Is there any PhD program does not accept foreigners due to its strategic importance? I have heard that some countries do not allow others to have specific skills to avoid them earning strategic skills, e.g., about nuclear physics, or the genome.

Are there any examples of students not being except just because of their origin, religion or interest in special topics as a foreigner?

As ff524 mentioned. Prospect Iranian students at USA universities are not allowed to study nuclear or petroleum science.
If you apply for scholarship of Mexican government, you will not be awarded if you want to pursue degree in tourism, culinary study or plastic surgery!!!
Most countries, i think all of them, but I am not sure, dont permit law, police, national security, military,teaching positions, to citizens of other country. or if they permit, they will not give you right to work after finished studies.


Department not allowing me to take courses from another department even though everyone else is allowed I am a graduate student here. There are two set of rules applying to the degree I am seeking:

rules from the university
rules from my department

Using the above sets of rules, you have to make a plan of study (POS) which would be the list of coursework you complete towards your degree.

I followed all those rules, but a few days ago the administrative assistant who’s in charge of all this suddenly said that I was not allowed to take courses from a certain department.

I asked them for the reason for this and got varying responses which included:

The university office raised an objection.
The department in question raised an objection.
There was some new rule which has been in power since last year.

(I found this hard to believe because as long as you follow the university and department rules to the letter, which I did, you're basically allowed to take whatever courses you want to fill in your additional requirements.)

After some digging in, it turns out there’s no such rule. In fact many people from my department have taken courses from that certain department this semester.

What should I do? I feel like I’m being singled out here. I feel this is also unfair if I’m the only one who’s forced to follow this non-existing rule.

This just happened:

I kept asking them about it and the reason for all this changed to the CSCI department again.

They denied singling me out, this was a lie, due to the reason highlighted below.

Finally, I revealed how other students in the my dept are also taking these courses and how people typically busy with research would only do so  for courses which they can use towards their degree (so they were not taking them to fill in credits only).

In the end, get this, this person tells me that the whole ordeal was just a 'mistake' which also suggests that this would have gone unnoticed if I hadn't asked.

You seem to be good at looking up university policy and rules, and reading them carefully.  So I suggest your next step would be to look up procedures for appealing academic decisions.  Also, get to know your university hierarchy.

Universities vary in how decision making is done, so it’s impossible for me to be more specific about your university.

But I will give you a trick that I’ve had good success with in a variety of educational institutions: Phone or visit the secretary of the highest-level dean you can find that sits above your department, and ask his or her advice for where in the hierarchy to bring your problem.  This secretary is often the most competent, knowledgeable person about university hierarchy in the whole institution.

And a general tip: Tell your story concisely and with a neutral tone of voice.  Begin by stating the problem.  Initially, leave out the numbered list of crazy reasons you were given (but be prepared to provide them if they ask you why the department rejected your proposal).


How to formulate good problem statements in CS research Short background: I started my PhD last November and now I am helping a master student writing his MSc thesis. I still have problems when I need to formulate a concise research question and even, at least in workshop papers, some publications fail in formulating clear research questions as well.
The topic the CS student writes about is the following. There is this work by Bracha on pluggable / optional type systems, e.g.  for scripting languages. The student wants to solve the same problem that these 'pluggable typesystem' solves. But he is using dependent-type theory, i.e., to check that values in the scripting language are valid according to a given type. This can solve (or better solve) problems related to scripting languages (e.g. security problems in web programming; because everything is basically a string in scripting languages).

I find it hard to come up with a concise research question. (And possibly also with a method to evaluate the approach).
So, my question is:

Are there any references that can help me to formulate valid research
questions?

The closest reference I have found is this mini-tutorial by Mary Shaw.
From Germany there is also a Memorandum that is interesting, but the focus is only on information systems research and not CS. (I can't find a link to the long version in either English or German yet.)

Have you tried the following:

  Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers. Chicago: University of
  Chicago, 1987. Print.

It's a very nice book and is applicable to CS (unlike many other research methodology books).


Write to professor or secretary? I would like to contact a Professor to ask if he might be interested in my research project. I can find his email contact and also the contact of his secretary from his personal website. I would like to write him directly, since I am not asking for something bureaucratic.  Do you think am I right?

If a professor has posted their email publicly online, then it is an invitation to contact them directly on technical matters.  In my experience, very few professors are unwilling to be contacted directly, and those who are unwilling typically clearly state who is the appropriate alternate contact person on their personal website (the institution may, of course, still list them in their directory).

You might not, however, get any reply.  Just because somebody is willing to be contacted doesn't mean they'll respond to everybody who does so.  If you don't get a response within a few days, then contact the secretary instead, and if you still don't get a response, then it is best to assume disinterest and move on.


How to know whether a journal is indexed by Thomson Reuters or Scopus? I am preparing to submit my first article to a specific journal. How can I know if a journal is indexed in Thomson Reuters or Scopus?

Scopus journal list:

https://www.scopus.com/sources.uri

Thomson Reuters Master Journal List:

http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/mjl/


How much bandwidth should I allocate for reviewing as a PhD student? I'm a PhD student in CS and have been receiving quite a few sub-reviewing requests recently.

Each review takes me more than a day (and often, 2-3 days), and I have reviewed 11 papers on the last year alone.

I never declined a review request, but this seems to take far more time than the reviewing load of the other students in my department.

How much time should I be spending on reviews (e.g., 5% of the time?), and how inappropriate is it to declined such a request if the load exceeds the bandwidth that I should allocate for reviewing?

Ask your advisor – it's literally their job to give you advice! In particular, they know your situation much better than we do, so they can give much better advice about how much time you should be spending on reviews.

A general rule of thumb is that you should review at least as many papers as you submit.* You're doing plenty more than that, I assume, so it's absolutely reasonable to decline review requests if they're taking up too much of your time: for example if they're taking up too much of your research time or leaving you with too little free time to relax. And, of course, this will vary through time. You might decline a review request that comes in when you're really busy with your own research (maybe a deadline's coming up or you're visiting some other researcher) even though you'd have accepted it if it came a few weeks earlier or later.

Remember, though, that reviewing papers has benefits to you. It keeps you in tune with developments in your field and exposes you to new ideas. Writing good reviews also makes more senior people in your field (the people you write reviews for) more aware of your talents.

* This will vary from field to field and depend on how many authors and how many reviewers a paper typically has.  In my area of computer science, 2–4 authors and 2–4 reviews is about normal, so a one-to-one ratio is reasonable.


Research within organisations I have just started working on a dissertation and I need to contact a number of organisations to get an idea of how they work.

What I am after is not sensitive in its nature. I just want to know what practices they apply to their tasks and whether they have developed anything  different that suits their needs or perhaps the tools they use.

However, I am being troubled by the following points:

How can I assure the organisations that the information I require is not sensitive or for commercial purposes? My interests are purely academic.
I am carrying out my research within an organisation. I am worried they might see me as competition. For the time being I have opted to not mentioning any organisation.

How can I go about assuring them that my interests are purely academic and convince them to reply back? What should I do?

In the US, if you are conducting a survey or certain type of interview, you need to have it approved (or declared exempt) by your campus IRB committee. This body will regulate what you need to disclose, and will also approve the wording of any cover letter.

In a written context, putting the cover letter on school letterhead should convey that the project is academic.

In an interview, you would likely state that you are a PhD student at UNIVERSITY and are working on a dissertation related to X to convey that your project is an academic one.


Should I send an email to the address of my former professor that wasn't explicitly given, but google out myself? I'm applying to PhD programs and want to ask for a reference letter from my former supervisor, who has since moved to a new university, so that his old work email is not working anymore. I've been asking him through his personal email; however, as he rarely checks it, sometime it takes more than a month for him to reply to me. One of the universities to which I'm applying has a deadline coming up in less than a month and I haven't heard from my former supervisor for a while. While panicking, I searched on Google and found his new email address. I wonder if it's reasonable to send email to that address and remind him as he never gave me the address.

From the formulation of your question, to me it seems your main concern is if it is polite to send an e-mail to the address you were never explicitly given, but instead found it on your own Googling.

It looks like you found his/her new work address. If that's the case, I'd say it's completely fine to send an e-mail. All the right reasons for contacting your former adviser before the deadline are already mentioned in @aeismail's answer.

I'd just like to add that I've been told over and over again that a good letter of recommendation from your former adviser is expected, and that it's extra great if you can have letters of recommendation from more than one of your former advisers: those are the people who were supposed to be working closest with you and who continually assessed your progress over a period of time. If you can't get them to say something good for you, you must be very very special in some other way to get accepted to a PhD.

Back to the is it polite point: it is a work e-mail you found. That's the way he's expecting to be contacted concerning scientific things. It's public and accessible to everybody. That does not mean he'll reply to everything, but if you're one of his former students, he should be glad to reply if you split on good terms.

