Does a full professorship necessarily imply tenure in American Universities? I'm having some trouble parsing the implications of all the job titles that get thrown around in academia. Does someone whose job title is just "Professor" necessarily have tenure, or are there nontenured full professors?

It depends on the institution whether it is even possible, in principle, to have nontenured full professors.  At some institutions, being a full professor automatically means you have tenure.  At other places, it is merely overwhelmingly likely that a full professor will have tenure.

Any case where somebody is a full professor but does not have tenure is likely to be a bit odd.  In my department, there have been, in the last twenty years, two people who had the title of "professor" without being tenured.  One of them was a senior person who the department hired, but for some reason they could not hire this person directly with tenure.  Instead, they were hired as an untenured full professor, with a two year tenure clock.  They turned in their tenure file after one year and got tenure with no problem.  The other person is a former tenured full professor (and department head), who moved to an entirely soft money position.  He was allowed to keep the title "professor," but he is no longer tenured, with his position coming up for review every three years.


Teacher put all of the answers to the homework in white font? We have Science homework due tomorrow and it's basically a "fill in the boxes" homework about energy in Microsoft Word. Well, my friends and I quickly realised that the teacher had put all of the answers in white font in the boxes. So, all we need to do is change the font to black and there's our homework.

I really don't know if this was an accident, intentional or a trap to test which of us are honest or not. So what do I do?

Do I just turn the font to black, read it over and laugh at how easy it was, or do I delete the boxes and actually try? I know which one I should do, of course, but if all the people in my class have done that and the answers are the same, what do I do?

There are several reasons you should do the work yourself, ignoring the filled in answers:

It is the honest thing to do.
You will learn far more from the homework that way.
The filled-in answers may not be the right answers. For example, the teacher could have used a file from someone who had done the homework for calibration, and made some mistakes.
If the teacher sees a lot of 100% correct answers, with exactly the same wording and formatting, they may become suspicious and realize what was going on. In that case, it may be very important to be able to honestly say you did the work yourself.


Online Quiz Times Given Last Minute I am an Engineering undergraduate student at a Canadian University and have had trouble in a course with regards to time to complete online quizzes. The course syllabus says there are 4 quizzes worth 4% each throughout the semester and gives the weeks that they will be conducted on, but does not give the date or time of the quiz. The quizzes are online using our university teaching website that all courses use.

The first issue arose after the very first lecture. During the first lecture nothing was mentioned about the first quiz. The Saturday following the lecture the professor emailed us and said that the first quiz would open Monday morning at 8am and be due at midnight. He also said all further communication would be through the teaching website we all use. (The syllabus also says all communication should be through the website). I planned to do the quiz (it's only a 10 minute 5 question quiz) Monday after my other classes in the evening around 9pm. I go to do the quiz only to realize it is closed. I check my email and apparently the professor emailed Sunday evening at around 7:30pm saying that the quiz will be closed at 8pm on Monday. I don't check my email every single day as it has never been a form of important communication for any class I have ever taken. I do, however, check the class website daily and there was not a single notification about the quiz. Every other course I have taken has given notifications on the website. I felt like this was unfair as the professor has said clearly on the syllabus and in his earlier email that all communication would be through the website. He then proceeded to change the quiz time (which is not on the syllabus) the day before on a Sunday evening through an email. I emailed showing him the discrepancy in a very professional manner and he simply replied with "check your email, things may change".

I found this last minute change to be very unprofessional and was upset at losing 4% of my mark. I have never missed a single assignment or test in all my 4 years of university and I attend every single lecture.

I would have taken my complaint further but in class the professor said that since some students were not enrolled in the class yet since it was only the first lecture that the lowest marked quiz would have its mark replaced with the average of the other three. Although not a direct remedy to my problem and not exactly fair I let it slide since it was good enough and I don't like complaining.

Now 4 weeks into the course the same thing happened. I check my email Tuesday morning to find that the professor emailed again on a Sunday (two days prior) saying quiz 2 is now open until Monday at midnight. I missed the quiz again. I checked the class website all throughout the weekend and Monday, no notifications were given. This is the second quiz I have now missed because I don't check my email every day and there is no remedy in place for missing it, it will be a zero. I have not yet contacted the professor or anyone else yet as I don't really know what to do except maybe talk to the department chair.

I feel like these last minute quizzes are not professional and should be announced in the lectures ahead of time or at least have their dates and times on the syllabus and if things change a notification on the class website is the bare minimum that should be done to communicate this.

Am I wrong to suggest that the professor is being unreasonable with the way he is communicating the quiz times? Should they not be set ahead of time or at least communicated in class and on the class website as opposed to email one day before? Do I have a case if I talk to the department chair?

The professor has been jerking you around (whether intentionally or not).

For now at least, you will need to check your email more often during the target dates.

It is fine to present your concerns to the department.  (In my view, being a good citizen of one's university includes providing constructive criticism that will help improve students' educational experience.)  I recommend presenting your concern in a calm way.


Scholarship case - Accepting more than one university offer I have applied for the said foundation as well as the Chevening Scholarship to pursue my Master's degree (Postgraduate).
Recently, I received two universities offers.
At the beginning and as a Syrian student, I did not know that accepting an offer may affect accepting other offers. So I accepted a university with an average ranking.
Now that I have received an offer from a better university, can I accept other universities' offers? Knowing that I need to accept at least two universities offers, because the universities that I applied for in the first scholarship differ from the other one. And each university is giving me 4 weeks to accept the offer, if I did not accept the offer I will not be able to provide my offers to the scholarship committee after 4 month if they picked me. Many thanks. I would really appreciate a prompt answer for this dilemma.

You didn't realize that saying to one university "yes, I accept to study full time at your university" meant that you couldn't accept the same thing at another university? Even as a student of another country, you should have understood this.
For the matter of needing to accept 2 different universities for 2 different scholarships: you can't. Either you need both scholarships to agree to both pay for the same university, or you need to make do with 1 scholarship.


How is an online article referenced if there is no obvious author? The referencing style I am using for online newspaper articles is thus:

Karlsen, T.-K. (2013) For scouts, the South American youth tournament is hard slog, not high life. Guardian [Online] 28 January. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2013/mar/28/scout-south-american-youth-championship-football [Accessed on 28/03/2013]

But how do I reference an article with no obvious author? For example, this is posted on the news website Balkan Insight, but has no author. So far I've been including Balkan Insight where the author name is, but also where the publication name is - i.e. where 'Karlsen' and 'Guardian' are in the previous example. And putting the in-text reference as Balkan Insight (2013).

There are probably several answers depending on the situation and on the standards in your field.

First there are papers published in journals with no authors that are referenced as:

  Anonymous, yyyy. Paper title ...

In some cases an organization can be the author. this is true for, for example, governmental organizations, NGO's etc. In these cases the publications are offically published. References would be listed under the organization (often abbreviated) such as:

  WMO (World Meteorological Organization), yyyy. Publication title ...

To reference online material is always a bit more complicated but I guess the anonymous author can be used and the source organization listed as the "Publisher" such as the The Guardian in your example. The point is that the source is known but not the author. If you have a lot of these sources there will of course be many "anomymous" floating around in th etext and reference list which may be awkward. In such a case you may consider using the organization as author.


Undergraduate doing a research term - supervisor has not assigned me any work to do other than reading, after one month. What can I do to fix this? I am an undergraduate student, and am using a term to study with a professor. We got along well in his class and I thought he had a keen interest in helping students.

From what I understand, initially I was supposed to work on a project that some other group would deliver to us. We waited until a week and a half ago, and abandoned that. In the meanwhile, I have basically been reading full-time. Unfortunately I find it very difficult to read for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and so have been losing a lot of motivation at work. Typically when reading technical stuff, there is something I can apply it to which makes it easier to remember and motivate for. Instead, I am reading through entire textbooks, cover to cover.

I have asked my supervisor what sort of project I can start working on, but he has instead told me to continue reading and that I need to be "more proactive". Is it normal for me to have to propose my own projects when I have no idea what the state of the art really is? I feel as though he is blowing me off. I have proposed projects before but he has said that they aren't relevant enough to the field.

The last working month has been one of the most miserable experiences of my life and it's been negatively effecting my professionalism, work ethic and personal relationships. What can I do to rectify this, given that I've already spoken with him? Do I need to resign?

As an undergraduate, it is not normal for you to be expected to come up with the research project on your own (that is what getting a PhD teaches you!). When I started out I was typically assigned a graduate student advisor who would let me work on their project or would work directly with me to propose another.

There is typically a lot of reading that you will do when first starting out, but not applying it directly to a project or research proposal after a month indicates that something needs to change.

I would first talk about these matters with someone who understands your supervisor (graduate student, postdocs etc.) to understand more about your supervisor's expectations. Then have a talk with your supervisor with your concerns (they are valid!). If your supervisor continues to not be helpful I would consider finding another. It's tough to start over, but it would be better in the long run if you can find a better lab that is more nurturing to your growth as a researcher.


