Is it fair for me to drink caffeine during tests? For some of my more difficult and early morning tests, I will buy coffee and bring it with me into the exam. My hope is that the caffeine will help me be fully alert, think more clearly, and write answers more quickly.

However, I know that drinking caffeine puts me in a slightly different state of mind physiologically than my classmates. Is it fair for me to drink caffeinated beverages at tests? If it isn't, is it merely something rude that would be nice for me to stop, or a form of mild cheating that I would be wise to admit to and discuss with my professors?

That would be totally acceptable. Remember, you are also in a totally different state if you went to the toilet right before the exam. If you drank a litre of water in the morning. If you ate something for breakfast that happens to contain lots of short-chained carbohydrates, providing lots of energy for your brain.

You have to draw the line somewere and coffee is definitely acceptable, if not expected.

Edit:
As several comments suggest, your other question about rudeness because of smelling beverages: that's different from course to course, and you will probably have to employ some degree of common sense there. People are usually not bothered by coffee smell as opposed to french fries or the sounds of eating potato crisps. If in doubt, just ask your TA or fellow students before going to the exam.


Sharing research-related codes and datasets: Split them, or share them together on a single platform? I want to share both (1) programming codes and (2) datasets related to a research project.
While I know some suitable platforms superficially, I cannot gauge their pros and cons in too much depth because I lack experience. (In addition, many of their "About Us"-pages are not overly informative.) This is what I am aware of:
First, as regards codes, it seems that the best platform would be GitHub. They have a large audience of coders and they inhere a version control system to ensure transparent collaboration.
Second, as regards science-related datasets, it seems that Open Science Framework (OSF), Zenodo, Dryad, and Figshare are among the best options. They assign DOIs, automatically link your profile to ORCID, adhere to highly trusted Open Science principles (e.g. C0PE), and are non-profit community-driven platforms. (I would oppose them to, say, Mendeley Data which belongs to a large commercial publisher.)
Now I wonder the following:
If I want to publish a paper and share both its codes and datasets, what would be the best approach?
(a) Should I split them by sharing the code on GitHub and sharing the datasets on, say, OSF?
(b) Should I share both codes and datasets on one single platform? If so, which criteria could I use before choosing the right platform?

Each platform has its uses, so it's best to use both GitHub for your code and a scientific data archival repository, such as Zenodo, for your code and data.
GitHub allows you to share your code in a manner that encourages collaboration through stars, issues, forks, pull requests, and notifications.  So definitely put a copy of your code there.  However, GitHub isn't designed to ensure the permanence of the hosted repositories. For example, one can always entirely remove a repository through GitHub's interface and also delete or modify old code with a Git force push.  In the longer term, we can't know that the company controlling GitHub (it used to be GitHub, now it's Microsoft) will continue to operate it in a way that serves science.  Consider how many corporate products and services have disappeared or changed tack over the past twenty years, even things coming out of large established companies, such as Google (check this list) or Sun Microsystems after it got acquired by Oracle (Java and Solaris licensing).
Consequently, for a better guarantee of your work's permanence and availability to future scientists you should also put your data and code on a scientific data repository, such as Zenodo.  This will associate a DOI with your deposited artifacts, which will permanently link to the corresponding version.  (Once you upload something to Zenodo, there's almost no possibility to undo the action.)  GitHub and Zenodo even offer you the ability to archive a specific GitHub version to Zenodo.
If the volume of the data is large or it is likely to be often used on its own, then split it from the code, and upload each on Zenodo as a separate dataset.  Zenodo allows you to link the two (and also the GitHub repository) with the "Related Identifiers" metadata.  You can use the Compiles and Compiled by identifiers for linking code with data, and the Supplement to identifier to link your GitHub repository.
For an example of a split associated with a large dataset consider this dataset regarding the lifetime of code lines (3.7GB), the associated software, and the software's GitHub repository. For example of a split associated with an independently usable dataset consider this list of repositories created by enterprises and the associated replication package.
If the volume of the data is modest, it's fine (or perhaps better) to combine the two in a single Zenodo upload, as is the case in this package regarding the completion of Wikipedia links.


How to "dress up" a CV that has a PhD but no peer reviewed publication record? I have a glaring omission in my CV because I do not have any scholarly (peer reviewed) publications to my credit. However, I have good industry-based experience (more than 10 years when I have written a number of manuals and submissions), and have recently completed a Social Science PhD from a reputable university. I am after some guidance on ways in which a person in my position would address this glaring omission in a CV so as to better highlight/present his credentials for academic purposes (e.g. to apply to join a university etc).

If you have submitted manuscripts to peer-reviewed outlets, you can say so.  If you have anything under second-round review, be sure to say so because that's all the better.

If you haven't submitted manuscripts, you could do so.  One of my peer-reviewed publications was originally a paper I wrote for a Ph.D. seminar.  I blew the dust off, firmed it up and made it stronger, and I submitted it.  It was a nice little paper.  My point is that you have doubtless done work that you could turn into a submission with X weeks of work.

Lots of people list their current research projects under a title such as "Current Research."

Beware that search committees know all the tricks.  You're not going to fool anyone.  But, I'm sure your goal is not to "fool" anyone at all.  You just want to put your best foot forward, and there's nothing wrong with that.


What should a student do immedately after he or she is accepted into a graduate program Can someone provide advise as to what a student should do immediately after being accepted into a graduate program and has identified with a professor?

Usually students are accepted in the middle of their final year of undergrad. A window of time opens between now and when the first semester begins.

I wonder what should a student optimally do during this time to smoothly transit into the designated graduate program.

Some thoughts:

Build up relationships with other graduate students, professors
Start reading papers on the topic of focus
Start preparing course work for first year of graduate school
Start identifying specific research area and pin point thesis topic and open questions
Get to know the locale

But ultimately this question is directed at people who have went through this process. What can a student do now in the little time that he or she has to smoothly enter the graduate program?

I have three utterly contradictory pieces of advice:

The first year of graduate school will be a much more intense version of the coursework that you took as an undergraduate. In particular, the basic core courses often sink many first year students. For example, in some disciplines you may be asked to read over 1000 pages a week during that first semester, while in others you might be asked to do significantly more complex problem sets or labs than you've ever encountered previously.  If you can, I'd obtain copies of the syllabi for the required first year classes and start reading as much of the material as you can. The more breathing space you can give yourself that first semester the better. Build up your scholarly reserve.
Graduate school is a very long haul. Burnout is a very real possibility. Because you don't have a gap year, you should use your summer to expand your mind a bit. Go for a month or so of walkabout in Europe or Australia. Take what will be your last extended vacation for a little while. Build up your emotional/psychological reserves.
Unless you're in a well-funded program, you may well be destitute -- especially before you pick up a TA/RA position. Even with funding, you may only make $15-25,000 a year, which can be very hard to live on. You might want to build up your savings heading into grad school so that you don't have to take out too many loans or spend too many cold nights eating ramen noodles. Build up your financial reserves.


Is any of today's applied mathematics research in academia still done primarily on pencil and paper? Does there exist applied mathematics research that involves primarily pencil-to-paper work, without the use of computers?  Or, are computers quickly replacing everything that an applied mathematician can once do by hand / traditionally does by hand?

Anything in academia in applied math research that computers can't do?

For instance, do PDE theorists use computers or strictly pencil and paper / chalk and chalkboard -- and leave the numerics of PDEs to numerical analysts instead?  Is there such a distinction, or is there instead always some sort of collaboration between the two types of applied mathematicians?

Another example that I can think of is the work of probability theorists.

Any insight to my very naive question would be greatly appreciated :)

Thanks,

I am an applied mathematician and I can't work without paper and pencil and in most cases I can't get things done without a computer.

My computer can't tell me in advance if my algorithm will converge, at what rate and what the error will be. My computer can't figure out how to discretize some new problem (unless I tell him how). My computer (up to now) never had a great idea.

On the other hand, I can't invert matrices with pen and paper and I even can multiply a large matrix like that. In fact I can't even store most data I use on paper... (and also access rates for data on paper are pretty slow).

tl;dr I basically always use paper, pen and computer.


Should I contact a PhD student or his supervisor for potential collaboration? I found some recently published papers which are related to my research and am interested in contacting the authors for potential collaboration. However, in those papers, the first author is a Ph.D. student while the second author is his supervisor, who is a well-known professor in my field. In my field, the order of author is based on contribution, which means the Ph.D. student contributed more to the paper than his supervisor.

Hence, I don't know whether I should contact the student or his supervisor to initiate the collaboration. I can see that the advantage for contacting the student is that he should know more about the research than his supervisor. On the other hand, I also look for someone that can write a reference letter for me in the future, and the supervisor sounds better.

First, check the fine print in the paper itself.  Some journals ask the authors to designate one person as the "contact author" or "corresponding author", and distinguish that author with a notation and a mark on the author list.  If that is the case, then that is the person that you should write to.

Beyond that, since the professor is well-known in your field, know that you are unlikely to end up doing much direct collaboration with them in any case, simply because they probably already have many different projects in progress.  The student is also more likely to respond at all for the same reason.

