Should you write university names out in full, or use the common abbreviation? I am writing a job application which lists the universities I have given invited talks at. What I would like some advice on, is whether I should always write each university out in full, or whether I should always use the common acronym / abbreviation associated with that university (if any), or whether it should depend on how well-known that acronym / abbreviation is.

For example, consider the following passage:

  I have given talks at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Melon University, the University of California Berkeley, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, University College London, the Technical University of Munich, Kings College London, Manchester Metropolitan University.

If I were to use all the acronyms / abbreviations, then it would read:

  I have given talks at MIT, Caltech, CMU, UC Berkeley, ETH Zürich, UCL, TMU, KCL, MMU.

Now, some of these acronyms / abbreviations are well-known (the first few), but some are not (the last few), particularly for non-academics.

But would it look strange if I used a mixture? Let’s see:

  I have given talks at MIT, Caltech, CMU, UC Berkeley, ETH Zürich, UCL, Technical University Munich, King's College London, Manchester Metropolitan University.

Yes, that looks a bit strange to me. So what rule should I use? Should I be consistent, or should I decide for each university what rule to use?

When the abbreviation is actually better known than the full name, go with the abbreviation. Otherwise, use the full name. That will render the last option you proposed (though it would be fine to write TU Munich as well).


How long it takes to hear from a APS journal I have submitted my paper to a reputed APS journal. It has been 65 days, and I still did not get any response. Should I contact the editor regarding this? I have two papers published in this journal and last two times it only took around 45-50 days. However, I am in a dilemma, if I contact the editor will he get mad at me. Hoping to hear useful thoughts from you.

As an author, I have had to wait anywhere from three days to seven months to get referee reports back from APS journals.  The time lapse is highly variable, although two months is a typical time.  I wouldn't even start to worry until it has been at least three or four months.  The APS editors are also generally pretty good about letting authors know if there has been an extended delay (most commonly caused, I understand, by a difficultly in finding willing referees).  If there's going to be a really long delay (over five or six months), they will probably send you an e-mail.

As a referee for the same journals, I can tell you that the editors like to hear back from referees within two weeks, but that doesn't necessarily mean the referee needs to submit a report within that time.  Often, a potential referee will take the whole two weeks just to let the editor know that they are not available.  And if they do promise a report, it may arrive another two to four weeks later.

In any case, if you are curious about the status of your article, you should consult APS's Author Status Inquiry System before contacting the editor.  The system (located at https://authors.aps.org/Submissions/status/ ) provides automated information about the workflow status of your paper.


Purpose of IP address and timestamp on open-access full-text article I understand that some pay-walled journals include timestamp and IP address and/or institution to full-text PDFs to track copyright violations.

However, I also saw an open access journal doing the same despite allowing non-commercial, attributable redistribution and modification.

If that journal grants such rights to readers, then why does it include IP addresses on the copies they download?

Most likely, they are still doing it to track copyright violations. If the document is made available under a license that permits non-commercial, attributed redistribution, then the publisher might wish to collect evidence in cases of commercial or unattributed  distribution.

It's also possible that the same publisher, or even the same journal, also has articles that follow the traditional "all rights reserved" model, and that this information is applied to all downloads indiscriminately.


What is the difference between all of these impact factors? While searching a Thomson indexed journal to submit to, I found this one :
http://www.bepls.com
And they are showing different impact factors :

Impact Factor: 0.971 [UIF, Germany]
Global Impact Factor 0.533 [ Australia]
Scientific Journal Impact Factor: 2.59 [ Canada]
Scientific Indexing Services Impact Factor: 0.982 [USA]
NAAS Rating : 4.95

My question is : what are the differences between all of them, and How can I evaluate the quality of a journal beside its impact factor.
Thanks!

They are fake impact factors, or bogus impact factors.
For instance, the first two you name (Universal Impact Factor, or UIF, and Global Impact Factor, or GIF) were identified as fake impact factors by this paper in 2015. Some others on that list are in the 'list of misleading and fake metrics'.
The original Impact Factor (IF; or Journal Impact Factor, JIF) is the one calculated by Web of Science (which belongs to Clarivate Analytics, or formerly to ISI which belonged to Thomson Reuters).
I just checked the Journal Citations Reports (JCR) of Web of Science. (The JCR is the section where you can find the JIFs). The journal you link to, BEPLS (or Bulletin of Environment, Pharmacology and Life Sciences), can not be found there.
In other words, it does not have an Impact Factor (other than the fake ones).
(EDIT: As you mentioned in your edited post and in the comment, the journal is listed in the Master Journal List. To be clear, it is in the "Zoological Record" index of Web of Science, and not in the SCI, or Science Citation Index, which may be the reason why the journal does not have a JIF. But I am too unfamiliar with the "Zoological Record"-part of Web of Science to know the details.)
It is most likely a predatory journal. Beware.


Applying for PhD position to multiple professors in the same department I got interviewed by a potential supervisor but she said she couldn’t accept me because I have no research experience related to her projects. I still want to do research in her field; so I contacted some supervisor from the same department as her and will be interviewed next week.

I want to know if it is ok to contact another supervisor from the same department if she finds out about it.

It is ok, since she already told you no. It is your right to find new one and to apply to us many as possible positions.
I think you should know that if you would like to work on someone's projects, it is highly desirable to have experience.


Should résumés be attached in a mail to a professor? Say there is a student who writes a mail to a professor asking for a PhD vacancy or a RA-ship position. Should he attach his résumé in a mail to a professor?

I have had contradictory viewpoints on this. Some people ask not to attach résumés in such mails to professors, saying such mails go straight to spam. They instead prefer having a webpage and providing a URL. This is tough, as students (esp. undergrads) do not have a lot to share on a website. Moreover there is a contradiction: if a professor cannot view a résumé in her browser, what is the guarantee she would visit a website and click each of the sublinks? Looks more implausible to me.

There are others who advise applicants to provide a brief bio instead of a résumé or a URL. Again this could turn out awkward: in a bio, "I did my bachelor's in XYZ University" is fine, but "I was fourth in the Department during my bacheor's" looks out of place.

I slightly prefer attachments.  The problem is that I'm reluctant to reply to e-mails asking for more information, or even to show up on server logs following links, because it may be interpreted as a sign of interest.

Like most faculty members (at least in technical areas), I get enormous numbers of junk e-mails regarding PhD positions or summer research.  The general pattern is that they are form letters sent to large numbers of people, almost all of whom ignore the letters.  If anyone replies in anything but the most discouraging way, then it inspires a potentially lengthy e-mail exchange that will probably just waste everyone's time.

This is a real problem, and I don't know what to do about it.  It's not really fair, but right now the burden is on applicants to stand out from the junk e-mails.  In particular, your e-mail should provide compelling proof that you spent at least as long thinking about it and writing it as you expect the faculty member to spend on it.  If it looks like it could be a form letter with the professor's name and research topic pasted in, then I'll ignore it, as will many other people.  [I should point out that I work in a department with centralized admissions, so I cannot accept students on my own.  This is explained on my web page and the department's.]

For example, a clearly personalized e-mail that discusses the professor's research in detail is good.  Keep in mind that plenty of people are trying to cheat with this.  For example, I regularly receive e-mails saying something like "I found your paper X fascinating when we read it in our seminar", with no further details.  This looks like a form letter, and there have been a couple of times when I've received e-mails from the same sender that were identical except for having different paper titles pasted in, with no indication that they had previously e-mailed me about another paper.  Maybe a few e-mails are genuine, but they sure look like lies.

So when I get an e-mail regarding PhD admissions or summer research, I'm very skeptical that it's more than spam.  There's a five or ten second window to convince me that it's different from the other e-mails, before I set it aside.  If it looks promising, then I'll read further, and I'm a little more likely to do so if any information I need is available right there.  So I'd recommend attaching whatever is needed.


How do I determine if a paper has undergone anonymous peer review of its statistical analysis? I heard on Twitter today about a paper stating that after the Snowden leaks, people looked up terrorism-related topics less on Wikipedia.

I'm not worried about deliberate fabrication of data, but I'm worried that poor quality statistical analysis may have happened. I'm not expert enough to look at the paper's statistical analyses myself and determine whether they're appropriate, so instead I want to know whether rigorous peer review has taken place.

The journal involved, the Berkeley Technology Law Journal, doesn't seem to mention peer review either on its about page or the page about the journal. The page about submissions says "Evaluation involves scoring by multiple different editors, and rarely lasts fewer than 3-4 weeks.", which suggests that it's evaluated only by editors, not by academic peers. Also, evaluation and scoring sounds different to what I'd expect to happen in peer review - it sounds like they're only evaluating whether it's a good fit for the journal and of enough interest.

How do I determine if a paper has undergone anonymous peer review of its statistical analysis, short of contacting the editor of the journal?

Related question: How do I recognise a peer-reviewed journal article? but the answers seem to focus on science related subjects, as opposed to the humanities.

Let's tease apart two issues here:

Has a paper undergone peer review of its technical content (which will include the statistical content)?
Should you believe the statistics in the paper?

