Is PhD worth it when considering your career in industry I'm a beginning doctoral student in the field of Machine Learning and I've been given several contradicting opinions on whether a PhD is worth it or not. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in front of a desk doing research, but I would like to deepen my understanding on my field. I am interested for a career on industry. Some people say I'm wasting my time for doing the PhD and some people say it is worth it. My plan at the moment is to finish PhD as fast as possible and then continue my career in industry when I'm still young. Any opinions or recommendations on what I should do? :)

P.S.

I want to add to this that I have already 2,5 years of work experience on industry (IT) already. For example I designed and implemented an online language skill tester for my university and have worked as a software engineer. So I wouldn't be entirely newbie in programming after I finish my PhD...

My subject is about applying the techniques of Machine Learning on Big Data.

Thank you for any suggestions and guidelines :)

You haven't really defined what you mean by "...when considering your career" in the subject of this post.  On the one hand, you say,

  I would like to deepen my understanding on my field.

If your goal is to deepen your understanding, one way to do that is to get a PhD. You can also do this on your own, without getting a PhD, but you'll find a more structured path and (possibly) more resources if you go down the PhD route.

On the other hand, you say,

  I am interested for a career on industry.

Are you interested in industry because of the money?  If that is the case, you're most likely better off earning a full income and "moving up the ladder" during the time you would spend in graduate school, which means you should forego getting a PhD to concentrate on the money.

If you're interested in a career in industry because of reasons outside of financial considerations, then you have to think about what kinds of jobs you're looking to take in industry. If you're satisfied that your current skills and educational level will make you competitive for the jobs you want, you should probably reconsider the PhD, and to "deepen your understanding" in a different way. Then again, a certain percentage of people want to get a PhD for the challenge and for strictly personal reasons, removed from the job details themselves.

If the jobs you want to get are generally given to PhDs, then you have your answer already -- get the PhD to make yourself competitive for those positions.

I suggest writing down all of your long-term goals, and then weighing them against the time and cost (and opportunity costs) of getting your PhD. If after all that you still don't have a good answer, you might consider continuing with your program for another year and just postponing the decision until then.  Eventually, either you will get your PhD, or you will be convinced that it is better off that you stop the program (but the decision may get harder the closer you are to finishing).


I received an offer letter from a university abroad, should I continue to interview locally until my visa application goes through? I have received an offer letter from a university abroad, which I am likely to accept. The country however has a very stringent immigration policy and a very complicated and lengthy visa application process. There is therefore a real chance that my visa application could be refused.

I have other interviews lined up and I know the usual procedure would be to notify the universities that I have received an offer. However, I feel like I ought to keep pursuing those jobs as a "safety net" because if my visa application fails, I'd effectively end up jobless.

Would it be unethical to go on with those interviews until I have received my visa?

You should definitely continue interviewing locally. I have personally seen several potential hirings fall apart because of visa issues. This is a real possibility.

Consider this: You would never stop interviewing until you have a sure, written offer on the table. Simply do not consider this offer to be sure, until visa issues are in the clear.


Having trouble responding to professors' emails due to anxiety, I have crippling anxiety around "authority figures", and I'm irrationally deathly afraid to the point where I will cry in a room when alone with them, likely due to my upbringing, namely, always being afraid of my verbally abusive, but very loving and well-intentioned, father.  And so I tend to leave very important and very kind emails from professors unanswered.  This is unprofessional of me, and so I was wondering what some of you here have successfully tried doing to counter this level of anxiety.

The authority figure can be a professor, a fireman / police officer looking to help me, my basketball coach.  I've experienced similar with all of these people.  I am sometimes just mute.

I see a doctor and take meds already, but I am looking for other ways to cope.

Is there a cool, fun strategy to try to implement, say, respond to emails within 5 minutes of reading them, even if my response is incomplete?  Aim for a one-sentence reply?

I don't know, I'm just thinking, but I know I need a lot of help.

You are doing the right thing seeking some medical advice. But the way to become more comfortable in this, as in most things, is:

Practice. Practice. Practice.

The first steps are painful and you may fall. Eventually you learn to walk and probably to run.

My doctoral program took a few years longer than it might have because I was too afraid to speak up on my own behalf at a certain point and got stuck (really stuck) with an unhelpful advisor.

Later, I took on the issue head on and taught myself to look people in the eye and to speak up. It was very difficult at first. Now I do it without thought or worry.

It is just a skill. Learn to apply it. Haltingly at first, but it is extremely unlikely that bad things will happen if you speak up. If people don't know your needs they will not be able to assist your academic growth. Just. Do. It. Grow into the person you want to be.

Sometimes you need to just pretend to be the person you want to be.


What are "Rare research subjects" ("Kleine Fächer")? I've noticed a funding agency offer a program for funding "rare subjects" ("Kleine Fächer" in German).

I'm pretty sure my own research doesn't count, but:

Is this concept / category of research subjects used more generally or is it just that funding body's invention?
What are the criteria typically used in judging a subject to be "rare"? After all, almost everyone studies subjects which, at some level of specificity, nobody else is studying (so it's "rare" to study it).

From the detailed description of the call:

  The so-called "rare subjects" (Kleine Fächer) often represent a comprehensive, significant and future-oriented canon of knowledge that is highly relevant for interdisciplinarity, internationality, and innovation.
  […]
  At the same time, these subjects are often characterized by precarious structures within universities.
  Above all, the human resources in these subjects are often scarce; there is a lack of structural sustainability for research and higher education.
  Moreover, they are particularly vulnerable to changing orientations in higher education policy, but also to socio-political change.

  […]

  The assessment will be based upon a comparative
  weighting of the following criteria:

  Does the proposed strategic concept focus on a “rare subject“? Is it about precarious knowledge?
  […]

So, the main criterion is that the subject is so small that it is “endangered” to die due to budget cuts and similar.

On the website of the call you can find a link to a conference on the subject, which in turn links to Portal Kleine Fächer (so there are other people using this term). This features a list of rare subjects, such as:

Albanology
Applied nuclear physics¹
Crystallography
Mining science
Rhetorics
Sign language
Film studies
Glaciology
Forensics
Medical physics¹
Ethics of medicine¹
History of science

As for distinguishing these subjects from subfields of other fields, that site’s definition particularly requires that the subject in question considers itself an own field, having its own societies, journals, and particularly own curricula at university level.
So, your typical specialisation of a big subject does not count here because practitioners of such fields first start the big subject and then specialise as opposed to studying the rare subject as they enter university.

In colloquial German you would rather call these Orchideenfach, but I suppose practitioners of the subjects avoid this term due to its negative connotations.

Please mind that I am mainly describing the usage by relevant sources and quote their examples. I do not completely agree with this.

¹ For which it is unclear to me how they meet the definition given by the site itself, despite having one of the respective institutes next door to me and having specialised on another of the fields to some extent.


For faculty positions: Cover letter vs. a letter of application In the announcement of a tenure-track faculty opening in computer science in USA, I see a request for

  a letter of application explaining your interest in ⟨university⟩ and in this position

Other documents (CV, research & teaching statements, scholarly work, references) are also requested, cover letter not being among them. The application goes to a small, mostly liberal-art university.

How many pages are typically expected for the letter of application? Is a cover letter expected in addition?

I have read What are the differences between a cover letter and an application letter?, which, however, speaks about a PhD position. I have also read the links provided there, but, they are targeted more towards the non-academic job market.

Cover letter = letter of application.  It typically goes: "Hi, this is who I am, this is where I got my PhD, I have published here.  Let me tell you a little about my research.  Let me tell you a little about my teaching.  I want to join your faculty because of this reason.  kthxbai"

It should be two pages, single spaced, maximum.  Use letterhead if you've got it, but keep in mind that letterhead is only used for the first page; the second page, if you have a second page, is on regular paper.


What is the traditional way of earning a doctorate in Germany? I came across this website:

https://www.academics.com/guide/individual-doctorate-germany

At the same time I am interested in pursuing a part-time PhD in Finance in Germany.

Anyone familiar with what is meant by "traditional way of doing a PhD in Germany" / "individual doctorate in Germany"?

Also, does it somehow better comply to a part-time formula?

The traditional German PhD is either self-funded or funded through a fixed-term (usually three years) part-time (mostly in the humanities) or full-time (less frequent, mostly in STEM) position at the university at which the PhD is pursued.

Regardless whether full-time or part-time position, you can formally use a certain share of your contractual working time to work on your PhD project. (I don't remember exactly, but probably something like 50 percent.) The remaining part is reserved for unrelated tasks, such as teaching, administration, or other research. This is usually specified in more or less detail in your work contract. In practice, however, your contractual work duties may be more or less related to your PhD project, and if you are lucky, they may even be perfectly aligned or identical. If you have a part-time position, it is generally expected that you also make progress on your PhD thesis during your free time, so that you may complete the thesis within the duration of the fixed-term contract.

It follows that in both traditional and structured PhD programs, and with both full and part-time positions, pursuing a PhD is in general regarded as requiring your full commitment, as if in a full-time job. However, this does not preclude exceptions, which will have to be negotiated on a per-case basis with your institutions and your supervisor.