Also, I've contacted everybody who gave me a letter of recommendation after I got my PhD grant, and I sad "thank you". I went to visit my supervisor in his office for a few minutes before I moved away for my PhD: those people, and he especially, are who made me love science, and made me look for a PhD in the first place. He often said that advising students on how to go further with science/research was one of the best parts of his job. So, maybe I was just lucky, but in my experience, your former advisers will be glad to help you, glad to know their help mattered and won't mind you contacting them.


Is there any recognized online portal where anyone can publish articles without being associated with any university or organization? Suppose some working person has interest in physics and mathematics and he want to publish a paper either review or research, so is there anyway he can publish? Obviously person is not associated with any university so he can not name that.

Yes, http://www.arxiv.org is the place for you.

But you can of course also publish in regular journals without being affiliated with a university. Science does not require a formal affiliation, just good ideas and data. If you have the latter, you can publish as a private citizen, an employee of a company, an employee of a government, or with any other background.


Need help and advice concerning how to apply and look for grad schools I am very new to this grad school process and currently overwhelmed to the point of tears.

I graduated from Stony Brook with a degree in Sociology in 2010. I was also admitted to Alpha Kappa Delta that year. I was a teaching assistant for 2 classes and had a 3.28 gpa overall but a higher gpa in just sociology.

I took time off to earn money and just give myself a break. I work as a babysitter, make pretty decent money, and I enjoy what I do but I want to go back to grad school now. I have no research experience, I am currently studying for the GRE, reading up on some information and I honestly don't know where to start or if I have a snowball's chance in a furnace of getting in anywhere.

I would like to go back Fall 2014 (giving myself time) and I am looking at programs like Cornell, Rutgers, and Syracuse (probably more as time goes on) and thinking the only way I am getting into any of those is if the faculty has pity on me. I feel I am intelligent and could do grad work, I just don't know how I can prove to admissions I can so they will let me in. I'd really like a Ph.D but if I have to start off with a masters to get into the school, I will. Although my fear of asking this question is currently taking over since I fear someone will squish my dream of grad school like a slow moving spider, if I don't ask, I won't be able to go forward since I don't know where to begin...

Honest advice or information would be much appreciated. I want to go to grad school and I am willing to find ways to make that happen, just no idea where to begin.

Thank you so very much ahead of time...^^

The first advice I have to give you is perhaps the most important: in the immortal words of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, DON'T PANIC.

First, identify the schools to which you'd be interested in applying. You should find a reasonable number (6 plus or minus 2 is typical), and plan on some "long shots," some "typical" schools for you, and one or two schools which you would have as a "fall back" option—in case none of the "long shots" and "typicals" work out for you.

You should also find people who can write letters of support for you. This is perhaps the hardest part for you. Luckily, you've finished relatively recently, so you should be able to find people in academia who can write some letters of support for you. If you have a few people such as employers who can vouch for your work ethic, that could also work.

Doing well on the GRE will also help, but it isn't likely to make a huge difference except in "borderline" cases.

One thing that might help your case is to get directly into contact with people at the various schools you'd be interested in attending. If you can organize a meeting with some of the faculty there and present your case in person, that can leave a more positive impression than just submitting an application "cold."

The other thing you can do to help your case is to have a clear and compelling explanation for what you want to do, and why you feel a master's or a PhD is the right way to accomplish those goals. I see far too many applications from candidates who otherwise might be viable who can't elucidate a single reason to go to graduate school beyond. Having a compelling plan can go some ways toward convincing skeptical faculty members that you are serious about graduate studies.

In addition, you can consider all of the advice about getting a bad transcript past admissions as additional suggestions for how to proceed.


Response to desk return of PLOS submission I recently submitted to PLOS One.  The manuscript was returned before sending to review, with a general comment

  Please ensure that your search strategy is adequately described such
  that another researcher could reproduce your experiments. Please
  include sufficient detail to this end. Eg, search strategy/protocol,
  search filters used, the dates of search, inclusion/exclusion
  criteria, reasons for inclusion/exclusion

The paper uses Web of Science.  The search terms and methods are simple and detailed in full.  I am confused if there was something specific they are wondering about, or more important, if they assume there was some additional criteria or method used.  For example, downloading all data with search term "Graphene" using the Topic search box.  I am not sure what else they would think is being done.

PLOS being particularly open access, I understand the extra focus on the methods, but is this a common response?  Is it usual they did not read the manuscript and just skimmed it, and I should reply with line numbers of where it exists?

I don't believe it is really an issue of the manuscript not stating it clearly, as it is its own subsection in methods detailed in each step.

Check if you have covered all the details that the editor has mentioned. If you are very sure that there is no scope for adding any other detail, you can write to the editor, providing a point by point explanation of what you have done, with page numbers and line numbers as evidence. Since the manuscript has anyways been rejected, you do not stand to lose anything by doing this. However, ensure that you maintain a polite and courteous tone throughout your email. Your email should not give the impression that you are refuting the editor's decision; rather, it should seem like you are seeking more clarity on the weaknesses of your paper, so that you can work towards improving it.


How to determine compensation for developing new course for community college? I am a startup entrepreneur in Chattanooga TN.  A few days ago, I was approached by a representative of Chattanooga State community college to teach a community course and/or course series on 3D printing and product branding.  This will be a new course, unlike any other that they have taught before, so I am sure that there will be plenty of developmental work involved.

When I asked about the compensation, the representative told me that the pay varied from instructor to instructor, and that I needed to come up with the amount.  I have never taught a course like this before, so I was wondering how I should gauge this amount.

Should I base it on hours taught in class, total hours material covered, students involved, or is there another standard?

I think you're going to find that they want to pay you their adjunct rate for teaching the course, which might be $3,000 or so.  If you want to be paid more, you will probably need to negotiate a list of deliverables, which would then allow someone else to teach the course next time.

I believe there are two motivations for being an adjunct instructor.  Some people make a living at it by piecing together adjunct appointments from two or more institutions.  Others do it for the love of teaching; they have to have day jobs to support their teaching hobby.  I got paid about $2,500 to develop and teach a course in web applications in 1997.  Now I am retired from the day job I had then, have a full-time faculty appointment, an office at school, and everything!

Edited to add: I missed that it is a community education course.  You might get a few bucks more for that, or extra pay for classes over a certain size.  It will still be a four-figure amount.


Am I allowed to write an essay about a scientific theory without violating the copyright? I have in project to write an essay on the Special Theory of Relativity. My idea is then to publish it as an ebook.

I would like to know if I can freely write about this topic or I need to take into account some problems related to royalties or copyright. Can I write about a topic like that without any problems of this kind? Can I include quotes and information about Einstein's life?

Thanks in advance!

Yes.

Scientific principles are never subject to copyright—you cannot copyright a scientific idea, theory, equation, or concept.

That said, you do have to worry about copyright if you extensively quote from copyrighted primary or secondary resources as part of your text. If you are not directly using their language, then you need only cite the works, and no royalty or copyright issues should arise.

(Note that in the particular case of the special theory of relativity, it is more than 95 years old (as it was announced in 1905), and thus is no longer under US copyright protection in any event, so you could in principle reuse or even reprint the entire text of his article.)


How I do politely indicate that I am expecting my name to be added to the paper I am composing this question on behalf of someone but as a first person. I am a postdoc at a top university in the US. I had recently been requested by my PI to help with setting up experiments and getting data for the latter part of a research that was to be submitted as a paper.

I spent 3 months aggressively working on it along side my own work towards other projects. The first author went ahead and submitted incomplete work without notifying any of us and without my name in it.

I had, thereafter, spoken to my PI and it looks like he is defensive of her submitting the paper because 'she was in stress and had to graduate. Not in the right frame of mind.' Between the two of us he said that he's going to insist on adding my name when they submit the revision (the paper already, as I expected, has request for data/corrections).

EDIT - I have indications that he is giving excuses and is currently passing the buck/lying to get the work done. Personally I have had no papers since I started this postdoc and I am afraid if I sound reluctant the PI will take away my work in my projects. This stresses me, but I also am not getting credit for where I worked. This is like a lose-lose situation for me.

The first author agrees to send the paper and review comments but doesn't. They expect real time work as though this is my only project. I am happy to spend time with some urgency if I at least get my recognition in the paper.

How do I word my emails or communications or speak to them and politely, yet clearly establish that this work from me has to be recognized in the form of addition to the paper?

If the situation is as you indicate and the original manuscript was submitted without the consent of all authors, then you have a case with the editor, although you should do your utmost to resolve this first with the thesis director.


Poster about a published article (Poster session in physics conference) What is the usual way to indicate on the poster that the poster is just a summary of an already published article?

I plan to give the reference as part of the poster title at the top, such as:

Interestic topic
J. of important Results, 2017, p1-23
Author, affiliation

Background (and why I have no idea): I am mathematician and will attend a physics conference. I have been encouraged by a member of the committee to present a poster about one of my results (actually my only result in physics so far, which was published in 2017 in the journal "Foundations of Physics"). I have no experience with posters (never presented one nor attended a poster session ever) nor with physics conferences. It seems that in many fields, posters are considered to be some form of publication? In any case, I would like to avoid misunderstandings or the impression of self-plagiarizing or whatever.

