How much does the reputation of the undergrad institution matter in top 10 graduate schools in Mathematics? I will be starting as a freshman in August 2018 in an undergrad institution. My school does not have the best reputation for mathematics in my country. Although it has a tie-up with another nearby graduate institution, which is the well known to top 10 US graduate program in Mathematics. Some Faculties from it teach courses at my institution. As from there, I do have hopes of getting good LOR's. Because of fewer facilities, many students in my undergrad pursue their honors thesis at a different location. Few of them pursued outside of my country under AMS fellows.

Ph.D. placements at my school include Dartmouth ,Northwestern, Paris, UIUC etc.

I do have the option of taking a gap year and target two other schools A & B.

School A has recently started its undergrad program. Although it is fairly reputed in my country and abroad.
Their placements include Chicago, Ohio State, Wisconsin etc.

School B has the best math undergrad program in my country. It has a stellar reputation in top 10 grad schools in the US and many students are pursuing PhDs in those schools.

I know Harvard or Princeton is beyond my reach, but do schools like Chicago or Berkeley care more about elite undergrad status. Should I take a gap year? Can stellar letters of recommendation and good honor's thesis outweigh undergrad reputation?

Unfortunately, this is not really a trade-off we are qualified to help you with.  There are just too many unquantifiable factors (we don't even know what country you are in!); I generally don't really recommend students putting off the rest of their lives for a year to try something like an entrance exam again.  Even if you can get in, it could be that going A and B will make a big difference, but you can't possibly know that (maybe Chicago had a really bad experience with the last student that came from A; you just can't control this stuff). Who can possibly guess what the general political situation for foreign graduate students in the US will be in a few years?

So my advice is to start at your current institution, and do the best work you can.  That's what you can control.


What are "advance articles" and how to cite them? I noticed some journals are publishing advance articles that are not part of a published volume (i.e. https://academic.oup.com/isr/advance-articles).
I am a bit confused in regards to what is the status of these publications. Will advance articles be part of future volumes or will they remain standalone? Also, how would you cite them in Chicago 17 given the lack of issue and volume numbers?
Thank you.

Some journals publish preliminary versions of articles. The final version will appear in a published volume, the preliminary version might not, since changes may be made.
You can cite a preliminary version, just like you would cite any manuscript. You cannot list issue/volume numbers, because they don't exist. You could label such manuscripts as "preliminary" or "to appear" or "advance article" or "advance article, final version to appear" ...


In a paper with a co-author who contributed one part (say, computer implementation), where should the contributions of the authors be outlined? If I write a paper, and another person provides a computer program that visualizes the idea, where should I mention the roles of the authors? Is the "acknowledgements" section appropriate for this? Or it is considered a bad tone to delineate the contributions of the co-authors?

If the journal wants you to specify which co-authors contributed which parts of the work, then the journal's guidelines for authors will tell you that clearly, and give you instructions for where in the paper to do it.  If the journal's guidelines don't say anything about it, then you don't need to specify which authors did what.


Moving from chemistry to oceanography as a current chemistry PhD student? I am currently working my way towards a PhD in chemistry in a very good EU university. Things are running smooth and I expect to graduate within 1 to 2 years. But there is one big problem: the time spent in the lab made me realise that this is not the life I want. Although my passion for science is still intact after all those years, I have to admit that the lab work, the dreadful academic and private job market and the unexciting prospect of "parallel careers" have finally dented my motivation to pursue such a path.

I do, however, have a second passion in life: the ocean. I simply love earth, climate and ocean science about as much as I love chemistry, and seriously considered going for such studies instead. Since I started college, I have continuously taken classes in related subjects (biological oceanography, biogeochemistry, atmospheric physics...), and have enjoyed every bit of it. The only reasons why I picked chemistry for grad school were that I considered the outcome of the research I would do as more valuable for society (I specialise in cancer biochemistry) and the illusion that surely, I would get my own lab some day. But with the current physical sciences job market being grimmer than ever in both academia and private research, I have to accept the possibility of doing no research at all after graduating as the likeliest scenario. And the mere thought of ending up in careers such as consulting, no matter how lucrative, makes me want to off myself straight away.

On the other hand, the job prospects in marine and earth sciences appear somewhat more decent (please correct me if I am wrong here) - at least in the sense that you have better chances of working as a scientist in the end, although not necessarily in a tenure-track position or in an elite institution. This, coupled with my very strong interest in the field, has led me to consider quitting traditional chemistry for a field such as chemical oceanology and the likes. To do so, several branching pathways seem not entirely absurd:

1) Finishing my PhD in chemistry, and then jump into oceanography via post-doc training: this would be the easiest and safest option IF permanently moving from chemistry to oceanography is realistically doable. (It seems to me that the fine understanding of the physical and chemical processes common in living systems and natural milieus deriving from a PhD in basic chemistry could be a plus in that prospect).

If 1) was to be an impossible/unrealistic course of action, I guess my options would then be:

2) Finishing my PhD in chemistry, and then do a second PhD in oceanography: I am honestly not a huge fan of this idea, as it would considerably extend the duration of my studies. I have also read quite often that already holding a PhD will basically disqualify you from being admitted in any serious graduate programme (committees would understandably see you as a degree chaser, an eternally indecisive student or a pisstaker). I would however gladly follow that path, provided that it is actually possible to go for the second PhD route and if it was my only option.

3) Dropping out of my current PhD and start another one in oceanography as soon as possible: This would be the Mad Max card. I am obviously very, very reluctant to this idea, but would consider it if everything else was to fail.

In the end, my question(s) would be: which one of these scenarios appears the more realistic? Is 1) a plausible option, and do I have to consider the other, riskier courses of action?

I would welcome any insight from people experienced in the related fields or who have heard of similar situations.

Chemistry and oceanography are quite closely related, with a lot of people who explicitly overlap the two.  A nice example that I happen to be familiar with is Chris Reddy at Woods Hole, who works on marine chemistry, especially in the area of oil spills.  There are lots more like him, so I think that a transition via postdoc is entirely feasible to attempt.

Whether you stay in biochemistry or shift to oceanography, however, I think that you may wish to consider the broader scientific ecosystem of research opportunities.  Your view of the biochemistry world is probably somewhat distorted by an environment dominated by highly competitive "big PIs" with large labs.  There's a lot more to the research world than that, even in medical biochemistry.


What to do if the editor's decision is not in your favor? I had recently developed a method and submitted as a manuscript to a journal. Out of four reviewers, three accepted the method and asked for some clarifications about the method:- 2 with major revision and 1 with a minor revision. But the left one,say X, has rejected and just written one line in his/her report i.e. "I feel the approach made in this method is not valid."

Editor's decision: Reject

So I revisited all the approaches, discussed with  our group leader and co-authors. Our leader is advising to submit to other journal. But I would like to reply to X and the editor that my approach is quite valid. So how can I do it?

Is their anyone who is the superior to a editor?

Moreover, I am wondering how the editor took a negative decision just based on one reviewer's feeling? I would appreciate both the editor and reviewer, if they could have provided some hints why does the reviewer X feel this is not a valid approach.

You seem to assume that the editor rejected the article because of that one reviewer. That may be true, but my guess would be that that is not (entirely) the case. Reviewers just see one submission in isolation, the editor sees all the submissions, and only has limited space in her or his journal. So the editor typically cannot accept all articles that the reviewers thought were OK. Making that hard choice is her or his job.

Given that and your description of what happened, it is extremely unlikely that any complaint procedure (if one exists for your journal) will be successful.

Think of your options this way: such a procedure will take time, and during that time your article cannot be submitted somewhere else. So you loose time for a very small chance that it will appear in that journal. Alternatively, you could immediately submit is somewhere else, thus increasing the chance of getting published quicker. I know what I would do.

Edit: Based on @Kay 's comments it seems clearer where the problem is. Kay seems to assume that the review process is a scientific debate. That premise is incorrect. Academic debates happen at conferences or after an article gets published. The peer review process is a mainly bureaucratic procedure aimed at quality control (with strengths and lots of weaknesses). The review process is not suited for an academic debate for (at least) two reasons: The anonymity makes it hard or impossible to directly respond, so there is no exchange, and the reviewer's main audience is the editor not the authors. The comments you get that help you improve your paper are basically a (very nice) side effect of that bureaucratic process, but the main aim is to help the editor decide whether or not (s)he wants to publish your article.


How to cite R packages when using Mendeley? In Mendeley, the closest category for an R package appears to be "Computer Program"; however, R itself is a computer program, not its packages.

Other literature sources seem to cite technical documents about R packages instead of the actual packages.

Aside from manually entering the citations, is there a way to incorporate R packages in my Mendeley library?

Each R package has a different way to be cited. Some were formally published as scientific articles in journals, some only as packages. The only way to know for sure is to check how the package maintainer want you to cite their package, with function citation.
Base R also comes with function toBibtex that help you export the correct citations as a bibtex file.

For instance:

> citation("Rcpp")

To cite Rcpp in publications use:

  Dirk Eddelbuettel and Romain Francois (2011). Rcpp: Seamless
  R and C++ Integration. Journal of Statistical Software,
  40(8), 1-18. URL http://www.jstatsoft.org/v40/i08/.

