Is my advisor asking me to commit fraud? I am currently a postdoc, leaving my position in ~1 month. I am departing my contract a few months early after receiving an offer for a job in industry, about which my advisor is very upset. It is policy at my institution to pay departing postdocs for un-used vacation days.
My advisor has asked that I "use" my leftover vacation days, i.e. take them on paper, but actually use that "time off" to finish a few papers. His argument for this is that he "cannot afford" to pay me for them (this sounds bogus to me; how was he going to pay my salary, if he is so broke?). It seems to me he just doesn't want to participate in this policy.
Obviously, this would be shafting me first and foremost, since I would be losing out on this money, but I am not all that upset about that. I'm worried that the university, or our funding agency would object to this maneuver. Would it even be legal? Most importantly, could I be held responsible, for facilitating this?

You've earned the days as paid vacation, you don't have to work during them. The money it costs to pay you for those days is part of your compensation for the work you've already done and the stretches of time that you came to work instead of taking the day off.
If you do decide to take the time to work on finishing up some papers, that could be good for both your advisor and you. All your work is basically a waste of time if it never makes it into a paper. Maybe you're fine with that if you're all done with academia, but if you ever did want to return then any papers you can publish will be to your benefit. I think there's also a strong sense of personal accomplishment in publishing papers (why are you doing research if not to share it with the research community??), and as a post doc (or any other level of academia) your role is a bit different from a standard employee in that you're typically doing research not just as a job but as your personal work.
As far as "not being able to afford" to pay for those days, I think you can mostly ignore that statement, it's not connected to what you do next in any real way. However, it's probably not motivated by your advisor literally being that broke, but rather that they expected that the grant money they spent on your position would result in some output that they can use to get more money for future projects - that's how the academic funding cycle works. If they've paid you for a spot and you've failed to complete projects, that's in many ways wasted money for them. Maybe they can pick up your work where you left off but often there is a lot of cost of time and effort in starting from someone else's partial work.
I won't comment on legal issues according to any letter of the law, but it's extraordinarily unlikely that you would see any legal consequences for spending time off working to complete a project. It's also unlikely your advisor would see any consequences for making the request. It also doesn't seem that your advisor is seeking to cause you to lose out on any money but rather they're hoping that you see enough value in completing work to spend your earned vacation time working. Like I said in the start, you've already earned this time and don't need to work for it, but it's a bit different from trying to pull money out of your pockets.

@GoodDeeds in a comment pointed out that OP's advisor may be asking them to "quit early" and count the end of their work as vacation time. I was thinking more along the lines of OP determining their own end date but their advisor asking that they keep working to finish up projects. Also in a comment, OP indicates that they are willing to work to finish up the incomplete papers on their own time.
Based on those pieces of information, my advice would be to:
A) Assure the advisor that you are willing and intending to finish up these projects. I think that's their main concern, whatever conflicts there have been between you. Everything you've said in this post could be a completely honest, non-exploitative effort towards this goal. Maybe that's overly charitable towards them, but I think it's a good mindset to start from.
B) Come to agreement on an official end date, when your regular salary ends. You should be committed to work full time through this date, like you've been doing until now. This shouldn't have any relation to the vacation hours you are owed. Pretend they don't exist. After that date, you're committing to finishing the projects, but not to working any set hours. If your advisor wants this to be sooner, you can say that if you aren't an employee during those hours there are other things you'd like to do during that time.
C) If your advisor insists on involving the vacation hour pay, reiterate your commitment to finishing up the work. If it helps your advisor to think about it, those volunteer hours you plan to put in on these projects in your nights and weekends are effectively "working for those vacation hours", you're just not willing to have those be "full time" hours on a schedule, or to substitute for your normal work.
If they aren't okay with this arrangement, then they aren't being reasonable. You can hope they come around, but remember that you have some power here. Your advisor is going to want you to finish your projects. You have a new job and aren't compelled to work for them. So, if these papers are going to actually get out, the two of you have to work on mutually acceptable terms. Good luck!


Do journals in general have any kind of policy regarding papers submitted by someone without a research affiliation? Assuming that there are no ethical or legal concerns involved, in general, how would academic journals handle research submitted from the general public (e.g., if a carpenter were to perform a study on memory)? Would it be published if it held to the same standard as other research, or is it rejected without review?

Edit: A lot of people are commenting on the fact that a person outside of academia probably wouldn't be able to write in a way that was required or have the sufficient training for carrying out a proper experiment. Not my point. I just want to know if there is a general rejection of articles purely based on the fact that the person doesn't have any affiliation to a proper research organization. We could for example imagine a former Nobel prize winner who has a lot of money and prefers to work alone.

Some journals implement a double-blind reviewing process, meaning that the reviewers are not aware that the authors are from academia or not, and only the scientific content is judged. That being said, it's worth mentioning that it would be hard for someone without a proper "paper-writing" training (such as the one one can acquire in academia), to produce a paper that would be accepted by reviewers. Some general structure is expected, such as related Works, critical discussion, rigorous methodology, and I would say that without that, it would be hard to get the paper published (I have myself rejected papers from graduate students, not because the idea itself was bad, but because the structure and the presentation were not meeting the standards one could expect for a scientific publication).

EDIT: After reformulation of the question, assuming that the quality of the paper makes it indistinguishable from any other paper, then, no, as far as I know, there is no general policy regarding the official affiliation of the author(s). For instance, in Computer Science, it's not rare to see papers published by people working in a "normal" company (i.e. not a research company), typically on some concrete problems/solutions they have found. Some people even keep publishing after starting their own startup, and therefore the affiliation is something like "MyCompanyWeb2.0".


Do universities in the USA help postdoc researchers with the visa process? I am currently at the end of my PhD and will be defending my thesis in the next two weeks. I have been offered a postdoc position at a university in the USA that is set to begin in October 2018.

I have asked the HR department of my new employer in the USA for information about the visa application process but I have gotten very little response/information. Is it typically up to the postdoc to sort out their own visa or do universities in the USA usually guide you through the process?

Note: I am moving from Ireland to the USA, if this makes any difference.

Yes, they should help you with the visa process, at least to some extent. In fact, they will likely have to sponsor your application. You will probably require a J1 (non-immigrant) visa for a postdoc in the US. More information on how to apply for such a visa is provided here.

In short, you will need a designated sponsor. Your university likely has this status. They have certain obligations to support and monitor your progress during the stay. If the university has an international office, they can likely provide you with more detail.

In any case, for you to apply for a J1 visa, you will need to have a copy of Form DS-2019 provided by the university. This is issued by the designated sponsor, confirming your eligibility for the J1 visa program, and contains some details about their exchange program (under which postdocs from abroad will typically fall, if my understanding is correct), start and end dates, and how your stay is funded. Without this DS-2019 form you cannot apply for the visa at the embassy. You will also need to bring it to the interview at the embassy, where the consular officer will evaluate your application.

One important thing to note is that if you will bring dependents with you (spouse or child), they will need their own DS-2019 forms to apply for a J2 visa.


Can I apply to graduate school twice? I'm currently a second year undergraduate student in mathematics and I'll have finished all my degree requirements two years early, but I'm at an absolutely great department so I don't want to graduate ASAP because I have a lot of opportunities here.

However, out of curiosity, I want to know if in a year or so if I could apply to graduate school and see if I can get in, and if I do, go, since I will have the option to graduate, or otherwise try again the year after. Is this frowned upon? Especially if I'll be applying to some of the same places twice? I'll probably be taking prelim courses anyway, so the course load isn't something I'd be missing out on, but the department is.

If I interpreted your question correctly, you're asking if you can apply for graduate school one year, and, if rejected, re-apply the following year. Unless there are some field-specific norms that I am unaware of, the answer is almost definitely yes. Of course, for you to stand a chance of not being rejected a second time, your application should be significantly improved. In your case, that seems likely, as you'll have had an extra year of schooling, possibly stronger references, perhaps some research experience. Good luck in any case!


Being accepted then rejected to an academic conference I submitted an abstract and received notification of acceptance to present at a conference.  The notification of acceptance asked for a short bio.  I provided the bio and was asked to provide more info in my bio relating to my academic and professional background. I provided the requested info touching on my experience in multiple disciplines in academia and industry.  I received notification today (10 days after receiving acceptance) that my submission has now been rejected.  They cited concern over the depth and breadth of the topic.

This hasn't happened with the many conferences I have submitted to.  I am not sure what to do handle this situation?  I have already devoted time and efforts to securing funding and completing the necessary studies to present.  Should I make attempts to rectify the situation and figure out why this was retroactively rejected?  Is this normal behavior for an academic conference?  Should I attempt to find out what happened in their review process?  What I can do to rectify the situation of having this submission retroactively rejected?

I'm inclined to think the simplest answer is human error. Someone overbooked a set time slot and your acceptance was taken back.
You'd be hard-pressed to get anyone to admit that, though. ;)


Citing style for Animal Conservation I am writing a commentary paper in Animal Conservation magazine. I have a hard time to find out a reference manager that will produce the right citing style

I read for their guidelines to authors:

  Journal titles should be abbreviated in accordance with the Zoological Record Serial Sources, published annually by BIOSIS.

