How to get women to apply for theses and research projects requiring (rudimentary) programming skills? I started my own research (sub) group in a STEM field some months ago at an EU university (bachelor/master/PhD system). Every student has to do a bachelor's thesis (6 weeks), research internships (total of 6 weeks), and a master's thesis (6 months). Since I believe that introducing students to actual research early is beneficial, I use these to let students work on part of my own research. This also allows me to care more about their work.
However, almost no female students show interest in doing their research projects in my group. I don't think it's because of me as person, since in the past almost 75% of students I supervised were women, most of them approaching me with the desire to work with me. However, I switched from an experimental research focus to a theoretical one and I require students to have some basic understanding of programming, since it's necessary for the research I'm doing now. I strongly suspect that this is the factor that leads to this problem.
Given the short time of many of those internships I don't see it as an option to teach these skills in that time in addition to the other necessary skills I have to convey. The university has coding courses and even special courses only for women, however, they don't seem to be very popular.
Any good ideas how I could motivate female students to pick up a basic knowledge in programming (either in the university provided courses or "on their own") and not being scared off by this requirement?

Teach computation throughout the undergraduate curriculum.  All your students need to know it anyway.  Examples: https://www.compadre.org/PICUP/webdocs/About.cfm
Ensure all students know why your research is worthwhile.  If the cause of your problem is stereotypes, relating the work to students' values is a way to overcome that.
Educate your students about bias.
Inform your students about minority role models.  Don't know any?  Here's one https://research.seas.ucla.edu/carter/.
Develop a reputation for being a good mentor.

There are no magic instantaneous fixes.


Research statement for second time PhD applications to a different graduate program Context
I was admitted to a graduate program(in chemical physics) in US during the fall of 2019 and after a year of coursework I realized that my research interests were more aligned towards another subject(condensed matter physics/ quantum information). As an international student I had some exposure to research in these related fields and it was until I got into graduate school that I could explore different research areas. When I first applied to graduate programs, I decided to apply to certain programs(in chemistry) based on my majors in undergrad. I decided to graduate from my program with a terminal masters' degree(M.S.), having taken basic graduate courses that align with my research interests and a summer research credits by working with a professor in the other department.
Question
How would a statement of purpose for the second time applications to graduate programs differ from the previous one? Are there any specific details that the admissions committee would expect me to include in my application package?

Since you are entering a different field, the new SoP should be specific to that field. What are your future plans and how do you expect to achieve them? The "tone" of it can be similar to what you wrote before, but the details will be different.
What areas do you hope to explore? What do you intend to do with the knowledge you gain? What sorts of research do you want to work on?
Let the SoP speak to your proposed future in the new field. Having a bit more experience than you did before you can probably be a bit more specific.


How to address a professor in letter? When writing letter to an academic professor (not necessarily from student to professor), what is the appropriate way to address his/her title?

I have seen in letters using

Dear Prof. X even when the addressee is not a full professor

Dear Dr. X though, knowing that the addressee is a full professor

Dear Mr/Mrs X though, knowing that s/he has an academic title

The appropriate way to address someone is with their proper title. In your question, it seems you know what the title should/should not be. If you know, use it. If you don't know, it's generally safer to err on the side of formality.

While I personally prefer (and request) everyone to refer to me by my given name, I do feel it a little strange when someone I do not know / have never met addresses me in writing by my given name. Perhaps I am old fashioned but I expect introductions to be formal (and better to be too formal than too familiar) and then quickly get to preferred ways of addressing (i.e., to use my given name).

When corresponding (in writing or electronically) I would look to the signature. If they wrote:

Dear Professor Schmoe:

Blah blah blah

Sincerely,
John

-----
Dr. John Doe
Agri-science Department
University of Whatchamacallit

Then I would write back

Dear John:

Thank you for your letter. Blah blah blah.

Sincerely,
Joe


How to cite a subsection of a book for IEEE For example, we use pp. 4-7 for pages from 4 to 7 and ch. 2 for chapter 2, but how should we cite a subsection of a book when a chapter is divided into multiple subsections, e.g. 2.1, 2.2, ... in a way that's compatible with IEEE writing style?

how should we cite a subsection of a book when a chapter is divided into multiple subsections, e.g. 2.1, 2.2, ...

Rather than citing the entire book, e.g., [1], you can cite a particular subsection, e.g., [§2.1, 1], [§2.2, 1], ..., meaning section 2.1, 2.1, ... of [1]. With Latex, you can use \cite[\S2.1]{X}.


Should I include research stays in my CV? During my PhD I was invited three times by two researchers to stay and do research in their lab, one week at a time. I'm now a postdoc and applying to tenured jobs in Europe (yay). Should I include these stays in my CV for these job applications?

To be fair most of the deadlines have already gone for these applications. Someone just mentioned to me that they did that so I'd like more opinions on this. To be even more fair I'm pretty sure I will still need the advice next year. (Some more research stays are coming up, also.)

Yes, listing them would add some more value to the CV.

This is how I would list it in my CV under a section called Research Visits.

Research Visits

Visiting researcher, ABC Laboratory, University of Alphabets (Duration: January 01 -- January 09, 2018; Supervisor/Collaborator: Professor A. BCDEG)
Visiting researcher, ABC Laboratory, University of Alphabets (Duration: January 23 -- January 30, 2018; Supervisor/Collaborator: Professor A. BCDEG)


Do I have to implement published algorithms in the same manner as the original source? If you want to optimize a technique used in a given publication, is it considered necessary to use the same programming language and data sets?

You don't need to use the same programming language, but it would be wise to use the same data sets (if available), to check that you get the same results and to compare performance.  Of course, you may want to use additional data sets.


Using the word propose in the abstract I wrote a paper. In the last sentence of its abstract, I wrote: Finally, we propose....

Now, one of the reviewer's said that

"Last sentence of abstract: « we propose » without saying for what use makes the sentence weird."

I can not understand what is the problem of using the phrase  « we propose ».

Thanks for any suggestions

It's very likely that the problem is not "we propose", it's whatever follows. Apparently you said "we propose X" and the reviewer thinks that you should explain why you propose X.


Decline unfunded place and reapply? I hold three offers from top-tier universities in the UK for a PhD in the humanities, with three great supervisors. However, one of the three has already let me know that the department has not nominated me for internal funding, which makes me quite pessimistic for the other two as well.

So, should I fail to get any funding from any of the three (and facing therefore the haunting perspective of a self-funded PhD), would it be a good idea to take a year off, work on my CV and skills, and then reapply to the same three uni's next year?

In no way would it be a 'wasted' year, since I will likely publish 2-3 papers (already working on two), I'll finish my Master's (I have yet to graduate), improve two foreign languages other than English, better refine my writing samples and researhc proposal and so on - so that I hope my profile will get more competitive for funding next year.

What I wonder is if this is frowned upon. I mean, if the admissions committee knew that I was admitted and then declined my unfunded offer, would this go against my chances of readmission (and funding)? Would the greater academic strength of my improved profile offset this possible act of academic 'unkindness'?

And how usual is it to turn down an unfunded offer hoping for funding in the following admission cycle?

(possible duplicate, as there are some similar questions, but the core of mine is the funding issue and how frowned upon is it to decline and reapply because of this)

P.S.: I am an EU national, so also consider Brexit and its possible consequences on funding awarding to non-UK applicants.

Have you considered asking the PhD supervisors if they do have funding? UK universities rarely have a pool of funds for PhD students. These would have to come from a funding programme, where potentially your supervisor has applied to and has got the funding for the PhD position.
It might be a good idea to ask all three of them, not only to see if there would be the opportunity to develop funding applications, but also see whether they have anything in the works for next year. Funding depending on the programme and situation may apply differently to EU citizens post-Brexit. However no one will be able to tell you accurately. At least for Scotland, the Scottish government has promised that funding for EU citizens will remain the same for 2019.


Mixed use of titles in dissertation acknowledgment I would of course use Prof. and Dr. in front of the names of committee members and other professors who I call by Prof. and Dr. in real life. But what about your “peers” who have doctorates?
For example, in the first paragraph I thank my advisor,  Prof. John Smith.... then in the next paragraph I mention specific people who helped me including Dr. Wang (a mentor at a different school) and Johny McLovin (who now has a PhD but worked with me as a grad student in the same lab). Then in the next paragraph I thank my friends and most of them have doctorates also but I’d just put their first names only. It kind of makes sense to me but the inconsistency bothers me. Most importantly, would it be rude to do this? Because in the same sentence I am referring to someone as a doctor and the other as not when both have doctorates purely based on my personal relationship.
On the other hand, I have read an acknowledgment that included titles in front of every single name (including Mr. and Ms.) and it bothered me a lot.
And no, I cannot just leave out the titles altogether because it’s something not culturally acceptable at my institution.
I have seen similar questions here before but none of them were directly applicable to my situation.

I'd suggest that if a person has a doctorate that you should give the title, even if they are your friends. It honors their achievement.
Your dissertation will be read by others, possibly many others if it is published.


