Should the fullstop go inside or outside the brackets for Harvard in-line citations? I was always taught to put the fullstop inside the brackets, but a couple of Harvard in-line citations I'm seeing put the fullstop outside, e.g.

  (Hyvönen, 2007; Joshi, 2001; Kaplan, 1984).

Is this correct, or should it be:

  (Hyvönen, 2007; Joshi, 2001; Kaplan, 1984.)

Full stops and periods should always go outside parenthetical references. The only time a stop should be "inside" a citation is when you are using superscript references, in which case the numbers normally appear after punctuation marks (at least in US based journals).

The reason is that the punctuation mark is not part of the citation itself. Therefore it should not be buried "inside" the citation.


Will doing Masters degree help me get into another masters degree? My first degree was in Economics and Finance.  Frankly, I didn't do very well, although I did do enough to scrape a 2:1.  There were a number of legitimate reasons for this underperformance, but it's still a fact.

Anyway,that was ten years ago.  I am wondering whether studying a masters in one subject will bolster my chances of being accepted to a prestigious masters programme.  E.g. if I study, say, an Msc in statistics at a lower-Russell Group uni now, would that bolster my chances of subsequently being accepted to a top sociology or poli sci programne at a top school? Or would it not make any difference?

Presumably a higher relevant qualification ---or an equivalent qualification that is more recent and with better performance--- will be more valuable than an older qualification with poorer performance.  Additionally, having a Masters degree in statistics (hopefully with good performance) would be of relevant value to entry into sociology or political science.  As to whether it is necessary, who can say.  Perhaps the best option is to apply to both ---i.e., apply to the top schools for immediate entry, and also apply to the MSc in Statistics as a fall-back.  If you are not accepted for the former, you can still do the latter and then re-apply more strongly later.


Do graduate school admissions committees care about an official bachelors degree, or just the relevant coursework? I am a second year undergraduate in in Math+CS interested in applying to some CS graduate programs (in the US).

Since I began my degree I purposefully put off taking a series of general education requirements with the intent of instead moving quickly through my main CS and Math coursework so that I could begin doing undergraduate research as soon as possible. If I continue this strategy then by the end of my third year I would have finished all the core coursework for both a Math and CS degree, along with a significant number of graduate courses in both departments. I also am actively working on some research projects which might lead to publishing as a first or second author in a relatively good journal, and some good recommendation letters.

Overall I feel like I could have a pretty competitive graduate application by next fall, except that I would not have the necessary general education requirements to be officially granted degrees by my university.

Would a graduate admissions committees be at all concerned that I did not officially complete my degree? Are there any reasons to hold out on applying until my fourth year (other than the possibility of taking more coursework, doing more research, etc.)?

Short answer: You will almost certainly need an official bachelor's degree.

Long answer: Your main obstacle here is not the admissions committee, but the requirements of the university you'd be applying to. Any university in the US surely has it written down officially in multiple places that Masters and PhD students must hold a bachelor's degree (or its foreign equivalent) before enrolling. I believe doing otherwise may even get the university in trouble with their accreditation board.

Even if there are exceptional circumstances under which this rule can be broken, the university would have to really want you. "Pretty competitive" won't cut it. And indeed, why (from their point of view) should they admit you now if they could admit you in a year, after you have more training under your belt?


Which limits to draw for speculations in an scientific publication? Let's take an example from geology.

I describe an area (A) using a topographic map not really well detailed (50m of resolution). In this area, I study variably-sized shapes of geologic structures (e.g., volcanoes). I have also from A, an area B that is way more detailed (1m-resolution) and it has been described by direct observations (on the field).
Now, I want to do analyzes of structures within A, given the knowledge from B, and check if similar structures of B are observable in the entire area A (not covered by B) so that the observation is extrapolated over the low-resolution data. I make a description of this in a little section of a paper.

The description is important to make probabilistic estimates. The aim of the paper I have in mind, deals with estimates of (1) where are the wanted structures, and (2) what shape do they have in the entire A.

Problem:

I cannot publish all of what has been done in B (yet), but just enough details (some are published already) to make the main structures wanted being characterized in A.

I want to publish the estimates done within A, but by using low-resolution data, which means, discriminating less characterizable structures; they can still be distinguished though.

Questions:

By doing (a) extrapolation of descriptions, and (b) general estimates on low-resolution data, should I fear about doing to much "speculations"?

I am more concerned about (a) than (b), because for the latter, the results are debatable and the method used is totally new and worthy for research in general.

The legitimacy of such extrapolations is, as far as I know, among the topics studied by statisticians.  If I'm right about that, it would be good to ask a statistician about your extrapolations, both to check how valid they are and also, if they are valid, to get some citable support for their validity.


Can a successful grant application be considered a publication in academia? I have spent most of my professional life writing proposals for improving the living and studying conditions of the constituents I served (community members, students, curricula and higher education institutions). Well, after 25 years serving as a teacher, professor, dean, and chancellor I find myself looking for a job in academia as an education professor and my publication count is extremely low compared to the number of successful grant proposals that I have in my credentials.

Can I count successful grant proposals, which actually changed the lives of thousands of people, as part of my publication or research record?

No.  Count them as part of your funding record.

Based on what you have said of your record, people will expect you to look for a job in research administration.  E.G. Vice President of Research, or Director of Research Facilities.

If you want to go back to teaching, the usual strategy I hear about in the news is to get an admin/leadership job and then demote yourself after a few years.


Conference; withdraw submission before results notification In conferences, especially in computer science domain; is it ethical, accepted and legal to withdraw a submission before the results notification/announcement?

Anyway, what if it has been just accepted!

In certain cases, e.g., when you found a serious error in your paper, it is very acceptable to withdraw the paper, as soon as you possible. Paper can be withdrawn even if accepted. It is better to withdraw as soon as possible, to allow the conference to accept other papers or to avoid the overhead of reviewing the paper.

Even from your own perspective, you also would definitely prefer to withdraw a paper as soon as possible, and definitely before it appears on the list of accepted papers (or worse, in the proceeding). Otherwise, questions may be raised about the paper that appears in the list but not presented, or worse, you will be publishing an incorrect paper. Both may  affect your reputation.

(I assume you wish to withdraw because some kind of a problem, but maybe your situation is different; in that case, you can edit your question to give more details)


Blown up deadline and I choose a large bite to chew For my master's thesis at a Greek University, I proposed to my supervisor to do end-to-end encryption of multiparty situations. I chose my topic because I had a plan for a post-master project and thought I can do bibliographic research through my master thesis. I presented this long-term project to my supervisor in an earlier semester essay.

On mid-term, my supervisor told me that bibliographic research was not enough. I suggested implementing an existing end-to-end group key agreement in javascript (having on my back of my head as a possible software stack t my project) and I laid down a timeframe.

I did manage to make a program but even though I tried my best to implement it I could not find a solution. Also due to time limitations and lack of any help (including from my supervisor), I found it too hard to approach it in a timely manner because I have to put together the pieces for the final thesis text as well.

But instead, I did manage to have an initial overlay architecture and requirements for my own long-term project by doing the literature review.

So I thought: "I can be honest and tell whatever happened about what I did manage to understand through the literature review, what gaps I found, lay down the initial architecture for my long-term project and present to the thesis examiners at the thesis examination what I did and why I failed and show them that I tried hard to achieve that."

Is this sufficient to get a master's degree, or will my attempt at honesty hurt me?

Just narrow the scope.  It is normal for students (and advisors) to make too broad of a scope.  As they get into a topic, they realize it is too much "real estate" to cover.

Personally, I would just write up what you have and modify the introduction to have a smaller objective.  But perhaps things are more strict in Europe.  But it would be very normal for a US doctorate thesis, even, to morph quite a bit.

The other advantage of writing up what you have is that you (and the advisor) are then looking at a tangible object.  Versus arguing about something in the abstract.  When you both look at it physically, it may look like enough.  Plus you need to write it anyways...so it doesn't hurt you, the time to do it.  [This applies to the work world as well.  Don't underestimate the value of a "half a loaf", especially a tangible one that you are looking at.]


What sort of research experience does a college or university expect a professor to provide an undergraduate? A lot of universities nowadays expect professors to be able to provide research experience to their undergraduates. i.e. in job applications for new hires. What do they actually expect- Publications? Senior projects? Funding opportunities for undergraduates? While I agree research 'experience' is a great thing for undergraduates in principal, realistically the vast majority of undergrads aren't going to be able to make progress on real problems - so how will this reflect on a new professor?

Faculty in such situations might be expected to provide research experiences commensurate with the size and scope of the institution. Undergraduates usually cannot devote the time to a project that a graduate student does, so the outcomes are different. Publications are not generally expected; conference presentations are more common. Most importantly, the undergraduate gets experience working on a complex problem and develops transferable research skills. What the faculty member gets is not the same as what he or she would get from graduate students.