  Eddelbuettel, Dirk (2013) Seamless R and C++ Integration with
  Rcpp. Springer, New York. ISBN 978-1-4614-6867-7.

  Dirk Eddelbuettel and James Joseph Balamuta (2017). Extending
  R with C++: A Brief Introduction to Rcpp. PeerJ Preprints
  5:e3188v1. URL
  https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3188v1.

To see these entries in BibTeX format, use 'print(<citation>,
bibtex=TRUE)', 'toBibtex(.)', or set
'options(citation.bibtex.max=999)'.

> toBibtex(citation("knitr"))
@Manual{,
  title = {knitr: A General-Purpose Package for Dynamic Report Generation in R},
  author = {Yihui Xie},
  year = {2018},
  note = {R package version 1.20},
  url = {https://yihui.name/knitr/},
}

@Book{,
  title = {Dynamic Documents with {R} and knitr},
  author = {Yihui Xie},
  publisher = {Chapman and Hall/CRC},
  address = {Boca Raton, Florida},
  year = {2015},
  edition = {2nd},
  note = {ISBN 978-1498716963},
  url = {https://yihui.name/knitr/},
}

@InCollection{,
  booktitle = {Implementing Reproducible Computational Research},
  editor = {Victoria Stodden and Friedrich Leisch and Roger D. Peng},
  title = {knitr: A Comprehensive Tool for Reproducible Research in {R}},
  author = {Yihui Xie},
  publisher = {Chapman and Hall/CRC},
  year = {2014},
  note = {ISBN 978-1466561595},
  url = {http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466561595},
}

As for importing bibtex files into Mendeley, I do not use Mendeley myself but this Q&A on TeX.se shows that one can simply use menu items "File > Import... > Bibtex (*.bib) " to do so.


What can be inferred and how common is that a potential PhD supervisor talks directly to my recommender? I would like to ask about a reasonable interpretation that can be made in the case that an aerospace engineering faculty member of a high-level US university, like Caltech or MIT, directly talks to my current university professor about my backgrounds and preparations before my formal submission of application.

Actually, I have been in contact with a faculty member since two years ago and I provided him periodically with updates regarding my work, master's dissertation and publications etc. The professor constantly expressed his interest in my background and even wrote in his last email that "I very much look forward to read your PhD application". A few weeks after this last email, there was a conference that my thesis advisors, one of whom is prominent in my field, were attending and the faculty member talked to them in person, said that he will certainly read my paper, which was published in that same conference, and that he is indeed interested in supervising my PhD.

Of course, I applied to the program and I am now waiting to hear back from the admissions committee and I read in some other questions that in top-rank institutions, the decisions are typically made by a group of faculty members, not necessarily the potential supervisor alone.

As such, I thought to ask this question so that it would be possible to find out how common this kind of situation is and what can be reasonably understood out of it.

Sounds like a polite chat. Professors are humans. They go to a conference and meet all kinds of people they don't know well and they need a topic to talk about, and a common acquaintance is a good topic for small talk. It is a bit tricky in the sense that there is an application involved here, but overall I would not over-interpret this.

If you want to interpret this, then you can see this as a slightly positive sign: (S)he is also signaling that (s)he is interested in supervising you. That helps: if one committee member says that (s)he wants to supervise a potential students, then there needs to be a good reason not to go along with that (e.g. lack of funding).


Supervisor offered work in lab, I accepted. What are the next steps? I am looking to join a research MSc this fall and one particular supervisor asked me if I would like to join his lab and I said yes.  I though forgot to ask him what to do next. Do I contact the program and tell them that this supervisor has asked me if I would like to join his lab or wait for him to contact the program,  do the needful and then contact me if accepted? Would it be alright if I send him a mail asking him if I should contact the program informing them that he had asked me if I could join his lab? Please advise.

If somebody has invited you to join their lab but the next steps for doing that are not clear, it is absolutely appropriate to email them to ask them what the next steps are and what you can do to help the process.


Allowed help in thesis If you write a thesis, is it legal to ask somebody if things you did are correct in the thesis? When it's my own work and this person says, everything correct, there shouldn't be any problem, right? When does plagiarism start?

From a publication point of view:

In general, this is nothing else than peer review and totally fine.

As long as the other person only tells you "all good", or "this here doesn't look good, maybe rewrite it so that X is more clear", that is no problem at all. If the other person writes the whole new version for you, that is obviously not good. Either way, this wouldn't be plagiarism in this case. Plagiarism means copying from a different paper/book/source without properly mentioning it. What this would be is someone else writing (part of) your publication without getting mentioned. That is at least as bad as plagiarism, but it is something else.
Depending on the level of help you got, consider mentioning the other person in the acknowledgements.

From a university point of view:

A thesis isn't completely the same as a paper, so here, other rules might apply. At some universities, you have to sign that you didn't use any sources or help apart from the ones clearly mentioned and cited. Thus, rules might be stricter here. While I would not worry about, say, a math major getting feedback on their English grammar by someone who has no idea about math, as soon as the one reviewing your work is from the same field and/or also gives feedback regarding content, this is something that should be cleared with your advisor first.


How do I find graduate level topics and textbooks after graduating? I've recently finished a MS in computer engineering and long term it's likely that I'll look into doing a PhD. One of the reasons I didnt do it straight away is that I dont really have a clue what I'd like to do it in. I enjoyed parts of EE, CE, applied mathematics, and CS.

Both to maybe look for what areas I'd most like and just for general knowledge, I'd like to buy a few textbooks and self study topics. However, I've got no clue what's... next?

Where can I find what's next, if that makes sense? Like, in undergrad, you take an intro circuits class, then Electronics 1 which introduces transistors, then Electronics 2 which has advanced amplifier circuits etc. It builds. I'm not sure what builds on what I've studied from here. I understand these topics "build" in undergrad in a cleaner, linear way since they're designed to, and now theres a plethora of options, but what are they? Where do I start looking?

By the end of my degree, I was just reading course descriptions and taking whatever sounded interesting/applicable to my thesis. This worked extremely well. Now that I'm graduated, however, I dont have easy access to up to date course listings. I've been reading random course listings at universities, but they're not helpful, and dont always list textbooks.

For reference, my favorite courses at the end of my degree were:

Digital signal processing, Dynamic optimization (optimal control), Linear systems theory, Intelligent systems, Compiler theory, and  Nonlinear optimization

Let me know if this would fit better elsewhere.

You can search university reading lists, e.g., https://www.google.com/search?q="reading list"%20"applied mathematics"%20site:edu, replacing applied mathematics with phrases to hone in your search.


What is the importance of a very tangentially related minor in grad school applications? In an effort to keep this question generalizable, I'll try to be as vague as possible.

I'm majoring in a softer science (getting a BA), while doing research in a much harder science which could be considered a super-field to my major. This year, I did a year-long field project in my major field which counts toward a certain sociology minor that's at least somewhat related to my major. I'm interested in said minor and my planning said I could complete it, so I declared it.

However, certain circumstances mean that I wasn't able to complete minor-satisfying courses in a timely manner. If I want to get the minor, I have to stick around an extra quarter. I'm not sure that expense is really worth it to me just for the minor.

I intend to apply to grad school in the harder field, a field in which I have a paper or two and a presentation at a major conference.

How important is an unrelated minor in applying to grad school? Unlike something like music or a language, there's probably not much I could do with it, even in my personal life.

I read this question, but it's about minoring in a related field, not a distant field.

I've tagged this both United States and United Kingdom because I'm from the States but looking at a couple programs that would send me to the UK.

Except in unusual circumstances, a minor per se will matter for very little indeed in applying to graduate school.  There may be value in the particular things that you have done related to this minor (e.g., the field project) or reference letters you might be able to get due to your work towards it, irrespective of whether you actually complete the minor or not.

I would not however recommend delaying your graduation and grad school applications just to be able to formally complete your minor.


How do academics make money from applying their research? There are a lot of very smart people in academia. They are at the front of human knowledge and push it further. Obviously, the research that comes out of academia is very new. My question is who applies this research? In other words, why don't these smart professors start a company and sell their new findings by applying it to a problem and sell a service or product?

I mean if I was a very smart researcher, and discovered something that no-one has known before, then first thing for me would be to create a company and sell it. Yet what I see is that all these researchers remain relatively poor compared to business people, and they publish some papers and then someone else applies their findings and makes a lot of money, while they do not get anything.

I might be wrong though. I don't really know how it goes.

I mean if I was a very smart researcher, and discovered something that no-one has known before, then first thing for me would be to create a company and sell it.

Come on, do you even think it is so easy for someone to start a company and start making money? The skills needed to make a product (corporate world) are different from those necessary to create an idea (academia). A simple well-thought out, well-exposited algorithm may bring plaudits in academia, but in the industry you need to implement the algorithm as a small part of a large system, subject it to rigorous testing, find people to market the product and suitable customers to buy, etc. And then there is the whole HR team which has to do its thing...

Patents are the way to go if you have to make money from a smart idea in the academia. (EDIT: Generally, both the University and the inventor share equitably the royalties and other income arising out of inventions developed under University auspices.)

