Working remotely in the summer (MSc) I'm considering moving back in with my parents over the summer to save money on rent. I would still be able to commute to campus at least once a week (4 hours each way, but I can nap on the ferry ride) to meet with my advisor. I'm working on my masters in math and I don't have any obligations in the summer that would require me to be on campus physically.

I asked my advisor and he said he is fine with this, but I am hesitant. On one hand, I would be able to save a good amount of money; on the other hand, I am unsure if this is a wise idea.

I'm curious to know your insights are on this. Thank you for any input!

Edit: I hadn't thought about some of the things you guys brought up and I really appreciate all the input! I have made up my mind and decided to move for the summer.

I don't understand why this is an issue. You can do mathematics anywhere. The same is true of other fields as well, though maybe not all. All you need is your mind and possibly a bit of paper to write on. You can use a commute to develop ideas, or to rest your mind.

There is nothing, really, in the air near a university that makes thinking easier, though interaction with other people usually helps.

But, as a newcomer, assuming that is your position, you need feedback on your ideas. That can be done remotely, nowadays, though your proposed occasional meet ups will also be beneficial, provided you use them for that feedback.

Being seen has little value in mathematical development. Producing something worth reading will be more valuable in your career than just "being seen". If your advisor agrees, you can share your work at any time via the internet or email.

Note that some researchers carry on collaboration remotely for years, not just a few months.


Distinct Research questions in Phd research proposal? I am writing my PhD research proposal. In "Research Aims / Questions" section, I have proposed two distinct research questions which are from the same sub-field but divert from each other a little bit.

Here is an example in my discipline, Computer Science, and subfield, Communications. The first research question involves analysis of router throughput with some specific algorithm.  The second question involves a compression mechanism a router, and the compression mechanism is not related to its throughput.

Question: Can I be successful having two not-closely-related research questions? or should I write two separate research proposals?

Any help would be appreciated.

It sounds like your proposal is for a PhD in technology of some kind, as such I can't tell you if the specific questions that you asked would work. However, I can share my own experiences so far. As a general rule, the easier your PhD questions are to research and answer, the better. For that reason, many people stick to one question. If there is more than one question in the proposal, they should be highly related. For example; in my own dissertation I am sampling approximately 30 schools across the country to determine if an anomaly that I discovered last year is universal, or if it is localized to that specific school (or possibly if it occurs in some areas but not others). Then, depending on the findings of that analysis, a secondary question becomes: what predictive factors determine those outcomes? In my case that will be easy to answer because I will have already taken those variables into account in order to control for them during the data collection phase. I'm not sure how much that helps, but in short I would avoid two questions unless they are directly related to each other.


Trade-off between content and style I am in the UK and I completed an undergraduate dissertation.
In my dissertation I went much higher than my level. All the content in my dissertation was at a masters level and everything was self-taught.
However I sort of came undone in my viva, where I was told I kept jumping into stuff.

I was wondering, when writing an undergraduate of a masters dissertation, is it better to go above and beyond your level and be ambitious or make sure the document is written very well and stay at the level you are currently at?

As you already noticed, you do not need to decide for one or the other but have to make a trade-off. I would advice to make this trade-off strongly in favour of good writing, i.e., schedule your work such that you have sufficient time to write down your thesis (or similar) properly and to have it reviewed for intellegibility (likely by your supervisor) and react to this. The reasons for this are as follows:

Your work is wasted if nobody understands it. The people who reviewed your thesis usually include your supervisor, i.e., the person who is most familiar with and most interested in your work apart from you and the single person whom you really need to demonstrate the value of your work. If even they had no chance to appreciate it, what was your work good for?
Communicating your work is one of the most important skills of an academic and hence one of the most important skills to learn in your studies. Most academics spend a considerable amount of time by communicating their work to others and academic success crucially depends on it. For example, people only tend to cite your work if they understand it. as far as I can tell, this is no different when you intent to leave academia.

Thus, time invested in learning communicating your work, in particular time invested in writing a thesis properly, is certainly not wasted. From another point of view, communicating your work is one of the skills you should be able to demonstrate when writing and defending a thesis – it’s not just about your knowledge of your field and applying this knowledge.
There is a saying that goes along the lines of this (and which I fail to find properly phrased right now):

  You only really understood something if you can teach it to others.

While there are a few people whose didactical skills are exceptionally bad in comparison to their expertise, these are really the exception (and you should not strive to be one of them) and this saying is mostly true otherwise. There are two things to “learn” from it:

By trying to properly communicate your work, you take different points of view at your work and thus understand it. This may enable you to find ways to improve your work or to apply it and connections to existing work.

If you cannot communicate your work, this is usually seen as an indicator that you did not fully understand what you are doing and thus is likely to lower the opinion of others of your work, in particular of important people such as your supervisor.


Do I need to ask a permission to acknowledge a respected mathematician in my paper? After writing the first draft of my paper, I sent the proof to an expert in my area. He responded my email in a neutral way, something like: I think if your argument is true then it would be nice,... I suggest you may read the paper ... to ...

Now, I would like to acknowledge him in my paper, sth. like: "I would like to thank Professor A for his comments". In my opinion, I should do this to show my gratitude. Besides, this also makes my paper somehow more concrete and professional, I think so.

My question: Do I need to ask Professor A the permission to acknowledge him? Or I just acknowlegde him without asking?

Thanks.

I don't think it's necessary to ask permission for something like this - there's really nothing he could do to stop you from acknowledging him if he did take issue with it, so the permission isn't even his to give to begin with.

That said, you're acknowledging him because you respect and appreciate his comments, and want to formally recognize the working relationship you have with him. It couldn't hurt to send him an email thanking him for his contribution, and mention that you will be acknowledging him in the paper. If he really has a problem with it, he'll have the opportunity to ask you to do otherwise at that time.


Missed to add the name of co-author I submitted a conference paper to an IEEE conference via edas system. I included the details of  co-author in the uploaded document but missed to add in the system. I noticed it when I received the acceptance notification. When i read the Commsoc policies, it says "it is not possible to add further co-author to a an submitted document". Is this means, I cannot add the co-author name? What will be worst case?
Thank you

Contact with the IEEE conference mail and the edas system as soon as possible.

The edas mail is: help@edas.info

The IEEE conference you should search in its website. At contact section probably.

If there's an incongruence between the document and the system they would detect it, but there's no guarantee. So, notify them there was an erratum before the publication is done.
Despite it could have author's incongruence, the document might be published with or without the forgotten author in the systems.

In the best case, it will be accepted, added the author at the systems and published the documennt including the author.
In the worst case your document will be rejected.


Is it legal to use Sci-Hub in Germany? I used to use this website to get the research papers that are not freely available online. So, passing the right name of any research work for this Russian website will derive the paper directly to your browser in Pdf format.

I used this website for the last 2 years when I was doing my Masters in Jordan. Now, I am doing PhD in Germany, So is it known this website in this region ? is it legal to explore or download the results?

The paper of

E. W. Steinhauer - Die Nutzung einer "Schattenbibliothek" im Licht des Urheberrechts Einige Überlegungen am Beispiel von Sci-Hub

says that downloading is probably illegal and viewing it in your browser is in some grey-area (although making this difference looks like some law-people did not understand the technicalities at all).

But there does not seem to be one court case where one was prosecuted for just downloading such material.
So if you still want to access the publications this way, then I suggest to use the following robust solution: Use the Tor browser or even the Tails operating system. In the latter you could save material with questionable copy-right license status in an encrypted file-system, then in Germany the law is pretty robust (compared to the USA or UK) around the "Aussageverweigerungsrecht", i.e. no authority can force you to decrypt it.


Pursued PhD under an advisor who did not know what to do. Now am stuck with future prospects I made a mistake 5 years ago. I changed my field from materials science to civil engineering. I did a PhD under a professor whose research expertise was not in my research topic. I had to independently work on my knowledge and skill set to become productive and produce research. But, due to lack of technical guidance, I produced mediocre research. My research is very novel and rigorous for my field of research, but the scope of getting a future position in the field seems bleak.

I want to diversify to other area of research, but I don't possess the experience or knowledge to carry out the projects. I am getting rejections from all postdoc positions as I don't meet their requirements.

I don't know what I should be doing now? My adviser doesn't have any connections in my research area. She just says to keep trying, and to not lose heart.

First of all note that your experience has probably made you a lot more independent than many of your peers. This is a desirable quality for a post-doc, and you should sell it. If you have produced any a single author  publications (which sounds likely in your scenario), this is again something you should emphasize.

As a second piece of advice, consider applying for a suitable post-doc fellowship. Advertised post-doc positions are often bound to specific funded projects, therefore a PI will be more inclined to hire somebody with proven expertise to work on that project, putting somebody switching (sub)fields after their PhD at disadvantage.

