Is it OK to hire another lab's student? An undergrad who's worked with me for just over a year (for course credit or for pay, depending on his preference in any given semester) presented a poster on his work with me at an event hosted by my lab. Afterwards, the student told me that he spoke to Professor B at the poster session, and Professor B suggested a project that he'd like the student to work on with him.

He had a meeting with Professor B to talk about the specifics, after which Professor B emailed me and asked whether I would recommend the student. I indicated in my response that the student is very capable and I would rather not lose him, to which Professor B responded, "He's planning on working with me for course credit next semester."

Was Professor B's behavior in this case OK?

More generally,

Under what conditions is it OK to hire another lab's student?

By "OK," I mean "not considered inappropriate behavior by the professor."

Hiring another lab's student is of course a continuum:

On the one hand: Student from Professor A's lab appears in Professor B's office, says "I've heard about your research and would really like to work with you." Professor B says, "Sure, I'd like that a lot."
On the other hand: Professor B attends event (open house, workshop, etc.) hosted by Professor A, where Professor A's student gives a talk about his ongoing research with Professor A. Professor B chats with the student after the talk, then says "You should work with me next semester."

Is either or both of these considered OK/not OK?

Does the type of student (PhD, MS, undergrad, high school student doing summer research) make a difference to your answer?

Do the terms of the student's position in either lab (earning course credit, getting paid, just getting supervision) make a difference?

Does it matter how long the student has been working with Professor A?

Should Professor B ask how Professor A feels about it before offering Professor A's student a job?

This is not an active, ongoing situation - I am not looking for advice on how to respond to Professor B, or whether I should say something to the student. (The student chose to continue his work with my lab and not to work with Professor B.) I just want to know whether Professor B's behavior was appropriate.

Consider the following scenario:

  I've been working with a professor for a year now, and at one of his
  events, I presented a poster. Another professor came up to me and
  started talking, and it turned out that this professor had a very
  interesting project related to my interests. I'm applying to grad
  schools in a year, and if I can get two recommendations from faculty
  it will really help my application. Should I work with this professor
  or not ?

Students have agency too. There's a lot of context and background missing in your description that Koldito alludes to. But in general students should be free to make their own decisions about their research activities and honor existing commitments that they've agreed to.

Personally, if I were Professor B, I might suggest that the student talk to you first before deciding, but it's also possible that B did that, and the student indicated that no continuing commitment existed. If I were advising the student, I'd also suggest they clear things up with you first. I might also suggest that depending on the level of interest in the project they have with you, they give you the right of first refusal.

But this exact situation has happened to me with students (twice). They worked with me for a while, and then found a topic that made more sense to them with another professor. I wished I could have convinced them to stay, but they did well with their advisors and I was on both their committees, with no hard feelings at all.


Listing all papers which cite my references I would like generate a list of all papers which cite my references, sorted by most recent. In other words I want all papers which are "2 publications away" from mine, which cite the references in my papers, but which are not references of my references. This would provide an easy way to see what new research is closely related to mine, even if they do not cite my papers.  Has anyone thought of doing this?  How could it be done?

You can do this using Google Scholar: Suppose your paper is Alternative to mental hospital treatment: I. Conceptual model, treatment program, and clinical evaluation. The cited by link lists the papers citing your paper (and can be sorted by date). Now you just need to click the cited by link for each of the papers identified in the previous step and merge the resulting lists.


How to the enlarge the font size of a journal paper I’m a low-vision person. I want to print research papers to read. But the font size is very small for me. Is there any way to make it bigger and print it?

If the paper is in PDF (the standard) you can print using the Poster option. You will need to print the page in a bigger size, to make it fit in multiple pages.

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/basic-pdf-printing-tasks.html

You can try to convert the PDF to word and enlarge the font before printing, but many don't convert well.

https://smallpdf.com/pt/pdf-para-word


Possible that one dissertation in Computational Archaeology could earn two degrees? I'm planning on my PhD to be in CS, but it occurs to me that my research as it applies to archaeology/anthropology will be just as unique and valuable (hopefully) to that field in and of itself.

I haven't been able to find anything on this specifically as in most cases the two fields concerned are closely related and two separate degrees would be unnecessary. In this case, however, it seems fair to ask the question as the two fields are both widely different and at the same time this research in particular would be completely overlapping between the two disciplines.

If this isn't a thing I'd appreciate any insight on schools which have strong graduate programs in both of these fields; regardless of whether I can earn two degrees (which I'm not expecting) I want to tailor my research and my access to experts/labs/programs as much as possible.

TIA!

It's hard to say something is definitely not possible, but I think this is a case where it just really isn't worthwhile. A PhD says you can do research; from there, it's more your research output that matters rather than the title of your degree.

What I would strongly suggest, however, is that you pursue having a mixture of faculty on your thesis committee. The exact rules will depend on your program and graduate school policies, but even if there is a requirement that official committee members come from a particular department, at a minimum you should be able to add some "outside" people who can help advise you in your second research area.

You should also pursue publishing papers in both fields.

Of course, all of this will depend on support from your main advisor, so when you look for particular programs, make that part of your search and part of the early conversations you have about your fit.


Deferring start of PhD program because of self-doubts This year I applied to several universities in the US, and got into a top program in my field. It was great news; I was given a very nice project to work on, and accepted the offer, along with excessive impostor syndrome.

Then I went to an internship to a nice university. I asked the grads there about their plans after PhD. Most of them did not have thoughts reaching that far, as if PhD was a default. This was interesting, considering the strength of the university, and made me wonder.

My motivation to go to graduate school was something along the lines "I want to work with strong people, I like working in the lab and this field seems nice". So, the self-doubt creeped in. I don't think I'm the worst candidate; I guess I am just scared of committing 6 years of my life, because with the job market I am not sure I want to be a professor and would rather work in industry.

My questions are:
1) Is it normal that I have self-doubts before even starting my PhD program?
2) Is it often for students to defer admission and take a year off to think the decision over? It's late, but it is better than going there half-hearted?

Yes, it is normal to have self-doubts and imposter syndrome is pretty common. However, the external validation you are getting seems to indicate that your fears are unwarranted. When other professionals and "strong" people consider you a top candidate it is pretty likely that you you are, no matter your doubts.

However, burnout is a serious problem for some, and finishing one degree with a flourish may leave many exhausted. You should work to avoid this, partly just by thinking of the new program as a fresh environment, but also, by pacing yourself just a little so that you don't overcommit too early.

Don't worry about job markets six years in advance. It is nearly assured that they won't be the same as now. They may be better or worse, but it is not possible to predict so long in advance. You also have the intervening period to work toward your goals and even to adjust them. Aiming to work in academia or industry, again, need not be a decision that you can't revisit over time.

You seem to have an opportunity. Better to grasp it, IMO, than to let it pass you by, possibly leaving you regrets in the future.

I don't advise taking a year off for the reasons you state. If you want to do so to get industry experience or solve a burn-out issue that might be good, but don't just let doubt keep you back. Others believe in you. Believe in yourself. That is doubly true if the position you are now offered won't assuredly be available in a year.


Can I show my long-term research interests on SOP, which are very important topics but aren't constantly researched yet I hope you can share your insights with me. I'm struggling to figure out appropriate research questions in my SOP. I'm trying to get into a top CS graduate school in the USA.

I am a cs grad and have done bioinformatics research, which attracts me to tackle computational and statistical challenges of Personalized Medicine. My long-term research goals are heterogeneous data integration, and statistical methods to reduce false positives and negatives. Since those things are really cutting-edge topics and groundbreaking progress has been made infrequently over a decade, not many US researchers list those questions as their primary research interests on their websites, but there is a hope that more researchers would get into those questions in near future.

So my concerns lead to two questions. First, would some of the top 20 CS graduate schools reject me because they don't have any researchers, who are currently researching those questions, but their research could help me work on those questions to some degree? Second, is it okay to state my long-term research goals I mentioned above on my SOP, rather than state which ongoing research at the school I'm interested in? I'm not sure what exact fields/topics would contribute to my long-term goals, but I think statistical machine learning and intelligent systems could offer some hopes.

Any opinions would be appreciated!

Only put something in your SOP as a research goal (short- or long-term) if you can make a credible case that (a) you understand broadly what it's about, and how it fits into your field as a whole, (b) you're capable of achieving it, and (c) the department you're applying to is a good place to do it, or start to do it. As an extreme example, saying you want to cure cancer is a bad idea because it's not realistic. But even saying you want to get into cancer research needs to be supported by evidence that you know something about it, and about the cancer group at the department you're applying to.

If you can't satisfy conditions (a), (b), and (c), it's not necessarily a bad thing, it just means you should be less specific about your goals. You could say, for example, that your end goal is to do research in applied CS, including bioinformatics. Then talk about what you've done already in that area, the skills you want to learn, and why department X is a good place to learn them. Make sure to keep it as focused on CS as possible. The last thing you want the committee to think is "why is this person applying to our department and not stats/applied math/biology?"


How much information is too much for a statement of purpose? I've read a lot on what to include and not to include in a personal statement. I have some short specific in that regard.

