How to export references from Endnote web to Endnote X5? I understand that Endnote X7 has the Sync feature to sync with the Endnote Web. But for some reason, the Sync is not working and my program is just getting stuck. So I have decided to use Endnote X5. But I do not know how to download the references from Endnote Web to Endnote X5. Can someone please help?

Thanks!

Here's a step-by-step guide, provided on the EndNote's Online Help page:

Export references following the export instructions using "RefMan (RIS) Export" as the export style;
click the Save To... button and save the export file to your computer;
open EndNote;
open an existing or new library;
select Import from the File menu;
in the Import dialog, click Browse to select the export file;
select "Reference Manager (RIS)" as the Import Option;
for EndNote 8 or later, select "No Translation" as the Text Translation (not applicable in your case).


Is there an easy/good way for professors to connect with corporate consulting projects? I'm not an academic (sorry!), but at various points over my career I have been interested in working with professors on a variety of projects.  I never found an easy way to find a professor who might be a good fit (e.g. is in the right field and interested in consulting work) and I'm wondering if there is one?  I suppose that part of my question is whether professors in general are interested in consulting work - I know they are extremely busy, so I'm not sure if this type of work is even attractive.

I am one of the founders of a company that does exactly what you are asking.  It matches professors and businesses together for consulting and executive education.  The company is called LIFTPhD.


Citing your own unpublished work (poster) I've been asked to acknowledge my own unpublished work but am not sure how to do this.

In short I've received a review on one of my papers that states it received favorable reviews and should be suitable for publication. However, the editor notes that the title and first two sentences of my abstract are identical to those from a poster I presented at a conference last year as well as some sentences fragments throughout the paper. The poster represented the early stages of the final manuscript and is not at all representative of the final manuscript. They've asked me to acknowledge the conference abstract in the paper.  It feels a bit out of place to just put the poster in the references section since it was not actually published and I'm not sure of an unobtrusive way to mention in the paper that the early work for this project was presented at a conference. I've written a response letter and am leaning towards putting the poster in the references but would appreciate any advice.

The field I'm working in is statistics if that has any bearing on the best way to do this.

You can refer to it without putting it in the bibliography. A typical way to do so would be in a title-footnote that says something like "a previous version of this paper was circulated under the name X, presented at conference Y, etc."


Error discovered in an accepted conference paper but not yet presented I'm a CS student, and I discovered two code bugs that change some numerical values on a table of a paper that got accepted and will be presented at a conference very soon. The changes is very small (think 0.1), and they don't affect the main conclusions of the paper at all.

I haven't talked to my coauthors yet but I don't know how to go about this. On the one hand I'm scared if I contact the organizers they might retract it for not being super accurate or something like that (conclusions don't get affected at all), but on the other hand I don't want to publish buggy code on GitHub and get caught there. What is the best way to go about this? Will the retract the paper if I contact the organizers?

Talk to your co-authors of course. But also talk to the conference committee and provide, or offer to provide, corrected copy. They may be able to help or not. But for the presentation, give the latest, most correct, version and note, if necessary, that the printed version has small errors not affecting the conclusions.

Some CS conferences will print proceedings and some of them will have a version ready before the conference. It may be possible that a second version, for general distribution, can differ a bit in details, but that is up to the conference and to the publication board of the organization sponsoring the conference.

But letting everyone know immediately is the best overall strategy.


How to tackle the bibliographic work as an entering PhD student? I'll be starting my PhD in the next fall. I already looked over the internet for advice for a beginner, even read two books on the subjects. Still, there is one point I haven't seen discussed as I wanted, it's the time and the way the student should be investing in catching up on his field and his specific topic, I'm speaking about the bibliographic part. For sure a student needs a lot of (continuous) input, but at the end he'll be solely judged on his output. From my previous research project, I'm not really confident in my way of balancing between going through articles/textbook material and trying to solve my own problematics. To be honest, it sometimes feels like a sneaky way of procrastinating: I'd tell myself that I'm still not ready to tackle my problem and that I need to make a little "detour" by existing works; and when it's done I don't feel more at ease to answer my questions. Or is it a normal aspect of research?

In my specific case, I'll be working on a quite new subject (string theory) when I only had advanced lecture of quantum field theory and general relativity; so I'm thinking about going through the canonical textbook on the subject during the summer, do most of the exercises and derivations in there (which already represents hundreds of hours invested), maybe revising some mathematical tools I need to be really familiar with. Once I'll have a general idea of the topic I'll jump to the main articles in relation to my thesis. I also know that I will be using numerical tools (Monte Carlo methods) and will need to get conformable with that. So far I only have a superficial knowledge and use of the tool.
Does it seem like a good use of my time? I already know that time and willpower are limited resources in grad school and I really don't want my desire to do well to burn me out from the beginning.

To be honest, it sometimes feels like a sneaky way of procrastinating:
  I'd tell myself that I'm still not ready to tackle my problem and that
  I need to make a little "detour" by existing works; and when it's done
  I don't feel more at ease to answer my questions. Or is it a normal
  aspect of research?

It is probably the most common way that new grad students attempt (consciously or otherwise) to avoid doing research :)

You have to remember that prior knowledge is an ocean you're swimming in, not a cup that you have to finish drinking. There's literally no way to "read all the prior literature": there's always something more.

General reading is perfectly fine, but when you have a problem to work on, it's best to break down bibliographic research into:

what does prior work say about your problem and what's the key open question (and this is something your advisor can help you with)
Once you start thinking about a specific problem and are trying to apply some specific tools, is there material to help you understand those tools better ?
When you're writing up, what related (not prior) work should you be aware of ?

At each stage, read only as much as you absolutely need to, in order to avoid going down rabbit holes. And remember, as a new Ph.D student, it's not a terrible thing if you reinvent something that someone discovered before, and only learn of this after the fact. You just don't that happening at your dissertation defense :)


MLA: Do I have to cite the editors of a book for a research paper? That's how the question was phrased in an English quiz I just took. The correct answer was 'yes'. Maybe the wording makes a difference, because the Purdue OWL has several example book citations with no mention of the author unless it's an anthology.

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/06/

For all works in a research paper you should give credit to authors (unless the requested format of citations does not include the author heading).

On the source your provided, there are many examples where they included the author, or the author "company". If there are so many authors that they would take up ample space in the resources/citation section of the research paper, you can write the first author along with "et al" after to designate there are more authors (again, this is dependent on the citation style).

MLA in particular requests:
Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. Publisher, Publication Date.


What is the volume of this article in a journal? I have this line about the article:

BioMedical Engineering OnLine 2007, 6:16 doi:10.1186/1475-925X-6-16

I think the volume is 6.
Then what is 16?

How should you correctly cite the Bibliography in Tex?

My BibTeX

%
% Published abstract
%
@ARTICLE{vladimir,
    author = {Kudriavtsev V, Polyshchuk V and Roy D L},
    title = {Heart energy signature spectrogram for cardiovascular diagnosis},
    journal = {BioMedical Engineering OnLine},
    year = {2007},
    volume = {6:16}
}

I am suspicious about the author and the volume field.

As others have already said, it's an article number.
You can verify on the publisher's website that papers in the same volume have indeed consecutive numbers.

As far as I can tell there is no bibtex field for an article number, so you'll have to work around it. Personally I'd go for volume=6, number=16, and no page field (it's not mandatory for an @article). The publisher's own bibtex file (go on "download reference" from the article page linked above) reads VOLUME = {6},NUMBER = {1},PAGES = {16} instead; that said, publishers' bibtex files are often quite bad, don't take this for an authoritative answer.

More importantly, the formatting of the author field is wrong. It should be Kudriavtsev, V. and Polyshchuk, V. and Roy, D. L., or even better (if you know their names) Kudriavtsev, Vladimir and Polyshchuk, Vladimir and Roy, Douglas L.. Note that the correct format is surname, name or surname, n., with "and" as the author separator. What you wrote would be parsed as two authors, one with given name Polyshchuk V and surname Kudriavtsev V, and one with surname only Roy D L. Abbreviations and sorting could go wrong with such a field.

For more information on formatting .bib files, ask on http://tex.stackexchange.com.


Tracking dissemination of open access publications I recently published a paper in an open access journal, allowing me to archive the post-print in other platforms, e.g. in my university's repository, or on ResearchGate.

I wonder however whether I should attach the PDF directly on these secondary platforms, or just share a link to the journal's website, where the paper is anyway freely available.

Won't multiplying the sources of the pdf make it more difficult to reflect the actual number of views or downloads of the paper? Although citations should anyway be counted properly, I assume number of reads/downloads also might influence potential readers in finding relevant papers, and I'm not sure if e.g. ResearchGate synchronizes counting with other platforms.

I think this is only a concern if you believe that people choose what to read based on how "popular" it is in terms of reads on sites such as ResearchGate. I really hope that this is not the case.... so long as it's citations that you are tracking (which is itself a flawed metric, but less so, and is one that is commonly used), then it doesn't matter where the paper is hosted - what matters is keeping it as accessible as possible.