Postdoctoral fellowship applications allow you to put more emphasis on your individual qualities and allow you to tailor a research proposal to your combination of expertise. You would (in most cases) still need to find a suitable host for your fellowship, but this may be easier than getting them to hire you as a postdoc (it is relatively low risk for the host). Of course, you should be warned that many fellowships have a very low acceptance rate. (10% acceptance rate is not uncommon for many grants, although some have rates as high as 30%) So, you need to submit a very strong application.


I'm writing a paper on a side project with a friend, should I involve my supervisor? Some months ago I was contacted by a friend who works in my scientific field, regarding a collaboration project (we're both postdocs). We exchanged some emails and considerations. He provided me the dataset, and I developed a simple program able to make some interesting scientific discoveries (at least, from my understanding).

We've not given too much importance to this project, but now it turns out that it could lead to a scientific paper to submit to a good journal.

Even if I dedicated to this side project a small amount of time (~3 hours / week), it surely took away some time from my main project, which is much more important.

Now in the writing phase, I wondering if I should tell my supervisor about this project and this paper.
On one hand, I'm worried that he might not like that I dedicated some working time to it instead of my main project... on the other side, I think he would be happy to collaborate in writing this paper with me and gain a new journal publication.

What do you think I should do?

What do you think my supervisor would say about this side project and its paper?

I recommend that you should talk with the supervisor about side projects. Perhaps revealing the nature of a project at once is not a good idea if the relation with the supervisor is not so close. You can start for example telling your supervisor that you are/will be collaborating with a friend on a project and see the reaction and the comments, and after a few weeks you can expose the whole project and paper to the supervisor. I don't think you have invested such a long time in your project, 3h/week is a small amount of time, so you didn't took much effort from your principal project, you have nothing to worry about.


Math/stat postdoc: how important it is to be a 'named' postdoc? It gives me the impression that an 'endowed' (named) postdoc is more prestigious than ordinary postdoc (e.g. grants postdoc). My question is how important it is compared to other factors (e.g. publications, the brand of the university, etc) if one wants to find a TT position in an R1 research university.

'endowed'(named) postdoc: for example, Ritt assistant professor in Columbia,  Dickson instructor in UChicago

Very few postdoc positions are endowed, and most of those are at universities that are already very good. As a consequence, the practical implications of being on such a position are relatively small: If you get one, you're pretty much by definition already at a good university, and the delta in prestige is pretty negligible.

What matters are (i) your publication record, (ii) which institutions you've been at, (iii) your letters of recommendation (all not necessarily in this order). What kind of postdoc position (endowed, grant-funded, teaching-supported) you had is not a relevant decision criterion in my experience.


Can college professors alter their grading scale to pass students? How often does this happen? I have recently completed a Multivariable Calculus class. I struggle a lot with math, and failed the first and second midterms and I feel that I failed the final exam as well. The first midterm was worth 25% of my grade, the second was worth 30% and and the final was 35%. I am absolutely convinced that I failed the final, yet I passed the course with a C, although homework was worth 10% and I maintained a 96% on it.

My question is, how often do professors alter their grading scale such that they don't fail someone? My professor did mention that if we do very poorly on the final exam, he would just give us a 'C'. How often does this happen?

Teaching is hard, and writing exams is hard.  Anyone who thinks they can set the exact criteria in advance is probably being arrogant.  At Chicago (at least in the 1980s) every single course is graded on a curve so essentially every course had its criteria set by the performance of the students.  On the one hand this compensates for mistakes in teaching or in writing an exam, on the other hand your performance is partly determined by how good your classmates happen to be.

One of the professors at MIT I tutored under was very angry that students had demanded (so the Institute regulated) that the percentages given to the various midterms and exams were set out in advance, because before that "innovation" he'd been able to adjust the percentages if he'd written an exam not up to his own standards, something you can often only find out after you've given it.

In the UK, these sorts of practices are banned.  Every student is supposed to be marked to criteria set up when the course was approved.  To make this work, UK universities require the exam to be written very early in the term, checked by a colleague, and then checked again by an external examiner.  Then at the end of the year there is something called an exam board, where a panel decides if something went wrong in a course and moves all the marks for the whole course up or down in response.  This is better than marking on a curve because the students can help each other learn without hurting themselves, but in other ways it's worse in that the professors cannot innovate and it can be very difficult to update material.


How many applications are usually received for a given PhD position? I realise that the answer to this question varies greatly between department and universities but I would like to get some estimates from somebody within the field since I myself has absolutely no idea. When I apply for a PhD position, can I expect to compete with a handful of other persons or can there be hundreds of applications sent?

There was over 80 for the position I applied for a few years ago, at a Dutch neuroscience institute with a good reputation. I imagine there would be more at world famous universities in the US. I hear that most of the time, most applicants aren't that good, even the top 10% who make it to the interview. In my case the best candidate got the position, and the one ranked second (me) got an offer for a position later on... so in the end it was one out of 40.


Using WolframAlpha for a take-home exam Is it ethical to use WolframAlpha on a take-home exam for a math class? A couple qualifiers: this is a make-up exam where the original exam allowed for a scientific calculator but not a graphing/symbol-solving calculator.

The professor has made no other stipulations about the exam yet (no word on if it's the same rules as for regular exams or otherwise). He has simply just announced one will be given out.

Generally speaking, if a particular set of tools was permitted - in your case a scientific calculator but not a graphing calculator, I would assume those would be the only tools permitted.

This is especially true for tools, like Wolfram Alpha, that duplicate functionality of things that have been disallowed, like graphing calculators and calculators that can deal with symbolic notation.


Computer Science - final year project being too focused on the engineering Recently, I had 3 proposals for my final year project rejected as they were too focused on the engineering aspect of my course and less on terms of being academic?

What could possibly they (the final year project supervisors) mean? Do they mean by academic that I have to do a more research related work? And if it is so, how in the world am I supposed to come up with such a project(as that could be absolutely anything)?

I am so lost about this...

I have heard this kind of comment before as well, and then it meant that the proposed work was too much about (solving) implementation aspects, too little about novel 'research' or 'scientific' work.

It helps to ask the question: 'could this work potentially be published in a scientific venue (workshop, conference, journal, etc)?
If the answer is 'no', then it might be considered to be too much about engineering.

For the record: it is not my opinion that 'engineering' work is less valuable or educational than 'scientific' work. Or that there is even a clear distinction. I just want to shed some light on what people mean when they say these kind of things.


Is it okay/common practice to reuse reference letters? Prompted by this question about "exporting" a reference letter, I am now thinking about the question if it is okay or even common to re-use already used reference letters.

For a little context: I am in the process of applying for postdoc positions. I have requested and gotten very nice letters for one position and - as they were similarly relevant - have used those letters once more for another application, after asking the people who wrote them if they are fine with that.

I have, similar to the OP of the previously mentioned question considered what I should do when I get deeper into the process of applications and will write more and more of them. Would it be okay to just use the letters I already have over and over? In general, I think in my case those people would have nothing against that, but I still feel oblidged to at least let them know who they are "refering" me to, before they might get any requests for further information out of the blue.  Repeatedly pestering them every time I want to submit another application might get old fairly soon, though.
I honestly have no idea if there is any common practice about this. As we all know, the academic job market is not that... easy, so it might be necessary to apply for quite a bunch of positions before getting one. I can't imagine that every new PhD keeps repeatedly asking the same people for letters until they find their position (asking different people once in a while would be an option, but then I would kind of "loose out" on the best letters by the people who know me best at least for some applications.), but I also would feel awkward "admitting" to have reused it to get a position without telling the writer about it beforehand.

To those in the position to write such letters:

Is it okay for you if they are reused without your direct knowledge?
Would you prefer to be asked every time or once ("Can I keep using this letter?")
Is there some option I completely miss out on?
How did you handle this previously (in case someone asked/reused them without asking and you were contacted/...)?

In the US, this practice essentially can't happen, because letters of reference are almost never given directly to the student—instead, the referee submits the letter directly to the requester. So you would have to ask your referees to submit the letter again on your behalf.

If you're in a country where the norm is to give a letter of reference directly to the applicant (such as Germany), the letter is usually given out without a target recipient, and is therefore much generic. In such cases, you do not need to request permission to reuse the letter, as it is already designed for such use.

If you're in doubt, just ask the person who wrote you the letter. Most people will want to update a letter, particularly if it's several years old.


Publish a Book Through a Research-Based or Industrial-Based Publisher? I'm in the middle of writing a book on a subject matter that covers both aspects of the research and general practice knowledge. I'm wondering to submit it to a publishing company that mainly publishes journals; or send it to a book publisher which is very respectable in the industry. There are two aspects to this:

Price: Generally speaking, the books that are published by research-based publishers (e.g., Springer) are way more expensive than normal reference books.