What an undergraduate does as research depends on the facilities, infrastructure, and culture of the institution. At a major research institution, undergraduates should be working on the same types of problems graduate students work on, but perhaps in a more limited scope. When I was a grad student, we had several undergrads in our lab, one of whom was grad student quality and got some publications. The others contributed valuable (if not always publishable) work to our projects.

At a smaller institution that maybe does not have a graduate progran (like where I am now), you give an undergraduate student work commensurate with the type of grants you are expected to write. My institution (and my department especially) does not emphasize pursuit of large external grants, and so the types of projects I can give to my students are more limited. At the undergraduate stage, the process is more important than the results. I regularly send my students to regional and national conferences, and I hope to eventually have them publish something, but I am not given low evaluation marks. However, if you are expected to apply for and get big grants, then your undergrads should be doing work at that level.

All in all, in the chemistry departments I have been a part of (large and small), most faculty have one or more undergraduates doing research and most undergraduates get the opportunity. However, not all undergraduates choose to, nor would their be enough opportunities to support them if they did. The onus is on the undergraduate to choose to do research, not on the professor to guarantee an opportunity is available to all students even if they do not want it.


Statement of Purpose length and bibliography If the desired length of a SOP is 1.5-2 pages, is it okay to have an extra page for bibliography? (so that I cite books/papers in the formal way)
Clarification: I mean 2 pages of text, plus 1 page of bibliography.

In my general experience, a statement of purpose rarely needs to be so detailed as to necessitate inclusion of a bibliography. That said, there is nothing expressly preventing you from including a bibliography. On the other hand, part of me is skeptical of the wisdom of including a full-page bibliography in association with a two-page statement. It may seem very much like overkill.

Unless you're citing each and every one of the works in the bibliography individually, I don't see a logical reason to include that many works. I'd stick to just the essential citations needed to explain what you want to do.


non-US PhD's with extensive course work I think I understand the general difference between US and European PhD.

US

GRE is compulsory to get admitted to any PhD programs.
First we get admitted to the institution.
Need to do extensive course work though if one has masters.
Will decide about the area of PhD only after completing the course
    work.

Europe & Australia

GRE is not compulsory, but might help to improve the chance of
getting an admission.
We will know the research area in the beginning.
Most seems to have no course work or little course work.

If I am right it seems both have its own advantages and disadvantages.

I want to apply for a PhD with extensive course work (in the beginning of PhD) but I must know which area I'll be doing my PhD when i get admitted and the PhD duration must be more than ones without any course work (i expect around 1+4 years of funding).

What are my best options considering the above concerns ?

Note: I am looking for PhD in Theoretical Physics

I have a PhD in theoretical physics obtained in Germany: in particular

  GRE is not compulsory, but might help to improve the chance of getting an admission.

GRE is totally irrelevant.

  We will know the research area in the beginning.

this is mainly true all across Europe but however there are some departments whose research projects are to be decided on your way throughout graduation (it happens in Italy, for example). I had a very strict and detailed project to fully adhere to, but it might not always be the case (with corresponding advantages and disadvantages). Also notice that sometimes, for whichever reason, PhD students change projects along the way (mostly because they do not like it or because it is a dead end line of research).

  Most seems to have no course work or little course work.

Wrong. I had heavy teaching duties (three-four semesters), mandatory classes to attend and corresponding exams to take (it happens in other European countries too). Besides that, compulsory seminars and conferences to take part to.

As a general rule always determine with the department you are applying to what the local rules are: it is very department dependent and even in the same department different scholarships may get treated differently and have different loads. I would personally go for a research project I like and then manage the extra curricular activities accordingly: after all, the chances to get a position afterwards will only depend on your final PhD thesis (and related papers); nobody ever looks at the exams marks and classes you have taken.


Is it inappropriate to share journal article reviews? I want to put the LaTeX source files for a paper that I just published up on GitHub (technically they are already there, but private). Is it inappropriate to include the (anonymous) reviews and my responses to these?

Yes. A review is normally a job performed by somebody at the request of a journal editor for your benefit. Hence the review is not yours per se to do as you please although you have received it to improve your manuscript. The review is basically a communication between two persons, albeit through an intermediary. Thus posting somebody's comments without asking for permission is similar to publishing somebody's private letters online without asking. It is not strictly illegal as I can see it but it is inappropriate.

If reviews are done in an open system, they are public and then the problem is a non-issue. Such reviews, if one wants to couple them to a paper or manuscript online, can, and probably should, be linked anyway.

As a side point, some journals only allow you to post pre-review versions of your manuscripts online. Revised manuscripts then involve the journal's "services" and are apparently seen as covered by the publisher's copyright rules, at least until they are rejected. This is not something I find appealing, it is just the case and one needs to take a close look to the agreement entered when submitting a manuscript.


What does a PhD Committee do? I have been reading that many students have a PhD committee. I assume this is a group of experts supervising the student.

In my case, and I think this is quite common, I had two people. One was the principal supervisor and the other was the associate supervisor.

Almost all my contacts were with the principal supervisor. The associate supervisor was a back-up resource if and when needed.

This was a simple one-on-one contact between me and my principal supervisor.

I am just wondering how does a PhD committee work?

At least in the US, a Ph.D committee will have 4-5 members, and there are rules about the composition of the committee (there might need to be at least one person from an external institution, and at least one person from a different department, or variations thereof).

The committee's formal job is to assess the Ph.D student's dissertation proposal, determine that the work being proposed is sufficient for a dissertation, and then evaluate the final dissertation defense and decide whether to grant the student a Ph.D or not.

Informally, a Ph.D committee provides a set of resources/expertise for the student to tap into for advice, research directions and even contacts for future work (yes, there's life after a Ph.D :)). There's prior discussion on how to choose your committee.


Is it ethical to date a graduate student of the same university where you are a faculty member? I am a 32 year old Assistant Professor. I met a girl at a conference. I liked her, but I realized she is a graduate student at the same university where I am faculty member. She is from the same school, but from a different department. Is it ethical for me to date her?

I hope it's ethical!  (My husband was a graduate student at the university I'm a professor at, in a different department in the same school, when we started dating.)

The core ethical issue in faculty/student relationships is the power dynamic: it creates an ethical problem if you have power over her career, either in a way that could favor her (leading to concerns about favoritism) or disfavor her (leading to concerns about coercion).

In separate departments, that's not likely to be an issue: most assistant professors at most universities don't have power over graduate students in other departments.  There are still situations where issues could arise - say, if you ended up on the panel choosing which grad student from the school would win a prize, and she were a candidate; or if you were asked to be the outside member of her thesis committee (at a school which picks outside members to be professors from other departments).

So, unless your school has a specific policy on the subject, it's probably ethical, as long as you make sure to avoid being in a position that creates a specific conflict.


Is it legal and ethical to post my notes of a conference I am attending on my website? I'm due to attend a conference soon, and plan to take notes on the talks I attend. My note-taking software of choice (org-mode) can easily export to HTML. Is it legal to post my notes on my website? Is it ethical?

Firstly, you will need to ensure that content from the conference is allowed to be shared - I have attended conferences were we were explicitly told not to share the content as much of it was pre-publication.

Secondly, and very importantly, if it is allowed and you do take notes, you should provide proper attribution - referencing the author/speaker and the conference proceedings.

If you are not sure of the legalities of reproducing your notes - ask and receive explicit advice.


Navigating the Thorny Issue of Receiving Job Offers While in a PhD Program Question
I'm wondering about people's experiences with navigating job offers while pursuing a Ph.D. How did you make the decision to stay or leave? If you left, how did you break the news? Were you satisfied with the decision you made?
Context
I'm currently in an internship, which is required as part of my program. The internship is outside of academia. I've been doing great work there, and there's already been some insinuation from management at the internship that they'd like to keep me around. Honestly, I really like the work I am doing at the internship.
In regards to the work:

I am working on projects where I can showcase my strengths.
I am working at a level where I can see lots of potential for professional growth, and I am in the midst of experiencing that growth.
The work I am doing is boosting the marketability of my resume by orders of magnitude above and beyond what I have, could or would get from my program.
I've been able to take on a leadership role with high level projects and contribute in valuable ways.
I think the work I am doing is meaningful and has the potential to make a difference in the world. It also has the potential to end up as a brief that sits on someone's desk, but potential exists nonetheless.

In regards to the job/employer:

I'm surrounded by very smart people. I'm quite sure that management thinks of me as an A-Team caliber employee, but I know that there is a lot to learn from the people I am surrounded by at the internship. Honestly, I have not felt this way in my program.
There is a great work life balance. Full time salaried employees can work no more than 39.5 hours a week. Anything above that is considered overtime, and employees are compensated appropriately.
The benefits for full-time employees are better than what many people in my field will likely have when they are employed.
Compensation is slightly above average, but stable with guaranteed incremental raises.
There's modest potential for career advancement. If I did go to work for them, how much I could advance would likely be due to the level they hired me at. Honestly, at the higher levels (i.e., the level of my current boss), there's really not a huge difference in pay as you move to other levels in the company.
MA/MS with experience are not compensated less than those with a PhD.

