Is it ethical to have two (undergraduate) researchers in the same group "compete" against one another for leadership/credit of a research study? When I was previously an undergraduate research assistant in a small lab group (seven members), there was a situation where the PI had pitched a research study idea to multiple students independently, with none of us knowing that the others had been told about the idea. The PI encouraged each one of us to go off on our own and pursue the idea, try to make some progress, and eventually come back to them with a better idea of how to approach the project (perhaps even some preliminary results).

I only found out a few weeks later that the PI had pitched the idea to multiple students when a discussion with the other students shifted towards current projects and ideas. As we talked, one student mentioned that the PI had told them about "a new idea for a research study" and that they "had devoted quite a bit of time making progress on the study." That research study happened to be the same one that I was pitched by the PI, and one that I had also spent considerable time working on recently.

The PI had told me that good work on this project could lead to a potential conference presentation and/or journal publication, and I was keen on making good progress. However, finding out that I wasn't the only person in the research group working independently on the idea made me feel like I was unfairly placed into a competition I wasn't even aware of. I could have invested plenty of time into the research project, only to discover that a colleague had already finish more than I had and, therefore, made my progress effectively worthless.

I'm curious what members of the academic community think about the ethics of this. Is it ethical to pit people in the same group against one another on a project, with the credit going to the one that finishes better and/or faster? Do the ethics of this change when the students aren't told that there are others working on this?

In this case, I happened to be an undergraduate research assistant while the other was a master’s student, but I'm wondering if this matters. At the time, we were both paid members of the lab, but I've heard about similar situations where one/both people were volunteer undergraduates working for free.

One part of me says that I was entitled the fair opportunity to work on the project knowing that I would receive due credit for any findings I made. But another part of me says that this is the nature of academia, and I should learn to thrive in situations like these.

Let me try with an "onion-answer", one layer at a time.

It is certainly not unethical to have several undergraduate students work on the same project. This is how most people get by, as there are simply not enough interesting and unique projects at undergraduate level that everybody can get their own. (And if there are, it would take too much time developing them.)
It is borderline unethical to set up a competition between students in your lab, dangling the prize of a conference presentation or a publication ahead of them. The focus should be on how to do good research, not how to get ahead of your colleagues - even though it is sometimes also part of research. I can see how this could be done in a somewhat fun and productive atmosphere, so I will not dismiss it off hand. But I would much rather have the students work together, than against each other.
It is blatantly unethical to have a competition among your undergraduate students without informing them, that they are in a competition, first. I assume from your post, that you have never said yes to be in such a competition, and that you in good faith assumed that your chances of getting the "prize" would be based on your performance alone, and not how it compares to the performance of other students. This is a kind of "bait and switch" strategy, also often used for job interviews, where you get a person in the door by promising them a reward - but at the end of the day there is only one reward, and many people competing.

Finally, you mention that part of the prize is also "credit". Here I want to tell you, that if any scientific work is done towards a specific publication as part of the non-winning studies, the authors of said work should be credited as co-authors. Even if they don't win the competition.


What to do during the first stages of your PhD program? Fresh from undergrad, I will be starting a math PhD program this upcoming fall in the United States. After several conversations with math professors and current PhD students, I noticed that several people advised having a sense of "urgency" right from the very start of your PhD program. Most recommended working to complete preliminary exams as soon as possible, but there was some variance in their opinions about when to jump into your thesis. One professor recommended "courting" potential thesis advisers by doing research projects with a professor or two during the first couple summers.

Do you agree with this call for urgency? If so, how do your recommend attacking those first 2-3 years of a (pure) math PhD program? Is it ever too soon to decide on your thesis topic? Recall that I do not have a master's, although I have taken three graduate-level algebra courses.

I'm a third year, and I have found it immensely helpful to get started with research as quickly as possible.

The thing is, a lot of times you get stuck in mathematical research, especially when you're first starting out. Also, you will have a harder time finding a concrete problem then you'd think. Additionally, you could use your research to guide which classes you take (at least after quals). Lastly, making progress is hard and takes time. This means that the best way to do research is to always have a research problem.

It may not be your main focus, your main focus may be your exams, but if over your first two years you've spent random times thinking about a specific problem (and have geared your studies towards a problem), you can begin to make a lot of headway. So I highly suggest you start the research process. Talk to some advisers. Find something that interests you. Read some papers in your free time. Use this to find an interesting problem. Talk about this with someone who researches the area and now you have an adviser. And just start thinking about it. This is all pretty leisurely and can be done in your "free time" between classes, after classes, etc. Don't worry about the time consuming parts (actually writing down solid proofs), just get your mind churning.

When exams are done, you'll be surprised how ready you are to write what you've come up with. Even if you haven't solved much, you have likely narrowed down a clear path of where you want to go and what you want to prove (and have an intuition as to why you think it's correct). Write down that path as a "homework problem" to yourself, and now you're full-time research.

(Some people will tell you to wait until you can understand your project. Honestly, I didn't understand what I was doing (stochastic dynamics) for about half a year. After finally taking the classes on subjects related to the field, I can say that classes wouldn't've helped much. The only way to get into a research project is to just start doing it, and keep trying different books/resources until you understand all the background. Classes help, but less than you'd think.)


Feasibility of moving from US to France for a postdoc opportunity Recently I ran across an international postdoctoral opportunity, which seems quite interesting to me. While I would prefer to stay in academia in United States, there are various factors that enable me to consider that opportunity, including potential for work on an interesting and important topic as well as an opportunity to immerse myself in somewhat different cultural, language and, perhaps, academic environment (thanks to my relative freedom from family obligations at the present time).

The problem is that the opportunity is at one of the universities in France, which creates several issues (beyond the obvious one of being accepted). The issues (and corresponding questions) are somewhat specific to my situation, but, at the same time, likely rather common to many people, who are originally from non-Francophone countries. Specifically, I'm concerned about the following.

How feasible is to consider such an opportunity from the foreign language perspective? I am talking about the fact that I practically do not speak French (discounting a very limited number of popular words and phrases)? While English language is considered a de facto universal language of science, I expect this aspect of academic environment to vary significantly from country to country (probably much less from university to university, even in major cities).
Combining that assumption with my, perhaps, incorrect knowledge that English is not as popular second language in France as in some other European countries, such as Sweden, this aspect brings an additional potential challenge of everyday living in a foreign language environment. I am aware of the fascinating approach of learning languages by immersing yourself in different cultural/language environment, but I'm not sure that it is such a good idea under the circumstances, considering that a postdoc position is demanding enough already. Thus, I am curious about the following question: is that a real challenge and to what extent?
How feasible is to consider such opportunity from the perspective of me being a US citizen without French work visa or similar documents in hand. I realize that, typically, AFAIK, selected international candidates' visa documents are processed by hosting universities. However, the question is this: how significantly the potential burden [financially and time-wise] of visa processing and, perhaps, relocation negatively impact hiring committees' decisions and, thus, reduce international postdoctoral candidates' chances to be offered a position of interest? I am interested in answers to this question from both general and local (France) perspective.

I recently did exactly what you were describing. Spent two years in Paris as a postdoc.

1) Not speaking French will be an issue because of collaboration. Some will be very open to working with you, but many others will not. Do not be surprised when group meetings are conducted in French. The more international the lab, the better the experience will likely be. Most of my collaborators and friends ended up coming from other countries outside of France; though they all also spoke French.

2) In a major city like Paris, day to day living is not really an issue. Getting around the city and running basic errands are really not that difficult.

3) Getting the work visa is a non-issue. The host organization will handle this and provide you with the paperwork (though probably not promptly). At some point you will have to visit a French Embassy in the US to file the paperwork in person. You will likely get something called a Scientific Visa which is very permissive in what it allows.

4) Here is the bad news. Bureaucracy is an absolute nightmare in France. If you want to navigate it, you will either have to speak very good French or have a friend willing to help you. This help will require multiple full day commitments, so it is a lot to ask. Once you arrive, you are supposed to apply for a resident permit and are technically not allowed to leave the country until it arrives. Mine took over a year and I know people who have gone 2+ years without receiving one. In the meantime you get a paper stating you are waiting on this permit. It expires every 3 months, so you have to present yourself in person to renew it (actually a renewal usually takes two visits). I never received proof of health insurance. That means I could receive healthcare, but I had to pay full price. From the people I know, this is a very common situation. They will still deduct money from your paycheck every month though.

5) Obtaining an apartment and bank account in France are quite difficult too. It is sort of a Catch-22 situation. Before arriving, I was put in touch with Science Accueil. They help setup foreign scientists with apartments, bank accounts, and things like that. Hopefully you will also have access to something like that.

Living in France as a non-EU citizen is very difficult. I don't regret doing it, but I don't think I would do it again. There are positives though. Your situation may be different, but I received 9 weeks of vacation per year (including holidays). It is easy to travel throughout Europe and that experience is amazing.

Good Luck!


Did requesting more info/contacting admissions too early hurt my chances of getting in? Before saying anything I would like to point out I have no knowledge on the how to apply for graduate schools and this may very well be a stupid question.

