PhD at top department (path - MS (unfunded) to PhD) vs mediocre dept (path - funded PhD) , differences in experience? At the present, I have got MS at Uni A (rank 16 usnews dept grad school)w/o funding for tuition and on the other hand I have a fully-funded PhD offer from uni B (rank 69 usnews dept grad school). At B the research is interesting, the advisor is a great person but the few drawbacks would be that he's relatively new (i'd be his only student in the lab apart from a few UGs, i'm the 2nd PhD), many of his grants are pending, ranking of the dept is relatively low. The reason I didn't apply to PhD programs was due to my avg U-GPA. So, my plan after masters, at least as of now would be to apply to PhD programs (looking at northwestern, upitt, emory, uofchicago, jhu). If I take CWRU, the advisor that I have lined up is willing for me to do independent research, write grant proposals, and work on a number of collaborative projects.

Can you tell me the main factors to consider when choosing where to do PhD apart from research interest and advisor relationship? I am trying to look at whether this risky choice of MS->PhD (which I am more inclined to) would be better than the PhD offer that I have right now. Risky because i'm not sure if the MS would better my chances at those schools for PhD and if it's worth the 2 years which I could have used for maybe a post-doc after PhD at B. Do top dept's have an edge over relatively lower ranked one's?

One reason that i'd probably want to do a MS would be to maybe expand my research focus and work under more renowned researchers in the field. Though I could do the same in UH by collaborating with great professors in other dept but would have to work much harder. Any thoughts or inputs?

Comparisons and recommendations of specific universities is off topic here as a "shopping question". I'll restrict this answer to the question of getting an MS first.

In the US (unlike many other places) getting an MS first isn't necessary and will probably lengthen your total program, especially if you switch programs after the MS. Also, not every MS program will be research focused, though some will. But some are just advanced coursework, even applied coursework if most graduates enter industry.

If you take the direct PhD path you will probably have an opportunity to get a sort of "freebie" MS along the way, perhaps by doing a small project and writing it up as an MS thesis.

The main requirements for a doctorate (US) are that you pass a set of comprehensive examinations and that you write an "acceptable" dissertation. There is normally advanced coursework, mostly to prepare for comps. But if you do an MS elsewhere, there is no guarantee that the courses there will give good preparation for comps at the doctoral institution. Maybe they do, maybe not.

If you can find a good advisor and a good and compatible research program that interests you, I would suggest the direct PhD path over any other. Whether your institution ranks 10 or 110 won't matter nearly as much to your overall career as what you do and what relationships you can develop while studying. And being a top student as the 210th ranked institution is probably better for your career than being a mid-level graduate of the 10th ranked one. At least in obtaining your first job. It is about what you do, not about what others have done to affect rankings. There are good advisors throughout academia. They aren't all at MIT and Berkeley.

But, there is also the question of the experience of the advisor. I neglected that in the first version here.

The one thing I'd worry about with an inexperienced advisor is where they are in their tenure process. If they are tenured it is not so much of a problem, nor should it be if they are a shoo in. But an advisor who is at risk of not getting tenure may prioritize their own work over helping you. I'd advise against that scenario.

But if they have a lot of ideas and like to share them, it should otherwise be fine. But look also at the other people in that group. Do they have an effective regular seminar for a few faculty in that field. That is a big plus, again if they share ideas.

I was once "stuck" with an untenured advisor who wasn't helpful.


My advisor wants to publish my final year project; what will this involve? I recently finished my final year of a Bachelor of Science degree in Web Development at university in the UK. As 3/8ths of the final year credit, I was required to create a Final Year Project, including ~40k word report and a software artefact, guided by a university tutor. At my graduation ceremony my tutor approached me to say he (and another advisor) are looking at getting it published.

This obviously sounds like great news, but as someone with no experience of advanced academia stuff I have no idea what this actually entails. Will this look good on my CV? Is it a frequent occurrence? When they say publish, who exactly will want to read 40k words about my final year project?

While I am proud of what I produced, I'm not entirely sure it is something I will want to brag about in the future as my skills develop.

I will talk about publishing as an undergraduate in a general sense. This may change depending on your field of study, where and how the work is published(journal, conference, workshop, etc) and what your level of contribution to the end product will be.

Let's start with the easy question. "Is this good for my career?" I don't know of many fields where having published work, perhaps especially as an undergraduate, is a detriment. As an undergraduate with two publications as first name (in my field the student/person who contributed the most / drove the ground level work is first name, the professor is last name and the names in the middle can range from "was vital to the success of the paper" to "they pushed a button a couple of times") and several acknowledgements having those papers gave me a definite leg up against my peers when it came time to search for jobs. Having publications under your name can be invaluable if you choose to apply to grad school but companies are often very interested to see what high-level, field-acknowledged work you have completed. It definitely makes you stand out in a crowd.

It may seem like nothing but puppies and rainbows but there's a darker side as well. Academic publishing is a lot of work. Depending on your level of contribution this can mean weeks of brutal work rerunning experiments, tweaking inputs/outputs, editing and documenting. Most of the people I know, their first paper was a brutal experience because Academic writing is unlike any other writing you have done and there can be a steep learning curve in both the technique and the tools. So, unless you have a burning desire for a publication for publication's sake, the deciding factors for you should be:

What is my expected contribution?
How and where will I be credited?
What are my obligations if the publication is accepted?

Let's break these down.

What is my expected contribution?

In my field a couple of professors coming up to you after the fact and saying "We are looking to get this published" is a bit weird. I'm assuming that these professors were in some way involved in the work as mentors or that this an extension of their work. It is unlikely that this work is fit to be published in its current state. That's not meant as a slam towards your work, rather it's a response to the specifics of publication. Academic publication is often fairly stringent in style and method. It is likely that parts of your work will need to be tweaked or polished for publication(this really depends on your field to be honest) and, in some cases, completely redone. It is very important for you to demand, in a nice way of course, a roadmap for what needs to be done to get this work published and what you will be expected to do. At that time you should also try to find out how much of the final publication will be your work vs work from others/the group at large. If you have graduated and are starting a new job or heading off to grad school you may have other demands on your time. Writing an academic publication, especially your first academic publication, can be a serious time sink. This will play into the next part...

How and where will I be credited?

Is your work going to be placed, whole cloth, into a template and submitted? Then you should expect to be first author(or your field's equivalent) and be given an appropriately large share of the credit. Is your work going to be used as a subsubsection, comprising all of 2 lines in the final publication? Then the credit to you should be, appropriately, smaller. But that's simplifying things a bit - author order and credit/acknowledgements should be explicitly discussed early in the process. Get it out on the table and nail it down because differences in expectations can definitely damage professional relationships which, to be honest, is probably the most valuable thing you will get out of this. Things like original contribution level, publication writing/editing contribution level, and time/effort commitment to the project should be taken into consideration. Additionally consider your future plans - are you planning on publishing again? Are you looking at going to grad school? Depending on the answers to these questions you may find that the most valuable things you get out of publishing are the experience of publishing and the strong network connections you forge with your coauthors.

What are my obligations if the publication is accepted?

This is the final piece of the puzzle. If your publication is a conference or workshop piece then someone will have to present at the conference/workshop. It should, ideally, be one of the primary contributors. If that person is you, will you be able to attend? Who will pay for travel and fees? Even beyond traveling for conferences/workshops - Who will pay for submission fees? Recently one of my papers was 3 pages over the limit (the conference accepted longer papers at a fee for each additional page up to 5 additional pages). This cost almost $400 (on top of the original submission fees). If this occurs who will pay? If the publication is accepted what does that mean about your ownership of the results of your work? If additional work is done on the project how will it be funded? It is likely that your professor(s) or your institutions has grants for all of this. But you need to find out before you agree to anything. Finally, the question a lot more people should ask, what happens if the publication isn't accepted? Will you be involved in making changes and attempting a different venue? How will the group handle revisions (which, with finished work, can be brutal as you're coming back to the submitted work several months after it was submitted  and making changes)?

All of this might seem like a bunch more questions to ask than answers but, really, that's the point. There are plenty who will disagree with me but, in my experience, the research was the easy part. Publishing is the hard, nasty, and occasionally obnoxious part(though it is pretty awesome too). In order to make the publishing part easier you need to have a clear plan for how you will turn this work into a publication and what everyone's expectations are.

I both love and hate my publications. As an undergraduate they gave me a definite edge over my peers in both grad school applications and the job market. I ended up with some very strong connections in my academic community that I can still leverage today. I am still involved as a researcher in my lab. On the flip side my first paper was a special kind of hell. It was two straight weeks of 20 hour days as we pushed to turn finished work into a publication before the deadline. I didn't sleep at all for the last 3 days of the push. My second paper was still brutal, but overall much better as I had passed the worst of the learning curve. I actually got some sleep leading up to that one. I'm incredibly proud of my work but, to be honest, doing those publications pushed me away from graduate school. They were a valuable experience in the world of academic publishing which, it turns out, is not something I enjoy enough to make it my career.