If it's in a well-respected peer-reviewed journal, then you can assume that it's undergone reasonable peer review.  That means it's unlikely that the content is blatantly and obviously crazy, and that in fact it's likely to be fairly solid.  It does not mean, however, that it is correct, particularly when it comes to something as subtle and frequently mis-applied as statistical analysis.

Bad statistical analysis is extremely common in every field of science, for a number of different reasons. Ignorance is a really big one, though, and one that's likely to be shared by the peer reviewers.  Thus, if you want to know whether to trust statistical analysis, you need to look at it yourself.


Using a viral CV/ cover letter LaTeX template for undergraduate research internships I am planning to apply for a few undergraduate research internships and I recently learned LaTeX, so I am thinking of transferring my resume from Word to LaTeX. I came across LaTeX templates for a "Deedy CV" and a "Deedy Cover Letter" which apparently went viral in 2014. Admittedly, the "Deedy" templates look very attractive; in fact, they were the most attractive-looking CV/cover letter templates in the entire Overleaf gallery. Is it recommended that an undergraduate applying for undergraduate research internships uses the Deedy templates? What about a template for a somewhat infographic colored CV? Do these formats of CVs convey unprofessionalism in academia?
P.S. If this is relevant, I am in the US and am also planning to cold email some professors on the US to ask if they would be willing to take me on for a research position.

I'm sure that the recipient won't really be concerned with which template you use for your CV or cover letter. Most probably they are not familiar with what templates are available. What  they will be concerned about  is the contents, and do you offer what experience and qualifications they are looking for.
The documents just have to look respectable, that is all. You are overthinking this.


What should I do if someone published my old reserarch result without mentioning my name? Recently, I realized someone, who was my friend in the past, published my research results related to an old project without mentioning my name. I'm wondering how he accessed to my results and why he published those results in a fake journal! By fake journal, I mean it's like someone buys a website and upload some pdfs and says I'm a publisher! Fortunately, it seems this guys recently got a faculty position in the US and I wanted to know how can I sue him? It's a clear example of research misconduct to publish the results of other people without mentioning even their name. I could prove my claim by giving the original raw data, which I'm pretty sure that he cannot provide them because I just stored them in a protected storage device. Could I directly contact the office of research compliance of the university that he works for?

Edited:

I realized it is more than one paper! He published two papers! in the same fake journal with my results...

Edited:

He admitted his fault and apologized... Also, he offered me three projects to work on and even a Postdoc position!!! (I'm still PhD student and even not defended my PhD proposal). I gave this matter up because he made the situation really emotional. I'm not sure that it is a correct thing to do or not but this question is kinda closed...

I would first contact the individual who published your work. Perhaps he can provide insight into his actions.

If he has a faculty position in the US, you could next contact his department to open a case with them. University administration may also be able to step in and arbitrate on the matter.

If the journal is reputable, they too would be a point of contact. Since I have no way of knowing what journal/"journal" this work was published in, it is difficult for me to gauge what contacting the journal would lead to.

Much of this will depend on providing evidence that you performed the work you say you did. This also greatly hinges on what exactly this person published that you think is yours. Did he publish written work verbatim from your own writings? Did he just publish a paper using an idea you had but never formalized? Did he publish data that you collected? Do you have any lab notebooks showing that you collected the data? Were you paid to do research for this person? Is he publishing a paper using data that you collected, but that he cleaned and analysed?

One note on pursuing civil litigation on this matter: Unless you can show loss of money, opportunity, or standing due to this person's actions, you are extremely unlikely to get a definitive decision awarding you some sort of remuneration for your work. This is not how civil suits work. This is an academic matter and the courts are likely not going to hear the case. (Unless you go to some sort of TV 'Judge Judy' court). If you have an actual published piece of work that is copyrighted, civil action could be a move of last resort. Otherwise, civil action is very unlikely to result in anything.


Do I need to sit for TOEFL or SAT? I'm actually an United States citizen who has been living and being educated in Malaysia.  So currently my family decided to send me back to the States to continue my future studies.  Some people told me that I need TOEFL/SAT results to prove my English but some of them said that I don't need it because I'm a citizen.  I'm kinda lost now...
What should I do to prepare myself before going there?

As Nate Eldredge already mentions in a comment, there will be a statement somewhere on the application page that specifies who needs to provide language scores as part of their application and who doesn't. Since schools receive large numbers of applications, there isn't really any leeway for special cases: Just follow the letter of the application requirements. If this requires that you to take the TOEFL or SAT, then that's what it is -- whether you think that's fair or necessary or required is a question that's entirely unimportant.


How do researchers use published plots? I was wondering how people deal with data represented with plots (of any kind) in a published paper, in particular for what regards Physics. When doing theoretical research (but not only), often you have to compare your model and its predictions with other models and/or experimental data. In fact, I usually find many papers in which the authors "update" some existing results with their own findings, changing very complicated plots and superimposing new graphics (i.e. the constraints they have found on a given quantity etc.).

How do people usually do that?

I mean, I do not really think that people (especially theorists) get all the possible databases and re-analyze everything, it would be simply impossible when one has to deal with dozens of experiments and the very messy data analysis behind each of those.
I was thinking that maybe researchers just digitize published graphs to have several lists of coordinates which can be used at will to create new plots.

What do you think about this and what is your experience?

Thank you very much!

I know of four approaches, and to my knowledge, all are commonly used. I'm coming from theoretical chemistry, so not quite theoretical physics, but not so different.

Often the data is made public, especially from large collaborations. For example: http://opendata.atlas.cern/ Otherwise, ask the original authors for their data. Often they'll share.
Recalculate the results -- especially the case with theoretical/computational approaches. Within a given field, many methods are usually quite similar to each other, so code written to do one can be easily modified to handle another. It just costs you some computer time.
Have a standard dataset that you compare to. If you're developing new methods, you test them against a standard that has been studied deeply. I've especially seen this in computational work, where a single massive brute-force simulation is used for years as a benchmark, and that data is shared with the community.
Graph digitizers, e.g., http://markummitchell.github.io/engauge-digitizer/. Scan and estimate where the data is. (Actually, this is the only approach I personally have not really used.)


Will the bad grade in a proposed studied subject be a red flag in my application? I am currently doing final year project on a subject which I did not have a very good grade(I took three courses in this subject with grade A-, A and B+, only top 5-10% can earn a grade of A and A+). I am quite interested in it and plan to continue in this subject in graduate school. Will this grade have bad effect for my application? Can I indicate my interest clearly in my PS given that my grade is not perfect?

I don't believe there is a serious stigma associated with an undergraduate getting a B+ in a graduate-level course. It is generally understood that undergraduates taking true graduate-level work (with graduate-level course numbers, etc.) are taking exceptionally advanced subjects, relative to their own preparation. Therefore, it is entirely understandable that you might have an A-, B+, or even a B in a graduate-level subject without it having a strong impact on your chances for graduate-school admissions. Exceptionally weak performance (corresponding to "failing" grades—usually C+ or lower) would be an exception to this, but I see no reason here why you should worry too much.


Send introductory email to foreign university professor ahead of classes Some of my college classmates and I will be studying for one semester at a foreign university in Belgium. To give context, we are Italian Erasmus students on an exchange program traveling to a foreign country that speaks Dutch/Flemish, although the classes will be partially or fully in English.

I would like to know if you think it’s a good idea to send an email to each professor of the courses we’ll be taking a few weeks in advance with the goals of

introducing ourselves
establishing a direct line and open of communication
asking if there’s anything we should review before classes start
saying we’re very happy to attend their course and look forward to learning from everyone
making sure they are aware of our arrival and therefore possibly prepare English material for us

Do you think this a good idea or should we just present ourselves on the first day of classes? Should I send it myself or cc my classmates? I just want to make sure this is going to be a great experience for everyone.

My advice is: Do not do this if you just want to introduce yourself or establish a line of communication. For those purposes, just talk to the professor in or after class or leave it all together -- just like the professor wants.

If you have more practical reasons (like if you need to review someth.), do this before and per email. (I'm assuming here that you read all inform. about the courses and do not ask about information posted e.g online.)

If you think there is a chance the courses could not be in English, I would also advice you to ask beforehand. (If the program is advertisted as being in English, I think you should not ask.)

If you send something, I would advice to speak with your classmates and send it together with them (in all their names, after they agree). This advoids you to be seen as a social weirdo who secretly wants to get advantages - after all, the information is important for everyone and you want everyone to have a great experience.


How to make sure graduate admissions committees are able to recognize/verify the material a student has self studied I posted a similar question at the following link yesterday; since, however, the focus of the question was different, I'm posting this question in a separate post.

It seems as if I'll be taking the next year off and studying a lot of mathematics on my own and apply to graduate schools in the next cycle. There's a lot of advice both on this website and Academia StackExchange for such students. However, I'd like to know how can students who have studied material outside of class better convince the admissions committee of the work they have done thus far. I know it's generally difficult to do this as an international student; the situation must be different for U.S citizens, I suppose.