Reputation Vs. Reaching the Masses: Obviously in terms of reputation in academia, research-based books are considered more seriously; however I'm losing reaching the masses of people who can benefit from it, as a normal reference book.

Both are valid aims:

Academics are paid for doing academic research, that is our job.
Academics are often (partially) paid for by tax money, so it is perfectly legitimate to communicate what you did with that money back to the general public.

There is usually some specialization: Some academics are good researchers but awful comunicators, so they won't write books for the general public and that is a good thing. Even those academics that are good comunicators will also publish more narrow academic works: the point of communicating with the general public is to communicate what scientific work you have done, so some scientific work needs to preceed the work aimed at the general public. Finally, it also depends on the state of your carreer: If you don't have tenure yet, I would choose to focus on projects that increase my academic reputation. When you have tenure you can afford to make more balanced decisions.


How do I use MLA citations for the title of my paper? I have a short quote as part of the title of an essay I am writing, and was wondering how I'd cite a quotation in the title of my essay in MLA format?

You don't include citations in the title of an article.

Enclose the quoted phrase in quote marks, so it's clear that they are someone else's words, and then give the source in the introduction.

  "Taking Arms Against a Sea of Troubles": Swiss Foreign Relations, 1683-1715

  By user18347

  Shakespeare's character Hamlet considered one of his options to be "taking arms against a sea of troubles" (Shakespeare, p. 123).  A similar choice was faced by the leaders of Switzerland in the late 17th century. [...]

Then include a reference to Shakespeare's work in your bibliography or list of references, as with any other source.

If the quote and its source are common knowledge, so that's it's more a proverb than a quote, then it's probably not necessary to discuss the source, unless it gives useful context.

If this is an essay for a course, then if in further doubt, consult your instructor.


Is there any scientific reference about position of the LGBTQ community in STEM academia? According to the Nature article "LGBTQ scientists are still left out" there are some "heteronormative assumptions" in the STEM field which artificially suppress the number of LGBTQ people in the field. This view of the sciences¹ doesn't match my own experience and anecdotal evidence. (I have seen evidence of a sexism issue but it is a separate issue from LGBT.) In my (admittedly subjective) experience, people in STEM tend to be more open-minded than any other profession.

The Nature article cites a few studies, but none seems to be directly on-point (one study focused on government workers rather than scientists in academia-proper, and another had results that were not statistically significant and whose authors admitted they had made mistakes). Again maybe I'm wrong, but I would like to see a more relevant peer-reviewed study (gender studies or social science) explaining this problem.

What robust studies exist on the representation of LGBTQ individuals² in STEM fields within academia?

¹ The idea that STEM fields are especially constrained comes up in other contexts, too. For example, according to an opinion piece by Manil Suri published in the New York Times, in science it is also not appropriate to talk about hobbies.
Manil Suri is a famous scholar; his description of the situation in academia is worrying, and gives the impression that behavior is constrained and under close scrutiny.
Being too expressive of personal identity can be viewed as running counter to scientific neutrality. In competitive venues, where complete immersion in one’s field might be the promoted ideal, the mention of an extracurricular pursuit can even be seized upon as a lack of commitment. I remember a young mathematician at a prestigious research institute sharing his love for piano playing after hearing I wrote fiction. “Don’t tell anyone in my department I own a piano,” he requested in the next breath.
This is a shock to me because I perceived the STEM field as most open-minded.

² Representation could measure the percentage of LGBTQ faculty in STEM fields in comparison to other academic disciplines, or something like dropout rates for LGBTQ students in STEM fields compared to dropout rates for other students.

The basic answer is that there is very little hard data. One study that I did find (via ResearchGate - I didn't have direct access if it even exists) is "Factors impacting the academic climate for LGBQ STEM faculty", Eric V. Patridge et al., Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering 20(1) 75-98 (2014).

Several quotes stand out:

  Amid the current nationally led campaign to increase the STEM workforce, there are numerous
  institutional efforts to support women and underrepresented ethnic minority STEM professionals;
  however, virtually none of these focuses on LGBT communities.

and

  A survey of the literature reveals that
  data-driven research of LGBT communities has been restricted to the social sciences, humanities,
  and health fields; there are only a handful of publications focused on LGBT communities in the
  STEM fields, and none of these are based on empirical data. Qualitative academic discussions
  report that LGBT populations are discouraged from entering the STEM fields because heteronormative
  climates are so widespread (Bilimoria and Stewart, 2009; Cech and Waidzunas, 2011;
  Gunckel, 2009). Our analyses support previous discussions...

The data in this 2014 paper was drawn from a 2010 study. Of some 5000 respondents, 498 were faculty. Of those, 59 were from STEM. After some further down selection, they ended up with 47 STEM faculty.

Points of some interest include:

  In response to questions on internal experiences and identity, STEM faculty (n = 47) reported
  the highest level of discomfort across the three questions included in the survey (campus, department,
  and classroom) (Table 3), although these differences were not significant. Notably, faculty
  from STEM departments reported significantly higher levels of professional outness than did
  those from other departments [2(4) = 16.7, p < .01].

However,

  the more out a STEM faculty member, the more likely it was that he or she
  was uncomfortable.

and, relative to all faculty in the study,

  STEM faculty members (n = 47) were most likely to consider
  leaving their institutions (53.2%)

Further,

  Our analyses support the hypothesis that heteronormative climates contribute to LGBQ faculty
  members seeking alternative employment options, and department level analyses suggest this
  closely describes LGBQ STEM faculty.

In addition,

  The loss of current and future faculty mentors for LGBQ communities is particularly problematic
  because there are so few resources that support LGBQ students. While there are countless
  organizations dedicated to the development of women and minority STEM talent, there are
  only two national organizations that encourage the development of LGBQ STEM talent.

In Physical Review Physics Education Research there is a paper titled "Enriching gender in physics education research: A binary past and a complex future", which touches on needing to look more broadly than just men/women. However, it does not appear to have any useful data on LGBT in physics.

Much of the rest I can find is online, non-peer reviewed studies. While interesting reading, it is harder to draw conclusions much less figure out what to do.

(As a response to your addendum to the question - it is quite clear that the person described in the New York Times Op-Ed piece was indeed, and sadly, afraid to reveal their piano playing. I can easily imagine that behavior coming from long experience with negative responses over time which have little to do with playing the piano. You might be interested in Gay and in STEM Fields which rebuts some of the points made in the Manil Suri op-ed piece you reference.)


Do academic integrity pledges work? Our students are asked to sign an "academic integrity" pledge with each assignment and exam, vowing that they have not given nor received unauthorized assistance on the assignment.

What (peer-reviewed) evidence is there to support the claim that these pledges make a significant impact on the rate of cheating, plagiarism, and other forms of academic dishonesty at the university level?

There is some research on this, with inconclusive results. Some problems with the existing literature:

These studies typically rely on student reports of cheating (i.e. students fill out an anonymous survey asking if they have cheated and if they have observed cheating)
The effectiveness of such a pledge seems to vary tremendously with context (big school vs small school, online vs traditional class, field of study, how much emphasis is placed on the honor code), and it is difficult or impossible to control for all of this
Many of these studies compare schools with a pledge and unproctored exams to schools with no such pledge and regular exams, which is not exactly the comparison you ask about.

See:

McCabe, Donald L., and Linda Klebe Trevino. "Academic dishonesty: Honor codes and other contextual influences." Journal of higher education (1993): 522-538.

Hall, Teresa L., and George D. Kuh. "Honor among students: Academic integrity and honor codes at state-assisted universities." NASPA Journal 36.1 (1998): 2-18.

McCabe, Donald L., Linda Klebe Trevino, and Kenneth D. Butterfield. "Academic integrity in honor code and non-honor code environments: A qualitative investigation." Journal of Higher Education (1999): 211-234.

McCabe, Donald L., Linda Klebe Trevino, and Kenneth D. Butterfield. "Honor codes and other contextual influences on academic integrity: A replication and extension to modified honor code settings." Research in higher Education 43.3 (2002): 357-378.

Roig, Miguel, and Amanda Marks. "Attitudes toward cheating before and after the implementation of a modified honor code: A case study." Ethics & Behavior 16.2 (2006): 163-171.

Vandehey, Michael, George Diekhoff, and Emily LaBeff. "College cheating: A twenty-year follow-up and the addition of an honor code." Journal of College Student Development 48.4 (2007): 468-480.

Konheim-Kalkstein, Yasmine L., Mark A. Stellmack, and Margaret L. Shilkey. "Comparison of honor code and non-honor code classrooms at a non-honor code university." Journal of College and Character 9.3 (2008).

LoSchiavo, Frank M., and Mark A. Shatz. "The impact of an honor code on cheating in online courses." Journal of Online Learning and Teaching 7.2 (2011): 179.