TL;DR: Make a list of questions, email/meet with your advisors/mentors, and flesh out the answers to those questions. If they're largely satisfactory - go for it!

EDIT Given your additional information. Unless they mean publish it on webspace they(or the university) controls OR as a book there is almost no way I can see a 40k word transcript being published as is. My rough estimates put that to be about 100 - 120 pages. I've not seen more than a handful of published papers (etc) over 20 pages long and most are under 10. This may mean they want to publish a portion of it or an heavily edited version of it. This adds a new question for you to ask, what do they mean by 'publishing'?


Managerial oversight of Dutch academics: how much permission do I need to ask? In two weeks time I am leaving the UK for the Netherlands. I am new to Dutch academia and while, for the most part, it seems to be much like UK academia, I am curious about, for lack of a better term, the level of managerial oversight over Dutch academics for day-to-day comings and goings and decisions about scholarly activities.

In the UK, it was expected that I work roughly 9ish to 5ish, 5 days a week, but more or less was up to me. Working from home did not need to be reported to anyone and if one was where one was meant to be when one was needed, it didn't really matter what happened at other times. I did not need to seek permission to attend conferences or workshops or to say yes to academic activities or opportunities.

What is managerial oversight like in the Netherlands? I don't want to either anger people by not asking when I should, or annoy people by asking often when I don't need to.

I know that to some extent this will be institution specific, but I believe that those here with Dutch experience would be able to speak to what the general expectation of reporting to and permission from line managers is compared to that, generally, in the UK.

I think (in both the UK and in NL) this is very much down to the personality and management style of whoever is responsible for supervising you and signing off on your expenses. On the whole I would say that attitudes in NL are similar to those in the UK, and provided you don't give anyone cause for concern you'll be left to your own devices.

That said, attitudes are set in a broader cultural context, and in NL conformity and a visible work ethic are valued.  In particular, I would suggest that people in Dutch academia are in general much more rigid about their working hours (8:30-5) than in the UK, with a better-defined home/work separation. "Working from home" as a matter of routine is not really a thing in NL. Continuing to follow the UK pattern will probably be fine with your bosses, but it may be frowned upon by your colleagues.


Publishing master's research while in a different PhD program I would like to ask about a situation when a research done as a part of a master's thesis at one institution is submitted for publication and published while attending a subsequent PhD program at another institution (US university). The content of the paper is mostly unrelated to the subject of study in the PhD program, and it is not supposed to be used towards earning a PhD degree e.g. by including it as part of the PhD thesis.

Is there something unethical about this? (I personally do not see any problems, but it seems better to ask anyway.)
Is this common, uncommon, rare? (It seems to me that such situations ought to arise whenever there is a master's thesis work that is to be published, because I imagine that rewriting the thesis into a journal paper form would be usually done only after the thesis defense, hence usually during another PhD program. Yet I do not know of any such cases personally.)
In that case, should one list as the affiliation the present institution (i.e. the university of the PhD program), or the institution where most of the work has been done?

It's fine.  Similar things will happen after the Ph.D., after job changes, etc.  Your current advisor doesn't need to be listed or involved in the process for work done elsewhere.
It is frequent (but unfortunate) that people write the thesis first and then produce articles.  However, I think it is better to be publishing along the way.  And this is not unusual at all either--so you are a little wrong that it is never done.  All that said, converting thesis chapters into papers is very normal and fine.
List the previous institution first with a footnote or parenthetical for current affiliation and contact email.  Do not list the old email.


Do they really mean "in all areas" and "will continue to be accepted until..." in Computer Science faculty opening ads in the US? The following is an extension of the question Job applications reviewed "until the position is filled" (i.e. soft deadline): What does that really mean?.

In most US job announcements of faculty openings (of any rank) in computer science I've seen no hard deadlines for applications and no hard subdiscipline designations. (In Europe, this is different: the deadlines and the subdiciplines are typically hard restictions.) Most of the time, we see sentences such as

  The search will focus on candidates in the areas X1, X2, and X3. However, outstanding candidates in all research areas will be considered.

and

  Preference will be given to applications submitted before Date Y, but we will continue accepting applications until the positions are filled.

Wee see such phrases way too often and may consider them boilerplate in the meantime.

Does the search team actually sometimes look at applications outside of the mentioned areas (X1, X2, and X3) and at the applications submitted after the deadline? Or are the above phrases introduced for some other reasons (legal, politics, ...), and the search team never looks at anything beyond the mentioned subdisciplines or anything past the deadline?
Has anyone already been hired despite being outside of areas X1-X3 or beyond the date Y?
In practical terms, if the applicant is a normal scientist but has missed the deadline, how long after that he/she should apply?
In practical terms, if the applicant is a normal scientist, is on time, but the subdiscipline is slightly off, should he/she still apply?
In practical terms, if the applicant is a normal scientist but the subdiscipline is slightly off and the deadline has passed, how long after that he/she should apply?

(An aside: Assume that the applicant cannot get this information directly by asking, e.g., due to the absense of contact data, and that the applicants network, including that of the supporting advisors if there are any, does not cover the location.)

This question seeks answers from folks who have participated in search committees, have supervised their work, or have received feedback as applicants. If it is the case for you, say so.

As to the research area, whether they really mean that any research area will be considered is impossible to know from the ad.  Sometimes the search committee really is open to a broad range of areas; other times, there is really so strong a preference for one particular area that people from outside area have essentially no chance.  I have served on search committees of both types; although the relevant verbiage in the ad was the same in either case, in one case, a majority of the committee was committed to hiring somebody from a very narrow area.

As to the deadline statement, I think that is pretty much always meant seriously.  The statements is there so that the committee does not have any possible obligation to not consider applications that are not completed until after the deadline.  There's no practical reason for the committee not to consider applications that come in a little late, and in my experience, slightly late applications have always been given full consideration.

By "slightly late," I mean a couple weeks. Actual review of the applications by the committee typically doesn't start until that long after the due date. (That's particularly true if the due date is early, falling during the winter break or earlier.) The latest application that I can recall getting full consideration was completed about a month late, but at that point things are probably getting dicey. And (just like in graduate admissions) committee members are likely to be more flexible about the dates of recommendation letters than the package put together by the job applicant.


Why do the prerequisites to enroll in PhD programs vary between research groups in Germany? I have been trying to get a Ph.D. position in Germany so I follow the advertising sites frequently. A few days ago I saw a position from a group of X Institute. I wrote the professor about the requirement and he replied a bachelor is a prerequisite and he encouraged me to apply. Today again I saw an advertisement for a position from a different group from the same institute and the professor said a master is needed as a prerequisite for becoming a Ph.D. student. My question is why the requirement varies from group to group whereas they come from the same institute? Can a professor or supervisor can play a role to waive master if he wants?

tl;dr: You'd typically need Master's. Read on to find out why.

The "traditional" German higher education system had only one kind of a degree before PhD, the Diplom. It's typically translated as MSc and it's not wrong: basically, it was a 5 years degree. You'd typically need this degree, and having it from a university (and not a Fachhochschule, a polytechnical university) in order to start a PhD.

Then, Bologna happened.

The current scheme in Germany is: 3 years BSc + 2 years MSc. Though the initial thought was to have a US system, where most of the students exit university with a BSc, it did not took off. Most companies and universities themselves saw "just" BSc as inferior and still required a MSc degree. It got a bit better nowadays.

It is possible to get a job with a BSc, even if it would pay less.

It is also possible to start your PhD with a BSc. But it's much, much harder. In many places special "fast-track" programmes exist. Details depend on the location. Typically, they allow a future PhD candidate to study for their MSc, but in a sort-of accelerated manner, for example, the MSc thesis is then allowed to be a topic from the future PhD. Further, typically the non-MSc holders are payed less, E12 level instead of E13.

All this requires, however, further, and in some cases non-insignificant actions from the advisor. So, there might be a certain willingness to employ a BSc-holder. It might be easier, if it's a four-years BSc. The typical "fits all" requirement is, however, a MSc.

A further notice. There are two sides to doing a PhD in Germany. 1) The general advisor-student relationship. It is about research and mentoring. No money is involved in this relationship. (You might want to register as a (PhD-)student with the university, it costs not much.) 2) The employer-employee relationship. The "funded position" is not really connected to the readiness to supervise a student. (Yes, it is often coinciding, but it is not required to be so.)

My point is: you should really ask very directly, does this particular professor really want to supervise you as a prospective PhD student (even with "only" a BSc), or do they do the former and have money for your position.


How can I obtain an academic reference, if I have been out of college for a very long time? I have completed my Master's degree 25+ years ago, and I decided to go back to college to further my education with a Doctorate degree. I fulfill all the requirements, except for the need to provide 2 academic references.

How should I proceed to obtain the references? Should I hunt down my former professors in their retirement and hope they retain their faint memories of me?

Your situation now is very similar to my situation in 2001. I got all my references from colleagues who knew my recent work. Fortunately, I had been doing research-like work, except in an environment where it lead to product and patents, rather than papers.

