exception I would make is if you have any reason to believe this student is abusive/insulting to anyone vulnerable or deserving more protection. For example, if the commentary is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. If it's more of a "(expletive) you" I'd let it go.


How to convert courses and hours (from a non-european university) to ECTS? I'm getting my "Licentiate of Computers/Systems" degree soon, in Argentina.
The degree is composed by 40 courses of 68 hours of lectures each. On top of that, you have to add the time you spend on assignments, studying for exams, etc. Depending on the course, you might have to spend from 30 hours to 250, but of course, this depends on each person.
You are supposed to take 5 courses per semester if you want to get the degree in 4 years (full-time).

I don't know how to convert my degree credits/hours into ECTS, given that, if I understood correctly, ECTS points do include studying and assignments hours.

I'd appreciate if someone could enlighten me. Please, let me know if more information is needed in order to calculate the ECTS.

Cheers.

If you're getting a degree in Argentina, then you should be concerned about the eligibility/mapping of the actual degree, not on the ECTS of individual courses.

ECTS of individual courses would apply if you want to get a degree in EU but have some of your earlier courses of an unfinished degree to count towards that new degree;  However, if you want to continue studies in, say, a masters programme then you'd enroll based on your Licentiate degree as whole, and none of the courses would be spearately treated.

In any case, if you need 'proper ECTS conversion', then you'll most likely need an official statement about that from the institution giving you the degree, not anyone else.


Is it ethical to explicitly or implicitly bias against student papers unless co-authored with senior researcher(s)? A few days ago I was browsing open-access social-science journals and I found one ‘author guideline’ explicitly saying that they are accepting student submissions if and only if the manuscript is co-authored with the academic advisor or a senior researcher.

I have acquaintances with several editors and editorial board members at various journals and I know from experience that some of us tends to be careful with manuscripts coming from PhD students. This manifests in practices that I find questionable (e.g., insisting on three unanimously positive specialist peer evaluations before acceptance, while a senior researcher’s manuscript may go with only two positives) and in other practices that I find to be biased (like an easier desk reject, or being less willing to deal with them, which results in longer peer evaluation cycles).

Is it justifiable for editors to restrict – formally or informally – the opportunities for PhD students to publish in their journals, like restricting them to submit only co-authored papers or subject their manuscript to more strict criteria than those of senior researchers before acceptance?

In my opinion, such a policy is absolutely unethical.

One of the key principles of science is that scientific work can be done by anybody.  Good science can be done by people who aren't even in academia, let alone by students.  A scientific paper should be evaluated on its merits, not an argument from authority based on its authors.

Now, humans being humans, reviewers will tend to bias towards known authorities and prejudice against unknowns, students, etc.  But this journal's policy, rather than fighting against such a tendency, explicitly enshrines and adopts it.  Likewise with the informal policies that you describe: anything that amplifies unfairness in judgement rather than de-amplifying it is highly suspect and likely scientifically unethical.

This doesn't mean that one should drop standards.  Rather, it means that one should treat a paper coming from a well-known PI at an august institution with just as much suspicion as one from a student author from a developing-world university you've never heard of before.  Being status-conscious primates, we're not very good at doing this, but such a condition is the goal towards which we should strive.

PS: Note that a policy the other way, i.e., student journals that don't accept papers without student authors, is not problematic because it is inverting the privilege gradient.


In canada, my 3-year degree is a bachelor or an associated? I'm taking a 3-year college in software development, and, where i live (Brazil) it's not considered a Bachelor (4 years, at least), but i dont know where my course fits in canada's classification, its not an associated (2 years) neither a Bachelor (4 years), what's the most equivalent to my degree in Canada? (I cant apply for equivalence programs, i didnt finish my college yet).
Am I able to apply for a master in canada with my 3-year college?

Your degree should not be qualified as an associated. But it does not give an immediate answer on your chances of being admitted (or being qualified to enter) to the particular M.Sc. program.

The answer will depend on the regulations of the particular university (and maybe even the Faculty/Department) you are applying to and what is actually written on your transcript/diploma.

Particular things that are of the importance:

What is the official title of your degree (on your diploma) and how is it translated into English?
Total # credit hours that you have taken (3-year degrees can be very different)
The particular set of courses you've taken towards your degree and how they are related towards the expectations of the M.Sc. program you are applying to.
If you are applying for a research-based program if your potential advisor is willing to admit you.
If the intended sources of funding (if you intend to use any) have some stricter requirements than general admission ones.