Assuming I don't get to take courses which I'll be self studying over the next few months, how should I go about making sure the admissions committee take due notice of the work I have done, and more importantly, they can recognize it, if not verify it completely. Of course, I will keep in touch with my math adviser. In addition, what else can I do? Say, I am studying abstract algebra on my own in the summer, working out problems in, say, Dummit and Foote's book. Should I, perhaps, make a website (a Google site), periodically type the solutions to the work I have done and post it online, so when I apply to graduate schools, I can refer admissions committees to this portfolio of sorts.

In a nutshell, I'd like to know, especially for students who have gone through such a process/situation, of the list of best possible set of actions one can do to make sure the work one has done outside of class is duly considered, if someone who is interested in mathematics schools doesn't have a large number of math courses.

Edit:

I have an additional query: I'll be taking next year off, but I'll be able to visit my college. Even though I won't be enrolled in classes, preferably with the instructor(s) who already know me, sit in their classes, work on problem, and perhaps even take exams. even though I won't get a grade, I could ask the instructor to mention in the letter that I completed this task. She could also comment on how well I did relative to my peers. Thoughts?

Letters of recommendation which attest to this, and also perhaps the math GRE. You can't believe how much garbage I see in personal statements about how much students have "mastered" a particular mathematical topic studying on their own, only to find out later they had "forgotten" what they had learned months ago after I meet them in the autumn and they're banging on my door asking me to take them on as their potential advisor. So this is why I trust letters of recommendation over the word of the student by and large these days. Please get one of your letter writers to attest to your self-study. Generally, the more senior and influential the letter writer who says this, the more likely I will believe you've self-studied what you say you've self-studied.


Am I allowed to use personal conversation as a source? I am writing a research proposal in art history. I had a studio visit to the local artist and had a chance to ask her some questions. Unfortunately, I have not recorded it because, well, I was not even planning to interview her this time. However, in my research proposal, I want to state her personal opinion. Am I even allowed to refer to our personal conversation? Of course, for the research itself, I consider conducting a conventional interview with her once again. But for now, can this be considered as an okay source?

I think it would be dangerous to source an unrecorded interview with a prominent person that involves opinion. Actually, it seems dangerous to do it if it is unrecorded and the rest of the first sentence just adds additional reasons.

If the person, at some point, objects to your characterization of their words you will have some troubles.

However, you can refer to personal communication in general if you have a record of it. One way to obtain the record is to send them a message (mail or email) in which you state your interpretation of their words and ask "(a) did I get it right, and (b) can I use that in a paper I'm writing?"

But a recorded and transcribed interview would also do the trick.

However, don't use things that could possibly be disputed without any agreed upon record, or without permission.


Issues with publishing dissertation on an interest/advocacy group's website I am wondering if it would hurt me (professional creditability etc.) if I publish my dissertation on an interest / advocacy group's website.

My dissertation is in one of the areas that this group has been advocating for a long time. Obviously, there are many other contrary views to the views of this interest group. The interest group is known nationally and, in essence, functions as a political lobby.

I am employed in the same industry, so chose to study in this area from a well respected university. It was easy to identify this gap in knowledge and to address it with robust research.

There has been no issues to date but now that the dissertation is approved, I am thinking of making it more widely available, hence the above option.

I would be cautious. That said, I think there are easy alternatives that don't involve giving up exposure of your work through their advocacy.

If you value credibility as an independent researcher, you will be well served by not being perceived as shilling for any particular organization or political cause. I think the interests of the organization that is requesting permission to republish your dissertation is in line with this. If your research is findings that are politically expedient for them, they benefit from the enhanced credibility that you garner from perceived intellectual independence.

My advice would be something like this:

Publish your dissertation on your own website or in your institutional archive. (If you don't have a website, now would be a great time to set one up!) It should only take a day or so to get set up.
Once you've done that, suggest that the organization write a summary of your work on their website — clearly in their voice — and to link to or repost (if they feel that is absolutely necessary) your work.

You will benefit from the traffic to your website and they will benefit by having your work seem like the work of an independent researcher and not something done by someone inside. And indeed, it sounds like this is exactly the case!


Is it acceptable to present the same project at two conferences and list them separately on my CV? Is it acceptable to present the same project at two conferences and list them separately on your CV?

The two conferences are for different audiences (one is for educators and faculty members and the other is for a more interdisciplinary population). This being the case, the project itself will not change. However, the analysis of the data and the emphasis on the implications of it are drastically different for the two conferences.

I have seen elsewhere online that the recommended course of action would be to simply cite the more well-known conference and only that one. However, since the analyses of data are different for the two conferences, would it be deemed acceptable to list them as separate entries on my CV?

When I give the same talk in multiple venues*, I list the title of the presentation once, then underneath all the places I've presented it. For example:

  On the use of nanofibers in basket weaving

  20th Annual Meeting of the Society for Basket Weavers (July 2016), Department of Basket Weaving Seminar at East South University (August 2016), Workshop on Innovative Use of Nanofibers (October 2016)

If it's a different presentation (e.g. different title), even if part of the same project, I'd list separate entries.

* Only at venues which accept work that has already been presented, of course.


Graduate student I was working with left I am currently an undergraduate, wanting to apply to PhD programs this upcoming fall. So I started talked to a CS professor doing research in deep learning and he set me up to work with one of his graduate students, so I started to work with the grad student and only communicated with him, not the professor. I recently came up with a new idea for a model to be published that the grad student thinks is a good idea, but he told me he has left working with the professor and no longer is working on this research.

So I am at a crossroads on what to do. I have an idea that was told could be good, but I have no idea what the process looks like for self-publishing and expected that the grad student would be there to help me. I thought about reaching out the professor, but I am not sure what to say, since the grad student left, the project is essentially dead I think so it is more of just me having a new idea and not sure how the professor could help with it.

Any advice on whether I should reach out to the professor or just try to work on it on my own would be greatly appreciated.

Speak to the professor again. There're a lot of reasons for this:

He set you up with the graduate student, so he can set you up with another graduate student if necessary.
If he set you up with his graduate student, then in some way he's also responsible for you. He won't leave you to your own devices now.
He's still working in the field, so he will know what to do with your idea. He'll probably know what to do with your idea better than the graduate student.
It sounds like you only have an idea. Ideas aren't usually publishable; you need results. Because you're an undergraduate, chances are you won't be able to get those results easily without guidance. The professor can provide that guidance.


What does "inclusive page numbers" mean? I am preparing a manuscript for submission to Journal of Cardiology. The author instructions say "Please provide inclusive page numbers, e.g., 51-9." What does that mean? How else can you cite page numbers.

The alternative is to include only the first page number, which is sufficient to clearly identify the referenced article but in this case the journal is wanting to use a style that includes the end page.
They probably included this in the directions because they cannot reformat references with missing info, and to save their publication staff the time of pestering the authors for the info at a later date.


Conflict of Interest statement for journal submission Does anyone know what "Conflict of Interest" is? I am submitting a paper to a journal, and they ask me to attach a Conflict of Interest. Is it the same as Cover Letter?

Thanks in advance for any help!

A conflict of interest statement is revealing that you have some relationship with the journal, or, for example, its editors. It can also be a statement in which you reveal a relationship to some company or product that you discuss, analyze, or recommend in the paper.

Some papers are written as propaganda on behalf of individuals or products, for example. They want a statement that you aren't doing that, of if you have such a "conflict", exactly what is its nature.

A serious enough conflict can lead to rejection. But if your Mom is the lead editor of the journal, it is still a conflict, though it can be resolved by assigning the paper to someone else.

Anyway, there are a variety of things, but they mostly come down to the question of whether a careful reader would question your conclusions based on external factors other than what is actually written in the paper.

A cover letter  is just for introducing yourself and your paper to the managing editor with a bit of information that will help to assign the paper to an appropriate editor. Quite different.


How to find the ISBN from the DOI? My question is inverse of the following question:
How can you find the DOI of an article that doesn't seem to have one?

I am looking for the ISBN number (it's a requirement for getting permissions on copyright.com) for the following paper:
http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2000-519

I found its DOI to be doi:10.2514/6.2000-519 from the citation data, however I couldn't find the ISBN. Is this typical? In the sense that can there be a DOI but not an ISBN for a manuscript?

Articles don't usually have an ISBN since they are for books. It should be sufficient to give the title of the article you are interested in to copyright.com, which is AIAA's preferred mechanism for copyright license clearance. That being said, searching your article's title on copyright.com gives a null result. As such, you should probably contact AIAA directly, or stick a sequence of zeros into copyright.com's extended request form.


What kind of papers do economics and finance students write? I teach a writing course that has many students who plan to study economics or finance in graduate school. I am not so familiar with these disciplines, but want to make sure these students finish the semester with the skills they need to succeed in graduate school. What kind of writing assignments can they expect to see?

Economical Writing is one standard reference for economists. An economics paper usually has a lit review, an economic model, analysis of what this model predicts, and how the data supports this model. A great outline is provided by the Toilet Seat Equilibrium paper.