Professors do engage themselves in collaborative work with the industry; at times, they are funded by the university for setting up small companies (see this question.). The lifestyles of people in the academia and the industry are vastly different; for one, professors have much more freedom with respect to timings than in the industry and afford greater time for their family - not a bad thing in exchange for money, after all.

Successful researchers in academia are unlikely to quibble about low income compared to people in the industry. Happiness versus money is a concave function - beyond a point, more money is unlikely to make one happier.


What degree is necessary for a career in conservation? I'm currently in school studying towards an A.S. in Natural Science. I'd like to have a focus on marine life, which leads me to believe I should get a B.S./B.A. in Marine Biology, however I want to be able to work in other areas well; such as aquatic life, land mammals, botany, forestry, &c. My question is, what degree should I work towards to be able to work fluidly between conservation efforts. I'm rather lost in all the different degrees out there, I don't know which to pursue. The school I'm considering offers degrees in Marine Biology, Natural Science, Environmental Science, Agriculture and Management, Plant and Soil Science, Wildlife Management.

I'm also going to pursue a Master's after my Bachelo'rs. I was curious if it might be a good idea to get a Bachelor's in Marine Biology, then maybe a Master's in something much broader in order to expand my horizon so to speak. Or is it a better idea to just stick with one area and focus there?

The conservation, applied ecology, and natural resource management fields can be a tough job market depending upon your geographically location and what subfield you want to work in.

For your undergraduate degree, any of the majors you listed would be reasonable. I would browse graduate programs you are remotely interested in and see what courses they require for admission. Some programs might requires 2-3 semester of calculus where others require none. Likewise, chemistry (e.g., organic) and physics requirements sometimes vary. As noted in a comment, your exact undergraduate degree does not matter if you plan on going to graduate school. However, some agencies (e.g., the US Federal government) have course requirements for jobs (e.g., a fish biologist).

Academically, I suggest a double major or a minor in another field to give you technical skills to help you stand out. Possible examples might be chemistry, math or statistics, or something related to GIS.

Outside of school, try to get as much experience as possible. Hopefully you can get payed summer job/internships. One great place to find these opportunities is the Texas A&M Wildlife/Applied Ecology jobs board.

The source for my information is my own experience. I am PhD-level research scientist working for a US natural resource research agency.


Fundementals of Engineering exam with Math degree (not ABET-engineering?) Is it possible to take the Fundamentals of Engineering to become a licensed engineer with only a math degree? I don't think a math degree is an ABET accredited "engineering program".

According to this National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) website:

The NCEES board of directors recently approved an amendment to the policy that governs the NCEES Engineering Standard to expand access to its credentials evaluations service. NCEES uses this standard to evaluate educational credentials of engineering licensure candidates with degrees from the following:

Engineering programs outside the United States
U.S.-based programs in engineering, engineering technology, related science, or mathematics that are not accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, when coupled with a master’s degree or doctorate from a program that is EAC/ABET-accredited at the undergraduate or graduate level

So, it seems that having an undergraduate degree in math is not, by itself, a showstopper for sitting for the FE exam, provided that you have a MS or PhD in engineering from an institution that is ABET-accredited, either at the undergraduate or graduate level. In this case, it sounds like you will be referred to the NCEES Credentials Evaluations service to have your background reviewed in order to determine if you are prepared well-enough to pursue engineering licensure.


Should I Change my Research Focus? I just finished my first semester in a PhD program in Pure and Applied mathematics. My initial focus was on probability, statistics, modeling, and machine learning. To this end I took a course in (Modern) Probability, Nonlinear Optimization, and the mandatory Functional Analysis. Based on my performance in these courses my advisor suggested that I should consider maybe switching to a different focus, as he thinks I will struggle to pass the qualifying exam (specifically in the two elective courses Probability and Nonlinear Optimization).
However, I do not believe my scores reflect my real capability or interest in the subjects, but rather reflect a gap in what was taught and what was tested. I am sure I could study really hard and succeed.
I am posting here to get a second opinion on whether or not I should change my focus, or if I should stick with it and double down and study really hard. I posted on math.stackexchange and was advised to post here for a second opinion. (https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/3984219/what-are-some-possible-phd-research-areas-based-on-these-course-pairs?noredirect=1#comment8221305_3984219)
What would you advise? Should I change my focus to another one that I might have a better synergy with? Thank you!

Your advisor's advice is probably worth taking. They know you better than we do.
But your current goal is to get a doctorate. The specific sub field is less important than that goal. You can always take up a different specialty later if it isn't too different.
Find a path to success. Examine the obstacles (exams, ...) and find a way through them. You may have made some judgmental errors, but don't make any more.
But to find that path, in mathematics, find a field in which you have true insight into how things work. Math insight isn't general. You can have deep insight into one field (analysis) and little in another (algebra).


Is it okay for a PhD student to go on holidays in breaks? I am a first year STEM PhD student in a US university, but I come from a different country. I took a couple of weeks off in this winter break to travel within the US, as it was too expensive to visit my home country.

Now, I have two options -

1. To visit my home country in the next winter (2016-17) for around a month.
 2. To visit my home country in the coming summer (2016) for a short period (say 2 weeks) and get back to work AND to go back again in the next winter for around a month.

Now, the problem with 1 is that there is still a year to go (well, almost a year), and so there is a possibility of being homesick.
So, there is 2. However, I am concerned if it will be seen as I am slacking off / going on holidays too many times etc. Now, I obviously understand that I should discuss this with my advisor and s/he should take the decision, but I am concerned if this is even a reasonable discussion topic (as opposed to the idea being so preposterous that there is no point even asking, and I should just stick to 2)

Note that even if I go on a short holiday in the summer, I plan to spend most of the summer doing research at my university.

So, tl;dr:
Is going on holidays in 3 consecutive breaks considered reasonable? Or is it too preposterous?

Do you have an adviser? Have you talked to them about this? Most should be fine with you taking some time off to visit your family, but you should probably discuss longer breaks with them to work out all the details.


Any chances for me in top 10 economics program? I am bachelors of commerce from a not known university. I am going to take economics masters from India's top institute. I will take higher math courses as well. What else should I do to get in top 10 economics program ? (Are there any chances for me?)

Also can you please suggest some masters economics program which enrolls commerce undergrad?

(If I had more rep then this probably would have been a comment not an answer, sorry).  That is a very hard question to answer without you providing much information.

Generally getting into a top 10 economics program is already a semi random process because so many applicants are so well qualified.  It requires a high GPA in hard courses, good recommendation letters, etc...  That being said, there are a lot of students from India who end up placing very well.

A website where you might get more opinions is http://www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/ .  They have a general format for how to submit your profile, look at a few and check it out.  Might help you know where you stand (They also have old archives of student profiles with results).


How to properly reply to regret email for PhD application? I applied for PhD position and later I received an email telling that: I regret to inform that you have not been selected for this position, how may I send a follow up email, if should I do so?

how may I send a follow up email, if should I do so?

That's not expected. You got the answer.

Time to move on and get on.


What is the distinction between "graduate school" and "professional school"? I have previously been involved with mentoring high school students as well as undergraduates, who typically don't have a clear understanding of all of the career possibilities available to them and how they might pursue them.

One of the distinctions I typically make is that "Professional School" (e.g. medical, law, physicians assistant, nurse practitioner, dental) is further training past undergraduate studies that prepares you for entry into a very specific profession/job with a terminal degree. "Graduate School" is additional training that prepares you to be an expert in a particular field, but the job opportunities are much more diverse and you may or may not be working toward a terminal degree. One of my college advisors made this distinction to me, and I have carried it forward.

Is making this distinction between graduate and professional school correct?
Is there another more specific or subtle difference that I am missing?

What is the true distinction between graduate and professional school? - Or is there not one?

At least in my geographic region (Texas, or the US southern states), a professional school implies a curriculum that targets specific skills for a particular vocation. In effect, this is akin to my awkward bastardization of several concepts:

  "Teach a man to fish and he can become a fisherman ... help him learn
  how to think and he can pursue a career in whatever he wants."

The former refers to a professional/vocational school.  The latter refers to accredited universities with broader range of curriculum missions.  Granted, this reflects my biased perspective: admittedly, vocational schools have a (usually) noble and useful purpose, but proper universities can offer so much more to enrich the whole student, and potentially brighten the intellectual and career outlook for years to come.


Is using an old book's solution considered cheating? I'm currently solving a coding problem. I remembered that i came across this problem in another book i studied myself to improve my coding in the summer.  That book has the same problem to this assignment. I understand the answer and know how to explain it but not sure if it is cheating to use that piece of code for my assignment.

One more thought in addition to Buffy's answer:

Transparency is maybe the solution here: tell your prof "I remember this problem, I met it studying book last summer. How shall I proceed with the assignment?"

This will ensure that there won't be any ground for accusing you of cheating
Prof may give you another assignment, from which you can learn more.


