Where should I place the citation in this sentence? I have the following sentence, where the citation refers to the first part of the sentence. Because of how it appears in the formatting of my paper, and how it reads, I would like to have the citation at the end of the sentence as below. Is this acceptable in APA style formatting?

However, location controls should control for variation common across regions, while my placebo test does not provide evidence that an unseen trend in weight gain is responsible for my results (Mincy & De la Cruz Toledo, 2014).

The citation refers to a study which uses location controls, while the placebo test refers to something I did myself, but that I mention here to provide additional support to the plausibility of my results.
Even if it's not your personal preference, would it be OK by APA to have this reference at the end of the sentence?

I think the bigger problem is with your sentence structure.

However, location controls should control for variation common across
regions, while my placebo test does not provide evidence that an
unseen trend in weight gain is responsible for my results (Mincy & De
la Cruz Toledo, 2014).

By starting the sentence with "However" a contrast is implied.  I'm assuming the contrast is against a (hopefully simple) point made in the prior sentence.
What really kills comprehension is the "while" in conjunction with the "however".  "While" is "coexisting in time" and since we have two items in contrast, it is not clear if the commentary is referring to the placebo test or the contrasted item.  This uncertainty impacts the citation, making it equally ambiguous.
I'd just start with the subject, the placebo test:

The placebo test does not support that an unseen trend in weight gain is responsible for
the results.

With this simple idea as an independent sentence, it is easier to place the citation with it or not.  The citation will be fully clear if placed in this sentence, as it is only supporting one idea; not a portion of a compound idea containing a contrast where one of those items occur simultaneously with a third item.
Incredibly long sentences and complex grammar are superficially brilliant; true brilliance is making a complex idea simple.


Should we allow reuse a image in a publication as long as it is properly cited and noted? Sometimes it is easier for the reader to understand a image if it is reused, even in the same publication. Just like we sometimes need to go back to a slide when doing a presentation.
What is the original reason for forbidding this? My guess is to save some pages. But now it is digital and manuscripts are already long and large.

Sometimes it is easier for the reader to understand a image if it is reused

Not really. You can go back and forth when reading a text. I see no advantage reproducing an image within the same document.

What is the original reason for forbidding this?

It is not strictly forbidden. I would call it common sense. The fact that you do not see images reproduced in the same document is because most people are convinced it is totally not necessary.


Is university allowed to refuse to confirm my masters theme due to lack of appropriate research staff? I am paying for my studies and I have chosen my own theme for my MS thesis. It is in artificial general intelligence and symbolic methods, rather rare theme. I am promising to do all the work fully myself, with some guidance by external researchers. Noone in the department is willing to be the advisor for my theme. I consider this research direction to be of utmost importance, in any case it is far more superior than the machine translation themes to some minor language - themes that are proposed by the department. I am not asking the would-be advisor to be expert in the field, I am asking just formal signature on the papers to continue my own research. Can university refuse to give me advisor? Maybe I can ask my money back? Maybe I ask the university to improve its quality and topicality of its research directions?

See this from the point of the department: They are giving out diplomas saying "we have seen the work produced by this student and certify that it meets these requirements". If there are no specialists in a given topic, how can they certify that you meet those requirements? When you choose a department for doing your masters then it is up to you to determine that they are doing the things you are interested in. So yes they can and should refuse if they feel they don't have anyone with the expertise necessary to evaluate your work. You can always ask your money back, but in all likelihood they refuse.

You can always ask the university to cover different topics, but universities cannot cover all topics so choices have to made. Adding a topic typically means hiring one or more additional professors. That is a really big long term investment. They are not going to make that investment because a student (who is almost done anyhow) wants that topic.


How to write PIs asking for PhD position? I have read here that the best way is to keep it simple, be short and ask for meetings, which is a bit generic way to ask for a job. I agree more with the discussion posted here by a student in a similar situation as mine (I still haven't started emailing people but I've already have a long unfinished list).

Speaking with some PhDs and postodcs I know, they told me that the best way is to know somebody in and maybe write them first in order to introduce you to the PI before you send your email. Another advantage of this is that you will know if there is a position available or if it's not a good idea to work there (the people who actually work there might have the best advice about that). Finally, they might also be "more reachable" than the PI who gets thousands of mails. On the other hand, I don't know the people who work where I want to go so it would feel as impersonal as this question feels to you.

Given the fact that I may have to write several (around 20) of these mails I want to have a good strategy. I know it's a debate that mostly depends on the area. My area of research is Neurobiology of Memory and Learning but I might also be interested to change a little bit, maybe to Addiction (Always within neurobiology).

I would also like to add that in order to write a detailed email about the PI's research history and future path one must be able to have the time for:

Read the publications = A large amount of time
Actually come out with an idea that meets with the PI's expectations AND research interest/approach/knowledge AND more important technique capacity

Of course, being a PhD student means that you have to suceed in both of them but not for every research we would be happy to do (if we were accepted) in advance.

When drafting your email, keep in mind that PhD advisors get tons of request like this. Your request has to stand out in order to have a chance of success. Most email requests are pretty generic, simply asking for a position, with some generic praise of the advisor's reputation, and a CV attached.

In order to stand out from the mass, the most important thing is probably that you do your research. What topic is the advisor working on? How does your background fit in there? Make it clear what you think you can contribute to the advisor's work. Try to get all this across as concisely as possible, maybe three or four sentences, at most. By all means, avoid being generic.

Surely you will have to put some time into it, but it will increase your chances of being considered dramatically. Better to send out fewer but well targeted emails than masses of generic requests.

If you get no response in spite of your request being well crafted, you can try following up once, after a week or so, but not more often.

EDIT: "Doing your research" does not mean writing a research proposal, but finding out what the PI works on and putting your skills and interests in this context. Most of the time the info on their website is sufficient, you don't have to read every single one of their papers.


Accepted into EPFL, might not get Visa in time, what am I signing myself up for? I was accepted to a Masters Program at EPFL 5 days ago. I am currently collecting all the necessary documentation to apply for a visa. However there is a chance it will take longer than I have to get to Switzerland (have to be there by September 30). My only idea right now is to use my passport to get to Switzerland as a tourist. Remain there until I get the visa (the 90 days are enough to guarantee that if I get approved I get the visa on time), cross the border to France, cross the border back again with the student visa.

Has anyone done something like this? Is this even legal? I tried contacting EPFL and the Swiss consulate and they were not helpful.

Additionally, EPFL wants me to sign a web form confirming or denying my attendance to the Masters program by June 30 (this weekend). They gave me essentially a week and a half to make the entire decision. Do I have any real obligation to stick to my word? If I say I want to go but it turns out I win the lottery or get into a different program afterwards I prefer and no longer feel like going to Switzerland will something happen? I.e what happens if I go back on my word (EPFL also was very unhelpful answering this question).

I know of international students in my research lab (in Canada, not Switzerland) that crossed the US borders and came back immediately to renew student visas. In itself, this is not illegal.

However, I don't think that you would be allowed to study in your program without a student visa, because those are usually required by the university to receive insurance coverage (for instance, if you're working in a lab). You really should ask your program director for advice on this situation. I would expect them to be understanding and guide you.


How does management work in academia? In commercial companies you will mostly only have a handful people per manager. For example in a law firm it might be four or five and rarely that I know of more than a dozen.   But in academia a department can have 60 academics in it. How does line management work with such a huge ratio of staff to heads of department?  Are there a lot of line managers below the head of department that academics report to?

Generally speaking "management" in a university takes a different role and faculty are generally expected to know what to do and to do it to a high standard. In a certain sense, every faculty member is an independent entity and they only need to coordinate on a few things. Those things, such as curriculum and grading policy, are normally handled by committees of faculty, not handed down from above.
Typically a department will have monthly faculty meetings in which things are communicated and new opportunities and directions are discussed. Solutions are normally by consensus. The meetings may be mandatory or not, but the mandate can be pretty loose.
There are few situations in which a tenured professor is told what to do by "management". And some of the layers of management, such as department heads and even deans may actually be chosen by vote of the faculty.
So, in a forty year career, I seldom "reported" to anyone in the traditional sense and no one "managed" me and my work. True, I submitted an annual report of my activities and said there how I worked toward the three traditional goals of the university: teaching, research, and service. The department head or dean would respond to that report, perhaps making suggestions, usually minor, on things I might do in the coming year.
Even it times of conflict, such as when a student complains, the complaint often is handled by faculty rather than by "management."
Faculty normally self organize into seminars and such, and normally worry about their funding. There may be some pressure about that in top universities.
In the traditional (Medieval) university, the faculty IS the university and it would hire "managers" to do those tasks that they found unsatisfying. It is still somewhat similar in many places, but less so in large R1 and State Universities.
There is a story about Rockefeller Columbia University (if I remember correctly) that when ex-president Dwight Eisenhower became the university president, he held a meeting and told the faculty all the "wonderful things the university would do for the faculty." The head of the faculty (an elected position) stood up and said something to the effect that the university couldn't do anything FOR the faculty. The university WAS the faculty.
There are, however, many support offices in a university that are managed in a traditional sense. There is often a funding support office, an enrollment office, a counseling office, etc. It can be very extensive. But they don't manage faculty. Instead, they provide support services to faculty and others, though internally they may be traditionally managed. A "student recruiter" would probably answer to a "boss".