How does one with a B.S. in Mathematical Sciences become a software developer? I will graduate in 1 semester and I have realized towards the end of my B.S. in mathematical sciences that I would like to develop software. I know there's no degree requirement to do this.

I have taken 20 math classes, bu have only taken 4 official computer science classes (2 in Java, 1 in C++, 1 in discrete math) and will have the opportunity to take up to 2 more before I graduate such as "data structures and algorithms" (a java class). I have also taken graph theory through the math department.

I have brainstormed. I could apply to masters degree programs in computer science (or PhD programs, then leave with a masters) or I could try to self teach myself the programming languages and gaps in my knowledge. Or I could take the additional couple of years to finish a double undergraduate major in computer science at my school. I could also try for an internship for Summer 2014, regardless.

So I could:

Self study and try for an entry level position. No explicit or implicit cost if I succeed. But if I fail to get a job, there's the time wasted that I could have been in school.
Finish a double major in CS (would take an additional 2 years). This would have an opportunity cost as well as an explicit cost.
Apply to graduate school in CS. This would have an opportunity cost and most likely an explicit cost.

My answer is coming from the experience of graduating with a B.S. in Mathematics (with a Physics minor) and then work as a programmer.

I had comparable programming experience before graduating and had actually planned on taking a second major in CS before dropping in in favor of Physics. I quickly realized that I would only find work in a programming position. It was quite a shock to work on a enterprise class application with hundreds of classes and a complicated architecture. I was incredibly lucky to find a position that was willing to train me up to speed.

I have found that sometimes I will use my math background to come up with an algorithm easily that other programmers will be stunned by. Other times I will feel critically behind the curve, especially when asked to design/architecture a new project.

I have filled in some of these gaps by supplementing my education through MOOCs, reading tons of books and forums (although I have only now started contributing), and picking my coworkers brains. I have had a goal of improving my skills with software patterns, and adding a new language/technology every year. However, keeping up with my mathematical skills (especially linear algebra and statistics) has opened many doors.

Also, improving "soft skills" like communication, networking, and organization is very important. In a lot of positions the goal in training is for you to generate business for the company.

Getting the lingo right away is critical. Once you know what can be done it is simply a matter of finding out how.

After three years as a junior programmer I am starting to look at Masters programs and I feel much more prepared and my job will be partially reimbursing me for classes. In addition I have a much better sense of what programs will benefit my career and how. For the type of work I am interested in I am looking into CS programs but also Systems Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Statistics.

That being said, I was incredibly fortunate to find a position that nurtured my abilities. To be clear, my supervisors were expecting a year before I contributed in a meaningful way, a lot of places will not take that bet on anyone. In order to get where I am I worked hard, usually 50 hrs at work and an additional 10 hrs of outside research.


Why do PhDs become homeless? There is a concept circling in the air that

doing a Ph.D. is a waste of time
a Ph.D. is worthless
and more

But, today, the following comment caught my attention:

I am asking this question, coz, I am venturing into a Ph.D., but these types of news are making me demotivated.

Does this have anything to do with academia or simply bad life-decisions?

In reality, few PdDs wind up homeless. A few do, and at certain times more do. But, in general, it shouldn't be a concern for someone wanting to study for a doctorate. But occasionally...

There are a lot of factors. The general state of a nation's economy at the time you finish can have a lot to do with it. When I finished (1970's) there were almost no jobs for mathematicians. We had landed on the moon and all money for science suddenly dried up for several years. I was lucky to stay in academia at all, and many PhDs at the time were pumping gas, etc. It cleared up in a few (several) years.

Some people get a doctorate not intending to use it for anything but the love of knowledge. Some turn out to be writers.

Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) was evading capture by the police.

Lots of reasons.

At the current moment there is a glut of doctoral graduates relative to the market for those skills in many fields. Academia in general graduates more PhDs in a given year than there are positions open in academia. So the system depends on jobs being available elsewhere. Sometimes that is true and sometimes not.

A lot of people take jobs below what their skills and education would require, such as teaching school with a doctorate.

And, as to bad life decisions, it is impossible to say. Having a job shouldn't be your highest lifetime goal, actually. Moreover, because of the length of time it takes to earn a doctorate the economy and the demand for your skills can change drastically before you finish. This is what happened to me. When I started grad school everyone would predict a bright future for a mathematician. When I finished, not so much. Nothing, really. I looked into becoming an actuary, for example. And, I switched fields to CS to become more employable in the short term.

But, I'm glad things are better in Kenya. Here (US) politicians have decided to drastically decrease funding for education at all levels. The feeling among some of them is that it is up to you, not society, to see to your education. This is a great way to assure that the population gets dumber and dumber and poorer and poorer over time. I have an opposite view that an educated populace is a national resource that shouldn't be compromised. Silly me.

Postscript: I didn't interpret the question as "Why do so many...". I don't see that implication anywhere in the original post.


What are my duties regarding reporting plagiarism when reviewing a fellow graduate student's paper? I am a PhD student, and have just finished the last part of my course requirement. My last assignment is to review several other student's term projects from a seminar course.

One of the projects I have been asked to review is rife with plagiarism. More than 75% of the paper is plagiarized, from over two dozen different sources, including academic papers, stackoverflow.com, and wikipedia. I have reported all of this to my professor, along with a detailed summary of which parts are taken from where.

However, some of the paper appears to be plagiarized from the student's own earlier assignments, in a different course. It's fairly obvious that this is the case because they first plagiarized the assignment description to summarize the problem they wanted to study, and then provide an answer to said problem, including answering discussion questions that are on the assignment, but somewhat unrelated to their main topic.

I know the professor who taught the earlier course well. Should I contact him directly? Should I suggest to my current instructor that the earlier professor be notified as well? Which course of action is more appropriate?

If you've spotted plagiarism, you have a duty to report it to a responsible authority. Just because the student is a fellow graduate student in your department does not absolve you of the duty. However, the politics of the situation can make things much more complicated, because it may lead to intra-departmental conflict, which is most certainly not a good thing.

I would believe the correct initial approach is to notify the professor of the current course of the current and past plagiarism. If you feel that no appropriate action has been taken, then you can consider notifying the instructor of the past course; however, the actions that can probably be taken are somewhat more limited than for a class where the final grades have not yet been assigned or have only recently posted.

How far you want to pursue this matter, on the other hand, depends on how serious you believe the transgression is. If the plagiarism is serious enough that it calls into doubt the student's ability to be an independent researcher, then further escalation—perhaps (in order of approach) to the graduate "officer" for the department, the chair of the department, or the dean for graduate students—may be necessary, if your initial efforts don't lead anywhere. This is, admittedly, a rather severe course of action, and one which may cause problems for you later down the road. So I would also recommend talking to your advisor as well, and solicit feedback as to what are the consequences of pursuing this.


How to improve chances of graduate admission following major, long-term burnout? So my first post didn't fare too well with this crowd.  Let me try again.

Because I did not get into any of the schools I actually wanted to attend, I lost my drive to continue getting good grades and subsequently very negatively impacted my GPA.  My current GPA does not reflect my ability.  When I was applying to schools for undergrad, I had the desire to go to graduate school since I liked solving new problems.  I now feel that since I did not get into one of the schools that would have been a better fit for me with respect to ability and the facts that I let my grades slip and that I've been out of school for effectively two years now for medical reasons, it will be much harder for me to get into a good graduate program.  I've got one year's worth of classes to finish off my undergraduate degree, but even acing those two semesters wouldn't increase my GPA to what I deem acceptable.

I've also come to realize that I don't like school per se (the exams, the coursework, etc.), but I do love learning and working on new problems.  Unfortunately, it's hard, if not impossible, to do things that require having learned things without going to school to get a degree that says you have learned said things.

My questions:

How do I recapture my drive to do the work so that I do not totally hose any future I may have?  I seriously doubt that attempting to transfer to one of the schools that have previously denied me would work.
How do I secure a position in a good graduate program with a pretty terrible GPA, having no real research experience, and coming from a less-than-stellar school?  REUs rejected me, I suspect, on the grounds of my GPA.
Is there any path that would allow me to get into a decent research position without the bother of degrees?

If you can think of any other options that would lead to a research position, I'd love to hear them.

First of all, I gotta say congrats for editing the question in a way which will make it more interesting to us.

Regarding the parts of the question that you have removed: You know, bad things happen, and they will happen in the future as well, it is your reaction that matters the most. Kudos in that regards as well, since you have decided to look around for a solution for your problem. That is a nice start nevertheless.

You can refer to this post regarding you question about getting into graduate school. However, are you sure that you really like research, have you had any experience in the past? If not, how do you know you like it? Or you just like the Phd title? Bear in mind that the graduate school and later academic career is full of rejections: paper-, grant-, acceptance-. It is obvious that you will have to change the way how you react to rejection, based on how you have reacted to rejection for the colleges that you have applied.

You should have kept you motivation high and work as much as possible to show that committees that did not accept you they have done wrong. But that is past already, you say you have 1 year left to finish your undergrad studies. Try to do you best in the courses that are left.

After all coursework is not the main factor in showing your research capabilities. When you will apply to other institutions later on for research/phd position you will have to convince them that you are capable of doing research. That's the main thing.