The professor who supervised my master's degree project was still working, and I could have contacted him, but I felt that my recent work was more relevant than a project I had finished in 1975.

I made sure one of my references was academically well-connected, although working in industry at the time. The other two were a software engineering manager and a computer hardware engineering manager who could write about my range of knowledge as well as my research potential.


Can I accept offers from universities in other countries before I apply to a German university? I am currently studying in Singapore and am going to take the A-levels this year. All the university applications for the UK and US take place this year and the results will be out early next year. And they usually have deadlines for you to consider their offer.

However, I am extremely fond of studying in Germany and the results of my applications to German universities will only come in July/August next year. By then all offer deadlines for other universities will have passed and if finally I got rejected by all German universities I will have no place to go...

In this case, is it advisory to take up an offer and then apply to a German university? Would the German universities know that you are already enrolled in other universities?

Many thanks!!!
Sarah

I doubt that the German university somehow knows that you are enrolled at other foreign universities, but it's generally forbidden to be enrolled at two German universities at the same time. However, it is possible and legal to enlist as guest student ("Zweithörer" or "Gasthörer" in German) while enlisted as full student at another German university. This might apply to non-german universities as well.

Regarding the application deadline: as far as I know the deadlines for normal applications is mid-july for the winter semester and mid-january for the summer semster. Normally, you get the results within 2-3 months.


Is it common to cite conference papers in a PhD? I tried searching for a similar question but most I read dealt with published papers and not a PhD, so apologies if this is a duplicate. I will remove this question if it is.

I've read a number of PhD dissertations and I haven't come across one which cites a conference paper, only journals (and the occasional website). I guess also it depends on the university if they accept such citations but I was just wondering if this is commonplace?

It has little to do with paper vs. thesis and everything to do with whether the person's field considers conference papers "real" publications.  If you read computer science Ph.D. dissertations, you will find them to be filled with conference paper citations.  In a field that disdains conferences, you will not.


Typesetting statement of purpose for a masters application What is a good format to use for the statement of purpose on a masters application?  I read that margins should be 1 inch (2.54cm). This seems to leave quite a lot of space on the page though. Should I use the justify feature on word? I used this often when writing mathematical coursework, as a lot of my lecturers also used it in their lecture notes, but is it suitable/needed in this case?

The main things I'd like to know:

Font
Margin size
Use justify or not
Spacing

Note: by format, I don't mean the structure of content, I mean the aesthetics of the document.

You should follow the instructions. Absent any such guidelines, you can do whatever you like, within reason. In the US, "reasonable" tends to mean:

Times New Roman, Arial, Calibri, or something similar
Single spaced, or something close to that (e.g., 1.1)
1" margins, almost always
Left or justified alignment, personal preference
Indent your paragraphs or leave a space between paragraphs or both
Header on each page including your name, page number, and any other relevant information you'd like to include. (e.g., university name, application number)

Personally, I like to use letterhead (either institutional or with my name on it) for official documents like this.


Are fear and concerns stemmed from being sexual assaulted generally understandable by grad schools? Would it be seen as a negative trait? I am a victim of sexual assault and I need to talk to the school (in the US) about it for accommodation reasons. I feel if I don't disclose enough I may not be able to get the accommodation, yet I don't feel comfortable of disclosing that much to the school. I am trying to decide what is safe to say. I am scared and nervous about saying something wrong or causing any consequences. For example, I don’t want to disclose the identity of the people who did it. I don’t want to bring them more back into my life.  The people who did it are not related to the school.
Are these concerns generally immediately understandable by grad schools?
Would any of the above I mentioned be considered negative traits as a student? For example, sometimes I get nervous and clumsy when I talk about it.
Thank you!
Edit: Thank you very much for all of your comments and answers. They are all very helpful informations to know. I am sorry if some aspects are not very clear in the questions because I am trying to avoid specific details but still ask questions. In reality it is a very complicated situation.

There are two parts of your question - how to get accommodations and whether you will be judged in some way.
Also, this answer assumes you are a current student, not a prospective student.
The first part of the question varies a bit from university to university. It sounds like you would like to figure out accommodations without making a formal report, which should be possible. You can start by visiting the website for the Title IX office at your specific school. You might need to click around a bit, but this website likely has quite a bit of information on resources for victims of assault. Some of these will be confidential (and labeled as such), including mental health services and often some sort of victim advocacy office. So you can start there to figure out how accommodations work at your school. Generally, accommodations are determined by trained administrators, not faculty.
For my institution (perhaps this is universal in the US, not sure), once the administration has decided on an accommodation for you, the faculty members affected simply get letters or emails explaining what they need to do. If I have any questions or concerns, I contact the accommodations office rather than putting the student in an awkward position of justifying themselves.
The second part of your question is about others’ judgement. The first point I’d like to make here is that very few people who actually matter to your student career need to know your personal business. In the information I gave above about how to get accommodations you note that no one in your department needs to find out anything until the administration has determined what accommodations you should get. Within your department, you could choose to be very vague about what is going on ("personal situation" or even "traumatic incident") and generally people know not to pry. If you do decide to disclose, also know that no one in their right mind is going to correlate your emotions about handling a sexual assault with your skills as a student. Those are such different domains of life that I can’t imagine any connection.


What are the consequences of withdrawing an abstract from a conference? I have submitted an abstract for a conference using some preliminary results. I read all the advice about how to write an abstract with no results and I didn't lie in my abstract—I just presented the results I had in hand and discussed the value of the data that I would acquire in the future without making any specific claims about the conclusions I would draw. The abstract deadline was about 6 months before the paper deadline, so I had anticipated acquiring more data that I could write about in the paper and make it a strong contribution. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances (lab caught on fire, experiment exploded, computer with all my data was wiped by an EMP and velociraptors ate my backups, or some other more mundane reason) the data that I anticipated having is not available and I won't be able to write the full paper.

Many conferences have a "No paper, no podium" and "No podium, no paper" policy, so in those cases one of the consequences of not submitting the paper is that it will not be published in the conference's proceedings and I won't get to present it at the conference. For other conferences, this may vary.

But what are the other consequences (to my career, to future publication of the paper) of withdrawing the paper at this stage, either by not submitting anything or by contacting the program chair and withdrawing?

First, I should mention that the "no paper, no podium" (and vice versa) only applies to conferences where proceedings are published. For many conferences, this is not the case—including many conferences in physics, chemistry, engineering, and applied mathematics that I regularly attend.

In general, if you have to withdraw a paper because of whatever reason—visa issues, experiments not working, or kidnapped by aliens (etc.)—it will not have that much impact on your career. The effect will increase, however, the more papers you withdraw, and the more trouble that you cause the conference organizers as a result. If you let them know well in advance that you're not going to be there, they can try to organize some sort of replacement for you, which, although suboptimal, is better than having a "hole" in the schedule. On the other hand, if you wait until the morning of your talk to withdraw your talk, you will definitely tick off the organizers, which may have an effect on your ability to present in the future (at least at that conference, or others the organizers work on later).


google scholar citation for github repository I am preparing the code for a paper which already published (without my name on it). The code is about to release now and I was hoping to add that to my google scholar or something to keep a record of the citation. Should I put the papar in my google scholar and somehow mention I worked on the code?

No, your name is not on the paper so you should not include it on a list of your publications. You can, of course, list it as an achievement/project/experience on your CV/Website/ORCID/whatever.

If you think your name should have been on the paper and you were not consulted prior to submission, you can inform the journal. This will be a quick way to make enemies of your not-quite-co-authors, however.

You can make your code "citable" (scare quotes because "citable" is being used to mean creating a version of record and a DOI for it, rather than merely being allowed to cite it). There are various repositories which will allow you to get a DOI for non-publication work, here are some examples:

GitHub/Zenodo - integrates directly with GitHub
Figshare - not just for figures, despite the name
Mendeley data - owned by Elsevier, so perhaps can have reasonable confidence in its staying power

Another option is the MethodsX journal, although you'd have to check that your work is suitable for the journal and not going to constitute double-publication. As this is a peer-reviewed journal, it gives you a higher level of "credit" than the other options above. Note, there is a mandatory open-access charge with this journal. (Or, even, if your code is distinct enough from the paper, you could look at publishing a full paper of your own in an appropriate journal; there are lots of software/code papers, even in non-CS fields.)

As you wish for the code to appear on your Google Scholar profile, you will probably need to choose MethodsX (or another Journal) as Google Scholar only indexes article-type documents. You could manually add the others to your publication list as an "other" type publication, but you won't the full suite of scholar features (citation monitoring etc.) that way.

Finally, unless the code is entirely your own work, any of the above will require communication with, consent from and credit to your collaborators (presumably those who published the paper you weren't on).


What should I do when the references are not replying? I have worked in Germany for 2 years as a research assistant and then I moved to my home country and worked here for almost 4 years and published papers in reputed journals. Logically I think I should include the names of my current supervisors or the supervisors I have published works with.
But  Professor X (I am applying for a Ph.D. position) is originally from Germany, currently residing in Canada. He asked me to include three references from Germany. So I wrote the supervisors those I have worked under.

