Research on Biological Networks I have a background in Physics and am currently pursuing a research career in experimental Biophysics. I've spent over a year on my project and am struggling terribly. I'm considering switching to doing theory.

Having done some research on neuronal networks, I'm assuming that transitioning to a group that works on Biological Networks would be ideal. I'm also planning to take courses on Bioinformatics and Non Linear Dynamics. Besides this, how do I prepare myself for the same? What kind of topics do I need to have a strong hold on as far as quantitative aspects are concerned?

Big caveat up front: many people struggle A LOT in their early graduate school career, and this doesn't mean that you can't be successful. A better guide to whether you should switch to theory might be whether or not you find the day-to-day process of debugging your experiments satisfying - even when it fails a lot of the time. (Also, if you like programming much more than being at the bench, that's another good sign for switching.)

If you are early in your career (first couple of years of graduate school), switching may be relatively easy, especially if you want to stay in the same university and department/program. I certainly knew many students who changed advisors early, though relatively few switching theory/experiment.

In general, I would suggest looking at prospective advisors, and talking with their current students to see what you'd need to know, and finding out if they would take students. Classes are useful, but most advisors will have their own recommendations for which are most important. Even beyond your own skills, other factors like research funding, will be critical in which advisors can accept you. Also, personal fit with an advisor is just as important as research area. Because of these points, it is probably better to figure out what group you want to join first, and then see what courses you should take.

I would also recommend that, if you have strong computational skills (programming) and a good physics/analytical methods background (i.e. good grades in core courses or other evidence of this), and are interested in biophysics, there is no need to limit yourself to systems biology / biological networks. There are a lot of computational biophysics topics out there, ranging from bioinformatics, protein interaction networks, computational neuroscience, biomechanics, molecular dynamics, etc., and if you have evidence of flexibility and learning a lot of different skills, you could be considered by groups focusing on topics further away from your past experience than you think.

All that out of the way: for a biophysicist with an interest in theory, other courses that are worth it are things like statistical mechanics, especially something focusing on non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. That could be in chemistry/chemE departments. Within network fields (which I know less well), you might want to infer network structure from data, which means there may be some statistics or machine learning courses that are worthwhile. For biomechanics-related theory, a continuum mechanics class (elasticity theory/hydrodynamics/etc) might be worthwhile.


Corona virus's effect on graduate admissions A great many top US physics PhD programs have canceled their open houses with no plan to reschedule.

Some are intended on running "virtual open houses." Other's are just sending links to information that could be found on the internet regarding their program.

Is the April 15th requirement of a decision regarding accepting grad school offers of admission still ethical?

Is it reasonable to propose that April 15th be moved a month or two later?

A STEM PhD could take anywhere from 4-7 years in the US. That is a non-trivial amount of your life.

You presumably did some research before deciding on where to apply to in the first place. That research is still valid. Any other contact with the institution(s) and faculty add to that basis of judgement.
You seem to presume that there is one uniquely right answer on your choice, and that getting to that one answer requires attending an open house. Likely, almost any choice could turn out well, or turn out badly, all depending on factors totally divorced from the open house.
Note that many people accept without having been to an open house. So, the decision can be made without going to one.
You seem to presume that actions to reduce the spread of the virus are unethical, something that I would hotly contest.


Is it customary to be reimbursed for travel to a PhD interview day? I'm applying for PhD programmes over in the UK and begun to get my first invitations for interviews. Some of them have to be in person as they include a tour of the facilities and such. Unfortunately, travel over here is not cheap and it got me wondering - is it customary for the interviewing institution to reimburse the cost of my travel?

On one hand the invitation emails do not mention anything about the cost of travel but on the other hand I got reimbursed even for travelling to my undergraduate interviews.

If the invitation did not specify that you'll be reimbursed, then assume that you won't.


In my first year of a research postdoc in math, I think I may want a teaching-only career. How should I prepare for the job search? I got my Ph.D. in math in the last year and am currently in the first year of a 3-year research-oriented postdoc at a large public American university. I am finding it harder and harder to focus on research, not necessarily because of teaching, but for various reasons which I don't think are relevant to the question, and I am beginning to think that I would like a career as a lecturer. I enjoy teaching quite a bit, and I think I'm fairly good at it. If, as I originally intended when I accepted the postdoc, I still planned to apply to research-oriented tenure-track positions, I know what I need to do to be prepared for that process (whether at a large research school or a smaller college which still requires research of its faculty, e.g. a tenure-track position with somewhat higher teaching emphasis). But it seems from looking at purely teaching postings on MathJobs that, for example, I will definitely need three letters of recommendation addressing my teaching. I honestly don't know how to go about finding people to write these letters (for the tenure-track career path I would expect to have to get one teaching-oriented letter). I have a teaching mentor who has observed me a couple terms who could presumably write one letter, but I don't know about the other two. Do chairs write teaching letters? I'm frankly a bit afraid to tell anyone at my institution that I'm not sure I want to do research anymore, since they hired me with a reduced teaching load to give me more time for research. I actually really like the place where I am, and think, at this point anyway, that I would like a lecturer position here, but as I'm currently doing a postdoc here, I have no idea how likely it would be to be hired as a lecturer (even with, let's say, an excellent teaching record).

Note that I'm talking about a lecturing position, where the only expectation would be teaching and possibly also service. I'm not talking about the tenure-track jobs with more teaching emphasis which still require some research output (although I guess it's possible, though by no means certain, that the research incidentally produced from my thesis could make me eligible to be hired for such a position). But I think that I really just want to focus on teaching (preferably at the university level).

Not as a complete answer, but as information the questioner and others might find useful:

At an R1 U.S. university, for example, it would be difficult for a postdoc to make a transition to a longer-term lecturer or even adjunct... if only because those positions are spoken-for, and quite competitive in a certain localized sense, which happens (in my observation here in Minneapolis) to not be entirely bad, insofar as there is tacit (which is bad) recognition (which is good) of seniority and experience and such things.

A few faculty may be "outraged" that you "betray" the "research Grail" by deciding as you have, but you have to write that off. Most faculty will be very understanding that you've "achieved clarity", for whatever reason. They will also understand that you need to be able to document teaching and pedagogy and mentoring. NB, it's not just "teaching", but a larger thing, "pedagogy", and a somewhat-different thing, "mentoring". Senior-projects, participation in REUs, and similar, are relevant.

And, somewhat nonsensically, an unfortunate fraction of the up-scale four-year colleges have created the concept that "undergrads do research", so you should be careful to not over-promote any potential disaffection with (actual?) research in your job apps. That is, the spin in those cases would have to be that you've had some epiphany about preaching to the masses about . You'll not want to play that stunt for serious undergrad teaching places, though, because they'll probably think you don't understand (the) reality. :)

So, yes, actively discuss with your faculty there, and actively arrange to have people (faculty) have some acquaintance with the broader range of your activities. NB, "not just teaching", but pedagogy, mentoring, ... maybe outreach... The sane people will be understanding, if maybe not very interested personally, and some should be interested enough to help you document your efforts (presuming you make them!) in the directions you want to claim you care about.


Telling letter writers who already submitted that I am not applying to graduate school Summary of question

I've been getting ready to apply to grad school, and now I have good reasons for not doing so. My letter writers have already uploaded their letters. Basically, it's the last minute, and I'm changing my mind, and not applying. How do I (a) thank them, (b) tactfully tell them I'm not applying, and (c) ask that they still write me a letter next year or the following year?

Details

For some months, I have been preparing to apply to graduate school. I have readied my test scores, research experience, and mostly finished my statements. It is December 1st, and I have already submitted some applications for fellowships. Over the past three weeks, I've sent emails for recommendation letters, which were uploaded by my recommenders (they were written last month, and the prior month). However one thing has happened this week: I realized that I had neglected to research the PhD students recently admitted to the programs to which I have applied. After doing so, I now understand that I am woefully under-prepared for graduate school relative to last year's cohort--even at my safety schools, which are around #50 on various popular ranking sites (I only mention rankings to demonstrate that I was not being overly arrogant in my school selection--though clearly, perhaps I was a little!).

Unfortunately, now, I have an even bigger problem: even if I got into a great grad school, I don't think I could rise to the occasion like everyone around me would, and would probably be very demoralized by this. After much deliberation, I am considering applying next year. Over this year, I will work part-time, attempt to gain experience through personal projects (I am in computer science, and have research ideas, so this is feasible) and teach myself more advanced subjects, and then apply to work in a lab, or apply for a research-based master's degree, in one or two years. I went to a relatively unknown school with few courses in my area of interest, so I think the time will be well spent and increase my confidence and knowledge. I don't think I'm falling prey to imposter syndrome, because, well, the major conference publications, master's degrees at elite universities, and impressive resumes of the PhD students at my safety schools are rather objective measures of my relative inexperience.