It would be great if you could stick around some research projects taking place at your current institution. Maybe some papers come out from there, even you can impress the professors, which might want to write strong recommendation letter for you later on. Strong recommendation letters are important as well.

Finally, do not be that obsessed with the colleges that you have targeted before. There are good colleges doing great stuff over there. Also, you can consider switching continents, in that case your GPA would matter less, as you will have to undergo two extra years of Master studies (in Europe) in order to get a Phd.

To answer your questions precisely:

You have clearly stated that you don't want to screw up any future you might have. So, remind this to yourself daily, try to focus on this. Try some self-motivation stuff!
The link I provided above should be helpful. Got no research experience? Then, simple... get some!
Do a Masters, in US or abroad before getting to Phd; Perform well in the Masters, most recent GPA matters the most.


Not citing a secondary source for a reason I have already read the relevant questions, but mine is really different;

I found useful information in a paper, it (basically) says for a specific case that "they use up to %60 more torque" but when I go to original source I saw that, in the original paper one of the values was "%63 torque", so I wrote, "they expend about %60 extra torque" and I couldn't give reference to a secondary source, because it was wrong, and my sentence became different.

Similarly, a paper said that (just a part of it) "during walking on a flat surface". However, when I open the original source, I saw that the original source says "for unrestrained walking" which means "during normal walking", so I couldn't give citation to secondary sources for that sentence because I corrected a part of the information.

Similarly, again, another paper (briefly) said that "in that country 159.000 amputation occurs per year" but when I open the original source, I saw that it was 143.000 so; I write "in that country each year more than 140.000 limb loss occurs." so, I couldn't write reference to a secondary source, because information became different. But sentence structures are similar I do not know if it is plagiarism?

Note1: Please, do not choose "duplicate" because my question is different, I'm correcting some missing or falsified information and I need a help about it. Is it correct to citing just original source, because secondary source reflects the information in a different way/and I can not find that information in original source, so, I modify the information, and I just cite the original source? Because at secondary source, information is a bit or more different (falsified or reflected secondary author's interpretation)? (as I explained above)

Note2: For some of them, I use a summary of secondary sources but I do correction for wrong parts or falsified numbers/interpretations. So I think it becomes my summary? I do not know where to draw the line.

You are mixing up to different things. It sounds like you are copying the sentence structure of the secondary source. If this is the case, that is plagiarism. It doesn't matter if you cite the secondary source or not, as no one will know that the citation is referring to the sentence structure. The second issue is the facts. For these, you should be citing the primary source. You do not need to cite every source that has cited the primary source. It is generally much better to cite primary sources than secondary sources, because as you have discovered, things can get messy the further away from the primary source you go.


Is it reasonable for a professor to ask students to stay 30-45 minutes past scheduled class time every week? I'm currently in a class in my major that meets for 50 minutes 3 times a week. Meanwhile, I'm a member of a campus club, unrelated to my major, which meets right after this class one day.

My professor has decided that he should have the students stay an extra 30-45 minutes after class on the day of the meetings so that he can continue to teach.

I'm the only one in the class who has voted against this, which makes me uncomfortable, because I'm what's forcing the class to have a faster pace.

Am I right in being outraged? Is it not the professor's job to teach the necessary course material in the time allotted, as opposed to having students stay late for no credit? Should I cave in and just not go to the club meetings? They're not important for my major, and I'm not an officer, but I immensely enjoy them.

Edit: I've been asked in the comments why my professor is doing this.  It has to do with the pacing of the course--if we had to stick to 50 minutes 3 times a week, then the pace would have to be much faster.

I guess I'm going to be the contrary opinion here. I don't think your professor's request is reasonable at all. Class time is scheduled the way it is so that people can plan the rest of their lives around the schedule. In this case, nobody but you seems to have anything from 12:50 on, but that shouldn't encourage the prof to monopolize that time.

Some may think your extracurricular activity is trivial or that you should skip it, but that math club could easily have been another class or your job. The professor is in a position of power, and he should respect his position by not trying to compel you to work outside the system because it's convenient to him. Several of your peers may actually appreciate that you're the lone hold out even if they won't ever admit it.

I would have no problem with the prof offering extra sessions where no required material was covered. This could be extra practice working example problems or a Q&A session to clear up anything confusing from class. That being said, I think professors should be held to teaching the required stuff in the allotted time.


Is it ethical to cite a reviewer's papers even if they are rather irrelevant? We have just received reviews on a paper, and in reading through one of the "borderline" reviews, I recognized that the "voice" of the review sounded like a researcher I associated with at a conference a few years ago. In particular, they use a certain terms in parts of their review customary to this researcher's homeland. I checked the review committee, and this individual is indeed listed. Upon reading further, they suggest some past work which may be useful -- one of which I recognized as this researcher's work (we have some overlap in our fields).

I have not reached out to this researcher, nor have I shared my suspicions with any co-authors. This researcher and I socialized in a group setting a few years back, but have had no subsequent contact besides being in the same circles on some social media.

While the paper this researcher authored is tangentially related, it is not one that I would consider particularly relevant in our discussion. However, being quite certain of this reviewer's identity, it is tempting to "play up" the relevance of that paper in the hopes of swaying the reviewer.

My question: Is this ethical? I do not have any concrete evidence of this reviewer's identity (nor will I ever look for it), but the fact that I feel compelled to respond in a way different than I would otherwise has my alarm bells going off.

Reworded bonus question: If I believe I've discerned the identity of a reviewer, should I report that to the PC?

Note: This question is intended to be about my conduct, not the reviewer's. I do not believe the reviewer has done anything unethical.

Don't speculate about who the reviewer(s) of your manuscript are. Nothing good can come out of having the knowledge. In fact thinking you know who the reviewers are can cause you quite a bit of grief.

Forget about who authored the review and focus on the facts. You think the paper suggested is tangentially related and not really relevant. Therefore you think you shouldn't cite it. As in similar situations, the next most natural thing to do would be to not cite it, giving your reasons. It would take a pretty unscrupulous reviewer to reject your manuscript because it doesn't cite his paper, and even if the reviewer attempts this, he would also have to convince the editor that he's actually rejecting your manuscript for valid reasons. Remember the editor can see who the reviewer is, and will notice if the reviewer is pushing his paper even if the relevance is tangential. Further, remember that the editor can accept a paper even if the reviewer recommends rejection.

Finally, about whether to report this, there's no point. You won't learn anything about it anyway because the editors can neither confirm nor deny the identity of the reviewer.


Accepted by a different proposed supervsior: writing a thank you letter This is a usual how to write a thank you letter but the twist is during the application process I put down professor X as a possible supervisor. I then interviewed with professor X and professor Y (both at the same institution). I was later accepted and the letter stated the supervisor would be professor Y. (Speculation: maybe professor X could not/did not want to take me on for whatever reason but professor Y did.) I spent a few days looking into professor Y's research and would probably accept.

How do I go about replying to the offer and emailing both professors? I'm not sure how to navigate this situation with the expected tact. Any guidance would be appreciated.

Context: this is for a PhD at a UK/European university.

All it really takes is something simple.

  Thank you both for considering my candidacy. I'm happy to join the program under Professor Y's direction.

And stay friendly with everyone.


How to correctly mention people in a PhD thesis? I'm currently looking for some advise concerning the correct way of mentioning people (i.e. inventors or scientists) in a (PhD) thesis. To clarify, I'm looking for a good way of phrasing "Method X was invented by Y". Which of the following sentences - if any - would be the best way?

Method X was invented by Doe
Method X was invented by John Doe
Method X was invented by John Doe (12 March 1899 - 22 April 1956)
Method X was invented by the Russian mathmatician and writer John Doe (12 March 1899 - 22 April 1956)

Personally, I think that it's appropriate to give some background (i.e. birth and death dates) for each newly introduced person. However, this might maybe be considered a bit too elaborated for a technical thesis.

Generally you should ask your advisor on that. It strongly depends on the discipline and probably the requirements of your parent institution. For example in my case the correct method was Method X was invented by Doe, but I have written a few works where the citation style was customarily Method X was invented by J. Doe as well as Method X was invented by John Doe.

On the other hand I can't remember any paper where an author would introduce biographical data of the people whose names are referred. You are generally not writing about those people but their ideas. Moreover, sometimes you may be unable to find the birth and death dates - what would you do in that case? Omit the data in case of few people where you were unable to find it?


Difference between research paper and scientific paper What is the difference between a research paper and a scientific paper? Does the research paper also mean a term paper at the end of your Masters?

I need to present a research paper. So does it mean I need to present a solution to an existing problem or does it mean a summary of various solutions already existing?

A research paper is a paper containing original research. That is, if you do some work to add (or try to add) new knowledge to a field of study, and then present the details of your approach and findings in a paper, that paper can be called a research paper.

Not all academic papers contain original research; other kinds of academic papers that are not research papers are

review papers, (see What is the difference between a review paper and a research paper?)
position papers (which present an opinion without original research to support it)
tutorial papers (which contain a tutorial introduction a topic or area, without contributing new results).