Is it negatively viewed by PhD programs if I completed my masters in 3 years instead of the standard duration of 2 years? I am doing my masters in Mathematics in Germany and I wanted to switch my major area from Geometry to Probability Theory after my first year, so that after my masters I can get a PhD in Statistics.
This would mean that I would finish my master's degree in 3 years instead of 2. Is that negatively viewed by graduate admissions committees in US / Europe?
Edit 1: The candidate must write their masters thesis in the major area and also get  more than a certain number of credit points in the major area
Edit 2: I might be getting the opportunity to be a TA in the stochastics department if I do take another year. So money might not be ab issue(except maybe in the mid semester break)

A Master's in Mathematics is presumably what is necessary for a PhD in Statistics (check with universities you'll apply to): There's no need to switch. It'll cost time and money. Instead, change the classes you'll take as soon as possible.
Bureaucrats are looking to tick-boxes: They'll presumably be looking for a undergraduate-, postgraduate-degree, or both in Mathematics. They'll likely not consider the classes you took.
A PhD supervisor may be interested in the courses you've taken. Their opinions will vary considerably. Get in touch with some candidate supervisors and ask them.
To a supervisor, a Master's with fifty percent more classes may make you more appealing to a candidate with fewer classes. But, it isn't necessary, so I'd suggest you don't give-up a year. You can learn whatever you don't know during your PhD.


Write about coursework/background or research first in letter of intent? (and misc. question) I am graduating next spring with a Math and Statistics BSc, and am currently applying to graduate math and statistics programs. There is program in particular that has caught my attention. It's essentially a pure and applied stochastics Ph.D. program in the UK. The program description mentions that coursework constitutes an important part of the program in the first few years, and that relevant math background is important in the admissions criteria. However, in the latter few years research becomes a critical aspect of the program, and consequently research potential is also important in admissions.

Thankfully I have a strong coursework and research background that is relevant to this program, and will describe both of these aspects in my letter of intent. What I'm not sure is which I should discuss first. My impression is that since selection committees are viewing hundreds of applications, it is necessary to get the most important information written early on in the letter. I'm unsure if I should mention my related advanced coursework or my related research first. I would guess that research should come first since research potential is less common than a strong coursework background. Any thoughts on this is appreciated.

Another question I have is: should I mention the names of some of the faculty I've worked with in my letter? From what I've been told my previous and current research supervisors are respected and well known for their work in numerical methods and stochastics (respectively). I'm also currently taking an advanced graduate course in stochastics with one of my referees who is apparently very well known as an expert in stochastics. Something like "in my current research supervised by Professor X... (etc)"?

Thank you!

Put aside the details for a moment and think about the larger picture. You want your application to support your suitability for the program and your likelihood of success. Everything should support that and you have limited space to express it. For a doctoral program research is primary, so research experience, especially if guided by well seasoned and respected professors is a key message. Naming them is easy and may help and can't hurt.

As to already being grounded in the required coursework, that is not trivial, but less important. There is time after you begin to decide which courses you need and which you don't, but having a solid background is positive. Your CV or transcripts will already speak to these, of course.

So, the message is, I'm a great candidate, my background coursework and research has well prepared me, my interests and work habits will propel me and others can attest to my dedication and good results. Fit everything else around that message.


How can I change the assignments in the syllabus in a way that is fair to the students? In my syllabus there is series of writing assignments that are worth 10% of the final grade.  Over the course of the semester there were supposed to be 4 assignments, however as a result of snow days and other extrinsic issues, the students have only turned in one of these assignments and I am not likely to be able to get any more in by the end of the semester.

Additionally, when I designed the assignment, I did not fully appreciate how difficult it would be for the students and how difficult it was going to be to grade.  At this point it is only going to be reasonable for me to assign grades based on whether the student put some effort into the assignment (i.e., check+, check, check-, 0).

So I am left with the situation where 10% of a student's final grade could be the result of one assignment that was graded only on completion.

As I see it, this poses 2 problems:

The final grade of the students that did the assignment will be artificially inflated, and
the final grade of a student that missed the assignment for whatever reason will be reduced to a degree disproportional to the offence.

Is there a way to deal with this situation fairly?

(I have considered moving the assignment to another assignment group (e.g., counting it as a classwork assignment) but then I am not sure how to redistribute the orphaned points in a fair way.)

Since the assignments did not go as intended, and it is obviously not the students' fault. I would just turn this part of the grade into extra credit. For example, students who did the assignment get +2.5 points added to their final grade, and those who didn't, don't get anything.


Getting into new PhD after failing comps Last summer I failed my comps/quals of my PhD program. I did not have a chance to take a second try, as my spring semester grades were poor. The first semester (fall) was good, though.

I could not fully concentrate on my studies during the spring semester as there were some family issues in my home country.

My advisor believes in me and said I should continue my studies. I am still very much motivated to do research in my area.

There are couple of concerns, though. How will my poor performance in the spring semester (and consequently failing comps) affect my chances into getting to another program? How should I approach my personal statement?

Two bits of advice.

First, your SoP should be as positive as possible without hiding the setback. Talk, as usual, about your goals and how your preparation makes you a likely success.

But, I think more important, use your adviser's personal/professional contacts to help get you in the door somewhere. The advisor, even beyond a LoR, can boost your chances if they are willing to speak to others they know who can help you.

If you say "I failed comps, but ..." it is an entirely different thing than a professor saying "He failed comps, but ...". The professor is putting their reputation on the line for you. It is likely to be respected.


Google Scholar citation missing because of name mismatch? I am a PhD student and have only a few publications under my belt. I just noticed a Nature paper cited my Master's thesis but it cited my first name as my last and my last first. I am a tad worried that this problem would propagate. On top of that, I tried to add this missing citation to my Google Scholar profile by adding an article manually with the messed up name (as in the references of the work citing mine) but the citation didn't show. For some reason, this citation was shown on ResearchGate and I just claimed authorship to it but would this affect the Google Scholar citation count though?

Would appreciate any suggestions around avoiding name being mis-cited or fixing citation count.

I would suggest that you email Nature, and the authors of the publication providing proof that they have not cited your work correctly. If either of them address this issue - which they should - then you should end up with the citation being correctly attributed to you.

On a side note I would suggest that you sign up to ORCID so that you claim a unique identifier for your research.

  As researchers and scholars, you face the ongoing challenge of
  distinguishing your research activities from those of others with
  similar names. You need to be able to easily and uniquely attach your
  identity to research objects such as datasets, equipment, articles,
  media stories, citations, experiments, patents, and notebooks. As you
  collaborate across disciplines, institutions and borders, you must
  interact with an increasing number and diversity of research
  information systems. Entering data over and over again can be
  time-consuming, and often frustrating.

  ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-driven effort to create and
  maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent
  method of linking research activities and outputs to these
  identifiers. ORCID is unique in its ability to reach across
  disciplines, research sectors and national boundaries. It is a hub
  that connects researchers and research through the embedding of ORCID
  identifiers in key workflows, such as research profile maintenance,
  manuscript submissions, grant applications, and patent applications.


How are junior professors evaluated for promotion? This is a naive question, coming from someone who has never had an academic job. I'm asking what is involved when a junior professor is promoted. My question is wide, since I don't understand academic life. Some answers are obvious, but I'd still like clarification:

Funding. Professors I know seem to be obsessed over funding. They're constantly writing grant applications and are constantly unhappy at how much of a lottery it is. However, since the professors are presumably paid a salary by the university, so what if they fail? It's not like the university will stop paying them, will it? Especially if the professor is tenured.

Does the source of the funding matter? Suppose Alice is a beginning professor. One day Bill Gates calls Alice and says "I'd like to be your PhD student, and I'll give you $1 billion of funding". Will her head of department be delighted? Will Alice immediately be promoted to full professor? Is the idea behind the $1 billion that Alice will now be able to hire an army of postdocs and PhD students (can she actually do this especially if the university doesn't have office space for them?), which will boost the department's research output and therefore improve the university's ranking? If so, does that mean academia is essentially "whoever has more money wins"?

Suppose that Alice had won $1 billion at the sweepstakes instead, and decided to put that money into her work (can she do this?). Does the same scenario as the above play out?
Research output. I imagine this is related to funding - if one has more funding, one can hire more postdocs and PhD students. But at that point, it's the postdocs and PhD students that are doing the research. The professor might have his or her name on plenty of papers, but never as a first author. Presumably, the papers will look good on the postdocs' and PhD students' CV, not so much on the professor's. Is that the case?
Teaching output. Presumably this must count for something or there'd be no reason for departments to have "best teaching" awards. I also imagine that departments will try to spread (mandatory) teaching loads around so everyone teaches roughly the same number of courses. This doesn't include Honours, PhD etc students however, and as far as I can tell different professors have different numbers of PhD students. Is it an advantage to have lots of such students? The obvious answer is "yes", but if so, I don't understand why professors don't just take on students until they hit capacity. They probably have a lot more prospective students than actual ones, especially at big universities, which is why the admission rate can be so low. If this is related to not having funding to pay the students (aren't students expected to pay for their education? This certainly applied at undergraduate level), does this mean that a self-funded student will have no trouble getting admitted even to prestigious universities?
Other ventures. I imagine this must count for something, or I don't see why a professor would agree to serve on a journal's editorial board. It's usually not a paid position, and it's time-consuming. I also see professors do things like start companies and try to sell commercial products. Question: why would the university tolerate this? It means the professor is putting time into something unrelated to the university. My contracts with (non-academic) employers typically have a line "you are expected to devote your full attention to affairs of the company". Does getting involved in these non-university activities help with getting promoted?

