If a professor says he will not fund my internship as it will be my first visit, how can I convince him politely? I contacted a professor in a foreign university for a possible research internship in his lab. He is willing to accept me as an intern, but has stated that since he barely knows me and it is the first time I will be working under him, he will not provide any financial support.

I have read his publications, his areas of interest match with mine, and I believe that his papers were among the most exciting ones I have read so far. Being an undergraduate, I have limited funding of my own and I don't want to miss this opportunity because of lack of resources.

Since he mentioned 'will not fund' instead of 'cannot fund', I feel that there is some scope to convince him. Can someone advise me regarding what I should say to do so, without being rude? I would appreciate any help.

It may help to look at this from the professor's point of view:

You are not a student at his university (or even a citizen of his university's country), so internal research grants are not an option (indeed, he may face some backlash for hiring a non-student if research slots are limited).
You are an undergraduate, so your ability to be useful to him is very limited, especially at first as you are ramping up. (Undergraduates generally have limited time and skills compared to grad students and post-docs).

Given this, his position is quite reasonable: if you want to work "for free", fine; otherwise, this won't work out.

To change his mind, you need to reverse one of these assumptions:

You can find a pot of money (e.g., a scholarship) and ask for his support in applying for it
You can prove that you are really useful for the lab, and that paying you a meager salary is more cost-effective than other options. But, for most undergraduate students, this will be an impossible sale, and the professor will quickly tire of saying "sorry, no."

In short: I really don't think you'll be able to convince him. Your best bet is to look for scholarships or other funding. If that doesn't work out, you should tell him honestly that while you appreciate his offer, and would certainly accept it even with a modest stipend, you simply cannot afford to travel to and live in the foreign country with no income.


Moving from a R2 university to a R1 university I am currently negotiating a TT position with a R2 university. This is my first faculty job offer after 4 years of postdoc experience in ecology and biogeochemistry related area. My long-term goal is to land a TT position in a tier 1 and/or R1 university. To that end, is there any pros or con that I should know before signing the contract with a R2 university. Does this count against you if you are trying to apply for a R1 university after you served as a TT faculty in a R2 university?

Who can say how individuals would react, but I would find it preposterous if anyone counted it against you. Of course, the competition for such faculty positions is very fierce, so make sure that you build a record of accomplishment in your first job and build a strong "stable" of collaborators.

The difference between a given R1 and a given R2 can be quite small, and not consistent across fields. Do the best you can and you will be more likely to have the best career you can have. It is more up to you than to somewhat arbitrary and subjective designations.

It may take a while to move up, of course. And don't give colleagues the impression that you are unhappy or that you think you are "below your station".


For faculty positions that require three years of research experience excluding PhD, how is that time calculated? Usually an applicant for a faculty position in different Indian academic institutes requires to have at least three years of research experience excluding his/her PhD. The time span may differ depending on the institutes and/or particular country. I was wondering how does one calculate the time span of research experience?

More particularly, does that 'experience' start with just joining a postdoc position or defending  one's thesis or only after obtaining the formal degree?

According to recent notification from UGC, research experience during PhD can also be included for teaching post.

Specially, in a notice dated 1 March 2016, it says:

  The issue regarding counting of the period of active service spent on pursuing Ph.D. was considered by the UGC in its 512th Meeting held on 4th February, 2016.

  The clarification of University Grants Commission is as follows:

  "the period of active service spent on pursuing Research Degree i.e. for
  acquiring Ph.D. degree simultaneously without taking any kind of leave may be counted as teaching experience for the purpose of direct
  recruitment/promotion to the post of Associate Professor and above."


Academic Freedom for students re: advisors and solo papers? I'm familiar with the general notion of Academic Freedom.

But I just ran across the phrase "given his/her academic freedom", which is a concept I've never run across before. It seems related to students writing solo papers, and etiquette around a student publishing without their advisor.

In general, are there aspects of academic freedom that don't exist until they are be bestowed on people? Tenure is about the only thing that may fit that bill, but that seems typically framed in terms of job guarantees. Do students pass any similar hurdles?

Update: The reference is from Wikipedia: Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski - Wikipedia

  As a sophomore, Pasterski worked on the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.[8] She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in high energy physics under the supervision of Andrew Strominger[16] from whom she was given her academic freedom in the Spring of 2015[17] based upon Pasterski et al's 2014 discovery of the "spin memory effect" which may be used to detect/verify the net effects of gravitational waves.[18] After being granted that academic freedom, she would complete the Pasterski-Strominger-Zhiboedov Triangle for electromagnetic memory in a 2015 solo paper[19] that Stephen Hawking cited in early 2016.[20]

Going back to Wikipedia's source, we're told that

  Strominger has since moved Pasterski, as a second year graduate student, into “Mode 2,” where she is given the latitude to work without his direct supervision on any topic of her choosing with anyone she wishes.

In other words, Pasterski seems to have quite a bit of independence to choose the direction of her work and collaborators. I suppose this represents academic freedom in the sense of "freedom of inquiry", but as far as I can tell neither "mode 2" or "given academic freedom" are formal designations at Harvard. As such I suspect they are not associated with the kind of protections that the academic freedom of professors can have (i.e. tenure). That is, in this case, it appears to be an agreement between advisor and student on how to handle things.

Since the original source calls it "mode 2" it seems likely that the phrase "given her academic freedom" is just a turn of phrase in the Wikipedia page. After all, freedoms are generally not granted by or from an individual. The notion of student academic freedom is generally defined in policies that would apply to all, not as a prize to be won for jumping a hurdle. Of course, I cannot prove a negative, so the latter might still happen somewhere.


What is a shadow program committee? I recently stumbled over the term “shadow program committee”, e.g. here.

What is a shadow program  committee? Why is it put in place, and when? What is its relation to the normal PC?

The link that you provide explains it fairly clearly for that academic community. They have chosen to organize training in reviewing and conference organization by setting up a group that does the same work as the real program committee.  The shadow group's work, however, is done only for training purposes and does not affect the actual decisions on papers.  This is similar to a mock trial or moot court in the legal arena: a chance to do "the real thing" without doing real damage if one screws up.  It both gives practice and helps the main organizers identify people who are ready to be brought onto the real program committee.

This is not a widespread mechanism in the scientific, however, so other communities may not mean the same thing if they use the same words.


What counts as Research Experience? I studied physics at a German university and encounter frequently in application regulations for universities from abroad (US/CA/AU) the wish to have research experience. I don't really know what is meant by that and guess there might be some cultural differences and suspect that many universities might generally not have a well designed curriculum. I personally did quite a lot of research intensive coursework. Particularly I did about 42 lab exercises with 12 being exercises with advanced difficulty concerning topics of modern physics. Both of my thesis projects required me to team up with local research groups and independently research and work on a suggested problem. Further I did seminars in which I was trained in scientific writing and presentation and was required to spend about an half year on writing a research proposal and getting it examined to get allowance to work on my master's thesis. I think my university did quite a good job at preparing me for research. But otherwise, I did not do any research outside of university. Also no publication. Both are not very common in theoretical physics before PhD studies. I would be glad to hear your thoughts on this.

Everything you have named count as research experience and are good enough for applications in graduate programs. At the moment your master thesis is the most important proof/measure of your research experience.

The main goal of a phd program is to train you to be an autonomous researcher. With that in mind, they are not expecting you to have worked as a researcher outside the university before achieving a Ph.D degree. There are students with some luck that are able to publish an article before the phd, but that is not common.


Double major vs single major and multiple minors I am currently enrolled at the engineering school of a large university (as a freshman).  I am set on majoring in Computer Science, and have been taking courses towards the requirements of that major.  In fact, I am so interested in CS so far that I suspect I will want to pursue graduate education in the field.  However, I have lots of other interests (mathematics, physics, mechanical engineering, robotics, and statistics), and have enough AP credit that I can either pursue a second major or multiple minors.

Besides mechanical engineering, pursuing a second major in any of my other listed interests would require that I satisfy the degree requirements for the school of arts and sciences (which I have determined to contain many courses that are probably interesting to some people, but are totally useless and uninteresting to me).

If the details of what were put on my degree did not matter, I would much prefer to simply take the courses in these various fields that would be most useful/interesting to me, and disregard any degree requirements other than those for my CS degree.  However, I have heard that minors generally don't add much to one's resume, and that a dual major/degree is much more valuable.

So how do I decide what to pursue?

I get this question a lot in undergraduate CS advising here at Michigan.  The context is usually that the student feels they can do more than just the minimum to earn their degree and they're wondering if it's worthwhile to put the extra effort into a minor or a dual degree.