Lecturer in Australia - response to selection criteria I am applying for a lecturer position in Australia in computer science. The application process asks for "a statement addressing the selection criteria outlined in the position description". An enumerated list of n (say, n=8) selection criteria is available in the job announcement. The criteria are heterogeneous, ranging from simple "PhD title or equivalent" to elaborate "a high level of communication skills". Which high-level structure is expected?

A continuous, consistent, logically ordered, literary perfect text, from which it follows that the applicant satisfies all the criteria.
A list of n paragraphs, one paragraph per criterion, that technically addresses the requirements, but not more.
A list of n sections, one section per criterion, that technically addresses the requirements, but not more.
...?

How large are the typical statements in each case?

It depends on the nature of the selection criteria. A criterion like

  PhD from an accredited institution

requires only a paragraph, but

  Research agenda with high probability of publications in leading journals

may require a whole section.

You see a similar thing with NSF research proposals; one question is (paraphrasing)

  "what is the grant number of your most recent support"

and another is

  "describe the research to be undertaken".


How to defend badly graded master thesis? My master thesis was the greatest sh*tshow that ever happened in my life. Fortunately I did manage to put it all together and submit it. After that I booked a defense date which is tomorrow.
In the meantime, two days ago I got the reviews for my master thesis from both professors and I barely passed the written thesis with score of 3.7 (1-Excellent and 5-Fail) with a lot of questions about my approach and structure. I don't mind ending with a bad grade as it was not up to the quality.

But, I am now in panic and anxiety for the last few days. I don't know how I will defend my thesis. Would anybody guide me how to defend a bad graded thesis? I am based in Germany. What are my chances that I failed the defense despite passing the written thesis?
My mind is blank at the moment due to anxiety as I did not get enough time to digest my results.

While I wish I could be more positive, the fundamental fact that is in the German grading system, a grade of 3,7 on a master's thesis is a disastrous grade that is essentially unheard of. Virtually all master's theses receive grades somewhere between 1,0 and 1,7. A grade of 3,7 is very much a "pity" grade that allows you to pass the master's program, but is essentially going to be an albatross around your neck. You will not be able to use the degree to pursue advanced study anywhere in Germany, and gaining employment with that kind of grade will be a lot more difficult.

You will want to check the Prüfungsordnungen (examination rules) for your program to determine if you are allowed to resubmit or repeat the master's thesis, rather than take a grade that low on the thesis. In that case, you may find that option preferable to having to deal with the consequences of a D on the thesis.


Should I take an interruption I am currently in my first year of PhD at a good university, and despite everything being "in order" (my supervisor is happy with my progress, I am doing well with the teaching, a have a good life alongside my studies...) I feel that, below the surface, stuff isn't really so "in order".

For the past 3 years I have been followed by a psychiatrist and a psychologist and diagnosed with OCD, Anxiety, ADHD and Autism. These conditions led to me taking an interruption during my Master's (which I then completed with top marks) and to having "special arrangements" in my previous job before starting a PhD.

For the past months, in fact since I started my PhD, my conditions have been an ongoing issue affecting my quality of life on a daily basis. (I have difficulties developing a relation with my housemates, I barely manage to be in the office because of social anxiety, etc.) Anxiety has not improved and, in the past weeks, I feel it has been worsening and can feel I am flirting with a burn-out.

On a couple of occasions, the student advice service has advised I took an interruption. Speaking to my "advisor" (each student is assigned a staff member as advisor alongside their main supervisor), they seemed to hint at the fact it wouldn't be as big a deal as I might be making it to take an interruption.

Part of me really wants an interruption. I feel I need some time off to "catch my breath", the past years have been extremely demanding and I feel I'm not able at present to work at my best. However, part of me also feels guilty about it. I know that there are a lot of students who would like my same opportunity (academic offer, funding, etc..)

In short, I guess I'd just like some advice. Should I apply for a 3-6 month interruption?

This is a highly opinion-based question, and difficult to answer. A more suitable question might be, "what are the negative effects of interrupting and how bad are they?". My short answer: you will delay your PhD when compared to a healthy version of yourself not interrupting, but not necessarily compared to your current self continuing. So, the first thing to assess is "will it actually go quicker if I stay, or will I burn out?". The second thing to consider is how bad taking longer on a PhD is. Short answer: not that bad, many students take long, sometimes many years longer. These students still end up with post-PhD work.

Concerns over other PhD students should be cast aside, you are comparing apples to oranges. The other students are presumably psychologically healthy, they do not need a break, whereas you might need a break. The taboo surrounding psychological and similar problems means we, somewhat irrationally, treat the issues differently from other health concerns. But you should address this in the same way as any other serious health issue.


Repeating courses and doing enriched courses as extras to help boost a torpedo'd GPA (math programs) So here is my conundrum. I am in my last year of my undergraduate degree which is a specialist in math and economics. In the early years of my program I was having a out school issues that I didn't think were affecting my performance but in the end did. I am in the process of getting good grades in thisnlast year in my courses, but regardless of me getting A+'s across the board I would still not have brought my GPA up enough to apply to any masters programs. During my studies I took a few math courses that were beyond my mathematical maturity at the time of the courses and as such got poor marks in them. This was due to my over eagerness to want to learn advanced concepts without respecting the process one needs to take to get there. As such I have been taking those intermediary courses now and they are going better.

I have a large desire to go to grad-school so I have been trying to think of ways to improve any faint hopes that I could somehow turn things around and I was wondering how the following strategy would affect my cause:

Graduate(well the formality part anyways) but then come back and repeat the advanced courses I did poorly in and on top of that do the other advanced courses that I have not taken obtaining good marks in these, then applying the following year. My question is how would this appear on an application? It won't affect my GPA directly, but it would illustrate that I have excelled within this set of courses of a higher level. Of course this would have to go with doing well on the GRE and anything else as well. Thoughts or advice?

I largely disagree with the other answer.

The bottom line is that graduate school in mathematics is much more challenging than most undergraduate programs in mathematics, and the academic job market in mathematics is rather cruelly competitive even for those who excelled in their graduate programs.  So my first question to you is: what are your goals?  Do you know what you're setting yourself up for?  Sticking with something out of sheer determination can be commendable if you have a clear view of the situation.  If you decide that you're willing to walk on foot through the desert to reach your goal, that could show gumption...but first, find out how far you need to walk.  If it's 500 miles, you're not showing gumption, you're showing a dangerous lack of planning.

  I have a large desire to go to grad-school

Why?  What are your specific goals?  Do you mean that you want to get a master's degree in mathematics and then apply it to do....what?  Do you mean that you want to get a PhD?  That you want to pursue an academic career?  I have the sense that the answers to most of these questions are "yes", so I will proceed for most of the answer under that assumption.

Maybe it sounds harsh to wonder why someone who has not excelled in something at the undergraduate level wants to pursue it at the graduate level...but I think it's kinder to be a little harsh if it helps people properly perceive the situation.

  I am in the process of getting good grades in thisnlast year in my courses, but regardless of me getting A+'s across the board I would still not have brought my GPA up enough to apply to any masters programs. During my studies I took a few math courses that were beyond my mathematical maturity at the time of the courses and as such got poor marks in them. This was due to my over eagerness to want to learn advanced concepts without respecting the process one needs to take to get there. As such I have been taking those intermediary courses now and they are going better.

So in your last year in the major, you're retaking intermediate level courses and doing better in them.  This means that up until now your performance in all your coursework was not good enough to satisfy the requirements for an undergraduate major?  Realistically, that's bad news: I teach mathematics at the undergraduate and graduate level.  As the grades lie: some of the students who are getting mostly A's should consider grad school; other students who are getting mostly A's should probably not be.  Students who are getting the lower range of "satisfactory" grades have not really understood the concepts of the course, but we hope that the lack of understanding will not snowball too much into the next course so that they can get through the major anyway.  This is not any kind of preparation for graduate work.

In my opinion, in order to have a shot at getting into a reputable graduate program (master's or PhD) and for such a program to be worth your time, you really want to excel in the undergraduate coursework.  If in your last year you are taking intermediate level courses, you don't have a chance of doing that before you graduate.

I would consider spending another year in your current degree program.  If that's going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars then that's a serious thing to do and I would think several times before doing it, but it still might be a good investment in your future.  If that is not an option I would suggest that you do "postbac" work and/or enroll in a "nondegree program" at a quality undergraduate institution that lets you take the advanced undergraduate courses for grades.

The alternative is to apply to a master's program.  But if you are applying to a master's program with a poor background you will probably have to pay for it, which could be just as expensive (or more so) than staying in your current program.  Moreover you may find when you get there that you are (i) poorly prepared relative to the other students, (ii) expected to do work at a level you've never been held to before (iii) in a new environment where you don't know anyone or know how things work and (iv) no one around is particularly invested in your success.

