Is it appropriate for an undergrad student to ask a professor to sign a non-disclosure agreement? Allow me to first give some context.  A friend and I have been discussing a business idea involving a technical device that I need some guidance on how to perfect.  My friend just told me he is taking a class with a professor that founded a company with a device similar, but distinctly different from mine, and I would love to talk to him about this during his office hours.  If he is willing to share I would like to ask about how his device works.  I would also like to ask him how to do a few of the things I am struggling with.  Before I tell him all the details of my idea, I would like to somehow protect my idea, since I do not know this professor at all.

So, I am asking all the academics out there, how would you feel if a student asked you to sign a non-disclosure agreement given these circumstances?

I don't understand most of the current answers, which mostly assume you want technical advice without paying for it, but requiring an NDA. If this is indeed what you want, I agree it's a bad idea.

However.

You write that this professor has already gone into business. This implies that he has a certain basic understanding of how business works. He probably has signed his fair share of NDAs, as well as requiring others to sign his.

It appears perfectly reasonable for you (or your friend) to set up a short meeting with this professor, say of 30 minutes or so. Quickly present your idea in a rather general manner, in an "elevator pitch" - at least outlining what problem you want to solve. Think beforehand how much you are comfortable revealing. Tell him that you'd like his advice, and be frank that you are not comfortable giving full details without protection for your intellectual property. (I'd also look for protection if I knew this professor, not only if he were unknown.)

Have a proposal ready for possible next steps, which would include him signing an NDA and his investing a little time for a discussion. Ask him explicitly what he'd expect from you in return for investing his time. Professors are busy people, and more so if they run a company on the side.

You may actually have a good chance that he'd be happy to mentor you to a limited extent pro bono - most academics are idealists at heart, otherwise they would be in industry from the very beginning. However, if you want more in-depth advice, be prepared to offer hourly rates, possibly conditional on your idea getting off the ground.

Always keep in mind that professors are busy, just as are other businesspeople. Don't come with a mindset that you are entitled to advice, but ask politely, and things may go well. If this professor is active in a similar line of business as you are, this may be a very good opportunity - he may have contacts in the industry and/or to funders that may very well be invaluable.


One of my professors made a rape joke. What should I do? I'm at a community college in the US.

Early on in the semester, one of my professors made a rape joke. I was too stunned, tired, and sick (I have a moderate physical health condition) to get involved at the time. Now we are in finals. I have spoken to other students and at least one person interpreted it the same way.

What should we do? What should I have done immediately?

Speak with the professor, and give them the benefit of the doubt. Ask for an appointment, and bring another student if you feel uncomfortable doing it one-on-one. Most professors (hopefully) would not intentionally make such jokes -- give them the benefit of the doubt, allow them to explain themselves or apologize, and go from there. Following Hanlon's razor, my guess is that they were trying to make an inoffensive (or at least less-offensive) comment and botched it.

If this doesn't go well, you can escalate. The department chair, a trusted professor, or your university's Title IX office (in the US) are good starting places. In general, they will be looking for a pattern of behavior.

Edit: I'm surprised how much controversy this has generated. College students are adults, and the professor's (possible) transgression was an off-color joke in public -- not fondling or propositioning. I agree there is no place for such jokes in the classroom, so - what is the desired outcome here? Presumably, that he will explain or apologize, and not do it again. This was months ago, and he (apparently) hasn't done it again, so maybe no action is needed. If OP wants to make sure, and to get the explanation/apology, that's admirable - ask for it adult-to-adult. If they don't give it, escalate. But for something like this, it is my view that running to the ombudsman, without first raising your concerns directly with the professor, would be downright cowardly.


Are there universities with policies that default intellectual property decisions to faculty? For context, at a US-based institute there is a typical business-like policy stating intellectual property developed by faculty is owned by the institute. Likewise, faculty are required to submit disclosures of their work before public release as to not interfere with the ability to patent such novel ideas.  This can clearly create some backlog and difficulty in publishing work, but is also a concern for academics that do not want to commercialize their ideas but instead allow them to be free for the 'public good'.
Are there examples where universities have created specific policies that allow faculty to make the decision on, for example, making an algorithm and code open source without disclosure?
Another way to consider the question if this is more common than I can find; what are the most open policies for faculty decision making in the ability to put ideas in the public domain without first disclosing to the university?

The University of Illinois (where I am a faculty member) classifies most written faculty work as "traditional academic copyrightable works", and by explicit policy all such works are owned by their authors.  If their creation requires university resources "over and above those usually and customarily provided", then by default the university gets a royalty-free non-exclusive license, but even that requirement is routinely waived.
My university also supports faculty releasing their software under open-source licenses.  In principle, any code developed with the support of a research grant requires university approval before it can be released, but in practice, faculty routinely publish their research code without prior approval (or censure) from the university.  I can see the possibility of a dispute arising if a piece of code were patentable, but the last time I remember the university wielding that particular hammer with any force, the NCSA Mosaic authors left (middle fingers high in the air) to found Netscape.
I have never felt any pressure to ask anyone's permission to publish an algorithm or source code.  (My first-order research area is algorithms.)


Grading many exams without getting sick I'm not sure if this question is on-topic here, but I imagine lots of people here deal with this problem.

In a few weeks, I'll have to grade about 500 exams. I'll receive them in paper form, and I need to give out the grades fairly quickly.

The last time I did this, I got the worst cold of my life and was totally incapacitated for the next week. What precautions can I take to make sure this doesn't happen again?

Wear a surgical mask and nitrile or latex gloves. Do not touch your face while working. Take frequent breaks to walk away from the pile.


Acknowledgment and authors in article based on PhD thesis A friend of mine finished his PhD and joined our group, on a project closely related to his PhD work. After three months, we submitted an article which includes significant  amount of work from his thesis and also the work done the last three months in our group.

But his PhD supervisor got angry and said he can not add any other author except himself and he demanded that the acknowledgment should only be based on funding information which he will provide.

The article includes some experimental work which was conducted by my friend after joining our group. We offered the professor to add his and our both funding acknowledgment, but he did not agree.

Is he right in his demands?

Moreover, my friend said his supervisor rejected the publication draft by saying it’s not worthy to be published.

My understanding of the current situation:

Your friend is attempting to publish what sounds like a significant portion of results from their dissertation, along with some new results obtained after a few months in a new research group (your group). Further, your friend's former PhD advisor does not approve of the new collaboration with your group, is not satisfied with whatever compromise you've proposed thus far, and does not want your group to submit the manuscript in question.

  Is [the former advisor] right in his demands?

Unfortunately, there is no universally correct answer. Why? Simply put, the "correct" answer to this question depends on the norms in your field, the agreed-upon publication policies in your friend's former research group, and so on. (One of the key things I've learned on this site is just how much academia varies, and I strongly encourage you / your friend to reflect on this point as well; see, e.g., Academia varies more than you think it does).

Further, getting into philosophical debates about the "correct" way a former advisor should proceed in this situation is, in my view, pointless; before getting on to your question, let me explain why I say this.

On this site, we see, time and time again, plenty of questions which are very closely related to the situation that your friend is currently in. Here are four such questions among many, and I strongly encourage you / your friend to take a look at these, too:

Authorship for paper based on my thesis
When should a supervisor be an author?
Co-authorship for not very involved supervisor
My advisor wants to co-author a paper on my thesis work, but drags out the submission, claiming it isn't ready. Should I submit without him?

As far as the "correct" course of action in the above / other related questions is concerned, the key takeaway (for me, at least) that all of these questions have in common is: it depends.

Now, on to your question. For simplicity, I see your friend's situation as belonging to one of the following two categories (below, since it is not clear in your question, when I write "norms," this will refer to the norms that exist for your friend, whatever that might entail):

If the "norms" are such that your friend is free to do whatever he wants with his research results, whether or not the results were obtained during his PhD, then your friend's former advisor has no grounds to halt publication, so long as the funding for the portion of the manuscript related to your friend's PhD results are acknowledged.
On the other hand, if the "norms" are such that your friend is required to consult with former PhD advisor on any collaborations, publications, etc. stemming from the research conducted while a PhD student, then your friend needs to sort this out with the former advisor ASAP.

In an ideal world, if this second case applies to your friend, then your friend should have already had a discussion with the former advisor. In fact, what this question and the many other related ones help to underscore is how extremely important it is to have authorship discussions with your advisor early on. (This may seem obvious now, but I write this for future visitors to A.SE who are on the verge of finding themselves in similar situations.)


Politely decline an offer that I sort-of accepted I applied to several post-grad programs at Australian Universities. I got an offer from one (University A) very quickly, conditional on completion of my undergraduate degree. It had a lapse date of January 1. During the Christmas break I emailed University A letting them know that I had completed my undergraduate degree but would not be able to get a transcript to them before January 1. I said "Is there anything I can send in the meantime [while waiting for official transcript] that would be sufficient to prove I have met the conditions of the offer and can accept it?" Since then I got another offer from a different university (University B) that suits me better and I plan to accept this offer.