Why retract a paper for intellectual property protection? A recent entry on the Retraction Watch blog (“Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process”) highlights the retraction of an article in the Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology. The retraction notice has the following wording:

  We regret to inform that the published paper included a few parts that disclosed confidential information which should have been protected under patent law. We admit that the request for retraction is due to the indiscretion of the authors, and confirmed that editorial committee of KJPP have not conducted any fault in publishing the paper.

However, as with all retracted papers, the paper is still available online; even if it weren't, it was available for some time.

So, given those facts, what purpose(s) does the retraction serve? The confidential information was published, and you can't get the cat back into the bag once it's out. This indicates an ethical failure of the authors, but in that particular case isn't that something they should sort out with their employer and the financial sponsor?

It beats me.

My answer is based on an understanding of UK patent law. The UK Patents Act 1977 is based on a "first-to-file" patent system. This means, in part, that an application for a patent may only be validly made if that invention was not part of the state-of-the-art at the time of filing. State-of-the-art includes any information made available to the public as of the priority date of the application, which is usually the date of filing.

If confidential information regarding an invention is made available to the public without the consent of the inventor, before a patent for the application is filed for it, then under UK law the inventor may still make an application for a patent without the prior disclosure - the unauthorised release of confidential information - rendering the application invalid for lack of novelty.

In this case, if the journal published the confidential information before the inventors/authors authorised the release of the information - presumably before a patent was filed for the subject matter of the paper - then the retraction of the paper may indicate that the journal is acknowledging that they released the information inproperly, i.e. before an agreed embargo date set by the authors. This may add weight to the inventors' argument that the prior release of the confidential information was made without the consent of the authors and that the authors, as inventors, may still validly apply for a patent.

I am not a patent lawyer. This is not patent advice. My comment is written from a UK patent law perspective.


Low ranking university with fund VS Unsure opportunity at a higher ranking one Two years ago, I completed my bachelor degree with highest honor ranking 1st of my class in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department in my university in Egypt. Since then I have been working as a teaching assistant in the same department. I was seeking to pursue my Msc degree at a high ranking university and hence I applied for a Msc in 12 universities. I was able to gain admission(without funding) in four of them(among them was Carnegie Mellon and University of Michigan ann arbor). Meanwhile, a friend of mine helped me to get a research as position in a low ranking university in the US (No. 160 according to Us news ranking).
 In the low ranking university, I am supposed to work intensively (the lab director requires the students to work on Sundays!) on a field that is not my primary field of interest. Also, he , this adviser, expects me to continue my Phd with him and my friends in this lab informed me that he will not give a recommendation letter if I want to leave his lab later. However, I am shooting for a higher ranking university for the Phd.

Do you advice me to go to the low ranking university with this adviser and then shoot for a higher one for the Phd? Or to wait and apply again for other universities for my Msc?

Also, is it OK to change my field of interest after finishing the Msc? will this limit my opportunists for a Phd in my primary field of interest?

Finally, how important is the Msc adviser's recommendation letter while applying for a Phd?

The answer is clear, and has nothing to do with ranking: if you want to go onto a PhD, your application will mostly depend on the letter of your research advisor.

That being said, there are terrible warning signs, and I would not take that position. Requiring you to work on sundays (and saturdays I presume) does not make a healthy student. Even students need down times. Sure, when I was writing my thesis I worked for a month straight; but thats crunch time. During normal students life it should be fairly balanced (40-60 hours a week working, with some play).

If you are willing to pay (another topic) go to the higher ranking schools, or wait a year and reapply to see if you can get funding at a better school. The advisor at the lower ranking school seems unethical, and I would not work for him even if he was at a school like MIT or Caltech. The fact that he wouldn't write you a letter of recommendation if you decided to leave is truly an indication that he does not have your best interests in mind: writing letters his his job.

As so many put it here, run don't walk.


I am nominated to Community Contribution Award. Should university financially support my travel? I have been nominated for a community contribution award. I was thrilled to be considered for this award. The conference also has workshops hardcoded to my research.

However, while discussing with my supervisor, he seemed hesitant that my travel could be financially supported, and he said if it a publication, it would be better.

He asked to send him email, it seems disappointing his reaction seemed disappointing. He said you cannot travel to all-conference, although I did not travel to any conferences since my PhD start?

My question: Should program financially support my travel to present at workshop plus being award nominee?

Sadly, what the university should do, what it can do, and what it is willing to do might all be different.

In a perfect world, yes, they should fund you. However, there may be limited funds or even regulations that bind their decision. Also, your relationship with the supervisor might be an issue if they don't think that this is worthwhile for you or them. Or even, if it would be your supervisor providing the funding under a grant, the grant itself might have rules. Finally, note that not every university will provide funds for students in any case. It might be harder to justify an unusual expense than a common one.

It wasn't exactly clear if you sent the email you were already asked to send and were then refused or if you haven't done that yet. Don't push the issue to the point that your advisor is angry and unyielding, but a formal request is probably appropriate. But try to make your case on the merits of the award, both for yourself and the university. And, there may be things of direct interest to your current studies at the conference also.

And if you have to self-fund for this, it may still be worth it for you in the long term if you use the time well at the conference to extend your circle of contacts for the future.


Is there data or research on the tradeoffs associated with revealing how a student's grade on an assessment compares to the rest of the class? We're building a teaching platform for projects, and one of the goals is to provide rich feedback to students concerning their performance.

I'm fairly data-driven as a student and always appreciate seeing a lot of data about each project submission (min/mean/median/max/histogram/percentile/rank...)

My advisor argues that this drives competitiveness unnecessarily, and while it may help the best students in the class, it would discourage those who are struggling. He would prefer to optimize the learning experience for each student in the class.

Is there published data or science of learning research regarding the tradeoffs between driving competition by revealing grades and ranks after every homework/project submission?

If you Google something like "pros and cons of ranking students" or something similar you will find several websites and other resources that deal with this topic.

Ranking students is common in education. The best examples are standardized tests that always include a percentile ranking (SAT, ACT, GRE, etc.). This is one form of norm-referencing, which is a common tool used in assessing. However, since standardized testing is nationwide, it is hard to be too competitive with the person sitting next to you during the exam, since you probably do not even know their name.

Within the classroom context, ranking could be detrimental if there is a higher consequence of the ranking. For example, only the top 20% will pass and the rest will fail. This could lead to some cutthroat behavior and really lead to a negative learning environment. If the ranking lacks deeper implications, students may not even pay attention to it.

In the end, whether or not to rank or not depends primarily on a person's philosophy of education. Some believe this is beneficial while other do not and there is empirical support for both positions. It is impossible to say that this should always be used or never be used.


Can a faculty in a different college in the same university be influential on my tenure review? I am a new tenure track faculty.  Last semester, I met a professor in a different college in the same university in a committee meeting.  She was very nice; she said that she wanted to be my older sister.  However, I felt like she was not reasonable and so I stopped talking with her about 1.5 months.  For example, she made me pay for her meal; she made me cook for her 6 times in row for two months; she asked me to search papers for her study about 3 times in a semester; so on.
I was wondering if it is ok to keep the distance from her as a new faculty?  Can she be influential on my tenure review in the future?  The reason I am asking this is that I'm kicked out of a dissertation committee today.  The dissertation committee chair is the person she always indicated as "her best friend".  So I begin to worry....
I'd truly appreciate it if you'd help!

If your department chair (or chair of your tenure committee) is going to be asking external academics for input in your tenure review (this is not uncommon!) then you might want to tell them this:

"This person asked me to cook meals for her 6 times in a row for 2 months, along with other things that I found to be unreasonable, therefore I distanced myself from her, which apparently she did not like, based on at least one incident that seems to have been inflicted on me recently with her pulling the strings".

If your university has a "faculty association" or "union" representing its faculty members, you may want to seek their assistance in delivering this message to your department chair or chair of tenure committee, so that you do not have to do it directly.


How do I mitigate my group project members plagiarizing off me and taking advantage of me? In a Statistics related class, Whenever I do a group project, my group members don't know how to do anything as much as I do, and if it's a big group such a 5 person group, one person may help me write. The other person doesn't have any original ideas and will do some small tasks I tell them to do, and the rest don't know how to program.

I end up doing most of the work because I don't want to receive a bad grade, and I put everything in the project report. The professor doesn't really care about a fair division of labor, and on the day before presentations everyone ends up reading my project report, and especially the two people who did nothing just memorize what I said, then since the professor says everyone has to speak during the presentation, they end up stealing my lines, and I end up divide my work and sharing credit for it and throw it to charity.

How do I mitigate my group members plagiarizing off me and taking advantage of me?
This doesn't happen when I work with people who actually understand what they're doing in class, and it's not a big deal when a project isn't worth 40 percent of the grade.

The only benefit is that I know how to code everything, and they don't but the professor doesn't check who coded what or care. They don't seem to care or they don't know how to code and can't help themselves help me.

The problem is in an introductory freshman graduate course, I don't know who's capable of doing good work, and I can only seek the "smart" people as I gain knowledge of who's capable and not capable.