If they're expecting or hoping it will make them more attractive to employers, the answer is no.  In fact, it can make them less attractive.  A resume that lists, e.g., dual majors in CS and ME, or CS and math (to pick real examples I'm familiar with) instantly raises a question in a hiring manager's mind:  What job are you looking for?  Do you want to be a computer scientist or a mechanical engineer?  A software engineer or a mathematician?  They only have particular job to fill and they're looking for someone who really wants that job, not someone who's not sure what they want.  To get a job, students with dual degrees or minors usually have to carefully craft their resumes to make very clear what they want, downplaying, almost to the point of burying the minor or dual degree.  (Again, I'm giving you real examples of what really happened.)

For those hoping to make themselves more attractive to employers, the far better choice is to put the extra effort into graduate school.  In CS, a master's is definitely the degree to get for those headed for industry.  In my experience (in 40+ years in industry) most hiring managers on high-performing teams have a master's (often earned part-time while working) and they like candidates with master's degrees.  It'll typically get you bumped to the top of the pile of resumes and, if they make an offer, it'll typically come with a small bump in salary, title and assignment.  If you work for 45 years and change jobs every 3 to 5 years, that's 9 to 15 times you'll get that bump.

The one great (but sole!) reason to go for a minor or a dual degree is that you simply love the subject and you recognize (correctly) that you have one chance to be an undergraduate and one chance to follow your dreams.  Certainly, if you go take a job as a software engineer, they'll pay for a master's but they're not going to pay for you to take philosophy courses.


As a reviewer, what steps can I take after paper is published despite major scientific and ethical concerns, with no explanation from editor? I recently reviewed a manuscript for a journal I didn't know very well, but which was indexed on Pubmed and Scopus and seemed to be legitimate. In my review, I recommended rejection based on what I considered to be substantial flaws in methodology, data analysis, and interpretation. In addition, I had ethical concerns about the manuscript, including suspicions of self-plagiarism and possible copyright infringement. It seemed that the authors had inappropriately reused text, data, and figures from an article that they had previously published in another journal. I detailed all of these concerns in my report to the editor.

After an automated response from the editor acknowledging receipt of my review, I heard nothing from the journal for 3-4 months. Out of curiosity, I looked online and was surprised to find that the manuscript was already in print! In fact, it had been published less than 2 months after I submitted my review, and the published version is essentially identical to the draft version I reviewed.

I have since made multiple attempts to contact the editor, but have received no response. To be clear, I certainly understand that the editorial team may not agree with my review, but I have been quite disappointed to have received no response to address the scientific and ethical issues I raised. If nothing else, in my experience (and I realize this may be a niche-specific expectation) an editor for any reputable journal will keep reviewers apprised of the editorial progress of manuscripts they have reviewed.

Some readers have asked whether this is an online open-access journal with article processing charges, but instead it is a subscription-based journal. Thus, the journal and publisher are not eligible for inclusion on Beall's List (scholarlyoa.com).

Are there any other steps I can or should take? Anyhow, if I continue to be ignored by the editor, I am considering sharing this information with the editorial board of the journal that published the original paper (the one that I think may have been self-plagiarized).

There may not be much you can do about the scientific issues.  A profoundly wrong paper should be retracted, and a correction should be issued for anything serious that's objectively wrong and correctable.  However, the problems you've identified (poor methodology and interpretation) may not definitively fall into these categories, depending on what exactly you mean.  There's no ethical reason why a journal can't have low standards or publish controversial papers.  The primary risk is that their reputation will suffer if they publish foolish papers.

It would indeed by unethical if they claim to be a peer-reviewed journal but aren't taking the review process seriously at all, and that sounds like what's going on here.  However, it would be difficult to prove based on an outsider's view of one case.  I imagine that if pressed, the editor would claim he/she evaluated the paper and your review and decided the paper was more credible.  It would be hard to prove that there was an ethical problem, rather than just poor scientific judgment on the part of the editor.

On the other hand, the allegations of copyright infringement and self-plagiarism are ethical issues that transcend journal standards or policies.  That might be a good place to begin, and perhaps more will come out during the investigation.

Here are some thoughts:

Your proposal to share this information with the editorial board of the previous journal sounds like a good idea.  I'd contact the publisher directly as well as the editorial board.
There may be an ethics committee in a relevant professional or learned society.  They could conduct an impartial investigation, which might lead to public censure or a retraction.
You could report these papers to the authors' funding agency, if any.
You could report these papers to the authors' employers.
You could publicize your experience on the web.

Among these possibilities, #1 and #2 seem most likely to make a difference regarding the journal, #3 and #4 might lead somewhere with the authors but wouldn't address the problematic nature of the journal, and #5 could be a valuable public service but is unlikely to change much by itself.


Submitting a manuscript dependent on another one also submitted I have a manuscript A, ready for submission, that describes a method for characterizing topographic features (computer sciences). I also have another manuscript B, ready for submission, that uses the method from the manuscript A where I extract the features I want  and do some statistical analyses to explain the topographic variations (geosciences). A and B cannot be merged, and I consider to publish them in different journals since they treat different topics.

Should I submit A and B at the same time, but mention in B that I use a method from A? If yes, what should put as in-text citation?

Is there a compelling reason to submit both simultaneously? In case (I hope this doesn't happen!) there is an oversight in A, and the reviewer asks for modifications to the method, the results in B may no longer be valid. So it would be better to wait for acceptance of A.

If you must submit both soon because of deadlines etc, you can cite A as "journal xyz- submitted" (i.e. 'submitted' in place of volume number etc). This does happen now and then, but in my field (materials science), most journals discourage it.


How to express success of the found solution in a thesis? I currently write my thesis, therefore I develop and later implement a solution for a problem and do a performance & security evaluation afterwards.

The results of the evaluation are quite good in my opinion, because they are just slightly below the solution considered optimal (which can not be applied in the given setup).

But I have problems on finding terms to express that success in the end of the evaluation chapter / conclusion as I can not simply write "This is a success".

Are there any common phrases, or don't I judge my results like this?

You don't need to reserve your conclusion until the end of your Evaluation chapter. Is that separate from the Results section? When you present your "Results", that should be narrowly focused on the test statistics, maybe even numerical comparisons to others' results to put the numbers in context.

The "Discussion" part of your work (not sure if that's all of what your "Evaluation" chapter is or just part of that chapter) is the right place to discuss the interpretation/interpretation of your analysis. You can even have that argument as the thesis for that section. E.g.

  As established in [Chapter  where you describe the problem], an effective solution to [problem] requires X, Y, and Z. The results in [other section] demonstrate that [this method] is a viable solution.

Then go through and interpret the results to show how the result is suitable. (You should fully acknowledge any drawbacks, but it should be OK to write up this section so that it explains the benefits of your solution.)

The Abstract and Introduction should also clearly say that the approach performs well and securely. You're probably not in a mystery-writing field. :)

Using the word "successful" might be the wrong tone (or it may be OK). Other wordings would be that the approach is "promising" or "proven" or "demonstrated". You might want to look over the wording that published articles in your field use.


Google scholar citation problem with arxiv I have a paper that I uploaded to arXiv and google scholar listed it as a publication. The paper cites a number of my papers that are already published. However, Google scholar doesn't add arxiv citations to the already published papers.

So apparently you have to wait. There is a delay between your arXiv submission and detection of its citations by Google scholar. But it will eventually happen.


Is it possible to get admitted to a MS program with funding if I have a poor GPA but good GRE scores? Many university in North America or in Europe offer fundings for masters program .  But it only for those students who have a good CGPA in undergraduate examination .I  have completed my bachelor degree in computer science and engineering . I have a very poor cgpa  . Is there any possibility that I can get myself admitted in those institution for masters program with fundings . I have heard that a good GRE score will help a lot . Is it true ? Can I get funding if I have a good GRE score  once again I repeat I have a very poor cgpa .

Before I begin to answer your question, let me elaborate that US and European universities typically do not have much funding available to students participating in a masters degree. Most funding options (in some universities all of them) are reserved for PhD students and for the universities that do offer funding for master students, it is usually awarded to a selected few. Furthermore, it is less common for European universities to offer funding (when compared to the US) but study cost in Europe can be much cheaper.

A poor undergraduate GPA alone does not prevent you from being accepted to a masters program. One can even hope to receive full funding if he can satisfy the admission committee that he is a fully capable student and his grades do not reflect his potential for being a graduate student.

However to be applicable for a fully funded masters program you will most likely need more than a good GRE score. Having the following can significantly increase your chances:

Good letters of recommendation from professors whom you've worked with and can vouch for you
Having related research experience (preferably with published results in a peer-reviewed journal)
Finding a professor (for your graduate supervisor) who has a highly matched research interest as you
Having related industry work experience
Preparing a compelling statement of purpose, providing convincing reasons for your poor undergraduate performance
Having a high TOEFL/IELTS score (for international applicants)

In computer science, having valuable achievements in an internationally recognizable contest like the "ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest" can tremendously boost your chances of getting accepted (and funded) at even the top schools. However, even qualifying to participate in such a contest requires a strong background in programming and algorithms.