Finally, a really poor master's program could end up being....poor.  I've seen students enter into a PhD program with master's degrees who were clearly not as well prepared as students coming directly from a more reputable undergraduate institution.  Also a good performance at a miserable place is not much of a steppingstone to a good PhD program.

All of this is predicated on the assumption that your desire to go to grad school meant that you wanted to get a PhD.  If you mean that you want to get a terminal master's en route to a specific real world job: in that case, attending wherever you get in and sticking it out becomes a much better plan.


Why older papers are more difficult to read than the new ones? Skimming through the literature, I find that in theoretical high-energy physics (modern gravitation theories, scalar tensor theories, etc.), older papers are more difficult to read than new papers written in the field, as I spend more time to read an older paper than a fresh one. I wonder why there is such difficulty and contrast for papers written some more than 20 years ago.

I cannot comment on those specific fields, but I had a similar experience with reading old papers in my fields as well with old textbooks on undergraduate mathematics (in particular linear algebra).

The main reason I made out for this is: Didactics marches on:

It usually takes decades for a field to establish a useful notation and terminology. And during that time, new insights may shed new light on what once was considered a reasonable convention – and thus the process repeats. And that’s not even taking into account people sticking persistently to some notation or terminology that everybody else abandoned.

The new terminology and notation usually prevailed for a reason, usually that it makes it more easy to communicate about your field. Also, even if you may be generally familiar with old terminology and notation, you are not as used to reading it, which slows things down.
Similar to the above, scientists have learnt how to write about their fields problems over the decades, allowing them to write more concisely.
Helpful abstractions and generalisations as well as mathematical background are often only discovered after a field has made some progress.
The target readership changed, knowing more about certain aspects of the required background and less about others. For example, many early works on quantum mechanics did not make use of abstract linear algebra as the audience could not be expected to be familiar with it. Nowadays, physicists are taught linear algebra in a more abstract way (due to its importance for quantum mechanics), however, they may not be so familiar with solutions of spherical partial differential equations.


Is it possible take take part in a research project if I'm not a part of a university? I graduated with a Masters of Engineering, concentrating in digital signal processing, in particular medical and audio, almost two years ago. I've always been interested in research, but due to personal circumstances I could never commit a lot of time to working on a research project with a professor, and obviously didn't get a chance to publish anything. Now that I'm more settled and have much more time on my hands, I started getting involved in some open source projects and reading some technical literature (engineering, mathematics) that I couldn't get to before. However, I'd still like to find someone to to collaborate with on a research project who is already established in the field and publishes papers. Part of the reason I want to do that is to be able to eventually apply for a Ph.D. program in a good school, and having publications would be a great thing on my resume.

What I'm trying to find out is how I can work on a research project similar to those graduate students work on as a part of their studies if I'm not a student anymore? Should I contact my old professors from the university? Is it possible to find some "open research" team that accepts collaborators from outside? Do I have to do it on my own (quite frankly I'm not sure I can give myself a good enough quick-start)? In short, I'm willing to volunteer my time in exchange for a possibility of publication in the future. Can I do it, and if yes then how?

It's certainly possible, though admittedly somewhat harder outside the framework of a university. Some potential avenues, answering generally - not all of them might apply to your particular circumstance.

Academic/Business partnerships. These are a new hot topic, and in some fields quite active. Universities love them because they're a revenue stream. Businesses like them because its harder to get closer to the cutting edge than at a major university. Look for companies that do this as potential employers? They're good for both dabbling in research, and also as a springboard into the research side of things - I've met several "private sector refugees" in my time.
Research-oriented companies. Quintiles, RTI, Westat, RAND, etc. all come to mind. There are tons of these companies, and many of them both pay quite well and actively publish. Are there any that serve your particular field?
Consulting. Research groups occasionally have funding for outside contractors of one sort or another - and if someone really wants to work with you, they may write such a position into a grant with you in mind. For example, I have some grant support for a freelance programmer. I've known other people hired for a particular expertise, or just "a warm body who isn't a student". This is probably the path you'd end up going down if you both contact your ex-professors and want to get paid.
Volunteering. Academics are cheap. It never hurts to ask if they've got some side project you might be suited for collecting dust in the back.


Is there a standard for translating grades across Erasmus universities? I've just finished my Erasmus period in the Netherlands. I'm still waiting for one result from my guest academy, then the Transcript of Record will reach my home university and, somehow, the results will be translated from Netherlands marks to Italian marks.

Is there an Erasmus standard on how to predictably translate results between ranking systems?

As far as I know, the translation is up to the universities who do the conversion. I think that it is unlikely that there are is one set of guidelines as even within a country not all universities have necessarily the same ranking systems.

I have found this table on Google though that gives some idea on what grades are roughly equivalent.


Is the title Ph.D. or Dr. meaningless in the sense that anyone can use it? I know a businessman who has received a LOT of mileage off of using "Dr." and "Ph.D." with his name - in fact he puts it front and center.   However, it turns out that he never had more than two years of undergraduate work.  Is there any teeth behind either of these titles, or is it just a matter of how many you can deceive for how long?

I know a businessman who has received a LOT of mileage off of using "Dr" and "PhD" with his name

I don't know which country we are talking about, but at least in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland "Dr." is a protected title, and pretending you have one when you don't is a criminal offence. In Austria, for instance, this is part of federal law (see also the Bundesgesetzbuch). I would assume that PhD is also a protected title in the US and Great Britain.

However, note that this law explicitly only covers "pretending to have a doctoral degree", which leaves some wiggle room. For instance, there is an notorious Austrian bus company called "Dr. Richard", where the "Dr." are officially just the initials of the name of the owner (Dragan Richard).


Should I resubmit a modified computer science conference paper to a journal? Here is the situation; I made an article that got published in a Computer Science conference; the final decision was that it was considered a borderline paper. After a while I got an email from the organizers of that conference, letting the authors know that there would be the chance to resubmit our articles to a journal, but that the work should contain at least 30% more contribution than the original paper. Long story short, I worked through all the reviewers comments and added more information on my original article.

Actually I am a little bit afraid if my article would make it through the journal, but because I worked hard on doing the asked changes I would not like to leave it like that.

For that reason, I was wondering that in case of a rejection, Could I submit my expanded work to another conference; or should I just leave it like that? I am afraid that maybe the reviewers from another conference could see it like a case of self-plagiarized, even though I am citing my original article.

What to do in this situation? Should I paraphrase all the article again before submitting it with the new material? or should just let it be?

When in doubt talk to your adviser.

It is common in the Computer Science that the delta between conference and journal papers is 30%. That is not updated text only, but 30% of new substantial material, such as new experiments etc.

When submitting paper to a conference, there isn't a 30% rule. Your new paper needs to have a stand-alone novel contribution.

The reason is that CS adopted an iterative publication style workshop -> conference -> journal. So if your extended paper does not get accepted to a journal, you can attempt another journal, but not another conference.


How to judge a Ph.D. applicant that arrives "out of thin air" I just received an email from a student from a distant country, asking me to accept him as a Ph.D. student. I do not know this person, his advisors, his references or even the university he studied in.
His master's thesis looks good at first glance, but I cannot be sure since it is not in my field. He still wants to do Ph.D. research in my field.
I asked him to send me some refereed publications, but he replied that he has none yet, and then asked me to give him some work by which his application can be assessed.

I am very unsure about this - I am afraid to get stuck with a bad student that takes too much time to supervise. On the other hand, I do not want to block him entirely. So my plan is to give him an open problem that I and some colleagues tried to solve in the past but failed. If he fails and gives up, then he will have to look for another advisor;
if he does manage to solve the open problem, then I will be more than happy to be his Ph.D. advisor, and his solution will be a part of his thesis.

My reservation about this plan is that it might be unethical/unprofessional to give him such a difficult problem to start with. But, he asked for it, and of course he is not obliged to take it if he does not want to.

Is this plan reasonable? Is there a better plan?

UPDATE: based on the answers, I changed the plan as follows: (a) referred the student to register through my university's system; (b) asked the student what papers he has read on my research field, and what ideas he has for extending them; (c) Based on the student's answer, I decided on a research problem that was not solved yet in a publication, but for which I already thought of a solution, so that I can guide the student in case he gets stuck; (d) scheduled a video call. My plan is to start working together remotely in parallel to the registration process, and see how it goes.

Thanks a lot for all the insights and ideas!

I would tell them what you expect from a PhD student: prove theorems/run empirical tests/conduct human studies or all the above. If their profile is a clear mismatch, I wouldn’t bother.

I would next ask them to review two papers of their choice out of your recent publications. One page review each. The review should include at least one idea for future directions.  It tells you whether they’re serious, what they want to work on, and whether they can reason about ideas in your field. It also guarantees that the problem is at least somewhat tractable (you’ve solved it after all).

If you’re happy with the write ups, schedule a video interview. You both are committing to 4+ years together, best to make sure you can discuss things together.

Good luck!


How to judge the quality of education of an art school? I know that most question in this community refer to (natural or engineering) sciences. This question is concerned with the quality of higher education in the field of arts though, I hope it is on topic here.