At my core, I think I want a PhD more than anything because I want to deeply challenge myself.  Obviously, I have a passion for my field as well, but if someone asked me why I was doing it I'd say it's because of the need to push myself.  Is this something to say in a personal statement, or am I better off leaving that out?
One school I'm applying is a top 10 school, and it's a bit of a reach for me.  Is it a bad idea to say that I've always wanted to get into that school specifically?  Will that imply that I'm applying for the wrong reasons?  This school is right next to where I grew up, and I've always wanted to study/research there.

The personal statement is the only thing holding up my applications.  I feel like I'm afraid to say a lot of things because I don't know if they'll be perceived in a positive or negative light.

Thanks for any help.

I doubt these sorts of statements matter very much.  They are basically fluff and would presumably occupy just a few sentences in your statement of purpose.  However, I'd be inclined to omit both of them, to avoid potentially giving the wrong impression:

  At my core, I think I want a PhD more than anything because I want to deeply challenge myself. Obviously, I have a passion for my field as well, but if someone asked me why I was doing it I'd say it's because of the need to push myself. Is this something to say in a personal statement, or am I better off leaving that out?

The difficulty is that there are many ways to challenge yourself.  You might run a marathon, master a foreign language, or raise lots of money for your favorite charity.  Because of the many ways to satisfy a desire for challenge, this motivation doesn't necessarily lead to stability over time.  Once you have completed your Ph.D., your academic ambitions may be satisfied and you may feel more attracted to a different challenge.  From your advisor's perspective, that would be a suboptimal outcome.  The purpose of a Ph.D. is preparation for a scholarly career, not checking off "get Ph.D." from a list of unrelated challenges.

Wanting to push yourself certainly isn't a bad thing.  If you didn't enjoy a challenge, then getting a Ph.D. would be a bad idea.  However, a desire for challenge is not in itself a very compelling reason to go to grad school, so I'd instead highlight the reasons you chose this particular challenge.

  One school I'm applying is a top 10 school, and it's a bit of a reach for me. Is it a bad idea to say that I've always wanted to get into that school specifically? Will that imply that I'm applying for the wrong reasons? This school is right next to where I grew up, and I've always wanted to study/research there.

This won't help you get admitted: fulfilling your childhood dreams is not one of the admissions committee's goals, nor is it relevant to whether you'd make a good grad student.  It could come across as off putting (for example, if you seem too interested in the university's overall fame), so it would be best omitted.


How to parse "$70,000/yr for 9 months' employment payable over 12 months"? I have received a job offer for a full-time contract position at a college in the US. The offer says that my salary will be $70,000/year for nine months’ employment payable over a period of twelve months. I received my offer not long ago, and although I will most likely accept the job, I didn't want to ask immediately about salary issues because I didn't want my first interaction after receiving the offer to be about money.

Since I am not familiar with university payment/hiring practices, which one of the following options is the correct one:

a) I will be employed for 9 months, then my salary will be ($70,000*9 months)/(12 months*1/year) =
$52,500/year
And since it is paid over 12-months, then my monthly salary before taxes will be $4,375/month.

b) Or is it simply $70,000/year paid over 12 months, that is, $5,833/month before taxes.

The wording of this is confusing and even my (non-US based) accountant is confused about what the salary will be.

Update: 7 days after posting this question, I have confirmed that the salary is $70k/year.

Option B.

Typically this confusing language reflects that you only have to teach for 9 months, and your salary is tied to your teaching responsibilities. So the university gives you $7777/month for 9 months and $0 for the other three. You can then supplement your income for the remaining three months. In particular, many research grants allow you to cover part or all of your own summer salary at your usual rate -- so if you win such a grant, you can actually gross $7777 every month and end up making a total of $93K per year.

In your case (perhaps because it's a teaching college and research grants are unusual?), they will "pay the salary over 12 months," which works out to $5833/month. This will save you the trouble of having to set money aside during the year and use it during the summer.

Note, your college may still require you to be "productive" over the summer (for certain values of "productive"). For that matter, they may provide the opportunity to take on additional paid work (i.e., teaching summer classes).


A faculty member turned me down because of lack of funding. If the university announces funding is available, should I apply anyway? Ten days ago I contacted a professor who conducts research in a field I am deeply interested in, to ask about PhD positions. He replied very politely that he had no funding available to hire a new person in his research group.

Today, the university announced that there is funding available for PhD positions and they welcome applications. In the application I am supposed to choose from a list of supervisors and try to convince them via a motivation letter and without directly contacting them.

Should I put the name of that professor or is it not a good idea? Wouldn't he know that there is some funding coming up soon, to suggest to me to wait a bit or is it possible he didn't know about it? Was he trying to politely say that he is not interested in me? If so, would it be a better idea to choose another supervisor or be persistent?

Maybe he meant that he didn't have funding to hire you directly. Or perhaps the university funding details are not known to everybody outside of the corresponding committee until they are out. Or even he was just oblivious to the existence of this.

There is no way to know without specifics, and there is little risk in just applying.


What merits acceptance for rapid publication in letter format? Ive recently been asked to review for a letter format journal (articles less than 4 pages) for rapid publication. The same standard criteria of original content, novelty and relevant references as for other journal publications are required. Looking to the referee guide of the journal, it is stated that

  When reviewing, reviewers should ask themselves 'Is this paper suitable for rapid publication?'

I am unable to find any discussion or guideline that clearly state what merits acceptance for rapid publication compared to the normal peer-review process for journal article submissions. Publishing as a IEEE letter vs article gives some input from the guidelines of IEEE JMEMS, where the author should argue why it is eligible for rapid publishing, although, Im not sure if this guideline is general for all journals.

I can understand that rapid publishing has benefits for authors and can be required by publishers due to competition. But I dont see what I, as a reviewer, am supposed to look for.

Since the letter format is short, not all aspects can be covered in the submission. Since the decision is binary (accept/reject), questions related to the submission cannot be answered or clarified by the authors through the review process. The situation arises that the submission can be original and novel, but may lack investigations or results. Should I still accept?

From my understanding of the term, it seems to me that your job is to evaluate two things:

Is the manuscript in "good enough" shape to publish without a proper, more rigorous peer-review process? As you say, there's no opportunity for a back-and-forth with the authors, although presumably they would have an opportunity to incorporate your feedback. So you'd need to be confident that the manuscript will be publishable with just one round of revisions.
Is there a clear, urgent need for publication that warrants circumventing the traditional peer-review process? I think the editor is looking for your recommendation, given your knowledge of the field and your assessment of how timely and significant the contribution is, as to whether to publish the manuscript as a letter, rather than as a regular research article. I imagine the authors won't make an argument for rapid publication specifically in the manuscript (due to lack of space), but perhaps in an accompanying cover letter or something similar (as indicated in this answer).

Regarding your specific question about a submission that is "original and novel, but may lack investigations or results," I think it is your job to judge:

whether publishing the manuscript essentially "as is," without such investigations, will sufficiently spur further advances in the field such that it's worth not waiting for those results; and
whether there is significant risk of similar, cutting edge work being published elsewhere earlier if this manuscript is subjected to a full peer-review, that would undercut both these authors and the journal you're reviewing for.


Uppercase/lowercase paper titles on a CV I have two papers from different conferences. The first has a title with all words beginning with an upper case letter. The second has a title with only the first letter of the first word capitalized.

On a CV, would it be acceptable to write both paper titles in the same uppercase/lowercase format, for consistency? Or should the CV titles be exactly as they appear on the papers?

Formatting of titles in citations is specified by citation style guides, APA, for example and depends on the context. If you are formatting your CV in APA style, you would use the link I provided and use "sentence case" for both titles (capitalize first word only) in your CV.

Note that this does not depend on the capitalization of the title in the original source; you should consider the title capitalization to be a formatting issue which will vary across formatting schemes but should be standardized when you bring the works together, like in a references list or CV.

This goes for English capitalization rules; I am not aware of APA guidelines for citations in other languages, such as German, which use different capitalization. Without further guidance, I would just suggest to be consistent.


Should I withdraw my paper from a journal which even didn't give me the manuscript number after one week? I submitted an article to Elsevier which even after one week its status is still "submitted to journal" and they didn't give me even the manuscript number. I have several past experiences with this publisher, where they gave me the manuscript number promptly, but this time after one week without even manuscript number seems a little bit odd.

Should I withdraw my article and submit it somewhere else, which probably their process may be faster? The reason why I'm asking this question is that I don't want to waste my time but on the other hand I don't want to make a bad reputation for potential future submissions by withdrawing my article because their journal is pretty famous in my field (computational physics).

One week is not an especially long time. You write that you've had previous experience with this publisher and they gave you a manuscript number promptly, but you didn't write if it's the same journal. Different journals can have different workflows - for example I've seen a journal which processed new submissions once a week, i.e. if you're unfortunate enough to submit your manuscript the day after they process new submissions, you won't get a manuscript number until one week later either.

It's up to you whether or not to withdraw, but I'll say that I've never seen an author withdraw after one week. I have however seen authors write to the journal asking about the status after one week. If you're really concerned, I would do that.