Final note. From my understanding, European universities are more sensitive to bad undergraduate GPAs and many have hard cut-offs which will eliminate you from the admission process without considering your application as a whole. Therefore, it is my personal recommendation to apply to US and Canadian universities alone as it will improve your chances and save you time and money.

Unfortunately even by having exact and complete knowledge of your GPA (which I don't), there is no way to be sure what your chances will be and parts of what is said above can be deemed opinion-based. The graduate admission process, from what I understand, is a complicated and nonlinear process with many different factors playing their part.


How do interim or partial transcripts work for application, and is it possible to have an admissions decision reversed based on the final version? I attempted to be as detailed as I could in the title, but let me elaborate a bit more.

I'm sure this situation is common (if not normal) but I'm applying to PhD programs this year fall and will only have been done with half of my master's program by then.

In cases like this, would I submit the transcript for the first two semesters of my master's degree? If I were to receive an admission green light and confirm to enroll (which is usually around April I believe), is it common to have these decisions reversed if my final GPA were to fall?

Thanks for any feedback or tips.

You need to explore this with the institutions you apply to.

And you need to read the correspondence carefully. If you get accepted, then you are probably accepted except in rare circumstances. But if you are "conditionally accepted" then you need to meet the conditions, whatever they are, to assure acceptance.

Acceptances are generated based on more that GPA, of course. Someone needs to make a prediction of success before one will be issued. But no prediction is perfect and students fail out even after enrolling. Universities know these things.

Tips and advice: Work hard. Don't let the bad things happen.


How to efficiently engage undergraduate students in my research program? I'm a fairly new Assistant Professor at a 4-year university. As is often the case our teaching load is high and we are also expected to do research. Personally, I like both teaching and doing research.

The difficult part of it, however, is to attract the students to work in your lab (often on a voluntary basis) that will make it worth the time and effort needed to train them.
The other challenge is this: once you have a student that you clearly see has the ability to perform well (both intellectually and skill-wise to work in a lab), how do I motivate them to spend as much time as they can in the lab?

It's obviously not worth it when a student starts an experiment and then loses the motivation to come in in-between classes to make a measurement. It's my feeling that the students see it like this: "if I come in and do some work in the lab, then that's good and useful for the professor", but without the true engagement to learn something from the experiment, without the student having the curiosity and passion to follow-up, it becomes more like waste of time and money.

Obviously, I realize that I'm asking a lot. It's generally accepted that this kind of behaviour/motivation can be expected from a Ph.D. student, but not so much from an undergrad. Nonetheless, this is the situation that many professors are in since they only get to work with undergrads and are still expected (and genuinely want) to do exciting research. If I could, I would spend much more time in the lab myself, but it's just not always possible.

What are the students getting in return for this?

Experience/interesting work? Then it's fun, but don't ever expect them to treat it as more than a hobby or fun project.
Money or course credit: Then it's their job to show up and work. The will show up, or you will fire them / fail them.
Publication: are your students credited on the publication? Will doing this work build their CV and make it easier for them to get jobs, or accepted into grad studies?

Anything else seems to fall dangerously into "how can I turn undergrads into unpaid interns". They have their own classes to work on and their own lives to run, and doing experiments probably isn't what gets them out of bed every day.

Does your university have a "Capita Selecta" or "Project Course" or "Individual Study" option? If so, you could give your students course credit for their involvement in your work, in which case they would be obligated to show up. They would get enough out of their contribution that it would be worth their time.

  It's generally accepted that this kind of behaviour/motivation can be expected from a Ph.D. student, but not so much from an undergrad.

Because the PhD student is being paid to be there, and the undergraduate isn't.

The takeaway

Being an undergraduate is hard. You've got 4-5 classes, all of whom want you to work like that class is the only one you're taking. You are probably having to work to pay your way through school, and you are trying to have enough leisure time that you don't go insane.

Your best way to get them interested is to take away one of these stressors: pay them (so they don't have to work), give them course credit (so they can take less classes), or treat it like leisure (so they can do something they enjoy casually).


Is it suitable for an MS student to ask teaching faculty for a recommendation letter for PhD applications? During my masters degree, I was a teaching assistant for undergraduate course 'X' two times. The professors in charge of the course are titled 'Senior Lecturer' - they are not research faculty.

How would my PhD application look if I had a recommendation letter from one of them?

Bear in mind:

I have worked extensively with them: meetings, created lecture content, handled student issues, etc.
I have two other LoR's from research faculty.
The other options I have (for my third LoR) are: Undergraduate faculty (from a different country) or graduate faculty who's courses I took, but did not interact very significantly.

Thanks!

(I'm assuming that the application form says you need three letters, but does not specify more).
As you already have two letters, I think a third one from teaching faculty is completely okay. Most PhD programms do not expect you to have collaborated with three different researchers before admission.

Make sure they mention your work ethic in their letter (that is, if your work ethic is good), about special knowledge you have because of teaching this course (if any) etc.
If they can say those things, this is more significant as a letter from faculty you didn't interact with.

However, if you also did serious research with the undergraduate faculty and you have a good relationsship with them, consider asking them.


Recommendations from professors in unrelated fields I have been working with a professor (working meaning meeting roughly once a week to discuss progress and problems) for a few years now, but plan to apply for graduate schools in an unrelated field. I have enough (strong) references without needing to ask this professor for a letter of recommendation. Given this, I have a few questions:

Since I plan to list this experience (is this even a good idea?) on my application, will it look bad if I don't list this professor as a reference/ask them for a letter of recommendation?
If so, is there anything I can do to mitigate this? (My main reason for not asking for a recommendation is to avoid having too many letters. Is this even a problem?)

Since I plan to list this experience (is this even a good idea?) on my application, will it look bad if I don't list this professor as a reference/ask them for a letter of recommendation?

Yes, it's a good idea. And no, it wouldn't look bad.

  If so, is there anything I can do to mitigate this? (My main reason for not asking for a recommendation is to avoid having too many letters. Is this even a problem?)

It is not a problem to have many references. Certainly having many good references can only help.

Note: having more references than needed, while some references are not good should be avoided.


Are journal papers really viewed as strictly inferior to conference papers in Theoretical Computer Science? To give a bit of context, I graduated 1 year ago from an undergraduate where I double majored in Math and Computer Science and I am planning to apply for a CS PHD this coming year with a focus on theory.
During my undergraduate studies, I worked on a project with a Professor that lead to a publication in a top Information theory conference (although the paper was about an information theory problem, it was essentially a theoretical cs paper). In addition, we added a new results and submitted the result to a top information theory Journal and we got the paper accepted. The last "breakthrough" came when I was able to come up with a new optimization technique that was interesting from a CS theory point of view, which led to a CS theory paper.
However, after writing the paper, my advisor told me he would prefer to submit the paper to a journal ("Theoretical Computer Science Journal") right away, rather than to a conference.
I understand that in CS, conferences are generally preferred to journals, but my question is, assuming that the CS theory paper gets in, would I be disadvantaged during the grad school application process against someone who has, say a SODA, paper? Are journal papers really viewed as strictly inferior to conference papers?

I understand that in CS, conferences are generally preferred to journals

I disagree: Conferences are preferred for earlier, smaller results, journals are preferred for more mature results. Journals can be considered more prestigious, given that journal articles are typically derived from earlier conference papers and are subjected to more scrutiny, e.g., multiple rounds of review (conference and journal reviewers) and discussion (after talks, for instance), and they've survived some test of time.

my advisor told me he would prefer to submit the paper to a journal...right away, rather than to a conference.

Your advisor is confident that the paper is already sufficiently mature and the typical conference-journal route isn't appropriate.

assuming that the CS theory paper gets in, would
I be disadvantaged during the grad school application process against
someone who has, say a SODA, paper?

I'd argue a journal article is superior. However, the turnaround time for a journal article is longer than a conference paper, so you might be in the position that your paper is under review, whereas a competing grad school applicant may have had their conference paper accepted. An article under review at a top journal is a good sign, but an accepted paper at a top conference is perhaps better for an evaluation committee - a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Are journal papers really viewed as strictly inferior to conference papers?

I don't believe they are, but I don't think there's an absolute consensus.


In biology, can one publish results that were already published in a conference proceedings? In my old field (a subdiscipline of computer science) it's not unusual to publish a preliminary version of a paper in a conference proceedings, and then later submit an updated version to a journal, presenting essentially the same result.

My question is, is it possible / accepted to do the same thing in biology? (And theoretical evolutionary biology in particular.)

I ask because some colleagues and I recently developed an evolutionary model that shows some surprising results which are quite relevant to current work in evolutioanry biology. We submitted it to a modelling conference and published it in the proceedings as an 8 page paper. However the feedback I've got from biologists suggests that this result has quite a big potential audience and deserves to be publised in a journal of reasonable impact, where biologists will read it.