A scientific paper is any paper on a scientific subject.

  Does the research paper also mean a term paper at the end of your Masters?

  I need to present a research paper. So does it mean I need to present a solution to an existing problem or does it mean a summary of various solutions already existing?

If the term paper at the end of your masters contains original research, then it's a research paper.

Depending on the policies of your department, you may or may not be required to attempt original research during your masters. In some departments, a review of existing literature may be fine. If you're not sure exactly what's required from you, you need to ask the relevant faculty or staff members in your department.


Do my publications help my department/university? I am currently a mathematics lecturer at a state university in the US. I still do research and put a lot of effort into publications, although it is not required for my position. My question is: Will my publications (in good journals) be seen as a positive by the math department and/or university overall? Do they gain any benefits from my research? Is there some baseline for number of publications that they need to meet for funding, etc?

(Although OP is in the US, the question doesn't have a "united-states" tag, so...)
In England and Wales, there's a pot of government money called "QR funding", which is allocated to universities in proportion to the quality and quantity of their faculty members' research publications, as measured in an episodic exercise called "REF".


Applying for NSF (Math Fellowship) before being accepted to a university. How to find a Sponsor? I am in the process of applying to graduate schools this Fall 2017 (both in the US and in Europe). I do not yet know what institution I may go to nor do I know any researcher who would be willing to make such early plans. I am wondering whether or not my case matches the requirements of the NSF (Math Fellowship)? I have read the FAQs but found nothing that answers my concern.

From the description for Sponsoring Scientist, I read

The sponsoring scientist's statement is meant to
show how the host and host institution will provide a vibrant and
supportive environment for the Fellow's proposed research and
training activities and provide a basis for the Fellow's future
independent research career.

The above makes me think that this Fellowship is only appropriate for enrolled students. Is this right?

If not and it is indeed possible/appropriate for me to apply for NSF (Math Fellowship), then how should I go about finding a Sponsoring Scientist? Is it appropriate to approach/email some researchers in some schools that I will be applying to?

You're looking at the NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships, which is for funding postdocs, not graduate study.

You probably want the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, which is the main NSF fellowship program for PhD studies in math and science.  This program doesn't have a "sponsoring scientist" requirement.


Submit the same paper to several journals/conferences (N.B.: This isn't a duplicate of Submitting the same research to multiple conferences, though the question is related.)

I've written a paper and am looking for journals or conferences where I could present it. I intend to send the same work (with only minor changes to fit length restrictions, etc.) to several journals or conferences organizers, at the same time. The goal is not to actually publish the same work in several journals or talk about it in several conferences, but to do that in a single journal or conference, as quickly as possible. I have two things in mind:

The review process is typically very long. If my paper is rejected by a group of reviewers, I'll lose several months during which I could have found other prospects. This is made worse by the fact that calls for papers tend to occur at about the same time.
For conferences, I can't know in advance whether my institution will accept to cover the costs. If I'm accepted to a conference and my institution refuses to cover the costs, I'll have to wait for a new opportunity, which might itself become void, and so on.

Is it ethical to submit the same paper to several journals or conferences at the same time, provided that, if my paper is accepted by several publishers/organizers, I follow up with only one of them, and disengage from the others?

And, if this is possible, how exactly ? (Should I explicitly inform the publisher or the organiser of the conference that I'm submitting the same work somewhere else ? Should I tell them where exactly I'm submitting the paper ? Should I tell them after the fact if I find a new opportunity in the meantime ? etc.)

No. Simultaneous submission is rarely considered acceptable.

Each journal or conference will have a simultaneous submission policy (a.k.a. dual submission policy) that you can look up. Make sure you read it and, if you can’t find it, ask. With a handful of exceptions (e.g., law reviews), they all prohibit simultaneous submission. If you ignore this policy, it is considered academic misconduct and could get you in trouble. And the chance of getting caught is very high.

I understand your frustration with the duration and uncertainty of the review process. However, if everyone started doing simultaneous submissions, the system would get even more clogged up. The bottleneck is a shortage of reviewer time and simultaneous submissions only consume more reviewer time. Simultaneous submission is viewed as a means of cheating the system that is unfair to those who follow the proper policy.


In the context of a review of an academic paper, what does "technical accuracy" mean? I have been asked to review an academic conference paper for a computer-science conference. One of the elements, the review must contain is a review of “technical accuracy.* What does this mean exactly? Is it the ability of the author to use the English language? Or is it supposed to be a review of their ability in the particular subject matter? Or something else?

Technical accuracy is that the approach taken in the paper and the results presented correct and are precisely and correctly presented.

It is only indirectly related to language, in that if the language is poor then communicating technical content is difficult.

I don't know how you can review the authors' ability from a paper. You can only review what is in the paper.


How to interview undergraduate candidates for research assistants? I am at a public high-ranked Canadian university where undergraduates are heavily encouraged to participate in research, and currently recruiting an assistant for myself (and my supervisor). While at this university both as an undergrad, undergraduate researcher, visiting lecturer, and graduate researcher I have seen a very large variance in undergraduate performance:

A good number of students have great research potential, motivation, and creativity; these students typically contribute well to undergraduate research and go on to top graduate schools in their specialties.
A good number of students are here just to prepare for a professional school (typically Med School, but sometimes Law). Typically these students are very hard working, but don't have a passion for research. They apply for research positions just to flesh out their CVs. They typically don't display great creativity and tend to be overworked and over-committed.
The majority of students are hard to motivate, and seldom display great research potential or creativity. It is hard to get results from them on tasks that are not route/mechanical in nature.

Are there any tips and tricks to how to attract students of type 1. More importantly, how can I structure interviews to better recognize students of type 1? Is it impossible to attract type 1 students with high probability and I should just hope for the best, but plan for the worst? Is the division I observed artificial and it is my job as the supervisor to turn every student into type 1?

My advisor, bless his heart, entrusted in me the responsibility of interviewing and selecting undergraduate students to work in our research lab while still being a graduate student myself.  Sometimes it's difficult to determine what a person is really like just from a few minutes speaking with them.  I found a few particular questions to be particularly helpful:

Ask them what their goals are for the future.  Most undergraduates give very general answers because they are not sure what they want.  A highly motivated student knows what they want, and are likely to link their goals as part of the reason why they want this particular research job opportunity.
Ask them to describe in detail a difficult problem that they had to overcome, and explain how they overcame it.  This is a question they typically anticipate, but it's the manner in which they answer that matters...  Observe how well they put together their answer, how long it takes them, and how well they articulate it and its relevance to the research job that they're applying for.
Ask them about their greatest strengths, and greatest weaknesses.  In particular, examine how they explain how their weaknesses may affect their job and how they intend to overcome these weaknesses.  A strong candidate will not only be self aware and honest, but will seek ways to overcome these deficiencies.


Am I breaking any law by digitalizing a curve from a plot on a scientific Journal if I cite the source and I mention the tool I used? Am I breaking any law or etiquette/guideline by:

digitalizing a curve from a plot published on a scientific Journal
using the data (the curve) on a paper I am submitting to another journal. I to compare the curve to my curve in my plot, I make sure I cite it and I say the tool I used to extract the data.

EDIT: I am speaking about using a digitizer (like a program that given a published figure with a curve and the coordinate axis it gets you the data).
It is a general question, since many journals are international, publisher might be  from UK, author from USA and I (the one trying to digitize the data) could be from New Zealand.

At least in the USA this is explicitly OK, so long as by 'digitize' you mean 'find a mathematical expression of the nature of the curve'. As long as you do not use the original image, you can even reproduce the curve from the that information. Data, as in observations about the natural world, cannot be copyrighted.
If you are 'digitizing' in the sense of creating a digital image, most journals will request you obtain permission to reproduce the image you found in the original article. "Creative and expressive' mediums, such as data visualization, are fully copyrightable.
You also might consider reaching out to the authors anyway, to get their own data used to produce the curve. Reviewers and readers will prefer this, as it ensures the description of the curve is accurate. Almost any author should be amenable to this.


Visiting professor opportunities for PhD candidates In my field, economics, I occasionally see opportunities for ABD PhD Candidates to apply for one- or two-semester visiting professor positions (presumably as sabbatical cover). I have only ever heard of two such opportunities, and each was through an email forwarded by our graduate adviser. Are these positions advertised centrally anywhere?

https://www.aeaweb.org/joe/listings.php

has a big centralized list of econ jobs (at all ranks) in the US. If you're not in the US you could try looking for such information at the website of the large professional organizations in your country.


How much reputational value is added to a journal by being indexed in various abstracting and indexing (A&I) databases? I'm co-editing a small communication and media-focused OA journal published by a regional scholarly association. We are in the process of being indexed in selected research databases of EBSCO (just signed the licensing agreement). My question is how does being indexed in EBSCO add to our value as a scholarly journal? As far as I know the publish-or-perish system, the real ground-breaker in terms of being established and respected is being indexed in Thomson Reuters' SSCI or Elsevier's SCOPUS and having an IF. We are still very far from that. Is EBSCO indexing competitive in the current "reputation market", or only good for increasing the visibility of our content?