The professor is clueless and expects that everyone is capable of either coding well or having original Innovative ideas. But that isn't true. Some people neither are original nor code well. He expects us to play nice with each other.

Since I end up doing all the work, by presentation day, I'm also too exhausted to present well, and I can't shake things up, and I thought about quitting the group and doing things on my own, but should I do that? The people in my group are close and might conspire against me.

Option one: send the professor an e-mail privately telling him I did everything but per his instructions we have to split up the presentation and everyone pretends they did a fair amount.

May I suggest an alternate point of view? Is it possible that you are grabbing the reins of the project and trying to control it too tightly?

I bring this up because you mention a couple of times that you are the only one who knows how to program. From my own experience I know that when experienced programmers are compelled to work with inexperienced programmers there is a strong temptation to seize control of the project in order to make sure it is done well. You have to keep in mind though that this is an educational exercise. The goal is not the completion of the project per se, but that the students learn the material by participating in the project. You may be assuring a higher quality result by taking control of the project, but you may be interfering with your fellow students learning the material. It may be time for them to learn how to program.

This may be doubly difficult because it sounds like you are more motivated than your fellow students. I expect that you knew exactly what needed to be done and wanted to come to grips with it, while your fellow students may have been "Yeah sure, whatever". Consider this an opportunity to learn how to engage and motivate your co-workers. You are going to be working on "group projects" most of the rest of your career, so this is an important skill to cultivate.

Of course on top of this is your natural concern about the project grade. I don't know how to ensure that your desire for a top grade doesn't conflict with the needs of your fellow students to get hands on experience or vice versa. I can only suggest that in the worst cases where one of your fellows is simply sitting back with folded arms, you may need to discuss the situation with the professor.


In which universities are permanent research positions common? I would like to find information about in which universities (not research centers), is faculty hired with permanent positions, for performing mainly (more than 90% of their time) research activities.

None that I know.

What differentiates a university from a research center is the presence of students. So teaching is part of working at a university. Moreover, universities are typically (to some extend) self-governed. The freedom we enjoy at a university can only exist if we are the ones that make the decisions. You cannot have one without the other. (That does not mean that there isn't any room for increasing the efficiency of that process, but that is another story.)

If you earn a Nobel prize or a Fields medal, you can probably negotiate something. Alternatively, it is sometimes possible to get a position with a "normal" amount of other duties and then apply for funding to get these duties reduced for a couple of years.


How can you change a bad course run by somebody else? I am a (very) junior post doc in a prestigious university, and for the last three years I have taught a first-year undergraduate level course on statistics, designed to be taken by biochemists. By "teach", I mean "provide classes going over a set of problem sheets written by somebody else". My background is in particle physics, and I find that the course, written and lectured by a very senior academic, is exceptionally poor.

For example, the "standard tables" of numerically integrated distributions that he provides to the students differ to the values one gets in R, or using other modern numerical methods. Additionally, his model solutions include things such as assuming that radioactive decay is normally distributed (it isn't, it's a classic example of a Poisson process), cherry-picking data to fit a regression line to, and not making explicitly clear how the different types of expressions vary for the t-distribution when the samples are assumed to have equal or unequal variance. He treats parametric and non parametric tests as interchangeable in answering questions, and the style of the questions themselves boil down to "guess an expression and put numbers into it". There is no mention of Bayes's theorem anywhere, nor of modern statistics.

The students do not like the course at all, and I find that I spend a large portion of the time filling in gaps in their knowledge, and saying things like "The way  answers this question is as follows", even if I am relatively certain that in doing so he has made a tacit assumption that might not be correct. Whilst admittedly teaching statistics to biochemists is notoriously difficult, I feel that the course as stands does not prepare them for a research career (they can't pin-the-statistical-test-tail-on-the-donkey-of-experimental-design) and actively avoids adequately discussing several quite important subtle points.

I have made most of these points to the senior academic in charge several times. He does not respond to them. He recently discovered that the notation he uses is inconsistent with that of the rest of the literature on the subject, and wrote an email to the people who deliver his classes saying something along the lines of "I have been teaching this course for 20 years..." and then stating that would essentially ignore this fact. When he went on sabbatical for a year, another academic (less junior than I, but still junior) entirely re-wrote the course, and it received much better reviews. When the lead tutor came back, he ignored the changes, and reverted back to his stock material.

This is incredibly frustrating. I do not know how adequately change anything, without committing career suicide and going to person in charge over the lead's head. I do not wish to make a fuss, but I really feel that it isn't very professional of me to have to start every class essentially ranting about what the students have been taught, teaching them how to pass the exam, and then telling them "fun things" that I think they should know at the end if there is extra time. I want to teach a course that adequately prepares individuals for their future, not very much for the past.

What is the best way to go about getting out of this situation without either (a) getting me fired, (b) getting the senior academic fired or retired, or (c) creating a very public fuss and generally being a bother?

I commend you for caring about these issues. When you have a permanent position somewhere, I hope that you will push for the sorts of improvements you described.

For the moment, you are in a position of essentially no power, and it is unlikely that anyone will listen to you. You tried the only potential solution at your disposal: you raised your concern to the academic in charge, and you found he doesn't care.

As such I recommend that you do the best job possible within the limits of your authority, try not to make any enemies, and try not to worry about this much. If a similar situation occurs later in your career, when you are likely to have more clout and authority (and possibly less pressure to publish), you might push harder for change.


What should I do with a workshop paper which is peer reviewed, but only available on the workshop website? I presented a paper in a workshop in CS. The workshop was related to a good conference, and they had a peer review system for evaluating the papers. But they do not have a proceeding and only made the pdf files available on their website.

Does it mean that my work is now considered published? or i should still try to send it to a conference venue for proper publication?

Works that appear in unpublished proceedings are not (generally) considered published, so such works can be submitted elsewhere, e.g., conferences with published proceedings, journals, etc. (Exceptions may arise if copyright was assigned, but workshops with unpublished proceedings shouldn't be asking for copyright.)


What are the pros and cons of submitting same paper to more than one open repository? What if I submit a same preprint to several open access repositories, e.g. arxiv, vixra, philica etc.?

I guess doing so would give to a paper more visibility. But would it be a bad practice? Would it be unethical? Scientific community would complain or blacklist me? Is there any copyright issues, or other notes that I should know? What do you advice?

I know it's unethical to submit a paper to more than a journal (or maybe conferences), but here I want to know about preprints and open repositories.

At first glance, I don't think it would be an ethical problem, but it could be a management one: if you need to update the pre-print, you could take the risk to have inconsistent versions available. It could also be confusing for those who are looking for your paper: if I see a paper with the same title on two different open repositories, I might wonder if there is a difference between the two versions, download the two versions, realize they are the same, and dislike the fact that I just wasted some time.

Moreover, it could also be interpreted as an attempt to artificially increase your citation count, and that could be frowned upon. For instance, in Computer Science, DBLP is often considered as a good publication indicator. If you publish a paper on arXiv, on ePrint and at a conference later, that's 3 references for a single paper. Someone realizing this might think that you're just trying to abuse the system.


Is talking about quitting to your supervisor a point of no return? I have been feeling miserable about my PhD degree situation for a bit of time, and I just started therapy. So far I've tried not to take drastic decisions such as quitting, because I know I am strongly influenced by my condition, but lately I can't think about anything else.

I wonder if it is possible to convert my contract in a research assistance, or what is a graceful way out so to continue deserving recommendation, or what is an adequate resign notice period, etc., but I know it would much better to finish the PhD degree, and so continue trying.

Is talking about quitting possibilities with your supervisor a point of no return?

Talking about quitting with your supervisor (or someone else in your supervisory committee or department) is not a point of no return. In fact, it can be a turning point.

PhD students all go through ups and downs and part of the job of the supervisor, and others in the department and university (head of department, counsellors, etc) is to help you get through the rough patches.

If you do not talk about it and things get so bad that you actually quit, then it may be a point of no return.

Full disclosure: I quit my PhD. The first my supervisor heard of it was the day I quit. Luckily, someone else gave me another chance a few years later.


Questions regarding post-PhD research jobs (specifically mathematics) I am currently a year or two away from a PhD in differential geometry.  I love doing research, and I would like to make my career doing research in some form (preferably mathematical), but I have no idea the jobs that are out there for pure mathematicians, or what skills are required in order to obtain them.  For what it is worth, I don't care about the money - as long as my family is not starving, I'm fine with a lack of significant disposable income.

So, I ask:

1) What are some areas (broad or narrow) of industry in which I should consider looking for employment?  Specific company recommendations are fine also; right now I have very limited knowledge of what's out there.

2) How should I tailor my skillset to be competitive for industrial jobs in math?  Right now I have a fairly diverse mathematical education, and rudimentary knowledge of a few programming languages, but not much else that might be useful to an employer.  What do you recommend I learn (either through courses or on my own) while I'm still in school?

Note:  I have avoided asking about professorial positions because, while I'm not a bad teacher, and a position at a research institution would be great, I lack the prestige that comes with graduating from a top-tier school and I want to remain realistic about my job prospects.