Today (January 6) I finally got a reply from University A saying "I can confirm you have successfully accepted your offer...". I realize I may have implied that I was going to accept the offer in my email, but the situation changed and I no longer want to accept the offer from University A, since University B is a much better option for me for various reasons.

How can I professionally and politely decline the offer to University A?

Dear [name],

  Thank you for your reply to my email of December [xx]. Please note that in that email I asked what documentation I need to send in the event that I decide to accept the offer to join your graduate program, but did not yet indicate a definite wish to accept the offer. In the meantime, I have considered the matter some more and decided to pursue other opportunities elsewhere. Thank you again for the generous offer, for which I am  grateful.

  Sincerely,

  [your name]


How to contact EiC when his emails seems like auto computer generated reply One of my article is under review in reputable IEEE journal. The average time of first decision for this journal is 3 months. However, my article is under review for 6.5 months and upon my inquiry I always get same email from EiC (editor-in-chief), which looks like an auto generated email, stating we appreciate your patience and we are trying to complete the process ASAP. According to journal policy, I cannot know who is the handling Associate Editor and all inquiries should go to EiC. In the given situation how can I invoke editorial board to expedite the process? Is it fine to make a call to EiC on his personal contact number?

I suggest contacting the publisher and asking them for a status update. The publisher is likely to have more time, and should be able to provide almost as good an update. IEEE's website lists some people to contact. You might be able to find an even better contact person from the journal's website.

I'd write in the email:

Is my paper under review?
If it's under review, are there any problems (e.g. the only invited reviewers haven't responded to the invitation for 3 months, and no new ones have been invited)?
If there are problems, can you ask the EiC to look at the submission?

In a first email I wouldn't mention that I've already contacted the EiC. If they ask about that, then only I'd say I've contacted the EiC, but received what looks like an automated response.


Should I test my algorithm using a standard dataset that I believe is flawed? I am developing an algorithm for a type of classification problem that is a small-but-growing area of AI research. Until two years ago, there was no standard benchmark for this type of problem. In 2016, a benchmark dataset was made publically available to solve this issue and most subsequent papers in this area have used it to evaluate their algorithms.

However, the dataset is of poor quality. It is very small with <100 examples, many of which are slight variations on the same data. Also, the ground truth is dubious for several examples. This makes it hard to compare the performance of different published algorithms since they are nearly all within the margin of error.

I can think of four options:

Publish my algorithm using the flawed benchmark. Its apparent performance is comparable to other methods, and it has enough other advantages (fewer parameters, etc.) to be published this way, but probably not in a high-impact venue.
Publish my algorithm using a more robust benchmark that I create on my own. I could add legitimacy by implementing previously-published algorithms to compare on the new benchmark, but I feel like this would still give the impression of moving the goalposts.
Publish my algorithm using a more robust benchmark that I create on my own, in addition to the flawed benchmark. Many papers test their algorithms on additional custom datasets (though usually simulations) so this is not unusual. However, this would imply I consider the flawed benchmark valid and that would still be the results most people look at.
Separately publish a more robust benchmark dataset and validated criticism of the flawed benchmark. I could then cite this when I later publish my algorithm. However, this will delay publication of my algorithm and still depends on my new benchmark being well-received.

Because I am still a Ph.D. student and this would be my first work in this field, I am wary of bucking current practices too much. What should I do? Are there other factors I should consider?

You leave a lot unsaid here, such as how expensive (time, money) it is to run the algorithm on any given dataset and how much effort to create a new one.

Three pieces of advice, though. If it is more or less standard to use the published data, then using that should give you some basis for evaluating your algorithm compared to others. With a new dataset you lose that opportunity.

A new dataset also leaves you open to a charge that the "great" results you got were just an artifact of the dataset you created on your own. You should probably avoid that. At least as the first iteration.

There is no reason that you couldn't use the existing dataset, gather your results, but also, in the same paper, discuss the shortcomings of that dataset. This also gives you an opening to future work and you might even get some advice on how to avoid the second point above.

Ok. Four pieces of advice. If you are new at this (and not a doctoral candidate writing a dissertation) you don't need to push the boundaries too far to make a contribution. You can use the simplest case to set up your case 4. for the future. But if you buck current practice very much you need to justify it.

On the other hand, if you are a doctoral candidate, the significance of your work is normally considered more important than the time you need to put into it and the expectation is that it is novel. But you still need to avoid the charge of tailoring the data to fit the desired results.


Does "minor revision" mean "accepted with minor revision"? I just received a decision letter from a journal editor (after three rounds of major revision). The letter shows that the reviewers "have asked for some other minor revisions". After getting the minor revision letter, I immediately completed the revision in accordance with the feedback from the reviewers (the suggested changes just involve adding a few sentences) and immediately resubmitted the revision to ScholarOne. A week has passed since I submitted the revision, but the status in ScholarOne remains unchanged. Is this normal? Can I assume that this basically means "acceptance with minor revision"? Thanks for your insight and sharing.

Yes, characterizing revisions as "minor" strongly suggests that if you make those revisions the paper will be accepted.  Editors may prefer not to explicitly say that the paper is "accepted with minor revisions", because authors may make "minor revisions" that don't correct the problems, and then feel that they've been promised publication in spite of that.

Depending on the journal, the editor, and the revisions, the manuscript may or may not go out to re-review once again, and even if it doesn't a one-week delay from submission to re-evaluation is not surprising.  In my field (biology) I wouldn't be surprised to hear back about acceptance anywhere from 1 day to 1 month after re-submission.


Education or employment: What is a post-doc? What is a PhD student? I’m afraid this question is mostly opinion-based, but I was wondering if there is any piece of material out there that covers the spectrum of opinions.

What exactly is a post-doc? Is it an education, an employment or something in between? This question is particularly bothering me, since in Sweden post-docs may be financed either through stipends – not paying taxes nor receiving social benefits (remember, in one of the most socially-oriented countries in the world) – or salary. One could argue that, on one hand, post-doc is an education towards becoming an independent researcher, on the other hand, a post-doc is expected to already produce knowledge for the benefit of humanity.

I tend to ask myself the same question about PhD students. Why would PIs bother recruiting PhD students for doing research, if an “army of post-doc-like researchers” would probably be more productive? For example, our university tends to recruit PhD students on H2020 calls which are for research, in addition to H2020 calls targeted for research training.

The legal situation in Israel

I mention Israel first since am involved in a legal case before the Israeli national labor court on this very question: Arguing that those PhD candidates who are required to work all week long, who are forbidden from working outside the university, who can be required to teach up to a limit according to the needs of their academic departments etc. etc. - who contribute significantly to the research (and teaching) "outputs" of the university, should be considered its employees, and the monthly "stipends" that they get should be recognized again as their salary. This is case ע'ע 5439-04-16 (Labor Appeal 5439-04-16). I've authored a booklet on the history of this struggle, which has an English version:

"These are student recipients of prizes": On the erasure of the Technion's junior researcher class

Or get the Hebrew version; in fact, if you can read Hebrew, you can find the court case documents here.

The legal situation in the US

Another, perhaps more relevant, legal treatment of this matter can be found in the recent ruling of the National Labor Relations board, in the case of Graduate Workers of Columbia University, UAW, AFL-CIO vs the University of Columbia (NLRB 364-90: HTML PDF, all case files): The court has found that, indeed, Graduate students who perform meaningful research or teaching work as part of the course of their PhD program (and are paid), are considered university employees to the extent of the applicability of US labor law, especially the laws governing unionization and collective bargaining.

That decision reversed the unfortunate (3-to-2) decision in the 2004 case of Brown University (NLRB 342-42: HTML, PDF), which had itself reversed the 2000 decision in the case of NYU (NLRB 332-111: HTML, PDF).

See also the AAUP description of the Columbia U case and their position.

The actual answer

I can talk for hours, literally, about this subject, and I actually have... but in a nutshell:

Being an employee and being undergoing a process of education are not mutually exclusive; and you always learn when you're starting out in a new career path, be it in industry or in academia.
The common labor-legal criteria for being considered an employee can and do apply to many/most/all PhD candidates (depending on which state in the world, which kind of PhD work etc.)
A university is an organization whose ongoing objectives are to produce research findings and to teach students. If you contribute towards those goals (by performing research and teaching), even if you're also undergoing a process of education yourself, you should be recognized and remunerated as such.
Post-Docs only undergo any sort of education through their practical research work (which, of course, involves learning - but that's the case also for the most high-ranking Professors); they don't take classes, get homework and take exams to see whether they've studied well enough. so about them there should not be any doubt of being in relations of employment.

as for why have PhD candidates when you can have Post-docs - I've already written enough, let others discuss that :-)


Why do lecturers not just assume all students have read the book? One thing I don't understand about lectures is why the lecturer covers the material that is already presented in the book and assigned as reading material to the students.

Is the assumption that some students are actually incapable of reading? If not, what then is the point of covering the same stuff in the lecture? Imagine that reading the book is a lecture itself: what then is the point of giving two identical lectures?

I understand that some students may not understand the book, and a spoken lecture makes it possible to answer questions and provide clarifications on unclear statements from the book, or just to add more detail/intuition to a certain topic.