Here is my question: how can I tactfully notify my letter writers that I am planning on not applying, while still thanking them for their recommendation, and letting them know that I would still appreciate their letter when I apply next year or the year after that? And faculty, if you were in this position, how would you feel about the student? I really don't want to anger my recommenders. They're excellent, hard-working, wonderful people, and I already feel guilty that I might be letting them down.

I had neglected to research the PhD students recently admitted to the programs to which I have applied.

Please don't compare yourself to others.  There are other, more productive comparisons to make, if you really need to make comparisons.

Compare your transcript with the course sequence at the schools you were going to apply to.  Do you have all, or almost all, of the prerequisites under your belt for your first two semesters?  If there are one or two courses missing, can you take those in winter, spring or summer?

It's often easiest to get a good start to graduate study if one doesn't significantly delay beginning.

I understand that you are concerned you may be being overambitious at this stage.  But if you received or are about to receive a Bachelor's degree, with good understanding and good grades, let that be your can of spinach to help you keep going with the applications.


Best practices for keeping a campus computer network from getting brought down by inappropriate use? I work at a California community college that has chronically underinvested in computing and networking. The school has been gradually increasing wifi coverage, which now includes all but a few areas of campus.

As a result, you can walk through the cafeteria or the halls of the natural science building and see one student after another watching TV shows on a laptop. Yes, it's conceivable that they have an educational reason for doing so, e.g., maybe they're watching "I Love Lucy" in order to research a paper on media stereotypes for their women's studies class. But in reality, I think they just want to watch Spongebob for entertainment.

This causes severe problems, because the network was never designed to be a TV conduit for thousands of students. It apparently was one factor leading to the fact that the entire wifi network went down for the first 6 weeks of this semester.

My school's Acceptable Use Policy forbids various uses such as commercial activity, chat, and playing games, but it does not forbid binge-watching "Breaking Bad" over the school's wifi network. I can understand the concern that once the school starts blocking certain web sites, there is a slippery slope leading toward violations of academic freedom. However, it seems farfetched to say that we have to let students access Netflix while logged in to a student account.

Are technological solutions such as bandwidth caps for student accounts a good option? This would seem to sidestep the issue of academic freedom. Spending our way out of the bandwidth deficit does not seem to be an option; not only do we not have the money, but there is every reason to expect that demand would expand to saturate supply.

Can anyone describe best practices for keeping a campus computer network from getting brought down by inappropriate use?  An ideal answer would describe both a successful policy and how it was successfully enforced without infinging academic freedom.

I see this as a resource allocation problem, not an academic freedom problem. Your network just does not have the resources to support many users with high-bandwidth demand (whether the demand is academic in nature or not), and your school does not want to apportion more money to upgrade network resources.

It sounds like you don't really want to prevent a particular use of the network; if you did, it would be in your Acceptable Use Policy. You just want to prevent a user from hogging network capacity, which degrades the experience for everyone else.

Instituting bandwidth caps (or a similar content-agnostic strategy) to prevent excessive resource use by one individual does not violate academic freedom. For example, Amtrak limits use of WiFi on its trains; streaming music, streaming video, and downloading large files are disabled. This is understood to be a reflection of their unwillingness to spend the money that would be required to support high-bandwidth content, not censorship.

If you want to make sure that students still have access to I Love Lucy and other essential academic content, you can offer uncapped network access in specific areas (e.g., in the library).

Of course, if you plan to implement this, you should announce the change, explain the reason for it, and expect students to be very, very unhappy about it. "Network" is simply one of the resources that students expect from a college; from their point of view, you are failing as a college if you do not provide a reasonable amount of this resource.


Retracting CS (conference) papers Suppose you learn of a confirmed fundamental error in a CS conference paper (for a reputable conference) that smells of gross negligence. Is there any way to get it retracted? Whenever I've asked, people told me that CS conferences don't do that—and I've surely never seen it for PL conferences (though this paper is on algorithms).

While we can't talk specifics, please assume I've already done all the due diligence to confirm the error, down to getting the authors to confirm it.

I understand such errors won't kill people directly as errors in life sciences could, but I'm still concerned. Maybe a more serious version of https://xkcd.com/386/, but still.

The specific case

Years ago (around 2009) I've confirmed the flaw with other experts of the field (let's call them A), who confirmed it with the authors of the paper (let's call them B). I was just an undergrad and not working in the field, so I didn't participate in the conversation. This paper is still cited years later by the authors (as a "preliminary version") without mentioning the error—though a later paper citing it changes a key equation and (maybe) fixes the problem.

*Those experts avoided publicizing the flaw out of professional courtesy—making enemies of the author would allegedly have risked hurting their publication chances. However, they (had to) go as far as citing the paper without mentioning issues in follow-up work. Out of respect, I hence won't mention even the subfield of algorithms or the conference.

I'm also outside of the field—I got involved simply because I was friends with one undergrad doing research with experts A and he just asked me help when he couldn't make sense of the paper by B.

EDIT: I forgot to specify why I say "gross negligence", and I agree that was bad on my part. Here are the neutral facts as best as I can recall them/verify them:

the included pseudocode has a type error in a crucial routine—if you index a matrix you need two indexes, not one. We started investigating because we couldn't make sense of the pseudocode. This was on a second paper specifically about the implementation. EDIT: All 8 accesses to the array in 21 lines have this type error, so it's no typo.
the algorithm fails on the running example. EDIT: by running example here meant the example used throughout the paper. But I rechecked and the offending example is just the 2nd they use.
the paper implements and benchmarks the algorithm it describes against a naive implementation, yet it didn't detect that the algorithm results are (EDIT) incorrect. After you've done 90% of the work, comparing results is pretty easy.

I wouldn't talk about negligence for an error in a correctness proof (which the paper seems to implicitly claim). And maybe the above is not gross negligence in this setting, but it does feel rather sloppy. I'm happy to be corrected though.

EDIT2:

The question starts with "Suppose you learn [of a case that...] smells of gross negligence", then focuses on retraction (not misconduct). You can question that assumption only if no such case exists. I do sketch one example but that's just supporting evidence; the focus of the question cannot be trying the specific case. I'm fine with also discussing this case, but I'm just trying to argue plausibility.
I still think in such a context one should compare expected and actual results, at least once you have implemented both. The guidelines of the German Science Foundation say "good scientific practice includes the following fundamental principles:... consistently and critically questioning all results". Which sounds common sense to me.
I'm sure aware of honest errors (which should also be corrected somehow). Nobody expects all proofs to be error-free and formalized.
Google suggests "negligence" can only be "gross" if it endangers people's life. I'm surely not suggesting that. If that's how it's understood, I apologize for that and amend to negligence.

Correcting errors in conference papers is certainly possible---I have done so myself.

Most reputable peer-reviewed conferences are associated with some sort of society or organization that maintains their archives, e.g., IEEE, ACM, AAAI, and that society will generally have a process for correcting or retracting their conference publications that looks much like their process for correcting or retracting the articles of the journals they maintain.

In many cases, however, a conference paper is superseded by a following journal paper, which effectively becomes the final and archival version.  In this case, while the authors have been less than honest about the flaw in their original paper, the later correction means that adjusting this particular paper in the archive is likely not a critical issue.


Suggesting research topic of personal interest to my PI I am currently performing some purely data driven research as part of my chemistry undergraduate research course. Through this work, I have developed a keen interest in what I’m doing.
Several papers that are similar to the work I’m doing have mentioned the current lack in certain aspects within this research area. This really got me  thinking about how that drawback can be addressed. This would however involve a lot of research and literature search for data mining. I really think that this would be a very interesting topic to pursue further. However, given how my research course is laid out, I should only focus on my current goals.
Regardless, I really want to propose my ideas to my PI and get them interested in this. Due to COVID, our interactions are very limited and only once a week over zoom. Therefore, I don’t feel like I have built enough rapport with them to suggest this. Additionally, given that I’m still an undergraduate, I’m not sure how seriously they would take my suggestion either.
Should I just go for it? Is there a manner in which I should approach topic? I would appreciate any suggestions.
Thanks!

There is a possible downside to your plan that you should also consider along with the discussion with your advisor.
Undergraduate research, unlike doctoral or professional research, is usually time limited. Therefore a long term research project may be contraindicated unless your advisor agrees that partial results are acceptable within your time frame. You might not be able to reach the point of having publishable results. If that is OK, then there are no real issues.
And if it is OK, and leaves you in a place with unfinished but potentially finighable work, then there might be an advantage to it. If the research questions are sufficiently "interesting" and your approach is "promising" then you might have a head start in graduate study, depending on the requirements of any program you enter.
But, before you commit much time and effort, have that conversation with the advisor and be sure that your short term outcomes are good enough to allow you to continue.


What is the difference between predatory publishers and vanity presses? The University of Sunshine Coast's website gives the difference as:

Vanity publishers are publishers that will charge the author a fee for publishing a book ...
While similar to vanity publishing, predatory Open Access publishers seek to take advantage of the Gold Open Access model, whereby the author pays to have an article available as Open Access on the journal website.