To avoid legal battle, in bussiness world reference letters are written extremely terse. How do academics get away with this? It seems to be accepted wisdom in the business world that reference letters for former employees should be extremely terse. They should confirm that the employee worked there, and essentially nothing else:

  To whom it may concern: Ellen Ripley was employed by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation from June 2137 to September 2139.  Signed, C. Burke, manager."

The standard reasoning is that if the letter contains something unfavorable and the employee is turned down for a future job, they might sue their former company for libel, claiming the unfavorable statement was a lie which damaged their career.  In order to avoid the possibility of such a legal battle (which, the reasoning goes, could be very expensive, even if the company wins), the company tells its managers to write letters with no content, so that there's no chance of them containing something actionable.

This question on Workplace Stack Exchange, Is there any evidence that giving references for former employees is inherently risky?, attests to this practice, and the answers provide some suggestion that the company's fears are justified.

On the other hand, in academia, detailed and informative recommendation letters are the norm.  They often run to multiple pages, and contain specific information about the candidate's history and activities at the institution, as well as the writer's (supposedly honest) subjective assessment of the candidate's strengths, weaknesses, and potential.  This is not only common but effectively mandatory; a minimal recommendation letter of the kind described above would immediately consign the candidate's application to the nearest wastebasket.

This would seem to be just the sort of thing that fills corporate counsel with horror, yet we do it every day.  No academic employer of mine has ever told me not to do so; for that matter, I can't say that I've ever received any official guidance, one way or the other, on writing recommendations.  Nobody in academia seems to be concerned that writing a letter that could be construed as less than favorable could result in legal consequences.  So how are we getting away with it?

Are universities treated differently under the law, making them less vulnerable to such threats?  Or do they willingly accept the legal risks in order to make the world a better place by providing actual information about their former students/employees?  Or is everyone ignorant of the risk of trouble?  Or is there something I have not thought of?

To forestall a couple of objections: I know that academics usually try to write only positive letters, and decline to write if they have nothing good to say, but that's evidently not enough in the corporate world.  Anyway, candidates often end up damned by faint praise.  Also, I know that we send letters in confidence, with the understanding that they won't be shown to the candidate, and sometimes this is backed by having the candidate sign a waiver, but I have to believe that a sufficiently determined and litigious candidate could get access anyway.

(I know this question may sound rhetorical, but I ask it in seriousness, and hope to learn something from the answers.  My context is the US, but if things are substantially different in other places, that would be interesting to know as well.)

My impression is that the difference is largely cultural.  The academic community in the U.S. has developed a culture of relying on written letters of recommendation, and this practice has a lot of inherent stability.  Someone considering suing knows that a questionable lawsuit would permanently ruin their career, in a way that wouldn't necessarily happen in the business world.  (For one thing, academia is a much smaller, more tightly knit, and more philosophically coherent group.)  If a student or job applicant did sue frivolously, then it would probably be cheaper to settle, but the university would not do so: proving a point would be a higher priority than saving money.  (By contrast, for-profit businesses are less likely to make unnecessary expenditures to try to defend their principles.)  University attorneys know that if they advised faculty not to write or require letters, everyone would ignore them and it would just hurt the university's reputation.  The culture takes on a life of its own, regardless of the legal context.

However, I believe U.S. legal precedents are actually pretty favorable for academic letters of recommendation.  The key phrase is "academic deference," which as I understand it is the theory that academic judgments are not subject to legal review because the courts aren't even capable of evaluating these judgments.  (Of course I'm not a lawyer and so I'm probably at least overlooking subtleties.)  You can sue for reasons like discrimination, but you can't successfully sue someone who made a good faith effort to judge your academic performance or potential on the grounds that you think they judged it wrong.

The academic deference doctrine is based on a number of precedents, but it's somewhat controversial.  For example, people argue that it makes it too easy to get away with discrimination (since it makes courts reluctant to examine evidence), and that lots of non-academic judgments are equally difficult to evaluate but don't have a special doctrine protecting them from review by the courts.  See this article by Moss for a review of the precedents and an argument against academic deference.

Depending on the circumstances, there may also be other legal issues.  For example, it's much harder to sue someone for libel based on their evaluation of your published scholarly work.  In particular, you have to prove actual malice since publishing the work makes you a public figure for this purpose.  In other words, it's not enough to prove that the evaluation was wrong; instead, you have to prove that they knew it was wrong or at least had reckless disregard for the truth. (See, for example, Posner's wonderful opinion on whether calling someone a crank is defamatory.)  I believe this is much more clear cut and better established than academic deference is, but it is not relevant for unpublished work or other recommendation letter content.

Returning to the cultural theme, it's also worth thinking about psychological factors.  If I run a business, then my ex-employees could be applying for jobs at competitors, partners, or companies that are irrelevant to my interests.  Among these possibilities, partner companies I'm actively working with are only a small fraction.  The generic case is that I won't care about the new employer or will actively harbor ill will towards them.  If a lawyer advises me that it's best not to say anything, I may seize on that excuse even aside from the lawsuit potential.  By contrast, academia is a world in which we're all partners, and that feels very different.  Universities do compete against each other in some ways, of course, but there's a much greater feeling of good will and cooperation than you see between most for-profit companies.  It's no surprise that very different norms and practices have developed in a far less competitive environment.


Why do PhD students complain so much? This question has two parts. First, a comparative question. Second, a broad  question about why PhD students get so stressed and complain so much.

Do PhD students complain more than people in other professions?

In my limited and biased experience, yes. More generally, there are so many websites about how hard life as a PhD student is. So many memes. These are clearly all composed by current or former PhD students. My cohort's facebook feeds read like journals written in prison. Party conversation demonstrates a general obsession with complaining about life in a PhD program. People often half-joke about how starting the PhD program was a horrible mistake.  PhD students have even been roasted on 30 Rock. And they're often weirdly nervous about trivial stuff. Yes, these are online comedy bits, but they are funny because they capture something true.

Many jobs are stressful and I believe that people in other fields handle their stress better or, at the very least, feel compelled to maintain that appearance. I started my PhD a bit later than average. Before doing so I worked in a few other fields, some of them more stressful than academia by reasonable standards (higher consequences of mistakes for oneself and/or for others, faster pace work environment, higher likelihood of being insulted/embarrassed by supervisors, what have you).

Why do PhD students complain so much?

I see a few reasons why PhD students have such a hard time.

Admittedly, there is a lot of work. But there are lots of jobs where you need to work very hard for long hours.

In many disciplines, there is no clear management structure where someone can tell you what to do when and when you are done. Of course, this can be stressful.

Because of the nature of theoretical innovation and research, one is never "done" with work. There is only a choice of when one is going to stop for the day or stop on a particular project (e.g., by submitting for publication).

Many PhD students have spent little time outside of school and academia. Most of their schooling until the PhD program was very structured with short-term goals. In a PhD and now they are responsible for defining their own projects.

PhD programs may attract uniquely stressful, driven people.

Maybe the idea of being a "student" fosters immature attitudes about the work environment, even though PhD students must deal with real adult workloads. People in many other lines of work have no illusions about their obligation to handle their workload.

Do PhD students complain more than people in other professions?

No.

To quote Drew Carey:

  Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? You know there's a support group for that. It's called everybody. They meet at the bar.


Are citations in abstracts considered bad style? I'd like to know your opinion on citations in abstracts.
At my university, there is no rule on that matter so it's basically a
question of preference.

Do you think it's okay to have citations in an abstract or do you
personally prefer to have the abstract be a ``stand-alone'' piece of
work?

It is not entirely unreasonable to include a citation in an abstract, if the reason you are citing it is because your paper is a major extension, rebuttal, or counterpoint to the cited article.

In that case, however, you do have the responsibility of providing the reference within the body of the abstract. For example,

  We extend upon the results of Smith [Journal of Very Important Results, 1, 374 (2012)] to include the effects of a doohickey at the end of the thingamajig.

In such a case, the abstract remains self-contained, with an important citation included. (This is especially essential if an author is well-known for multiple papers, in which case the reference can be used to distinguish the varous works that could be intended.)

Large numbers of citations, however, should be avoided, as should "secondary" citations. Only the most critical literature for a paper should be cited, and that should normally be limited to one or two. Any more than that, and the abstract becomes hard to read.


What if MS advisor pad his wife's name into my conference and journal publications? My MS advisor who is a tenured professor in a US school is padding his wife's name into my publication papers. His wife is an PhD candidate from the same department too and she didn't have any contribution on my research work. This is ethically and morally wrong but as the advisor is my thesis committee chair and I want to do my defense in coming month, I haven't opposed his idea yet. What I could do in this scenario? (He submitted one paper in a conference already with her name as second author and I am working to submit another in a transaction- he insisted her name to put in the second author position)

This sort of "guest" authorship is not unheard of. For instance, that may be why Chinese universities primarily give credit to the first or corresponding authors of papers (as opposed to other authors, who may be "guest" authors).
Assuming your description of the situation is correct, including another PhD student who had little to no contribution as the second author, especially one with a personal connection to the advisor, is definitely ethically questionable. It's good that you noticed and disagree with it.
Practically speaking, it's much easier to raise this issue after you have graduated and received any recommendation letters you need from your advisor. For instance, if indeed you are submitting in a few months, you could delay submission of the papers until afterwards. Alternatively, even if you submit a paper with a non-contributing second author, as the first author you will still receive the primary credit from any applications of your CV.