But, truth be told, those parts of a lecture make up a small, small minority. Most of the lecture is indeed spent on just repeating what the book said - except of course with much less detail, since you can't cram 30 pages of written words in a 1 hour lecture.

So would it not be much more efficient to do it differently? Here's one example for a 1 hour lecture, but you can think of your own:

Spend the first 15 minutes on recitation of the book material. It gets everyone on board, sets the tone, refreshes everyone's mind. During these 15 minutes, certain added remarks can be made if the lecturer feels them necessary.
Spend the next 10 minutes answering questions by confused students.
You now have 35 minutes left to cover extra material not presented in the book. This could be in-depth examples or intuition of the topic just covered, advanced extensions, or just some extra topic that you wouldn't have time to otherwise cover in your course.

This way you are both more efficient since you are not wasting time repeating stuff, and you also take care of students' questions and get some time to add clarifying remarks. You get the best of both worlds.

The answer may depend on what type of course we are talking about, here I'll focus on STEM.

The most obvious answer would be "because it would be a false assumption". Many students don't read the books. But then you get to the question: why don't the students read the books?

I'm an engineering student, and here's my perspective: in STEM courses it's quite often the case that the lectures are quite simply a boiled-down version of the books; they present the same theorems as the books, in the same order, often using the same examples, but without all the "fluff". Students don't read the books because we go to the lectures, take notes, and get all the necessary material in a document we wrote ourselves. Writing it ourselves helps us learn the material, and since it's a boiled-down version it's much less material to read through when preparing for exams.

As for professors, if they assume that the books have been read and understood, they wouldn't have much to talk about since what they planned to present was the book's material. They could use lectures for Q&A sessions and practice problems but attendance would be quite low in that case and students would complain about paying for simply being told what book to read instead of being presented the material. Besides, (at least in the case of my university) Q&As and practice problem sessions are typically done by the TAs on a regular basis anyway.

I imagine this may not hold for other types of classes such as history or literature in which documents are assigned to be read and then discussed and analyzed in class, but I have little to no experiences with those so I can't give an informed answer.

P.S: "Imagine that reading the book is a lecture itself". Fun fact: the word lecture is french for reading.


Should I mention industrial experience in an academic CV when applying for a PhD? I have about six years of entry-level experience in a certain field acquired before entering university and during its first years. Should I mention such experience when applying for a PhD? By now I also have research and teaching experience, which is much more relevant.

The work experience includes some relevant aspects for the PhD, e.g. programming. The companies were small (start-ups). Two of them no longer exist (it is more than 10 years since the first job). Could I just write this along the lines

  I have also xx years of experience in yy field working as a zz. My tasks involved mostly blah blah.

As the fellows said, you need to declare something about that rather long gap. Because, the admission committee would be disappointed in a typical applicant with a considerable time interval without any scientific or technical activity.

Furthermore, I would like to pinpoint that the Ph.D. projects would be, roughly, divided into two large categories. One would be pure-research projects, are which supposed to be traced as the cutting-edge study and engineering. The next one would be industrial projects (considerably common in european positions), are which stemming from the desire for new ideas, but are different with the former case in that the mental background from the context of the project would be really functional and precious. One might claim that the industrial experience could be accounted as such background.

Just do it, then!


Does a informative and clear professor webpage often increase the number of prospective PhD students who apply to work for the professor? Here is what I would call a particularly informative and clear professor webpage.

Of course, it's not the most important thing (for me, personally, I mostly discovered professors through asking current professors whom to contact). But a lot of PhD students do discover professors to contact through Internet searches, which may be especially relevant for PhD students who might not have as many connections (especially international ones). And maybe a strong professor webpage could also increase the "fit" of the applicants who do decide to contact the professor.

As an international student who is (was?) looking for potential advisors, I'd say yes (As far as I know)!

The algorithm for me worked as follows:

Contact the obvious ones. These were authors of papers I read recently (& liked), editors of journals etc. Basically, the ones with good "academic presence".
Look at professors who have written textbooks or survey papers.
Look at strong departments for professors. (By strong I mean : Reputation, Rankings and Star Power/Infrastructure)
If a professor has a good webpage (Updated recently with list of current/past projects, list of graduate students and alumni), Shoof! Time saved!
If a professor has a bad webpage (Last updated in 2001 or with minimal content or whatever), then run him on google scholar. Read his papers and try to find out what his students are upto.
Once a professor has been selected, run youtube and ratemyprofessor on him. This is usually worthless but it did yield some awesome results once in a while. It did help get a virtual lab tour at times.

In conclusion:

Maintaining a good website does help students (especially international) get to know the professor better.
It does save us a lot of time by having access to all relevant information at one place
What is most irritating is webpages with very old content. I would prefer limited recent content to old obsolete content.


I need some code that was made available by a student 15 years ago, but is no longer online. How can I contact someone in the group to get the code? I need Matlab code of a method to compare it with the results of my proposed method.

The method which I want to use happened to be available online by a research group in a university in US in 1997  [see here]. Unfortunately, when I click the corresponding link of the method, it gives a server Error message. I've tried to email the person who seems to be responsible for this page, but I didn't get a reply.   This page also returns a server error.

As I urgently need this code, what should I do to contact to this research group?

Also, how can I convince them to give me the code?

PhD students come and move on, so if you are looking for code that isn't exactly brand new then contacting the responsible professor is usually your best bet. That being said, I would not get my hopes up too much that you get your code "urgently". There is a good chance that even the responsible professor will need to do some good ol' digging before (s)he unearths this material, if at all (and then there is still a good chance that nobody knows anymore how to make it work, or that it does not run anymore on today's platforms). Assume that this is going to be a bit of a project on its own.


How to overcome feelings of incompetence/failure in a PhD programme? I've recently quit my job as a maths teacher after doing it for 3 years and I have been incredibly lucky to be offered a fully funded doctoral training course at a top university. This is an extraordinary opportunity for me, especially given that I previously withdrew from a PhD, and this time I really want to make it work.

I am quite rusty on some things that many other starting students will not be, not because I can't do them but because it's been a very long time since I needed to apply them. I am currently a bit worried that I may be the weakest in the cohort or that it'll take me a very long time to understand simple things and that I may feel incompetent and like I don't deserve to be there.

What are some good ways to overcome these feelings of idiocy?

You have to accept that you are rusty and need to brush up on things. It is what it is, but there are others, myself included, who started a PhD after a few unproductive years.

The number one thing to do is not to take more classes than you're required to. If you are in the US system, there will be tons of homeworks and class work, so you need to make sure you will not fall too far behind. Your first objective is to pass the qualifier exam if your university has one.

But, you will also need to get an adviser, who will want you to do research. You need to pick wisely. Your adviser must be able to support you, especially if you are not allowed to teach. It is better to find someone who is a good planner and doesn't expect a student who takes classes and probably teaches to also do 60+ hours of research work. Not that it wouldn't be beneficial.

If teaching is included in the time balancing act, you have to be careful that your students do not abuse your time. Be strict with office hours, and be hard to find especially when preparing for your own exams.

The part with getting up to speed is harder, but be open and let people help you. If you have questions, do not be shy to ask your younger peers, or the course instructors. Also, participate in group study, especially if you feel it helps you and check homework results and discuss them with colleagues. You will learn a lot, but it will also help you understand more accurately where you stand in terms of knowledge compared to your colleagues. Even if you are more of an introvert and work a lot better alone, you still need the interaction with your peers.

Another thing is to plan alone time far from work. You have to have a more relaxed day, at least, when you don't have any work planned or you will end up burnt out and depressed. Also, if you have a family already, you have to understand that the PhD will take you from them more than a normal job would. Make sure you have a discussion with them where you set the expectations, and also try to leave the work at work as much as you can.


how to reply the email from professor? I want to say got it, but it seems not appropriate.
Can I just reply like, well noted with thanks or well received?
How to reply emails like this?

thanks in advance
EDIT----------------------------------
I work as the TA for the professor. So the usual cases are:
1. he gives me an assignment and I want to reply 'I will do it right away'.
2. I ask him some questions about the assignment and he replies something. And I want to express 'yes, got it!'

He gives me an assignment and I want to reply 'I will do it right away'.

Then reply: "I will do it right away".

But if you're going to do it right away, you can probably wait replying until you have finished the assignment, if a reply in that case is expected.

  I ask him some questions about the assignment and he replies something. And I want to express 'yes, got it!'

Then reply: "Got it, thanks."

To sum up: as many students, you're overthinking all this.


Waiting with a lot of uncertainty I have to choose between industry and academia (1 year left). I think the success of below two points according to me is a minimum qualification to get accepted for PhD. But I am afraid of total failure.

First paper under review (months of waiting time).
Results for a scholarship program for summer research intern will be announced after 5 months. One of the top researchers in my field has agreed to take me but I am not sure about securing the scholarship.

Because of this uncertainty, fear of failure and long waiting time I am totally freezed. I have no motivation to take new projects because of no validation of my previous work.

How can I unfreeze myself and start working again? Or should I totally stop until the review comes?

First, your experience is not unusual for undergraduates, so you are in good company.

