Cv and cover letter for PhD admission I am wondering about the cv format for PhD application. In professional setting, for example, in the research experience part, I write a lot about what I did in my research rather than doing so in the cover letter. The cover letter on the other hand should be short. This is recommended by the career service center.
Should I do the same for PhD application? Or maybe I should write about my research in my cv and repeat the same thing in the cover letter?
Thank you!

Write about your research (interests, current and relevant former positions, and your experience/skills/goals, all in relation to the position you are applying for) in the cover letter. Only mention positions and education milestones (and possibly supervisors of Bachelor's/Master's thesis) in your CV (and publications, if any, in a separate section).
The cover letter doesn't have to be short "short", 1-2 pages is totally fine in my experience.


How does a student's misconduct history carry across to other courses (if it does)? Is there a difference between minor and major offences? I have a general inquiry regarding the impact of past misconduct in different courses of study.

To provide an example: if a student takes a course and is removed because of poor performance (or even if they are not removed and have had a warning) could this be used against him/her in a different course in the future? Or does the code of conduct for each university specify that each course constitutes a different "chance". What about when it is not about removal, and is about academic misconduct or general behavior?

In cases where the gap between both courses is quite high (say a decade), would it be safe to presume that misconduct as (for example) a teenager could not be used without good reason in the future, or could it be waived all-together?

My UK university centrally tracks all academic offences, both major and minor, and I think this is pretty common. We are not allowed to release information about academic offences to employers or other universities. If the new course is at a new university, it is up to the applicant to inform the university. There may be a question on the application and the applicant must answer it truthfully. If the new course is at the same university, it depends on how well they track things, in this case, how well they tracked things in the past.

Past occurrences of academic misconduct are only used in deciding penalties for current occurrences of academic misconduct. Hopefully, a student would not commit academic misconduct again. If they did, the board may have discretion to ignore some past events if a large amount of time has elapsed. This is going to be specific to each board. Even if the board is allowed, discretion, they may not exercise it.


How to format for a useful journal club? I've been attending my lab's journal club for a while, and I'm wondering whether there are better ways out there of conducting a journal club. To make the question more generic, our club seems to have two purposes:

Ensure that the students in the lab are reading papers in the field
Discuss the latest research findings in the field

Regarding goal (1), that's kinda what I'm spending all my time doing; I'm doing research, and much of that involves little more than reading a ridiculous number of papers. Insofar as accomplishing goal (2), I'm not sure we do it the best way possible. The journal club I'm currently attending is run by a professor. In general, one person prepares a presentation, and the professor grills that person on the paper. Other people chime in if they're interested, but more often than not it's an hour of watching the prof duel with the student. If the student is well prepared, I'll learn a lot, but when the kid has clearly not read the paper well, it's just a waste of everyone's time. What successful journal club formats have you encountered?

This is based on my experience being in some highly unsuccessful journals clubs, and some very successful ones - at least in my mind.

You must have faculty involvement. I've seen more than one journal club that either didn't have faculty members, or had a faculty member or two who just kind of sat back and didn't say anything. That's bad. Faculty members who can contribute, answer questions, and generally provide some context for papers are excellent. They're good for pointed questions we might have missed - I've had faculty members ask a question about a figure that got into an interesting discussion of research ethics, one that led insight into some politics ("The reason that commentary appeared in this journal is Y"), etc.
I prefer to have them separate from lab meetings, and drawing from a wider audience than my specific research group. I find the breadth of experience, diversity of papers, and keeping up with things taking place beyond my narrow little laser-like focus to be both refreshing and more useful than going over a paper half of us already read.
Giving the journal club a greater context. Yes, keeping track of the literature is important. But its importance seems to slide if you know your analysis should be done soon, or something needs to come out of the water bath, or midterms need to be graded. One semester we framed ours as qualifying exam preparation, and another as professional development - the people presenting wrote their critiques like responses to requests for peer review.

Overall, I've found journal clubs to be most useful for mid-level graduate students - they need enough experience to have thoughts, insights and feelings about the paper, but if a JC succeeds, eventually they should need it less and less.


How to refer to an author whose last name can be confused with a pronoun? I am currently writing a research paper and am having an issue referring to an author of a paper whose name is "Dadi He". I know that it is common practice to refer to an author by their last name when referring to them or their findings.

Though I find myself writing sentences starting along the lines of "He found that...". I assume that the simple solution is to refer to the author by his full name. But this seems to become repetitive after a few sentences.

Is this correct, is there a more formal or accepted way to do so?

Specific anti-advice (for a related situation):

If this situation arises with a female author, especially if their first name is recognizably female, I encourage you not to write out the full name each time.

It may seem unobjectionable, but this would play into the sexist practice (once widespread, though fortunately much less common today) of referring to men by last name while referring to women always by first and last name:

  This phenomenon has been analyzed previously by Schmidt [6], Wang [7], Mary Jones [2,3,4], Elfenbacher [1], Doris Laubin [5], and Washington [8,9].


Shrink the paper or pay for extra page charges? A PhD student has started his research about two year ago by research scholarship from university. His supervisor won a huge grant on a topic very close to his research project couple of months earlier. He and his supervisor submitted a 6 page paper to a journal for publication. Editor's decision is that the paper should be published as a communication rather original research. This means that they have to reduce the manuscript to 4 pages or pay about 500$ for extra pages. The adviser asked the student to shrink the paper to the shortest possible version.

I have the following questions:

Can they pay the publications fees from the grant budget?
Can student ask the adviser to pay for the publication from the grant? What is the best polite approach for such request?
Should supervisor expect to put the grant number in the acknowledgement while he does not pay for the publication fees.

You already have the answer from your advisor. He is the one who knows the circumstances and can make the call if he want to.
You can ask, but be careful how you do it. Remember, if he wanted to do it, he would have done it already instead of asking you to cut the paper.
Yes, if its close enough, and he feels that grant has been supporting his activities...


How to manage a colleague in your research group taking your idea? I have been a newly appointed lecturer (18 months). Within my first 6 months I have advertised a PhD subject in order to recruit a good student. The specific project was advertised a year ago. I completed the recruitment of a very promising PhD student that started about two months ago.
In the meantime one of my colleagues that belongs to the same research group, has an already established collaboration with a company. After a brief discussion, my colleague informed me that the company is open to new ideas and that we could collaborate on a similar idea, which was not specified at that point. After a month, my colleague sent an email saying that they are going to submit a project for funding but again, no specifics were given.
I have asked to check the application (as I was included, but my colleague was the lead) and see the objectives/deliverables/commitments etc. I highlighted the fact that we will need to avoid any potential conflict of interest, but received no reply. After checking with my organization's research team I found that the project idea was based on the subject of my PhD student. However, I do not have a copy of the application to understand the extent of overlap, just the summary of it.
The whole process was dodgy and I have lost trust in my colleague.
I found out later that my colleague is known for such tactics but at the same time has the support of a senior member of the group that has the power to block me from pursuing my research plans. I am not sure how to manage the situation and would appreciate any advice on the matter or if you could share similar experiences and how you handled them.

Let’s start with one simple fact. On paper, your colleague didn’t do anything unethical. Perhaps they were thinking about something similar and you happened to as well, it’s not unheard of. So I don’t think that there’s much you can do apart from noting a colleague who’s not a very good collaborator.
If this is a pattern, then perhaps a discussion with a more senior person is warranted. I’d suggest you focus on getting more than one person to attest to this behavior and perhaps back it up with evidence e.g. email correspondence or the like.


Does my lab head need to be a co-author on my manuscript? I am a biology student working in a laboratory. I am planning to submit a solo author paper to a journal/book.  I conceived the work, drafted and revised it.

My question is if I need to include my laboratory head as a co-author. He was not involved in conceiving the work, drafting the paper and revising it. However, I did generate the data in his laboratory. Am I obliged to add him as a co-author because I work in his laboratory?

I have previously submitted solo author papers for books. But, I don't want to run into any troubles, so I am wondering what the right thing to do is.

Eager to hear your thoughts.

In many of the lab sciences it has become customary, and even required, that the PI of the lab is a co-author on all papers produced by those working in the lab, usually as the last listed author.

It would probably be thought unusual if you were to break this "tradition". It might even cost you in your relationship with the PI in the future.

The rationale for this is that the PI has probably done the work to get the lab funded and sets general direction for the work in the lab. Many of the ideas generated by those working there may come indirectly from others, including some insights from the head.

I don't know if this is the situation in your lab, but suspect that it is since you are asking the question. In such cases it is probably wise to go along to preserve the collegial relationships that can benefit you in your future.

You may question the fairness of this, and many do, but if it is required by the meta rules, you are a bit stuck. Ask your colleagues in the lab what is the proper approach. If they say to include the head, and you would rather not do so, then I'd advise asking the PI for permission to publish a paper on your own. I'd follow the advise given if for no better reason than self protection.

I'll note that in some labs many people are listed as co-author even though they have little contribution to the intellectual content of the paper. But they, in some way, enable the work and so are listed as co-authors.