Which topics should be covered in a teaching statement? In mathematics, submitting a teaching statement (also called teaching philosophy or similar names) is part of the application package for any teaching jobs (and most research jobs). I suspect it is a part of the application for academic jobs in other disciplines too. I have written a teaching statement and I rewrite and modify it every now and then. Since I wrote it myself I think it is perfect and I cannot detect its possible flaws and mistakes. Therefore, I am looking for tips and advice for improving my teaching statement. I particularly appreciate any advices from people who are involved in hiring committees. My questions are:

Which topics would members of search committees like to see in a teaching statement? or alternatively, which mistakes in a teaching statement can ruin an applicants' chances for getting an interview?

In order to make this Q&A useful for others, I didn't restrict it to mathematicians. However, I'll appreciate if someone has a specific advice for writing teaching statements for mathematics jobs.

First things first:

  Since I wrote it myself I think it is perfect and I cannot detect its possible flaws and mistakes.

It is imperative that you have someone else read over your statement with a critical eye and with the experience to provide quality feedback.  You'd be surprised at what you can miss in your own writing, and how the tone may come across different to others.

  Which topics would members of search committees like to see in a teaching statement?

This will be dependent on the type of department you are applying to -- at many institutions, research ability trumps teaching, and your statement might not count for much (see below for a caveat about being too gung-ho).  Assuming the reason you are asked for a teaching statement is because the department that is hiring does value teaching, I suggest the following:

Demonstrate your understanding that math is difficult for some students, particularly as it gets more abstract.  If you can, provide a brief example of a topic that was hard to teach and how you ended up teaching it.
Provide examples of how you changed your teaching based on student feedback or your own assessment.  Showing that as a professor, you'll continually try to improve your teaching goes a long way.
Talk about curriculum development -- if you have ever designed a course, make sure you mention it.  Describe what you enjoyed about the course development process, and how you addressed the challenges.
Try to convey your passion for teaching -- some of the best teachers are the most passionate, and if you can get that across (only if it is true, of course!), all the better.

  Which mistakes in a teaching statement can ruin an applicants' chances for getting an interview?

As with any writing, poor grammar demonstrates a lack of attention to detail (or ability), and that will torpedo your application.  Again, have others read it over and provide feedback.
If you are applying to a school where teaching takes a back seat to research, don't make it sound like you live for teaching; you don't want to say that you've stayed up all night crafting the perfect lesson when you should have been doing research.
Don't be boring!  This could be a difficult one depending on your writing style. I've seen teaching statements that made it sound like the teacher would be the most boring professor in the world.  Again, examples from your own teaching can help make the writing more interesting.

Finally, your teaching statement can be more personal than your research statement, so it is okay to let that come out a bit more.  Demonstrating why you'll be a good teacher is the most important part, and this should be apparent in the essay.

Edit: I should add -- as with any other letter or statement, you should feel free to craft different letters for different jobs.  If you're applying to a college where professors teach three or four classes per semester, you can expect they will pay more attention to your teaching statement, and you should taylor it appropriately.


Criticism by referee I got a report on one of my papers recently, in which the referee claimed my results were "natural". This was one of their primary reasons for rejecting my paper. I agree the proofs are not exceptionally difficult, but on the other hand I feel my results significantly advance our understanding of certain mathematical objects, and may be crucial in answering some open questions in the field. Is the rejection simply a consequence of my not adequately "selling" my results, or is insufficient novelty a good enough reason for rejecting a paper?  In time, I feel that I will be able to use the results to answer these big questions, but of course there is no guarantee of this. Should I simply aim for a lesser journal now, or is the referee's comment likely to be echoed by other reviewers, in which case I should "hold my fire" until (if?) I draft a more substantial paper?

Insufficient novelty is definitely good enough reason to reject a paper - otherwise for example I can just repackage the proof of Pythagoras's theorem from the nearest mathematics textbook I can get my hands on, and publish that (I can publish that multiple times too).

To publish your results you need to convince the editor that the result actually matters. You write that they "significantly advance our understanding of certain mathematical objects". That's the key point you want to elaborate on. How exactly do they advance our understanding? Do they show that certain approaches to the open questions in the field are more likely / less likely to be successful? Do they lead to any partial results?

It's impossible to tell how other (not necessarily lesser) journals will react, since peer review is an inherently stochastic process, but if I'm the author I would look carefully at elaborating on the above questions before submitting it to another journal.


My University professor copied parts of my assignment for the sample solution. Should he have credited me? So I just saw this and found it kind of funny, a bit weird, I guess flattering and wondered if he should have at least asked me or gave me some credit and is he allowed to do this as the professor? !
I got a 100/100 in this 2000 words assignment for his course and today I decided to see the essay-like solution he posted for everyone to see, and there are complete paragraphs exactly the same as mine, even the commas. I didn't rediscover anything with this assignment, the topic is not new, but the expressions, the writing and the ideas are all mine.
Anyway I am not gonna say anything to him but I did laugh at the thought that if I ever use my answer again in a similar topic imagine if then I am accused of plagiarism from myself and/or him :)
(btw English is not my first language sorry for any mistakes)

Yes, this is both flattering and weird. I would call it unprofessional and tacky.
He should have thanked you for the nice answer and asked your permission to post parts of it.
Whether you should have public credit for that work may depend on policies at your school and on how you and the instructor think about the impact of such an announcement on other students.
Do stick with this:

Anyway I am not gonna say anything to him but I did laugh at the
thought that if I ever use my answer again in a similar topic imagine
if then I am accused of plagiarism from myself and/or him :)


How long does PhD Application Process take in the UK? I submitted my application with a supervisor's name fora UK university last week. I plan to apply for a scbolarship after getting an offer. The scholarship application deadline is in March. I would like to know how long it takes to get an application result in a UK uni?

This will depend on the university. You should tell them your situation.


Should I quit my job and travel the world before applying to PhD programs? I plan to apply for PhD programs in foreign policy this upcoming year. It's a field I'm passionate about and something that, after much deliberation, I am positive I want to pursue. With that said, I'm currently in a field unrelated to politics/policy - having studied business in college. I have been working in this field for several years.

I've always dreamed of traveling the world, experiencing other cultures, and having some time to myself to learn a new language/write a book. In the past, I've always been a working hard in school or work to do these things for myself - and I'm sure I won't have the time upon starting a PhD program.

Thus, in a perfect world, I would like to quit my job, travel the world, and have the experience of a lifetime as soon as possible - for as long as possible - until the start of my PhD program. My main worry is that, in approx. 8 months when I apply for PhD programs, I will have to put 'unemployed' and attempt to explain to admissions what I've been up to for almost a year (as opposed to putting down a very good, well respected job - albeit one in a different field).

I want this experience of a lifetime but, at the same time, I don't want to jeopardize my chances at top programs. Some people I have consulted have said that taking on such an experience can actually be seen as unique and increase my chances of admission (though I am skeptical of that).

I am extremely grateful for any tips/advice. If anyone has familiarity with the admissions process of top PhD programs and how they would view someone with a current 'unemployed' status, please provide any insight you can.

Thanks so much!

The way PhD admission works is that you usually apply during the fall, receive admission decisions in the following winter/spring, make a decision around April and enroll in the fall. This means that there is usually a four-month(ish) long gap between the admission process and enrollment. Many students fresh out of college will use this period to relax, maybe even travel around the world. So if you can afford to quit your job or make certain arrangement with your employer, this time window could be a compromise between your need to enjoy life and appear productive, since people don't usually expect you to work hard just before you formally enroll in the program. On the other hand, if you urgently need to travel well before application and still want to impress the admission committee, my general advice is that a generic travel plan will not achieve the goal here. For your travelling to be viewed positively, it should yield concrete outcomes demonstrating excellence in whatever skills valued in your field of study.

I should also say that this is based on my experience with Ph.D. programs in science. A political science Ph.D. may have difference culture/expectations.


What should you do if a co-author has an unethical affiliation? A person I know was in the process of publishing her first manuscript when her supervisor told her to add his newly acquired affiliation from a university in Saudi Arabia to his name. The Saudi Arabian university hired this Supervisor as guest faculty and were essentially paying him for adding them as one of the affiliated universities in all the forthcoming manuscripts.

This was of major ethical concern to my acquaintance.  In recent years, Saudi universities have been accused in multiple different prominent articles of "buying rankings" by paying prominent faculty to list them as an affiliation, even though the faculty have little real interaction with the university.  To many, this looks like simple bribery or unethical sale of reputation, particularly give the high sums of money involved.

My acquaintance was concerned that, if her advisor was listing this affiliation on her paper, then she would be aiding and abetting in this unethical behavior.  Unfortunately, her confrontation with her advisor went badly, and although she was able to publish the paper without the questionable affiliation, the relationship was destroyed and she ended up resigning the laboratory under pressure.

Now my question is this: what should a junior researcher do when they feel they are being asked to be party to "affiliation fraud" of this sort?  We would not ask a person to remain silent if they thought a co-author was being unethically added or removed.  Should unethical addition or removal of an affiliation be treated the same way?

To my mind, this case is very similar to the question of whether somebody can essentially pay for co-authorship.  We see many questions of this sort on this site, a particular apropos example of which is this one, which asks in part:

  Suppose I'm a billionaire who knows nothing about science, but I take it into my head that I want to be (regarded as) a famous scientist.