Your best course of action is to share these concerns with a faculty member or even one of the doctoral students in your program. They can help you make a realistic assessment of your chances for acceptance with funding in a doctoral program.

Do not rely on undergraduates for information about grad school requirements--there is too much guess work among those students for you to trust your future to it. Talk to people who are in a position to know.

Last, fear of failure is understandable, but look at this experience as a chance to learn how to overcome it. Students in graduate programs need to develop the ability to have an article rejected without being crippled by the experience. It takes time and experience (i.e. multiple rejections) to learn how to accept it as part of the process and continue to improve. If you want to go to a doctoral program, now is the time to begin learning how to keep working and doing your best, no matter what.

The fact that you are now asking these questions is a very promising sign that you are already on your way to overcoming your fear. Good luck!


Should you email a journal after 3 weeks kindly asking why a manuscript hasn't been sent for review, or is this too soon? Am I simply being impatient? It's a computer science/biomedical journal. Don't want to seem pushy, yet it seems like it shouldn't take 3 weeks to see if a manuscript is within scope and decide whether to send it for review. It's been sitting at the "with editor" status with no status updates.

Probably too early. Don't assume that the paper isn't evaluated yet. Most likely it was judged in scope and they are simply looking for referees.
Wait a little bit more.


Academia and privacy I am an academic at a large university. I have been asked to produce some videos to be used in an online component of a departmental service course. This is a course I am currently teaching, and the videos are meant to be used in future iterations of the course (which I will probably not be teaching) to reduce the number of weekly lecture hours.

I don't have a strong opinion either way about whether this plan is good for the course, but I do not want to appear in the videos for reasons of personal privacy. I am a very private person, and I have always tried to keep a light online footprint with minimal social media activity. The idea of hundreds or thousands of students whom I don't know watching videos of me for years to come makes me very uncomfortable.

It has been pointed out to me that the university already records lectures, and that the videos that I'm now being asked to make are if anything better since they will help me produce them in a recording studio and I can do multiple takes. This is a fair point, though I am also not so happy with the current lecture recordings (it may be technically possible to opt out but is not practically possible since students would complain). But I still think the videos I'm now being asked to record are more invasive of my privacy. The lecture recordings only capture audio and the projector/document camera, and are only accessible by the students in the course I teach. The videos I'm being asked to produce will show my face and be uploaded to the university youtube channel, and remain as a central component of a large course for years.

I realize that it's always been the case that certain careers require being recorded (politician, actor, professional athlete, news anchor, journalist), but I didn't think of academia as being one of them. To what extent are academics public figures / performers that should be required to make recordings of themselves?

Am I being unreasonable by refusing to appear in these videos?

The answer to this question is extremely simple and clear-cut. No, you are not being unreasonable. You don’t want to appear on YouTube, so don’t - this is not a job requirement for a professor (or for a graduate student) anywhere. You don’t owe anyone any explanations. Do not let yourself be guilt-tripped or manipulated into giving up more of your privacy than you feel comfortable doing. And do not get drawn into a debate about the nuances of precisely which careers require agreeing to be a public figure and which don’t - this just opens the door for other people to try to manipulate you with irrelevant sophistry.

Just say no.


Is a Master Student ready to be a Review Editor? I just published my first paper (originated from my monograph) in a prestigious journal and that same journal invited me to be part of their Editorial Board as a Review Editor. I feel that this is a good opportunity to improve my skills (e.g.: writing, specific field knowledge, etc) and help others with their papers but I also feel quite intimidate by this offer since I barely started my Master and only know PhD and postdoc students that are reviewers.

I already talked a bit with my supervisor and he feels that this journal is too "high-level" for me, maybe a "lower" journal would be ok to accept it.

A Review Editor is a relatively low-stakes position, particularly if the journal already boasts some degree of prestige. Most journals publish various genres of scholarship. The title here refers to one of the lesser-known classifications of peer-reviewed publication: book reviews.

In similar fashion, academic conferences comprise various kinds of panels and time slots. You may be invited to share your extensive and fascinating original research in a ninety-minute panel discussion wherein you are the sole presenter. Or you may be accepted to the conference in combination, grouped into a panel with three other academics whose research aims match yours, or because your various conclusions seem to inform one another, or because all four of these hypothetical research efforts will likely appeal to a common audience segment (for example, an analysis of a budding marijuana industry may fit nicely paneled together with an exploration of the hidden meaning in children's cartoons). Some dedicated scholar will accept an offer to keynote the event, an honorary and certain center of attention. And some presenters will merely stand in the hallway with posters that compress their meaningful researches into two thousand square inches.

For peer-reviewed journals, book reviews are the poster boards of our publication-dependent life. Some scholars publish original research; others synthesize previous scholarship, often applying common wisdoms from earlier eras in analysis of some recent event or phenomenon. Some scholars read lengthy academic texts from other scholars--noticed works that show early indication of high impact--and review the book along a pretty standard range of criteria. The review editor (typically there's only one) offers copy edit and review for these submissions and recommends a certain number of them for inclusion in the journal's upcoming volume. (I hope no former or current reviewers of academic texts feel slighted here; I certainly intend no insult.)

Of course, your question was, "Is a master's student ready...?"

I suppose that depends on the student. I've met more than one instructor who began teaching university courses before completing undergraduate study. (No, seriously. Singly-assigned as instructor of record and paid a lecturer's wage.) If this response has helped you garner a sense of what you'd be stepping into, and if that doesn't sound dull, or terrifying, or somehow jointly meaningful and thankless, then give it a go. Sometimes I worry I'm too afraid of not winning some award or notoriety at a task and I let thoughts of prestige or career steal away interesting opportunities.

If it were me, I'd take it. I don't think I would spend too much time considering the offer an honor, but I think I could probably collate the reviews of impressive books and assess them according to a rubric that's already been hashed out for me. Then I'd see if I could somehow parlay it into earned credit toward my degree.


Should retracted articles also be listed on the academic CV? Should a separate section list all retracted articles?

Should just a note (---retracted) suffice?

Is a short explanation expected (retracted for fabrication, plagiarism)?

Should one give a longer explanation (retracted due to Joe's work, my supervisor, who is a fraud. He is the rat, not me.).

Or should the retracted article be treated simply as a denied article, and not be listed at all?

In a poll on Retraction Watch asking "Should retracted papers show up on a CV?," the majority of respondents said "They should be listed as retracted":

However, there is a significant minority support for the option of not listing them at all. DrugMonkey offers the following rationale for this position:

  In a very large number of situations in which an academic CV is used, there is no obligation for it to constitute an exhaustive list of everything the scientist has ever done that might be considered pertinent to various sections.

If you choose to include it, a simple note that the paper is retracted, and possibly the list of authors signing on to the retraction, is probably the classiest way to do it. The retraction notice should give the rest of the details, should anyone wish to follow up. See for example Donald Green's CV (online). Assigning blame for the problem in a CV seems wildly inappropriate to me.


Should I make 2 applications to the same university I apply for a PhD position, with my own research proposal, at one university and receive an offer already. However, as I cannot fund myself, I have to wait for the scholarship whose result will be announced at the end of April. In the mean time, a university is advertising an industrial funded PhD project whose deadline is the end of March. My background matches the requirements for the project which is quite interesting to me as well. I wonder if I should apply for a project as if I am accepted and receive a scholarship from the first offer, I have to choose one of them.

Update: I'm asking this question as I'm worried if making 2 applications to 2 supervisors from the same research group may impact the outcome of both applications, i.e. whether I receive scholarship from the first application and/or be accepted into the 2nd project. Since, I believe both supervisors are not very happy if they know about it.

There is no right answer to this and it depends on the institution that you are in and the people you are dealing with. You are the only one who can decide on this.

In principal I don't see any problem with this if you manage it correctly. IMHO talking with the first guy to understand the consequence of your action and then making the decision is the right course. Second guy has the money and that makes the situation entirely different for him. The reality is that if you are good people will always assume that you have your own interest in mind and will try to get the best offer. So thats not new. What matters is how you play your cards and behave.

So, what I would say is go to the first guy talk about the scholarship situation and your prospects, see what he says, if you feel its right bring up the other project ask him "given the uncertainty of the situation and what would you do if you were in my shoes". and take it from there...

If he says something on the lines of well i am not sure what will happen with scholarship and nothing is guaranteed then go ahead and apply for the second one but if he is saying its a tough situation and you have to make your own mind it kinda indicates that his is not going to be happy about it and is really not understanding you/caring.

I think right now you need to test the waters first and need to do it very delicately...


Planning for grad school I am a second year under-graduate student in mathematics. My school (3 years under-grad) has a great history of sending its under-graduates to top graduate level math programs of the US universities. However, I do not know to what extent top universities expect an under-graduate to have done graduate level courses.

The math courses I will have done in my under-grad are: Calculus I-II-III, Analysis I, Analysis II, Linear Algebra I, Linear Algebra II, Complex Analysis, Real Analysis, Intro to Algebra, Discrete Math, Introductory PDE, Stochastic Processes. I do not know if I will have done Topology and Number Theory as they are not offered in a regular basis.