Your students might want to look at the Research Papers in Economics archive, pick some papers there, and critique them from the intensive writing perspective. This collection has both published and unpublished versions, so with some luck they might be able to trace as the paper is getting into a more publishable state as it moves between versions and revisions.


Is it normal to go to a conference/workshop without a publication? I started my PhD not long ago, and I have heard some of my colleagues something to the effect of since they did not get their submission to some conference accepted, they will not be going to that conference.

This made me wonder whether it is normal for academics to go to conferences or workshops even if they didn't get anything accepted by that conference or workshop. Obviously, the organisers and committee members could still have a reason to go, but what about other people? As a PhD student, I would think that it's a good idea to go to conferences that are relevant to your area of research, whether or not you actually have anything accepted by that conference, just to make connections and hear about the latest research.

So long question short: As a new PhD student, should I go to relevant conferences and workshops even though I have no publications accepted at that conference or workshop, or would this be seen as a waste of time and weird?

This answer is written with a background of a subfield of applied CS, where conferences are a primary venue of publications.

tl;dr: Yes, it is normal. At the same time, it is unusual (though not "seen as weird") for someone to actually attend all conferences related to their field.

Indeed, it can be a good idea to attend a conference simply out of interest for the topic. Both learning about new research and especially making connections with other researchers are worthwhile goals.

However, there are a number of reasons why it might not be realistically feasible:

Some employers would not want to regularly cover travel expenses to conferences unless the attendee is presenting something ("has to go") there, especially if they take place far away. To clarify, presenting something on the conference counts as a compelling reason that requires attendance (even if it means the person gets to attend 5 or more conferences in a single year), while simply attending out of mere interest does not.

As suggested by JiK, there are also arrangements where the total number of conferences that will be funded within a given timespan is restricted by an upper limit. In such cases, "saving" conference trips for the instances where you actually can present something may be the way to go.

Even if the conference takes place very closely, registration fees are sometimes considerable (600€ or more).
The time required to travel or at least to attend the conference is missing elsewhere. It is "just" a few days, but it is a few days ever so often that the conference attendee will not be available for progressing with their research and fulfilling their possible other duties (e.g. giving or supporting classes, supervising students, performing non-research tasks required by their funding source and/or department, etc.). This is especially difficult with regular (e.g. teaching-related) duties, as they cannot just be postponed; someone has to fill in for the traveling researcher.

Moreover, the value of visiting these conferences (especially compared to other strategies for using your time that restrict conference visits to when you also present something yourself) should not be overestimated:

While a conference can usually be picked for being "on-topic" for your research, most conference scopes are often still wide enough so the vast majority of works presented there are at best "nice to see, though essentially unrelated" to your work (especially in early stages of your PhD, where you are probably somewhat focused on rather narrow topics, as opposed to more senior researchers, who are more likely to be interested in a whole bunch of topics covered by their own group).

This is less of a concern for workshops, which are usually more focused on a specific topic or set of questions. On the other hand, workshops (at least as I know them from some CS-subdisciplines) often have lesser requirements to the completeness of contributions, and also sometimes later deadlines than the main conference. As such, it can be easier to still produce something to present on a workshop as a "justification" to attend the workshop (and also the conference it is embedded in).

While some talks are certainly interesting to watch, not all of them are. A bit of personal preference towards receiving information in talks vs. in writing certainly plays into this. Still, I think it can generally be said that attending a conference is not an overly efficient means to quickly get updated on a wide spectrum of new ideas, given that every single such idea occupies a timeslot of some 20 to 25 minutes.
Finding new contacts tends to be a bit of a "gamble" that is, among other factors, influenced by the nature of the conference. Especially smaller conferences can easily have something like a "core community" that considers the conference their "annual meeting of old friends", where it is very difficult to get into. Again, this depends a lot on your personality, of course; different people are very differently skilled at getting in touch with strangers.


Should I take an S/NS grade during COVID19 if I want to go to grad school? I am currently a graduating senior. The course in question is within my department, but will count as an elective (since I have already met the requirements, I just took this class for the experience). This class ended up being way harder than I anticipated, and online learning turned out to be more of a challenge than I expected. My current overall gpa is a 3.8, and my departmental gpa is a 3.96. I anticipate getting a B in the class, a C+ at the lowest. However, a B or C+ would prevent me from getting cum laude (which I would get otherwise), and would tank my departmental gpa. My question is, will taking this class S/NS be a disaster for PhD program admissions, especially since it is within my department, or will exceptions be made for Spring 2020 given current events? I am weighing the benefits of graduating with cum laude and a high gpa against the damage of having an S/NS grade.

More details as requested:

I have to register for S/NS now but can switch back to a letter grade later if I wish. I have access to all my scores so if I end up doing much better than I anticipated I could take the letter grade.
The class is only made up of 3 test scores (which are hard and difficult to gauge my performance before getting graded) so my fear is that one of them will tank my average.
S/NS means satisfactory / not satisfactory.

No one can predict how it will play out as the world of academia, as elsewhere, is in a bit of chaos now. I expect, however, that most people will be understanding of such things. They will need to be, in general, since a few universities are only "grading" students on that basis for now.

But, I doubt that it matters very much which way you jump. Your description of the course indicates it would not be a major determinant of anything in your future. If you take the grade and are asked in the future, I think your description here would be fine, especially if you are doing well in other, more important, courses.

That said, cum laude will be nice to think on thirty years from now.


Do American universities generally sponsor H1B visas for staff? Do top American universities (such as NYU, etc.) sponsor H1B visa petitions for staff position? If yes, what type of jobs are sponsored in staff positions?

Yes.  A simple google search for "H1-B university staff" links to a bunch of federal and school-specific policies.  It goes without saying these roles are reserved for people with "specialized knowledge," etc.  Also a link to a similarish question about faculty is here.

You asked "what type" and I missed that the first time around.  Here is a link to a page that explains H1B jobs open at NYU.  Not all but mostly faculty positions.


Is the impact factor the sole criteria for selecting journals? I am planning on submitting a paper to a mechanical or materials science journal. I am looking at these two journals IJMS (IF 4.6) and JMST (IF 6.2).
First one is published by Elsevier and is an old journal, while second one by The Journal of the Chinese Society for Metals and is a recent one.
Considering, my paper fits the scope of both the journals, should a decision of submitting a paper be made solely on the basis of the impact factor?
Is the second journal better than the first one?

I think impact factor should be almost at the bottom of considerations of how to choose a journal. If you want to read more I suggest this nature article.
The first test should be to make sure you are submitting to a journal of good standing. For example you may want to ask is it a predatory journal.
Once that's out of the way then I think the most important thing is your choice depends on who you want your audience to be. You've suggested journals in different fields - this is now your choice. Different journals have different audiences from different communities. In my work, some journals lend themselves to more theoretical work whereas some prefer more practical implementations and applications.
There are some other considerations which I think you might consider too:
You may also want to bring your work to the attention of one of the editors. This might be someone you want to work with in future for example.
You should also think if there is a good fit to your work. Acceptance is not guaranteed for any work. You should have a look at the scope of each journal and see if your work fits.
Finally, you may want to consider how fast the journal processes articles - how long is it from when you submit your work to a potential publication. Early in your career this might be an important factor too.


How to convert Italian grades to American and U.K system? I just graduated in aeronautical engineering (master of science) at the Polytechnic of Milan. In the Italian university system, students who finish their major get a final grade that that goes from 66 to 110 (plus honors). In my particular case, I got a 103/110.

Since I am writing my resume/CV in English, I would like to convert my Italian final grade to the American (GPA?) and U.K system.

Can anyone suggest me what conversion I should follow?

Don't even try.

There is no "American grading system".  There is a fairly common 0.0-4.0 scale for "grade-point averages", but the meanings of those GPA differ significantly among different US universities, among different departments at the same university, and in some cases, even between different instructors of the same course.

The only reasonable way to judge what Italian grades say about your potential for graduate study is to compare them against other Italian grades.


Submitting an extension paper of a paper that is currently in review for a considerable amount of time? I have a paper under review for over 6 months now. Recently I have done some more work which is an extension of paper under review and wrote it as a new paper. As there is dependency on the paper under review, I have included some important theorems of paper under review in appendix of the new paper. Can I submit this new paper to (a) the same journal, although there is a paper already under review for a long time. (b) Should I submit to another journal, even before the review process of current paper still going on.
(c) should i seek advice of the EIC of the current paper under review
(d) Don't do anything and wait for the decision on the current paper under review and proceed accordingly?

Appreciate any pros and cons or suggestions/advice in this scenario.

I wouldn’t submit the follow-up paper while the first is still under revision. For the moment I’d consider the time that you’ve waited as pretty normal. So stay calm and wait some more time. If the first paper eventually gets publish, fine, then proceed with the follow-up paper. Otherwise, I would consider the option to merge both versions to a more influential single version and submit this one (maybe even in a higher-ranked journal).


How do you find out if academia is the right path for you? Apologies if this question is not entirely fitting for this Exchange, but I didn't know where else to ask.

