Should I address my professors by first name in emails if my peers are doing so already? I'm starting a grad school and I'm used to start my emails to all my professors with "Dear Professor Smith", even though they respond with their first name at the end of their emails ("Best, John").
I noticed that the guys I'm starting the studies with are using "Hi John" in their emails. I don't think they know professors better than I do.
I don't want to be too familiar, but neither be the only who keeps this distance. Should I switch to "Hi John"?

In the US-influenced culture of international Academica, closing an email with the first name can most of the time be interpreted as implicit invitation to interact, at least in further email communication, on a first-name basis.
So yes, most likely you can address your professors by first name in emails. Not because your peers are doing so, but because your professors are inviting you to. For other communication, I would just ask: "Is it OK if I call you Jane, or do you prefer Dr. Doe"?


Discussing authorship/sole authorship with supervisor This is a borderline IPS question, but I feel the academic aspects will be more relevant.

One year ago I switched supervisor. Went to him with a formulated project (but no concrete results yet) and I am now at a stage where I should discuss authorship, which I haven't done before. This supervisor provided much needed guidance and support in meetings, but I am personally of the opinion that I should be the sole author of the paper, though this is obviously a grey area.

My question is then two-fold:

Does his contribution qualify him objectively (i.e. in most academic situation) as a co author ?
I have a hard time telling whether his contribution is enough for him to ask me to include him as a co-author.

On my part I have:

Formulated the core idea around which the paper revolves
Found a fitting mathematical formalism
Run all numerics
Ideated and wrote all mathematical proofs required

On his part he has:

Guided me in what could be considered an interesting result in the field (e.g. this would be an interesting statement, can you show that it is true?)
Guided me in constructing a coherent story around my idea compatible with the field

On the one hand, this paper would have never been born without his guidance. On the other hand I believe is contribution to the content is not big. I would like your thoughts on this, so that I can ponder the various sides of this and be ready if a discussion arises.

How do I discuss this with him?
I have a feeling he won't ask me for co-authorship, but I might be wrong and indeed he might expect it as a counterpart to the time he dedicated to me.

I would like to bring up the topic in a way that recognizes the value of his support and express my opinion on authorship without causing conflict (with the person that will in all likelihood write me references for the future)?

One way I thought this could go is to just ask something like: "I will be writing up. Do you think such and such journal would be a good outlet for this work? Do you think we should author this together?"

I believe this sends the message: I am somewhat open/uncertain about  co-authorship, what do you think? and leaves the initiative on the topic to him.

Some clarification : sole authorship is considered a good thing in my field, I am at a loss in assessing how much.

Also, I am responsible for my own funding which comes from a scholarship, none of my supervisor had anything to do with it.

Finally, my previous supervisor has explicitly stated he wouldn't require authorship on this (saying he didn't contribute enough).

Note: things may vary by field. Single-author publications has never been an important metric in any field I've ever worked in, but can't say for sure about math.

I think your advisor should be a co-author. Here are some things to consider:

Reputation. Even if you did good work, the paper will get more circulation with an established researcher's name on it. So, you probably want him to have authorship, though you should of course be first author.

His contributions. As you say the project "would never have been born without his guidance." It sounds like he did not contribute only offhand comments, but actually proposed a line of research and helped you to follow it.

Funding. I'm assuming he funded you to do this research. In itself, this doesn't mean he deserves authorship -- but I suspect that a lot has been going on "behind the scenes" to help you with this work. Grant proposals are a lot of work, and he probably put a bit of thought into your general research area before he even hired you. (This may not apply in your particular case, since the advisor didn't fund you.)

The bar for co-authorship is not so high. I have seen questions on this site where people have been given co-authorship for reviewing the grammar! I think this is ridiculous, but adding your advisor seems altogether appropriate. In particular, you will be first author, so it costs you very little -- and it likely means quite a bit to him. In fact, the old supervisor would have a decent case for being added as yet another author.

Edit: OP has clarified that single-author papers are an important metric in this field. If this is true, the advisor in question surely knows this as well. So, if you want to ask for sole-authorship, you could say something like this:

  I wanted to ask about the authorship for this paper. As you know, single-author papers will be important for my career. So, I wondered if you thought it would be appropriate for me to be the sole author on this paper.

Note, I still think adding your advisor as a co-author would be more appropriate. Perhaps a "compromise" would be to ask the question in a more neutral way, something like:

  I wanted to ask about the authorship for this paper. You obviously made a lot of contributions and maybe it makes sense for you to be a co-author. On the other hand, this paper might be a good chance for me to get a single-author paper, which as you know, I will need for my career. What do you think?


Are you supposed to come up with a thesis problem on your own in math? It seems like every other graduate student I know is working on some problem that their advisor has suggested, and I've just been spending a year reading papers and trying to think of a problem for myself. Is something wrong here? Are you supposed to come up with a thesis problem on your own?

I am only looking for answers which are specific to pure math. I have friends in compsci and various sciences, and their research lives are not similar to mine at all.

Individual background:

I am interested in an area of math which has a similar flavor to the one that my advisor works in, but is quite different. My advisor thinks that this area is a good one to work in and knows of some of the major results, but doesn't know any of the details of the proofs or what people are working on now. I am finding it very hard to come up with good problems on my own. I can come up with ideas for problems, but I cannot judge whether they are interesting to other people who work in this area or feasible at all. I also can't tell for sure whether something has been done before, as I have to rely on mathscinet since I am not an expert in my field and do not have experts to talk to. I think these are the things that an advisor should be able to help with, but right now I feel like I'm just all on my own, even though I meet with my advisor frequently to check in. I also feel like I'm getting behind in graduate school because I still haven't found a single problem to work on after two years.

There's nothing necessarily wrong.  There are different ways to a thesis.  Many advisors expect students to come up with their own problems and others don't.  For certain fields/people this is easier than others, but in general finding good problems is hard and takes time.  Choosing good problems to work on is a large part of being a good mathematician.  Often experts who give problems to students will consult with other experts before giving a thesis problem or before deciding on whether to work on something themselves.

There are many successful mathematicians who wanted to do something in a different area than their advisor.  However, it is a bit riskier, as you seem to realize, for several reasons: it may be hard to find a problem, you want to make sure what you do isn't already known, you may want some perspective/guidance, you want to make sure what you do is interesting, ...

Here are some things you can consider, in no special order:

Look for a secondary advisor.  You should of course ask your advisor what he thinks about this, and he may be able to suggest some people.
Go to conferences/workshops/etc in this area (also local seminars if possible) and meet people and talk to them about ideas.  You shouldn't expect someone to give you a problem, but if you have some general ideas for things to try, they may have valuable specific suggestions.
See if you can visit an expert at another institution.  Again, talk to your advisor about this and perhaps he can make suggestions.
If you know how to do some things, you can just do them and write them up, then send them to experts and ask for feedback (is this known?  is it interesting?).
Do your thesis in your supervisor's area, and then you can consider doing work in this other area later.
At the minimum, talk to your advisor about your concerns about feeling "lost."  That's one of the things they're there for.


How to stop Endnote omitting the year for some references? I am having problems with Endnote outputting a mix of citation styles (or possibly a broken citation style!) in the same document, despite applying the Endnote Frontiers Science style (official, from the Endnote website) throughout. Eg

...feline herpesvirus 1 (Thiry et al.) and terrapene herpesvirus 1-associated pneumonia in Eastern box turtles (Sim et al., 2014)...

and when I look at the final reference list I see that both references look correct and the same eg

Thiry, E., Addie, D., Belak, S., Boucraut-Baralon, C., Egberink, H., Frymus, T., Gruffydd-Jones, T., Hartmann, K., Hosie, M.J., Lloret, A., Lutz, H., Marsilio, F., Pennisi, M.G., Radford, A.D., Truyen, U., and Horzinek, M.C. (2009). Feline herpesvirus infection. ABCD guidelines on prevention and management. J Feline Med Surg 11, 547-555.
Sim, R.R., Norton, T.M., Bronson, E., Allender, M.C., Stedman, N., Childress, A.L., and Wellehan, J.F., Jr. (2014). Identification of a novel herpesvirus in captive Eastern box turtles (Terrapene carolina carolina). Vet Microbiol.

So I am at bit of a loss as to why one reference looks correct (author, year) and the other does not (author).

A few options:

It is possible to exclude the year from an in text citation in Endnote. So I'd check that setting. Right clicking the in-text citation should give you a few options.
Make sure you are showing field codes in Word so that you can confirm that you have actually inserted a citation there. Without field codes it's possible that you have written some text manually.
You may want to explore the style settings in Endnote (e.g., go to edit - output styles in Endnote and select the current Endnote style). There are a whole range of settings that you may need to explore. There might be some rules that you can tweak related to how in text citations display.


Circular References in Papers Is it possible to submit two papers to the same conference which are citing each other?

Both papers were accepted and they are both very related, so I think to cite the papers in each other, when submitting the camera ready version. Is this allowed or is it not a good idea?

This is actually quite common in some fields, for both conference and journal submission, particularly when you have coordinated submission from a number of different participants in a complex project.