I'm getting my Bachelor's degree in Spring 2017 and I plan on applying for graduate programs for art that Fall. I have been looking at different schools and requesting more information and asking the admission offices about the programs I am thinking of applying to.

BUT, a friend of mine told me I definitely shouldn't have done that until I am almost absolutely sure I will be applying to that school and especially not a year ahead. I was just casually requesting more information, and I didn't know they took that so seriously.

So my question is did I somehow hurt my chances of getting into those schools by contacting the admissions very early? Especially when I am interested in more than one program?

I would also like to clarify that I did not contact a faculty member in the program, just the admissions office.

I am 100% sure you did NOT hurt your chances of getting in merely by requesting additional information. Asking for clarification is never a negative. I expect the admissions office would simply send you links to the school's webpages that give the information you requested, and end their email with "Feel free to email us if you have any more questions".


Is it acceptable to ask for the original bibtex file of a paper? I am reading a review paper which includes hundreds of useful citations for my paper. I would like to import some of the citations into a bibtex file. The only thing I know to do is to search them on google one by one, and then click on "export bibtex".

Is it acceptable (ethical) to ask the author of a paper for the original bibtex (Latex) file?

Or I wonder if there are any program could do the repetitive job: searching each citation on google one by one and export the bibtex from google scholar.

Thanks for the Scopus answer. It works for most of the published (not working papers, though) papers!!

I would consider this a perfectly reasonable, if unusual, request.

That probably has a lot to do with the culture of my field; most papers in particle physics are uploaded to arXiv as LaTeX source (though .bib files are often not included), which is then made available to download along with the rendered PDF. This facilitates a cultural expectation that source code to the paper should be available to readers, not hidden. So I would consider sharing the BibTeX file associated with a paper to be a reasonable thing to do, a professional courtesy of sorts - similar to what sharing a copy of the paper itself is or used to be.

Other fields may think differently. Still, in most cases I would think it's fine to ask. The author can always say no or ignore your request, if they don't want their file to be shared for some reason.


How to cite a specific living document in a GitHub repository? I want to cite the Ethereum Project's white paper. It was the document that announced the project and outlined its philosophies, properties, etc. However, in 2014 they moved the paper to GitHub and treat it as a living document. For example, although the paper was initially released in 2013, as of today it has 84 revisions on GitHub with the most recent being two hours ago. They do not make a PDF available that I have found, nor have I been able to locate a DOI.

I'm going to assume that I would need to cite a specific version of the document, but I'm not sure if there is a preferred way to do that.

Note this question is similar to, but distinct from, this question which addresses how to cite an entire repository that one owns. I'm asking how to cite a specific document within a repository owned by someone else.

Please go ahead a create a DOI for the specific release yourself and use it to cite the work.

Also, you could fork your own copy of the wiki and keep it updated from time to time from the main branch.

Versioning DOI: You can also get a DOI automatically issued for every release of the 'Living Document' by Zenoda. Details are here.

Here is a guide: https://help.github.com/articles/referencing-and-citing-content/


Is there a service that can store and mail recommendation letters to schools? I am currently applying to graduate schools, all of which request 3 letters of recommendation.

Schools currently accept letters submitted by a recommender on an online service, or sent through postal mail.

Since the recommendation letters that are submitted on my behalf are similar for each school, my recommenders have to go through a sisyphic process:

Get the email from the school
Click the link
Find the recommendation letter file
Upload the file
Submit
Rinse and repeat for each school

tl;dr

What I hope to discover is a service where my recommenders can upload their letter ONCE, and then have that service dispense the letters to all the schools, instead of having the recommenders themselves do it for each school separately.

Does such a thing exist?

Many schools offer such a service. For example, UC Berkeley

  The Letter Service will send letters to educational institutions to support your admission to graduate and professional school. We will also send letters to educational institutions for the purpose of supporting your applications for academic/educational and research employment, i.e., teaching positions.

You should check with your school/department to see what is offered.


Exam design: give maximum score per question or not? When designing an exam, would you mention the maximum score per question or not? Is it common practice?

In my view this promotes cherry-picking. This could be seen as a way to  prioritize or to satisfice  (leaving questions open since "they are not worth it").

Is there any scientific proof/pedagogical insight this is a "must", "nice for students " or "making it easier for students"?

Any thoughts on this (from professors and students)?

Examinations are time-limited, so time is a scarce resource that students need to economise.  Stipulating the marks allocated to exam questions has three main purposes:

Objectivity: The stipulated marks creates a more objective assessment, insofar as the weightings on the questions are fixed by the stipulated marks.  This prevents students from being unfairly penalised by subjective re-allocation of marks.
Time allocation: The stipulated marks allows students to economise their time by allocating it in a manner that gives appropriate levels of time relative to the marks available for the question.
Implicit expectation of detail: Ideally, marks should be allocated roughly commensurately with the time the question will take to complete if done properly.  This gives the students an understanding of the proportion of time that each question should take, and so it allows them to diagnose whether they are taking too long on a question.  This also means that the allocated marks gives the student an implicit hint as to how much detail they are expected to give in a question --- low mark questions usually do not require large amounts of detail.

In your question, you seem to be taking the view that it is bad for students to economise their limited time, and that this incentivises students to eschew answering entire questions.  So long as there is sufficient time available in the exam, this should not be the case.  (A useful rule-of-thumb I heard for exams was that the course lecturer should be able to complete the exam in 1/3 of the time limit for an undergraduate exam, or 1/2 of the time limit for a postgraduate exam.  This should be done under conditions where the course lecturer first "forgets" the answers to the exam, and has to figure them out in the time limit.)


NSF IIS status date changed, status still pending It has been close to three months since my NSF IIS proposal submission. The status date changed today on NSF Fastlane but the status is still pending. Does it mean it is going to be declined?

That almost certainly means that proposal has gone through a review panel, and does not indicate what the recommendation from the panel is. There are several internal stages the proposal goes through after panel review.


Conference fee and travel costs for invited speaker I am invited as a speaker to a international conference to present a published paper. I want to ask if is it usual to not pay the conference fee and the hotel? Should I ask them via email?

The larger and more prestigious the venue, the higher the probability that your conference fee and travel costs will be paid by the venue.  Certain invited speakers (particularly keynote speakers) will also be given a speaking fee, but "invited speaker" means different things in different venues.

You should, therefore, explicitly ask.  First, if it's a small and not well-funded venue, they may be asking for you to volunteer rather than offering to pay.  Second, many predatory / scam conferences send out official "invited speaker" invitations that attempt to stroke your ego and get you to give them money.

If you don't already know the people and the venue, be careful because it is quite likely to be a predatory / scam invitation.  The "invited to present a published paper" is a particular red flag, as these venues seem to have a semi-automated method of scraping publication databases and inviting authors to give them money to talk to a half-empty room of others who have been similarly scammed.  Once you've published a few papers, you'll get a lot of these---I get several per day.


Asking for details of an algorithm developed in an article in review Recently, I have reviewed an article for the IEEE (a very good article too).  Within the article, the authors place great emphasis on a particular algorithm they developed and used, without disclosing any actual code - but explained very well that it could be replicated (which I won't do)..

Now, after I have provided an anonymous review, it occurred to me that I could further test their algorithm in my similar field of research (giving due credit of course).

How would one go about asking for details of an algorithm developed in an article in review?

In a similar situation, I have sent an email to the editor asking to pass on a message and giving permission to reveal my name and contact details to the authors if they wish to respond.

Alternatively, but more problematic, you state that you may be able to replicate it. You could go ahead and do that and by the time your work is complete, the original article is likely to be available to be cited. If you were to go down this path, though, you should still be discussing this with the editor as part of your agreement as a reviewer is that you don't do this.


Is a Master's thesis considered 'published'? I'm currently applying for PhD positions in the US, having completed a Master's degree in Engineering in the UK and then working in Industry for the past 13 years. I'm a bit confused as to the extent to which (if at all) a Master's thesis is considered to be 'published'?

To my knowledge, my Master's thesis was not officially published on the University website. However, I have seen some cases where Master's theses at some institutions are available online from the affiliated institution's website. To what extent are these 'available online' Master's theses considered to be published?

If they are not considered published then, if someone completes a Master's thesis and publishes it online, but doesn't follow-up by publishing it in a journal (perhaps they don't go on to do a PhD), then what is to prevent another academic taking those results and publishing them as their own? Is that considered 'fair game' in academia?

The background to this on my side is that my Master's thesis was a very successful project and was received very well at the time by the faculty in the Engineering school I studied in. It probably could have been turned into a research paper; however, given that I made the decision to start a career in Industry, I didn't push to publish the results in an academic journal at the time.

More recently, I have come across a paper that was published a few years later by researchers I am not familiar with at another institution, which seems very similar to my Master's thesis (I'd say ~75-80% the same content). Now, I am not accusing them of plagiarism - it's quite possible they may have discovered the same thing independently. However, I am just wondering, in general, to what extent a Master's thesis posted online is considered to be 'published' and how it is perceived in Academia if someone was to 'plagiarize' a Master's thesis.