I am not aware of any standard way to do this, coming from a physics background and having presented several posters. I would either include the paper in the references, or have a statement directly under the title along the lines of 'Results presented here published as [publication details]', as you suggested.


What to think when asked to self-fund research? I applied to a funded advertised PhD position about 7 weeks ago... I heard nothing between then and a few days ago when I got an email from them saying that they “wondered” whether I would be willing to self-fund my research. I let them know that I wouldn’t be able to do that and have heard nothing back from them since... The issue here is that I don’t know how to take this.

I’m under the impression that my application was well above average (I had it looked over by several academics I know) and I’m pretty sure that I was one of the first people who applied, if not the first.

I just want to know if I should take their question to mean that they are not willing to fund my research. Is this standard practice? And if it is, what does it mean?

Answering for the UK and for not-STEM: YMMV in other locations or subjects.

In such a situation it is very likely that you have not been given the funded position. If I were to speculate here, the internal decision about the funded position was likely made and whoever contacted you assumed you had already been notified that you did not get it. However, it is certainly acceptable and appropriate for you to ask about the status of that application and you need not hesitate.

However, to put things in perspective, my subject area recently had over 100 applicants for 4 funded PhD positions (and 86 applicants for a single post doc position). It certainly didn't matter at all who applied first as no one looks at the applications until the closing date, and we don't look at them in the order they come in. While you might believe your application was strong, and it might be strong, if you are facing a similar applicant to award ratio, your prospects aren't good.


Can departments sanction students who do not take sufficient precautions to protect their work? One of my colleagues was teaching an introductory programming course this past spring. He discovered several students cheating by taking code from a public GitHub repository, which contained all the answers for this class. This repository already had an issue opened on it by a professor from another large school, who requested that it be taken down because his students were using it to cheat. No response.

Fortunately, the student left some identifying information in the comments, which we were able to use to determine that he attends our school, in our department. We attempted to contact him to request that he remove the offending code--unfortunately, emails to both his departmental email and his GitHub email went unanswered.

The department has a student code of conduct which states that students must take "all reasonable precautions" to prevent others from using their work. While this student is clearly in violation of that, we can't exactly fail him out of a course he passed over a year ago, and failing him out of course he's currently taking seems petty.

We've considered escalating this to the department, but we're not sure if the department can actually do anything about this. Can a department in the US punish a student for helping other students cheat even if the student is not taking the class where the cheating is occurring? If so, what should be done? If not, might there be anyone at the school that can do anything? This is a large, public state school.

Can a department in the US punish a student for helping other students cheat even if the student is not taking the class where the cheating is occurring?

I don't know what you can do legally, but morally I think it would be wrong to try to prevent the student from making his/her coursework from past years' courses public. Making the work public could help the student market themselves to prospective employers, and has multiple other benefits for both the student (ego boost, impressing friends, fulfilling an altruistic desire to provide a useful internet resource they worked hard to create, gaining valuable experience using github, and more) and the internet (people from all over the world could download and use the code). Who are you and your colleagues to say that your selfish needs of not having such code available for download online because it facilitates cheating by your colleague's students are more important than the needs of the student and others who can genuinely benefit from the student's work? I think your premise that the student is doing something wrong is simply incorrect.

  If so, what should be done? If not, might there be anyone at the school that can do anything?

Yes, something could be done; you and your colleague could free yourselves of the harmful mindset of trying to control what your students are doing with coursework they worked hard to create after they finish taking your classes. As Massimo Ortolano suggests in the comments, stop taking the easy way out of giving the same assignments year after year and then blaming others for how easy it is for your students to cheat, and instead put in the work to give original assignments.


How to interpret "I think you should apply broadly" from a prospective PhD supervisor? What does it mean, that a professor says: "I think it would be great to have you at X university, and your suggested dissertation topic is a great idea, But, I think you should apply broadly, not just to my university" ?
I mean, does that imply he's really into accepting you? Is there any hidden subtext here?

You should interpret it as good advice.
Apply broadly. Find the program that's the best fit for you. Many graduate programs are sufficiently competitive that many qualified applicants are not admitted. It's impossible to admit everyone qualified who applies if there are more qualified applicants than slots, and there is a lot of subjectiveness and a bit of luck in who makes that cut.
Maybe the professor is gently saying you are unlikely to be admitted to their program and lab, maybe not; there is little benefit for you in attempting to divinate their meaning. There is lots of benefit for you in following their advice (more choice, higher chance of admission), and risk in failing to do so (no choice, chance of not being admitted and not having a backup plan).
Sometimes advice is just advice.


How to teach from someone else's material? This semester I've been teaching a few hours for another professor (I'm a Postdoc). The idea is that I get some teaching experience while he gets a few precious extra hours for his research.

His slides didn't come with any notes, and he hasn't been very responsive in answering my questions about exactly what he said when he delivered the content. I revised the material and edited the slides in preparation. But, after the first hour of class, I've covered about half the material, which was supposed to last three hours. So, I guess either I've missed something implicit (not on the slides) or I've just not paced the material well.

Short of practising in full, how does one take, adapt and own somebody else's lecture materials?

In addition to the slides, use an accompanying textbook to prepare the lecture. This will give you additional context material to fill the lectures, as well as small exercises you can go through at the end of each session.


How to cite a paper that gives background and context about another paper I'm starting work on writing my Master thesis in computer science (after doing a lot of experimentation last semester.) I want to give some background on neural networks relevant to my work. By reading various papers I have found there are several foundational papers (say paper A) in the field that I would like to cite and include. I understand that I should read and cite the primary source regardless of where I found it. However, some of the papers (say paper B) that reference it give background/context on the paper (and even authors) I would also like to include. Should I cite paper B for points like the relevance of the paper, the backgrounds of the authors, and comparison to future work / other papers?
Thanks!

I actually disagree that you should always cite the original source for exactly the reasons you give. Each subsequent paper provides additional context that can help the reader understand the importance of an idea. But it should be clear to a reader who originated the idea even if you cite a later work. "Master Kwan originated the idea of ... as is explicated in the later work of her disciple Master Kuo in as found in ...".
Just make it clear that you don't attribute Kwan's ideas to Kuo, similarly to not attributing the work of others to yourself. And the above assumes that Kuo has properly cited Kwan so the chain is intact.
A Masters thesis, however, could have an extensive bibliography and could even organize it by ideas rather than simply alphabetically or chronologically. Then, there is no real need to choose. So, in the body of the text you could cite original sources, but say elsewhere that the bibliography contains later important sources that explain ramifications of the original. That might be too much for a paper that has severe page limits, but not for a thesis.


Biographical record...? What is it "give a solid overall biographical record of your subject based on the book you have read.  Be sure to include a brief synopsis of all of the high and low points and successes and failures of your subject."

This my assignment, fro writing about a person of my choice. I've realized I don't exactly what a biographical record is. Google wasn't much help for a solid answer either. Can some one explain?

Generally, a biography describes a course of a person's life. By a solid overall biographical record, I suppose you are instructed to include all phases of concerned person's history -- from childhood to current time or death (whichever is earlier) in detail.


What are the pros and cons of publishing a positioning paper based on a grant proposal? We are preparing a grant proposal, which is planned to be submitted in about a year. A part of the proposal is an critical analysis on the state-of-the-art in a particular field. From there we identify some research topics that seem important and promising on which to the best of our knowledge no other people published on. Around these fields we build the rest of the proposal.

We were thinking about the idea of using the text of the literature analysis and the identification of these new topics, to write a positioning paper for a conference or journal.

The main question is: What are the pros and cons of doing so?

We are also interested in your feedback about the timing of doing so?
Your recommendations on the type of venue of doing so (important journal, or small workshop conference, research group website)? And maybe even some general recommendations related to this topic, that we did not thing about.

Is it a good idea to publish it before submitting the grant request (such that we can cite it in the proposal)? Or is it better to wait after one knows if the proposal is accepted or rejected?  We understand that by publishing, other people could also get inspired to work on it, or even ask funding on it. We don't worry to much about that, but maybe we should. Are there other risks? For example if the proposal gets rejected how many years do we have before the ideas get to old to receive funding in revised/recycled form?

Publishing a position paper can possibly be useful to get feedback about the idea and refine it for grant submission, particularly if you're publishing it at a conference.

I personally don't worry too much about getting scooped either, but I would likely only do it if it lays out a space that is far bigger than can be tackled in a single grant proposal. Sure, someone else might get inspired - I think that's a good outcome! - but it isn't terribly likely that they're going to go work on the same corner of the probelm that you are.


Joint papers as PhD student During PhD studies (math/applied math) is it considered ok to have mainly or solely joint papers with other authors? For example three-author papers, me, supervisor and another author.