All of this is going to be very field- and country-specific. I will answer for biological/biomedical sciences at UK universities.

The career progression at most UK universities is:
Lecturer → Senior Lecturer → Reader → Full professor

In the UK there is no such thing as tenure unless you got it before 1987. However sacking someone from any job in the UK is much harder than in the US.

Promotion from lecturer to senior lecturer usually involves demonstrating:

You can secure on-going substantial funding for your research. This means getting multiple grants at different times that bring the university substantial overheads (not all do).
You have some leadership role in teaching – you have created new modules and now co-ordinate them, or are lead for a degree program or a reaching in a sub field.
You have at least one major admin role in the department, such as head of admissions, chair of the equality committee, head of outreach, exams co-ordinator etc.

Reader is normally a purely ceremonial position, that comes with no salary or benefits increase and usually awarded in recognition of a being a leader in your research field.

The big step to professor (also known as  a chair) is generally entirely research-based (although some places are now awarding professorships on the basis of world-leading innovation in teaching). Promotion to professor usually involves obtaining references from international colleagues saying you are where it is at in your field, worldwide. You will have brought in funding above and beyond what is normal, probably more than once (e.g. funds to start a research institute, or a large, multicentre program etc). You will become your universities leader in whatever it is you do i.e. Prof Such and Such, University of Neverland’s chair in X studies.

As for your specific questions

Funding is all. If you don’t get funding, you can’t do research. If you don’t get funding, you definitely won’t get promoted. In my university, if you don’t get funding you won’t pass your probationary period to get a lectureship, and at many places if you don’t keep getting funding, you are in danger of losing your job.  Not all funding is equal, because not all funding comes with overheads: that is, if I apply for a grant to buy a $ 100,000 piece of equipment and the funder gives me $ 100,000, then the university gets nothing. There are different ways of seeing this. You could see it as the university wanted to profit from the grant. Or you could see it as the university needing to find the funds to pay my salary, heat, light and clean my office etc. Making the university a lot of money is primarily what gets you promoted.
Research outputs. A cynic would say that as far as the university is concerned, research outputs are adverts that allow you to get more funding. Either by advertising to funders that you are worth investing in, or to companies that might want to licence your tech, or to student choosing a uni. A special case of this is the quadrennial ranking of universities by the government on their research outputs.
Teaching output matters in so far as having a reputation for good teaching helps you recruit undergrad/masters students. As for PhD students: in my field at least, getting a student is treated like winning a small grant. A PhD students costs someone around $ 195,000 over the course of their four-year studentship ($ 85,000 in tuition fees, about the same again in stipend for the student, and about $ 25,000 in research costs). Any student who can come up with that themselves is likely to be welcomed with open arms. Very few can.
Being an editor and sitting on committees is a service to the community that even universities recognise is necessary for academia to continue. It also brings prestige. For the professor, being editor of a leading journal is a good way to demonstrate you are at the top of your field. As for companies: if you are starting a company, you are likely to be doing so using IP licensed from the university. Spin-outs also look good when a university is try to demonstrate to funders/government that they are good at doing research that has an impact on society (the so-called impact agenda). In the US of course, once you are tenured, you can spend your time doing whatever you like.


How would a small liberal arts college view a PhD from Germany or the UK? Factors other than teaching ops? Main concern: I am looking at PhD programs in Germany and the UK (vs US programs). Ideally, I would like to end up at a small liberal arts college (I got my BA from one). So I know I want a program with teaching requirements. I think this rules out France and Switzerland, but I believe many German PhD programs have teaching requirements. I also think the UK has teaching opportunities as well.

Are there other factors I should be thinking about?

Specific Concerns I've thought of

First, am I wrong in my assumption that there are only small liberal arts colleges in the US? Or are there places in Europe, where you can get the same research, teaching, and mentorship balance?

I know that liberal arts departments are smaller. Should I be worried that a foreign school that is good in my field might not be known in the department that I am applying to?

Also, I had a friend at Oxford, who said that she would need to do a postdoc (in a field that doesn't normally require them), because US universities will not see her 2 year masters + 3 year PhD, as equivalent to a master + 5 year PhD in the US. I'm in the sciences and my field doesn't normally require a masters. Should I also be concerned?

Reasons
I am currently a Master student in a European program that allows us to do research in multiple countries (theoretically anywhere that will take us, but we have specific connections to France, Germany, and Switzerland). So far I really like the science culture here. I like how easy it is to collaborate with and even work in different labs. In my experience, PhD students in the US just don't have the mobility that EU students. I have an interdisciplinary focus, so this is very attractive to me. I also am interested in a very specific topic and there is better funding for it in Germany and (I think) in the UK.

In the US, it is hard to find a school with more than one lab working on the topic, I'm most interested in, so I like the idea of applying to the lab rather than the school. I am willing to consider working on related areas, but I'm not sure if I can spend 5 to 7 years working on something that is only tangential to my main interests. On the other hand, my Master program has a general focus and I would be interested in taking more classes that are specific to my main interests.

It's hard to get a job teaching in America unless you do the degree in America. This is because so much of getting an academic job, especially at a small teaching college is going to depend upon personal connections.

Think about it from their point of view. The hiring committee wants somebody who is a good scholar, a good teacher, and a good citizen of the department (in some order, which factors are more important differ from school to school). It's really hard to evaluate somebody in depth along all three of those axes. It's even harder when you have a pile of three or four hundred applications for one job. So you use shortcuts.

One quick shortcut is no Ph.D. in hand, or a Ph.D. from a place that has a bad reputation. That cuts your pile to 200 or so applications. Then you look and see who doesn't have any good publications or presentations. Now you're down to 100 or so candidates, all of whom are very strong, but you're only going to be able to interview about 20 or so. So the next thing you look at is letters of recommendation. The way you get from that pile of 100 to the pile of 20 is by having letters of recommendation from people that members of the search committee have heard of. There's a chance that they've heard of your famous german mentor, but there's an even better chance that they haven't. Take two scholars X and Y of equal ability, but where X is an American and Y is a German. Let X and Y have equally good publication records and so on, it's still far more likely that the search committee has heard of X than that they've heard of Y, because they've got to conferences with X and heard X's papers and been impressed by him over drinks, etc. This matters hugely in terms of getting hired in the ultra competitive world of academic hiring, and so doing a degree abroad is always going to handicap you.

The only exception I can think of are Oxford and Cambridge. American scholars tend to know the names of those folks, and those two universities have such a strong reputation that you might not get penalized in this way having the degree from them. Everywhere else is a danger zone.


I have found an error in a textbook. What can I do about it? In the book Electronic Devices and Circuit Theory (10th edition) by Boylestad and Louis Nashelsky, I have found a technical mistake.

What can I do about this?
To whom should I send an email, the authors or the publisher? (Also, there is no email address mentioned in the book or on the Internet to which I can send my suggestions.)
I have never written an official email of this kind. If I should send an email, how should I write it?

First of all, see if the book has a newer edition, and try to look at a copy and see if it corrects the error.

If not, then try to find:

The publisher's web page for the book
The author's professional web page, which hopefully has some mention of the book.
An unofficial errata list (google the book's title and "errata" or "corrections").

Check in both places for an errata list, which may already have a correction of the error.

If not, then it is worth trying to report it.  Writing the email is the easy part: just politely point out that you believe there is an error on page NNN, and explain as completely as possible why you believe it is incorrect.  If you think you know how it could be corrected, you could explain that as well, but it isn't strictly necessary.

The hard part is figuring out where to send it; publishers and authors should make this obvious, but often they do not.

For a major established textbook (which I assume this is), I would focus on the publisher, since the original author may well not be actively involved with the book anymore.  See if there is any contact or feedback information on the book's web page.

If you are a faculty member, the publisher probably has assigned a representative for your institution.  You may get a better response by contacting your rep directly and asking them to forward your report to the appropriate person.  If you are a student and this is your course text, you could ask your professor to contact the publisher's rep.

If there is an unofficial errata list, it should include contact information for the person who's maintaining it; send a report to them.

For a text or monograph with a smaller audience, you will probably do better to contact the author directly; look for contact info on their professional web page.

It's a good service to the community to report errors in books so they can eventually be fixed, so thanks for doing this.  However, if the publisher/author make it a huge pain to do so, that is ultimately their problem.  Make a reasonable effort to report it to an appropriate person, but if you don't succeed, there's no need for heroic efforts.