My question goes along the lines of "What is the proper way to judge the quality of education of a university?". It is different from the question linked in that art schools have to be judged by looking at different metrics.
In user6726's answer to the question linked above, they state:

  [...] If students from institute X stumble more over questions at
  conferences compared to those from institute Y, or if they publish in
  lesser venues, or produce less-solid papers (more errors, more
  failures to think a problem through), then you can conclude either
  that Y attracts better students or that Y does a better job of
  training students than X [...].

Former students of an university of arts will not attend conferences as often as graduates from other fields, and rarely publish papers at all. While it is true that a university of art's value for a student's career is heavily dependent on the reputation of that university, this is not limited to the field of arts. Additionally, the reputation of an educational institution can be difficult to assess, if one is not in the same place and get hands-on experience there.

What should be considered when judging a university of arts, if one considers to study there?
This should be applicable to both undergrad and postgrad programmes.

Graduation rate, and time to graduation. A school with a graduation rate of 50% is not a good thing. Nor is a school with average time to bachelors degree of 6 years. Historically, the 'rejection rate' of students applying has also been a sign of school quality, although many schools (Harvard, etc) now game this by providing free or reduced priced applications so as to raise this rate. They also market like mad, so they can pocket your admission fee...


Independent researcher reaching out to academia for help I am an independent researcher and have spent the past year writing a fairly extensive (60+ pages) research paper on a topic in probability/statistics. The paper is almost complete but there are a couple minor loose ends that I am having issues with proving. Furthermore, given the length of the paper I am not sure of the appropriate journal to submit for publication and thus am considering contacting relevant professors in academia for help/guidance. My plan was to offer co-authorship in exchange for help addressing these loose ends and guidance with the publication process.  That said, my impression is that research faculty are inundated with these sorts of requests and so I was not sure if this approach was likely to get a response. Is this practice frowned upon in academia? If not, are there general best practices for reaching out with these sorts of requests?

It is common practise to ask domain experts for help and, where appropriate, to offer co-authorship. As professors are busy, you might want to seek more junior researchers. (I'll refrain from explaining how to write an email, since you can find answers on this website.)


How do I approach a professor for research I'm in a PhD program and want to approach a professor that I'm interested in working with. I've already sent him a couple of emails describing my background and asking for a meeting but he hasn't responded yet (it's been a couple of weeks). I've heard that he is very busy but always looks for new students. I also couldn't find his office hours(he probably doesn't have any). Is it rude if I dropped by his office? If I do, should I ask to schedule a meeting or just start talking about my interests?

I've advised nearly 30 Ph.D. students during my academic career as a professor. My advice to you is to be careful here. You've sent him a few emails, and you've received no response. Hopefully you attached your CV to those emails. If he is looking for someone to join his research group and he thought you were an exciting candidate, he should have responded to one of your emails by now (or maybe he still will). Given that you are already in the program, he really should either invite you to meet with him or else let you know that he doesn't have an opportunity for you. Given his lack of responsiveness, maybe he isn't a very good choice as a research advisor in any event.


How to (smartly) leave a postdoc early? I've already spent some months in a multi-year post-doc in Europe, doing clinical research. However, neither the project nor the life outside the lab seem good enough for my interests, and I'm planning on moving forward.

I'd like go for either an industry job (1st choice) or another postdoc (2nd option). I have a few questions about this:

Should I immediately tell my supervisor, or might I just give her
a short notice?
Regarding the next move (either industry or other postdoc): will
it be hard to get a new position if I don't manage to get a
recommendation letter from my current supervisor? I guess I may have
to ask for recommendation letters to my PhD references. If this
could be a problem, how to avoid/minimize it?
...And any general advice/experience about the topic would
likewise be appreciated.

Thanks,

If you have a good relationship with your advisor, consider informing him or her early in a very respectful way. He or she will appreciate you took the time. Why give them a reason to (potentially) write a less than stellar letter?

If you do NOT get a letter from your current advisor and go for another post doc, yes it will absolutely raise a flag. You could expect the topic to come up, or the interviewer make even contact your advisor directly.  However, if it really only has been a few months, simply stating the environment/locale/work/etc wasn't matched may be sufficient.


In ABET accreditation criteria, what is the meaning of "one year of X"? The ABET accreditation criteria document for Computer Science lists some course requirements as

One year of Science and Mathematics
At least one half year of Mathematics
One and one-third years of Computer Science
At least one year of up-to-date coverage of fundamental and advanced topics

How many courses is one year equivalent to? It may mean 10, going by 5 courses per semester. "One year of X" may mean a year where there is at least one course on X every semester. In either case, "one and one-third years" of courses does not make sense.

ABET formally defines a "year" as

  The lesser of 32 semester-hours (or equivalent) or one-fourth of the credits required for graduation [1].

The wiggle room in the definition is almost certainly because of the wide variety of credit systems used by various schools. "One and a third years" would then equate either to 42 semester hours, or four full trimesters or quarters of study for those on alternate study schedules.

[1] http://www.abet.org/eac-criteria-2014-2015/


How do I tactfully tell my advisor (who's much busier than I am) that I'm too busy to do such-and-such? I recognize my advisor is busier than I am. But, nonetheless, I feel the need to tell her sometimes that I am overloaded with too many tasks and I need to push a deadline back or pass on some request.

How do other people handle this tactfully?

I have had this discussion with my supervisors/advisors many times, all with positive outcomes.  This is what I do:

Be direct and to the point, it sounds like neither of you have time to dance around the issue.
Offer alternative ideas/timelines/strategies, I found that coming up with a solution is appreciated as in the long term, it is going to save time.
Be honest and truthful, state that you are overloaded - show how this is so, and either defer or decline the request.

Remember, your time and well being is just as valuable, and any good advisor already recognises that fact.


advisor slow to submit my research article For about 2 months now I have been sitting on a draft of what I think is a very nice research article, the first that I wish to publish.  My advisor and some other professors have seen my arguments and agree that everything looks okay.

My advisor believes that we should submit it... at ... some... point... but I am very anxious to submit the paper to a journal already. For one thing I would like to have it published by the time I graduate to help me find a job.

Question 1. Is my advisor employing some strategy by delaying me, hoping that I will revise the article or something?  I am still doing a lot of editing, but I'm not sure the paper is improving significantly. This editing may just be a biproduct of my anxiety and compulsiveness. I could probably do it forever, but the article must be sent off eventually!

Question 2. How can I 'light the fire' under my advisor? I'd hate to go around him, so maybe there is some tool I can use to prod him a bit. If his delaying were to cause my ideas to get scooped, I think I would absolutely lose my mind!!!

You believe the paper is ready. S/he doesn't, it seems. Ask him what conditions the paper needs to fulfil to make the paper submittable, and, if it is something that you can do, do that.

If it's him/her who needs to read the paper (but you say they approved of the arguments), then ask how you can proceed to make the paper being wrapped up soon, to avoid scooping.


Should I mention in my SOP for PhD that I was accepted for an MS in the same university earlier? I was accepted into an MS program at Stanford university two years ago and although it was my dream university, I decided to forgo it in favour of a fully funded MS in an Erasmus Mundus program simply because I could not afford the former. I will soon be applying for PhD again and was wondering whether I should mention that I was accepted into the MS program earlier. Will that help or harm my application in any way? Also, any suggestions on how to stand out among the large pool of applicants vying for a few spots?

It is probably irrelevant and won't be determinative. There might be some small effect provided that you make the first cut by showing your overall suitability for the program.

I can't see anyone using it against you under the circumstances and, on the other hand, you are applying for something different and your situation has changed via the other program.

Write the best application you can and mention it or not. Or save it as a talking point if you get invited to an interview.

What the applications committee are looking for is evidence that you will almost certainly be a success in the program. There can be lots of ways to demonstrate that, but it goes beyond GPA and test scores. What have you done. What can you say about your background, outlook, and goals that is interesting in your SOP?


Post Doc in Norway research atmosphere I was recommended for a post doc in Norway. I was wondering how is the research typical atmosphere in Norway. Here in the UK you spend more time writing proposals or trying to do research that can be published quickly and get funding rather than anything that contributes in my experience. Should I expect the same in Norway? It's fine if the answer is yes, the subject in question is interesting enough and the pay seems decent and I need a job.
Thanks

From my limited experience of having worked both in Norway and the UK, I get the impression that there is less pressure in Norway than in the UK. Given the vast difference in population, it is however only natural to expect more competition in the UK than that in Norway. Also Norwegian policies seem to be more welcoming to third-country nationals.

I would however disagree that spending more time writing proposals or trying to do research that can be published quickly and get funding are necessarily opposed to anything that contributes to experience. In fact, your productivity tends to increase when you have less external pressure to dictate what you need to do.

So a place where one can thrive is not necessarily country-specific, although for some, it may be.


How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor? When needing to ask a professor about something important and potentially delicate, what is an appropriate way to phrase the question or write the email?

Examples include:

Requesting a recommendation letter
Asking for exceptions to policy (e.g., ignoring a course prerequisite, rescheduling an exam)
Asking if you can do research with them, join a group, get into a program
Scheduling a meeting, exam, or defense
Letting them know about a change of plans
Letting them know about a life event affecting your work or studies (e.g., wedding, funeral, sickness, vacation)

Professors are people too.