Is it inappropriate to use school-provided remote learning tools to pursue friendship or relationship with another student? Note: I am currently not enrolled in any courses, whether remote or in-person. This question is based on a post I saw a couple days ago on Reddit where someone asked a similar question.
Now that distance learning is quite commonplace among both secondary schools and higher learning institutes due to COVID, there isn't as much of a possibility for students to approach each other outside of class hours in an attempt to hang out together or get romantically involved, as quite frequently happened in the pre-COVID days.
My question is whether it would be considered inappropriate for a student to use private chat options on whichever platform the school provides for distance learning to contact another student for explicitly non-education related companionship, assuming the contact happens during moments where such contact would happen on campus, like between scheduled classes or during pair activities. The intent is to use the private chat options to send communications that would otherwise be done at school outside of class hours, with no real distinction between asking your best friend if they want to play some Fortnite after school and asking that cute girl in one of your classes whether she would want to go have a drink with you after school.

For already established contacts, there should not be any problem. Same when you ask a group of known and new people (e.g. the general group chat), whether they want to do something together (which might not be the best idea at the moment, but I hope you get what I mean).
Contacting specific people that are not your friends might be a different story, especially if your approach might not be desired. If you go this way I would be very careful in how you are approaching someone, especially if it is, or can be perceived as such, of romantic nature. One way to go could be to start out with asking if the other person is okay with being contacted by you for private matters at all in this system.
However, I would suggest to try social media instead. Or ask common friends/acquaintances for a contact - the way we did it before social media existed. Again, of course, nice and respectful.


Discussing an unpublished approach of a former team member I started my research as a PhD student a few years ago. I was assigned to researcher X's team and had to assist him in finding a solution as the project got stuck. However, X was not able to implement his approach properly and, after some time, I doubted that the solution's concept would work out at all. Nevertheless, X demanded that we continue following his approach.

After a few months, there was still no progress and people started getting disappointed. X got into severe and dirty conflicts (on a personal level) with his other team members. Conflicts escalated and finally X (and another guy) were removed from the project and forced to quit.

I continued working on X's approach for several more weeks. Since my work was not controlled by X, I was looking at the proposed solution more critically. I came across severe conceptual errors and also some implementation errors. I had to discard the current solution and started working on a completely new approach (not related to X's approach). After several more weeks, I finished the implementation and it was working quite well.

Now I am outlining my PhD thesis. One of the topics is my approach to solving the aforementioned problem. However, my approach is not that straightforward, compared to X's approach. It is more complex and expensive. Therefore I need to justify in my thesis, why I decided to use MY approach and NOT X's approach. I can show this his approach does not work. Therefore, I have to describe his approach, show the implementation and present some of the results. Unfortunately, nothing has been published by him. I would be the first to present his approach - this feels uncomfortable. In the department there is a huge fear of retaliation (e.g., accusations of scientific misconduct), since X was forced to quit. We know that he monitors our publications. I need to handle this at low risk without reducing the quality of my thesis.

My options are:

Leaving out X's approach in the thesis completely. I do not like this, since I invested a lot of work/time and, what is even more, my thesis appears to be not comprehensive without it. It's especially interesting for the reader to know, why X's approach (the most obvious one) does not work. Leaving it out reduces the quality of the thesis and creates open questions which remain unanswered (e.g., why I am using such a complex approach, could I not simply do X's method). However, this solution has no risk.
Describing X's approach without mentioning X. One argued that I had done enough work on it so I should just leave his name out. I do not like this at all as this is ethically not correct.
Describing X's approach and clearly attributing it to X (altogether on 2 or 3 pages). I would include an explanation of conceptual issues, leaving out implementation errors (=no personal blaming). That would be my preferred method, however, I am still publishing and discussing his (unpublished) approach. Is this acceptable or does it expose me to some risk?

I would like to use the third option. Is this acceptable or do other/better solutions for such a situation exist?

I need to justify...why I decided to use MY approach and NOT X's approach.

I don't think you need any such justification: "[X's approach] does not work....nothing has been published by him." Thus, the literature contains nothing about X's work and you need not compare your results to his unpublished work. Nonetheless, if you feel that some reference to his work is necessary, then you could mention that X is working on the topic or that some of your ideas followed from discussions with X or ...

  It's...interesting...to know...why X's approach...does not work.

Many approaches don't work. You cannot possibly mention them all. It is perfectly reasonable to omit discussion of X's approach. That said, in some cases -- e.g., when the obvious solution seems feasible -- you might like to very briefly mention why the obvious solution doesn't work. For instance, you could mention: This problem can be intuitively solved by ABC, however, ... (You could also mention that X pursued some of these ideas, or that you pursued some of these ideas with X.)


Is it a good idea to have a departmental problem database? A departmental problem database will work like this: When a professor gives an exam, quiz etc. they upload the problems into the database. When the grading has been completed, they upload the scores. The software will give back some statistics. The goal is that through the years the database will grow in numbers and in quality. This will minimize the effort to create an assessment and maximize the quality of the questions, as (ideally) the professors will be revising the problems based on the feedback they get.

My target field is Mathematics.

My questions:

Is it a good idea to have a departmental problem database?
Do you know any examples where a departmental problem database has been implemented? What was the result?
Is confidentiality an issue?

I'd consider three key factors.

Are there many faculty members who want to use such a database?  It's probably not worth the effort unless it reaches critical mass.  Taking a survey is a little awkward, since some people may make polite comments that sound more enthusiastic than they really are.  One option would be to ask something relatively demanding.  For example, how many people would be willing to commit to seeding the database by entering all the problems they assign in suitable courses for the next year or two?
Who will serve as system administrator?  Unauthorized access is enough of a cheating risk that it's important to take precautions.  It could be better not to have such a database than to have one managed by an inexperienced system administrator.
Will you be able to work on a scale that doesn't just enable students to cheat by building their own database?  Student groups (such as fraternities) sometimes maintain archives of old exams and even problem sets, nominally for use as practice materials but often in the hope that problems will be repeated.  If you can build a big enough database, then this sort of cheating will be ineffective, but it will work very well for smaller databases.  I think this would be a big problem unless you achieve extraordinary growth, and I'd guess you'd need to work on a far larger scale than a single department.

My take is these are major problems and I'm skeptical about overcoming them.  However, perhaps your circumstances differ from mine.


Is original research required for an undergraduate thesis? I am currently in my final year of BSCS. And we have the option of pursuing a thesis or do a Final Year Project (FYP). I asked a professor related to my field and she told me that It's really hard to write a thesis as you need to pick an original research paper or area, reproduce the work done in this area, work on the limitations mentioned and add your own new findings which I think is really hard for me at this stage since I'm in the phase of understanding existing knowledge.

My main interest is in Computer Graphics and I was thinking to create a path-tracer, have already created a gpu ray-tracer, and use different acceleration data structures and profile the increase in speed obtained.

The thing is, all of this has already been done so I'd just be reproducing the work already done and implementing it and highlighting conclusions already drawn with just a little talk on the limitations and what could be done. Does this qualify as an undergraduate thesis or should I give up on it and she is right in assuming that thesis needs to have some new findings?

Also if it qualifies as a thesis what are the chances to getting it published since there are no new findings?

The reason I was pushing towards the thesis more as I am from a South-Asian country and the standard of education is "pretty" low here. Research is like a godly word for people here and we have zero exposure to research/conferences/seminars etc. I aim to do my masters from abroad and was thinking my bachelor's thesis would be a valuable experience.

The professor is suggesting you do the final project and keep it easy for both parties. I got data, my name on the paper, and research presentation at academic conference in undergrad by playing ball and working on the professor's pet project.  And just because the school calls it an FYP doesn't mean you have to call it that. I'm not saying you can call it a thesis but if you applied elsewhere, FYP would sound really obscure and student-ish.  If you own a quality piece of written work, you can rework the intro and publish it wherever it fits in your field. If nobody wants to publish it, hold onto it and maybe it can get worked into something else later. Maybe that FYP is "currently submitted" for publication on your CV at just the right time later. Thesis may be property of the school. Final thought: professor may commit time to messing around with data and getting complicated with you if he can co-publish something. It's a lot of extra office hours with you to do a thesis when they could be with their family at home. Can you make it worth their time? Let them hint to you how it can be worth going the extra mile.


Are professional body certificates any helpful in getting into academia (if I don't have any undergraduate education)? Sometimes professional bodies issue diplomas and postgraduate diplomas which, for example in the UK, are recognized at a very high training level.

What I am not sure about is whether these, even though not issued by universities, can help enter university at academia or research level?

Usually, these topics are discussed on a case-by-case basis. For example, the professional institute can have some kind of agreement or understanding with some universities, but not with others. The best you can do is to choose a research program that you want to join, prepare your record (including professional diplomas) and ask the faculty that rules the program.