So, my question to those who are studying or working in graduate level math departments is: Are there any specific (number or name of) graduate level courses that a student should have done to be accepted in top math schools for PhD? I know that many things other than the transcript would be considered by admission committee. But just looking at the transcript of an undergraduate, which graduate level math courses would the committee like to see in applicant's transcript?

I am a professor in a top ten math dept. in the US.  I have sat on admissions committees for many years, and talked to colleagues at other top tier institutions about admissions.

First: admissions is not done by a "bureacracy", or "officers".  It is done by some subset of the math dept. faculty, who read the applications, including the letters, the GRE scores, the transcripts, and the essay, and then rank order them.

Second: To get to a top institution, high GRE scores are essential.  These don't guarantee admission by any means, but if someone can't get high scores on this exam, it calls into question their understanding of all the basic undergrad math they've learnt.   It's true that different schools (and different faculty members, even at a given school) place different weights on this exam, but doing well on it is something you have some control over in the admissions process (by preparing well), so it makes sense to do so.

Your GPA in your math courses is also very important.  Presumably you are doing your best in your courses, and getting as high a GPA as possible.  So there is no real magic to this; you just have to work hard at learning math.

Third: Assuming that your GPA and GRE scores put you in the ball-park of being a credible candidate for admission, people will read your letters carefully.  So you want to get letter writers who can write about your achievements and abilities in as much detail as possible.

Fourth: No-one expects undergrads to have done real research; REU experience certainly helps, but one main reason for this is that it provides a way to meet professors who may get to know you quite well, and so can (hopefully) write a strong letter for you.

Fifth: Graduate courses certainly help, if your grade in them is good and meaningful.  It is often the case that undergrads in grad courses will be given somewhat inflated grades out of sympathy on the part of the instructor.  This makes sense from the point of view of not destroying someone's GPA because they took a challenging class, but an admissions committee will look for evidence that the undergrad really did master the material in the grad classes they have taken.  One way to show this is to have the instructor of the graduate class write a (hopefully positive) letter.

Again, different schools have different expectations about what incoming students will know.  At the absolute top places (Harvard, Princeton) essentially all the incoming students will know essentially all the material in basic graduate courses (measure theory and functional analysis, basic algebraic topology, basic commutative algebra, and so on).  At other places this is not the case, but most incoming students at most top schools will be familiar with a reasonable percentage of what would be regarded as basic graduate math.

Sixth:
In terms of preparation for grad school, writing a senior thesis is great.  It teaches you about a topic in much more depth than you would normally investigate it, normally leads to learning some grad level math, and also again builds a closer connection with a professor (your advisor) who can then hopefully write a good letter for you.   And at a more fundamental level, since mathematicians spend most of their time writing about mathematics, this is pretty good preparation for that.

As far as applications to grad school go (rather than as preparation for succeeding in graduate school, where as I've said it's great), my sense is that the real pay-off for writing a senior thesis is the letter from the advisor.

Since this is a bit harder to quantify than entries on a transcript, often students are advised to take grad classes rather than write a senior thesis (if this option exists).  I can see why this advice is given, but I do think writing a senior thesis (if you put your heart into it) is an invaluable mathematical experience.

A related option is to do independent study on a topic with a faculty member. Again, from the pragmatic point of view this doesn't do much for your transcript, but the benefits for your mathematical education are similar to those of writing a senior thesis, if you have a good advisor and take the independent study seriously.

Finally: Remember that there are lots graduate schools in mathematics.  What I've written above more-or-less reflects admissions experience at top ten institutions, but obviously there are many more very good math programs out there, and they are not all as competitive as the top ten.

So overall, the most sensible thing to do is to work on learning as much math as you can as well as you can, and interacting with your professors enough that they know what you're learning and can write about it.  I think the only things that are really worth thinking about in terms of "gaming" the admissions process are attending an REU or doing independent study or writing a senior thesis, something that gives you a chance to interact with a professor, and a specific topic, in more depth; and making sure you study well for the GRE before you take it.


How do hiring/promotion/grant committees assess individual applicants who've authored papers with huge teams While reading this slightly-too-snarky question, I was reminded of a slightly more serious question I’ve wondered about from time to time: how does being one of the 1000+ authors on a paper like the LIGO discovery or one of the CERN collaborations influence your career?  I’m used being in a field (mathematics) where most papers have between one and three authors (I’ve written with three separate four-person teams, and people have often considered this a bit exotic), so when reading a CV, one can reasonably ascribe most of the “credit” for a paper to any of the authors.

If you’re in a situation where you have to judge the research output of a scientist (like a hiring or tenure committee), how does seeing a paper from an enormous collaboration change your thinking?  What do you if you have make a decision between candidates whose publication lists are identical (due them being in the same collaboration)?

There's generally a way of assessing your contribution to the project even if it's enormous. So even if you're 29th author, if you were the senior manager of say particle detection and analysis, that's knowable. And they'll have a letter of recommendation from the project supervisor detailing your role.

And people on the committee (especially the person's department head) if they think you're great will advocate for you, the importance of your role, and the importance of your contribution to it.


Malfunctioning social media buttons on a conference website The website of a conference that will take place soon (next month), offers social media buttons that should redirect the website visitor to the corresponding social media page or account, but when I click the Facebook button I get redirected to "Sorry, this page isn't available" and when I click the twitter button I get redirected to "Sorry, that page doesn't exist!" messages.

Is this normal?

I wouldn't say this is normal. That said, it need not raise a red flag or suggest that this would be a predatory conference or something you must stay away from. It doesn't inspire confidence, but it doesn't need to hurt confidence much either.

This sounds like a relatively minor issue and the kind of thing that is easy for the person setting up the conference website to miss in testing. Keep in mind that many prestigious conference have websites set up by academics volunteering to do so as part of service to their academic community, who are very busy, and for whom building robust websites is not their full time job.

There are predatory and sham conferences. If the conference is archival, check out Beall's List of potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers and search around the web for information on the conference.

Email the organizers to tell them about the issue. You might even learn something about the credibility of the conference by who responds, and how.


Is it ethical to use a textbook required for a class that was easily found online? I am taking an online class that requires a textbook to be purchased. I have found the book through my first simple search using the Google search engine. The website where I found the book seems to be foreign and not related to the original authors. Is it ethical for me to use the free version that I have easily found online and not purchase the book?
Edit: I think there is a valid distinction between resources found on controversial websites like SciHub and the Google search engine. Furthermore, my intentions were to purchase the book before I stumbled upon it in the first few search results.

If you're asking whether this will be seen as ethical by a university administration, the answer is no. The law probably lines up with the ethics that fall into the professional norms of the university admin.
However.
The money that the public pays for textbooks does not flow into the pockets of the people that generated or summarized that knowledge, so the system is far from fair.
I had a professor who actually told us to download his book illegally if we could get it, and when we pointed out he was the author, he said he made negligible returns on the sale.
Which gets us to the professional norms of your field. Some fields are big supporters of free access to knowledge. In these fields, the arxiv and scihub are popular. Downloading anything illegally if it's academic knowledge would generally be accepted as ethical within the professional norms of those fields.
Personally, I believe academic knowledge should be much freer than it is, and everyone should have access to the work we do. I'm not studying physics because I want to get rich. I study this because it's beautiful and it's important, and because these are fundamental questions for humanity, and answers should be shared with humanity. We all benefit from living in a society that's informed about itself and the world around it.


How does having a PhD affect your chance of getting into a second PhD UK university in a different field UK university? My friend has taken a unusual route in academia. She first did a bachelor and PhD in electrical engineering, fully funded by her scholarship. However, she told me that she has little interest in engineering, and only did it to please her parents. Her real interest is in art history. Hence, two months after completing her PhD in engineering, she took up a masters in art history in the UK, which is her dream. She did very well in her masters, and started applying for a PhD in the UK earlier this year. As of now, she has received multiple offers to study for a PhD in these universities. But, she has little success in obtaining scholarship for her PhD in art history.
I cannot help but feel a bit 'unfair'? I know many students who have spent a lot more time taking art history classes, such as those who did a bachelor and then a masters, but cannot manage to get into PhD programs. Hence, I have a few questions on the process that the UK universities have in selecting PhD students. Are the UK universities quite relax in choosing PhD students who have their own means of funding (assuming that they can get a supervisor there who is willing to supervise them)? Does the pandemic causes the UK universities to relax their section of incoming PhD students? Does having a PhD in a separate field made my friend easier to be accepted into a PhD in the UK university?

... she has little success in obtaining scholarship for her PhD in art
history... I cannot help but feel a bit 'unfair'?

Overall, I would interpret your friend's lack of success in getting funding for her second PhD as tacit rejections from these universities. An offer of a PhD without any money attached is not really an offer at all (see e.g. Is it worth self-funding a PhD to attend a top 10 university? and especially Fomite's answer to that question for more information on this point).
Note: there is a subtlety here about the type of self-funding. If a student has won an external scholarship or grant, or has some money from their own government (or maybe a national museum or gallery in the case of art history), that student would be very attractive and likely get many offers for a PhD.