The way that I have handled this when I've done so is to have the citations initially as "submitted" and either bundle the other submissions as supplementary information for reviewers (when possible), or with a note saying "available on request" when the venue doesn't support supplementary information.  Another option is to make use of pre-print services like arXiv, though that can violate double-blind review.

Once the papers are accepted, you just change the camera-ready to the final information and the circular reference enters the literature without issue.  It gets more awkward if one paper is accepted and the other is not, but this can be resolved with the help of a pre-print service.


It's been one month since the graduate advisor (also the POI) said will get back to me regarding my grad application, should I send a follow up email? It's been one month since the graduate advisor (also the POI) said will get back to me regarding my grad application, should I send a follow up email or should I just wait? He said in the last email that he is checking something for me and will get back to me as soon as possible, but it's towards the end of March, I am little nervous and worried. I don't want to sound too pushy and impatient since he already said he'll get back to me asap...should I still follow up? if yes, any advice to ask him about the status very politely?

It's been one month since the graduate advisor (also the POI) said will get back to me regarding my grad application, should I send a follow up email?

Yes. They have probably forgotten about the correspondence.

  I don't want to sound too pushy and impatient since he already said he'll get back to me asap...should I still follow up? if yes, any advice to ask him about the status very politely?

Reply to his last mail with the same subject line (and correspondence below) and say something simple like:

Hi X,

I was wondering if there were any updates since we last spoke?

Thanks,
Y


Does waiting a few years before pursuing a PhD affect chances of getting admitted? This is a somewhat long question. I hope you can take the time to read it carefully.
I obtained my bachelor's degree in physics in June 2019. I decided I wanted to go to physics graduate school in the USA after finishing my undergraduate degree, however I noticed I was not going to be a strong candidate because I only had one letter of recommendation, had very little experience doing research, and had never published a paper. Hence, I decided to postpone my application and work with physicists to do research. Since I come from a place where research opportunities are scarce, I decided to contact researchers from the USA to work with them. It was really hard to get a response from them, but finally I got a response from two very good physicists from UC Santa Cruz and Georgetown. I am currently working with one of them and there's a possibility to publish an article by the end of this year's  Fall. The other physicist advised me not to work with the two of them at the same time, as I might become overwhelmed by the amount of work from both projects. So he told me that it was my decision if I wanted to apply this year or wait until the next year. He said to me that if I waited one more year to apply, we would work together on a project and he claimed that we would publish a paper together by the end of Fall 2021.
My dilemma is that if I wait one more year I would be older and when I start my phd, three years will have passed since I graduated from college. However, if I wait one more year I will have one more letter of recommendation and one more paper published (which would probably make me a stronger candidate).
My question is the following: is it a better idea to wait one more year considering that I can get all the things I mentioned before? Or, does waiting this amount of time affect my chances of being admitted?
I graduated from a 4-year physics program at the age of 22 (I'm 23 now).

Waiting can negatively affect your chances of admission if you aren't doing academia-related things: for example, if you quit to join industry for 3 years, then when you get around to applying your letter writers might not remember you that well anymore (they might even have died/retired/resigned), which will have a negative impact.
What you are doing, on the other hand, will not negatively affect your chances - in fact you are likely to improve your chances. You are after all getting more/better letters of recommendations & publications, two key aspects to an application.


My master thesis supervisor wants me to continue as his PhD student, but he has no funds at the moment. Any advice? I am currently working on my master thesis in physics and mathematics and will finish within a few months. My supervisor told me he would like to continue with my thesis' research subject and asked me if I wanted to be a PhD student in his group. However, he doesn't have any funds at the moment for hiring another PhD student, although his current PhD students are all almost finished.
He is going to look around and obviously will continue submitting proposals for grants. But unless we are very lucky, there won't be a grant within a reasonable time. He offered to help me get a PhD somewhere else and write a good letter of recommendation. I think the chances are good to obtain a PhD position somewhere else. However, I would like to find a way to do a PhD with my current supervisor.
Does anyone have any ideas how to get funding or something else I could do? This is at a university in The Netherlands and a PhD is considered as a job here. Funding is almost never arranged by the PhD student his/herself.

There are -mainly- two options in the Netherlands to arrange your own funding.
Get a talent scholarship from NWO. See here: https://www.nwo.nl/en/research-and-results/programmes/magw/research-talent/index.html
Or, as you are in beta science a very good option, is to find a company that will hire you and will allow you to do the phd externally. This allows you to gain some work experience while doing the phd. You will take longer, but you will stay connected to practice.
By the way, in my opinion, to much of this 'yeah i would love to but i dont have funding' is coming from professors. If they really want you, they should only offer you a funded position. But that's from someone who left academia :)


Does scientific experience matter for a funded PhD application? I have some scientific experience, some papers in conference journals with impact factor, and a couple of papers in scientific journals. I am in a bad situation and may be unable to keep my current PhD (I am a final year student without funding).

I would like to know if I have good changes to be accepted in a funded PhD program in my field of research in another University in EU because of my research experience, or do only the BSc, MSc grades really matter? Mine are not too high. Also, do the MPhil grades also matter for application to a funded PhD program? Mine are high. People aren't supposed to have one when they apply.

From personal experience, and this is not always the case, publications matter and they matter because they show prior research which helps in situations of lower grades.

However, do be prepared to receive questions in either the interview phase or via email when discussing with the university you will be applying to on why you are leaving in your last year. If your current advisor is in knowledge of your current situation and is willing to recommend you then this may not be a problem at the end.

Hope this helps...


Should I let my professor know that I cited a text written by him....that I pirated from online I wrote an essay for a professor of mine, in which I cited a book he had written. As it so happens, the citation is based on my having obtained a (most likely) pirated PDF copy of the book. The text is quite expensive, not readily available anywhere (library, textbook store, or Amazon) aside from the publisher, and the subject matter is esoteric and poorly addressed in other papers. I am only citing less than 10 pages worth of material, mostly on definitions and problem formulation

I am going to be presenting this essay in front of the class, and my concern is that he will notice the citation of his book and ask the potentially uncomfortable question of "...so you have one of my books...?"

I'm wondering what I should do in this case. Should I simply remove all references to the problem texts and cited portions and pretend that nothing ever happened? Should I not do anything? Is the citation of a text that you pirated really a big deal in academia?

It is incredibly uncommon to assume that someone bought a book just because it is cited. While in theory, the professor could ask this question, why would (s)he care?
If you are geniuinely concerned about the question, perform an inter-library loan with your university library on the two books now, and should that question ideed pop up, reply that you performed an inter-library loan.
Use legal sources in the future. Libraries spend tons of money on buying literature, so use it. Most jurisdictions also allow limited copying of a book (e.g., the most relevant pages for your own work).


What should an editor do if the authors have guessed who the reviewers are? For whatever reason, authors are occasionally able to guess who the reviewers of their papers are. Sometimes these guesses have even gotten published:

"We appreciate the very candid critical insights of 2 anonymous reviewers, M. Gompper, and K. Beard." In Conservation Biology.
"We do not gratefully thank T. Appourchaux for his useless and very mean comments." In ESA.

What is the best way for an editor to handle these not-necessarily-correct guesses, if they are noticed:

during peer review (e.g. in the cover letter or author response to reviewers)
after acceptance?

Editors need not respond to author guesses.

Regarding,

  We appreciate the very candid critical insights of 2 anonymous reviewers, M. Gompper, and K. Beard.

There is no suggestion that either M. Gompper, K. Beard, or both were anonymous reviewers. Actually, the serial comma suggests they are not. (Even if the comma were absent, I'd perhaps assume authors were unfamiliar with its need.) Similarly,

  We do not gratefully thank T. Appourchaux for his useless and very mean comments.

Gives no suggestion that  T. Appourchaux was a reviewer.

(Useful) insights and comments are provided beyond the reviewing process and should be acknowledged.

There might be exceptions -- e.g., if authors are claiming reviewer bias, having correctly guessed the reviewer's identity -- but the OP doesn't provide sufficient details to determine whether that's the case here.


Does one need to be affiliated with a university to publish papers? Assume you have already completed your undergrad and have been working for a number of years. Does one need to be part of a university or a learning institution to publish papers?

Absolutely not. Affiliations do not matter; what matters is the value and the fit of the contribution to the journal or the conference to which you are submitting.


Writing a thesis acknowledgement: should I address the person as "you" or use 3rd person? I'm writing an acknowledgment for my thesis. I looked at several written acknowledgments and realized that the people who are acknowledged are addressed by "you" rather than "He/She". For example,

"I'm thankful to Dr. Marry. You have been the weekly contact ...."

But I personally prefer to address them in a 3rd person format saying "She has been the weekly contact".

I'm wondering if my preference is wrong and not common.

I'd go (and did go) with the 3rd person format, for a simple reason: It's not a letter to that one person, nor a (handwritten) dedication/signed copy of a thesis. Instead it is something that is printed and which is (hopefully) read by more than this one person.

So you talk to a broad audience about that person, hence 3rd person. Only if it were a handwritten, personal message in one particular copy, I would ever go with "you".