Bottom line: It is a place I could see myself putting in a decade for sure. I'd leave the job after that decade in a good position to work in a variety of other contexts.
Tension
I really don't want to piss anyone off too bad if I get an offer at this job and leave. It's never been my intention to stay in academia or even in the research firm circuit, which is still kind of academia. I've always been very clear and direct with my advisor about that point. My advisor has been fine with that, although very pointed in telling me that she/he has never worked outside of academia and all he/she really knows how to do is prepare me to be an academic... so if I want something additional from my experience in grad school I need to figure it out myself. My advisor has largely been supportive of allowing me to find my own path in graduate school, and I've been successful at finding that path and not too much wandering along the way. So, really it's a question of whether or not I owe it to my advisor to stay and forgo being paid an actual salary that I can live on, passing on a potentially great job opportunity, etc. A part of me says yes, but I'm wondering if the more mature answer is no. Everything I wanted in a job appears to be right in front of me. Would you take it?

As an advisor, I want students to be up front about what their long term goals are. If a student is not interested in an academic career, I'll take that into account when I decide to work with them. Part of that calculus is the concern that the student might jump ship part way through.

It sounds like you've been up front and honest about your intentions with your advisor at every step of the way. Your advisor will probably be disappointed, but they will not likely be surprised. I don't think you owe it to them to stay and that seems like a bad reason to stay doing something other than what you want to do with your life. Your own time is simply too valuable and your advisor should respect that.


Do active researchers in mathematics read a paper in detail? Context:
As a researcher you need to read many research papers by others. In the case of mathematics, a paper consists of:

Results (theorems, lemma, propositions)
Proofs that consist of the technique or method by which the researcher obtaining their result.

Clearly, results can be used without learning the proof. However, understanding a proof may help you develop future results (but not necessarily always).

Ideally, it is best to learn the proof and techniques used in detail in order to fully understand the reality.

Question:

Do researchers (graduate students, professors, research fellows) in mathematics have a detailed understanding of the proofs/techniques outlined in contemporary journal papers? What is the convention in math?

Please note that my issue is not whether the proof is correct or not, I want to know what most academics do in the most of the cases when a result is published in a peer-reviewed journal paper. Do they read and understand the proof or they just skip the proof and remember the result? (provided that the proof technique is not out of the box)?

Example: I was reading Simon Singh's book on Fermat's Last Theorem, he wrote that only half dozen people understood the proof of Andrew Wiles. (The number maybe slightly erratic since I read the book long ago.) But the modularity conjecture was proved by him at the same time, I guess this is quite important. This made me think how much actually people understand contemporary work? How much it is actually important? Mathematics is a very very technical subject now a days.

The answer, of course, is that it varies with each reader and with the specific needs of each reader. For many people, a skim is sufficient for most papers. The question is "does this seem reasonable" and if so, there may be little need to go into the details.

This is especially true about proofs. If an overview of the proof suggests that the techniques are standard for the field, and the results don't seem to clash with what the reader knows, then it is unlikely that the reader will spend the time on every detail.

The exceptions, of course, are many. Students want to learn new proof techniques that they are relatively unfamiliar with. Surprising results require a close look. Long standing problems, when finally proven, also require a close look.

And, in many cases, the way something is proven is more important than the result itself. If a skim of a proof suggests that there is something new here, then experienced mathematicians will want to examine it in detail as well as look for gaps and errors.

But if you are a student, or otherwise feel the need for an answer to this question, then I'd suggest that you err on the side of completeness. Keep your skeptic hat on until you are satisfied.


Should I reach out to a potential PhD supervisor about applying when they have a relationship with my current PhD supervisor? I've had a really bad relationship with my supervisor since I started. I've even had to take time off to get a mental reprieve from everything that was happening. At this point, I really want to go somewhere else. This is not an American university, and I'm in the social sciences. In order to apply for admissions, you have to have the support of your prospective supervisor. I know the person that I would like to have as my supervisor at the other university and they sponsored me as a visiting student at their uni for a semester. However, this person has a strong relationship with my current supervisor. My concern would be that the prospective supervisor wouldn't want to jeopardize their relationship with their colleague by taking me on and that reaching out to them will jeopardize my ability to get a recommendation from them after I graduate. I'm also concerned that this would further strain my already intolerable relationship with my current supervisor, as I'm guessing that the prospective supervisor would reach out to the current one. For background, my research is progressing, and I don't have research or academic-related problems. It's really that my supervisor and my department are unsupportive to downright abusive.

Your concern is correct: If your prospective supervisor supported your application and adopted you as a PhD student, that might put a significant strain on their relationship to your current supervisor. It seems unlikely that your prospective supervisor would want to risk that. You can talk to them about your idea, but be prepared for a negative response.

Your best bet would be to look for another supervisor who doesn't have any noteworthy relationship to your current one.


Social norms about hiring freelance assistants Is it considered ethical or appropriate for a researcher to hire a freelance contractor to perform or assist in some secondary tasks related to the preparation of a research papers? To make some concrete examples, what about (1) drawing illustrations, (2) transcribing manuscript notes into Latex, (3) preparing numerical simulations, (4) proofreading, and so on?

The field is mathematics. And the assistant would not be a professional researcher, just someone with some scientific background and relevant skills in Latex, Matlab, or whatever appropriate tools.

I see no problem with any of that provided that the funding is appropriate. There may be provision in grants for such aid, for example. Research and publication should be about ideas extending knowledge, not about the manual preparation of documents.

And RAs often do some of that.


How to transfer non graded subjects to gpa? Hi I am sending an application and the university needs all of my grades in GPA format.  I am using a GPA calculator to convert my grades, however there is a subject which was not graded it is only accredited. I talked to the university and they say they need all actual grades. They have been slow to answer me, how can I put the grade? as an A?

While this was ultimately cleared up in the comments, for future readers:

In the US, the term for a class which counts as credit but has no grade attached is "Pass-Fail". You either get credit towards the degree, or you don't, but there is no grade attached. In general (I'm aware of no exceptions to this in the US, at least), pass-fail courses do not count for purposes of GPA, so there's no way to convert a credit-only class to GPA - it's just a class you received credit for.

One situation which is more complicated is if you have a class that provides something like a "narrative grade", which I'm told exists but have no personal experience with, and it doesn't have a direct correlate to GPA systems in the US. If you encounter that you'll simply need to speak with the institution to which you are applying and they'll have to make the determination as to how to handle such coursework.


How to make a connection with academics on Linkedin that they would accept? I read that some academics would avoid accepting students (undergraduate or graduate) or other researchers requests on Linkedin. So what are the cases that could be acceptable for academics to add people on Linkedin and avoid any embarrassments?

After completing their course?
After working on a joint research?
After attending a workshop, seminar, talk?
After meeting them at a conference?
After sending them an email about mutual work, papers, etc.?

I consider LinkedIn to be pretty low-stakes interaction, so I merely want to avoid being linked to spammers and frauds.  My own policy, then, is that I will accept LinkedIn invitations from anybody who I actually know who they are, either by a) having had a non-trivial interaction with them (including by phone or electronically) or b) indirect interactions such as reading their papers.

Other people may have more stringent policies, but in my opinion, it's reasonable to request a connection with anybody you have a relationship with: the worst that will happen is that they will ignore it.


Advisor's Negativity How do you deal with the constant flow negativity from an advisor? Examples:

How worthless I am, how I am the worst student he ever had. Absolutely good for nothing.
Whatever I am doing is meaningless, trivial, or pointless.
I never did/can-do anything correct.
I just don't have the potential, and there is just no scope for growth. Maybe in some other universe, I might have excelled, but not in this one.
The fact that I chose the wrong career; instead, I should do something more simple and enjoy life for a change.
I should just quit my program.
He won't embarrass himself by writing a letter for me in the future.

What do you do when you start to believe in all of his statements, and they start to become self-fulfilling prophecies. Especially how worthless I am...

I can't judge whether the advisor is making a correct evaluation and being a jerk about it, or just being a jerk.

But, at a minimum, you need a different advisor. It should be someone who has some faith in you and encourages your best work. Staying where you are, under this advisor, is unlikely to result in success.

But you have to evaluate your own position and whether any of the statements have any validity. If they have some, then what can you do to improve the situation? If they have some validity, then what is the cause of it? Lack of preparation? Poor work process? Undiagnosed illness? There are lots of possibilities.

In the worst case, you may need to abandon your program, at least for a while, but no one here has the perspective to recommend that.