Is Zoological Record Serial Sources a citing style?

I am usually using Mendeley (and have little experience with citing style) but I can't find any citing style for animal conservation nor for Zoological Record Serial Sources.

Can you help me to find a way to automatically format my list of references to the correct citing style?

As an example. Can you cite this paper to the right citing style

It looks to me like ZRSS isn't a citation style, just a list of journals.  You can refer to that list to figure out how to abbreviate the name of a journal (e.g. Animal Conservation might be abbreviated as Anim. Conserv.) but it isn't supposed to show you how to format the rest of the citation.

If you keep reading right below there in the Guidelines for Authors, it contains more information about how to format citations, with several examples, and provides style files for EndNote and Reference Manager.  It is possible that someone else has written one for Mendeley, or you could do it.

If you need more detailed information than what is in the Guidelines, you will need to ask the editors.  If you look on the left side of the Guidelines page, there is a Contact link, which gives an email address for someone in the editorial office, who can be contacted with questions about "submitting a manuscript".


Is it ok to enquire the editor about the accceptance chance of a paper which is under review for 1.5 years I have submitted two papers in a top-tier applied mathematics journal. The first one is a short paper and the second one is a full paper. After 7 months the short paper and after 8 month the full paper got major revision. For the short paper I submitted the revised paper after 5 months. Finally, this paper got rejected after 7 months after I submitted the revision. Therefore it was under review for (7+5+7) months i.e. around 1.5 yr including the time I took for revising the paper. For the second paper I submitted the revised paper after 5 months. After this 5 months have passed. Therefore it is under review for (8+5+5) months i.e. 1.5 year. Will it be ok if I politely ask the editor about the acceptance chance of the full paper. One week back I asked the editor, he told me that they are waiting for one review. After that they will send the decision. Is it ok to request the editor whether he can confirm its acceptance chance ? If they want to reject reject now only, so that I can send to other journals. I will be applying for some jobs now. I need to know this information urgently. I am concerned because from the first round reviews I am very much hopeful about its acceptance. If I pressurize them they may reject it.

I don't think the editor could confirm the acceptance chance without communicating with the referee. Perhaps you could ask the editor to expedite the process by asking the referee to cut short the report and submit it immediately if it's going to be negative.

You might not wish to do this if you want a more thorough report in the case of rejection.

You could alternatively ask the editor to send a reminder to the referee,  whether the referee agreed to return a report before a particular date, and confirm that they had not lost contact with the referee (since a long time had passed).


It is ethical and common that a professor ask the student to write their own recommendation letter? I am in a unique situation. My supervisor and two other professors I approached for recommendation letter have asked me to write the my own recommendation letter and they will sign it.
Is it ethical and common practice?
How can I handle this situation? I already requested three of them multiple times, but always received same response that they are busy and will sign the letter which I sent them.

It's not common (in my experience).  I have requested letters of recommendation from professors in a couple of different fields, and was never asked to write my own.  Nor have I heard of anyone who was asked to.  That said, it might be something that varies by field, institution, culture, etc.  I wouldn't rule out it being common in some contexts--I just don't know of any.

It's not unethical. There is not an ethical requirement that a letter from a person was actually written by that person.  Even though I've never heard of a student being asked to write their own letter, it is well known that, often, professors don't actually write the letters themselves.  Secretarial staff often do much of the actual writing (hopefully with the professor giving input about the student's strong points, things to emphasize, etc).  In a broader professional context, it's quite common for people to sign the name at the bottom of letters that were not written by them, for a variety of purposes.

Who wrote the letter, ultimately, doesn't matter.  What does matter is that the person signing their name at the bottom agrees with all the content and is willing to stand behind it.  As long as your adviser is happy to agree with what you said, there is no ethical problem here.

That said, it's not ideal, either.  I would argue that a professor who asks you to write your own letter is not doing a great job discharging their academic responsibilities.  Really the content of the letter ought to come from them, even if someone else is writing it up.  This is an opportunity for them to assist you in your career, and they aren't really taking that opportunity seriously.  In addition, it puts you in a rather awkward situation--many people would not be comfortable putting complimentary words about themselves in someone else's mouth.

So, I sympathize with your situation, it's not great.  But you probably don't have a good alternative other than writing the letter as requested, at least from your supervisor.  You want a recommendation from your supervisor, and substituting someone else wouldn't be equivalent.  At least you get to make sure it says what you want!  Just make sure you get someone (who is actually interested in helping you) to review it, both for content and to catch any errors.


What is a good checklist for last minute changes before submitting a PhD thesis? I have finished my thesis, it's been proofread by my advisor and myself, yet I have 24 hours to make last-minute changes to it. What should I be looking for? I will not make any substantial changes to the content, but what about the form? For such limited amount of time, where should I focus my effort? Or, said another way: what’s in your last-day check list for a thesis?

Major modifications to the original question. Thanks to F'x for the advice.

First, if you've already proofread it recently, a second try will most likely not help. You won't see the typos and weird sentences anyway :)  I'll advise to focus on specific short parts that can make a difference in the reading. It's also the right time to get someöne else on board to give these specific items a second look (with fresh eyes).

Without further ado, I suggest you limit yourself to checking the following items:

Text

The main check here is not really for typos (although be sure to fix those you will see), but rather for clarity.

General introduction, general conclusion
Introduction and conclusion of each chapter
Summary/abstract, if one is included (sometimes it's written in 10 minutes in a haze, in which case it's worth extra checking in the end)
Acknowledgments, if it's already present (some people only include it after the defense is over). Make sure you're not forgetting someöne important, like your wife or your bonsai.

Figures and figure captions

Quality of the graphics
Do color and symbols mentionned in the caption match the figure?
If you intend to have black and white figures in print, are the figures understandable in black and white? Do the captions make sense for both version (color and B&W)?

Equations

Check your equations. Again. Typos there are typically hard to find.

Numbers & tables

All tables, all inline numbers: make sure they include units, make sure the number of significant digits displayed is reasonable and consistent.

Bibliography

Do not care to much about the formatting: if most of it is okay, noöne will really complain about one or two missing page numbers or lack of italics in one title. However:

If references are hyperlinked (using DOI number), click on each to check that they match the right online paper
If a paper is “in press” or “accepted for publication” or something else, check if it has been published since and update its status

(The starting point for this was my answer to “Examining paper proofs”, but it is now significantly different)


Affiliation in conflict-of-interest situations This is a follow-up question to What affiliation to put on an academic paper for alumni authors? Some time ago, I read a paper published in a journal owned by my employer which was very far-fetched. It espoused a very non-mainstream theory. It looked so far-fetched that I couldn't believe the journal would accept it, but I confirmed with the desk editor of that journal that it wasn't a mistake. I also saw the review - the reviewer agreed it was very speculative, but couldn't outright call it wrong, and so recommended acceptance.

I could think of reasons why the theory was wrong, so I wrote up a letter to the editor and submitted it to the journal.

Question: what's my affiliation? From aeismail's answer to the above question, my affiliation is where I did the research work. That makes my affiliation the publisher (however I was not contracted to do research work, and I did this on my own time). However there's potential conflict-of-interest here since I'm submitting to my employer's journal. If I listed my employer as my affiliation, it might seem that I've circumvented the normal peer review process. In practice the peer review process happened as normal, and I was not involved in it at all, but this would not be apparent to anyone not an employee of the publisher.

I got out of this dilemma by listing the university that granted my most recent degree. They maintain a university email address for life, so I used that. Nobody has complained, but I'd like to know if this was the right affiliation.

I disagree pretty strenuously with what you have done.

First of all, being an alumnus is not an "affiliation".  If you weren't a student or employee of the university at the time you did the work, it's not your affiliation and should not be listed as such.  You're welcome to list your alumni email address if you like, but that's your contact information, not your affiliation.

I would say your affiliation is your employer, the publisher.  Or, if you feel strongly that the work was done "on your own time", then you may omit any affiliation.

However, independently of any of this, you had a duty to disclose your employment by the publisher, as a potential conflict of interest.  Conflicts of interest may exist regardless of your affiliation and must be disclosed.  You can certainly add additional information that you think may help the reader evaluate the issue (e.g. "I was not involved in the review").

I have to say I'm pretty concerned with the notion that you would "get out of this" by concealing the potential conflict.  That's exactly the wrong instinct, and contrary to every principle of academic ethics.  You address conflicts of interest by disclosing them.  The fact that "nobody has complained" isn't dispositive; it's not their job to find and disclose your conflicts for you.  What you've done can be grounds for retraction all by itself (see for instance https://retractionwatch.com/category/by-reason-for-retraction/failure-to-disclose-coi/), though if the omission seems to be accidental, a published correction can suffice.