This sounds pretty trivial: vanity presses are presumably willing to publish anything, including journal articles, if paid.
If there is a difference, what is it? If there is no difference, why did Jeffrey Beall create a new term?

I've always seen the terms as somewhat distinct.

A predatory journal seeks to deceive and create the impression of publishing a peer-reviewed article. I take the predatory journals to always be engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the academic process (where authors can range from stooges to willing co-conspirators). Here, the reason why authors pay can be imitation of Gold-standard open-access or it can be pay-to-play to defraud their employers.

In contrast, vanity presses are sometimes just really low-tier publishers without malice. I don't think they always are trying to create the impression that what they produce is high quality academic work. The failing from an academic perspective of a vanity press is that they don't have robust (or any?) standards for what they will publish in book form and they don't engage in academically sufficient (or any?) editing practices of what they publish. The product on offer is you can say "I published a book". I think the business model here is that vanity publications don't make publishers money, so they instead charge the authors to break even (or make a profit?).

Regarding your point about a vanity presses willingness to publish an article, sure they can print it up for you -- as a book, but I severely doubt they are going to make it seem like it's volume 4 of the international journal of basketweaving and wickerwork.

I'm sure it varies by field, but in my field as I understand it, journal articles in top-tier journals tell us far more about the quality of someone's work than even books in top-tier presses, because presses publish things of sufficient quality that make them money. As you go down the scale on each side, incentives and motives shift, but the article vs. book distinction remains meaningful.


How can I find a second supervisor? I'm in the second half of my Phd in a technical field in Germany. As it is common in Germany, it is not a structured PhD program but an independent PhD without any course work/mentors etc. I am not very satisfied with my supervisor because he cannot help me at all, since my topic is not his primary interest and he is very busy since he is not yet a professor. I do everything alone from choosing the specialisation of my topic to writing (my first) papers, and I got used to that.
I like my topic and I get the money and besides the bad supervision, my supervisor so I decided not to change the PhD. However, I would really like to find a second supervisor who could give me advise and has a better reputation in my field.

How should I approach potential professors with my request? I would not need too much help or any money, just the name of someone who is at least a little known in this field and I would be willing to do some work for them. Is it very uncommon and unlikely to find a professor who is willing to do that?

I tried once at a summer school to ask another professor and it would have worked out but I experienced afterwards that my supervisor was not at all happy about that so I have to make sure beforehand that he agrees with my choice.

Your last paragraph already says what you have to do first: Talk to your supervisor about potential second supervisors/mentors. You could bring a list of people who you would like to approach and ask about his opinion. Maybe he also has suggestions. Also make sure that he in principle agrees with the idea of a second supervisor.

Then you should be clear about what you want from a second supervisor: Regular discussions in person/email/phone? Feedback on drafts? Discussion or even joint development of ideas? Extended discussion via email? I somebody from a different place the supervisor of which I do not know would approach me about being a second supervisor, I would want to know answers to these questions and probably would have opinions about the answers, too.

The last paragraph also shows that you know at least one way to approach a potential second supervisor. Apart from personal meeting I would not recommend a non-solicited email from your side. If you can't meet the potential supervisor in person, I would suggest that your supervisor would make the first contact and let him/her introduce you.


What is the most cited paper of all time? There was recently a talk at my university of someone who wrote the most cited paper in the top journal of my field. Something like that is usually easy to look up for a single journal, but it made me wonder which would be the most cited paper published in any scientific journal (conference proceedings also count) until now?

Nature put out a list recently of the most cited papers in Web of Science.

At the top, with more than 300k citations, was a methods paper:

Protein measurement with the folin phenol reagent. Lowry, O. H., Rosebrough, N. J., Farr, A. L. & Randall, R. J. J. Biol. Chem. 193, 265–275 (1951).


My PhD advisor thinks my progress is poor. How should I proceed? I am a second semester PhD student. I have no publications until now. In the lab I am currently, we use some sort of academic journal to keep track of our progress. Due to classes and TA workload I did not make research progress for two weeks. When I saw my advisor I had not properly structured my journal update. To make things worse when he asked me how much time I did spend on non research activities I was unable to answer as I did not keep track of time.

This discussion ended up with my advisor saying that he might have to convert me to a master's student if I progress like that. He fears I may not be able to make any research progress within the semester with the current rate. He mentioned this warning will be given only once. He said that I should have adapted to the lab's pace until now.

I recognize that my progress was not appropriate, neither was the way to report this through the journal. However, I felt that being converted to a master student is something I really want to avoid.

Therefore I want to try really hard as my goal is the Ph.D.
However, doubts have clouded my head and  I felt I may also have a collaboration issue. I may need to look for another advisor too, although I still believe that if I don't improve something like that may happen again regardless of advisor.

I believe my advisor is a really good and experienced scientist and I respect him, but:

He has converted other PhD students to Master status in the past.
Also, he is very busy and it is not possible for him to discuss research with me for more than 20 minutes per week.
Other students of the lab manage to make appropriate progress but most of them seem stressed.
My advisor encouraged some students to publish survey papers. However afterward he mentioned that they can not yet graduate as the 6 papers he wants us to publish can only be research-related and not surveys.

In this post, I tried to give both my failings and my worries.

What are your suggestions for my situation?

Should I ignore all these and just try harder or should I change my course of action? Or do both?

It is normal this issue makes you upset as it will have a huge impact on your future. Everybody has doubts, and it is good to explore them and not to rush into things wihtout thinking.

First, about your advisor : he seems to be a respectable person (as you say it yourself) so what he is saying needs to be heard.
Maybe you are not meant to do a PhD and it will be better to do a master. You need to ask yourself why a PhD is important for you?, is it mandatory for the professional goals you want to achieve? Are you willing to sacrifice (hobbies for examples) and work more for it?

If you think your advisor doesn't spend enought time with you, you should say it to him and ask him to provide help : by himself or to appoint to you a more senior student.

Final question you should ask yourself and maybe the most important one: besides your advisor, the puplications and other things, do you enjoy studying/working on the content of the PhD?


How to Constructively Deal with Email Invitations to Scam Conferences or Journals? Today I received the following email which was entitled the same as one of my publications:

Dear Dr. Ian,
I followed your research works which were of extremely high standard. I would like to invite you to the World Pediatrics Webinar 2021 which aims to accelerate scientific discoveries and major milestones in the field of Pediatrics. The conference will be held during June 08-09, 2021.
Conference Website: https://www.▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮-▮▮▮▮▮▮▮.com/
You can directly contact me through Whatsapp: +37▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮
Please let me know your interest so that we can discuss further. Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Ian Watson | Program Manger
World Pediatrics Webinar 2021

I get a few of these scam conference or predatory journal emails a week. It takes about 500 milliseconds to recognize the scam. First, that paper was not of extremely high standard. Second, Whatsapp, really? I dutifully report them as junk to my organization's email platform, but they keep coming.
I've found a couple of tangentially related questions:

How to warn others about a conference-related scam?
How to make sure that a conference is not a scam when you are invited as a speaker?

The first has to do with a specific scam associated with a particular conference and the second is about identifying the scam.
In contrast, my question is about how to deal with the problem once identified, productively.

What arguments can I make to my academic institution's IT department that blocking these emails should be a priority?
If I can't convince my IT department to block the emails for everyone, is there an authority I can complain to? Google? The website's hosting provider? The payment processor?

In addition to the annoyance (which spread over an organization sized number of individuals is considerable and detracts from meaningful academic pursuits), academics fall for prey to deceptive practices all the time [1] [2]. This means potentially hundreds  wasted on registration fees, which are frequently paid by funds provided by taxpayers or charitable organizations.

I am going to focus on your point 1:

What arguments can I make to my academic institution's IT department that blocking these emails should be a priority?

Please don't.
If you manage to convince your IT department to make it a priority to block such emails, then it's quite likely that there will be false positives across your institute. You say that it is straightforward to identify these scam emails, and I have no doubt that as a human, indeed, you can. But there will also be humans writing invite emails on behalf of legit conferences or journals. Those humans may not have English as their first language. They may inadvertently use turns of phrase that you find characteristic of spam invites. As a consequence, some legit invites will be discarded along with the spam invites. The cost of these discards is asymmetrical: the cost of manually discarding spam is a slight annoyance, but the cost of having a legit invite discarded could be a missed career opportunity.
Ask yourself: how many colleagues missing out on legit invitations is it worth for you to no longer have to manually discard the spam invitations?