One of them had given LOR earlier in 2019 and it was very good (as he sent me once to check if everything was ok or not). I worked under him in 2014 and only for a month and we were on good terms. But now when I wrote him, he did not reply (its been 2 days)
Another one has also given me LOR when I was applying for another job. I worked under him for 4 months(I got the job that time in 2015). After that, we were not connected. He also did not reply.
The last one where I worked for 8 months ( in 2015) and learned most of my works which mean his LOR is the most valued one. But we did not finish on good terms. I mean we both have issues so I left that job at that time. After that, once I asked for a LOR from him, he only wrote a list of works that I learned from his lab, and nothing else (like good character or something that you usually need to write in a LOR). So I don't think his LOR will add anything positive to my application. But as  Professor X asked for their name, so I mailed him (the last one) too. Again he did not reply.

So basically I wrote three of my supervisors two days ago and asked for their permission if I can include their name in my application and none of them replied yet. Maybe things are difficult due to this pandemic.
In this situation what should I do? Should I write Professor X that I could not reach them? Or just send  Professor X the list of names? what if Professor X contacts them and they don't reply?
(I am restless because Professor X is waiting for my reply too)
Update: I have written to Professor X explaining the problems I am facing 3 days ago. And he did not reply to me yet. Should I write him again? or what can be a good step to take now?

People get loads of emails and it is very natural that some take a few days to reply. Also some emails may be missed or overlooked, so you can write again and say it's urgent. Normally such things should be done with a few weeks time if at all possible because answering to such requests is not the first thing on people's list.
If all else fails, try to contact somebody else. I'd avoid to give Professor X the list of names without having an answer from them. It doesn't look good to pass on such information without being authorised. You can ask Professor X for advice what to do without telling them names. Surely if Professor X is responsible for the tight time frame, they should have some understanding.


Why should data mining be minimized in research? According to this paper by the previous editor of Journal of Finance, Campbell R. Harvey, authors of papers should "convince the reader that there has been minimal data mining". Why is it so?

Assuming by "data mining" what they really mean is "continually testing hypotheses until you find something significant"...

See:

https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/310119/why-does-collecting-data-until-finding-a-significant-result-increase-type-i-erro

or a comic depicting the same issue:

https://xkcd.com/882/

Basically, when we perform a hypothesis test (using a frequentist approach), we are asking whether it is likely that the data we observe (for example, a difference between two groups) occurred simply by chance.

However, if you look at multiple possible questions, it becomes increasingly likely that you find a result that, due to the flawed approach, appears unlikely to have occurred by chance. If you use a significance threshold of 0.05, you in fact expect that 1/20 times (in the large number limit) you look at completely random data you will conclude a significant difference.

You can still do this systematically and correct for this exploration without increasing your false positive rate. The problem is when you set these explorations aside and pretend that only the "interesting" ones (based on a flawed measure of statistical significance) occurred, you are likely to report a result that occurred by chance and is not replicable.

This problem is even worse if you use your results to inform further analyses in an unprincipled way. For example, you compare two groups: jelly bean eaters and non-eaters, and find no significant difference in cancer risk, but you look and see that the difference is smaller in a subgroup. You then exclude that subgroup (say, people over 55 years old), repeat your analysis, claim "statistical significance", and write a paper titled "Jellybeans cause cancer in people under age 55".

If you didn't set out to test this hypothesis because you had no a priori reason to expect age differences in jelly bean danger, it is very likely your conclusion is wrong: you have "mined" out a result from the data that didn't really exist in the first place.


Do I have the legal right to demand information on plagiarism of my work from another university? A student of a German institute has translated my Russian thesis word by word to English and submitted it as her own work in 2014. I informed the university providing them with my work in Russian and presentations of the work I made in 2013.
Upon receiving my email, university examinations first asked for a legal translation of my work. To which I replied that my work was written in Russian and that is a reason why it was stolen – for translation – and also that the legal translation of even one page would cost a lot. And since I was the victim in this case, I suggested that their university is responsible for preventing the acceptance of plagiarised works and has to either translate my work or ask one a professor who speaks Russian to confirm the match. Also, I suggested them to look at numerous tables with hundreds of numbers and match them (providing pages).

Two months have passed since then, and I still haven’t received any update. I called the examination office, and the woman re-directed me to her colleague, who then told me that:

Me not being a student of that university, I have no right for any information.
If there was any plagiarism, their system would recognise it.
I should ask the student who I claim has stolen my work on any information.

Yet the problem is:

Their European plagiarism system has no access to the database of university in Russia, and moreover my thesis is in Russian, while she submitted translated English version. So plagiarism is untraceable by their system. Which they apparently ignore.
Asking me to talk to the person committing the plagiarism, who in the first place lied to me when stealing my work, and declined my request for her to come forward and recall work. It is the same as police would tell the assault victim to go and talk to the criminal.

Is there any legal way for me to get the answer on the plagiarism case from this university? Shouldn’t the university be checking the translation of my thesis rather than requesting me to make an official translation? After all it’s their job to prevent plagiarism! And given their system has holes – I did part of the job for them already – identifying that the work is plagiarism and its up for them to check.

Yet they completely brush me off saying I am not involved and have no rights.

In my opinion, what seems to have gone wrong is that the examination office employees do not have an interest in pursuing this issue. After all, the student having handed in your thesis may sue the university if the thesis gets rejected. After the degree has already been awarded to the student, it is quite difficult to retract the degree. This is probably why they asked for an official translation. By the way, the examination office does not rate or examine anything - they are concerned with the administrative processes of examinations, and are thus probably unable to deal with this issue correctly. They might have felt that they need to deal with this issue, though, which is why they asked you to provide an official translation. As you wrote, you shouldn't be expected to pay for this.

As a suggestion, you may want to consider contacting researchers at the university directly. Point of contact number one should probably be the advisor of plagiarizing student. Other points of contact may be the secondary examiner, or the dean of studies. Provide them with bibliographical information about your thesis and a PDF of your thesis. At larger universities, there may probably be Russian PhD students that they can ask for a first look. In the east of Germany, it is not entirely uncommon that older professors can read Russian themselves. Once they have some indication that your accusation may be correct, they are likely to arrange for a closer check.


What is the necessary entity that cannot be done by professor without physical classroom with assembled students? I want to know whether there is any necessary entity (quality/property) in the traditional classroom teaching that cannot be done without a physical classroom with intended students. Please keep aside the administrative responsibilities such as minimum teaching hours in classroom, availability in office, maintaining attendance of students etc.,

Afaik, most of the tasks that a professor (any lecturer) can do in the classroom can also be done without classroom with assembled students, nowadays, with high availability.

For lecture, a professor can publish her recorded video lectures to students. For query solving or interaction, she can use the Q&A site for her students. Announcements can also be streamed in a similar way. I'm referring to the sites such as Google classroom, piazza, slack, etc.,

In such a case, I'm getting the doubt whether there exists a necessary entity that a professor cannot provide without (her direct presence) a classroom teaching.

If such an entity exists, then what is that?

Have you ever taught? When you explain something to a class, have you ever seen understanding happen in students' faces, or confusion? When the former happens, have you stopped your speaking and prompted the student to continue your thought and make it their own? Or in the latter case, have you stopped and asked what was unclear, had a discussion about it, and then tried to explain it in a different way?

None of this happens in an online setting: You give students a textbook chapter to read or a video to watch, but it's not interactive: You can't catch students where they need to be caught to learn efficiently because you don't have the personal interaction and contact. Personal contact really is a very powerful thing.


Should I list conferences I attended on my CV? I am a PhD student in mathematics, and I noticed that on my peers' CV's, they often list conferences they attended. It seems as if they just attended these conferences, they did not help organize, nor did they give a talk.

Should I list conferences I only attended on my CV, or does it look like obvious filler?

In general, you can put pretty much whatever you want in your CV (unless there is a template, in which case deciding what to put or not should be pretty straight-forward). The question is: what is the point of putting a piece of information in your CV?

Usually, a CV is used in the context of a recruitment process, where the point, in the end, is to give reasons to the recruiter to recruit you instead of someone else. Hence, a piece of information contained in a CV should be instructive, for instance by ensuring that you do have the proper credentials, or by providing evidence that you can be apt to the position you are applying for.

Perhaps attending conferences is something relatively rare in your field, and you have attended more than the average PhD students? In that case, listing all the conferences you have attended could indicate you are very interested in keeping up with recent advances in your field. It could also show that you enjoy travelling. Perhaps you have secure internal or external funding to attend that conference (i.e., the funding was not automatically given)? That's also good evidence. You could list them if it provides evidence for an aspect that you are willing to emphasise in your application.

On the other hand, if the conferences you have attended had nothing special, or do not help emphasising any particular point, then you might want to keep the space in your CV for something else.


How to cite the terminology that has different meanings in different contexts but with the same name? For example, I am conducting research in "human attention".