My guess is that the traditional program offers more flexibility in this regard, because you don't have to follow a certain curriculum, your progress does not have to be aligned with the rest of your cohort, and you don't normally have to complete any coursework.


Is reusing old code for a new assignment considered self plagiarism? How to protect yourself if you consider it to be, and a group partner does not? I am taking a graduate machine learning course and am working with another student in the class on a final project. In his undergraduate studies, the other student wrote code that accomplished a similar task, and mentioned in our previous meeting that we would be able to leverage much of this code for our current project if we wanted to. I responded that I believe it would constitute textbook cheating and self-plagiarism, but the other student disagrees and believes that re-using the code would not constitute self-plagiarism because he himself wrote it, and it would be redundant to re-write what he had already done.

Now, the course instructors have made it clear that we are not allowed to use any external libraries to perform certain classes of algorithms for this project. This students' prior code would fall under this category of prohibited tools, but he claims that it doesn't qualify because he wrote the code himself (so it is not an "external library"). I believe this is hyperbole, but he disagrees. It is also worth mentioning that this code is licensed under an MIT License, though it is not widely used at all.

It has gotten to the point where I am uncomfortable going forward with the project by re-using his old code, and he does not want to do work on the project that he considers to be redundant. My worry is that if it turns out we're not allowed to reuse the code, then using it could cause us to fail the course and severely negatively affect our reputations. Even if we don't get caught, I personally feel that it would be unethical to copy-paste old code and present it as though it's fresh code for this current project.

I am unsure of how to proceed. I have tried reaching out to the professor of the course some time ago (she has been traveling for some conferences recently and will be for a while) but I have not heard back from her. Additionally, the course TAs have been unwilling to weigh-in on the situation.

I have the following questions:

Is the above situation usually considered to be self plagiarism? Why or why not?
Is the above act typically allowed in an academic setting?
Assuming you are in my position, and consider re-using the code to be cheating and/or unethical, what is the best way to proceed; both in terms of how to make progress on the project, how to compromise with my group mate, and how to protect myself if my group mate refuses to budge.

What should you do?  You should ask the professor politely and without imposing your pre-judgement on whether this is or is not prohibited by the rules of the class.  You are not in a position to make this judgement.  The only person who can give a definitive ruling is the professor who set the rules.

I recommend an approach like:

  My teammate has previously created code that would be very applicable to this project.  Can we use that code, or does it count as an external library, and we should instead write it again as an exercise?

While you are waiting for a response, I would recommend proceeding in two ways in parallel:

You implement a new version of the library from scratch, while
Your partner builds upon the existing library.

That way, you get the educational value of building the library, rather than using the pre-existing library, and your partner can push on ahead without either of you being stalled while waiting for the result.


How can I appropriately bring up topics of agenda to my professor in a meeting? I have been working as an undergraduate research assistant in my professor's lab for about a year now. I've enjoyed working under his supervision, and though I wish I am acquainted with him more, I haven't been able to have much engaging discussions with him due to his tight schedule and partially due to my inability to start conversations with him.

I will be meeting with him in a few days in preparation for my presentation for the summer research project at school. He's been away for a couple of weeks due to personal reasons, and I wish to take this opportunity to bring some agendas to the table.

I want to take about a week off before the semester starts to see my family and to visit my country's consulate for official reasons. He seemed a bit hesitant, though he agreed, when I previously asked for a leave, most likely due to a very late notice.
My professor met with me before his leave and informed me that my funding will be paid out in time for the beginning of another research project around mid-August. However, my money is dwindling dangerously, so I wish to ask him specifically when I can get paid.
I have been working on the research project that my professor and several other professors and PhD students have contributed to over the past several years. My primary adviser, a PhD student, encouraged me to take my role as the lead author on a conference paper. He told me that it would be up to the professor to decide what conference (level of recognition) I will shoot for. Before his leave, he briefly mentioned that I should be the coauthor for a tier 1 conference and support my adviser who will be the lead author,but the decision has not been finalized yet. While I do not want to sound too greedy, I want to express my desire to work diligently as the lead author and aim for the tier 1 conference. I also feel the need to talk about this as soon as possible because the deadline for the submission of papers for the tier 1 conference is less than two months away.

I am not well informed of the culture of the academia, so I am not sure how to bring up these topics to my professor or if the topics themselves are too arrogant for me to mention. How should I approach him about these topics? Also, how can I let him be well aware of my wish to continue to graduate studies when he seems to be occupied most of the time and doesn't have much time for conversations. Thank you.

Send him/her an email reminder that you will be meeting and there are three things you want to discuss:

The week I will be taking off before the semester starts, what is expected before, during, and after?
When funding will be paid for _____.
The ______ project.

Have the email open and mention these "tag lines" if it gets off topic. Professors are usually busy, so I wouldn't beat around the bush with this. Just be direct and to the point, but cordial and understanding.

Whenever I do this before going into a meeting, even if we get off topic, we always tend to at least hit the email points before ending. It also makes it easier to talk about funding since it's much easier to do it via email, and now the email will force it to be a topic of conversation.


Lack of motivation to carry out research or search for positions post PhD. How to address this feeling? Tl;dr: Defended my PhD two weeks ago. However, right from the time of the defense and up until the present moment, I am experiencing a huge lack of motivation and sense of purpose to do anything related to research or search for future positions. How to address this?

Other details****: I had applied for other positions before my defense and was not successful in securing a suitable position. I have an offer from my PhD advisor about a postdoc position which I am expected to start early next year.

Leaving every other concern aside, I am very appalled by my lack of motivation and the constant feeling of lethargy to start with the pending research work and/or resume with the dedicated job search.

I have no idea how to address this feeling. I have taken two hiking trips during the last two weekends. However it feels empty and unproductive inside. I have so much to do before I start with a postdoc position. But all am I doing is wasting time.

Give yourself some time

You just finished an important step in your career, which has presumably taken you between 3 and 7 years. Congratulations! For a while, it is normal to feel like celebrating your achievement instead of going on with everyday research and making important decisions. It is even more normal to have doubts about the next step.

Try to find out why you are not motivated

The good news is that you have an offer for a postdoc position, so (assuming you do not have to give an amswer now) you have some time to reflect on why you are not motivated. Is it just a temporary feeling? Do you really want to continue in academia? Do you want to do research at all? The answers to these questions should become clearer after a while.

Talk to people

Your advisor might have some suggestions about other options you might have after your PhD that motivate you more. You can also ask other colleagues/people in the field that you trust. Maybe they have had a similar experience and can tell you how they overcame it.


Rankings of Computer Science conferences and journals I was wondering if there is any kind of "reliable" CS conferences ranking available on the web. I have searched on SCImago, but I believe it only ranks journals, and there is no mention about conferences. Actually I am curious about it because in the faculty that I am currently working we want to know which papers are presented to good conferences, and which ones are presented to bogus conferences.

Is there any way to know that for the field of Computer Science? I know there are some tools like Google Scholar, but I believe it is not so trustable after all. Should we rely on Scopus maybe?

Any advice?
Thanks

There is CORE, an initiative by universities from Australia and New Zealand. On their website, you can find both journal and conference rankings. Most of the rankings are ok, but (of course) there are individual entries that seem too high or too low to me. As far as I know, many research organisations and faculties in the APAC area use this ranking to assign "credit" for papers.

That being said, if your goal is to distinguish good and bogus conferences, I am not sure CORE will actually help you. The main problem is that CORE is only updated every few years, and only with entries which got submitted by somebody during a nomination phase. Hence it is never really complete. Actual bogus conferences (such as the infamous Worldcomp series - see also for instance here) are not listed at all, but so are smaller legit venues as well as any new conference or journal (of any quality). Hence, you can use the presence of a ranking in CORE as a signal that the venue is probably not bogus (it may still subjectively be better or worse than its ranking indicates, but it is very unlikely to be an actual scam), but you cannot use the absence of a ranking to indicate a bogus venue.

Another problem that you may run into is that a few bogus venues have taken up the practice of using a name that is "coincidentally" very similar to existing high-ranked venues (cp. the top-quality WWW conference and the very low-quality WWW/Internet conference). To complicate matters further, in some emerging fields, even more or less established publishers sometimes churn out journals with basically identical names at more or less the same time (e.g., Springer's Journal of Cloud Computing vs Inderscience's Journal of Cloud Computing).

Finally, established conferences occasionally change their name, sometimes as part of a merger with other conferences, and hence "fall of" the ranking if you do not know what the conference used to be called in the past.

All that is to say that CORE is a tool that can help you get a feel for the value of a publication, but it will not relief you from the task of actually looking at the publications themselves to assess their value.


How can I be a good closer? I'm a 3rd year Ph.D. student in an engineering discipline, and I realize that I am better at starting projects than closing projects. By closing, I mean that the work gets published either in a good journal or a top conference.
I currently have 3 projects on the side (each of them started as a course project or a fun side project) apart from my thesis work. My advisor is flexible with this, but at the same time he would prefer me to invest all of my time in my thesis work (which is completely reasonable).