Relation of concepts "related work"/"background"/"preliminaries"/"state of the art"? I'm currently struggling to structure and organize my "related work" chapter of my PhD thesis.

I've stumbled across the terms "related work", "background", "preliminaries" and "state of the art". Mainly, I understand that some deal with established knowledge that is being taught in textbooks, and which is the technological base for my work (e.g., elliptic curve (EC) cryptography and digital signatures to protect communication among servers). The other deal with the most recent academic state of the art, e.g., novel communication protocols based on elliptic curves.

It's also clear to me, that I need to differentiate my work by having contributions which go beyond the state of the art, and which differ from related work.

Hoever, I struggle to realted this terms, and to make up a meaningful chapter outline.

I was thinking of:

Background and related work chapter

Background and preliminaries

Technology X
Technology Y
Technology Z

Related work and state of the art

Overall related work to the kind of system I build
Overall related work to sub-aspect A
Overall related work to sub-aspect B
Overall related work to sub-aspect C
Difference to related work and state of the art

Can anyone help me clarify the relation of these terms, or hint me to page clarifying them? Also suggestions regarding my outline would be welcome.

Every scientific work needs to establish its context.  What exactly you name the sections and how you organize them in order to present this context is less important, so long as you give the reader a good roadmap to understanding how your work fits into the larger intellectual environment.

Personally, I find that references tend to cluster into a few distinct groups:

Motivation of the work and the foundations that it builds upon
Contrasting to the works of others that do not accomplish the same goals, showing that you are aware of them and that your work is novel.
Justification of assertions
Pointers to methods that have been used

The first two are what typically ends up in a related work / background / whatever section, while the other two more typically end up embedded in other prose where they end up being relevant.

Given this, your proposed structure seems basically sane, though of course the details can't be determined without knowing the details of your work.  The most important thing, I would say, is that if you end up with a very large and complex chapter (as often happens in a thesis), to make sure that you give the reader a good map to help them navigate it.


How to find collaborators for a research project(paper or a series of papers)? Recently, I have read new papers and seen new different approaches and the very interesting physical effects in alternatives to general relativity, and I think I see a bit of ideas for future papers, but I don't have any expertise in these approaches, I have published papers only in general relativity(from physics point of view). At my university, no one is interested in these topics(general relativity or alternatives, only on numerical simulations of hot plasma in accretion disks around black holes). I have proposed some ideas to some friends and peers and  although at first sight they seem to be very interested, after I send them the differential equations and papers to be studied everyone lost interest. The question would be how to find a collaborator interested in such a new approach that would lead to papers in good journals where I have published before?

You can probably find colleagues easily.  The challenge is interesting them in a collaboration with you.

The basic rule is that collaborations are successful when everyone benefits.  In order to get collaborators, you need to make it clear that they will benefit by working with you on your idea.  Benefit in academia usually takes the form of:

Funding
Publication authorship
Advancing the collaborator's pre-existing research interest

You have already mentioned one potential benefit of your work: high-impact publications.  The key is communicating (and convincing) colleagues that they will benefit.

Here are some things that might help:

Have a concrete proposal. While some open-ended early discussions might be useful, once you are ready to invite people to collaborate, invite them to something specific.  Do you want to write a paper together that demonstrates XYZ? is a clear idea that colleagues can quickly evaluate to decide whether they are interested.  On the other hand, Should we work together in area X? is far too open-ended.  It is not clear whether it will lead to anything useful, and busy academics will be reluctant to invest a lot of time in discussions that might not lead anywhere.*
Demonstrate credibility.  A colleague might be interested in your idea, but still reluctant to get involved if they don't know whether you  are able to accomplish what you propose.  The bigger and bolder your idea, the more skepticism you are likely to face from others.  Some ways to demonstrate credibility:

Existing track record (publications, etc.)
An introduction from someone known who can vouch for you.
Networking and conversations that give people an insight into your knowledge.

Offer to collaborate with others on their ideas.  You ought to be the kind of colleague that you hope others will be for you.  This means being willing to contribute to other projects.  Offering to help others, besides being nice, also gives you a network and credibility for advancing your own ideas later.  And in practice, advancing your own ideas often means compromising with someone else on a project that does some of what you both want.

*When I was trying to get collaborators on a grant application, I made the mistake of being too open-ended.  It seemed like appropriate deference to others who were more experienced to approach them without a well-formed idea.  However, these discussions didn't go anywhere.  Eventually I realized that making a clear, concrete proposal was a service to everyone, as it gave them a much better idea of what I was talking about and whether it was worthwhile.  "Let's apply for funding from this specific grant call, based on this short summary idea" got an immediate response from others.  In the end, more experienced colleagues did shape the proposal quite a lot, but the specific proposal was a much better starting point for successful collaboration.


PhD in Germany after Bachelors Recently I have received an offer for PhD studentship in Biology from a lab in Germany. I have completed my Bachelors degree and I have solid 2 years of research experience with 3 peer reviewed publications. Now to formally enroll as a PhD student they are asking me for Masters degree which I don't have.

My question is, is it possible to enroll without masters degree into PhD in Germany? I know that in US, UK Masters degree is not a pre-requisite for PhD. How about in Germany? Can't my research experience be accounted as qualification ?

Essentially, you cannot start a PhD program without a master's degree in Germany. Some programs feature a dual-degree option, whereby you're admitted to a master's program as well as a PhD program. US and UK programs do basically the same thing, which is why the master's degree is not a prerequisite—you earn it, or the equivalent, along the way to the PhD after the bachelor's.

However, in German universities, most PhD positions are actually government jobs in what is known as the TV-L system. More precisely, it's what's called a "TV-L E13." Now, one of the requirements of the TV-L E13 is a master's degree in the appropriate subject. There really isn't a way to waive this requirement.

What perhaps can be done is to ask if the group is willing to sponsor you as a "Wissentschaftliche Hilfskraft"—essentially, a part-time worker in the group—while you complete the master's program. (If they're eager enough to hire you with a bachelor's, then they should be willing to support you while you get the necessary training.)


How and if to advise editor about suitable referees for my paper I am writing a paper where the proofs involve more than one field of mathematics. Call them fields X and Y for simplification. This is not very unusual, but I think it may confuse the editor in the following sense:

There are several motivations for the paper coming from both fields X and Y. However, all technically hard parts in the proofs belong to field X.

So, in my opinion, it would be best to get at least 2 referees, at least one of them from field X (but another one from field Y would be great, at least to give comments regarding the motivation).

While I am not the first one to write about the problem my paper attacks, it is still a rather new problem, and an editor possibly will not have the right "feeling" about what kind of expertise is required for working on this problem.

Even more confusing: Previous work on this problem has been done through field Z, which is certainly not my approach (people from field Z will have to struggle quite a bit with the technical parts of my paper, as I had to struggle with reading their work).

My contribution in this paper is "generalization, theory building, solving some open problems stated by others, stating new open problems". But there is another contribution - I give new motivation which applies also to previous work (not done by me), but went unnoticed.

I would like to communicate to the editor the information regarding what kind of mathematicians I think should review my paper (when I submit it). However, I am afraid it may come out as very rude: Not only I am telling him how to do his work, I am telling him how to judge my own work! Yet, if I were the editor (I am young and not an editor anywhere), I think I would appreciate the information that "this is how the author thinks I should do my work".

Should I communicate any of this information to the editor? What part of it? If coming out as rude was not be an issue at all, I would send a list of possible reviewers explaining why they are good for the job in my opinion.

This certainly sounds like it could be communicated through a cover letter. This does not guarantee that your comments are actually being read by the associate editor, though - at least in my field, cover letters are uncommon enough for journal papers that I typically don't even check if there is one if I get a paper to handle. However, it is unclear to me what practical other ways you have to communicate with a handling editor where you don't know yet who it will be.

That said, you never have a guarantee that the editor will take your input on reviewers into account. Personally, I tend to be fairly sceptical about "suggested reviewers" or anything that approaches this - maybe I am too suspicious, but whenever authors suggest a reviewer, especially when not explicitly asked to do so, I immediately assume that this reviewer will be in some way positively biased, even if no conflict is obvious from the outside.

So my summary is - sure, (briefly) explain your reasoning in the cover letter, but don't get your hopes up too much that this will change substantially how your manuscript will be handled.


how to decide on first coauthorship for a paper I know this topic is kind of depending on which school each researcher is from, so i would like to gain more information regarding the topic.
I am a phd researcher and I have a specific task to do, a colleague of mine have similar task but using different agents. this colleague came up with an idea to compare both agents and write a paper about it, s\he performed his\her experiments and started writing the paper, s\he then approached me with the idea to compare, so I agreed, performed and analyzed my data, which took me weeks to finish, and shared it with this colleague. As I was working on another manuscript and s\he wanted to write this new manuscript by him\herself, I only contributed to read and correct writing-wise (plus of course my data and results) but the most recent version was never shared with me, last one shared was around Nov-Dec 2020, and till this moment I dont know how my contribution was written in the author statement. I got to have a fast look at paper after submission and saw that the graphs always had one part regarding my data, yet i am only a co-author and this colleague is the first author. My question here, was I supposed to have an equal contribution and supposed to be a first co-author? my other colleagues pointed this out and that s\he should have put me as a first coauthor with him\her, and I am not sure if its true or not, i dont have much experience writing manuscripts, and my (our) SV never pointed this out to me. Now its anyhow late to ask for a coauthorship, but I would like to avoid such situation in the future, so would really appreciate if someone has an experience on how to handle such situation.
Sorry for the long message and thanks in advance!