I am currently working through my Masters, and while talking with one of my professors the question "Would you be interested in continuing with a PhD" came up. I have thought about this frequently over the last few months, but I can't seem to come to a proper answer. I believe the problem here lies in the fact that with a Bachelor or Masters you kind of know what you're getting into and what will be expected of you, while for a PhD it is kinda hard to find information (at least for me / in my country).

I have already gained some industry experience before coming back to University, and thus I know for certain that I would not like spending my life doing boring, repetitive office tasks; I plan on taking on as many extra-curricular activities during my Masters that can expose me to the 'department life', or at least give me a glimpse of what working in Academia is like.

However, despite all this, I keep coming back to the original question and not knowing what to think: Would a PhD hold my interest for however long it takes me to complete it? Would I enjoy working in Academia afterwards? What should I expect from a PhD in my field? Would I get one just to (possibly) be hired by a top-tier company doing cutting-edge/research work?

I don't know if I'm conveying my thought clearly here, but what I am trying to say is that there is virtually no information on what is expected of a PhD student, what Academia life is like and all this kind of stuff. How does one know if doing research would be a good fit for him/her if there's no prior exposure to this kind of work? Would I be good at teaching in case I decide to stay in Academia? How do I assess this?

I feel like there must be a way to clear my thoughts and get some answers before I decide to enroll in a multi-year PhD program and possibly waste years of my life leading up to nothing, having to fall back to an everyday industry job with less experience than someone of my age.

Again, I realise how general and convoluted this post is, and I won't mind deleting it if it is deemed unfit for this Exchange, but I'm honestly at a loss on where to go next and would like to hear opinions coming from people that are/have been in the field.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read all of this!

As pointed out in guest's answer, I'm specifying that my field is STEM (Bachelors in CS, Masters in Data Science). You can read more details and my reply to his answer in the comment section, which might give a little bit of insight into what I initially wrote here.

You will get a more helpful answer if you add the field you work in.  Perhaps leaving the question general, but "sneaking in" some info on your field.
I have worked in several industries and never been bored.  Certainly more routine jobs do exist.  But I would not exaggerate the stereotype of industry boring or even of academic research being exciting (it is not, always).  New products, initiatives, markets, etc give many private sector jobs plenty of excitement.
I urge you not to do the Ph.D. unless you see yourself as top 25-50% in your field (a higher percentage correlating to subjects with more industrial hiring of Ph.D.'s).  It is very important to realize that there is a glut of Ph.D.'s on the market.  At least in STEM, the number of doctoral slots is determined by the amount of (mostly federal) funding for research.  It is NOT determined by the number of high paying jobs needing graduates.  [I laugh at C&EN exhorting more kids to go into STEM in the same issue they talk about the intense competition at job fairs...and chemistry is actually better than math or physics.]

This is not to say don't do it. But go in with your eyes wide open.  At a minimum talk to kids looking for jobs in their final year.  (Or about advisor relations, thesis writing, etc.)  I do think the experience can be OK but you really need to look out for number 1.  Don't just do it because you don't know what you want to do, prof talked you into it, etc.  At a minimum, do a job search in parallel (you don't need to let each "side" know you are doing this).


Preserving ownership of authorship in the period after leaving a position and before journal submission Background:
I am currently working on a paper as a first author with 3 other members.
My tenure with the research institute ends on the end of this month and I have no intention to continue any working relationship due to the very complex political environment and "back-scratching" among upper management in this research institute I am in, plus my observations of other ethical issues.

However, I intend to submit this paper to a journal after the end of my tenure. This journal has an associated conference that has deadline submission on the 15th July 2018. For this particular conference, an acceptances of a paper for this conference would enable a direct proceeding to its associated journal.
I have a valid concern aimed at the senior research fellow (No PhD), whom I report to and who is also the last author of this paper, due to strong corroborated anecdotes (credit stealing included) from multiple employees. As far as facts is concerned, he comes from industry after 20 years, without a PhD, and sorely lacks technical skills in my observation.
This further cements my concern and I am aware that there exists a possibility that my concerns may be misguided.

Measures taken:

1) I have created an official email confirming the roles, responsibilities and order of authorship of each team member involved in this project. The email has been acknowledged by each individual team member including aforementioned senior research fellow/ programme director (without a PhD).
His role is to review to review the draft before my submission (possible and probably potential red flag?).
He has not acknowledged nor mentioned anything in his reply about getting back to me with changes to the draft.

2) I intend to submit my paper to an open journal arXiv before submitting any draft to this senior research fellow.

3) 2) is followed by a submission of a draft to senior research fellow with a co-correspondence to the integrity office, worded in a diplomatic manner.

Are these three steps sufficient? What more should I be aware of?

Edit: The email also serves as a centralised communication where any work done by must submitted to that email.

In the world of patent, researchers establish priority in the following way. They keep a bound notebook (no loose-leaf) so that pages can't be added between other pages. Whenever they have a good idea for which they want to establish priority they make a dated complete note of the idea. They then get a colleague to date and sign their note. At some companies most employees always have this patent book with them so they can record ideas as they occur.

Then, if another person somewhere tries to patent the idea, they can present the patent book as evidence of prior art. The other person in this case may be completely unknown to you, but for patent, priority is pretty much the whole game.

You can do something like this yourself, if you are unsure. It needn't be confrontational to your co workers. Make a signed and dated (paper) copy of each version of the paper that you work on and have a non-involved but trusted colleague sign and date it. You can even leave them with a signed and dated copy so that you each have one.

The existence of these copies protects you a bit from being excluded. But in the absence of a problem, they are just private notes and so non-confrontational.

For your future, you are likely better off with cordial relations with your co-authors. It may even turn out that they are proud of their association with you.


Switching between different graduate departments within the same graduate school? How difficult it is to switch between different graduate departments within the same graduate school? And how can a student initiate the process?

Some have told me that it's easier than getting into a graduate department via PhD admissions. But I do wonder - does it depend on what school it is? (I'm at Brown). What other factors determine how easy it is to get into another graduate department? Would they look at your transcript/GRE scores/etc? I have GRE scores of 96th percentile Verbal/96th percentile Math/99th percentile Analytical/89th percentile Biology. My grades are weaker though. I'm currently a student in a Geoscience department and am considering switching to Physics or a Biology-related field.

Of course, one has to convince someone else to be able to take them on. Most of my experience is with Physics and Scientific Computing, however, and a lot of fields really value the skills that people in Physics/Scientific Computing have.

Maybe this differs between departments or schools, but in my experience transferring between departments is exactly the same process as applying from the outside.  If faculty in the new department know you and are familiar with your work, then you may have an advantage (or disadvantage), but there is no advantage from being already enrolled in another department.

If you want to do something interdisciplinary that could fit in either department, it's usually easiest not to switch (so you don't have to deal with applying again, fulfilling different class and exam requirements, etc.).  Instead, you can try to arrange a thesis committee with representatives from both departments.

If you want to start over in a new field, then the only option is to apply to the new department.  You'll need to convince them of two things: that you are changing departments because you now understand better what you would like to do (rather than because you are doing poorly in grad school), but that you will complete the new program rather than changing interests again in a few years.  This means you need a compelling story to explain the shift.


Transitioning from experimental to theoretical research after masters I just graduated last summer and currently have a chance to do a research masters in applied physics in North America. The proposed project is very experimental in nature. My ultimate goal is to earn a PhD (preferably in the US) afterwards and continue in academia (postdoc, etc.).

While I don't mind the experimental aspect, I am not sure however if I would like to stay on the experimental side of things 'forever'. I worry that by joining this project, I will pigeonhole myself as an experimentalist and not be able to find a PhD position on the more theoretical side of things later on. I'm afraid that I won't be able to convince a future professor to take me on as his/her PhD student if I spend 1-2 years doing purely experimental work.

Is this a valid concern? Will an 'experimental' masters project hinder my chances of acceptance in a more theoretical PhD project at a US university?

This depends strongly on the branch of physics. For theoretical PhD work in high energy physics you need a very profound theoretical and mathematical background. A purely experimental master work would make me suspicious if you can catch up the lost time to learn by yourself this necessary background.

In branches like nano and quantum physics due to the size and nature of the investigated objects, a strong collaboration of theorists and experimentalists is very common and practiced and even within a master or PhD work project these systems/objects can be and are often modeled/simulated/calculated additionally to experimental measurements by single students.

Your question is very valid, for PhD positions in top universities and groups the group leader will take an in-depth look on your background. Switching form theoretical nanophysics in the master work to theoretical high-energy physics PhD is much less troublesome than from applied physics, but also not easy. The likelihood for tenure is in the bigger branches like condensed matter physics much higher than in small niche branches. The smaller and more competitive your aimed branch is, the earlier you should work towards it. And in addition to computer science or math, even if you decide to become a pure theoretical physicist, you still have to have a good overview and understanding of experimental methods.

Many physics students know before starting to study that they want to work later in hep or astrophysics or ... and specialize over their studies by attending special lectures and seminars ("Sheldon-Nerd-syndrome"). Promising that you will catch up this content will not help you a lot, as it can take years to understand, apply and further develop some physical theories.