If the letter hadn't yet been published, I would advise you to contact the editor and ask for a conflict-of-interest disclosure to be added ("the author is an employee of XXX but did not participate in the review of the cited paper").  Or if that is not possible, to withdraw the letter.

In this case, you say the letter was published long ago, so it's less clear what to do.  Probably the safest course of action would be to write to the editors, apologize, and ask that a correction be published.  I don't think it's necessary to correct the affiliation per se, but rather to correct the fact that your potential conflict was not disclosed.  It's possible they will decide that retraction is more appropriate, but that's their call.


Is a hybrid career possible in academia I m rounding the corner of my PhD and wanted to have the semblance of a plan for next steps as I close out my degree.
I came from industry so I have a grasp of the pros and cons on that front. I also have exposure to the darkside of academia as I had a front row seat to lab startup trials and tribulations. My issue lies with the fact that my curiosity itch has the best chance to be satisfied on the academic side. In a post Covid world university budgets will be extraordinarly tight making an already dire market for tenure track positions worse. Also I can imagine non R1 institutions having less opportunities as well.
I was wondering if anyone ever witnessed someone cobble together a patchwork of job roles to make a career out of research blending industry and academia together. Like a part time soft money independent researcher in combination with something else to have a long term career. I know there are industrial post docs but I am looking for a career bit a temp position.
Looking forward to hearing responses.
UPDATE
I am relaxing the condition of working for both industry and academia at the same time as it seems to be a key roadblock in achieving the ultimate goal.

In my observation, there are some advantages and disadvantages in academia for faculty who come from an industrial background and have research interests relating to industry.  The main benefit I have seen is that this often gives useful applied research ideas, and it also often gives scope for some research projects that are of benefit to industry, and therefore gives the opportunity to secure industry funding for research.  Attracting "external funding" is one of the most sought after abilities for academics, and if you are able to develop a research project that attracts industry funding then your university will love you and you have a high chance of academic promotion.  Moreover, if you can secure industry funding for a project, this may make it easier to secure supplementary funding from traditional grant-funding bodies, since they don't have to fund the whole project.
The difficulty you will encounter, highlighted in the comments to your answer, is that there will be a need to negotiate ownership and IP issues in a way that satisfies all funding bodies and the university.  Companies and industry bodies will sometimes fund "general" research that they perceive to be of benefit to them, but they may want the research to lead to some new development or product where they can claim IP ownership.  Contrarily, public universities and public grant-funding bodies will want research projects that give some "public benefit" and not just a private benefit to a company or industry body claiming IP rights.  Consequently, if you want to create a successful research project that spans both these institutions, you will need to negotiate an appropriate compromise that satisfies all parties.  Usually this will entail a guarantee by the industry funders that you can publish some or all of your research in academic journals, but possibly with some extra private knowledge that they may lay claim to (e.g., ownership of a particular dataset, etc.).  I have not had experience with this, but I have seen some successful academics who manage to produce research projects that span industry.  Regardless of whether you can achieve this, I would say that it is often very valuable to have some industry experience coming in to academia.  At worst, it will give you some useful research ideas that have arisen from your industrial practice, and networking connections with industry figures to come up with new research ideas and methods.
In terms of pursuing a "hybrid" career, this may also be possible.  Universities usually allow (or even encourage) their academics to pursue some "service to the profession" that may consist of outside consulting work, or engagement with commercial/industrial projects.  As a rule of thumb, most universities allow an academic to spend up to 20% of their time on this, subject to faculty approval.  (But it varies, so check the rules at the particular university you are thinking of applying to.)  It might also be possible to supplement this with your recreational leave if you don't mind using this for outside work.  To have a successful "hybrid" career, you will have to adapt to the imperatives of university environment, in particular the necessity to "publish or perish".  Nevertheless, having an industrial background can sometimes help with this, insofar as it assists in creating useful research ideas.


Phd advisor funding problem I am in the third year of my PhD. My advisor is very nice and he has helped me out so far in terms of my research, and other things as well. He is very approachable and we really bond very well. He even understands me a lot.

The problem is that he does not have funding and never mentions much about it. Sometimes, I feel since he does not have money he tends to cut short the experiments or divert them. He mentioned about working on a molecule which I am not interested in but that is the only funding my co-PI has, and I have to work on it. He mentioned not to worry much about that as I will eventually get publications and graduate. I feel that my research is being hampered due to this and I am lacking behind in terms of data.

Should I leave the university and look somewhere else?

This is my third year and it feels late to get into all this. Am I making a big deal out of it and should I just be thinking about graduating?

You should have a serious sit-down conversation with your advisor about your goals and interests, and talk about what the obstacles are that will need to be overcome. If you will not be able to work on something due to lack of funding, that is exactly something you need to be clear on if you aren't already.

If they don't have funding for the Project X you want, and only instead have funding for work on Project Y, you can A) ask what options they are aware of to get involved in work with something like Project X, B) ask for other potential alternatives beyond Project Y, and/or C) decide to try Project Y and maybe decide it works for your long-term goals (or not), even if it isn't what you had in mind originally.

As to the question, "should you just be thinking about graduating" - no, you should be thinking about what you are doing to do after you graduate, and how to use these years to contribute towards what you want to do beyond the immediate program. I don't know what you want long-term, and I don't know how Project X or Project Y fits in to that - but that's exactly what you need to find out for yourself.

Things don't always go as we plan, so you'll have to remain focused on the big picture and be willing to be creative to find way to make what is available work for you. This could conceivably mean a different program, but it seems awfully early in the process to conclude that because 1-2 people don't have funding for one project you were interested in that you now have to change institutions. There could be other people, other projects, other labs - but the time to do that is before it's too late, such as when they are announcing you passed your defense and it's time for you to get out and take your diploma with you.


Firstly manuscipt 'rejected' and then status changed to 'revise' I submitted a paper and in the cover letter, I mentioned that the work is related to our previous publication (published in the same journal). After 25 days (for that time status was 'with editor') I received an email from Editor that I need to mention in "manuscript (and letter)" about the difference between the published manuscript and submitted manuscript. I wrote few lines in the manuscript and added some text in the cover letter (I did not prepare response letter as there was no option to upload it) explaining the difference. I submitted the manuscript again after one day of receiving the email from the editor.

On the very next day, I received rejection email from Editor saying it was not made clear up to which extend this work was different from published one. I wrote a reply email to Editor saying that the submitted manuscript is much different from the earlier one (I wrote 6-7 lines email) and allow this manuscript to be judged by the reviewer.

Here is the twist. The editor replied (within 2-3 hours). He said that the manuscript was reviewed by the reviewer and it was not found to be suitable to publish in present form.  However, he invited me to revise it if I could respond to the reviewer's comments. And the decision was changed from 'Reject' to 'Revise' and a new deadline was given to me.

Now what should I understand out of this ? Is it a good sign or editor is just passing time ? Can anybody guess the chances that the editor will see this without prejudice, becuase he earlier rejected this. Moreover, I am confused whether it will go to the new reviewers now. (I believe it was not gone to reviewer otherwise it would take at least a week to get the response)

And is it usual in peer review process ?

Thanks in advance for sharing your opinions and advice.

Regards.

It is not really clear what happened. It sounds like the 25 days it was "with editor" it was actually out for review (possibly the editor does the review). It then sounds like the editor looked at the review(s) and decided the manuscript was not "new work". Instead of coming to a decision then, he ask you if the work was new. Your initial response did not convince him, so he rejected the work for not being new. He did not send the reviews, because the issue was the work was not new. You then convinced him the work was new, so he changed the status and gave you the review(s).

  Is it a good sign or editor is just passing time ?

I can assure you that the editor is not just passing time. I think you have an uphill battle still to convince the editor and reviewer that the work is new. It also seems like you may not be as clear as you could be.

As for whether it goes out for review again, that depends on the editor.


How to deal with a student who tricks a professor into accepting a late exam? There are multiple cases of movie or TV show students who are attending an exam and are too late to turn in, but then ask the teacher "do you know who I am" at their desk. Then when the teacher says "I have no idea", they mix in their exam with the pile of completed exams and then walk away. 2 examples of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CqgnZhb--Q and https://www.reddit.com/r/BollywoodRealism/comments/hzeu2u/i_so_wish_this_was_how_it_worke/
Now, I know that these are just fictional scenes from comedy movies, but if a student were to try and pull a stunt like this during a real exam, what are ways to deal with this and/or avoid this problem to begin with?

Don't leave the pile of exams on your desk. Simple enough, and good practice. Exams should probably be properly secured in some way.
If you catch them, reject the exam, or otherwise deal with it.
If you consider it a breach of an honor code, especially an explicit one, then they can be reported to the overseeing board, of course.


How to foster gender diversity as an organizer I am part of the organizing committee for a workshop in a STEM field that historically has problems with underrepresentation of women (and other groups, but let me focus on women in this question). I would like to help foster an inclusive environment at the workshop and more generally in my department and am looking for suggestions for how to proceed.

The topic of the workshop is slightly out of my field of expertise and I do not have a long list of qualified speakers (of any gender) that I can offer suggestions from.