There are generally no magic words or special formulas for talking to professors.  That said, it is understandable that people often feel very nervous in communicating with professors because how the professor responds can sometimes have a big impact on your future.  Here are some ideas about what works well.

Make your communications polite, direct, and succinct.

You don't need to be fancy or tell your life story.  Professors are busy people, and most will highly appreciate a simple, polite email telling them what you want and why you think it makes sense.

Here is a template for such an email to a professor:

Put the topic in the subject
In approximately one short sentence each:

Tell them / remind them who you are (unless you interact frequently)
Give the context for your request
Ask what you need to ask or tell them what you need to tell them.
Invite further communication or discussion if useful.

Examples:

  Subject: Request to ignore Programming 101 prerequisite for Algorithms

  Dear Prof. Brown:

  I am a freshman in the computer science department, wishing to take your Algorithms course. I believe that it is reasonable for me to do this even though I have not taken the Programming 101 prerequisite, because I have previously built and released two Android cell-phone apps, demonstrating that I know programming basics. Would you be willing to sign the department form so that I can take your class? If you'd like more information, I am happy to meet or to answer questions over email.

  Subject: Letter of Recommendation

  Dear Professor Patel:

  Your may remember that last year I took your Advanced Topics in Advancement seminar, and did a project on pico-widgets that you liked very much. I am now planning to apply to Ph.D. programs. Would you be willing to write me a strong letter of recommendation? I am attaching an informal transcript.  Please let me know if there is any additional information that you would need.

  Subject: Out sick

  Dear Professor Xu:

  I am sick with the Martian Spotted Flu, and the doctor says I should stay in bed for a week. I'm sorry, but somebody else will need to take care of the mice while I am out. If they need information, they can call my phone and I'll answer when I can.


How should an undergrad pick a journal to submit to? I am an undergraduate who has been doing research in a lab since my freshmen year, and I have usually just worked on projects with a PhD student. That being said, as of now I have co-authored two papers (both accepted) with said PhD student.

The professor has entrusted me to do my own research and he is really pushing that we publish a letter as soon as possible on the research I was doing, since no one in our (relatively new) subfield has even touched on this method. The first journal he said was Physical Review Letters (which made my eyes light up). Now though, he is leaning more to Applied Physics Letters or a much more specified journal.

I am looking to go into a PhD program in physics; should I submit to whatever journal my professor says to? He is very open and I think I could convince him to let me send it to Physical Review Letters but maybe he knows something I don't (like that it would be a waste of time - autorejection). Are there any other physics-based letters for broad and novel physics research?

Assuming your professor is not new at advising, he would have the best opinion on the matter since it is surely something he has dealt with before. If you are really unsure about this, express your concern and ask him why he would suggest one over the other, and then make your decision from there.

Additionally, can you get input from the PhD student you are working with?

If all else fails, you may be able to talk to another professor in the same field to get a second opinion on this.


Is there a website for academic physics jobs in the US like mathjobs.org? I am in math, and we usually apply to most academic jobs (in the US) through a generic application at mathjobs.org. Is there an equivalent in physics?

In particle/nuclear physics there is http://inspirehep.net/collection/Jobs
More generally, many (but definitely not all) physics jobs are announced on http://academicjobsonline.org.


How can I tell if I am short-listed for postdoc position? I applied for a postdoc position whose application deadline was 24th June. When I contacted my potential mentor asking when to expect the results,

  he thanked me for showing interest in applying for the position and told me that shortlisted candidates will be informed and the process will get completed by the end of July.

Until now I have received no further information from the institution nor was any list published at the institute website. I contacted recently the institution through mail asking whether I am selected or not but got no reply.

So, considering what my potential mentor said, does his words mean that I am not selected for the position? Or should I wait? I am confused about what to do next, in order to know if I am selected or not.

Update: I have mailed my potential advisor as well as the institution about knowing the results of selection but there was no reply. Now i came to know by unofficial means that the applications are still being processed and the results are not yet decided.

I think the answer you've got was pretty clear:

If you are short listed (for interview), you will be informed.
The process (including interviews and decisions) will be completed by end of July.

Typically, the shortlist is made within a week of the application deadline and interviews are conducted within another few weeks. The decision (of whom if any to make an offer to) is typically made immediately after the last interview and then it takes some more time before an offer is accepted.

In your case, this all fits nicely within the time frame of 5 weeks (24 June until end of July). So, if above typical scenario applies, then the fact that you haven't heard from them, implies that you were not shortlisted. But there may be other reasons, such as a delay in the process.

IMHO not informing those not shortlisted at the stage when the shortlist has been made (as is the case here) is a rather poor practice.

Don't be disheartened by a failed attempt to get shortlisted at a postdoc application. There are many applicants and you must expect to make several applications before getting there. You may ask them for feedback to improve your application (but most importantly: add publications to your CV).


Do bachelor programs in Germany with no Numerus Clausus accept any a level grades? I am planning to apply to a bachelor program in Germany with no Numerus Clausus, using my cambridge A-levels.

If I am eligible for a direct admission, does this mean that I can be sure that I will be accepted regardless of my A-levels grades?

According to the German Constitution, (Art. 12 GG), every German has the right to chose their own education institution, if they have the formal qualification. Under the European principles of free movement and non-discrimination, this effectively includes foreign EU citizens.

Therefore, if there is no Numerus Clausus, this usually means that every EU citizen with an Abitur or equivalent foreign degree will be admitted to the study program and at the education institution of their own chosing.

However:

There may be additional language requirements for foreigners.
There may be additional selection criteria, defined by the local university, for study programs that are offered only at few institutions.
The recognition of UK A levels as equivalent for the purpose of university admissions may become an issue after Brexit.

To be on the safe side, you should contact the student advisory service of the university at which you are planning to apply well in advance.


Contradiction on findings in existing literature I'm currently writing my thesis where I have two underlying sources where one says that a variable (has the founder of a kickstarter project backed other projects?) has influence on the dependent variable, while another source says it doesn't. What do I do in such a situation?

As Buffy notes, you cite both, and expound upon the apparent conflict.

If you are just reviewing literature, you would point out that the two studies came to different conclusions. If this is on-topic for your thesis, you would then dig a bit deeper and clarify what the studies have in common and how they differ, as it would lay out potential explanations for the apparent conflict.

This sort of thing is often the goal of reviewing literature to start with - identify a gap where there are no studies, or identify places where studies and/or theory seems to disagree.

Depending on what work you are doing, you may simply note this as a promising topic for future research, or you may want to try to address this conflict yourself with your own work to try to resolve the contradiction. The answer may be all kinds of things, from seeking out a mediating variable, to changing the analysis in a way that makes the conflict disappear, to ending up confirming that in fact "sometimes this variable matters, and sometimes it doesn't, and we don't know why."


Why do I see research being republished in Springer? For example, I see a "book" on Springer published in 2017 that is identical to a conference article presented in 2011. What is happening here?
In my opinion, duplicate publications are not good for the research community. I am annoyed because if I cite the Springer version in my paper, then the reader will see e.g., 2017 and think that the work was proposed in 2017 when actually it was proposed in e.g., 2011. Furthermore, if I come across a paper published in 20XX in Springer, I have to play detective to make sure there isn't a version 5 years old that is identical...
Edit1: I must point out that the "book" versions of the papers I am referring are not extended versions but instead are identical.
Edit2: So, the specific case I am thinking of is a paper presented at a conference. The publisher of the book and conference are both Springer, but I am confused as to why conference proceeding are being published 5 or more years after the conference.

I don't know what book you're looking at, but it could be a reprint volume. These are, as their name indicates, collections of reprinted works. They are usually reprinted works of some famous person (example), or they might be works which the editor of the volume has decided are worth including (example).
These books will usually make it quite clear the works contained are reprints though, so there should be no confusion over the date the original work was published.


My paper is accepted for a presentation in a conference; but I can not attend. Now what? I can not attend the conference and present my work. Besides they (organizers) have asked us to declare them "right away" in the case we can not attend for any reasons. Now I have two questions:

1- Will my paper lose the chance to be published in the selected papers of the conference (which is almost 20 among 100 presented ones)?  Or it still has the chance even without my presentation (e.g., for sake of its content)

2- They have announced to publish the conference details (including lecturers' names and papers) on their website in a week. Now, should I wait to see my name on their page (in order to reference specific people; e.g. an admission committee of somewhere) and then tell them I can not attend the conference? Or is it immoral and/or just telling the story (and not referring to a webpage) would suffice?

Thanks

You'd have to ask the conference organization. You should try to get somebody to present the work for you, or (just out of courtesy) tell them it won't be presented (so they can schedule talks correctly).

What will happen is up to the conference. Some I've attended just did not publish papers which weren't presented, others did publish in their proceedings regardless (you had to pay any attendance fees, at the very least). What happens with "selected papers" also varies, one conference I went to selected papers only among those presented, including in their selection the presentation and questions and answers, asking selected authors for a revision based on the above.