Your colleague came up with the idea of combining the work of themselves and yourself into a single paper, and your co-author took the lead in writing the paper. For me, that would add up to enough distinct initiative to single out your colleague as the primary author of the paper.
You ask how "to avoid such situation in the future"; Roland's comment is spot-on in this regard: the author list and relative ordering therein should be discussed upfront, if you wish to discuss it at all.


Why do lecturers give only couple of days to do exercises? I have always been on a courses where lecturer teaches something and then gives the exercises on that subject. Is that a better way than reveal all exercises when the course begins? I mean, why I should always have only one week time to write solutions and then wait until the next set is revealed? I understand that this gives equal amount of time to think every problem but is it always necessary, as people learns by various speed?

The instructor may not want the students to work far ahead in the class.

If the student does go on ahead and is doing exercises incorrectly (due to lack of knowledge of the subject), then it is may be harder for the student to learn the subject matter correctly due to the bad habits he or she has developed.


Can my old supervisor publish my work without my say so So I completed my PhD in Jan this year and have graduated. Since then I have left academia/research and ended up in a regular job I love despite it being something that is unrelated to my PhD. My supervisor and I have had a not great relationship, mostly down to my decision to leave research, which she views as a "waste of a PhD" according to people I know still working in her lab.
I was happy to let it all be in the past but three months ago she messaged (with a throwaway "hope you are well" but no attempt to ask how I was doing) and said I should publish some of my work to ensure I make the most of the time I spent getting my doctorate.
I initially said okay and have been working on it and pulling it together, but lately I have things going on in my personal life which needs more time and to be honest it's all taking its toll. Ive been looking at the publication as something that is sapping a lot of my time and energy and, despite my supervisors insistence, it's not critical to my future career success.
I tried to explain I have a lot on and this paper was taking a lower priority and they responded that I wrote my thesis when I started a new job so getting this done shouldn't be too taxing... The idea of commiting anymore time on my doctoral work is filling me with dread. I just want it to be over and my husband has noticed whenever I think about it because it's just like I receed.
So Im wondering can my supervisor force me to publish? Ive checked and apparently the IP belongs to the university, but my only other concern is if my supervisor decided to publish the work in my name (or without me as an author), could she actually do that?  That concerns me as I know the work has flaws in it (e.g. Low n numbers and unblinded assessments) so if it were to get published it would no doubt be in a low impact journal and I honestly wouldn't put it past her to assign the low quality of the paper (or the fact she couldn't answer questions on the research, because she hasn't been in a lab in 6 years) to me not assisting. The whole situation just has me a nervous wreck.
TLDR: after finishing a PhD can a former boss force you to publish? Or can they publish your work without your input or consent?

Formally, no.
Your former supervisor seems to be trying to coerce you into working on something you do not want to work on. "Getting this done shouldn't be too taxing" sounds like the kind of argument of a person who does not want to engage with your argument, but merely wants to get their way. You can choose to give her what she wants, but you can also choose to not do this. If the work is getting you down, why not just stop? You can tell your supervisor "no" in a polite way.
Your supervisor cannot publish your work without your input or consent. If your supervisor submits your work under her own name (without you as a co-author), this is a violation of academic integrity, and if you can show that she took things from your thesis, you can force a retraction of the paper. If she submits the work with you as a co-author (as she should), then you retain control: all authors must consent to the paper being submitted. A good venue will send all co-authors an email notifying them of the paper submission, and if you object to the submission, it should be removed from the reviewing process. It would be very unwise of your supervisor to try to sneak your work into a publication without your consent: if this ends up with a retraction, this will be bad for her reputation.
You worked for this person during your PhD, but that is now water under the bridge. You no longer work for this person, so you don't owe her anything. If she is wise, she will leave it at that. If she is unwise enough to try to pull a fast one on you, you have ways to fix the fallout. So, you should be fine.


PhD: Should I choose a topic out of a comfort zone? I am accepted to a math PhD program and have a visit in a few weeks. I only have a few days to tell the university which professors I would like to meet.

Problem: I also still don't know what I would like to work on (which I stated explicitly in my SOP) and the departments has ~100 faculty members. I started to go one by one and see if I like what they do but what would make a good topic?

Reading the papers from professor A things look "easy", I don't know the solution to the problems but I'm in familiar territory: it is number theory, a junior high school could understand the problem, and maybe high school could understand some solutions.

The vast majority of the time, for other professors, I don't understand anything at all. Sometimes I have a clear disgust (seeing lots of integrals/computations), sometimes I feel it is too hard (Langland related algebra), ...

I wonder how discomfortable I should be with a subject? I would be sad to end a PhD with seemingly "no additional knowledge" (if I choose prof. A) but conversely I would also be sad if I struggle on something too hard for me or for which I have no appetite even after spending time understanding it. Finally I don't have enough time to spend hours on each professor's topic to see if I would like it.

What is a good way to approach this?

Pick the ones who interest you to meet with.  Probably some function (topics I like, big names).  I.e. y= f(x,t).

Who you meet with is not going to make your final decision on what school to go to.  But for sure you need to meet with those who you think are seriously "in zone" for being your advisor.  You need that scoop.  I would even make a stink if you don't meet with a key guy (their time is limited but so is yours...you are only making on visit...have seen candidates get a breakfast or lunch meeting or at least meet with grad student representative).

In terms of what work you should do, I strongly recommend to do something you are confident in.  This stuff is hard enough so you need an edge.  Also make it something you are interested in.  This stuff is hard enough so you need some enjoyment.  See.  Multifactorial.  Not f(x) versus f(t) but f (both).  maximize, maximize.  but each variable needs to be above average.  Say above 7 on a 0 to 10 subjective.  Don't let a 10  on one allow a 5 on the other.


Is it accepted to refer to your own published result by your own name? Assume that Jane Doe has published a paper in 2010 where she has developed a model or a theorem or a similar result, let’s say, that it relates to growth.

Now assume that Jane Doe is writing another paper in 2015, where she refers to the model/theorem from her paper in 2010.

Is it acceptable for Jane to write something like the following?

  Doe’s growth model (2010), implies that ...
  Doe’s growth theorem (2010) implies that ...
  The Doe growth model (2010) implies ...

This is, unfortunately, a case where English grammar can be tricky and exactly how you phrase things is going to matter.

It is often seen a presumptuous to name something after yourself: "Newton's Laws" and "Hawking radiation" and "Rayleigh scattering" are retrospective judgements of significance by the community.  Claiming a similar name is an assertion in advance that your work will be at a similar level of significance.

The problem, then, is that if you say "Doe's growth model", it is ambiguous whether that is intended to be a construction like "Hawking radiation" or whether it just means "the growth model that happens to have been developed by Doe."

This potential problem can be avoided by rephrasing to avoid the parallel construction: "the growth model by Doe et al (2010)", or better yet, "the growth model presented in (Doe, 2010)."  The point here is that the significant item under discussion is the growth model, not Doe, and the sentence should be phrased to make that as clear as possible.

Finally, note that these sorts of phrasings can work both for double blind review and for review where the authors' identities are known: even when the identity of the author is known, the important thing should be the relationship between the work, not the fraction of authors that are shared between two papers (unless you are specifically trying to talk about independent co-discovery).


Publishing policies - copyright transfer I submitted a paper to a journal and now it is under review. Since I would like to publish it on the Research Gate I was reading the journal rules to be sure this is possible. I also had a look on the SHERPA/RoMEO website and this is what I found:

Author's Pre-print: author can archive pre-print (ie pre-refereeing)
Author's Post-print: author can archive post-print (ie final draft post-refereeing)
Publisher's Version/PDF:  author cannot archive publisher's version/PDF
General Conditions:
Author's pre-print on pre-print servers such as arXiv.org
Author's post-print on author's personal website immediately
Author's post-print on any open access repository after 12 months after publication
Publisher's version/PDF cannot be used
Published source must be acknowledged
Must link to publisher version
Set phrase to accompany link to published version (see policy)
Articles in some journals can be made Open Access on payment of additional charge

So, from the SHERPA/RoMEO it seems I can put a pre-print version on-line on other websites.
Then I had a look at the "Instructions for authors" section in the journal website and there it says that, after acceptance, I have to sign a Copyright transfer statement.
What does this mean?
Also, if my paper get refused from the journal, can I still publish it on the Research Gate?

You can publish the preprint online, e.g. on arXiv, RG, or your university preprint server.

If your paper is accepted in the journal, you probably will be asked to transfer the copyright to the journal. The copyright applies to the accepted version of the paper, i.e. after reviewers' suggestions are implemented, the paper is proofread, copy-edited and typeset in journal style. According to SHERPA/RoMEO, you can upload a post-print version to your own website immediately, and any other website 12 months after the acceptance.