I suspect that the senior member of the committee will take the attitude that he is "gender blind" and chooses speakers to invite based only on their quality but that because of implicit biases, the invitee list he draws up will be something like 90% male. I do not think he will be particularly open to a direct conversation about gender and underrepresentation.

I saw this question which was asking whether preferential invitation of female speakers is normal; I am instead asking how to foster diversity (perhaps by preferential invitation or by other means).

Aimed at a different point in the pipeline, you can try to make it more possible for speakers to accept your invitation. One step that can make a huge difference for certain people (in many cases, converting a 100% impossibility into an acceptance) is to provide resources for childcare at or near the conference.

For some ideas about specific steps you can take, Matilde Lalin recently wrote a nice overview of different ways conferences can and do support attendees traveling with children (published on Terry Tao's blog).

One that's not mentioned there is to allow attendees to purchase a hotel room in the conference-reserved block for a nanny. I know that the American Institute of Mathematics does this, and it can make the difference if the only other option would put the nanny somewhere far from the conference.

Depending on the size of your conference, this needn't necessarily mean that you subsidize or even organize the childcare; it can help even just to put attendees in touch with local daycares/nannies/babysitters, or provide other information. However unless your conference is very small, I hope you'll give thought to implementing some of the other steps that Lalin outlines.

Added February 2015:

Greg Martin has written an excellent paper "Addressing the underrepresentation of women in mathematics conferences" that addresses exactly this question, which is simultaneously scholarly and actionable. In particular, in Section 4 (pp 17-21) he gives thirty-eight concrete suggestions that organizers can follow. Not all of them will be applicable in a given situation (including that of the original question here), but many will be.


Conference Paper/Poster version of Bachelor Thesis - should I cite the thesis? My B. Sc. thesis is shortlisted for a young scientist award, which allows me to take part in the respective society's yearly conference for free, submit a full conference paper as well as present a poster. The paper has already been submitted after positive abstract review, I'm currently creating the poster.

While selecting publications for the poster, I noticed that I did not cite my own thesis in the paper. I suppose that this happened rather unconcious, probably because I viewd the paper as another version of my thesis - I used the same data and methods, and only created new illustrations and of course rewrote the text.

I am wondering: would this be considered self-plagiarism? And could this potentially be harmful or may it be considered to be of low importance. Is there anything I can do about this? My field is earth observation btw, if that is of help.

Yes, you should always cite your own work and failing to do so can be called a violation of norms. This (self plagiarism) is, I think, a relatively recent concern, but it is something that everyone should give thought to in their writing.

If at all possible, provide a new version of the publication, in which you make the correction before it is published and do something appropriate in the poster as well.

Not everyone will complain and some will consider it a minor violation by a novice, but some might judge you harshly. Be aware of that and defend yourself against it. When in doubt, cite it.

The purpose of avoiding plagiarism is a bit different than that of avoiding self plagiarism. Ordinary plagiarism is a violation because it represents someone else's work as your own. Self plagiarism doesn't do that, of course, so the purpose of avoiding it is different.

When you present something that is derived from earlier, visible, work, and you cut and paste, you are likely to cut, past, and edit a bit. This can subtly change the meaning of things in a way that may not be obvious to a reader. Moreover, the original work appeared in a context including various references and other words that you did not cut and paste. This context is invisible to the reader of the new work.

Therefore, when you use and update your old work you cite it in the new work. This permits a reader of the new work to find and analyze the context, just as they would if you were citing someone else's work.


Prospective supervisor wants me to do irrelevant videos as a condition for supervision. Can I say yes when I mean no? This question is the reverse of Dealing with a PhD student reneging on an agreement to appear in social media, in which the student had agreed during interviewing to participate in social media outreach but refused to do so when hired. The top answers in the linked question sided with the student.

Suppose I'm a prospective PhD student looking for potential supervisors. I'm attracted to one professor in particular for both academic (e.g. matching research interests) and non-academic reasons (e.g. solves my two-body problem). The only problem is, he wants me to make social media videos to boost the profile of his research group. I think this is unreasonable, since doing this isn't part of the requirements for a PhD. I know I'm unlikely to enjoy doing these things as well, and would rather concentrate on my PhD.

The professor wants me to confirm both verbally and in writing that I'm willing to make these promotional videos. It's likely that if I say no, he will decline to supervise me. Is it OK to say yes, and then try to get out of making the videos?

No, this is not okay.
If you lie your way into a position you are not suited for, you will almost certainly pay for it down the line.
That's a very general rule, and I think it applies here. If you say you are willing to do X while interviewing for a PhD position and, after getting the position, you refuse to do X, then you are going to have soured the relationship with your advisor. That is a very important relationship. If you say no in the interview and you don't get the position because of it, then it's probably for the best.


Using my ethnically misleading name in a field where it's relevant I'm a white person researching Asian history. Let's say I'm married and have taken my husband's name, which is unambiguously Asian (I'll use "Leung" for the examples). I'm unsure whether I should use my legal name for future publications, continue using my maiden name, or find some other solution. Here are my considerations:

Using my legal name

When people see "Leung" in the list of authors or speakers, they'll expect to see a Chinese person. For me to use this name seems misleading. They might expect a different level of language proficiency and a different personal relation to the subject than I actually have.
My husband is a second generation immigrant and has little interest in Asian history, so my marriage is irrelevant to my academic field.

Using my maiden name

My maiden name is a word that means "White". If I use this name and people find out that my legal name is Leung, they might feel like I'm trying to hide something. I don't have many publications under this name, so there's little benefit to continuing to use it. I also don't particularly identify with it, which is why I changed my name in the first place.

Other options

Many people in my situation seem to use a double name. However, this name would still not be my legal name, and being known as "White Leung" feels like a weird joke.

I could use a different name from my family tree, or some complete pseudonym. But this has both the drawbacks of not being my legal name, and also not being the name I have published under so far.

Is there a consensus on what should be done in this situation? Are there resources for people in a similar situation? Since there are many fields where the ethnic background of researchers is somewhat relevant (sociology, area studies, languages...) this must be a common problem.

Edit: Some commenters have expressed the idea that a researcher's ethnicity doesn't or shouldn't matter to their audience. I disagree. For one thing, researchers educated in Chinese universities often have a very different approach to historical topics than those in the west. One commenter has pointed out that this would not affect me, because my western education is declared in my CV. But even for western people of Chinese descent or origin, they will generally have a different perspective on Chinese history than someone who has no personal connection to the place.

Would this be true for an American of Chinese descent who didn't speak Chinese as a native language? Or who might have been adopted and therefore has no childhood experience of Chinese culture?

You do have a personal connection: you married a Chinese man and you are a serious scholar of Asian studies. If it's really true that it's culturally offensive in a way that would be professionally damaging, then use your maiden name or whatever name you feel represents you as you wish to be represented. But this seems a bit overwrought to me. If you identify with Leung, then use Leung, and just deal with the fact that some people might have a problem with it. You're already OK with being a non-Asian Asian studies scholar--what do you say to anyone who objects to that?


How much duplication is permissible in letters of recommendation? Anybody has idea, how much copying is allowed in a recommendation letter and whether they really run a copying test on the letters of recommendation?

While our university occasionally submits statements of purpose, research statements, and writing samples through plagiarism detectors (and gives the admissions committee the results), I have never seen this done to letters of recommendation.

There are just very limited ways of saying nice things about students. I use the same variation of an opening for all my letters, with only minor changes in intensity (I am very/slightly/marginally pleased to write this letter of recommendation) and close with the same sentence on all of them.

I wouldn't worry.

Addendum given the changes to the the original question: I don't know if people have seen the output of plagiarism detectors but they don't provide  a simple YES/NO answer. Instead, they provide a statistical quantification of how much unquoted text might be drawn from other sources (e.g., 3-5% of the text appears duplicative). Each report is several pages long with parts of the student text highlighted and possible prior sources highlighted.

The reports are quite "noisy" with many false positives -- notably in one case that I remember, highlighting text in the bibliography because the citations matched citations in other bibliographies. [facepalm]

Running LORs through plagiarism detectors would serve no useful evaluative purpose in terms of how the admissions committee views the candidate.


Is Scribd widely used in academia? Scribd is surely a huge website, but I was wondering if there are some data on its usage in the academic world as a means for sharing lecture notes or research notes.

I use it a little, and one of my colleagues uses it a little, but I don't get the impression that it's widely used. The application I used it for was the following. I have written textbooks for use in some of my courses. They're available for free online. About 70 other people are using them. At a certain point, I decided I wanted to do a fairly major revision, which would completely break compatibility with the earlier versions of the book. (There's a different order of topics, for example.) I didn't want the old versions cluttering up my web site and creating confusion, but I also didn't want to force my users to switch immediately to the new version (or at all, if they liked the old version better). So I just put the old ones on scribd.

One of my colleague uses scribd for his course notes, for a somewhat different reason. He simply doesn't want the hassle of maintaining his own web site, paying for webhosting, etc.