Are the UK universities quite relax in choosing PhD students who have
their own means of funding (assuming that they can get a supervisor
there who is willing to supervise them)?

No. If you don't have the potential to do good research then it's likely you won't get an offer to study for a PhD, even if you're as rich as Croesus. Since your friend has been offered PhD positions, then the universities clearly think she is capable, but would rather award their funding to someone else (see my answer to your last question below for why).

Does the pandemic causes the UK universities to relax their section of
incoming PhD students?

It could be that there are fewer applicants for PhD positions, as people may be preferring to go into a more stable career than academia at the moment, or international students may be put off by how the pandemic has been handled in the UK. However, I would expect that there are still more than enough candidates to make the selection competitive and hence no relaxation or lowering of standards on the part of the universities. Furthermore, since PhD funding is decided years in advance, I don't think that we have seen the effects of the pandemic on that yet.

Does having a PhD in a separate field made my friend easier to be
accepted into a PhD in the UK university?

It's possible. Offers for a PhD are generally based on the research potential of the candidate, and obviously someone who already holds a PhD is capable of doing research. However, this clearly counts against them when it comes to funding. Most supervisors/departments would rather fund someone who doesn't have a PhD than someone who does -- who's already "had their turn", so to speak. This question and its answers discuss why doing two PhDs is generally not a good idea: Is doing two PhDs a good path?.
A final point to consider is that funding in art history is likely far scarcer than in engineering, especially in the UK where the government has placed heavy emphasis on funding STEM research over humanities in recent years.


Extreme nervousness during exam period I'm currently a master student in computer science. I study at a school where we have only one take for the exam. I study really hard, yet I am never able to feel confident enough when the exams approach. I am nervous that somehow things will go bad and it only makes me perform worse. I tried studying weeks in advance and really going over all of the materials to feel sure that I know it, but it does not help me. I feel I have no power over what happens in an exam and I feel that I only have one chance that could lead to an ugly mark on my resume. How do I reduce the stress and the nervousness?

Nervousness in the face of uncertainty is normal. Ask any astronaut sitting on the launch pad. What you experience is pretty common. Overconfidence can also be a hinderance.

You seem to have good study habits ("weeks in advance"). But note that cramming the night before an exam is counterproductive for nearly everyone. If you are tired, so is your mind. And it will be focused only on what you studied last, rather than having a more general and nuanced sense.

One "trick" is to do something active in the last couple of hours before a big exam. Anything to get your blood flowing and let your mind rest. Even deep breathing as a calming exercise has benefits.

I also have a bit of a mantra that I use at the start of an important activity, such as an exam. "Some things are beyond my control. I can only do my best."


Possible contents of a risk-assessment matrix for a grant proposal I am post-doc from biological sciences writing a grant proposal. One of the sections of the application is dedicated to risk assessment of the given project. There were no further instructions.

I can think of very general risks and their solutions. For example:

  Experiment failed. → Troubleshoot; try alternative method.
  Manuscript publication delayed. → Get help from supervisor or grants office.
  Insignificant results. → Discuss with experts; try again!

Is this the kind of risk assessment funding agencies (like NIH, Welcome Trust, or EU) are looking for? Can you suggest some extra points (research or managerial) which I can consider here?

There are two classes of risks that are typically considered in grant-writing:

Programmatic risks that the money will be wasted because something doesn't go as you hoped.
Safety and ethics risks based on the specific contents on your research.

The second is generally covered under a checklist of declarations regarding specific topics (e.g., "human subjects research," "dual-use agents of concern," "vertebrate animal research"), rather than general "risks", so I'm going to write my answer addressing the first class.

With regards to programmatic risks, the big issue here is research always involves the unexpected, most often emerging in the form of things not working as well as you thought they would.  Progress might be slow, effects might be small, vital supplies might become unavailable, things just might not work, etc.

What grant reviewers are generally looking for here, then, is evidence of clear thinking about how to handle setbacks of this sort.  You really don't want to give money to somebody with no "plan B", and then 3 months into the project something goes wrong and they end up just frittering away the rest of the money banging their head against the same wall.

How I recommend assessing risks, then, is to sit down with a your project plan and asking yourself the following questions:

For each step in the plan, what materials/people/facilities/information is needed before I can begin the step? What happens if they aren't available as expected?
For each step in the plan, what does "failure" look like? How many different ways can it fail?
Which of these problems are most likely to endanger the overall goals of the proposal?
For all of the "important" problems, what is the plan B for how to ensure money is spent in a worthwhile manner if they are encountered?

Doing this assessment may also cause you to reorganize your plan: sponsors often like to see the most "critical path" or high-risk work up front, so that the most significant and productive problems can be encountered sooner rather than later (and the project terminated if necessary).


Do most customers choose predatory publishers knowingly? In this comment, it was claimed:

  Predatory publishers thrive because when you apply for a job or a grant, few read your papers. They check the papers you pinpoint and the number of publcations. That's where these publishers step on and that's why people choose them. Not because they don't know. Of course there might be a few accidentally doing it, like the OP in this question, but most of the people who are in academia for a while select them only to increase faster their publication list.

By contrast, I cannot remember a single case of somebody reporting their experience with such publisher on this very site that submitted a paper to a predatory publisher knowingly (except for exposing them). Now, there is no denying that there is a strong bias here since people who intentionally choose a predatory publisher are less likely to admit it or ask questions here.

So, I am curious: Is there any data or good argument to support the claim that people who publish with predatory publishers are aware that they are not publishing with a regular scientific publisher?

There is some circumstantial evidence against the claim that most people who publish with predatory publishers are aware that they are not publishing with a regular scientific publisher.

Many authors of papers published in predatory journals are inexperienced with academic publication. From [1]:

  The majority of authors who publish in predatory journals have no other publications, whereas the second largest group consists of authors with fewer than five journal publications elsewhere; very few authors have published more than 10 articles. In contrast, the histogram reveals that group 2 authors, those who publish in OA journals that have a robust review process and subsequently rejected Bohannon's false submission, generally have a stronger publication record. With the exception of a few new authors, most group 2 authors have published journal articles previously; in fact, some authors have published more than 30 articles.

(Group-1 journals are open-access journals with low-quality or no peer review; group-2 journals are open-access journals that have more rigorous peer-review process than the journals in group 1. All are biomedical-science journals.)
Many prospective authors are unfamiliar with predatory journals and unaware of predatory practices in the academic publishing industry.

In a survey of 145 medical and veterinary science participants in a scientific writing workshop [2]:

  Thirty-four of 142 (23.9%) respondents were aware of the DOAJ; 7/143 (4.8%) were aware of Beall’s list, 33/143 (23.0%) were aware of the term “predatory journal”, and 24/142 (16.9%) were aware of the Science article about predatory journals.

In another (very small) survey of U.S.-based authors who published in criminal-justice journals on Beall’s list [3]:

  Just under half (44%; 4 respondents) of the respondents had heard of the “Scholarly Open Access List” and one-third of the respondents had heard of the term “Predatory Journal.” Furthermore, all but one of the respondents was not aware that they had published an article in a journal associated with the predatory journal list. One respondent questioned the accuracy of their association with a predatory journal, and stated

    … should not be on the list. They had more referees than any other journal I’ve pursued and I’m [the] author of 20 peer reviewed papers (sic).

References:

[1]: Xia J, Harmon JL, Connolly KG, Donnelly RM, Anderson MR, Howard HA. Who publishes in “predatory” journals?. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. 2015 Jul 1;66(7):1406-17. DOI: 10.1002/asi.23265

[2]: Christopher MM, Young KM. Awareness of “Predatory” open-access journals among prospective veterinary and medical authors attending scientific writing workshops. Frontiers in Veterinary Science. 2015;2. DOI: 10.3389/fvets.2015.00022

[3]: Noga-Styron KE, Olivero JM, Britto S. Predatory Journals in the Criminal Justices Sciences: Getting our Cite on the Target. Journal of Criminal Justice Education. 2016 Jul 8:1-8. DOI: 10.1080/10511253.2016.1195421


Two authors with same name – multiple author citations I'm formatting a paper right now and there are two authors with the surname "Moran". I know that the usual way of going about that is to add the initial to each citation (J. Moran 2015; D. Moran 2014). But what is the standard way of doing that if one of the authors is also part of a three-author citation (e.g. Peters, (D.) Moran and Seegers)? Does the initial of the Moran that is referred to here also need to be included? Or is it unnecessary since it is clear from the two other names which work is referenced?
I'm using Chicago author-date style (16th edition).

Not sure about Chicago, but the APA Style says: "Never include initials for second or subsequent authors in in-text citations."


Is it possible to retrieve easily all the Nature papers featured the cover since 1950? Is there a way to read efficiently old papers? For example, to read all the Science and Nature cover papers since 1950?

How do you read old/fundamental literature?

If you are researching a specific area (doing a lit search) then your university library and an academic librarian is a good place to start. Libraries normally have access to such things and can get copies of papers. The librarians know how to go about it and can even help you manage a broader search.

All you really need is some specific idea of what you are after. A citation in a recent paper is an excellent start. Even if your own university doesn't have direct access, they likely have associations that they can work through to obtain what you want.