How can I tell if I'm making enough progress when working remotely? I am starting a PhD abroad, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic I cannot leave my country at the moment. My advisor has agreed that I can work remotely (starting later is not an option). While we can Skype and most of my work can be done online, I am concerned that having no access to the department, not being able to attend seminars/workshops, and not being able to meet/talk to other students in person will put me at a big disadvantage.

I am keen not to spend these initial few months slacking off and want to catch any problems before it is too late. However, I have always found it difficult to judge my own progress when studying alone, and with a PhD it seems that it will be especially hard as I need to learn a lot of skills in a new area. Also, because my advisor seems like a very 'nice' person who does not demand that his students work very hard, I am concerned that he will not tell me if I am underperforming.

Would it be appropriate to raise this with my advisor, asking him to tell me if I am not doing as well as his students usually do? Or are there any strategies for people working from home to judge if they are doing enough?

Yes, you should raise this issue, both with the advisor and with the university administration. Students need some feedback on their work and it is the university's responsibility to provide a way for that to happen. They need to provide the channels and you need to find a way to use them.

But things are in a bit of chaos now, of course, and effective response can be slow to occur.

Virtual seminars are possible using simple or sophisticated software. Perhaps you can set up (or the university can) a group of students and a professor or two willing to have an online session regularly. It isn't the same as face to face, but it can keep you engaged.

But at a minimum, write a lot and note where you have problems. Ask a lot of questions, but make sure they are pretty focused. Share what you write with your advisor, by email or by posting it somewhere.

Ask your advisor directly how you are doing and ask explicitly for next steps. You will most likely get suggestions about reading. Take a lot of notes on the readings and note things that puzzle you. Ask about them.

If you are starting the research phase of the degree it is normally a fairly solitary effort in any case, but the advisor should be willing to review and respond to your efforts and your questions.


Are there any reasons or benefits for the very long process of reviewing grant proposal? I talked with some colleagues and it seems that the review process for most grants proposals (NSF, NIH,etc) are taking months (~6). This is probably not helpful for science and innovation. I understand that reviewers are busy people but papers submitted for a conference would usually not take more than 2 months to be reviewed. And some reviews that I read for conferences are even much better than grant proposal reviews.

Are there any reasons or benefits that grant proposals are taking long time?

The processes for grants and papers are very different. Once the editor or programming committee has reached a decision, there’s not much left to do.

Grants are much tougher. After the decision by the panel has been reached, there are several additional levels of bureaucratic approval that must be secured before a grant can be formally awarded. It’s these latter stages that lead to the extended time between submission and decision.


How should feedback be given for "silly mistakes" on an exam I am a TA currently grading a set of 80 midterms for an engineering math course for fourth-year engineer undergrads. The test had four questions, each question had around four parts.

Of course, typically a student can make a wide variety of different types of errors on the exam. But what I have noticed in this exam is that some of these errors are not necessarily conceptual, yet we are basically taking all the points away for these "minor errors" (per instructor's grading scheme).

For instance,

For a question with several parts. A student copied one of his own
(correct) answers from the previous part incorrectly.
A student wrote down all the steps correctly, until the last step
where he had to evaluate the expression at a number and the mistake
was forgetting a negative sign.
After a long derivation, a student substitute formula incorrectly (forgot a square root in the formula, ahem, Gaussian). Everything else completely correct.

There was a litter of other minor errors. Now, these students are in their final year of engineering school, so I think I can give them the benefit of the doubt that they wouldn't make silly mistakes such as writing "0 - 1 = 1" or copy things down wrong in a non-time-constrained setting, which is the situation they will most likely face when they graduate and work in industry.

Is there a way to provide feedback for a student if he or she makes silly mistakes on the exam? I do not think that giving them a zero for writing a minus sign incorrectly is a good way of either providing feedback or preventing the same mistake from happening again in their (long) lives.

First, notice that students will typically be able to tell which of their mistakes were silly and which more significant.  So for silly mistakes you don't need to write feedback other than to circle where they went wrong, and indicate the number of points taken off (or granted).

For a more serious mistake you can write more detailed feedback.  Sometimes feedback here isn't necessary, either, other than to write, "see solution."

Second, you can figure out what types of errors and what frequency of errors you want to bring the grade down from A to B, from A to C, etc., and decide how many points to remove based on that.

More importantly: what's a well written exam like?  Example: I'm asking them to solve this eigenvalue-eigenvector problem.  If the student has a vague idea what is being sought, I want him to get one point.  If he sets things up well but doesn't know what to do next, he gets two points.  If he follows through well but for whatever reason didn't quite get to the perfectly correct punch line, he'll get 3 points.  Perfect, complete answer: 4 points. (This is just an example of the point distribution.  You might end up with a different scoring structure.) In short, the scoring should be integral to the exam design from the beginning.

Most importantly: as a TA, you should be getting special guidance from the professor for grading a midterm exam.


Can I add a link to my website in a paper I'm coauthoring? I'm writing a paper with a professor. I want to put a link to my website in the paper. I am first author, so I'm wondering if the following is okay:

Bob Smith, Slifer University, https://BobSmith.io
Peter Bob, Georgia Tech of Mechanical Engineering

Suppose I'm Bob Smith and the professor is Peter Bob.

This way people can see my other work and potentially hire me. I'd also mention, this is a quite well known professor, so don't say "No one will look at your website".

Since the OP has commented that they've never seen an example of a published paper including the URL of an author's website, here is an example of such a paper:

Local Selectivity of Orders in Central Simple Algebras, Benjamin Linowitz and Thomas R. Shemanske, Int. J. Number Theory 13 (2017), no. 4, 853-884.

Our website URLs appear with our institutional information on the last page of the paper.

By the way, here's another lesson to draw from this example: try to use email addresses and website URLs that are permanent. By the time this paper was published I had already moved to a different institution and the University of Michigan had deleted the email and web accounts I listed in the paper.


General structure of Research Statement (applying for faculty position) I'm going to apply for assistant professor positions (in theoretical computer science) soon, and I'm trying to get a feeling for how to write a good research statement.

Should it contain a detailed overview of my (recent?) publications?
If the answer to 1 is yes, should I highlight my specific contributions in multi-author papers - as opposed to "we proved this and that..." ?
If the answer to 1 is yes, I must list the references here that I'm mentioning, which are also stated (in the full list of publications) in my CV, right?
Assuming there's no page limit, what's an appropriate length for a research statement?

My current plan is to group my work into topics and then, for each topic, provide a short overview of the respective papers ("What I've done so far") and some outlook on some future work ("What I would like to do").

Should it contain a detailed overview of my (recent?) publications?

NO.  It should contain a detailed overview of your research program, including both your past accomplishments and your future plans/vision.  Of course you have to describe your published results in technical detail, but as part of a larger narrative, not as stand-alone pieces.  Focus on the big picture, not on the tiny technical details.  Remember that your audience is not just other theoretical computer scientists.

  If the answer to 1 is yes, should I highlight my specific contributions in multi-author papers - as opposed to "we proved this and that..." ?

NO.  "My coauthors and I proved..." is fine.  The public dogma in theoretical computer science is that in every paper, each of the authors contributed 100% of the work, which is why they are listed alphabetically.  You own any paper that has your name on it.  Your narrative will naturally focus on the parts of the paper that you are the most proud of, which are usually the parts that you worked on the most.

Of course, if you're writing papers with your advisor or other more senior coauthors, there is a natural tendency for people to wonder if your aren't really just riding their coattails.  This is why you need a larger narrative in your statement—to convince the reader that you understand your results at a deeper level than someone who merely read the papers.  This is also why you have papers with different sets of coauthors—so that the common thread through your work stands out as your contribution.  In particular, you have at least one paper without your advisor.  Right?

  If the answer to 1 is yes, I must list the references here that I'm mentioning, which are also stated (in the full list of publications) in my CV, right?

The approach I always recommend is to treat your CV as your bibliography, and to include a footnote like "Numbered references indicate papers listed in my CV."  Of course, this means that your research statement never cites anyone else's work, except in broad narrative strokes, but for a brief document intended to sell your research program, I think that's appropriate.

  Assuming there's no page limit, what's an appropriate length for a research statement?

Aim for three pages.  Less than two is too short.  More than four is too long.

That may not seem like a lot of space, but that actually works in your favor.  You want to give the impression that you've done just gobs of really amazingly cool stuff, but dammit there just isn't room to write about everything.


How to choose the appropriate graphic representation (plot) method for the results? Do you use a rule of thumb when deciding the type of the chart/plot (box plot vs. scatter plot) you use when you want to represent the results of your research/simulations?

I would say the answer is "choose the one that represents the data best" but still there must be some type of rule where you surely don't use a given plotting method but use another one.