And, not that it helps, perhaps your advisor just doesn't belong in any advising situation. You probably have little chance of fixing that problem.


When should someone be a coauthor instead of being in the acknowledgements? We had a master's student working on our project.  He set up a database for us, and wrote some of the initial code with me in a pair programming session.  At one point, he had more commits to the repository than any of the other students working on the project.  Then he went to do an internship for the summer, and after that my advisor did not want to keep him on the project for some reason, even though I thought he was friendly and easy to work with.

My advisor chose not to list him as a coauthor, and put him in the acknowledgements section instead.  However, there was another guy (a professor) who didn't write any code at all, and wasn't there throughout most of the project, but he wrote the introduction and related work sections for us, and he got listed as a coauthor, even though he probably did a day's worth of work on the project (maybe two).  In fact, my advisor gave him the coveted last author position, even though my advisor came up with the idea and directed the whole project.

What determines who gets put as a coauthor, and who gets put in the acknowledgement sections?

Usually, the key indicator for co-authorship is the contribution of creative content. Did the student have own ideas that improved the paper? Was the program/database he wrote just a technical thing, or did it contribute scientifically? These are some questions that can help make/understand the decision.

There is a fine line to walk sometimes. Especially between different subject areas, there can be discrepancies who gets to be co-author. Sometimes everybody is counted, sometimes only the first author and his advisor(s) without any students.


Difference in business school pay across developed countries Why is the pay for tenure-track faculty at business schools in developed countries other than the US substantially lower than (and often only a fraction of) their US counterpart (with the exceptions of Hong Kong and Singapore, and then perhaps a handful of other schools in the rest of the world)?
Shouldn't the proportion of people who want to pursue business degrees and are able to pay business school tuition largely comparable across developed countries? Then should non-US business schools also be able to make money from tuition to hire top business researchers/professors and pay them as well as US business schools? What makes the economics of running a business school and paying faculty different in other developed countries?

Many universities are not funded by tuition by students. Funding from the government is not rare.
Did you remember to take into account such issues as whether the society offers reasonable healthcare for everyone, kindergarten and school for children, reasonable holidays, unemployment benefits, rights for employees, etc.? Adjusting for these might not always be in favour of USA. This also makes it very difficult to compare wages across countries.
That said, USA is a very rich country with some very rich universities that can afford to pay well.


Should I use bold fonts to highlight particular words in SOP? Is it odd to use bold fonts to highlight particular important words in your SOP, such as the name of Professors I am interested to work with, or the name of a Lab? I have seen someone do this to highlight the Professor he is keen on working with. I am curious if this is an acceptable practice.

Example:

At Rice University, the works of Dr. Gerard Fuller are well suited to my research experience and goals.

You are overthinking this. It's not going to make a difference whether or not you boldface names or other parts. Focus on the content of your statement, instead of spending your mental energy on issues such as boldfacing some text.


Is it fine to exclude an email salutation for short messages? I've had a habit of always starting with "Dear Prof. X" but have noticed professors sometimes drop the header past the first reply. For shorter emails, is it polite to omit these formalities from my end? Like "Dear Prof. X, Thanks for the information, I'll make sure to do that. Best, Me" seems a bit cumbersome.

An important thing to note here is that often these dropped headers don't happen because the email is merely short, but usually because the email chain starts to approximate a conversation, i.e. a quick succession of short replies. So the formalities shift from those of writing letters to those of talking in person. So maybe take some cues from there.
In particular, even if it is short, not starting the first message with some greeting would be a bit impolite. The same is true if some time has passed between messages. (You'd greet somebody if you meet them again, even if you just met them yesterday and didn't talk to anyone in between) But a quick ABAB-exchange within a few minutes doesn't really warrant repeated greetings.
And of course, as mentioned in the other answer, when in doubt, just err on the formal side.


What to do with an overtly exasperating colleague in computer science? I am working on my undergraduate research project in an HPCC. Whoever does programming knows this is a "teach-yourself" skill. Everytime a problem arises, you search the wealth of tutorials and guides on the Internet, you ask in an specialized forum and the last resource is to consult a colleague (everybody is very occupied with their own business).

A few weeks ago, a new MSc candidate entered our lab and was assigned a seat next to me. She seems unable to go beyond very basic commands like executing a for loop in a Bash script. We helped during the first weeks, but she is making no progress. I myself handed her down a couple of tutorials and scripts. What exasperates us is that the more frustrated she gets the more she starts mumbling expecting that someone will approach and solve the problem for her, not to mention that she interrupts every five minutes asking the same question we have answered several times. We spoke about it in the most kindly possible way, now she says we are bullying her!

She is completely unprepared and we are starting to think that she lied to get accepted by our supervisor. She is destroying the amicable relations in our lab and affecting performance of almost everybody. I decided to program the most I can in my laptop instead of using the HPCC, but a process that gets done in five minutes at home is solved in seconds in the lab.

We don't want to mess up her reputation with our supervisor, but we got to find solutions. Does anyone had a similar situation with a colleague? How would you solve it in the most diplomatic way?

UPDATE: Group meeting this morning. Our supervisor found out she has done nothing. She blame us. Our supervisor said it is not our business to solve her problems, she might have spoken them out a couple of weeks ago. She (our supervisor) asked her to separate an appointment to talk privately. Let's see what happens...

I will try to present yet another approach than the ones in the answers above. I don't consider it a definite solution, rather a way to go that may work for someone and may not for someone else. (And also, I would much more prefer to speak to someone higher-up, if you can; that's what the other answers discuss.)

The thing is: Be honest, but without judging the other person's qualities at all. I had been in such a situation before: person coming to me with simple problems that fall in the "googlable" or "in every book" or "in every course" or "in every tutorial" category, again and again.

The honest answer was, for me at least: Well, we have discussed a similar thing before. I'm sorry but I have got other things to do as well. I'm willing to help you with the burdens, but please, try to [point out some good resources here] before approaching me, and if you approach me, please make it specific enough so that we don't lose too much time solving the problems.

It is true, honest but not rude. After all, it is your time, your studies and you yourself who'll go on the market to sell your results, and you need to be productive. If this is a serious annoyance that makes your productivity drop significantly, they need to know it.


Can I start such a contact with one researcher that does not know me in one online conference? I have a major in Mathematics and a masters in Physics and am currently starting my PhD in Physics. Since I've started my masters I am very interested in one particular research field. The main developments in this field have been carried out by a group lead by a very respected researcher. Moreover the book he wrote about the subject together with the papers of his group are what made me be interested in the field.
For my PhD I wanted to work with this field. My supervisor works in related stuff and he spent one year in the US doing his own research, but in a group that was actively discussing the subject I'm interested in, so that he got interested as well. In that case he accepted to supervise me. We are right now deciding on what to take as a concrete objective.
In that sense I had one particular idea that my supervisor really enjoyed and said it could really be the way to go. We are discussing now the particular details.
Now, I'm participating on one online conference and that physicist who leads the group which is making the most significant contributions to the field is participating. Moreover people say that he is approachable and there is one particular moment every day in the conference on which people are encouraged to talk to one another.
In that setting, I have been considering starting an interaction with that professor and ask him his view on the general idea of my proposal. In fact, in one of his papers there is one very short footnote briefly saying that one could perhaps do something related to what I have in mind, but his group followed a distinct direction.
Now while I think that trying to talk to him could be beneficial I fear whether or not I can do it and how to approach it in this online environment.
For starters he doesn't know me and we don't have any common acquaintances. Isn't it a bit of too much asking him privately in one online conference an opinion about an idea I had for my PhD project?
In that sense my question here is: can I try starting such an interaction? And if so how is the correct way to approach it given that he doesn't know me?

Conferences, including online ones, are for liaising with people and talking to them. There is nothing wrong with what you suggest. There is always the chance the professor might ignore you, not be interested or not know, but that can happen anyway.
I do not know what functionalities the conference offers, but a brief text or email asking if the professor could spare the time for a chat on X and Y seems like a good way to start. Try not to ask during the questions after a paper presentation or, generally, the proceedings of the conference, but a workshop might be an alternative. Personally, I would just text or email him.


Where to apply for MSc depending on GPA? I am an engineering undergrad in my third year. The question that I am asking might sound like a duplicate but I seek some rough statistics. What classification might be roughly correct for institutions offering MSc degree for their average acceptation GPAs?

To visualize, I do not expect a 2.8/4 average student to be accepted to MIT except extreme cases. Would it be "roughly" correct to make a tabulation as follows:

top-20:   3.7/4

top-50:   3.5/4

top-100:   3.3/4

top-200:  3.0/4

I am aware of that it lacks real statistical information and there are many external factors shaping this kind of generalization, however, it would be helpful for making "realistic" degree applications. Any improvement would be appreciated.