Speak to professors in the field you are interested in or look simply on some faculty homepages, if the field is split up into experimental/theoretical/computational groups. As said, for some fields experimentalists and theorists work within one group, for other both types rather and only interact in big collaborative projects or over publications and the single research groups are purely theory/experiment oriented.


What's the meaning of "first-page-first order"? Recently I prepared to submit to a conference of IEEE. In the requirements of submission, it indicated that:

PDF and Postscript files:

must not have Adobe Document Protection or Document Security enabled,

must have either 'US Letter' or 'A4' sized pages,

must be in first-page-first order, and

must have ALL FONTS embedded and subset.

I have searched for the phrase of "first-page-first", but still did not have an idea of it (sorry my first language is not english).
If anyone can tell me what's the meaning of it exactly I would be very grateful.

I am pretty sure this is just a ridiculously dated instruction. On some older printers, the pages were ejected print side up and new pages were added to the top. This means that the first page printed would end up being the bottom page of the document when you picked it up. If you then wanted to staple the document in the correct order, you needed to reorder everything. With these printers it was much more desirable to print "back-to-front" such that when you pick up the document from the printer everything is in the "correct" order. Some computers provided (and maybe some still do) the option to print "back-to-front" to avoid this. Some people conceivably, though I have never seen it, produced documents in a first-page last order to help with the printing. I think this instruction just means that the pages should go in the order you expect them in: the first page of your pdf should be page 1 and the last page N. In a first-page-last order the first page would be N and the last page 1, which would be really awful to read on screen.


How to handle supervisor not giving appropriate credit Someone close to me (let's call her Natalie) recently completed an undergraduate degree in Preschool Education. Her thesis was by research; she did the field study and the majority of the theoretical analysis, and her supervisor (let's call her Betty) helped with the latter. They are now to present the research at a conference. Betty claimed she should be first author, which Natalie felt was unfair, but agreed to. Now that the conference is drawing close and they have created the presentation, Natalie realises that it contains no reference to her thesis, and is afraid that the fact that this was her thesis will not be mentioned at all (they are presenting it together, but Betty has the introduction and closing). How should she handle the situation?

It should also be noted that after this presentation they aim to publish the research either in the conference proceedings or in the conference organisers' journal.

I wouldn't particularly expect the thesis to be mentioned in a presentation, and I certainly wouldn't find its omission "alarming".    In academic research, a thesis, especially an undergraduate thesis, is a sort of "second class citizen" and is usually considered a much less important type of writing than a peer-reviewed publication.  (This is why you normally try to "publish your thesis" by writing papers with the same content as your thesis.)  Natalie did the work that's contained in the paper, and she's getting credit by being an author of that paper (ignoring issues about author ordering); whether the work was part of a thesis isn't seen as especially relevant.

Now, if the thesis contains additional information that is directly relevant to the paper, then the paper certainly ought to cite the thesis, but one should keep in mind that people may take it less seriously because it hasn't been peer reviewed.  However, if the thesis only contains basically the same content as the paper (or a subset), then in my experience, the usual practice would be to not mention the thesis.

Natalie is certainly free to mention, in her part of the talk, that the work being presented was part of her thesis, but this isn't really relevant information to the audience.  If there are places where the thesis contains discussion of relevant topics that are not in the paper, it could make sense to mention it ("see my thesis for further details").  But it's not inherently necessary.

Added: You say Natalie is worried that Betty will be angry if Natalie mentions the thesis in the talk.  I don't see why she would be angry, but if Natalie is worried, she can discuss it with Betty beforehand.  It sounds like she's observing that "Betty didn't plan to mention the thesis" and inferring that "Betty strongly objects to having the thesis mentioned at all", but I don't think that inference is justified.  I think it more likely that Betty simply didn't plan to mention the thesis just because she didn't think it was important or relevant (for the reasons I stated above).  But if Natalie does think that it would be relevant to mention the thesis, and if she can articulate her reasons (beyond "self-promotion"), then I wouldn't think Betty would object to having it mentioned.  At the very least, I wouldn't think she would object to discussing the possibility of mentioning it.


How much of a "personal touch" on dissertation is OK? I don't know if this is the case at other institutions but at my university dissertations are published as A5-size books/booklets. There are some regulations on how the formatting is supposed to be but it's pretty relaxed otherwise. Common practice is that the PhD candidate designs the cover themselves.

Typically these covers feature an image relating to the work the person has done in the lab; a molecule, a graph, a microscopy shot etc. Recently a colleague of mine put a painting of herself on the cover. Just for the sake of clarity, not a painting she's done, but rather a painting of her made by someone else. This has raised some discussion among the younger students, such as myself. Thus I wonder, how much of a personal touch is OK really? Would something like I described above be seen as an ego-thing by a potential employer? I am of the opinion that it might be seen as a lack of modesty or "self-distance" (quotes are there as I am not sure if this expression exists in english).

Am I being too critical? As it's a multi-cultural international group of academics here, I wonder if there is a consensus regarding such "customization" of the dissertation.

This probably depends a lot on how things work at your university.  In the cases I'm familiar with (U.S. math departments), there are only four types of people who have an opinion about your dissertation:

You.
Your thesis commitee, particularly your advisor.
The bureaucrat who measures the margins and decides whether your paper is fancy enough.
Family members and friends who will want to take a look at the nicely bound volume and make polite comments.

Nobody else will pay any attention to your dissertation, unless you do an inadequate job of publishing its contents (in which case someone might be forced to look it up), you become very famous (in which case it will be an interesting historical document), or you do something so weird in it that people pass around copies for the amusement or shock value.

The painting on the cover might fall into the last category if it looks pompous or strange enough.  However, most personal touches are not a problem if the four groups mentioned above don't care.  Furthermore, the bureaucrat won't care unless you violate a known rule or do something so awful that they feel the need to dig up an obscure rule, and your family doesn't get a vote (you'll just be embarrassed if they think you've done something silly).

So the short answer is "ask your advisor".


What to do when you have two manuscripts under review where one cites the other, but the citing paper gets accepted before the cited paper? I submitted an article around 11 months ago to a SCI journal and another article around 5 months ago in another SCI journal. The second article cited the first article which was under review for 6 months at the time of submission of second article. Recently, we got acceptance letter for 2nd article while 1st article is still under review.
What action should we take? remove the citation in 2nd article and cite the 2nd article in 1st article or we stay with the current situation. but what if our 1st article got rejection?

If I understand correctly, this is your situation:

Paper 1 was submitted for review 11 months ago
Paper 2 was submitted for review six months later.
Paper 2 was accepted for publication. Paper 1 is still under review.

Presumably, Paper 2 cites Paper 1 as being "submitted". The present version of Paper 1  does not cite Paper 2 because Paper 2 was not in existence when Paper 1 was submitted.

Are these correct? If so, here are some thoughts about your questions:

Should you continue to cite Paper 1 in Paper 2?

I would. The fact that Paper 1 is still under review is out of your control. In fact, its final disposition is also up in the air. Nevertheless, Paper 2 uses information derived from Paper 1, hence the need to cite it. That Paper 2 was accepted with the citation to Paper 1 is important evidence that the reviewers and the editors thought that it was appropriate, despite the "submitted" tag.

Should you remove the citation of Paper 1 in Paper 2?

I wouldn't do this, unless there was a material change in your manuscript. If the parts of Paper 2 that depend on Paper 1 were lost in revision, then fine. However, it is not a good idea to eliminate references simply because of publication status.

Should you cite Paper 2 in Paper 1?

You should only cite papers that support your statements. Frivolously citing one paper of yours just because it was published is a rather trivial reason. However, if you genuinely feel that Paper 2 has substantial contributions to Paper 1, then this should be fine. You would do this in the revision stage. Be aware, though, that alert editorial staff may review this change with skepticism.

If you retain the citation of Paper 1 in Paper 2 and Paper 1 gets rejected, then what happens?

Generally, there's nothing you can do about this. Journals still operate as if the manuscripts were static entities. That is to say, once a final version has been approved at the galley stage, no changes can be made. Paper 1 will always be cited in Paper 2 as being "submitted" in perpetuity. There are some publishing models now that account for this fluidity in publication status, although there are not widespread, and rather experimental. Say, for example, that you cited the work of Doorman (2014) and your work was published in 2015. In 2016, Doorman was found to have committed research misconduct and his 2014 publication was retracted because all the data were fabricated. Well, your 2015 publication would still cite Doorman 2014. There are no easy solutions to this issue as yet.

Good luck.


Are professors obligated to accept supervisory role? If not, how does it work? Firstly, I am not specifically talking about PhD supervision. I think that's less relevant for my question since a PhD supervision is usually a mutually beneficial arrangement, as the professor gains a PhD student to help them with related research.

My focus is more on supervision of bachelor and masters theses. In these, there is less benefit to the professor to act in a supervisory role.

So with that in mind, if a student contacts a professor because they need a supervisor for their bachelor or thesis project (something which is a requirement in order to get the degree), is the supervisor obligated to accept this role?