(Another exception could be a dedication. In contrast to the acknowledgements the dedication is more specific and -- usually -- to one person or specific group of people, like family. In this case 'you' might also make sense, because here you address them personally.)


How to find tools that are presented in the papers? I just searched a couple of papers related to the subject that I'm trying to work on. And the thing is that they all presented a tool that helped them do the job.

Here some of them:
mapo,
mica,
any many more.

I am trying to get to know these tools to see what is it that they are good at or bad at, but I searched and I couldn't find them!

Is it all the tools that I can't find? Is it about all the papers that the tools that they make are not on the Internet?
If they are how am I suppose to find them?

The tools you state are prototypes developed by the authors. They may not always have enough rank to be easily Googled, so the best place to search for them would be the respective institution sites and author sites.

For instance,

MAPO can be found in the corresponding author Tao Xie's website (although you might need his consent to access it).
MICA is available in GitHub with copyright by Carnegie Mellon University.

If that doesn't work, the best thing to do would be to mail the corresponding author requesting the required access to the software.


Difficulty getting published in top tier journals? How much harder is it to get published in a top-tier journal (ACM, IEEE) compared to a small second-rate conference?

Is it an unrealistic goal to try to publish my 1st paper in the #1 journal in the field?

Is it likely such a journal will accept my paper if I am proposing a hybrid method that combines methods used by other papers? Or do I need something completely new and ground-breaking?

Does the fact that the 1st author will be a student (undergraduate) will reduce my chances?

I've co-authored a paper on a top-journal. The first author was a PhD student. The paper was so strong that it was even on the cover page of the journal.

That was the first paper for both the first author and myself.

But ...

The paper was authorised very closely with some experts in the field. Those experts knew exactly what to write, what to analyze and what not to do. It's a domain knowledge that a student wouldn't possibly have. They knew how to conduct a good research project.
We wouldn't been able to publish to the journal without the experts.
The study was indeed interesting, and attempted to solve some very practical problems. Thus, it was not something you read and throw away. It would cause impacts to the field.
We had softwares, web sites, cool graphics to backup the paper.
There was nothing special in the statistics and methods. Absolutely nothing new. But how it was analyzed was simple to follow and solid. Again, the experts knew exactly how and what to do.

You have better chance if your study attempts to solve important questions. Talk to a professor if you need advice.

Unfortunately I don't see you have much chance if you don't have anything truly interesting.


How to find out whether a PhD dissertation is ready to submit? How one may know that his/her work is good and enough for getting PhD? Does it depend on the number of words, pages, number of published paper or some things else?

You should talk about this with your advisor and your consultant professors. You can complete your report and show it to your advisers. They will read and tell you what lacks in your report. Also, you may talk to the members of your PhD committee orally before giving them your report. They may give you some guides or some of their expectations.

Talk to the previous PhD students and see what brought them to the point that their PhD was ready to be presented.

Another important thing is your PhD proposal in which you have clarified your goals of your dissertation. If you have completed your promises in the proposal (or you have strong reasons why could not reach some of your goals), then your work is completed.

Another thing may be regulations of your department. Some departments require their students to submit one or two journal or conference papers out of their PhD project. You can check your department's regulations on what are their expectations from a complete PhD project.


Top CS PhD programs, do I stand a chance? I'm an American EE/CompE undergrad at a mid tier(top 200) smaller state school with a 3.96 GPA. I am the first person in my family to attend college, so you can imagine that getting advice on grad schools would be pretty difficult.

My university is not very big on research, so I have looked elsewhere for research opportunities and completed an EE REU at a top 20 university and a CompE Summer Research Program at a top 10 university. I'm looking to work on the Robotics/Perception/AI side of CS. I have posters and have given presentations on my summer research, but I don't have any publications. Realistically, what is my chance of getting into places like MIT EECS, Stanford CS, or UIUC CS? Is it even possible? Would they consider someone with my background, or is just a waste of money to apply?

I also plan on applying for fellowships such as NSF GRFP and will mention that on my application. I'm gonna be graduating in December, so I am currently applying for a prestigious CS research internship at a national lab for the spring(Jan - June). Assuming that I get accepted, would you list it on your Resume/CV in your application as a "future accepted position"? Or would that look unprofessional since you didn't start yet?

Am I at a disadvantage in terms of being a domestic student since most applicants are international? What kind of GRE scores should I be aiming for(I know some universities don't require the GRE)?

Thank you so much! I would really appreciate any feedback or advice that you may have. Sorry if my post is too long.

Let me offer some concrete data to support Buffy's answer, as a faculty member at one of the departments you mention (although I don't work in AI).  Short version: Your profile is definitely strong enough to be considered at Illinois, but your chances are low, because everyone's chances are low.

The computer science PhD program at Illinois received about 1100 applications for Fall 2019 admission.  More than 300 applicants listed artificial intelligence as their primary research interest.  (Another 450 applicants listed AI as one of their secondary research interests.)  We offered admission to 35 of these 300+ applicants; about half of those 35 accepted our offers.

(I'm sure the application numbers are significantly higher, and the acceptance rates comparably lower, at MIT and Stanford.)

Almost all of those 35 admitted applicants were from universities with highly-ranked graduate programs.  A significant fraction of the accepted applicants already have research publications (or at least strong submissions) at top conferences.  A slightly smaller fraction are finishing masters degrees or applied to transfer from another lower-ranked PhD program.  (Every successful applicant with some grad school under their belt has already published.)

The main thing we look for in PhD applications is compelling evidence of research potential.  This evidence must be explicit in your CV, in your statement, in your choice of references, and in the content of your reference letters.  (Not surprisingly, this is also what the NSF GRFP and similar fellowships look for!)  So your application really needs to include strong letters from your mentors at both of your REUs.

On the other hand, the biggest resource constraint is faculty attention.  We only admit PhD applicants that get several positive reviews from faculty, and at least one faculty member declaring their willingness to advise.  Admission in AI isn't ridiculously tight because we don't want to admit people, or because we think the people we reject wouldn't thrive, or even because there isn't enough money.  It's tight because students require care and feeding, and AI faculty need to sleep occasionally.  So thinking strategically, you may fare better aiming at newer faculty, or at subfields where the department is growing.  (Hint: Robotics.)

Finally, if you're not accepted to a strong PhD program straightaway, you might consider joining a research master's program first, to build up your research track-record, and then applying again.  But then you really need to publish during your MS program to have a shot; PhD applicants with prior graduate-school experience are held to higher standards.  (Not surprisingly, this is true for the NSF GRFP and similar fellowships!)

  Assuming that I get accepted, would you list it on your Resume/CV in your application as a "future accepted position"?

Yes, absolutely!  (See: evidence of research potential.)  But be sure to describe the position in more detail in your statement, to remove any ambiguity.

  Am I at a disadvantage in terms of being a domestic student since most applicants are international?

No, not at all.  It's true that most applicants are international, but the average international applicant is weaker than the average domestic applicant.  (It's really hard to entice our own best undergrads away from six-figure salaries at Appflix or Twitbook or Ubazon or whatever.)  Roughly half of our PhD admission offers went to domestic students this year.

  What kind of GRE scores should I be aiming for (I know some universities don't require the GRE)?

MIT and Illinois don't require GRE scores (because we think they're useless as evidence of research potential), but Stanford does.  You should aim for the best GRE scores you can get.


Are paper revision services worthwhile? After completing a paper my supervisor at the time wanted to use a paper review service to review my paper for grammar, English etc..

I am a native English speaker and the service is based in a non-English-speaking country, but I don't know the nationality of the person who reviewed the paper. After receiving back the corrected paper, it seems like they have reduced its size by more than 50% by taking out words phrases that they thought to be redundant and rewording sentences to be easier to understand by anyone.

I feel like these services aren't worth the money but that might just be due to the sour feeling of having someone change the majority of a paper you've spent a fair amount of time on by someone that might know little about the subject.

What kind of experiences have people had with these services?  Do you think think they are worth using?

[paper review service] reduced [paper] size by more than 50% by taking out words phrases that they thought to be redundant and rewording sentences to be easier to understand by anyone.

A fifty percent reduction in paper length is an excellent improvement of your paper, because your readers have less to read. (Assuming what "they thought to be redundant" really was.) There's no need for any "sour feeling," appreciate the improvement and learn how to make similar reductions. (Note that reductions are far easier for someone else to make than the original author.)


How to politely respond to generic emails requesting a PhD/job in my lab? Without wasting too much time As I transition to faculty, I have increasingly gotten requests from people who want to do PhD's with me or want postdocs in my lab.

Often these emails are extremely generic and don't suggest they know anything about my research. The descriptions of themselves suggests they've mostly studied completely unrelated topics to my research field (even as broadly defined as the topic at even the department level).

I probably get at least one of these emails per day now (during graduate student application season), so it would be too cumbersome to send out a personalised response email to each one. And I imagine the volume will only increase if/when I become more established.

Most faculty surely just ignore/delete these types of emails, but I feel bad that these students appear to have gotten terrible (or no) advice about how to contact a prospective advisor, and I want to be helpful. How should I reply?