I guess a follow-on question relating to my situation is: how much of this (if any) should I mention in my applications for PhD programs?

To what extent are these 'available online' Master's theses considered to be published?

In academia, published typically means included in conference proceedings or a journal by a publisher in some format (typically a printed book) that has an ISBN. A thesis is not published, under that definition. Nonetheless, an unpublished thesis needn't be private, e.g., it may appear online and it may be available in university library.

  what is to prevent another academic taking [someone's Master's thesis] and publishing them as their own? Is that considered 'fair game' in academia?

Such behaviour isn't prevented, but it would destroy a career, so it is uncommon.

  to what extent a Master's thesis posted online is considered to be 'published' and how it is perceived in Academia if someone was to 'plagiarize' a Master's thesis.

Such a thesis isn't published, but that's not the main issue: Academic fraud is intolerable and fraudsters will suffer severe consequences.

  how much of this (if any) should I mention in my applications for PhD programs?

I don't see any reason to mention any of it. Do you? (Perhaps add a comment if you do.)


How is extra exam time for disability accommodation perceived by professors, especially potential reference letter writers? Some students with what is considered as academic disabilities receive 30 minutes of additional time for every hour of exam, which is a factor of 1.5 to the exam time.

How is this perceived by professors? Might some of them think that these students get an edge or advantage over other students unfairly?

If a student is looking forward to requesting a reference for grad school from a certain professor, would it generally be better for him/her not to request exam extensions for this professor's course?

(I will answer in the context of the U.S., but I hope others will answer for other parts of the world.)

  How is this perceived by professors?  Might some of them think that these students get an edge or advantage over other students unfairly?

The US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has stated, "A test should ultimately measure a student's achievements and not the extent of the disability" (www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/auxaids.html).

If some professors are still playing catch-up, that's their problem.  Extended time has been settled legally for at least 15 years (see the Marilyn Bartlett case about accommodations in the bar exam, which was decided TWICE by Sonia Sotomayor, long before she was appointed to the US Supreme Court).

  If a student is looking forward to requesting a reference for grad school from a certain professor, would it generally be better for him/her not to request exam extensions for this professor's course?

There is no reason to have a tooth extracted without novocaine, i.e. there is no reason to sacrifice the needed accommodations, just because a professor might botch a letter of recommendation.  I say botch because it would be discriminatory for a professor to judge a student's exam results differently just because the student used a reasonable accommodation to achieve them.  OCR enforces the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act, which protect the civil rights of K-12, undergraduate and graduate students with disabilities.

Institutions of higher learning and testing boards do not provide extended time and other accommodations lightly.  It is fair to assume that if the student has an approved 504 accommodation in place, it is in fact needed and appropriate.  College professors are experts in their fields.  We cannot expect them to also be experts in disabilities, and sit in judgment to decide which students truly deserve their legally binding accommodations and which do not.  It would be even more absurd for them to make such judgments without a careful examination of the student's documentation.  And if we did hand off this responsibility to individual professors... why would universities need to set up offices for students with disabilities?


How to publish proof of something if the academic level is lower than expected and cannot publish to a journal or a conference? I am an undergraduate student with an interest in Computer science, so recently i have discovered new concepts and algorithms related to patterns and simulations (i.e biological simulations & computational models simulations), and how they can be related easily, extremely easily to mathematics in a way that it would envolve a single rule of (1+1=2) and it would take forever to fully analyse and understand all the possible outputs (all the biological & computational simulations) based on that simple rule.

So i have read about similar ideas that exist today (suppose we name it X), it took about (3) well-known physicists and mathematicians (20-30) years to introduce (X) and be accepted in the literature, mainly (X) is based on  two important topics in computer science (Turing machines & Self-replicating machines) these two topics can be considered as the core idea of computers, so like any other researcher i wrote the ideas explaining every detail neatly and revised it more than (30) times then contacted (3) journals about it and they refused to publish although they said and know that the ideas are novel, new and applicable ...

I went to contact some professional people in the field, they still suggested me to submit it to a journal or present it in a conference, so i went for the second choice, they replied "the proofs and ideas in the research paper are true but you can't present something that is not in your area of expertise and even if it was, you still can't because the different academic level between the presenter and the audience, it would be suitable to publish it in a journal", so here is my problem: As an undergraduate, i have a valid proof of something, how to publish it ? So,

1) I have contacted some related journals and they refused.

2) I have submitted the paper to a conference and they refused.

3) Contacted professional people and refered to option (1) & (2).

What's next to do ? Also, this seems to be on-the-edge situation, but i know there is one more thing i can do.

I will echo @jakebeal's skepticism about your results themselves - I would suggest having a long, serious, and honest discussion with a professional mentor about the novelty and importance of what you've found. This is important both for presenting your ideas, and deciding where they should end up - I certainly have thoughts that I know don't "rate" $TopJournal.

That being said, there's nothing about being an undergraduate student that would present you from publishing in a solid journal. For example, as an undergraduate working in the field you described, I published in several solid journals. There's nothing that would stop a paper from being published just because the author is an undergraduate.

You've said you've contacted several journals and conferences, and they've refused - have they said why? Have you spoken to your mentors to make sure your paper is actually submission ready - the process is non-trivial, and important even if your findings are genuinely important. What you should do next, if you're genuinely interested in moving your finding forward, is to talk to people in the field, make sure the idea is ready to publish and that you've got a solid notion both of its importance and how to "sell" the concept to an editor, and then proceed from there.


scientific plotting software like Excel with more functionality without coding? Is there any (popular) software for Mac that generates high quality scientific plots for publications without needs for coding? Specifically, I am looking to generate sub-plots or panels where Excel does not have such functionality.

Seems Plot is one good choice:

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/20194/plot

You can look at some online services such as Plotly, which works with Excel, R, etc.


Is it possible to get a professor position without having had any fellowships in grad school? As a deferred action for early childhood arrival (DACA) student, I found out that I am not eligible for federal fellowships from the government or through the university.

Some universities allow for fellowships to DACA students if they meet in-state requirements but being a student who attended undergrad at another state, I do not qualify. (I applied to all out-of-state graduate programs)

With the DACA status, I can still apply and work as teaching assistant or research assistant to fund my Ph.D. program.

So my question would be, if I do not have any fellowships on my CV and only RA & TA positions, how much would this negatively impact me when applying for assistant professor positions, if at all?

Do hiring committees ever place emphasis on whether the student had had fellowships or not? And would it be more worth it to go into a Ph.D. program in-state where I may qualify for some federal fellowships made through the school (from a funding perspective)?

There's no way that you are going to be disqualified from faculty positions by not having a graduate student fellowship. There's no "has a fellowship" checkbox on rubric that search committees use.
What will matter is a holistic evaluation of the quality of your research, your publications, your teaching experience, and your letters of recommendation.

Of course, evaluating junior faculty candidates is difficult and lots other things matter as well and can help reinforce (or cast doubt) on a committee's evaluation of a candidates quality. In that sense, a prestigious fellowship can be an additional positive signal in an otherwise strong packet. In that context, you should think of a fellowship as a "nice to have" — it does nothing to replace great research, great publications, and great letters.

In some ways, not having a fellowship might even help, if it translates into more work as a TA and RA.  This might lead to teaching experience and publications, which will be viewed as more valuable than all but the most prestigious fellowships. For example, I've seen faculty candidates who had made it entirely through graduate school on fellowships dinged for a lack of teaching experience.


What kind of opportunities exist in the industry for someone with a Ph.D in theoretical CS? I'm curious to know what kind of choices does someone with a recent Ph.D in theoretical CS have, in the industrial research labs, and how to find out about existing opportunities. In particular, I'm looking for:

Links to sites where such opportunities are listed, if something like that exists.
Information regarding the scope of working on pure theoretical topics in industrial labs, which tend to be product-oriented IMHO.

It would be really great if anyone working in an industrial lab would share his experience (which lab, what kind of work you do etc), even if he/she may not be working on theoretical CS (or CS at all!).

AT&T, Google, IBM, and Microsoft all have thriving basic research labs that regularly hire PhDs in theoretical computer science, and whose members regularly publish in theoretical computer science conferences and journals.  Yes, research at those labs is colored by the needs of their parent companies, but not as much as you might think.  All four companies (and several others) have thriving internship programs.

As with any other research job, your best bet in finding opportunities is to talk personally with people at the labs.  Go to FOCS/STOC/SODA, sit at the same lunch table as David Johnson or Muthu or Ken Clarkson or Yuval Peres, and just talk to them.  (It obviously helps if you have some research results that they care about.)  Ask your advisor to introduce you if you don't feel comfortable just introducing yourself.

(I'm about to get some angry emails from David, Muthu, Ken, and Yuval, aren't I?)


How much is the teaching duty of university administrators? Due to the time-consuming nature of administrative jobs, university administrators normally reduce their teaching duties. This reduction is normally proportional to the level of administrative job: Chair/Dean/Vice President/Provost/President.