You can't know before writing, however, whether you'd mostly likely end up working with this Ph.D. student or somebody else: if the student still has some years to go, you'd likely end up collaborating with them; if they are about to defend, they might either be "taking the project" or handing it off to another student.  So if there isn't one person designated as contact author, write to both (as ff524 suggests in the comments), and let them decide how to respond.


Asked to write a letter of recommendation for promotion for an abusive former professor I've recently been asked to write a letter of recommendation for tenure and promotion for my former advisor from graduate school. This is for a potential promotion/tenure a few years down the line.

My time in grad school was one of the darkest periods of my life. My former advisor was verbally abusive, demanding, and insulting. The way they treated me, and the stress that came with it, led to severe problems with anxiety and depression to the point where I became suicidal. I'm also not the only student who's had these kind of problems with them: I know of at least one other student who's had serious mental health problems due to their experiences as their graduate student under the same professor.

The problem is I'm still potentially reliant on my former advisor. I'm now working full-time outside academia, and I'm applying for employment-based permanent residency in the United States. One of the requirements for that is a set of experience letters from a few previous employers or professors that states what skills you're bringing to the job (to justify why the company is hiring you instead of an American). This is a signed letter saying something like:

  This person was a student of mine from date A to date B, I have direct personal knowledge of their work, they took courses on X, Y, and Z topics, and demonstrated skills A, B, and C through the course of their research/work.

This advisor has already refused to sign such a letter for another student who left the lab on bad terms after standing up to the abuse.

Without permanent residency, I'd be forced to leave the country in the coming years when my work visa expires. I've spent long enough here that my entire life is here, and so anything that could potentially put it in jeopardy makes me extremely cautious.

The request states that my letter will be kept confidential, but my former advisor has supervised relatively few students overall. My understanding is that any points I bring up in my letter will be discussed with them as part of their review process, and so there's a good chance they'll know it was me.

I see three possible options:

Write the letter honestly, holding them accountable for their actions, but leaving myself open to the risk that they'll know I wrote something negative and retaliate by refusing to cooperate with my immigration process.
Politely decline to write the letter, which doesn't hold them accountable, and could still cause them to refuse when I ask them for the favour of signing the experience letter.
Grit my teeth and write something reasonably neutral in the letter, letting them potentially go on to harm more students in the future.

None of these are good options, and I'm not sure what the best course of action here is.

Get your former advisor to sign the letter now.

After that has succeeded or failed, you should contact the person who runs this process and ask them verbally how the letter will be used and what it contains.  Probably this is a dean.  Probably the dean already knows about your advisor's behavior.  They might be seeking a letter that will help them get rid of your former advisor.  At well-run universities, these letters are not requested from random students.  They come from known students.

You should write an honest letter.

There is an option you do not mention:  You can "damn with faint praise."  This is done by writing a letter which says nice things about a person, but none of the nice things are relevant to the person's job.  E.g. They are funny and well-dressed.  I don't recommend this but it is available to you.  If done carefully, it can prevent promotion while giving the illusion that you intended to help the advisor.


Is it more difficult for teetotalers to develop academic contacts? I see a number of answers in this site where building contacts over a glass of beer is encouraged. Moreover the cream of academia belongs to the Western world, where beer culture is common. Unfortunately though, I am a rigid teetotaler and I do not know about the ins-and-outs of the preferences of drinking friends of mine. I confess I'd make a terrible company at a public house. But I hasten to add that in general, I am amiable and move around quite well with people within my limitations.

Does my being a teetotaler put me at a grave disadvantage when it comes to establishing intelligent academic contacts?

No. What really helps in building academic contacts is not beer, wine or any other alcohol, but the ability to generate informal discussions in relaxed settings. Fortunately, there are many ways to achieve that goal that do not require the intake of alcohol!

Even without going very far from drinking, sharing a nice lunch or dinner in an appropriate setting is one good way to establish contacts.


Should I talk about my poor academic performance due to financial situation in my SOP? Background

So, I got into a premier institute of my country but had a hard time there. I always had to look for some sort of a job to support my family and as a result I graduated with six technical internships and a very poor GPA.

Now after four years I got myself into research and have an otherwise good profile, it's just that my GPA is so low that I have to explain about it in my SOP.

Is it okay if I talk about this? Or will this further hurt my chances?

With a low GPA, your chances are already quite slim. You need a way to explain it. But it is even more important that you can explain why the institution can expect that you will be a success in the future. Your poor background doesn't help with this, no matter the reason. If your situation can be expected to continue, then it will be especially difficult to convince anyone that your outcomes will be different.

You have to make a case for the future, primarily.


Will a post on arXiv as a high school sophomore hurt my future academic life? I am a high school sophomore student who is very passionate about the subject of number theory and college level calculus. However, I am currently only in the high school class of precalculus/trig. The paper contains material beyond high school calculus, but am afraid that it would not be good enough for an actual arXiv paper.  Here are a few important facts to consider about my particular situation.

(The math side) The proof is basically a non-summation proof of an inequality between an integral and a constant. By "non-summation" I mean like, if you have a sum of infinite terms, you are not allowed to approximate using 1000000 terms or whatever. This implies more strategic methods, no use of any obvious approximation methods like trap rule, and most importantly, in my opinion,  why I feel it good enough.
I feel that this is not necessarily good enough for arXiv because I am not proving some general result, have 0 co-authors, and very limited assistance on the subject.
I currently have no people to endorse, but quite confident I can achieve one (connections).
If this is too low level, I am afraid that this might mar writing papers in the future, my credibility, etc.
I have an unused arXiv account, which I doubt will be harmful (side question: will it?)

But, Ok, let's assume that I manage to pull this off during the summer. Assuming the paper is written fair enough, but about the content I am talking about, would writing the paper hurt my academic life down the road?

I suggest looking into publications that specifically target high school or undergraduate students. An example, but one that unfortunately no longer exists, is The Mathematics Student Journal (sample issue from 1971). A current one is Pi Mu Epsilon Journal. An organization that I've been involved with both as a student (mid 1970s) and as a teacher (late 1990s) is Mu Alpha Theta. These are USA based, but your teacher should know some appropriate for you.


How does time off for a serious illness affect funding and duration of PhD? I am a PhD student from India studying in the UK and I have been diagnosed with Hepatitis B during my recent visit to India. The sad part is that it is a recurrence of the disease as I contracted it before my PhD and had to delay my PhD for a few months in the beginning.

Now that I have been diagnosed with it again, I'm afraid of telling my supervisor and sponsors about it as I feel they might cancel the funding as I have such a recurrent problem.

I say this because my project is funded by a German company who are a stickler for time and want me to finish my work on time as there have been enough delays.

I also took 2 months off in the summer to work on a separate research project outside of my PhD to build experience. It was not taken nicely by the company but I went anyway as I had a very good first year viva and report. I took it with the thought that I would make up the time by working extra once I get back and my supervisor supported me in this regard. Plus, UK PhD students are allowed 6-8 weeks off during their PhD for holidays and I haven't taken any time off since except to visit India for a conference, which has led to my predicament.

I feel completely lost and I do not know what to do.

What I exactly want to know is, If its normal for PhD students to take time off for illnesses? Can sponsors withdraw funding in that event? How does it affect the time of the PhD?

I'm at Simon Fraser University in Canada, but I've recently been dealing with this issue as I'm involved with our grad student association, so I wanted to respond to your question. If you don't change your registration status in any way, your semesters will almost certainly count against you in every way imaginable -- everyone thinks you're making progress and there is nothing to say otherwise. You should look into your university's 'on leave' policy, as that will be the formal mechanism that allows other allowances to take place. Here, leave for medical reasons will require going through your supervisor (and in turn, a faculty committee), but is essentially always granted, so I hope that works the same where you are.

Unfortunately, funding entities likely have their own, probably very specific, rules, so it's unlikely any general advice would cover them.

Ultimately, I highly recommend taking formal leave (i.e. changing your registration status), because various negative effects will likely accrue otherwise.


PhD Email and Deadlines in the US I was considering writing Emails to professors in US universities regarding PhD opportunities at their departments, however I noticed there is a formal PhD application with deadlines in December to follow. So what is the point in contacting professors for placements in their team when there is already an application process similar to undergraduate programmes? Thank you

In many departments, when it comes to accepting students, it's good to have a professor put their hand up and say that they would want to work with you and put you on their funding. By the time it gets to accepting students, because there are so many good applicants, the pool has become mostly indistinguishable. Having someone advocating for you at these meetings can make all the difference in the world.


Should an errata contain header and footer text and a page number? When writing a paper and adding an errata list (spelling out some mistakes that were made in previous versions of the paper), should that list contain the same meta-information as other pages, i.e. header and footer text and a page number? (If it's relevant, I am using APA for this paper but cannot find any information on the subject.) Additionally, should it be included in a table of contents?