Some universities may accept you without conditions, but I guess the most common case will be that you will have to take some extra courses in their program and get the corresponding credit in order to fit your profile and knowledge to their exact expectation.


What are books and websites I should look at before trying to write a grant? I am an undergraduate currently involved with a local arts nonprofit, and the folks in charge would like to write grants and proposals to the colleges in town for cooperating on an after-school program. What should I read to find:

Organizations I should be in touch with which offer grants
General guidelines/requirements for a successful proposal?

Also: How do I find somebody in my school or elsewhere whom I could ask to review my grants before I submit them?

The form of a successful proposal varies wildly from organization to organization and often also within different programs in an organization. Many grant organizations thus provide "model grants" or "writing guides" somewhere on their website that you can look at to see what they are looking for (they aren't interested in wasting their time either).  See, for example the NSF's grant-writing guide.

Government organizations also generally allow you to search a database of previous grant recipients: you can look for some who are close to your area (thematically and/or geographically) and ask them for advice or to share their examples of winning proposals.  People are often willing to help out like-minded colleagues in this way.


Does it look bad if I put a variety of interests in my research statement? For reference, I am in mathematics.  I will be on the job market again, and I need to write up a new research statement.  I have interests in the area of pure mathematics that I did my thesis research on, but I also have interests in research in math education and also research in mathematics and art.

Does it reflect bad on me if I express my wide range of research interests in my research statement?

I am mostly interested in teaching positions, possible with some research, like a liberal arts college.

I am afraid it looks weird because these are quite disjoint from each other, although I have ongoing projects in each area, I am afraid may look like I'm scatterbrained.

It depends what they are looking for. Some employers will place a premium on flexibility, in which case your variety of interests will be a positive. It will help you to build connections with other departments, potentially increasing opportunities for service teaching, and hence increasing funding to the department. It will enable you to go with the flow, to seek research funding in whatever area has the best prospects at the moment, and collaborate on a variety of projects inside and outside your department. It will also help you to teach from several different angles.

Other employers are looking to build on an existing strength (for instance, a strong research stream in a particular area or good relationships with a particular external stakeholder) or fill a particular gap in their existing strengths. In this case, a variety of interests will be a negative, because you might shift focus away from the research interest for which they are really hiring you. Usually, job ads will mention whether there is a particular specialty that they are really after, but it also doesn't hurt to ask around to find out if you are not sure.


As faculty, can I bring about changes in our outsourced campus bookstore? I am tenured faculty at a state university in the US. Our campus bookstore is not run by the university; instead, it is owned and operated by a large, well-known corporation, and has a contractual agreement with the university to "be the official bookstore" and to operate in the center of campus.
Over the years, I have grown increasingly frustrated by the poor service offered by the bookstore. To name only the problems I've encountered this fall:

A full week into classes, many of my students have not yet been able to obtain their books. Neither they nor I have been told when their books will be ready; bookstore staff are not answering their email, and their phone goes straight to a recording.

A complaint on their Facebook page reads: "Please get more people working the registers, kids are waiting in line shoulder to shoulder with others for hours because there’s only one person working the register!" This, in the middle of a deadly pandemic!

My question is this: As a faculty member, do I have any ability to coerce them to improve their service? For example, if I were to join the relevant Faculty Senate committee, and pester a bunch of people in my university's administration, would I be able to bring about change? (And, if so, what would be the best way to proceed?). Or, would I merely be driving myself crazy?

While there may be some excuses this fall (2020) in the middle of a pandemic that supply chains for books are messed up (as they are for many other things), here are a few things that you could do.

Choose textbooks and materials that are readily available through other outlets, even suggesting places they can be found. (Neither of my kids generally buy their textbooks from the campus bookstore anymore - just easier to order from the comfort of their dorm/apartment and have them show up in a day or two.)

Prepare and teach your course such that any of several recent editions of the textbook could be used. This way it will be easier for students to find a used copy that would still apply. (One of the organic chemistry profs at the local university does this - organic chemistry texts new are ~$400, used are ~$50 since new editions come out nearly yearly in an attempt by the textbook publishers to destroy the used market.)

Provide much of the material yourself in the form of lecture notes, with pointers to material on reserve at the library (wait, is that a thing anymore?).

Work with your department to apply these suggestions across more classes. Talk to colleagues in other departments as well. They likely have similar frustrations.

In summary, I think local, then grassroots, efforts are likely to be more impactful than trying to fight city hall.


Does emailing a journal to ask if my article is within scope hurt chances of getting published? When I started my "quest for knowledge" several years ago I began in an already ill defined-field which was on the borders between science and philosophy but as I progressed I drifted further and further into something I can only classify as "something pertaining to many sciences but not really a part of any one field". It became some even I-can-not-tell-what field of science and although I have completed my quest and came with a sound paradigm it doesn't really pertain to the scope of any of the journals in my area which I use in my references. Or to be more precise, it pertains to all of them but only "a little bit", this is why selecting the proper journal seems so difficult now.

In order to solve the problem, and actually thinking this is a solution, I decided to write a small e-mail to journals explaining my situation and what I have done. It was something like a 200-300 word abstract so they know what my paper is about and then asked if this is within the scope of their journal. None have answered me!

Has anyone had a similar experience? Did I do the right thing writing their editorial boards these e-mails? Did I shoot myself in the foot by doing this? Any suggestions what the effect of these e-mails could have been (e.g. they think I am a crackpot, they just deleted them, they put me in a "forbidden list")? Am I doing something terribly wrong here? Can anybody give me advice as to how I can handle the situation from now on? Do such e-mails effect my chances of publishing there negatively or outright stop them?

Don't worry.  There is nothing bad about what you have done, and it will almost certainly have no impact on consideration of any manuscript you may submit to any of those journals.

Most academics divide their time between large numbers of obligations, and they receive many unsolicited emails; this is even more true of those who are on the editorial board of a prominent journal.  Many of them will not reply to an unsolicited message from someone they don't know.

They have not put you on a "forbidden list" or labeled you as a crackpot (unless the content of your message was such as to warrant that -- but even then they probably don't remember your name).

Let me add that it is sometimes a good idea to contact an editor before submitting your paper, and I have done so on occasion.  This usually requires that you know the editor, or that someone who knows them can introduce you -- or that you can manage to bump into them at a conference.  Asking informally if your manuscript is a fit for their journal can be helpful when the work falls between disciplines, and an immediate answer saves time for you, for the journal, and possibly for potential reviewers.  When doing this you should usually contact the particular associate editor who is most likely to handle a manuscript like yours.


Should I include written evaluations (from courses I took) in my transcript as part of the job application materials? I did my undergraduate and graduate degrees at a university that includes course evaluations as part of the transcript. My evaluations from my professors and instructors generally are good to excellent.

I am applying for jobs right now, and some ask for graduate and undergraduate transcripts. I can order two kinds of transcripts, one with evaluations, and one without.

Would it be beneficial for me to include my evaluations with the transcripts in my job applications materials?

It would be attached in the same file as my transcript, not attached as a separate file.

For reference, my undergrad/grad transcripts with grades and records is composed of four pages. The evaluations are an extra 14 pages.

If your course evaluations range from good to excellent and there is nothing harmful in them, including them can only be helpful.

In the worst (and probably more likely case) people will simply not read the additional 10 pages of transcript. This is, of course, exactly where you would be if you didn't send them in the first place.

A thick application file is not a problem. Just remember that it falls on you to help narrate and explain what you include. For example, if there are a few choice quotes from the evaluations, you might want to call those out in your application front-matter.


I got mad at my advisor? Without going into the details, I got a little irritated and frustrated with my advisor today.

I've been feeling myself slowly losing respect for her as a manager, but have remained professional and friendly. Her micromanagement and unpredictability have had some negative impacts on my project. We had to work closely together today on something under what I would say is a high pressure situation. She really didn't lead very well.

I just snapped a few times and was pretty irritated. I wasn't full on mad, but since I'm normally the opposite of confrontational (I've never even gotten mad at a coworker before), it definitely is something that would stand out.

She's been really nice after this, and complimenting me on small things, but I'm not sure how to go forward. Should I just pretend like nothing happened? There's been some long-term frustration that led up to this, but it still feels wrong to have lost my temper with my advisor.

Is it common/rare for grad students to show anger towards their supervisor, and how negatively do you judge them for it?

She's been really nice after this, and complimenting me on small things, but I'm not sure how to go forward.

It shows that she realized you have been stressed out, and she is willing to be helpful to make you feel better as a new student. Do not think too much. Work well. Respect her and be nice to her (really mean that. not pretend).

As time passes, the event will be forgotten and forgiven (if needed). Since you are fairly new, you will eventually get to know her more. At that time, you will be in a better position to see what went wrong and what made you lose your cool.