Will time off spent doing things not related to my research interests count against me when applying to PhD programs? I recently finished my undergraduate degree in physics and I currently have a year-long research internship. My original plan was to apply to graduate school (physics PhD) in the fall. However, the more I think about it, the more I'd like to take additional time off to pursue non-physics related interests (think: traveling, creative writing) and also to spend time at home with family (I grew up in a small-ish city where I doubt I could get a job related to my research interests).

I have been told that I have a pretty decent shot at getting into top-tier graduate schools (4+ years research, honors thesis, > 3.9 GPA, etc.). As has been pointed out previously, there seems to be a consensus that taking time off and getting experience related to your field is viewed positively/not negatively. However, my question is, would taking additional time off for completely non-science related pursuits significantly decrease my chances of being accepted to competitive PhD programs?

Physics isn't my field (Mathematics), but I can't imagine a program that would think less of you for taking time off.

The danger is that if it goes on too long you lose your "edge" and get "rusty" both at Physics and the academic life in general.

However, there is little worse than starting an intensive graduate program facing any sort of burn out. You want to start out with a maximum of energy and enthusiasm because the road ahead won't be easy. Your credentials are good, but the competition, if it exists, in grad school will be from people just like you - the best.

In my own case, I might have finished the doctorate earlier than I did had I taken a year to unwind from a very intense undergraduate program.

Finally, if you take time away and then apply, make sure you are ready with a good answer if asked why. Life is more important than Physics (for most, anyway).


How much can you 'laymanize' a PhD presentation? I am in my first year of a PhD in France. I recently attended a competition of best presentation by PhD students. It was a 15 minutes visual presentation and 7 minutes of questions. After the presentation, one of the members of review committee openly stated the following;

  Since we have an audience from diverse areas of science, mathematics and technology the presentations should have been simple so that a layman can understand. I quote A. Einstein, "if you can't explain it simply you don't understand it well enough."

Even though this communicates an obvious message, I feel layman bear a high level of ambiguity with it. The following questions crops up in my mind.

How much can you laymanize a particular research topic say, from theoretical physics, for example Non local wavefunction collapse?

The topic is chosen as random but for those who don't have exposure in basic quantum mechanics may not understand the technical terms.

Is it advisable to prepare such a presentation in assumption that the audience are completely nescient?

If I oversimplify the presentation, leaving all the technical terms, I highly doubt that there will not be any material for those who actually knows the subject.

One approach is to try to satisfy both the extremes, first explain the technical terms in detail and then move on to subject core which I found is difficult if not impossible to fit into the time limit.

First, it is important to recognize that every scientist is effectively a layman for almost all other science.

For example, I am a computer scientist, and I have only a vague layman-level understanding that when you say "non-local waveform collapse" it's probably about quantum mechanics and Bell's theorem, and the math you put up on a slide will certainly be rather alien and fairly incomprehensible to me.  If I put up a slide on the semantics of field calculus, it would probably be likewise alien to you, and if a biologist of my acquaintance put up a slide on the chemical mechanisms of chromatin remodeling it would be alien to both you and I.  Think of a layman, then, not as some sort of idiot to be condescended to, but as an intelligent and interested person whose expertise happens to be in a different field.

Furthermore, our relative ignorance of one another's work is greatly amplified while listening to a talk: when I am puzzled and need to think about what you've just said, I miss the next things being said and have to try to catch up! In effect, only people who are extremely close to your own work, even within your field, will be able to follow deep technical details in a talk.  Every audience except the smallest and most intimate, then, is effectively composed mostly of laymen---but likely with a few experts as well.

So, how do you give a talk to heterogeneous audiences?  Personally, I find it effective to think of a talk as an advertisement, the goal of which is to make people interested enough and convinced enough by your work that they want talk with you about it afterward or to read the manuscripts that present it fully.  Start with a discussion of the goal of your work, how the work relates to other work and why its goals might be interesting, narrow down to a few key details (which might only be understood in detail by the few experts in the audience), present evidence for why your insights are correct, and widen back out to explain why what you just presented satisfies the goals you laid out in your introduction.   Such a structure can then "laymanize" even the most complex topic, by explaining how it fits into the larger world, while at the same time respecting the intelligence of the audience and not sacrificing communication to experts.

For the details of how to accomplish this effectively, I personally have found Patrick Winston's "How to Speak" lecture to be an excellent resource for heuristics and tips, and recommend it to others as well.


Can I name my algorithm after myself? I am about to submit a paper in which I present a new algorithm. There are many algorithms that are named after the author in my field, but I am not sure whether the authors themselves named those after themselves, or whether others named those algorithms after the authors post-pbulication (so in other papers). Is it appropriate to name the algorithm after myself?

Its not illegal, but not in good taste either. Not talking specifically about algorithms, but even equations, constants, methods - these are usually named by others, post-publication.
Having said that, I know of atleast one instance where the authors named something after themselves, but I don't see subsequent work using that name. Can be an embarassment if that happens.


How can I select the best platform for organizing a book? I'm on a team of 10 people contributing to a book organized by the department. As the only contributor under 30, I'm in charge of technical stuff.

The team is comprised of members who are not computer savvy.

Management of citations and changes in a large text are critical to the project.

What features would benefit such a team and how could one convince collaborators to learn & use them?

If you're the only technically-literate person on a team of academics, I would eliminate the options with a learning curve.  Especially since academics tend to be quite resistant to change (well, most people are, but academics even more so) and you mentioned someone uses WordPad (yikes).

Yes, Git or Subversion or the many other collaboration tools out there would work great, but unless you're going to oversee the training of everyone AND they are motivated to change the way they work, it's destined to fail.  It takes practice to be good at these things.

I would recommend two steps:

Use Dropbox with extended version history that everyone can treat just like a drive on their computer
Split the various parts of the book up into many different files.  This way someone can open the file for chapter 1 and work on it while someone else works in chapter 13.

This way, if there ARE any mistakes, or someone edits someone else's work out of existence, Dropbox will handle version control in the background that allows for recovery.  And most importantly, your collaborators won't really need to change many habits for it to work.  Work in a format everyone knows, like Word, and deal with formatting like LaTeX later when the text is completed.


Changing PhD topic and effect on career I'm a PhD student in my third year (4-6 is common in my country) and seriously consider abandoning my current topic.
The new topic is in the same general field (CS related), yet in a vastly different domain and would need a quite different methods. My advisor suggested this switch, he could keep me funded in both cases, yet probably better with the new topic.

Arguments for switching are both personal interest in the new topic (it's recently trending, I was interested from the beginning, yet few positions were available) and lack of progress in the current area:

I could produce some publications, yet not up to my advisors expectations (should be easier with the new topic, given the impact factors of the journals my advisor suggested)
For the last 6-8 month I made barely any progress (lots of failed experiments)
I would probably have to abandon my current methods anyway due to 1./2., so half a year or so will be lost learning new methods no matter how I decide

Yet I shy away from switching, mainly due to already being quite old (combination of personal problems and a switch of my major as an undergraduate) and fearing how my C.V. would look if I did take about a year longer and had this second switch...

Thanks for any input.

Most people won't care.

The time to PhD isn't really considered all that important unless it's highly anomalous (much shorter or longer than standard), and if you get good publications out of it, nobody is going to make a big deal about switching topics. It happens for all kinds of reasons—funding changes, or because the original project doesn't pan out for whatever reason (technical or logistical).

It will also not impact your career much, unless you're planning to continue studying one of those areas as your post-graduation career. Again, the overall quality tends to matter much more than the actual topic in most cases (particularly if you're moving into a different area from your graduate work).


How to efficiently print the image of a whiteboard? I often brainstorm research ideas on my whiteboard. I then run out of space and want to store and print the contents of the whiteboard. In general I have a system of taking a photo of the whiteboard with my phone, which is synchronised to dropbox, which then creates a copy on my computer. Now I can print the image, on my computer, but it is not optimised for printing.
It is possible to open it up in photoshop and manually make it black and white, and try to optimise the contrast and so on.

However, I'd ideally like it to be a one click process for printing a whiteboard image. The whole point is that the process shouldn't disrupt the brainstorming process.

How can I efficiently print digital photos of a whiteboard that are optimised for printing?

Naturally, the procedure might vary under different computing or phone operating systems. An ideal solution would be (a) extremely efficient, (b) minimise printing toner usage, (c) maximise readability. Useful automated steps would include: (a) optional conversion to black and white; (b) arrangement of image into a size and layout designed for printed paper, (c) optimising contrast so that the whiteboard is white and only markings print. Some form of auto-cropping might also be useful.

UPDATE: A few options I've discovered since posting:

Ricoh has a couple of Apps for iphone and Android that will email you a modified whiteboard photo. I wasn't entirely happy with the quality of the results, but with good initial lighting and black and white image, it seem to work okay. They also have a web app that is quite easy to use for uploading single files and then printing cleaned versions.
This gimp tutorial and gimp script for processing whiteboard images. The manual process if fairly straightforward, but not a single click.
Various suggestions on Photo StackExchange for getting more professional results particularly one involving shooting both the original image and and an empty white board and digitally subtracting images. It all sounds a bit complex for simple brainstorming needs.
These suggestions on SuperUser. In particular, there's an email service where you email the original whiteboard photo file and get a cleaned version back http://snapclean.me/ . It took a few minutes when I tried it.