Can such papers form the basis of the PhD thesis? My concern is whether if only first-author or single author papers are considered useful for PhD studies.

It will depend on the requirements of your course - ask your supervisor for clarification.

Having said that, I did write a handful of papers while I was completing my PhD - not a single one was with me being a sole author. Three of them had my supervisor and another academic as co-authors and the other 2 was with another academic (I was co-author of these).

These papers formed the 'backbone' of my successful PhD thesis. My supervisor indicated that having the papers published and then referencing them in the thesis served to strengthen the thesis, as those points had already been peer-reviewed.

If anything, they demonstrate some ability to collaborate with other academics.


Sharing Code In thesis My question is about sharing code in my thesis. I ran simulations using ready data in my field from a book. After that, I compared the results with those from the book. Do I need to share my code or is sharing it optional? Because I already explained the methodology that I used for my thesis.
Looking forward to your answer. I tried to find a proper answer but I couldn't find it.

Your institute is the one who gives you your degree, revoking it is only going to happen if there is some sort of serious academic misconduct that they find out about much later. They know at the time you submit your thesis whether or not your code is included, so there is no reason that they would give you your degree knowing this, and then later deciding it is a reason to revoke your degree.

The most important thing is that your degree needs to be approved by your advisor and committee, so if your advisor says not to include it, don't. You could always put your code up on GitHub and include a reference to it in your thesis. (My thesis included my code at the end, as an appendix; I'm pretty sure no one ever looked at it).


PhD funding source for international student in the UK I will start my PhD in computer science at a UK university soon. Even though the university has given me a partial funding, I still need to cover part of my tuition fee and living expenses. My university offers teaching assistant position but its payment is very limited.

I've been looking and seen that most, if not all, of funding sources are only available for UK and EU students. So, I want to ask if there are any sources for international to apply.

Your best bet is probably to check if there are fellowships available for study abroad from your home country. However, depending on where you're from, there may be special programs available. For instance, there are Commonwealth Scholarships available for people living in members of the British Commonwealth.

There are some databases of UK awards for general students: here, for instance, is a list of postgraduate scholarships available to citizens of any country.


How should I go about publishing a manuscript in which my mentor does not actively support my best interests? I am at a loss of what to do. I had started working on this project, a systematic review and meta-analysis back in undergrad. I was a senior. Long story short, for a while my manuscript was going well. Come August 2016, my mentor stopped communicating with me in the final stages. Weeks of no responses predominated, and as a result I emailed the Chair of the department on 3 separate occasions (over a total of 7 months). I was promised 3 different deadlines, all of which went unfulfilled. I finally emailed the dean in April when we got close to my final deadline of May 1, 2017. I got my edits, but I was 3 days away from leaving the area because I was heading off to graduate school.

I ended up telling my mentor I didn't want to publish or take this situation into a new institution, but if I found someone who could advise and help me with the situation I would reach out to her. I expressed I had felt we had failed to meet the deadline and the outlook was bleak. She responded positively saying we hadn't missed the deadline, but if I were open to forfeiting my primary authorship stance then she'd be glad to completely finish the manuscript. I took this as a direct offense to the work I had done because I had decided on the topic, done the data extraction, results, conclusions, and limitations of the paper.

I have found someone but am worried my old mentor will not follow through or will hinder the process again. My new adviser suggested I send her an ultimatum and deadline for her final comments for the manuscript and submit to a journal. However, as I am not a researcher, am going to grad school to be a clinician (current graduation 2019), and only have a bachelor's degree, I am scared if I do this then I may lose her support for the manuscript.

How should I proceed?

First, regardless of what you do, secure your independence of her in every way: funding, reference letters, etc.  All that has to run smoothly without her.

Second, forget her.  Don't count on her finishing. She won't do that at all or if she does it, it won't happen personally, but she hires another student.

Third, prepare a journal submission, and get someone senior to read your paper and provide critical comments.  You need a more-or-less constant eye on the paper from some senior person in the area to guide you away from pitfalls you don't see due to the lack of experience.  If you don't have that person, count on a rejection of your first submission.

Fourth, put your prior, no longer supportive advisor either into acknowledgements or as the last coauthor, depending on how much of her contribution is left by the time point of submission. Submit the paper.


Viewing paper abstracts from Google Scholar In a researcher's page in Google Scholar we can click the paper title to see its abstract.

Is it possible to do this from standard Google Scholar search?

(I'm starting to think this is just not possible, but maybe I'm doing something wrong.)

No abstract in standard search

Abstract example as seen from researcher page (by clicking paper title)

Update: To clarify, I meant viewing the abstract without leaving Google Scholar. (Microsoft Academic, for example, shows the abstract within the website.)

In Google Scholar's mobile version, clicking on the title of the search result reveals the abstract. In order to show the mobile version on a desktop computer, you have to resort to hacks, such as a mobile browser plugin for your browser or enabling mobile view in the developer tools of e.g. Chrome or Firefox.


Why should a paper be reviewed by more than ten reviewers? One of our recent submission has been suggested to be revised by a journal (CS). However, we could not at first believe that we have to address the comments or points raised by 11 reviewers plus the editor's comments. The comments are very diverse and conflicting.

Is it quite difficult to address all the comments and satisfy all the reviewers. Everyone is a human being, even us.

How and why should a paper be reviewed by so many reviewers? Now we are not in a situation to withdraw the paper and probably it is quite difficult to address all the comments because of computational issues.

For the how question, I have this possible answer: Yes, the editor might have sent reviewer invitation to more than required number of reviewers; and to the surprise, all accepted it.

11 reviewers seems excessive to me too, but that is the situation you are in now so you need to find a way to deal with it. My starting point would be that it is the editor that makes the final decision not the reviewers, so it is her or him you need to convince not all 11 reviewers. Sometimes the editor gives hints one what (s)he thinks the main comments are. In that case you know what to focus on.

If that is not the case you just have to make reasonable decisions and justify them. So if there are conflicting comments you need to show that you have taken them seriously and made a reasonable choice on how to handle that. If all the suggestions are too much, i.e. it would result in a book rather than a article, then the editor (and the reviewers) can see that as well. Just mention that and justify the choices you make.


What do people usually ask letter writers to emphasize in a letter of reference? I hear that a lot of letter writers to let them know things things you would like for them to "highlight in your application".

What do most people ask their letter writer to emphasize? Is it personal anecdotes between themselves and the letter writer? their own work ethic? their personal theoretical contributions to projects?

People are sometimes asked for such things, if for no other reason than to remind the writer about what the applicant has done. But, there is a more important consideration.

The fundamental requirement of a supportive letter is for the writer to make a prediction, even if not explicitly stated, that the subject of the letter is both highly qualified (the past) and has great prospects for success (the future).

When possible, provide some evidence, especially about things that might not show up in a CV.

Everything in the letter needs to support that primary goal, no matter how stated. Anecdotes might help, past research, great questions in class or the office (curiosity). But make sure that the main goal is addressed. Otherwise the letter is just noise.

Qualified (check). High likelihood of success (check).


Forced to work as a postdoc without pay I got an externally funded research grant as a lead researcher to carry out a project at a UK University, together with other senior co-PIs. The grant would pay my salary for the duration of the project as a postdoc, which would be 6 months. Due to several administrative and other issues, the project kept being delayed (outside of my control), by what the funding finished, but the project deliverables were not produced. I continued working on the project in the hope that we could finish it at some point, but other issues came up, preventing the project from being completed.

It has been now 4 months that I've been working as a postdoc in this project without any pay, and I can't continue living without any money to support myself. I got some legal advice from a lawyer about this where I was told I should just walk out since my contract finished and I have no obligation to work without a contract. However, being an ECR (early career researcher), it would be extremely damaging for my future career to abandon this project halfway and not get any publication from it.

After several meetings with the PIs discussing what to do with the project, and pointing out I need money to survive, their conclusion was that I must finish the project deliverables, without any further pay, as they are blaming me for the delays in the project (which is not the case, as I stated before). They are also threatening me (indirectly) with damaging my reputation as a scientist, blacklisting me for future grant applications (the senior PIs are in several grant committees in my area of research) and just in general destroying any chances of me having a future research career.

At this point, I have no idea what to do to get out of this problem... It seems my only options are either to quit academia entirely or accepting to being exploited and work without pay.

On top of all this, I discovered recently the grant has some small amount of leftover money from non needed consumables, which I requested to be redirected to my salary. The PIs refused this, as they are saying they will only pay me this amount if the project is finished.

I am looking for any advice on how to deal with this problem, particularly if someone else faced a similar situation before in a UK university.

For some reason there is this belief in academia that people should work without pay. It's inappropriate. You need to walk away.

Even early career researchers are allowed to work for pay.

It would also seem that a 6-month grant would only be for a rather small project. Can the project be tied off quickly so that you can move on?

If the senior PIs are threatening to ruin your career, I would try to get some evidence of these threats. Also keep in mind that even if you finish the project, PIs who make threats to ruin you career are not all of the sudden going to become your best buddies. You could very well finish the project and still have your senior PIs blacklist you for further grants. You owe them nothing.