Also offer to proactively fix the situation. Apologies by word mean nothing. Show it in action.


How should I ask for library services for literature review? Early on the research planning process, I would like to make use of the services offered by public libraries. Including online library services, what is the best way they could help a student researcher who is currently preparing a research proposal for a specialization?

Would it be wise to send them an email or give them a phone call, so that they could come up with a list of possibly useful and related research papers at their disposal?

I don't believe that a public library would be a useful resource for an academic literature review.  You are likely to be better supported by a university librarian.  But, I am not sure why you would be relying on a librarian to assist with obtaining resources for a literature review.  My recommendation is that you develop the skills and knowledge to efficiently and effectively conduct a search for relevant resources, as opposed to relying on somebody else.  You presumably have more background and knowledge in your substantive area, and this is something you will be doing throughout your academic career.  Even if a librarian or somebody else culled sources for you, the burden is still on you to ensure the review was comprehensive.


How should I interpret advisor overly positive feedbacks? I am currently in the writing phase of my master thesis in a US-based university. Almost all of the feedback I am receiving from my advisor is either linguistic suggestions or just positive supportive kinda of a language. I am the primary investigator from my thesis.

How should I interpret this positive feedback and lack of critical comments? Could it indicate that the work is so weak and not even worth corrections? How can I direct their responses to be more critical?

That’s a good sign. Not all the advisors would take pains to provide you with lots of English corrections. I suggest that you make sure all corrections are made. Some people in academia may be very negative about a paper written in bad English. It might have a very negative impact. You may ask American students to help you out with this simple task of editing your work. Then your advisor might switch to some other recommendations or critique. It might make your work even better if you accelerate the editing in this way. Your advisor will undoubtedly be very impressed. And I’m almost sure some other improvements will be suggested to you apart from constant English language corrections. I would have given the same feedback. I mean first things first. Language should not be dismaying; otherwise, as I said, it can have a very negative impact on your work, while it’s the contents the paper should be judged on. It’s good that your advisor is ready for the nitty-gritty job of plowing through the language of your paper. That’s commendable.


Measuring daily/weekly productivity in academia One of the things I struggle with in academia is measuring my daily/weekly productivity. Before academia, I worked in various fields and always felt productive because I could measure my productivity, i.e. cash on hand after a shift of waiting tables. Since being in academia (currently a post-doc) I struggle with measuring productivity because it comes in the form of years, not days/weeks. I set goals each week and keep a running timer on my desk when I am working -- not meetings or seminars, straight research -- and still have a hard time measuring productivity. I realize this is the nature of the profession I am in but am hoping for some advice.

Question: How do you measure your short-run productivity?

If you are doing true research then I doubt that you can measure "short term productivity" meaningfully. You can keep track of how many papers you read in a week and how many gallons of a reactant you use up in a month, but they aren't real measures of progress, just of activity.

The problem is that progress in research requires insight and insight can't be scheduled. "I'm 30% of the way to a major insight in mumble mumble mumble". Well, maybe.

In some fields, other than research, you can do some things. Sometime in the previous century I was told by my writing/English professor that he knew a famous author who wrote every day, starting early, and only finished when he had made "one page" of progress toward his current project. So, he could write a short story every three weeks or a novel every year. But even there it wasn't always possible, because to make that one page of progress you might have to completely restructure your story, throwing out many many pages.

In research, you can go for a long time making little 'visible' progress. You accumulate small insights, but often don't recognize them until later. Then, hopefully, you get the big insight. Possibly this comes as you are falling asleep after a long, seemingly unproductive day, or when you are finishing up a fifty mile bike ride.

Research is, by definition, exploring the unknown. Scheduling activity is possible, but not insight. But, hopefully, you will know it when it happens.


Does doing more than one undergrad research affect my Phd admission? I'm a undergraduate Physics student, and also doing double major on Mathematics.According to my plan, I will both do undergrad research on both physics and mathematics more than once.

What I am curious about is, whether doing more undergrad research in physics or mathematics affect my Phd admission,and if it is, in which way ?
Of course, if I do some noticeable work on them, it will affect positively but what exactly I am asking is if all of the research will be on just "undergrad research" level?

If you want to get a PhD, your goal as an undergrad (in addition to learning as much as you can) should be to show your professors (who will eventually write your recommendation letters) that you have the qualities needed to succeed in graduate school.  These include, for example: curiosity, creativity, perseverance, a strong work ethic, and a solid grounding in the basics of the field (such as calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations, in mathematics).

What you don't want from a letter writer is something like: "Leth was in my class and got an A".  What you do want is for your letter writers to each share different anecdotes where you clearly display these qualities needed for success in graduate school.
One way to demonstrate these qualities is through a successful undergraduate research project.  But undergraduate research is neither necessary nor sufficient.  Two or three mediocre research projects is better than nothing, but not much.  One strong project is much better than three weak ones.
But there are other ways to impress your letter writers.  Maybe you do an independent study and really work your butt off, showing that you know how to learn on your own and that you have the passion and desire to make it happen.  Or maybe it's not even an independent study; maybe it's just a class project where you really deliver far more than what is required.  Your goal should be to make your letter writers more than happy to have you as a graduate student, if you were to apply to do graduate work with them.


How to make a list of potential graduate school? I will be applying to graduate schools the upcoming fall and I have a list of schools that I like based on professors, research work, etc. But, how can I realistically narrow my list to schools I can actually get into? I am a top student at a good public school, but it is certainly not an MIT or Ivy.

I have around a 3.9 and will have taken 4-5 grad courses by the time I graduate, with research with 3 different professors and a minimum of 1 paper co-authored.

I feel like getting into schools such as Berkeley or CMU is out of my reach, but I love their programs.

Can anyone suggest me a strategy which makes it much easier for me to make choices?
(Lesser the number of available options, quicker and better will be the decision.)

It sounds like you already have 1) a list of potential schools and 2) some idea what schools you can realistically get into and which you cannot.

So take these schools and split them into three groups: those you should be able to get into (safety schools), those for which you have a 50-50 chance, and those which you would be delighted to get into (like Berkeley and CMU). It doesn't have to be a very scientific split; a rough one based on your intuition or whatever it was that made you think Berkeley and CMU are beyond you suffices. Then apply to some schools from all three groups.


How to judge the quality of academic paper (students pov)? I have a master's degree (in maths) and would like to pursue a PhD in future and have at least a year in hand. So I thought of picking some new research topic by reading articles in journals. The problem is how do I know the material I am reading is of a suitable standard. I often hear (and I don't mean to belittle all researcher) rumours that few researchers publish for the heck of publishing. So I don't want to waste my effort in reading those papers. One of my criteria to shortlist papers is to look for the journal which has high brand value. But this method looks superficial to me. So can you suggest some pointer on how does one goes about finding a new research topic of which he/she has no advance knowledge (although I have the pre-requisite knowledge to pursue that topic).

First, I think that a paper is a "good" paper if you can learn something from it. It doesn't matter what other, more experienced, people have to say. The reason for that is ....

Most serious researchers in various fields, math in particular, write for a certain audience. That audience doesn't include novices. Papers are written for other people at a similar level of sophistication as the writer and who are able to fill in details of argument without it being explicitly provided in all cases. Occasionally this leads to errors as you might guess, but it is the way of it.

But, on the other hand, most researchers also include a fairly complete list of references and perhaps an even richer bibliography. This is where the novice, even a beginning doctoral student, has to start. Read a paper that seems interesting or was given to you by an advisor. When (not if, when) you get stuck, go to the references for older papers that contribute to the ideas of the current paper. Start to read and understand them until you get stuck. Then, ... Do this recursively until you reach Euclid if necessary, or until you understand the current paper you are reading and then work forward through the stack (or the tree, actually) until you understand the paper of interest that started you on the quest.

Take a lot of notes as you do this. Don't depend on memory, especially short term memory to keep you on track.

You may need to do this process a few times until you become more accustomed to the ideas and gain insight into what is going on in that small part of math. The papers contain a lot of detail, but it is the insight, not the detail, per se, that gets you to true understanding.

But the notes you take will help guarantee that the whole (painful) process actually leaves you better off at the end. If you actually learn something, you have made a personal advancement.

I'll note for completeness that some people in science and math do write for a broader audience. Carl Sagan was noted for this, of course, as is Neil deGrasse Tyson. You can learn quite a lot from such authors, but not to the same depth you get from specialists writing for other specialists.


Is it a plus point for my PhD application to mention that I am already a PhD candidate at some other university? I have recently completed my MS and joined as a Ph.D. candidate in the same university. But I want to move out. I am filling the application for an other position where they have asked the following:

Please give the full contact details for you at your permanent institute.
If you do not have a permanent institute, you can use the Leave empty button to
leave this page empty.