For both me and my colleague, one of the considerations was that our school's computing resources are flaky, inadequate, and Windows-centric. People might also prefer not to use a school server for something like a textbook that they want to make clear is not the intellectual property of their employer.

One of the problems with using scribd for these purposes is that scribd has been searching for a business model that will allow them to make a profit, and therefore they keep changing their rules and the way they present themselves publicly. For example, I've heard complaints from people that (at least at one point in time) scribd seemed to be trying to force them to pay money or contribute materials in order to access files.

It is probably not realistic to think of scribd as a permanent place to store documents (cf. arxiv.org or archive.org, where there is some expectation of permanence).

Another educational purpose for which I use scribd is illegal according to the laws of some countries. There are a lot of classic papers in my field that are very important and useful educationally, but are still under copyright in many countries. Some of the old ones are not even available from the publisher in digital form if you're willing to pay; they haven't been digitized, and the only way to access them is by going to the basement at a big university where they keep very old journals. Sometimes when I go to the trouble of obtaining one of these papers, I scan it and post it on scribd.


Once I accepted a postdoc offer with "A", is it ok to accept an invitation to present with group "B"? Details are very important here:

I interviewed for postdoc positions at 2 labs (same university), and received offers from both.

I accepted the offer from lab "A", and when I declined the offer from "B", the PI told me that they were sorry about my decision, and that they would still like to invite me make a presentation for their lab. I thanked him for the invitation and agreed to make the presentation.

The two groups ("A" and "B") do not interact (they work on different fields), so this is essentially a matter of etiquette.

Is it ok if I make the aforementioned presentation now that I started my appointment with "A"? Should I inform the PI of "A" that I will go present with group "B"? Or should I just decline the invitation to present?

Give the presentation.

There is no problem here (to be honest, I'm struggling to work out why you would think there is). Giving presentations is part of being an academic. Different groups can talk to each other. Different groups with close enough interested should talk to each other.


What are the differences between these kinds of articles: original, review, letter, and short communication? I am interested in knowing, what are the differences between  Original Paper, Review Paper, Letter and Short/ Rapid/ Brief Communication paper?

Thanks to everyone for reading and taking the time for the great responses.

This will vary pretty heavily depending on the journal in question. But generally speaking, in broad strokes:

"Original Paper" - This is a generic term for a full-length, original research finding paper that doesn't fall into another specialized category.
"Review Paper" - This is a paper summarizing the state of research on a topic. These can often be somewhat long, are often but not always by invitation only, and this category can include meta-analysis, but doesn't have to. This may also be the umbrella that commentaries fall under, but again, not always.
"Short/Rapid/Brief Communication" - A shorter version of "Original Paper", whose methods, findings, etc. don't justify a full length paper. They still contain original findings, but are general much more straightforward.
Letters - Possibly even shorter original findings, field reports, single observations, etc. This can also include arguments about previously published papers, which involve either opinion pieces or snippets of contradictory or supporting research.


Am I reading enough of the scientific literature? Should I read for breadth or depth? Ever since starting graduate school I've tried to make scientific reading a part of my daily ritual; I track pages read using Beeminder, and the graph doesn't lie.  It keeps me honest.

I aim to closely read and summarize 5 pages per day and skim a few other abstracts besides that.  I spend about half my time looking at data and figures which doesn't contribute to my daily "page count."  When I'm reading about a new topic these five pages can take several hours, but on topics I have more background in five pages might only take an hour per day.

I guess since everybody defines "read" in a different way it's hard to get an objective answer about how much reading is enough.  How much people read seems like a bit of a sensitive topic among real-life colleagues because everyone has a bit of anxiety that they aren't reading enough.  But for those further along in their academic path, I'd like to hear how you approached the literature early in your graduate school career and what you think is a sufficient amount.

I guess this all distills down into two main topics:

When deciding what to read each day, should I focus on depth or breadth?

Is five pages of close reading per day enough?  I know it doesn't sound like much, but it takes significant mental energy to meet that goal.  And consistently reading 5 pages per day adds up to a lot over time.

Edited to add: I mostly read about petrology, volcanology, structural geology, and tectonics if that makes a difference.  By "page" I mean "page of text" so if I'm reading a structural geology paper with lots of maps and figures I discount for those and a "ten page" paper becomes a 5 page paper for my purposes.

My experience is almost exclusively with mathematics papers, and applies little or not at all to other fields.

Much of eykanal's post applies to math as well, but one big difference is that math papers are much more varied in their structure, not having an actual experiment to tie them together.  A good paper will generally explain its organization in the introduction, however.

One point worth emphasizing is that reading a paper from front to back, trying to understand everything at each step, is usually inefficient.  The most common instance is that a paper often starts with definitions which may be hard to make sense of without understanding the theorems they're used in.  It's generally more effective to skim the paper several times, trying to understand more and more with each pass.

Relatedly, you'll eventually pick up the skill of picking out the most interesting ideas from a paper without reading the whole thing.  Early on, though, it's probably better to read things carefully; it's very easy to fool yourself into thinking you've understood something.

As to your main question, about breadth versus depth, your first priority has to be depth, because that's what you'll ultimately need to be able to do your own research and get your degree.  But if you're learning enough to do that, you want as much breadth as possible.  It actually gets harder and harder to learn completely new things as you get on in your career, even when there may be direct benefits to your research to do doing so.  Laying the foundations of a broad understanding of your field while in graduate school will pay off later.


Get in touch with potential PhD supervisor without a topic? How specific should I be? I would like to work with a very specific person. That person has an interest in the overall topic I want to write my PhD in, but I have no idea what exactly that topic is going to be. But I am sure that I want to work with this person, and that this is the general area I want to tackle.

How do I get in touch? Should I better have some proposal ready? How specific would I need to be? Or do you think it's ok to just say it how it is?

I am worried to make a bad impression if I just contact him and say "I would like to do my PhD with you, but I have no idea what specific topic yet". I am in the political sciences and the person is in very high demand, which complicates things a bit further I guess. I am in the UK by the way.

From your question, it sounds like you have an area you are interested in, but are not sure what your exact hypothesis or research question should be. For a pre- or early program PhD student, this is normal.

From my experience with PhD programs, students are often pushed to have their exact research question from the first day, but this is not usually not ideal. For most students (as it should be), your research question will change as you learn more about the topic. So, theoretically, how can you be so sure that a research question is the right one from the start without a serious review of the literature (which usually happens during your studies).

That being said, one way to approach this is to ask the professor to coffee or a brief meeting and tell him or her, "I am very interested in your area of research. I do not know enough about it to have a specific research question in mind, but I am very interested in working with you so I can learn more about it and develop my own area of study."

Your question reminds me of one graduate student who was placed with me and was interested in criminology and health, but not sure how the two should intersect. He was very interested in the topic of HIV/AIDS. I'm a gerontologist and he was placed with me because a more suitable advisor was on sabbatical. He learned more about gerontology and ultimately changed his research question to be about aging prisoners, which is a really hot topic. He is doing well. You will figure this out, too. Good luck.


What to enter for "current situation" in PhD application if one is unemployed I am applying for a PhD program, in one of section they ask about my Current situation (professional/academic.
I finished my master and now I do not have job and just applying for PhD and writing my paper.
what should I write that have better effect on them?
p.s :It is a mandatory part and it has a small line

As someone with experience of post-graduation unemployment, I'd say don't be worried about it. It is perfectly understandable that you finished your degree and are now applying to PhDs without being employed in between.

It would be helpful to know the exact phrasing of the question but if it is expecting a simple one line answer I would just put "Recent graduate" and maybe the classification of your degree (MSc, MA, etc. and the subject).

Think about why they are asking the question. Is it to check if you  are in the middle of a degree or finished? Is it to check your grade? Or what type of degree you have? Or is it to check if you have a job so they need to think about your start date of PhD in relation to quitting your job? There is no shame in just writing "currently unemployed". I did this and I am now 2 years into my PhD. You may need to explain in more detail at an interview and justify why you are not working, but if you have a sensible reason this will not be a barrier.


What does a successful NecTAR application look like This is quite specific question, though, it specificness is largely related to the fact it can only be answered by someone with experience with computational research in Australia.

NeCTAR grants Cloud computing resources, in the form of VM's to Australian researchers.

To apply for resources there are several fields.

The allocation documentation is quite sparse on recommendations for what they are to contain.

The most significant of which is the "Research use case" which has the description:

  Research use case [Form Box Here] Note: A short write up on how you intend to use your cloud instances will help us in our decision making.

It's not much to go on.

The box is quite small though it is expandable.
I'm not sure how much to write. It doesn't support rich text or any kind of markup. I am wondering if I should reference my statements (seems awkward without rich text).

Or if I should be describing other avenues of getting compute power attempted etc.

The documentation does note:

  If there are any issues with your request, we will get in touch with you.
  You may be asked to provide more detail about your research or to clarify your technical requirements.

So perhaps what I write the first time does not even matter,
since they will just ask for clarification until I have appropriate amounts of information?