Husband and wife publishing together - Problem for tenure-track jobs? My husband and I work in the same research area (of theoretical computer science). We were in the same PhD program and even had the same advisor. We are a great collaboration team, and really enjoy and are productive when we work together. In addition, neither of us have anyone else to collaborate with because no one in the department really works in quite the same area (not even our advisor - long story). As a result, nearly all of my papers are co-authored with my husband. My husband has a decent number of papers without me as a co-author because he is three years ahead of me in the program, so he has his papers from before I even started, and also has had more time for more papers since I have just completed the class-heavy portion of my PhD.

My husband has recently graduated and is a tenure-track professor at a good university. I would also like to be a professor one day. From what I've seen in my field, spousal hiring seems pretty common. So we figured that we would both apply to a bunch of universities and would end up being hired as a pair. However, we have been worried that us both being in the same research area and publishing together is going to cause difficulties being hired. Since I have a few more years left in the program, my plan is to to have two or three good publications that don't include my husband (I already have one single author paper in a good place).

So my question is, how difficult will it be for us to be hired together into the same department if we have so many papers co-authored together? Will publishing a few good papers without my husband improve the situation to the point that we have a reasonable chance of being hired together, even though a significant amount of my early work was with my husband?

Additional Note: Even just in my department, several of the new hires in the last 3 or 4 years have been husband and wife pairs where they were both hired into the computer science department. So it seems that this practice is currently very common in CS. I have not seen any that shared a research area, though.

Edit: This question is very different from the one asked at
PhD Student : Publish Paper with Wife? . That question is primarily about whether it is strange to publish with a spouse at all (and the spouse in question is not in academia), while my question is specifically about my husband and I getting hired together in the same department if we have co-authored a significant amount of our work together. The answers provided there don't really help with this question.

Edit: I have edited down the four questions to just a single main question.

The problem of the two of you getting hired together in the same department is much harder than for each of you getting hired separately somewhere near each other.

The problem is simply that there aren't enough job openings for two people in the same field at the same time, or even near in time. There might be exceptions, such as if you are in a very competitive and hot new area in which universities are competing for faculty in that field, but that is also rare.

But, if you are in an area with a lot of universities, such as NYC or London, for example, you could probably find employment close enough to solve your problem. One of you might need to take a job at a lower ranked place to make this work, I suppose.

Being nearby, but at different institutions would also open the options for collaborations separate from each other, as well.

You can't really control how people judge your collaboration, but if you are being interviewed separately for jobs, each of you can stand on your own in your knowledge of the field and potential for future work. But, don't obsess over what you can't control.

I'll note that it is easier for a university to solve the two-body problem if the two are in very different fields. It gets harder the more similar they are, especially the same sub-field. But being "hot" helps if you can find the place that is trying to rapidly expand. That is rare for lots of reasons and it isn't a stable situation. "Rapidly expanding" today could be "saturated" tomorrow.


Textbook has two different versions, which to use? I've recently enrolled in an Introduction to Computer Science II course in which the professor allowed me to skip the prerequisites.The problem is, I don't have the textbook from the previous course, Java How to Program 10th Edition Late Objects - Deitel & Deitel. The course and the one before it both encompass the same book, so I would like to catch up before the course starts.

While browsing on online stores, this led me to two different books, the 'Global Edition', and the US edition. Seeing that the Global Edition was half the price of the US version and I was on a budget, I thought it was a steal. There are many choices online with international editions at around $60 and the US at $150.

Why would the global textbook be lower than half the price than the US edition? What's the difference? I've read around that there is not much of a difference except for the cover, but why would that call for such a lowered price? The US book comes with access codes and other features, will the Global also come with those exact features?

Often if not almost always, "International Editions" (the monicker I know them under) are copies of expensive text books printed in emerging market countries (often India), whose legality I question...at least they are not licensed by the publisher for all I know. Someone here might have more substantial comments on the legal aspect - in fact, StrongBad does in his answer to an earlier question.

From the one I bought before understanding this, I would, in the future, stay away from them for their quality alone. I kept noticing that there were seeming errors where the text diverged in most cases from a supporting graphic; and there were graphics on almost every page. I carefully made a list of errata for the first 100 pages, and submitted them to the author. He was kind enough to reply fast, expressing that he was puzzled: none seemed to be true. I eventually figured out that the graphics and text of my book were from different editions of the original book...my version is essentially useless.


How common is mandatory attendance-taking in college courses in US? A recent SE Academia question asked about how best to implement a university's requirement that the instructor must keep attendance records for all students. The top-voted answer there was to simply refuse to follow the university's policy, specifically, "Allow all students in class and do not monitor attendance." The justification and comments indicate that this is such an unusual and egregious demand at a university that it should be refused on its face.

Coincidentally, around the same time this topic independently came up at my own institution (large college in northeast U.S.), where mandatory attendance records, recorded by instructors and collected by the college, have been the process for many years, since before I arrived.

When this discussion came up in my department I cited the SE question linked above and its top-voted answer. However, it seems that almost all of my colleagues (~40 faculty members) simply disbelieved what I was saying. Their sense was that mandatory attendance-record-keeping was standard and customary at any academic institution in their experience. At least one comment was made asserting that other institutions forgoing attendance records would be a sign of lowering academic standards.

So: What is an evidence-based estimate for the proportion of U.S. college classes that have a mandatory attendance-record-keeping policy? A proper answer for this would require some kind of reference for the evidence of the estimate. The estimate could be at the level of the university, college, division, department, course, or something else, depending on available data. Additional points if a historical profile can be given, i.e., confirmation on whether attendance requirements have been growing more or less common in recent decades.

In the US there are actually some federal rules governing attendance keeping. Colleges must account somehow for students receiving federal aid, for example. That is a lot of students, as it likely includes those with government backed loans. While the rule doesn't seem to require that instructors keep a formal log, they are required to know who is attending and who is not.

For example, Here is a sample page from a large US state university: https://uc.uiowa.edu/faculty/teaching-instructional-policies/student-attendance-absences.

Some states will, themselves, impose additional rules, as will some individual privately funded colleges and universities.

There are a variety of reasons for such rules, including liability. If a student "disappears", especially one who is not technically an adult, the powers that be will want to know.

Beyond such rules, some instructors count attendance in the grading rubric, but I don't think that is especially common post-secondary. But non-attendance can be a symptom of other problems and so instructors are expected in general to know who is there and who is not - especially when missing class or other activities is repeated frequently.

So, while I don't know what percentage of colleges require this, my guess is that it is fairly high, based on the need to keep records. But it is also my guess that the rules aren't strictly honored in a lot of places.


Will I get rejected because PI cannot show funding? I applied to Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences for PhD program. I have talked with PI before submitting the application. I have 3.9 GPA from Master , 2 publications and one paper as the lead author under review in a great journal and plenty of research experiences. I think PI really likes me but, he said he doesn't have funding right now. He still asked me to apply for it and is willing to seek out funding options for me. I may be a very strong candidate as the program fits me, my background and future goals like a glove plus competitive academic profile. LORs will be excellent also. I am scared that I will get rejected because PI cannot show the funding this year. He recently got hired so, he is very active academically and applying for funding actively as well. What is the likelihood that I will get rejected? Any advice on anything that I can do?

Actually, in the US it would be unlikely that your application would be rejected only for lack of funding. But you could well be accepted without funding if it comes to that and your background is strong enough.

In spite of it's association with Cornel, CALS is part of the New York State university system, so NYS rules apply to many things there.

But there may be other funding open to you than direct funding by the professor. You might be eligible for TA or RA employment. But you might also have to apply for that separately than for admission.

But work with the professor who will know all of your options.


Advantages and disadvantages of doing PhD research at a non-academic lab What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing your PhD research (in science, math, or engineering) at a non-academic lab (like a government or industrial lab) vs. the traditional academic setting? (Of course, the degree is granted by a university.)

When is one option better than the other if you have the choice between doing your research in an academic or non-academic setting?

A few potential advantages I can think of:

You're likely to be hired by the lab after graduation. If you don't want to enter academia and are happy with the lab, this could be your career. If you do want to enter academia, often you're in good company because leaving research labs for academia isn't uncommon.
You can work with more people (your school's students and professors and the lab's researchers). This'll expand your professional network and expose you to different perspectives.
Your affiliation with the lab could add some credibility to you and your research.

A few potential disadvantages:

Travel could be problematic if your school and your lab aren't close. This could be mitigated by taking care of the coursework first.
The research topic is often dictated by someone in the lab if you are funded by them. If you decide this topic is not worth researching or not interesting then you might have a problem. Politics in the lab could change the research topic in the future and that might also be a problem.

Throughout graduate school I worked at and was funded by a university-run laboratory that operated somewhat like a government laboratory and was largely funded for applied research. I now work at a UARC (which is similar to an FFRDC).  Given that my graduate school lab was already affiliated with the University, though, my situation is slightly different than yours.