No response after PhD interview with good feedback + follow-up emails I interviewed ~1 month ago for a PhD position at Institution A. The first email contacts went very well - really quick and nice replies from the PI. I had the interview which went well - as the PI told at the end of the interview and he gave me a comparison with other candidates he had already interviewed.
He told me to expect news from him at the end of the week but unfortunately, I did not get any. So I sent a follow-up email 1 week after the interview, with no reply (~3 weeks ago)
I received another offer from Institution B - a really good one but I still prefer the one at institution A. I need to give my decision ASAP (paperwork, relocation etc). So I sent another email to ask for any outcome to PI from insitution A and to tell that I have received an offer elsewhere.
It's been several days with no news again.
I am quite disappointed. It's okay if I am rejected but well, I think it is important to end things in a good way.
Anyone has an idea of what's happening ?
Thank you !

It's fairly common in academia that you don't hear back after an interview if they won't hire you, more so if the PI appears to be acting unprofessionally as a rule: they shouldn't compare you to your face to other candidates.
One could go over why that is so, but it's best to simply shrug and accept the offer that is definite.


Addressing selection criteria I am applying for PhD scholarship and there is selection criteria and I have to respond to each of them. One criterion is given below.

•   willingness to collaborate and engage closely with industry partners.

The question is, how can I respond that criterion. Not to mention, I have no experience with industrial partners

It asks for willingness, not experience. A simple statement that you are, indeed, willing to work with people from anywhere, industry or otherwise, if it advances the art and the science is enough. Provided that you believe that, of course.

But you also need to be aware that industry partners have their own agendas and they aren't always aligned with dissemination of knowledge. But, as a student, you should be able to get good advice from advisors about how to deal with such things.

Collaborative relationships are generally good as long as they aren't exploitative. So, the advice is to be open, but keep a certain wariness.


How much score in GRE computer science subject test is considered 'good'? I'm applying to MS / MS-PhD programs in CS this fall.

I don't have a good GPA (2.86 on a scale of 4). I have experience as a research assistant under a professor and also a couple of good projects.

Right now I'm working as a developer, so I have around 5 months of experience. I have a GRE score of 314 on 340. I'm giving subject test to improve my chances of getting into a grad school. What score can be considered 'good'? I don't have much time to prepare and I am a little rusty on some of the topics, what is the good advice for a crash course for subject test in, say a week or so?

As @davidshen's answer points out, my answer is now moot, because the GRE subject test in computer science is no longer offered.

For most applications to strong departments, there is no good score on the GRE CS subject test; there are only bad scores.  A score below the 50th percentile is a red flag, indicating significant gaps in your undergraduate CS background.  (The raw score is completely meaningless to most people, even those of us who work on admissions committees; only the percentile score matters.)  But graduate school is about research, not standardized tests, so no GRE score is good enough to get you accepted.

There are a few exceptional circumstances where a high GRE score actually gives some useful information.

As Daniel says, a score in the 90th percentile or better can partially make up for a poor GPA.  (It worked for me; my GPA was worse than yours.)  It's probably not enough on its own, though.  (It wasn't for me.)
GRE scores are useful for calibrating GPAs of students from unknown schools.

On the gripping hand, many graduate programs (like mine) don't require GREs; their admissions committee may not even think to look at your GRE score unless you point it out in your statement of purpose.


Asking my advisor about our lab’s funding situation It seems like funding in the lab in which I am working is getting tight. Since I usually end up spending a fair amount of said funding to buy supplies for the lab and my coworkers, it’d be nice to have an accurate picture of the lab’s financial situation so that I can make more informed decisions.

I’ve pretty directly indicated to my adviser that I’m interested in more details about how the funding situation in the lab is, but it seems my adviser doesn’t want to talk about it. On the couple cases I’ve mentioned it, they’ve avoided directly talking about it or have given me very vague and not very useful responses. I'm sure there's always a great deal of uncertainty in the future of the funding situation, but it would feel helpful to know where we stand at the present moment if nothing else.

I’m currently self-funded, so I’m not particularly concerned about losing my job or anything. I’m sure my adviser would tell me before things got too crazy bad, but I’d just rather not be so in the dark about these things. How unusual is it for advisers to hide this info from their students? Would it be appropriate / inappropriate for me to push further? I realize that funding is probably a somewhat sore and frustrating subject for many professors.

The cultures differ on this point. In some countries, a PI's lab is a bit like his "private" business, or an extension of his/her house. The success of the lab fully depends on the PI's recognition, achievements, and sheer luck with the funding bodies. Naturally, PIs can be over-protective about what happens in "their kingdom", particularly if things are not going well (do they ever?)

In other places the Lab "belongs" to a University, and PI's simply inhabit it, just like postdocs, PhD students and technicians. They have some academic powers and are still responsible for finding the money to keep the place running, but the management powers are to a large extent taken away by HRs, Finance's, Senior Management, etc. It is often, but not always, lead to a better transparency, because University acts in the best interests of all employers, or at least tries to make it look like this. However, in this case PIs may not be fully aware what the situation with their funding is, particularly if University is not doing well.

In theory, as someone working in the Lab, you are a stakeholder and have all the rights to know what's going on and how long the place will run. In practice, the situation can be terribly unpredictable, and even you PI may not know what is going to happen.


As adjunct faculty at four-year university, with no PhD, what should I have my students call me? I will be teaching at a four year university as adjunct faculty. Is it okay to have my students to call me Professor LastName, even if I do not have this title formally? If not, what other options do I have? I quite dislike Ms.. At my old college, I had my students call me by my first name, but instead I got a strange combination of "Teacher" and "Ms. FirstName" and "Miss FirstName" which makes me feel like a kindergarten teacher.

(Note: I have seen this question asked in a variety of ways but not in the case where the asker does not have a PhD.)

To a fairly large extent this can be student driven, actually. The students get into habits of speech. Some places it results in fairly formal address, in which case "Professor" would be fine in the US. Other places it is common to use first names. Your colleagues should be able to tell you the local custom.

In the US, "Professor" has both a generic and a technical sense. Students normally use it as a generic term. Undergraduates, at least. There are some places in which you are Doctor if you have a doctorate and Professor otherwise. Not especially consistent, but as the kids say, "whatever".

There are a few places that impose formal rules, but you'd have been informed of that if it were the case. But, no matter your wishes, the students will likely do what they do.

I once tried to impose "first names only" rules on a set of doctoral students. Some went along ok, but others couldn't make the jump. I was, forever, Professor Buffy to them.

If, on the first day of class, you write your name on the board as "Professor MathStudent1324", most will go along. And if you write "Maria MathStudent1324" you will probably wind up as Maria. But like I said, they will do what feels comfortable to them.


Seeking to pursue research project independently (outside of academia) Hello Academia Community,

I hold a PhD and would like to pursue a research project independent of an university (outside of academia on my own or in collaboration with other researchers). First of all, is that even possible? Second, what governing body do I submit my proposal to for review? Third, could you please outline the process?....I wonder whether if it is as simple as  conducting the research and submitting to a journal?

I appreciate your reply,

M

There are only a few issues. First, yes, you can do such research as long as you haven't signed a contract that gives all of your IP to your employer. This sort of yielding of output is common in industry for employees, but rare, I hope, in academia.

Second, if your research involves human subjects in any way, you probably have to get vetting on your research proposal from an ethics body. In the US, that would be a university's IRB, or some equivalent. Most reputable journals won't accept a paper involving human subjects without an external ethics review.

But if there are no impediments, just do your research and submit it in the normal way. If you don't want your university's name attached to it in any way, your affiliation can just be "independent researcher".


Should I share my horrible software? After I had published my paper, some people asked me to share the software that I developed. At first, I was very happy that my paper attracted some attention, and I was happy to share not only the binary but also the source code, case studies etc. But looking at my software, I feel very embarrassed.

My software is just horrible: the source code is just a mess, containing several of my unsuccessful attempts; I have never used design patterns, so duplicate code is everywhere; for simplicity and quick implementation, I often prefer recursions to loops etc etc.

I'm always under pressure to produce new results, and cleaning those code would cost me significant effort.

My question is if sharing this horrible software will give people a very negative impression of me? Would it do harm to my career if the people I share are prospect collaborators, employers, as they work in the same field.

Yes, you should.

First, most scientific software is terrible. I'd be very surprised if yours is worse than average: the mere fact you know design patterns and the difference between recursion and loops suggests it's better.

Second, it's unlikely you'll have the incentive or motivation to make it better unless, or until, it's needed by someone else (or you in 6 months). Making it open gives you that incentive.

Potential upsides: possible new collaborators, bugfixes, extensions, publications.

Potential downsides: timesink (maintaining code or fixing problems for other people), getting scooped. I'll be clear: I don't take either of these downsides very seriously.


Potential academic career in very different fields There's this question about doing research in two very different fields, but my question is somewhat different. I have serious academic interests in two very different fields: one in computer science/mathematics, but the other would be considered comparative literature/cultural studies. I could hardly think of any way to combine those two academic interests (well, I know of digital humanities, but that is not what I exactly want to do).

Nevertheless, I wish to continue research in both areas as an academic, although not necessarily at the same time. Clearly, a possible route is to go one way and then do another PhD and switch mid-career, but I am not sure if this is a good idea. But on the other hand, I am not sure if this is even possible without a mid-career career change.