What I currently do is save the following text on my computer, and simply paste it in an email response every time I receive this type of email.

  I'm sorry to say that this email is too generic for me to consider you as a future PhD student working with me. Unfortunately, it doesn't demonstrate that you know what topics I work on. I'd recommend in the future sending only a few emails. Focus on max 10 or so potential supervisors that really fit your specific research interest. Explain what specifically drew you to them as a supervisor. Explain what you want to work on with them. You should have read one of their papers or at minimum read a description of their research from their webpage. The type of email you wrote will get very few responses because we receive several such emails. I hope this doesn't come off too harsh. I hope you might take this advice and improve next time if you send more emails in the future - because I really do want you to succeed.

  Here is an example of what I sent to my prospective PhD advisor 10 years ago. I only emailed 6 professors, because I really wanted to spend a lot of time tailoring my email to their interests and convincing them I wanted to work on the things they worked on.

    "My name is ____________ and I am a senior majoring in Applied
    Mathematics at UC Davis. I am interested in working in your lab during
    graduate studies because of my broad interests in theoretical ecology.

    Your website especially stood out because you state that you encourage
    independent research and teamwork. Currently, I am collaborating with
    six other students modelling plant population dynamics in fragmented
    landscapes. We defined our own research question, and although it was the toughest  part of the project it was the most rewarding.

    During this project, I first came across your early work on
    the population dynamics of plants with a dormant life stage - and
    further reading some of your newer papers in epidemiology, predator
    prey dynamics and evolution, I really like the diversity of the
    problems in your lab.

    Specifically, I am interested in doing research in spatial ecology and
    understanding how populations spread. This is because spread is not
    only a fundamental process in ecology but also because it is at the
    heart of controlling environmental pests and diseases. I think your
    work on integral projection models will be especially relevant to the
    spread models I want to study (integro-difference equations). I am in
    the beginning phase of drafting an NSF graduate research fellowship
    application on how to best choose the locations of pest control when a
    pest species spreads according to such equations, and think you’d be
    an ideal supervisor for the project.

    I was wondering if you will have any openings for new graduate
    students in your lab this coming year? Any comments or feedback would
    be greatly appreciated."

  Note the parts about teamwork and independent research are specifically on this professors website that talks about qualities he looks for in graduate students. I didn't put this sentence in any of my emails to other professors (in fact all the sentences except for the first one are very different for each prospective professor). For most professors, I wrote shorter emails that focussed on how their work related to mine. For example, sentences like the bolded one in this email.

  cheers,

  -Dr X

The goal is to provide them with useful advice that they might take and become more successful in the future. Often these students come from disadvantaged backgrounds or from developing countries and I think it is really important to try to help them and not just ignore their emails. Of course, as one becomes more well known, even this strategy might prove to be cumbersome.

Over this past graduate student application season, nearly all of the students I sent this email response to were gushing with gratitude for the advice.


I have been betrayed and isolated by my advisor and I am mentally drained. What should I do now? I'm in the middle of a complicated situation, and I'm wondering whether this is commonplace in academia.

Long story short: I'm an international student, and I recently completed my master's degree in CS. I had been working with one adviser (Prof A), I completed my course work in December, but since Prof A couldn't find worthy candidates to fill my place, Prof A told me that if I assist her with her research projects for one more semester, she will help me find a job. Fast forward two months, she told me in a meeting that she tried to help but she can't and that I should look for a job on my own. I recently asked if I could pursue a PhD in her lab. She said no, as she has no funding. I've successfully applied to a different lab (Prof B), only to find out that all professors are provided funding for first-year graduate students. Why would she lie about this? Is this normal?

The situation has since developed that I've been able to play my acceptance to Prof B's lab off of Prof A, and she was very happy to take me on now that I'm working on B's research; she clearly hopes to get research funding out of this new-found collaboration. This seems incredibly callous to me; she clearly has no interest in my situation, and simply wants more grant money. Is this normal behavior for academics? I was on the edge of being deported, and she clearly could not care less about my personal situation, only for her research money. Are all academics this callous?

So essentially, what you need is someone to take you on as a PhD. It looks like your current advisor just isn't interested in having you be her PhD student. This other professor is interested in having you as a PhD student, but you aren't interested in his research.

It sounds like neither of these is an option for doing a PhD. This means that you need to find someone else to be your advisor. Think about who else is in your department.

Other than that, your only choices are probably to find a job or leave the country.

(I'm not mentioning trying to apply to another university because I think admission season is almost over for most, but there might be some places still accepting applications.)

Post-edit things:

  Why would she lie about this? Is this normal?

First of all, you don't know if she lied. You have no idea under what constraints she operates. Yes, you've been told first-years get funding, but a PhD is more than a year, so what is she supposed to do with you after that, if she really doesn't have funding? That would have been worse, spending a year working for her and then being deported, don't you think?

Secondly, if she did lie, she might have done it because she doesn't tell you what's really preventing her from taking you on. What if you're not as good a researcher as you think you are and she doesn't want you working on her project? What if she got funding from a grant that requires the participants to be citizens, and she's trying to get another student, who actually qualified for it, to join her? There are lots of possibilities.

Is it normal? Academics aren't special. People lie. I lie sometimes. I'm sure you lie sometimes. Lying is as normal in academia as it is anywhere else.

Honestly, the above answers the rest of your question too. You assume you know her situation and motivations when the fact is that you don't. You conclude that she's callous---maybe she is, maybe she isn't---again, sometimes you're going to run into a callous person, might even get (un)lucky and stumble upon a sociopath, that's just the risk you run when interacting with people. Nothing special about academia there either.


PHD: Same core idea but in context of different country? I am thinking of carrying out PHD research in a subject in context of my country. But, I found out that the same topic (or same issue) has been researched by somebody else in context of his country i.e. “xyz in abc country”. It’s not a scientific research and most of the research work-findings are based on his specific country which is relatively different than my country. So, though the core research idea is same, overall contexts are totally different. I am planning to research on “xyz in context of my country”.

So, can I do it? Any suggestions?

I am bit concerned as I was thinking of similar qualitative and quantities research methodologies (off course in different country), so overall structure, especially literature review part (references) may look somewhat similar in some places (as it is study of same core thing but in different context).
How may potential supervisor perceive it? (Acceptance?)
What about overall value of research?

I am confident that research will add value to knowledge in the industry as it has not been done in context of my country (context) before. Findings may be useful also for countries (context) similar to mine.
Or I can also expand the focus of study to two countries-not that country the research was done (making it bit wider). But that may complicate the things.

What may be a better idea?
What do you suggest?

Edit: I am NOT saying that only locations will be different or not that same thing will be researched again. It will be more like 'challenges for x in xyz country' and 'challenges for x in abc country'.I have been using word 'different context'. Only problem is the study is about 'challenges for x' which may overlap in some places. Challenges, research responses, finding may be totally different.

The scientific significance of the work really depends on what the nature of the subject is and how much value is added by doing the additional research.  For two extremes, consider:

A study on the effect of GMO feed on pigs in Freedonia, using the same methodlogy as a just-completed study of the effect of GMO feed on pigs in the Duchy of Grand Fenwick: low value, because there is no reason to think pigs will react to the same food differently in two different places.
A study quantifying the size of difference economic sectors in Freedonia (which has not been previously/recently studied), using the same methodology as a just-completed study of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick: high value, because countries typically have different economies, and understanding a country's economy is very valuable for planning policy.

You can evaluate the value of your proposed contribution similarly, by asking how much there is expected to be a difference, and how much knowledge your study will add.  Your advisor can then help you further tune the scope for their expectation of an appropriate amount of work for your dissertation.


How to write and publish a literature review In Computer Science, you find yourself overwhelmed by the huge number of literature available over a certain subject.

I searched online on how to proceed and write a literature review (in a way that i could publish it).

A lot of the information online will go over the same generic things, so am seeking help in this community.

I would appreciate some advice/strategy from your previous experiences

Reference:

Kotz, Daniel, and Jochen WL Cals. "Effective writing and publishing scientific papers-part I: how to get started." Journal of clinical epidemiology 66 (2013): 397.

Let me share some insights, I hope it will be useful. I will break down my answer, based on your question's main dimensions, that is help, knowledge and motivation. Speaking about the first dimension, it is unclear to me what do you mean, so I will leave this aspect for you to clarify and for others to address.

In regard to knowledge, the best advice I can give is to get a decent book specifically on writing literature reviews (i.e., Hart, 2005) or, even, a good book on research methodology, which has comprehensive enough chapter on the topic (i.e., Booth, Colomb & Williams, 2004; Creswell, 2007, 2014; Davis & Parker, 1997). This is just to start. More importantly, IMHO, after you will read some theory on writing literature reviews or research manuscripts, is to start reading real literature reviews: either review/survey papers (for Computer Science, there are specialized journals that publish such papers, for example, ACM Computing Reviews and ACM Computing Surveys), or simply focused research papers on the topic of your interest (most of them will have a corresponding section, which is usually titled "Review of Literature", "Introduction", "Background", "State of the Art" or similarly).