The case of the Saudi Arabian affiliations looks to me very much like a parallel construct:

  Suppose I'm a billionaire institution which does little significant research, but I take it into my head that I want to be (regarded as) a famous institution.

I think that it is completely reasonable to find this problematic, and to object to a co-author adding this institution, just as one might object to a co-author adding the billionaire know-nothing as another author.

Now the question is what to do about it, and, as in these authorship questions, the advice tends to depend strongly on the power dynamics of the situation.  On this site, we often advise students to leave bad situations rather than creating a confrontation, due to the power imbalance with faculty.  For people in positions of power, however, like tenured faculty, it is an effective endorsement of unethical behavior if you are aware of it and do not call it out.  It may not be a hill to die on, but either you care enough to make your voice heard or else you accept the behavior as legitimate.

In this particular case, the student may have acted unwisely with regards to safeguarding their own future, but it may also have been important enough to them to take that ethical stand.  It's impossible for us to know how important it was to that person, and it's easy to engage in post-facto critique of their tactics, but I think the concern is legitimate and the actions taken are within the range of reasonable options, depending on how strongly the student felt about the ethics involved.

In short: some people choose not to take military money, not to work on espionage-related research, or not to publish in non-open journals.  Choosing not to be party to what you perceive as bribery for prestige is just as legitimate an ethical choice to make.


Would it be arrogant for me to offer my professor material on the module they teach? I am a first year CS undergraduate taking a module on differential equations. For part of this module I did a personal project on the motion of simple harmonic systems (damped and undamped) which I recently found out was in fact something we would briefly cover at the end of the module. From my project I have a very nice set of interactive graphs which I made to aide my learning and understanding of the subject. When I found out that the subject of my project was something that would be covered in the module it occurred to me that this might be worth offering to my professor to possibly share with other students or something to that end. However as soon as I thought this I realised that it might come across as arrogant and I'm now unsure of what to do. Would it be worth emailing my professor about this?

Providing material to your teachers is all about HOW and WHY you provide that material. If you're providing this material purely as an extra resource than provided you approach it as that, you shouldn't appear arrogant. If you are doing this to prove your knowledge of the topic or to try and 'one up' the instructor, then yes this is gonna be seen as arrogance.

I suggest an email similar to the one below:
"Dear xxxx,
Looking ahead in the topic I noticed that we are covering yyyyyyy. I have previously done a project on this topic and thought that it might be useful in trying to explain the concepts. I have attached all documents on the project for you to review and would love an opportunity to discuss my work with you.

Thank-you for your time,
I look forward to hearing from you,
"
Etc...

That should get your point across without portraying arrogance. How you conduct yourself in any meetings or class however, that is really up to you.

Also be aware that the teacher may choose not to use your project or other materials. That is their choice and their right. They may choose to include it in subsequent versions of their topic.


How to deal with left over work from a Post Doc I have recently (6 months) left academia after a three year postdoc at a high ranking university. During my time there, I became the lab's statistics guru having carried out analysis on a lot of our labs data, both my data, and others.

I was let go due to lack of funds, but my previous supervisor is now asking me to carry out a number of analyses on new data for publication, and to finish one or two papers I did not finish during my employment.

So my questions are:

How do I graciously refuse to touch others data? I wrote the data analysis pipeline, but am not interested in maintaining and rerunning it every time new results appear. It's available on github and well commented, just no one else in the lab knows how to do anything with computers. The actual running is easy for the most part, it is "small" modifications that are causing me trouble. I've offered to train others (and trained an undergrad who has also since left the lab), but the amount of training to teach someone python from scratch is a little daunting.
How to finish up my own papers? I'm currently contracting to industry at rates 3-6 times what I was paid during my postdoc - my supervisor is asking for me to work for free, or maybe my previous rate if he can get the money. This is a significant time sink, but I do feel obligated (and interested) to finish these off. What is a good pay rate to ask for? How do I do this without offending my supervisor?

Location is USA. The postdoc was a yearly contract, where an informal agreement was made to extend it to a 4th year, which had to be cancelled due to a loss of funding 4 months from renewal, thus the somewhat unorganized departure. In my heart of hearts, I'd like to continue in academia, but due to partner issues have to stay in the current location, making academia extremely unlikely. I'm currently undergoing the recruitment process for two different industry positions, as well as my contracting.

The easiest way to do this is to politely inform your previous advisor that you no longer have the time to commit to the projects you were working on as a post doc. It is not your responsibility to train others in his lab, or to take on duties beyond what you're comfortable with.

One option to consider, if you're working on a "for hire" basis, is to offer the possibility of hiring you on a contract basis to do the work. You would then be able to set the scope and extent of the work, as well as your compensation. If your advisor was unwilling to accept the terms, it would put the refusal on him, and you'd be more or less "in the clear," so to speak.

As for the pay rate, you should probably select a rate that is between the academic and corporate rates, but leaning more toward the former—remember that academic pockets are typically not as deep as corporate ones.


How would teaching during the last year of a postdoc be perceived on the academic job market? How would large and small research schools, master's only schools, and liberal arts schools all look at a post-doc who did 5 years of research and a 6th year of teaching + post-doc at ~50/50? This would be in physics if that matters.

In my, undergraduate-only department we aren't looking for teaching experience as a check box on the incoming CVs, we're looking for evidence that the candidate likes teaching. Because that's what we're hiring someone to do. Of course, if you haven't logged some time in the classroom then there is no way for you to know, but we are perfectly willing to listen to "When I was a TA ..." stories to get a sense of how the candidate thinks and feels about teaching.

And of course, we're looking for a research background that will give you a chance of doing something here, but with five years of post-doctoral research you look good on paper. We'd want to hear you talk about getting some research done with limited resources.


How are graduate students funded over the summer (in US)? I know that there are often summer courses through TAing, but those are much rarer. Many departments don't even offer summer courses.

In that case, are graduate students over summer always supported by RAships? And does an adviser have to have funding in order to support these students (in US)?

Do these standards also vary between professors at public schools and those at private schools? Especially schools that have guaranteed five-year funding?

As Noah mentioned, I don't think there is a binding contract to provide funding.

A few points  (US Specific)

Within my school itself, there are variable policies across departments. Certain departments provide 9 month guarantees and if you want to hang around in summer, either convince your advisor to find money for you or find your own. Certain departments guarantee funding for all 12 months, if you take an internship or decide to take a break or whatever, you don't get paid.
If you are an international student, AFAIK, You have two (realistic) options : Convince advisor, get an internship. Finding your own summer funding can be quite tough for international students in the US.
Usually, (at least in my experience), if you are doing good work and your advisor doesn't want to lose momentum, he will get you funding. In my field, it's not hard to get internships even for international students but most advisors will try to get funding so as to not break flow of things. But again, this is experience, not fact.


How should I communicate that I do not hold the views expressed in a paper I wrote I am writing a paper for a class that requires me to write from a perspective I disagree with.  To an external observer it may not be clear that I am not allowed to disagree with the premise of the prompt.

I disagree with it to such a degree that I would like to add something at the beginning or end of the paper that expresses my dissent in case my work or record is made public for some reason.  It would be professionally and personally embarrassing to have the work become public.

Is there a way to do this professionally?  Is there a way to do this without offending my professor?

I would precede my paper by a strong explanatory note disassociating myself from the views expressed in the paper, in boldface and surrounded by a big black frame. For extra clarity and safety, I would then quote verbatim the assignment that the project is fulfilling, before starting the actual paper. E.g.:

  Confessions of a cannibal
  Final project for Philosophy 101
  [your name]

  Explanatory note: the views in the essay below are written in the context of a final project assignment for the course Philosophy 101. They are fictional and do not represent the author's actual views on cannibalism or on any other subject.

  Project assignment: "Write a 4000-word essay written from the point of view of a cannibal living in New York City in the year 1987. Discuss the narrator's views and opinions on cannibalism and other topics of interest."

  [body of the essay]

I should note that you say "To an external observer it may not be clear that I am not allowed to disagree with the premise of the prompt." It's not clear to me if you mean that you are not allowed to include an explanatory note of this type, or even to quote the assignment text. If that's what you meant, I'd have to say that forbidding you from including such explanatory text would in my opinion be tantamount to requiring you to actually pretend to be a cannibal (or other such person with unsavory views), which would be a highly unethical requirement. In the face of such a restriction, I would frankly refuse to hand in such an assignment, and take the matter up with the instructor and/or higher university authorities.


Is it acceptable to write reports in the IEEE standard paper format? I am an undergrad engineering student working on some project with my colleagues , and we are asked to submit a report by the end of it.
So is it a good thing to write the report in the IEEE standard paper format.
http://www.ieee.org/documents/MSW_A4_format.doc

If not, what are some other standards forms that we may use?

This might not be the most suitable place for this question but I figured out that there could be a lot of professors and instructors here.

As an EE student, I used to submit reports in IEEE format (if none was specified by the instructor). So yes, it's perfectly acceptable in my experience.

However, some professors prefer more whitespace so they can write comments while grading student reports. I therefore switched to the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science format, which has much larger margins.