Even at the Masters level, graduate admissions are just not that simple and one-dimensional.  GPA is not directly comparable between schools, since different schools have different qualities and different ways of calculating GPA (often even within a single country: GPA is computed many different ways in the US).  Expect your entire record to be scrutinized, along with whatever recommendation letters, essays, etc. that you are also asked to provide.

In short: nobody can tell you where to apply unless they know both you and the programs that you are applying to very well.


Should I ask for confirmation of my admission from University academic department I have applied to two Canadian universities for MS program. One of them has accepted my application and has given me admission. While for the other one, status is "Under department review". I am waiting for second university response. But the problem is that I have to give my confirmation with in two weeks time. In this case, can I ask them to accelerate the decision process for me and can give me a definite answer? Is this polite to do it? Do I need to mention the University name in mail?

Yes, in this case it is appropriate to contact the department/program head or admissions administrator and inform them that you have another acceptance. Rather than ask for them to "hurry up," it would be more polite to say, "I have received another offer of acceptance that requires my response within two weeks. Will your department be able to make its admission decisions within that time line?"


Excluding a coauthor based on data misuse and misrepresentation? My graduate student utilized some particles produced by a collaborator's lab in some animal imaging experiments, which were designed and analyzed by my student and me.  The protocol for synthesizing the particles has already been published by my collaborator, and a technician in the collaborator's lab made the particles according to the protocol.  I shared some of the resulting in vivo images from this study with my collaborator, but unfortunately, I subsequently discovered that the collaborator used some of these images in a fraudulent manner (grossly misrepresenting them as preliminary data in some grant applications).  The collaborator's institution conducted a formal investigation of this and other incidents and found scientific misconduct had occurred.  I would like to publish my graduate student's image data, in part to make sure that a legitimate representation of the data is in the literature, but mostly because the work was publicly-funded and represents the hard work of many good people.  If the misconduct hadn't occurred, I probably would have considered including the collaborator as a co-author on the publication, by getting them more involved in the manuscript, even though the particle prep was not novel. But now there are many reasons why I do not wish to publish something with this collaborator!  Is documented scientific misconduct involving the data from this study a valid reason for not including this collaborator as a coauthor of a paper describing this study?  Can I simply acknowledge the technician who provided the particles and reference the prior publication of the protocol?

If the misconduct in question tainted the data itself (and not just subsequent uses of that data), then the paper itself is fundamentally tainted and should be reworked with non-tainted data. If the data isn't tainted and it is a result of this person's work, then they deserve credit. Proper credit has to do with your intellectual honesty, and not the merits of the person receiving the credit. Having said this, I don't think that this necessitates including them as a coauthor -- but I don't see how you could avoid at least acknowledging them by name.


Conclusions section in a letter: To give a peek into new findings (not reported in letter) or not Perhaps because this is my first letter, that I am writing independently, I don’t have a good grasp of the amount of significant results that need to be in the letter, to be published in the journal.

Because this is a letter, I cant just go all in to describe every possible result we have obtained, so I only showed a small portion of the results.
While, in a certain light the results shown in the result are small, extrapolating it to a larger problem, the results are way more significant.
For example, in this letter, I present the first model for a certain device. I experimentally validate the model and show the variation of a certain parameter on the performance of the device. A 10% variation in the parameter has a 10% impact on the performance of the device. However, the 10% is a hard-limit, and you cant really optimize that parameter beyond ~10%. However, there are a multitude of other parameters which can be similarly optimized, and I have obtained theoretical results showing >50% and 1000% theoretical improvement in the performance of the device based on 2 performance metrics.

However, going into details of these individual parameters and their optimizations is almost impossible in this short letter.

I know that conclusions are not supposed to have any results, but are supposed to discuss the implications of the results. Can I consider the broader results (50% and 1000% improvement in theoretical performance), as implications of the current study? Can I report this performance improvement in the conclusions section (without giving too much details of the study), as a study we have done and mention that we are going to report it in future publications?

It sounds like the depth of your findings are at odds with the letter format. If you want to talk about the full optimization across all parameters in detail I would consider an alternate format for publication.

That being said, one of the prominent journals in my field (JASA, whose full author guidelines can be found here) provides specific guidance for letters to the editor that supports your mentioning additional results that will be expanded on in future publications:

  The work should have a modicum of completeness, to the extent that the letter “tells a story” that is at least plausible to the reader, and it should have some nontrivial support for what is being related. Not all the loose strings need be tied together. Often there is an implicit promise that the publication of the letter will be followed up by a regular research article that fills in
  the gaps and that does all the things that a regular research article should do.

Note that this is just one journal in one field, and the expectations of the journal you are submitting to may differ.  I would recommend looking at your target journal's guidelines before proceeding one way or the other.


Is being a good teacher a bad thing at a research intensive university? In Do student reviews of teachers matter?, there are a couple of comments which suggest that being labeled a "good teacher" is a bad thing at a research intensive university. I have heard this in the past, but have always thought it was based on the fact that you wanted to be known for your research as opposed to your teaching. In other words that you want to be known as a "good researcher" as opposed to a good teacher. The way the comments are used in that question it sounds like you should in fact strive to be known as a "bad teacher".

Is it bad to be known as a good teacher? Is it good to be known as a bad teacher?

No.

I work at a university that focuses almost exclusively on research (we have only graduate students, most of whom are Ph.D. students, and the number of postdocs, research staff, etc. is approximately equal to the number of students).  A few faculty members are well known as excellent teachers, and a few are commonly known to be poor teachers.  In general, I don't think the distinction has very much influence on the respect accorded to each within the university (and even less in the larger academic community).  But I think the good teachers are better liked, both by their peers and the administration.  I certainly appreciate it when I find that students are well prepared thanks to having taken a course with a "good" teacher.  And bad teachers are occasionally so bad that they cause administrative problems, which makes everyone unhappy.

Part of each faculty member's annual review is an evaluation of his/her teaching (by the dean).  A positive review is definitely a good thing.


Why did SoftwareX’ impact factor drop from 4.5 SJR to 0.4 last year? I planned to submit one of my long-developed software pieces to the prestigious journal SoftwareX. I was preparing for this for a while and making my code ready, and was just about to submit and realized its huge drop of impact factor on SJR.
It steadily built its position as a respected and leading journal, growing its impact factor close to 10 and topping the lists at SJR and Google Scholar for publishing software. And now it dropped a lot, to the level of paid open-access journals of disputable reputation.
Is there a systematic reason why this happened? Too many papers, too many poor papers, bad leadership, bad management, poor peer-review?

I think this is a good example of putting too much faith in an average measure like Impact Factor or SJR when you talk about the 'reputation' of a journal.
In 2015, in its first year, SoftwareX published "Gromacs: High performance molecular simulations through multi-level parallelism from laptops to supercomputers", which was extremely highly cited - Scopus has almost 3,800 citations, more than 40 times more than the next most-cited paper in the journal. The journal is quite small, so in 2017 SoftwareX would have had a “citations per paper” of about 8 from that one paper alone.
SJR uses a three-year window, so this paper stopped contributing to their average in 2019, which is where you see the precipitous drop in rank, as it's now reflecting the 'normal' citation rate for other papers in the journal without this huge outlier.
The question you have to answer for yourself when deciding where to submit is, should you care? You said SoftwareX had built a reputation as a respected and leading journal, so if that was actually true in your field, then nothing seems to have changed apart from this one big outlier dropping out of the citation average. On the other hand, if 'reputation' was just used as shorthand for Impact/SJR, then this has indeed substantially fallen, and you'll need to decide how much that matters to you when you decide where to submit.


Should references to the appendix be removed from a camera ready paper? It is not uncommon for conferences in say theoretical computer science to have a strict page limit for the camera ready version (like 12 pages). In addition, the original submitted papers might often contain perhaps even a long appendix.

The submitted paper might postpone proofs to the appendix, or say something like "due to lack of space, you can find this and that in the appendix". However, for the proceedings, it is my understanding that the appendix is completely omitted. I think I have often seen proceedings papers which make "forward references" to the appendix, but strictly speaking this makes little sense because there is no appendix.

So should one remove all references to the appendix in the camera ready version? Or do people typically not care, because it is understood that there is an arXiv version, or because a full version will appear later, or something else?

As a general rule, papers should be self-contained. A reference to an appendix would violate this rule if the paper is distributed without the appendix.

Instead, a best practice is to have a reference to an extended version of the paper that includes the appendix:

  The proof of this result is provided in [1].

  A. Nonymous: How to write a paper (extended version). 2018. Available online at http://arxiv.org/some/url

The extended version would then have the same sentence, but with a reference to the appendix:

  The proof of this result is provided in the appendix.


How will an application for graduate admissions be affected if psychological issues prevent student from getting strong recommendations? What if a student is unable to or has difficulty getting strong recommendation letters (for graduate admissions in mathematics) due to psychological factors, such as autism?