To be clear, the journal version would not just be the same text as the conference version - it would be longer, including substantial new analysis as well as more details and context that couldn't be included in the conference version. The question is just whether it's possible (in biology) to present the key result from the model as the main result of the journal paper, or whether the new paper would have to take the form "we present a new analysis of the model previously published in [conference proceedings]". (The latter is possible of course, but I worry that it would limit the impact of the paper, since the new analysis is a much more incremental advance.)

Yes I believe this is possible, but depends on the policies of the specific journal and the nature of the conference publication.

Actually I know of cases where journal editors contact authors of work published in conference proceedings, and suggest submission of an extended version in their journal. This would typically happen in a relevant sub-field where both journal and conference publications are possible, such as bioinformatics.


How to obtain a percentile ranking for a journal? (i.e., top 30%; 30% to 50%) My institution ranks scientific achievement according to some criteria when evaluating promotions, positions, etc. for its subjects (students, grad students, personnel, etc.) This is done by a rule book that is specified in the form of a bylaw and is administered by the ministry of science, therefore it is not local to my institution, but applied nationwide.
The passage about SCI journal publications states that journals are divided into three groups:

eminent international journals - a journal that in its subject ranks in the top 30% journals in ISI list publications
outstanding international journals - the same but for <30% and >50%
international journals - the same for <50%

The difference in "points" awarded for publications in each of the categories is rather large. I was wondering how I could determine which journals fall into a criterium from above?

I talked to the administrative service, but got no satisfying answer, i.e. there is no list of journals (which is understandable, as there are far too many subjects). They told me something along the lines: "These things will be evaluated when the time comes", which is, of course, not at least satisfactory to me.
I talked also briefly with the head of the department and he told me that he never really gave it much thought, I should publish in journals that suit me, the higher the impact factor and prestige the better of course, but in the end it isn't that much of an imperative, and that I should let the "politicians" and administrators worry about those tiny matters. I would, however, still like to know which journals I should favorite.

PS: the rule book naturally specifies similar criteria for various scientific publications (conferences, patents, books, etc.), but since I'm working on my first article to be submitted to a journal and I still haven't decided which journal, I would like to take things like this into account

Likely this is not the answer you want to hear, but I assume the administrative service you talked to is correct. If nobody really knows which journals fall under which of these (rather subjective) categories, it will not be feasible to in advance establish for sure way how much any paper you write will count in the end, when you are evaluated.

This is not nearly as strange as it sounds. Formal rules for promotion and the evaluation of research tend to live in the ugly grey area between bureaucrats who like things orderly, well-defined and, most importantly, written down, and the reality of science, where basically no two scientists will ever be able to agree on an absolutely consistent quality ranking of publication outlets. What usually happens is that some sort of nebulous rankings are defined without specifically ranking concrete venues,and then leave it to a commission of academics to decide ad hoc which publications fall into which category.

At my current university, we have similar nebulous requirements for PhD graduation. Essentially, it is required that students need at least one A-ranked publication. However, what is considered A-ranked varies considerably between different faculty, and is basically negotiated when graduation time is near. I assume requirements for tenure etc. are handled similarly.

Note that there are some initiatives that are trying to rank publication venues more formally, for instance CORE for computer science. However, these rankings are also far from perfect (or, for some fields, they are apparently downright terrible).


Should I ask a journal for provided peer review when a corresponding author will not share communications? This question stems from a broader question at:

How to deal with corresponding authors not sharing submission steps? (E.g. Peer reviews & Decisions)

I often run into the uncomfortable situation where a corresponding author will not share details about received peer review and editorial decisions. I am not sure how common such a situation is, and what is the best procedure to follow.

This happened where I was not the first author however I did much (if not most) of the writing and data analysis. Therefore I feel more than just entitled to read and discuss reviewers' comments. At least once I was left with the impression that no strict peer review actually took place (on a paper where the PI was friends with the handling editor).

I was wondering whether it would be appropriate if I directly contacted the journal seeking to receive the provided peer review and editorial decision. (After requesting and being ignored by both the first & corresponding author(s)).

No, it's not appropriate. The whole peer-review system relies on the corresponding author's trustworthiness. Asking the journal to provide reviews to other authors is an implicit allegation that the corresponding author is not fulfilling their duties or possibly even engaged in misconduct. Unless there is actual misconduct involved or the corresponding author no longer available (e.g., sick) other authors should never contact the journal. Bringing this lack of communication among authors to the journal's attention is the last resort and will not only cost you a collaboration (and thereby make an enemy) but probably also prevent the publication.

It even would be more appropriate to contact the corresponding author's superiors, although that would be a nuclear option too.

I would have a frank discussion with the corresponding author. I might even say that this could be the last collaboration if they don't start taking me serious.


Should such CS coursework be subject to plagiarism? I just joined a new CS course and have some trouble understanding whether I should be worried that my coursework is to be considered plagiarized or not. The following is the situation.

I am doing a systems programming project with math. Our professor gave us numerous working code samples and math which can be directly copied over to a program with few changes. Some trivial details about the codebase structure was omitted, but can be easily derived by simple reverse engineering from the provided code samples with some effort; it is very intuitive.

Very few non-trivial details were omitted in the provided code samples and that is where the real effort to distinguish one solution from another is at in my opinion; this is less than 5% of the entire codebase.

The matter becomes more complicated because the answer to this coursework is available online by other students. Looking at the solution of other students,
one can't help but to see more or less the same solutions with minor variations.

Because I have looked at the solution of other students while developing my own solution, I can't help but feel guilty for having absorbed some of their ideas and thus leading to similar program structure. At the same time, all of us have been using the professor's code samples as our main resource. Where I thought I could improve the structure of the program or add features which were incorrect or omitted by other students, I have done so. So there are some differences from other solutions, but not that much.

So I am conflicted regarding whether I should be worried that my solutions is considered plagiarized in this scenario or not. I guess my solution resembles more a "highly patched up copy" rather than being different from the "ground up".

This is basically a request for opinions because there isn't a general answer to the definition of plagarism in coding. Borrowing code is a huge part of learning how to code!

That said here are my guidelines for myself:

make choices you're comfortable with.

If it feels wrong it probably is. You should be willing to openly stand by every decision and every google search.

add comments with sources throughout your code.

This will make things way easier just from a coding perspective and if you're accused of plagarism, makes it easier to argue that you were not intending to do so.

In particular, I link to stack exchange answers that were helpful, especially to questions I asked.

you could even put a link to this thread in your submission code somewhere so that you can demonstrate that you clearly thought about academic honesty.

Intent matters a lot in plagiarism at a grad or post grad level. It's when things are getting published that it becomes much more objective.


150%, 1.5 times, 1.5× or 1.5-fold If some measure of quality improves to 150 % of its original value in a study from condition A to condition B, would it be most appropriate, in terms of scientific writing (computer science specifically), to describe that as:

  a 1.5-fold improvement

  a 1.5× improvement

  performing 1.5 times better

The following may seem a bit nitpicking, but such details are what separates the wheat from the chaff:

  a 1.5-fold improvement

Bad. This implies that the improvement – not the quality measure – is 1.5 of something else, that is reasonably comparable, e.g., another improvement. This would make sense in a context like:

  We compared different performance boosters and found that contrafibulaties yielded a 1.5-fold improvement compared to the improvement by pericombobulations.

(Note that I do not consider the above sentence an example of good writing as it is bound to be misunderstood by somebody, but it’s at least technically correct.)

  a 1.5× improvement

Very bad. If I am benign, I read this as “1.5-fold improvement” (see above). If I am not, this does not make any sense at all. Replacing words with mathematical symbols just because they have some semantic relation is a very bad habit as it almost never yields a clear meaning, is bad style, and is indicative of deficiencies in basic mathematical concepts.

  performing 1.5 times better

Meh. If we are being literal, it has problems similar to “a 1.5-fold improvement”: Does 1.5 times apply to better or something else? Now, linguistically, this is a fixed idiom with a clear meaning, so the situation is not that bad, but I would guess that some non-native speakers misunderstand it. Moreover, idioms do not stylistically mix very well with accurate, quantitative descriptions.

  performing 50 % better

Almost Good. Similar to the above, but better, since 50 % is by far not as likely to be understood to apply to better than 1.5 times.

  performing 1.5 times as well
  performing 150 % as well

Good. These leave no room for misunderstanding as you make clear what 1.5 times or 50 % refer to, and it’s the correct thing, namely “goodness”, i.e., your measure of quality.

  an improvement by 50 %
  an improvement to 150 %

Good (with sufficient context). Again, it is clear, what the numbers actually refer to.

  performing 50 % better than A
  performing 1.5 times as well as A
  performing 150 % as well as A
  an improvement by 50 % in comparison to A
  an improvement to 150 % of A’s performance

Very Good. By naming the actual reference, you avoid misunderstandings. However, with sufficient context, the expressions I labelled good may be preferable for brevity and avoiding unnecessary redundancy.

Note that all this assumes a measure of quality that increases with quality. If your measure decreases with quality (e.g., runtime), it’s probably best to directly talk about the measure, e.g.:

  A’s runtime was 50 % of B’s.
  A runs twice as fast as B.