How to address dependencies when publishing a chain of papers In computer systems, it's relatively common to have a large problem which is broken up into multiple sub-problems, each of which is substantial in its own right and is in the realm of different subsets of students. Suppose there's two parts, A and B. Suppose that properly presenting B requires explanations and background which A establishes (concepts, principles, etc.), and preferably would reproduce some figures for clarity. However, A has been written but not yet accepted/published.
How should the authors of B proceed? Ideally the figures would be reproduced from the drafts and clearly cited as copies, but it seems weird as the original is yet unpublished. This also creates the worry that reviewers for a later submission of A would complain that these contributions are not novel as B's earlier publication have already presented them.

Dependencies like these are a great place to use preprints.
The arXiv is usually a good preprint server for computer science research (other fields use others, like bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, etc). Your preprint can go up immediately, and then it's publicly available with a DOI for citation ever after.
This both clearly establishes ordering and allows paper B to cite paper A in its preprint form. Even if paper B makes it all the way to publication before paper A, the preprint can be linked to the final form after paper A is published, which indexing and citation services use to consolidate the versions together.
Finally, most journals allow preprints these days, and some even force you to use them, so in most circumstances there is no downside to posting a preprint.


Can a paper directly be written on a new application developed rather then an algorithm from existing research results or algorithms? Suppose we design a prototype for a new product that is indeed novel.

Would writing a paper on such a thing be useful as mostly the papers talk about new algorithms or their upgrades or some new theory ?

I am talking about just a new product that does something better than the existing ones but uses old algorithms and research.

This is something that I have been doing.  If I understand your question correctly, you are looking at a new product using existing algorithms and techniques. If this is the case, the answer is yes: many journals will welcome this, as I have found.  I have also taken an existing technology, aspects of existing algorithms, based on existing research and developed a brand new technique.

A couple of caveats though:

You will need to make the specific context to which it will be used crystal clear, this must be the focus.
You must give full credit for the prior information and techniques.
You must fully justify why such an altered technique is useful, what are the implications and benefits of such a product.


How credible is an application for a PhD in Computational Fluid Dynamics from an MSc in Computer Science? I am currently in the second year of a four year Computer Science MSCi program in the UK.

I would like to know how credible is an application for a PHD in Computational Fluid Dynamics, from an MSCi in Computer Science?

I understand that these courses are usually delivered by engineering, physics, or maths departments, but does the computational aspect stand me in good stead?

If at the moment you didn't take any courses in physics and fluid mechanics yet then I think your chances are close to zero.

However, you mentioned that you still have 2 years to go on your MSc program. In that case you still have 2 years to 'reshape' yourself for such a position. I would approach this endeavor in 3 steps:

Talk to professors with (open) PhD positions in CFD and ask them what courses they think are prerequisite for the positions that they have. Also ask what courses would be desirable/helpful.
Take ALL of the prerequisite courses they mentioned and as many of the desirable ones as possible. Either take them as electives for your current program or just on top of it. This might seem like a lot of work, and it probably is, but if you are serious about the PhD in CFD then this will actually help in your application process, because it shows that you are committed.
In many MSc programs you will have some big project at the end. If that is the case for you as well, make it a CFD project for a professor with PhD projects available. Give it your all and you might be able to 'network' your way into one of his/her positions.


Writing High-Quality Research Papers I have submitted a manuscript to a reputable journal, the article was rejected because it didn't pass the grammar check. The journal editor also mentioned the low quality of the figures.

My ex-supervisors never trained me how to write a research article. I would be grateful for recommendations to improve my writing style.

The issue here isn't writing a paper in a "more scientific" way; it's just writing more correctly and precisely. To be brutally honest, the writing in the original draft of this question is so poor that I would immediately reject any article written in such a style. It's not merely technical writing: there are problems with basic usage, grammar, and syntax.

The best way to improve is probably to work with a competent and experienced writing tutor who can help you identify the mistakes you are making and how to fix them. However, this is unlikely to be a "quick fix" unless you are willing to devote substantial time and effort to make your writing better.

Online tools like Grammarly can attempt to point out problems but they are neither completely reliable nor, in the long term, suitable substitutes for personally understanding the guiding principles of standard persuasive or technical writing.


How to politely ask for recommendation letters to professors I am applying to a few different masters' programs this fall after having applied to a different program last year. In the end, I decided not to pursue that option due to financial reasons. I graduated from my university in May 2014, and I have visited many of my professors during their office hours while I was a student there. Of course, I only made recommendation letter requests to professors in courses that I did well in. Last year, when I was applying to another program, it was relatively easy to obtain recommendation letters from the professors I made requests to. However, this year is different. I explained my change of direction to the professors who wrote my recommendation letters last year. Except for one professor, the other professors don't even bother responding to my emails. In cases when I am requesting recommendation letters after graduation, do I have visit professors directly and have a conversation with them? If that is the case, I am unable to do that because I am currently outside of the US. Also, am I expected to give them a gift at the time I am making such request? I want to know what I may be doing incorrectly.

I don't think you're doing anything incorrectly.  Sometimes people get busy, sometimes people are thoughtless and inconsiderate.  I'm afraid you're going to have to use a combination of persistence and politeness.  The tricky thing with the politeness is that you don't want to lay it on too thick -- as that in itself can get annoying.

Please consider using a combination of email and phone.

If things are still going badly after about two weeks, then I think it's time to contact a department secretary, dean, assistant chair or assistant chair.

I can see that in some departments it might be easier to pester someone by knocking on their door, but that really shouldn't be necessary; and you can use the department administration to accomplish the same thing.

(As mentioned in a comment -- please, no gifts.  It's not the custom in the U.S. and therefore would be too weird.)


What action to take when questions regarding a published paper are ignored by its author? Recently, our group is trying to reproduce the result reported by a paper whose authors are from an Ivy league university. We are unable to reproduce the results because there are several implementation details are not mentioned in the paper. Hence, we decide to write the first author, who is now already a faculty member in another university, an email.

At first, we asked for the code, which we consider is perfectly fine, as the paper has been published. We feel the code in a published paper is no longer a secret in this transparent research era where reproducibility is highly valued. However, he simply ignored our email (3+ weeks, no response).

Then, we thought, OK, seems that he is reluctant to share the code, so let's just ask him to clarify several implementation details so that we can implement the thing ourselves and hopefully, we can reproduce the result. So, we sent a second email which very clearly asks for clarifications. Again, he ignored the email (1.5 weeks+, no response).

We now feel angry and start suspecting the authenticity of their reported results. However, we cannot accuse them of anything, since we are not able to prove that they cheated, which would be a felony if they really did.

We always feel that upon the publication of a paper, its authors, or at least the correspondence author, hold responsible for any inquiries regarding the paper, especially when the authenticity is being doubted. What they chose to do - ignoring our email - is really irresponsible.

What can we do?

Disclaimer

Thanks for the answers and comments! It is interesting that many start besieging me on my "bad" attitude in the email.

Just to clarify,

I wrote perfectly polite emails to the correspondence author;
I have NOT questioned his results or whatsoever.

How do you know he ignored the email?

Maybe he never received it because it was filtered before he had a chance to see it. Maybe he hasn't read his email this month because he's on vacation. Maybe that email address was good when the paper is published but not good now, but it's also not bouncing.

If one channel of communication doesn't work, try a different one. Call his office phone or send a letter to him. Write to a different author saying you've been trying to reach the corresponding author without success and you want to check the email address. Don't assume anything when you have no information.


Is there a maximum duration for an MS in Germany, and are there allowances for medical leave? Does someone here know how many years at the maximum one can take to finish MSc degree in Mathematics in Germany ? My friend enrolled for three semesters on regular basis but due to his mental instability he couldn't do anything. He almost has all the credits required and just needs thesis to be done. He is planning to take take a year gap to recover and may be finish his degree .

Is it possible for him ? Are there any provisions that restrict a person to take only certain number of semesters or that a person cannot take a year break or something of that sort ?

It is almost always possible to take a vacation semester, which is either free of charge, or at a fraction of the standard fee you would normally pay. (But you also lose some student perks, such as the public transportation ticket and student discounts.)

But you have to check with your Studienordnung or Prüfungsamt. You will certainly have a maximum number of semesters for your studies as well as a maximum time between finishing your last lectures and beginning your thesis.

In case of illness, as long as you have an official waiver from a doctor saying you can't study/work, most of these limits don't apply.

tl;dr: Check with your "Prüfungsamt"


Found errors in paper: What happens now? As second-year bachelor students, we “validated” a scientific paper from our university. We took the raw data, evaluated it independently of the original paper, and then compared it back to see if there was a difference. It had recently been presented at a conference but has yet to be published in a journal. The task was assigned as part of our course project work. We were more successful then we imagined: We found rather large errors in some of the calculations. This was very satisfying for us, although probably less so for the people who wrote it.

It was a fair bit of effort and we worked more than the other groups. Each group were assigned different papers or projects, i.e. nobody else was working on the same stuff. It was not compensated or anything being university coursework.
We hinted at the problem to the authors weeks ago but only submitted our work the other day.