I forgot to rename the school when applying my SOP to another school. How bad is this? I just realized that I referenced my desire to go to school A in a letter to school B (in fact, I did this by mistake for 2 schools!). Most unfortunately, I have already submitted the applications for these 2 schools so I can no longer change the letters. How damaging can this mistake be? The annoying thing is, I mention specific professors I want to work with from both schools, and these names are correct, but it's just the school name that was mixed up in the editing stages.

As a long time graduate program director, I've read thousands of these essays; this mistake happens in maybe 1 in 50 or so. I have already seen one this year, for example.

Here's the deal: If it's a generic statement of purpose that is not tailored to the school in question, yeah, it hurts a bit. It's an added signal that you're not all that serious about this particular school. If your statement of purpose is well tailored to the program -- or if you've created other contacts there, e.g., talked extensively with a faculty member interested in recruiting you -- the harm should be minimal.


Personal log of peer review conducted at Elsevier journals A few months ago, I found a web app that showed statistics on my experience as a reviewer, especially with respect to Elsevier journals; it just displayed the number of referee reports I had submitted, for each journal.

Given the data, I think it was some service owned by Elsevier, but despite my best efforts, I cannot find it anymore. I thought it might have been Mendeley, but not quite: my (private) Mendeley profile just shows the last two papers I've reviewed, along with a broken link to "view all publications".

Publons, in principle, is similar to what I'm looking for, but it does not have any agreement with Elsevier (and in fact, the peer review part of my Publons profile is currently empty).
Any ideas?

Sounds like Elsevier's Reviewer Recognition site/platform. According to a description here this platform lets reviewers track their reviews, claim book discounts, etc. [It also mentions a service for public reviewer pages (hmm, where have I heard about that before?), but the provided link is broken so I'm not sure if that's still available or not.]


What should a tenured professor do to move to a more research oriented school? Much is written about how to get a job, but I've seen very little about how a professor with tenure (typically an associate or full professor) goes about changing schools.  If a professor wants to move to a school with a higher emphasis on research, obviously his or her research, publication, and grant records will be very important.  But what else will be important?  Particularly, which aspects will be much more important than they would be for an assistant professor looking to get a job at the same school?

Its difficult, and rare for faculty to move from non-research oriented schools to research oriented schools, particularly at the senior level. To be hired as a senior faculty member, you generally have to be specifically recruited, and someone has to make a case that you, specifically, would substantially strengthen the department. This is because making an offer with tenure is a huge commitment for a department, and much more expensive than hiring a younger scientist.

So what you have to do is be a visible leader in your field. When people think of your field, they should think of you, and when their university thinks of expanding their coverage of your field, you should be one of the first people they think of.


In case of in-lecture quizzes, is it unreasonable to fail students who are late or absent? I am teaching a large undergraduate class this semester. One day a week (same day every week) we have a quiz. The syllabus doesn't specify at what moment of the class period the quiz will be given. It does say though that students who missed the quiz aren't allowed to make it up. So, I've had the following situation since the semester started. First and second week I gave the quiz at the end of the class. During week 3 I already had a few students coming more than 20 minutes late, but early enough not to miss the 15 min quiz, which I gave again at the end. So, this week (week 4) I gave the quiz 10 minutes after the start of the class. The actual time of the quiz wasn't announced in advance. And yes, I've had many students coming late and some came when the quiz was already over. These students couldn't have 15 minutes like others if any time at all. Now these students are claiming that I needed to tell them in advance at what time the quiz was supposed to be or emphasize that it can be at any time, or otherwise they follow the pattern.

All students who came in late were the ones who were late the previous week except one student.

I repeat that it's a big lecture hall, and I don't want to take notes when a specific student actually started his or her quiz and add 15 minutes to that time. Also, after quiz I want all of them to concentrate on the class material. And I don't want to give it at the end all the time as some students will come in late, and that disrupts the flow of a lecture, distracts other students and generally erodes class morale.

I drop quite a lot of lowest quiz grades at the end of the semester to meet those cases when students do have to be absent. So, a good student's grade won't be affected if he or she will miss a couple of quizzes.

I am currently facing lots of negative emails from students who were late and didn't get the grade they would get if they had the same time as everybody else. Do you think it's me being unreasonable? Their main argument is that it should be clearly stated when a quiz is given or emphasized that it can be given at any time, which I find unnecessary.

Do you think it's me being unreasonable?

Sadly, yes. I see two problems here:

You said in a comment that the policy of "the quiz can happen at any time" was not articulated at all. You gave the quiz near the end of the class a couple of times, and the students naturally assumed that that's when you'll always have it. Now you are trying to argue legalistically that since you didn't say when the quiz will occur, you were reserving the right to hold it at any time. However, in my opinion if you are going to argue based on legalisms, the burden is on you to dot all your i's and cross all your t's and make sure that you gave your students such amazingly clear information that they couldn't even imagine arguing with you.
The thing to keep in mind here is that you are an educator, not a prosecutor trying to entrap a criminal in court. The students deserve to have clearly articulated rules so that they can focus their time and energy on the material; in particular, if there's a quiz, they deserve to know the precise time when it will be held, or at the very least to have an explicit announcement that the quiz can be held at variable times. Overall, your approach to dealing with the students who came late as I'm understanding it from your question seems to me to place you in an adversarial, combative position relative to your students, which is not where you want to be as a teacher - it can only serve to distract from your educational objectives and provides for a poor learning environment for your students.

A second problem is that I'm getting a strong feeling from reading your question that you're trying to use the quiz as a crowd control mechanism, which feels wrong to me (and partially as a result has gotten you into the current messy situation). You've devised an elaborate strategy that consists of holding a quiz at a randomly selected time during the class as a solution to the problem of making students come to class, and come on time. The problem of students coming in late may be a very real concern, but random quizzes are simply an inappropriate and ineffective way to address it (and one that can potentially be perceived quite negatively by the students).
A quiz is a form of assessment, and is a legitimate device to use for that purpose, but let's keep things in their right place: deal with the problem of disruptive late-coming students in the appropriate way, and have your assessment in the way that makes sense from an educational standpoint, whether it be quizzes, exams, homework, or even mandatory class attendance if that's important to you and your institution's policies allow it.


Getting a second opinion (I'm a math PhD student)
I'm writing a paper and part of my work relies on an old result of my advisor.
Recently, I started to become concerned that the old result does not have a proof (only a sketch) and I have a hunch that the proof is considerably harder (or possibly just much trickier) than the sketch makes it look.  (It's possible I'm wrong; it concerns an area that I'm more of a novice in.  However, I know enough that I couldn't cite this result without at least reading the sketch.)
Not only that, there are certain questions I have not been able to address as it pertains to my results, and the more I have thought about the missing proof of the old result, the more confident I have become that those questions could be addressed if I knew the missing proof.  Therefore, not only does some of my work rely on this old result, but I may be able to substantially improve it if I figure out the old one.  (To put it differently, in my own brain at least, the old result is an important open question.)
Further (and, ironically, this was brought to my attention by my advisor), there is a rather big theorem in our research area that relies on the old result.  It's troubling to me that I don't know how to prove the big theorem without it, and it could be an issue for the larger community if, as I suspect is possible, no one knows how to fill out the sketch in the original paper.
It may be that this is simply an open problem that has been overlooked.
I am discussing this with my advisor and I'm concerned that he won't be willing to show me how to fix the sketch or to make time for us to come up with our own proof.  (We discussed it previously, before I had understood its importance, and his explanation followed the sketch in the paper.  It looks possible that my advisor and his coauthor overlooked the difficulty in turning the sketch into a proof.)
What's worse is my advisor is starting to get a bit defensive about it (or that's my impression).  I don't doubt that he will eventually hear my concerns, I'm simply worried that he will want to move on or will admit that he no longer knows how to fix it; and I don't want to sit around waiting until that happens.
Is now a bad time to reach out to a junior person in the field (who I know and trust) asking if they know how to turn the sketch into a proof?  I would not phrase it as "I'm concerned the old result is wrong," but as "What am I missing?  I'm new to this particular problem, is it known how to address this kind of issue?  Have you read this part of the paper before?"  I would ask that this person not discuss it with my advisor before we had come to a conclusion and have the entire conversation via Zoom rather than e-mail.  At the end of the day, I don't want to bother my advisor with technical details from old papers, whereas the person I have in mind is someone I trust to listen to my questions and take the details seriously.
My concern is if my advisor hears about it, he could misunderstand my intentions and think I'm telling others his old result is wrong.  However, this issue is pretty distracting right now and I just want to know I'm not missing something that really is obvious or understood by experts.  If that's the case, then I can stop pressing my advisor about it and move on to other things.
I could wait until this takes its course with my advisor; it's just that he's busy.  In retrospect, I wish that I had asked someone else first (before my advisor) so that I wouldn't be in the awkward position I'm in now.