Consult the APA Style manual, which you can probably check out of a library. The full manual is not available online, although I was able to find this information about lists. You may want to consider the guidelines for appendices, since this list sounds like an appendix (if it is long). This document from Walden University(pdf) describes how to format appendices using APA), but is mum on header and footer. I expect that you should include such information.
Consult the recipient of your paper. If this paper is being written for a class, ask your instructor. If this paper is to be submitted to a journal or conference, then said journal or conference likely has detailed guidelines available for lists and appendices. If such information is not available, you should contact a member of the editorial staff.


What challenges will an international joint PhD program pose to applicant? To elaborate, “international” means you have to work at institute A for a minimum of X certain years, and work at institute B for a minimum of Y certain years. They are supposed to be far away from each other geographically (like Europe and U.S.)

And “challenges” are the ones during such kind of PhD life.

NOTE: I also posted this question on Quora.

EDIT: To narrow down the question, I particularly want to learn about the challenges in frequent travelling and working with multiple advisors in different locations.

I should preface this by saying I am an Australian living in Germany.

There are many many factors that will define the challenges you as an individual will face, and of course it really depends WHICH countries you are going to spend time in, and where you are from originally. A US/UK joint program for an Australian will not be nearly as tough as a French/Russian program for a Korean.

This is due to what I call "Ausländer tax", which is to say foreigner tax, or put better "outsider tax".
Ausländer tax is an financial, physical and emotional debt that you pay by simply living in a country that you are not native too.

For example, I was paying a moderate Ausländer tax for the first two years of my PhD where every month I would buy a monthly tram ticket to get too and from work. This cost me around $60 a month. After two years I found out there was a special semester tram ticket for students enrolled at the university, which is $90 for the whole semester. After paying this for a year, I then found out that student's don't have to pay for the trams at all if it's before 8am or after 9pm - which pretty much covers 99.9% of my travel times. In essence, I'd paid around $1700 in Ausländer tax for just the trams. Financial Ausländer tax is generally easy to spot. I know i'm paying it by not being able to put in a contribution of my salary towards my pension, for example. I know i'm paying it by being unable to renegotiate my energy bill, because no one at Eon will talk to me in English. I know I pay it every time I get a taxi and speak in English, even though I know very well what the rates should be or the route we should take. Financial Ausländer tax is a bummer but can at least be overcome by being rich.

But Ausländer tax also includes things that are a bit harder to measure, and in cases impossible to overcome. For example, as I cannot speak German to a high standard, walking around town I hear essentially white noise 24/7. People in the street will ask me questions and I won't even know they are talking to me. Sometimes they will be quite offended by this, which makes me feel like shit, and then I have to spend the day at work feeling sorry for myself. Elevator trips are particularly awkward, simply because I have nothing to say. This is 90% a language barrier issue, but 10% a cultural issue, because certain rituals differ from country to country. This constant, unrelenting confusion creates stress and can really wear you down. It is like putting a whale in a zoo. Sure it can survive, and it will generate productive outcomes, but for the whale it is a burden. Worst of all, it's not obvious how to improve the situation for the whale.

There are PLENTY of positives to living abroad however, which I believe outweigh the Ausländer tax certainly for the first few years. You learn the culture, you learn new ways of doing things, and this has a real and practical benefit to you. But after a while, perhaps 2-3 years, these benefits diminish, and the cons of the Ausländer tax accumulate.

The only solution to Ausländer tax is to stop being an Ausländer. To totally integrate with the new culture. This doesn't mean you just learn the new culture - that is what we did in year 1 and 2. It means to adopt the new culture. Redefine yourself and drop the overhead of translating in-and-out of a foreign language/culture by making it your primary language/culture. For some people this is much easier than others, and of course it depends on the cultural delta, but many people never accept this as they are either unable or unwilling to give up their original culture.


Acknowledgment as technician. Do I list them in the CV? How? I’m a technician that has done some work in a research group, and I get some acknowledgments in the papers. A fellow technician in the university has told me that for us, technicians, they are important for our CV, as we don’t get publications (we usually just assist, so getting in a publication is really weird).

Should I put my acknowledgments in my CV? If so, how should I put them? I tried to put them with the name of the paper and the authors, but maybe my future employer won’t understand that part if he is not in academia (but e.g., in a company).

Employers outside academia usually aren't interested in publications but rather in your abilities and any deliverables you can associate those abilities with.

How specifically you highlight those abilities completely depends on the job you are applying for. For example, if you were applying for a position where you would be doing LC/MS, you could write in your resume that you "processed LC/MS samples in support of three projects leading to publishable papers."

If you were applying for an academic job, I'd be more likely to suggest including the papers your were acknowledged in, along with a note about what you were acknowledged for.


Is it ok to mention my upcoming post during my conference presentation? I was recently appointed to a new post (at a much better university) and my affiliation will change in a couple of months. I have to attend a conference next week and present work carried out with my current affiliation.

I would like somehow to let the audience know what my next position will be, and the project I will be working on, as it is very relevant in the community.

My questions are:

Is this common, or should I just stick to the research findings?
If it is indeed common, how to let the audience know? I was thinking about including a slide in the end of my presentation, about my upcoming post and project. But then, is there a chance that my new employer would have a problem with that? Should I let them know? Or maybe just forget the whole thing and just present my current work?

I am asking because the presentation will be permanently online, so I would like to make the most out of it.

This answer is based on conference experience from CS subfields.

  a) is this common, or should I just stick to the research findings, and

Yes, it is fairly common for presenters to stick in a little bit of info on their affiliation/current research environment, especially if they see themselves in a position where they want to be contacted by members of the audience (for research collaborations, etc.).

  b) if it is indeed common, how to let the audience know?

Mentions of the respective information are sometimes (briefly) inserted at the beginning of a talk, but more commonly at the end (along with saying something like "If you have any cool ideas for .../If you're looking for a project jointventure in ... contact me at ...!").

  But then, is there a chance that my new employer would have a problem with that?

If both your old and your new employer are institutions that see themselves dedicated to the public benefit, e.g. universities, rather than to enhancing their corporate profile, e.g. private enterprises, none of the employers should have much of a problem with that (even more so as switching between universities usually does not mean you cut all ties to your former institution).

If, however, one of these employers is indeed a private enterprise, you may want to ask. In a way, I see the primary concern here rather that the old employer might have a problem with what you are planning, less so the new one. After all, you carried out the work presented during the talk while being affiliated with the old employer - mentioning your new job in such a presentation could be seen like using the resources of the old employer to advertise the new employer.


How does a University tackle admissions for Master's Degree from students that come from a different college? Are the fellow Bachelor's students that graduated from the same university given any advantage over the students that apply from a foreign, possibly less accredited university? Of course we're talking about equivalent degrees.

For Example - Harvard university has fellow undergraduate students that after graduating want to pursue Master's degree at Harvard. Do they get any advantage over let's say an applicant from Cambridge that has the same results as the local harvard students?
Does it differ worldwide? Is there some universal guideline for universities to follow?

There is probably a small overall effect. But most universities are interested in diversity, and many universities encourage their students to move on after graduation. The reason is that, if the faculty in a (sub) field is small, then you will benefit from wider exposure to ideas. You may have learned about as much as you can from a given faculty.

Some places will have strict rules that every applicant is to be treated similarly.

But the effect that I suspect is there is that some students develop a research association with a faculty member or group and there is reluctance on both sides to break it. Those students may have an advantage in continuing due to the letters of recommendation etc. that they bring.

But there are forces pulling both ways. And you need to do well, in any case, to take advantage of any asymmetry.

Students, on the other hand, often want to continue at the same institution. There may be geographical associations and a feeling of comfort. "BA, MA, PhD, University of Michigan" is a pretty common sort of thing to see.


Getting a teaching recommendation as a mathematics postdoc in the UK I am a postdoc in mathematics in the UK.  When my current position ends, I plan to apply for positions in the US (among other places).  Most of these positions will require some teaching experience, including a teaching recommendation.  My current position does not require me to teach, but I have the option of teaching tutorials, teaching graduate courses, and supervising student projects.  Is one of these kinds of teaching more in line with the experience that US universities are looking for?

It's important to remember that teaching is not the same as "giving lectures in front of a class". So you (or your letter writers) have some leeway in deciding what exactly the letter should cover.

In practice, lots of people are in your situation. (I was too, when I was looking for faculty positions.) What is important is that one of your letter writers covers how you teach, and this can cover the style in which you give professional presentations, interact with students you mentor, etc. All of these are, when explained by someone who has a lot of experience as a teacher, predictive of how good a teacher you will be in the future. Of course, most potential employers would ideally like to see a discussion in these letters how good a teacher you are in a regular classroom -- since that's one of your primary job duties as a professor -- but the selection committee will be able to extrapolate to that from what they find in a letter.

If you do have the opportunity to teach any regular class, then I would try to do that -- it doesn't matter much in that case whether it's an undergrad or grad course. It just rounds out your resume, and gives you more options for potential letter writers, and more material for letter writers to write about if they choose to sit in on your class once or twice.