Speaking about motivation for writing a literature review, that IMHO should come from your excitement about (interest in) a particular topic. If you won't have excitement or, at least, enough interest in a topic, I don't see how you can obtain motivation. It's that simple. Your other questions are rather broad, but I'm sure that you will be able to answer most of those questions after reading some foundational literature on research methodology, as I recommended above.

References

Booth, W., Colomb, G., & Williams J. (2004). The craft of research (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Creswell, J.W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry & research design: Choosing among five approaches (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Creswell, J.W. (2014). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Davis, G. B., & Parker, C. A. (1997). Writing the doctoral dissertation: A systematic approach (2nd ed.). Hauppauge, NY: Barrons Educational Series.

Hart, C. (2005). Doing a literature review: Releasing the social science research imagination. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.


Academic Job Mobility in the European Context In the United States it is not uncommon to apply to academic jobs all over the country. Personally, I do not know a single person who limited his or her search to just one state (i.e. Massachusetts). That being said, the language of instruction and the key aspects of academic culture remain the same coast to coast.

In comparison, what is the situation like in Europe, particularly Scandinavia and Switzerland?

For example, given that the population of Denmark is comparable in size to that of Massachusetts, how does this affect the academic job market? Is it standard practice for PhDs & lecturers/postdocs located in Denmark to search for their first career placement across Europe [and beyond]? Or do they search for employment primarily on the national academic job market? How do the national differences in language/academic culture fit into this equation?

Background: I’m considering PhD/Academic Career in Europe. Ideally, I would like to learn the local language and assimilate as much as possible during the PhD. Given this long-term effort, I would prefer to continue on in the same country following graduation.

I’m especially interested in hearing from those with experience in the social sciences and humanities (working or studying in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, or Switzerland/Austria). However, please consider contributing even if you do not fit this particular set of criteria. My own experience is in Cult/Soc Anthropology (USA).

From the perspective of the Netherlands and the social sciences I can say that international mobility is certainly common, but staying in your own country is even more common. I would say a small majority does indeed limit it's search to the Netherlands.

This has consequences for the job market. Since the Netherlands is a small country the (sub-(sub-))discipline typically consist of a small number of people who will regularly meet. So if a position is open, then most candidates are known to the people who are hiring. So networks are important, and you typically get introduced to those networks by your advisor during your PhD. So doing a PhD in the Netherlands would set you up well for a subsequent career in the Netherlands. It is certainly possible to enter the Dutch market later and it happens regularly, but it is easier if you started as a PhD student in the Netherlands.

An important part of the reason for limiting yourself to your own country is probably the language barrier. You may be able to do a Postdoc with just English. However, when your job includes teaching, then you will eventually be expected to teach in the local language. Similarly, if your job requires you to participate in the self-government of the university, you will be disadvantages if you don't speak the local language. Moreover, your social live will be much easier when you speak the local language. Many languages in Europe are fairly similar, e.g. Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, or Dutch and German, or Spanish and Italian. However, it is still a non-trivial investment to become sufficiently fluent to teach or negotiate in the other language.

I am now living and working in Germany, and my impression is that mobility is less common here than in the Netherlands.


Research Director not responding to email - should I call him? I'm posting this question because normally he is a very punctual person, often responding within a matter of hours if our time zones match up. However, I sent an email last week and a follow-up one on Sunday, and he has yet to read it (according to my email-tracking software).

I don't think his university has started break yet, so should I wait a little bit and leave a message?

Edit: Question should not be considered a duplicate because I am inquiring as to whether I should call him now that email seems to be "exhausted" so to speak, but I'm not sure if calling is appropriate.

Before you call him, email the department receptionists and ask if the Research Director is around. It's possible he's on holiday, he's on bereavement leave or paternity leave, he's attending a conference, and so on. The department receptionists are likely to be more familiar with his schedule than most. If they say he's around, you can also ask them to pass a message to the Research Director.


How serious should I regard the "compliments" in an email denying my application? A school, whose PhD program I applied to, denied my application with words such as "Your record is strong, but...". I am kind of confused. Is such a reply simply a "polite" way to decline a person? Should I believe that the sentence "your record is strong" is a compliment, or it is simply a decoration?

To me, such a compliment does not seem to help because obviously, for the school, my record was not strong enough to be admitted, so speaking of "your record is strong" is almost meaningless?

I would take it as simply a polite way to decline your application.  They no doubt really do get a lot of strong applications (every decent program does), and in many cultures such as the US there is a tendency to "sugar-coat" bad news with compliments (I don't know if your application was in the US, but I believe this practice turns up elsewhere as well).  You would actually probably get less praise if you got in---after all, the acceptance is compliment enough.


How do people claim precedence with their unpublished scientific theories? Say for example a physicist (person A) came up with a theory and sent it to a journal. But it was rejected. (As an example, maybe person A came up with the idea for the Higgs particle).

Then 10 years later the same theory was published by someone else (person B). And this time it was published. And maybe they even went on to win the Nobel prize.

Can person A then claim precedence? And then what will happen to the Nobel prize will it go to person A instead?

This must happen quite a lot that papers get rejected but later someone else has the same idea and gets published. What happens in those cases. How do they claim precedence? Or is the polite thing not to make a fuss?

If the paper was rejected the journal still should have the archive where the manuscript and all communications are preserved. If the paper was rejected and was actually a good paper ahead of its time it will be of great interest to investigate why it was rejected. Of course the more time passes the greater risk that this archived information may be lost but in 10 years it is unlikely.

It is likely that both persons will be mentioned in the history books. The person B may be still considered more important because it was his/her work that actually influenced the scientific community. There were a lot of examples in the history of science when even published work was unnoticed and only later independent work attracted interest. Concerning Nobel Prize... Well, it will be decided by the Nobel Committee that will not surprise anyone by surprising everyone.

Nowadays one can easily share the work placing preprints into a public repository like the mentioned arXiv (where some subjects like gen-phys have a reputation of having quite a low bar). One can also put a preprint into some sufficiently trustworthy repository like one owned by the institute. In the old days before internet preprints existed too. They were sometimes printed as small booklets by the author or printed by the institution. The problem with preprints is that while in theoretical physics it's almost strange not to publish a preprint and journals often encourage and sometimes even require that, in other fields journals sometimes may treat a preprint as a prior publication.

Some priority may be claimed if the work was presented at a conference and something like a presentation and numerous witnesses are available. However this is really unreliable.  Because often much less evidence can be provided there are a lot of instances when people claim that some of their unpublished work was stolen and of course no one can prove anything. On the other hand if the work was published as some sort of proceedings (that often have no real peer-review) this claim may be quite solid.

Then there are personal notes and letters that are used by historians. However it is really hard to use it to claim priority when actual interest of living people are involved. Though I remember a smart trick in the history of aluminium electric extraction - one of the authors sent himself several of letters safekeeping the unopened envelopes with official mail stamps and then successfully used those in court to prove his priority.


Publishing independent proofs of a theorem in the same journal? In the comments here, a user suggested that when two proofs of the same theorem are obtained independently, it is a common practice (at least in physics) to submit them to the same journal.

I was wondering what the benefits of this approach are and how widespread it is. (I'm particularly interested in mathematics, but insight from other disciplines is also appreciated.)

Edit: Just to clarify, I'm not asking why it's worth publishing independent proofs of the same theorem - that's something that can be taken for granted, at least in mathematics. What I'm curious about is the practice of specifically publishing the two proofs in the same journal (as opposed to different journals).

I can only speak for mathematics. However, when you really understand the nature of mathematics you start to realize that the proofs of the theorems are often as or more important than the statements of the theorems themselves.

The proof, in showing why something is true, gives a roadmap to truth. Sometimes a technique, if it is not standard but is interesting, can be the most important aspect of a math paper because that same roadmap might just show a way to prove other things, some similar, and some not.

My own dissertation had interesting theorems, to be sure, but it was most useful for the proof of one of the theorems. The proof was unexpected and gave new ways to approach some problems in Analysis.

So, a journal that shows two independent proofs of the same thing can be especially interesting since the similarities and differences between the proofs can give hints of other things that might be shown.

I doubt that it is especially common, though in popular areas of research it must happen. Parallel research is pretty widespread, though if offset in time by only a bit, it won't be possible to have such things in the same issue of a journal.

On the other hand, getting beaten to a result may not be devastating if different approaches are taken. Other mathematicians can learn from that.

From the journal's standpoint such situations are especially satisfying as two different but interesting proof methodologies may represent the merging of two separate trains of thought. That in itself is interesting to a mathematician and may lead to consolidation or to further advances.


contacting post-doc in a lab to join his research instead of his mentor This question is unrelated to the previous one I asked earlier this week.
There's a post-doc in a lab at my school who exactly fits my research interests-- as in, he is working in the exact subfield of the subfield I like, and he is using the exact techniques I would like to gain experience in.
Is it appropriate to just contact him instead of the professor who manages his group? (I guess, instead of contacting his mentor)
I know there's a question of funding, but frankly for several reasons I'm willing to not be paid, at least for the first few months (and I'll mention this in my email to him).
edit: I know there's some instability with postdocs in someone else's lab (they might just yeet to another lab), but if I get a year with him, I would still love the opportunity.
edit: I'm second-year

For this short answer, I'm using information from an earlier question that you asked here; namely, that you are a 2nd year undergraduate student. I'm not familiar with how Asian universities operate, but the below would by and large apply to both Europe and the U.S.
If there is any researcher at your university you are interested in working with (probably as an undergraduate researcher), then just talk to them. If you hit it off both personally and academically, then the postdoc (in the case at hand) will discuss with their PI (professor and research supervisor) if they can take you in. The PI will then decide if yes; sometimes after first talking to you as well.