At least in the US, it is relatively hard for non-academic laboratories to find funding for basic research; funding agencies like the NSF have a prejudice toward funding degree-granting institutions.  Therefore, in my experience, much of the flavor of the funding at non-academic laboratories is geared toward applied research.  This might not be a problem, but it can be a challenge to find a deep, Ph.D.-level problem to solve when your sponsors are interested in seeing more concrete results.

In my case, working at an applied research laboratory to fund my graduate degrees was actually somewhat of a benefit.  Due to the reasons I listed above, it was difficult for me to latch onto a deep problem to solve for which there was stable, direct funding.  Therefore, I used my position at the laboratory to basically "pay the bills" (it covered my stipend, tuition remission, &c.).  That gave me the freedom to work on related—but not directly funded—problems that interested me.  This of course had the overhead of essentially working two jobs at once, but it had the added benefit of providing visibility to my "side" research to the sponsors who were funding my "pay the bills" research.  It also paid for my trips to relevant conferences, at which I was able to present both flavors of my research.

Now that I am working at a UARC, I see others here who are also pursuing part-time Ph.D.s.  Most of them seem to have found a similar model to mine: They use their position at the non-academic lab to "pay the bills", and then focus their actual research on a related but independent problem.  If you are able to fund yourself (i.e., if your Ph.D. advisor doesn't have to worry about finding funding for you), then many advisors will be willing to take you on as a student.


Is giving condolences to a professor socially acceptable? I'm an undergraduate in the US.

My professor just told us via email that he will not be able to grade an exam until next week because his family member died from complications due to COVID-19. I don't care much about the delay, but I do like my professor, both as a person and an educator. Would it be out of line for me to send an email along the lines of "Hi professor, I'm sorry to hear your loved one passed."

I'm not a very socially outgoing person and I don't speak up in class much, so I don't know if this would overstep the student-professor relationship.

It's not merely perfectly fine (e.g., in the U.S.), but a very good thing to do. (Conceivably in other cultures it could be construed as too intrusive, we must acknowledge.)


I printed my PhD thesis and one of the image graphics came out as a black square and I sent copies yesterday to the reviewrs I don't understand how this happened I sent the printing service a pdf. And in the pdf the image is completely normal.
And two other graphics lost their labels. I don't know how this happened.
Will this be looked down upon?

These things can happen with printing services. This is why you always get a test print, which you check thoroughly. You did get that, right? And you did check it, right? If so, then you probably have a good case against the printing service, to get them to print replacement copies free of charge.
But this does not help you right now. Yes, it will be an issue for the committee if several figures in your thesis are not legible. What you can do is to write an email to your committee members explaining the situation. Attach a pdf of your thesis - which you have double checked to be correct - and promise to send them replacement copies once they arrive.
And before you send the replacement copies, you make damn sure that all the graphics display as it should.


What to do if an audience member refuses to let you answer their question? I was reading this question about famous people asking rude questions in talks, and it reminded me of a situation which happened at the end of my academic career. I would really like some advice on how I should have handled it.

I was giving a short talk at a conference and at the end the session chair asked for questions or comments. An eminent Belgian professor said "I really think you should look at X from 197y" and, since I had looked at X, I began to reply, and then the professor interrupted my reply with

  "That wasn't a question. That was a comment."

I was speechless. This is Treppenwitz as it was several years ago, but what would have been a good comeback?

The question's title does not reveal the status of the obstructionist questioner, and this status matters enormously. Lower-status people behaving this way could not "get away with it". High-status people often can.

Given all the implicit primate-interaction and other presumption in anyone's behaving like that, in particular denying response, this should be treated like bad drivers on the highway, specifically, potentially more reactive than the indifferent bad weather or bad luck of various sorts. Namely, any substantial response, especially any expression of annoyance or umbrage, will incur a cost that makes whatever satisfaction one had hoped-for too expensive.

Instead, a dumb-happy-innocent smile and "thanks for your comment... then", to avoid engagement, is wise.

Sure, this amounts to a sort of impersonal bullying, but you yourself could not likely change the outcome. It'd require the intervention of someone of comparable status, blah-blah-blah.

So, in summary, no, such "comments" are not productive, are status-reiterating, ... and do create a generally stifling status-conscious atmosphere. Not that most human scenarios aren't status-conscious... :)


Is it ethical/ correct to cite a confidential document/ paper (under NDA)? Each paper should be able to provide enough evidence that its claims are correct. Nowadays, where the number of joint industry-university projects grows exponentially, many confidential documents produced by private companies become available to researchers in academia under Non Disclosure Agreements (NDA).

My question is the following: is it ethical to cite a confidential work in a scientific paper and use it to make some statements, while the rest of the scientific community cannot evaluate the accuracy of the claims in that source?

In my personal opinion, this type of reference should be prohibited, since it hinders the progress of science, but I would be glad to hear other opinions on this topic and especially how they believe that such a case should be treated.

If the information you want to disclose is contained in a document that is covered under a non-disclosure agreement with the industry partner, you will need to get their written permission to disclose the content that you're referencing at the very least. If I were reviewing your article, and this reference were key, and the company had never published this document, I would be inclined to make negative comments in my review about the lack of publication of a key reference which might lead to the rejection of your article. You might have to work hard to convince your industry partner to either publish the information from the confidential document in a separate, smaller format, or to publish the confidential document in its entirety in order to get your article published.

Either way, if you rely on NDA materials, you still have to cite them. It'll be best for your publication chances if the company discloses this information itself before you try to publish. Otherwise, even submitting your work to a journal or conference will require permission from the company since submission will count as disclosure.


PhD advisor lost funding, need advice I am an international PhD student in an engineering department in US and was fully funded for all two years, but just two weeks before the fall semester (without any warning), my advisor informed me that he cannot support me, apparently he lost all the funding sources this July. He is quite happy with my research and wants me to pay this semester at least half of my tuition and live on half of the monthly stipend. He informed me that after this fall he will find a TA to support myself.

Now, my problem is that my work is experimental and needs constant funding. While TA will cover my expenses, it will not cover the experiments. Even he does not know how and when the funding for experiments will come (he didn't look confident at all). Should I think of changing the advisor now? I am personally thinking of taking an MS with my current work and looking for a funded lab for PhD in the same university.

If your advisor can't support you and your research, find another advisor as soon as possible. Your department/grad program should be able to help with this and talking to them should be your next step - it's also possible they can do something to get you funded in the immediate term. In fact, this should have been the advice your advisor gave you instead of suggesting you try to float around for a semester.

You might be able to keep your current advisor as a co-advisor or something, but frankly the way they handled this situation (waiting to tell you until now) is absolutely horrible and unprofessional (and selfish): they would have known long ago that funding was expiring and if they were waiting on some pending grant applications they needed to inform you then so you could line up other support.

I wouldn't be able to trust that person again.


Is there a "Rate my Advisor" type website? I am not sure about the incentive effects of websites such as ratemyprof.com, as Professors with tenure may or may not care about undergrad students. However, they may be more serious about graduate students (supervision, co-authorship etc).

Does a ratemyadvisor type website exist?

This is important (I think) because relationships between supervisor-supervisee are probably more profound (given the time investment) and have arguably more ramifications on the future (reference letters bear more weight).

Any thoughts are welcome!

I spoke recently with someone who is building such a website/community, and I doubt they will mind me giving a brief overview of how they intend it to work.

Basically there are 2 issues that are difficult to overcome - assuming all the technological issues are minor:

Skepticism
Slander

Skepticism in the sense of 'Oh, I see this PI has a bad review from 2001, but who's to say that will happen to me. Maybe this one student is an odd-ball'. It also has parallels with the TornadoGuard problem.

And we see this a lot on academia.stackexchange too. We only ever hear 1 side of the story, and that story is rarely impartial. You know, occasionally people like to rant. People often omit the times they made mistakes. It's human nature. And so any website of this nature has to somehow overcome this issue of he-said-she-said, and theres simply no technological device we can implement to get around this. Particularly if you allow anonymous submissions.

The second, slander, is what I believe most people in the pubpeer.com debate are worried about. A deliberate attempt to hurt someone's reputation under the flag of mob-justice. Nitpicking and emotive words, but no real substance, etc. I actually only found out about pubpeer a week or so ago when a colleague at a party showed it to me, and I was shocked to see people I respect being picked apart on there for silly little things. Still, those anonymous criticisms do have some validity, and the concept of post-publication peer review is something I deeply agree with. I think only time will tell what impact sites like pubpeer will have on science. For a PI-review site, it could have disastrous consequences. Potentially legal consequences.