Thanks for your time,

EDIT:  Recommended reading suggestions are also appreciated.

Discalimer: IANADG, I am not a differential geometrist...

Still, some potentially-relevant fields:

Architecture and materials industry: Surfaces and bodies with complex structures, their behavior, the forces applied to them, their expansion, contortion etc. with weather or with load changes and so on. Specifically, I can imagine a bunch of relevant applications in 3d-printing. This might be relevant (although it's not a specific workplace)
Car industry, for similar reasons
Computer vision and image/video  processing: lots of geometry and lots of derivation going on there. Just as an example, read this (but )

I'll also make another, more concrete suggestion: Various countries have academic-oriented placement/recruitment agencies. While those obviously don't know you perfectly well and can't cater to your interests exactly, they could interest you in a selection of potential positions which you might find appealing - or, at least, will help you realize what kind of work is out there. Also, an up-to-date LinkedIn profile has a bit of that same effect.


Is it an invasion of privacy to ask a lecturer for details on their LaTeX editor setup? I (very) recently completed a Real Analysis course at my university. One day during the course I went to see my lecturer regarding an error I spotted in his notes.

The notes set for our course were written and typed up by our lecturer. Upon verifying this error my lecturer opened up the source .tex files for his notes and corrected the error and recompiled the notes in front of me (he was sitting down at his desk and I was standing next to him).

As someone who's used to typing up stuff in TexStudio I was very intrigued by what LaTeX editor he was using as it seemed like something I never saw before, and honestly it seemed like the ideal LaTeX editor setup at first glance. I thought of asking him at the time but I assumed that I would be crossing some boundary.

Fast forward to now, and I have quite a good relationship with this (now former) lecturer of mine, having completed his course just a few weeks ago.

Would it be frowned upon if I sent him an email asking him what his LaTeX editor setup is? (I'm assuming it's Emacs with auctex and with some sort of custom theme). Would any lecturer consider this as an invasion of privacy or crossing some boundary?

I don't think anybody would look on such a request as an "invasion of privacy"; if anything, most people are happy to share the names of tools they use. I wouldn't worry about it, but don't be alarmed if you don't get a response, either, since this would be a "low-priority" email for most people to respond to (unless it's someone they're actively supervising or collaborating with!).


How can software piracy in academia be reduced/eliminated? Software piracy is obviously illegal as well as being wrong for a variety of reasons. However, from my experience it is extremely common to see pirated software being used by research students. This appears to be implicitly condoned/encouraged by some academic staff.

Usually software piracy is done by an individual for their own use. In academia it is being done with implicit consent by the organisation and for the purposes of conducting research which may end up with commercial applications, or be built upon by others.

How can software piracy in academia be reduced/eliminated?

Actually, part of this is by design.

Software companies turn a blind eye to students and faculty pirating their software, so the students learn how to use their program. Once they go on to companies, they will request to use what they know best, and the companies will pay the hefty fees.

How can we avoid this? The best solution is at the root: replace all commercial software by open source versions, when this alternative has a comparable level of quality. This has two costs that would have to be weighted before doing the switch:

The instructors would need to learn another software, that is perhaps not what they are using for their research.
If the industry standard is a commercial software, the students will have to learn it, preferably when still at university.

On the other hand, sometimes the open source version is superior to the commercial version. For example, I think the Scipy ecosystem is much better than MATLAB except for a few niches. So, when MATLAB users do the exercise of evaluating the quality of Scipy for their applications, they may discover that making the switch in both teaching and research is, perhaps, a good move.

This switch should be encouraged even more for introductory classes, where none of the advanced features come into play, and classes where the software is only used marginally (limited to, for example, one or two practical sessions). Once students have knowledge of the free alternatives, they would have alternative resources before pirating.

(Disclaimer: I personally dislike MATLAB quite a lot, but I know of many people from many fields that are making the switch, and of no one that is doing it back. YMMV.)

Another front is in the software companies themselves. My university provides some commercial licenses for free for us staff. But the list of instructions to install and launch some of the programs is as long as my arm, and quite often (judging from the emails the IT department sends), unreliable. So, even though people can get a legal version for free, the pirated version may prove to be easier and more reliable; so I wouldn't be surprised if several people had chosen that option.


Does taking graduate course as an undergraduate increase chances of getting into graduate school? I would like to know does it help if I take a graduate course related to my major in engineering as an undergraduate and do very well in it? will it increase my chance of getting to graduate school in case if graduate school committee sees the graduate course in my transcript?

Yes, I think most admissions committees would see this as good evidence of your preparation for graduate study.


Discussion section: Rough calculation to explain unexpected results Unexpected results were attained in a simulation that point to a possible problem with the dataset. While writing about this in the discussion section, I'd like to elaborate on my explanation for this by presenting a simple calculation that reinforces my interpretation. Is it allowed to do this in a discussion section or should I lay the foundation for this in the method section and then include it in the results?

Generally yes. The purpose of a discussion section is to interpret your results, both in light of what was previously known (hopefully described in the introduction), and with new supporting arguments or hypotheses. A calculation (possibly short or rough) is a good way of providing a supporting argument, and it's quite common to see one in the discussion section of a scientific paper. However, theses are often subject to local rules, some of which may be silly, so make sure to check your institution's style or thesis guide, or check with your advisor whether they have any preferences.


How much mathematics are electrical graduate students expected to know? In most Australian universities, the engineering degrees contain three explicit MATH courses which they cover one and two variable calculus, linear algebra, complex numbers, statistics (probability, random variables, etc), Fourier series, differential equations and Laplace transform. For electrical engineering students, they will obviously learn more mathematics but it is usually a part of the electrical engineering subjects and not explicit mathematics subjects. I believe an Australian electrical engineering student does not study topology, group theory, real and functional analysis and other advanced mathematics simply because those topics are not a part of an electrical engineering degree in Australia.

I think (but unsure) that the undergraduate electrical engineering programs in US require students to take much more math subjects.

Let's suppose that someone completes his electrical engineering degree in Australia and he applies for a mathematical research area of electrical engineering (signal processing, control theory) in graduate school in USA. Suppose that he is a good candidate overall; will graduate admission committee be concerned about Australian students mathematical ability? How do electrical engineering graduate school make sure that the Australian applicants have the required mathematical skills to complete the graduate program successfully?

I think it really depends. I've seen EE majors do much of the math someone majoring in math. At the junior-senior level, some EE students will take a semester of advanced calculus, matrix theory, and numerical analysis. It really depends on the university and their degree requirements.

For students outside of the US, admissions committees do try to review the student's background as carefully as possible, comparing it to their requirements. Certainly it will help to have as much math as possible if you want to stand out. In particular, try taking some "applied" courses - partial differential equations, numerical analysis, optimization, stuff like that. Some "pure" topics like real analysis (perhaps up to introductory measure theory, this is really not a big thing in my opinion) and complex analysis will help too.

If you plan to apply to a US university, I suggest talking to someone in graduate admissions in the department that you are interested in.


How to be confident that my background for my research is adequate? I am a third-year PhD student in Computational Algebra with a B.Sc. in Computer Science.

While doing my research, I often need to check my old textbooks for definitions, and I am concerned that I may not be adequately prepared despite having done the course work seriously.  Due to this to me I feel like I should read a textbook for 2 weeks then start doing the research.

Others have suggested to only read a book when you need a particular lemma/proof/etc., however I am conflicted on whether this is good advice.

Question:  What should I do?

Please note that my supervisor told me that you know enough for research. Is this kind of feeling common among PhD students?

To expand a bit on the comments saying this is a normal feeling (which it is): learning something in a class is well and good, but many things will not truly click until you have to use them. To take a random example, I learned and understood the proof of the Arzela-Ascoli Theorem in my third year of undergrad, but I thought it was just a neat result. I certainly forgot the statement and proof multiple times, and had to look it up. It wasn't until halfway through grad school that I realized this theorem (and/or the idea behind it) underlies pretty much every compactness theorem for function spaces, making it (in my judgment) one of the most important theorems in analysis. After that, it was not so hard to remember.

Due to this to me it feels I should read a textbook for 2 weeks then start doing the research.
Others have suggested to only read a book when you need a particular lemma/proof/etc., however I am conflicted on whether this is good advice.

Some subjects you'll need to know in detail, others you can pick up on the fly. With experience, you'll get better at distinguishing one from the other, but for now your advisor can give you guidance about this.


When is Research Assistant/Associate/Fellow a correct title for a PhD student? What is the correct term for a PhD student who does entirely research and is paid through third-party funds?

One can see that sometimes people doing a PhD call themselves a Research Associate or Research Assistant (in a very few cases also Research Fellow). I am looking for clarification regarding which term would be appropriate and also why the others are not.

I can't find a clear definition. If this is country dependent I would like to know this for the UK and Germany.

How about "PhD student"?

Since you also asked about Germany: in German you can call yourself "Doktorand" or "Promovend". But also in Germany, "PhD student" would be perfectly fine.