I have accidentally given students assignment guidelines that conflict with the course coordinator's. How I can rectify my mistake? I am a tutor and I have given guidelines to students on how to complete the assignment. After three weeks later I found out that the course coordinator expected different requirements than what I have told students.

There is a clash now and students are very confused. They are emailing me about who they should follow. Given there is still one week left in the due date of assignment. How I can mend my mistake? I worry anything I will do now go against me.

I should have consulted with coordinator before deliver the guidelines to students. But I just wanted to help students as they were feeling lost because the course coordinator didn't provide any guidelines whatsoever. Students said the assignment is vague and I just helped them with the structure of it. But now coordinator wants a different structure than what I have given to students four weeks ago.

Talk to the course coordinator immediately and coordinate your next steps.

Apparently, there was a serious breakdown in communication, and

  the course coordinator didn't provide any guidelines whatsoever

suggests to me that you are not the only one to blame.

Whatever your next steps will be, they need to be aligned with the coordinator and his expectations. You may be able to extend deadlines, adjust grading rubrics or something else.

Next time, make sure you know what the coordinator wants. (And the coordinator should make sure, too.)


Patent application file on arxiv Is it wise to upload the published patent application file on arxiv?
what will be the consequences of copy right?

You can't upload your patent application materials to arXiv, because they simply don't accept that kind of submission.

https://arxiv.org/help/moderation:

  arXiv accepts only submissions in the form of an article that would be refereeable by a conventional publication venue.

Your file isn't an article, and "conventional publication venues" (journals, conference proceedings, etc) don't publish or referee patent applications.    If you submit it, it will probably be rejected in the moderation process.

Whether it would be legally advisable to make your file publicly available some other way, or to write and publish an article about your invention, and how any of this might affect the validity of your patent, are questions that you need to ask your patent attorney.  It would be very unwise to rely on the advice of random Internet strangers for something like that.


Whether and how to thank a girlfriend or boyfriend in the acknowledgements of thesis? How is it received by the academia if someone thanks to his/her girlfriend/boyfriend in the acknowledgements of the thesis?

I have seen writers including his/her fiancee in the acknowledgements, however I don't know if including an informal relationship in the thesis will be received well.

If it is acceptable, how should I refer to my girlfriend?

The acknowledgements section is really yours to do with as you wish.  You can thank anybody who has been of help and support to you, no matter how formal or informal your relationship with them is.  You can make the relationship explicit or not, however you prefer.  Thus, for example, it is equally valid to write:

  Thank you to Jane Smith, for all her love and support

or

  Thank you to my girlfriend Jane Smith, for all her love and support


How to cite primary source first found in secondary source? I have the following situation (I am in the humanities):

I am writing a paper. In that paper, I several times cite a particular scholar's book. Now, in that book, this scholar cites (not quotes) a particular historical primary source.

As this looked interesting to me, I traced down this primary source (a diary entry), but I found it in a source collection different from that cited by the author. Moreover, when looking at the original source, I discovered that it contains additional content not summarized by that scholar that is useful for me. So I went ahead and directly quoted the primary source (including bits not mentioned by the author) in my paper.

Now, in the footnote, I am currently just providing a reference to the original source, not to the mentioned author where I first found a reference to that source. My question is whether this is okay?

According to the Chicago Manual (my citation style) and sources on the web, my understanding is that I only need to provide an additional comment in the form of "Source X, cited/quoted in ....." if I do not actually trace down the original source. So, it seems to me that what I am doing is fine.

Still, as especially the advice on the internet is somewhat unclear and mostly jut designed to discourage citing of primary sources without having checked them, I thought I could also ask here.

Thanks!

If I'm understanding correctly, you are saying you read a secondary source, which led you to a primary source; then you cited material from the primary source that wasn't discussed in the secondary source; and your question is whether you need to cite the secondary source because it led you to the primary?

If so, I do not think you need to cite the secondary source. It feels polite to do so, sort of like using "via" on Twitter. But in an academic paper I do not think it is required.


What can I do when my e-mails to professors go unanswered? I have accepted as postdoc researcher in a Swedish university. Three professors in the university are correspondent for this position. I have to travel to Sweden within 2 weeks and start my new job. However, I should make sure about some issue before leaving my homeland. They all are so quick in answering. However, I sent them a short e-mail but did not receive any reply from 10 days ago. I don't  know what I should do. Does such a behavior mean "No"? Or am I annoying them because of my e-mail?

Variants on this question come up a lot: "I sent an email to a professor about X and they didn't reply, now what?"

My untested pet theory is that it's related to imposter syndrome somehow.  People in graduate school, or entering graduate school, or otherwise just trying to enter academia, never feel like they belong.  You're clearly not good enough to be there, so you had better try not to make waves lest someone notice and rectify the situation.  So when a professor fails at something basic, like replying to an email, the automatic assumption is that it's probably a reflection on how little you belong, even in their inbox.

Don't get me wrong, I and every PhD student I've talked to have felt the same way, and I imagine that doesn't change at the post doc level either.

But the general answer given is "what you asked is reasonable and they should have replied.  Don't assume the worst, they're probably just busy.  Yes, you should absolutely follow up again after allowing enough time to go by from the first attempt."

From what you've said, this advice exactly fits your situation too.  Following up with a phone call might be even better - you're not accusing them of anything, or upset they didn't reply.  You're just helping them out with fitting you into their busy schedule.

The bottom line for me is that if they are actually sending you an implicit "no" by not replying, it is they who should feel sheepish when you follow up, not you.  We all face rejections at various points in our academic careers, and there's no excuse for avoiding giving timely, professional rejections to others when necessary.


My adviser wants to use bad statistics. Help! I am going to submit a paper in a couple of weeks. The results are good, but my adviser wants me to report the results in a particular way that makes them artificially look better. I asked a statistics professor about this method and he emphatically said it was dishonest and the wrong way to report results. I argued this with my professor and he would have none of it. I told them the results are good anyway, why report it in this inflated way, and he insists that this is simply a difference in opinions on the definition of this metric. He says he has published many papers with this metric and other (major) people in the field have used this metric too. But when I google around I can't find a single source that jibes with his definition.

Clearly I am unable to convince my adviser. I am uneasy being the first author on a paper with dishonest reporting (especially since honest reporting would not impact the worthiness of the article). Some of the other coauthors are uneasy too, but we're just grad students. I'm tempted to change the numbers to the right ones right before I submit the paper. What do you recommend I do?

Do not "change the numbers to the right ones right before I submit the paper" - this would be submitting without your co-authors approval.

If you are sure that "your" statistics are the correct ones - which sounds likely in this case - get back to your advisor with your other co-authors and the stats prof, try to convince him once more. Support your opinion with papers and/or textbooks.

Depending on how wrong your advisor's suggestion is, insist on not using it, or let it over to reviewers.


*Probably* losing my tenure-track position due to COVID-19 and low enrollment Due to low enrollment, my college's administration sent out letters rescinding all non-tenure full-year appointments (against our contract, too) and replacing them with a fall 2020 appointment only. This would be my tenured year if I made it through, and spring is unknown as of now.
I just interviewed with another institution that loves me (Zoom, informal), but I have not gone through with the official interview, and they hinted that they'd be willing to hold the position for spring for me. They are hiring urgently and my tenure is uncertain. I won't know until maybe November 2020 if I have a job next spring at my current institution.
I'll obviously need references, etc. from my current place of employment. My chair, several colleagues would gladly do it for me, but I'm afraid to tell them I'm about to leave... and I don't want to. But I have bills to pay and would hate a gap in employment and the loss of (potential) tenure, too.
What would you do?

What would you do?

Disclaimer: I have never been in this situation before, so I don't speak from experience. Following my advice would be risky; that said, so would any other course of action.
Act like a rat on a sinking ship.
Your university has unilaterally rescinded your contract. Go on the official interview. Ask your chair and colleagues to be references. Make every effort to find secure and permanent employment.
Tell your chair and dean that you love your university and would like to stay in the long term. (If this is true.) Bargain with them if possible, if you decide you trust them.
One option you may (or may not) have is to go on unpaid leave if you accept another job offer. Sometimes people accept a job at University B while going on unpaid leave at University A, go to B for a year, and then decide to return to University A.
If your chair and colleagues are worthy of your loyalty, then they could not expect it under these circumstances. Good luck.


Do professors in the STEM fields at U.S. universities get summers off? A question asked on this site discusses how professors earn their summer salary:

How do professors choose their summer salary?

My question is: are professors whose research is supported by external grants, e.g., the NSF grants, obligated to work during the summer, when they collect their summer salary?  Or is the summer salary essentially free money, and professors resume their funded research in the fall semester?

What about during the month-long winter break that occurs between the fall and spring semesters?

While no one is technically forcing you to do work over the summer, you'd be foolish to take extended breaks.