Given that using whiteboards is fundamental to teaching and research, I hope people don't mind that I have used this site for asking the question.

For this I use TurboScan on my iPhone.  It's designed for scanning and there are many similar apps.

It takes 3 photos and combines them to get one with good contrast and resolution.  It optimizes for readability.  It automatically detects the edge of the whiteboard and crops there; you can easily adjust the crop to be smaller if desired.  You can easily adjust contrast.

Here is a photo of what's on my whiteboard right now.  This was taken in extremely poor lighting conditions (dim, with lots of glare).  Also, TurboScan outputs a PDF, so you can zoom nicely without it becoming pixelated, but SE would only allow me to upload a JPEG, so what's below is lower quality.  Right-click and open in a new window to see it better.


(APA) Citations for figures I created with existing data (An Egotistical Dilemma) Context: I'm working on a paper in APA style. I created two scatterplots on my own using code I wrote in R. However, the actual raw data represented comes from a source in my references.
Issue: I feel I'm in a bit of a quandary: I deserve recognition for the creation of these figures, yet I feel I must still provide an in-text citation in the figures' captions. The closest parallel I can come up with is that the interpretation (in the form of visual elements) of the source's raw data is ultimately my paraphrasing the raw data; thus requiring a citation so as not to constitute plagiarism.
Should I just simply provide an in-text citation in the caption and not mention that the figures won't be found in the cited source?
If not, what's a succinct way to highlight the fact that the figures aren't in the source, only the raw unmunged data? Should I, perhaps, forgo citation of the data's source in the figure and only cite the data's source when discussing the figures in the actual text?

Plagiarism is one thing, and I support your view on this situation as paraphrasing data. But a more important reason to add a citation is to let the reader know where the data is coming from (and how the data was collected). This is immensily important for the reader to understand and analyse your presented data correctly. In my mind, we should always write with open cards, i.e. so that our work is repeatable and deductions are easy to follow.

Should I just simply provide an in-text citation in the caption and not mention that the figures won't be found in the cited source?

I would recommend a sentence in the figure text of something like: "The data in this figure are derived from raw data found in [source]." Preferably add an equation reference to the equation that the plotted data is a result of: "The data in this figure are derived from raw data found in [source] by using (equation reference)." or ..."by applying (equation reference) to it."
In my mind this kind of sentence will make it clear where the raw data is coming from, and that the figure you present is your work and therefore not found in the source.

Should I, perhaps, forgo citation of the data's source in the figure and only cite the data's source when discussing the figures in the actual text?

The reference to the raw data should be in the figure text. A common way to read a report/article is to read summary and conclusion and scroll through to read highlights and look at figures. Therefore the figure texts should explain their figure in a quite independent way, so that the quick read gives a good understanding of what the figure presents without searching through the main text. References to how the data was collected and computed, is part of the foundation for understanding the figure.


Dissertation acknowledgements I'm at the stage in writing my dissertation where most of the substantive aspects are finished and the only tasks left are more or less administrative. However, one thing that I've been avoiding is writing the "Acknowledgements" section. Obviously I will thank my supervisor, committee members, other faculty and staff that have played a meaningful role in my education, other students who have been friends and co-workers, my close friends, and my family (in that order!), but I'm struggling with how to approach it. Does anyone have advice or hot tips about what to do or not do that they'd be willing to share? Is it possible to make it meaningful without sounding contrived or pedantic or disingenuous? Do I go with the standard disclaimer about how any errors that remain after getting all that wonderful help and support are mine alone...? Thanks!

The acknowledgements are the only part of the dissertation where you are writing as yourself instead of the Impartial Professional Narrator.  Just relax and be honest.  (Yes, that can be hard, especially after so many years of writing as Impartial Professional Narrator.)

Don't worry too much about writing it the right way.  Just be yourself.  Of course your acknowledgements will sound trite to the average reader, but you're not writing to the average reader; you're writing to your mentors, colleagues, friends, and family, who will value the sentiment far more than the specific words.

And don't forget to send a copy of your dissertation to each of the people you acknowledge, especially your family.


Convince coauthors of reducing self-citations I am writing a paper jointly with coauthors from another research group. In their contributions to the paper they include a lot of self-citations, many of which are (in my opinion) irrelevant.

How do I convince them that this is bad style and that they should reduce the number of self-citations, without creating an antagonistic situation between our groups?

While you can give your best arguments to the others they probably won't be convincing. On the other hand, I wouldn't worry about it too much since the most powerful advocates for your position will be those who review the paper after submission. Reviewers don't especially like to go through "crufty" papers with a lot of irrelevant stuff. If your co-authors are, indeed, over-the-top on self-citation, it will likely be noted and need to be cleaned up after reviews come in.

Rather than cause too much difficulty, let the reviewers be your allies if it is really needed.

I would, however, make the argument to your collaborators that a lot of the citations are irrelevant and detract from the main ideas of the paper. You could even send them back a draft in which you have removed the citations you think are unneeded, just so you have a "working document" without those citations.


What are the pros and cons of coursework at the doctoral level? This is a debatable issue given for me to make inquires on: some people said that coursework should be introduced at the doctoral level while others insist that it should not be introduced, as a PhD student is already a Master in the area of study.

What are the arguments for and against introducing coursework for PhD students?

I think that which way one goes on the question has a lot to do with whether you are dealing with a US-style model (long program bundling Masters and Ph.D.) or a European-style model (short program assuming Masters already completed).

To my mind, the main pro of doctoral coursework is that it ensures graduates have a solid general grounding in the field at some depth, and cannot only hyper-specialize.  Complementarily, the main con is that coursework interferes with research by taking time that would otherwise be devoted to it, thereby stretching out the time expected in a program.

In a US-style program, a large amount of coursework is pretty much always included and the program is expected to take longer accordingly.  In a European-style program, I think one can make a reasonable argument that there should be no coursework, as that should have been completed during one's Masters.


What to do when a referee asks me to do something impossible/unreasonable? What are my best options when a reviewer misunderstands my work and asks for an unreasonable improvement? She was very clear that this was a major issue and that she would only accept the paper under this "improvement".

Should I withdraw the submission?
Should I write to the editor and try to convince him that the reviewer is wrong? (Possibly asking for a new reviewer).
Should I make the revision normally trying to convince editor and referee that what they ask is impossible?
Something else?

I'm inclined to go with the 2nd option.

The field is in the intersection of Mathematics and Computer Science, and the journal is not a top one.

Edit: I've made the revision normally, as suggested here. Thanks to everyone that commented as I wouldn't have done so. In the end, I was happy with the revision.

I believe the key is that you can include the information in your paper about this direction being "impossible", and improve it significantly by doing so.

Rather than rejecting the suggestion outright, add a discussion to your paper of that future direction and some notes on its difficulty (i.e., although we show in this paper that 10+10=20 through novel use of the podal digits, the corollary of 20-10=10 cannot currently be proven empirically due to limitations of the primary technique of positive incremental dactylonomy, and the lack of willing test subjects for the secondary approach).

Although it might seem obvious to you why that improvement is "impossible", your reviewers may read your paper even more carefully than your broader audience. If something was unclear (or at least, non-obvious) to this reviewer, you should expect that at least some non-negligible proportion of your broader readership will come to the same conclusion. I think you improve your paper substantially if you can explain this concisely.

Even better, if you can suggest some approach that is possible but currently difficult to implement or outside the scope of your current paper, your work could be the priority reference for that approach.


Searching for academic jobs within a specific city I am currently in the job market and due to personal issues I am geographically limited and cannot relocate. I was wondering what would be a good strategy to go about the job search. There are only 3 institutions that I could potentially work on. Realistically I know that it might take a while for opening to come in my field but I was wondering if there is anything I can do in the mean time. I know this is not common in academia, and we go where the jobs are. I really want to continue in academia but I am unsure how to move forward.

If you intend to stay on the job market (whether for those 3 institutions or in general), the best thing you can do is stay competitive in terms of research productivity. That usually means taking a postdoc or other full-time research position where you can publish as much as possible.
However, there is a "shelf life" to postdocs. If you are a postdoc for too long, hiring committees start to wonder why you haven't been hired, and may reject you thinking there's something wrong. For instance, in my field it is common to have 0-2 years of postdoc, so someone who has been a postdoc for 5 years may find it more difficult to get interviews.


How strict are paper revision deadlines? I recently received a "revise and resubmit" decision for a submission to an Elsevier journal, and the deadline to resubmit is in about 5 weeks. Since I have to consult with my coauthors for my revision, and one of them is a professor who's not exactly fast in replying emails, I'm worried whether I'll be able to get a revision ready in time.