If your paper is not accepted by the journal, you are free to make it available anywhere on the web.


Should I quit a project where I can't see how to contribute? I am part of a collaboration (i.e., researchers from different universities, not formally tied to a grant or deadline).  We all met for a few days to develop an idea, and it seems quite promising.  However, I did not feel like I contributed much, and since the project is a bit outside my expertise, I am not sure how much more I can even contribute.  (Of course, I can learn from them, but I am not convinced that that is a good enough reason to be apart of the project.)

Should I quit the collaboration, so as not to "get in the way" of the others?  Or is it worth staying on, even if my main contributions are high-level (e.g., organizing shared files, adding code descriptions, sending "check-in" e-mails, etc.)?

EDIT: Some people have linked me to my own question, which I think is different in nature; here I am asking about how to handle the dynamics within a particular collaboration.  Perhaps the underlying question is really, are high-level contributions worthwhile? Also, I have spoken with the collaborators, and they are fine with me on the project, but I wonder if they are just being nice or political. So maybe there's imposter syndrome involved as well.

I am part of a collaboration [that] met for a few days to develop an idea, and it seems quite promising. However, I did not feel like I contributed much, and since the project is a bit outside my expertise, I am not sure how much more I can even contribute...Should I quit the collaboration, so as not to "get in the way" of the others? Or is it worth staying on, even if my main contributions are high-level (e.g., organizing shared files, adding code descriptions, sending "check-in" e-mails, etc.)?

You could share your concerns with your collaborators and ask them whether they want you to continue collaborating. You might discover you've already contributed more than you've realised. Regardless, you'll be making it clear what you can offer moving forwards.


Just missed grad school application deadline..what can I do? update: My application has already been accepted! Thanks to everyone who has provided me valuable suggestions. I really appreciate your help! This is an important lesson to me: "Don't leave your work until the last minute"

I just missed the my grad school application deadline....... This is the biggest and most serious mistake I ever made in my life...

This university locates in the Central timezone so I assumed its application deadline was 11:59pm CST. Before I submitted my application, I rechecked everything out of a habit. Then I clicked to submit my application at 11:10pm CST but found that it couldn't be submitted because I was unable to choose the term of enrolment. I first thought it was an internet or technical problem so I restarted my search engine a few times but it still didn't work. At that time, I realized that the deadline might be in EST! (confirmed, as I could still choose term of enrollment for my application to another department in the same university whose deadline is at a later time).

I already sent the department with screenshot of my application with time displayed on the side, along with my application materials. I will also be calling the department first thing in the morning tomorrow to make an appeal. Taking the advice provided by the folks who responded to my question, I am also going to contact my prospective advisor for help.

Is there anything else I can do?

I just missed the my grad school application deadline....... This is the biggest and most serious mistake I even made in my life...

If that's really true, then what a great life you've had.  You'll bounce back from this and be back to sunshine and roses sooner or later.

  [D]oes anyone of you know if the department would accept my late application in this instance?

Of course not [i.e., we don't know], because you haven't told us what department you've applied to.

  Is there anything else I can do?  I am even too shamed to contact my prospective advisor regarding this situation.

Taking you at your word, letting shame prevent you from talking to your prospective advisor is the biggest and most serious mistake you've ever made in your life.  Don't do that.  Talk to your prospective advisor as soon as possible.  (There is no need to write about it in a panicked or alarmed tone.  If this really all just happened in the last two hours, it is quite likely that you'll hear from the admissions personnel as well.  But calmly informing your prospective advisor of the situation will be helpful.  If she tells the department that it was not your fault that your application was not submitted on time, it can only help your case.)  If it's very soon, there's at least a reasonable shot that this can be straightened out.  The worst case scenario is that you may have to apply elsewhere or up to one year later.  This is suboptimal and you should do what you can to avoid it, but it would not ruin your life.  Really.


In mathematics, is it a problem if all research is joint with senior co-authors? If a mathematics postdoc's publications are all co-authored with established senior co-authors (e.g. advisors), could it be a problem when applying for tenure-track jobs? I wonder in particular if hiring committees discount candidates who do not have either sole-authored work or work co-authored with peers. If this is a problem, to what extent can it be mitigated by letters from the senior co-authors?

Edit: I meant to ask about pure rather than applied mathematics.

It can be an issue, but it is doesn't have to be a large one.  If all of your work is joint with senior people, many people will wonder to what extent you contributed to these projects, and to what extent you were just following others.  Particularly at top schools, people want to hire leaders in their field, and certainly people who will be productive without mentors/advisors alongside them.

Who you're collaborating with (the very top people or virtually unknown people, just your grad school/postdoc advisors or people at other institutions, etc) and what the results are also play a role in how this is viewed.

However, this can definitely be addressed in letters, and thoughtful letter writers should address this issue.  Another thing that is helpful is if you go forth and talk to many people about math (at conferences etc) so that at many places where you are applying someone will be able to address how well you "know your stuff."


How to find original conference of the paper on arXiv? I found some paper on arXiv that I cannot find the conference. Google show arXiv version first. The paper can't even find on Google Scholar.

For the specific case, this paper:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.02774

Search Google for keyword "Crowd Transformer Network" lead to arXiv site above.
Search Google Scholar for keyword "Crowd Transformer Network" does not result in that paper, not to the arXiv copy above either.

If I can't find a conference/journal where the paper come from, does it mean the work is not credible ?

How should I handle this case ?

In short: arXiv is a repository for scholarly research articles (in certain scientific disciplines) that allows them to be recorded and distributed widely without paywalls. The articles should be genuine attempts to produce scientific contributions, and be "refereeable" - which means that it should be in a state that it would be suitable for submission to a peer-reviewed venue, but it need not actually have been submitted to one, nor does it need to have been accepted by one.

Papers on arXiv are not required to be published anywhere (conference, journal, or otherwise) - some are submitted before even being sent to a venue for review at all, some are in review progress, some may have been rejected by peer review and may or may not be in the process of revision for sending to a new venue, etc.

You may want to read about arXiv a bit more, such as here https://arxiv.org/help/general (see the disclaimer):

  Disclaimer: Papers will be entered in the listings in order of receipt
  on an impartial basis and appearance of a paper is not intended in any
  way to convey tacit approval of its assumptions, methods, or
  conclusions by any agent (electronic, mechanical, or other). We
  reserve the right to reject any inappropriate submissions.

And you may wish to read the primer: https://arxiv.org/help/primer

In practice, papers found on the arXiv are in every state of the process, from before-submission, to accepted-but-not-yet-appearing, to being the home for the pre-print or even final version of the article appearing in some peer-reviewed venue (see How many arXiv papers are uploaded in their final (refereed) versions? for more on that). And you'll even find some "submitted but rejected" papers, too - it's not a bug, it's a feature.

It is ultimately up to you as a scholar to decide how to interpret the credibility or usefulness of any given paper. Appearing on arXiv is proof of availability of a paper, which allows you to read it and judge for yourself.


Writing a thesis: Is it a good practice to use personalized lists? I am writing a master's thesis using Latex. I am attracted by pifont package that allows to use personalized lists as the ones this picture shows:
My question: is it a good or bad practice to use such symbols as personalized lists ?

The advantage of using a simple round bullet is that it's such a familiar device that people don't notice the symbol itself. The brain recognises that it's a list structure, and immediately starts reading the items.

If, on the other hand, you use a less-common symbol, the reader will notice it, and possibly be distracted by your icon choice. That's not what you want.

There are some cases where it could be useful to distinguish the items on the list in some way. For example, you might have a list of features, and use checkmarks and Xs to indicate which are supported. But even then, I would use better icons. Most of the ones you've shown look ugly and old-fashioned, in my opinion.


As a student, can I publish a paper without including the head of the lab as co-author, against his wishes? My question is, how can I publish my results without name of my supervisor as a co-author? Do I need their name in my paper? Is it suspicious if I submit an article without his name?
I have a problem with the head of the lab that I performed the experiments there. He wants to be the coauthor but in my point of view he does not have substantially intellectual contribution to my work. He also, told me that he would send samples for the measurement to another lab. But, he did not. Whenever I followed up about the measurement of samples, he postponed to another month. It is almost two years. My supervisor is worried that the guy may make trouble for his profession. So, he said that I can publish the results that I have without his name. The article is just have two authors, another student and me (PhD graduate). Do you think that journals will publish our results or they will suspect about it?

To help answer the question "is it ok to publish without a supervisor/head of lab?", consider the following points:

Having more names listed as authors doesn't dilute your own contribution. At job interviews, you will be asked which of your articles you consider the most significant, and what was your contribution to them: your ability to explain these points has nothing to do with the author list.
Having a more experienced researcher co-sign one of your articles may attract more citations. When writing, nobody should ignore previously published relevant work; in practice, getting cited is easier when co-signing with "big names" in a field (not saying I like this situation, but it is what it is...).
Simply by allowing you to work in their lab, this person made a significant contribution to the article (although not a "substantial intellectual contribution"), in the sense that the article would not be the same without you being able to do work in this lab. Some might think this is what the acknowledgments section of an article is for; it depends how you used the lab's resources (was it more like a service that you could have easily found somewhere else, or did you benefit from this lab's unique expertise or equipment?). If it looks more like a collaboration, including this person as author would be fair.