If you want to leave out the "student" part, you might call yourself "PhD candidate".

Be careful to avoid calling yourself something you are not (e.g. "Dr."), since particularly in Germany that might be illegal.


Greeting in cover letter to journal with 6 editors I am in the process of submitting a paper to a journal and they require a cover letter to be attached to the submission. There are multiple guides for this online from several publishers, including Springer. The Springer guide suggests that:

  If known, address the editor who will be assessing your manuscript by their name. Include the date of submission and the journal you are submitting to.

The journal of my choice has six editors with no one being more senior as far as I can tell from the website information. Looking at the publication lists there are two primary candidates, editors A and B, for handling the paper (or that is my guess).

What do I use for a greeting in my cover letter?

(NB: I'm not asking about the content of such a letter and searching for is:question cover letter [publications] gave me nothing of interest, so I don't think it's a duplicate like other recent cover letter questions have been.)

Since you don't know for sure which of the six editors of the journal will handle the submission, a generic salutation seems most appropriate.

I would go with "Dear Editors", or "Dear Editors of Journal X".


Course planning: How to assign homework to highlight important sections I'm planning a course on advanced calculus.  Some of my topics align quite well with entire chapters of the textbook, so it makes sense for me to teach the entire topic, link it to a textbook chapter and additional resources, and assign homework from the end of the chapter.  However, some of my topics take material from several chapters of the textbook and other resources, either because it's a very quick review or because the textbook presents things in a way I don't like.

What is happening is that some topics are getting a disproportionate amount of suggested practice, given how much time we spend on them in lecture.  For example, I'm dedicating only one 50-minute lecture to the four topics of vectors, lines, planes, and distance, since they've already seen this stuff 3 times.  However, that's 5 textbook chapters, and it's looking to be about 40 suggested practice problems.  On the other hand, I'm dedicating the exact same amount of time to a single topic, parametric equations in space, and they will only get about 20 suggested practice problems.  For the course itself, parametric equations are a more important topic and should be practiced a lot more.  However, I don't want to assign just one question per topic for the review stuff, since practice and review is important.

Is there a nice way to communicate to students that a particular topic is more important for their understanding of the course, but that another topic should be reviewed until they are comfortable so that the important topics are simpler?

A few options are open to you here.

Simply highlight a proportion of the questions.  So out of the 40 you have for vectors, lines, planes and distance just highlight or set half of them for homework.  Pick and choose problems that give a good overview of the entire section so that they get a taste of different types of problems.  Of course if students feel the need then there are plenty more questions in these sections that they may attempt in the text book which is no harm.
Make up new parametric equation questions.  Have a look at the questions that are there.  Are there any styles of questions that are left out?  If so create some based on that style.  If there are not simply modify the questions that are there already.  Try to come up with corner cases to test their understanding (or at least show them there is a bit more to the topic). Cases that display certain tricks or potentially weird (from your students point of view) answers.  You will have to make the judgement call as to what is missing to the current set of questions yourself.
A combination of the above.  Highlight a selection of the vector questions while adding in a few parametric equation questions.

Finally in addition to the above you can explicitly mention that these topics are more important for the course.  While a bit of a blunt force object if they are expecting trickier/more parametric equations they will spend more time studying it.  You can also explicitly state that studying the other topics will help them with the parametric stuff.


Calling a professor regarding an advertised postdoc position I have sent an email to a professor regarding a postdoc position that I saw advertised in the careers web page of her university. The email was very polite and extensively detailed. However, it has been one week now and I still did not receive any reply from the Professor who advertised the position. Is it acceptable if I call her by phone, since she is making her phone number public on her page, or is it rude to do so? I have no problem waiting longer for her reply, but the position will close in less than one month and I would like to know what documents should I submit with the application as this is not specified in the advertisement.

One week is very little time for these things. The person is busy. She is probably considering several applications as well as doing her normal work. Calling probably will not make the situation better and might make it worse. If she is considering your application, she won't want to make any decision in a phone call, of course.

The required documents are likely posted somewhere and can't be known here. You need to find them. If they aren't listed in the position announcement they may be in general application materials of the institution. Failing that, the common thing is your CV and a Statement of Purpose (SOP). You need to convince her or a committee that you are the right person for this position and that your background indicates you will be a good fit. Address both your past and your future as you see it.


What do I write as response for an academic misconduct investigation? I am a first year student at a UK university and submitted an essay for one of the courses a couple of months ago. Now, I received an email in which I am informed that some passages of my essay are too similar to the sources, and that the sources were not satisfactorily referenced. I have never worked by a reference system before, because my country doesn't use any. I have 10 days to write them back, and if I don't, a formal investigation will be carried against me for possible academic misconduct. What should I say in the written statement and is my lack of experience a good enough motive?

If I understand this correctly, you were under the impression that proper quotation of sources means to have them in your bibliography (and nothing else). You then quoted from those sources without quotation marks and footnotes to the reference quoted.
I’d explain that to them, apologize, and ask for a good source how, in the future, to quote according to their specific guidelines. That’s the truth; it doesn’t strike me as terrible in your first year, but you’ll have to hope your professors agree.


Having students scribe lectures: can the instructor choose any license? For each lecture of a course, a couple of students are assigned to scribe the lecture, as part of the course requirements. Can the instructor choose any license he wants for the scribe notes? E.g. CC BY-SA 4.0 or CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 in case the instructor is considering compiling and releasing the scribe notes publicly and is fine with people re-sharing them? Or are students entitled to decide under what license the scribe notes should be? I am mostly interested in the United States but curious about other countries as well.

I'd ask the students to transfer any copyright to me, formally if need be. In any case, the scribe is writing down what you are writing on the board, so the contents is morally yours in any case.

Presumably the result will undergo wide edition by you, so this is mostly moot.

[A student did transcribe my scribblings a while back; some things  got misunderstood or I plainly messed up, a lot of cleanup was needed, and for the next version I added several examples and clarifications.]


Letter for Advisor's Promotion I've been asked by my former department to write a letter for my doctoral advisor's promotion. What kind of information do departments typically want in these letters?

They specifically asked to mention any areas for improvement. While I got along with him very well overall, I can, with hindsight, see some areas in which he could improve. To what extent would this hurt his chances for promotion?

Thanks!

Write about what you know and don't speculate. Because of the power imbalance, let others (professors) speak about improvements.

Think about whether you have had a good experience and whether you would recommend him to other students. Make it personal. If some sorts of students might not thrive with this prof and you wouldn't recommend they work with him you can say that.

Be honest, but don't stray too far outside the limits of your relationship.

From a student I think that is all that is expected.

If you think he needs improvement, speak to him about it, privately. And preferably after you finish. "I wish that ..."


Do I have to submit transcripts from school I transferred out of for grad application? Every grad school requires to submit transcripts from all undergrad and grad instatutions applicant attended including studying abroad.

Personally I am confused with one case. I entered first University just after the high school, but a year after I dropped it and entered another University (a branch of a well-known University that had been opened that very year). The main reason was that the latter University had a program with more advanced and fundamental courses in math and CS and with a researh component as a part of curriculum, and it generally better fit my interests and desires (another reasons were e.g. better professors, better ranking).

I feel that this episode of my life is worth mentioning in my SoP (I preferred to waste a year because I wanted to dedicate my life to science and therefore get better training for this goal). However I'm not sure if I had to get transcripts from that first University even if I just studied there for a year and wasn't satisfied with it's level of education.

Can anyone answer if I am obligated to get and submit this document?

If a graduate school requires transcripts from all your undergraduate institutions, then I would understand that to include the university you attended for just a year.  Under the circumstances you describe, the content of that transcript should not have much effect on the admission decision (or on fellowship offers), but omitting it seems risky because it could get your application rejected (or ignored) on a technicality.


Are hobbies in the CV detrimental? I have a serious, artistic hobby and I write an application for a scientific job. The hobby is music. I studied music for three years, but didn't conclude, because I decided to pursue a scientific career. I kept playing horn1, however; since lately I play in a (non-student, serious) orchestra.

I've seen that professors add information of this kind to their, say, online CV's. But first, they probably do not apply for grants using that version of their CV. Secondly, they are already somehow "respected".

That hobby was an important part of my life, thus I'd feel somehow dishonest to exclude it from the CV. It also explains why I'm about two years older than an average PhD student is where I studied.

Is including an artistic hobby in my CV detrimental for my application?

[1] This is not really the instrument but just an example.

It is part of your experience, so should go in. It also shows, to a degree, that there's more to your life than just science, making you appear more rounded. It also explains the age discrepancy.

However, should the place you're applying for require a nerd, who would appear totally immersed in the task in hand,  it may be considered that you have a somewhat butterfly approach - trying out something, but not following it through.

Some thought will be needed considering the c.v., and be more mindful of the recipients of it. Thus tailor it to the exact post applied for: tell them what they need to know. Or what you think they need to know...