The website/community I referred to up top seemed to have spent a considerable amount of time fleshing out all the technological methods that could help here, and in the end i'm told they settled on the fairly low-tech idea for Skype-based interviews, potentially on a weekly release schedule. The idea is to mainly cater for people who hate their PhD and feel relief knowing they're not the only ones going through hell. So these Skype interviews generally are with post-docs or no-docs who had a bad experience, and they talk about what the end result was, what they'd do differently, if they still feel they were treated unfairly many years down the line (I watched 3 interviews and they were all totally different, so i'm finding it difficult to generalise here). But the big issue for the team putting all this together is finding PhD/post-docs/no-docs who are OK with talking about their experiences. They offered to interview me but I turned them down because, frankly, i'm not that brave. They offered to pixilate my face, but even so... as disappointed as I am with my treatment during my PhD, there's no one specific person that really let me down. It was a system of failures, I think, and one that is unlikely to happen again. So that particular PI-review project wouldn't really help me or people like me.


For how long afterwards can you publish papers based on field research? In 2010 I did field research for my Masters Thesis in International Peace & Conflict Resolution (i.e. multi-disciplinary social science and international relations) in Bolivia interviewing indigenous judges. The interviews focused on the structure & function of their indigenous judicial system and its relationship of the state system. After graduation, I had wanted to publish a version of my thesis but never got around to it. After a while, I assumed too many years had passed for any of it to still be relevant to publish but then I was reading an anthropology methodology book that mentioned how anthropologists will publish papers based on notes from field work for years after finishing the field work.

I still have all my notes and recorded interviews. Could I still publish a paper in a journal based on 10 year old field research?

(Note: I haven't decided on a specific social science field I'd want to publish but does it make a difference? I am also not a academic associated with any university.)

If you prove a theory or find an interesting or useful relationship using 100 year-old data you can publish, that is send to a journal for review.

It is not the age of the data but the results / analysis / conclusions.


What is the normal total time for Peer Review for a general paper submission (Not a Special Issue) in IETE Journal of Research Taylor Francis? I have submitted a paper in IETE Journal of Research (http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tijr20#.VrL0xvl97IW) on 22/09/15. Still the status is under review. Is it usual for this journal or I should make a polite query to the editor.

Although I have never submitted to this journal, in my experience, this is not an unusually long period of time, especially given all the delays that can stack up during peer review.

This has also been studied recently, with typical turnaround times of 14 weeks. When you consider the holiday break that many academics likely took in Dec/Jan, this is right in line with your delay.

That being said, after 4 months, I don't think many editors would mind a quick email to ask for an update. The last time I did this, the editor explained that they had had an unusually difficult time in finding reviewers. However, do be polite and respectful of their time when you write the editor.


Meaningful research in PhD with no publications I have been doing my PhD in Computer Science for one year and a half now (Europe-based) and I feel my research is not going much far.
I choose to do this after my master studies because I actually like to do it: I like reading about new solutions, new problems and try to solve them myself. I also really liked taking university courses.
Lately, I started to notice more and more how many of my peers managed to publish in some conferences, while I still have nothing close to submission. Also, I had a talk with my supervisor few months ago, where he hinted that my approach to the PhD was not going to be productive, and that a change was needed. He mentioned the need for more independence on my side, when finding and developing research ideas.
To make it (hopefully) more explicit, it may be that I like doing research for my own fulfillment and curiosity, but I cannot spot questions or problems that needs to be addressed or can have a chance during the review process. I don't know how to explain the current situation in another way. In the meantime I also got a bit discouraged, and asked myself if, career-wise, it is worth to pursue a path where I am happy with my day-to-day activities, but ultimately don't get any "public" acknowledgement. I think I learned a lot in this year (also, my level was maybe not so high as my peers'), so I am not unsatisfied with myself, but the issue here is that progress is measured on papers and not self-achievements. Working hard is also okay for me, so I would say motivation is not the issue here.
Should I consider quitting my PhD, or moving to a lower-rank institute? I'm fine with my work at the moment, but I'm worried it may not get better -- and I don't like the idea of finding myself at the fourth+ year of PhD, still with no publication. I don't think I want to keep on with research afterwards, and I fear those years will not be meaningful career-wise.

Your situation hints at a mismatch between your supervisor's supervision style (which is fairly hands-off) and the style you would need to be productive (which requires more guidance and input in the beginning, with the goal of ultimately having you become more independent).
My recommendation is: Find a co-advisor with a more hands-on supervision style. That could be somebody in your group who is fairly productive (most likely a postdoc, assistant professor or young associate professor), with a visible publication track record. Most people who are that way have more problems to work on that they can solve on their own. You should have your main advisor on board with this, which might be easy to achieve, since advisors have an active interest in seeing their students graduate.


Why do journals have limits on the number of references? I was rather shocked when hearing in a conversation that journals sometimes have explicit limits on the number of references that can be included in one article. I understand that there are space concerns for print publications, and that word/page limits, as well as limits on the numbers of figures and tables are common. But placing limits on the number of references strike me as rather close to impinging on the integrity of the articles themselves (would anyone support a motion to limit the number of authors?).

  Question: What are some reasons that have led journals to limit the number of references?

Clarification: I am not asking whether this is a good idea in general. (I think it is silly, but that's just my opinion.) I am not asking whether this can have some potentially good effect on the quality of scientific writing. I am specifically asking whether there was an official explanation ever issued on the part of the publishers explaining this rule, or whether there was some event (say, an abuse in the form of many gratuitous references or an observed trend for the average number of references to keep growing if not otherwise checked) or some strong personality (famous editor-in-chief X) that led to these kinds of policies being formulated.

For example, Applied Physics Letters has limits on number of words (with some conversion factor applied also to figures and tables), but (in my opinion, rightly) excludes the title, the author list, and the list of references from the limit.

For examples of journals (from various publishers) that have limits on number of references:

Nature "strictly enforces" a limit of 50 for articles and 30 for letters. (Science, I note, does not for research articles. For review articles the limit is 100.)
Earth and Planetary Science Letters limits to 50.
Blood "recommends" a limit of 100 references, though I don't know if this is a hard limit or not.
Journal of Clinical Ontology limits to 10 for "correspondences" and a "suggested limit" of 150 for "research articles".
Journal of Genetics (more reasonably, in my opinion), have different limits for different types of articles. But notably for research and review articles there are no limit to references: the reference number limit applies to shorter submissions such as correspondence, commentary, or "research notes".

Some additional information:

(TL;DR: Nature put in their current policy sometime between the years 1986 and 1988, with no reference limits prior. Did something happen in the 80s?)

I went down to the library and looked at the old issues of Nature (not because I want to single them out, but because the library happen to have all the issues since the 20s available on the stacks). After some binary search I've found that in December 1986 the instructions to the authors look like this (with no mention of limit to references)

and in October 1988 it became almost the same as present day (apologies for the flash... the lighting in the stacks wasn't good).

(I don't have the exact date of the switch, since only some of the issues in the library came from the original magazines; others came from bound reprints ordered from the publisher which stripped out pages like these. So in particular I found no "Guides to Authors" in the 1987 issues I had access to.)

Back in the 20s and 30s most of the items in Nature had no references whatsoever. By the 50s and 60s we start seeing articles more in the form of what we expect today, but the number of references are generally not too many. Even in the 70s and the 80s (before the change of rules) the majority of the articles do abide by the modern rules, with occasional exceptions.

Journals aim to publish an organized set of articles of some approximate length in an attractive format.

Journals set limits on the number of references to shape the form, format, and quality of the submitted articles.

This organization is a good thing, in terms of disseminating scientific information. Given the limited space of one article, there is definitely some appropriate range for the number of essential and useful references that relate to the presented work.

This is less restrictive that it might sound, as these rules set by the journal are seldom hard limits. If you have good reason to include a couple of extra references, you can usually work with the editor to get them included.

Another reason to include limits is to try to encourage authors to examine references more closely, and to be more selective in their choices of what to include. Just as many journals have rules against gratuitous figures and tables (e.g. all figs must be referenced in the text), these limits are meant to discourage gratuitous inclusion of references that are not directly related to the discussion in the manuscript.

In response to the expanded question: "What happened in the 80's?" ...

The Science Citation Index was launched in 1964. With its growth and success, and the addition of other field-specific indices, it became possible to compute statistical journal and author comparisons (e.g. Impact Factor). This concerted effort to index citations made being cited in the work of others more important, and the use of numerous citations became much more common. The benefits of these author and journal metrics were much lauded during the 70's and 80's, but people were also increasingly aware that this arrangement was vulnerable to abuse, i.e. gaming the system by inflating citations. SCI grew to become Web of Knowledge, then Web of Science and along the way (1992) it was acquired by a large media company and today it's run by Thomson-Reuters.

The question posed invites speculation; we can't know exactly what the owners and editors of the various scientific journals were thinking when they started implementing citation limits. However, I would hazard a guess that they realized gratuitous citations might be an issue, probably had a few bad apples, and decided that limits were a good idea to keep the quality of the submissions high.


How do I check the indexing of journals in databases? Various journals claim to be indexed by worldwide databases like INSPEC, Google Scholar etc. How can I verify these claims?