Is the resubmit deadline strict? Once the deadline passes and I don't make a resubmission, is the paper immediately rejected? Is it usually possible to ask for an extension?

The strictness of the deadline strongly depends on the journal and the context of publication.  For most papers to most journals, there is potentially a great deal of flexibility (assuming that you ask early and are polite about it).  The main exceptions that I have encountered are:

High-impact journals sometimes expect you to drop everything else on their behalf, and thus may give both a short deadline and little flexibility.
Articles submitted for a special issue sometimes need to hit particular dates in a production schedule, and thus may not have much flexibility to give.


Faculty criticizing students in front of other students As a graduate student, I often discuss the performance and abilities of undergraduates in very frank terms with fellow graduate students. However, I would never do so in front of other undergraduates. To do so seems clearly unprofessional. My question is, should faculty members have the same code of conduct towards graduate students? Is it inappropriate for a professor to discuss negative intellectual or personal qualities of their graduate students in front of other graduate students? I ask because a faculty member at my institution routinely criticizes the abilities and progress of one of their students in front of other students. I wonder if someone should have a discussion with the faculty member to stop this behavior.

Note: I can imagine scenarios in which it is appropriate for a professor to speak frankly, in confidence, with one student about another student's abilities, for example if students are having issues working with each other or there are concerns about the quality of work. But this is not what I'm talking about. To give a specific example, imagine a faculty member at a dinner with several other faculty and students, and loudly saying things like "Johnny can't even come up with testable hypothesis", "I'm probably just going to have to hand him a project", and "he'll get his PhD but he won't be successful in academia."

The answer to your two question are:  YES! - Faculty members should have the same code of conduct towards graduate students? Why should an undergrad be treated with any less (or more) respect than a grad student.

And...

NO! It is not appropriate for a professor to discuss negative intellectual or personal qualities of their graduate students in front of other graduate students?

This all falls under the realm of basic human decency.


Do I need permission to use an image from a book from 1942? The book is On growth and forms by D'arcy Thompson. It was published in 1942 and Thompson died in 1948. Wikipedia uses the image citing public domain. Can I use extracts and images from the book with proper citation without problem?

The image I want is on this page:
https://archive.org/details/ongrowthform1917thom/page/322

As you can see the book is in public domain and is freely available on archive.org

It depends on whether or not the book is in the public domain in your specific country.  In some countries, copyright extends to some amount of time after the death of the author, for example 50 years.  However, your country's copyright laws may be different.


Cite page of paper vs page of proceedings I am currently writing my thesis and I use several papers that are available als single PDFs like this one

I did not want to write the bibtex on my own, so I searched online and found this:

@inproceedings{Rozinat:2005:CTM:2179586.2179604,
 author = {Rozinat, A. and van der Aalst, W. M. P.},
 title = {Conformance Testing: Measuring the Fit and Appropriateness of Event Logs and Process Models},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Business Process Management},
 series = {BPM'05},
 year = {2006},
 isbn = {3-540-32595-6, 978-3-540-32595-6},
 location = {Nancy, France},
 pages = {163--176},
 numpages = {14},
 url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11678564_15},
 doi = {10.1007/11678564_15},
 acmid = {2179604},
 publisher = {Springer-Verlag},
 address = {Berlin, Heidelberg},
}

The problem: When citing a particular page of this paper, I use the page number of the single article PDF because I don't have access to the proceedings book as cited in my bibtex file.

Is this a valid practice or should the page number equal the page number in the proceedings book?

If not, how would a correct bibtex look for this single PDF?

Page numbers are largely irrelevant. There are not so many dead tree copies around, and a digital copy may be modified. In that case, searching for the title on it is trivial. You are providing the DOI, that is a permanent identificator, so you don't have to worry about it.

On a practical thing, I just use DOI's API to get the citations, and leave them worry about the details:

[david@LCARS david]$ curl -LH "Accept: text/bibliography; style=bibtex" http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11678564_15

That gives you:

  @article{Rozinat_2006, title={Conformance Testing: Measuring the Fit and Appropriateness of Event Logs and Process Models}, ISBN={http://id.crossref.org/isbn/978-3-540-32596-3}, ISSN={1611-3349}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11678564_15}, DOI={10.1007/11678564_15}, journal={Lecture Notes in Computer Science}, publisher={Springer Science + Business Media}, author={Rozinat, A. and der Aalst, W. M. P.}, year={2006}, pages={163–176}}

It is easy, fast to generate if you have the DOI, and minimises the risk of typos.


How do I tell my supervisor his idea is incorrect? My supervisor gave me some guidance in order to complete my Masters thesis and to publish the result in a journal. His idea to develop the work is not correct and in this case I know my thesis better than him.

How do I tell him his idea is not correct?

The safest approach is always to make it a question about you rather than about them. "I'm confused. You said... but I had previously read/been told/seen ... instead. The two seem to conflict; can you help me understand what I'm missing, or what that other reference was missing?"

They may be able to show that there isn't actually a conflict. They may be be able to show that you misunderstood something, or that the other reference was outdated, incomplete, doesn't apply in this situation, is an alternative theory that they disagree with because.., ... Or they may say "oops, you're right."

By not accusing them, you avoid embarrassing yourself if they were right, give them space to correct themselves gracefully if they were wrong, and maximize your own opportunities to learn.


How useful are professional society memberships? En route to academia, are professional society memberships useful? So far, I feel like I have been paying ~$100/year for a few societies (with student discounts), just to receive copies of their monthly magazines that I only end up skimming over once. I get tons of emails that are vaguely aimed towards keeping people up to date with current research, but one can do that by reading papers anyways. So I don't really see a point to being a member.

Does anybody else feel this way? Are there actual benefits to being a member for societies like these?

In addition to the individual benefits they offer (subscriptions, electronic journal access, discounts, the possibility of distinguished or honorary grades of membership, etc.), professional organizations also contribute to the research community more broadly:

They organize conferences, publish journals, and support other activities, for example in employment, education, outreach, and public awareness.  The academic community would be very different without these services, many of which need financial support.
They represent their field to the outside world, such as government funding agencies, and make the case for its importance.
They intervene in crises.  For example, when the University of Rochester abruptly decided to cancel its graduate program in mathematics in 1995, the American Mathematical Society helped coordinate a very effective response, which led to the program's reinstatement.
They monitor the health of the field and help members address any concerns (for example, by investigating ethical complaints).
They help shape how the field is viewed within academia, through publicity, prizes, leadership positions, invited lectures, etc.

Membership dues help pay for these activities, which are also more effective when the organization represents a large fraction of the field.

Nobody has an obligation to belong to any particular organization, but it's a simple and valuable way to support the field as a whole.  I'd recommend that every grad student join a couple of professional societies.


Postdoc Fellowships Collision I recently won a 2-year postdoc fellowship in a prestigious EU university (funded by the university itself). I also applied a few months ago for a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship selecting as host istitution the same university.

If I would win the Marie Curie (I will get the notification in February), I would be in the position where I should decide whether to quit the current fellowship and take the Marie Curie, or to refuse the Marie Curie. (I could also decide to delay the acceptance of the University fellowship and decide in February). The salary of the University fellowship is a bit higher than the Marie Curie, but the rest would be pretty much the same, especially regarding the research team and research project.

I would like to analyze the pro and cons of such decisions. Namely:

Will the Marie Curie program offer me some benefit in terms of visibility, networking, etc...?
There will be differences in saying on the CV that I worked for 2 years funded by University X rather than by the EU Commission with a Marie Cure Individual Fellowship?
Isn't already a good thing saying that you won a Marie Curie (even if you refused the fundings?) Or there is any concrete difference for an evaluator between winning and taking the funding?
Could refusing the fundings be seen as a 'bad' thing by the EU commission?

It is quite likely that I will not get the Marie Curie, but it is better to start thinking beforehand how to deal with this situation if it will occur.

I think this is a situation where you should try to 'have your cake and eat it', that is try to do both.

If you get the Marie-Curie it usually comes with the stipulation that you should start it at some point in the next 12 months, chosen at your convenience. So you have some flexibility there but presumably not quite enough to just start it at the end of the university fellowship. The university on the other hand could be more flexible and should also be willing to be so as a Marie Curie fellow is prestigeous for the university as well. So if you do get the Marie Curie, I would suggest to go to the funding office of the university and ask them whether you can pause your university grant for the duration of the Marie Curie fellowship. It seems quite likely to me that they will accept such a proposal.

Best of luck with the fellowship applications.


Will ResearchGate eventually find and create links to my publications? I have many publications in my profile that I had to add manually, but ResearchGate seems not to recognize any of them sufficiently to create links to the online full text (and other info) that is readily available for all of them (Google Scholar, for example has links to every one of them).

Will ResearchGate eventually find and connect these publications? (Is adding this information manually myself the only option?)

ResearchGate does not support this feature, and has no current plans to do so.

The only way to attach information to publications that ResearchGate must be added manually (because ResearchGate fails to find them) is to add that information manually for each publication as well.