I am curious if it is only matter of personal preference or there is institutional regulations for minimum and maximum teaching tasks?

In general, how university administrators are involved in classroom teaching, supervising graduate students, and academic research projects?

You are right that professors in various administrative positions typically have a reduced teaching load. However, this is hard to quantify and depends mostly on the institution's policy and maybe even the specific agreement (or contract) negotiated. The full range is possible: from no reduction in teaching load (position with little time requirement) to full “exemption” from teaching (e.g., dean or university president).


What to do when you plan to submit a paper and a senior colleague is independently pursuing the same research idea? I am an assistant professor in a business discipline. A couple of months ago, I came across (through casual chat) that a senior colleague of mine plans to pursue a research idea that I myself was also planning to pursue. I asked whether I could join her and her co-author on the project and she declined. But she said I could work on it myself. We didn't share any details of our thoughts afterwards. So we don't know what exactly each other's research question and progress on the project.

I went ahead and explored the project with the research question I had in mind. Now I have a finished draft of my work. I don't know the status of my colleague's project.

Now I would like to submit my paper to a journal. But I am not sure whether I should publicize it by e.g. posting it online/on my website. I am afraid that my senior colleague (she will be on my tenure committee) will be pissed off if I do so. She may think that I am scooping her. On the other hand, without publicizing it, people in my field (or potential referees of my paper) will not know that this work is mine and the paper may not get exposure/comments (which may not be critical).

What should I do? I don't think I have done anything unethical, but somehow I feel that I am stuck in a dilemma.

The fact that the colleague in question will be on your tenure committee seems to, on the surface, complicate matters. However, it's not like you had a conversation with her, made no mention of a possible collaboration, and took the idea and ran with it:

You reached out to her by proposing a collaboration on the research topic, which she declined.

Thus you should do with your manuscript whatever is normal in your field to disseminate the ideas contained in your paper; e.g., submit your paper for peer review, post the manuscript on your webpage/upload the manuscript to a preprint server (if this is normal in your field/OK with where you plan on submitting your manuscript), etc.

Also, if your conversation with your colleague was key in your research progress on the topic, then I think an acknowledgment in your manuscript stating that fact would be appropriate.


Academic job search: protocol for asking for letters of reference Asking on behalf of my client (I'm an academic editor). Person is up for tenure next year at a small college. Wants to apply for a job at a better school with a higher salary. What is the protocol/things to be aware of when asking for letters of reference when she has not told anyone in her department that she is thinking of leaving? This is not a case of being engaged in an intensive job hunt; rather, she came across an intriguing position. What are the possible repercussions if it becomes known that she's looking for a job one year before tenure? Tenure is likely because her achievements exceed the standards of her current position.

First a bit of a warning. In many fields, the faculty from different colleges are likely to know and interact with one another at conferences and such. So it would be fairly normal, for a person writing a reference to correspond with another faculty member at your client's college. I assume she wants to avoid that situation, though it may be less important than she thinks.

However, since your client is asking for letters from people known to her and who, in turn know her, it is also fine to include a note giving her current situation and wishes for confidentiality. Not prejudicing a future tenure decision would be a good enough reason, I think.

However, the college(s) to which the recommendations are sent, might also, informally, seek additional information. This may be improper in some places, but it also likely happens. Thus, you can get no absolute guarantee that the current employer won't learn of what is happening. It seems a little harder for me to consider asking the new institution to keep it confidential.

But, while I doubt that there would be a problem in any case, it would be good to have a backup explanation for "looking at another position while being perfectly content" in the current one, not to put words in her mouth.


Posting peer reviewed but not yet accepted papers to arXiv Here  Elsevier say that authors may put preprints on arXiv, and that they may put accepted versions on arXiv. They define a preprint as something that has not been peer reviewed, nor had any other value added to it by the  publisher.

They do not seem to say anything explicitly about posting intermediate versions, that is, versions that have been revised as part of the peer review process but have not yet been accepted.

I would like to post to arXiv a significantly revised version of a paper that has been accepted subject to minor revisions. The Elsevier website does not seem to address this case. Is posting the paper acceptable? Is it common practice?

The rationale for wishing to post this version is to be able to refer to new results it contains. But I can understand a journal not wanting such intermediate versions to be posted. Their peer review process has added value, but until the paper is accepted it's hard to give the journal credit.

I'm not a lawyer, but their definition of "preprint" says:

  This is the author's own write-up of research results and analysis that has not been peer reviewed, nor had any other value added to it by a publisher (such as formatting, copy-editing, technical enhancements, and the like).

Note all of these - formatting, copy-editing, technical enhancements - are done by the publisher's staff. Peer review is not usually done by the publisher's staff. So I'd say you are clear to post revised-but-not-yet-accepted papers to arXiv.

In any case the worst case scenario is probably them sending you a warning asking you to take down the revision (I consider this rather unlikely too - even if it's against their policies, they would first have to notice, and then have to decide to enforce). So you can probably do it without incurring too much trouble. If you're very worried, you can also ask them.


I got the following comment from a reputed math journal. What does it mean? I got this comment after more than 75 days of submission:

  The considered problem in this manuscript is a practice in high mathematics and can not be a paper for publication in high-level journals.

What does it mean?

My educated guess is that the reviewer is a native speaker of German and mistranslated some terms into English:

The German word Übung translates both to practice and to exercise.
In German universities, höhere Mathematik (literally: higher mathematics) was used as a label for mathematics courses for students of other scientific fields or engineering. At times, this only referred to the calculus courses (and not the linear-algebra courses). In particular, these courses usually focus on applying mathematical concepts and do not compare to courses for students of mathematics. (I wouldn’t be surprised if you can still find this label in use somewhere.)

If my guess is correct, the reviewers comment means something along the lines of:

  This manuscript is just a (demonstrative) exercise in undergraduate mathematics and therefore not suitable for publication in a high-level journal.

So, your manuscript was rejected because it allegedly does not feature any new mathematics.


Is it common/ ethically acceptable for PhD advisors to propose and supervise topics on which they lack basic knowledge? I've just graduated in STEM in a small but respected university in Europe. I had two supervisors who hold their PhD in my field.  The aim of my PhD was to utilize a particular chemical compound in the synthesis of various materials. Very little literature is available about the topic and neither of my supervisors had ever published a single paper about it.
I had a tough time during my PhD because I was left figuring out completely on my own how to do research without having a real expert beside me I could learn from. Moreover, I was prevented from asking for help to anyone. Whenever I asked them for help, my supervisors would just throw out some buzzwords or vague explanations to the data I had produced, which were seldom appropriate. Sometimes, I was also given the silent treatment. Back then, I thought that this was the way a PhD is meant to be done. You know "you have to be independent", "your PhD is only yours"....
However, I eventually realized that my supervisors were not those experts they were supposed to be and came up with the reason behind their "hands-off" attitude. I found out they did not  aware of the physical, chemical, and even toxicological (!) properties of the compound I had been working with for the last three years. They were even oblivious to the appropriate scientific terminology and apparatuses relevant to the research topic: one of them was unaware that the term polymerization was also applicable  in the context of inorganic compounds, not just organic or biological polymers, while the other did not know a (very) common technique you are supposed to learn during the second year of your bachelor's degree. As an "expert" of the topic, he should have been definitely knowledgeable of. I could continue with other examples, but my thread is not about shaming my supervisors. Their knowledge and expertise are under their responsibility, not mine.
After my graduation, I left both my supervisors as I felt I had been deceived and lured to work with them. I do not trust them anymore. Right now, I continue to feel as if I were used, exploited and tricked. Probably, my PhD served only as a +1 in their CV. I do not think they were so interested in the project or in my growth as a researcher. At the same time, I do not regret my time as a PhD student. It was a stimulating intellectual experience: I learnt a lot of new things and I met many interesting people during my journey.
My questions are: how "normal" or common is it for a supervisor to put forward a PhD project without any expertise or even knowing the terminology and techniques relevant to it, especially in the STEM field? Is doing so considered ethical?
IMPORTANT: this post is NOT a vent or a blame game. I am not interested in discussing about red flags or the specific behaviour of my advisors. I am sharing my story just as an example to kindle a meaningful discussion.
What I am actually interested in is your opinion and/or experience regarding this kind of supervision style and its possible impact on the professional life of a freshly graduated PhD.
Clarifications:

They asked me to join them in this project as I was one of the top students of my cohort. I know I should have asked more questions to my supervisors when I first met them. But, you know, I naïvely thought that they were experts. Otherwise, why taking the role as a PhD supervisor?

Switching supervisors is not an option here, moreover I couldn't walk out (or run away, as JeffE would say) because I unfortunately realized the lack of knowledge of my supervisors at the end of my project. If I had dropped out from my PhD, I should have paid a hefty penalty of several thousands quid.

I was fully funded by a public institution. Is this the reason why they were not so invested in the project? They would not have lost any of their money.