Given that I would like to continue in academia after Ph.D., I would like to hear tips and tricks on how to be a good closer.
Should there be a restructuring in the way I think about publishing?

I am better at starting projects than closing projects.

Well, this is not really about you, but the thing in the background is

having an idea for a project is often much simpler than working it out and finalizing it.

Some other words of wisdom are the devil is in the details.

So by declaring that you "are better at starting than at closing" you mount a straw man to distract you from the hard part of research. I agree, the first steps into a new idea are usually fun and some first results are easy to obtain. But, as you also noted, along the way it gets harder and often messier. Going through this, staying focused and sticking to the problem is an integral part of research.

If you would answer with "I could close the project if I wanted to, but I am just better in starting new ones." I'd challenge you to go for it and really finish one project before you start the next one.

As for the question "How can I get better at closing?". One thing is simply to realize that finishing a project/finalizing a manuscript is a hard but important task. Sometimes it feels boring to edit the manuscript once again, go over parameter settings once again, recheck derivations once again, update the bibliography once again... but this is a part of doing research: Bring it in a form that is useful to others.


What is the difference between a Bachelor of Arts Honours and a regular Bachelor of Arts? I'm applying to Oxford at the moment for graduate study. Under the section asking what undergraduate degree I'll be receiving, it gives me the choice of "Bachelor of Arts (non-UK)" and "Bachelor of Arts Honours (non-UK)." What is the difference between these two? I might receive departmental honors when I graduate, but I suspect this isn't part of the distinction.

Speaking from my experience in Australia -- but I think it holds for most Commonwealth countries.

A Bachelor of Arts (or Science) is 3 year degree, purely by coursework.
Though potentially some coursework units may have large research components.
You can get into it based on results from high school or some other tertiary entrance exam.

The adding of Honour means the the addition of an extra year, after completion, where you do some coursework, but the focus is on research, you produce somehting which might be called a Honours thesis or similar. Depending on the university, students doing honours may count as post-graduate students, or not (or somewhere between).
It may make sense to think of the Honour year as being a separate qualification -- it is often possible (if unusual) to get into Honours at a different university to where you completed your bachelors.
To get into this Honours pseduo-course, you need to have done well on your units in your bachelors. At the completion your honours results are graded and you get back a result like "1st Class", "2nd Class Division A", "Second Class Division B"; There are more classes, but I've not heard anyone say they have them (presumably because it doesn't sound good to say I have 3rd Class Honours, and/or they don't stick around in academia.).

Honours 1st class is considered roughly equivalent to having done a Masters, as far as getting in to a PhD goes. Thus the Honours pseudocourse can be used as a "shortcut" by high achieving students to get into a PhD a year earlier than they would if they did a Masters -- at the cost of a fair bit of stress usually, because a lot of Honours projects are as hard as Masters projects, and they tend to have a lot of coursework at the same time.

Away from BA and BS, other undergrad degrees may have "built-in" honours.
Bachelors of Engineering tend to have them (Particularly if the B.E. would make you a accredited engineer, without having to go on and do Masters). In these cases Everyone does a research based Bachelors Thesis, but only those who have it graded above a certain cut off, and who meet overall coursework grade cutoffs get awarded a Honours classification, and get Honours on their certificate.


Do universities prioritize research experience over industrial experience for master? For PhD, it's obvious that since you'll be doing research, prior research experience would be a larger plus over industrial experience.

But for a non-research (course-based) master's, do universities still prefer candidates with more research experience or would they prefer candidates with more real world experience?

Assuming both research experience and industrial experience are rather entry level (e.g. junior research assistant vs junior developer).

Based on my experience (for thesis based MSc): a big yes. Because universities are mainly interested in research and publishing papers. Although industrial experience might be relevant but research experience is key.

However, for course based master degree usually students are not required to publish. Thus, it might not be an extra point to have research experience.


When is the typical end of interview invitations for faculty positions? Is there a date when interview invitations stop going out? Some said that interview invitations will come between mid-Jan and mid-Feb, so can an applicant  assume that by March or mid-March there will be no more interview invitations?

I don't think there is a single answer here. Some schools start their interview process in late fall, and other schools don't even conduct preliminary interviews until the end of February. In addition, there's always the possibility that nobody accepts their initial offers, in which case they may want to start a new round of interviews. So basically, you can get an interview request until you get a rejection letter.

However, I would suspect that the bulk of interview requests go out by late February.


Software to make illustrative videos explaining a research topic What are some good (preferably open-source) software for making illustrative videos to explain one's research? I am currently looking for software to make a small video on my research topic that could complement presentation slides. The video may not delve into all technical details, but should summarise all technical content in a compact and entertaining way.

One source that I know of is Videoscribe (sample video), but I have not tried it yet. Are there other/better alternatives, especially open-source?

Not free or open-source, but my institution offers licenses to Camtasia Studio, which seems to be the best package out there for slidecasts/screencasts.

Educreations is a a comparatively much simpler - and cheaper - tool that allows you to create videos but doesn't play as well with slides.


What to do in dealing with scientific mistakes in an article? Recently I've read an article in a journal and find out numerous scientific mistakes in that paper. I decide to write a note to the editorial board of the journal.
First of all, I want to know is there any credit for writing a note about scientific mistakes in an article?
Then I want to know what should be the subject of the note, errata, corrigenda, or retraction note with respect to the scientific mistakes and probably falsified, mistaken data?
It should be noted that I am fully confident of the paper's mistakes and have no desire to communicate with the author of the article.

In this kind of scenario, write a letter to the editor. To quote:

  In academic publishing, letters to the editor of an academic journal are usually open postpublication reviews of a paper, often critical of some aspect of the original paper. The authors of the original paper sometimes respond to these with a letter of their own. Controversial papers in mainstream journals often attract numerous letters to the editor. Good citation indexing services list the original papers together with all replies. Depending on the length of the letter and the journal's style, other types of headings may be used, such as peer commentary. There are some variations on this practice. Some journals request open commentaries as a matter of course, which are published together with the original paper, and any authors' reply, in a process called open peer commentary. The introduction of the "epub ahead of print" practice in many journals now allows unsolicited letters to the editor (and authors' reply) to appear in the same print issue of the journal, as long as they are sent in the interval between the electronic publication of the original paper and its appearance in print.

Example of such a letter, and the authors' response to it (and other letters criticizing their original results).


How to learn how to pronounce and remember names of Chinese students? Most Australian universities have a large number of international students. Common countries of origin include China, Singapore, and Malaysia. When interacting with students, it's much nicer if you can learn their name and pronounce it correctly. To reduce the scope of this question, I thought I'd limit it to Chinese names, but it could be broadened to include other Asian countries.

Several challenges emerge with Chinese names for an Australian (and presumably others from North America, Europe, etc.):

challenges of pronunciation
challenges when reading a Chinese name of knowing which part of the full name is the name to address the student by
challenges in remember the name. In particular, I find it difficult to remember a name that I can't pronounce. Furthermore, the less familiar I am with a name and the fewer associations I have with a name, the harder I find it is to remember.

Questions

How can I learn how to pronounce names of Chinese students?
How can I better recall names of Chinese students? e.g., get acquainted with common names, build some semantic knowledge around Chinese names.

I'd be particularly interested in any good online resources for this purpose.

UPDATE: Following the suggestion of @scaaahu I have asked this question also on Chinese Stack Exchange.com . I normally would not cross-post, but I think that this question might be a rare exception to the rule where cross-posting will provide complementary perspectives.

First of all, I would like to sincerely thank you for your consideration on behalf of all Chinese (I am a Chinese myself).
Now, to answer your questions. One of the best ways to pronounce the individual Chinese names correctly is to ask them - those Chinese students. They would be glad to tell you.
In its nature, Chinese is hard for English speaking people to pronounce. This site is not the right place to discuss the details. There is a better Stack Exchange site.
There are many Chinese dialects. Mandarin Chinese is the most common one. I just did a search, this site seems to be a good place to use. I tried some of the audio sound clips and they sound fine.
Again, asking them is the best way. My Chinese last name is Hu. The correct pronunciation is like "who". Many non-Chinese speaking people pronounce it wrong. I already got used to it but I am always happy to tell them the right way when they ask me. So, thank you again for asking.
Your second question is how to recall Chinese names. This is even harder for a non-Chinese speaking person. My suggestion is to ask individuals what names they go by. If they have English names, would they prefer you call their English names?! I believe most of them would say yes. If they insist on you calling them by their Chinese names, I am afraid the only way is to ask their names every time you meet them. I am not sure they would like it but if that's what they want, that's the way they get.


Listing acknowledgments on CV I have yet to see this, but was wondering if others have or if it makes sense to list acknowledgments in published papers on a CV.

In some questions on this SE, it seems significant contributions to a paper can occur, yet for some reason (maybe not contributing to writing of the paper), the person is listed in acknowledgments and not co-author.  This seems like something that is of relevance/importance.

In the other case, acknowledgments can be 'thanks for the discussion' in which it may have been a brief conversation with one important realization through the talk.  This seems more like daily life.