Will graduate schools even consider these problems?

A graduate school probably will not make any exceptions for psychological issues: by the time that you are at the level of graduate school, people are generally evaluating you as a "whole package."  If a person has cognitive or psychological issues (and many successful people do), what will likely matter is whether those impair them to the degree that they will have trouble succeeding.

For example, consider a person on the autism spectrum: this covers a huge range of different issues and many different levels of functionality and types of coping strategy.  One person might have a strong focus and coping strategies that cause others to feel just that they are "socially awkward" and get strong recommendations regardless. Another with less adaptive coping strategies might instead find themselves perceived as argumentative and hard to work with and have a hard time getting good recommendations.

In the end it boils down to this: a person has to have people willing to advocate for them.  If they can't get advocates, then it doesn't matter whether it's because of bad grades, bad attitude, mental illness, or anything else (unless you are dealing with a clear case of discrimination against a specially protected category, e.g., in the U.S., religion, race, or gender).


How to ensure that putting a product's photo in a paper does not violate copyright? I have put into my paper a photo (available here) that I have collected from the company's website available for free. There is no copyright note, except the one at the bottom of the website and product is available for sale (probably patented). I have contacted the company seeking permission, but they did not reply after a week and I cannot wait anymore.

The paper will be published in an IEEE magazine.

So here are my questions:

How to make sure an online photo carries copyright?
Is citing to their website sufficient to avoid copyright violation?
If received copyright permission, how to use the permission in the paper? (I received permission from another company for another photo). Write it on the image or write "courtesy of ..." (I have seen this phrase quite a lot).

UPDATE 1: Thanks all of you, referring to your answers, I decided to stay in the safe side by removing the photo from the paper. I did not criticize anything and did not admire it either (but it could be a free publicity for them which is ignored despite second email to the company). I just discussed its functionality as an encouraging innovation for particular domain.

However, almost NO ONE yet commented on 3rd question. Can any one help in this regard?

Photography and other creations carry copyright by default

The answer to your part 1 - the exclusive copyright of a photo belongs to someone from the point of its creation, even if no explicit copyright note is attached.

If you had made the photo of that product, then it would be an entirely different question, but redistributing a photo someone else made is legally almost exactly as redistributing a Hollywood movie.

Available for free doesn't imply a permission to redistribute

If something is freely distributed by it's owner, it doesn't come with an implied permission for you to do the same thing. Unless it comes with a licence that explicitly allows you to do so (e.g. the various Creative Commons licences), you don't have a permission to copy that image further. Citing the source doesn't change that.

Lack of response means lack of permission

If you don't have an explicit permission, then you don't have it regardless of reasons - if an author chooses not to communicate with you, then tough luck. It also may be that the company doesn't have free hands in licencing the image - it's quite possible that the copyright is owned by some photographer, and the company has a licence to use it in their website but not in print.

The journal may want clarifications

The journal submission documents will likely include either a statement that all images are your own, or that you have licenced them appropriately. They may leave the licences as your responsibility or require you to send them the documentation.


How to formally address two individuals with different titles for PhD cover letter I am in the process of writing a cover letter for a PhD application. The two supervisors of the project are part of my faculty (where I am doing a postgraduate degree), and I have previously been in touch with them through an interview and because one of them taught me some classes last year. I would surely want to address the letter to their names, I am whoever doubting how to officially address them since the first supervisor has a title of professor and the second supervisor has a title of doctor. Maybe having this kind of issue seems exaggerated to some, but I do not know whether to make a distinction in their titles in my letter. I am studying in the UK now, but I previously studied in the Netherlands and getting the right title was always a big issue. To those who might know within the context, can I simply address them both as Dr. to avoid the whole feeling of pointing out their different levels in the letter?

In all likelihood, nobody will pay much attention to this. But if anyone is going to take offence, I think it is much more likely they will be upset if you haven't given them the correct title than because you're "drawing attention to their different levels". So I would address my letter "Dear Prof. X and Dr Y".


Can a university revoke one's degree for his minor misconduct? I don't mean misconduct that will make him get expelled or miss his academic requirement. He will have received sanction like making an apology or suspension for a month if the university finds it out earlier. But the student now has graduated and will not be back. Can the university still do something to him?

This depends entirely on what the misconduct was and the university in question. One extreme case is Jan Hendrik Schon where he published many articles using fabricated data. The University of Konstanz revoked his degree after the subsequent investigation of academic dishonorable misconduct. For something like this, the institution that had initially conferred the degree may revoke the degree despite the individual having already graduated.

If the individual has graduated, but has not yet been issued the degree, and depending on the severity of the misconduct, the university may also withhold the degree until further notice.

Overall, it really depends on the university's judgment on how severe the misconduct was. There are no universal rules regarding how the university ought to punish a student based on the misconduct (e.g., some universities are much more strict about plagiarism or cheating than others).


How to protect scientific open research from being patented? For instance, say a published paper demonstrated new possible invention or technology by analysing the data and publishing it publicly.

Is there any way to protect such research or its data which can lead to unauthorised private patents worldwide?

If not, is prove of being first into specific area of research/technology (such as publication date) enough to protect from and avoid such situation?

Legally speaking, any disclosure of an invention prevents it from being patented: it counts as prior art. Disclosure includes not only publication but also public demonstrations, as well as sales (except possibly when subject to a non-disclosure agreement). This is part of the novelty requirement of patentability.

There is an exception: in some countries, the inventor has a grace period after disclosure during which they can still file a patent. This only applies to the inventor, a third party isn't allowed to file a patent for something they didn't invent, or for something that somebody else has already published. The longest grace period around the world is 1 year, in the US. Some jurisdictions such as the EU have no grace period.

Thus if you publish your research, this protects from anyone subsequently filing a patent on it. Even if they had invented it previously, your publication would invalidate a future application. After publication, the only remaining risk is that you, or a fellow inventor who worked with you, take advantage of the grace period to file a patent in countries where this is possible. I don't know of a way for you to legally guarantee to others that you won't file a patent.

Note that you need to publish (or at least publicize — a private disclosure is sufficient to invalidate a patent unless it falls under the scope of a confidentiality agreement). If you invent something and don't publicize it, that allows someone else (presumably working independently, since you didn't tell them anything) to file a patent on their own invention. Being the first to invent doesn't bring you an advantage (it used to in some countries, but since the US switched in 2013, all countries have a first-to-file system). Fortunately, publishing open research shouldn't be an onerous requirement.

That's the law. In practice, patent examiners don't always find prior publications. The ubiquitous Internet has made it easier than it used to be, but conversely the increasing volume of available knowledge has made it more difficult to find the needle in the haystack. If a patent has been accepted by a patent office, it can still be contested due to the existence of prior art, but this requires a court decision, which can be costly.

Some research institutions (public or private) have a formal practice of defensive publications: publish potential inventions that they don't intent to patent as soon as possible, in order to block anyone else from patenting them. Technically, any publication is a public disclosure, including an arXiv preprint, a blog post, or even a research seminar if it's legally open to external visitors. However, since it's easier to fight a patent before it's granted, it is advantageous to make it easy for patent examiners to find the defensive publication.

If you're concerned about someone filing a patent on something you discovered, or for that matter anything that you know about, you can watch patent applications. Patent applications are published for a period of at least a few months, during which time anyone can point the patent examiner to something that they consider to be prior art. Stack Exchange participates in this process through their Patents site where people can coordinate prior art searches.


Previous interests in a subfield which is different from your perspective advisor's Assume that I'm interested in a certain broad field of mathematics (say A). Also, assume that have done a honors thesis during my BSc in a certain narrow-ish subfield (say A.1).

Suppose that I'm interested in applying to a certain outstanding university mostly because its graduate program offers, among other things, lots of good specialized courses and research seminars concerning various aspects of field A and related areas of mathematics (way more and of way higher level compared to any other university, as far as I know).

Now, suppose that (despite the breadth of the courses offered) the outstanding faculty members of this university who work in field A are interested in a subfield that is different and not very related, as far as I know, (say A.2) from the one I've done my bachelor thesis in (A.1).

Assume that I am eager to know more about this different subfield because it "feels" promising and interesting, but I'm not particularly familiar with it yet.

  Would my current (but fixable during
  the courses) lack of knowledge about the main subfield of interest of
  the faculty and my different "specialization" make my statement of purpose (where I've to explain why
  I've chosen the program) and therefore my application weak?

In short, is it acceptable to convey the following "message" in a statement of purpose?

  "I love the broad area A, my specialized knowledge
  of which is limited to a narrow-ish subarea A.1; and I'm ready to get the most out of the many courses
  and seminars that you offer. I'm not quite familiar with A.2 (the main subfield of interest of the faculty), but I'm willing to learn something new and I've a hunch that it's going to be fun."