References for Ph.D. admission application I completed my B.A. in 2005 and my M.Ed. in 2010.  I'm now looking at going back to school to do a Ph.D., but I'm not sure what to do about the references required for my applications.  I'm still able to get in contact with my advisors from both programs, but even so it's been a couple of years since I've talked to either of them.  Should I focus on tracking down old professors, or would it be better to find colleagues from my professional career to attest to relevant work I've done since graduating?

You will certainly want to track down old professors. It might be helpful to get letters from professional colleagues, depending on your field. (I am in mathematics, and in pure math this would not be helpful. But maybe, e.g. CS would be different.)

It would be very helpful if you could get a newer recommendation from a professor in the field in which you would like to study. There are a couple of ways to do this:

If you live near a research university, find a graduate course that looks interesting and ask the professor's permission to sit in on the course. Do all the work assigned for the course, and do it damn well. Ask the professor if he/she would be willing to give occasional feedback, and/or grade your homework. If all goes well, you can ask for a letter of recommendation.
If this is not feasible (perhaps you live further away, or your working hours are not flexible), plan to do a lot of self-study and find some research university which is semi-close. Ask a couple of professors if you could make appointments with them, and solicit their advice on self-study and preparing for grad school.

If one is especially friendly or helpful, ask if he/she could later evaluate the results of your self-study. Go work your butt off, then return and talk to the professor, demonstrate that you've learned a lot, and let the professor teach you some more. Repeat if there's time. Eventually, ask for a letter.

Both of these depend on having the time to informally begin your studies early in a serious way -- but if you want to get a Ph.D. this is a good idea anyway. These ideas also depend on the generosity of professors -- this will likely be forthcoming if you demonstrate that you are serious, and also that you intend to be very respectful of their time.

Good luck to you!


Appropriate recognition for contribution to a book I am a PhD student and my supervisor has asked me to make some significant contributions to a book which he is trying to publish.

He has asked me to proofread the book (English is my native language but is not his) but has also asked if I could effectively rewrite some sections to improve the communication and structure of the book.

I am happy to do the work but would like to agree beforehand how my contribution should be recognised. As I will not be contributing any technical knowledge to the book I feel that co-authorship is not appropriate, especially as the book will be aimed at experts in the area so the content is more important than the communication. However, I would expect more than, say, a mention in an acknowledgements section.

Does there exist some sort of compromise between co-authorship and an acknowledgement which would better reflect my contribution?

Sometimes the cover gives only the book's title and the name of the principal author but the title page says:

THEORY OF PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS

by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

with contributions from

Madeleine L'Engle


Is there an official way to include an image from the internet in a paper? For a paper we're writing, we need to use a small image of a popular, easily recognized piece of consumer electronics.

In previous drafts of the paper, a long time ago, someone made an image for the paper that ended up being the "headliner" image, i.e., the largest image that explains and outlines the subject of the whole paper. In it, because it was such an early draft and he was just trying to get the concept down, he clearly just googled the name of the piece of electronics and grabbed a random image he liked, cropped it, and put it in the larger image.

Now we're at the stage where we're actually going to submit the paper, but of course now part of our "headline" image is a random picture that we don't own, so I'm in a bit of an awkward position. Hopefully I can at least get the original composite image from the one who made our "headline" image (the image in the paper is flat so it can't just be "ungrouped" so I can remove/replace the offending part), but even then I don't know how to proceed.

So my question is, how can one use images in this way in a professional paper? Are you allowed to use anything on the internet as long as you credit it clearly? And if so, is there some way you're supposed to credit just a random URL?

This is a really good example of why it's important to be careful about copyright from the beginning: there's really no good way to ensure that you can actually secure permissions to use a random image.  In terms of scientific ethics, you can credit the source, but that is completely unrelated to the fact that you may have no legal right to use the image.

As I see it, there are three good paths to proceed:

Track down the source of the original image (e.g., via reverse image search) and see if it happens to come from somewhere that you can acquire a copyright from.
Search for a similar image that is less restricted by copyright (Wikipedia is often a good source of such, due to their restrictions).
Make your own image.  Since you're dealing with a popular piece of consumer electronics, you might even just lay hands on one and take a picture yourself, then enhance and crop as necessary with image editing tools (there's lots of good free tools out there).


Is it ok to asking several profs at the same time for a letter of reference on short notice? I got an offer for an exchange program and I have paid the deposit, which isn't cheap. The application deadline (which I was only informed a few hours ago) is due in two weeks, on 2nd March. I have to get a letter of reference from a professor by then, but it's hard to contact them right now because public holidays (lasting for around 6 days) are starting on the day after tomorrow. If I do it after the holiday then I'll have less than 5 days until the deadline. I have emailed a prof, asking for an appointment but haven't got back any response. Is it ok to ask a few more profs in case I don't get any replies or get rejected by said prof?

Because of the workload professors are under, it is not an uncommon problem. The only way to address the problem is to contact multiple professors for a recommendation; I know other people who have contact multiple professors for this purpose.

You have only asked the Professor if they would be willing to write a letter of recommendation. This means that they have not already invested any time. So, If you get multiple recommendations, you can simply email the other professor(s), "Thank you very much for agreeing. Another professor has already offered to write me a recommendation letter, so to save yourself some time you don't need to write one for me too".


How should I use a laptop in class without distracting others? In science/engineering subjects, it's not yet commonplace to use a laptop or tablet in class as most people still take notes with a pen and paper.

What is some good etiquette for laptop use in classes, so that I don't annoy or distract either my fellow students or the professor? Should I ask the professor if he/she would mind me using a laptop?

Professors don't share the same rationale so mileage may differ. Usually, the younger ones are more forgiving. Those born before late Generation X (aka 1970 or before) are more likely to feel awkward because in most of their education life, portable computers had not been made popular. So, personal computer and laptop were/are much less integrated into their daily life.

In fact, it's not the laptop, it's what the laptop being used for and the manners of the owner's. Here are some guidelines, most are in my syllabi as well:

If the syllabus does not require a labtop but you'd like to use one, inform the professor through e-mail for permission. This step, however, can be skipped if the majority of the students have started using one since the beginning.
Sit to the side or back so that your screen will not interfere with other students' line of eyesight.
Mute all sounds.
Be courteous about where to plug your charger and make sure no one will trip over the wire.
Type quietly.
Refrain from doing anything other than tasks related to the materials being covered (no Facebook, Reddit, Youtube, games, porn, jokes, e-mail, IM, shopping etc. even you think you have nailed down the contents).
Occasionally establish eye contacts with the professor.
Ask questions, keep engaged.
If there are very few students and the interaction becomes more of a meeting, angle your laptop to either or your side by about 40 degrees so that it's not becoming a wall between you and the professor, or you and other students.

I also ask my TAs to sit at the back of the classroom so that I can make sure karma finds its way when I tally up the in-class performance portion of the final grade.


Should I worry that a graduate student somewhere gave a talk using my abstract? I was looking for mentions of my work on the internet and I came across a seminar series in which a graduate student had given a talk using an abstract of mine. It is unpublished work which I posted on a preprint server. There was no mention in his talk announcement of who did the work, but it was unmistakable because it was in a very specialised area and got a fair bit of media exposure.

On the one hand, I think it is shoddy to give a talk about someone's work without mentioning them in your abstract. The student also never contacted me to ask if he could talk about my work or to get further information etc.

On the other hand, it seems unlikely that the student wanted to pass the work off as his own because, as I said, it already appeared in various newspapers and blogs with my name attached to it.

I thought of contacting the student or his advisor, but it seems a little heavy-handed, I don't know what I should say, and my default behaviour is just to do nothing.

On the other hand, I have been stung before by ruthless people in academia and I feel like I should be protecting my turf, particularly since I am not currently employed by a university.

Best case: it was an innocent misunderstanding, my work got some extra publicity because this student thought it was cool. Worst case: he makes some minor changes and publishes it under his own name and I am once again a doormat.

I think there are basically two cases here:

The student is presenting or leading discussion on your work as part of a "journal club" sort of series, and the abstract is your abstract because they're talking about your paper.
The student is baldly and ridiculously plagiarizing.

I think a good way to approach this is to assume case #1, and make contact with the student.  You might email the student (paper trail), cc'ing both their advisor and yours, with something like:

  I noticed online that you gave a presentation on my paper [preprint link].  I'm interested to know how it was received, and if there was any interesting feedback.  Would you mind sharing your notes?

Now, if it's case #1, you've made positive contact with a possible fan and collaborator, and something really nice might come out of it.  If it's case #2, though, you've established a paper trail and made certain that the relevant supervisors on both sides are aware of it, so that if any incident happens in the future, your position is exceedingly clear and strong.


Is there a way to save my career from absolute disaster? I am in my fifth year and I am about to submit my Applied Mechanics PhD thesis in. However, I always felt absolutely incompetent in the field. I tried improving my weak areas by self study, taking up challenging projects, but always ended up with either abandoning the idea or settling with a less rigorous work.

When I used to talk to my advisor, he used to say that I am doing fine and I shouldn't worry about impact factors and rigour of a work at PhD level as I will eventually learn more and get more opportunities as I advance in my career.