Some people seem to list their contributions tot he academic community, such as being a reviewer for a journal.

What would you think if you saw acknowledgments on a CV, or, would it make more sense to categorize acknowledgments into other topics, such as, 'Non-co-authored project participation'.

I've never seen "mentioned in acknowledgements" on a CV, and wouldn't know how to evaluate them if I did see them on somebody's CV.  Acknowledgements are often pretty random and arbitrary in their threshold, and can often indicate a very small involvement indeed (e.g., "Mary was eating lunch with us one day when the project was being discussed, and happened to say something useful").  This is different than something like service (e.g., reviewing), which typically has fairly well-defined investment in time, and is a known burden that needs to be shouldered by volunteers across the community.


Text between a Topic and Subtopic in a Thesis I wonder, which one of these structurings is to prefer for a thesis.

To write text between a topic and subtopic, e.g.

A. Main Topic

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse viverra lobortis semper. Donec ultrices ante eu ex interdum, eget eleifend tortor iaculis.

1. Subtopic X

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse viverra lobortis semper. Donec ultrices ante eu ex interdum, eget eleifend tortor iaculis.

2. Subtopic Y

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse viverra lobortis semper. Donec ultrices ante eu ex interdum, eget eleifend tortor iaculis.

To write no text between a topic and subtopic, e.g.

A. Main Topic

1. Subtopic X

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse viverra lobortis semper. Donec ultrices ante eu ex interdum, eget eleifend tortor iaculis.

2. Subtopic Y

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse viverra lobortis semper. Donec ultrices ante eu ex interdum, eget eleifend tortor iaculis.

This likely depends on the style guide that your field or your program follows. For example, I know that the first option is preferred (but not strictly required) in APA style.


What if I got an idea that has been recently published, should I invest time considering it? I got an idea for my master's work but when I did some research it turned out that someone published it in 2016. Should I stick to my idea as maybe I can do some improvements or at least I can give other interpretations or raise some questions or should I leave it behind. Can you propose me some solutions?

Thank you!

Assuming that you want to work in this small sub area, you can pursue it. You are a bit behind the frontier if work was published a few years ago and you need to get up to that frontier if you want to advance it. That will take some effort and such efforts are worth it, just to develop your mind.

But you also have new information that will help you get to the frontier quickly: the new paper and other recent work.

On the other hand, leaving everything else aside to pursue ground that you know others are already plowing, seems sub-optimal. I'd suggest pursuit, but not that exclusively. Develop a lot of ideas shallowly (and keep notes) so that you can pursue a few of them deeply.


How to greet the audience at the beginning of a PhD defense talk/presentation? I'll be giving a 30-min public talk as a part of my PhD defense next month. It would be attended by the examination committee (consisting of my advisor and two examiners). I reckon that some professors/lecturers from the university might also join it apart from my colleagues and friends.

What would be a suitable - neither too short or seemingly-snappy nor too long and boring - way to address the audience at the very beginning of my talk? For instance, starting with

  Hello everyone

sounds a bit too informal to me. Personally, I am inclined to starting with

  Respected members of the examination committee...

but I am not sure if that, because of the "Respected ", may be considered too traditional (unfortunately, I don't recall how my colleagues who graduated in the last years did it - you never focus on such aspects until it is your turn :-$).

Should I refer to the examination committee using names, as in:

  Respected members of the examination committee, Prof. X, Prof. Y, and Prof. Z

or better not?

For peers and friends, addressing could simply continue as

  ... and dear colleagues and friends.

Should I also try to sandwich another category specifically for the other professors and lecturers? If so, what could be a suitable way to address them?

I would like to second both xLeitix and Koldito's comments and convert them into an answer:

In most cases, there is no requirement, and you can just say, "Good [morning/afternoon], my name is [name], and welcome to my thesis defense."
A very few institutions have a much more formal set of requirements.  For example, when I was an examiner for a defense at TU Delft, I had to learn a few words of Dutch in order to ask my questions with the required formality.  Also, I had to come a day early to get fitted for a special archaic form of suit. Don't worry about this, though: if this is the case for your institution, then somebody will make sure that you are instructed in what to do.


If something is publicly visible in the Internet, does it mean I can use it for research? I am talking about images in particular. If I collect a dataset for non-profit purposes (research) and an image is publicly available for anyone on the web (i.e. I can see it in google image search results, and the access to corresponding web page is not limited), does it mean that I can use it, if I mention source?

For example: 3d models themselves might be not available and cost money, but their previews are freely accessible by anyone on the web. Can I use these images as data for research and distribute an archive with these images freely? (including text file with authors of these images and URLs to pages!) Images themselves are available for free.

Or, I might collect a list of these URLs and publish a large txt file with these URLs so that everyone could download them if they need. That should not be a violation, is it? If I one downloads images to train an algorithm?

I feel like that is somewhat different from using images for educational or illustrative purposes.

There are at least three largely-unrelated questions buried in here. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, and in any case its correctness may vary a little according to where you are.

The first thing to establish is that "appearing on the internet", whether in Google Images or elsewhere, does not mean that something is in the public domain. Something may be public domain, or it may be copyrighted with a permissive license, or (most commonly) neither of these may apply - although you can configure Google Images to search for pictures with public domain and/or Creative Commons licenses.

Now, the three questions:

If something is available online can you use it in your research? I don't see any copyright reason why not, since you're not distributing it; downloading an image to perform research is not fundamentally any different to downloading an image (in your browser) to view it.
You might need to be careful that your research (which you presumably do want to distribute) is not a "derivative work" of the copyrighted material. Reporting something like "50% of pictures on the internet are of cats" would not be a problem, but for less clear-cut cases - for example where part of the original material remains - you might want to check.
If something is available online can you redistribute it? No, or at least not by default. Not unless it is public domain or licensed in such a way as to permit this. "Fair use" considerations may modify this answer in some jurisdictions.
Can you distribute a list of the URLs of copyrighted works that others could download for their own research? Probably, but there have been some attempts at really bizzare laws in this area in some countries, due to websites that provide links to pirated movies, etc., that they do not host.


What do publishers provide to authors in different disciplines? Discussions about academic publication (for example, the recent Elsevier boycott, the actual cost of publication, open-access initiatives by universities and funding agencies, citation cartels, or post-publication review) are often muddled by the fact that publication practices and culture vary significantly from one discipline to the next.  I would like to see some of these differences explicitly teased apart.

I'm particularly interested in exactly how publishers in different disciplines help move authors' ideas to formally published papers.  Publishing in any discipline requires the combined effort of authors, publishers, editors, and reviewers, but the distribution of these efforts (and their associated costs) seems to vary from one discipline to the next.

What specific services do publishers provide to authors in your discipline? Please only one answer per discipline.  (If necessary, define "discipline" as "set of researchers with the same publication practices".)

(At a deeper level, I am curious why so many people seem to associate the value, authority, and prestige of various publication venues with their publishers instead of their authors, editors, and readers.  But that's not a good question for StackExchange; let's stick to the narrower factual question.)

I'll provide an answer for my own discipline.

In theoretical computer science:

Papers are written, illustrated, and typeset (in LaTeX) by authors and refereed by unpaid volunteers.  Some publishers give free journal subscriptions to editorial board members; a few pay a small stipend to the editors-in-chief of each journal; otherwise, editors are also unpaid volunteers.
Most journal publishers provide an online system to help editors track submissions and communicate with referees.  Conference publishers do not; most program committees use free systems like EasyChair or HotCRP.
Some journal publishers employ copy editors, who produce the final camera-ready paper directly from author-provided LaTeX and image files.  Specifically, copy editors correct (and invariably insert) spelling and grammar errors, and reformat the paper (especially the bibliography) to fit the publisher's standards.  For other journals and most conference proceedings (Springer's LNCS series being a notable exception), copy editors simply do not exist; camera-ready papers are produced by authors using publisher-provided LaTeX packages, except possibly for page numbers.
Most publishers provide electronic versions of their papers to subscribers.  Some publishers also provide extensive indexing and cross-referencing of their publication catalog.  Online-only venues are still relatively rare, so for most venues, publishers print, bind, and ship paper copies.


Applying to PhD programs - One reference just quit his job I am applying directly to several Professors for a PhD. As part of my applications I usually attach a CV, two references (one is a professor, the other is a research project leader in industry), and if asked I add a note transcript too.

My second referee just told me he quit his job as project leader. As contact info I had attached his work phone and address. Obviously, he will no longer be reachable at those.

What makes things worse is the fact that I recently submitted two PhD applications.To professor A: I sent it a month ago, and he recently replied asking me for my note transcripts. Regardless if he is satisfied or not with my academic performance, when he calls/writes my second reference, the fact that he is unreachable would be a red flag. To professor B: I sent the application a week ago, and have not got any response. Same problem applies, he won't be able to reach my second reference. In such case, he would probably not even bother to ask for my transcript.

What would be the correct course of action now?

The first thing you need to do is check if your reference is still willing to act as a reference even though they have changed jobs. In general, they will, but if they have retired or left the field completely maybe they do not want to. Potentially, a reference who works in industry has signed some sort of non-compete agreement or an NDA that does not allow them to write a reference any longer. Once you either get the referee's new contact information, or a new reference, you need to email your potential supervisors.