I don't think the answer is yes, since people usually say that if you want to get a supervisor, you should ask your professior if he/she wants to. So the words imply that the professor has a choice and could turn you down.

And so if the answer is indeed no, how does the system then work? What happens if nobody wants to supervise one particular student? Is that student then just screwed?

The exact answer to this is likely to vary from one university to the next, depending on local rules and terms of employment. In general, the position is likely to be: professors are not required to agree to a student's request for supervision. However, it is generally advisable/mandatory for professors to accede to 'requests' that come from higher up in the management hierarchy.

If students are required to complete a supervised project as part of a course, then it is the university's responsibility to ensure that an appropriate supervisor is made available. If a student reported that they cannot find a willing supervisor, this would likely result in management applying increasing amounts of pressure and/or incentives until someone agreed. However, in such circumstances, the student is likely to be left with Hobson's choice - the project offered may not be a close match to the student's preferences.


Should someone mention her admission to other prestigous universities in past years when she applies for a PhD program? Last year, one of my friends received a competitive PhD offer (including a full-time research assistant position) from a highly prestigious university in Canada, however her request for Study Visa was rejected because of some Social Tie issues.
This year, she has a plan to apply for universities in Europe and Australia. Is it worth mentioning her last year offer in her emails to the potential advisors or put it in her CV in order to increase her chance of acceptance?
Roughly speaking, the acceptance in the aforesaid Canadian university is considered harder than the European and Australian universities she wants to apply.

I just don't see that information as appropriate... it doesn't belong in a CV or the application. It could be appropriate for a letter of reference to mention it, though.


I feel like I forgot my simple mathematical knowledge Please help me. I can not tell psychologists about this because they are not mathematicians (They will not understand me)

Sometimes I don't read about mathematics for a couple of months, I do not think anything about my research and then I feel like I forget everything when I go back to research.

For example, I was working on a very important problem in March, and then I stopped doing mathematics so far. I want to go back to my research now, but I feel myself as weak, exhausted, lost my math skills and charlatan. Fear of failure, fear of losing everything, makes me crazy.

what can I do?

When I start researching again I have to learn math from scratch because I feel I have forgotten everything. It's disgusting because it makes me feel bad.

Please give advice =)

Thanks

As a grad student in computer engineering, I have a similar problem when I switch between projects that use different programming languages. I might spend months working in a high-level language like Python, only to switch to a project using a low-level language like C, or a project whose language I'm unfamiliar with, like MATLAB.

As I see it, there are two issues here:

1. Documentation -- setting a project aside is unavoidable at some point. As @Bemte pointed out, the trick is to document your work well enough where you can pick the train of thought back up days, weeks, or months later. This takes time and effort to do well (something I'm still learning). Suffice to say -- your documentation should include everything that you need to familiar with the work in a reasonable amount of time. That might include:

Detailed notes of the conversations you had, proofs you were working on, etc.
Papers you were reading
Textbook chapters that are important
And so on.

2. Patience -- you said it's been a couple of months since you had looked at your work. I can say for sure that if I went 2 or 3 months without looking at my code, it would be like reading gibberish, and it would take me a couple of weeks minimum to get back up to full productivity. I may be reading too far into your words, but it sounds to me that you need to be patient with yourself. High-level mathematics is not a subject that you learn overnight; and any psychologist will tell you that it takes time to enter the flow. Be patient with yourself.

I'll add this quick caveat: if you're concerned that you're still forgetting information even after you've been working on it continuously for weeks/months, that may be a sign of a more significant neurological or mental health problem. In that case, consult with (medical) experts. (Update: see @aparente001's excellent answer on how to best do this here.)

But otherwise, it's likely just a matter of being human -- we all forget things after a while :)


Who owns the copyright of the acquisition of an object or sample owned by a third party? Our lab performed 3D scans of materials (e.g. metals, rocks etc.) produced by other institutions and universities. But I am also interested in other analyses.
I was wondering who has the copyright on the data, the one who acquired the data (the person who performed the analyses, collecting the actual data and metadata, in this case, me), the person/institution who created the materials that were scanned, or the one who provided the materials?
I waited for more than one year, now I would like to make the data public, and I would like to understand if I own the copyright of the worked that I carried out.

Copyright almost certainly isn't the correct legal basis here (IANAL, so take that with a grain of salt, but as comments have pointed out, data is not subject to copyright in many jurisdictions), so I would suggest dropping that part of your thinking. The issue is not whether you have copyright of something produced, but whether you were allowed to use the materials you were provided to produce publicly available data.
Usually when materials pass between entities, including between universities or between a private company and a university, they are subject to a Material Transfer Agreement (MTA). This is a contract that specifies what can and can't be done with provided materials.
In the absence of such an agreement, there may be some implied rights but it might be best to go ahead and secure an MTA after the fact, or at a minimum get some informal agreement that you can use to protect yourself. Otherwise, you're in a situation where you are at the mercy of those who may be upset by your actions, which could start an academic or legal dispute that you don't want to be involved in.
(note: I'm assuming there is something somewhat special about these materials such that you could not have obtained them from other sources)


I have been accepted to an event where a keynote lecturer is a plagiarist After some decades an event on my research area was announced in my city, so I decided to send my abstract, which was accepted.

However, they recently sent me the programme and among the keynote speakers was a person whose doctoral thesis contains uncontroversial plagiarism. (About 30 pages of his thesis are just a translation from two papers written in English by other scholars into the language in which the thesis was written.) There are no legal charges against this lecturer. Instead, the plagiarism was revealed by an apparently anonymous source about two or three years ago through a mailing list.

I know that at least some of the organisers of the event were in such mailing list, so they do not ignore the charges and had the chance to test whether they were true or not.

I have considered that maybe the best option to withdraw my lecture from the event explaining exactly why to the organisers. This, though, would not help at all, since they already know and do not care. Else they wouldn't have invited him as keynote speaker.

Other option that somebody suggested me is that I use some minutes of my lecture to publicly denounce him. (It just happens that my regular lecture starts right after his keynote lecture finishes.) But there are three problems with this:

When publicly denounced, this lecturer threatened to prosecute the source for defamation. (He's also lawyer.) I currently do not have a job nor a regular income that would allow me to face a prosecution, let alone to prosecute him.
It is very likely that most of the people that are going to the event already know. In such case, and since this is fairly yesterday news, I do not expect that there be any important reaction.
I am about to enter in the phase of defending my thesis, and this lecturer works in my institution as invited professor. Unscrupulous as he is, he may try to retaliate against me by using his power to delay my thesis dissertation. (I do not know how much power he has.)

Finally, you may be surprised as to how a whole academic community could care so little about this case. But I have to say that when the news about his plagiarism came, I myself didn't dare to publicly speak disapproving his behaviour because of what I said in the third point. Still, it was surprising to me that, although I know that several professors disapproved of his actions, apparently none of them publicly manifested their disapproval. I later knew that this wasn't the first time that something like this happens in my institution.

I'd like to know what is the most ethical or less unethical thing to do in this case. One thing is for sure, though. I do not think it would be right for me to go to that event, and speak after him as if he were a respectful scholar. And I am not going to.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

What really matters here is what your goal is. Is your goal to: (A) cause there to be some sort of disciplinary action/reaction against this person; or (B) to make sure that your own name is not tarnished by association with this person in the future.

If you are hoping for (A) I believe that you have answered your own question. It does not appear that any action will be taken against this person based on anything you do in relation to this conference. The discipline is covering this up and everyone is going along with it and as an early career researcher, you are not influential enough to change this. It's sad, but it's true. However (B) is entirely possible for you. If you believe that one day this person will be publicly shamed and denounced fully by the discipline, it is not unreasonable for you to not want your name associated with theirs. This might mean withdrawing from the conference and specifically asking that your name be removed from any material online about the event. Indeed, you don't even need to say why you are pulling out of the event if that includes a risk that it will get back to the person in question.

In this situation, I think (B) is a reasonable concern and a reasonable reason to not speak at a conference. I also think that you are tangentially associated with this person so are unlikely to experience any negatives from speaking after them at the event. Ultimately, with risk of association low, it comes down to your own ethical stance and if you feel sharing a stage with this person violates that.


To what extent is the university budget public? I guess this is technically a legal question, but since it is about universities I hope it is ok to ask it here.

Let's say that university A has employed the construction company X for a big project. Let's also say that from an outsider's perspective the deal seems a bit dodgy. How much of this information has to be public? In other words, what can a general member of public learn about this deal?

Assume that university A is a standard "public" UK university and company X is just a big private company.

The key to this information request would be the Freedom of Information Act. The act has lots of things which you cannot request information for, however. One of them is "trade secrets". I don't know if construction work can be considered a trade secret.

Timothy Gowers documented his attempt to get UK universities to reveal their journal subscription costs on his blog. This sounds relatively similar to what you're thinking of. If you attempt to get the same information, I'd guess you'll need to use the same methods, will meet the same obstacles, and get the same results (i.e. you'll eventually be successful).