Or is my understanding of the purpose of plots completely wrong. Hope the more experienced scientists here provide some guidelines

Data visualization is an entire scientific field of its own. A good introduction to the basic principles can be found in the works of Edward Tufte, whose book on the visual display of quantitative information is a classic in the area.

The basic principle, however, is that you want the important information of the chart to leap out to the eye, and as such the dimensionality of your presentation and the dimensionality of the presentation method should be matched as closely as possible.  Likewise, the features of different elements of a graph should be adjusted to put the emphasis on the most important ones, while not concealing the others.

For a simple example, consider a simple one-dimensional data set, where there are a set of conditions, each of which produced some distribution of values.

If the conditions are qualitatively different or vary along many dimensions, the data should probably be presented as a bar graph
If they are quantitatively arranged along one dimension they should be presented as a line graph.
If they are arranged along two dimensions, the should be presented as multiple lines on a single graph.

The type of error bars also depends on the nature of the distributions:

If the distributions are small compared to the effect size, such that they do not significantly affects interpretation of the data, then error bars should be made small and subtle, so that the information is present but the eye is drawn to the means.
If the distributions are large but regular, they can be presented via visually prominent error bars.
If the distributions are large and highly irregular, then a more complex representation like a box-and-whisker graph is better.

This is just scratching the surface, of course, but hopefully gives an illustration of the principles of how to think about data visualization...


Contacting a paper author: best way to address an engineer I would like to send an email to a paper author, but I'm not sure how to address them.

The author is not a professor,
their google+ profile says "Network Engineer" (in an important network company BBTW).
As far as I know has a degree and has several publications like articles, conference papers, RFC's.

I'm a Master degree student.

What form of address should I use?

Default to "Dear Mr. [last name]" (assuming you're sure the person is male).  If you're not sure the person is male, use "Dear [first name] [last name]".  Don't worry about other titles unless the person specifically uses "PEng." or other professional association designation after their name, in which case include that.


Flair/Badge for arXiv paper? This is borderline trivial, but in my attempt to publish my work in a public repository, I've found badges at the top of my README.md to be useful. For example, using Zenodo, I can create a badge that points to a proper DOI that looks like this:

Encyclopedia of Finite Graphs

If I have a critical piece of code, I can publish Travis.CL badges or Coveralls for code coverage.

Is the an equivalent badge or icon I can use to visually indicate that the work has been published on the arXiv?

I found a service that can create custom badges: shields.io. Using the arXiv background color (Firebrick #B31B1B) I was able to create a badge that looked more or less "official". An example of their template and my specific use case:

http://img.shields.io/badge/<SUBJECT>-<STATUS>-<COLOR>.svg
http://img.shields.io/badge/math.CO-arXiv%3A1408.3644-B31B1B.svg

After converting the svg to png for use on github, I got this:


My research supervisor left the university and no one told me I am currently doing my Masters in a program that has both a practicum component and a thesis component. My research supervisor and I had been working over the past few years on a thesis topic. The last time I spoke with her was at the end of March and we were close to defending a research proposal (I just needed to do a few edits to the proposal). Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic happened, and research was closed down for a few months during the summer. At the same time, I had to adjust to doing my practicum placement online. I didn’t hear anything from my supervisor during the summer and to be honest, I didn’t get in contact with her because I understood that her expectation was that I would get in touch once I had something to share.
In September, I tried to get in touch with my supervisor using her university email and I kept getting an error that it was “undeliverable”. I tried looking on the faculty listing and noticed that I could no longer find her there. I got in contact with one of the graduate student assistants in my program and told them about the situation and they told me to email my supervisor on her personal email.
I finally received an email from her, and she informed me that she left the university at the end of June because her the funding for one of her programs was cut. She also mentioned that she had informed the head of the department with my name and thesis topic and asked them to check in with me. I was never informed about this change. My supervisor didn’t send me an email to inform me when this happened in June and I still haven’t been contacted by anyone from the department.
I have tried to get in contact with a professor at my department and they basically said that I need to get in contact with a different person who would set me up with a new supervisor. This prof informed me that depending on how that conversation goes and who the possible available supervisor would be, I would have the following two options:

start working on a completely new research topic + proposal with a new research supervisor – which would mean that I would have to start my lit review all over again

possibility of continuing my current proposal if someone is willing to take it but knowing that no one has any expertise in that area

Considering that there is no one else in my department that focuses on my topic and I was counting on my supervisor’s expertise to guide me, my only option is to start all over again. This means that I will have to delay my graduation by a year. I feel so burnt out and the thought of having to start all over again is excruciatingly painful.
So, my question is:

Am I right to be upset that no one informed me that my supervisor was leaving/has left? I am not sure if I am justified in expecting the department to have gotten in contact with me by now? And expecting them to not have put the burden on me to figure out who to get in touch with to sort this situation?  I feel like if I was informed in June, I could have started on literature review for a new topic much sooner rather than wasting time on my current topic.

What are my options here? have you been in a similar situation? what should I do? Part of me wants to just push through and start the new project. Another part of me wants to give up on the thesis and just switch to an equivalent program without a thesis.

Am I right to be upset that no one informed me that my supervisor was leaving/has left?

While it sounds like your subject (counselling psychology) is much closer than mine (mathematics) to understanding human emotions, I would suggest that it may not be productive to think of emotions in terms of "right" and "wrong".  I don't know what your personal relationship with your advisor was, or what the norms/expectations are in your field/department with respect to supervisor relationships.  While in most instances, I would expect a supervisor to let their students know personally if they are leaving the institution, it sounds like this may have been a sudden leave and supervisory expectations for masters theses can be quite different than for PhD theses.  (In math in the US, the former is quite rare.)  To continue...

she had informed the head of the department with my name and thesis topic and asked them to check in with me. I was never informed about this change. My supervisor didn’t send me an email to inform me when this happened in June and I still haven’t been contacted by anyone from the department

With the pandemic and other disasters, I would guess that someone accidentally dropped the ball, so you could be upset, or be understanding, or some combination of both, but I don't think that any particular "choice" of these emotions is "right."
Anyway, after you learned this, did you contact the head of the department?  If not, try this and/or the graduate student director if your department has one.  Presumably your former supervisor's goal was that the head of the department would try to find you a new supervisor under which you can continue your current project.  I don't know how it is in your field/department, but in mine if your thesis was essentially done, we would just have someone else formally complete the supervision even if we don't have an expert in the area.


How to turn down a MSc supervisor after we had already agreed to work together? I applied to a university in Canada for a MSc. As part of their requirements, I needed to have a supervisor in order to be granted admission to the program. So I did contact a supervisor and he took me in as his student with the condition that I brought my own funding. I said yes. However, the university has not yet offered me admission, I am still waiting for their decision.

This was not my only option of course and last week I got accepted to a MSc/PhD program in a Max Planck university in Germany. Because it is much better ranked and students are given a monthly stipend, I took the offer because I thought it was a better option for me.

How do I reject now the professor who accepted me on Canada? Should I tell him the truth? Is this a very bad move on my side?

Skip the "better-ranked" part (don't be petty); say you couldn't hold up your end of the bargain - to find your own funding -, and Max Planck offered a fully-funded position. I don't foresee any issues or grievances after a short, to the point mail to this sort.


Mass (spam) emails seeking short term internship, solutions This question asking if the subject of current question is spam or not serves as the motivation for further, seeking solutions. As can be seen from the answers and comments, the emails from undergraduate students seeking a short term internship in en masse can be identified as a legitimate problem faced by many in Academia. Most of the emails have a common design or made out of same template and an equivocal tone. Even the researchers who doesn't even started a group were targeted asking them to consider the application to join the group(which doesn't exist) and claiming that the applicant had read the publication(doesn't exist either) on so and so topic. The epicenter of these mass outbreak is a particular country according to the OP and the answered. Some pointed out that most of it are indeed from legitimate students but overly opportunistic and some pointed out the reason why. If this is indeed a growing trend and a real issue,

How can the target weed out the emails considering that some applications are indeed real?
Taking into account that this may harm the chances of talented students and may form a negative general opinion(?), what measures can be taken to make the students aware that sending out emails in mass is not a professional way to attain a position?

What I do is to provide on my web page a very explicit set of directions for how to contact me about possibly doing any kind of work with my group. I have separate sections for undergrads, grads, and postdocs. For undergrads, I explain a bit about what we do in my group, describe what undergrad research in the group is like, ask them to answer a few questions about what draws them to our work in particular, what they hope to gain by working with us, about their skills and background, and about their general interest and experience reading primary literature. I also ask for a transcript. You could ask anything, though.

With something like this in place, you can either ignore with good conscience any emails that fail to address these questions, or you can send a brief form-letter response asking that the applicant address these questions in order to be considered for a position.


How damaging are writing errors like typos in faculty application documents? How damaging are writing errors like typos in faculty application documents?
Do search committees usually tolerate a couple of small errors in cover letter, sample publications, etc?

To me, typos in a faculty application suggest one or more of the following:

Detail - you do not pay enough attention to details.
Rigor - you were not rigorous enough to ensure the document is error free by double checking and letting other people check the document.
Importance - if the application was important enough you would have made sure it is error-free, therefore it may not be very important to you.
Culture - you come from a culture where typos are acceptable, and did not bother to adapt.