Are there any "non-research" jobs in Asian HiEd available to foreigners? it is me again.
If anyone has experience working in SE Asia, I would love to hear from you.
I am wondering if there are any "non-research" jobs in Asian universities and colleges. I have a Ph.D. in "life sciences", currently live and work in Canada. Unfortunately, the job market for people with such qualification is really bad in Canada (I would say, almost non-existing). In general, there are very few jobs in Canada, where pay is actually commensurate with the cost of living (which is getting higher and higher), but I digress. Sometimes, I try to contemplate some backup/exit strategies. Idea of working in Asia is one of them. To be clear, I have no other motives, except monetary. It appears to me that job market is better overseas and it might  be not as difficult to find a job in SE Asia. What I am wondering about is this: are there any jobs in Asian Higher Ed. that are between a "postdoc" and a "professor", something like a "lecturer". I do not have any energy left in me to go for a "postdoc" (it would be a torture for me) and I do not have good research record to even apply for prof. position. It would be great to know that there is something "above" the proverbial "English teacher" (I do not like children, in general).
Last, but not least: how is it financially? I understand that these type of jobs do not offer good salaries, but again, in big cities in Canada post.doc salary is extremely restrictive. But if compensation for these jobs is as bad as "adjuncting" in the USA, then it not worth it, obviously.

In China, there are some lecturer positions in universities that do not require to do research. The salary is lower than that of an assistant professor (that does research) and also the teaching load is higher. For example, at some university, lecturers are required to teach over 350-400 hours a year. The salary as well as living expenses can vary quite a lot depending on the city and university. There is a great need for English teachers but other topics can be possible. For the work permit, as I remember it requires a bachelor degree and 2 years experience, and as a Canadian, you are in the list of countries considered as native speaker eligible for teaching English.  Other possibilities for teaching English is to teach in a training center for professionals rather than teaching for kids.  For English teaching jobs, there are several agents looking for teachers that you may contact or you may talk with universities directly.  By the way, I think you also need to check the requirements for entering the country. During the pandemic, some countries have stricter rules for giving work permits (e.g China). It may not be the best moment to look for a job.


Can I do a PhD in Mechanical Engineering without experimental work? I am a final year PhD student in Mechanical Engineering. My PhD comprises only numerical work with a Finite Element Method software, and structural optimization with a developed MATLAB code. I have already a good number of publications, and a few innovations in my project, like structures with a new configuration. However, my supervisor tells me that I need to validate my numerical results with an experimental test. Do I really need to validate my results experimentally to have a "safe" work, I mean, work with results that I can trust? I did a mesh sensitivity analysis for every geometry I have tested.I am sure the mesh is fine enough to obtain converged results. Is it safe to assume the accuracy of the numerical results? And if numerical work alone is not enough, is there any alternative to experimental testing, that would delay my thesis defense and is expensive (allocation of funds is very difficult right now due to crisis in EU?"

I am asking this because I don't have any experience in experimental work, and this will delay my thesis defense 1 year or so. I don't plan on working with anything experimental after my PhD graduation. I would like to have arguments to convince my supervisor that I can do my PhD without experimental work, presenting results in my thesis that are accurate, and that anyone can trust.

I am asking for help of Mechanical Engineering PhD graduates, specialists in numerical work. I would also like to know if you did experimental testing to prototypes in your work, and if not, the arguments you had to defend yourselves in the thesis examination, if you confronted with questions like :"why haven't you done experimental work?"

P.S. I know someone that did his PhD without experimental work, but it was in a different field, like Biomedical Engineering, or so.

I'm an expirmentalist, and I have worked with FE modeling for a long time now. I have many publications based on tests, validated models and purely numerical "without validation". I can tell you this much, the ones that keeps me awake at night and the hardest ones to publish are those with "numerical models without any experimental tests" to back the numerical predictions up or at the least include some sort of validation.

My MSc (structural engineering) was all numerical (but based on full scale tests done by others), so I did not have to test my own specimens (validated my models against experiments that were already published). I can tell this much, without a validation, your model is just a model! As you know FEA is just an approximation with multiple simplistic assumptions of a real phenomenon.

However, I tend to agree that whether needing to validate your model against measured data (solely by doing your own experiment or simply against other published work) is case specific. I do not know your "thesis problem" and the fact that you have published a good number of articles (if published in high quality journals) and your advisor was fine with that "until now!" leads me to think that you may be able to get away to a "numerical" thesis.

Perhaps you can discuss the following ideas with your advisor/committee;

If they insist on an experiment (although they are tight on funding as you have mentioned [not a very good sign in your case since you are trying to avoid that!]), try to find a somehow similar published work, use your model to validate it. I understand that this may not be a "direct validation" but at least your advisor/committee can be assured that your model is capable of simulating a real problem. In other words, your model is "not-directly" more than an FE model.
Ask if you can validate your model with some other ways i.e., analytically, hand calculations, published methods etc. (I hope you have done this by now!). You can always do a parametric study (I assume you did already), pick parameters that can relate to an actual problem (either from literature or industry) and see how your model performs. If possible/applicable, contact an industry firm (that is willing to share) and see if they have anything on hand that you can use to validate the model.
Discuss with your advisor why did not he ask you to do this long time ago ("usually" one will do an experiment and then develop a model! [that's what I always do, keep in mind this is different that finding a problem and trying to get some funding for in which you will develop a model first to show the feasibility of your problem rather than spending money on an experiment that turns out to be "worthless"]). I understand this is too late to ask now, but if you know the "inside" of whats going on "with your committee (perhaps?)", you will know how to tackle this issue more specifically.

Remember this, you do not have to prepare a 6 months, $ 100k experiment to validate your model. Sometimes, all what you need is a well organized set-up, few strain gauges, loading-inducing actuators and a specimen (of course this is a simplification - but you get my point).


How to concentrate during conference talks where the quality of the presentation is poor? I have read a lot of tips on how to give a good conference talk: know your audience, give context, don't talk too fast, give your talk a clear structure or story, minimize text on slides, etc.

However, more often than not, presentations I've been to break most of these tips (quickly flipping through walls of text and equations while droning on in monotone), and I find it very difficult to concentrate on the talks.

Any tips on how to pay better attention and be able to learn something from these types of presentations?

When I attend talks where the quality of the presentation is poor, I like to use it as an opportunity to learn about what not to do in a presentation.

I have an ongoing list of "things not to do in a presentation", with examples from talks I've attended. I just take out the list and add to it whenever I attend one of these presentations. I find it helpful for improving the quality of my own presentations - more helpful than just reading tips others have written about presenting, because when I refer to my list I am reminded of exactly why and how a presentation is made worse by [insert bad thing here], from personal experience.

Usually as a result of taking notes on the presentation technique, I end up also paying attention to the content of the presentation, which is a nice side benefit.

P.S. I also have a list of "effective presentation techniques" and I add to it whenever I attend a talk where the quality of presentation is very good.


Is it rude to forward an email message to the original recipient if they did not respond? If an email message sent to one's professor is not answered promptly, is it rude to forward it without comment to the original recipient as a reminder?  If so, how long should one wait before doing so?  Assume the professor is teaching a class the sender is taking.

On the whole, I'd say "yes, this is a rude way to send a reminder to a non-peer."

The premises are tricky: what is "prompt" to one person is not to another, and not everyone checks (work-related) email at every available opportunity. E.g., some seem to only go through email once a day, on weekdays, or even less often.

There is the other issue about acknowledgement of receipt, even if one's response will be delayed.

But/and if one is teaching a course with 30 or 100 or 250 students, individual responses to daily can be a time-consuming occupation... so that "acknowledgement of receipt" becomes unappealing and an arguable waste of time... if a proper understanding can be reached.

I've tried to cultivate in my students a sense that emails should have a "greeting", a "body", and a "closing", much as old-timey paper letters did... if only so that one can tell whether a thing was mis-sent and/or truncated, not to mention some overt acknowledgement of the identity and dignity of the recipient.

So, if I were to receive a fowarded copy of an email that had already been sent to me, I would consider it quite rude, yes. I do attempt to respond within a few hours of receipt of all email, even if only to acknowledge receipt. Whether or not I had done so, I'd view a merely-forwarded email as uncivil, apart from issues about peer-or-not.


What happens to surplus referee reports? As far as I understand, it is commonplace for editors to invite M reviewers when N < M would suffice. After N reports arrive, they take a decision and inform the authors. What happens to the N+1st, N+2nd, ... referee reports that arrive after the decision has been taken?

As a referee, I have only been told “thanks, we won’t need your report anymore” a very small number of times, and as an author I’ve never been told “look, there’s one more report for you”. So I wonder what happens in practice.

EDIT: I have in mind journals, not conferences. A conference is more driven by deadlines, probably.