Two papers both use the terminology "attention maps". However, actually one paper refer "attention maps" as "gaze maps" and the other refer "attention maps" as "importance maps". They are both right as "gaze maps" and "importance maps" are just the sub-classes of "attention maps". The terms "gaze maps" and "importance maps" are just made up by me to clarify the two concepts.

Normally, when I cite other people's work, I just use their terminology directly. But now I have to cite them both with the same name. How to deal with this situation？ Is there a conventional way?

I'd suggest:

Introducing attention maps;
Discussing the specifics of sub-classes gaze maps and importance maps,
without reference to their names; and
Mention that subclasses are known as attention maps by <> [X] and gaze maps  [Y].

Depending on whether gaze maps and importance maps are the same sub-class, distinct sub-classes, or intersecting sub-classes determines some of the specifics of how I'd handle the final point. As written, I've assumed they are the same-sub-class.


Publishing a very mediocre paper as undergraduate? Given that I am an undergraduate is it a good idea to publish a very mediocre paper (nothing novel, results way bellow state of art) in a conference/competition that accepts such papers?

Our results are good compared to everyone else (we are ranked 3rd) but the paper adds little to no value to the field and the conference/competition is mediocre (but not very bad).

Should I include myself in the authors or not, given that I am in the top of class in terms of grades and aiming for top US universities for PhD? My professor declined to be in the paper but everyone else in the team is okay with it.

So you want to publish rubbish, just to have a publication on your CV? If you really are a good student, you will find other ways to get publications. Remember that such a publication will stay with you forever, everyone googeling you will find it. On the other hand, once you have some publications, no one will care if you made your first one during your undergraduate or later.

Also: Talk to your professor. He will have reasons to decline and will be able to tell you more about the pros and cons of publishing this paper, given your academic plans. I would put quite some weight on his opinion, as he knows the paper and has lots of experience when it comes to the field, accepting or declining PhD students, etc.


Does choosing not to submit GRE scores look bad (particularly for CS PhD programs)? I am preparing to submit applications to high ranking CS PhD programs in the US. My GRE quant score is not quite what I wanted (162V/163Q). I have strong research experience, good letters from professors I worked with, and a decent GPA (~3.6) from a top 10 undergrad CS school. However, my quant score is only around 80th percentile, whereas many top CS programs have averages in the 90-95 range.
I'm not sure if submitting my GRE scores will hinder my chance, or if the opposite case is true. Is it the case that a student without GRE scores will look lazy, or look like their hiding poor scores?
All of the institutions that I am applying to have made the GRE optional.

I would assume, but can't guarantee, that if they have a policy that GRE scores are optional then the policy would preclude assumptions about missing scores. So, in that sense you are probably safe.
But, you can hardly control for what an individual committee member might have in the back of their mind.
It might even be possible to learn more about the policies used and how interpretations are made in such cases.
Since some places now make them optional, some students choose not to take them, I also assume. And in the US, at least, admission is based on a wide variety of things, of which test scores are only one.


How to respond to receiving a duplicate list of corrections Two weeks ago I have done and I have submitted the corrections that a journal had asked me to do, but today thay asked me to do the same corrections. I am looking for a good letter cover to let them know.

Perhaps the new version didn't arrive or they lost it. Perhaps the editor clicked the wrong link and sent you the wrong response. Write back that you made those corrections and sent them on date. Include a fresh copy of the new document. Ask for instructions on how to proceed if there is any difficulty.

I suspect it is just a simple error. Make a simple and friendly response.


Is the phrase "We can see that ..." appropriate in research papers? Today at work, we had a discussion about writing styles of research papers. One of the topic was if the phrase "We can see that..." is appropriate for research papers or not.

While some people were convinced that the phrase does not belong there others had no problem with it. Since my mother language is not English and I am a "writer beginner" I was tactically silent.

I tried to google.scholar the phrase and it showed me a lot of papers with it. However, we all know that not all papers out there have proper writing style.

So the question:

Is the phrase "We can see that ..." appropriate for a research paper? If so, at which circumstances? At which circumstances it is not?

The goal of scientific writing is to transfer knowledge and information with high degree of clarity, precision, conciseness, and a reasonably natural tone. When editing written work, a quick litmus test is to slash away each phrase then evaluate if the sentence can do without it. "We can see that..." is a very popular candidate to be slashed because in 99% of the cases, the sentence's meaning wouldn't change:

  "We can see in Table 1 that the average age is 56 years old with a standard
  deviation of 7 years."

  "The average age is 56 years old with a standard deviation of 7
  years (Table 1)."

When describing graphs or illustration, we tend to see "We can see that..." a lot more frequently than in other plain text; most of these can also be deleted:

  "In Figure 1, we can see that females are the majority (67%)."

  "Females are the majority (67%, Figure 1)."

... or replaced by the graphical components on which that the viewers should focus.

  "In Figure 2, we can see that the sales of graphic novel have been
  steadily increasing since 2011."

  "The sales of graphic novel have been steadily increasing since 2011,
  as indicated by the dotted line in Figure 2." OR

  "The sales of graphic novel (dotted line in Figure 2) have been
  steadily increasing since 2011"

And a few random thoughts from also an ESL:

I tend to focus on how efficient the sentence is rather than how formal the sentence is. I will, on any day, take a PhD candidate who writes clearly than one who writes formally. "Formal" bad writing scratches the inside of my cranium.
When it comes to writing, I tend to gear away from pragmatic advices that say "You always have to..." or "You never should..." Languages and usages change along time; it's more important to be able to tell my ideas to the current crowd, than to be able to write an ancient script. Beginning learners should feel free to stick to a handful of "rules of thumb," but as the learning progresses they should develop their own judgment and some flexibility.
A journal is only as formal as the editors of that journal go. Check the guideline to authors, read the specified style manual, and read a few current issues for an overall landscape, and then write. Leave all other "formal this" and "formal that" behind.


4 weeks after on campus interview - ask about update I had an on-campus interview for a tenure track assistant professor position in mathematics about 4 weeks ago.  The interview seemed to go well, I felt I was well-received.  I was told at the end of the interview that they had more interviews scheduled over "the next couple of weeks" and would then begin to make offers.

I interpreted this as two more weeks of interviews, meaning it's been two weeks since interviews have likely finished now.  I have no idea how long it takes to prepare offers or when it is reasonable to ask for an update.

Not sure if it's relevant, but I am currently a Ph.D. student in mathematics, defending this semester, and have an unusually diverse teaching background (for a Ph.D. student anyway).  This is a teaching-focused institution.  I'm sure my competition is probably more experienced (not likely soon-to-be Ph.D.s like me, but rather people who have had post-doc experiences, etc.)

Is it reasonable to ask about the status of the search?

It's possible that they simply haven't yet finalized their ranking, gotten approval,  and made the first offer.  It seems more likely or that they have done so and you weren't their first choice.  You can certainly ask what the status of the search is, and they'll probably tell you whether or not an offer has been made, but don't expect to be told who has been made an offer or whether you're still in consideration.

If you are still under consideration and everyone ahead of you on the list turns down their offers, then you might get an offer later.


Finding papers that acknowledge a specific author Is there any way to find all papers that acknowledge a specific author? (i.e., the author is mentioned in the acknowledgement section)

Resorting to advanced search tool that most famous publishers offer would simplify your task (at least to an extent).

E.g., search for papers with name in full-text and not in authors and not in references.

Currently existing journal libraries do not support such a feature yet. The solution to your question is a topic of research by itself. The following articles, [1] and [2], might provide some insights.


Value of (multiple) master's on the path to the PhD? I'm a PhD student in computer science. At the end of the year I will finish my coursework and be awarded a master's degree. Due to the nature of my research (machine learning) I'm considering taking additional classes to get a master's in statistics. The obvious pro is that I will gain a deeper understanding of topics that I will otherwise be generally self studying. The obvious drawback is that coursework takes time away from research. How do I weigh these pros and cons appropriately? Thanks.

You seem (at least in your question) to have skipped over a middle option: as a PHD student in computer science at an American university, it is likely that with no additional paperwork you can enroll in graduate courses in the statistics department.

(As with all things academic, it would be good to run this past your supervisor, but as long as you can explain (i) why you think it will be useful to you and (ii) why it will not significantly impede the progress on whatever else you are supposed to be doing, s/he ought to be supportive of it.  If the statistics coursework is directly relevant to your thesis research, s/he ought to be enthusiastic, even.)

You can then take exactly the courses to develop the knowledge and skills you need.  I don't know your situation, but it seems very unlikely that what you want to learn will coincide precisely with the set of requirements for a master's degree in statistics.  And in terms of your credentials: unless you are looking for a post-PhD position specifically in statistics, given that you already have one master's degree and are going for a PhD, I don't see a second master's degree in statistics as having much value to you.  (Even then, unless your career goal is to be some kind of adjunct lecturer in a statistics department, a second master's degree is not guaranteed to be directly helpful: if you have specific career goals then you should ask around as to what credentials best help you achieve these goals.)