Now it had come to my attention that many researchers are pressured to publish in faculty recognized journals. Which, I suspect, may differ from the list of SSCI/Scopus-indexed journals in our field. My question is that how bad the idea would be to write to specific departments asking for approving our journal? We can back up our request by showing that we are internationally recognised, question is how strong an argument of being indexed in EBSCO would be in that situation?

Reputation of a journal matters for two at least two things. The first is whether a library will subscribe to a journal. If you are looking for subscriptions, the more places you are indexed, the better. As your journal is open access, libraries are unlikely to pay money to subscribe, so I do not think this matters. The second is whether academics are willing to publish in the journal. I think serious academics choose journals based on what has been published in the journal in the past. Indexing is like advertising: it might make me think about publishing in the journal, but if everything in the journal is crap, I am not going to publish there.

As for faculty recognised journals, this sound fishy to me and I hope you are not talking about mainstream Western universities. Presumably, in these crazy faculties, if a researcher thinks your journal is good quality, they will fight to get the journal recognised regardless of where it is indexed.


"I" versus "we" in grant application I am writing a grant application as a sole PI, and it is not clear to me whether I should use singular or plural terms. As an example, currently I have a sentence like this:

  "Based on previous work, I got to the conclusion that the present approach X to problem Y is inappropriate. Therefore, in paper Z we developed an alternative approach which I plan to pursue further in the proposed research.

The reason for the switches between "I" and "we" is that the conclusion is mine, but paper Z is a paper I wrote with a coauthor, and the plan to pursue this further is again mine alone. While the terms reflect the reality, it seems bad English to switch back and forth between singular and plural.

In usual research papers, I often use "we" even when I am a sole coauthor, since this is convenient and quite common in my field (computer science). However, using "we" in a personal grant application seems inappropriate.

What is a better style for writing sentences such as the above?

Your paragraph is less informative than, perhaps, it should be. If you give citations for each claim then it becomes clear. Give a reference after "previous work" and "paper Z", etc. Then the I and we is obvious.

I think that readers of a grant application will want those citations, actually. "What previous work...?"

But an "Royal we" is often used as you say, but it would be a consistent usage. And it could sometimes be interpreted as "we = researchers in the field generally"


Poster author added me as coauthor after abstract was submitted. Can I include it on CV? Poster author added me as coauthor after its abstract has been submitted to a conference. As a result, on the conference website I'm not listed as an coauthor, but my name is on the actual poster.

Assuming that it's not possible to update poster authorship info on the conference website, should I still list this poster on my CV, or would it just create confusion or misunderstanding?

A poster of which you're not the first author is such a minor thing I wouldn't worry about it (even if it is listed on the conference website).  I don't have a huge publication list but still only include posters I presented (aand only at major conferences).  They don't have anything like the CV impact of a peer-reviewed paper.

Either:

You were accidentally omitted and should be included. In this case the author should contact the conference organisers (but it's probably too late).
Or your contribution was rather minor -- perhaps it only became apparent that your work made it onto the poster at all at the last minute.  In this case while you're named as an author it's closer to an acknowledgement in practice.

Listing it as a publication, if the title can be searched for but you're not named, doesn't seem like a good idea.  Realistically no one is ever going to look.  But if you just happen to come up against someone who's interested in something very specific about the poster that you don't normally do, it isn't going to help you.


Why don't professors start companies? Why don't more professors attempt to use the knowledge gained during the course of their research work by starting a company and commercializing their findings?
I'm asking this question per this comment.

This question seems to be based on a misconception, namely that professors start companies substantially less frequently than they could or should.

The vast majority of professors, even in fairly applied areas like computer science (compared with literature, say), are simply not in a position to start companies based on their research.  You need a viable business plan, and they don't grow on trees.  Specifically, even really profound research with many practical applications usually just doesn't have obvious commercial potential as a stand-alone business, since it won't be clear how to monetize it.  Of course, there are exceptions, and plenty of important businesses were started by faculty, but only a small fraction of professors could do this successfully.

Here's another way of looking at it.  There's no reason why a business based on a professor's research needs to be founded by the professor.  If you see someone with great ideas, you can buy the rights to the ideas and found your own company.  If professors were missing a lot of wonderful opportunities to found companies, then you'd expect entrepreneurs to step in and do it, but that doesn't happen very often either.

Ultimately, this is why we have academic research.  The stuff that leads to obvious business plans could easily be funded by industry.  By contrast, one of the reasons why academia includes research is to make sure work that can't easily be sold doesn't get neglected.


Acknowledgement of submission to the Annals of Mathematics Does the Annals of Mathematics always to reply every submission within a few days? I submitted a few times to them before, and every time I hear back from the  editorial office very soon (within three days). But this time there has been no response to my submission for more than one week.

Is this normal? Or I should inquire about the status of my paper?

A week is not so different from three days, especially if that week includes the July 4th holiday in the U.S.  If several weeks pass and you still have been given no indication that the paper was received, then it would be worth asking if they got it, but in the meantime I don't think you need to worry.


What is the most efficient way of deducing the culture of a lab during graduate recruitment days? I am amidst the recruiting season for engineering PhD programs. Fortunately, I  have made it to the interview stage for some (YAY!). I have been reading a lot about how crucial fit is to a person's success in a program. I am stuck wondering how can you ascertain fit when you are on campus only one day. In the program's I applied to you are admitted to the group not the program.

These recruitment events are the only face time I will have and given the itinerary pacing,  my free time will be limited.  I also assume it is unlikely I will get a senior student to open up to a complete stranger nor is it feasible to directly ask the PI what is the real culture of the lab.

So my question is what are good strategies to make the most of my time on campus?

I second @ff524's comment about the "key questions". Not all of them are equally applicable to each person, so decide what fits your situation the best.

Plan ahead, and try to memorize a few questions you want to ask.

Here are a few tips:

Talk to the grads in that research group.
Talk to the faculty leading that research group.
Talk to the postdocs in that research group.
Talk to other faculty in that department (but in other research groups).
Try to observe interactions between grads and their advisors, if possible.

What you want to elucidate is the following:

What are the expectations in terms of balancing fun/health/classes/research? Does your potential advisor appreciate friends/family, or is he/she more work-oriented?
What's the expectation in terms of hours/week worked? Does that seem reasonable compared to other research groups?
Do people in the group seem to get along with each other? (If not, that's a sign that there could be drama.) Do you think you could get along with the people there?
Are people -- especially grads -- competing with each other for funding? This can put a strain on interpersonal relationships, unfortunately.
Are people -- especially the faculty and/or senior grads or postdocs -- looking out for their own interests or for those of others (particularly yours)? In other words, will they be on your side and look out for you?
Are people only interested in their own work, or do they show an interest in your abilities? Do they show an interest in you as a person -- beyond your academic capabilities?
Does your potential advisor seem to appreciate his/her students?

If you're feeling really gutsy, you could ask a few more direct questions, but be careful.


Which grants to acknowledge, for papers written over a long period of time? I often write papers (usually with coauthors) over long periods, say 5-10 years. (In mathematics, this is fairly typical.) Over this time period I've enjoyed a number of research grants, most of them fairly small.

How do I know which of them to acknowledge in my papers? A literal reading of the grant funders' rules seems to suggest that I should acknowledge all of them. However, this seems a bit over the top, and nobody seems to do this in practice.

While it might seem over the top, it also seems to be good politics if you want to keep funders happy and the old lucre flowing your way, even if slowly.

I assume that you are talking about five or so grants, not twenty or more. Try to work up a short paragraph you can include in your work that mentions each agency, at least. If there aren't too many you could probably mention the grants by name instead of just the agencies, especially for the larger ones.

But the rules were set when you accepted the money. It is best to follow them.

It might be good, as a matter of practice, to separate out which grant supports which paper, specifically, though it is a bit hard if you haven't made it a regular practice. But you might be able to reconstruct a timeline from the dates grants were effective and the start of any research project, just by looking at the dates of early versions of paper drafts and correspondence with coauthors on the ideas.

And some of the grant requests likely mentioned specific lines of inquiry that the grant would support. Knowing what you wrote then should help you determine which papers should credit those grants.


How should I stay in touch with the professor with whom I have arranged an internship? This professor has accepted me for an undergrad research internship in 2017. How should I stay in touch and continue our email conversations for the following months? I did ask her to send me some papers of hers and I read them. Now what should I do to continue to look interested in her research?

Well, you don't really want to start the internship now, on a remote basis. So just send an email once every three months or so with some news about yourself and your studies.

If you want to write a bit more often, that's okay too.  I wouldn't write more than once a month, though.


Advisor threatening to pull his name from accepted paper that I submitted without his knowledge Recently, I submitted a research article in the journal "Applied Mathematics and Computations" and fortunately my work got accepted with a very good response from reviewers.

However, I made the mistake of submitting this paper without the knowledge of my coauthor (who is my advisor). When I told him that our paper had been accepted, he became really upset with me and warned me that he would withdraw his name from the article.

Nothing is wrong with the article except that I did not ask him before submitting it. The reason I did not ask him was because he took an unnecessarily long time (2-3 months) to edit the draft of the manuscript.