You would certainly be a good candidate for so-called pre-M.Sc. program, in which for one or two terms you would take some more courses relevant to your degree - and, maybe, even start some research projects.

Also, the admission committee might conditionally admit you to the M.Sc. program with the requirement to take an extra # credit hours.

There are certainly cases when a 3-year degree holder goes for an M.Sc. program directly; however, the general expectation (from my understanding of at least Univ. of Manitoba - no official affiliation, just a former student) for software engineering is that you hold a 4-year degree (B.Sc. or even Honours).


I submitted the correct essay in an exam, but I did not remove my draft outline at the beginning of the essay. Is it going be a problem? I was taking a language exam that asked us to finish writing an essay. Because of COVID, the exam went online and used Canvas as the platform. Neither scratch paper nor any other software was allowed so we had to use the textbox to draft the outline. The textbox was tiny. Therefore, I had to scroll the sidebar and I could not see what I wrote at the beginning while proofreading.
I finished the essay and submitted it. However, after submission, I realized I did not remove the draft outline at the beginning of my essay and submitted it as well.
The exam was super important for me and I am now literally freaked out. Is it going to be a huge problem? What should I do?

Probably not.
But there is really only one person that knows for sure: the professor in question. So, as Mark Meckes already mentioned in the comments, send them a message, explain that you forgot to remove the draft outline at the beginning of your essay and ask them to ignore that part, and to exclude it from the word count limit if applicable.
Be aware that you might not get a response if the professor is busy, which doesn't mean there is a problem.


When to make thesis available for public access? I have recently finished my thesis and submitted to both university and national thesis center.

However, it is not online yet (probably there are many thesis pending). Should I wait for the thesis center to make it available or can I just put it to my website?

Unless your university has a policy that explicitly forbids it (which would be very strange), you should feel free to post your thesis online as soon as it has been officially submitted and accepted.


I've developed a close relationship with my past graduate teaching assistant, and I'm very interested in her: is it appropriate to pursue this? The graduate teaching assistant I'm interested in taught one of my introductory courses. She needed research assistants, so I decided to join her lab. From all this we became very close. Ever since the end of that semester, we talk nonstop.  It's been more than a year since I was in her class, but I am still an undergraduate. I am also applying to essentially the same graduate program she is in. We are not working with each other right now, but it is extremely likely we will work together again.
Would it be inappropriate to pursue this? The people in her lab know me. Would this make her look bad?

Since you are not working under her supervision right now, then assuming you are both adults, you are in the clear ethically, legally, and university policy-wise.
The only real caveats are that if you end up involved in a romantic relationship with her, she will not be able to write you a letter of recommendation, and will not be able to assume a supervisory role over you in the future. However, academia has plenty of dating and married couples working in the same department and sometimes on the same project. There are well-established norms for dealing with such situations, and no one thinks this is anything to get worked up about.
Good luck!
Edit: as I somewhat feared would happen, people are volunteering unsolicited advice about whether it’s a smart idea to enter a relationship with someone you may end up sharing a workplace with in some hypothetical future, based on further hypotheticals about what would happen if you end up splitting up or whatnot. Since I respect you as a fully autonomous adult capable of making your own decisions, I have restricted my answer to things you actually asked about and that are in the scope of the sort of advice this site is designed to offer. I would advise others to do the same. There’s nothing inappropriate about a romantic relationship in your situation. It may be a good idea or a bad one, wise or unwise based on numerous factors as with any question about whether two people are a good match for each other. But that’s not what you asked about, and has no connection to academia.


How much time to wait for answer after postdoc negotiations I was wondering about a case I lived before two weeks. I have applied to a postdoc position even 10 months before getting my PhD degree. After couple of days, a professor from the institution emailed me and showed a lot of interest in my CV. He offered me to go there and write my thesis there. I refused that because of many issues regarding family, supervisor, etc.
I offered him that I can come just after finishing my dissertation writing, and would stay there till the defense day, taking couple of days off for the PhD degree and going back to them.

Anyway, he said they will study my case but they showed potential of acceptance.
They gave me a scientific paper as a task and I did it on time. He finally told me we will keep you updated. So I waited 10 days and never heard back from him. I sent him an email, and did not reply. I resend a new email after another 5 days.

What do you think? Have you been in such case? I am already have the feel they don't want me anymore, but come on where is all their interest in me gone? And why he does not reply to my emails? Never know the answer.

PS. The university is prestigious and worth to think and dream of it.