I can't really judge whether the OP's treatment was appropriate or not, but there are situations in which it would be and, in those situations the answer to whether this is "acceptable" would be yes. I also think it is somewhat common, but far from universal.
The bottom line is that at some point along the line the student becomes the expert in the research topic and leaves the advisor(s) behind. In some situations that comes earlier than in most. The fresh PhD is the world's foremost expert in whatever the specific topic of the research is.
It is also true that in many fields the process of research is distinct from the actual questions asked. In those fields a person can advise another on that process and check that they follow correct process to the end, even without knowing a lot about the specifics. Research questions that rely heavily on statistics fall into such a format, though there are many variations that need to be considered. In mathematics, the validity of a proof can be checked by someone who didn't develop it.
However, for a meaningful and worthwhile advisor-advisee relationship to develop, the advisor(s) needs to be honest about what sorts of help they can and cannot provide. That understanding needs to be reached at the beginning of the relationship and if not satisfactory, then either the student or professor(s) needs to withdraw. Some students (a fair number, but not universal) can excel in situations of minimal specific help. Others (almost certainly the majority) need a bit more. Some need a lot more.
Moreover, a lot depends on what the advisor(s) are willing and able to do to advance the career of an independent student after they complete their work. If they are completely supportive, then there is little reason to be alarmed. The fact that you are exhausted at the completion of your degree is not a valid measure here. Nearly everyone (I suspect) feels that way to some degree.
Red flags arise when you aren't told you won't be helped, or if you are told you will be but abandoned. Other red flags appear when the advisor abandons you after you finish. But having to do much of the work of it on your own, isn't, in itself, a red flag, though it doesn't work for everyone. Be glad you finished successfully. Congratulations.
I'd suggest you reevaluate your decision to leave them behind. It may not be the right decision.


Is it reasonable to take hobby classes during a doctorate? I'm starting a doctorate focusing on artificial intelligence and network security, and have all of my technical classes paid for and organized. The schedule is currently forecasted at 60-ish hours a week of classes, grading, research, and other required activities. I feel this is reasonable.

However, I'd also like to take advantage of the expertise on campus and take piano lessons offered as credited classes by my school. These classes would be taught by the institute as graded classes but would not contribute in any way to my doctorate requirements or employment. They would be fully paid for by my scholarships, along with any other classes I'm taking.

On the plus side, I feel like learning something outside of my doctorate will make me a better rounded student, and music has always given me a safe, healthy outlet for stress and anxiety. And it seems like such a waste to pass up on free lessons from a professional when I'd be paying upwards of $1000 for lessons from a non-professional anyway.

However, I'm worried about attempting this for a couple reasons:

First, I'm worried that my adviser would see these extra hours as a signal that I'm not working to my maximum potential on his project. It's one thing to have hobbies and outlets, it's another to take extraneous classes that could be replaced with required ones.

Secondly, this could be an easy official scapegoat if anything goes wrong with my research. If I get a B in my required classes, it would be easy to say that the five hours a week in this class could have been used to study.

Finally, while the scholarship contract specifically says "all classes" are paid for, I'm worried it would be seen as unethical to ask the computer science department to pay for a class that has nothing to do with my doctorate.

Lots of people do this, especially if their funding allows them to take out-of-program courses. But you should

Check first that your advisor is OK with it. Tell them that music has always given you a safe, healthy outlet for stress and anxiety. Skip the well-rounded student part.
If you don't yet have an advisor, check with the graduate director. In fact, you might want to check with the graduate director anyway if you have any reason to doubt that your advisor's say-so will cover your bases.
Take the outside course pass-fail or undergrad level if possible. Tell your advisor/grad director that that's what you're doing.

Some programs might have the kind of issues you describe about "focusing on your studies," but most won't. A few might have issues about paying for an out-of-program course. But in any event they're going to find out about it anyway, so you should approach them about it first.


Is it possible to withdraw a conference paper after the rebuttal period? Maybe it sounds like an odd question, but it's really important to me!
Recently I received the reviewers' feedback as the rebuttal phase of the conference, and I sent them an answer letter regarding their comments.

As a matter of fact, two of the reviewers pointed out a theoretical problem regarding my proposed methodology which somehow disproves my claim. To be honest, I'm fine with that part as they helped me to understand what I was missing in my work.
And, based on the reviewer's comments, I expect the paper to be rejected in the end with 80-90% likelihood.

The problem is that they will send the notifications to authors 1.5 months from now, But we already figured out the solution to fix the missing theoretical part and I also gathered the results supporting that. So now I have the modified version of that paper almost ready to submit, but I have to wait 1.5 months until I receive the official notification from this conference to be able to send the paper somewhere else otherwise it'd be against the regulations.

My question is: is it proper to ask the conference chairs to revoke the paper now, and then submit the paper somewhere else? Or would it cause bad impression or might damage our reputations?

I suggest that you write to the chair of the program committee, explaining that (1) you agree with the reviewers about what was missing from your paper, (2) you've revised the paper to correct the problem, (3) you realize (or at least believe) that it's too late to modify your submission to this conference, (4) you would therefore like to submit the the revised version elsewhere, and (5) you would therefore like to withdraw your submission to this conference.  I would expect a reasonable program chair to let you withdraw the paper; after all, the conference gains nothing by forcing you to wait for an official rejection.

I'd also suggest mentioning that you're grateful to the reviewers for pointing out the problem.


How do I go about publishing my late father’s legacy papers? My father wrote some papers on cosmology that remained unpublished at the time of his death.

I have been looking for a publisher for them. I contacted IOP publishing but they said that, while Dad’s writings were interesting, they were not ready for publishing in any of their journals.
For example, they need a reference list citing other current published research on the same topic.

I am not a scientist and have no idea how to do this. Where can I get help with this? Would something like American Journal Experts be a good idea?

Where can I get help with this?

You could try asking his colleagues or other professional acquaintances (including past coauthors of his), or former graduate students.  Even if they can't help, they may be able to direct you to more appropriate people.

If you can't track down any relevant individuals, you could try asking the current chair of his former department or trying to contact someone at any relevant professional societies he was a member of.  They probably couldn't help directly, but they could try to put you in touch with those who could.  It's not really their job to do this, so there are no guarantees, but I bet they would be sympathetic.

  Would something like American Journal Experts be a good idea?

Almost certainly not.  This seems to be a company that offers editing and formatting assistance for papers, which isn't really the issue here.  Rather, you need scientific assistance from someone who knows the research area well (to help flesh out the ideas and connect them with the literature), and it's not likely that any company can offer that.

  I contacted IOP publishing but they said that, while Dad’s writings were interesting, they were not ready for publishing in any of their journals. For example, they need a reference list citing other current published research on the same topic.

It's hard to know what to make of this.  One possibility is that the papers were unfinished but just need a little more work, and someone could complete them without great difficulty.  Another possibility is that the papers were only fragmentary, with interesting ideas that still require major work.  In that case, they are unlikely to be published in their present form but might still inspire further work (which should credit your father).  A third possibility is that these writings are not really suitable for publication, and the editor was just being polite and focusing on the most objective reason.

If you are unable to get the papers formally published, you may still be able to make them available and permanently archive them through the arXiv.  This is a web site that offers open access to research papers in physics, among other fields.  It would ensure that your father's work is not forgotten.

Assuming your father's name is also Krogdahl, he has two papers on the arXiv.  If you decide to try posting his more recent writings, I'd strongly recommend first consulting with someone in the field (such as a former colleague) about what is worth posting and how to do so, as well as getting in touch with the arXiv administrators.  The arXiv is a little finicky about various aspects of submissions, so it's best to handle things carefully.


What to do about questions that are designed to embarrass the speaker? I've attended a lot of seminars and lectures by now, and it's typical for the chair of the seminar to offer audience members a chance to ask questions of the speaker about their work after the presentation.

Most of the time, the questions seek clarification of some aspect of the presentation or focus on a more comprehensive understanding of the research involved.

However, occasionally, I've noticed that questions are purposefully designed to embarrass the speaker.  Things along the lines of "That method won't work at all for what you're trying to do.  Your results are completely invalid" or "So-and-so's group already did that work years ago.  Did you not read their paper?"

Perhaps more disturbingly (I just got back from a really large conference if you can't tell), is that women seem to be more harshly criticized than men, and over trivial issues.  For instance, in a few sessions I went to, female graduate students were given really hard times over their presentations while the male grad students were not.  All presentations were about the same quality.  I guess I'm a little shocked; I'd heard of sexism in academia but hadn't actually seen it (or noticed it) until this conference.

Oddly enough, I've observed that it's typically prestigious professors or researchers that are asking these ostentatious questions.  I suppose they figure they have enough "fame" or whatever that their job isn't in jeopardy, and there's no easy way to really prove they're being rude or sexist.

I don't know what's going on here, but it seems to me that these questions, even if they do have technical merit, should be held until after the seminar, where they can be discussed privately with the researcher.