I am really looking for an example of an application that someone has done successfully in the past. Just to get an idea of what it would be like.

I don't have any personal experience with NeCTAR; maybe someone who does will chime in.

But if it's anything like the US and EU analogues I have worked with (e.g. PlanetLab, GENI, OneLab), this information is used mainly

to collect information about how the system is being used (e.g. to report back to funding source), and
to filter requests that are clearly ineligible (e.g. "I want to host my personal website on your cloud"),

not because they reject some serious, eligible requests based on application details.

If that's the case here, too, you really don't need to worry too much about what you write. Something of the form

  My research is on X. I will use the system in order to do Y.

should suffice. (If you happen to have a project website, adding a link to it is also nice.)


Am I too old for academia after a PhD? Currently, I am applying for PhD positions at United States and Canadian Universities. I will be 35 when I start my PhD in Computer Science/Machine Learning, and probably I will finish it around the age of 40.

Will I be banished from academic positions considering a possible PostDoc time and what about industry positions ? Should I plan my study towards industry or academia from the research perspective ?

No.

Age discrimination is illegal in the US and (I assume) Canada.  If you're worried, just don't put your date of birth on your CV.  Most people don't.

Hiring committees just don't care how old you are.  All that matters is the quality and impact of your research.


Who should I ask for reference letters for academic positions? I am planning to apply for tenure track academic positions, and I already got 3 letters from people who I have worked with during my PhD, including my advisor.

Do you think I should seek out letters from my former supervisor (masters) and a few that I have published paper with during my master's program? Does it add value to the application?

Also, I have worked with a few fellow students who are now assistant professors in other institutions. Does it make sense to ask for letters from them?

Short answer: Extra letters do not improve an application, but could undermine it.

Elaboration: One advice often given in career center presentations or online articles about post-doc/TT applications is that the application packet should only contain the documents (and the number of documents) requested. If the announcement asks for 3 letter of reference, it means the hiring committee expects 3 letters, not 2 or 4. This is a simple yet often overlooked fundamental criterion of a successful application.

Assuming you are planning to supply only the requested number of letters and the issue is which letters to include, I recommend sticking with the traditional approach of letters from the individuals who you have worked with in subordinate capacity with during your PhD studies. This typically includes your dissertation advisor/committee chair, perhaps another committee member, or (if different) a PI on a grant you worked on, whether in or outside of your department (e.g. an affiliated research center).

I would advise against letters from very junior faculty at other institutions (e.g. your recent peers) as they carry relatively little clout and the hiring committee might get the wrong idea if they suspect your choice of using them as reference may have been forced, to some extent, by circumstances that prevent letters from more reputable/senior colleagues (in other words they may come across as less convincing and perhaps even suspicion-provoking reference choices - and you don't need that).

Generally, I would advice including letters from the individuals (faculty) you have worked with most recently. The dissertation advisor is an unavoidable choice and a must. Beyond that, if you worked with other faculty who were PIs or partners you have collaborated/co-authored with, choose the individuals you have worked with on most recent projects/publications as consistent with the chronology of your academic appointments/experience in the CV.

It is also a well known and accepted (if not publicly advertised) practice to pre-write letters of recommendation to save your references' time. Whether you have done this already or not, good to keep in mind. Just ask your reference in a matter-of-fact way if they prefer to author the letter or could use a summary draft (or at the very least, a current copy of your CV).

Good luck with your apps! Let us know how it goes!


What good is engineering research with no practical relevance? I am a Ph.D. student currently doing research at a top engineering school in North America.

I am becoming more and more jaded at the fact that a sizable portion of the research conducted at my university as well as publications to engineering conferences seem to have very limited practical relevance, and with no attempts to address implementation concerns. Many of these papers seem to be published just for the sake of it.

One glaring example is power engineering. The methodologies
proposed by recent graduates from power engineering are so extremely far-fetched from practical implementation, it raises the question as to why any such
research should be continued.

Power is a very safety critical field: people can die after going for too long without power (case in point), and the industry itself is highly government regulated. The algorithms that have been proposed from my
research department as well as many like it completely ignore things
like safety guarantees. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that
government employees in the power industry would rely on some biology
motivated or learning based algorithm to arrange the power supply to millions of actual
people. There are decades old well-regulated power markets for that!
But power is just one example out of many. I have read many papers on
signal processing and control theory. Most of the papers are completely
math and proof based; their proposed methods are so mathematical, with extremely limited robustness or safety guarantees, etc. These researchers are more concerned with epsilons and deltas than how their proposed methods can be realistically
implemented in people's cars or mobile phones.

An "implementation"
nowadays is just a MATLAB simulation, a few equations, and a graph. Even during undergraduate
engineering training, we have seen how difficult it is to go from
simulation to actual software/hardware that people can use. I can easily show you highly technical papers from these fields published by people who do not even care about the readability of their notation, let alone practical implementation.
So it is a legitimate question as to why anyone would ever use these
highly-theoretical, and assumption laden research results. It is
unclear what "the small-gain signal must belong to a Hilbert space on
the extended half-line" actually means in real life cache design. Furthermore, many
papers are completely without any mention of practical implementation of
the algorithms, so it is completely unknown if anyone would actually
be able to use these research results.

Engineering research is ultimately used to create new technologies that promise to improve the lives of people. However, it is unknown to me at this point how a "bat-echolocation based meta-heuristic algorithm for nuclear generator dispatch" could benefit anyone.

So my question boils down to how we as researchers should attempt to bridge the gap between the highly mathematical, highly theoretical modern engineering research and the practical implementation of research results. What good is engineering research with no practical relevance?

The short answer to your question is that you are vastly overestimating your, and other engineer's, ability to judge what techniques will ever have practical relevance.

I think it was Michael Stonebraker, a Turing award winning computer scientist with no lack of practical impact, who said that the sweet spot for academic applied research are techniques that are about 10 years away from being widely implementable. If you limit yourself to things that you can already do today, you will fail to propose the kind of radically new developments that should, at least in theory, distinguish academic research from other drivers of innovation, such as startup companies or industrial R&D. Incidentally, if the lack of impact your work has right now is distressing you, you should ponder the question whether you would not achieve higher job satisfaction in a startup or industrial lab.

I find your example of self-learning power grids particularly unconvincing. If we rewind time a few years and relate your arguments to research into automated driving, I am sure you will find plenty of people who found this research to be a waste of time. Driving surely is a safety critical field, and automotive is highly regulated. Algorithms for automated driving assistance completely failed to, and to some extent still fail to, address the practical concerns of many stakeholders as well as governmental safety guarantees. And yet here we are. I am not sure if the same will happen to power grids, but it is absolutely plausible that it will.

You may also be interested in reading into TRLs (technology readiness levels), as used for instance by the European Union's framework programmes as well as NASA.

The basic concept here is that academic research is usually best suited to bring ideas from TRL 0 or 1 to 3 or 4. The "Matlab implementations" you complain about may very well just be the laboratory tests that are meant on TRL 3. This is very much in line with the position in the grander scheme of the progress of technology that many large organizations envision for academic research labs.


Is a self-taught person allowed to compete with other in a prize like Nobel Prize, Field Medal, etc? If a person studies and/or does experiments at his/her own home or laboratory because of some reasons, is he/she still allowed to compete with others to get a prize like Nobel Prize, Field Medal, etc?

More precisely, from the beginning he/she never gets educations from formal institutions (schools, colleges, universities).

Allowed - yes. Have any reasonable chance to compete - no.

(But to learn university-level things, given the determination - yes.)

There are two separate issues:

you won't learn stuff abut the current research lines and you won't be able to attract others to your results,
in academia things like degrees and university/advisor name do matter.

First, you can learn a lot of stuff by yourself. However, it is hard to get to research-level. Moreover, now most research requires a lot of collaboration. A century ago it may be still possible to invent something in one's private workshop (but still a lot of knowledge and infusion was required). Now it is not true anymore. Also, you need to know the tools and which problems are open, solved or seems to be dead-end. Moreover, you may end up solving problems which are difficult but not of the interest of other academicians.

See also from Gerard't Hooft, How to become a good theoretical physicist:

  It so often happens that I receive mail - well-intended but totally useless - by amateur physicists who believe to have solved the world. They believe this, only because they understand totally nothing about the real way problems are solved in Modern Physics. If you really want to contribute to our theoretical understanding of physical laws - and it is an exciting experience if you succeed! - there are many things you need to know. First of all, be serious about it. All necessary science courses are taught at Universities, so, naturally, the first thing you should do is have yourself admitted at a University and absorb everything you can. But what if you are still young, at School, and before being admitted at a University, you have to endure the childish anecdotes that they call science there? What if you are older, and you are not at all looking forward to join those noisy crowds of young students ?

Also: almost all Nobel prize winners had advisors, which were also well-know and are from first league universities.

Second, the academia is less meritocratic than it seems to be. While certain skills and knowledge are essential, they are not the only factor. It does matter if you have a certain degree*), from which university you are and who is/was you advisor. Many contacts are within a clique, were you need to have a recommendation by people they know.