Thanks for your comments.

It is not clear from your question what you are waiting for. Based on your description of the conversation, you should continue to look for post doc opportunities until you have a firm offer. Do not wait to hear anything more before sending out more applications. It is probably worth noting that 10 months prior to defending seems very early to be actively looking for a post doc.

If you are talking about how long you should wait before giving up hope, then you should wait as long as possible. Right now you do not have another offer, so there is no reason to move on.

If you are talking about how long you should wait until contacting the PI again, I would say generally 1 or 2 weeks between attempts. You might be better off making a phone call next time.


Does a low page limit (3 pages) indicate anything about the quality of a conference? I'm concerned about a scientific & tech. conference which has set the page limit to 3!

I'm wondering if that means the quality of submitted paper in this conference is considered low.

What do they expect from authors to put into 3 pages?

Do not confuse quality and quantity: the two dimensions are orthogonal.

A 3-page limit means that the conference is really asking for extended abstracts, rather than full papers.  You can't say much in a 3-page extended abstract, even in the highly dense IEEE two-column format, so it can't be treated the same as a full paper, but that's not reason for it to be bad, just terse.  The conference might well attract very high quality 3-page extended abstracts.  One thing that some such conferences do is have an associated journal special issue, where full papers are later invited.


What constitutes a declarable conflict of interest in gender studies? From Wikipedia:

  A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial interest, or otherwise, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation of the individual or organization.

Question: In the context of gender studies, what constitutes a declarable conflict of interest in gender studies?

As some hypothetical examples:

A woman scientist is writing about male violence against women, and is herself a victim of such violence.
An LGBT person is writing about an LGBT topic.

In both cases, the work will likely be influenced to some degree by the author's personal experience, i.e., one could argue that there is a conflict of interest.  However, it seems unreasonable to insist that a victim of violence declare the fact.  Similarly, it seems unreasonable for an LGBT person to declare their LGBT status, and possibly face discrimination as a result.

In these scenarios, there's a conflict of interest in declaring a possible conflict of interest.

Usually, these relationships are financial.

For example:

In a paper talking about how Twitter has failed to police harassment, a professor who's an investor in an early-stage social network competitor would have to declare that.
Similarly, board memberships, speaking gigs, etc. are things that would have to be declared. For example, while writing a paper about abortion access rights, a professor should disclose if she was a paid speaker for a pro-choice advocacy group.

Generally, "I really care about this" for personal reasons doesn't so much count as a conflict of interest. I cannot imagine, for example, a journal intending for those writing in gender studies to disclose if they had been victims of intimate partner violence.


How many authors should attend a conference? I wrote a paper with  3 other students regarding my final year project in mechanical engineering. It was recently selected for a conference in NIT Delhi. Minimum one author is required to present and the price is pretty steep for the participation certificate.Should all of us attend the conference or just one of us? Does the certificate hold any value?

Perhaps things are different in India than some other places, but I'd suggest that at least one of you go, as required. The others should make a decision whether the conference, itself, independent of the presentation, has enough value to justify the cost in money and time spent. If any of you intend an academic career, the opportunity to meet others has positive value in building future circles of collaboration.
Note that there may be some discounts for student presenters.
Ii think that, in general, a "certificate of participation" has little value other than as a remembrance.
Of course, if you can draw on a grant for this, the computation changes quite a lot, and then the main cost is the time and effort for the individual. That may not be trivial, of course. Talk too your professor(s).
And, congratulations.


Any good way to tell a faculty candidate "We don't want you"? I serve on a faculty search committee at a large university here in the US.  The part of the job none of us enjoys is informing a candidate who's visited and given a teaching demonstration that we've decided not to recommend a hire.  We do it in three pretty bare sentences thanking them for coming, telling them that unfortunately, we cannot offer a position (without giving any reasons), and wishing them well.  This is the best we could come up with.

Is there any better/best way to do this?  How do other search committees communicate rejections?  How much, if anything, do they tell the applicant about the reasons for the rejection?  Do they try to do more to soften the bad news?  And would they send the rejection by mail or email (including PDF attachment)?

Getting a rejection sucks. There is not much you can do about it. My wife and I have talked about this a lot and as candidates the only thing we wanted to know was how close we were and how we stacked up against the people who beat us. When sitting on search committess we have had various levels of success trying to inform candidates in the rejection letter about how many applicants, how many first round interviews, how many campus visits, how many offers, and was the position filled.