Having said all that, in the end it is just a tiny factor amongst many more important factors. If you are awesome, this probably won't matter.


My friend listed my name as a co-author on two journal papers without my permission Recently, I found that my friend published two journal papers. He listed my name as a co-author without my permission.

He used to send me a draft of the 1st paper, and wanted to add me as a co-author. After reading the manuscript, I found that this paper has a lot of serious problems. Thus, I told him that he needs to address these issues, and tell me how to solve them before submission. However, he submitted anyway, and did not tell me. In this final version, some major concerns have not been addressed yet. I am the 4th author of this paper.

The 2nd paper is about XXX. I clearly told him that I do not want to do any XXX-related research due to my religious belief. However, he added my name on this paper without my consent. I am the 6th author of this paper.

The editors of these two journals are his friends. Thus, he listed me as co-author since he wants to increase the global impact of these two journals. These two journals are not good. Thus, they did not send me emails about the co-authorship while submission.

As a co-author, I will be responsible for the content that I published. In my opinion, the 1st paper does not meet the academic standard. The 2nd paper is against my belief. I really do not want to be a co-author of these two papers.

Can anyone tell me what I shall do next? Since these two papers have been published, can I contact the editors to remove my name from these papers? Or even withdraw these two papers? Will this ruin my friend's academic life?

..................................................................

Thanks a lot for your help. I really appreciate!

If I withdraw these two papers, will there be some bad records online, e.g. records which show that my two papers have been withdrawn. Or can I just report that I am not the author of these two papers on pubpeer?

Thanks again!

..................................................................

My friend has contacted the editors. My name has been removed from these two papers.

Thanks a lot for your answers and suggestions. I realy appreciate!

Your academic standing should be your primary concern, so if the quality of paper 1 is so poor contact the editor(s) and get the paper withdrawn or your name removed.

For paper 2 if it offends your beliefs such that you want to be disassociated with the paper, again contact the editor(s) and get the paper withdrawn or your name removed.

You have to decide if the issues warrant your subsequent actions, we cannot decide, but worrying about the effect on your "friend" is secondary.


Techniques to remain focused while marking examinations Marking exams can be long, boring, and un-engaging.

It is important one remain focused though to ensure that the evaluation is fair to each student.

What are some methods one can employ to maintain focus and not zone-out while reading answers?

There is two issues in your question.

How to be fair to each student when it comes to this boring task of evaluating them

My own policy is the "mark-one-question-and-shuffle" : I correct the first question/problem for all the students, then I shuffle the whole stack and go for another question that I also pick at random. This way if I am tired or in a bad mood, it will impact everybody, so it will be fair.

How to stay focus for a long marking session

I cannot answer to that and I guess it depends of many personal factors. Personally, I find marking tasks boring but easy to do and easy to focus on. It's like driving, some people can drive for hours, others can't. To tell the truth, marking is somehow relaxing for me.


In law schools do JD professors supervise PhD students? I know that law schools, unlike most other academic faculties hire a significant portion of their professors without a doctorate (PhD, D.Phil, etc) but just with a JD law degree.
I come from a science background so this notion is pretty foreign to me.
Do the JD professors supervise doctoral and/or master's students? I know that these professors will still engage in legal scolarship/ publishing papers but it would seem inappropriate for them to be issuing doctorates if they themselves don't have one.

I am an academic in a different field but my spouse is a (tenured and endowed-research-chair holding) law professor without a Ph.D. They supervise doctoral students with no issues.

The Ph.D. is a marker, a rite-of-passage that the young academic has made their initial significant novel contribution to the corpus of knowledge, and has learned enough tradecraft to be standalone researcher. While a Ph.D. is a big deal when you're getting one and when you've just received one, it is but a first instance of what a research academic does over and over again for the rest of their academic career. So a mid-career (or later) research-focused academic has loads of experience in "Ph.D.-level" research, whether or not they actually obtained that degree at the start of their careers. And a teaching- and/or service-prioritizing professor who does fairly little research has pretty limited relevant experience irrespective of whether they actually did an actual Ph.D. way back when.

As @astronat wrote in the comments, the Ph.D. is actually awarded by the university, on the recommendation of the department, and on the basis of the evaluation by the whole dissertation committee. So to the extent the issue is whether a non-Ph.D. can judge the specific level of achievement (etc) warranting the Ph.D., if there is any uncertainty at all, the broader set of voices involved will provide additional feedback. As you can imagine, my spouse found this useful as a sanity check the first few times they were supervising without themselves having the specific degree, but this became less relevant over time.

Bottom line is the same criteria for what makes a good supervisor apply as in other fields (research proficiency, care for students, time to advise, well-connected to help find students jobs, etc.) and the Ph.D. credential is just less important in fields (like law) where historically this credential has been less commonplace.


Getting a job in industrial math with only a Masters? Is it possible to get a job in industrial mathematics with a Masters in math but no work experience and no PhD. Or would one be limited to only nonresearch industrial math jobs?

How about the type of jobs listed here: http://www.siam.org/careers/thinking/solve.php
?

Students with master's degrees an applied mathematics (and statistics, OR, actuarial science, mathematical finance, etc.) often find work in industry doing applied mathematics, but this work is not typically "research" of the sort that results in publications in research journals.   If you want to do publishable research, then complete a PhD.


Decision about getting a job while completing MSc Studies Last year I got accepted in a full time informatics MSc. During that period I also had a fulltime job as a software developer in a startup and I was trying to make some publications with my thesis supervisor from my BSc. However all these simultaneous activities had a very negative impact on me, since I had no free time and I slept very little time every day for an extended period of time. Things became worse when a close relative of mine died.
As a result I decided to quit my job and although we managed to publish some papers with my supervisor I decided to end my collaboration with him as well (although it was very fruitful) .
The aforementioned situations also had a great negative impact in my studies and as a result I passed only 2 out of 5 courses in the first semester.
My studies are really important to me as I want to pursue a PhD. Therefore i decided to fully focus on the MSc and improve my grades. So, during last summer I managed to pass almost every course I had failed before, with high grades.
Recently my BSc thesis supervisor called me offering a job in a research program.
This job interests me a lot since:

I would really like to work with him again since we had a great
collaboration...
there is a high chance of publishing again...
I would also earn some money...

However:
I am afraid that this may impact negatively once again:

my studies (despite being close to the completion of the MSc)
my grades (and as a result this could possibly affect getting accepted in a PhD)

I am afraid that if I refuse the offer, he may deny future collaboration.
What is your advice about this ?
Should I accept the job or would that possibly be a bad idea ?

It's clear that you are reluctant to take on full-time employment after your recent experiences, and understandably so. However, this does not mean that you can't take on part-time work to help pay the bills. This is a fairly common phenomenon for master's students, particularly in countries where the master's degree is considered an "undergraduate" degree (such as in Europe). Exactly how much is up to you—you probably know how much time you could spend on external work without compromising your desired work-life balance.

If your bachelor's advisor is understanding and supportive of you, then he would likely be willing to let you work part-time on his project while you finish your studies. If he isn't willing to do so, then that might be a sign that he's not someone you should have as a long-term advisor. (A good research advisor and mentor will want what is best for both of you, not just what is best for the advisor!)


How to find the most relevant publications in field/topic What is the most reliable way of finding the most relevant publications in scientific field and particularly a specific topic?

Does Google Scholar citing results suffice?

IMHO, it is difficult to say which search strategy is most reliable. The Google Scholar (as well as Web of Science, Scopus, etc.) citations are a good place to start but they definitely should not be your only guide.

Another item to look at are survey papers and research monographs in your field of interest (and, nowadays, Wikipedia, Scholarpedia, etc.; note also that sometimes plain Google search instead of Google Scholar search brings more helpful results) and the references therein.

There are least two reasons to do so:

sometimes an important result makes it straight into surveys and monographs which get cited instead of the original paper(s);
a paper with an important negative result (e.g. one which closes certain research avenues) is sometimes not particularly well cited just because people move on to other research directions.

Yet another way to find relevant references is the so-called snowballing method a good description of which is given at this answer (without using the term snowballing).

And, of course, it is a good idea to ask your colleagues, especially after you've already done some searching on your own and just want to make sure that the search results you have are reasonably complete.


Objectively speaking, is the opportunity cost of doing a PhD in STEM higher than it was compared to decades ago? Here's somethings that are well established:

being a PhD student is a (albeit, temporary) career-path with the poorest education-level/income ratio. It has been estimated that Post-Doc salary is comparable to junior librarian, and PhD salary is comparable to a waiter.

Note: average Waiter salary Entry level positions start at $21,158 per year while most experienced workers make up to $39,585 per year. A junior library makes less than $50,000/yr.

the opportunity cost is also stark compared to people who are similarly educated in STEM but left for industry early, with a popular estimate of around 1 million USD by the end of the PhD (5-6 years) (which might not include time-value of money, investments, and retirement savings).

Despite academia as a whole being a multi-billion/trillion dollar industry, the administration refuses to raise the stipend for PhD student, leading it to stagnate on average 25,000-30,000 USD/yr for the last three decades if not more.