As to the value of the coursework itself versus the time for your CS research: Suresh's comment is the best answer that I can think of to that.  You're right; there are pros and cons to be weighed against each other.  We can't do that for you nearly as well as you can do it for yourself.  Your supervisor is the natural person to go to for some additional insight, but in my opinion the final decision is really yours.


Is there a general rule for whether adjuncts who are regular faculty in other departments can supervise grad students? I'm very interested in working with a specific professor, who is a full-time full professor in one department, and adjunct faculty in another. In this case he is not a part-time adjunct who only teaches. I'm more interested in being a grad student in the second department, for a number of reasons that aren't important to go into.

In the US, would it be typical for such a professor to be able to supervise a grad student in the second department? Or is this likely to vary by school? The department website is unclear.

I know I can ask him, but I thought this would be a valuable question for the community as well.

In our department (Ohio, US) the rule is that to supervise a graduate student, you need to go through a certain "credentialing process" (should have a certain number of publications in the area, hold a degree in one of several possible fields related to mathematics, etc.) so if somebody from other departments wants to supervise our students, all he formally needs to do is to submit an application, have his credentials verified, and go ahead. It is not something that happens often but it does sometimes and right now I'm trying to figure out how it works with co-advising from a different country. So, it is nothing unheard of but the exact rules and procedures may vary widely, which means that your best bet is to ask the department chair or secretary. The department websites usually do not display such things. One should read thick regulation handbooks for faculty to find them out and there is no reason why you should dig into any of those yourself instead of asking people whose duty is to know all such stuff or exactly where to look for it.


Should I apply to tenure-track positions if I'm fairly certain I won't be staying? I hope to receive my PhD in Mathematics in May of 2015, so I am currently applying for jobs.  Due to life circumstances, I'm fairly certain that I will only be staying at my next position for about 2 years.  Does this mean I shouldn't even try to apply for tenure-track positions?  Will a hiring committee not even consider me for the position if I'm not willing to commit to staying with them for a certain amount of time?

I would love to get a teaching/lecturing position at any institute of higher education (4-year research university, liberal arts school, community college), but as I look for openings, a lot of them are tenure-track assistant professor positions.  Should I go through the effort of sending in an application, or will that be a waste of my, and the committee's, time?

Thanks for any advice you have!

Edit (to address Nate's comment):

My wife is currently applying for 2 year graduate degree programs in various cities in the US, so I'm applying for jobs in the same cities.  When she finishes her program, we plan to move outside of the US (Africa or Southeast Asia), where I do hope to remain in academia, teaching mathematics to college-aged students.

Apply.

If you accept a position, you are committed for the following year. Leaving after two years will disappoint people, but it happens fairly often, and the potential consequences of you not applying to these jobs are perhaps more serious than the potential consequences to the departments if you leave after two years.

Besides, I don't know what your circumstances are, but you are presumably not completely sure you won't stay.


How much time do researchers spend on writing grants? As a potential future researcher I would like to know how much I could focus on my research and how much distraction grants cause. My research interest lie in theoretical cs and logic, however the answers should include other areas so that they may be useful to other readers too.

Specifically, how many hours of your working day on average is dedicated to grant related issues - searching a grant, writing a grant proposal, writing the final report for the funded projects, etc.

I heard in an informal talk that this can be as much as half of the time of the researcher, say 5 hours, Monday to Friday. In such circumstance, I do not think I would be able to focus on the research.

It very much depends on the field, the researcher, and the grants. To give you a picture of someone who works in public health - in a soft money position - here's some things that occupy my time. I am however not faculty (I'm a postdoc) so if anything this is an underestimate.

Several weeks a year, almost everything else comes to a halt. Even when I'm not the PI on a grant, if I'm in charge of a section theres reading to do, figures to make, etc. Also often rigging up preliminary data etc., because working on mathematical models of infectious diseases means that for grant applications you have to outline the model itself - a substantial amount of work is already done.
I've spent probably a good month of productive working time managing a particular grant I have. This grant has been a problem child from day one - issues with the contract, issues paying things, issues, issues...it's depressingly not even for all that much money.
Usually then per-paper I spend about an hour making sure my acknowledgments point to the right grants, make sure things that should be in PubMed Central end up their, etc.


Didn't attend field-specific conferences during my PhD; how much of a disadvantage is it? During my mechanical engineering PhD, I was not able to go to my field specific conferences and had to go to diverse conferences. Thus, I couldn't interact with researchers directly in my field of research. As an introvert, it is very difficult for me to make connections or networks during conferences and events. So, I doubt that I could have done anything by going to field specific conferences either.

On top of that, I don't have anything on my CV to speak about my leadership qualities. I have done some volunteering work and judged a poster session during my PhD. I also have done some TA. But, apart from that, I have not done any organizing stuff.

I had earlier helped my advisor to write a grant and have been a reviewer in a journal. Since writing that grant, I have not received any opportunity to write a grant as my advisor has pivoted his research interests to other field quite different from mine. So, I don't have much experience in that too.

Excluding my publication record, as a PhD student about to submit my thesis, how much of a disadvantage am I in when applying for a future academic position?

People skills can be very important for an academic. We teach, we advise and guide students, we interact with colleagues. In lab sciences we often have to work closely with others. Collaboration, even in such fields as math, is very important today. Moreover, people will tend to ignore your ideas if you don't learn how to present them enthusiastically.

However, that doesn't close you out if you are introverted. Even if you are very introverted. People skills are just that: skills. They can be learned and practiced. Many of the people you meet who have good people skills are actually introverted.

I've mentioned how introverts can interact effectively in public in answer to other questions here, for example.

Treat people skills just like any other skills that you need to learn. Start out slow, if necessary, but practice. Play the role of a confident somewhat extroverted person, even if you aren't.

This answer was provided for an earlier version of the question that was quite focused on effective strategies for introverts in academia.


Education gap in Between Graduation and Master degree I had completed my graduation in 2013 and after that due to some family problem, I had to go home and help my father with his business. Now I have started preparing for a master degree, but how can I compensate for my two years gap in education?
 graduation completed in june 2013

gap 2.6 years

master start january  2016

I started my PhD in 2002, having completed my master's degree in 1975. I can assure you, from personal experience, that a 27 year gap in education is not too long.

I prepared for my resumed studies by reviewing material that would have been covered in a bachelor's degree program in my subject, computer science. I found a sample curriculum - in my case the ACM guidelines - and then looked up the various topics on-line. I purchased a few textbooks, but mainly I did on-line reading and tutorials. If I it had only been a couple of years since my bachelor's degree I would have used the textbooks from that rather than buying new ones.

I also did a lot of practice GRE tests to prepare for the application process.


First, third, or "we" for Marie Curie Individual Fellowship Maybe I am overthinking this. But which person should I use in the fellowship application? There are sections about the actual science, about the applicant, and about the exchange with the host institution. Is it ok to switch person according to the section? Or should I refer to myself as the "Researcher" as the templates use?

Optimally, you would check this with people in your field, in the best case somebody who has already written a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship proposal. In my area, the usage of "I" has become fairly standard for personal grant applications, to the extent that using "they" would be considered somewhat unusual. Using "we" for such grants is not recommended, as apparently some people want to see this as a sign of lacking independence. (I completely disagree with this assessment, but why take the risk?).


Trouble finding advisor with same research interest I am a second year PhD student in computer science. I am having trouble finding an advisor who shares the same research interest as me. I have been working on my own (for the most part) for these two years and obtained some publishable results (a faculty suggested I publish a single author paper).  But without an advisor, I cannot proceed further in my PhD studies.

Any comment will be helpful.

While it would be ideal to have an advisor who has some interest and experience in your area of research, it is not strictly necessary. The most important things you will learn from your advisor, such as how to write papers, how to write a thesis, how to approach research, and how to design experiments are not domain-specific.

One option is that you look for an advisor that will be supportive, that you trust, and that you "click" with. If later on you need help from someone who knows your specific field, your advisor can probably put you in touch with someone who can help. That person might even be at another university.

It might also be possible for you to have two advisors; one in your university or programme that helps you with non-domain-specific stuff, and another in your field of expertise that might be at another university.

When you meet with potential advisors, ask them if they think it could be a problem that your field of interest is different from theirs. They may suggest one of the options I've mentioned above, or something else useful.


Unable to defend and graduate because of advisers fickle mentality I am an international student at a US university and I have a fantastic, caring and supportive adviser who I find fosters a happy work environment for all his students to grow in.

Here's the drawback to this happily unfolding story:

He advises 9 students, 5 of who are PhD students (I am one of them).
4 out of the 5 PhD students are in the final stages of their PhD program (me included).
3 out of these 4 PhD students have families and should have graduated at least about 5-6 months ago but because of "family pressure" they haven't. I don't relate to that because I don't have a family and I want to defend and graduate

My adviser has always had goals that are generally considered unattainable in my group. I had been given 3 weeks to finish my dissertation in 2012 with the dangling carrot that I could defend and then focus on writing papers perhaps.

I met this goal one whole week short of the 3 week goal. However, my advisor has been postponing my defense for a variety of reasons (all of which are true) and  is being pulled in several directions at the same time because of an important position in the research area of fuel cells.