One of the benefits of a tenured faculty position at a research university is that you get great flexibility in your schedule. Today, I left work early (e.g., 4pm) to pick up my kids at summer camp and go to the park. I have no (or almost no) formal obligations over the summer.

That said, this evening, I was doing data processing and reading through papers. It's now 1 AM.

My long answer to your question is that it's certainly possible for a research active faculty member to take a whole summer off, collect summer salary, and pick up in the fall with research and teaching.

This sounds like a very bad idea.

Right now, funding levels are so competitive, that everyone I know with research funding is trying to be as productive as possible throughout the year. The summer might be a bit more laid-back, and I bet most research faculty spend less time in the office or lab. Most will probably travel to at least one conference or workshop, and I bet most also take a week or two of "real vacation" with family or friends.

But, if you're not working on papers or grants year-round, you're probably falling behind and will likely have difficulty getting that grant (and summer salary) renewed.

This summer, I helped submit a major center grant, I'm drafting another grant for my group's research, and I'm trying to finish up ~3 papers. Add in some papers and grant proposals to review as service. I'm not trying to boast - I suspect this isn't an unusual summer work load for research-active faculty.


How should one decide whether to study logic in a math or philosophy department? In particular, besides the more obvious fact that your courses and qualifying exams are going to be in different fields, are there any subtler reasons to prefer one department over another? Some possible refinements of my question are:

Is there a significant difference in resources available to logicians in one department over another? (Perhaps philosophy departments tend to be more well-funded than mathematics departments, or perhaps there are more fellowship opportunities available to students in math departments.)
Are there any significant differences in academic expectations? For instance, are there perhaps greater expectations to publish more frequently when in one department versus the other, or does perhaps one department take its language requirement more seriously than the other?
Related to the previous question, are there any significant cultural differences between the two departments?
Does choice of department have any impact on postgraduate academic job prospects?
Is it possible at all, once you are in one department as a graduate student, to switch to the other?

I ask these as general questions, though here's some information about my personal circumstances if they make any particular answer more apparent:

I am currently a third-year undergraduate math major interested in graduate study in logic. I have the dubious and unsavory distinction of having a departmental GPA lower than my overall GPA, but outside of a course in ethics and a (spectacular) course in philosophical logic, my philosophy-related coursework has tended to focus more on continental philosophy. In short, it is not clear to me that I do better in one field than another (I have done well in all my philosophy/philosophy-related classes, while I have done either spectacularly well or spectacularly horribly in my math classes), and I deeply enjoy learning about both. I have also heard rumors that philosophy graduate admissions tend to be, by virtue of self-selection and small entering class sizes, much more competitive than math graduate admissions, but given my own record, it's not clear that admissions to one department will be easier than admissions to another (though this has little to do with whether one type of program is better than the other).

I am a math professor, and from what (very) little I know about philosophy, I would expect the academic cultures to be very different. Once (as an undergraduate) I went to a lecture given by a leading contemporary philosopher. During the Q&A period, one audience member remarked: "I think your point of view is obviously wrong... " and proceeded to elaborate at length! I've never seen this in mathematics. Despite what you've seen in movies, I've found academic mathematics to be quite friendly and relatively nonconfrontational.

My understanding is that (perhaps unfortunately) philosophical logic and mathematical logic are considered entirely separate academic disciplines. I went to graduate school at a university with a strong mathematical logic program, and what my friends were doing was recognizably mathematics. I don't think I heard them talk about philosophy, at least any more than it came up during random conversations. I would recommend to you that you learn something about model theory, recursion theory, axiomatic set theory, the incompleteness theorem, etc. and see if this is something you enjoy.

I doubt very much that you could switch from one department to the other, although I don't have any firsthand knowledge of this.

I would certainly expect graduate admissions and the job market to be very different. My understanding is that the job market in mathematical logic is very difficult; indeed, I only know of one of my logician friends that is now in a permanent academic position. (That said, the others found good non-academic jobs.) However, my guess is that the job market in philosophy is still bleaker.


Can I ask my advisor to drop authorship for a journal submission? Update: I talked with my advisor about (1) the possibility of asking the editor about submitting our paper this journal X and (2) the possibility of me as the sole author to submit this paper. She said no and no :(

Background info: I am from the field of social science, and this paper is from my dissertation. My advisor provided funding for my dissertation ($9,000). My advisor has been very good to me. I just graduated last year and am now an assistant professor at another university.

I did plan to add my advisor as the second author of this paper, I also told her in an email I would like to submit this paper to X, the top journal of our field, and I attached the draft in this email.

Then I heard back from her yesterday with an edited version. In the comments, she told me not to submit to X because she is one of the associate editors which creates a conflict of interest--I emailed the editor to confirm and this is indeed the rule. This rule was not listed on the journal's website and my advisor did not tell me when I sent her the email saying I would like to submit to X journal.

I really want to submit to this X journal because I imagine it would help me a lot with my academic career. If I knew that any paper with associate editors as a co-author cannot be submitted to journal X, I would never send this paper to my advisor for comments.

I wonder if I can ask my advisor to withdraw her authorship and I will be the sole author for this paper so that I can submit to X. I am not sure how unethical my behavior can be? Or maintaining a good relationship with my advisor is more important than having a top journal publication? Any suggestions are appreciated!

This is not about the relationships with the former advisor at all.

The list of authors is supposed to be determined based on who actually worked on the particular research (which sometimes – however good or bad it is – may mean simply being a supervisor and providing funding). If the researcher contributed to several of

the formulation of hypothesis
data collection / measurements / numerical simulations
data analysis
writing the actual paper
insert here other field-specific steps

she should be an author. Certainly, different criteria for being an author of the paper can be applied, and the list is very field-dependent.

However, the unfortunate amalgamation of facts that

you want to submit to a certain journal X
this journal X has a certain conflict of interest policy
the presence of one co-author who normally would be listed in the list of authors does not allow to submit to X

should not be used as a reason to exclude one from the list of authors. At least, the initiative should not come from the other authors who could benefit from it.

So, I would strongly consider submitting to a different journal.

Alternatively, you (or your colleague in the potential conflict of interest) can ask the journal X editor to arrange a submission/revision process through another associate editor(s). There might be other associate editors willing and qualified to do it for the paper in your field and your particular research direction.


Is there any benefit of being treated as "professor" by students and admin? I just joined a faculty as assistant professor, at a university in South America. The admin team and students treat me as "professor". Moreover, because the official language is Spanish, people refer to me as "usted" instead of "tu" (see difference here).

Just coming out of the PhD, and feeling still "young", I find this treatment very odd. I would like to be treated, particularly by students, by my first name.

Now, without trying to foster authority styles, or exercise power, or being pedantic, I wonder whether there is an actual "benefit" in keeping this formal relationship? For instance, perhaps it gives me more capacity to extract effort from students? Diluting the boundaries might give them confidence to go against my instructions or so. And yet, conversely, someone might argue that a more friendly approach can actually help me gain confidence with students, understanding more their interests and motivations.

In the end my question is what are the pros and cons of each approach, based on your experience. Any help is more than welcome.

A certain amount of separation from your students has value. You have some power over their future, for example. The use of usted implies respect as well. This is useful if any conflicts arise in the future where you need to take a role of authority.

But, having a friendly and open relationship with your students is also useful if it gives them the "permission" to seek you out for help when they need it. Mostly I'm thinking of academic help. Even if they have personal problems (health, family,...) it is useful to them to know that you understand difficulties that may affect their performance. You can encourage them in such situations.

Sometimes you need to be understanding. And sometimes you need to speak somewhat strictly. Both can advance their educational pursuit. Less frequently you need to speak with full authority. Don't make that impossible, should the need arise.

So, a small gap is useful, and too wide a gap is probably not optimal. There are some students who will try to take advantage of you (e.g., by trying have you change grades) if you seem too much like "one of the gang".

Note that I was always Dr. Buffy or Prof. Buffy to my undergraduate and even MS level students. But with doctoral students I (and my colleagues) more or less insisted on first names. But the expectation was that they had achieved the status of colleagues at that point and we wanted them to think that way.


Is it really the responsibility of a conference organizer to provide the necessary letters to the participants for their visa processing? I got a conference acceptance and my institute registered that. All the expenses to attend the conference were also approved.

When I checked with the respective embassy for visa processing, they asked for a letter of reason from the host country/conference.

Upon request to the conference representatives they excused. When I told them explicitly, once with a sample from some colleague of what I would need and then with the exact form from the official website of their embassy, then the response was, yes we would try our best to prepare it. However, if we couldn't, you can not blame us because the organizer has not promised any such assistance.

Such statement was a shock for me. To me, it was as if, I invite someone to my home, once he is at the door, I tell him, I did not promise you to open the door.

I am not sure if my assumption is wrong or what? maybe that's almost out of their domain but other conferences do prepare these documents.