This isn't impossible, but would be very difficult to manage. Trying to earn degrees in two disparate fields at the same time would not really be possible for anyone unless they have an exceptional mind and drive to match. This might be you, of course.

However, assuming that you have the credentials it might not be very possible to actually pursue matching positions in academia. Academic couples usually have a problem finding work at the same institution just due to a mismatch in the needs of various departments over time. One member of a couple might find a great offer while the other can't find anything at the same or nearby institution. That won't be exactly your issue, of course, and you might be able to get one good position in either of your fields and then use that position to make contacts to get something in the other. But I think that depends a lot on individual circumstances.

Your suggestion to pursue one now and the other later seems like a good one. Hopefully you can choose one that (a) is feasible to enter now and (b) will satisfy you if the other options fail.

All that doesn't imply, of course, that you don't have a worthy goal. People who know a lot of things and can write and do on a lot of topics are worth having, though the academic establishment in most places isn't especially well set up to reward them properly. There are a few exceptions, perhaps. Oxford (UK) comes to mind with their college system rewarding diversity of thought.

Perhaps a way to think about it is this. Which of these fields cannot be done without a credential? Can I pursue the other, independently for now, uncredentialed? If that is the situation, it might be a solution. Similarly, in which of these is it more important that I build a reputation? There are plenty of academics in various fields who are also novelists, for example. Not the same thing, I realize, but different mind sets for the two activities.


Citing different papers which use different notation for the same concept, Not sure if this is the place to ask about this. But for lack of knowledge of a better resource, I turn here.

When citing papers which use the different notation for the same model, is it better to leave the notation as is when citing each source, or, to retain consistency conform to one notation?

If I were to conform to one notation, does the more recent source take priority when choosing notation or the earlier source? Additionally how would it be formatted when quoting the source with the altered notation?

This probably varies between fields, but in my field, mathematics, what I"d do is to explain the notation that I want to use and then express other people's results in that notation. I'd probably say something like "XXX proved [citation] a theorem that, in the notation explained above, says YYY."


Will journal editors contact you if your book review has been rejected? I was sent a book to review for a journal. Book reviews of the particular journal are peer-reviewed. It has been 3 months after my submission but I still haven't heard from the editors.

How long does it take to decide if a book review is accepted or not? Since a book review is rather short in length, I am wondering if the time frame for peer review will be shorter too... Is it a common practice that editors will contact author even if the book review is rejected?

Many thanks.

In two of the journals I help edit (both in the field of medicine and health), book reviews are commissioned by the Editor. We identify potential authors, choose one and invite him or her to participate as a book reviewer. Those that agree are sent a copy of the book together with some instructions about what is expected of them. Then, they are entered into the manuscript management system under a separate code set aside for commissioned pieces. This system differs in two distinct ways from that used for typical submissions.

The Author is reminded of the deadline.
The Commissioning Editor is allowed expedited review.

When the submission is received, it goes onto peer-review and the Commissioning Editor makes a recommendation that is discussed during the typical manuscript meeting. Whatever the disposition of the manuscript -- Accept, Revise, Reject -- the author is informed. This is true at any stage in the process.

Book reviews are way way down on our priority list. They serve as "space fillers". No one cites them, very few read them, no one reacts to them. Thus, they are regularly bumped for more of the regular fare -- research articles, editorials, clinical practice briefs, etc.

We have never had a case in which a manuscript was rejected without the authors being informed. This is because they have the right to appeal the decision. More importantly, it's just plain wrong.

I note that this has been resolved already. However, I want to end by saying that the Associate Editors, Commissioning Editors, Deputy Editors, Managing Editors and the Editors-in-Chief are human. You should feel free to contact them if you have questions in the same professional manner you would contact the teachers or principal of your child's school. After all, it's your manuscript and they wouldn't be doing so well if you'd submitted elsewhere.


Effectiveness of grouping students to balance skills In the past, when forming student groups in class I've always allowed the students to form their own groups, which has certainly made them happy as they tend to form around social circles. As a side note, students at my school go together as classes so they have years where they know all the other people in their class quite well.

However, I'm considering doing things differently this time. I'm thinking to actively form the groups in such a way that strong students are in groups with weak students and average students - that is, groups are balanced and there are no 'strong' or 'weak' groups. I believe I can simply randomly pick students for each group and as long as strong, normal, and weak exist in roughly equal numbers, I will naturally achieve my goals, at least for the most part.

What I'm really wondering is if anyone knows the effects of student groups being formed by teachers as opposed to being formed by students themselves when those students have a strong social connection because of traveling though university as a group.

Edit: The class size is 70 and the group size is five.

Edit(2): While the studying will be done in teams, individual members are assessed individually - social loafing will hurt the loafer the most.

I have a practical suggestion based on a course I used to attend.
It was a natural continuation of another course (which was a requirement), and the majority of the student body from the first course was proceeding to take the second course.
The only team leaders were picked by the professor, in a sense that the best students from the previous class were team leaders, and were free to form their group as they wanted.
This ensured several things:

no "elite" team with only the top students

the groups were formed mostly to students liking

some degree of balance was naturally present
(e.g. we grouped on purpose with 6:4 in favor of "stronger" students, because we were allowed to distribute the assignment grade on our own, and that way non-perfect score still meant everybody got approximately the grade they wanted which coincided mostly with their effort: non-perfect project was not a tragedy)

on the previous class, a small number of students were actually "pushed" to go the extra mile, do exceptionally, and provide a team leader for their social group

From the student perspective, at least, it worked pretty well. If you say the student body is not changing that much from class to class, maybe something similar could work.
The downside might be that an "elite" group is clearly identified, but if it is based on objective criteria, and not seemingly the random whiff of a professor, it does not seem so bad.


Is there a pre-publication access for ACM journals? After a manuscript is accepted in a journal, usually it takes serveral months before it actually gets actually published. Many publishers now provide online access to the published papars, before they get printed, and even before the typesetting.
Some of the ACM journals have a section called "Forthcoming Articles" in their homepage, but clicking on the articles in this sections leads to nowhere! So, I wanted to know if there is a pre-publication access for ACM journals or not.

Here is an example:

ACM Transactions on the Web (TWEB)

I have searched for some of the articles of this type in third party pre-print servers, but I couldn't find anything.

My experience with ACM Transactions publications, as both author and editor, is that they do not generally offer any sort of early access.

I find this rather strange for a computing society, but suspect this may be because they also have fairly liberal preprint policies: authors can put early versions of their article up on arXiv or similar repositories.  Many ACM journal articles are also extended versions of conference articles, so that is another route for accessing information that you may be looking for.


Applying to grad school - Need to indicate history in previous not so good school? I'm applying for grad school. The application asks to list out all schools attended previously.

However, long time ago I attended a not so good school and I even felt the degree was not accredited, so I quit (with graded transcript). Later on, I completed my undergrad in another school.

Do you think I should indicate this bad school in my application? If I do need to indicate, what I'm afraid is that it would be hard for my future grad school to verify my status in this bad school. I'm not afraid of grade or whatever, but just feel like it's not worth it to be indicated. If I don't, would there be any issue later on?

You should disclose any previous schools when asked.

If you didn't like your previous school, that may or may not be a topic for the interview. However, if you choose to hide this information, consider the following:

did you transfer credits from your "bad" school to the "good" one? The admissions will probably ask where the missing courses are.
did you start in your "good" school from scratch? The admissions will probably ask what you were doing in the meantime.

Either leads down a rather uncomfortable conversation path.

On the other hand, if you are honest from the start, I imagine that the admission persons don't even care that much and won't mention it.

Bottom line, it is never a good idea to hide facts when applying anywhere.


How to deal with my fear of large audiences? I am having problems facing audiences. During my primary and secondary school period I had inferiority complexes due to my size. Therefore I always skipped and ran from debates, but now I graduated with a good grade from university. I am a teacher now and still have this phobia of facing crowds. No matter how I prepare, whenever I stand in front of the crowd, my voice will be shaking. I really need your advice because I tried every method, but they are not working and it's depressing.

If you haven't tried one of the beta blockers prescribed for performance anxiety/stage fright, they're worth looking into.

For me, using propranolol before presentations has been much more helpful than I ever expected, and has even had carry over effects. (Basically I suck at talking to most people most of the time, but now I suck less!) Just having the experience of speaking without the physical effects of anxiety turned out to be powerful. Something about breaking the feedback loop, I guess -

The fact that you mention your voice shaking, especially, makes me think beta blockers might help you.


Recently published paper deliberately not citing our very relevant work -- anything to do? Note that the difference between this question and a related question (Recently published paper does not cite my very relevant work) is that the authors in my question are fully aware of our work, whereas, in the related question, the authors were not aware of OP's work.

A recent paper did not cite our very relevant work.

There are significant overlaps among the scopes of the papers, and one of the important figures and the related conclusion are almost identical.