Explaining Poorly Chosen Major and Average Grades I am a Mechanical Engineering major applying for Ph.D. programs in Physics (in the US) who was always interested in Theoretical Physics but chose Mechanical Engineering due to a poor career choice at the time of the selection of undergrad major. Being interested in only theoretical physics, I didn't care much about perfecting the engineering subjects and this is reflected in my grades. I have very good scores in Physics courses (except for an applied physics course). I am writing my SoP and have gotten advice from a lot of people that I should explain my choice of a different major despite my interest in physics as well as my average grades in engineering subjects. But I am not sure whether plainly telling them that I got viciously lured into engineering by being told "undergraduate physics education in our country is not good and one can easily switch to physics after the undergraduate program if one has done undergraduate studies in engineering" would help. Also, whether plainly telling the truth that I didn't find engineering interesting and thus, my grades are average would help. It might (wrongly) show that I would not study uninteresting things that are required for some research project.

I have a fair amount of content to write about my interest in Physics, for example, I am pursuing a minor in Physics, I have done a good number of interesting research projects, I have attended some schools on theoretical physics, have taken a graduate course in GR, I have well-identified research interests, etc. etc. Is it required (or helpful) to write about why I chose a different major and why my grades are average in the engineering subjects? If yes then what should be the tone and approach?

I do think you should explain your mediocre grades in your major in your application.  Give the honest truth that you feel it was a poor choice of major and you lacked interest in the subject.  It's not perfect, but it's better than no explanation.

The more you can portray it as a story of growing and maturing over time, the better.  Focus on the positive: lessons learned, developing more discipline, finding your passion in your physics classes, etc.

I don't think you should say you were "viciously lured" into engineering.  It doesn't really add anything to the story, and also it comes across as blame-shifting.


Is participating in open peer reviewing good or bad for early career scientists? I see a few questions about open peer review (OPR), as more publishers move towards open access and open review.
As an early career scientist I wondering if publishing my name as a reviewer is a risky business as I am usually very thorough in my reviews but also try to be as fair and friendly as possible.
So I know that being a reviewer doesn't really count that much, it seems that publishing my name has potentially more pitfalls than advantages. I don't like to make "enemies 'among my peers as I respect their work, so I am afraid that my comments might be taken the wrong way and create potential conflicts. This for me would be the only reason not to participate in OPR. In my field people are mostly open and friendly, but of course there is competition.
The only possible advantage I see is that when I am being reviewed I might receive a more fair treatment similarly to the one I have given, but this seems less likely as the pool of potential reviewers is large.
Are there more advantages or disadvantages when participating in OPR?

My opinion:
I don't see your reasons either for and against as compelling. I suspect it's neither risky nor significantly advantageous.
You should take this on if you think it a good way to contribute to progress in your discipline. You might learn something too.


Can I send my journal article (under review) for a invited Elsevier book (not-to-be-refereed) chapter? I just got an invitation from an editor of a non-refereed book. Is it considered self plagiarism if I send one of my journal article to the book?

The book is hard to define. It is more like a textbook rather than a review volume.

If you had published your paper on a journal and you had transferred the copyright to that journal, it's a violation of copyright. And typically you transfer the copyright at the time of submission.

If you want to republish your paper somewhere else, you should first ask permission to the copyright owner.

Beware, moreover, that most of the invitations to "publish your research" in a book come from predatory publishers. In case, you don't want to send them any of your works.


Co-authors not willing to publish after rejection. May I drop them? We wrote a case report (1 + 2 co authors). The case report was not accepted. I tried to convince the other co-authors to re-write and submit.
I waited for 3 years and 6 months. The co-authors showed no interest after repeated calls. I wrote the case report completely fresh with review of literature.

Can I send for publication without the co-authors as they did not take part in preparing this revised manuscript?

It depends what the co-authors did. If they were involved in the work they should normally be authors of the paper. I think the important questions you need to answer are:

What exactly do you mean by "showed no interest after repeated calls"? I have never heard of someone who does not want a "free" paper published, unless they disagree with the methods or conclusions in the paper. What is the reason they are not interested?
Did you ask them if they agree to not have their name on it? If they agree: problem solved. If not, that means they do agree to be co-authors: problem solved.


Does it makes sense to publish new math whose primary significance is its applicability to another field? I have come up with a new mathematical method that has applications in a field outside mathematics. I have described the mathematics of it, and proved relevant theorems to show how it works. The sole importance of this method is its applications to field X.

If I go to mathematicians, they are saying that the theorems are right, but the mathematics of it is nothing unusual but expected. They don't readily know much about X, and have no inclination to know. So it’s difficult to impress a math journal editor for a publication acceptance. So the mathematicians are advising to go to experts of field X.

On the other hand, If I go to experts of X, they are reluctant to comment, as they don't readily understand the relevant math (unless they take some time and refer to a few books). Moreover the concept is a bit counter-intuitive to the latest beliefs in field X.

I need better workstations and some time and funding to apply and solve harder problems in field X, for which I need some support and funding, which is possible only if someone buys my idea and sponsor, as a form of startup. My strategy is to first publish this mathematical method, in a math journal, so that it gets some authenticity and help me get some serious attention from experts of field X for providing labs/infrastructure or attract venture capitalists for a startup.

I appreciate some suggestions whether my strategy is good idea. If so, what are type of math journals can I target for this purpose. I don’t expect to go to mathematicians and say that I have done something incredible, but I just want to garner enough interest to get published in a decent journal, so that it will be easy for me to gather attention from community of field X.

Note that I am not asking for a specific journal, but types of journals, and even if it makes moral/practical sense to publish at all, and if so under what philosophy?

I'm an applied mathematician and I have written some papers with a focus similar to what you describe:

They don't include fundamentally new mathematics
They achieve new/faster/better results in some application, by applying mathematical techniques that are not known in the application field

This kind of work should usually be published in a journal of the application area, not a mathematics journal.  The application specialists are the ones who need to learn about what you've done, so they can use it.  You need to write your manuscript in a way that is accessible and convincing to application specialists.  This probably means not focusing on theorems and proofs, but on results.  It may require changing the vocabulary and notation you use.  It is often not easy, and you will need to spend time reading the literature of the application field.  It can be very helpful to find someone in that field you can talk to, or even get as a co-author.


Is publishing in a special issue of a Q3 Journal as relevant as publishing in a Q1 Journal? I want to publish a paper in mathematics in a special issue of my topic but in a Q3 Journal (i.e., ranked in 3rd quartile). The catch is that in this issue, the editors are some of the top leaders in the area, so I guess that the quality of the paper should be high in order to be accepted. Should I go for this? Or is it preferable to publish in a Q1 Journal (i.e., ranked in 1st quartile)? How would you, as a hiring committee when applying for a postdoctoral position, see this? I honestly think that the paper has the quality in order to be published in a first quartile Journal.

For those not familiar with the terminology, Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. They refer to quartile in which the journal is ranked within discipline. For example, see this listing of mathematics journals on scimago with the prominent display of ranking quartile.

How would you, as a hiring committee when applying for a postdoctoral position, see this? Since I've been on "hiring committees for postdocs" quite a few times, I'll just share personal experience.

1) As to me, I wouldn't care at all where you published but would look directly at what you published. As one of my colleagues in Wisconsin put it "I just want to know what his (applicant's) signature theorem is". So as soon as your paper is on arXiv, I'll have an opinion about you. Not all people are like that, of course, but given that the postdoctoral positions are often given to people somebody in the department seriously considers working with, you may be pretty sure that if your result is good, then the interested in you person will spare no effort explaining to others why it is so and that "this guy solved a 40 year old problem on which Terence Tao had only a partial result" is stronger than "this guy published in Acta".

2) It may be beneficial to have a publication in a higher ranking journal on your record later in your career (some university promotion guidelines explicitly count Acta papers as 5 points and "University of Urjupinsk Seminar Proceedings" as 0 points).

3) The formal "publication score" is not everything. You also make professional acquaintances and get friends and enemies over time. Sometimes I choose the journal based on personal relationships (existing or the ones I would like to establish) rather than according to any ranking system and I don't think it is such a terrible idea.

Just my 2 cents :-)


recommendation letter from professor who doesn't know me very well A master's program that I want to apply to is asking for two letters of recommendation. I can get one of them, because I am very close with a professor that I'm doing a research project for, and I'm doing a good job in it.

But the second letter might be a problem. Basically, I have other professors and instructors to choose from, but none of them know me as well as the professor mentioned above. In their classes, I did well, but I wasn't top of the class.

There is one lab instructor that I had, and I always did very well in his lab (I'm good with hands-on work), but I don't know if he remembers me. He would always give me a bunch of extra credit for the lab reports.

Another professor I was thinking of asking is a statistics professor. I'm thinking he might be willing because at the beginning of his class, I was struggling, and failed the first midterm, but I studied and improved greatly in the end. I finished that class with a 3.5.

So my question is, how can you ask for a recommendation letter from a professor that doesn't know you all that well? I've seen others do it, but it always seems like they are the students who either did very well in their classes, or who have a much closer relationship with the professor.