From my experience, things happen differently. Comments do highlight it correctly.

Initially, N reviews are solicited by the editor. If they disagree (or, I have to assume, some reviewers miss their deadlines), more reviews are solicited. I've been reviewer #5 few times.

Typical values for N are:

2, with third as a tie-break – a typical grant application review scheme;
3, with 4 or even 5 as a tie-break - seen more often with journal papers.


How to reconcile desire to succeed in academia/willingness to prioritize research with ethical concerns about fair work practices? I'm not 100% sure how to phrase my question, but I've been grappling with this for sometime and thought maybe the responses would provide me some insight.
I'm currently at PhD student soon to be on the market for postdocs with the goal of staying in academia. My dilemma is this: I am reasonably content spending a large amount of time/mental energy on research. However, I worry that this contributes to a culture of overwork and reinforces academia as a "ivory tower" inaccessible to those without the privilege of being able place such an emphasis on research.
To expand: Much of my life is spent directly or indirectly on research. I don't really subscribe to the idea of having to work "X hours a week" and regularly take day or week long breaks from my research when I'm not feeling like I'm making progress. I also regularly see a therapist and try to take care of my mental health as well as possible. However, even with this in mind, my desire to manage my mental health seems to be rooted in the desire to be more productive. When inspiration does strike, I'm happy to stop whatever I'm doing and follow up on the idea for as long as I'm captivated. Thus, even though I'm not always "doing" research, in the back of my mind I'm usually thinking of something related to research.
So far this seems to have worked reasonably well for me and feels sustainable long term.
However, one effect is that I spend more time on research than I'm paid for (honestly this is probably true of any PhD student). What I worry about is that my willingness to research in this way helps to reinforce a lot troublesome aspects of academia. In particular, I wonder about what the effect on the work-life balance of my fellow PhD students, both in the sense that it normalizes what may be an unhealthy work-life balance for many people and in also the sense that there are many people, for whatever reason, who cannot do this even if they wanted.
Unpaid internships/adjunct faculty positions are perhaps a similar and more self-contained example of a similar dilemma- they may be individually beneficial, but certainly reinforce societal barriers and limit who is able to succeed.

I will avoid the discussion about "fair work practices", which I find problematic for the reasons explored in the comments. Instead, I will address two questions that I think are at the heart of your question.

Does the fact that you work long hours contribute to a "culture of overwork"?

Arguably, no. Investing a certain amount of time into your work is not an endorsement for others to follow your path. There are large individual difference in how much capacity a person is able and willing to commit to their research. You are responsible for keeping your own mental and physical health in check, but not for the health of others.

How can you avoid contributing to a "culture of overwork"?

This is mostly about how you interact with others. Fundamentally, adopt a mindset that acknowledges and embraces individual differences.

Don't glorify worked hours as a performance metric. Don't walk around telling people how busy you are.

If you're in a position where you supervise students, encourage them to work the number of hours that feels right for them. Encourage them to view their time as a valuable asset and use it in a productive way. Don't scold them for not putting in a certain number of hours (assuming that they don't clearly put in less hours than they are contractually obliged to - if so, first try to understand what's going on).


What is the impact factor of my short communication paper? Recently I published a paper in as a short communication in a Springer Journal in Natural Science discipline (Impact Factor 3.56). It was a short paper within 2500 words and 3 figures although the figures can be split up to 8-10 independent figures to make it a full length research paper.
I shared this paper in the social media after it got published. A few of my contacts asked me why I published it as a short communication, rather than as a full research article. They also mentioned that short communications are in general not treated as peer reviewed articles even if it underwent a rigorous review process. They have now suggested making it a full paper with some additional results.
My questions are:

Does this publication really have no Impact factor as of the Journal?
Does people cite the results published in short communications?
Is it always possible to extend the short communicated articles to
full length? If possible, then can I copy all or some of the point-to-point texts
and results already published in the short communications? Will it be
considered as self plagiarism?

Impact factors are assigned to journals not papers. No paper has an impact factor. The impact factor of the journal you published in, and the format makes no difference to that (as long as it is a peer reviewed format).

In my field (molecular biology/genomics/bioinformatics) people absolutely cite short communications.

Once a paper is published, you cannot publish exactly the same work as a full length article. You might publish further analysis of the same data, or the same analysis on different data, or different work that comes to the same conclusions, but you cannot just expand this same work to a new paper. Your new paper must also acknowledge the existance of the previous, and therefore would probably not be seen as as novel as the first one.


Will it improve my PhD applications if I take a gap year to work on research? I was a philosophy major who took a bunch of graduate-level classes in linguistics and I wanted to apply to PhD programs in linguistics (in the United States). I had a writing sample in the philosophy of language, and I found out later from other professors that PhD programs in linguistics are mostly only interested in BAs and MAs in linguistics (unless they have a very strong linguistics writing sample), regardless of what courses they took. So I ended up getting waitlisted to a couple of schools (one top-ranked) and rejected everywhere else, and turned down at both places I got waitlisted. I informally applied to a bunch of MAs in linguistics in May, just by sending emails, and I got accepted to many but without any kind of funding, so I wasn't able to go anywhere this year.

I have no plans or anything whatsoever this year, and to be honest, it's depressing and boring. I'm also unable to get a job.  I'm doing my best to do research and work on two new writing samples for linguistics, which I hope will make me seem like a more serious applicant.

I was just wondering: will this situation look bad on my application? Should I describe what I went through in my statement of purpose? I want to reapply to a school I got rejected from and another school I got waitlisted from. Would that be all right if I really improved my application?

Your situation sounds similar to mine. After finishing my undergrad and not getting a PhD position, and since it was too late to apply for a full MSc, I moved to another country, enrolled just in the thesis and I worked on it for a year. After that, I got a lot of experience, a good recommendation, and a position. Now, I was lucky I could move and found a university that the only requirement for registering was finding a willing supervisor. So, I won't say necessarily that everything is lost, but it may be difficult depending on your situation.

I would advise against being fully independent researcher. You are fresh from undergrad, and with not so much experience in the field. If you work without adequate supervision chances are you will be reinventing the wheel, walking down paths that lead nowhere, or creating a beautiful yet useless theory. Your priority should be finding a professor that can guide you and provide some interesting problems to work on and feedback.

You should also keep an eye to applications in Europe: positions are opening and rolling all year round.


Completing a PhD sooner: what does it take? More specifically in finance/economics. As I understand it, spending at least 5 years in the program is highly beneficial if one intends to work in academia. However, if aiming for industry positions instead some would argue that it might not add as much value as the forgone salary would justify.

This leads me to my question. Let's consider a person who has completed M.Sc prior to entering a PhD program in US in Finance/Econ or another similar field and is on par with the average candidate in, say T20 school. With hard work and long nights, how quickly could such  feasibly expect to complete their PhD?

Furthermore, are there major differences between programs in e.g how fast the coursework can be finished, and between requirements one needs to fill before being allowed to graduate? How about supervisors, i.e. are some less willing to let you graduate ahead of time at the risk of suffering some personal reputational damage if it turns out that the candidate falls short of the standards typically expected from a fresh PhD graduate? Any other factors I fail to consider?

The first thing you need to ask yourself is: do you really want a PhD? At its core a PhD is nothing more and nothing less than "vocational education for researchers". In a PhD program you will learn about and get some experience in doing real research. If you don't want to become a researcher, then what is the value to you? There is the status that some feel comes attached with the title, but is that really worth a couple of years of your life?

Assuming you really want to go through with this, then you need to realize that it will take at least 3 years and probably more. That is a long time, so you need to approach that more like a marathon than as a sprint. So don't go in and start burning the midnight oil, because you will only burn out yourself before you are done with your PhD. This is a very common mistake among PhD students.

The only PhD student I know who made it in about 3 years had a completely different approach. She had a plan that was realistic, and she stuck to it. Making a realistic plan for your thesis is very hard. She managged because she already had experience doing research and was already well versed in her topic. She was also extremely disciplined in how she managed her time, and this ment that while at work she worked very hard, but she would not work in the evenings and not work in the weekends. She was able to work that hard and that focussed for 3 years on end because she did not work in the evenings and in the weekends.

I am not that person. I whish I was that disciplined, but I am not, and it took me 7 years to finish my PhD...


Is there away to know who has published several high quality papers in a specific academic field/area during the last 5 years for example I am trying to submit a paper for publication. The journal is asking to provide a list of experts who have published several high quality papers in the field of interest. Is there away to find this out easily?

THe easiest way I can think of is to access Elsevier's platform called http://www.scopus.com . There, you can do paper research based on author's name, field, date and nº of citations. Take the top citated works and research their impact factor on google scholar.


Can dysfunctional graduate admissions processes be improved? I am an assistant professor at a lower-tier research university. Recently I learned that my university and department have a dysfunctional system for reading and evaluating applications to our Ph.D. program.

There is no way to read the applications online, or indeed to collect all the applications together in one place so that applications can be compared. Instead, applications were printed out as they arrive, passed around with a comment sheet on top, and then discussed. This happened several times; after each go-around, the files that were just evaluated would disappear, usually to not be seen again.