My question here, specifically, is what can be done to minimize these (uncomfortable for everyone) instances?  My thoughts are that a session chair should remind the audience to refrain from questions that are accusatory in nature.  As a presenter, I'm not sure what can be done in advance to preempt and avoid these questions.  Any ideas?

Firstly, I should note that the examples you give are certainly somewhat agressively formulated (more so than would be common in my field), but not in themselves invalid questions. It is certainly "allowed" to be critical of the presented work, and there is nothing the session chair can or should do about this.

As a speaker, it always helps to think in advance what kind of "negative" question there could be, and prepare for them. You know that your work is very close to Foo et al, 2001? Good, have a backup slide that highlights your contribution over them. You think people would argue that a much simpler standard approach would have also worked instead of your super-complicated new custom method? Have a backup slide which compares the results of the two methods (you did test the standard method first, right?). If your answer does not convince the person asking the question, then much of what I wrote in this related answer also applies here. Specifically:

  (...) try to explain calmly why you did what you did. Yes, maybe that person asking the question will disagree, but so what? The fact that your actual peer reviews are good shows that there are a non-trivial amount of researchers that actually agree with you. The person asking the question is not your supervisor, you don't need to agree with him/her specifically on your research agenda or approaches.

As a session chair, you need to step in as soon as a question starts to become an ad hominem attack. That is, "I think this has been done years ago." is still fine, while "How the heck did you even get a PhD?" isn't. Further, a session chair should interrupt a series of questions as soon as he feels that the discussion isn't of interest to the larger audience anymore. I do not think that there is much that can be done in advance. As a session chair, you typically want to foster discussions, not preemptively set out the ground rules.

About the parts regarding sexisms and whether senior professors tend to be mean: I don't really have much to say about this. Not being a woman, I have not yet noticed any particular pattern about how females get asked questions versus males. The same is true for whether senior professors ask more critical questions - personally, I rather have the impression that fellow grad students and young postdocs or assistant professors are more likely to be extremely critical of other person's work than more senior researchers.


How important is a rebuttal for a top conference (CS)? After the first review process, could the rebuttal totally change the reviewers' minds, i.e. from accept to reject or the other way around?

First, it's worth noting that very few computer science conferences actually allow a rebuttal: mostly, the decision you get is the final decision.  In those rare cases that I have encountered that have a rebuttal period, it mainly serves to help disambiguate papers that are near the borderline.  Thus, it can certainly shift the status of a paper between accept and reject (e.g., by showing that reviewer #3 really was nuts and should be discounted or by eliminating the doubt that the authors were benefiting from), but is unlikely to do so unless the paper was already quite close to the boundary.


A potential supervisor said 'happy to supervise me for PhD', but I'm not in the minimum requirement. Is it guaranteed to be accepted? (UK) After the interview, a potential supervisor said: "Really Happy to Supervise You" with possible funding. However, the problem is that I'm not in the minimum academic requirement (grade) in the university admission (UK University).

In this situation, can I be accepted from the university for the PhD? Is it Guaranteed?? (* I did not apply officially yet).

Unlike some other countries, in the UK the supervisors do not have a lot of say in questions related to admissions and funding. Admissions are subject to university rules and these rules are rarely flexible, even if your potential supervisor really strongly supports your application. A student who does not meet minimal requirements is unlikely to be admitted for a program.

Most of the PhD programs in the UK are not funded from your supervisors' budget or their grant, but instead are funded through the Centers for Doctoral Training (which are funded from block grants to the University). Supervisors actually bid for a privilege of supervising a funded PhD student. To progress their career, academics in the UK must successfully supervise a certain number of PhD students. This means that academics are usually very happy to supervise any student who is successful in bringing in the funding. So even if your potential supervisor tells you that they are really happy to supervise you, don't assume that  they can and will go an extra mile to bend the university rules for you.


Part-time UK lecturer - how much admin and what counts? Can anyone give me a guide to how much admin a part-time university lecturer should be doing. My employer is so very vague and I have no idea if I'm doing too much, or if I can just say no. It seems as though everybody knows how the system works but doesn't want to say it out loud.

I have a 0.6 teaching only contract. 3 classes per term.

People seem to do admin roles to work towards promotion etc, but I have no interest in getting more hours or progressing to senior lecturer etc. My work outside of teaching is what I want to progress in.

Thoughts or advice?

Unfortunately for you (and, I would argue, everyone) .6 FTE teaching-only contracts in the UK are, by and large, used by the Universities to squeeze out as much work for as little pay possible. They are often conceived of as a way to mop up the teaching and admin tasks that researchers with full time research+teaching contracts don't want to do, perhaps because one of them got a big grant which buys them out of teaching and admin. Thus the answer to your question is that you likely have to do a lot of admin and you likely have little choice about it if you wish to keep your job. Indeed many of these .6 FTE positions are on rolling contracts so they can let you go if you aren't performing. As for what admin you should do and what you can say no to, that is something to discuss with your line manager and your head of school. you should have some sort of work load model (or equivalent) that helps spell out what your duties are and then helps you say no to things that are not your job. It is very possible that people are piling work on you because, again, you are in this position that may have been created for work to be piled on to, but it is your line manager and head of school's job to make sure that you aren't doing too much. If they are the ones giving you the work, well, you should probably be looking for a new job.

A note on .6 fte teaching contracts because what you said above is a common but distressing sentiment. You wish to advance your career and gain promotion on the back of your research which you say you do in your unpaid time (though, of course, your Uni gets credit for). However, as you are on a teaching contract, you will be evaluated for promotion based on criteria related to teaching; it is very rare for someone to have their position regraded from teaching, and I've never actually seen it happen. It sounds to me that you are in the wrong position; the position you are in does not match your career goals and is very unlikely to lead you to the research career you are looking for.

Finally, though there is variation, "senior lecturer" is a title that everyone has at UK universities irrespective of if the are "teaching" or "research and teaching". I'm a senior lecturer, I'm on a R&T contract, and 75% of my time is pure research, with 25% of my time for teaching, supervision, and admin. You sound like you DO want to be a senior lecturer, just that you want to be in a full time, traditional, research and teaching role.


How to tell supervisor too many lengthy meetings are hurting your productivity? My supervisor wants us to meet 3-5 times in a week with another PhD student of his. Every meeting is on average more than couple of hours. I don't know about the other student. But I feel like we are wasting too much time in meeting; it's hurting my productivity. How can I tell my supervisor to keep the amount of meetings and duration limited? To make matter worse, he also wants us (me and other PhD student) to meet separately besides these meetings. I am spending on avg. 12-15 hours per week doing these meetings.

I can answer questions why I think these meetings aren't productive, but that may turn into rant and I may put them into another question. So I want to keep it short and precise; let's just assume these meetings aren't productive for me.

I think this is a time to be direct and honest: just say you are spending too much time in meetings and it should be reduced.  Say what you should be doing instead.  A reasonable person should not be offended and should know that meetings can hurt productivity.

I also recommend considering changing the way the meeting works to align it with your needs.  When I am in a meeting, if nobody is taking charge, I will try to be a leader and give the meeting some direction.  Remind participants of the agenda.  Add the things you want to do to the agenda.  But be tactful.


What if my paper is accepted, but later my institution doesn’t allow me to publish in this journal? My paper was accepted by a publisher; an acceptance letter was mailed to me.
However, later my institution didn’t allow me to publish there, because it the journal isn’t indexed by Scopus? How can I withdraw the paper; is there any issue if I submit my paper to another publisher?

Your question is the result of going against the grain. You should have looked first if your university had any rule regarding which journal to publish. This is important even now as you can re-submit to another unwanted journal by the university.

Depending on the limited data given by yourself I suggest you  get a confirmation from the journal that your article will not be published by them. Until that time, do not send your article to another journal for review.
.
Again I assume that perhaps you wanted to fund the article through university and that is why university refuses article. Is this the case? If it is, then you should either publish without any funding from the university or follow above mentioned suggestion.


How to do a good remote presentation? Due to COVID-19, I'm working from home, and I'm going to give a presentation from home. I wonder if some of good practices when giving presentation directly are still good? For example: do not put too many words in the slides => but now the audiences only have the slides to stare at, should I put more words?

Differences between a real in-person and a remote presentation are quite many, but the main key points of keeping an audience engaged remain the same. Assuming the audience can access the slides somewhere before or after the presentation, I would suggest to have pictorial representations of main concepts - use schematic diagrams and small bullet point sentences to assist them. Play around with bold fonts and highlight colours for texts, but not too much of any of these. There are many other good practices for giving a scientific and technical presentation, do perform a google search and find your preferred ones.
For a remote session, it is best to choose a platform where you can share your screen and keeping your video on, which actually adds a real feel to the presentation for the audience. It is good to have a plain background and silent environment as much as possible. If you choose a virtual background, make sure the software platform has had enough practice with it so that it can recognize between you and the background without patches of your face disappearing in the background. Structure your words more like a conversation and less like a monologue because even though the audience might be the best in this field, it is easy to zone out in such a session, so it is best to put in elements that attract attention and makes your talk easy to follow. Also, remember to number your slides/equations, etc so that they are easy to refer to.
Also, keep track of the time, if there is a chair or convener, probably they will give warnings, otherwise time yourself and don't rush or be overly slow, try to keep a steady tempo. A neutral tone is also a strong requirement for remote sessions because if your audience is spread across the planet, you don't want to come across as either a rude person or a bore.
I remember the speakers from remote sessions whose talks were natural and didn't seem too rehearsed and plastic. In the end, the content matters the most, but it is always pleasant to see it presented in an easier way - just like in a good paper.


