Conflict with department chair I am a new faculty member.  My chair is simply crazy in my perspective.

I am an assistant professor.  However, my teaching assignment is "offering individual statistical consulting/workshops", not "teaching any classes". This was indicated in my job description when I applied for this job.  However, several times, she says, "you are not teaching" - so she says that I need to do what she asks me to do because she pays my salary (I really do not know why she pays).
What she wants me to do is to write research/funding proposals and articles, then put her as the PI/the first author although they are my research ideas/works.  She has taken three studies so far.  More seriously, when she took the first one, I refused it.  Then she sent out an official letter including some other faculty, saying that she took my research proposal because it was originally her idea and I stole it.  Worse still, she then forced me to write the paper for her.
My Ph.D. is in statistics. She said that I couldn't get tenured unless I change my research field into an education field which she wanted to do. Her point was again "paycheck" - I should do something because I am not teaching.
Worst of all, she claims I am a bad person and faculty member because I refuse her unethical requests as a researcher.  Furthermore, she talks about me to all the other faculty members, causing them to hesitate to be friends with me.  Whatever I say goes to the chair.

I am preparing to leave this crazy medical school. However, my concern is the possibilities the chair could ruin my future career by using her connections.  What should I do?

I strongly suggest having conversations with other faculty in your department, to get their perspectives on what your responsibilities actually are, and on the behavior of the chair. I would also suggest speaking with deans or associate deans, but only after talking to your colleagues within the department.
The situation sounds bizarre; good luck!


What is the difference (if any) between a postdoctoral fellow and a postdoctoral intern? Are "fellowship" and "internship" synonyms? Is there a different meaning in this language, between North America and English-speaking Europe?

Sometimes there is none, depending on the field or college.

In the UK, there can sometimes be a distinction. There are certain postdoctoral researcher positions that are positions in a PI's group where one works under a professor or more permanent faculty. A fellowship in the UK system means one has research independence and is allowed to pursue her own research program freely. Sometimes postdoc interns can also do this but it depends on the field, program, and position.


Is it OK to include public domain (wikimedia commons) image in a research grant proposal? Obviously, with a proper attribution.
Thank you.

Normally yes, as long as you clearly cite the source (even if the license does not require it, plagiarism rules do) and of course the image should be appropriate for the research proposal (regardless of source).  To be sure, carefully check any rules applying to your particular research proposal; it is possible (but unlikely) they have unusual rules that may prohibit this.  For details on how to cite, see this summary page on Wikimedia Commons (thanks Buffy for the pointer).  Note: most images on Wikimedia Commons are not public domain, but under another free license — check the specific image for details (it's even possible images have been wrongly uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, but there are limits in how far you can practically go to verify that the license information there is correct).


How to convert from one grading scheme to another? I'm trying to figure out the equivalence between grade schemes in different countries.

According to some Google results:

If you are a U.S. citizen, you need a GPA of 3.2+ (it varies, some say 3.2 and some others say 3.6, etc) to apply for a position in the UK (job or university) where the prerequisite is to have a minimum grade of 2:1.
In UK 2:1 is earned if you have a 60-69% of the points. I've read that 2:1 is the same as 67%.
In Spain we use a grading scheme of 10 points. So according to (2), for have a UK 2:1 you need to have 6-6.9 points.
If you are Spanish and have 6.7, when converting it to GPA the result is 1.5.

However, if you take the above points and treat them as a math equation, the final result will be GPA 1.5 = GPA 3.2, which doesn't make any sense.

GPA 3.2 = UK 2:1
UK 2:1 = Spain 6.7
Spain 6.7 = GPA 1.5

Replacing now...

UK 2:1 = GPA 1.5
GPA 3.2 = GPA 1.5

My question is if someone has a better explanation on converting grades obtained in different countries.

There is no clear answer for conversion between grading schemes in different countries. Sure, you could numerically try to convert using ratios and proportions as you are currently tying to do but they don't really mean anything because of the following two salient reasons:

Grade Inflation and Deflation: Grades mean differently in different institutions across different disciplines and in different courses. For instance, certain highly ranked universities in the USA are very well known for grade inflation. A 3.5 overall GPA is what almost everyone gets. On the other hand, certain other highly ranked universities suffer from grade inflation where getting a 3.0 GPA in certain courses and in certain majors is very different. Hence, merely using some base metric to convert between grading schemes of different countries is not a very good idea.
Differential grading within the same country: Not every country has a standardized grading system. For instance, India has at least 5 different grading schemes that I am aware of including but not limited to absolute CGPA's on a 4.0 scale, a percentage system on 100 and a relative CGPA system on a 10.0 scale.

tl;dr

Don't convert between different grading schemes unless it is explicitly mentioned what minimum grades you need for your own country. Just apply and hope for the best.