The leading author of the paper in question has been informed about our work even before we submitted the paper. I've asked for a reason for not mentioning it, and the answer was that our paper was noticed during the revision of the paper, and the authors do not feel obliged to mention it.

Is it OK to not mention a paper because of ``seeing it too late?''
Regarding this: does the date of submission/acceptance play a role?

Our publication date is before their submission date.

You have no real recourse. Authors can cite what they like and snub others for no reason. Plus, you can't cite everything so someone's going to get left out. But if it seems purposeful it very well may be. I would send your paper(s) to the snubbing PI and say something like 'looks like these slipped past you'.

It's in their best interest because of your work truly is that related, you'll probably review their papers eventually.


Ramifications of withdrawing publication offer (question from student editor)? I am the editor of a student-edited journal at a graduate school. We extended a publication offer to an author that has published with the journal in the past, and with whom I do not wish to burn any bridges. The normal process of an offer goes like this: (1) extend the offer, (2) author either accepts or rejects, (3) send copyright agreement, (4) author signs and returns copyright agreement, (5) we edit and publish the article.

The author accepted the offer within the time frame (step 2), but we have not progressed beyond that. I have to withdraw/rescind the offer because we have maxed out our page numbers for this year. I tried telling the author that I would be happy to work with the incoming editor in chief to see if they want to make him an offer to publish next year, but he insists that because he accepted the offer we are now obligated to publish it next year. I reminded him that we have not sent him a copyright agreement or entered into a publication contract, and even if we did so the journal reserves the right to terminate the agreement at its sole discretion. He essentially said that his acceptance of the publication offer formed the publication contract and now we have to publish him or else (said he turned down other offers, etc.).

I feel terrible about the situation (we've tried our best to never put authors in this position, and have never had to rescind/withdraw an offer before). Since I've only experienced this from the editor's point of view, I'm wondering what published authors have to say about the situation? Is it your understanding that once you accept an offer you've formed a contract with the publication, and they are obliged to print it? Have you ever had an offer withdrawn, and did it burn all bridges with that institution/publication?

I believe the author is in the right here. Accepting an article is morally binding and should commit the journal to publish it, barring exceptional circumstances. Authors should be entitled to rely on that commitment.

Although you may not have any legal obligation to publish the paper at this point, to refuse to do so would be extremely unprofessional and reflect very poorly on the journal. Given the deadlines, you can't publish in the current issue, but you should queue it for publication in the next issue with available space, ahead of any other articles not yet accepted.

Your idea seems to be that the incoming editor should have sole authority to determine the content  of the next issue, and as such that he should have the right to decide not to publish the article if he so chooses. I would disagree with that. I believe the incoming editor has a  professional duty to treat your acceptance of the article as binding on him as well. If you want to think of the journal as a continuing entity, rather than a sequence of unrelated anthologies, there needs to be continuity of this kind.

It is somewhat awkward for the incoming editor, as now he will have less space to fill with articles he selects. He may have a right to be annoyed with your poor planning, but that's between the two of you; you shouldn't make the author suffer for it.

I'd make exceptions only in very unusual cases, such as if the incoming editor discovers fraud or plagiarism in the article, or finds that your review process grossly violated the journal's stated standards.


Mentioning slipshod undergrad research or not in top graduate school applications? I am recently writing my statement of purpose (or research statement, if you prefer this) for my graduate school applications (in the field of EECS). I have two conference publications, paper_A in one mediocre conference (1st author) and paper_B  in one famous (but not yet top-tier) conference (2nd author).

I am completely happy with paper_A, despite its publishing venue being mediocre, simply because I did it completely myself and knew exactly why I was doing that. So I had a great time talking about that work in my statement.

On the contrary, paper_B, although accepted by a famous conference, really tortures and discourages me a lot while I am writing about it. Being the 2nd author, I now feel that there doesn't make much sense doing that work, and what we have claimed is weak and untenable. While elaborating on paper_B in the statement, I even gradually lost all the confidence about myself, which I have gained from writing about paper_A!

My targeted schools are those top-tier schools. So I am afraid this slipshod piece of research may even backfire, since the critical faculty may find my work lousy.

So should I simply delete that paper from my statement and CV? But, its publishing venue is indeed a famous and widely acceptable one. Or should I present the complete me to the committee with all my works? But, will that piece of slipshod research backfire and hurt me?

P.S.: One side information that may help. paper_A is in the area that I wish to apply for, and paper_B is more like a side work, which I don't wish to continue in my graduate research.

As an undergraduate, you are not responsible for the scope and scale of research you are not directly leading. If a graduate student or PI is the one in charge of the work, you will not be "dragged through the mud" for having worked on it. In general, you are given the benefit of the doubt—you are asked to contribute to a project, and you do it.

I don't think any committee is going to take a dim view of having published two conference papers while still an undergraduate. (And any committee that does probably represents a department you don't want to be at.)

If you are concerned about the impact, though, I would mention but not emphasize it. If you don't mention it at all, and somehow it turns up later on, it will raise more red flags than if you at least mention it in passing.


Minimum thereshold for scholarship I emailed a professor in Australia for a PhD program. In the response, and as a part of that, he told me "For scholarships, you need to be at least 85% and over". What does it mean? Is this refer to GPA or something else?

It may be GPA. It may be rank in your class. It may be your percentile on the graduate exams. I agree with @GrotesqueSI: The answer is to email the professor again and request clarification.


Should you request graduate school recommendation letters only from those that know you as a researcher? In a discussion with a friend of mine who is applying to graduate school in physics, she was worried that she wouldn't be able to get a good recommendation from one of her advisors because she hadn't done much creditable research under that advisor. I suggested that since she has two other recommendations from other professors who she had done research under, she could ask for a recommendation from a professor who thought highly of her academic (i.e. non-research) performance.

I was surprised by how negatively she responded to the idea: she would much prefer a mediocre letter from a research advisor than a good letter from someone who does not know her as a researcher, but does as a student. I reasoned that her research credentials would probably be spoken for with her other letters, but she didn't seem to accept this reasoning.

Is it generally true that a PhD program in the sciences looks more favorably on less-than-glowing recommendation letters about an applicant's research experience than on positive letters about his/her academic performance? Even when his/her research is attested to by other letters?

If it is not true in general, does it hold for programs in the experimental sciences? Does it vary between fields? (I am a mathematics student, and to my knowledge this question doesn't apply as well to mathematics programs.)

Graduate schools admitting students are looking for evidence of ability as (or at least strong potential to become) a good researcher. Therefore, letters of recommendation that do not discuss research at all are simply not nearly as helpful to us than letters that do.

However, a mediocre letter of recommendation can be damaging to a student's chances of admission. Someone who isn't enthusiastic and immediately willing to write a letter should not be asked to write one; the "hit" to the student's admission chances simply aren't worth it.

So, under the circumstances, someone who is willing to write a very good letter that can testify to academic talent is certainly better than a weak to mediocre research-based letter. But a letter that only talks about a student taking tests well and "acing" a class is not really helpful. A letter that talks about, for instance, an in-depth class assignment, or can include details and observations from outside of class, would make for a much stronger and more useful letter.


How should be your relationship with your PhD advisor What kind of relation should one have with their supervisor ?
Could one talk informally with them ? would you get their phone number to discuss things on the phone ?
Thanks

This depends on personalities. For some it is perfectly acceptable to be very informal. For others, such as mine, a more formal relationship was needed. But, even in a formal relationship, you need to have your questions answered and concerns addressed. But it is really a matter of "style" how you go about that.
So, the first thing to do is ask the advisor what they prefer and how frequently it is "good" to touch base. Even with a formal relationship, an advisor might want a progress report every couple of weeks (or more, or less).
But work it out initially. And, you want to have a good relationship so that they will be willing to support you after you finish, as well as during your degree years.
Of course everything was, and we hope will be, in the absence of a pandemic.

Note that different advisors rank different parts of their job differently. Some value their own research very highly, which can be a problem if they aren't as helpful as they should be. I often worry about untenured advisors for this reason (and once suffered because of it until I switched). But, I'd just guess that phone conversations with advisors are pretty rare (though mumble mumble pandemic).

And you might also want to look at my earlier question and its answers on this site: How do you build a healthy and productive relationship with your supervisor?


Good slide design for teaching? When I am preparing slides for a course (as I have been today, weekend be damned), aside from questions of pacing and exposition, I often find myself asking various questions about the layout of slides such as:

Should bullets generally be introduced one-by-one using animations or should the entire slide be displayed immediately?
Is animation generally good or bad for lecture slides?
What is a good approach to take for titling slides?
Should I include "separation slides" to chunk content?
What is the optimal amount of information per slide?
Slides should be numbered, but is it better to give the total number of slides on each (e.g., 4/20) or just the current slide (e.g., 4)?

These are all small questions but I think they add up to something non-trivial in the overall didactic potential of the slides.