There was a time, pre internet, when this was the primary way of doing academic research.

I hope I've interpreted your need correctly.


rate of H-1B audits at universities An assistant professor I know at a leading US research university just received a visit from someone representing the "Fraud Detection and National Security" branch of USCIS, who was doing a random H-1B audit. The USCIS agent asked many detailed questions about the number of hours the professor spends in the classroom, the number of hours spent in office hours, salary, education, and so on, and took photos of the professor's office. The agent claimed that these random H-1B inspections happen regularly and are designed to find fraudulent applicants.

I have been in academia for over a decade and this is the first time anyone has told me of such a visit. The timing seems curious, to say the least. I am wondering if these random occasional visits have been happening for a long time, and it's just a coincidence that the one that I heard about occurs just as the new US government is beginning to implement radically different immigration policies, or if this is part of a new focus on H-1B visa holders. Any knowledge of the situation or further anecdotal evidence of recent visits might be useful.

This is known as the "Administrative Site Visit and Verification Program" (USCIS site link) and it's not a response to the Trump administration; the site was last updated on 2014. Not every H1B applicant will be visited. So, chance is you'll find more "never heard of it" than "oh yeah."

And I highly doubt if there has been an increase in rate of visits in the last two weeks since the new presidency; this kind of measures seems too much of a finesse compared to what had been passed down from the executives.


How to find the number of citations for each version of an arXiv article? I wonder how to to find the number of citations for each version of an arXiv article. (E.g., given an arXiv article, 100 citations with no version, 31 citations for version 1, 56 citations for version 2, etc.)

A simple procedure would be to search for the arxiv identifier including the version number within articles citing the preprint in question. The arxiv identifier is explained here: Understanding the arXiv identifier.

Roughly as follows:

Find the article in a Google Scholar result list.
The entry usually has a link "Cited by: x". Follow this links to see the papers that cite the preprint in question.
It is now possible to limit further searches to the current result list. Do that and search for the arxiv identifier with version number added.

A quick example:

The paper arXiv:1207.1158 is cited roughly 609 times as of today: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=4690497069002627251&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=de.

Searching for "arXiv:1207.1158v1" within the citing articles yields 4 results: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=arXiv%3A1207.1158v1&btnG=&hl=de&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0%2C5&cites=4690497069002627251&scipsc=1, while searching for "arXiv:1207.1158v1" yields 6 results: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=arXiv%3A1207.1158v2&btnG=&hl=de&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0%2C5&cites=4690497069002627251&scipsc=1.

As could be expected, the difficulty is that most papers don't include the arxiv identifier with the version number when citing an arxiv preprint.


Is it considered cheating if you post assignment questions on a site but no one answered it If you post an assignment question on a 3rd party site. But got no answers from it.
Is that still considered cheating?

At my university, the answer is definitely yes. The rules here clearly state that even the attempt to cheat is misconduct (e.g. bringing a device that is capable of cheating to an exam is considered cheating even if it not used/touched).

(However, if asking a question about your assignment in some forum is cheating, depends on the rules for your course/institution. In my courses, this would not be forbidden for homework assignments, for example.)


Advertising a symposium A group of PhD students and young researchers (where I belong) is preparing a symposium, a single day meeting, for other young researchers, PhD, master and students.

I don't have any previous experience with advertising this kind of events and I haven't received other advertisement, to an event similar to this one, than a place and a date with a link for more info. However, this was from a better known organization (and I get to know this organization through a friend) and our organization is not well known so I doubt this way would work to attract new people.

Which is the best way to increase registrations to the symposium? What information would you like to know before going for a registration or looking for more information?

Some important information I thought to include in a leaflet/ad:

Place, dates, duration (done)
Where to register and how much does it cost (done)
Key speakers (At the moment we don't have confirmation of all the invited speakers)
Sponsors and support (done)
...

There's a similar question question for a similar event, but I am in charge of advertising.

Some suggestions for improving participation:

Recruit two to three faculty members to serve on a panel to judge presentations. The top three (or four or five) presentations receive prizes. Include this on the flyer.
Every participant gets a certificate of participation.
Announce a recognized name as a keynote speaker, if possible. Not a big deal, if it's not possible.

Then, mail the flyer to the graduate program directors (of the relevant departments) at the nearby universities and ask them to encourage their students to participate in the symposium. Also contact the graduate student organizations at these universities.


When and how did journal publications start to have such an important role in evaluating researchers? Wikipedia says that Newton published the laws in 1687 on Principia Mathematica. And in another page that:

  The first recorded editorial pre-publication peer-review occurred in 1665 by the founding editor of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg

However is unclear to me when and how publishing in highly reputable journals has become so important, in particular for judging a researcher's past research success. (For example, for evaluating researchers for purposes of awarding funding.)

I assume that it all started as a way to filter or deprioritize low quality research proposals or researcher, but that would make for other question maybe. When and how did journals start to have such an important role in science for evaluating researchers?

Widespread peer review in journals is a relatively recent phenomenon. Famously, Einstein and Rosen wrote an incorrect paper arguing that gravitational waves don't exist, which was rejected by a reviewer for Physical Review. The rejection made Einstein angry, and he wrote:

Dear Sir,
We (Mr. Rosen and I) had sent you our manuscript for publication and had not authorized you to show it to specialists before it is printed. I see no reason to address the—in any case erroneous—comments of your anonymous expert. On the basis of this incident I prefer to publish the paper elsewhere.
Respectfully,
P.S. Mr. Rosen, who has left for the Soviet Union, has authorized me to represent him in this matter.

This was in 1936, and Einstein had already published many papers by that point. It appears from his response that peer review was not yet common at that time.
(Source: "Einstein versus the Physical Review" in Physics Today.)
Googling this I stumbled across a blog post by Michael Nielsen who links to some historical papers on the growth of peer review that may interest you.


What is a teaching prep in terms of teaching load? I am new to this job search thing, and I keep seeing the teaching load description along with something called "preps," what is this?

For reference, I am a Ph.D. student in mathematics in the U.S. looking for mostly teaching positions.

A "prep" is an individual different course you are teaching.  If you are teaching 2 different sections of the same course the same semester, that counts as only 1 "prep" but counts twice towards your "teaching load".

Given not-too-large class sizes, teaching 4 courses with only 2 preps might be less work than teaching 3 courses with 3 preps, since presumably you don't have to prepare twice to teach the same class twice.


The structure of a multiple-study proposal/thesis/manuscript? I'm going to write a proposal for my PhD thesis. I'm familiar with the outline of a proposal or thesis, but my thesis will involve two quite separate studies (like multiple-study articles). I want to know how should it be structured.  It's going to be done about successful aging. It's a mixed method study. Actually studies are as follows:

Choosing appropriate sample
A qualitative research on the sample
A quantitative research aiming to generalize the results of Study 2.

I appreciate an example outline or an actual proposal/thesis.

I had a similar situation. My thesis proposal included three different studies.

Obviously, you have a subject and both studies fall under that subject. This means you should have one introduction concerning this subject, one set of objectives and hypotheses. Personnally, it's in the method section that I would explain that I'm going to test those hypotheses using two research methods.

After that, it depends on your institution rules for thesis proposal. Just remember that your PhD is not about the experiment or studies you're doing. It's about answering a specific question, testing some hypotheses.The method you use is secondary (in my opinion).


After 3 Years of PhD - problems with University registration - Fight or apply for another PhD The Main problem is university registration as the process is vital to enroll as a PhD student, so that I can submit my thesis and defend it. Administrative issues here in Germany have prevented me from completing the registration process because I am an overseas student and some issues to do with deadlines.

Some good news are have published three papers as first author in leading journals and written the thesis work as well.

Is it a good idea to dump this registration process and take another PhD or should I apply for industry jobs? Note that I am not committed to staying in academia.

For the benefit of the wider audience, a little background into the German PhD system is in order.

Researchers after the master's level are hired as Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter (researchers, literally "academic personnel"), and work for the individual research groups as half- or full-time employees, with the commensurate salary and benefits.
In parallel, students are expected to register as doctoral students (Zulassung). Such a process will typically involve some classwork for international students, particularly those studying in engineering fields (and those with degrees other than the area they're now studying). One of the forms to be filled out in this process is the Betreuungsbestätigung, which is a commitment by the signer to be the candidate's advisor.

Normally, deadlines are deadlines; however, if there are mitigating circumstances, many departments will allow the advisor to petition for exceptions to be made. Given that you've made good research progress, it would seem reasonable that your advisor would want to ensure that you get your PhD. So, before doing anything else, talk to your advisor.


Publishing at a venue without ACM/IEEE brand? My PhD Supervisor asked me to submit one of my work at an upcoming International Conference. He is amongst the program committee members. I was having a look at its committee members, the Advisory committee etc. It boasts of researchers from reputed Universities- with some of them quite well established (I know some of them personally). Further, the conference is happening for the 6th time.

However I found it quite strange that they are organizing the conference without any branding of IEEE/ACM etc. behind them. The proceedings of the conference will be compiled on a CD-ROM. This obviously means that if my paper gets accepted there, it is not going to be archived with IEEE-xplore or ACM digital library. Google may index it because they may put the PDFs on the conference's website, but that PDF exists only as long as the website for the conference exists.