Going to the younger colleague is fine, but I also wouldn't hesitate to go to your advisor again.  It is, after all, part of his job to train you.  Prepare a detailed explanation of the problem you see with the proof and the spots where you think it is tricky.  If you're conscientious in narrowing down the scope of the issue, you surely won't be wasting his time.  Either he can fill it in (and you're done) or he can't (and then you've made him aware that there's a gap in his old proof, which is doubtless important to him).
I have been in a similar situation.  There was a theorem which my advisor attributed to another, famous and famously sloppy mathematician who only sketched the proof.  Moreover, another student of my advisor several years prior wrote out a detailed proof in his unpublished thesis.  I was working on generalizing the result to a different setting (already as a postdoc) and noticed an unproven assumption in the other student's proof.  In the end the assumption was false, the overall result was correct, but required additional novel ideas and evinced some unanticipated subtleties -- my advisor and I published a paper in a very good journal.  (Then I got distracted onto other projects and never finished the generalization.)


Is it okay to take a day off as an undergraduate? I am an undergraduate Computer Science student. I take the bus to college everyday at 7 am and come back at 4 pm. And take 3 lectures everyday, except on one day, I take 4, which are 1:30 hours long. Due to this I get very tired, especially towards the end of the week. Anybody would.

I have Saturday and Sunday free. I was thinking whether I should take the Saturday off, or should I study that day too just because I feel like there is a lot to learn. Also sometimes I have my own projects to work on and I have to take a break from the Course's material on weekends. Is it acceptable/expected? Assume I can complete all my assignments in weekdays and on Sunday.

Your health is important to maintain. It does you little good to work harder than your mind and body can accommodate.

Burn out is a serious issue. Some people work so hard for so long that they just, one day, decide it isn't fun anymore and quit, cold.

Your mind will continue to work on problems without being conscious of it and without being forced to concentrate on those problems. People often wake up in the morning or after a nap with a solution to a tricky problem.

So, yes, learn to take breaks, whether short or longer - preferably both. Work when you are relaxed if you can make that happen.

You can also, perhaps learn to use some of the travel time to either just relax or to work on things that don't require access to a machine. This might make the "day off" less of an issue. But don't take this suggestion to mean "work always". For example, some people carry index cards on which they write definitions of things or something about a current problem. If they find a moment of boredom, say on a bus, then they can pull out a few cards and leaf through them, just reinforcing their learning.

See Hipster PDA, for example.


Is it considered bad if a student replies late to a professor? We know that professors are busy, and more often than not we (students) do not receive quick replies from them. However, the tables have turned (sadly, and just once).
This summer, I'm working on some advanced reading and possibly research under the guidance of a professor not at my institution (given the pandemic, all interaction is online, i.e. via email and scheduled Zoom meetings). After one of my meetings, I wrote to the professor summarizing whatever was discussed in the meeting, and heard back from the professor within a few hours (probably two). The reply also contained some information unrelated to the meeting, to which I may have been expected to respond to. At that point, I was in the process of completing certain work that was assigned to me, and I decided to reply back only after I had made some substantial progress to be able to give an update. So, I replied after approximately 60 hours with updates on substantial progress (as I had expected), and also replied to the extra bit in their email which was essentially some information besides what was discussed in the meeting.
In retrospect, I feel a little awful for sending in a late reply to the professor's email, though 60 hours hopefully isn't too big a deal. Could this possibly be interpreted badly/negatively by the professor? I intend to respond swiftly henceforth - but I am wondering if anything went wrong this time around. I haven't heard back from the professor in about two days now (that's probably okay, but still enough to trigger anxiety).
Please let me know in the context of the above situation if everything seems alright and if replying ASAP to professors is the way to go. Since many people here are at advanced stages in their careers (PhDs, postdocs, professors, etc.) - I hope to gain some valuable insights. Thank you for your patience and for reading this far!
Lastly (though somewhat less important), as the title suggests: Is it considered bad if a student replies late to a professor? (just in general, without context)

Firstly, take a deep breath. You are fine. I know it's hard, but try not to overthink the situation
There is no "normal" or "expected" response time set by the laws of academia (those don't exist). Sixty hours is a perfectly fine response time, especially if the email from the professor was giving lots of detailed information which you needed to think about before answering, or as you say, you needed to make progress and report on it. Email is not instant messenger and should not be treated as such. Many people in academia only check their email once a day, so wouldn't notice a "slow" reply at all. Furthermore, as a recipient, I'd rather get a slow, correct response than a hasty one with mistakes.
If you are worried about this in the future, it's fine to ask the professor how quickly they would like you to respond to emails. In my new job, my bosses and I discussed this openly, in fact. We decided that a week is a good maximum response time, excluding holidays. It's good to have these honest conversations about expectations for any collaboration, and it's not too late for you to do the same.
Another option is to reply to the professor's email soon after you have seen it (not interrupting your work or concentration, of course) to let them know that you have read it and are working on it and will reply with a full answer tomorrow/next week/other timeframe. However, I think this could be a bit redundant (the sender will probably assume it anyway), it unwantedly adds to the sender's email traffic and is bad for the environment.
In summary, try not to worry and don't think of email as being like Whatsapp. It's more like sending a physical letter.


How to give a short talk at big math conference (section talk)? Context:
Very big math conferences are often structured in the following way: there are key note speakers, but also sections on more specific topics, as well as satellite workshops on quite narrow subjects. This question is about the second type of talk. Due to the size of such conferences, the talks maybe rather short (20min, 30min).
Such sections (Algebra, Topology, Geometry, Probability theory, etc.) are still very broad. The organizers might make an effort to group similar talks together within different daily sessions, but it should be taken into account that many conference participants will follow all daily sessions of one section.
Question:

How to approach such a short talk?
How to find a good balance between bringing the own results across to the broader audience without having to spend all of the talk explaining background, and saying something interesting to experts?

It seems find that in a typical 1h seminar talk it is easier to provide something for everybody: listeners who have not seen the basic constructions of the topic, and experts of the field.

The advice is the same as for any talk, only moreso: Think of your talk as an advertisement -- your goal is to get people interested enough so they will look up and read your paper (or, in this case, invite you to their seminar to talk about it in more detail). Specifically:

Assume no one in the audience is an expert on your topic. (Seriously. It's hard to underestimate how much everybody else knows about something you spent years studying.)
The most important question to address is why should the audience care about your work? This question needs to be answered by slide 2 at the latest, and it doesn't hurt to remind them on the last slide as well. This is easy if you solve a long-standing open problem, but anything in the direction "if you have such-and-such a problem, my result will help you" will do. (If you really cannot come up with something, at least tell them why you care about the work -- presumably, some aspect of it was fascinating enough to make you finish it.)
Skip the details. Honestly, if in doubt, leave it out. Focus on a few core ideas, and try to get them across as plainly as possible. If your main result needs two slides of assumptions or notations before you can state it, see if you can find a more specific (non-trivial) setting where it will fit on one slide. Don't try to give a blow-by-blow proof, but stick with two or three high-level bullet points ("Proof uses Galerkin approximation, compensated compactness, and the embedding of X into Y").

(Also, since this is such an old question, you probably already went to the very big meeting. What did you hope to get out of hearing those talks? In hindsight, which ones did you take the most away from? Keep this in mind when preparing the next talk.)


Is second authorship good for an undergraduate student planning for masters admit? As an undergraduate student, I worked along with my professor and his PHd student on one of the projects that comes under his thesis. We shared the work equally and now I'm being offered 2nd authorship. Does it add value to my resume or will the evaluvators assume my contributions were less.

Any research experience is good for an undergraduate in the US, and likely elsewhere. Don't worry about author order too much yet. The doctoral student probably has a good claim on first authorship in any case.
But a publication on your CV is definitely a positive thing. Most people in the US start a MS or PhD with little or no real research experience.


Reasonable number of person-months for a full time academic? I am currently applying for an Italian grant (a PRIN, precisely, in case someone is familiar with them), and in the application we have to indicate a number of person-months also for the PI and the other participating academics that are already employed full-time by their own universities.

What is a reasonable number of person-months to include in this case? How much of his/her time can a professor/academic (so someone who already has a full time teaching and research job in a university) contribute to a big research grant?

There is no explicit guideline in the call.

If you are working full time on the grant (e.g., as a post doc or research scientist with no teaching or administrative duties), then 100% of your time is not unreasonable. If you have a standard faculty position with a breakdown of maybe 40% research, 40% teaching, and 20% admin, then you might be able to get away with 40% of your time, but most people would expect you to have other, possibly "unpaid" research commitments. In my field, funding agencies generally do not like to see less than 10% time (half a day a week) from the PI, because that just does not leave enough time to administer the grant. For young investigators, they want to see commitments of at least 20%.


Is there such a thing as "open" double-blind peer review? Is there such a thing as "open" double-blind reviewing, where the author's comments, the reviews, and any interchange between author and reviewer are viewable, not just by the editor but also by the other reviewers, but completely anonymous?

If so, what are some journals that have this practice?

Yes, there is such a thing as "open double-blind" reviewing: the "Frontiers in" journal series uses exactly this model.

During the review process, "control" is handed back and forth between editors, reviewers, and authors in an incremental "conversation" model, in which the paper might go through many incremental revisions.  If the editor determines the paper cannot proceed or an author is unable to reply to reviewer comments, then it is rejected.  Otherwise, reviewers, once satisfied with the paper, sign off with an endorsement.  When all reviewers have endorsed, the paper proceeds to publication and the identity of the reviewers is revealed on the final published version.