Is the name of this institute acceptable? Perhaps it is more a question of translation than an academic one, but I think it cannot be wrong to get opinions from people here because the question has a relation with higher education anyway.

A China-based college is officially named (translated into English, to be exact) Guangxi Vocational and Technical College of Communications (广西交通职业技术学院 in Chinese), and the business of that college mainly focuses on knowledge, skills, training, majors or programs in strong and close connection with transport (or transportation) which includes roads and bridges engineering, auto engineering, navigation, traffic control, etc. Guangxi is the name of the place where this college is situated.

So the name in English doesn’t sound so clearly defined or even confusing because communications might contain the meaning of transport, but the word is now more related to telecommunication, media outlets, broadcasting, performing arts, etc.

Technical and Vocational College does not seem a common name found in mainstream higher education of English-speaking countries. Polytechnic can be the substitute, can it?

My alternative for the above name in English is Guangxi Transport Polytechnic. Does it sound acceptable to native ears?

Interesting question- here in the UK, we don't use the term polytechnic anymore with technical and vocational training being pursued in further education colleges as opposed to higher education universities.

So, if you were speaking to someone from the UK, it would be appropriate to say:

Guangxi College of Transport.

Does that help?


Strategy as to when to apply to PhD programs I'm a master's student in CS at a top-20 school (in the US), in my second year (although it feels like my first year since I had to play catch-up last year and mainly took undergraduate courses).

My current strategy for applying to PhD programs is to apply only to top-5 this year, and if I don't get in, apply to a fuller range of programs (top 50 or so) next year.

But because I don't have any publications in spite of having worked on 3 research projects, it doesn't sound like I have much of a chance of getting into top-5 programs this year anyway (and applying actually kind of sounds like a waste of time). So if and when I get rejected from them, I would take the next year to try to get a publication and also retake the GRE (my quantitative score is 164--in the 87th percentile when apparently the top programs expect a percentile in the high 90s).

However, although my GPA is 3.9 now, who knows what it'll be next year. Or if I'll manage to get a paper accepted. So does it make more sense for me to just try to get into whatever PhD program will take me now or to take a year to work on strengthening my application? As this post says, apparently the bar you have to clear to be considered an acceptable candidate rises every year anyway, suggesting that anything I do over the following year won't have much of an impact on my prospects.

Your chances getting accepted by applying out of the blue to top institutions is close to zero given that your application doesn't sound particular in any way. Most applicants GPA is between 3.8-4.0 and your GRE scores are ok. Start contacting some specific professors you would like to work with, even if not top-5, even top-10 or 20 will be better if you have a good research connection with a professor. Don't be obsessed with these rankings. If you have free time and money to throw away, sure, go ahead and apply now, but don't expect anything out of it more than the learning experience. You will also not get any feedback from the rejections, so you will never know why you were rejected.


Avoiding the double effort of academic research and marketable job skills as a math PhD For context, I'm entering a mathematics PhD program that offers several different areas of specialization, mathematical computer science (MCS), pure maths, statistics, and more. My undergrad was in pure maths, so I feel most comfortable there, but I'm also interested in MCS, although I'm essentially a stranger there, other than a course on graph theory and a chapter of Algorithms. I'm trying to decide which track to put myself on while considering job prospects after school.
After reading several posts about job prospects for a pure maths PhD here, here, and here, I've noticed a few places where you can go with your PhD.

Academia, with a notoriously tight job market, but where you get to continue doing enjoyable research, possibly gain tenure and basically continue the freedom from the same "business" demands that industry would have. I'm not sure I have the mettle to make it here, so the next options feel safer.
Industry, where your skills will probably be underutilized, or even totally irrelevant, meaning you will have to learn entirely new skills -- programming, statistics, etc -- that you're perfectly capable of learning but haven't been directly taught in your PhD studies. These are jobs like actuaries, software engineers, etc.
Industry Research, rare in between opportunities where research is restricted to what the company needs, but is still relatively open and free. Places like Google and Facebook labs.

There is obvious tension between the first two because a PhD is an academic, not professional, credential. It's simply not optimized to land you into option 2. If you're interested in options 2 or 3, the advice is that you should learn programming or something else on the side and use that to get your first job, and essentially leave the learning in your dissertation behind. This seems like an enormous waste to me. The effort and time spent learning esoteric pure math is essentially for fun (admittedly, a lot of fun), while you are still left to develop marketable job skills on your own.
So my question is: how can I choose my academic track/thesis topic minimize doubling my work? Am I merely butting my head against an intrinsic problem of academic vs professional credential? Should I see the PhD instead as an magical time to enjoy learning math, which will end but leave me mentally strong to tackle other, very different challenges? Perhaps instead it is merely an incubator, where I'm supported while developing a variety of skills not directly involved in the program?
Edit: Thank you for your responses. They're very helpful on a soul searching level and definitely respond to my question, but they weren't exactly what I was looking for.
I should have phrased it like this: What kinds of concrete choices -- courses, advisors, areas of mathematics, etc -- can I make while doing a PhD to maximize its' value after graduating?
For example, is MCS a better choice in terms of applicability outside of academia? Should I consider where a professor's students go after graduating when considering them as an advisor? Am I just worrying too much, and I should just find a problem I love so much that I think about it in the shower? What else am I missing?
Thank you again for your help.

A math PhD will teach you a large number of completely marketable, industry-ready skills:

how to think logically and analytically

how to research challenging technical topics on your own, solve problems, and pursue difficult goals over an extended period of time, overcoming frustration and maintaining a good level of motivation

how to communicate your ideas effectively, in writing and in person (in particular, if you gain teaching experience while doing your PhD your presentation skills will end up orders of magnitude better than those of your peers who went into industry straight out of college)

and many other “soft” skills that are difficult to quantify and describe but are nonetheless extremely useful and important.

All of these things add up to a very attractive package for employers. It’s easy to focus on the “esoteric math” part of a PhD and conclude that it’s a “waste”. Will an industry job give you an opportunity to use your knowledge of Schur’s lemma or Brouwer’s fixed point theorem, or show off your familiarity with Radon-Nikodym derivatives? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean you will have wasted your efforts learning those things. Along the way, you will have learned to look at the world like a mathematician, and that, as it happens, is a darn useful skill almost anywhere you go.


When should you stop "doubling down"? At what point should a student decide they shouldn't try to be a researcher anymore, assuming they still have the desire? My personal situation is that I have ample cognitive ability (in the opinion of my professors and me), but the "mental" side just doesn't seem up to the challenge and my grades are sporatic, even as an undergraduate. I would have to drop a lot of money on a Master's program to get into a PhD program highly ranked enough to possibly make it research-wise, but that would only (possibly!) work if I succeed. Part of me feels like indulging my dream further would just build up to a worse let-down, even though I have no competing priorities such as creating a family, becoming rich, etc.

No one can answer this question but you.

Having said that, some points to ponder:

There exist funded research based masters programs. Depending on the field and geography they will vary substantially in quality, but conceivably you could delay answering that question by going somewhere for a Masters and seeing how well that goes.
Grades are going to have an effect on you getting in. In terms of success, what really matters is grit. Smarts get you somewhere, but you need to learn to tolerate challenge and failure to succeed in research.
If you have nothing else on your plate, in terms of family or ambitions, then now is the time to experiment with possible paths. So long as you don't define your self-worth based on success in a PhD, the worst that could happen is you decide research isn't for you.
Is it research you want to do, or is research just the only entrance into a field you can see. Sometimes people think they want to do research, but it's because that is the only job they know in that field. Maybe spend some time thinking about alternative entrances into the field you're interested in!


How much does video broadcasting on youtube benefit you academic life? Recently, I was working on implementing a new optimization approach to publish a paper. Additionally, I've also implemented the other famous existed methods in the area in order to demonstrate the efficacy of my approach.
It is worthwhile to note, I had a lot of difficulty in implementing the existed method as their Matlab code was not publicly available anywhere.
So, I thought it is useful to create a series of videos (4-5 video/ 15-20 min each) so that, other researcher can learn how to implement these famous methods in Matlab.
Thus, I need a good reason to do so. In other words, what is the outcome for me.
- Would they cite my youtube channel in their paper?
- Does it help my academic reputation?
- Does it help to get a better scholarship for Ph.D. program?
P.S.> I should note that, I have 3 published work in high-rank journals of my field. But if this idea (video broadcasting) doesn't have any significant outcome, I would stick to write another paper and save my time.

A publication will get you more than such a tutorial. It is unlikely that the video or the tutorial will be cited. I don't think it will help you in formal competitions. However, much competition is informal. Say you make your videos/manual and they are used. Next time you go to a conference you'll notice that will come to you just to see what Electricman looks like in real life. You'll be noticed and that can snowball. However, you need to make a trade-off. This is a rather "soft" benefit and there is no guarantee that it will happen.