The other thing we do is make sure the letter starts off with we cannot offer you a position and then includes all the other information.


My professor is not teaching his online course himself, but uses publicly available videos instead. Is this appropriate? I'm taking a graduate course online this semester, and have noticed a few things:

Professor has assigned us a mid-term, a final, and a research paper as the coursework for the class. These are the only grades we will receive this semester from this course.
Each week, he assigns us a chapter to read, and around 8-9 hours of videos that are supposed to serve as supplementary instruction.
The videos are publicly posted YouTube videos from the textbook author, Coursera, and other online courses.
He has not provided any of his own material for this course. No PowerPoints, no lectures, no notes, no study guide. Nothing of his own work.

At no point in the course description, or anything provided before registration did he indicate that the course would be structured like this.

Is it an issue that we're essentially taking an uncredited Coursera course for a grade and graduate credits?

If your instructor is available for questions, comments and discussions, then you can learn a great deal this way, potentially.

I recommend that you try to do just that.  If, after at least ten days of really trying, you have difficulties, or find yourself concerned that you may not be properly prepared for courses that build on the one you're currently taking, then I recommend that you reach out to a department administrator.  Present it as a problem you are having, not as a problem your instructor is having.  However, do lay out in as neutral a tone as possible, a description of the current course format, and if your instructor has been unresponsive to questions, do include that information.  Draft the email and sleep on it.  The next day be brutal and remove any trace of whining or complaining.  Just state the problem as a problem you are having.

Hopefully you will not have a problem.

Happy studying!


How to manage literature when writing a dissertation/paper How do you manage (workflow) writing the literature review for a paper or a dissertation?
Unfortunately my current method of going on binge reading stretches while scribbling notes on random bits of paper inevitably lead to a situation where I dread trying to write a coherent literature review because everything is disorganized.
The one time I did try to be more organized by using a template to capture and summarize info for each paper such as sampling, methodology, results, papers I want to read, etc., I ended up with so much information I became overwhelmed trying to synthesize it all.
I also developed this nasty habit of trawling through the citations of every paper I read and downloading like 80% of them. I then soon end up in a situation where I have hundreds upon hundreds of pdf's, most of which I literally don't have time to read. I'm basically a paper hoarder.
Any tips on how I can streamline my search, processing and writing up of literature?

Throughout working on the paper (including thinking before I start to write and then writing), whenever I find a paper that may be relevant, I save it. I make sure not to save anything that I see but only after checking the abstract and when I decide that there is a good chance that I will want to mention it in the literatere review part of the paper. I use Mendeley for this, but I can imagine google drive or even just a folder with PDFs would work.
I also do some searching on Google Scholar before I start working on the problem (to make sure that it is not already known) and then before I start writing (I have a better picture of the problem and my result by then; I also catch new papers this way). I also throw all the papers into Mendeley. Again, not anything that I find, only those I decide I will probably want to cite.
When the time comes, I go through all the papers, decide which ones to include, and write the "related work" part of the paper. Because I have filtered out the not so relevant papers before, I only usually have about 30 papers. Those I decide not to include, I usually move to some other folder to make the writing easier.

The nice thing about Mendeley and similar software is that it allows you to save notes, this can be useful if you read through a paper, decide it is relevant but it is not obvious at first glance how. By making a note, you don't have to think about how it is related when you are writing the literature review.


Is it OK to submit a paper without asking your former supervisor? It has been nearly four months since I finished my Master's degree and I do not yet have any publications.

Around this time last year, I and my two thesis advisors submitted a paper to a conference and it was rejected with a score of "borderline paper" (unlucky me, that year there were so many quality studies).

Now, I look back and see that that paper was poorly written and did not have a clear message.

I am not claiming that I am the paper-writing-guru, but I believe that I have improved.

What I think is, without asking to my advisor, keeping him busy too much, should I write a paper and submit it to a conference? (of course, not a bogus conference).
Or should I be more patient and wait for him to approve a manuscript to submit it somewhere?

If I write a paper based on my thesis and submit it to a conference, is that accepted as doing something behind someone's back?

Edit: I see that I should not submit a paper based on my thesis without co-authorship of my supervisor. What about submitting a paper based on a different topic within the same area of research?

You should never submit a paper without the active consent of the co-authors.  If your advisor is a co-author (and they probably will be for work based on your Masters thesis), then you definitely must have their consent to submit.  You can do most of the writing yourself, if you want, since you probably have more time to devote to this than your advisor, but you should talk with your advisor about your intent early in the process and must determine authorship.