Also, I'm on a time limit, as the masters application is due in about one month.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

I think you have a couple of good options for the second recommendation letter:

Ask the statistics professor to write the recommendation letter. Struggling in the beginning, but overcoming the difficulties can be a good point in his recommendation letter if he perceived that situation the same way. If you ask him over the e-mail, please, give him enough information to connect yourself with a student he had. You don't want to write his recommendation letter, but want to give/remind him of certain facts (term, grade, progress, course contents, what you learned). Meeting in person will be probably even better, but be prepared to introduce yourself with some story and keep a piece of paper with the factual information you wish he uses in the recommendation letter. The professor will either decline (if he doesn't feel comfortable) or will become one of your references.
Ask the lab instructor. And follow the same procedure. The recommendation letter from him might feature your hands-on skills and ability to analyze the experiments, which is also valuable.
Find somebody outside of academic circles. It would be nice if you worked and volunteered somewhere and your manager is able to recommend you based on some other set of skills.

Again, none of those are ideal references, but usually, for a Master's program, people don't have reference letters that are from perfect sources. And your potential ones are certainly not bad at all. Especially, if they decide to write a good recommendation letter.


How does one cite a book series/sequence? I have a need to cite a certain scifi book series (i.e. a collection of books functioning as elements in a single larger story, not a series like the Springer Graduate Texts in Math) as inspiring a thought experiment in a philosophy paper, but I’m having trouble finding advice on how to cite a book series rather than a particular book in the series.

At least in this case it doesn’t seem appropriate to pick any particular book in the series (the relevant conceit is present across the whole series, but it’s quite possible some books in the series don’t mention it at all and I don’t even know which of the books I read).

Also, any suggestions for representing a series in BibTeX?

The Purdue MLA site provides a recommendation for how to cite an entire television series, which is essentially identical to citing a unified work: instead of naming an episode, one names the series as a whole, and the date shifts from a single point to a range.

By analogy, then, to cite a book series, one should simply use the series name as the book title, and list the range of publication dates, e.g.,

@book{LOTR,
 author = {J.R.R. Tolkien},
 title = {The Lord of the Rings},
 year {1954--1956},
 ...


PhD application to Austrian University I have a master's degree and I would like to study for a doctorate in Austrian universities and among the questions that are in the application is "Where do you want to carry out your project ? (library, archive, institute)".

How can I answer this question?

Maybe they just mean: "At which institute (or lab, if applicable) do you plan to implement the project?" And the answer could be "Institute of ... at the University of Vienna" or whatever?


Can a reviewer ask for primary data? Can a reviewer ask for the primary data (actual collected data in a prevalence study)? Is the information confidential or can be shared? Even if can be shared, does the reviewer have the authority to ask for it?

It's a very free process. The reviewer can ask for it if they want (though they would have to keep it confidential). You can refuse if you want. The reviewer can, as a result, decide to give a poor review. The editor can decide to reject the paper on that basis.

In a few cases there might be a good reason that you would not want to share your primary data, but generally, I don't see why it would be a problem. In any case, many journals (at least in my field) require, or at least strongly recommend, primary data to be made publicly available upon publication.

If you are worried about being scooped, you are probably worrying over nothing. If a reviewer was to try to present your data as their own (very unlikely and difficult to start with), it would be very easy to demonstrate, through your documented submission, that the work was yours and they were stealing it.


Received a book review request, how to know if publisher is credible? I received a book review request from a publishing company called PACKT. How do I know if the company and book is credible and if the effort would be worthy?

Why do you care? Let them send you the book, if you are at all interested in the topic. (Free books! Yay!)

Then review it. If the book is obviously crap, then stop reading after page 15, write up how far you got and why you stopped reading, and submit the review. You may not get any more requests for reviewing from that particular publisher after that, but a one-paragraph review that warns people off a bad book is certainly helpful. And the entire process won't cost you more than half an hour.

And if the book is good, you can spend more time on it, write a thoughtful review and got a Free Book out of it.

EDIT: on second, third or more-th glance, I do see a way in which reviewing for a shady publisher can hurt you. Suppose an author plagiarizes a large amount of text for his book - but you don't notice (maybe because you are not familiar with the text that was plagiarized) and write a good review. Once this becomes known, of course people will wonder why you did not notice.

This really presupposes that something like this could more easily happen with a shady publisher, an assumption which may be open to question itself. I'd rather wonder about the author than the publisher here.

So I'd recommend something like this: google the author. Check his publications. Does he have a track record in the field? I'd be suspicious if someone with no scientific footprint suddenly were to write a book.

Check the publisher. What else have they published? Go by the publisher's website and by Amazon, especially if you don't trust them to be honest on the website. How are the reviews of their other books on Amazon? If you google their books' titles with "site:edu", does any educational institution set them as textbooks?

Finally, if the author has a website but does not mention the book you are supposed to review and the publisher looks extremely fishy to you, write him an email and ask about the book. It may be that an unethical publisher put his name on a plagiarized book that he never saw (however, I don't think that this is likely).


What happens if you don't enjoy your research partially through your degree? I'm a sophomore at a Canadian university studying mathematics. Since near the end of first year, I've thought about attending graduate school for some mathematics field (this could also be because I don't know what else I can do with my degree/knowledge).

I'm thinking about it now, however, and I've noticed (through painstakingly unfortunate experiences and unnecessary, overly-ambitious classes this year) that perhaps mathematics may not be my life (although I do enjoy reading on it, studying/looking into different aspects of the field, and even if I don't do well on an assignment, test, or class altogether, I'm not typically turned off of that subject if it is maths-related).

Thus, I'm thinking about this as someone who could potentially be doing this in grad school. Right now, I have the freedom to take other, non-maths courses (I'm minoring in film, for example). Will this freedom continue in grad school? As well, I'm fortunate enough to be in an undergrad program that encourages cross-faculty research. Thus, if I wanted to look at mathematics from a film point of view (or vice versa) for a research project or thesis, it would be encouraged. However, from what I'm seeing from my grad school research, you are typically in grad school for one specific field and do research in that topic for your entire degree (which, I understand is usually less than the 3/4 years of undergrad study).

So I guess my question is, what do you do if you're in grad school but grow weary of your research? I'm sure you can't just up and leave, but what if you want to research something that isn't offered by a grad institution, or want to merge two topics together? How does the process work then? Or what if I wanted to do research with the philosophy department on a mathematical topic (e.g. something like logic)? How would that work?

Do grad institutions give a degree of freedom to their students, or is it all about the adviser and what they want? And if the latter is the case, what do you do if you don't want that? Do you have to just suck it up and do it anyway?

First of all, as @ff524 points out there is a world of difference between a master's program and a PhD program.  If you don't understand the difference, then you know too little about graduate school to be thinking about it any meaningful way.

In the US a math master's degree takes about 1-2 years and is not a prerequisite for a math PhD program.  (In fact, although some students can use a strong performance in a master's degree to "launder" their academic record and gain admittance to a solid PhD program, in most cases enrolling in a master's program signals a much smaller commitment than enrolling in a PhD program.)  In Canada it seems to take a bit longer: 2-3 years, and up until recently it was viewed as a prerequisite to getting a PhD.  (Things seem to be changing a bit, although still probably the majority of Canadian math PhD students have done separate master's degrees, which adds to the total time to get a PhD).  Getting a PhD in either Canada or the US takes 4-7 years; I believe 5 years is the most frequent number though the mean is higher.   Moreover a PhD is the required certification for a future academic career in mathematics (it used to be that a master's degree let you teach at 2 year colleges, but that is rapidly ceasing to be the case in the current job market).  The purpose of a master's degree in mathematics is much more fluid...or it may serve no purpose at all.  You should know that the lowest common denominator for master's degrees in math is indeed very low: it is well known to US graduate programs that an undergraduate degree at a top institution with good grades is usually better than a master's degree at a mediocre institution.

It is fairly easy to "weather through" a master's degree in mathematics, even if your level of interest wanes in the middle (because there need not be much middle, in part).  If you have some specific career goal for which a master's degree in mathematics would be advantageous -- e.g. high school teaching -- then not being unilaterally devoted to mathematics is not a serious obstruction.  By contrast, if you are not interested in mathematics almost to the exclusion of other academic fields, then a PhD program in mathematics is probably not for you.  (Certain branches of applied mathematics are exceptions to this, but the vast majority of students who do a PhD in a "mathematics department" are not that applied.)

  Right now, I have the freedom to take other, non-maths courses (I'm minoring in film, for example). Will this freedom continue in grad school?

Technically yes -- graduate students are allowed to enroll for courses in any department just like undergraduates.  In practice: the freedom will be severely restricted.  If as a graduate student you take a course outside of your department then you should expect to be asked to explain its relevance to your mathematical course of study.  Thus it is relatively common to take language courses and courses in related fields (cs, physics, statistics...).  You should probably not be taking "elective" courses -- e.g. if you took a course in film, it would have to be strongly skewed to the technical aspects of image production / reconstruction / whatever or you will probably find yourself having to defend doing something that interferes with your research.