I have my own opinions on these questions and I feel that I have a good intuitive sense of how to structure slides, but my hunches are just hunches.

Hence this question is looking for either:

Pointers to scientific studies or other well-argued material on good slide design for teaching
First-hand answers to the above questions (and related ones) accompanied by solid argumentation/anecdotal experience (rather than just subjective preferences)

I'm looking for answers that specifically target teaching rather than research presentations. (For me, there is a significant difference.) I'm also looking for answers that target slide layout and design rather than talk structure.

And though I appreciate that the notion of good slide design varies between different subjects, I still think that there is a meaty intersection of good practices that one could follow across all disciplines. It is precisely this intersection that the question targets.

My students thank you in advance!

On a side note, here's a nice slightly-related question on what to do with the last slide.

This morning I watched a video about how powerpoint is killing our ability to teach properly. It can be seen as a lesson in bad slide design. One key message is if you are reading your slides to the students, you are not teaching. Ultimately, slides should just contain key information, and you should tell the rest of the story.

Regarding some of the other points:
animation of text should be left to Walt Disney;  there should be one idea per slide (slides are free!);  separation slides are a good idea to let the listener know when topics have finished, which is especially helpful if the separation slides are blank (or even black!).

Less is more. If you want to give the students more, prepare a handout.


Our professor does not make any effort to engage with us I don't know if this question is appropriate for this site, nevertheless, I will do my best to explain the situation. And I'm sorry if the title does not fit the question very well.

The thing is, one of our professors does not basically make any effort to engage with us in any way.

All his lectures look the same: he literally just reads his own lecture notes. And that's all. Well, he does scribble a few things on the blackboard, but basically, everything boils down to him reading his notes in a thorougly monotone voice for two to three hours.

He does not care whether we listen or not, nor whether we understand or not. When somebody tried to most politely suggest him that maybe it's not the most efficient method of teaching, he dismissed it, saying "that's how it works at the university".

None of our other lecturers do the same. They encourage us to take part in various activities related to their subjects, use different methods of presentation, but generally - they make an effort to actually teach us and (make us understand) maths, physics etc. The situation is especially dissatisfactory, as most of my group are really interested in the subject he teaches and his way of "teaching" is particularly discouraging for most of us.

My question is: is there any way we could - at least - try to change things a bit? I mean, make him actually teach us, not just come to class, read lecture notes and walk out? How should we approach this issue?

Given that you've described the other lecturers at your uni as being engaged, I would contact one or two of them and tell them the situation. They would know your local context and have advice on what to do.

At a given university there will be somebody whose job it is to supervise the teaching of the faculty. At larger universities a given department will, for example, have a Associate Head of Undergrad Affairs (or some similar title) who would be the appropriate person to bring the issue up with. The lecturers will be able to point you to that person, or may be willing to talk to your lecturer directly about their teaching.


Does it make sense to "pause" an academic career so that I can pursue financial independence and self-fund my research? I graduated with a bachelor’s in the humanities last year. I would have preferred to continue studying, but I don’t have the money, and I have found very few opportunities for full funding where I live (in the EU). I’m originally from the States.
I work in IT, and given how the wages are at present, if I buckle down and exclusively focus on work, I could probably save up enough in 5-6 years that I could live completely off of conservative investments (index funds). I would work at a US company (where wages are high) and live in central Europe (where costs are low).
My question is: from an academic point of view, does it seem reasonable that the benefits of self-funding my research would outweigh the disadvantages of delaying my career by at least 5 years?
For the purposes of this question, please assume that my financial assumptions are realistic. I realize I will need to do my due diligence there.
More details / clarifications:

The plan would be to attend graduate school in Europe after achieving financial independence, and then self-fund independent research after that. By "self-fund," I mostly mean paying my living expenses; my field does not require expensive equipment, travel, etc.
My concern is that at 30, my motivation and ability to re-enter academia will be much less than it is now, both because I’ll be older and because I will have spent all of my youthful energy on non-academic work. Obviously, 30 is young, but still, I’ve been warned that motivation and capacity to learn really decreases from one’s 20s.
I think one advantage of this idea is independence. I am in the humanities and have a far-left persuasion. I've heard that junior faculty have to research what their seniors want to see, rather than what they’re interested in. I recognize the need to consult senior colleagues., but having to censor myself would defeat the purpose of doing research in the first place, for me.
It seems to me that academics have to waste time and give up autonomy in order to get grants. I could avoid all of this by self-funding.
It's unfortunate that my IT work (which requires study and effort) has no overlap with my research interests. So, I would have to put research completely on hold until saving enough money, and then would never use my IT knowledge again.

It seems implausible that your plan can work: You can't hope to draw more than 5% off an investment per year, so even a moderate income of $50k (or equivalent in your country) will require you to accumulate about a million dollars. It seems improbable that you will be able to sock away this much money in 5-6 years, post-taxes, unless you have a pre-tax salary on the order of half a million dollars.
So what that means for your current situation is then that you'll have to save for far more than just 5-6 years -- and that you'll miss some of the best years of your life where you can establish a career, a family. In other words, I think that the premise in the title of your question is flawed and that you'll miss out on some of the best parts of your life.
(As a side note: In your 30s, you probably will want to have a partner and family at some point. It's conceivable that you could live of less than $50k per year if you're living by yourself frugally. But you can't do that if you have a family and children: They have needs that may exceed your own, and what's acceptable as a living abode for you may no longer be for your family.)


How to list both journals and conferences on your CV when you have worked in two fields with different publication cultures? I used to be in a field where journals were much more prestigious than conferences, so I kept journals and conferences in separate sections (assuming that people would care a lot less about the conferences).  Now I have switched to computer science, where conferences are the main venue of publication, and my only first-author paper is now a conference paper.  Do I still keep journals and conferences separate?  It feels weird to put my only first-author paper in the same section as a random poster presentation my coauthor gave.

I'm also thinking of having one section for "publications," and listing all the papers reverse-chronologically, except for the non-important conferences, which I'd put at the end.

I work with this situation myself right now, as I am active simultaneously in two fields with these opposing publication cultures.  This is further complicated by the fact that some of the publications I am most proud of are not peer reviewed in any fashion (e.g., standards documents).

I thus simply organize all of my publications according to categories and try to include enough information that people from different fields may at least understand that there is a culture gap.  The current categories in my CV are:

Journal Articles
Book Chapters & Theses
Peer-Reviewed Conference Articles
Peer-Reviewed Conference Abstracts
Workshops, Symposia, and Seminars
Published Whitepapers and Technical Reports

This allows me to distinguish between conferences that people should take seriously ("Peer-Reviewed Conference Articles") and those which they should view as "light weight" ("Peer-Reviewed Conference Abstracts").  Conference poster presentations that haven't even received meaningful peer review I don't even list at this point, though at an earlier stage I would have put them down as another category.


Under what option should i upload a revised main document when using manuscriptcentral? [please edit this question or propose a better title, English is not my native language]

Recently my paper was accepted with major revisions in a journal using  mc.manuscriptcentral in its submission process.

I revised my paper and edited the main document, and now i want to upload it now, but there is still Authors bio in that document, so under what should i upload it, the website proposes the following choice ?

It should probably be "Main document". The reason it says "- with author details" is probably because, as you said, your article has already been accepted. So, the label "Main document - with author details" probably means that you should now add your author information; you should no longer hide it as you were probably required to do in the double-blind peer review stage.

I'm not absolutely certain, but based on the details you provided, that seems to be the most likely option.


Why do most people think it's a bad idea to read from slides? As many of you probably know, almost all advice regarding doing better academic talks includes universal advice to not put too many words in any one slide, and to not read straight from slides (this is always thought to be a sign of a bad talk).

I used to agree with all of this because it sounds reasonable, and anyway that's how I've written my own talks so far. But I went to a conference late last year where a speaker did exactly the opposite of this advice (my field is mathematics). He was literally reading his slides verbatim, and each of his slides was packed full with long sentences. And yet, it was one of my favorite talks of the conference, and for me (a Ph.D student) it was clean, clear, and easy to follow despite the fact that the material was completely new to me. I do think a large part of the reason I found it so clean and clear was precisely because of the talk's structure, and not despite of it.

That experience made me rethink my prejudice against speakers who read out of the slides. For some people, it may be a superior talk strategy to alternatives, especially in academic fields where the details really matter.

So, I am not convinced anymore that it is general (or even, usual) good advice to not read from the slides. Why do people think it's such a bad idea? And please don't say "it's lazy" or "could just read the slides instead of listening to the talk" because in practice, neither of these perspectives demonstrate why an alternative is better at communicating the information, which is what really matters.

Research in the field of multimedia learning suggests that in most cases, "people learn more deeply from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration, and onscreen text". This is known as the redundancy principle.