There are options to mention that I am currently a Ph.D. candidate. Is it a good idea to mention that I am currently a Ph.D. candidate? I am asking this because someone have told me that if you are currently a Ph.D. candidate, universities don't give much attention to your application.

I can't really see how it is a plus, but it could be a big negative.

The obvious question is going to be: why is this student leaving his current university? Doing a PhD involves a pretty hefty investment for both sides, and you're about to leave a university in an attempt to go to another. Universities want to be convinced that you will make it to graduation.

I would expect you to have a very good reason for this (trying to go to a better ranked school after starting at one isn't a good enough rationale to me).


What is the difference between doing a PhD in a small university versus a big reputed university in Germany? Take for example Brandenberg University of Technology versus Technical University of Darmstadt.

Does the size of a university play any role in someone's PhD research experience in Germany?

What would be the impact on someone's post-PhD career if he chooses the smaller one versus the bigger one?

Does the size of a university play any role in someone's PhD research experience in Germany?

First of all, I am assuming that your PhD does not contain any course components, because that’s the norm in Germany. Otherwise, it gets complicated and strongly depends on the PhD programme in question.

When doing a PhD, the vast majority happens within your group. The money and facilities you have available here mostly depend on what funding, facilities, etc. the professor managed to acquire. This might slightly correlate with the power of the university, but the fluctuations between groups are much higher. It makes for more sense to judge the group in this respect.

Aspects of the location that affect your PhD from outside your group will be:

Are there more groups in your general field? If yes, there will be more opportunities to interact with visiting researchers, get quick feedback on certain aspects, have a secondary supervisor who at least somewhat knows what you are doing, etc. It is a small drawback if your group is isolated at your university. (Note that you sometimes have to take neighbouring universities into account here. There are not few cases, where parts of the next university are easier to reach than other parts of the same university.)
Does the university have all the facilities that go beyond what a single group usually has, like a workshop to create special devices, analysing facilities, a supercomputer, etc.
Will you have any teaching duties and if yes, what are they? You probably want to gather some relevant teaching experience, but not spend too much time on this.
Are there enough students for your group to regularly have bachelor and master students doing there thesis? This may give you the opportunity to gather advising experience and benefit from the research output of delegated side projects. Depending on your field, however, this may also be just a huge time sink.
Many if not all universities offer workshops or similar for PhD students about teaching, scientific writing, searching for postdoc jobs, writing grants, etc.

You will get more reliable information on most of the above when you directly ask the professor you are applying to. Moreover, most of this depends on your department or faculty, and not on the university. For example, if you are doing your PhD in computer science, it does not matter whether your university hosts faculties or departments of social sciences, engineering, law, medicine, agriculture, biology, etc. (unless, of course, you are doing research about direct application to those fields). In particular some faculties have run pretty much independently over centuries; they just share a common administrative backbone, location, and name and sometimes some of their researchers collaborate with each other.

At least in Germany, the variability between individual groups within a department is higher that the variability between individual departments and faculties within a university, which in turn is higher than the variability between universities.
The main thing you probably need to consider will be whether your future potential employers are aware of this, but that really depends on what you want to do with your degree and where:
Some people just like easy categorisations like having high- and low-quality universities, even though these are completely oversimplifying things.


How to give credit for conference presentations on CV? I'm an undergraduate writing my CV.

I've given two presentations at undergraduate conferences on my (unpublished) research projects. I independently prepared my presentations but my lab mates/supervisor helped with the research. I want to list these presentations on my CV.

So my question is:

How do I properly credit the contributions of others for these conference presentations?

Should I just state the title of the talk and the conference name? Should I include the names of all the people that helped with the research? Since we didn't publish any papers, how do I determine what order the names should go in? Would it okay to list them alphabetically?

Note: these aren't peer-reviewed conference papers or anything. Any undergraduate student can submit an abstract and give a talk.

All official and known conferences will need the authors to present their accepted work in oral or poster manner, and will publish the proceedings of the conference. I am not sure what you mean by undergraduate conference. But a presentation, where no paper has been presented to the research community, is not a big shot to be declared in CV, at least because there is no clear evidence for such accomplishment.

If there were any paper, You would mention the paper in a typical manner in your CV (considering yourself and any other one, who had any contribution) and insert an unpublished assertion in front of it. But in this situation, the better idea could be citing the thing in your CV, as a Given Presentation at blah blah blah Conference. If you do it, you might better explain something about undergraduate conference, because the reader may not be aware of this term, leading to confusion.

Good luck


How to phrase an email in response to an unreasonable action by a superior? When I was admitted to my graduate course, I was guaranteed funding for six years.

Essentially, I have been doing research on a different school of thought, so I am not well liked by some of the senior professors (who have badmouthed me to department administrators), some of whom refuse to talk to me.

I completed five years and had a verbal conversation with a department administrator. They mentioned "you are not entitled to funding in your sixth year. We spoke previously. I asked whether you needed funding this year and you shook your head."

I am writing to the department administrator and will subsequently escalate this to the department head and deputy if things are unresolved. However, I don't know what tone to use. On the one hand, I need to convey the seriousness of this matter. On the other, they are my superiors.

I'm thinking of the following: "I refer to our conversation on date X. You mentioned that I would not be entitled to funding for the upcoming year because (repeat conversation). I would like to know if I heard you correctly. As this is an important matter, I appreciate your reply by date Y. If you do not respond, I will assume that there are no inaccuracies in my recollection. Finally, I reiterate that I made no indication that said I did not need funding."

Is there a better way of phrasing this?

I think it is too soon to make any demands of the supervisor to answer by a certain date or anything like that, nor is there a need to ask him to explain whether you heard him correctly, or to confirm or deny anything. All you need to do at this point is to lay out your understanding of events - if the supervisor wants to contest that understanding, he/she is at liberty to try to do so. A key principle for this sort of email is that you should be very clear and factual and maintain a neutral and polite tone. Something like the following:

  Dear [name of supervisor],

  I am writing in connection with our recent meeting on [insert date] to discuss my status and funding in the program. As you know, my acceptance letter to the program, dated [insert date of acceptance letter (you have a copy right? maybe attach it to the email)], states that I am entitled to six years of funding. No conditions were attached to this promise other than my maintaining my status as a PhD student in good standing in the program, which has been and remains the case. [obviously, only write all of that if those are true statements...]

  During the meeting, you stated however that I am not entitled to a sixth year of funding, based on your assertion that "We spoke previously. I asked whether you needed funding this year and you shook your head." [Note: if you put their words in quotes, make sure it is an accurate quote.] I would like to clarify that I never indicated that I did not need funding for a sixth year, either by a shake of the head or in any other way. I do in fact need and want funding, and was and still am expecting to receive it based on the department's promise, signed by [insert title: Graduate Program Chair/Department Chair, etc] [insert name of signatory to the letter] in the acceptance letter I mentioned above.

  I would appreciate if you reply to this email at your earliest convenience to acknowledge that you received it. Thank you for your continued support and for your assistance in correcting any misunderstanding that may have occurred.

  Yours etc,

  [your name]

Once the supervisor replies, if they explicitly confirm that you will get the funding, great; if they do not explicitly confirm that but don't contest your understanding, you have now put yourself in a good position to go to the department head; and if they try to contest your description (like claiming that you did shake your head), I think they will appear rather foolish for relying on such signals rather than statements documented in writing or even a verbal statement, so again you are in a good position to go argue your case with the department head.

Note also that I added a polite request for an acknowledgement and nothing more. The supervisor is free to ignore that, but again doing that will make them look bad, and in any case if you don't get a reply within a few days, you can and should proceed to the next stage of the plan.

One other option I can think is to copy the department head on the email. That is a bit of a "nuclear option" and is likely to be interpreted as an aggressive and antagonistic move (nobody likes to be made to look bad in front of their supervisor), so probably it's too soon for that level of response. But it's something to consider in the event that you want to dial up the level of forcefulness of your response.

Hope this helps, and good luck!


In choosing a postdoc, how should I prioritize mentorship versus research opportunity? I am an experimental physicist looking for postdocs in applied physics and materials science. In choosing groups to inquire about a position, I am trying to determine how to prioritize potential mentorship versus potential research opportunity. I see large "super" groups with huge numbers of postdocs and students. These groups have a high potential for research with lots of funding. However, I am worried about entering an ultra-competitive environment where I will receive very little mentorship from an advisor. I am wondering if choosing a smaller group will have an advantage because of receiving quality mentorship, despite the fact that the research topics might not be as leading edge or popular.

I think that the choice of mentorship versus. research opportunity* entirely depends on your own way of working/your preferences.

If you are very good at working independently, enjoy working on your own and have the ambition to become a full professor then I would pick research opportunity over mentorship.

If you need or desire a lot of guidance, or flourish when you have lots of discussions with someone 'higher up' and you don't really care whether you do cutting edge science or just good science then you might be better of going for mentorship over research opportunity.