Disclaimer (and clarification): This question was originally raised by a former classmate of mine and I post it on this board (with his approval) because I may probably find myself in a kind of similar situation in short time.

It is not at all uncommon (especially at BSc level*) for people to go into vastly different areas; their knowledge and skills in one area can often add to their abilities in another.

For simplicity in what follows, let your original field be A and your newly taught field be B.

Things can get a little hairy if you are determined to stay in A for your project (or, at least, it might not be as successful as having a supervisor with strong knowledge within A). If you are willing to make the transfer to B, and if you are willing to accept that further academia in A may be rather impeded (again, compared with originally taking a project in A), I do not see any issue with such a switch at this point.

There might be some circumstances in which "belonging to the same parent field" does not mean that A and B are even remotely related in their approaches and terminology in the modern day, and catching-up might be a lot of hard work. It is, I suppose, up to you and your friend to figure this out with available literature.

I am probably not giving you any information above what you already know - but I had to say the above just in case. What I would really like to say is the following: If you want to follow a path, follow it. Prior knowledge adds something to the group - not only will you have some unexpected tricks up your sleeve, but you may become the "go-to guy" for certain problems, and their knowledge will provide you with yet another set of tricks. Such mixing rarely comes to a detriment of either side of the table, provided you are willing to learn and they are willing to stretch you.

But if you are unsure on a path, do not take it simply because you dont feel you have a choice. I personally fell into that trap - in my case, joining a doctoral training centre in a much more general field than my own (Theoretical Physics -> Nanoscience). It turned out to be so general that most of the material was hand-wavy and useless. Now I'm back doing what I love, but it was half a year of plain old misery for me.


Do Statistics PhD programs require their undergraduate / master's applicants to know measure theory? I know that many Statistics PhD students come from undergraduate / master's level math / applied math backgrounds.  So, many will have taken a full-year of introductory real analysis and most likely also complex analysis (and lots of linear algebra and linear algebraic courses, such as scientific computing) -- but perhaps not measure-theoretic analysis.

Would you say that it is imperative to try and take a measure theory course to strengthen one's application to PhD programs in Statistics?

A lot of my classmates are fixated on the idea that measure theory is a necessity for Phd admission, while one professor that I spoke with internally thinks that this is a myth.  But, he is a mathematician, so I'd rather ask the question here, just to gather more information.

Thanks,

Measure theory is essential for higher level probability.

However, I believe most graduate schools will have a graduate course on measure theory. Thus it is not absolutely necessary to have learnt measure theory before entering graduate school.


Applying to faculty jobs: how close to research area should I be? I am applying to faculty jobs in computer science. Let's say I am in field A.
I found a job ad for an assistant professor position. The ad says something along the lines of "the department is seeking applicants whose expertise is in the area of Field B" and "A focus in (subfield of B) is preferred." The ad also reads "the applicant should have interests that complement existing departmental strengths," which I interpreted to mean that you could apply if you do similar research to existing faculty.
Field B is essentially disparate from Field A, but there are fewer people in general studying in Field A than in Field B. (Speaking statistically of data sets like the Taulbee report.)
Would it be appropriate for me to submit an application for this job, even though I don't work in Field B? Or would the department hiring committee get mad that I submitted an application, effectively wasting their time?

You want a job? So apply. That’s all there is to it.
The academic job market is not some kind of neighborhood bonding event or support group where people try to be as nice as possible to each other and avoid hurting each other’s feelings. No one will be mad at you — in fact, the very notion that someone getting mad at you is a consideration you should take into account when deciding whether to apply for a job is, from my point of view as someone who in a typical year looks at anywhere between a couple of dozen and a couple of hundred job applications, completely absurd.
You might not get the job, but there’s nothing inappropriate about applying, unless there are formal requirements listed in the job application that you don’t satisfy.
Good luck with the job search!


Resubmission of arxiv paper after rejection I submitted my first paper to a peer-reviewed journal a few months ago. New as I am to the publishing scene, I submitted the paper to the arxiv preprint server before it was accepted. The paper ended up being rejected by the journal but with a bunch of helpful comments from the reviewers.

Now, I would like to make some substantial revisions to the paper before submitting to a journal again. When I do, will the preprint of the current version that is already on arxiv affect the acceptance of the newer version (asssuming that the journal has no policy against arxiv preprints) ? If yes, what can I do to prevent that?

I am not particularly "new to the game", and I still often submit preprints prior to acceptance. To me, this is the entire point of an arxiv or PeerJ preprint - after acceptance, I can usually just self-archive the camera-ready version and don't even need a preprint server to ensure priority.

  will the preprint of the current version that is already on arxiv affect the acceptance of the newer version (asssuming that the journal has no policy against arxiv preprints) ? If yes, what can I do to prevent that?

Why would it? The fact that you have an earlier version of the paper online at a source that, according to your assumption, does not count as prior publication should not matter at all. You are allowed (some would say required) to improve on your work between unsuccessful submissions.

Also, the existence of your preprint probably does not say much more than that an earlier version exists, not whether and where it has been submitted, or how often. It would take a particularly unreasonable reviewer to hold it against you that your paper may have been rejected somewhere in the past.

The only time when the existence of the preprint may be awkward is you made a significant mistake in your previous version and need to change some relevant study outcomes because of that. I would not worry about minor updates to the results, especially if you collected new data in the meantime, but if the core results and message of the paper somehow dramatically changes between versions a reviewer who is aware of this may question the validity of your science. For instance, I have once reviewed a paper that was strongly arguing that A leads to B in the preprint, but in the version I reviewed they suddenly flipped and said that A clear does not lead to B, but instead to C - without any new data. As a reviewer, this does raise a lot of red flags.


How are interdisciplinary degrees viewed by disciplinary (AACSB) faculty hiring committees? Perhaps someone with direct experience can help with some clarification.

My research interests involve human resources in the truest sense. But the phd program in which I have an interest is listed as an "interdisciplinary" degree. I have a masters degree from an AACSB school in accountancy (24 hours in graduate accounting). Of course, the phd would NOT be AACSB because it isn't even a business degree.

My real goal is to conduct research related to business decisions made based upon labor availability and the implications of technology, etc.

So my question (even after reading the AACSB definition) is if I pursue such a degree (where my passion lies), would I be considered AQ for a college/school of business as per AACSB standards? My intuition tells me no, but I just want to get some feedback.

I should clarify that I'm not only interested in the AACSB official position, but also in how a faculty in business schools might view such a situation. That's why I included the "direct experience" part. Any faculty members at AACSB schools with an opinion?

I've reviewed 13 "similar" questions on this site and am still lost as to the answer as the other questions differ significantly in the details.

Thank you

When a department looks to hire, they have to make an official statement about which degrees should apply to the position. So the first place to look is job ads for positions you are interested in. There should be a sentence like, "Applicants should have a Ph.D. in ..." to show the "acceptable" degrees. As Business schools typically hire in the Fall, there should be many examples of these job ads currently circulating.

However, what departments do is more important than what they say. Notably, departments may say they are open to interdisciplinary degrees, but then only hire from disciplinary programs. To check this, you should look at the CVs of current faculty at AACSB schools who have HR focus and see what their qualifications are. Especially look at newer faculty hires. If some substantial portion of current faculty come from interdisciplinary degrees like the one you are considering, then I think you would be in good shape. Otherwise, I would reconsider your plan.


Should PhD students pay out of pocket for their PhD expenses? Say a PhD student has a salary paid through a RA/TA or a fellowships but said student has no money for conferences, lab experiments, or to visit another lab for a few months to develop an important part of the thesis.

Should the student pay for these expenses out of his personal money? Is this acceptable, or should the student cut down on the project or change project to accommodate with the budget restrictions?

EDIT: Think of students from small departments and from countries where research money is little to non existent

"Should" is a hard word here. I certainly never paid for these things, but my supervisor was well funded, and so I didn't have to worry about it. At the other end, I think a student certainly "can" pay for these things out of their own pocket. My recommendation for travel would be to avoid this by pursuing departmental, university, and conference-specific travel funds.

I can't imagine it being reasonable for a student to purchase lab equipment. It's often expected that you'll have your own laptop, but workstations, servers, and compute clusters should be provided by someone else. Same for microscopes, reagents, glassware, and everything in between.


How to reference the official oracle documentation? I would like to reference some material from the official Oracle documentation for my bachelor thesis. The piece of documentation I want to include is giving information about data types. The problem I have is that I didn't find any information about the author, address, year, etc.

How do I reference that then? Or does anybody of you found some information about a specific author, year, etc. ?