It is pretty clear to me that most (but not all) PhD programs are path to an enlightened poverty, with STEM PhD faring better than Humanities PhD, and industry-demanded STEM PhD faring better than say biology or pure math.
However, I wonder if this opportunity cost has gotten even even worse over the past few decades due to some factors such as,

rising competitive (on the global scale),
job/housing insecurity,
a sizable aging but not retiring faculty,
skill-based labor market heavily favored over degree-based,
rising cost of living in almost every part of the globe.

Take a current example, due to Covid19 many industry stocks (say airline) are at their lowest point, however, most PhD students do not have the money to invest hence will not likely to reap the benefit. Another example is in software engineering: it is pretty well established salary was good about a decade ago but now the supply is high enough for the wage to fall, most PhD students also miss this "golden" period. Almost all major tech companies (such as Stackexchange, minus IBM, Microsoft, Apple) are founded/launched by people around 2000s, we can firmly say that period is over. Yet another is encroachment of industrial research on academic topics. Google, Twitter, Facebook and various other large tech conglomerates dominates all major AI references in 2020, which makes research on a PhD stipend look pointless
I sometimes take a look at these so-called industry-academia collaboration and wonder out-loud if this isn't just some scheme that seeks to exploit underpaid and highly motivated graduate students.
Objectively speaking, has the opportunity cost gotten higher over the years? If (or not) so why?

The opportunity cost could be calculated only ex-post. So if you take a 1000 PhD students and determine their total earnings 5 years after their education vis-a-vis the alternatives, says a software engineer. And do a statistical analysis, only then, could you come to a conclusion. Perhaps you can look for such data and do the analysis if you want to be rigorous.
But that might not really be highly useful because there will be outliers and most of the choices we make in life, assuming we are motivated to be successful, is to become an outlier. We make decisions to pursue higher degrees like PhD with varying goals.
Most of the PhD aspirants wish to find a career in education -universities and colleges - requiring to fulfil the eligibility criteria. In their case, there is no value in calculating the opportunity cost as that is the career path which suits them.
Another group of aspirants pursue a PhD with the hope of building something which can bootstrap their career in innovation and entrepreneurship. You build a very good idea in academia and launch it as a product. Google is one such example. Silicon Valley is filled with such instances. If successful, the opportunity cost is not high. If you fail in this goal and then get back to the industry there is a high opportunity cost-- with a good chance that your boss was your junior in high school.
There is another notable group of PhD aspirants who pursue a degree in the hope of migrating to a newly developed country with better living standards. The host country either runs the universities, more as a business, raking in billions of dollars in tuition fees and then letting these PhD students work in the industry -- where they do not really mind doing even jobs which have got little to do with what they did in their PhD. Again, in this case the opportunity cost is very low -- considering their objective.
Going deeper into your question, or rather now addressing your actual question, has the opportunity cost changed over time. The opportunity cost has, with time, reduced, imo. I have known students who extend their Master's thesis into PhD and finish the whole work in less than 4 years after their Bachelors. In Europe, the average PhD duration is increasingly tending to three years though it is still 7-8 years in the US. Naturally, the opportunity cost in the US is high but so are the opportunities.
You can see that the opportunity cost is not just a function of time but also the region of the world and the ability/goal of the PhD aspirant.


What is the equivalent of "good honors degree" in terms of universities in EU The requirements for applying for a master's programme in National University of Singapore are stated as

  The candidates must possess:

  A good honours degree in computing; or
  A good honours degree in a related discipline with 2 years IT industry experience; or
  A good bachelor's degree in computing with 2 years IT industry experience; or
  A good bachelor's or honours degree in business related discipline    with 2 years IT industry experience.

In my country, a student is considered as an honorable student if he/she completes his/her education with a GPA over 3.00/4.00 but I don't know what is a good honour degree?

I have looked it up on Google but there are a lot of different definitions.
Also, I could not find any statements in the university website. Can you help me?

For historical reasons, Singapore often uses the U.K degree classification system.   'Good Honours Degree' usually means either 'First class Honours' or 'Upper Second Class Honours'.   These map (approximately) onto the U.S 'cum laude' classifications.

For more info, see Wikipedia 'British undergraduate degree classification'.


I need help please about being accused on cheating My prof is accusing me of chatting on an Online exam. I did not cheat. The exam was 30 multiple-choice and 3 short answers.
I got all MCQ right, except I made some mistakes in the short answer.
In the exam, His concern only on the last 3 short answer questions.  he claimed that he cheats from the test bank ( Answer key of the test book). Also, he claimed that I answered one question similar to the textbook; however, this question's answer included only simple mathematical addition of some numbers. This does not show any valid reasons for his accusation. Moreover, during the meeting, he blamed me for choosing the wrong answer for a question. Thus, I am being blamed for answering questions, whether they are right or wrong. and another question was because I answered similar to the test bank  as he was like," this part of the question was not in the test bank)
Secondly, he accused me of violating academic Integrity in my online quizzes, and his concern was, "My other concern is that you spent on average 18 minutes on all online quizzes following the first quiz that included short answers, whereas the class spent anywhere between 40 minutes to 2 hours. The majority of students use a second attempt to improve their score on the first attempt." Note: all the quizzes are theory 30 MCQ, except the first quiz was 25 MCQ and 1 short-answer.
He sent me an email to discuss, and then during the online meeting, he asks me to do an oral exam." he was like, so I can prove some evidence,"  and I refused to make the oral exam as it's unfair to be exam orally for something I don't do it.
He gave me zero on the midterm and put me under academic integrity. Please advise me what I should do? I have my review of the hearing next week.

He sent me an email to discuss, and then during the online meeting, he asks me to do an oral exam.

You present this as a bad thing, but it's actually a good thing.
Apparently you did all the tests unusually fast, and in a way that looks to an observer like you're cheating. But that's not enough proof. It's possible that you're just pretty good at this subject. So the professor needs to test whether you cheated or whether you're just really good and fast at this subject.
That's what the oral exam is for. If you know this subject really well, you should also be able to do well in the oral exam.


Do IMS journals count as open access? I'm considering submitting a paper to Annals of Applied Statistics, published by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS).

According to IMS Journals on arXiv:

  Note that the IMS posts all accepted IMS journal articles on arXiv at publication.

However, the paper entries on the journal page do not link directly to the arXiv paper. Also, for at least the following publication, there is no corresponding entry on arXiv. I'm not sure what to conclude from that.

So, I was just wondering if this approach counts as open access. Also, the Wikipedia entry, Comparison of statistics journals lists Annals of Applied Statistics and other IMS journals as not open access.

The definitive place to check is the IMS's Copyright Transfer Agreement, which conclusively says:

  However, the author(s) reserve the following:

  All proprietary rights other than copyright, such as patent rights.
  The rights to use all or part of this work (with appropriate reference to the journal and article) in future works of
  their own, such as lectures, press releases, reviews, textbooks, or reprint books.
  The right to place the final version of this article (exactly as published in the journal) on their own homepage or in
  a public digital repository, provided there is a link to the official journal site.
  The right to provide a copy of the final peer‐reviewed manuscript to the NIH upon acceptance for publication, for
  public archiving in PubMed Central as soon as possible but no later than 12 months after publication.

So the IMS follows the green open access model (which is confirmed by Sherpa/ROMEO).


How long to wait before contacting another arm's length referee? Good afternoon,
I am trying to find an external referee to review and evaluate an application package for a postdoctoral fellowship. This assessment, which is a required element of the application, is due August 13. I e-mailed a first potential referee a couple days ago (so certainly not very long at all). I introduced myself, identified why she might be well-placed to serve as a referee, and identified the deadline. Rather than following-up, it is likely that I would reach out to another potential referee if I don't hear back from her. At what point do you think I should reach out to another potential referee?
My initial thoughts are after seven or eight business days. I realize this may not be considered a long time for these sorts of applications, but I fear that the likelihood of a positive response will be severely reduced at that point and I don't want to put anyone who does agree to take on the assessment in a position where they feel rushed.
Would value your thoughts!

You are very considerate to your referees, and I hope you get this postdoc position!
There is no exact number of days for these things and you would know the person's emailing habits better than me. Perhaps in another 2 days (4 days total), you can write him something like:

Dear Prof. XXXX,
I am just writing to follow-up on my email below.
Of course there is no rush for your assistance with refereeing my application package, because it is not due until 13 August. I wrote to you this early because I wanted to make sure that you had plenty of time, since I wanted to inconvenience you as little as possible.
If I may, I would just like to ask whether or not you might be able to act as one of my arms-distance referees for this application package: The deadline is not until August 31st, but I would just like to first establish who is going to have enough time to do it and who doesn't, so that if for example you are not able to do it, I don't end up asking someone else with not much time available. The idea is for me to be as considerate as possible to the time and energy spent by my external referees.
Sincerely,
user125706

Please feel free to adjust this letter, or write your own based on it, or copy-paste it. Whatever makes you feel most comfortable.
Good luck on getting this position!