However, I feel that I wasted my PhD. I am searching for postdoc positions, but I feel incompetent for the openings. I feel that even if I do get response back, I will get rejected due to my poor knowledge.

I also feel that I should have worked harder and not have wasted time in my past. I also tried making connections during my conferences, but that did not anywhere.

I screwed up big time. I am 30 years old. No work experience. And a mediocre PhD. I messed up really badly.

Is there a way to redeem my career?

I think your situation is not unique. If you look around academia.SE (as user2768 suggested, search for "impostor syndrome"), you will find that many PhD students have the same feeling about their work or their career path. See How should I deal with discouragement as a graduate student? for example. I hope this gives you some comfort -- sometimes it helps to know that other people are in similar situations -- and you will find some advice in the answers which works out for you.

The advice of your advisor seems reasonable in the sense that often one looks for the perfect solution from scratch, which is a path that rarely brings the desired results. I found that research is done in an iterative way, where you steadily improve and refine the methods and thereby the results. Of course, academic rigor must not be neglected. The impact factor is in my opinion indeed overrated, but this may depend on your field.

Don't let that stop you from applying and attending job/PostDoc position interviews. If you do nothing, you may end up in a spiral downwards since naturally there will be no progress in your career. And even if you fail at an interview, at least you gain experience what is required to succeed.


Will following a famous professor as a research internship be bad? I am an undergraduate student majoring in computer science.

I just get an internship offer to work for a famous professor's (or say leading person in his field) lab in a top university. It is a good opportunely for me, I can have great exposure, good guidance(though as they said mostly I will follow his phd students) and might have chance to get some publications with them.

The thing I am concerning is as he is a leading person in top universities, he must be surrounded by lots of smart persons. Even though I push myself to the limit I might still be an average or even a lower average person to him. The reference letter I get (for my graduate application) might not be that good or even an negative factor (in someway called "proved failure", proved I am not that smart). It is kind of like in my own university I can get an A level grade, but when I am in the top university, due to the competition and other factors I might only get a B or C level grade. And unlike grade, I can never know what he wrote in the reference. If I don't have that reference, the admission office might never my limit but with that my limit is obvious to them. Maybe after working for one year I will not get a "plus" but a "minus" for my graduate application.

If I go I will defiantly try my best, but I am currently have another offer from a "less famous" professor and following whom I might have less risk to be affected by the factor I mentioned.

If just considering the factor I mentioned above alone, will it be bad to follow a famous professor?

This is indeed a tough choice.

In principle, if you manage to establish a strong positive connection with the "famous professor" and will collaborate or simply keep in touch with him, this could be beneficial for the rest of your academic carrier: he may not only write a strong recommendation letter for grad school, but also introduce you to his professional network (traditionally conservative academic circles will accept you more easily), help to find a postdoc and a tenure-track position, and, finally he could write a letter for tenure promotion for you. On top of this, if you will continue to collaborate with him, your co-authored papers will be more easily accepted by good journals, etc.

On the other hand, "as they said mostly I will follow his phd students." This is a very strong indicator that he will not have time for you (this is typical for famous professors with large groups) and you will be supervised by his PhD students. In this case, interaction with the professor will be minimal, and, if he agrees to write a letter, he will ask students who supervised you to assist. There is a chance that you would remain a sort of unknown to him.

The "less-famous" professor, however, is likely to have more time for your. And you could learn (and benefit in other ways) much more from him than from PhD students of the famous professor. Remember also that a very strong and enthusiastic letter from a less-famous professor is better than a modest letter from the top one.

So, as I said, it is a tough choice.

I would recommend:

Try to find out what happened with other undergrads who where interns in both  groups (famous and less-famous). Where are they? If possible, contact them and ask about their experience.
Focus on how comfortable it is for you to communicate with both professors on a personal level. You could also ask them how often you should expect to interact with them.
Don't reflect too much on "The thing I am concerning is as he is a leading person in top universities, he must be surrounded by lots of smart persons." You got the internship. They would not offer it to a stupid person, since they are "surrounded by lots of smart persons". You are smart.


Is it acceptable practice to make the source code of a re-implemented paper available online It is the usual practice that researchers re-implement others' work for the purpose of comparison or result verification. If for instance researcher A re-implements researcher B's paper and improves it. Is it acceptable to make his re-implementation files of researcher B's paper available as a supplementary file with his published paper?

Science is all about reproducibility. You should reimplement others work and make it available to third parties, just like the original author made his work and results public so that others can learn from it. (They may not have made any software available, but they did describe what exactly they did, after all.)


DOI for a yet-unpublished paper Suppose I have a paper #1 which was accepted by a Very Respectable Journal, and has been assigned a DOI, but has yet to be actually published (i.e. it's in the queue, and the DOI is not "activated", so it doesn't work for now).

Suppose, at this point, that I write another paper #2 in which I cite paper #1, saying that it is accepted by Ver. Resp. J. In this case, should I or should I not provide the DOI?

The possible downside of this is that someone may try to use the DOI before it goes live and be confused. On the other hand, if someone reads the version of paper #2 later on, the DOI may be more helpful than mere mention of the paper being accepted at Ver. Resp. J.

Assuming the formatting requirements of your journal say to include DOIs, I would do so. One of two scenarios seems most likely:

Paper #1 will appear in press (or online) before Paper #2 is published, at which point it is a trivial edit to change the in press citation to the proper published citation, with the DOI.
For some reason this doesn't happen, and Paper #2 sees the light of day before the DOI in Paper #1 goes live. For a relatively short span of Paper #2's life, readers won't be able to get to the DOI for paper one - but for what is likely the majority of the paper's useful life, the DOI given in the references section will be live, and will point to the published Paper #1.

It's only in that really brief span of time where a reader might try to access the DOI and not be able to. I think optimizing for that time (which may be zero) is counter-productive when you view a paper over its entire lifetime. At best, you have what is essentially an auto-updating reference. At worst, a reader goes "That's odd..." and emails you to see if they can get a preprint.


Chalk or slides for a job interview? Finally! I've got invited for an interview for a permanent job (in mathematics), and now I have two weeks to prepare myself. Part of the process is giving a 25 minutes talk about some exciting recent piece of research. The first half should be accessible to a 2nd year student, and the audience is the faculty members.

I was advised by one of my colleagues to take this quite seriously (not that I wouldn't). And having identified a few candidate talks, I am now torn between the obvious question:

  Chalk or beamer?

Pro-Chalk reasons:

Talks go slower, so you can be sure more people follow.
More impressive to hear a good chalk talk.

Con-Chalk reasons:

Black suit.
Cover less ground, and possibly not enough actual new research (even considering the fact this talk will have no proofs and will just serve as an overview).

Pro-Beamer reasons:

Black suit.
No need to spend times writing complicated definitions, equations, or otherwise long and mathy statements.
Helps with time management.

Con-Beamer reasons:

It's easier to gloss over some of the details that you really should focus on.
It's a lot easier for people to momentarily lose focus and lose the entire talk because of a missed slide.
It gives an illusion of help with time management.

So any advice would be helpful.

I think you lay it out just fine in your pro/con arguments. At the end, it is also a cultural thing: In pure math, for example, chalk talks are acceptable and not entirely uncommon. On the other hand, in applied math they are very uncommon and it would be rather surprising to see someone give a chalk talk -- to the point where people would wonder whether that is the person we would want to hire. I suspect that in other fields, that stigma is even stronger: Imagine someone in a business school giving a chalk talk.

So it depends a bit on the cultural norms in your field. I would think that a slide talk makes sure you're always on the right side. I will also point out that chalk talks have real issues with visuals. For example, if your hand writing is not extraordinary, some people may not be able to read what you have to say. Secondly, there is  the saying that a picture is as good as a thousand words -- but good pictures are just really hard to do on the board because (i) it is inherently 2d, and (ii) there is a limit to the complexity that you can reproduce on a board. If there is anything in your talk that could be presented in a visual way (and I would say that there is, even though I know nothing about your research area), then it's worth doing that in a visual way and that implies that you'd be better off with slides in most cases.


Do I have to ask permission for a one day leave from graduate school? I am a Masters student in maths in Toronto and changed supervisors one year into my Masters program. My new supervisor was expecting me to to a PhD with him, but within two months of switching to him, I mentioned to him that I would not be pursuing a PhD. I mentioned to him that I haven't decided what to do after my Masters, as I would like to work hard on my Masters thesis and write a good thesis.

Even though I said this, I am spending half my time learning data science because I would like to transition to data science after my Masters. The fact that I have only been putting in a minimal amount of effort to my thesis is reflected in the amount of work I complete every week before my meeting with him.

I have recently decided to fly to Chicago for a networking event in data science, which means that I will not be on campus for one working day of the week and also I will miss my supervisor's group meeting. I have already mentioned this to the course instructor for which I am a TA this term and he's switched my office hours for next week.

Now, the course instructor and my supervisor are in the same research group, and I am afraid to ask my supervisor for a leave for one day because I have been putting in a minimal amount of effort for my Masters thesis.