Abstract concepts such as datetime or longs are generally not attributed to Oracle or similar companies, if anything you should cite an earlier work that discusses and introduces the concepts. The earliest mention that I know that introduces most of these concepts that are used in many (if not all) modern databases and programming languages derive from C, it even introduced us to the Hello World concept. Therefore a good reference would be:

  Kernighan, B. W., & Ritchie, D. M. (1978). The C programming language.
  Prentice-Hall, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA (ISBN: 0-13-110163-3).

Co-incidentally, according to Google Scholar this work has been referenced 8000+ times as of the 4th of December, 2018.

PS: There may be earlier references of specific datatypes, but I argue that no other work has brought them all together in one place before the work of Kernighan and Ritchie.


Accidently gave essay notes to a classmate So at the last day of class a classmate asked if they could borrow some of my lecture notes for studying for the final (this was a history class). I said sure and sent them to their usb. Since it was near the end of class I was rushing to copy and paste my files and in that I think I also sent them my essay notes by mistake. I do not know their name and I have contacted the department head and my professor about the issue letting them know as I am worried they could use these notes in their paper. The notes are not my draft or final copy, they just summarise each article the professor gave for the essay, and the paper itself was well overdue at this point. The office told me I would not likely get in trouble but I still have worries as marking is ongoing. Have I done the right thing so far? Is there anything else I should do?

You have taken appropriate action already. If you meet up with the person warn them against using the notes. But, if you want some additional security, print out your notes and get someone you trust to sign and date them. Now you have a clear marker. I doubt that this is necessary, but if you are paranoid,...

But any infraction of rules would be by the other student, not yourself. Notes are just notes. Relax.


Can political issues between Iran and USA affect me? I have already read this question and its answers. However, I believe my question is slightly different.

I was born in Iran but I am from a religious minority called Bahai faith and the followers of the Bahai faith are persecuted in Iran. I was excluded several times from high school for my religious beliefs and I could not study at a university for the same reason. I came to Australia as a refugee (I am an Australian citizen now) and did my undergraduate studies in Australia.

Given the current political state of Iran and USA, will I face difficulties for admission to universities in USA and visa because I was born in Iran?

I find it really unfair. In Iran, I was treated like a dirt since I was not a muslim and now I should be treated the same by USA authorities simply because I was born in Iran.

I think that as far as paperwork goes, your Australian citizenship will ensure you have very little trouble.

Regarding racism, I think the point that Boaty made above was that your explanation about your being Iranian but Bahai will really not change people's attitude or conduct towards you. Reason does not work with racists or bigots.

On the positive side, you will find many people (especially in academic contexts) who will be welcoming and non-judgmental.

The extent and frequency of the racism that you experience will partly be a function of how identifiable you are as a minority. If you have a skin color that lets you "pass", do not have a beard and so on, you will attract less of it.

Similarly, geography is an important variable too: If you are in a small town in the middle of Idaho, you are obviously more likely to be treated with suspicion and hostility than in Berkeley, CA.

Overall, my advice would be to not worry about it and have a great time.


When is it appropriate to ask whether relocation costs would be covered? For one who has accepted a faculty position overseas, when is it appropriate to ask whether relocation costs would be reimbursed?

Reimbursement for relocation expenses is part of your compensation for the job.  The best time to ask about it is actually when you are negotiating over your salary.  Depending on the policies of the hiring institution, it may or may not be possible to negotiate over the amount of the relocation expenses.  However, whether or not you can negotiate for a larger reimbursement, you would probably want to find out how much your employer is going to be paying for you to move before you agree to take the job; long-distance and international moves can be quite expensive.

If you have already agreed to take the job, but you have not previously asked about relocation expenses, you ought to do so immediately.  I would contact the head of the department and ask them.  They may give you an answer immediately, or they may refer you to human resources.  However, there is no reason to hold back on asking about this.


How to account for publication bias? I am doing a literature review in the medical field, which is as many other fields heavily impacted by publication bias. Is there any standard way to account for it?

When am I e.g. allowed to say that treatment X successfully treat condition Y, despite the fact that a certain amount of studies may have been left unpublished as they did not show statistically significant "positive" results, i.e. that those unpublished studies did not successfully show that treatment X does treat condition Y?

Or shall I just ignore it?

First, you should note the difference between checking for evidence of publication bias and correcting for it. To know that there are patterns in the data that indicates publication bias means that you will be able to temper the discussion of your results, and maybe suggest potential weaknessess in the study, even if it is not possible to correct for biases.

There exists a number of methods that can be used to identify publication bias. A simple graphical funnel plot of effect size vs. sample size is maybe the easiest to apply. The idea here is that the scatter around the true effect size should be symmetric and with expanding variance at smaller sample sizes ("trumpet-shaped"). Publication bias can lead to underreporting of non-significant studies with smaller sample sizes, which would result in a skewed pattern in the funnel plot. Another method to test for publication bias is a regression between standardized effects and precision ('Egger's method') or rank-correlation methods. You can get an overview of these methods and others in e.g. Macaskill et al. (2001) and Thornton & Lee (2000).

Accounting/correcting for publication bias is trickier, and I have no personal experiance in using these methods. However, I know that one method that is used in medical research is to only include pre-registred studies in the meta-analysis. If this is possible depends on your topic though. You can also use simulations and parametric methods to basically try to recreate the complete (unknown) dataset, and in this way account for the publication bias (one example of this is Givens et al. 1997)


Should a cover letter always be included in faculty job applications? Should one always write a cover letter when applying for faculty positions, even when not explicitly asked for in the job post?

If it depends on the field and/or type of university, please specify. If it matters, I'm applying to Physics departments in universities which primarily emphasize research, which already require (at least) a CV, research statement, teaching statement, and letters of recommendation.

The cover letter is one place in your application where you can explain why you're interested in this particular position including both professional reasons ("I'd really like to work with your library's archive of original manuscripts by P.D.Q. Bach")  and personal reasons ("My in-laws happen to live in your small town and my spouse would like to move back.")  Showing that you know something about the location, the the institution, and the particular position can be a helpful factor if you're on the borderline for an interview.

If there's really nothing special that you want to say then a generic two sentence cover letter won't greatly hurt your chances.


Talks vs. poster presentations: Which is better for advertising your research and building research networks? I'm looking into applying to present at a conference for undergraduates in mathematics this summer. When I apply, I have to either apply to give a talk (~20 minutes) or present a poster.

From what I've read on this site, it seems posters are often looked down on relative to talks, especially in mathematics. However, one advantage of a poster session is that I can have a back-and-forth discussion which is impossible in a talk. I think this is especially important for my research, since the computations in the subject are notoriously tricky and will trip up even experts if they aren't paying close attention to the details.

What are the relative advantages/disadvantages of each format? Which is a better way to advertise my research and network with other researchers in my field?

It depends on what you want to do. If you feel like at this point in your research it would be more beneficial to converse than to present, then I'd say that a poster session is the right venue for you. It's true that talks are considered a bit more prestigious than poster sessions, but you really should go with what you think will be more valuable for you, and for the conference attendees.

It's worth noting that you could always do a poster presentation this year, get the feedback that you covet, and then return next year to do a talk, and let everyone know how your research went over the subsequent year. That kind of progression is not a bad thing.

Also, if you are in the early stages of your research, it might not be ready for a talk. When I attend a conference talk, I'm expecting there to be some significant findings. Sure, talks might be more "prestigious," but, if there are some holes in your research, you could end up discrediting yourself. People aren't expecting the same level of maturity in the research during a poster session. So, as I said before, forget the prestige aspect, and choose what is more fitting based on your goals, and on what you have to share at this point in your research.


Comprehensive Guide for Ph.D. thesis in Mathematics? Could any one recommend some comprehensive guide (online version preferred) for writing a Ph.D. thesis in Mathematics?

I did some google search but there are too many results and it is difficult to decide which one to read. Here I am not asking anyone to write such a guide for me (otherwise this question will be too broad and thus not suitable here); instead, I would appreciate if anyone could make some recommendations of those existing references.

It could also be helpful to check this and this short guides and the books by Steven G. Krantz, in particular

A Mathematician's Survival Guide: Graduate School and Early Career Development
A Primer of Mathematical Writing

The first one contains subsection 4.6 which deals specifically with writing a thesis, the second one is on mathematical writing in general but it does not really deal with the theses per se.


Europe Etiquette : Should I reply to a reply? When asking a question to a professor, I wonder if I should reply to his answer if I have no other questions with "Thank you for your kind answer professor". I guess this is the polite thing to do but with covid-19, I know professors are overwhelmed with mails from student and I am wondering if I am expected to systematically thank them for their replies to my questions or does it just bother them with extra-mails in their mailbox ?
Also, I am in a master student in an European university where there is a high hierarchical gap between students and professors.

I'm here in the US, so I can't speak to how things work in Europe.  But here, I get lots of emails that require answers, which often take time.  When a student says, thank you but doesn't require any further response, I appreciate it.  YMMV.