So these constant vacillations have led to my defense being pushed to the end of Feb 2013. Now I'm told they don't know when I'll defend.

I find that this is rather unfair and considering that I generally have a good rapport with my advisor I am unsure of how to broach this topic. Why am I so worried? I come from a country where demanding things from your adviser is sinful and gets you kicked out of graduate school.

I'd really like to say that I want to defend and figure out the next step in my life! I am not talking getting a job necessarily but just life in general — get married, have kids, find a job, move to a different place (in no particular order) what have you.

Any advice or similar experience that I can draw from?

Talk to him (I'm gonna make a template out of that one)

Be professional, stay fact-based, don't say it as a criticism (veiled or not) of him, and you should be in the clear. Say something like:

  I wanted to ask you, given your experience on this matter: I had expected that the final period of my PhD, between finishing the thesis and defending, would be quite short. Given that it's not the case, I was wondering: what is, in your expectations, a typical schedule? Am I doing something that hurts my ability to defend sooner? Could I do something to speed the process?

That should open up a dialogue about your expectations, his expectations, your constraints and his, and possibly help unknot the tie you're in.

However, you're not giving us much information about the exact nature of the core issue:

  he has been postponing my defense for a variety of reasons (all of which are true)

If all the reasons given for postponing the defense are valid (I assume “true” here means “valid”), I don't see why you expect to defend. Do you think he's setting the bar too high? Is it merely a scheduling/timing issue? You say that your thesis is ready, has he gone over it, commented, critiqued, discussed it with you? Is the problem with putting together the committee?


Publishing articles in not peer-reviewed journals There are several important journals out there that are not peer-reviewed, such as Network Security. Do such papers provide any value for the author(s), especially for whom want to apply for a PhD program.

You call them "important journals". Others would call them "magazines". Most fields have them and "recognized experts" can present useful information to practitioners. But they seem to be more "popularizers of field X" than true journals. Their only control is editorial. For a recognized expert, they probably have a bit of value come time for salary and promotion decisions as they may give an indication of the external reputation of a person.

I think that if a person writes a research paper sufficient for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, they would do send it for peer review. They wouldn't submit it to a non-peer-reviewed place at all. On the other hand, a "layman's" or "practitioners" article on the consequences of the research would be suitable for such a journal, but it would be backed by the earlier research publication. Likewise, if a person does some work, but it isn't up to the standards of a peer reviewed journal, but has important applications, it would be good to get it out there for practitioners. But, by definition, it isn't up to par for the peer reviewed journal.

Therefore, for entry to a doctoral program, I think they would have very little value. The problem is in the analysis of the work. If you publish in a peer reviewed journal, someone evaluating your CV can depend on the quality of the work because they know about the system and how it works. They can trust that experts in the field have looked closely at the work and judged it worthy. That isn't the case with non-peer-reviewed work. Therefore they would need to evaluate the work themselves and would not be especially willing to do so.

The Elsevier series you mention is, perhaps, a bit better than a magazine, but not like a true "journal." Publishing here is unlikely to hurt you, as some other things might (predatory journals), but won't help much. You will need the rest of your CV to be adequate to support your candidacy.

Caveat: The above is opinion. It is how I would look at the CV of a candidate, nothing more. You would still have to make your case otherwise.


How to ask for a co-supervisor? (master's program etiquette) I'm finishing up the first year of my master's program, heading into the second starting September. I had proposed a topic to my (then potential, since confirmed) supervisor in October and we agreed to work together. I changed this topic a month ago for various reasons (mostly lack of available data).  My supervisor was supportive of my topic change and throughout this process has been really helpful, responsive, and critical. But he is not really knowledgeable about the topic or the theoretical framework I am using - his helpfulness has come more from his knowledge of the discipline I'm working in (to which I am new) and his commentary on how I present and support my ideas. I feel that a co-supervisor would help focus my ideas and point out possible gaps, flaws, or inconsistencies in my analysis of the data based on their knowledge of the topic.

Is it too late to ask for a co-supervisor at the end of first year? I have a professor in mind who I'd like to ask, and he is someone I already know, but since it's quite late in the year I am wondering if it is appropriate to even ask. (And I'd definitely consult my current supervisor first. He'd probably be ok with it).

No It is not too late. Don't be afraid to talk about it. But as you said, you should first talk to your main supervisor to let him know. He will normally be ok with that. Then, you can talk with the other professor. If the professor is too busy or not interested, s/he will let you know. From my experience, it is generally quite positive for the students to get a co-supervisor for several reasons.


What should be included on the title page of a conference presentation I am preparing slides for a conference.

And I struggled (a bit) for what to put on the title page.

I know the paper title is a must, maybe the conference name, place, date.

How about authors and affiliation?

Should I put all the authors name on the title page?

Or only the presenter?

How about if they are from different institute?

Should I put all the institute names on the first page?

I usually include:

Title of talk
Name of presenter (me)
Names of coauthors
Date
Name of conference
Title of conference session (if applicable)
City of conference
My institution's name
Maybe my institution's logo

I don't include the coauthors' affiliations.


Asking professors’ help on proposal I am applying to a master program. The application requires a pre-proposal for a project that is relevant to scholarships. Although I have a specific topic to write my pre-proposal about, I am not totally aware of the latest research in this very special sub-field. Is it acceptable for both the university I am applying to, and a professor working on this field, to ask for help and clarity on my chosen topic? First, should the pre-proposal be originally my own idea? Second, do professors think it is okay to give me hints on writing my pre-proposal? Of course, in the end, I will write the pre-proposal by my own.

What you propose seems fine to me. Make sure, however, that the professor understands why you are asking and that his/her help doesn't become authorship. Academics work together, especially at the idea stage.

Some departments provide a coffee room with a table and whiteboard just to encourage this sort of collaboration.

Note that the answer might be different if you had no ideas at all about where to start. But the prof can, as a minimum point you to places to help you develop the proposal. I think that most professors would consider this to be fine, or would tell you (gently) if they didn't. Ask.


How does a departmental library decide what new books to order? Who decides what books a department (say, of mathematics, at a public university in the US) shall order for its library? Is there usually a formal process?

I am somewhat surprised that I have found essentially no answer to this on the internet, nor on my library's website.

My department shares a "library representative" with several other departments in my university. If you want a book purchased, you tell the library representative. Occasionally, there will be an allocation of funds to purchase new resources, and the library representative will send all faculty a note to submit requests by such-and-such date.


What to do if your research idea has already been published? I am an amateur researcher (no PhD, Masters, etc...) and just want to put something out there so I can put it on my resume to demonstrate I know how to perform research and hopefully get a job.  I did a Google search and found a paper that discusses the same idea I had.  However, the paper approaches the problem differently than I would have done (although the more I read the harder it is for me to separate the two in my head), and does not go as in depth as I plan to.  With that said, the underlying concept/theory are the same.
It seems like what I can add to the field are additional evidence that the technique works and maybe (most likely not) an expansion of the technique/theory to allow for it to be used more broadly.  Realistically, I'll probably only be able to offer additional evidence that his technique works, as I am not educated enough and in the field - but one never knows.  I'd have to dig deeper, and will only know after I run my simulations anyways to see if the concept can be expanded.
Is there a case for me to construct a research paper?  Or should I just do a bunch of simulations, which is what I was planning on doing, to demonstrate that his technique works and show how it could be applied.  In the latter case, if my work is deemed unoriginal, I would just publish the results either via a blog or Twitter and reference the original paper or just keep it for personal use/knowledge.  In the former case, if my work is deemed original, I would actually write up a research paper, but still obviously reference his paper.
Thanks!

It is hard to give advice specific to your case without knowing more, so I'll mostly restrict to general comments here. What you do depends on the field, to some extent, and to the individual paper and kind of research.
But, if you use a known technique to reach a known result, your results are probably not going to be published. It is, at best, a learning experience.
Independent researchers have a number of problems, but they often come down to lack of professional advice in getting started in research. Working with a guide can help you avoid dead ends. The big problem is that there is a lot to know about any given narrow subject and it can take a long time to absorb it. A guide can help you find an appropriate path to learning what is already known and what is still valuable to pursue. Ideally, you'd like to know about the earlier work before you spend time that might not be productive.
You don't suggest that your research is in mathematics, but there, it is possible to publish new proofs of known theorems under certain circumstances. A proof give insight into why something is true as well as the fact that it is. Sometimes those insights can be transferred to other problems yet unsolved. So, a new proof, using a novel technique, can be valuable in itself and might get published.
Another kind of research depends on statistical methods. Social science and some of the "hard" sciences can use such methods. Some of the published results here are worth replicating, since statistics alone only give evidence, not proof, that something might be true. But, again, you need some variation for the new study to be valuable. Sometimes a paper will contain assumptions that may be unwarranted (normal distribution of a variable in a population, say) and a new study making fewer assumptions might be worth doing. Likewise, some medical studies are extremely important and may affect people's health. So, a lot of evidence for what is really going on is needed and replicated studies can be essential. And some studies actually refute the results of others, thus requiring more study. Statistical studies, if done well, have a measurable probability of producing misleading results. Replication reduces the probability of error, provided that things are done properly, and probably with some variation on the original.