How should I convince him now?

PS. Please also see this "Query".

You are wrong for putting the name of someone on a paper and submitting it without asking them for permission. Having them as an author communicates to the world that they approved the content and agree with the conclusions. Implicit in that is that they signed off on the manuscript. Some people get angry when this happens even if the paper is fine and they agree with the conclusions. Some don't. This happened to me recently, and even though I didn't agree with the recommendations of the paper, they weren't wrong, scientifically, so I decided to let it go.

You need to figure out a way to smooth this over with your advisor and to work with them to get edits turned around more quickly. That being said, don't lead the discussion by bringing up the turnaround time issue. That's combative.


Can I work on old manuscripts using personal time? I submitted few manuscripts to some journals during my PhD and moved to other institute for postdoc (full-time) in few months before. Now one manuscript has come for revision and other manuscripts may come soon. I have following many questions in my mind.

I am wondering is it ethical to spend some time to make revision of my old manuscripts in holidays/weekends in my house without using any resources from Institute?

Should I need to discuss this matter to my present supervisor or Institute?

Should I acknowledge my present Institute? Is it also necessary to change my affiliation?

Let's address your questions one by one.

  I am wondering is it ethical to spend some time to make revision of my old manuscripts in holidays/weekends in my house without using any resources from Institute?

What you do on your free time is entirely up to you: no job, boss, or conditions, can take that away from you...

(Well, almost… as noted in comments, there can be clauses that limit your abilities to work on other projects, but I would think that the principal case in which it causes problem / conflicts of interest, is when that "side activity" is paid, which, I assume, is not your case.)

  Should I need to discuss this matter to my present supervisor or Institute?

...yet, depending on the sensibilities and particular conditions of your employment, you may want to tell your supervisor. You don't have to make it super formal, as it is rather usual for a young post-doc to have ongoing work that follows publications made during the Ph.D. Just mention that you'll be working on some revisions on your free time, and that should be fine.

If your supervisor shows interest ("Great, you should make a presentation", "Tell me more", "What are the connections with our current project?"), you can try to make fruitful connections, but that may not arise.

  Should I acknowledge my present Institute? Is it also necessary to change my affiliation?

I would think that this will depends on the country, institute, kind of supervisor, and many other aspects. Listing your former institution as the "main institute", and your current institute as your current address would probably be the safest option.


Are there available corpora of academic works? There are many different corpora[1] for the English language:

Google Books ngram database is freely accessible and covers publications indexed in Google Books from the 16th century; words are tagged by part-of-speech (more info here).
The Corpus of Contemporary American English is a large and balanced corpus of American English, including not only books but also magazines, newspapers and spoken English.
The British National Corpus is a similar enterprise for British English, both spoken and written.

However, one may want to do an analysis of the evolution of English as used in written academic works (theses, journal articles, etc.). This came apparent to me while I was trying to research usage of passive vs. active voice for this question.

So, are there any available corpora of academic works in English language?

corpus: collections of written or spoken material in machine-readable form, assembled for the purpose of studying linguistic structures, frequencies, etc. [New Oxford American Dictionary]

Yes, JSTOR provides a corpus for linguistic (and other) analyses of academic literature, at JSTOR Data for Research

See this Language Log discussion of one such analysis done on that corpus.


What are the best ways to organize one's research workflow when using multiple Operating Systems? I have a good memory, but some of the fields I'm working in (NLP, Semantic Web, Information Visualization, Machine Learning) are quickly expanding.

While I do have a good method of keeping track of good research (I only follow the best researchers and research groups on Twitter, Scholar, conferences, journals, etc), sometimes perhaps it's better to save all the interesting papers, add notes to them and put them in context and relationships with other papers (if a paper frequently cites another paper and is a sequel to that paper, perhaps it's better to read those 2 papers together, for example).
Essentially the things I want to do are these:

keep records of the workshops, classes or tutorials I attended, but also
video recordings of presentations I have never seen in real life
annotate PDFs, extract metadata from them and generate bibtex
bibliographies
keep tutorials in pdf + video format synced (where possible)
keep everything in context - organized in folders, tagged,
cross-referenced if possible (if an article is cited in a paper and I
already have it in my library, I want to be able to access it fast)
I want to be able to search about various keywords/tags regardless of the location where the actual files are stored and OS.

I noticed most of these things are doable in the Apple ecosystem (iTunes, iBooks, etc), but not really on Windows and Linux. Does anyone has any idea about how to do this in Linux and Windows? I happen to absolutely need to use both operating systems (still have some work with SQL Server, Excel, etc), but most of my development work is in Linux (coding in Java, Python, JavaScript and others, but also writing papers in LaTeX).

I would preferably only sync a huge zotero (or similar) folder using Dropbox, and papers/tutorials should be in sub-folders named after their research field, but also tagged so that I can find them regardless of the folder.

EDIT:
I have paid Dropbox, but apparently finding free WebDAV is an issue (therefore that would mean an additional 5-10 euros per month). As far as code goes I use GitHub and GitLab.

After seeing your answers, it occured to me that I'm thinking about it too much. Perhaps the best idea is this: the whole workflow should be a webapp - this way it will perform almost similarly on all operating systems, as even if there are differences between browsers, they are not so big as the differences between OSes.

Here's what I do, to manage everything between a Mac laptop and a Linux desktop. I usually write code and do heavy lifting on the Linux machine, but when at home or reading / writing documents I use OS X.

All files of a manageable size are synchronized with BitTorrent Sync. You could also use Dropbox, but that costs money for >2 GB. BTSync is free, unlimited, cross-platform, and peer-to-peer.
If I'm writing code or TeX using TextMate on my Mac, but executing it on Linux, I just run rmate on a document on my Linux machine and the file pops up in TextMate on my Mac. It's wizardry, I tell you. It beats waiting 5-10 seconds for cloud synchronization to catch up.
I use Papers3 for my paper library, which synchronizes with my iPad. All the PDFs are kept in my small, free Dropbox account - the file organization is a bit obtuse so Papers3 is in practice Mac/iOS only. Papers3 does have a Windows app, but not Linux. Mendeley will sync with its Linux and Windows apps, so that might be your best multi-platform option for document storage and annotation.
I have not used Evernote recently, but it runs using Wine in Linux. That's another option for syncing notes and documents.

I'm not aware of a tool for Linux which comes anywhere close to Spotlight for Mac. If there is a program that will synchronize file tags and such across operating systems, I'd like to know about it! Otherwise, for advanced "metadata" and such you're usually restricted to the ecosystem of a particular application.


Correspondence articles, do you put them in the CV? Some journals have correspondence articles that vary in size and format. More importantly, they can be peer-reviewed or not (even in the same journal, like Nature Genetics for instance).

Do you write these publications in the CV? If so, do you put them in a separate category or together with your regular academic publications?

The following assumes that you do not have to follow strict guidelines for your CV (in which case you would most probably have consulted them already).

You put stuff on a CV for a reason, usually to showcase your achievements or experience. When deciding what to put on a CV, this should be your main criterion, i.e., do you think that whoever reads your CV will be positively impressed reading this – in contrast to being annoyed by having to read about every tiny thing you ever published? Whether the article in question is sufficiently noteworthy, is something that only you and people who are familiar with your work (such as a supervisor) can decide.

It might help to ask yourself the following questions:

Are you at a stage where you list every publication, talk and poster on your CV or are you only listing “selected publications“?
Is the correspondence relevant and can you expect the reader to know or see this? Did you, e.g., find a serious flaw in a publication that was considered seminal until your correspondence? Has your correspondence been cited?
Did your correspondce require a noteworthy effort and can you expect the reader to know or see this?
Are you the main contributor to the correspondence?

Considering where to put this correspondence, I would try to avoid creating a new category for one item only, i.e., I would put it in some fitting category or choose the categories such that it fits in one of them. Either way, I would ensure that the correspondence cannot be mistaken for a regular publication. If your correspondence does not have a title like ”Reply to …“, which makes this obvious, you can, e.g., append “(correspondence)” to the entry.

Disclaimer: The above is based on thought only. I have no experience in putting correspondce on a CV.


Is it possible to download magazines as single PDF in IEEE Xplore with an institutional subscription? In the past, as a subscriber of IEEE Security & Privacy, I was able to download the entire magazine as a single PDF.

Since I started using IEEE Xplore from the university, however, I can only download an article at a time which is quite annoying. Is there a way to download a full magazine as a single PDF using an institutional subscription?

No, this is not possible, at least not with IEEE Xplore.

In fact, they explicitly disallow this. See http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/termsOfUse.jsp (Point 4 of the "Do Not"s for Institutional Subscribers). So it is not surprising that there is no technical support for doing that.

As an individual former subscriber of "IEEE Security & Privacy", they may have granted you that right. Interestingly, under the "Do Not"s for IEEE Member access to IEEE Xplore, the point about downloading whole issues is missing. So that may be part of the reason.