So my question is:

Is it really the responsibility of a conference organizer to provide the necessary letters to the participants for their visa processing?

In any case, how to deal with such an issue/response?

Is it their responsibility?

Yes. I've run into this issue before, but I have never had a conference organizer demur on writing the letters. Not only is it the responsibility of the conference organizer, strictly speaking they are the only person who can provide you with the appropriate letters, since the letter is the justification for your attendance. Someone else cannot write you a letter saying "Tod is attending because of some other conference."

What should you do?

Don't go. On the one hand this is a moot point, because if they don't write the letter, you won't have the visa. On the other hand, the unwillingness to write a letter leads me to believe that this is not a genuine conference. There is an industry of essentially fraudulent journals and conferences. Many of the conferences are held in places like China, I suppose so that people have an opportunity to travel there and because it is relatively cheap, which require letters to travel. Not getting a letter is a huge warning sign.

It is undoubtedly disappointing, but if the conference is not going to do the absolute minimum required, and it sounds like you are paying, you are almost assuredly better off not attending.


Are books and professional society memberships allowable expenses under US federal grants? Can you include books and/or professional society memberships in expenses under grants from agencies like NSF and NIH?

I've purchased lots of books under grants from DOE and the Air Force in the past, but I'm wondering if they're generally considered allowable.  My quick searching uncovered the following:

NIH seems to explicitly allow books at least
NSF: I'm guessing books are allowed under "materials and supplies"

I haven't found anything about allowability of professional society memberships.

The page you linked to in your question directly addresses memberships for NIH:

  Dues or Membership Fees

  Allowable as an F&A cost for organizational membership in business, professional, or technical organizations or societies.

  Payment of dues or membership fees for an individual’s membership in a professional or technical organization is allowable as a fringe benefit or an employee development cost, if paid according to an established organizational policy consistently applied regardless of the source of funds.

I agree with your conclusion about books for NSF grants, and their page oddly doesn't list information about memberships. I would imagine that it could arguably fall under the section related to conference fees, but that's conjecture.


How do I move forward after working with a toxic academic supervisor? How do I move forward after working with a toxic academic supervisor who ruined my all job opportunities by giving negative referrals, when my next job is asking referee report from him?
If anyone has gone through a similar experience and survived, would love to hear how you survived.

I think you will have to be transparent about the relationship in the lab when potential employers ask for that reference. However, assuming you warned whatever graduate degree you had, it can also be taken as a sign that despite a toxic work environment you were able to still carve out success. Everyone has experienced a toxic work environment, so if your story is authentic, and you sound authentic, employers might be able to identify that.
But what you can’t do is use that supervisor as a reference, and you most likely won’t get other faculty to speak poorly about your supervisor in a letter. So, I would argue, that you just need to be transparent about your experience when you need to confront it.


Does going to a graduate school with less prestige than your undergraduate school hurt you? I am trying to decided whether pursing a Master's in Computer Science will make me more competitive for a job designing video games. I went to a prestigious undergraduate school and finished strongly. The graduate schools which offer Master's programs with concentrations in video game design are less prestigious than my undergraduate school.

The average starting salary with a graduate degree from one of them is actually $30k less than my starting salary with just an undergraduate degree.

If I attend a less prestigious graduate school, will that cancel out my undergraduate degree? Could I end up making less money with my graduate degree from one of these less prestigious schools? Will employers make the false assumption that I attended a lesser graduate school because I did poorly as an undergraduate?

Edited heavily based on further information provided by OP
If you are going into industry, or pursuing a Master's, it may hurt you in the short term
A Master's degree is mostly course work. It's too short for you to create a body of work that stands on its own. The quality of the courses largely determines, consequently, the quality of the Master's. Prospective employers may use an institution's reputation as a heuristic/proxy for the quality teaching.
Attending a less prestigious institution will make it more difficult to get interviews. Not being able to attend the bigger names also means you miss out on their alumni networks.
Create a compensatory professional network that overcomes these limitations. Most Master's in CS programs have a semester-long project. Make an impressive project and shop it around. This is a good way to build rapport with potential employers.


Is it advisable to have many clickable hyperlinks in an academic CV? I have recently been updating my academic CV. I realise that some items are not as internationally recognised as to that every reader will be aware of their importance without googling them. Hence, I am thinking about inserting hyperlinks to those items lest the reader wish to learn more.

Now, many items on my CV are clickable, and a reader particularly interested in one item may now just click on it to see a webpage with more details to pop up.

However, I rarely see a CV with many hyperlinks behind those words/phrases. Is this a taboo, or I am OK to do so?

I agree: most academic CVs do not have a festival of hyperlinks.  I don't see a problem with it, unless -- as @Taladris says -- the large amount of hyperlinking creates clutter in the document.  For something like a CV, where the spacing on the page is highly adjustable, I would think that you could probably have even a highly hyperlinked CV and take a little care to make sure that it does not look too busy to the eye.

I can tell you though why I don't feel the need to hyperlink my CV (and I imagine the reason holds more generally).  It's simple: I also have a webpage, and anything which appears on my CV which could get linked to also appears on my webpage.  Further, the translation between the two is straightforward: I have a section of my CV listing papers, and I also have an immediately visible link to a subpage containing papers from my main webpage (which, as you can see, is no frills to say the least, but it seems to get the job done).

Although I am certainly no expert on the visual display of information, webpage design (you'll know that immediately if you clicked on the above link) or anything like that, it is my opinion that a webpage is a more natural medium to have clickable content than a CV.

I think every young academic should have a professional webpage.  If they do have one, I'm not sure that a heavily hyperlinked CV is necessary, although again I see no harm in it.


Does a Ph.D. dissertation usually have an ISBN? ISBN is for books. Is it a standard procedure to assign an ISBN for a Ph.D. thesis?

Some institutions publish each PHD thesis as a book, and then they assign ISBN to each. E.g., theses done at CWI, Amsterdam.
To my knowledge, this is quite uncommon throughout the world, but does exist in certain places.


Is it necessary to understand every detail of a research paper? I am currently an undergraduate thinking about doing a Bachelor's thesis (and publish one or two papers if at all possible). I have found an advisor in computer science (artificial intelligence). I have begun to review literature suggested by my advisor. Most of the times I can understand the general idea of a paper (and why it is novel or important). However, very often I can't understand all details of it. Sometimes it is the lengthy math proof that I can't follow and sometimes it is the algorithm description that lacks too many details for me to code it up by myself.

So is it necessary or recommended for me to figure out everything in a paper? I can certainly ask for advisor all questions I have about a paper but I do not feel good about it. I think it is a kind of wasting his time to go through all mathematical details that support a major claim which I have already understood. Also I want whether this aspect of literature review is different if I am an undergraduate vs. PhD student vs. professional researchers.

I would posit that there are three general levels of depth to which you need to understand a paper:

Understanding context: For anything related to the work that you are doing, you need to be able to understand it well enough to explain how it relates to your work, and why it should or should not be directly compared.  This is the "general idea" level that you describe.
Direct comparison with other work:  For work that is closely related to your own work, you will likely need to be able to make a direct comparison, possibly even by running instances of the other work on the same problems.  Here, you need to understand at least well enough to correctly apply the other work and to make a cogent comparison of the relevant qualitative and quantitative attributes.  You'll probably need to understand most of the paper for this, but not necessarily all.  For example, you might not need to understand the proof of an algorithm's correctness, but would need to understand its uses and performance characteristics.
Building on top of other work: For work that you are actually making use of in developing your own work, e.g., by using it as a component or by extending a prior technique, you need to understand it very thoroughly indeed.  This is the level at which you really do need to understand everything in the paper.


What habits should I build in the first part of my PhD? I'm a first-year PhD student in a computer science department. As is usual at this school, my first three quarters are spent rotating with different professors, finding an adviser and a research fit that I like. However, unlike previous rotations, I can see myself working in this subfield for my PhD, and I've moved from wondering what subfield I'll be working in, to wondering how to get acclimated in this field.

I've always been a person to run an "outer loop" of self-reflection, advice-asking, and habit-forming. In undergrad, I followed a few blogs about making the most of college. However, it's been a lot harder for me to find useful advice about doing top-quality work in getting a PhD.

I hear that in the first part of your PhD, students are significantly less "productive" than in the fourth year and onward. That makes sense, and I'm becoming comfortable with the banging-head-against-wall feeling that is creeping up on me. However, I'd like to know what the three years of "unproductive" time teaches you to do, so I know what I should focus my energy on during these years.

I've heard it's important to read papers, develop a "taste" for useful problems, and hone in on a larger research question. However, each of those has a lot of follow-up questions that few people seem to talk about. Reading papers: how many? what about? what for? Taste: how do I get as many "data points" as possible in learning what's a useful problem?

Edit: I'm at school in the United States, and I'm unsure whether I'd want to go to academia, industry or run a startup. If I were to bet right now, I'd say 50% academia, 30% startup, 20% industry.