Alternatives to sewing (or any habit) to stay focused in class I struggle with staying focused during lectures. However, while listening to online lectures, I started sewing and it has made life so much easier. I am able to listen and follow along. When the time comes to do practice questions, I do a lot better than I usually do.

So the problem is, I cant take my needle and thread into an in-person lecture. Are there any alternatives that I can try? Or should I just talk to my professor and see if I can sit in the back of the class and sew? I don't want to seem disrespectful, but I've tried so much to improve and this has been the most effective thing by far.

Taking notes doesn't usually help. I get so caught up in taking notes that I miss the material. If I just try to listen, I zone out.

Edit regarding duplication:
I saw a similar question someone posted asking how to focus in class. I found the way to do that. My question is more like, "What is an alternative I can do that won't make my professor think I'm being disrespectful? (Looking for something that is academically acceptable) " Or is it appropriate to go to my professor, explain the situation, and ask to do what helps me?

If sewing helps you learn, consider bringing it to an in-person lecture.

In a large lecture hall, I seriously doubt anyone will notice/care
In a more intimate class, it could be worth asking the professor if they mind.

While you might have a bad experience with a grouchy professor, I think the vast majority will either understand or not care, particularly if you are clearly engaging. Personally, I would rather have a student paying attention while sewing than on their phone.


What does [ctb] stand for? This R package f.x. states:

"Kurt Hornik [ctb]"

I assume this abbreviation is coming from academic publishing - hence why I ask it here.

ctb = Contributor.

It's not so much about academic publishing, but (academic/open source) software. One has authors and contributors. Contributors added a bit of code, but presumably did not contribute to the overall design efforts.


My professor did not cite my article in a review on the same topic I was surprised to see a review on a topic where I have published an original article, where my article was not cited. My surprise was even bigger because this review was issued from the same department where my original article was issued and it was concerning the same topic. The first author was somebody I don't know personally, but the corresponding author is my professor, who was also a co-author in my original article. I must also say that my original article has many international citations, and it saddened me a lot to realize that my own department and my own professor, forgot to cite my (their) own published work.

I emailed my professor the fact that I felt forgotten and that this was not academically correct but the answer I received did not make things better. He said that

  many other articles aren't included, because this review was covering
  many topics and that the main topic was "A". The part of the topic B
  (my topic) was not included in the aim of the review but was asked by
  a reviewer so it was added later.

But I'm not happy with this answer, because the topic B is even included in the main title of the review. But even the topic A could be enough for a citation of my original article. Later he said that in a review article they can cite only the recent 2 years original articles and that he was not obliged to cite my (our) original article.

I have obtained my PhD from this department, 5 years ago, and my original article was published 5 years ago. The review was published last month.

Do you believe that this was academically correct?

Agreeing with @PeteL.Clark: define precisely what you want as outcome of the interaction, and act following this outcome.

My experience of priority issues and fighting "not being cited" that, unless your work is so promising that a priority/citation fight warrants all-out war to gain or not lose visibility, the loss of concord is usually not worth it; as unfair as that may seem, the one complaining about being ignored is often seen as the one "disturbing the peace". It shouldn't be like that, but this is an empirical observation I made, even in blatant cases of intentional ignoring. Maybe it has something to do that quite a few times it's the ones with the most aggressive "nostrification" tendency who battle the issue of being ignored in the most forceful manner.

Now, there are indeed cases where all-out priority wars may be war-ranted (pun intended) to ensure that one is at least etched in the community's minds, but keep in mind, even then, the outcome is all but assured.

Lots of unfairness happens, to all of us, but it is usually the long-term that counts. Given that your old article attracted a lot of citations, you probably are better off just ignoring the matter, but only you can judge whether entering the war-ring (yes, pun intended again) as response to your latest slight is worth it.


Is there (or should there be) a website to record errors in papers There are several questions on this site about errors in papers and even the errors-erratum tag. I'm specifically thinking of mathematical errors, where there is an unambiguous mistake, like a wrong sign or wrong physical constant. I have come across ~5 of these in the past month.

Is contacting the publisher really the best way to correct these? Sometimes papers are old and it seems unlikely that a new PDF will be generated. Would the academic research community find it useful to have one canonical site that made it very easy to submit errors and corrections. Then, when reading a paper, one could check the site with the DOI or title and see if that paper has an entry. I am considering making such a site, but wanted to check with other academics if it seems like a worthy endeavor, if a site like this already exists, or if there is a reason it does not exist.

I realize this is an opinion question. I know these types of questions get closed, but this is still the best site I can think of to ask the question, so hopefully I get some good replies before this gets downvoted.

A site which has some ambitions and potential in this direction is PubPeer, which aims to be a general "online journal club", but which has also become a place to dissect papers for errors and possible fraud, particularly in biomedical areas.  It is thus one clearing house for discussing errors in papers.

Interestingly, they also have apparently set up a system that allows you to use a browser plugin to easily dual-post your comments on PubPeer to comments on the paper at the corresponding journal's site, which may also help with putting pressure on editors to actually make corrections...


May I publish the slides from my presentation that use figures from published papers as examples? I used some screenshots from academic published papers (e.g. figures) in my presentation that I gave to a group of colleagues. The screenshots were used as examples of how you should or should not do certain analyses or present certain results.

As my examples concerned screenshots of figures or tables from published paper these fall under copyright.  The copyright is usually held by the editors/publishing companies. The papers/sources are correctly referenced on the respective slide of my presentation that contain the screenshots.

Still my question is whether it is legal to publish (e.g. make online available) the slides on which the screenshots are given or would this infringe copyright? In other words: do I have to delete the respective slides before spreading my talk?

Yes, it is legal to reproduce and legal to use exact figure if it is not copyrighted.

If you refer to the source, you can reproduce the data. Which means you cannot use the figure by taking a screenshot, but rather reproduce the result by yourself. Data and equations are not copyrighted.

If the article is in open science or creative commons license (most of them are nowadays) you can take screenshots and use them.

To avoid complications, why not make your own figure of the data? It is pretty simple. After taking a screenshot, using plot digitizer you can get the data. Use your own plotting tool to make the picture.  This is a problem if your picture is an image from the experiment. Then you need to obtain permission to use that image.


Applying to more selective programs after having been diagnosed with a long-term mental condition I have discovered recently that I had ADHD, and possibly some other mental condition, which explain some past academic difficulties. This gave me hope that with treatment (which I will start soon) and newfound motivation, I can improve my academic results dramatically and aim for a PhD.

My opinion for now is that the plan that gives me the best chances would be to get a second master's degree containing more theory compared to my current one (computer engineering). I'm aiming for some universities I have visited, which are quite highly regarded compared to my current one.

My results have had ups and downs over the years, and would be clearly insufficient without a very good justification, which I believe my mental health problems to be. I have documentation of the mental health problems I suffered from during part of my studies. I don't plan to use these as an argument for admission, but providing that I get better results in the next semester after getting medical help, I am hoping that the admission committee won't disqualify me instantly based on my past results, and give more importance to the next semester.

One additional difficulty is that I'm nearing the end of my current degree, so I won't have another occasion to get good results. I worry that getting good grades in the last months could be insufficient to offset my less-than-stellar record.

Is a very late mental disorder diagnosis followed by a significant improvement in results likely to save my applications to selective programs? Should I lower my ambitions for the moment?

It's certainly a huge relief to finally know, after years or decades of struggling, what the underlying problem is. But people with ADHD tend to assume that a diagnosis and treatment is a magic bullet that will suddenly make them like everyone else. I think part of this is ADHD tendencies and part is internalizing the erroneous belief that if you just tried harder you'd stop screwing up. I don't have any first-hand experience with ASD, but the issues seem to be similar.

So here's my first observation: A diagnosis does not "fix" ADHD. A diagnosis together with medication and therapy or coaching does not "fix" ADHD. Right now you're at the starting point and you've been pointed in the right direction, but it's probably going to take some time and experimentation to find out exactly what you need to successfully manage advanced academic work. Expect that what you need might be really different than what is ordinarily offered in an academic setting. Don't beat yourself up trying to be like the neurotypicals the work is designed for.

My second observation: As you can see from the answers already given, many professors and programs take the attitude that learning disorders/differences are the student's problem and it's not their job to deal with them (except maybe in a very superficial legally-mandated way). This attitude might vary by country--my own experiences in the US have been pretty dismal. So even once you know what you need, and even though the law is on your side, you might find yourself fighting a losing battle against these attitudes to get it. So it's also important to be sure that you're entering an environment that sets you up for success.

I honestly don't know the answer to this second problem. I might post a related question here later to see what the ASE community thinks. I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but the fact is that the academic community is on the whole not particularly welcoming to people with learning differences, and ADHD is particularly misunderstood. The trick here is to find the exceptions who will provide the conditions you need to flourish.