Addressing the follow-on question in your edit: new research conducted independently from any work done during your Masters, however, need not have your advisor as a co-author.


Are professors required to perform research as a necessity to teaching? In my country, in order to teach mathematics (or any subject) to college students one doesn't have to have a PhD. Just a good academic record in the masters level of one's subject and one must clear a (reasonably difficult) national level teachers eligibility test in one's subject. Having a PhD and research publications is a bonus but not mandatory.

So my question then is - would it be necessary to do research once you have secured a permanent faculty position? By necessary I mean, will I face any difficulties in teaching or explaining concepts and ideas to students if I don't spend some time doing research, publishing papers, learning and asking new questions in a given field?

Over the course of a long career in teaching, the nature of your instruction will necessarily need to change as both our scientific understanding of the world and our society change.  This is especially true for undergraduate and graduate instruction, where the knowledge is more specialized and changes more quickly, but I would argue it is also true for much of one's earlier schooling as well.

To be a good instructor, then, I think that one absolutely must keep up with the evolving nature of one's field.  But does that require doing research?  I don't think so (except, of course, for advising graduate students who are required to do research).  Remaining involved in research is definitely one of the easiest ways to keep up with a field, but it's not a panacea either: research is typically extremely focused and narrow, and being up to date in one's particular research sub-field does not necessarily mean you will learn about everything relevant to instructing your students in a course that is only related in the more general sense (e.g., a platinum electrocatalyst researcher teaching introductory organic chemistry).  One can consume information about research without producing it oneself, however, and many other forms of professional education are also available.

Bottom line: doing research is a great way of keeping up with your field, but not necessarily sufficient and not necessarily the only way.


How to find someone online to collaborate on a joint paper? I would like to know where (a website) I can find anyone to publish some joint papers?

I thought such cooperation can be shaped as the following:

We could share some ideas for papers through email or a web tool and ask the opinions about them (in fact if the person is an expert on a field who could transfer his knowledge and experience to me and direct me in the right way would be a plus :) )
I would try to prepare a draft of the paper

Somethings that I wish the other one can guide or help me on are:

I don't know much journals to publish a paper in, in this regard one could send the article to the journal
My English is not perfect and the other one could modify the paper or guide me for some modification

Update:
it seems the way I wrote it, the relation could be like two keen researchers with common field of interest or like an expert who guide a PhD student.

The things you seek from a coauthor (advice on journal selection and English usage) are not in themselves a sufficient basis for coauthorship, but rather just being thanked in the acknowledgments.  A coauthor on a scholarly publication needs to make a substantial intellectual contribution by being seriously involved in the research.

I do not know of any website designed for academics seeking coauthors, and I wouldn't recommend approaching it from the perspective of "I'd like to publish a paper and am looking for someone to help clean it up and submit it."  That's not likely to find you the sort of intellectual connection that would lead to genuine coauthors.  Instead, you may get no responses, or you may get unscrupulous coauthors who just want an easy way to get their names on papers.  (And even if that doesn't bother you, think about it this way: if someone's willing to put their name on your ideas, could you really trust them not to add some plagiarized text to the paper?)

Instead, research collaboration should come before coauthorship, so the question becomes how to find collaborators.  That can come in all sorts of ways: you can talk with people at conferences about common interests, you can write to people whose papers are on similar topics, etc.  Sometimes collaborators meet through participation in websites where they discover a common interest.  (They aren't necessarily collaborating on the website, but they may start to correspond after interacting through the website, and the correspondence may turn into a collaboration.)  Once you are actively working on research with someone, writing a paper together will come naturally.


How to abort one post-doc sub-project politely Right after starting a post-doc, another post-doc in the new group came and invited me to collaborate in one of his projects (only a side thing; not my main research project; somehow independent from my advisor). I agreed to participate, but recently I've been procrastinating that work because, to be honest, it doesn't seem quite appealing now.

Of course, I have other projects of my own -which are going ok-, but this one is a bit of a bug in my head. How can I gracefully tell my colleague that I'm quitting?

Bad news is almost always best conveyed:

Immediately
In person

You cannot change that you probably should have said this earlier, but you can prevent it from being further delayed now.

So go find your colleague and tell them you are not going to be able to collaborate with them. Probably best to apologize to them as part of this conversation, too.

A lot of this will depend on how long ago this agreement was and how long you've been procrastinating saying anything. If we're talking a week, it's less important than if this other post-doc has been waiting for you for a month. If it's been a long time, make sure to apologize for taking so long to tell them, too.