  Previous research has shown students learn better from multimedia
  lessons containing graphics and narration than from graphics,
  narration, and redundant on-screen text (Kalyuga, Chandler, &
  Sweller, 1999, 2000, 2004; Leahy, Chandler, & Sweller, 2003;
  Mayer, Heiser, & Lonn, 2001; Moreno & Mayer, 2002a, 2002b;
  Mousavi, Low, & Sweller, 1995). This finding is known as the
  redundancy effect (Mayer, 2001, 2005c). For example, in a study
  by Moreno and Mayer (2002b), participants viewed an animation
  about lightning formation. The first condition had narration accompany
  the animation, whereas a second condition received
  redundant on-screen text in addition to the animation and narration.
  The group that received the redundant on-screen text performed
  worse on subsequent retention and transfer questions than
  did the group that received animation and narration; thus, a redundancy
  effect was found.

(source: [1])

Why?

  Adding redundant on-screen text detracts from the learning
  processes highlighted in Figure 1 because it creates extraneous
  processing—such as inducing the learner to visually scan between
  the caption at the bottom of the screen and the graphic and to try
  to mentally reconcile the incoming spoken and verbal stream. If
  the learner has to waste limited cognitive capacity on extraneous
  processing, the learner will be less able to engage in the cognitive
  processing needed for learning—essential and generative processing.

(also from [1])

Are there times when it is good to include some of the narration in a slide? Yes. For example:

  The most straightforward contribution of this work is to add an important caveat to the redundancy principle “People learn more deeply from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration, and onscreen
  text” (Mayer, 2005c, p. 193). In revising this statement of
  the redundancy principle, we can add the following limitation:
  “except when the on-screen text is short, highlights the key action
  described in the narration, and is placed next to the portion of the
  graphic that it describes.”

(also: [1])

In a meta-analysis of the literature on the redundancy principle:

  [A]dvantages of spoken–written presentations over spoken-only presentations were found for low prior knowledge learners, system-paced learning materials, and picture-free materials. In comparison with verbatim, spoken–written presentations, presentations displaying
  key terms extracted from spoken narrations were associated with better learning outcomes and accounted for much of the advantage of spoken–written over spoken-only presentations.

(Source: [2])

You perceived the talk with redundant written and spoken text to be beneficial to you; this is consistent with the research as well:

  Research on metacognition has consistently demonstrated that learners fail to endorse instructional designs that produce benefits to memory, and often prefer designs that actually impair comprehension. Unlike previous studies in which learners were only exposed to a single multimedia design, the current study used a within–subjects approach to examine whether exposure to both redundant text and non-redundant text multimedia presentations improved learners' metacognitive judgments about presentation styles that promote better understanding. A redundant text multimedia presentation containing narration paired with verbatim on–screen text (Redundant) was contrasted with two non-redundant text multimedia presentations: (1) narration paired with images and minimal text (Complementary) or (2) narration paired with minimal text (Sparse). Learners watched presentation pairs of either Redundant + Complementary, or Redundant + Sparse. Results demonstrate that Complementary and Sparse presentations produced highest overall performance on the final comprehension assessment, but the Redundant presentation produced highest perceived understanding and engagement ratings. These findings suggest that learners misperceive the benefits of redundant text, even after direct exposure to a non-redundant, effective presentation.

(Source: [3])

Note that the results above refer to multimedia presentations, i.e. those that include graphics. Presentations that do not include graphics may benefit from redundant spoken-written text (see [4]). But presentations that do not use graphics violate the multimedia principle, which states that in general, "people learn better from words and pictures than from words alone".

For more information on principles of multimedia learning, see The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning. If you're looking for something shorter, here is a brief summary of the major principles of multimedia learning, and here is a presentation by Richard Mayer.

References:

[1] Revising the redundancy principle in multimedia learning. Mayer, Richard E.; Johnson, Cheryl I.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 100(2), May 2008, 380-386. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.100.2.380

[2] Verbal redundancy in multimedia learning environments: A meta-analysis.
Adesope, Olusola O.; Nesbit, John C.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 104(1), Feb 2012, 250-263. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0026147

[3] Learners misperceive the benefits of redundant text in multimedia learning . Fenesi, Barbara; Kim, Joseph A. Frontiers in psychology 5, 2014. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4088922/

[4] Verbal redundancy in multimedia learning: When reading helps listening. Moreno, Roxana; Mayer, Richard E.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 94(1), Mar 2002, 156-163. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.94.1.156


Publication statistics per research company Is there any website or other places that give some publication statistics (e.g. number of published papers, number of citations, etc.) per company? Ideally I would like to have those statistics computed for some time period, e.g. for every year.

Note that I am talking about industrial research organizations here, not publishing companies.

To find the number of citations to people at a company, you can use Scopus or Thomson Reuters Web of Science (formerly ISI Web of Knowledge) and, in the affiliation field, write the name of the company.

Example:


Why is novelty mandatory for a Ph.D. degree? The institute I am studying at has added the following requirement recently:

  A PhD scholar must publish two papers in his/her corresponding field
  in SCI journals.

This means that a student cannot get PhD without two SCI rated papers. To the best of my knowledge, novelty is a mandate for such journals; hence, novelty has became mandatory for a student to get PhD in my institute.

In this context, I have the following query: Why is novelty mandatory for a PhD degree?

Consider a scenario in which a student is ambitious and wants to do research on an open problem or famous unsolved problem in his/her field. The student cannot attempt to research such a topic since research may be locally saturated, and he/she cannot come up with a novel idea. Does the rule not restrict the research on such problems? I can see the alternatives like tutorial papers, survey papers, etc., but some of these require only highly experienced geeks.

Note: Assume that neither the PhD student nor the PhD supervisor is an extraordinary person in that particular field.

Novelty is a basic requirement in research because without novel results, the work is of at best limited usefulness. It's not useless - review papers are useful - but it's less interesting to the people at the frontier. In the case of a PhD, it is supposed to signify a student is now capable of doing research. Research (as opposed to literature review) necessarily involves new and novel results. Therefore novelty is a requirement.

If I understand your last paragraph right, you're wondering about open problems which might be too complex to solve in one go. But in that case, you still get new and novel results - they might be partial results, but they're still results. The same goes for research using new methods that turn out not to work: knowing where not to look is not as useful as knowing where to look, but by narrowing the parameter space, it's still useful.


How do you record your lectures? While reading this question, and specifically Chris Gregg's answer, I started to think about recording my lectures in order to help students review, help students who missed class, and generally provide a way for people to learn about the subjects I teach.

So, how do teachers (with the same goal as I wrote) record their lectures? Do they simply ask someone to record them with a video camera? Do they go in and do more serious editing like you see in Coursera videos where the video transitions between the lecturer's face and slides being drawn on by the lecturer (as described here)?

I'm curious what my options are, considering my university provides zero support for this idea of recording lectures.

If my lecture is done via a presentation (not my preferred method, but necessary for some classes), I record the audio of my lectures along with a "video" of the slides I use. I use Camtasia to record everything, so the only other thing I need is a microphone.

When I give lectures at the blackboard I don't record them. However, for those lectures I provide a fairly detailed set of course notes.


Is it reasonable to ask a professor about the strength of a recommendation letter (after they have submitted)? I have asked a professor that I took a year long project with to write a recommendation to support my application to a well-known, selective masters programme in the UK (my university is based in South Africa). The letter has already been submitted but the problem is, I have no idea how strong the letter is.

Some useful information: I think the project went fairly well and I will not have to interact with this professor again in any formal capacity.

Question: (1) Do you think it is reasonable to ask the professor about the strength of the letter he has submitted? (2) If so, how should I go about doing this?

I would like to do this for the following reasons:

If the letter is not so strong, I have other people who are willing to write me strong letters for my other applications (though none with the same reputation)
I can possibly try to change references for the current application (that the prof. has already submitted the letter for) since I have not submitted the actual application.

Any advice is welcome and appreciated.

It would be quite acceptable to ask for a copy of the recommendation letter (although your professor is not forced to supply it). That is probably a more reasonable request than asking if the recommendation is strong, which may require the professor to justify the recommendation.

Once the recommendation is submitted, you would also be entitled to request a copy directly from the institution you've applied to, as this is covered under the Data Protection Act.

Now, as someone who both writes references for students and reads them, I can tell you that the norm in the UK is for them to be restrained and factual. References that are full of hype are generally treated with suspicion.

Academic referees in the UK are also rather limited in what they are allowed to say. There are generally university guidelines which dictate the format. They usually have to be internally signed off before they can be submitted. Then a copy is kept on file.

Choosing referees is something that needs to be done carefully. Even with the best will in the world, an in-demand professor is not likely to be able to give this their full attention.

During my busy periods, when I was writing references for students regularly, I could get up to 20 requests a week. Normally, I'd have to write those in my free time, in the evenings. So, even though I would want to do my best for every student, references for anyone other than students I'd worked very closely with would become necessarily formulaic.

Choosing a referee who has had the opportunity to get to know you, who you have impressed in some way and who is not run off their feet with other activities is generally a sound strategy.