Disclaimer: I am completely inexperienced/unknowledgeable in this academia thing. I might be completely off here.

This has lead me to wonder however:

What will happen to the conference proceedings in questions? The paper with mistakes can still be found online.
Can (or should) we expect any credit for our work when they correct their paper? I know people acknowledge help with, say, a novel or computer program, but does the same principle apply to finding a problem in a scientific paper? Our would this have been caught in peer review later?
Certainly not saying we are going to do this, but do people publish counter-articles to papers with corrections?

The field is aerospace engineering.

The very first thing you should do is notify the authors that you found errors. This serves two purposes:

Gives the authors the chance to correct their results and publish an erratum to their paper.
Gives the authors the chance to rebut your arguments in case it is you who is wrong. Since they are obviously familiar with the work they might be aware of something you have missed. It would be very embarrassing for you to publish a Comment pointing out a problem that doesn't exist.

Be extra careful and polite when notifying the authors about the error and give them the benefit of the doubt. If you are helpful they would and should acknowledge your help in the erratum or revised paper. Since you said they are going to submit the work to a journal it could be that they even offer coauthorship.

They might choose to ignore your comments or, if they disagree with them, not take any action. In that case you can submit a Comment to their paper, write to the editor, or write a paper yourself with the correct result. Some authors have a hard time acknowledging mistakes and some editors might be unresponsive about wrong results that have already been published, so you might hit a wall or two along this road.

Again, whatever you do, make sure it is not you who made a mistake before making any claims.


How to ask to review for a specific conference or journal? I have been invited to review technical content in the past. However, if I want to be part of review process for specific conference/journal – how do I go about and suggest my availability?

In a word: networking.

Most conferences and journals don't have any formal process for people to offer themselves in this manner.  I'm not exactly sure why not, because most publication venues are also always wishing they had more trustworthy reviewing capacity.  I think it's the "trustworthy" part that's the issue: there is a notion that the people in charge of selecting reviewers should have some reason to believe the review you turn in will be a meaningful evaluation of the work under consideration.  Still, in practice I often identify possible reviewers by looking at their online presence, so having a person submit themselves as a possible reviewer seems like it would be no less reliable — it's just that in my experience it's just not done.

Instead, the most frequent ways that I see people getting asked to be reviewers are

by having people get to know them and think of them when they're looking for people to review, and
by having other people who are declining to review point the editor to them as an alternative.

If you put the word out into your professional network that you are looking to review papers, then reviews will likely start coming your way.  Furthermore, once you've reviewed for somebody, you'll be in their database: provide a high-quality and timely review and fill out the reviewer account with keywords and such, and you'll be more likely to be tapped again to review for the same venues, because reliable reviewers are like gold.


Is it OK to use bullet points in the statement of purpose for graduate school applications? Is it OK to use bullet points in the statement of purpose for graduate school applications?

I'm applying for a PhD program in physical science. I want to organize some information in a bullet points form. However, I didn't see this done in any of the statements that I have seen online.

Both Buffy and JoshuaZ raise valid points:

One of the things that [some] reviewers will be looking for...is your basic writing ability.
The reaction [to bullet points] seemed to be all over the place. One person thought bullet points stood out and were great. Another considered it to be unprofessional.

I'll add: Used well, bullet points can convey your message succinctly, which is a skill reviews are looking for. Used badly, they suggest a poor writing style. You, yourself, can perhaps determine whether bullet points are working. Give it a try. You can also ask people what they think.


Does a PhD student need to focus more on working in theory, in order to have a real chance of becoming a professor? I have a friend who's doing a STEM PhD at one of the top programs - think e.g. Harvard / Princeton / MIT - and they are getting ready to drop out after the faculty there have told them that they don't have a real chance at academia since their published papers have been "too applied", and that strong work in theory was crucial.  (They're trying to see whether the papers can somehow form a thesis, but they have mentally checked out and are looking forward to having a nice payday in industry.)

I wanted to know whether that is sort of the norm in STEM academia, that to have a real chance at becoming a professor, one should stay away from work that's "too applied", during their PhD years, and try to work on theory.

Is this generally true?

I agree with Buffy's answer, but also want to expand on what knzhou alludes to in a comment: STEM has many sub-fields, some of which are more theoretical or applied than others. As it turns out, the walls separating these different fields are far from impermeable. Perhaps your friend's PhD really is too applied for his current department, making a tenure case difficult in that field? Perhaps their research would be a more natural fit for another department, or a national laboratory? For example, there are plenty of people with physics PhDs that have ended up as tenured professors in various engineering departments.

Now, if the research best fits departments with the current name, then your friend might just have to go down the status ladder a little bit to have a realistic chance of tenure. For example, an expert in a field-specific numerical method can be seen as too much of a one-trick pony for the absolute top institutions.

The bottom line is this: if your friend enjoys their research there are a lot of possibilities to explore before giving up on it completely. They really should talk to their mentor(s) to get personal career advice.


How can I get access to the computer science journals from top publishers through a single subscription in Europe? Is there any possibility to get access to journals from all the top publishers from a domain through a single subscription in Europe?

For example, let's say I'm interested in Computer Science and I want to have access to the following: ACM, IEEE, Springer, Elsevier via their Digital Libraries.

It would be ok even if the tax would be 1000 euros per year for a single person, or up to 3000 euros per year for a single institution.

Two questions here: can you have a multi-publisher subscription, and can you have a "subject-specific" subscription?

For the first, I suspect the most likely answer is "you can't". I'm not aware of any service (either for institutions or individuals) that offers a subscription with an arbitrarily selected set of journals from across multiple publishers. Generally speaking, you'd have to set this up with each publisher.

For an institution, you can get close to a single subscription model by using a subscription agent, who will handle the details of your subscriptions for you and send you one invoice, but even then it's still potentially quite a lot of work to actually get each one working, and - as we saw with Swets last year - no guarantee it'll be a stable solution long term. I don't know if similar services are available for individuals; I've certainly never noticed them advertised.

On the second question - more or less, yes. The publishers usually offer three approaches  to subscribing - a manually selected list of journals ("I want A, and B, and C..."); thematic packages (Elsevier, for example, has relatively broad "subject collections"), or an everything-included deal, which isn't much use for you. The first option is usually more expensive if you want a large range of titles.

Using the thematic packages, you probably could just get computer science journals - but this might be quite loosely defined. (Elsevier's set includes, for example, the Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management!)


Why won't good journals retract papers that were proven wrong? I saw some research papers still present in good and reputed journals even though they were proven wrong by other papers. The subject is cryptography.

If a paper is proven wrong, it does not contribute a valid result to the corresponding topic. What is the reason for keeping them intact, which can cause issues for newbies?

Without knowing the specifics of the papers you are referring to, it's difficult to respond exactly.  In general, however, there is more than one way for a paper to be "wrong", and most "wrong" papers should not be retracted.

The thing is, a paper typically contains more than just a single assertion. When you say that a paper is "proven wrong", it sounds like you are referring to the high-level conclusion, e.g., "Cryptographic protocol X is secure against replay attacks."  Then somebody else comes along and shows that actually, there is a way to do a replay attack after all.

Such a refutation, however, often does not actually invalidate any of the actual technical methods or results presented in the original paper.  Instead, it will more typically involve showing that they were insufficient in some way for supporting the high-level conclusion.  For example, the problem statement might have been formulated too narrowly, or the authors might have drawn a conclusion that was stronger than their evidence actually supported.

In such a case the conclusion of the paper may indeed be wrong, but everything else is indeed correct.  Careful phrasing by the original author may in fact mean that the conclusion is even still technically correct (e.g., "According to this formulation, cryptographic protocol X is secure against replay attacks.").  In short, the results stand but their implications are much less than the original investigator may have believed.

Bottom line: many refutations may be understood as changing our interpretation of results derived using valid methods, while retraction is generally reserved for invalidating flaws in the methods themselves.


How to anonymize self-citation of source code repository in IEEE double blind peer review? I am  going to submit a paper IEEE Communications letters.

In the paper, I cited my source code repository to provide an open access:

  ... For more detail, please refer [1] ...

  Reference

  My real name, My project name "https://my-source-code-repository", Accessed: 2016-02-17.

However, IEEE Communicaitons Letters is doing double blind peer review and information about authors should be blinded. In this situation, how could I make it blinded?

Anonymize project name
Anonymize repository URL

Reviews might not able to validate the work

Anonymize project committer
Anonymize everything

I think most reviewers for IEEE Communications Letters are unlikely to visit your source code link and try and validate your code. It's fairly unusual in this field (I say this as someone in the same field.) Certainly the reviewers will not expect access to your code. So if you want to anonymize everything, that would be fine.

If you want to preserve the ability of reviewers to access your code (which is a very good thing!) and don't mind going to a little bit of extra trouble, you could always just upload an anonymized tar.gz archive containing the source code (without the version control metadata) to any file sharing site. Then use that URL in the version you submit for review. (When the paper is accepted, you can update the reference to point to your non-anonymous repository.)


academic dismissive undergraduate and research experience I've got an academic dismissive (LOW GPA) from the department at my 2nd year of my undergraduate study due to money problems, then I got back to the program and raised my GPA from 1.9 to 3.2 (overall GPA).
Step by step, my GPA at the last 60 hours was 3.75> I overcame the problem because I've found a good job from home.
I worked as a research assistant for one year with two of my professors, had a 8 weeks internship in a good institution in London, had a 6 weeks internship in my country, and studied well for the exam so I've got 100 out of 120 in the TOFEL exam and 170 for the Q part, 153 for the V part of the GRE exam.