What are the benefits of PhD students working on projects where they won't be first-author? Given that only papers where you are the first-author will contribute to your dissertation, isn't it a poor use of time to be contributing to the projects of other researchers?

In disciplines* where the PhD thesis consists of a set of published articles, the PhD usually - but not always - must be composed of first-author papers. Yet there are many reasons why it might be beneficial to be involved in other projects as well, so long as one is also making reasonable progress toward the dissertation.

Perhaps the two most important reasons are:

Training. Early on in graduate school, it may be valuable to simply have the experience of going through every stage of a research project from conception to publication, without having to be in charge every step of the way. Often a first of second year student will be involved in a research project on which a more senior student or postdoc is first author.
Portfolio-building. For most students the goal is not merely to finish the dissertation, but to do so in a way that positions the student for future success. It may be preferable to graduate with 3 first-author and 4 mid-author papers instead of 4 first-author papers, for example.

Additional reasons include

Research assistantship duties. If one is being paid on an RAship, this often contributes substantially to published research that may not be directly relevant to the dissertation.
Reciprocity. Sometimes students collaborate on a series of papers and alternate first authorships as they go.
Too good a thing to pass up. Sometimes the lab hits on something so cool that one would be a fool not to be part of it, whatever the authorship position.
Networking. By establishing collaborations with researchers beyond one's home lab and institution, one builds up one's professional network.

This is only a partial list, of course, but it should provide a sense of some of the reasons that graduate students should not shy away from projects that will lead to mid-author publications.

Authorship order does not matter in all disciplines. In economics and some subfields of computer science, for example, authorship is alphabetical by convention. Clearly this distinction does not matter in those fields.

[ Edited to include suggestions from the comments and other answers. ]


Who is responsible for detecting plagiarism in a PhD thesis? Background
I am asking this question in the context of the long running plagiarism scandal in Germany.The most prominent victim of the scandal of plagiarized doctoral dissertations by politicians was former defense minister Guttenberg. His doctoral title was withdrawn, and he resigned from his position. He was followed by several other politicians, and now even the German Education and Research Minister Annette Schavan is under suspicion of plagiarism.

The interesting thing is that for all these people, the plagiarism was detected only due to plagiarism detection wikis like VroniPlag and GuttenPlag, where ordinary people compared these doctoral dissertations with other published work. The only role of universities has been to respond to allegations that are especially well documented and have caused a reasonable amount of public uproar.

Don't the Universities themselves bear any responsibility for letting this plagiarism go undetected? In fact Guttenberg's dissertation was awarded a summa cum laude. It appears as if their is no mechanism whatsoever (at least in German universities) to detect academic fraud.

Is there any mechanism at all to detect plagiarism or fraudulent research in PhD dissertations (doctoral theses)?

I understand that there are probably country based differences and my experience is primarily with the German system. Still it would be good to know the seriousness with which academic fraud is taken in different countries. This appears especially pertinent to the maintenance of the credibility of academia in general and doctoral degrees in particular, and yet there seem to be no checks whatsoever!

The problem is that the PhD system is designed for people who intend to become researchers.  For these cases, plagiarism is not at all a common problem.  You are expected to published your research, and you will not have a successful career unless it is widely read and cited.  That gives lots of opportunities to get caught, and the penalties for plagiarism are a huge deterrent.

To the extent you find plagiarism, it's generally people who do not want a research career, but instead view the PhD simply as an obstacle on the road to a teaching (or other) career.  Probably the community should scrutinize these sorts of theses more carefully, but it can be hard to work up the energy to do so when most of them are OK, and when these theses really don't matter much for the research world.

The German politicians are pretty much the worst case scenario.  In the US, the stereotypical case is educational administrators.  Typically, you have a distinguished person who starts to feel the need for a PhD.  Perhaps it's because they associate with academics and feel looked down upon, or perhaps it's because an academic endorsement would make the public value their expertise more.  This student is very smart and accomplished, and nobody suspects them of any dishonesty.  However, they are also very busy, often working on a PhD while pursuing other projects as well, and academic research is not a priority.  At some point, they succumb to pressure and start taking shortcuts.  Probably it starts with small things, but the shortcuts gradually grow larger.  They rationalize that the thesis doesn't really matter anyway, because they have no intention of following an academic career track.  After all, they have the knowledge and experience, and they deserve the PhD title, so what difference does one document make anyway?  Meanwhile, the advisor probably doesn't spend that much time working with the student, and has no reason to suspect anything.  The advisor really ought to be extra careful in cases like this, but that would seem like an insult to the student, so it's easiest just to trust them.