Google Scholar is not a normal indexing service, in the sense that it does attempt to index only "trusted sources." You should be somewhat wary of any publication venue that advertises itself as being indexed by Google Scholar, since this is practically meaningless.

For INSPEC and many other indexing services, the service itself may have a list of indexed journals which you can find on their website. (See here for INSPEC's, for example.)

If your institution subscribes to the indexing service, you can check yourself if the journal is indexed there.


Persistent website with a DOI I'm writing a paper that contains links to documentation that lives as a collection of web pages. I'm looking to host these webpages somewhere such that I can create a direct link to a page from my paper, and such that the website is persistent. This means that I would like to get a DOI or something similar for the website.

Is there a service or other means so that I can accomplish this?

The PURL service (https://archive.org/services/purl/) allows you to create a persistent URL (e.g., "http://purl.org/my-thing") that redirects to a specified target URL.
You have the flexibility of changing the target URL at any time (e.g., when the target website undergoes a content reorganization or web host migration, breaking the previous URLs).
Also, partial PURL redirections are supported, for which you can use one PURL record to handle all resources that share a common location prefix (e.g., "http://purl.org/my-doc/A" redirects to "http://example.com/doc/A").
If the target website is yours, then you may need to shop around for a suitable web host;
free web hosting services may or may not be sufficient or appropriate, depending on the size and complexity of your website (dependencies on frameworks, databases, etc.), expected traffic, whether you mind serving ads, etc.
If the target website is third party, then you may need to monitor it over time to ensure that your PURL remains valid and accurate.
The PURL service is hosted by the Internet Archive, which IMHO will be around for a long time.

Wayback Machine (https://archive.org/web/), also hosted by the Internet Archive, is another option, especially if the webpage contents are relatively stable (or immutable).
This service allows you to "capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future".
Other similar webpage archival services include
Perma.cc (https://perma.cc/) and
archive.is (https://archive.is/).
These options work best for simple static webpages (text and images);
I recommend testing them carefully to ensure that the archived version of the website is sufficiently accurate and that you do not lose too much functionality.

figshare (https://figshare.com/) is yet another approach along the lines of open research.
This is a "repository where users can make all of their research outputs available in a citable, shareable and discoverable manner".
figshare issues a DOI for your uploaded content.
This could work if you can package the website contents suitably for viewing through figshare.

Finally, you can also directly create a new DOI for your website through a suitable DataCite (https://www.datacite.org/) member (see list of current members).

Assuming a simple static website, I would suggest the following steps:

Host your website on a free web hosting service (e.g., GitHub Pages, Neocities), create a PURL to point to it, and include the PURL in your paper and the website itself (use partial PURL redirects to handle individual pages that share a common location prefix);
Archive a simplified snapshot of your website (perhaps on a single page) on the Wayback Machine, and include the resulting link on your website too; and
After the paper is published, add the complete paper citation with DOI to your website, and archive it again on the Wayback Machine.

I believe this should help readers of your paper find your website and/or its contents long after the paper is published, using the published links or general search engines.


APIs for titles and abstracts for most or all published articles? Are there any APIs that index and capture the titles and abstracts most or all published scientific journals?

If not, what about only for pharmaceutical or health fields?

//////

Edits: I came across CrossRef api, but wonder if there are other options.

For healthcare, you'll want to check out what the NIH has to offer. NCBI has a bunch of a free APIs, and also allows download of the index data directly. I used to download PubMed Central for local indexing via rsync, but I'm not sure if they still operate that service. In any event, PMC is a key tool that is familiar to health/medical researchers and very popular.


What would my Higher National Diploma be considered in the United States? I am currently studying my BTEC HND(Higher National Diploma) from a United Kingdom approved centre and i was planning to apply to the United States after complete this diploma. However i have no information of what to expect out of the United States. What will my diploma be considered in the country and will it be easy to apply to universities regarding my discipline. I've added a link below explaining and introducing HND for those who are not fimilar with the program.
Thank You in Advance

Infromation about HND From Pearson Education

From the website:

  BTEC Higher Nationals are internationally-recognised Higher Education qualifications at level 4 and 5 that are equivalent to the first and second years of a university degree, providing progression to both university and employment.

This means it will probably be considered as something like an associates degree. Some 4-year US universities might give you credit towards undergraduate classes. I doubt any well-respected university would give you credits towards a graduate degree. It is probably insufficient to get admitted directly to a graduate program.


How to prevent cheating on take-home exams For certain undergrad classes, I assign a take-home exam, rather than the more familiar in-class exam. When I distribute the exam, I remind the students that this is an individual exam, and that they may not work in groups, and then I add "Believe me, I can tell when you cheat". This, however, is a bluff. Unless it is superobvious, I can't tell if students work together; I only tell them I can to scare them into honoring the rules.

Are there any ways, other than lying to the students, to prevent (or at least minimize) this type of cheating in take-home exams?

One way to do it: if the assignment has many small questions, you can make it more difficult taking a random draw from a bigger pool for each student, so they are all slightly different. So, any pair of students would have just a portion of them in common. This can appear unfair, but it should even out if you do it many times.

But, if this were a fight, you would be on the losing side; for any strategy you can come up with, someone else would find the way to hack it. You should instead focus on making people not want to cheat.

Make the problems interesting challenges, not mechanical tasks. If it involves some creative thinking it is less likely that two students arrive independently to the same solution (and even less to arrive to the same solutions in each exercise).
But make them approachable. If they look impossible, it is more tempting to cheat. In a course I took recently, we had to solve an easier version of a problem, and apply it to a more difficult one. We only had to hand in the difficult version, but handing in only the easy part gave also points.

For what I have seen from a student perspective, the more advanced the course, the less likely cheating is, and the more frowned upon by the other students is.


Is the adoption of IS0 9000 principles, or even actual ISO certification very common in universities? I'm not sure if this is on-topic but nothing seemed conclusive that it wasn't in the help center, so let's see what happens.
The ISO 9000 family of standards has been adopted by well over a million organizations in the world, most of them are of course businesses with customers, but not all of them are.
I'd like to know if the adoption of IS0 9000 principles, or even actual ISO certification is very common in universities.
The two areas I'm interested in are

Large science efforts that handle substantial funding, where the standardization of procedures might improve efficiency of use of funds and project completion
Universities of no particular size or areas of research, but where the procedures are of a departmental nature i.e. paperwork, human resources, departmental budgets and management, etc.

My guess is that there may indeed be some adoption in the first category and only small, scattered or isolated instances of the second, but it's only a guess.

I know of one university which is ISO 9001 certified.  Most universities are not.  I have not been able to discern any benefit to the certification.  I am not aware of any "science effort" that is certified.


Should I cite or quote? I seem to be in a dilemma when it comes to citation and references. I am implementing and improving an algorithm, and therefore I must state the steps of the algorithm. I would also like to use the definitions they used and there is not much room for paraphrasing. If I paraphrase it, it would be weird since the formulation is very specific. This is a general question: when implementing some algorithm in a paper, would I cite the definitions or should I quote?

The standard dichotomy of quoting vs. paraphrasing makes sense for prose (where an idea can be expressed in many ways), but generally not for mathematical equations: F = ma cannot be meaningfully paraphrased.  An algorithm straddles the boundary (which is a source of much intellectual property difficulty): in some ways, after all, an algorithm can be thought of as a rather extensive equation.

A prose-style block quote is not appropriate for an equation, and I would argue that it is likewise not appropriate for an equation.  What I instead tend to do in this circumstance is say something like, "Here is the definition of Algorithm X, as reproduced from [citation]:" and then state the definition.  If I am adjusting notation or making other such presentation changes, then I will replace "reproduced" with "adapted."  This gives the citation and makes it clear that you are using somebody else's formulation, without breaking into a prose-style quote (even better is to place it in a figure or table).

The explanation of the algorithm, on the other hand, is prose, and that you should write yourself, paraphrasing and adapting for the context in which you are discussing the algorithm, which is no doubt different than its original presentation.


To choose which Masters program to attend, should I favor institution or specialization? I am an Electronics & Communication Engineer and I want to pursue a masters degree.  After completing the degree, I would like to work in industry with zero inclination towards a PhD.

I am considering two institutions and two possible specializations (e.g., VLSI vs. Signal Processing). I prefer one institution over the other because of its general reputation, faculty, placements, and lab facilities. I prefer one specialization over the other because of personal preference, prior knowledge in the specialization field, type of possible jobs, and placements in the specialization field.

Suppose I am offered acceptance into the more-preferred specialization at my less-preferred university, and the less-preferred specialization at my more-preferred university.

Which option will better position me for my eventual goal, of completing the masters degree and getting a job in industry? Which criteria is more important in choosing a masters program, the institution or the specialization?

If your interest is in "industry," I'd choose a school based on the institution. Most employers look at that as the "headline," and often "gloss over" the actual content of the degree.

If your interest was in research, I'd go the other way and emphasize "specialization." Because that is what research is basically about.