Potential downside of joining a rapidly growing department I'm considering joining an engineering department as a graduate student at a US university which has been rapidly expanding over the last few years. They don't have a lot of name recognition at this point but have a few other things going for them. They are ideally located and have excellent labs and collaborations. Over the last 6-7 years the department has jumped up ~50 spots in rankings and the college of engineering has gone from ~50 - 150+ faculty. Since most of the PhD candidates who joined after this expansion started are still in school, there is very little record to show which careers PhD graduates go into and how they do over a time of few years.

What could be the potential downsides of joining such a department?

My impression is that you are looking at the wrong factors here. For PhD training, department-level name recognition, or where in the usual rankings the department is placed, is both fairly irrelevant. The same can also be said about where students of the department usually go afterwards.

During your PhD, you will work first and foremost with exactly one advisor. You need to evaluate whether your advisor is strong and a good fit, and what her or his students usually do afterwards. The rest of the department is not irrelevant, but ultimately not nearly as important as your advisor.

Consequently, look at the professors in your field in the department who would likely end up your advisors. Would you think it would great for you to work with them? If yes, go there and don't mind whether the department is a few places down in some ranking, If no, don't go there even if they are "up and coming".


Why is doctoral thesis plagiarism sometimes forgiven by academia? I was recently looking at the rates of PhD revocations of people who were found to have plagiarized large portions of their PhD theses by Vroniplag, and it isn't that high.
Most people that were found by sites like Vroniplag whose PhDs weren't revoked are either established professors or are working outside of academia so it's kind of understandable that their PhDs weren't taken.
But there seem to be instances where someone plagiarized portions of their thesis and  they are still promoted by their Universities and given funding.
Why is PhD thesis plagiarism forgiven in some instances by academia?

I certainly won't and can't speak for all cases, but it is still true that a doctoral student is a student and is in a learning situation. Therefore, some universities will treat plagiarism as they do other sorts of misconduct and try to turn it into a learning situation so that the student can improve their practices and ethics. The alternative of failing the student and expelling them from the program is extreme, of course.
I would hope that when plagiarism is found in a dissertation, and agreed that it is plagiarism, that the dissertation gets corrected and proper citations and proper quotations made. But that is a hope, not a certainty.
Sadly, too many people get out into the world without really learning all that should be learned, and, from the prevalence of plagiarism questions here, I think this is one area that probably needs to be explicitly addressed somewhere in the educational process. But, too often, people just make assumptions and assume others make the same assumptions without reflection.


Can you abbreviate the title of the Proceeedings of the IEEE? I found this on Page 34 of IEEE EDITORIAL STYLE MANUAL, it's about how to edit the reference. I don't understand the following sentence:

  NOTE: The only exception to this rule is PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, which never carried an acronym on the masthead

Does it mean when cite a paper from PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, do not cite it in an abbreviation form. If it is, why the following example ( Page 35 of IEEE EDITORIAL STYLE MANUAL) gave an abbreviation form:

The part you quote does not refer to the name of the Journal but to the vol. ##, no. ## section of the citation and is applicable to those earlier than 1988.

So the 1981 citation would be

IEEE Trans. Automat. Contr., vol. AC-26, no.1, pp. 1–34, Jan. 1981.

while a citation from the same journal past 1988 would be

IEEE Trans. Automat. Contr., vol. 40, no.1, pp. 1–34, Jan. 1995.

The exception to the Proc. of IEEE applies here, as it never had an abbreviation in the volume and it has always been:

Proc. IEEE, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 1-11, Jan. 1978.

The example they provide is correct.


What should I do if I find a mistake in my submitted master's thesis? What would you do if you have already handed in a thesis to your professor, but you printed an earlier version with a small mistake. You want to have a great grade nevertheless, but I am feeling unsure of what to do:

Would you tell him your mistake and hope that he indulgent and says "Okay, then this does not count as a mistake." Since you recognized your own mistake, he is likely to be forgiving. Or would you say nothing and hope that he won't find the mistake?

Everyone makes small mistakes from time to time and it is expected that there should be some mistakes in a master's thesis. What you should perhaps do depends on the nature of the mistake. If you are talking about a small or even a big typo, I would suggest just leaving it be and not alerting your professor. Typos are expected and a few won't impact your grade very much, if at all. However, if you have made a major scientific, analytic, or other substantive mistake, acknowledging it and offering a correction is the right thing to do. Depending on the rules of your institution, the professor may not be able to accept a modification to the document you turned in, but if they can, you are sorted. If they can't, them knowing that YOU know that this was a mistake is likely better than them finding the mistake and thinking that you don't know, from a grade point of view.


If someone would have obtained two MSc degrees from the same university , how do you put that on a business card? If someone would have obtained two MSc degrees from the same university for example MSc politics from UCL and MSc international relations from UCL too, how do you put that on a business card?

This will very likely depend on the laws of the country you are in and the norms of the business you are in (does it look complete or pretentious to list all degrees). For example, in Austria you would/could just list all titles (except if you work in an especially "young" company where you would probably not list degrees at all).

Since you seem to emphasize "from the same university", could you mabe explain why this could make a difference to "two master titles from different universities"?


I have been asked to change the review I gave to a paper I rejected a paper after careful review and consideration, writing six pages to justify my decision.
In less than 24 h I have received a petition to change my verdict to major changes. The rationale is that the other two reviewers have given major changes and that my review is too harsh and not well enough substantiated.

Is this normal?
Is this ethical?
Any further thoughts?

Thank you

I have written quite a few reviews, with a significant percentage of them recommending rejection. Editors often made the decision to reject; sometimes they deviated and asked for major corrections. This is normal — editors have to take reviews into consideration, but are not bound by them. Not a single time have I received a request to change a review.

Is this normal?

No, this is not normal, in my opinion. There is no good reason for the editor to ask you to change the review. If the editor believes the paper deserves a major correction, they simply have to make their decision, noting your recommendation.

Is this ethical?

No. Under no circumstances should an editor disclose the recommendation of other reviewers to you to ask you to amend your recommendation to join the majority. You were asked to express your own opinion, which you did. The editor is trying to receive an unequivocal agreement, which is not necessary and not fair to you. The editor does not have to follow your recommendation, but they have to respect it.

Any further thoughts?

Please make the name of the journal known. I would refrain from ever using the journal(s) which allow such reviewing process to take place.


How to state that you “rigorified” an existing paper without sounding arrogant or condescending? I am writing a paper aimed at a physics journal which extends an old paper (not by me), which introduced a mathematical formalism for a physical problem in a rather handwaving way and without addressing most of its mathematical background.
In addition to exentding this formalism, my paper elaborates on this mathematical background and relatedly introduces the formalism in a ”more rigorous” way.
I consider the latter one of my paper’s key features for the following reasons:

One might consider the formalism and the methods derived from it not to be properly substantiated in the old paper.
Though the mathematical background has no other application so far, it is interesting for its own sake and perhaps from a philosophical point of view.
My approach to the formalism might be more accessible to some people and make them give a better understanding of what they are doing when applying the formalism and related methods.

As these points are rather opinion-based, I do not intend to elaborate on them in the paper – at most I might shortly mention the didactical aspects in the conclusion.
(I mainly mentioned them here to give you some idea what I am talking about.)
However, I do want to briefly mention in the abstract or the introduction that I “rigorified” the formalism, where briefly can be anything between one word and two sentences.
For example, my abstract could look like:

  [Old paper] introduced [old concept], which is useful for [application].
  We extend this concept to [new concept] and also rigorify its mathematical background.

My problem is that rigorify its mathematical background is far from what I actually want to say.
I am therefore looking for a way to say this without seeming arrogant or condescending on the old paper and in particular without implying that the old paper “did not do its mathematics properly”.

I intentionally do not give my best solutions for now, as I do not want to induce any bias on them, in case I may underestimate them.

I am also torn between Academia and English Language & Usage for posting this question.

It sounds to me like you are viewing the older paper through the lens of the type of paper you would have written in the first place and are finding it wanting.  It also sounds like you are viewing your own work as "fixing the flaws" of the older paper, almost as if you want to replace the older paper in your mind with your paper and pretend it had been written that way all along.  More quantitatively you have your eye on the mark that the older paper should have hit, you are filling in the gap between the actual old paper and your eyeballed mark, and since you are measuring from the eyeballed mark you are giving the difference a minus sign.  This framing seems to be behind most of your problems.  Try recasting the entire thing more positively in your own mind.

1) Someone else published an inspirational paper way back when.  This paper introduced some formalism and concentrated on its application to a physical problem.

2) Your paper gives much deeper attention to the mathematical aspects of the formalism, while also extending the formalism.  Since 1) showed that the formalism is interesting and useful, your work has evident value.

There are no "minus signs" in the above description: 1) + 2) = your eyeball mark.

Unless there are actual mathematical errors in the older paper, you don't need to say that you are fixing or "rigorifying" (not really a word, by the way) the older paper.  By the way, I don't know whether you've heard my rant about this use of the word "rigor" in mathematics and its applications.  As an adult mathematician I have become increasingly skeptical of mathematical "rigor": the other paper either made mistakes (which you will need to correct), made claims which were unjustified or insufficiently justified (in which case you make clear that what you are contributing is the justification and not the claims themselves) or they weren't doing mathematics at all (which is fine: that's what you're adding).  Adding rigor must mean one of the things above, right?  It is not some generic ingredient that you can sprinkle more or less liberally over a piece of "unrigorous mathematics" and make it rigorous.