I want to take a Master of Science in materials engineering or aerospace materials, and then continue to PHD.

Please tell me if the dismissive mistake will effect the master's admission negatively?

The only proper answer will come from the admissions system of a university that you apply to. However, in any system that lets you make a personal statement or (better) includes an interview, you will have a chance to explain the issue. Most people, though not everyone, will understand that people change and grow. They also, normally, understand that the more recent work is a better indication of your future work.

I wouldn't worry too much about it, as long as you have a satisfactory explanation and have made up any learning deficit you may have from the year of poor work.


Is that possible for a journal to publish an article upon accepting but the Author requested for withdrawal with some reasons? one may send an article to a journal and the journal accepted it. However, the author do not want to publish his article on this journal for some reason and as soon as the author get message from the journal notified to withdraw the article.
Is that possible for the journal to publish  after the author announced them not to publish (withdraw)?

In US (and probably many other places), unless the authors have signed a copyright transfer agreement, the journal does not have a legal right to publish the article since they do not own the copyright to the material. If the journal required the copyright transfer/assignment as part of submission process, and the authors all signed it, then the journal has the right to publish it. It would be impolite to do so after a request for retraction, but there's a difference between what's polite and what's legal.


In computer science, what should be the typical author list if it's postdoc's idea and professor's student? In computer science (particularly AI), in a project where a postdoc proposes an idea and guides a junior PhD student, and the student does most of the dirty/labor work,  what is the typical author order? Is it one of the following?

Student Postdoc Professor
Postdoc Student Professor
Student Professor Postdoc

In general, author lists in CS are usually in order of contribution. For practical reasons this often means that you end up with student/postdoc/professor, simply because that's also the order of effort that the various parties can typically put into the project. This would also be my "default" if there are no special circumstances that warrant a different author list.

Some possible special circumstances:

You, the postdoc, don't only have the idea but also do most of the actual work in the project. In that case it would be warranted to put your name first. However, note that for a PhD student being first author is often more useful than for you, so take this into account when distributing tasks for the project. That doesn't mean that the postdoc should gift the PhD student with first authorship if not warranted, but often it's better for everybody if the project is laid out in a way that the PhD student gets enough tasks so that their first authorship is actually warranted.
The professor is not interested in the project and does not want to get involved. In this case he may not even be part of the project at all and it becomes student/postdoc. However, if you want to go for that, make very, very sure that the professor is also ok with not being on the paper. There are many CS labs where the professor assumes to be on every paper that their students write. If you can't live with taking such a professor on, don't work with their students. If you decide to kick off the professor (even if warranted due to contributions), you may not only get into a fight yourself, but you may also make life much harder for the student.

Note that there is in my experience rarely a case where the ordering student/professor/postdoc would be warranted. Actual contributions rarely seem to work out like that, and it's also much less useful for the postdoc than some may think - the postdoc does not become the senior author in the collaboration just because they have been put last in the list.


Should I give professor gift at the beginning of my PhD? I will be in a PhD program in Germany in which the first year of the program consists of only studying courses under several different professors.

Some people suggested me that I should give gift to the professors with whom I had interview with at the beginning of my PhD. Should I do it? Would it be misunderstood as bribing?

I would prefer not get a gift from someone that is dependent on me. I don't want to end up in a situation of perceived (by the person receiving the gift, giving the gift, or by an outsider) bribery. I realize that in many cases it is an innocent show of appreciation, but just saying (or writing) "thank you" will achieve the same goal without the risk of it being perceived the wrong way.


What are the chances of getting into a great CS PhD program with research in a different field? I am a CS and Mathematics double major going into my senior year at a very small liberal arts college.  I aspire to get into a high ranking AI PhD program.  The issue is that, due to the size of my school, I had no research opportunities in CS at my current institution.  I was accepted into an REU at a very good college for the summer of 2020, but due to the pandemic it was cancelled.
I have been able to work on several mathematics research projects with a professor at my school, and one is published in an undergraduate journal.  I have also been working on chemistry research with another professor, which may get published but it may not be before program decisions are out.  I know that students from math background often do PhDs in AI, but I worry that since I specifically am a CS student, it will be expected that I have CS research.
I am in all other ways a good student, I just worry that my research will not be enough.

I'll assume you intend to study in the US. It might be a bit different elsewhere.
From the sound of it, you are a good and eager student, interested in opportunities. If your record is good, generally, and you get good letters of recommendation from professors, then you are competitive. However, there is a lot of competition, and the higher up you go in university rankings the fiercer it tends to get.
Only an admissions committee can really answer your question, and that would only be in how they treat your application. There are a lot of applicants for every slot in doctoral programs.
If you want to assure that you find something suitable, cast a wide, rather than a narrow net in making applications. Apply to a few "dream" universities, but also to some others that have good programs, but not necessarily in the top 25, or even 50 in the rankings. The worst case is that you will get a lot of offers with a wide net, but no offers at all with a narrow one. Stay flexible.
Some undergraduates going in to doctoral programs (in the US) have some research experience, but not all. The fact that you have some, even in chemistry, is a plus, but more for your overall likelihood of success.


How do I cite an article which has been accepted pending revisions, but the revisions aren't accepted yet? I have an article accepted in a journal, providing I make certain revisions.  I have now made the revisions and sent them off, but am awaiting the journal's confirmation that the reviewers are satisfied.  How do I reference my own paper in this limbo situation?  'Accepted'?  'In press' seems a bit ahead of myself.  But 'In prep' seems to not do it justice, as it has been accepted.  Does anyone use 'under revision'?

It is likely the case that by the time I finish the piece in which I cite myself, the situation will be clearer.  But for this point in time (and for ongoing conference presentations) it would be good to know what the style is here.

"In revision" might be a good option for some venues, say when referring to the work in a presentation.


How much can one download from databases before it is too much? According to this article, a student was arrested for downloading ~4 million articles from an on-line database.

I want to review all existing articles in my interest area before writing my paper, so I need to download and skim through several thousand articles. I read the terms of service of my school's database, but it just says I should avoid trying to make a "collection".

At what point does the downloading become enough that the databases start to complain? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000? Do they send out warnings?

According to this article, a student was arrested for downloading ~4
  million articles from an on-line database.

That was an extreme case. He had history of downloading and releasing large amount of information. In this JSTOR case, I don't think he had actually released the articles, although the indication was strong. He was charged with "unlawfully breaking in a protected computer," which I guess he probably downloaded the paper with unusual means, perhaps using codes or hacks. Overall, the whole case was very politically charged and I will not use that as a benchmark in your case.

  I want to review all existing articles in my interest area before
  writing my paper, so I need to download and skim through several
  thousand articles. I read the terms of service of my school's
  database, but it just says I should avoid trying to make a
  "collection".

When there are several thousands of articles that are pertinent to your research interest in ONE paper, I would suggest you to refine your research interest. And no, you don't need to review all existing articles, just pick the important seminal works, and then trace the major works along a very well define research interest. You can also use a few prominent modern works as seeds and use their reference list to snow ball your library.

  At what point does the downloading become enough that the databases
  start to complain? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000? Do they send out
  warnings?

You should be able to download as much as you want as long as you follow the instructions and rules. For large download volume, I'd check with the librarian to clarify:

What the institutional limit is. There may be a download limit and if you'd get a warning letter it's likely from your school because your thousands of download could have cost them a lot more than usual. Some school libraries may ban accounts associated with a large download volume as well; it's better to give the librarian a heads up.
Your student account payment scheme. Some schools may have limit and beyond which the students may have to pay. I know that this is certainly possible for inter-library loan (which you may have to do if a few thousands paper is your goal.) A peer of mine got billed for more than US$500 because she ordered about a hundred papers through inter-library loan.


Online courses notes taking Friend of mine told me that MOOC platforms recommend not to take notes for better learning experience, that people remember material better after watching a short videos, than after spending some time taking notes and pausing each time. Although I didn't find any such suggestions, maybe there is some research about it? Or any personal thoughts?

Do you want to learn or do you want to just be an audience for a performance. Rhetorical question, I know.

Yes, take notes. Express things in your own words, rather than just using the presenter's words. This will better engage your brain and make real learning possible.

Even better is to revise (and extend) your notes after a period of time.

Another sort of notes you can take, of course, is about questions that the presenter doesn't answer and that you might want/need to follow up on later.

Note that learning involves actively engaging (and actually changing the physical structure of) the brain. You learn things deeply by reinforcing them. Notes are one necessary way to accomplish this for most people. Exercises and problem solving are another.

If you have the time, you can, of course, watch a lesson more than once. You might want to do most of your note-taking on the second viewing. But that assumes you have the discipline to actually do that. You can take different sorts of notes on subsequent viewings, being more detailed for example.