In the email, you need to tell the potential supervisor what happened. A job change is pretty typical and does not look bad in any way. Having to change referees is a little more problematic, but just explain briefly what happened.


Mediocre research career so far. Can I salvage my career by continuing as a postdoc with my PhD advisor? I made a huge mistake of working in a field different than my advisor's expertise. My PhD research was in computational modeling of 3D printing process using finite element analysis.
While my advisor's expertise is in density functional theory and molecular dynamics simulations. She works on battery research and my colleagues working on those projects get  published in >15 impact factor journals.
Due to covid, I did not relocate to other place for postdoc and I have been pursuing postdoc with my PhD advisor for the past 9 months.
I have already destroyed my chances of getting an academic position by being a simulation guy in a experimental heavy research field. I am trying to find another position but failed so far. I am having an ongoing discussion about a postdoc position with another professor from another university. He will let me know if he secures a grant.
Meanwhile, my advisor has offered me one more year of postdoc position. Am I heading on to disastrous career by considering her offer?
For the past 9 months, my work has been different and I am enjoying the new learning opportunity.  But I extremely worried about my future.
Please advise.

Am I heading on to disastrous career by considering her offer?

No.  There is nothing wrong with considering and accepting a job offer from your PhD advisor, or an extension thereof.
What is disastrous for your career is not looking for a better job and taking one as soon as it is feasible to do so.


Is my Major Professor Counted as a Co-Author? According to the APA style manual, the editorial "we" is used to refer to the author and co-authors but should not be used if there is a single author. However, in writing my mathematics thesis, I am working closely with a professor to do the research. He won't be listed as an author as far as I'm aware, but it feels natural to use the pronoun "we" to talk about results found during or after a proof. It also has always seemed more a reference to the author and reader together but perhaps this has only been my own erroneous imagination. Here is the link to the APA style reference I mentioned: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/first-person-pronouns
Should I avoid using the pronoun "we?"

Using "we" as you suggest is fine.  As to the APA, I say a mathematician needs a guide to psychology writing like a fish needs a bicycle.  We with a single author is good enough for Terry Tao 1,2 so you can do it as well.
There are many specific style issues in mathematics.  There are many guides. Here is one 3.
By the way, the best time to discuss authorship issues with your professor is back when you started this project.  The second best time is today.


Discussing work with supervisor in an invited dinner with his family I am a grad student. I have been away for an internship in another city. My professor came to meet me at the weekend and he invited me to dinner.
I did not have any time to prepare and I did not bring a gift and he brought me a gift. I was embarrassed, really.

I recently got a result from my project and was very interested to show him my result as I had not seen him for a long time.  I am feeling so embarrassed.

Do you think these behaviors were rude? I was very clumsy. Could I write something as thankyou letter and apologize about not being prepared?

Welcome to academia.SE :-)

See, many things that we do in our life are most of the time unplanned and spontaneous. The thing that you did is not a big deal for good people. Just say sorry sometime during tea time and get on with it. Don't keep it scratching.

Further, one positive to that is: He would have felt so happy that he has got a very dedicated (and weird) student who shows results during family dinner.

I have done it quite few times and I am not sorry about it. It feels weird initially, but not so apologetic.

Good luck!


How do selection committees ensure that they won't steal an applicant's ideas as presented in his/her research statement? Academic job applications usually require the submission of a research statement, which describes not only the applicant's research experience, but also future direction of their work. As such, it may contain some novel ideas.

Considering that a research statement is not a publication, and therefore, can't be cited, how does a selection committee ensure that nothing in an applicant's research statement (especially those of unsuccessful applicants) will be stolen by anyone in the selection committee who reads it?

I mean, since the applicant's submitted documents are probably only known to the selection committee and the applicant him/herself, isn't it easy for anyone in the committee to copy those ideas without being found out?

A related question, if a member in the committee identifies an interesting and promising idea of an unsuccessful applicant, and is keen to pursue the idea, what should the committee member do? How do you give credit to the unsuccessful applicant when the research statement is the only document where the idea is described?

To be clear, my concern is more on the committee, not how I can prevent the committee from stealing my idea. One day I might be sitting as a selection committee member myself, and I'd like to know what I should do in this situation.

This question is related to Research statement ideas got used by interviewing committee, but looking from the perspective of the committee.

Academics are presented with confidential material all the time. We review manuscripts and grants and we are expected to not steal those ideas. A research statement is very similar to a grant proposal. When we are given applications to review we are reminded that they are confidential and should not be circulated. This is the same as when reviewing a grant. While many funding agencies and publishers have clear statements that reviewers must agree to, departments generally do not produce such guidelines. That said, a department would likely come down very hard on an individual who did not respect the confidentiality of an applicant.

With that out of the way, it is often that a reviewer has similar ideas as an applicant. On the face of it, it may appear that the reviewer has stolen the idea from a proposal, when in fact it was an independent idea that the reviewer had already had. One question is should reviewers decline to review based on a conflict of interest when the proposed work is similar to their current/future work. In my opinion, they should not since they are in the best position to review the work and the similarity is likely the reason they have been asked to review. This then does leave the burden on the reviewers to be able to document that the research agenda is in fact their own and not stolen from the confidential proposal.

The final issue is to document anything that is unique to your proposal. Saying you want to study topic X does not make it yours. Saying you want to study topic X with method Y, isn't much better. If the proposal says I want to study topic X with novel method Y because of reason Z, then the linking of X, Y, and Z might be important. If you document this, then at least if someone studies X with Y, you can get the credit for coming up with the brilliant idea of using method Y on problem X. In some ways realising that problem X can be solved with method Y is more important than actually solving the problem.


Second PhD in Astro after a PhD in CMT (Physics) Okay here is the current situation. I am entering my second year in my PhD program and most of my options of joining the Theoretical astrophysics groups are closed ( no professors working in that field and two of them who were working are leaving the university). Right now the only open option for me is to work in computational condensed matter theory which I am not sure I am interested in (But I do know that given a option between this and theoretical astro I would choose the latter) ie.. interest in Astro theory >> Interest in CMT. okay given this background the questions are,

1) what are the cons of doing another PhD in astro after completing my PhD in CMT (let us say it would take me 5 years here to complete my PhD and if I am applying to an university in UK for my second PhD I would complete it in 3 years so in total i would have spent around 8 years with 2 PhD's in my hand) cons ?

2) I know most of you would ask me to just reapply to other schools, But I am not sure how certain I am in getting an admission again and I dont want this entire two years here to go waste ( just 3 of more years I would have my PhD). So my second question is it even possible to get a PhD position in Europe after having PhD in US ?

So basically my reason for second PhD is not for a better career path, but instead to shift to my area of interest but as well as to not let these 2 years of my life go waste. Is it a good choice to make ?

Edit 1- I did read all the answers for double PhD questions but all the questions were in the line of "I want a better job/career, should I do double PhD?" mine is, "Let us say I complete my current PhD, is there any disadvantage of doing another one just because I would love to work in that field?"

PS: Yes I am working in US university right now, and yup as I am in my second year I have completed few course work and started the project. Rather than saying I "have to complete this PhD", I would put it this way - "I don't hate the work I am doing here, it is just that I would like working in the other field much more than this"

Edit 2- Thanks for the helpful answers. Let me explain my personal bias towards astrophysics. I am a math person by nature, and previously had my undergraduate in engineering.I wanted to move to physics mainly because of the rigorous mathematical structure of it compared to engineering, I self studied several physics stuff and hence wanted to do theoretical physics. But later (now) my views about theoretical physics is changing. On the whole this is what I think is the timeline chart in theoretical physics area apart from Astro) -

Experimentalists collect data of physical world
Theorists build model to explain the data
The new theory might lead experimentalists to further prob the physical world to test the theory
If it does, verify that theory, if not inform the theorist
Theorist then builds a new (or modify the old model) to explain the existing results.

So at the end of the day theorists keep on modifying their model until it agrees with all the experiments. At the end of the day, this is just model building/modifying till my theory fits the data(this creates a bound purpose to building the theory unlike mathematics). But in Astro, since there are very few experiments to verify, the set of all possible theories is large and theorists in this field actually have the freedom to keep on building theories(or models) to explain. And it is this abstract nature of this field (which is analogous to mathematics) where one needs no reason to build theory other than building it just for the fun of it interests me. These are my personal thoughts about general theoretical physics and the reason I want to move to Astro.

Don't plan on doing two PhD for all the reasons in the comments.

Whether to stay and throw yourself fully into the best and most active and dynamic CMT group (try to be a CMT star for goodness sakes)  or leave for another university depends on being honest with yourself about your reasons for choosing one over the other. (Is it 'liking' to call yourself an astrophysicist? ) Intellectually - they are both fascinating fields. You will find the smartest of the smart in either.

You talk about losing work, but did not mention being involved in any research projects with either of the astrophysics faculty who are leaving. If you had, they likely would be already talking to you about whether a plan could be put in place to help you finish your project somehow.