As my colleague on the committee put it: "While I took notes, it was incredibly difficult to compare people even a week apart. ... Overall the process was much too opaque for me."

This is in stark contrast to our hiring, for which we used MathJobs. This system is designed perfectly: it provides online, secure access to all the applications online. When I was on our hiring committee we individually read applications in detail (and were able to read the files of candidates on our shortlist as frequently as we wishes). We came to meetings well prepared; these meetings were short, to the point, and resulted in excellent hires.

There is a similar site MathPrograms which we could use for graduate admissions, which is also extremely well designed, requires almost no effort to set up, and which costs well under a thousand dollars. If we were allowed to use this, we could evaluate applications much easier without the Graduate School's "help" than with it.

Two questions:

Are graduate admissions systems this way for some "good" reason which I may have overlooked?
As a faculty member, is there any way I can usefully push for using MathPrograms, or some similarly sensible system?

Who decides how the application process is handled?  If it's decided in your department, then I'd think you have a good chance of making it more reasonable --- maybe not anything like MathPrograms that costs money, but at least keeping all the files in one place where you can review what you saw last week.  Maybe you can get a secretary to scan the files and make them available on-line to the appropriate faculty members.  If the decision is made at the college level, then you may have more work changing the process, but money may cease to be an issue; a big expense at the department level can look trivial to a dean, provided the dean understands how bad the current system is.  If you need to deal with a central Graduate School, the subject of "help" (in quotation marks) in your message, then all I can do is wish you good luck.


Do we really need gold open access if publishers permit self-archiving and sharing? Several well-established journals nowadays allow self-archiving or sharing of articles through an institutional repository. For instance, Elsevier allows immediate sharing of the accepted manuscript via the author’s non-commercial homepage and, after an embargo, through their institutional repository. Springer has similar rules. More in general you can check on Sherpa/Romeo for any journal’s policies.

So I am wondering: is it worth it paying for the open access option, when we can just choose our publisher wisely, and then prepare a nicely formatted version of our accepted articles to share them online?

What you're describing is open access. It's simply a different form of it to the one Springer want you to pay for...

There are effectively two-and-a-half routes to open access, with a lot of subtle variants between journals -

Gold - the article is available immediately, freely, and in perpetuity, via the journal's website, probably with a permissive copyright license. The big open access journals (PLOS One, Scientific Reports, etc) are generally all-gold. It is usually paid for, but not always - many journals are gold but don't charge.

Hybrid gold - a special case of the above but for a single article in an otherwise subscription-access journal, rather than an all-gold-OA title. Usually costs more than an all-gold journal and almost always paid for.

Green - a version of the article (usually but not always the accepted manuscript) is available through a repository (or personal website, etc), often after a delay of around a year, and usually without a permissive copyright license. Usually no charge (other than standard publication costs if relevant).

Almost all mainstream journals allow green open access, though the rules are complicated, and they often refer to it as something like "permitted distribution" rather than "open access". Most journals from the big commercial publishers offer hybrid open access, though exactly how common it is for people to take this option is still a bit of an open question. (Finally, most all-gold journals also permit green open access, but obviously it's less important in that case!)

So, the question becomes - assuming my journal allows green OA, as almost all Springer and Elsevier titles do, what is the point of paying for hybrid? (This is a question I answer a lot for people looking at OA option forms, and most of them decide not to...)

Possible reasons to take gold over green, assuming you've already decided on committing to that journal, might be -

Audience. If you expect the title to be of wide public interest (= lots of non-academics want to read it) or valuable to particular audiences in regions without great journal subscriptions (Africa, South America, etc) then hybrid gold may make sense.
Timeframes. If you know it is likely to be of particular interest now, and making it publicly available a year or two down the line would be much less valuable, for whatever reason, then hybrid gold is more useful.
Distribution. If you know you'll want to make a lot of copies of your paper and distribute them widely and publicly, having a permissive copyright license through hybrid gold may help do this.
Discoverability. Hybrid OA papers are marginally more discoverable than green OA ones, as you can find them through the journal website, the DOI points to them, etc. A repository or personal website may not always be as easy to find.
Policy requirements. In some cases, funder or institutional policy will require that a hybrid OA option be taken if available. This is rarer now, and most of them are starting to pedal back on hybrid spending, but it may apply.

In practice, most people don't take the option. And if you want those specific benefits, you can get most of them from using an all-gold OA journal in the first place...


When siblings contribute to a research paper, do they need to declare their relationship in the competing interest form? Siblings contributed to a research paper. The publisher asks to fill no competing interest form. Citing the journal in question, it contains the following check box:

☐ The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
☐ The authors declare the following financial interests/personal
relationships which may be considered as potential competing
interests:

What the siblings are obliged to declare? Does "personal relationships" requires them to declare their personal relationship? But what if their relationship certainly does not influence the work? Any suggestions on whether to declare their relationship or not?

There is already an assumption that authors working together have some level of positive relationship - whether colleagues, advisor/advisee, or relatives. These things need not be declared, because they don't influence the content of the work besides all the authors standing by it (which is a minimum requirement for even submitting the paper).
If a sibling has a stake in a company selling widgets and the paper is about how widgets are superior to doodads, then this likely should be reported because the paper could be influenced by a sibling's desire to help their relative's business.


How is disclosure of previously undiagnosed long term health condition likely to be viewed when evaluating academic track record? Considering situations where an individual academic track record is to be evaluated - whether by grant panel, job interview panel, promotion panel etc.
If the individual were to make a statement along the lines of

Prior to [date] I was suffering from an undiagnosed long
term health condition which did not result in absence from work, but limited my
output. This was both diagnosed and treated from [date] after which
my productivity increased substantially, as can be demonstrated by
XYZ.

Is this likely to be viewed favorably in evaluating the applicant's potential to deliver on the future grant/job/etc? Or is there a risk it could be viewed with suspicion given the applicant was still employed between those dates and the employer unaware of the situation?
Suppose it were a mental health disorder, would it be better to say so, or keep with the more generic description above?
Would the answer differ depending on which of the situations (job application, grant application) we're talking about?

I would suggest that you don't raise the issue, for a couple of reasons.
First is that you don't know how it will be read. Some people might see it as an invalid excuse, rather than a valid one. Others might wonder whether it will affect your work in future. It is impossible to say. Saying such things won't, in particular, give you an advantage.
Second, it is natural for a person's productivity to increase over time and natural for an application reader to weigh the more recent work more heavily then the older work. That effect can occur even for someone with no health issues. I doubt that the change after the date of diagnosis would be noted by a typical reader unless you point it out.
This is really opinion, of course. If you are healthy now, focus on how you will continue productivity going into the future.


What is done in a workshop? How does it differ from an academic conference? I have done some research on this, but I still don't know what is carried out in a workshop. What activities are arranged? How are they different from conferences?

The reason why it is difficult to tell what workshops are about is because it is a catch-all category that many different types of academic meeting are labelled as. To illustrate, let me give examples of the nature of some of the events that I have attended in the last two years that all use the same word "workshop" to describe themselves:

A "baby conference" attached to a full-size conference, where the small meeting simply isn't large enough to meet on its own yet.
A project meeting for researchers who are all funded by the same large grant
A planning and discussion session aimed at helping determine the direction of a field
A joint industry/academia fact-finding meeting sponsored by an industry consortium
A specialty conference attended by around 100 people
A premier conference attended by several hundred people
A working meeting by a standards development group

The length of these meetings ranged from a single afternoon to a full week. Their programs ranged from nothing but loosely structured discussion to a full-on tightly packed conference schedule.  The level of peer review ranged from non-applicable to minimal to full-on single-blind review and revision.

In short: a workshop is whatever it wants to be, and different ones serve different purposes in the academic ecosystem.


How to approach a PhD if I want to have a career in academia? I am towards the end of the first year of my PhD where most of my time went towards doing courses and a small research project in our lab. I plan to continue in academia after my PhD and aspire to get a good faculty position sometime in the future. Is there a stark difference in the way one should approach a PhD if they want to go in academia versus if they aspire for an industry research position ? What do universities look for in a PhD which might be very different from what a company looks for in the same candidate and what can I do at my level to tailor my PhD research towards the direction I want to go in.

If you want to stay in academia, these are some of the elements that prospective PIs/Institutions will be looking for: 1) published material; 2) conference participation; 3) ability to attract funding; 4) prizes/awards (although this should be of low priority if you are an early-career researcher, given how unlikely it is to get a prize at that stage). You should also focus on showing that you can have original ideas and that your PhD wasn't simply doing what you have been told to do. Other thing that is important, and I cannot stress this enough, is networking. No matter how ridiculous or incorrect it may seem, the people that you know will make a difference in getting jobs and positions.


How can I share my Google Scholar profile with selected people only? In Google Scholar under the section:

My profile > Pencil symbol > Make my profile public

I have unchecked the option.

This has made my Google Scholar profile private. Now I want the ability to share my profile with few of my friends, not all. How do I do that?