To get the ball rolling, I will offer an answer.  I will invite others to edit my answer to improve it, or write another answer.

In the early part, spend about 5 - 10% of your time looking at journal articles and other scientific literature (if you are on top of your coursework).
Form one or more study groups, if for no other reason than to get practice communicating about your subject area.
Attend seminars.
Visit office hours.
Try to keep your notes organized.
If there are foundational exams in your program, get some old exams and start looking at them, as time permits.
Find fun ways of getting exercise.


Teacher takes pictures of students during exams and posts them on social media There's this teacher who takes pictures of his students during exams, and posts them on social media, with the knowledge of the students. A lot of people enjoy these pictures (including the students), but I'm not sure how I should feel about this.

This also includes editing pictures to make them into memes of some kind. There is no foul play involved, just for fun.

Is this behavior alright? Should it be tolerated?

Addition :

The students were not asked for their consent. There have been no verbal objections, so far.

Doing this without permission is unprofessional, and it may be illegal, depending on your jurisdiction.

Asking for students' permission first is still unprofessional, especially in an exam situation, where students are already nervous, and given the power imbalance between the professor and the students. Who among the students will dare to object right before the exam? (This could depend on your local culture.)

You write that "There is no foul play involved, just for fun." - What is fun for one student could very well be harrassment for another, especially if pictures are edited. I don't see how this furthers the academic enterprise, so I would avoid doing this, at the risk of coming across as a spoilsport.

I surmise this question could soon be closed as opinion-based.


I can't figure out why my professor hates me I now have Professor X for the third semester in a row. I have not interacted with him very much outside of class, but I am positive he used to like me. But now, I can tell that he dislikes me.

I can only think of 1 or 2 reasons of why he would hate me (possibly valid, possibly not; for one, I complained about him to some classmates). But these reasons seem somewhat unlikely to be the cause. I have an (unfounded) fear that perhaps he mistook someone else's course evaluation last semester for mine (I did not actually complete one).

Is there anything I can do to alleviate the situation? I have considered asking him directly in person, but I think that he will either evade the question, or at best give one of the above-mentioned reasons; and if he does give one of the above-mentioned reasons, I wouldn't agree that they justify the professor being so upset.

I am emotionally disturbed by my professor's behavior. Additionally,  I will probably have to take him for two more semesters, so I would like to rebuild a decent relationship. I am at a very small school so at the same time I fear that this professor might talk negatively about me to his colleagues.

Do you have any advice on how I could improve the situation?

My answer to your question is, I believe, pretty good advice to follow in general: you should act professionally.

At the end of the day it doesn't matter whether or not your professor likes or dislikes you. If you handle yourself professionally (show up to class on time and prepared, complete your homework assignments to the best of your ability, ask for help when it is needed and interact respectfully with your professors) then you should expect that you will be treated fairly and equitably and should complain if you aren't.

(I've taught at the college level for more than ten years and have never disliked a student. The worst that happens is that occasionally I'll have a student that I find exasperating -- perhaps they talk over other students in class or consistently show up to class 5-10 minutes late -- but these sort of students pop up so regularly that I can't imagine actively disliking any of them. I have a similarly difficult time imagining a professor actively disliking one of their students barring some sort of (extraordinarily rare) extenuating circumstances.)


Tons of People Cheating on Exams which hampers my grade To give you some context we recently had our final exams and I barely managed to cross the threshold to get a 10 GPA in the course. I later found out tons of people had cheated on that course and cruised through it. These groups of people formed towards the end of the semester but now I'm worried they'll do this again from the beginning of the next semester which will make it even more harder for people who don't. Even our teacher acknowledged that cheating has happened but can't take any actions due to 2 reasons majorly, numerical based questions have more or less the same way to solve and identical calculations and proofs are bound to be similar in a class of 600-700 students.
To sort of counter this for some reason the professors decided to make the paper more difficult and more lengthy by adding more parts to each questions compared to previous years but this only made it more difficult for people who're attempting it honestly as when 5 people group together even if each person handles 1-2 questions they can easily finish them off.
Now I know the standard BS that focus on learning and I do but grades do matter, they matter everywhere and they matter in the long run as well and I'm genuinely worried that over time this will hamper by grades over time. Proctored exams also don't really make a difference as they can't really look at what a person is doing with like his other devices and there are tons of excuses people have. I even know a guy who tried solving a question got some wrong values then copied the second part correctly from some other person. He got through by making up some excuse with the TA.
How can I approach the professors or the administration or even try to suggest ways to make the process more fair, I don't want to snitch on others specifically and neither do I know everyone who cheats, I only know some people who would mention this at times and even invited me

If you can get perfect marks (10), then the cheaters don't really hamper your grade. They don't, in the short term, inconvenience you at all. You are doing the work to learn and your marks show that. All is well. Long term, you might be competing in some marketplace with unethical people, of course.
I suggest two options. Direct and indirect.
The direct action is to find a few people in the same situation and make a joint appeal to administration. They are likely aware of it, of course. But you can point out "how" people are cheating without getting in to the "who". Ask for steps to be taken. No guarantee of success. But this is something for group, not individual action.
The indirect action is to spend some effort becoming known to faculty for your hard work and skills so that they are assured that you are there to learn, not cheat. If you are successful at this, then you will have access to good support in those marketplaces, including, especially good letters of recommendation.
I highly recommend the second (indirect) action. I only point out the first.


Should I do Master or PhD to teach in community college? I currently have Bachelors in Economics and Math, and I'm doing full-time research in Economics right now.

My initial plan was to do PhD in Economics and work in academia, but after doing research, I realized that I'm not very interested in doing research in Economics, but rather I'm interested in teaching Economics at a post-secondary level.

However, I do know that professors in major universities are usually very researched-driven, so I was considering teaching in community college level (or PUIs, as commented by @NMJD). However, even to teach at community college level, at least Master in Economics is required, if not PhD.

While I'm open to the idea of doing Master in Economics, I feel that it doesn't have much value, other than the certificate of graduation itself, because Masters in Applied Economics is very similar to advanced undergrad Economics that I've taken (at least when I looked at their courses). I've already taken multiple PhD courses as undergraduate, and doing research in Economics in my workplace is generally considered equivalent to completing Masters. Financial burden of enrolling in Masters program is undesirable as well.

My question is: Should I pursue Masters in Economics, knowing that I'll repeat many courses that I've taken as undergraduate while putting myself in a debt? Or should I go to PhD, even though I understand that PhD is a very research-intensive degree?

NOTE: I've read similar article
Can you teach at a community college with a master's degree?.

Although it is similar, it doesn't not quite answer my question, as my question is Economics-specific, and I'm comparing the option of doing Masters or PhD to teach in community college.

A large portion of the community college workforce is part-time.  When there are full time job openings, they are quite competitive.  I will assume you are looking for full time work.  I have observed that many community college job advertisements say that a PhD is desirable, and I think that the applicant pool will typically contain many PhDs.  So I would suggest getting a PhD.

Be sure that during your PhD, you demonstrate that you know how to teach.  You can find quite a bit of information about how to obtain a job at a community college in columns on Inside Higher Ed.  If you earn a masters in the course of earning your PhD, teaching part-time at a community college during your PhD could be a good strategy.


Is it possible to share an arXiv article before it is announced? Once I submit an article to arXiv, it takes some time to be announced. Is there a way to share the article link before it is announced?  I would like to share it with my friends/guide, so they may point out mistakes, if any, before the article is announced.

Until the article is announced, it does not have a publicly viewable URL.  It can only be accessed from the account of the submitter.  So you cannot effectively share your paper until it is announced in the regular arXiv mailing.  However, since that announcement should be within at most two business days (unless your paper gets flagged for special treatment, because of extensive evidence of plagiarism or some other problem), it should not hurt you too much to wait for the announcement.


Conferences and journals for network science? I'd like to learn about the state of the art in network science and which problems researchers are actively working on. In particular, I'm interested in the applications, but the theory is also interesting.

I've found papers on scholar.google.com, and if I'm not mistaken most of the papers are published in application-specific conferences. For example, if network science is used to understand something related to cancer then the results are published in a medical journal. This is making it hard for me to get a consistent view and it's hard for me to get access to such a broad section of the literature (I'm not at a university so I keep hitting paywalls).

tl;dr: Where can I find conferences and journals that focus on network science?

I would say you are approaching it in the wrong way. Since network science (as Wikipedia defined it) is multidisciplinary concept, then I really doubt finding a consistent venue (conferences/ journals) for it.  This is specially true if you are interested in the application side.  If you are interested in the theory behind it, I see Graph Theory is the way to go.

I have worked in different applications of what so called network science including bioinformatics, social networks. I only knew graph theory (I had no clue what genes really are). So this largely depends on the application domain.

So simple steps to go:

Pick an area/interesting problem related to your expertise/background.
Read its literature.

If you saw a good paper related to your work, then keep an eye on the authors.