Do graduate programs concentrated on complex analysis exist? I’ve been searching for a graduate university program which would concentrate on complex analysis in several variables, but wasn’t very successful. A mathematician friend of mine told me that complex analysis is currently not developed very actively, and is kind of not "fashionable".

Is this true, and is there not so much to develop anymore? I know there are some open problems in Complex Analysis, but I'm concerned that there appears to be lack of interest in this field in academia in general. Are there specific good reasons for this lack of interest?

Actually, check out CUNY Grad Center.  iirc, lots of faculty at CUNY list complex analysis as one of their research areas.


Difference between tenure-track/tenured positions in universities and research scientist positions in national labs I am trying to evaluate pros and cons for working at universities as tenure-track (and eventually, hopefully, tenured) and research scientist at national labs. I realize that not much is discussed on what it means by working at national labs (except a few specific questions such as Are faculty positions more competitive than government research lab positions?), unlike working at universities. I wish to start by asking about job security, salary (US universities usually pay 9-monthly and expect profs to cover the remaining 3 months from the prof's grants. Is there any such thing at national labs), any other things? Working with research students (all the way to completion of their degrees, as opposed to as your interns for a few months) is of course rewarding at universities. But probably too much teaching and administrative work may be negatives at universities too - any comparison with national lab jobs?

I know that this may be slightly broader question, and a bit subjective too, but I believe answers from different perspectives would help researchers like me who are at critical juncture at their career and need to decide one way or another.

Edit-1: I also came to know that some research labs in the US may have different classifications. e.g., is National Renewable Energy Laboratory same as NASA etc.?

Edit-2: How about 'redundancies'? Can these labs use 'lack of budget' or some other (non-disciplinary) excuse to remove the permanent staff?

My experience is purely through my work at NASA, so take that with a grain of salt.

There are (roughly) two levels of employment at NASA Research Centers (not labs like JPL): civil servants and contractors. If you're looking to become a research scientist at NASA, you want to become a civil servant, though there are plenty of scientists on contract.

Contractors are just that, they work on a specific research project that has allocated in its budget a certain amount of money for a project. Usually these contracts are administered under huge omnibus corporations like Millennium Enterprise Integration, who take something like 200k in overhead, per contractor.

What this means is contractors can be extremely expensive to a project, and that, as a result, contractors usually split their time (and cost) on two or three projects. If you're a contractor at a NASA center, you'll need to maintain a decent porfolio of projects that cover your salary. It can be stressful, but also less regulated than civil servantship

Civil Servantship is a pretty sweet gig if being a tenured professor was your reason to enter academia. If you get hired as a civil servant, it's virtually impossible to fire you unless you commit the equivalent of a felony (which is easier than tenured professorship, see below). Basically when you're hired congress agrees to pay your salary for the rest of your working life.

You can apply for money to do projects, including internal funding that academics won't have access to. With that you can hire contractors or buy equipment, but not pay yourself. Instead you have this new unit of labor called Full Time Equivalent (FTE), which is can also be part of a grant award, and represents your salary being paid for a full year. FTE vary depending on the center you're at, Alabama FTE is going to be cheaper than Bay Area FTE, but at some centers there's a significant surplus of FTE going around (no idea why). All not having FTE means as a civil servant is you might have to go ask someone for FTE, which means you're effectively working for them.

I said before it's easier to commit a felony when you're a civil servant, and that's because you're effectively a representative of the U.S. government. That means you can't take money from companies (gifts are limited to $20), and a whole host of other rules that have been put in place because essentially every form of graft and corruption that you can possibly imagine has already been done by someone in the government. It's actually pretty amazing.

Also the pay for a civil servant isn't that great (still better than grad school!), and because of the rules you can't really supplement your income. That's why it's not unheard of for civil servants to actually switch to contractors sometimes- the caps for compensation are much higher for contractors, and can be influenced by a competing offer.

oh and also you don't have to teach, but that's one of the few places where civil servants can make extra money (lecturing at local universities).

But in terms of an environment where 1) you can pitch research and it will get funded and 2) you'll have job security that tenure used to match, there is no better place, as far as I can tell, than NASA.


Does it make sense to appeal the reject decision made by the journal editor? A manuscript that my supervisors and a collaborator and I have been working on for so long recently got rejected twice by different journals, the main reason being that the findings are considered as "nothing new" and didn't "add anything to the field". However, we do think that our findings contribute to the field and can justify this major reason for rejection. I am thinking about whether we should appeal against the decision. I know it is risky and most likely won't be successful. But I would like to hear what you think about this.Thank you!

You're starting at the wrong end. If four or more reviewers plus two editors have found that your paper has "nothing new", but you think that "our findings contribute to the field", then you haven't made your point well enough in the paper.
The most pragmatic approach to dealing with rejections is to assume that the failure lies with your writing and not ignorant reviewers and editors: If someone doesn't see your point, then you haven't made your point well enough. Any appeal will not change that you haven't written your paper well enough.
So: go back to the drawing board. Read through your introduction and try to understand whether, from the perspective of a reader, you've made it clear enough where the current knowledge has deficits, why we should care about these deficits, and how your paper addresses these deficits. If you make these points clearly and easy to find/understand for a reader, and your papers will get accepted. If you make it difficult for readers to understand the point of the paper, you will get rejections.


Discovered a paper very late into my research - what now? I am currently writing my thesis and am quite far already. However, I have discovered a paper now which troubles me quite a bit, as it pretty much destroys everything I am arguing for (and very convincingly so!). I know that this would not be so bad, had the paper been published only recently. But it came out about 10 years ago - I should probably have found & read that much earlier! What am I to do now? I am worried to tell my supervisor!

It's just one paper. Papers in academia conflict quite often, sometimes with reasonable explanation.

What you should do depends a lot on the nature of the conflict. At a minimum, you should address the paper's arguments in your literature review and why you think your dissertation will find different results, or why the paper doesn't apply, or why you think parts of the paper are relevant but other parts are not, or what have you.

If the paper reveals a much more substantial error in your argument, you may have to rework sections of your argument or tweak your approach.

But the discovery of one paper is very unlikely to torpedo an entire dissertation project.


Etiquette when unable to attend a conference I'm supposed to give a presentation at an academic conference in the coming days but have fallen ill. What is the best way to send my regrets? Should I also send a doctor's note? It doesn't provide details of my condition but does have other personal information such as date of birth and home address. I just wonder if any of this is the conference organiser's business. At the same time, sending an email without proof that I am truly incapacitated doesn't seem like it's enough either. I'm still not sure what to do about the presentation I'd prepared - whether or not to send it anyway etc. I'm trying to focus on getting better, but I am worried that this medical issue will ruin my good name. Any advice would be appreciated.

Just tell the convener that you will be unable to present due to unforeseen circumstances.  That is enough and will be understood — there can be many reasons and it won't be a first time.  He/she will be glad that you inform him/her at all — it happens all to often that people simply don't turn up without giving any information at all.  The convener shouldn't need a doctor's note.

That being said, is any co-author travelling to the conference, or perhaps a colleague familiar with your work?  If yes, you could ask one of them if they are willing to take over your presentation.  I've done this for colleagues and although I wasn't able to answer detailed questions from the audience, it's still beneficial both for me (visibility to experts in the field) and to the first author.


How specific does a "Work Package" in a grant proposal need to be? I'm currently polishing a grant proposal for the ERC Starting Grant scheme. As is typical doubts beset me. There aren't many samples available, and every one I was able to find exists in a niche of its own.

What seems to be a typical pattern is to describe at a very high level the proposed approach: for instance, we will study issue A using method B but they don't go too much in detail. For example, how is this study exactly going to happen?

Where possible I have tried to explain in as much detail my line of inquiry and the expected outcomes. However, especially for a grant with a horizon of 5 years, it's difficult to explain how the last WPs will be studied, as they might depend on the outcomes of the prior ones.

It is highly likely that these proposals I have seen were the unsuccessful ones. If you have any experience of successful ones, how much detail did you give (or make up)?

Try to look at it from the view of a reviewer. You'll have a limited amount of time to estimate whether

the research will have a good chance of success (knowledge generation is success, so negative results are allowed!)
the applicants know the field well enough to work on the topic without stumbling about too many obstacles (e.g. you should say which methods you are using and why)
the work load is managable
the project is well managed.

Every reviewer knows, that you can not predict the future. If you could detail the research you want to do in three years, it would not have been research in the first three years! But you should make clear you know of the risks of your proposal and demonstrante, how you will handle those uncertenties.