Should "I" be used in a science fair conclusion? I just want to know if I is appropriate to use in writing a science fair conclusion.

Writing styles differ but using the first person singular is generally acceptable. The other option that is commonly used is to speak in passive voice or to talk about the work. You can say "I programmed Gumby to ...". You can also say "Gumby was programmed to ...". Or "The work shows that if Gumby is programmed to ...".

There are places in which a more formal (passive voice) is preferred, but if you were in such a place you would probably already know that. Given that you ask the question, I assume you are in a more informal place, such as the US, in which using I is fine for describing your own work.

But you might experiment a bit with how the report sounds to your own ear before deciding. You can also consult with your project advisor/instructor for advice.


Why don't some U.S. colleges celebrate American national holidays? I was just catching up with a friend about the plunging temperatures in the towns that we live in, and they brought up that they actually have classes today, on Martin Luther King day, which is a national holiday.

Shouldn't colleges observe national holidays and give faculty, students and staff the day off?

(If location matters, we're in the Northeast region.)

The observance of holidays in the United States is a complicated issue.

Holidays declared by the federal government are generally (but not universally) observed by state governments, which oversee public universities here. Private institutions, on the other hand, have no obligation to observe those holidays, and can choose to close or remain open according to their own decisions about what best serves their students’ needs. For example, my undergraduate institution did not take any days off from the first day of classes in the fall semester, but did provide a week’s break corresponding to Thanksgiving. It’s an unusual arrangement but perfectly legal.

It should also be mentioned that while universities have core “business hours” where faculty are expected to be present, in reality, faculty largely choose their own working hours.


Are INRIA working reports publicly available? Any suggestions on how to find these two papers?  They were cited in 1993:

  [11] Morazavian, H. and M. Boutiller, On a theorem of Kuratoski, Working Report, INRIA, Rocquencourt, France (1981).

  [12] Mortazavian H., Patterns arising from a theorem of Kuratowski in topology with appications, Working Report, INRIA, Rocquencourt, France (1981).

I emailed them two years ago. Their reply was:

  "We don't have this references. Absolutely no traces....sorry."

You could try to contact the author of the 1993 publication citing them.

And as Massimo Ortolano mentions, those titles are probably not the original translations. Maybe you can get the institute to send you a list of the 1981 publications and look for anything contributed by H. Mortazavian?


Part-time PhD workload compared to part-time undergrad workload Does a part-time PhD workload differ significantly from part-time undergrad studies?

I'm intending to go on to postgraduate studies next year. I'd prefer to go straight to a PhD if possible, but will consider Masters if it looks like the more tenable option. I've worked full time for the past 9 years while completing first a certificate, and then a BSc which is currently being wrapped up, both via the Open University in the UK.

During this time I haven't found my studies to be overly burdensome, even when taking two or three modules concurrently. I don't mind spending evenings and weekends reading, researching, and performing practical coursework. (Don't get me wrong, it's hard work, but worth it!)

This question: Is it possible to work full time and complete a PhD? discusses the relative difficulty of working full time and pursuing a PhD. My question is slightly different, though, as I'm already used to having less personal time than others might expect.

Should I expect my personal time to diminish significantly when I continue on to postgraduate study, compared to life as a part-time undergrad student?

I'd particularly value answers from previous full-time-working part-time OU students who continued on with a part-time PhD.

My intended discipline is Computer Science, and I'd like to attend a University in the UK, particularly Sheffield, but as I haven't completed my BSc and begun applying for postgraduate positions yet, I can't be sure of the location.

A bit late with this answer but hopefully will be helpful. You ask;

  Should I expect my personal time to diminish significantly when I
  continue on to postgraduate study, compared to life as a part-time
  undergrad student?

Judging by my personal experience the short answer is yes.

Here's a bit more detail though. I am studying in Ireland, so not to dissimilar to the UK system. I work full-time and also did an undergraduate degree, part-time, before progressing to post-graduate study. My degree and post-grad are not related to my work but something I have a lot of passion for. I found with my undergraduate degree I had a lot more free time. Lectures were 3 nights a week for year 1-2 and 2 nights a week in years 3-4. Speaking for myself on top of lecture nights I found I could usually get away with doing a bit of extra work at the weekend.

Two years ago I started a History Masters(which I have just transferred to a PhD) and found that almost all my free time is now used with doing my PhD work. Saying that it's important to have other activities outside of your full-time work and study. I follow my local football team so usual have a evening off each week.

As you mention you have not decided on location so I'd like to add something about my experience. My workplace is about a 5 minute walk from my University. I think this makes all the difference to me. I can leave work at 5pm, have a coffee and be working on my PhD by 5.30. I also have my own dedicated desk space there which is a benefit with regard to having a space to leave books etc. Together with working in a family business this also gives me the flexibility to be able to arrange meetings with my Supervisor at working hours times and to pop over to the university during the day if I need to. So if possible I think it would be good to consider location of your institution in your decision making.

Just to sum up my weekly time spent on my PhD (and this can always vary depending on other commitments.) About 4 nights a week 6pm to about 10.30pm, Saturday 11am to about 10pm and Sunday about 1pm to 7.30pm.

We have the OU in Ireland too. The university I go to is as StrongBad describes in their answer a bricks and mortar university. In my own situation I have found every department that I have dealt with to be very understanding to the part-time nature of some of its students and to be honest the only situation I can think of I have been disadvantaged by not been a full time student is the opening hours of some of the offices. That said most functions of the college can be done online now or I can email the respective office.


Does this case constitute plagiarism? I recently read a dissertation where I recognized sentences that appeared in earlier papers but are not cited in the dissertation.
Here are some of these sentences.
He also appears to be copying from flashcards , also without citations.
Does this constitute plagiarism?

Yes, the use of unattributed material, or use of quotes without indicating they are quotes even with attribution, is plagiarism.
If it's just a few sentences in a long dissertation, it's plausible that some of it was due to lazy note-taking, like copying the words of others into an intermediate document and not realizing months or years later that they were copied. However, laziness is not really a defense. Maybe a mitigating factor.


What is the advantage of m·s^(-1) over m/s? It's everywhere, but no matter who I ask I can never get a straight answer, only "I don't know"s. What is the advantage of using multiplication and negative powers over just using division when writing out units, as in the question title. Granted, in most cases they use superscript rather than how I formatted it in the title, but my phone keyboard would not let me do that.

I don't have a problem reading units written this way, but it just seems inefficient as it uses more characters and makes it more difficult for "regular people" to follow. I'm suspecting it's nothing more than a style choice, possibly because it looks "more scientific".

I think the main advantage is that an ambiguity of a/bc is avoided. For example, g/m^2s may be read as g m^{-2} s^{-1} or g m^{-2} s depending on whether multiplication takes priority over division.  As far as I know, there is no consistency in opinions about it, so to avoid confusion a slightly uglier notation with negative powers may be worth accepting.


Is it OK if a letter of recommendation misstates the name of my degree? I am applying for a graduate degree program.

In a letter of recommendation, my professor misstated my MS in Telecommunication Networks as an MS in Telecommunication.

Can this be an issue?

No.  The committee will want to know what your reference can tell them about you, not so much whether they can pass a pop quiz on the exact name of the program you're trying to get into.


Google Scholar: Will having HTML and PDF in different subdirectories lead to incorrect indexing? I am trying to get our department's green OA repo at my university's web-site properly indexed by Google Scholar.
The PDFs in our repo for a large part legacy scans with no structure. This means that there is little hope of Google being able to scrape usable metadata from the PDF, so having an HTML abstract with metadata linked to the PDF is in our case essential for providing Google Scholar with the correct metadata.
Our repo is based upon on the Drupal 7 CMS: The author fills in the Google Scholar Metadata, which is stored as a regular Drupal node (HTML), and then uploads the full length PDF to the site.  The PDF is stored in the server's file system.
The way Drupal works means that the URL of the HTML abstract becomes http://example.org/node/NNN, while the uploaded PDF will have an URL like http://example.org/sites/default/files/XXXXXXX.pdf. The two are then linked together through the citation_pdf_url metatag in the HTML.
I was happy with this, until I spotted the following paragraph in section H of the Indexing Guidelines  for Google Scholar:

The content of the [citation_pdf_url] tag is the absolute URL of the PDF file; for security reasons, it must refer to a file in the same subdirectory as the HTML abstract. (my emphasis)
Failure to link the alternate versions together could result in the incorrect indexing of the PDF files, because these files would be processed as separate documents without the information contained in the meta tags. (their emphasis)

Given that this means what I think it means, indexing of my repo will break as node/  is indeed not the same "subdirectory" as sites/default/files/.
However, who keeps HTML content in subdirectories in 2014?  The current webdesign paradigm is to separate content (such text rendered with HTML) from assets (such as PDF files), and only the latter is actually stored in the file system. To me, this requirements is outdated and will also probably break almost every repo that is built on some sort of CMS.
I am prepared to bite the bullet and write the code that is needed in order to spew out static HTML files that can be saved in the sites/default/files/ subdirectory along with the PDF - if that is what it really takes to make Google Scholar index my repo.
However, before embarking upon this task, I wanted to hear from other that have repos that provide metadata for Google Scholar if this "same subdirectories" is absolutely required if you want the HTML abstract and full length PDF to be linked by means of citation_pdf_url tag.
Will having HTML and the PDF in different subdirectories really lead to incorrect indexing or no indexing of the PDF files?