How can I find a list of my co-authors for a grant conflict of interest? Many funding agencies require a list of co-authors in the past n years. Is there an easier way to do this than to find all of my papers and copy and paste the names and institutions?

As with most other administrative data, it's far easier to maintain this information than to rebuild it from scratch every time you need it.

Maintain a spreadsheet with a complete list of your collaborators, including name, affiliation, ORCID, contact info, and most recent collaboration date for each one.  Keep this spreadsheet in the same directory where you maintain your CV.

If you're lucky enough to have lots of collaborators already, setting up the initial spreadsheet will take significant time.  Better to invest that time only once.

Every time you submit a paper or grant proposal, spend 5–10 minutes adding any new collaborators and updating your information for collaborators already listed.

Each time you need to submit a list of conflicts, extract the collaborators recent enough to create a conflict, in the precise format the agency requires.  Different agencies define conflicts differently, so if you plan to submit proposals to more than one agency, I don't recommend removing anyone ever.

If your agency is like NSF, it will require a list of names and current affiliations of your recent collaborators.  So every time you submit a proposal, you need to double-check that everyone's listed affiliation is current.  A list of affiliations at the time of your collaboration, no matter how you obtain it, is not sufficient.  People move; your conflicts follow them.  (People also occasionally change names, but that's must less common.)


Repeat dropper and failure at multiple colleges. Is a Master's ever possible? Just found this site and did some searching around but I'm not sure anyone is as nuts as I am.  Long story short I've been living with a severe anxiety surrounding school.  I'm 29 years old now and am finally getting to the root of my issue, and it's making a lot of sense.  Everything except how to move forward.  I've always wanted to go "all the way" through a Masters Degree but I'm almost certain any competent admissions committee will reject me without question.  Here's my scenario:

Community College 1: About 9 years ago I registered for my classes, didn't show up.  Dropped by the administration.
Community College 2: About 7 years ago I registered for my classes, showed up for a week, dropped by administration.
Community College 3: 4 years ago I registered for a fresh start.  Did one semester successfully but got a D in one class because I had anxiety surrounding showing up for that class.  I retook that same class 5 more times each resulting in either a self-initiated withdraw/drop, or a flat-out F because I stopped going and had too much anxiety to admit that i'm dropping again.  I have 1 "ok" semester, and 3 complete failure/dropped semesters.  Ending GPA is 1.75
Went back to Community College 1.  Did well and have a GPA of 3.4.  Did not transfer any of the classes from any other school.

Now I'm looking to apply to a 4 year university.  I know I need to give them all transcripts from all schools, but I'm really nervous about not getting in anywhere because of my rough history working through that anxiety.  I'm mostly concerned about a future Master's program not giving me the time of day.  I have an excellent work history because I always put that first but now that I'm learning how to focus on academics I want to go all the way.  Maybe even further for a PhD., if I continue to bust my behind the way I have been.

I'm floating the idea of maybe doing a 2nd Bachelor's before a Master's if I have to do that to prove to a committee that I'm worth a shot.

What would any of you do in my shoes?

Let me come at this from a different angle (and from someone who has faced something similar in the past.)

Why do you want a masters?  What is your goal in getting a masters and/or a PhD?

Is you goal "Because I always kind of wanted one"? Is it "Because it will help me with my career goals"? Is it "Because I want to show that I can"?

This is not to be a negative nelly, though it may sound that way, but Graduate course work, especially in Computer Science(an assumption based on your current work as a web-developer), can be very challenging and stressful. Depending on the program and the instructor, it is not unusual for over half a class to have, on paper, a 'failing' grade. Some teachers are great about communicating that this is OK and expected, other's will let you hang out and stress about whether your 'failing grade' is really a failing grade. Some of these courses can involved 20+ hours a week of project or coursework. Some have no 'right' or definite answers.

None of this is to say you shouldn't go for it. Recognizing and working on an anxiety issue(or any mental health issue) takes a great deal of strength and hard work. That you have persevered to complete an undergraduate degree shows that you are a hard working, intelligent, passionate individual.

What I am saying is - analyze your reasons for going to graduate school. Make sure that what you get out of graduate school will actually match those reasons and that you approach it in a doable fashion. I would recommend a multi-step process.

Identify the school / program you are interested in attending
Register at that school(or a school with similar characteristics) to take courses
Take high level undergraduate courses. Look at the graduate degree you are interested in - often they have prereqs that you could take. Take difficult courses that are stressful to get a feel for what graduate courses will be like.
If you have time - get involved in a research lab that interests you. Make some connections with professors(and incidentally the admissions council).
Once you've got a year(ish) of courses under your belt - go for that Masters or PhD!

Doing the above benefits you in many ways. First and foremost it gives you a safe place to fail gracefully. If you're taking a course not for your masters but as preparation then dropping it isn't a big deal. Maybe you'll find you need another prereq, maybe you want to spend some time buffing up on the material. There is a big difference in having the pressure to 'pass right now or fail forever!!!' (well, what you brain tells you is failing forever and what is, in reality, not a big deal) and 'well I could take this later once I do ____....'

Secondly this gives you a little bit of a buffer. This shows any admissions group that you can take challenging classes and pass them. That you can work through the rigors of Masters program. And you can point to this during your statement of purpose as 'proof' that you have improved your reaction to anxiety around school and have a support network/plan in place for the rigors of graduate work.

Thirdly this gives you a chance to get the admissions committee on your side. If professors and admissions officers know your name(in a positive light) it can make a real difference in how your application is received. Additionally some schools have 'backdoors', so to speak, into Graduate programs especially for non traditional students.

Finally, and I hope this goes without saying, make sure you have a support network in place. I would recommend, as someone who has been there and gotten the teeshirt, that you have a local therapist for, at least, your first few semesters. Additionally there's no shame in deciding that graduate school isn't for you(I ultimately decided that PhD papers are the bane of my existence and am not current pursuing a PhD.)


American universities - where does all the money go? This question is about Title-IV eligable 4 year institutions in America, the majority of which are non-profit.

Colleges have a range of funding sources, including tution fees. Tuition fees have increased by ~500% in the past 5 decades, much faster than inflation.

My question is, given the increase in income from that source, and that the institutions do not make a profit, where is the money going?

For instance, is this offset by decreases in state funding? Are they spending a lot more on grounds maintainance or research?

I would prefer answers that refer to some kind of data, for instance graphs, university financial report...

The answer is completely different at different types of schools. At state schools in California, the increases in tuition have gone to offset decreases in state funding. At some private schools with big endowments, e.g., Princeton, it's simply not true that tuition has gone up dramatically. (Princeton is now about the same price as Berkeley for a kid from an affluent family.) At other private schools, the increased tuition may be paying for amenities like rock-climbing walls, or it may simply have increased because parents perceive high tuition as a sign of status and quality.


What are the advantages for submitting my paper to demo or doctoral symposium sessions of conferences Several conferences feature demo sessions and doctoral symposia. Besides publishing these in the conferences' proceedings do these two offer advantages? What is the additional value of these two types over normal conference papers especially in computer science?

My experience is with Computer Science conferences. Some have a multi-day Doctoral Symposium associated with them. The advantage of them is that you get both some experience in presenting your work and some useful feedback on it. The ones I was associated with have a review selection process so you get some feedback at that point and then were run symposium style, not presentation to a large audience. Other students and a few professors would listen to your presentation and try to give you feedback and ideas.

I don't believe that the symposia published the work of the students. This was pre-doctoral research in progress. The purpose wasn't publication, but advancement.

While I wasn't the symposium chair at any of these (part of overall committee), one of my close colleagues was the chair at one of them. I only heard of good experiences. Note that they aren't intended for finished/polished work, but for work in progress where additional ideas might be welcomed.

I'll also note that our doctoral program at the university used the same idea of symposium presentation with our own doctoral students. Once monthly, students would discuss their work with the other students and the advisors of most of them in an all day seminar. Each student would have a bit of time to report on progess and problems. This was very helpful, especially to those who were struggling a bit with the research as the ideas for progress were usually pretty helpful.

I see no reason that this wouldn't transfer to most other fields. Even when I was a student of mathematics, my professor had a weekly symposium for his own students. A few other faculty would also attend. But this, for the most part, wasn't student presentations, but rather discussions of mutual interest on which the (few) students were currently working.


Is it cheating if I develop some part of my MSc. thesis in a hackathon in a team? I am working on my master thesis in software engineering. I am going to present the idea of my thesis in a hackathon (startup competition), so most probably, we will make a team and develop a minimum viable product based on my thesis.

The question is:

Can I mention to this minimum viable product as the validation of my thesis?
Or it would be considering as plagiarism since i have not developed it alone, but in a team.

I believe it would be fine and acceptable as long as in your thesis writing you name who helped you and how they helped you.

I doubt anyone will think less of your thesis for having people help you. As long as it is still clear that you did a lot of work yourself... this team isn't completely doing your project and thesis for you!

You could ask your thesis advisor to be certain.

Many PhD students hire research assistants to help them code software engineering projects.