It wasn't clear if you were in UK or US. In the US- those 2 years are typically core courses and preparation for the qualifiers. If so, those core courses will transfer pretty easily to any similar department, and if you did stellar in them, will probably make it easier to get into a department that matches your interests. You will not have to take the core again and in particular, the pressure will be that you should hit the ground running and  get involved in a significant way in a project (even if you have less time because you are supported initially on TA instead of RA). If you can pass the qualifier will be the main issue.

As an additional note - most faculty understand if a student wants to switch schools because the subfield of interest is not represented. They will write recommendation letters without qualms and wish you the best.


Citation format for Editor's Response I have a question about citation format.

I would like to cite the comments by the editor at the beginning of a "Letters to the editor" section from Mathematics Magazine's October 1995 issue.

(Not any of the letters themselves. The comments by the editor that precede the letters.)

What's the format? Most importantly, what are the author and title?

The editor appears to have been a Martha Siegel, but I think the simplest solution in your case is to go the table of contents of that issue, and click "Cite this item", which yields citations like

  Mixon, Bill, Steven J. Brams, D. Marc Kilgour, Robert Mandl, David L. Farnsworth, and David M. Bloom. "News and Letters." Mathematics Magazine 68, no. 4 (1995): 322-24. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2690589.

for the news and letters section. A three page document is short enough that you don't really need to be more specific than that. Still, if you want you can make it clear in the text that you're only citing the editor's introduction to the section. A less standard solution would be adding something to that effect in brackets in the reference list, e.g. "[Editor's introduction]".


Technique for teaching "unlearning"? How should one go about trying to teach students to "unlearn" a previous skill/principle they believe is correct but is actually wrong?

Hypothetically speaking as a really basic situation, if your student was adamant that the formula for the area of a rectangle is 2*l + 2*w, even though you tried to explain that is instead the formula for the perimeter, and explained to them the definition of area vs. perimeter, but they are overly confident that they are right, how can you gently guide them to the right direction? What is best practice?

I these cases the direct approach is seldom constructive. It's tempting to start constructing logical examples that show they must be wrong, but this is much more a matter of psychology than of logic.

Basically, the stronger you argue, the harder they will dig their heels in. With your example you may actually force a situation where they have no other way out than to admit that they're wrong, but in most scenarios they'll find a way to stick to their guns, and the more you push the issue, the harder it becomes to admit they were wrong all along.

So the trick here is small commitments. Don't ask them to accept the whole thing in one go, but get them to accept a small part of it, something they can agree on without admitting defeat. Then just stand back and let them come round on their own.

My favourite example of this principle is trying to convince a rabid anti-Apple consumer to buy an apple laptop instead of a regular PC. If you argue on quality of hardware, or value for money, or user experience, it won't do you any good (regardless of whether those are valid arguments). What you should do is buy them something very cheap and tiny, like an iPod nano, for their birthday. Once they commit to that, the anti-Apple stance is no longer a point of principle, but they're somewhere in the grey area, free to move around.

It's all about breaking down the principled stance and the ties to their pride. Only once you've got rid of that should you come in with the logical arguments.


Sending a *digitally signed* email to prospective employer/supervisor I have been digitally signing (and encrypting, whenever possible) my official emails for sometime. While I am not extremely paranoid (but serious, certainly) about cryptographic security, I also think signing the email is a signature [pun intended] that I take such aspects seriously. On a like-minded recipient, this could therefore make a good impression.

On the other hand, if seeing the

  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

  Hash: SHA1

header has a high likelihood of annoying or confusing the person (to the point of them simply deleting my email), then I certainly do not mind sending an unsigned message.

I recently started applying for jobs (in the area of quantum information/communication to be precise) and was wondering if I should, in my first email contact with a potential employer or (postdoc) supervisor, also sign that email?

I cannot imagine anyone being too put off by the digital signature, although I would probably go with a detached signature.

I think if you are going to digitally sign your emails, you may want to make sure you understand what you are doing. This would definitely be the type of thing I might bring up as a "safe" small talk topic during a campus visit. Often the small talk conversations can influence a decision in a tight job search since the search committee is not only looking for someone who can teach the required classes and do great research, but also someone they want to work with.


Some students giggle at me while I teach! I am an associate lecturer and its my second term with the undergraduate students.

I noticed some of my students laugh when I teach. Its the most annoying thing I ever felt in my academic life so far. I always think, why some laugh while others appreciate my way of teaching? Its very puzzling.
At the end of my first trimester I received a very positive feedback from the majority students. But just those couple of giggling students ruin my whole confidence.

I don't speak funny and I look average too but why why that happens with me?

Is it normal in academia? Did this happen to anyone else? And how I can deal with them?

In my experience, there are some students who just cannot take class seriously. They may not even be laughing at you. Rather, they may be talking with a classmate and find what they are discussing amusing. They may not be paying attention to you at all. When they take a test and do not do well, they may react by thinking that is funny. If it bothers you enough, you should talk with the students after class and explain that their behavior is distracting to you, and probably to their classmates. This might appeal to whatever sense of fairness they may have. If they continue to be a distraction for you, a pointed remark about immature behavior may be appropriate, again after class. You may, if you wish, indicate that their behavior shows a lack of respect for you, the course, and their classmates.

I would not call the students out in class. I would also consult the department chair for suggestions on how to handle the situation.


What are the steps I need to take when an author won't answer clarification questions? I have recently read a paper in the Journal of Empirical Finance.
I was interested in the methodology that the author was using, but in terms of the data collection, the writing was particularly brief and I struggled to replicate their results.
This could have been clarified easily by the author, but they choose not to reply.
Is there anything I can do here or is it the authors choice not to answer questions about a published article?

I get far more emails than I can reply to, but occasionally I do reply to random emails from people I don't know concerning papers I have written.  The main factors that lead to me replying are: (1) I can see that the person is genuinely interested and has tried pretty hard to understand. (2) The person has a very concrete question that I can easily write down the answer to. (3) I am not overly pressed for time from other obligations.
In your case I cannot tell what kind of email you wrote.  But if it says roughly "Dear X, I am interested in your paper but I don't understand your data collection methodology.  Could you explain it in more detail?  Best regards, Y." then I would ignore it for sure.  Why?  Basically the person has written a minimal-effort email, and so I assume they probably read the paper with minimal effort too.  And what they want from me is completely unreasonable: They want me to write an expanded methods section just for them.
On the other hand, if the email would show a deeper understanding of the topic, and they would clearly explain their confusion and ask a specific question that I can easily clarify, then I am happy to do so, even if it takes a couple of paragraphs of explanation.  However, such emails are rare.
When you publish a paper, the paper stands on its own, with all its strengths and weaknesses.  A paper does not come with any warranty or guarantee that the author will freely provide all interested readers with further personalized instruction on the topic of the paper.


Are management courses useless? As a business students I have taken tons of management courses - from marketing theories to company strategies to human resources. But I feel I literally got nothing out of them. What we have done is just to study by rote, sit for exams and forget 99% of the content two weeking later. Are they useless or should I have studied them in the other ways?

Here is a bit of my thought: let's take Cousera as an example. It offers degree courses in business, by completing which you could earn a diploma just as on-campus students do. However, they are video-based and lack interactions among students themselves and between professors and students. More importantly, you cannot network as those actually studying on the campus do, which renders them even more useless and in reality these types of degree are not even half as valuable as a full time on-campus degree. So, let's say, if management courses are really useful, why do online degrees still have not got recognition from the industry?

I won't comment on whether management courses are useless. But the way you approached them certainly made them so. Learning by rote the day before the exam and forgetting everything afterwards is a complete waste of time, unless your one and only goal is to get a degree at the end. If that's your only objective, then any course you take at the university is useless, really. If your objectives include learning, though, then you did a pretty poor job at it, and that's mostly on you. Yes, a bad course does not help. But there are plenty of things you could have done to make use of the lost time. Interact with students, ask the professor for more reading material, look for it yourself...


Do I need to cite the source of a famous quote in my thesis? I'm writing part of my Computer Science PhD and I'd like to know whether it is generally acceptable to have a reference to a famous quotation by a famous person without citing a source. For example,

  "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!" - Edsger W. Dijkstra

But please don't decorate each chapter with a quote you took from a calendar. As JiK said, there are so many misattributions and misstatements around, you need to go to the source if you absolutely must use a quote. But as chapter decoration I find them silly. Okay, Knuth is allowed to do that, but until you reach the god-like status of Knuth, please refrain.


Will a dishonesty incident destroy the chances of getting into a good PhD program? This is going to be a long post but I believe is the only way to understand my situation.

I studied B.Sc in Information Systems Engineering in a small private university in Latin America, it's not a research oriented institution and thus does not have a high reputation, especially outside my country. My GPA is very high (here grades range from 0 to 100; I have a 84.5 GPA which is top 12~15% of the class).

After having completed my first degree I wanted to study M.Sc in Computer Science, in a different university, much larger and public-founded, that has a relatively good reputation worldwide(ranks consistently among top 300 universities in the world).