Can we use online video lectures to free university professors from lecturing for lower-division courses in mathematics? During the 2020-2021 Covid-19 season, universities and colleges around the world made most of their math classes online over Zoom and many professors have their recorded lectures.
Most math lectures usually don't involve in-class discussions and for the most of the time, professors dominates the teaching. Oftentimes, excellent recorded lectures can be much better than live lectures in mathematics and other theoretical sciences. I have seen many students commenting under certain YouTube videos that those recorded lectures are much better than their professors'.
I wonder if we could possibly use those recorded videos (there are a lot of such videos modulo-necessary-editing during Covid-19 season. Building a system like (https://nptel.ac.in/) should be feasible) to free university math professors from repeatedly giving lectures on lower-division math classes like calculus, linear algebra or differential equations (but at the same time, asking them to hold discussion sessions and office hours to have more interactions with students and of course, grading homework assignments and exams), so that they could have more time on their research and teaching classes that are  more relevant to their research? I believe this is particularly important for the early-career mathematicians. Many postdocs in math are assigned with lower division classes that are kind-of digressions to their research.
This seems to be a win-win strategy for both professors and students in terms of the mathematics. If this is good then maybe it should have been conducted already like https://nptel.ac.in/. What would be the potential challenges for doing so for higher education in United States and Europe?

Yes, you absolutely can!
The win-win is very unlikely though. Students won't see lower tuition or anything, and will have no opportunity to interact with anyone at the faculty level (so no letters of recommendation, no research jobs, etc). Professor lines will be closed on retirement (or through layoffs) because who needs them, we've got McGraw-Hill eLectures.


Multiple paper submission deadline extension (three times in few days) Important Announcement – Paper Submission Deadline Extension
The paper submission deadline has been extended to May 25, 2015 June 1, 2015.

This is the third extension of the deadline for the meeting where I have submitted my paper.

To May 1, 2015 May 18, 2015.
To May 18, 2015 May 25, 2015.
And now, to May 25, 2015 June 1, 2015.

I do not know what think. I have submitted the paper on the afternoon of May 18, 2015. That evening I saw the second extension (like Cinderella, not at midnight but close).
Now I have seen another extension, and I am concerned because I have worked very hard in this project.
The question is: there is a concrete risk that the conference could have had a few submissions and could be canceled?

Typically, I have seen two cases of deadline extension:

Some venues have a "customary" extension, which always happens, and thus all regulars know that the de facto deadline is slightly later than the initially stated deadline.
The other main case of extension is when a venue wants a few more submissions and is hoping an extension can drum them up.

Multiple deadline extensions sounds to me like desperation, and you might well be looking at an event that will either be cancelled or accept a lot of trash.  Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about it right other than withdraw your paper if you are nervous, which might not help you much either.


Verifying that cited results are still current before publishing Assume you are knee-deep in a project, going through a series of papers that are seemingly relevant to your project. You found this ~10 year old paper, which looks very promising indeed. A lot of interesting results, good discussion, etc.

At this stage, I think it's obvious that you should check whether or not the results and conclusions in the paper are still valid by searching for any correspondence related to the article (e.g., pointing out that some claims do not hold, etc). However, I have yet to find anyone that digs into such information. You normally find a paper, read it, find more interesting papers through references and keep on digging in this manner until you have accumulated "enough" articles to form an educated opinion.

My questions are as follows:

Is this (or any other) type of quality assurance process, when it comes to cited literature, common practice?
Is there a way to streamline this process? PubMed does not seem to include all correspondence related to each article.

I should perhaps note that, if you are in biomedical sciences (especially related to complex diseases), about half of the publications turn out to be wrong or misleading after some years, and perhaps a quarter more are shown to be incomplete in its findings. I believe it's in the nature of biology, in contrast to more human defined sciences like mathematics or computer science. There are no formulas or calculations to check the integrity of the work published.

I think what you're looking for are the papers that cite a given paper. This is often listed as "Cited by" in various databases. If paper B shows that paper A is incorrect, paper B will almost always cite paper A. In that vein, you can look at all the works that cite a given paper to see if any disprove the results.

More typically, though, if a paper published 10 years ago is still relevant today, there are other more recent papers on the same topic which will either cite that paper or derivative works thereof, and you would use those more recent papers to ascertain the current state of the research. Old papers, particularly in quick-moving fields, tend to either fade away pretty quickly or serve as foundations for other research. If no one else has cited it in the interim period, it's probably worth taking a very critical look at why that is the case before throwing in all your chips on that single paper.


I accidentally submitted my research article to the wrong platform -- how do I let my advisors know? I’m an MSc student in Computer Science in the last month of my program.  A few months ago, my advisors and I completed an article that I then submitted to a conference. The notifications of acceptance were supposed to come out in early December, so we were a bit perplexed when we had yet to  receive them even in mid-December. We thought this may be due to logistical problems related to the pandemic, so we weren’t too irritated.
I recently sent the organizers a polite email that we had not received a decision notification, and I was shocked to receive the reply that stated that they had no record of my submission. I replied quickly with my submission number and the (automated) notification of receipt I had obtained from their submission system. It’s been two days and I have not received a reply to this email.
Upon scrolling through the webpage for this conference, I realize they had two ways to different links for submitting an article. I selected the one that apparently goes to some submission platform that they do not even monitor, and had not checked that the other link was to a different platform.
While it’s upsetting that our submission will not even be reviewed let alone accepted, I’m even more dismayed by the thought of how my advisors will take this bad news. We worked on this article for some time and underwent a rather intense crunch to get it completed before the deadline. They’re going to write me reference letters for a PhD program application this month, and I’m very worried that this submission mistake will reflect badly in those letters. My question is: should I break the bad news to them now? Should I wait until I finish my program here (in 3 weeks)?

If your advisors know of the problem, they can help fix it. For example, perhaps they might suggest submitting the article to a different conference. Even if the problem is not fixable, they can still help mitigate it, e.g. by mentioning in any reference letters that you have written a marvelous piece of work that wasn't published because of some confusion with the conference submission platform.
You gain nothing by hiding the information, so do not hide it.
One more thing: it is quite possible that you might not have a problem in the first place. After all, if the organizers really had two submission links, one of which they did not check but still sent out submission numbers & receipt notifications, then it's not surprising that some papers are going to be misfiled. They could very well be kicking themselves over the error and would do their best to make up for it. Don't panic before you get a response from them.


PhD thesis - Where to put description of history of applied method? I am writing my PhD thesis within the natural sciences (ecology), following the typical structure of introduction, literature review, material & methods, results, discussion, conclusion.

For some of my analyses I am using a method which was developed about 90 years ago and has become the "standard" method in my field. I'd like to outline the origin and development of that method, along with some downsides that have become obvious in the past decades (and which I am trying to overcome by extending the method).

Is it appropriate to do so within the methods section (instead of just having a plain description of the methods I have applied)? Or would I rather include that in an extra chapter in the literature review (where I am so far rather focussing on describing the existing knowledge rather than methods)? Or even put it in the introduction?

While there's no "right" answer here, I would put this sort of discussion in the introduction/background as its own subsection. In that section, you're providing the motivation for the research, as well as any relevant information that the user needs to understand the paper. This seems to fit that definition nicely.


Is it normal to start your master's study without an advisor? So I've been admitted to master's program in Mechanical Engineering at a US university.

I contacted 2 of the faculty in the department in my chief area of interest , but neither had an opening/ funding . I feel like it was a huge blunder on my part. Should I try to find an advisor in a different subfield or wait a semester and see if any new opening arrive?

If I start research in a different subfield and a spot opens up in my preferred subfield next semester,  is it possible to switch?

Well this is more like an advice rather than an answer:
In the end all of it depends on the funding you might receive. If the advisors are sure to be available with the funding next semester, I would say you don't need to hurry to find a new research area. I assume you are interested and made some preparations for your current field. It would be reckless to throw away the work you have done so far.
However if the funding is not so sure for the next semester, I would say you go with the one that supplies you funding. In the end, you can always turn back to your old questions. Researcher is very much like a qualified worker, you are paid not only for the results you've obtained, but mostly you have the capacity to treat and obtain the result or rather they pay you because it is you who has the capacity to treat and obtain the result, so one should not take research subjects at a personal level, at least not too much.
However I have no idea how US works, so you are on your own concerning the feasiblity of my advice.


does resbmit paper go to the same reviewer? We sent paper to a reputed journal. After 4 months we get:
Reviewers have now commented on your paper. You will see that they are advising that you revise your manuscript. If you are prepared to undertake the work required, I would be pleased to reconsider my decision.

Im confusing about revise? what it does means? The reviews was easy and we already resbmit them. Does the paper will be reviewed by the same reviewers? What is our change for our paper to be accepted? how long in average will take to get the decision?

Does the paper will be reviewed by the same reviewers?

Authors, editors, and reviewers, would all surely prefer resubmissions to be reviewed by the same reviewers. (Authors want their changes evaluated, editors want their selected reviewers to see the process through, and reviewers want to ensure their concerns have been addressed.) However, reviewers may be unavailable or may decide to no longer participate (perhaps they've seen enough of the paper already), or editors may include a new reviewer to get a better perspective. So, resubmissions may be reviewed by different reviewers.