*As a sidenote, mentorship and research opportunity don't have to conflict necessarily. There are small research groups with excellent mentoring that do very cutting edge science


"Updating" a letter of recommendation? I just realized that I forgot to mention an important detail to my professor, who already submitted his recommendation.

Is it typical to update the letter, given that the piece of information is very important?

Let me be direct here: You are already asking your professors a big favor for writing these letters for you. It is your job to give them all relevant materials up front, and if you fail in this, then you'll have to figure out a way to fix this yourself -- for example by writing to the department where you are applying, putting this information into your statement of purpose instead, or in some other way. You are overtaxing your professor's goodwill by asking him to go back, rewrite the letter, find a way to get that to the departments he sent his letters to, etc.

All of this is of course independent of the actual possibility of updating a letter of recommendation. In most cases, professors get a link to a website where they can attach a letter, and this link becomes dead either once the letter is submitted, or once the deadline for these letters passes. It may become exceedingly tedious to find a way to update a letter once that is the case.


A note vs a "research paper" I had my math paper rejected for publication. From the referee report,

  [M]y opinion is to reject this paper. In order to save its positive aspects, I propose: 1) either reduce the length of the paper eliminating superfluous parts, and presenting it as a note (not a research paper), or 2) add new material, so that it becomes a true research paper, and present it again as a new work.

I am confused. Is a note a paper that lacks content or simply one that is short? In what way does a note differ from a research paper, or "a true research paper"?

Would one consider John Nash's famous 2 pages paper Equilibrium points in n-person games and Watson and Crick's Nobel-Prize-winning 2 pages paper A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid a note or a research paper?

Lastly, how does publishing a note vs a research paper affect a scholar, e.g. prestige and/or income?

The mathematical community often considers a very short, highly focused paper to be a note.  A few journals officially categorize the papers they publish into notes and full papers, but usually no formal distinction is made.  There is no clear dividing line between these cases in general.  Typically it comes down to the author's intent: a note is just meant to record some observation in the literature, even though it may not be important enough to justify a lengthy or detailed paper, while anything else is a full paper.  Nash's paper would probably not be considered a note, even though it's short and focused, because it's too important (and arguably wouldn't have benefited from being longer).  The Watson and Crick paper is not so relevant, since papers from other scientific fields have completely different length distributions from mathematics papers.

I'm not fond of the term "true research paper" in the referee report, since it suggests that there's a clearer distinction between notes and papers.  But what the referee means is simple: you have found something worth recording as a note, but not yet enough to justify the length of your paper (in the referee's opinion).

  Lastly, how does publishing a note vs a research paper affect a scholar, e.g. prestige and/or income?

The prestige depends on the note/paper.  The ceiling is vastly higher for papers: the world's best papers are far more impressive than the world's best notes.  If you are looking for a job at a major research university, then publishing a note might help a little, but ultimately you will need to have really good papers.  On the other hand, there are plenty of mediocre papers out there, and a good note can be better than a not so good paper.

As for income, the relationship between publishing and income is tricky.  To the extent your publications help get you a job, promotion, or raise, they can make a real difference for your income.  Aside from that, you won't make any money from them.  In any case, it's difficult to quantify their effect on income.


Too old to get another math PhD degree? I got my math PhD degree more than 10 years ago, and my major is algebra. I have published some papers in some journals such as Adv. Math.. I really love math, but I am still thinking I haven't got a good and complete math education, and do not have a good picture of math. Someone may argue that I can teach math to myself. The problem is that I am a teather in a university now; I have to teach a lot of classes and have other duties. Now I have an idea which sounds crazy: I want to do another math PhD. But the problem is I am  almost 40 years old. So I am wondering if this is possible. Does someone have experience of such a second PhD?

The question is really strange. As a university professor you can attend other professor's courses, in addition to self-education. If the time and duties is the main problem, you can take an unpayed leave, or buy out some courses. There are many ways of reducing your duties and obtaining some extra time for self-study,
by sacrificing some of your salary. Given the ratio of professor's salary to the graduate student support (at least in the US) you will be still better off than by switching to a graduate school. Let me add that in most US departments graduate students have the same teaching load as professors, sometimes more.

Speaking of the age, this is not a obstacle: I have at least one friend who enrolled to PhD after 40 (having a master degree before and working as a high school teacher), and he publishes first-class results.


Life sciences publishers that support/encourage collaborative manuscript review? Full disclosure: I'm asking this as a displacement activity while I should be reviewing a paper.

Given how well journal clubs etc work, it has occurred to me a few times that reviewing a manuscript as a group would probably result in faster turnaround and more detailed comments. However, typically journals approach individual reviewers and place confidentiality restrictions on the reviewer so this mechanism wouldn't work. Does anyone know of any journals, ideally in the life sciences, which support or even encourage collaborative peer review of manuscripts?

Most of the European Geosciences Union (EGU)/Copernicus journals do something sort of like this - they've been doing it for some years and it mostly works out well. The journals are fairly reputable in their fields and from what I can see authors seem to like them.

EGU describe them as "two-stage journals with public peer-review and interactive public discussions".

Unhelpfully for you, though, these are all geosciences. (List)

The process is:

article submitted
posted as discussion paper after initial approval by an editor
reviews & responses posted publicly, with third parties able to post uninvited reviews

The system still works on individual not collective reviews, but the fact that they're public potentially allows them to build on issues raised by each other, and I can't see an obvious reason they wouldn't accept a review contributed by a group.


Interviewing in July - would start date necessarily be September? I applied for a position with the application deadline of April 30 and was contacted for an interview last week. My interview is in mid-July. Can they reasonably expect a candidate to start in September if they make a decision quickly? If so, would it be appropriate to ask for teaching release for the fall semester? Not sure if asking for a january 2016 start-date would be a deal-breaker from their perspective when they are moving so quickly. Thanks in advance.

Edit: this is in Canada.

This may depend to some extent on hiring norms in your field/country.

I would assume that if they are interviewing people in July, it is because they really need someone to start teaching in the fall.  (Otherwise they would wait another year and hire for next fall, when there would be more candidates available; I would assume that by this time of year, many people are off the market.)  As such, I wouldn't think they'd be likely to go for a deferred start date, or a complete release from fall teaching.  A modest teaching reduction is conceivable; you may be able to tell during the interview whether this would seem to be in line with their needs (e.g. if there is one particular class that they really need someone to teach).

The size of the department may also give some indication - a large department is more likely to have some flexibility than a small one.

You might be able to negotiate for classes that require less advance preparation (e.g. introductory courses instead of advanced).  You might also be able to get more money for relocation, on the grounds that you're moving on short notice.

But my gut feeling is that you should be prepared to show up and start teaching in September.


Teaching "professorships" Let me start with the following remark (which surely I am not the first person to bring up). When things work as it should, to get a job one usually needs to prove that one is competent in doing that job. For instance, for teaching at any level between primary school to high school, you need to have been trained as a teacher (for the appropriate age group and subject). This suddenly breaks down at university: courses at university, particularly the advanced courses, are mostly taught by professors, who in order to get hired need to prove that they are competent enough... no, wrong guess: not in teaching at university, but in doing research. I will never completely understand what the reasons for this are, and where the assumption that good researchers also teach well comes from (evidence to the contrary abounds). Mostly historical reasons, I guess. Nevertheless, I do not want to discuss the reasons for the status quo any further here, and I am not claiming that it is necessarily always problematic. Rather, in this question, my aim is to find out whether there are any universities, and particularly pure mathematics departments, that do things differently.
Here is the background information: I am a PhD student in pure mathematics in continental Europe and I really enjoy teaching at university level. I would even like to do this as a full-time job. But I am not sure that I want (or could) go on to do research as a post-doc in pure mathematics until eventually becoming a professor.
Some clarification: I know of the existence of some rare full-time teaching positions at some mathematics departments, but they are usually either non-permanent, or relegated to teaching courses for prospective high school teachers or basic courses that need to be taught to really many students (also from other scientific subjects). Nothing against these positions, but it is not the kind of positions that I am asking about here.
Now the question:

Is anybody aware of any university that has permanent, teaching-only (or mostly-teaching) positions in pure maths (including advanced courses)?

In other words: Is there any place where one can make a living out of teaching at a university? Or does one really need not be a full-time researcher who by contract is obliged to do some teaching as well?
Answers about universities all over the world are welcome, as I believe that different countries have very different traditions in this respect. But I am mostly interested in universities in Europe (including UK, about whose  criteria/system I don't know much about).

In the UK, what you're looking for is called the "teaching and scholarship career pathway" (distinguishing it from the "teaching and research career pathway").  A jobs.ac.uk search for the word "scholarship" reveals quite a few vacancies on the teaching and scholarship career pathway.