Will going part-time in undergraduate affect my graduate admission? I'm a fourth year undergraduate student in a university in the U.S., and this is my last semester. I have already applied to graduate schools, and I'm currently awaiting responses. Since I have already finished all my requirements and am ready to graduate, I wanted to go part time this semester. I am aware of how it affects my financial aid; however, I do not know if it has an effect on my admittance to graduate school. I do not mean whether or not I get accepted (the decisions will happen without knowledge of my current semester), but whether I am eligible to attend graduate school if I have been part time for a semester. That is, will there be any potential issues when the schools that have accepted me see my final transcript and see I was part time? Is there a universal answer to this? Or should I contact each school individually and ask about their policy?

Also, are there any other potential issues with going part time that I haven't mentioned? Anything noteworthy I might have missed?

I did something similar.  My final semester in undergrad, I had two options: stay full time and finish two minors, or go part time (really just one class) and complete an intensive EMT-Paramedic training program.  Since I was seriously considering med schools, the second option seemed like a better idea to me.  (How good of an idea it was remains to me seen, since I did not go to med school, but anyway...)

I have since gone to grad school in two different fields.  Absolutely no one gave a dang about my last semester being part time (although I did get some questions about being a paramedic).

So, to quote guest:

  Just get the sheepskin. Nobody cares about the details.


How to ask for employment help or referral from someone you don't know? I will use fake names for the sake of anonymity. I have recently completed my PhD and applied to a professor position at University ABC. It has been almost 3 months since my application and I sent out an email to the Chair of the department (who presumably is the person in charge of recruiting academic/faculty members) but did not receive any response. There is another senior faculty member at University ABC, Dr. M, whose research is similar to mine and whose work I have referenced in my thesis. Moreover, Dr. M also attended the same university as my academic supervisor but they have never formally met.

Dr. M may not be involved at all in the recruitment process. However, I would like to ask for Dr. M's help in case he is able to give my application a push.

I am not sure how to write an email to Dr. M to ask for his help in such a scenario since there is no reason for me to believe that he is involved in the recruitment process. Nevertheless, I do want this job and I wan to do everything I can to make sure my application gets properly considered. How can I go about this task?

The typical approach is to send an email saying something like:

  Dear Dr. M.,

  My name is ... and I am applying for the position of ... in your department.  (Brief summary of your professional background and research interests.)  I am particularly interested in the position because I would look forward to the opportunity to collaborate with you.  Please let me know if there's anything you want to discuss.  My CV is attached (maybe also a preprint).

This alerts Dr. M to the fact you are applying, so that he can get in touch with the search committee if he wants to support your application.

However, normally you would do this at roughly the same time as you submit the application.  You say you applied three months ago, but when is the application deadline?  If it hasn't passed yet, or if it was just a few days ago, then there might still be time for an email to Dr. M to have some effect.

But if it passed some time ago, then the search committee has probably already finished one or more rounds of screening.  If that's the case, and you haven't been invited to interview or otherwise contacted, then unfortunately, you probably didn't make the initial cut.  In that case there is very little that Dr. M can do, so not much point in contacting him.

(By the way, it's pretty much irrelevant that your advisor went to the same university as Dr. M, if they haven't otherwise been in contact.  That kind of relationship is roughly comparable to this one.  So I'd leave it out of any message.)


Bringing an unprepared student into the lab I'm thinking of bringing a new student in the lab. His theory background is seriously lacking. He didn't take enough math and physics classes, and has insignificant programming experience. He has a permanent position as a technician at my institution and he wants to get a PhD.

I'm in serious need of manpower (or woman power), as what I'm doing requires a lot of computer simulations. The question is what should I do to involve this student early enough in research and keep him motivated until he understands enough to become curious? I have the feeling he wants the PhD more as a way to improve his position within the institution.

Edit: To clarify: I want the student to do all the PhD work that is required, i.e. learn the techniques, write papers, conduct independent research. I don't know how to get him over the steep learning curve at the beginning without losing him.

You suggest the individual is not 'already curious' by which I assume you mean 'not passionate'. Lack of experience can be overlooked if a student is passionate because they will work hard for the reward of learning. If the student lacks interest, it will probably be a constant struggle.


Paper published using my work During my master thesis I have been working on a project. The professor used a good bunch of my work and included it in a publication. She even requested some of the data at the beginning of the year, which I provided for her. She did not put my name on the publication. The paper has been already published. Is there anything I can do in such case?

Edit: I did not have any publication based on this project. And there is an acknowledgment part, but my name is not there. The data was used for the core of the paper. The ex-supervisor contacted me earlier this year to send her my data, claiming that she lost everything on her hard disk. Then she used all that in the paper. She even put 12 authors on the publication, needless to say, most of them did not contribute. Half of the experimental section and analysis part is my work. I mean even if she didn't want to put my name on it, at least she could have let me know that she is publishing the data.

Unfortunately, your institution is the most likely avenue for recourse in these situations. I believe most journals leave it up the authors to sort this out and direct you to your university or institution for adjudication, despite spelling out the various and detailed criteria for authorship. Even if the editor agrees with you, any authorship changes after publication must be approved by all the current authors. I don't mean to be overly cynical but getting your name on that paper would require an exceptionally ethical and proactive worker/administrator at your institution. Seems like quite the uphill battle to me...  Here are the relevant links to Nature and Science:

https://www.nature.com/nature-research/editorial-policies/authorship

https://www.sciencemag.org/authors/science-journals-editorial-policies


How should I list the conferences and courses I attend as an undergrad student to my CV? This is not really a duplicate of this question: Should I list conferences I attended on my CV?

I just finish my bachelor and trying to apply to a grad school. Of course, my CV is weak and strong LORs are what I should count on. However, I do want to strengthen my CV, so I want to list some conferences and courses that I have attended. So far, I have attended:

A specialty workshop held in my university. Actively helping behind the scene (put letters into envelops, be a reception, etc). Unfortunately I don't remember exactly the detail, but I can seek for help.
An international flagship conference held by a reputable institute in my country. I just sit back and listened, and unfortunately didn't register to attend.
An annual conference held by my university. This one was opened for any specialty, and I had a poster presentation in there.
An course taught by an invited professor from Germany, with h-index was 36. This course was organized at the same time with the workshop.

Should I list them down to my CV? How should do it properly?

Yes, I would suggest you include these in the CV for a graduate application.  It probably won't make a huge difference in admissions, but it is evidence that you are interested and involved in the research community in your field.

You can list them in any way that seems appropriate; there's no strict standard format for a CV.  You probably have sections for "Education" and "Work experience" and maybe "Publications"; make a similar section entitled "Conferences attended" or "Conference participation" or something like that.  Include the title, date and location of each conference, and maybe a short sentence discussing the scope of the meeting and your role.

(As discussed in the question you linked: later in your career, you will probably want to take this section out.)


In computer science, how hard it is to get a job at an industry research lab? As a PhD graduate, how much easier it to get a job at a research lab like the ones at Microsoft, Intel, Google etc. compared to getting a job as a Professor at an R1 university?

Is it possible to get a job at an R1 university, if one spends a period of time publishing papers at an industry research lab?

It is much easier to get a job in an top-notch industry research lab than an R1 professorship for one simple reason: there are vastly more such research lab jobs available.

To illustrate this, let's consider an illustrative example.  The Stanford Computer Science faculty has 55 professors.  To sustain a department of that size, they'll probably be hiring 2-4 people per year, depending on what fraction fail to make tenure.  Meanwhile, right next door is its cousin, SRI International, with about 2100 employees: most of those don't have PhDs, but a lot of them do, and a quick search on their open job postings finds more than a dozen that are looking for a PhD-level candidate right now.  That's just one company, and one you've probably never even heard of.  There's a lot more big ones out there, and far more than that if you start considering the smaller ones as well.

Now, getting back into a professorship, that's a different story.  It most certainly can be done, if you maintain a good research presence.  For most people, however, the trip to industry is a one-way trip, simply because you generally don't have to publish.  Many research companies like it when you publish, and many strongly encourage it---but the fact that they have to encourage it should tell you that the incentives are just not there the same way.  At a company, you are not measured primarily by your ability to publish, and so it tends to get triaged in favor of other things, like writing proposals, delivering demos to customers, or product development.  There's nothing against publishing, but there's no "publish or perish" and so there's a lot less publishing.

Bottom line: you can move in either direction, but it's a lot easier to move from university to industry than the reverse.


How much am I allowed to edit my ESL friend's Master's Thesis? I am lucky enough to be on a good schedule with my own edit: Thesis  and have a little extra time. Earlier in the year, I offered to edit one of my classmate's/close friend's dissertation in Computer Science. I made sure to leave enough time to do this in the writing process and they gave me a copy to edit a week before the deadline.

The time frame is fine, but the issue is I am unsure of how much help I am allowed to offer. They are an ESL (English as a Second Language) student, and I don't believe they have had much formal English training. Our University makes clear that they accommodate ESL students, as it is a large portion of the student base. The dissertation guidelines note they don't come down hard on syntax and grammar, but that the paper does need to make sense in written English, and that the examiners can't grade a paper they can't understand.