*) In science no matter how smart you are, you won't have chance without a certain degree, while in programming your skills and experience are more important than if you have a PhD degree or not even a BSc.

Nevertheless, finding enough skill and determination to do experiments in one's own home may be a good predictor of later success in science or engineering.


Condensed-matter theory with career prospect in the industry Reason for the post: I'm trying to better understand the jobs in the industry so that I can tailor my graduate studies to more closely represent the kinds of jobs I will be doing in the industry. Thus, I'm trying to figure out which field in condensed matter theory I should pursue given the details below. I know at the end of the day this will be a personal decision, but I wanted to get some insight from people who might have walked this path before.

About me: I will begin my studies towards a physics PhD this fall, and currently my interest lies within computational condensed-matter theory (CCMT). After my PhD, I hope to secure a research-oriented job in the industry. For example, working at Micron Semiconductor company in the R&D department. Another important factor for me is I prefer my job to make direct use and connections to what I have mastered in graduate school. This takes me back to my original question where I'm trying to figure out PhD in which field allows me to have a job that closely resembles what I have mastered.

My Dilemma: Within CCMT, I can specialize in hard or soft condensed matter theory. From previous exposure, I know I greatly enjoy the former option. But I also think that there aren't many jobs in the industry that directly make use of hard condensed-matter theory. So my worry is that if I pursue this specialization I would likely end up with a job that makes no use or connections to what I spent five or more years mastering.

On the other hand, if I pursue the "soft" route, I feel like the likelihood of me finding a job in the industry that resembles what I have mastered in graduate school is more likely, as soft condensed matter is readily applicable in the industry.

Additionally, I have the opportunity to do my PhD in biophysics. This would be a parallel route to that of pursuing soft condensed matter. This field seems to offer ample computational opportunities and I think there are a fair number of industry jobs in the medical/pharma sector. The huge catch here, with both routes of soft and biophysics, is that I have no idea if I'm going to like the theory involved.

Summary: I will be starting my PhD in physics soon with a focus on computational condescend matter theory. After a successful degree, I hope to get a research-oriented job in the industry. I prefer this job to be one that makes direct connections to the knowledge and toolkit I build during my PhD, so this way I don't end up feeling like I got a PhD for nothing. I'm seeking insight on which sub-field within condensed matter physics might best suit me.

From previous exposure, I know I greatly enjoy the former option

Do the above one. I did an experimental DPhil in condensed matter physics and there were are very few (well paid) jobs in this field in the UK. I imagine there are even less in theory (I imagine companies will  work with academics to do the theory and then spin-off their ideas where relevant).

When I did my DPhil I also wanted a job which made the most of my physics knowledge, but after a successful DPhil (with a good publication record) I decided academia wasn't for me because of the lack of stability and need to be geographically mobile. I moved into industry and am pleasantly surprised at the amount I use the physical knowledge gained during my DPhil! I'll get put on / approached for relevant projects (in the CMP domain). Pleasantly, I find I get to dedicate about the same time to projects I find interesting in industry as in academia: too much time in academia was spent chasing grants, teaching students and helping my peers.

All in all, for your PhD do what you enjoy most: if you end up loving you should stay in academia -  don't bother moving to industry. If you end up enjoying it less than you think, you will get a great job in industry with either of those PhDs. Decide later at the end of your successful PhD!


Patents and papers out of my field of research I am a Ph.D. candidate and my field of research is digital signal processing. But, from a lot of years I have two ideas:

A new technique useful in the biomedical field.
A paper or, better, an improvement of an unit of measure in physic.

This two things are completely off topic in my field of research.

The question is: there are ways for publishing, patenting in other topics?

Thank you in advance,
Giacomo

In each case, you need to verify that your ideas are novel and useful in the context of their own fields, and express them in the languages of those fields. It may be better, rather than going independent, to explain the situation to your advisor, and ask for recommendations and introductions to researchers in the relevant areas.

I have some experience of the patent process, fortunately as an employee with my employer paying all the costs. It has its own language. Converting an idea to a properly constructed series of claims is a specialized skill. I have had trouble reviewing a patent application to check that it correctly reflected an invention I completely understood. I have no idea how much it costs to get a patent written up and filed, but it is definitely not free.

If the original work were done "on the job" as a supported researcher, you need to check into the university's intellectual property rules and your own contracts.


Would it be looked upon negatively to intentionally employ a writing style uncommon in my field to express what I see as key values in the field? I am interested in answers to this question particularly as it pertains to mathematics.

To be more specific, I am interested in using the passive voice in mathematical proofs as I feel that this reinforces the objectiveness and universality of the proof as opposed to the specific instance of the proof or my own self. However, it is my understanding that the first person plural present tense active voice is the norm in mathematics. I want to use this uncommon style in papers and other proofs for these reasons. However, I am concerned this may tarnish my reputation. Would it be looked upon negatively to intentionally employ a writing style uncommon in my field to express what I see as key values in the field?

You are not very specific: on the one hand, there is more than one kind of mathematical writing; on the other hand, you write "I am concerned this may tarnish my reputation" and that depends (a little bit, at least) on who you are.

I will assume that you are a junior mathematical writer, i.e., that you have not yet published many (or any) mathematical papers.  (If you have already written a few dozen papers, you have not only a lot of experience but have gotten a lot of feedback, so you know what kinds of writing variations referees, editors and other careful readers will pay attention to.)

Let me begin with some (unfortunately rather conservative, but still inherently sound) advice for the journeyman writer in any academic field:

  Don't try to be innovative or different in your writing style in your first papers or first years of writing papers.  First learn how to write acceptably -- or better, well -- according to the most standard norms of your discipline.

It takes a while to master the standard conventions of academic writing.  When I look back at some of my earliest papers, I see some weird stuff.  In a few cases I was trying to be innovative, but most of the time I just didn't know what the standard convention was.  About 50 papers in, I am still learning new things about the standard mathematical style.

What's so great about standard mathematical style?  Nothing inherent.  But as a culture, we're used to it.

  The cardinal goals of mathematical writing are precision and clarity.  After that, the next goal is unobtrusiveness: good mathematical writing does not call attention to itself, because attention that is diverted to the writing is diverted away from the mathematical ideas and reasoning.

Again, what is unobtrusive depends on the culture.  For instance, there are some mathematical turns of phrase that would be pretty weird in ordinary writing but are not weird in mathematical writing because they have been done so many times before.  Examples include: "in the sequel," "by abuse of notation," "a trivial case"...And of course the best example is the use of "we" in mathematical writing.  It looks pretty weird the first N times you see it...and then it doesn't.  It is an entirely standard convention of mathematical writing, as can be seen by its approved use in virtually every mathematical style guide but even more strongly by its almost universal use in published papers.  You don't have to use "we" in mathematical writing -- e.g. this style guide contains some tips from Paul Halmos on avoiding it -- but I can think of no good reason to avoid it.

Every mathematical style guide known to me denigrates the passive voice in mathematical writing in the majority of instances.  So for a journeyman mathematical writer to insist on using the passive voice would be a violation of both of the above pieces of advice: on the one hand you are not learning to write in the standard way, and on the other hand you are writing in a nonstandard way that a lot of your readers are going to notice, get mildly distracted by, and therefore in some cases get moderately annoyed at you for writing in this way.  Why do you want to risk this?  You say:

  "I am interested in using the passive voice in mathematical proofs as I feel that this reinforces the objectiveness and universality of the proof as opposed to the specific instance of the proof or my own self."

Honestly, I am very unsure what you mean by that.  In case you are suggesting that there is some logical or ontological difference between

  We will show first that A implies B and then that B does not imply A

and

  It will be shown that A implies B and then that B does not imply A

I can assure you that there is not.  More to the point, readers of math papers are not going to be critiquing the proofs for "objectiveness": I don't even know what it would mean for an otherwise satisfactory mathematical argument to lack objectiveness.

Moreover, what are you actually trying to accomplish by using the passive voice in your math papers?  It can't be to make your work easier and more pleasant to read...as you seem to understand already.  You write

  "Would it be looked upon negatively to intentionally employ a writing style uncommon in my field to express what I see as key values in the field?"

What "key value" is expressed by using the passive voice?  I don't think there is one.  But if people get wind of the idea that you feel like you, as a junior person, are in personal possession of a clearer understanding of the "key values in the field"...Well, since you asked for feedback, my honest appraisal is that you sound a little nutty and a lot inexperienced.  So it is a bit of a negative, yes.  Of course, all mathematicians start out a lot inexperienced, and many, many of us are a little nutty, so your eccentric-sounding ideas about writing and mathematical values will not be a major sticking point in your career.

The largest issue I see, honestly, is the impediment to learning good writing that you've placed on yourself.  Without meaning to be harsh: parts of your question remain obscure to me after repeated readings.  The comments show that other readers feel the same way.  This is a real example of your writing not being properly understood by others, perhaps to the point of your overall message getting lost.  That's the risk you incur by not placing a premium on clarity.  It's a big one.