Moreover, theoretical mathematics (and some branches of applied mathematics) is one of the least interdisciplinary of academic fields.  If you want to work on logic, then you may well find an expert advisor or co-advisor in the philosophy department -- but nevertheless you should expect your work to be at least 90% mathematics.  There must be a few math PhD students who take more than a small handful of philosophy courses...but I have never met any.

All in all: you should not seriously consider a PhD program in mathematics unless (i) you are single-mindedly, passionately devoted to mathematics or (ii) you have a very specific career goal for which a PhD in mathematics is beneficial, and your plan has been vetted as reasonable by multiple trusted mentors.  If you like but don't love mathematics as you are completing your undergraduate degree, plan on continuing to read, learn and perhaps do mathematics after you graduate, at your own pace...as a hobby.


Should the explanatory text come before or after the animations in tech articles? This question is in regards to curruclum development theory. The medium is blog articles / technical white-papers (accessed online). I often use animations to help drive points home, and I'm curious as to whether the supporting text should come before or after the animation.

Question:  Should supporting text come before or after animations?

Bonus question:  Should supporting text come before or after still images? (not-animated)

Examples:

Animation before text

The data moves from the Server to the left router. Then the Left router to the Middle router. Then the Middle router to the Right router. Then the right router to the Server.

Text before Animation

The data moves from the Server to the left router. Then the Left router to the Middle router. Then the Middle router to the Right router. Then the right router to the Server.

Before the animation, introduce the graphic.

Below the animation, include a caption.  Your first example has a nice caption but I would format it so it looks more clearly like a caption.

Provide a way to turn off the animation.  It is hard for some people (like me) to focus on the text that follows while the movement is continuing to take place.

Thank you so much for asking.  Animation on the web can drive a person nuts.  On the other hand, it can be helpful in gaining understanding.


How should I cite a paper that I've obtained by asking the author to send it to me? I'm basing my dissertation on a study in a paper that isn't available anywhere I've found online. I emailed the author and they sent me a pdf copy. Normally when I write citations for an electronic journal, I would do so like this - using the MHRA Author-Date style prescribed by my English department:

  Ke, C., (May 1998). Effects of Strategies on the Learning of Chinese Characters Among Foreign Language Students. Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, 33 (2): 99-112 {http://fakelibrary.com/thisisnotwhereigotthispaperfrom} [accessed 2017-12-04]

Because there is no link, I will just have to cite it this way:

  Ke, C., (May 1998). Effects of Strategies on the Learning of Chinese Characters Among Foreign Language Students. Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, 33 (2): 99-112

Is this acceptable, or should I include somewhere on the citation that it was accessed via personal communication? I've checked my department's guide for MHRA Author-Date, but it's incredibly sparse. If you know how more popular style guides approach this, please let me know.

It doesn't matter how you got the paper. Just cite it as you would anything else. I've had papers from Science sent to me from a friend when our departmental internet was down, but that doesn't change how I cite it. Yea, the journal is obscure and others will have difficulty finding it, but in theory they could given the info you provide. That should be sufficient.


Finding all communication related to any research paper Is there any resource (blog or website) where one can find all communication related to any published scientific paper? For example I found some advise on how to write a "rebuttal letters" but not a "real life" rebuttal letter. Same is true for cover letter or reviewers comment. Is there any open-access journal which make everything public (or any researcher have done so)?

It might highly depend on your field of research... But here is a list of tools / resources that can help you track all the documents associated with a paper:

Altmetrics track all the online activity associated with a published paper, including Twitter, Facebook or blog posts. Exemple here
Pubpeer is a platform for post-reviewing about any published papers
Exemple of open access journals that include the reviews with the publications: eLife , Frontiers

I hope it helps!


Impact of the quality of a presentation in a conference on the number of citations the corresponding article receives Is there any research/study that looked at the impact of the quality of a presentation in a conference on the number of citations the corresponding article receives? (quality in terms of form, not the content itself)

I am most interested in the United States and the field of computer science.

This survey by Dalton (2014) reviews literature that correlates citation rates with dissemination strategies. Research into a correlation between presentation quality at conferences and subsequent citation rates is notably absent, suggesting that there likely is not much research on this question. That said, a few things can be inferred:

  Frenken et al. (2010) carried out a study on collaboration in scientific research and found that international collaborations tend to receive more citations than national or regional level collaborations.

Intuitively, a principal reason for attending conferences and workshops is to expand one's network and meet potential new collaborators. A good presentation is more likely to serve this purpose than a poor one, because it can set a first professional impression of you.

  A considerable amount of work has been published on the positive effects of open access on citation rates. Lawrence (2001) carried out an investigation on the impact of free online availability of papers on citation rates in computer science. The results showed a clear correlation between the number of times an article is cited and the probability that the article is freely available online. The more highly cited articles were significantly more likely to be available online.

If you publish your presentation online after the conference, then you are increasing the open access material related to the paper. Especially if you are publishing the research manuscript behind a paywall, the presentation may open the research to a broader audience. Whether the presentation is well done, intuitively, is likely to affect whether you are willing to post it online and the amount of time that readers are likely to interact with it. If you present it well, you are probably more likely to post a public video of the presentation  online.

  Thelwall et al. (2013) [...] found that there were statistically significant associations between higher citations for articles and the use of various social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs and forums. Similarly a study carried out by Shuai et al. (2012) showed there was a statistically significant correlation between social media mentions and download and citation counts.

Further to the previous point, if you publish your open-access presentation online after the conference, it creates an opportunity to create a social media buzz around it.

Summary There might not be much research on whether a direct correlation exists between presentation quality and citation rate, but a good presentation can amplify factors that have been shown in literature to increase citation rates.

References

S. Dalton (2014). "Increasing citations: key evidence." Retrieved from: http://library.leeds.ac.uk/downloads/file/616/increasing_citations_literature_review_april_2014 on 15 October 2015.

K. Frenken et al. (2010). "The citation impact of research collaboration in science‐based industries: A spatial‐institutional analysis." Papers in Regional Science: 89(2), 251-265.

S. Lawrence et al. (2001). "Free online availability substantially increases a paper's impact." Nature: 411(6837), 521-521.

X. Shuai et al. (2012). "How the scientific community reacts to newly submitted preprints: Article downloads, twitter mentions, and citations." PloS one: 7(11).

M. Thelwall et al. (2013). "Do altmetrics work? Twitter and ten other social web services." PloS one: 8(5).


Recommended tools for graphs and charts I have seen a couple of images in several papers like those attached below. These images are really expressive also nice i.e. look very scientific. I have no idea how to generate such images since I have in the past used powerpoint/excel. I'd appreciate some pointers on the tools for generating such images or even better ones.

UPDATE Just to clarify about duplicated question(s), this question is quite specific to graphs like those that combine several features concisely into a line /bar graph or scatter plot e.t.c. (as provided in the attached images). Some similar questions e.g. this one is about illustrations as seen in the answers provided. I think my question is different, so are the answers provided different from those in the referenced question.

The R language has a number of libraries to produce clean looking graphs, for example ggplot2.

The example below was made with the galluvial extension for ggplot2, one of many extensions that allow animation, interactive graphs, and more.


Should I use the filing, publication, or grant date when citing a patent? What is the standard for citing granted patents and patent applications in a paper? For granted patents, three dates are available: filing, publication, and grant dates (see for example this patent). Which one should I use? The grant date seems to be missing from the original document itself. I would think that since the publication date is the date that is always present, it should be the date to use when citing granted patents or patent applications. However, the filing date is probably more important for the patent itself. So, which should I use?

There is no clear single standard. Personally, I would use the filing date, because this date is most important when establishing prior art (which might invalidate the patent, or parts of it).

Anyway, for unique identification the patent publication number (which is GB2468195 in your example) is more important.

When targeting a journal, you might want to check whether there is anything in their guidelines.


Is it common for advisers to have not understand a funded project? I'm a graduate student in computer science engineering in South Korea.

My adviser (a professor) told members in my lab to write a proposal to get a fund (from government or a company). Finally, we got funded and started an R&D. In the project proposal document, my adviser has been listed as a chief of research (a director). And (unoffically) one of the lab members has been named as a chief of hands-on workers.

We have two meetings. One is a project meeting and discussion only with lab members. And another is a report meeting with a chief of hands-on workers and my adviser. In the report meeting, he reports the result of the project meeting. If there is any unresolved issue, he got mad.

A problem that I think is, my adviser has no idea of any knowledge related with the project, literally. The project requires a cutting edge theories and techniques, but his knowledge stays when he became a professor.
He just hunts a fund and if he got a fund, he doesn't care afterwards.

Thus, his anger does not help to resolve an issue. He doesn't know why the issue exists and why it is difficult to resolve. Even if we explain about it, that does not help, next week, he forgets and gets mad again. In the report meeting, we can't expect any helpful comment from my adviser.

Even worse is, when it is the time to report a result of the funded project to the funder, my adviser has to present the result and answer to questions. But as I said before, he has no idea of the project. So, we teach him about the project for a couple of weeks before the presentation. But do you think it will be effective teaching months-long R&D in a couple of weeks? No, the presentation goes bad and the next funding will be unclear.