Dealing with mistake in scheduling an extra lecture I am a TA for an undergraduate class, and I have the following situation:

Usually, I give my (one-hour) lectures (which consists of solving exercises and reviewing theory as needed) at Thursdays 12 p.m., but this week they have the midterm right at this time, so I decided to move this week's lecture to Tuesday (today) to help the students. The professor is aware of this and saw no problem, although it might be relevant to say that I had no obligation to do so: I could say "there's no lecture this week" and be done with it. Instead, I said that this lecture would be at the same time, 12 p.m., but I mistakingly wrote 1 p.m. at the webpage of the course. When a student emailed me yesterday asking for confirmation, I hastily confirmed the 1 p.m. mistake, only to realize the screw up.

To minimize the harm, I decided to show up at 12 p.m. and give a two-hour lecture. I put a follow-up message on the webpage informing that I would be there earlier, and sent an email to that student (I do not have everyone's email address). A lot of people showed up at 12, asked their questions, then a lot more people appeared at 1, visibly upset, and asked their questions. All in all, in the end, it seemed that everyone had their questions addressed, so I won't lose any sleep over this.

I would like to know, though, if I could have dealt with the situation better. Or if there is a standard strategy for dealing with this kind of mistake (certainly I'm not the first nor will be the last TA to do this).

I don't really see how you could have done things that much differently: you made a mistake, tried to honor it so that nobody showed up and couldn't ask questions, and was open with everybody as much as possible.

The only thing you might have done is ask people to attend one hour or the other, but they would have in principle every right to attend the full two-hour session if they so choose.

(That is, of course, in the event that you announced the wrong time. The easy way to fix this is to check, double-check, and triple-check the announcement before you post the announcement.)


Should unsavory but otherwise scientifically correct experiments lead to retractions? The following occurred at my university (this is from a preliminary report that has been published):

  Three colleagues requested permission to perform a certain chemical experiment (analyzing environmental samples) in a laboratory. The request was denied as the lab does not have sufficient ventilation for this sort of job. The colleagues ran the experiment anyway for several months. This was uncovered when several workers in nearby offices complained about headaches, skin rash and breathing difficulties. One person had to stay in a hospital for several days. The scientists have been suspended from or have left the university.

Apparently, the results from these experiments were used in a publication.

Should this publication be retracted? One argument is that the researchers knowingly risked the health and lives of persons to conduct their experiments. Others argue that the results themselves are OK and that the ‘side effects’ do not change the validity of the paper. Are there any ethical standards that deal with this situation or similar cases?

In human and animal work, the Declaration of Helsinki was written in 1964 and was designed to provide ethical oversight of medical research. Work that was done without proper ethical oversight cannot be published in most reputable journals. If it was somehow published, it would be retracted. Most journals require a statement in the paper that good research practice was followed. Other fields presumably do not require such statements since the frequency of such unethical and dangerous behavior is rare. That said, research that wad conducted in a manner that was more dangerous than necessary should not be published, and if published should be retracted.


What exactly does termination from a PhD program entail? I am an engineering PhD candidate at a US university. I left the university a couple of years ago after 5yrs of PhD work to work as an independent scientist, while also working with my advisor on the completion of my PhD on the side (while not being enrolled in the university all this while). I received a notice recently from the department asking me to defend my thesis ASAP or risk being terminated from the PhD program.

What exactly does termination mean, and what does it entail?

On a side note, what are the implications of such a termination on my professional career in the industry? For ex. does it show up in a background check? I have a Bachelor's (from another university) and Master's degree (from the same university).

This is normal practice these days at universities. In the old days, doctoral students could drift away from their program mid-stream and people wouldn't really care. They might return after 20 years to submit their dissertation, but otherwise there was no attempt to track these zombie students down.

Unfortunately, many places are  now using average time-to-degree (TTD) as metrics to a graduate program's quality (purportedly a lower TTD is better).  Zombie students are problematic as you can have someone who is 15 years into a program without graduating, dragging the average up. Note that there is a difference between a nominal TTD and actual TTDs -- for example, in my old university the nominal TTD was 5 years but very few people actually graduated in that time, the average was closer to 6.5 years.

In my experience, provosts are asking departments to track the zombies down and determine whether they should be terminated or not. Being terminated isn't a bad thing, it means that you will be left with your last degree (e.g., M.Phil) and you shouldn't really  call yourself ABD as you won't be permitted to submit. I've been through a few of these cullings and as faculty I think they are a good thing as zombie students on the books really help no one.

If you have any hope of submitting, I would ask that you be given some time (1 year would be reasonable) to submit. Otherwise, I would take your MA/M.Phil and be happy with it. I don't think there are any negatives for a career in industry. Again, you technically shouldn't call yourself ABD (rather you "withdrew from program after meeting all qualifications for the doctorate but the dissertation") but I really don't think anyone is going to check. Think of it as a general discharge, under honorable conditions.


Scientific presentations - black or white? At most scientific conferences and talks I have attended, the speakers generally present black text on white backgrounds, which I personally find rather dull. Is there any reason / explicit convention which should stop one from presenting light coloured text on a dark background?

Conferences tend to take place indoors in dimly-lit rooms.  Dimly-lit rooms are a good place to fall asleep.  Using a white background helps avoid this.  Also, dark text/lines on a white background are easier to read (I've seen more than one study showing this).

If you are going to be showing a lot of astronomy or fluorescence biology images, where the image is mostly black with some interesting colorful things in it, you probably want a black or dark background for at least those slides; at some point you should just switch over.  Also, if it is essential to understanding for the viewer to discriminate many shades of color, it's easier with a black background because you can use a wide variety of discriminable pastel colors that would be washed out to invisibility on a white background. You can't even use saturated yellow or cyan on a white background and expect it to be seen.

But for most scientific presentations there are good reasons for a light colored background.


How do some institutions attract so many female computer scientists? It's no secret that computer science is a heavily male-dominated discipline. It's so male-dominated that some people have given up trying to attract more women. Yet Carnegie Mellon not only has close to 50% women in their undergraduate CS classes, they have lots of female faculty. Why?

I'm also interested in what any other institution that's been successful at achieving something resembling gender parity has done as well.

Carnegie Mellon gives an answer on their website:

  The steady climb of women enrolling in these fields at Carnegie Mellon highlights a combination of factors: a strong commitment by leaders at the university, college and department levels; influential pipeline programs for middle- and high-school students; targeted recruitment; closer scrutiny of applications; support and mentorship programs; and attention to diversifying the faculty.

A second, speculative answer:  Carnegie Mellon is wealthy.  Computer science is where they invest the most.  If they want to attract more women to their computer science department, they can use their money to do it.  Many of the factors they list cost money. They may be decreasing the diversity of other universities.


Difference between reference/recommendation What is exactly the difference between a reference letter and a recommendation letter in Academia? According to Wikipedia:

  Letters of recommendation are very specific in nature and normally requested/required and are always addressed to an individual, whereas letters of reference are more general in nature and are usually addressed "To Whom It May Concern".

However, I've often seen applications where it was asked to provide letters, without being explicit about whether it should be recommendation or reference letters (according to the previous definition).

I only ask letters from persons with whom I have worked closely (typically my former advisors), because I believe they are the best persons to ask about me, but it seems that some people also include letters from persons they just know.

In other words, what exactly is expected when a job application asks to "give references who can provide recommendation letters"?

With due deference to Wikipedia, colloquially, the two terms are used interchangeably.


How can I improve my paper with mostly original contents and only two references? I'm collaborating with another person on a public-key cryptosystem that we intend to publish. I could only think of two references (one to the 1976 Diffie-Hellman paper, and one to SHA-3 FIPS-202), even though most of the contents are completely original.
I put my content onto Grammarly Premium and it only found 2% of so-called plagiarism - so called because the source of plagiarism is actually a low-quality prank question on a Q&A site that contains a series of digits 9 and asks its sum, that happen to collide with our experiment data.
What can I do to improve our paper?

Citations aren't just about avoiding plagiarism. They are more about embedding your work into a scientific context. Every paper should explain in an introduction section

why this work is relevant, and
how this work differs from previous approaches.

It is extremely rare that an approach is so novel that there is no meaningful prior work that can be referenced – many papers just apply an existing concept A to an  existing problem B and analyze whether this is useful, or extend an existing approach to have some desirable properties. If you can't reference such prior work, that is usually an indication that you don't understand the state of the art in your field. Such papers are unlikely to contribute to the field, and are very likely to be rejected by journals or conferences.
Most of the citations are usually in the introduction section of a paper, which is where related work is discussed. In contrast, it is somewhat normal that there are fewer references in the section where you describe your novel approach. You would still reference existing building blocks and methods of your approach. E.g. an experimental paper in CS might reference relevant software libraries that were used.
I am not an experienced author and know how hard it is to break into a field. It's difficult to get an overview of the state of the art in your field. However, this is a crucial part of writing a good paper – otherwise, it is quite likely that you're either doing something that has already been done, or that you're flaunting the methodological conventions of the field. For example, there might be existing testing methods or benchmark problems that every serious paper in that field should use. (If those existing methods were unsuitable, a paper about that could be useful as well!)