Presumably a profile can be public or private, not somewhere in between, so

  I want the ability to share my profile with [a] few of my friends

this isn't possible unless you adopt an ad hoc solution, e.g., you could save the page and share by email. (More sophisticated solutions exist, for instance, you could mirror the page somewhere and grant a few friends access to the mirror, but such a solution will be time consuming to deploy.)


How do I generate an Undergraduate Thesis worthy of publication? Simply, what do you expect from a good bachelor's thesis?

What do you expect from a good bachelor's thesis?

The expectations for a bachelor's thesis vary from country to country and from field to field. However, I think the main points can be summarised as follows:

the author shows a good understanding of the given problem
the author is aware of the existing literature in the field, can discuss the literature critically and understands where their problem sits in the literature
the thesis is well-written and successfully communicates the author's findings, ensuring that anyone wishing to replicate their experiments could do so

A bachelors thesis is NOT expected to be an entirely original work nor does it need to represent an advancement in the field. I think I am safe in stating that publishing work from a bachelor's thesis is highly unusual.

A successful thesis requires consistent work on a specific problem with demonstrable results that can be disseminated to the community (be this your peers at university, future employers or maybe to a journal for peer review).

You are missing one key ingredient: a supervisor.

At the bachelor's level, it is very difficult (due to inexperience or unfamiliarity with the literature) to identify a problem which is open-ended enough to allow plenty of work on it, but not so esoteric or challenging that the student will not be able to make any meaningful progress or learn anything valuable from the experience.

You state that

  Most of my lecturers are PhD scholars themselves struggling with their own papers. Ego in academia may prevent them from assisting me in my paper.

Have you asked them about this or are you making an assumption? They may well be very happy to supervise your project; after all, getting other people interested in research is very important for academics.

I think that you and your thesis will be far more successful if you find a supervisor who can give you the guidance and direction you need. Your supervisor will also be able to answer your questions about publication of your work (if it merits it-- again, I stress that publication should be low on your list of priorities. Get to know the literature, gain some expertise surrounding your problem and write, write, write).

Now to address your questions about an Ig Nobel.

I'm not sure if you've maybe misunderstood what these prizes are about: they're a gentle satirical mocking of the Nobel prizes, and generally awarded for ``pointless'' or silly research-- not serious science. I'm not sure that aiming to be awarded one for your bachelor's thesis is a good idea.

You can nominate yourself for an Ig Nobel, but as their own website states (emphasis mine):

  Self-nominees seldom win. It seems characteristic of the Ig Nobel prizes that the "Igginess" is a side-effect, not a goal.

Don't aim for an Ig Nobel. Concentrate on finding a supervisor, working on a tough problem, writing a great thesis and getting to know the joys and pitfalls of research.

There are some other questions and answers on this site that may help you further:

Finding a supervisor (this question is about getting a supervisor at another university, but the advice is applicable to your situation).
Do's and don'ts of undergrad research
What counts as undergrad research (when aiming for grad school)


How do I ask a faculty member if I can work with him? There is a postdoctoral position that I would like to apply for. One of the requirements for it is to identify a working group and a faculty member that you are interested in working with. I have never done this. How do I ask a person whom I've never met/worked with if I can work with him ? I mean, what is a polite way to say, well, compared to everyone in the group, your work seems to be the closest to what I want to do, so can I work with you please?

I would be very grateful for any input. Thanks in advance !!!

The first thing to do is probably send the academic you're interested in working with an e-mail. In that e-mail, you can say how interested in their work you are, a bit about your background and round off with asking for a meeting to discuss a possible post-doc position?

Hopefully, they'll respond to the e-mail favourably and you'll be on your way. If they don't reply, then perhaps, after a week send a polite reminder or even go chap on their door.

Be bold. The worst they can say is no and that's not that bad anyway, as you'll have the confidence to go on and ask others.


How can I create a DOI for a paper that was uploaded to arXiv but not published somewhere else? I wonder whether there is any way to create a DOI for a paper that was uploaded to arXiv but not published somewhere else, and have the DOI points to the arXiv URL (e.g., not pointing to some researchgate page). While there are reasons that arXiv does not provide DOIs (Why does arxiv.org not assign DOIs?), I prefer to use the same identifiers for all my research papers.

Ultimately, no, you can't. There's no infrastructure to say "I want to get a single DOI for XYZ arbitrary url".

DOIs for most scholarly publications are issued through CrossRef. CrossRef do not assign DOIs directly, but delegate this to members or their agents. Members, who are usually publishers, pay a fee to the central consortium, and agree to issue DOIs based on a fixed set of rules.

As you can see from these rules, the general sense of membership is "organisations issuing DOIs for stuff they control". While there isn't an explicit prohibition against assigning DOIs to third-party material (which surprised me!), point 4 comes pretty close:

  Members have an obligation to maintain the metadata and URLs associated with all registered DOIs.

There is also a general prohibition of 'duplicative' works including preprints:

  Crossref only registers DOIs for Definitive Works (or Versions of Record, if not formally published) but not for Duplicative Works, as defined in the Crossref Glossary. This means that only original scholarly material, for which there is no actual DOI at the time of submission, and no expected duplication in future, is admissible for Crossref DOI registration. Crossref does not permit multiple DOIs to be assigned to certain closely related versions of a work, and hence does not support assignment of DOIs to Pre-prints or Post-prints of Definitive Works or to the Personal Version or a Self-archived Copy of a Definitive Work. For the same reasons, materials for which DOI duplication can be reasonably anticipated, such as an Authors Original Draft of a work being prepared for publication, are not admissible for Crossref DOI registration.

Putting those together, it seems likely that CrossRef's terms would prevent a member agreeing to issue a DOI for a (potentially duplicative) work hosted somewhere out of their control.

So, could you get a DOI from someone else, outside of CrossRef? Probably not. DOIs are only issued through a number of central registration authorities (eg CrossRef, DataCite). These have fairly well-defined areas of activity (eg DataCite won't issue DOIs for publications) and, to the best of my knowledge, none offer a "DOI for an arbitrary URL" service.


Recommender Too Busy to Submit Letter I've actually just finished applying to 12 graduate programs all around the country and so far, things have been pretty smooth but there is one thing that I am concerned about.

I have three people that I asked to write a letter of recommendation for me. Two of them have all sent in their LOR's already which is great, but there is one that I'm kind of having issues with sadly.

I told her last week that I'm still missing LOR's from her. Her response was that A) she didn't know that I was applying to that many schools and B) she's way too busy to send out those LOR's. I totally understand the amount of stress she probably has to deal with for someone as busy as she is, but at the same time, I'm really bummed out about it because she did initially agree to write them for me before the application submission season even started. To add, I also sent her a list of all the schools I was applying to at that time.

Now fast-forwarding to this week, she sent in LOR's to four of the schools I'm applying to. That's a start! But I reminded her again that I'm applying to other schools as well, eight more to be exact, and they're all currently waiting for her LOR to be submitted. She responds that no, she sent it in to five schools--and I hope this is just my online checklist lagging, but this doesn't seem to be the case--and that she's too busy to do even more. She explicitly said that she wants this to be the last time she'll have to turn in any more letters due to how busy she is on the last email she's sent me.

I'm awfully depressed about this situation and I'm not certain about what to do. I'm not the richest person in the world so I literally spent a good portion of my savings just to apply. Those application fees add up. To have that money and all that time I spent working on my apps go to waste just because one single component of my application was missing would be a major disappointment. At the same time, I really don't want to cause tension between her and me. I totally sympathize for her situation, and I really don't want to burden her, so I'm a little hesitant to try to talk to her again. I definitely don't want to come across as pushy.

Any suggestions on how to tackle this? I get a bit teary-eyed and anxious when I have to think about this.

It's hard for me to understand how this can really be an issue for the professor, because in this day and age of online submission, once she has written a letter, it takes very little time to submit it to each additional school.  Twelve schools is a little on the high side but certainly not ridiculous.  However, it won't really help the situation for you to tell her that.  Of course, overwork and burnout are definitely things for faculty, and there could be issues like that in play.  But my point is that based on what you've said, it sounds like your request is totally reasonable, and this is unprofessional behavior on her part.

I would suggest you discuss this with her department chair.  You could share your email chain with the chair, making it clear that  you requested the letters well in advance and the professor agreed to send them; that she has actually already written the letter; and that the reason for her balking is not apparently related to any concerns about your qualifications.

The chair will be better positioned to speak to the faculty member about sending the letters.  Departments have an interest in seeing students succeed, and I think most chairs would not be happy about seeing this obstructed for relatively trivial reasons.  The chair may also be able to offer to adjust the professor's workload, or have the letters submitted by some other staff member.  As a last resort, the chair may be able to lean on some other professor to write a substitute letter at short notice.

Be prompt about this, but don't panic too much about approaching deadlines.  Graduate programs are usually able to have some flexibility about letters submitted after a deadline, as long as the student's portion of the application was in on time.

This might hurt your relationship with the professor somewhat.  However, I would say she already blew up your relationship by refusing to submit your letters.  That's a breach of a very straightforward professional obligation.