Google Scholar is pretty smart about these things.  On all of the websites I'm involved with, we keep the PDFs in a separate directory from the page that links to them, and Scholar finds them just fine.  Of course, we also don't us the citation_pdf_url tag, so maybe we're fine because we're low-tech and Scholar does the inference for us...

I recommend doing it the easy way, and trusting Scholar to be smart.  If it doesn't do the right thing, then you can always go back and drop the tag and wait for a refresh.  And then if that doesn't work, you can do it the hard way.


Conferences on “Technology Foresight” I am working on research in the field of renewable energy and technology transfer. The research methodology that I have applied in my study is called the “Technology Foresight”, where I am using methodologies such as STEEPV analysis, Delphi surveys and scenario building and so on. My question is with relevant to the conferences. With the literature survey that I did at the initial stage of my studies I came up with a technology Foresight model that can be applied to my study. This is sort of a unique model which my supervisors suggest me to publish it in a conference. The reason they asked me to do so, is to network with other research community who are very much familiar with this methodology “Technology Foresight”.

But I have no idea as how to find good conferences which consider “technology Foresight” as one of their main them. My supervisors are also not that familiar with this methodology as they are from the renewable energy and technology transfer fields. I would really appreciate if you can suggest me good conferences in the field of “Technology Foresight”.

You won't have done your work in isolation: so you've already built up a list of references that you're working from. From this list, pull out the top ten that are most pertinent to technology foresight.  If necessary, supplement this with a quick literature search in the usual places for papers in technology foresight in other areas.

From that list of papers, take the list of authors. Now, look at the web pages for each of the authors - they'll mostly, if not all, have a page of publications. You're looking for the section on conference papers.

Make a note of the conferences that they've presented technology foresight work at. You're looking for those conferences which keep cropping up on the pages of your authors of interest.

This should build up a picture of where the key players present at.

Just be careful with "futurology" conferences - they can be a real mixed bag. Some lack rigour, don't report on the development of protocols and methods, and lack other academic qualities. And thus they will bring you no useful networking, nor constructive feedback.

You might find some of the energy-systems modelling conferences useful too, as they can have sections devoted to scenario development, which will overlap a fair bit with technology foresight - but don't invest too much effort there, because it's a bit of a stretch, unles your own work overlaps a lot with energy-systems models. FWIW, my opinion is that you shouldn't spend too much time looking at the International Energy Agency (IEA): they've been behind the curve for decades, and that's not changing yet.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) have been looking a bit at foresight and technology transfer: they're a very young and growing organisation, so there might or might not be something useful there, but do keep an eye on them.

And the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) maintains a list of international energy conferences that you might find useful.

On the technology transfer aspect, I guess development conferences might be where it's at, but that's a lot further from my own area, so that's just wild speculation on my part.

Disclosure: I'm not directly affiliated with any of those organisations, but friends and colleagues are.


Display well-roundedness in letters for Grad school applications Many students have asked for a letter of recommendation to support their grad school applications at US universities. Most of them aim for business schools, but many also go for science.

Now, admission committees to American undergraduate programs consider not only the prospective student's school performance but also their "well-roundedness". But how does that matter for graduate programs? Should I appeal to that in a letter of recommendation and if yes, how should I do that? One student actually asked to write a letter that makes him appear more well-rounded.

How much does this weigh in for grad school admissions? Are there differences between scientific disciplines to consider?

Why be well-rounded?

Well-roundedness for undergraduates is partly about being adaptable and therefore prepared for a college education. Someone who both has good grades and also competes in athletics, holds a job, etc. has perhaps shown some experience in balancing their different responsibilities. Additionally, someone with a breadth of experience is more likely to actually know what they want to do next rather than sort of just blindly going with the flow.

Usefulness of well-rounded experiences for potential graduate students

I think this last part applies best to the appropriateness of well-roundedness for graduate school. Someone who has shown multiple interests and is now choosing to specialize one is probably making a more informed decision than someone who hasn't. As an example, if they've gathered experience in math, physics, and engineering and are now applying to a physics graduate program, they probably know physics is actually the field that excites them most. They also might carry in some extra skills that not everyone in their graduate program would have: programs in the biological sciences or business, for example, can really benefit from incoming students with quantitative or computational skills.

Knowing what sort of recommendation letter to write

As far as how to write recommendation letters, I would recommend asking the student for some feedback. Prospective students should have some idea of why they are asking certain people for recommendations; when I applied, I asked for one professor who taught me in courses on the history of science, completely outside my field of interest. I hoped to convey some breadth of experience by asking for that letter.

My other recommendations were from people more in my field and were better positioned to talk about my potential for research (which is still the most important thing in a graduate application). If those people had written about breadth instead of their opinions of my research potential in my field, they would look quite odd and probably not be helpful.


Is it possible to get a faculty position from a skype interview alone? I am applying for faculty positions in a country outside the country I am currently a postdoc in (USA). My visa restrictions make it difficult traveling outside of the US for interviews.

Is it possible to get a faculty position from a skype interview alone?

Possible? Yes, of course. Assuming your other materials are solid and you are high on the list of applicants. Not the common thing and not the best route, but if your restrictions are understood by the hiring committee it might be possible to get an offer if you come over well in such an interview.

But you may not have many alternatives, so it may be your best bet.


Should I switch to PhD or graduate with a Master's? I am doing Master's in Applied Science in Civil Engineering. In my research I work with big data analysis which has gotten a fancy new name in past few years "Data Science". When I joined the master's program I didn't knew much about programming and had basic knowledge of statistical analysis. Over the period of about 2 years I learned a lot about data analysis in R language, developing data apps, creating interactive documents, etc. Although my research area had no direct relation with any of those things, I enjoyed learning them and using them in getting insights about data.

On the other hand, this journey has been very frustrating because I could get very little useful knowledge for my research study. My 2 supervisors have been very supportive and both have asked me to continue my work and switch to PhD.

One part of me long for getting out in the 'field' and have a 9 to 5 job with set amount of tasks everyday. But at the same time I am afraid to leave academia as this is all I've ever done in my career (worked as a Lecturer previously and now have graduate assistant positions). Money is another concern as I've not yet determined how much I would be able to get in scholarships/ grants during PhD.
I don't know how to keep myself motivated continuously during research, so there are always some days when I just don't do anything. I am really confused at this stage as to what should I do, complete my master's in next 4 months and graduate or go for a PhD. What are your thoughts/ experiences?

You shouldn't stick around for a PhD because you're afraid to do something else. A PhD is something that you should do because you're motivated to use the skills you acquire in the PhD in your later career (either as a researcher, or in a research-oriented field).

If you're not excited about being a PhD student, then it's not worth it in the long run to be miserable for several years of your life to obtain the degree. Moreover, because the PhD can limit your ability to take certain jobs—because of the perception of overqualification—if you're not motivated, don't do it.

In other words: Choose to do something because you want to be there—not because you're afraid to be somewhere else!


Faculty interview: 15 min. PPT explaining Teaching philosophy and Research Vision I have a faculty interview call that asks me to summarize the following two points in 15 minutes PPT. The interview will be on Zoom.

How would you describe your teaching philosophy? With examples from your previous teaching experience?
How do you think your research can help develop the research direction of the school, outlining vision and plans for the next three years?

Any suggestions will be highly appreciated as it is my first such interview.

On the first point, there are some questions you should consider.

how do you lead students to have insights? Through in-class activities, assignments, projects, reading, essays, test taking? How much emphasis is placed on each aspect?
are your assignments/projects/tests creative? Or merely regurgitation of the material?
how do you account for the (expected) differences in learning style? Do you adapt your style to fit theirs?
how much work outside of class is expected?
how do you detect and respond to plagiarism?
how do you deal with disruptive students?

Regarding research, what is the reputation of the school? of the department?

What is their faculty known for? Theory vs lab vs simulation-based?
Can you find collaborators? (on campus and elsewhere)
Do you have collaborators outside of academia (National Labs, industry)?
How much money do you need?
Do you have special requirements?
How much staffing is required?
Can you use undergrads or grads or postdocs in your research?