Should I ask my supervisor for a one-day leave, or should I not tell him and miss the group meeting and just return to work the next day?

In general, it is not a good idea to miss a meeting that you were expected to attend, without giving any notice. It looks unprofessional, and it is annoying and rude to people who made plans based on your attendance at the meeting.

Let your advisor know that you are planning to miss the meeting.


Multidisciplinary Science & Engineering - Too overwhelming for industry/ academics? Is being multidisciplinary a bad or under appreciated feature?

I ended up graduating with a solid mechanical engineering (MechE) degree, but made my record extremely multidisciplinary through research and other classes. I claim to have experience at least 3 domains of engineering, including MechE.

I get that some people have one main focus and maybe switched entirely to another, but what if they are like me, with 3 or more disciplines? They’re all interrelated, so I feel like I can bridge seemingly unrelated domains to come up with new ideas.

Do I leave all of this on my resume/CV, OR should I only highlight only a couple expertise on one resume and try not to say too much else?

Thanks!

I think that this is easier to accomplish for a senior researcher than a relatively new one. Academia tends to value specialization in research, so at the beginning of a career you may need to focus your efforts, and your applications, on some specialized area.

But many of the big questions can only be answered by taking a broader look, so it is a mistake to think that a multidisciplinary approach isn't valued. But it may be harder for a new researcher to convince people that you can do serious work in more than one area, or that you have sufficiently deep understanding that you can bring those multiple threads of thought together in a coherent way.

The trick is to get a good position (tenure) so that you have the freedom to work to your own muse. Once you have some sort of reputation, people will defer to your ideas more than they will for a new, and possibly misguided, free spirit.

Our education system seems to start out broad, then go narrow and deep. Then you can freely broaden it again from a solid base.

Note that there isn't anything right or wrong here, but it does seem to be a common conception.


Can I get into PhD in Physics with a high GRE score and an unrelated masters degree? I recently completed my MBA and have worked in the IT field for the last 7 years. I have an undergraduate degree in mathematics, and have completed 3 physics graduate courses (mechanics, E&M, QM) as an open university student. Is it realistic for me to self study for the physics GRE, get a great score, and then have a chance to be admitted to a physics PhD program?

The physics graduate courses I took were from a master’s school, but I had to pay for these out of my pocket. I though about continuing in that masters program but it is just too expensive given my situation (I have a family and a mortgage).

I want to know if I have a shot at a PhD program without going for the masters and only with a great physics GRE score and a mathematics undergraduate degree.

Typically the only reason that PhD granting institutions in the US give out a master's degree en route to the doctorate is the existence of capitation money in some states that reward them for each advanced degree they grant. You don't need a master's degree. I never got one, and I could have for $50 and two weeks spent converting a couple of journal articles to thesis format. Nobody worth talking to expects you to have an MS when you apply.


no reply from potential supervisor I know there are already many similar questions posted on this website, but I need someone to comment on my email to potential advisors.
I should mention that I've been sending emails to potential supervisors for over one month now, and very few of them have replied, which makes me think there's something wrong with my email. Also, I personalize these emails for each professor and investigate their research before sending the email.

Here is an example:

Dear Professor X,
I am a graduate student of X from X University, highly interested in X and have recently published a paper in X. I have achieved a great deal of training and experiences in the field of targeted drug delivery. I’ve enjoyed reading your papers and ideas such as "assessing the impact of anti-PEG IgM on the biological performance of nanoparticles and using chelating zinc ions" and "optimisation of pH during nanoprecipitation to increase insulin loading into PLGA-PEG nanoparticles". Your research is best compatible with my research interest because I am looking for positions that I can both exploit my skills in drug delivery and further explore the field of X. I am very eager to know your opinion regarding my case in joining your research team as a PhD candidate for fall 2020. For more information, I have attached my resume as a PDF file. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,
XX

I would appreciate your comments about the email.

Like user avid, I used to get several of these and they were easy to ignore. Even retired for several years, I get a few. Some ask me to join my lab (which I never had). Others are from wildly different fields. Straight to trash, or even junk.
You seem to have avoided some of the pitfalls, provided that your field really is relevant to what the professor does.
But you ask too much. You've flooded the professor and implicitly asked for some analysis of all that is there. The CV as a pdf is overkill, for example. It is too early for that. Many recipients will stop reading after your first or second sentence. You will be immediately dumped with the others that are even more off base.

Dear Professor Buffy
I am inquiring whether you are accepting students at this time. If so, I'd like to discuss with you my qualifications and interest. I can provide whatever background information you need to evaluate my candidacy.
If you will have a position open in the near future I'd like to apply.
Sincerely panipiridin

You will be more likely to get some reply. Even if it is just "sorry", letting you know to move on. But if the reply is as simple as "say more" then you know you have an audience.
But it requires very little on the part of the busy professor, so is more likely to succeed. Don't ask for a lot in a contact email.
But, of course, do your homework first, so that you don't wind up wasting anyone's time, including your own. Make sure you have an idea of what that prof is really interested in. Prowl their web pages. Read a paper or two. Be ready to answer simple questions about that area of research.

I assume in the above that you are in a place/field in which early acceptance by a professor is required for admission to a program. That isn't universally the case, so understand the overall system too. For example, in the US in mathematics or CS it is normally the case that you first get accepted by the university. Then you start some coursework. Then you find an advisor. But here you get to have the conversation in their office and don't need (and shouldn't use) email.


Should I share my extensive notes summarizing literature in my field? Before and during my PhD (that I just recently finished) I have been taking notes summarizing basically everything I have read in my field (articles/monographs/dissertations). The notes are structured as nested lists with points ordered as they appear in the reference, with a page reference to each point. The notes are written in markdown with one file for every reference being summarized. There are around 220 of them so far. Some points in the lists are direct quotes, marked up as such. They sometimes include my own comments (which are typically critical, otherwise I don't have reason to comment) in square brackets.

Now, I had the idea of making these notes available as a GitHub repo and to mention it in my blog. I would have found it useful if other researchers did something similar, as I could then see what they found interesting about a particular work and I could make searches in their notes to find relevant references for stuff I am working on. What are the pros and cons of making these notes available? I have spent a huge amount of work reading literature and compiling these notes, and I am bothered by the thought of someone "stealing" my work, but at the same time I am thrilled by the thought of them being of use to others. The notes won't be very citable as such since they are only summaries of other works and anyone who finds them useful would have to go to the original source anyway, meaning I won't get much credit if people do find them useful.

I would keep adding to and editing the notes after they are made available.

Pros:

Contributing to an open and collaborative scientific process

If you've put a lot of work into something, it is great if that work can benefit others as well. If you can save another researcher a bit of time, or even better provide them with some inspiration, that is great for science in general.

Raising your profile as a researcher

It's almost always a good thing for people to know your name and be aware of what area you are working on. If people read your notes and find them useful, this will give them a positive impression of you and could make them more likely to collaborate with you in the future.

Provide motivation to continue updating your notes

Pretty sure it's an established psychological effect: if you share your goals with others it provides incentive to meet those goals.

Ego boost

As you said yourself, it would feel good!

Cons:

Possible negative impression to authors you are critical of

You mentioned that a lot of your notes are critical of the papers you read. I would say this is normal - we tend to focus on weaknesses when we pick apart a paper. But to the author, this might create a negative impression if they feel that you are unfairly harsh, or that you get hung up on details and don't "get" the main point of the article. On the other hand, researchers tend to be fairly thick-skinned and will be used to dealing with criticism.

Unlikely to be formally cited

Given that your notes don't contain much in the way of original material, they are unlikely to get cited. People are more likely just to cite the original papers that you refer to.

Overall, you can probably tell that my personal opinion would be to go ahead and post them - it sounds like a very positive step. But it might be worth spending a bit of time checking through your more critical points and perhaps moderating them slightly, or balancing them against something positive.


How to formulate in academic writing when one comes up with a novel approach In my project work I came up with a new method for solving a certain problem which has not been used before, by extending an already existing approach.

What type of wording should I use in academic writing to express this fact.

I wrote something in the lines of, but would like to have something more elegant:

  Furthermore, in my project work I propose a novel approach by
  extending X and incorporating an xyz mechanism to it in order to
  get better Z metric

EDIT:

I would also like to say, that "something similar has never been done before to our knowledge"

It's not enough to just say that your approach is novel.  You need to make a convincing case that your approach is actually novel.  This requires a thorough literature review of existing techniques for the problem you are attacking, together with direct comparisons between your technique and each of those existing techniques.

The message you want to send is "I have read every paper on this topic, and none of them do this thing that I'm about to do."  The novice reader will just believe you, but the expert reader, who has probably spent decades thinking about your problem, will look for their favorite handful of papers in your survey.  Make sure they find them.

You also need to understand the standards for novelty in your field.  The same technique can be considered completely revolutionary in one field and a standard modification of classical textbook methods in another.  (Yes, both views can be correct.)

Of course, the real reason to prepare this literature review is to convince yourself that your approach is actually novel.  Because it probably isn't.  Most “novel” techniques aren't.