So my take on this is that plagiarism is not as widespread as news stories might suggest.  It's just particularly likely to happen in cases where it would attract media attention.


I publish under a one-word name, which Google Scholar does not index. What can I do? I publish under a single name (no last name). As Google Scholar does not recognise me as an author I face several issues with citation counts and wrong bibliographic data being available in Google Scholar. I have reported this issue several times through the contact us form for Scholar but I just get an automated response from them. What can I do?
Example: When you search my name in scholar, my papers appear not because I am an author but because I am a word in the paper. Google does not index me as an author. So, if some one cites my work as Abhishta et. al. Google has no idea who is being cited.
This situation is a different from the questions that are asked before on this forum as the former questions were discussing problems that journals require multiple names for an author but in this case, the publisher is fine with having a single name and the paper is already published. However there are problems with Scholar indexing the data of the paper.
First author indexed by Google as
Actual authors of the paper

Google scholar is imperfect. It's based on an automatic parser, rather than human curation. I've seen it make all kinds of mistakes.

What can you do? You already have set up a profile that has the correct information. You can try contacting Google, but don't expect much from them. I doubt they have the resources to deal with everyone who contacts them with an issue. However, they are always improving their algorithm and this may get resolved.

The only other thing I think you can do is alter how your name appears on papers to conform to western expectations, as suggested in this question: I have only one name shown in my ID card. How do I write my name (surname) in research paper or article?

Overall, I wouldn't worry too much about it. It is easy enough to find your publications online and any human reader will understand that you are mononymous.


Replacing a shorter manuscript with a longer manuscript on arXiv I initially wrote a short manuscript (4 pages) intended for physics journal A and posted this short manuscript on arXiv. After referee feedback from journal A, I am now seeking to instead submit this manuscript to physics journal B but in a longer format (15 pages) with more comprehensive details and additional information/examples included. Given this significant update to the contents of the manuscript, is it all right to simply replace the original short manuscript on arXiv with the new longer manuscript? Or should I create a new entry on arXiv despite the central theme of the two manuscripts being similar?
On this point, if I submit the new longer manuscript to physics journal B, is it unethical if I don't update the original arXiv submission at all? (Namely, the short manuscript on arXiv and long manuscript published in physics journal B will have the same titles but contain differing contents.)

If the new manuscript version supersedes the old one, and includes all of its content, I would suggest replacing it. After all, if, say, PRL would have asked for Supplemental Material which would have added up to another 10 pages, you would also have updated the arxiv version.
An added advantage is that people don't get confused by the fact that there are two different versions of the same result on the arxiv, and they don't know which one to cite.  (You would also loose citations this way, except on google scholar, where you might gain some; this could of course be resolved by adding the Journal-Ref field for both of them.)
Finally, if you decide to post two different versions, it would be a good idea to add a corresponding comment field to both publications, informing the reader about their relation.


Which is better to stay in shared house or university accommodation? I will be a postgraduate student from this Oct in UK and looking for accommodation.
I would like to know pros and cons of shared house and accommodation provided by the University.
Thank you in advance!

The University of Reading publishes cost of living information on its website

https://studyabroad.reading.ac.uk/incoming/costs/

The costs of University accommodation are listed at

http://www.reading.ac.uk/ready-to-study/study/fees-and-funding/fees-and-funding-ug/living-costs.aspx

and you can see rental properties on sites like rightmove.co.uk


What tense to use in thesis when describing complex simulation models? I've researched the "rules" regarding use of tenses in scientific writing. However, I'm still not sure how to describe the simulations I've done during my thesis.

Just a simple example:

  1: An example model was developed to simulate the behavior during
  compression.

Here I'm describing something I did in the past, similar to an experiment, hence I'm using the past tense.

Then I'll describe what happens during the simulation, or how specific properties of the simulation model were set.

  2: The piston geometry is imported as a .stl-mesh. By moving the mesh in direction of the negative z-axis, the particles in the
  cylinder are compressed until...

I'm not sure about the tenses used in example 2. I could have also written:

  3: The piston geometry was imported as a .stl-mesh. By moving the mesh in direction of the negative z-axis, the particles in the
  cylinder were compressed until...

I can't decide whether example 2 or 3 is the better choice.