Is all of this is due to lab members who are not smart enough? Okay, if it is a personal research, my adviser may not have enough knowledge than me. But, this is a lab project and he is a chief. Then, at least, he should have a similar, comparable level of knowledge with lab members, in my opinion.

Does this commonly happen in other labs, universities and countries.

(comment converted to answer)

No, this is not common in general. See if you can find out the secret of his success in getting the funding (grant money). Then write a grant proposal, with a different professor, whom you respect.


Do I need a PhD in mathematics if my goal is to teach at the undergraduate level? My ultimate goal is to teach undergraduate level mathematics, that is, classes such as calculus and differential equations, as well as introductory proof-based courses like linear algebra, abstract algebra, and real and complex analysis. Why? I just love to teach people who are interested in learning math, and I have the strong belief (it's more of a certainty) that all interested mathematics students can appreciate and find the joy to learn any of these core classes if they receive the right approach. I am willing to teach like this patiently because I like it and I'm willing to devote to it. I feel very comfortable teaching math.

I am receiving a bachelor's degree in mathematics from UC Berkeley in May 2016. Needless to say, I like math a lot and I am excited to learn math at a higher level in grad school.

My question is, given that my goal is to become a math educator and obtain a secured job, do I need to pursue a PhD in mathematics?

I know that the whole idea in getting a PhD is to do original research, but to be honest, this is not the exciting part for me to go to grad school. This is merely secondary for me. I would even say it is tertiary since I am more enthusiastic about studying more math and being a graduate instructor. I know community colleges, liberal arts colleges, and even some universities hire lecturers (whose only job is to teach). Should I get into a master's program to achieve my dream job instead?

At least in the US, if you want to teach calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra, and are also willing to teach lower-level stuff (e.g., algebra stuff like quadratic equations and trigonometry) you can likely do that at a community college, which means you might not need a PhD. If you really want to teach abstract algebra and real analysis you probably could not do that at a community college, which means you'd probably need a PhD.


What gets included for Continuing Professional Development? When you are asked to list what continual professional development (CPD) you have completed in the previous 12 months, where do you draw the line on what gets included?

I would think attending a seminar on teaching skills should be included.
A new degree, diploma, certificate, etc. would certainly be included
I would think that participating on this or any other website (Academia.se) would not be included.
I would think that discussions, no matter how long or involved, would not be included.
How about reading books?
How about watching a video series specific to the position?
How about audio books?
How about reading articles?
How about research for writing articles on the subject of teaching (if you are a teacher)?

I would also think as a general rule that things done to improve a teacher's teaching or subject knowledge would count.

Seconding Damien's answer - it depends on who you are reporting to, and it depends on what they want. Ask for guidelines.

I report to a committee of peers in my department who forward my report with recommendations to the dean. I am judged in several categories. Explicit guidelines on what counts (and what does not) in each category are provided. I would earn credit somewhere for everything on your list. Each category is weighted differently, so I do not received equal credit for all activities. I have taken your list of activities and placed them into the categories for which I would receive credit, and added some of my own.

  Instructional Design and Development - Activities to improve the courses that I teach and the methods by which I teach them.

Attending a seminar on teaching skills
Video or webinar series on the position
Experimentation in teaching methodology
Developing new materials that better suit the needs of the course

  Teaching Performance and Feedback to Students - Activities that improve my interacting with students in and out of the classroom.

Nothing from your list fits here
Reflecting on student evaluations and using them to improve your instruction
Faithfully keeping office hours and responding to students in a timely fashion
Advising students and writing letters of recommendation for them

  Scholarly Activity / Professional Development - Activities to improve my knowledge of my discipline and which improve the discipline as a whole

A new degree, diploma, or certificate
Reading books, articles, letters, reviews, etc. in your field
Conducting research in your field, even if specific to education in your field
Attending, and especially presenting at, conferences
Submitting grant requests, and especially receiving grants

  Service - Activities which forward the mission and goals of the department, the institution, the profession, or the community.

Participating in Stack Exchange
Serving on committees at the department and institution level
Serving as department chair
Being active (and especially holding an officer position) in professional organizations
Educational outreach to the community

  Collegiality - Activities that improve my relationship with my colleagues and improves my colleagues' abilities to perform their jobs.

Discussions with colleagues focusing on best practices
Sharing of teaching materials with colleagues
Mentoring younger colleagues

Again, the specific answer to your question is held by the authority to whom you are responsible - your supervisor, department, department chair, dean, provost, vice president, etc. Ask for guidelines. If your supervisor wants you to be productive in the desirable way, you should receive guidelines.


Can reading book review substitute reading the whole book in a literature review? This book has 570 pages, a lot of information about my research subject and several studies are included.
However, I don't want to spend my time reading it because one professor wrote already 12 pages review, emphasizing most important finding and conclusions. As well critical perspective.

Should I cite both of them in my literature review so I can honor in a way book author or is it dishonest from my side to cite something I didn't read? I don't doubt he did a great job, even people from Cambridge are praising him, but I think I will lose a lot of time since I am a slow reader and in the review is represented a lot what I would like to know.

I'd recommend you should at least read and understand the chapters pertaining to your research.

If you trust the other professor wrote a concise, but complete and truly impartial review (because "even some people from Stanford praise him"? Think again: does that sound like a valid scientific reasoning?), you certainly may decide at our own risk to cite only the review.

By academic standards, as soon as you just add something to the bibliography you didn't read, it's... an academic misdemeanor. And adding a reference to something you did not even browse is quite the opposite of "honoring the author".


Applying for a Physics Masters as an international student I am a citizen of Bangladesh, an underdeveloped country in South East Asia.

I would like to apply to universities in Canada for a Masters degree. In particular, I would love to secure an admission to York University or the University of Waterloo. However, I've learnt that students coming from the Indian sub-continent must have already done a Masters to apply for a Masters degree. How true is this?

You can pose these questions to the institution you are most interested in applying to.

I doubt you need a Masters in order to apply for a Masters.

In general, I recommend applying for a PhD.  If you decide to stop with a Masters, that's okay.  Check this with the particular institution, of course -- but in general, I think that applying for the PhD program would give you the best chance of financial support (research assistantship or teaching assistantship).


Can I upload a pre-print during peer review that includes changes suggested by reviewers? My paper is in the late stage of peer-review and probably will be accepted once I complete the last minor revisions, but it is not formally accepted yet.
During peer-review the manuscript changed quite a lot because of the helpful comments by the reviewers.

The journal is not open access and therefore I want to upload the manuscript to a public repository like arxiv to make it more accessible.
The last version of my manuscript that I plan to upload is probably close to the final published version once it is accepted.

The publisher of the journal is Wiley-Blackwell, according to the sherpa/romeo database it is in the yellow category:
http://sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/search.php?id=2050&la=en&fIDnum=|&mode=simple&format=full

They allow pre-prints, but it says 'pre-refereeing', so I am not completely sure if it is allowed to upload a pre-print at this stage.

The link to the Wiley policy states that you cannot update the pre-print (submitted version) with the accepted version: "Authors may also post the submitted version of a manuscript to non-commercial servers at any time. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article." The update is only a link to the published version. The accepted version can only be posted open access after 12 month as stated in Sherpa/RoMEO.

A version including changes that came in during peer review is no longer the submitted version.


Is this journal a scam: Requires payment, invited to submit via email, no comments from reviewers, journal not listed on scimagojr rankings After having presented a paper of mine at a conference last summer, I received an email from someone claiming to be part of an editorial team of a journal, to whom my paper was recommended. I sent my work to them, and received an unconditional acceptance after four weeks. But there have been some things that made me doubtful on whether it is actually a good idea to go on and publish there.

I received no comments from reviewers. The journal claims on the website that it is "peer-reviewed" (says nothing on the blindness). When I inquired about comments, the assistant to the editor told me that the editor's comments could be forwarded to me, but that that would take some time. I am currently waiting for this (for about three weeks).

The contact I have with them, exclusively with the editor's assistant, has been interesting. I receive emails at times when people in the US (it is an American journal) are unlikely to work. The person has an Indian-sounding name, and the hours of activity are more likely to be Indian working hours than American.

I could not find anything on the assistant to the editor online. She has referred to me multiple times as "Dr.", even though I am not yet, never used that prefix, and wrote to her after the first time that that is the wrong title. In general, the mails are unresponsive, and only answer one question out of three I asked them, etc.

On the journal website, they cite their h-index for the year 2010, and compare it to those of other journals in 2010. The journal does not appear in the ranking at https://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=JOURNAL+NAME. In turn, I do not know how reputable that website is, but it looks quite complete.

I can not find a list of articles that appeared in this journal on their website. I would like such a list to compare my article to others, and to see who the other authors are, how often their articles were subsequently cited, etc. As the journal's name is consisting of quite generic words, it is difficult to find articles from it on Google scholar - or they are not even indexed on Google scholar, although they claim to be on their website.