My experience along these lines is the following: I have shared a lot of tips on another statistical package because I liked doing that (some people have weird hobbies). Only later I noticed that it also benefited me (the last two jobs I received were definitely helped by my presence in this community). So if you like making videos and explaining things and you would do this as a hobby, then by all means go ahead and use the idea that it might also benefit you later on as an excuse to spend a bit more time on it (but not too much!!!).


help needed for contacting a supervisor for PhD I have done my Masters research in Microbial ecology. I am interested in stem cell research but I belong to a developing country where we don't have cutting edge research opportunities to gain hand-on experience. I have a good academic background but no research experience except undergraduate and postgraduate research. I am really willing to learn new techniques and want to change my research field to stem cell research. I am not good at convincing and presenting my point to convince a potential supervisor and show my motivation and interest.

Do I have to explain all this to the supervisor I am about to contact to make a point or straight away show my interest? I have obtained a scholarship just need acceptance and secure admission.

If you have funding, you might email him:

  Hello Professor X,

  I am interested in researching stem cells, and see you are an expert
  at researching stem cells. I am wondering if you are accepting new
  graduate student this application cycle?

  My background is QRS and also have some interests in TRV. Your paper
  on "MMMMM" is interesting, and wonder if your group is going to expand
  on that paper and if there are any opportunities in this field for
  graduate students if you are accepting students?

  It is also important to note that I have a scholarship that will fully
  fund my education, and thus, am looking for a place to spend this
  scholarship money.

  Thank you for your time,

  Marviii

Your actual email should probably be more specific and formal, but keep it brief. You are essentially a free graduate student (except time), so potential supervisors should be interested in you. Don't be modest about mentioning it.


How much are taxes for a postdoc in the United States? I'm being offered a postdoc position at Penn State University.

The recent rise in salary sounds good (about 4000$/month), but I wonder taxes may be not included. Any help?

You will be taxed like any other employee in the US, unless you are in the US temporarily and the US has alternative tax arrangements with your home country (see below). Salary is always reported in pre-tax terms. Your actual take-home pay will depend on deductions for things like healthcare, and the taxes in your state. At the new annual ~$47k level for postdocs, you can expect this to be in the vicinity of $2800-$3000/month, depending on your marital status, dependents, etc.

There are many online calculators for you to figure this out, for example HR Block or Intuit.

It's possible that if your home country has a particular tax treaty (link to IRS) with the United States your tax situation may be different. If this is the case, you may want to adjust your tax withholding accordingly, though you may also owe taxes to your home country. If you have taxes withheld that you do not actually need to pay, you can get them back when you file a tax return at the end of the year (typically in February-April), but you are essentially giving the US government an interest-free loan.

The institution you work for should have some resources and can help you with sorting out your tax situation. Local/state laws, countries of origin, your visa type, etc. can all influence your tax situation. The information I provide here is a guideline to know what your approximate income will be to help you make decisions about housing, etc before you start a position, but you should always study or get guidance on the particulars of your tax situation to avoid needing to correct things in the future.


How do I politely decline a professor who's really keen on having me for a PhD position? I wrote an email to my potential advisor, politely declining an offer for a PhD position. And he has replied saying that he's sad to hear that, and asking if there's anything he can do to convince me otherwise. How do I reply to this?

I would just reply that you thank him for his interest but that it isn't possible to work together at this time. But suggest that you would be honored/happy to stay in contact for the future if your fields of interest intersect.

Over the long run you want to build up a set of contacts like this and you have an opportunity to start it. He might be a future source of advice on your research or your career. But such contacts need to be nurtured.

I would, however, hold off on such a reply until you have a firm and accepted position elsewhere.


As a postdoc, should I expect my PhD adviser to fund my conference travel to present my PhD work? I am scheduled to present part of my PhD research
at a conference in a few months.
This will be my first conference after graduating from my PhD.
I am now a postdoc at another university,
but my current adviser's policy is to fund conference travel
only for postdocs presenting research done by with him,
i.e. he would not fund my travel to this conference
to present research I had done during my PhD
which did not involve him.

Is it normal for a PhD adviser
to fund conference travel for graduated students,
if the students are presenting work they have done during their PhD?
If the graduated student had tenure-track jobs
and their own source of funding for conference travel,
then clearly the graduated student
would be expected to use his/her own funding.

However, in my case,
when I do not have funding for conference travel,
is it normal to expect my PhD adviser to provide funding?
I will ask my adviser about this directly,
but I was wondering if there is a standard expected behavior
for PhD advisers that generally applies in my situation.

If my PhD adviser is unable/unwilling to fund my travel,
is it unreasonable for me to say that I cannot attend the conference?
(I estimate the total cost of attending the conference to be ~$1K.)

Update:
I asked my PhD adviser whether he could fund my conference travel,
and he said yes immediately.

One should always figure out the funding issues before submitting an abstract to a conference. Presenters withdrawing from a conference are a major headache to the conference organizers and it is unreasonable to expect them to reorganize the conference program because you did not figure out your travel plans (either timing or funding) in advanced. There are cases where there is nothing you can do (e.g., having a child), but in general when you submit an abstract you are committing yourself to presenting the work.

As to who should fund your travel, the best would have been to ask when you submitted to the conference. There really isn't a standard for who should pay. The first issue is to determine if your PhD advisor or Post Doc Advisor has money that could be used to pay for your travel. They would have to have money that could, if they desired, be used to fund your travel, and be willing to fund your travel.

I would ask both people and see what they say. No one is going to be offended by you asking. I wouldn't be surprised if both said no, but nor would I be surprised if both said yes.


Is it appropriate to ask a professor to bump up a grade when I suspect it may be at the cutoff? Background: My course has three exams: I did really bad on the first, great on the second (97%), and I think well on the third. I regularly attended the professor's office hours and never missed class.

Question: I now estimate that my final grade could be at the cutoff. Is it appropriate for me ask if he can round up grades (or bump up..) now before the grade is out? Or after the grade is out..?

Details:

This professor didn't send out scores online for the previous two exams. He only allowed us to pick up the exam on the class. However, since everyone will be leaving, I don't know whether he is going to distribute the exam grade online or he is just going straight to put the final letter grade in the system. So, another option would be to e-mail him now and ask how he plans to distribute the exam grades.

Consider asking for an appointment to review the final exam.

Preemptively saying "I might be below the cut-off and would appreciate free points" is obnoxious. It's likely the professor has already taken your improvement and other factors into account. Further, asking for additional points for any reason other than a grading mistake is really inappropriate, though it's so common that most professors accept it.

On the other hand, waiting until the final grades might be too long. Once the professor has made a decision about what grade you deserve, they are much less likely to reverse that decision.

So, a good middle ground is to ask for an appointment to review the exam. This is a good thing to do in any case; further, the professor will take extra care when assigning your grade, as he will anticipate having to justify it to you. This also does not put you in an awkward position if you actually earned the grade you wanted -- you can just review the exam and thank him for a good course. Note, if you do this, you should make a good-faith review of the exam and an honest assessment of what you deserve; this is not "one weird trick" to get free points.


During recitation sections, should I ask students for help in coming up with the answer? Typically when teaching recitation sections (in lower level applied math classes), I bring a problem or two, and ask students to fill in the steps in the solution.  Usually 4 or 5 people (out of 10-15) are engaged in this process.

On the one hand, I think the engaged students benefit from the class discussion, and enjoy it more than listening to a lecture.

On the other hand, I worry that the students who don't participate in the discussion will find it boring, or get confused (because sometimes the other students suggest wrong approaches, and I humor them a bit before explaining why it's wrong).  It also makes the problem-solving process longer than it could be, and in that time I could cover more types of problems or just let students go home early.

What do you think is the best practice?  (And is it different in regular lectures than in recitation sections?)

I really like working problems with students, because I think that actually working a problem is a very good way to engage more deeply with the material.  That said, you've put your finger on two very important problems: engaging the whole class, and dealing with incorrect solutions.

My approaches to these two problems:

Engaging the whole class: you don't have to have everybody talk, but you have to give an opportunity for everybody to talk.  In fact, I think it's often better not to call on individual students, and thereby put them on the spot.  But you can promote engagement by calling on subsets of the class, e.g., "Let's hear from somebody who hasn't spoken yet", "somebody on the left side of the room", "one of you folks in the back".  This gives you ways to make sure the confident students don't dominate and allow less confident students space to step forward.
Dealing with incorrect solutions: Honest mistakes are golden, for every one highlights a way in which a student is misunderstanding the material.  Depending on the nature of the mistake, you can take a number of different approaches.  With some mistakes, you can just follow through to illustrate how things go wrong, then use that as a contrast.  With others, you can go Socratic and ask the student questions that lead them to understand the correct answer more deeply.  Yet others give you a chance to segue into an explanation of common misunderstandings.  I say, cherish the mistakes, give the student positive feedback for speaking and thinking even as you tell them they are wrong, and turn them into opportunities for deeper understanding.

To me, the flip side of the problems you highlight are, in fact, the best reasons to ask students to help work problems in small recitations.  Solved well, they can present students with some of the best guided learning opportunities in an entire course.