In summary: unless there are some clear mistakes, you don't need to bill your work as fixing their mathematics.  You can bill it either as adding the math or adding more math.  Both of these are good things added to other good things: no problem.


Where can I publish failed research directions? Suppose I work on a difficult open problem, try several directions that haven't been tried before, work for several weeks on these directions, but finally reach a dead end.

Is there a way I can publish my work, so that future researchers know that these directions are futile and won't have to waste several weeks just to get to the same conclusion?

I think that one has to distinguish different kinds of failures, and also see if the field is experimental or not.

If you have done experiments and they show that some approach does not work, it is perfectly fine to publish that (although, as is discussed in various places, you often do not get the credit that you deserve for this).

If your work is theoretical, it is important that you can formalize the "dead ends" in a sufficient useful way; for example by proving that objects of a certain kind or with certain properties do not exist or that an (intuitive) lemma is wrong which can be shown by a counterexample.


Should I mention unfinished master work in my CV in order to show I have research experience? I am going to apply a mathematics PhD in US or Canada. I am doing a master right now and I have quit a master degree before, which was a research-based degree in theoretical physics. In my CV or resume, should I include my unfinished master degree in order to show I have related research experience? I don't know if research experience in different field also count. One drawback I can think of is committee may think that I don't have the ability to finish my work.

Generally speaking it is best to show everything. You need to account for the time spent on the earlier MS. You may have a perfectly good reason for quitting, which you can give if asked.
If you failed out of the earlier one or were terminated it makes it harder to explain, but your new major, especially if pure math is sufficiently different from physics that it is, otherwise, unlikely to hurt.
But having a gap that can't be explained raises questions also, that might hurt.
Your letters of recommendation and your statement of purpose will need to be strong enough to convince readers of your seriousness, as is true of all candidates.


Patent vs Research paper for a top university admission? I am working as software developer in a company. I had filed one patent and published one research paper. I want to apply for Master's in a top university (like NUS at Singapore or German universities) next year. I am working on some new IOT projects and deep learning ideas. What is more beneficial to get admission in Master's at a top university:
A Patent or a research paper on an idea/project?

The best answer, I think, given so little information, is "it depends". But for things of equal quality (however that might be measured) a paper might hold a bit more weight, given that academia is more about ideas (papers) than products (patents). The specific university department, however, might have its own ideas about the balance.
There is also some controversy about software patents, that you are probably aware of.
But it is quality and innovation that will be the important consideration for most.


Why is Scottish BSc (Hons) 4 years while English BSc (Hons) is 3 years? Why BSc (Hons) in Scotland (in Computer Science but in other subjects probably too) is 4 years long and in England BSc (Hons) is 3 years long? Does it cover more material? Does it mean that MSc in Scotland is shorter than in England? In general, how long is MSc in these countries? Is it 1 years or 2 years?

In Scotland, you can attend university after completing Highers, which are taken in the same year as AS levels are taken in England. Therefore, many Scottish students leave school a year earlier. Theoretically, the first year of university in Scotland is less advanced than the first year of university in England (although speaking from experience, I don't believe that this is practically the case). In recognition of this fact, it is often possible for English students to enter their course directly into second year, with a higher grade requirement.


Bad recommendation letter from previous postdoc adviser I am completing my first postdoc and I had a pretty bad experience with my current adviser. I finally got to publish something, contribute in a grant writing etc., but overall it hasn't been great...

Now, I am going to start a new postdoctoral appointment under the supervision of a faculty I have been working with for several years and I will apply for tenure track positions once this last appointment has ended. I am pretty sure that my new adviser will be able to provide very good recommendation letters for me in the future. So the question is, will I need to provide recommendation letters from my current adviser? What if those are not good?

When applying for your first tenure track job most search committees will expect that your PhD supervisor and current supervisor will be amongst the N letters of recommendation that you provide. While having your PhD supervisor and current supervisor write letters is not a strict requirement their absence would be noticed. The other letters can come from anyone that knows you well and is experienced enough to write letters for a TT position. There is no expectation that you have letters from all supervisors that you worked with.

That said, you should talk with your current supervisor about the possibility of getting a letter. There maybe some positions they are willing to recommend you for and there may be cases where you need N+1 letters and you only have N.


How does one address a tenure-track offer that is below expectations I'm about to receive a tenure-track offer and was already informed about the offered salary. Unfortunately, the salary is barely an increase over my current postdoc salary. (In fact, taking into account the tax differences at my current location vs the location of the tenure-track institution, it's going to be a net pay cut.)
Also, the salary is below the range that the department head indicated during my visit. I was very excited about the prospect of joining the institution, but now I'm wondering whether all the hard work during several years (which were very successful research-wise) of being a postdoc was in vain.

I do have another offer (but for a non-research based industry job) and a couple more interviews (for tenure-track jobs) scheduled.

  How do I best approach the situation without giving the impression as being someone who's overly demanding or gaming the system?

I think you tell the chair of the department some version of what you've told us: you're very excited about joining the institution (very important to say that first!), but you don't feel like the the salary is appropriate for the position, and you would find it much easier to accept the offer if the salary were increased.  Negotiating over salaries is quite normal, not overly demanding or taking some kind of advantage.  Of course you might well not be successful, but people often are.

Negotiating is not fun (at least for me), but it doesn't have to be that hard, especially when you have some leverage.  I would mention the fact that you feel the current offer is an effective pay cut from your present position (it's up to you whether to mention your current salary), and that you're very confused about the fact that offered salary is lower than the range the head himself mentioned.  Mention the (presumably more lucrative) industry job and its salary, though you should probably make it clear that you don't expect to be matched (unless you won't come unless it will.  Obviously, then you should say that).


Distinction between Article writings and Academic writings? How is writing an article for publications different from writing a thesis or dissertation in terms of ethics and language usage. How does the background to the study look in the case of an article or dissertation?

An article for publication is a manuscript formatted according to a particular journal's formatting standards, whose content is judged acceptable by the editors, following the advice of referees.*

A thesis or dissertation is a manuscript formatted according to a particular university's formatting standards, whose content is judged acceptable by your advisor, following the advice of a committee.

In both cases, the expectations for ethics, language, length, novelty, rigor, formality, background exposition, typesetting, submission processes, approval processes, and so on strongly depend on the specific people who judge whether the manuscript is acceptable, and more broadly on the institutions and research communities to which those people belong.

You should ask them.

*In computer science, substitute "conference", "program committee", and "reviewers" for "journal", "editors", and "referees", respectively.


Associate adjunct professor to Assistant adjunct professor in USA Is it possible that an Associate adjunct professor becomes  assistant adjunct professor in USA university within same department of that university?

This is likely much more common than for non-adjuncts. The protections for adjuncts are pretty weak generally. However, there are situations in which adjuncts are unionized and then the union rules would apply.

Also, the typical adjunct position is a fixed term contract that might be renewed or not. The nominal rank would be part of the contract.

But possible? Certainly. Not common, though.


How long should I wait for the response of the possible postdoc advisor? Some days ago, I write a message to a PI to confirm if a postdoctoral offer, posted on a webpage, was still open. He reply me that those positions were already filled. But, he ask me for my C.V. just in case he can arrange for other postdoctoral positions in his group. Of course, I sent my C.V. with two re prints of my most representative papers. He wrote me back again for sending him those documents.

The questions that I would like to address are:

Should I write him back asking him if he liked or not my C.V.?
Just in case, How long should I wait to write him back?
Would be better if I write to his actual postdoctoral students in order to know if he has made some comment about my application?

I don't think there is any need at all to communicate further with this PI regarding this matter.

I don't see any point in asking him if he "likes" your CV.  It's a weird request - it's not his job to evaluate your record at your request, or to tell you whether your CV is well-written.  If that is meant to be a way of asking him "What are my chances of getting a postdoc with you?", don't: that's not something he can reasonably evaluate until there is actually a position and he can compare your application with those of all other applicants.
I would not write him back at all, regarding the postdoc specifically.
He doesn't have a position open, so there isn't any action he can take for you in the short term.  If a position appears at some future date, and if he is still interested in you as a candidate: well, he knows how to reach you.  And sometimes "Please send me your CV and I will keep you in mind for a future opening" is a polite way of saying "No."
Definitely do not contact his other postdocs.  The hiring decision is for the PI to make, not the postdocs, so any questions about it should be directed to the PI.  Trying to go behind his back to wheedle out inside information from them would be unprofessional, will annoy the postdocs, and will probably destroy your chances of ever getting hired if the PI should learn of it.

If you have some other bona fide reason to stay in contact with this PI (discussion about research topics of mutual interest, questions about his papers, etc), that could be helpful in keeping yourself in his thoughts for possible future postdoc hiring, as well as general networking.  But they had better be for real - if you come across as making up reasons to contact him just to get his attention, that will seem slimy.