Letting grant funder know that funds no longer needed? I am a English PhD student (focusing on literature), but this year one of my assistantships through my university has involved some grant writing for local non-profits. Recently I've been working on a small grant for a local non-profit, which will help this non-profit pay for some consultants to help it develop a strategic plan and more effective organization. (The grant is offered by a foundation that focuses on capacity-building support for non-profits in the city where I live.) Because of the impacts of COVID-19 on the non-profit sector (i.e., many of our organization's donation funds are likely to dry up), our hired consultants have generously offered to do their work pro bono.

Here's my question: what is the etiquette of letting a grant funder know their funds are no longer needed for a specific project? To clarify, I was pretty far into the grant writing process (original LOI / project proposal approved, directed to the next steps in the application process) when we learned we'd no longer need the funds for the consultation fees. (The foundation that has offered the funds is a major donor to local non-profits, so there is a good chance that we'll be applying to them again in the future--just for a different project.) Since I corresponded a lot with a representative of the foundation, I feel like I should follow up to let them know, especially as we may be applying to them again in the future ... what are others' thoughts on this issue?

(If there's a better StackExchange community for posting this question, I apologize!)

I would ask the representative. Procedures differ wildly from funding agency to funding agency.

However, I would not be worried: everybody acted in good faith, and you are asking for less money. So in all likelihood the response will just be a short email thanking you for letting them know, and telling you that they look forward to receiving new applications from you in the future.


Is it OK to work on projects from research proposal before position starts? There is considerable gap in time between submitting applications for academic positions and the time the postitions start. I'm wondering about the status of the problems listed in the research proposal during this gap. Are they off-limits and should be avoided, or is it OK to work on/think about them in the meantime? Suppose that I show up at the new institution already with a preprint on arXiv solving one of the problems from my research proposal - would it be considered inappropriate?

[My field is pure mathematics, meaning that the research tends to be relatively unpredictable and does not require external resuorces.]

I don't think you should ever delay work, especially in mathematics. It is like trying to turn off your brain. Work away. I'd even say publish all you want. You aren't being hired for specific pieces of work unless you are a consultant or such. But academic positions are nothing like that.

The "worst" case is that you show up with everything completed and have to - horrors - work on something else that extends it or is otherwise "interesting."

Kidding aside, nothing is off limits in advancing mathematics. You will only be praised for working in the interim. Your research proposal just assured the hiring group that you have ideas and will be productive.


Is writing a research paper on Overleaf risky for plagiarism? Is it safe to write research paper on Overleaf? Some of my friends say that it is not safe to write research papers on it as it is connected it internet. Please suggest. I am afraid of plagiarism.

Overleaf is unlikely to be a problem
To plagiarize your work, someone would have to

find it very valuable
hack your Overleaf account (and know it is there they need to hack) or that of your coauthors or you would have to have shared it publicly
finish the research before you do, which typically means they would have to have superior or in any case solid knowledge in the field,
publish it before you do
have more credibility than you do in the academic community, so that you can't just say that it was actually your work they are plagiarizing

Of all these factors the second one is the only one that has anything to do with Overleaf. In order for it to be the crucial issue, you already need to have a competent and well-connected researcher out to plagiarize you. While it could happen, it feels unlikely, and you probably know if you are in this situation or not.
If you do happen to be in a position that requires extreme information security (governmental research, dual purpose research, authoritarian regime, a powerful enemy out to get you), then it is a good rule of thumb to not use Overleaf or other cloud services. But in this case you really should seek help that is a lot more competent and specific than the answers here.


Standard style when citing different authors from the same group I want to cite a series of three papers (condensed-matter physics, if it matters) where the first author is a different person in each case, say authors A, B and C, but all the papers come from the same group led by author D. That is, the list of authors in each paper is "A, ..., and D", "B, ..., and D", and "C, ..., and D".

Cited independently, I would refer to these papers as "A et al.", "B et al." and "C et al.". However, I want to cite them as the most correct variant of "a series of papers by D's group".