To get into the program I was asked to complete some supplementary courses and get a certain minimum grade average. On my first semester I got good grades BUT I ran into some serious trouble in one final exam.

In this final exam, I fell asleep and arrived a few minutes after the exam had started, with all the hurry and all I forgot to take my phone out of my pocket (It's forbidden to have a phone on you during test). One of the exam supervisors noticed it and I was found guilty of academic dishonesty (which meant I had no chances of continuing towards this degree). I was pissed off but instead of quitting, i pursued another degree, in the same university but in a different faculty. I pursued M.Sc in Information Systems Engineering.

To be able to get into this new program, I was asked again to complete some supplementary courses, this time I got excellent grades and didn't run into any problems. Now I'm about to start my first semester in the M.Sc, and I started to think about PhD.

So finally I can ask the question: will this incident affect my chances of getting into a good PhD program? I mean if I wanted to go abroad say to study in the US, will this incident hurt my chances beyond repair?

Edit: Possibly a new issue has arised. I started to worry about being rejected from this M.Sc., even if I completed all the sumplementary courses with grades higher than requested?

After this incident had ocurred and after the discipline hearing in which I got "disqualified" instead of the actual grade as punishment, I applied to this different M.Sc program at the same University.

I did send an email to one professor that is in the acceptance comitte of this different Masters program, asking about my chances of getting into the Masters(I didn't mention this incident, I just asked if I stood a chance).

He replied with the list of supplementary courses but now that I think about it, he probably didn't even look at the current transcript of the university, He probably just look over the transcripts of the B.Sc.

I mean I have with me a letter (which I received after the hearing) that says: You have to complete all these courses with minimum GPA of X, which I did, and every grade has to be no less than Y, which I also did.

Should I be worried?

A citation of exam disqualification on your official transcript will probably arouse some concern in those who see it.  (FYI, although most or all graduate programs will ask for your undergraduate transcripts, it is not guaranteed that a given admissions committee will read them carefully enough to catch this.)

Switching into a different master's program at the same university is a good idea.  If you succeed in doing that, then the issue was clearly not of the highest level of seriousness, i.e., not serious enough to get you kicked out of the university.  Assuming you can switch, Captain Obvious has just told me to inform you that you should keep your nose absolutely clean (and leave your cell phone at home!) for the remainder of your new master's program.  Also I would put more than the normal effort in to make sure you get the best possible grades.

Now what happens when you apply for a PhD program elsewhere, e.g. at a good American university?  Assuming that the disqualification will continue to appear on your transcript, in my opinion you should address this in your personal statement and also ask a sympathetic faculty member to confirm your story in their letter.  The tone here is very important (and it is also important that you do not dwell on the issue too much; more than one paragraph would probably be excessive).  If this is handled well then it becomes somewhat in the eye of the beholder how seriously to regard the issue.

For my part, assuming I believe the story you've told I have a lot of sympathy for you: forgetting to remove your cell phone from your pocket is a failure to comply with an exam directive.  I am a mathematician so can be very literal-minded, but I think that to call something "academic dishonesty" there must be some actual dishonesty involved, i.e., an attempt to cheat, deceive or take unfair advantage. [This means that plagiarism can be separate from academic dishonesty, which is a fine cutting but I think correct.  Also plagiarism has a victimized party, an important distinction.]  So to me calling your action "academic dishonesty" seems extreme and unkind.

This is also colored by the fact that in my academic culture (public university, US) we would generally not ask students to remove items from their own person before taking an exam nor would we feel comfortable searching a student's person in an exam situation.  It may be that in your own culture the removal of cell phones upon taking an exam is so standardized that the failure to do it looks self-servingly negligent.  Still, for me it is not a big problem.  As an example, when I give exams in freshman calculus, calculators are not permitted.  Once I noticed 5-10 minutes into an exam that a student was in fact using a calculator.  I walked over to him, pointed out where it said on the exam sheet that calculators were not permitted, asked him to put away his calculator, took away the work he had done on the exam so far and allowed him to start fresh.  I thought it was an honest mistake which gained him little if any advantage and I didn't see the point in making a big stink about it.  Others might feel differently.

In fact, "Others might feel differently" is one of my main points: I think that you should apply to a larger number of programs than you otherwise would because some programs and people will find this problematic and others likely will not, in a way that will not be possible for you to predict in advance.

Anyway, good luck and remember that cell phones are the root of all evil.


Should you mention previous rejections when resubmitting a paper? What is common practice? You submit a manuscript to journal A. The paper is rejected, either with a short dismissal ("not good enough for this journal") or with a longer rebuttal from the referees. You wish to resubmit it to a different journal B.

Should you inform the editor at B of the previous rejection?

What is ethically correct? What do people do in the real world?

Possible arguments in favor:

It is important information regarding the manuscript, you shouldn't withhold it.
In this way the editor at B can contact the editor at journal A to solicit an opinion from the same referees, who already know the paper and are in a better position to give a report.
It is not honest to submit and resubmit the same paper at different venues until you are lucky enough to get better-inclined reviewers; mentioning all previous history is needed to expose this practice.

Possible arguments against:

The editor at B will perceive what has happened as an indication that you consider journal B to be lower-tier than A, and possibly get offended (and biased against publication).
If the information gets to the referees, they might be negatively influenced, too.
Ultimately, is it fair that the previous referees are brought into the picture again, or should you start with a clean slate and new reviewers?
It feels silly to write "we got a negative report with no suggestions for changes, so we are sending the exact same manuscript at you with minor modifications".

The arguments against look weaker in my view, because they all imply a bias that "perfect" editors and reviewers should not have.

Regarding your arguments for: 1. and 3. seem to be more like "axioms" than arguments.  1. in particular seems almost to be begging the question.  As for 3., journals have (increasingly!) long lists of requirements for authors, some of them serious but also others that those "in the know" know that they may safely ignore: e.g. many journals ask that you submit papers in their own template, but there's no good reason for that, most papers that I've written or refereed do not do that, and no one cares.  So the negation of 3. seems more reasonable to me: if journals wanted you to provide this information, they would ask for it.  (Maybe you are trying to argue that they should ask for it.  Interesting, but a different question, I think.)

Argument 2. is much more pertinent: if the referee's careful opinion is that your paper is valuable and deserves to be published in a research journal but just not in the journal that you have submitted to, one can indeed save a lot of people's time by carrying over the same referee to a different journal.  If you want to do this, it seems best to ask the editor of journal A to get in touch with journal B.  I've done this both as an author and as the carry-over referee.

But this is an option that the author gets to choose to exercise or not.  In terms of the current practices, this is certainly true and I don't think anyone expects otherwise.  Again, it is interesting to argue about whether it should be true....and yes, I think it should.  The refereeing system is not strong on incorporating "responses to referees": when authors write back to the editors pointing out factual mistakes in a referee report, they are often told something like "I am inclined to believe you and that is most regrettable.  You should definitely resubmit your paper to another journal of similar stature.  Best of luck."  Very often the referee acts not only as the jury but also the judge and the executioner in the current system.  But for a paper whose work is agreed to be correct and novel -- or for which this evaluation was not even made -- then fundamentally, "not good enough for a journal like X" is nothing but an informed opinion.  If that opinion is a sound one, a different referee will probably come to it independently.  If it isn't, then I think the author has every right to start out fresh.

Let me also say that as a frequent referee, I do not feel the desire to know the provenance of the paper, and I don't think that would help me with my decision.  I already have what I think is probably too much information at my disposal: namely the author's identity and thus their professional reputation, my personal view of them, and so forth.  Being a good referee doesn't mean taking all possible information into account; it means taking exactly the right information into account to evaluate the paper on its own merits.

In the course of arguing against the "arguments for", it seems that I have espoused some of the arguments against: 2. and 3.  I hope these arguments have been shown to be more convincing.  (Arguments against 1. and 4. do not seem very compelling to me.)


Combining Visiting Professor with TT I currently work as a TT Assistant Professor in a very comfortable and welcoming top-100 university in my field. My wife lives in another country for the time being and I would like to spend more time with her so I was looking for opportunities there as well. I noticed a top-10 university there that I have connections with that I would like to collaborate with. After making introductions and such, they are willing to collaborate and are additionally offering me a visiting professor position.

The way I understood this offer (one line in an e-mail), is that this would allow me to go there and do research and teach some courses every once in a while and probably get my costs reimbursed. After reading some threads here, it seems that my view is too simplistic and possibly wrong.

Is such a visiting professor position actually combineable with an existing TT position?
Is there a name for what I described in the second paragraph?
What would you recommend for my situation? Visiting researcher? Visiting scholar? Visiting professor?

I will answer this question in light of @paulgarrett 's comments:

A Visiting Professor position is a full time job and not combineable with a full time TT position
A Visiting Professor position is no guarantee whatsover for anything else in the future so one should not give up her TT position for this.
Visiting Scholar seems to be the type of position that is combineable: you start a research collaboration with the second university but officially affiliate 100% with your current one.

I ended up going for something in between which I hope will combines the best of both worlds: having the visiting scholar position for a year and simultaneously giving up 20% of my TT at my current institution in order to get a temporary 20% position as visiting professor at the external institution.