I also sent emails to academics that are listed on the Journals website as editors. They were not listed with institutional affiliations, but I googled their names, found academics with the same name and active in overall the same academic field, and wrote them emails, asking about their affiliation with the journal and whether it is legit. I received no replies.

In case of acceptance, I have to pay 320$ to publish, this includes the subscription to the journal for one year.

I am now wondering whether, given all of the above, it is a good journal to publish in, or whether there even is such a thing as a scam in this area of academia that I need to be aware of. Other journals also require a publication fee or even a submission fee, but in their cases, it is more clear to the authors what they gain in return. If it is not a financial scam, could it be a sort of academic scam - an attempt to steal results? But what good are stolen results with no data?

Should I mention the publisher and the journal name in this question?

Definitely a scam. I get these invitations every couple of months, from an organisation whose acronym quite appropriately rhymes with "diarrhea".

  After having presented a paper of mine at a conference last summer,

I will guess that this conference published a list of presenters online, and that this list included your email address and your topic...

  I received an email from someone claiming to be part of an editorial team of a journal, to whom my paper was recommended.

If it's legit, I would expect them to mention who recommended your work. But unless you've produced something world-shattering, it's very unlikely that a legitimate journal would be cold-calling you to invite you to submit.

  I sent my work to them, and received an unconditional acceptance after four weeks... I received no comments from reviewers

Yeah, the quick turn-around plus lack of comments is a pretty good sign that their "peer review" is non-existent. I've never known a peer reviewer who couldn't find something to say, even if it was just "you should cite these eight papers by the very eminent Prof. P.R. Revua".

  The contact I have with them, exclusively with the editor's assistant, has been interesting. I receive emails at times when people in the US (it is an American journal) are unlikely to work. The person has an Indian-sounding name, and the hours of activity are more likely to be Indian working hours than American.

An Indian-sounding name doesn't mean anything on its own; there are plenty of eminent academics of Indian origin all over the world. But the rest of this is definitely suspicious.

The ones who spam me also have a poor grasp of English grammar; while that's not unusual for academics (even the native English speakers, cough cough), it's very suspicious for a publisher. The fact that you can't find information about other articles they've published is also a strong sign of a scam.

It's very unlikely that these people are trying to steal your results. More likely, they're just trying to get a $320 fee out of you for significantly less than $320 worth of work on their part. They may publish your work but it's not going to be worth anything to you, and may even count against you if you list this journal on your CV. It's also quite possible that if you do pay the $320, they'll hit you up for more.

Your advisor should be able to give you some advice on more reputable journals in your field. In the meantime, keep your money, and be on the lookout for more scam attempts - once a scammer gets a response from somebody, they're very likely to target that person for future scams, or sell them on to another scammer.

Edited 8/6 in response to further information with examples of the reviews:

I don't think informal tone or minor spelling/grammar issues from a reviewer are suspicious in themselves. Reviews don't have to be as formal as a published article, and many reviewers aren't perfect English speakers.

What I do notice is that the writing style is quite similar between these two reviews. I can't be sure from the few paragraphs provided, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they were both written by the same person.

One error that did raise my eyebrow was Reviewer 1's repeated "et. Al" which should be "et al., short for Latin "et alia". This is such a common part of academic English that I'm surprised any serious academic wouldn't know it.

More suspicious IMHO is the point that @NajibIdrissi noted: these reviews are very generic. Without any previous experience in your field, I daresay I could write something like this after five minutes of skimming your paper and five more of googling for references that match your keywords, and I could recycle 90% of it for the next review I needed to produce.

There are always more papers that could be included in the lit review, there's always more room to discuss further applications, and every author wants to be told that their model is valid and their methods are sound.


How to talk to previous lab members when applying to a postdoc? I hear that it's common to talk with previous lab members before accepting a postdoc position.
I was wandering what is the best way to approach these conversations.
Should I let the professor know that I am going to email their previous lab members? I don't think they would oppose, and if they do that would be very suspicious. But I'm not sure if it's common courtesy to let them know, or if it's unnecessary.
Also, when I email previous lab members, is there anything I should keep in mind?
Thank you.

Should I let the professor know that I am going to email their previous lab members?

There is no reason to do that.
I suggest it may be more useful to contact people who have left the lab, as they are less likely to feel a conflict of interest when describing their experiences.
Ask about the supervisor's management style.  Ask about how working in the lab advanced peoples' careers.  If you are unfamiliar with the location, ask about difficulties people encountered living there.


Would a journal paying money for reviews, with open access and ad-based revenue, work? I am considering developing a new journal, with an innovative publishing method, and would love to hear some insights. The main concept is to change the review process. I would like to have a extra fast review period, by doing two things:

All the reviewers should be still PhD student or post-doc students. They are the ones with higher knowledge on a specific topic and more free time to quickly review a paper.
Reviewers get paid if they review in less than one week, lets say 10 USD, as an incentive.

Also, all papers are open-access and there are no publication fees. The income would come from ads on the papers. What do you think? Would you publish a paper in a journal like this? Would you be a reviewer?

Your idea has no chance of success. I'll ignore the part about reviewers being PhD students and postdocs and just look at the publishing model, because that alone is enough to sink the concept.

Ad revenue is not enough to sustain a journal. Just consider: who is willing to pay to advertise in a journal?

You might be able to get some ad revenue in a print journal, but as a whole, print is declining (maybe ~20% of the journal market at this point and dropping), plus with the most lucrative markets (developed countries) almost fully using electronic articles, you're not going to reach much of an audience that advertisers will be interested in.
Plus, if you do print your journal, you have printing costs to pay for.
Even if you go fully electronic, academic journals don't have nearly enough readership to attract advertisers. Just compare how many subscribers you need on a YouTube channel to monetize content (I use YouTube because this is also an advertisement-driven service). YouTube wants one thousand subscribers. Academic articles don't come close to 1,000 readers on average.
And to top it off, not only are you generating no revenue (diamond open access), you want to pay your reviewers. Where are you going to get the money from? You can beg your editorial board members work for free, you can use a free editorial-management system, you can outsource copyediting and typesetting to the authors, you can ignore marketing your journal, you can strongarm your institution to host your journal's webpage for free ... but paying reviewers involves cold hard cash.

The only way this can work is if you manage to secure renewable, external funding. Depending on how much you're willing to skimp on a journal's operating costs, as well as on how many articles your journal gets, you might not need more than a couple of thousand dollars every year. However even this level of funding is not easy to get. There's a reason why diamond open access journals are rare.

tl; dr: you can try, but expect to fail.


What to do if a colleague is reviewing an unchanged paper that has been rejected before on my recommendation? Around a year ago, I reviewed a paper for a journal. The originality of the paper was questionable, and content and presentation were severly lacking throughout. Consequently, both another reviewer and I recommended rejection and gave detailed explanations to which the associate editor agreed. The decision including the review reports were sent to the authors.

Now, a colleague of mine just told me of a review request from another journal. Briefly summarizing the content of the paper, I realized that this sounded quite familiar. Expressing my concerns to my colleague, we compared the authors and the papers, and realized that this was exactly the same paper that was reviewed and rejected earlier, nothing has been changed (apart fomr some journal style specific things).

How should we proceed?

If you were asked to re-review an "unchanged" manuscript there are a number of things you can do (e.g., Asked again to review a paper, when the authors don't wish to modify it). The issue is that this is not the case. You are no longer part of the review process.

The first thing you should do is STOP. The behavior you have engaged in so far has been completely unethical and a clear violation of every reviewer agreement I have ever seen.

Your colleague should never have told you about the paper under review.
You should not have mention that you reviewed a similar paper in the past.
Neither of you should have mentioned authors or the title.
The actual manuscripts should never have been shared and/or compared

To a lesser extent, it is not even clear why you still have your copy of the manuscript.

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) provides Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers which can be thought of as best practice. These include:

respect the confidentiality of peer review and not reveal any details of a manuscript or its
review, during or after the peer-review process, beyond those that are released by the
journal
not involve anyone else in the review of a manuscript, including junior researchers they are
mentoring, without first obtaining permission from the journal; the names of any individuals
who have helped them with the review should be included with the returned review so that
they are associated with the manuscript in the journal’s records and can also receive due
credit for their efforts.
keep all manuscript and review details confidential.


Can I publish research in a peer-reviewed journal if parts of it have previously been published in a self published book? The book was not published in English, and I am using a different perspective in the paper, but the same qualitative data.

I didn't find any formal policies addressing this specific case, but my intuition is that it would probably be all right.  It could be analogous to publishing sections of a thesis, which is generally accepted.

If you have a journal in mind for the paper, you could contact the editors and ask their position on the issue.  If and when you eventually submit the paper, you should include a note to the editor explaining the situation, and probably mention this in the text of the paper as well.  If you disclose everything, there won't be any ethical issue; the editor can make the decision, and I expect there would be some good journals that won't have a problem with it.

Factors that might be relevant:

Was the book offered for sale publicly, or distributed privately among colleagues?
How many copies were produced/sold?
Did you retain the copyright on the book?