My question is whether this is acceptable as above or it would undermine the work done by A, B and C, considering boss D was paying them but probably was too busy to work out the details of the paper, and most of the work was presumably done by A, B and C.

Is there a standard styling for these cases I can rely on?

Edit:

I finally just opted by

... as pointed out by the same group of authors on a series of papers [1-3], ...

which I think strengthens the idea that A, B, and C did not reach their conclusions separately but as part of a wider collaboration.

This is most likely a field-culture thing, but I find it very odd that you would treat the three papers as anything but independent pieces of work. If you want to indicate that the three papers are part of a series, you could always say something like

  a series of papers [1,2,3] presented blah blah

On the one hand, you want to give the "group leader" prominence, and on the other hand you clearly recognize the potential unfairness. I can imagine some of my students being rightly upset if their dissertation work was referred to as "work from the lab of Prof. Venkat".

I realize that many lab-driven disciplines are top-down in this way, but since there's a perfectly reasonable way to cite the work, I'd avoid highlighting the "lab leader" any more than merely by their presence on the author list.


How important is it for your website to have a unique domain when applying for academic jobs? I am a PhD mathematics student in the United States, and I plan to apply for jobs at liberal arts institutions over the upcoming months.

I currently have a personal website on Weebly.com, which is a service that offers free web-hosting.  The URL they've assigned me is myname.weebly.com.

Would potential employers consider this URL unprofessional?  It would be printed on my CV and business cards, possibly other places as well.  I can pay Weebly $8/month to have a custom URL, but I'd rather not do that if no one would care.  If it makes any difference, I know that myname.com is currently available through Weebly.

I don't think there is any real downside to the weebly.com domain name.

There isn't really an expectation that you have a personal website in the first place in academia.  It is "something extra", and the fact that you have it hosted on a free service doesn't seem like a downside to me.

Note, however, that if you do want to register a personal domain, you can do it for about $10 or so a year, much less than Weebly charges.  You can't map a Weebly site to a domain without a paid plan, but you could still have the domain redirect there.  Also, there are other free hosting services (e.g. Google Sites) that allow mapping the domain without extra charges beyond the domain registration.

Also note the suggestion of Nate Eldredge and others that you could use your university web page as an alternative that is free and looks more "professional".  Also, it may help your work be more discoverable.  It does have the downside of not coming with you when you change institutions, though.


Would this kind of paraphrasing be called "plagiarism"? Original Text:

The questionnaire was designed by the researcher to gather data on the
perceptions of students based on their experiences in the blended
environment. It consisted of Likert-type items and open-ended
questions. The content of the questionnaire was derived from a
literature review on blended learning and authenticity of learning,
from conversations with teaching staff, and from the researcher‟s
previous experiences in the use of blended format in teaching and
learning. Experts from Doctoral Committee were asked their opinions in
order to ensure content validity.

My Text
This part will be readded after finalizing my thesis.

Assuming that (Gedik, 2010) is the source of the original, I don't think you have a problem since, (a) you give the citation and (b) the ways to express the needed ideas here are very limited.
You are clearly making reference to the original work. And it is clear you are describing the work of another.
The essential elements describing the questionnaire must all be present and you have minimally done that.


What to do if I have found a major issue with my model before a conference presentation? I submitted an abstract to a major conference in my field. I am presenting tomorrow at the virtual conference and the video is already uploaded, no conference proceedings were submitted. However, today, I came across a major issue with the modeling technique used in my research. This might be seriously challenged tomorrow. Also, this might influence the conclusion of the results as well.
How do I answer if the issues with my modeling strategy are questioned during my presentation? I can't remove my talk at the last moment. I am worried that I will be ridiculed tomorrow.
What can I do?

Things like this happen. No one should be ridiculed for honest errors. It's a good thing that you found this one before someone else did.
Your description suggests that some (even much) of your work is still OK, since you say only that the problem  might affect your conclusions.
If you can describe the problem (even with no solution) in advance, you should.
Does the conference format allow you to introduce your talk with some preliminary comments, either via zoom (or some such) or with a short new video upload? Ask the organizers.