Why is it extremely difficult for me to concentrate, and why do I yawn repeatedly? Whenever I'm attending a class or even watching an educational video on internet (mainly any educational activity where I'm required to focus), I keep yawning constantly and all the time (I didn't count it before but I think I might yawn once, or maybe even more, every minute), with my eyes getting teary; and I lose my focus constantly and overthinking starts to contain me, I many times not only think about an event, but even keep imagining events and stories within a particular idea; and then I suddenly pay attention to the fact that I missed what I'm there for and I'd been in a different world. I get things together and I try to focus again, but this keeps happening endlessly. Overthinking usually abuses my brain, but it gets worse whenever I'm trying to focus.

It could be many factors: lack of interest, screen time, poor sleep, inconsistent sleep, lack of hydration, too much sugar in your diet (causes crashes), eating before class, not eating enough before class, poor habit formation early in life, lack of physical exercise. There are many, many factors. However, to begin with, you should examine a few things in your lifestyle:

1) What is your diet like? when do you eat? do you eat consistently the same times each day? do you eat a carb heavy diet?

2) Do you get physical activity? Are you hydrated or always drinking diuretics?

3) Examine your sleep schedule. Inconsistent sleep can be worse for you than less sleep.

4) Do you care to be in class? Are you treating your classroom like a job? If not, you should be.

5) Journal your day so you have a record. After two weeks, identify poor patterns in your lifestyle.

6) After you take a deep look into your lifestyle, and the consistency of your lifestyle, consider speaking with a profesional about trying ADHD medication and integrating those medications holistically into your lifestyle.

Nobody here will know why you are the way you are, but those are some key areas of life that you can personally make changes to.


Pay for open access publication from private money I am working on a paper together with people from another university. In one of our meetings, after I have mentioned that I do not have any funding from the university for open access, they suggested that we can pay the publication fee from private money.
This puzzled me, as I have never heard that somebody is doing this.
Is it common to pay a publication fee in an open access journal from private money?

People would rather avoid doing this, but, yes, it is possible. I can't say how common. Most academics will try to pay such fees (and other publication fees) out of grant funds. Some university departments will provide funds if asked.
But there is no prohibition about paying as a private person. Independent researchers have few options otherwise.


Progress tracking tool for managing PhD students I am looking for good options for tools to manage my PhD students, in terms of seeing that they are on track in working out their PhD theses (I am in the UK, three year system) and are hitting their necessary milestones. Each year, as the number of students I supervise grow, it becomes more unwieldy to keep track of each student's progress.

In some ways this sounds like I am looking for a project management tool like MS Project or OmniPlan. But these seem too unwieldy and, perhaps, I would like to also have something that can help manage the chapters I have read and the comments I have given then.

So some basic features would be:

Collaborative software (preference of hosted on a server)
Task lists with deadlines
Timeline progression

I am curious what recommendations people have.

Like @Orion suggested, trello is great for organizing work. It is a kanban board where you express tasks as cards and you pile those cards in different decks; usual decks are TO-DO, DOING and DONE, but this is up to you. You can have different boards, one per student. It is collaborative and allows to grant access to a board to specific users (e.g. each student's board would be accessed by the student and you). you can open a card and write comments on it.

If you prefer not to depend on an external service, you can self-host a trello clone, like wekan.

Update: for Gantt charts within the kanban board approach, I see 2 options:

Pay for the Trello extension called elegantt.
Use the open source kanban board called kanboard. It is less visually appealing, but comes with a Gantt view out of the box. You can either host it yourself or subscribe to the hosted version.


Academic dishonesty after acceptance of graduate school I am being accused of academic dishonesty on a problem for a class this year. I have already accepted an offer to a Ph.D program and if I am convicted, there will be no mark on the final transcript I send them, and the effects are probably going to be nonexistent on my actual grade. Should I be concerned that this will turn up, and is it likely I will have to disclose this later?
Edit (some more information that may be relevant):
This has no way of connecting to the professors who wrote my recommendation. My concern in case of conviction is mainly the extent to which I may have to graduate schools, and whether or not my existing statement that I have not been convicted (submitted prior to all this) will be checked (in the case of a conviction, it may appear that I lied).
The alleged offense is itself minor (as far as these things go) and based on resemblance with something online. Not that I expect this to have an impact on how it is externally viewed.

The graduate school, or whoever sets local regulation, can do whatever they want.  But most likely:

No information will be sought beyond a transcript.
The graduate school will not find out about misconduct not on the transcript.
If the graduate school finds out, and any information you provide agrees with information provided by your previous institution, the graduate school will consider the previous institution's actions to have settled the matter.

If you disagree with your previous institution's findings, instead of saying "Y happened", say " found that X happened, but I found that Y happened."  This way it is clear you are not misleading anyone.


How to reference "letters of gratitude" on the CV? On my CV, I would like to reference some "letters of gratitude" I have received from different institutions about training courses I have given to them.

I imagine these letters could go under "Honors and Awards" section on my CV, is that right?

How should I mention these letters? Something like:

Letter of gratitute from [institution] on the [course details]

or is there any better, formal way of saying it?

I am working on two separate areas (academia and industry); in the second one, it is sometimes useful to acknowledge these thank you letters when applying for jobs.

I'd recommend having two versions of your CV/resume, for use in applying to different sorts of jobs.  The industrial version could take whatever approach is standard for such applications.  For the academic version, it would be safer not to list these letters of gratitude under "Honors and Awards", since that's usually reserved for more clear-cut cases (such as prizes, awards, competitive fellowships, etc.), so including them there could look odd or like you are padding your CV.  If you'd like to mention them on the academic version of your CV as well, one possibility would be to write "received letter of gratitude from university" in parentheses after your description of the training course.


Is the usage of "vice versa" appropriate in academic writing? I have written:

  In an oil-water system, if the particle contact angle is larger than 90°, showing greater affinity for the oil phase, then the system is likely to be a W/O emulsion and vice versa.

Does this convey "if the particle contact angle is lower than 90°, that the system is more likely to be O/W emulsion", in a more professional way, or does it seem lazy?

I hate writing repeating sentences, with a few different words.

I would make the position completely clear:

  Conversely, if the angle is …

technical writing is not a good place to leave people guessing or admitting the possibility of ambiguity: for a few extra words it is worth it IMHO...


How to compensate for previous low grades when applying to PhDs in the UK? I want to know how to compensate a low overall grade for past education for a Ph.D. application in computer science in the UK ?
Thanks

It's not clear what you consider to be a low grade, or whether you are already in the UK. This answer assumes that you have a low 2:1 (i.e. 60%-65%) and have obtained your degree(s) in the UK.
If your highest qualification is a BSc, you can compensate for a low overall mark by one or more of the following:

Get a Master's degree (preferably a research-based Master's) and do well in it
Get some research experience either independently, through your workplace or through someone at your local university
Make sure you have excellent reference letters from three reputable academics, of which at least one can talk about your research ability and experience in detail

If your highest qualification is a Master's and the poor marks were in your BSc, you have already demonstrated that you're on an upward trend and there's not much more you can do. If your highest qualification is a Master's but the poor marks were in that Master's, there's not much you can do about that, unless you have a very good explanation as to why that might be (mitigating personal circumstances, perhaps). Again, having a referee who can vouch for you will go some way to compensate for that.
However, it's worth bearing in mind that if your degree is classified below a 2:1 (i.e. a 2:2, 3rd or pass), your application may be screened out before your references are even read. It's possible to get around this if you have someone on the admissions committee who will vouch for you, but this presumes that you have already contacted a potential supervisor who understands why your grades are poor and is still keen to take you as a student.
Note that we have a wiki question on this site that is US-focused, but much of the advice is also applicable in the UK: How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?


What is the proper way to cite an image source, if they were given to me by a company? I am writing my thesis and use images that were created by a company. These images are not available online, they were handed to me.

How would I properly give them credit for their images? If it is relevant, I have to use IEEE citation style.

The most important function of a citation is to inform readers where they can find the information you are citing.  If the information you are using was provided for your privately, then your source is “personal communication”, meaning that the information cannot be found in any published literature, but only through personal contacts.

In this case, I would do the following:  In figure captions and/or the body text discussing the figures, make an explicit statement that you received the images from the company involved.  One statement may be sufficient (something of the form: “Figures 3–6 were provided by Prescott Pharmaceuticals,” when you are discussing figure 3).  For each figure, also provide a citation in the caption to “Prescott Pharmaceuticals, private communication” (or however private communications are formatted with the citation system you are using).


Should table format follow text format in submitted manuscript when no format specified? I am currently writting my first manuscript and there is no specifications about tables format in the author guidelines of the journal. If I follow the text format (double spaced, Times New Roman 12 pts) some of my tables which are very extensive will look awfull.

Should I modify their structure so they look better (but only in the manuscript) or should I keep my own format?

If you can't wait for a reply from the editor which is probably the best solution, then check out some of the articles that journal has already published and see how the tables were formatted.

You will recognise single spaced, double spaced etc...