The question in my mind: Is such a publication bad for a PhD student? If I put this work on my CV, nobody can find it on the Internet (except on my personal website or archived on arXiv). Then where is the credibility that work was actually peer-reviewed and published at an International Conference?

And what about copyright issues? The website says nothing of it. These are a group of researchers from different parts of the world coming together to organize a conference. There is no organization like ACM or IEEE behind them. So I am assuming that the issue of copyright transfers may never arise. Does that mean I can submit this work to other venues as well (since exclusive copyright are never transferred)?

Truly speaking, the only reasons I am going for it is because (1) my Supervisor wants me to, and (2) selected high-quality papers will get the opportunity to submit extended versions to special issue of a SCI journal (which is great for me!).

p.s.: In case it matters: until the past year, it was being organized as a 'workshop'. This is the first time they are calling it a conference and have a Journal extension.

p.p.s: My field is Computer Science.

Not being affiliated with an organization such as the IEEE or ACM is not, on its own, a bad sign. For example, what is currently the IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity has decided to end its affiliation with the IEEE and go solo; the Symposium on Computational Geometry likewise just left ACM. STACS is also unaffiliated.

It's not great if the proceedings are only distributed on CD. On the other hand, if you're already going to be preparing a journal version (and you should!), that will completely supersede any conference version, anyway. I would never read a conference version ("extended abstract") of a paper if a full version was available: in my area (theoretical CS), the conference version generally has the proofs missing and the peer review isn't very rigorous.

STACS publishes proceedings through Dagstuhl, which is basically a computer science conference centre in Germany and has close links to DBLP. In this case, copyright is retained by the authors. Note that, regardless of who owns the copyright, most CS conferences won't accept papers which have either appeared at another conference with published proceedings or have been submitted to such a conference. You don't get to double-dip your papers.


How do I create a useful learning objective? I am preparing a lesson plan and I unable to write objective of this session in a correct way.

My question is how do we state objectives of sessions such as:

1- Avoiding common mistakes in Email
2- Avoiding common mistakes when meeting someone for the first time
3- Avoiding common mistakes in writing

They all have one objective and that is  how to avoid common mistakes(and save yourself from jeopardizing your career, for example in case of emails).

I want to understand how do we present this objective to the audience or students.

My attempt is something like this:

At the end of the session the participants would be able to understand how to avoid common mistakes in email communication that can lead to serious issues

But I am not very please with this statement. Really appreciate your help in drafting a good objective phrase.

Disclaimer: Mostly opinions.

First. I'd suggest perhaps one level down in terms of the verb choice. What the course will likely do is to introduce an array of possible mistakes in these activities so that audience can avoid committing them. So, the objectives should not be "avoiding" but rather along the line of "familiarize with", "able to list", or "be introduced to a survey of." Whether to avoid or not is really not the takeaway.

The general tip of writing objectives is to think: "If I am going to assess whether my audiences have learned my messages, what are the aspects I will be testing?" Very likely, you are not going to give them a mistake-prone situation and see if they avoid it in real life; but perhaps provide a list of scenarios and see if they can identify which one is likely going to cause a mistake, and which is a safer/more professional approach. In other words, you'll be testing their knowledge and attitude, and not their behavior after class. Yet. your current objectives are about their behaviors.

Second, perhaps add some specificity. E-mail for what? Talking to family members? Someone whose pets just died? Business? Potential dates? If someone just picked up this one page of objectives, is there enough information for the person to decide if he/she should consider your course offer?

Third, consider providing a clear set of general benefits. After learning all these objectives, what will likely happen? Will they have a better commands in communicating with people in professional setting? In other words, what are the aspirations of your course, that you won't be teaching directly, but the audience may be able to realize that if they follow your advice?

Meanwhile, beware of over-promising. Communication is at least a two-way process and even your audience did everything "right," mistake may still happen. I'd suggest perhaps more neutral wording such as "achieve high level of clarity..." so as to "minimize potential miscommunication or mistakes."


When do I use a footnote in a thesis and when do I use parenthesis for extra information? I have one question for my masters thesis. If I have A, which is also known as B or C, can I write:

  A (also known as B or C)

(or similar) or can I use a foonote like this:

  A¹

  ¹ Also known as B or C

Or more in general: When do I add extra information (like synonyms) between parenthesis, and when do I add them as footnote?

This is mostly about the reader's flow. Something that is parenthesized is something you expect the reader to actively read, but you're signalling that it's secondary information. The main drawback to parentheses is that if the text in them becomes too long, the reader has to work very hard to remember the main point you're making. You're essentially talking about a lot of unimportant stuff while you have an unfinished, important sentence going. So make sure you put only short, simple things in parentheses.

If you put something in a footnote, you're signalling that the reader should skip it on first reading and they should only investigate if something is unclear, or if it's a second reading and they need all the details. The drawback to footnotes is that they are often more tantalising than they should be. While the reader should ignore them, they are too curious, and break their concentration to look up the footnote. This pulls them out of the text for something they were supposed to ignore.

On the whole, try to avoid both as much as you can. In your example, ie. this method is also known as X, parentheses should be fine and a footnote is probably overkill. However, you could also consider finishing your main point first, and moving the parenthesized statement to the end of the paragraph as a full sentence. That way the reader can finish absorbing the primary information unencumbered by details, and gloss over the aka's once the hard work is finished.


Should I do another Master's in CS to take courses covering recent developments in my field relevant to my work? I already have a C.S. Master's degree with computer vision experience, but this was before deep learning. It's been 4 years since I've been out of school and most companies want engineers with deep learning experience.
I'm thinking about keeping my current job and doing another Master's degree part time because there are courses that I want to take. What do you guys think of having two Master's in computer science?

You finally want to convince a potential employer that you know enough about hot topic ABC (in your current case "deep learning") to get the job. Best thing is personal hands-on industryt experience with the topic. If I were this potential employer, I'd as well consider someone who made significant contributions in a relevant open-source project.
As the hot topics in software change quite frequently over time (I've been in the industry for 30+ years and seen an awful lot of different hypes), you can't continue to add more and more Master's degrees - or do you want to still attend university MS programs when being 50+ years old, and finally retire with a collection of maybe ten different computer science MS degrees?
My recommendation:

You got an MS in computer science already, and that shows your basic competence. No need to repeat that with a slightly different specialization.
Acquire the necessary knowledge on the interesting hot topic ABC, maybe by attending a course, or by reading online materials or whatever you prefer. (And continue to do so with topics of interest all over your career.)
Depending on the country / culture where you seek a job, get a certificate documenting your knowledge.
Find a project where you can apply that knowledge, either in your current job, or volunteering in an open-source project.
Be quick. Don't waste years of time studying before you apply for a job. By the time you're ready, there will be a different hot topic, and topic-ABC specialists aren't relevant any more. As long as the topic is really hot, there won't be enough experienced specialists available, so the industry will also accept a lot of training-on-the-job candidates.


Question regarding post-doc salary and moving expense (US) I'm a 2nd-year post-doc at a US university on the West coast, and I'm currently seeking my next position. I have had interviews at two universities on the East coast.  Because I received positive feedback and my interests align well with those positions, I believe that they will be offered.

Here're my question about the salary:

Do they (university and PI) usually consider the 2 years of my previous experience in my current school? Does US university faculties usually consider the previous experience?
If they do consider experience, then will my salary be calculated as for a 3rd-year postdoc?
If they don't consider experience, then how could I request a raise to 3rd-year post-doc level? Is it OK to negotiate regarding this issue?
I know that PIs (university professors) usually do not offer the moving expense for new post-docs. But is there any chance that the university might offer support with moving expenses?

I have never negotiated my salary before. There was no choice when I was Ph.D., and the first post-doc position offered to me was quite generous. So these kinds of things are totally new to me.

In my experience, the particulars of a postdoc position vary more widely than academic jobs at any other level -- so much so that it may not be helpful to speak in generalities.

I have direct experience with (some) postdoc positions in mathematics in the United States and Canada.  For these postdoc positions, the salary was the same for all years (usually 2-3) of the position.  Moreover this salary was a standard one given to all postdocs of the same "kind" (roughly, the same funding source) and was not negotiated in the cases known to me.  However, if I remember correctly, the last time I brought this up on this site someone else told me of a North American math postdoc position that did include annual raises.

Again in my (relatively limited) experience, someone who does a second postdoc is not "senior" in any positive way to someone who is on their first postdoc -- if anything, there may be a mild perception that someone who is doing their second postdoc was not successful in landing a tenure track job.  But these things may be different in your field.

  how can I 'politely' ask them to raise the salary according to 3rd year post-doc level?

The way to ask politely is...to ask, politely.  Namely, don't ask them to do it, but inquire into the possibility of doing it.  There is really no harm in asking about a salary bump, moving expenses or whatever -- if it's not on the table, they'll tell you.  If it is, you can explore it.  As long as you don't make hard demands or counteroffers, they should be happy to talk to you about it.