I'm looking at the paper now, and it's pretty rough. I'm not going crazy over the syntax and am helping with that some. However, I'm finding I'm having to make a lot of corrections and completely restructuring sentences and paragraphs in order to make the sentences make sense.

My question is how much should I be fixing? How much would I be allowed to fix? I am mostly worried about plagiarism, as it would be obvious that my friend's paper has been dramatically changed. My friend's supervisor has seen some drafts of his writing, and it would be obvious if the writing was suddenly much clearer. Getting a paper edited is not against the rules, but I have to make so many dramatic edits I'm worried it may risk plagiarism.

When there's a bad argument, I don't rewrite it, but just write a sentence or blurb below it to guide my friend to making a better one. Like, "do you have evidence for this?" or, "this is not relevant here, move to...".

Thanks for the advice!

It sounds like you're doing all the right things regarding helping without actually writing for your friend. I would explain to your friend, and ask them to meet with their adviser, either with or without you, to discuss how much/what type of help is appropriate. With the adviser included in the process, and some boundaries identified, it will be clear that plagiarism is not taking place. That being said, this is a huge time committment on your part. It might help you and your friend for them to work with a writing coach. Your school probably has a writing center or ESL center that can help with this.


Is there any reliable website other than google translate to translate from Chinese to English? So I have come across a paper that will highly beneficial to me and my research group ,but the problem its in chinese and it heavily involves chemical formulas and mathematical data,so its hard to translate using google translate.Is there any site that translates academia papers?

Please pay a mathematical freelancer on Upworks.


Mentioning Products of Companies in Technical Paper? I am writing a technical paper for my college project. This is my first time so I don't have much experience in this arena.
I am writing about a philosophy used by Mechanical Engineers while designing a product. Now there is a situation where I have to mention a product and the company whose product it is.
I am saying this by:

... so popular that it has been incorporated by ABC Company in their XYZ Product suite ...

Now I want to ask whether I should mention that:

ABC & XYZ are registered trademark of ABC Inc.

If yes then where and in what format?

No need to mention the trademarks in a technical paper, although you could certainly cite their website if it talks about the product.

I generally cite anything that I think the reader could get more information about that is pertinent to the topic.  That said, a paper isn't a web page, and you shouldn't litter it with gratuitous cites.


Can a journal once removed from Scopus be reindexed in Scopus? If a journal indexing in Scopus is cancelled, can such journal be indexed in Scopus again?

Yes, provided the reasons that led to delisting are addressed.


Being asked to pay penalty if fail PhD qualifying exam Just to ask, how common is it for universities to ask a PhD student (fully funded) who has failed the qualifying exams to pay back partially or in full their stipend?

I heard some anecdotes that some universities require students to pay the equivalent of masters course fees in order to graduate with a master degree. This is supposedly done to deter students who enroll in a PhD to get a free Master by deliberately (or otherwise) failing their qualifying exams.

Thanks for any input from any professors/ students inside or outside US!

In the United States, I have never heard of such a policy, and would consider it somewhat strange and vindictive on the part of the university.  Yes, it can be frustrating for professors when a student drops out with a Masters, but it's better to lose an unwilling or unable student early than to attempt to cudgel them along toward an ill-deserved doctorate.

In terms of "free rides" and "paying back," in most cases that I am aware of, a Ph.D. student who is supported by the department or their advisor is not just given money, but is working as a teaching assistant or research assistant.

Perhaps if one was supported by an external fellowship it might include such a term.  If I were a student, however, I would be very leery of accepting such an offer.


Masters Dilemma: Does University Reputation Come First? I'm a political science undergrad from Canada with a very good GPA (4.26/4.33), lots of experience as a research assistant and two papers submitted. I would like to pursue an academic career, so I'm looking for a research-oriented masters. I could probably get admitted in a decent university abroad but I face a dilemma.

I was offered a complete scholarship, a 15 000$ stipend, and promised a long-term research assistant job at a local and totally unknown university.

So here's my question guys.

Should I aim for THE best uni I can possibly get into for my MSc? Is it wiser to take an offer at a lesser known university but get a director that will include me in all her research projects? Do professors in top universities even work/publish with their masters students?

Any advice is welcome.

Only you can answer this question, because only you know what you want out of your Masters & what your risk appetite is. Superficially, the choice is fairly straightforward:

If you take the offer:

You're paid $15,000 for however long the Masters is, not to mention a tuition waiver. That's pretty substantial for a Masters student.
You are further guaranteed a long-term research position. This is a big deal since the post-graduation job search is a major headache for many students.
You are presumably in a familiar environment. You know the local city. If you have a significant other or children, you have less trouble accommodating them.
Your experience in the academic aspects of the Masters might be better simply because you know the supervisor personally.
Flip side: you could suffer from the "same university" drawback.

If you look abroad:

A more prestigious university is going to affect your job search, especially if you get a non-academic job. If you stay in academia, then the reputation of the department matters more.
If you get along well with your advisor, there's a good chance your experience is better at the more prestigious university, for reasons such as more good students to talk to, more seminars by leading academics to attend, etc.
Warning: you might not get admitted.
You have a lot more administrative hassle to deal with, e.g. you might have standardized tests to take, visa applications to worry about, housing to look for, etc.

Ultimately, is a bird in hand worth more than two in the bush for you? If you say yes, you presumably dislike risk, in which case it's better to take up the offer. If you say no, the reverse probably applies.

One thing worth pointing out is that you can still become an academic if you stay at the local, unknown university (in fact, the long-term job offer is effectively a guarantee of this). However, because of the Law of Descending Prestige, you probably won't end up at a well-known institution. It's still a bird in hand vs. two in the bush situation, and it's up to you to choose how much risk you're willing to take in pursuit of your dreams.


Is there a research exchange program for postdocs between UK and worldwide universities? I completed a PhD a couple of years ago and am looking at postdocs abroad, but not in my original field, so my advisors aren't able to suggest good places to apply to. Are there any programmes (official or unofficial) where a UK PhD is highly regarded that facilitate exchanges of academics between UK and worldwide universities? I'm thinking US and China to start with.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships fund individuals with PhDs to go and do a postdoc research project at another university for a while. If you are interested in the US/China, then you would be looking at the Global Fellowships, which fund a period of study outside the EU (typically 2 years) followed by a year back in an EU country to transfer the knowledge learned back into Europe. The scheme is highly competitive. You would need to make arrangements with appropriate host institutions yourself.


Are there examples of highly cited papers that very poorly written? We've had a little debate at work about whether a paper that presents good research, but that is at the same time very poorly written (either sloppy presentation, or not written in the native language of the authors), would nevertheless get a lot of citations. Are there good examples of such papers, specifically ones that present seminal work in some field, but that are very difficult to read because of the language or are riddled with errors?

I think Heidegger's Being and Time might fit this criteria. Though the philosopher's work was important to the field, he was criticized for the use of convoluted, imprecise language that managed to confuse other philosophers (Bertrand Russell being one such critic). In fact, the philosopher Paul Edwards published a collection of articles under the title Heidegger's Confusions in order to

  rescue [Heidegger’s] valuable ideas from the logical confusions in which they are embedded and from the willfully obscure and perverse language in which they are frequently expressed.

With regard to more recent (and research-oriented) writing: talk of the poor grammatical quality of academic journals has been around a while. Take a look at this quote from the Chronicle article "Bad Writing and Bad Thinking"

  Many people—publishers of scholarly work, editors at higher-education publications, agents looking for academic authors capable of writing trade books—who think about the general quality of scholarly prose would admit that we're in a sorry state, and most would say there isn't much to do about it.

So, although an example other than Heidegger's writing doesn't come to mind, it doesn't seem you'll have to look very far.


Writing an arXiv paper without "Introduction" or "related work" sections Many conferences and journals demand that a paper must follow certain guidelines; otherwise the paper will not get accepted.
For example:

Writing introduction section
Writing previous related work

Is it okay to not follow these guidelines while writing an arXiv version? I want to directly write the main result and its proof, and put that on arXiv.
Note: I take an exceptionally good amount of time to write an Introduction since I am not good with framing English sentences. And since my research area is a competitive one, I do not want to get scooped in that time.

ArXiv's submission guidelines state that

Submissions to arXiv should be topical and refereeable scientific contributions that follow accepted standards of scholarly communication.

A manuscript that doesn't provide any context is unlikely to meet that standard, and may be declined by a moderator. In any case, the golden rule in technical communication is to consider the audience (hopefully your preprint will find some interested readers!) and what they'd find useful. Context and discussion of the relation to prior work tend to be quite useful.
Note, however, that ArXiv's guidelines don't specify that you need to write a perfect introduction. I've sometimes found myself stuck on one or two key opening sentences, trying to get them just right, instead of writing productively. If you face a similar issue, here's a method I've found useful. First consider what points you want to make, and maybe key works you want to cite, in order to have some structure to work from. Then force yourself to just put something down on (a possibly figurative) paper, in order to get started. If you edit that a few times, I would be surprised if you don't have something that's at least refereeable. More advice along these lines can be found here.