Can a hypothetical question be chosen as a research question? Suppose, can I choose "what would happen if the USA doesn't exist" as a research question? Would this be still acceptable by a wider researcher community?

At least in the hard sciences your question would not constitute a good research question. A scientific theory is considered a 'good' theory, if it makes falsifiable predictions (i.e. predictions which can be compared to observations of the real world) and has not been falsified despite comparing it to lots of observations.

Suppose in researching your question you come up with the theory "Hotdogs would never have been invented if the USA did not exist". This is not a good scientific theory, since it can not be falsified by comparing it to observations.

Things would be different, if it would currently not be known whether the USA exists or not. If in this case you can logically argue that "Hotdogs would never have been invented if the USA did not exist", this would constitute a valuable scientific contribution, since it would provide a link between the observation of Hotdogs and the existence of the USA.


Can presented papers at conferences be listed in the reference section of Research Statements? I have some presentation in conferences, which have not published as a proceeding or in a journal. I would like to know whether it is customary to put presented papers in the reference section and cite them in research statement?

The references for a research statement follow the same customs as references in other academic documents.  So yes, you can cite conferences.
Is it common to cite conference papers in a PhD?


What should a TA do if they cannot do all of the assigned homework for a class? I'm a TA who is assigned to help grade papers for an upper level course. In the first assignment, I realized that I do not know how to do one of the assigned problems. The professor has requested that I grade all of the assigned problems. I don't think I will get a grading rubric (showing the answers to the assigned problems). I'm extremely nervous since I don't know how to do all of the problems on my own.

Should I ask professor directly about the problem in his office hours? The alternative would be to look at all of the solutions submitted by the students and analyze which answers are correct.

You should ask the professor to show you how to work the problem. It is also fine to ask the professor to confirm that all of your solutions are correct.

The professor is responsible for making sure the students' work is scored correctly, and since he wrote the questions, it is his responsibility to either provide you with the solutions or to check your solutions before you assign final grades.

Besides being responsible to the students in the course, the professor also has an obligation to support your development as a TA, which includes helping you work through any gaps or obstacles in your own learning.

Since you have already taken the initiative to work through the assignment on your own, the professor will likely be happy to help you, and you should not feel intimidated or embarrassed to ask.


Recommendation letters when changing between two unrelated fields I was a humanities major in undergrad and am now applying for a master's in engineering. The program I'm considering is a three-year MS that explicitly targets students without engineering backgrounds. To apply, all they require is proficiency in first-semester calculus. Besides a stats elective and AP credits, I didn't take formal math courses in college, but since graduating, I've self-studied the calculus sequence and differential equations, and I am currently working on linear algebra.

My concern is with getting letters of recommendation that will be relevant to the admissions committee. I have one recommender, my undergraduate thesis advisor, who can attest to my research skills and time management. For the second letter, I think it would be ideal to have someone who can speak to my math ability, as I can imagine that admissions will regard my self-study with skepticism. However, I've been out of college for a year and a half and now work overseas, so seeking a reference from someone in my university's math department is impractical.

Do you have any ideas for how someone in my situation could get a letter of reference from someone who can directly address my potential as an engineer?

Failing that, or perhaps in addition, can you suggest any concrete ways I can demonstrate my math ability to the admissions committee?

I've taken a look at these two questions:

Who to ask for letters of recommendation when changing fields after PhD?
When changing fields from undergrad to PhD, which department should recommendation letters come from?

I believe my question is distinct since I am looking to make a much more drastic switch between fields, and my competitors are also people who are changing fields.

Both my undergraduate institution and the graduate program in question are in the US.

If someone in your undergrad math department has actually evaluated your work, then the year and a half is not an obstacle for a recommendation. Best if they know you as more than a body who occupied a seat, of course.

But in general, if no one has seen your work, nor had a chance to evaluate it, then they can't really attest to it, ethically or practically.

Since your situation is described as a bit unique, let me suggest, at least, a unique solution. You could ask a mathematics professor, either at your original institution or elsewhere, to evaluate your skills. There are at least two ways that could be accomplished. They could just give you a final exam from some recent course and decide whether you have the skills. But a fifteen minute or so oral exam should be enough to get an idea. They could then, simply certify about what they did and how you did. It wouldn't be a real letter of recommendation, perhaps, but might fulfill your needs.

An alternative is just to suggest to an admissions committee that you would be willing to take such an exam if there is any doubt about your qualifications. That alone might be enough.

Thirdly, nothing at all might be needed. The program seems pretty flexible. Perhaps flexible enough to accommodate your self study as valid.


Can I get a PhD online? I know one can get a Bachelors degree online. Can one do the same with a PhD (I refer to fields which don't need specialized equipment like Math or CS, for example).

At first glance, it should be easier since your doing almost independent work (you don't really need tests).

Are there such programs?

Most PhD programs that I am aware of have "residency requirements"—that is, you must be registered at the university and in general physically present in the department for some period of time. However, most PhD advisors that I am aware of in disciplines in which people can "work remotely" do allow their students to "telecommute" if necessary. For instance, if a spouse gets a job far away from campus, and daily commutes are no longer a realistic option.

That said, the idea of a purely online PhD strikes me as highly unlikely to work out—because the nature of a PhD is fundamentally different from a bachelor's, in that it is a research degree, not a coursework degree. You are learning to become an independent researcher, and I don't think the online format translates well to that goal. There's too little direct interaction with other researchers. You'd definitely be independent, but there's no guarantee that you'd learn how to do research.


Is there a citation style with just the first author's last name, and year Is there citation style that only cites it as (FirstAuthorLastName,year)
that can be downloaded as a .csl file and incorporated into mendeley/readcube.

However a simple nature style [1] is too short.
And I would like to see the author's name in the text.
Is there citation style that only cites it as (FirstAuthorLastName,year)

Meaning no other coauthors name, (since that not how I remeber the article anyway) and no et al.
(because i already know it's "et al", it's just redudant text).

is there a citation style that is like this?.

Or is there a website when one can see different citation syles?

Thanks

In a comment you mentioned that you're looking for a .csl citation style file, e.g. for use with Mendeley. It turns out that Mendeley has a generator for, and repository of such files. In particular, one can opt to search by example. Using that tool for citations of the form "(Campbell, 2007)" reveals some examples, the most relevant of which is a modified Chicago style that appears to be associated with Colorado State University - School of Biomedical Engineering:

  Example Output

  Inline citations

  (Campbell, 2007)

  (Ahlquist, 2009; Borges, 1999; Campbell, 2007; Mares, 2001)

  Bibliography

  Ahlquist, J. S., & Breunig, C. (2009). Country clustering in comparative political economy (MPIfG Discussion Paper No. 09–5) (p. 32). Cologne: Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. Retrieved from www.mpifg.de/pu/mpifg_dp/dp09-5.pdf

  Borges, J. L. (1999). Selected non-fictions. (E. Weinberger, Ed., E. Allen, S. J. Levine, & E. Weinberger, Trans.). New York: Viking.

  Campbell, J. L., & Pedersen, O. K. (2007). “The varieties of capitalism and hybrid success.” Comparative Political Studies, 40(3), 307–332. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414006286542
  “CSL search by example.” (n.d.). Retrieved December 15, 2012, from http://editor.citationstyles.org/searchByExample/

  Mares, I. (2001). “Firms and the welfare state: When, why, and how does social policy matter to employers?” In P. A. Hall & D. Soskice (Eds.), Varieties of capitalism. The institutional foundations of comparative advantage (pp. 184–213). New York: Oxford University Press.

I have not tried it myself, but I hope it does the trick.


As a referee, is it appropiate to ask for further details on a model extracted from another work? I'm reviewing a work in applied mathematics, and on it, the authors work on an equation that is derived from a previous work.

There is a parameter that has been chosen in a way I would like to be justified. Looking into the reference where they extracted the equation, the original authors also don't give any explanation for it.

Therefore, should I ask for further details on this parameter? or is it enough for them to point out the seminal work?

The onus is on the authors to appropriately justify all of their choices and conclusions, either directly or by referring to previous work which in turn contains an appropriate justification.

In this case they have referred to previous work which (in your view) does not contain an appropriate justification, so their job is not done.  It is completely reasonable for you as referee to object.

(Even if the previous work did contain appropriate justification, you might still feel, as in Buffy's answer, that the justification should be written in the present paper, to make it more self-contained.  That's also appropriate to mention as a reviewer, but it's more a matter of style than correctness.)


Books/resources about how to write a good Thesis introduction I would like to know if there is any reference book about this topic.

I found the "They Say/ I say" book useful to write the Thesis discussion, but feel I need some guidelines on how to tackle this other part of the Thesis.

Thanks

The best resource for how to write a thesis is to see other successful thesis that were written in the last 10 years, in your field, from your or other universities .

Search in Google Scholar; or check your university's library where they hold all the Ph.D. thesis done at your university.