I would say the present tense is appropriate if you are giving a description of how the model works in general.  The model itself is timeless; it will keep working the same way now and forever.

The past tense puts the emphasis on what you did in your specific project; it reads like a report.  You did it this way; someone else in the future might do something else.


What is the salary range for a Post Doc in France? I was wondering what is the salary range for a Post Doc in France (Engineering - Ecole des Mines)?

In the UK the range is £31K - 38K and I'm already midway in the range. I'm considering moving to France for an interesting Post Doc and I was wondering how much of a salary I can negotiate.

I did two post-doc in France, both paid by public institutions.

In 2013, CNRS paid 2.022€ net per month,
In 2014, INRIA paid 2.120€ net per month.

This included social security, but I had to pay some taxes at the end of the year (so beware and save!).

I also had access to various benefits, both from my employer, e.g.,

re-allocation funds,
contributing to the cost of my commuting (this is a legal obligation, and they will happily comply),
financial help to pay a nurse for my kid

and from the state.

Those offers were "forfait" and not negotiable.
Most of the public employers will be happy to provide you with additional information about the various benefits you can access to, and to discuss the cost of living, but they have absolutely no room to discuss your salary.

If you look at the INRIA's webpage, they explicitly give the salary for a post-doc with them: there won't be no exception, everyone gets the same salary, no matter the town, subject, experience, qualification, PI, etc.

I don't know precisely the situation at L'école des Mines, but I would be surprised if the situation was much different. This page reads

  Pour ses actions de recherche et afin de conforter les liens très
  forts qu’elle entretient avec les entreprises françaises et
  étrangères, l’École recrute également de jeunes scientifiques,
  titulaires d’un doctorat ou d’un diplôme équivalent,

  sur contrat à durée déterminée, éventuellement renouvelable
  leur assure une rémunération brute mensuelle allant de 2 340 € à 2 944 €.(chiffre 2007)
  leur permet d’acquérir au sein de ses laboratoires de l’École une expérience complémentaire de très haut niveau dans les métiers de la
  recherche

So, in 2007, the salary range for a post doc was between 2.340€ and 2.944€ but I would assume that on what ends of that spectrum you land depends on your age, experience, social status, and not on negotiation. I could be wrong: the better way to get a definitive answer is to ask them!


How to cite a paper whose place and status of publication is questionable or unknown I want to cite the following paper:

  Cem Kaner & Walter P. Bond, “Software engineering metrics: What do they measure and how do we know?” 10th International Software Metrics Symposium (Metrics 2004), Chicago, IL, September 14-16, 2004.

Most of my citations of papers in proceedings contain page numbers.
The PDF file does contain page numbers from 1 to 12. However, I cannot find any contribution from the author in the table of contents for the proceedings. Other citations cite the paper without page numbers.

What should my citation look like? And in case I encounter something like this in the future: what explains the apparent mismatch between the author's website and official proceedings?

I have double checked in IEEE Xplore. The paper does not appear in the table of contents, the authors do not appear in the author list. Additionnaly, I cannot trace it in ISI Web of Science (which mentioned other conference papers by C. Kaner in 2004).

There are three options (in general):

A mistake in the proceedings for a regularly accepted paper,
The paper is more a tutorial, a keynote, a late breaking paper that has not been through the standard review process,
A paper that was not published in the conference, and which was put online carelessly in the conference paper shape.

As I am really unsure, and know that papers sometimes cite papers they have not read (and papers that do not exist), I would cite it only as an online document, or a preprint, with the url, without page number, and a potential note like "(often refered to as published in Metrics 2004)".

Most of all, I would suggest you not to cite it, unless it is really useful for your work. Or cite a paper really "published " by the authors instead (good luck with that).

EDIT: after a long search, I have found using the Wayback Machine that this paper could have been part of Metrics 2004 Late Breaking Papers:

  The purpose of the late breaking papers session is to give authors the
  opportunity to present work from on-going projects, new ideas and
  papers not complete at the time of the original call for papers. Each
  paper has been peer reviewed by at least 2 independent experts.

  The late breaking papers sessions allow authors to make a short
  presentation of their work in the main programme. Printed copies of
  the extended abstracts are circulated in delegate packs and, due to
  the timescale, the full papers will be published electronically on the
  conference web site.

Finally, I observe that with some online journal, it gets more difficult to have standard page numbers. Sometimes each paper gets a number. As much as I like citing papers correctly, may be page numbers are becoming  useful when the work only exists in paper-like form: a DOI is an interesting alternative.