How to avoid plagiarism when you come up with an argument for a class paper and later discover that another author has the same argument? I am a graduate student in English working on my final paper for a class. I was assigned a particular author to write on, but about halfway through the semester another student wanted to write on that author so I agreed to write on a different author. I had already read some articles on this second author so I thought I would be able to come up with a good paper topic. I thought I had come up with a good idea for a thesis, but as I did my research, I found that my thesis contained essentially the same idea as a supporting argument expressed in one of the articles I had read. I expressed my concern to my professor as I began working on my paper; he read the first few pages and said he did not see a problem. I have cited the author's statements and ideas that I feel coincide with mine, but I still have a troubled conscience -- I feel that my ideas are not sufficiently my own and that my thesis is far too similar to the arguments in this article. It is too late for me to start on another paper, but I'm not sure that I can in good conscience turn in this paper. If anyone has any advice, I would appreciate it.

From your description, it doesn't sound like a question of plagiarism (you say you're referencing the relevant paper, and I assume you're either paraphrasing it or using quotation marks as appropriate), but a possible lack of novelty. Lack of novelty is more of an issue when you're trying to publish in a journal or present at a conference. Usually class assignments don't have to be novel; they just have to reflect your own work. If your professor is satisfied, I don't think you have a problem. I would do my best to extend the ideas from the other paper, i.e. add something to their analysis.


How much revenue do academic authors make on their published books? Is there any dataset that look at how much revenue academic authors make on their published books?

I am aware of the question How much do Springer-Verlag authors make per book sold? but answers there focused on royalties (i.e., data on number of sold books is missing), and the question was on Springer-Verlag only.

I am most interested in the computer science field (machine learning and natural language processing in particular), but I am curious about other fields as well. I am most interested in the United States but curious about other countries as well.

I co-authored a research monograph in a rather specialized area of applied mathematics.  I have received about $300 in royalties over several years.  I think this is typical.

For most authors, the important consideration is not how much money they will make, but how effectively the publisher will be able to distribute the book.  This usually means going with a well-established publisher.  I know some highly-respected authors that also shop around to find the publisher that will distribute their book for the lowest reasonable price.


finalising a postdoc employment contract I have been offered a 2-year postdoc position in a good Dutch university. What they sent me so far is an email stating that they would like to offer me the position, and whether I would like to take up this position. I then replied with a yes instantly. Does this exchange of emails constitute a formal appointment decision (and acceptance)? I heard from others that it will take some time for them to formulate an employment contract. So what I shall do in the meantime is to wait and not to push them?

Also the PT's preferred start date is 1st February. What does 'start date' mean exactly? Is this the date that I will start getting paid? the date that I actually start working? If this is the case, does a starting date of 1st Feb imply that I should arrive earlier, say, in January to look for accommodation and sort everything out before 1st Feb?

Thanks in advance!

Having done a post-doc in The Netherlands, I think I can answer your questions.

Your "yes" is an acceptance, though probably not legally binding. They will take it in good faith that you have accepted. The contract may arrive in the mail for you to sign, but you may just sign on your first day.
The starting date is the date you will start and get paid from. You will probably need to go to The Netherlands earlier to find accommodation, though you could easily start everything on February 1 without causing any problems. They will understand that in your first few weeks you'll need to vanish to register yourself with the city, to get bank accounts, etc etc.

I would ask them if the have an accommodation service, even if it only provides short term accommodation. Finding accommodation in The Netherlands can be difficult.
In fact, I would simply ask them what their expectations are, essentially sending them the questions you've posted above. Unless it is the first time they've hired a post-doc, these questions will be unsurprising and they should have answers for them. The Dutch are good at dealing with direct questions (and you'll need to get used to receiving them ;-) ).


Do A+ grades (as an undergrad) matter at all for graduate school? If I get A+ grades then it will raise my GPA in my undergrad institution, as well as for Columbia which is where I want to go to graduate school for statistics. Should I try hard to get A+ grades or should I be content with As? Trying for A+ grades would not cut into any of my important academic activity such as research or my other classes because I already make all As, but it might slightly affect sleep and socialization.

Edit (from answer): To be clear I am an undergraduate right now.

If your undergrad school awards more GPA points for A+ rather than As then you should definitely try to get A+. As a matter of fact, you should always be trying to do your very best anyways. But for a top program this will be especially important. If you go to grad school, academia will be your full time 9-5 Mon-Sat job, so I would say go on and start early. treat your subjects that way in undergrad and excel in every way possible so as to get into the very best program possible.


How should I approach this unfinished research that I do not want to do? I am about to finish an undergraduate degree, with a good enough GPA that even if I got C's in all of my current classes, my final overall cumulative GPA would remain above 3.6.

Assuming I graduate with all the whistles in my diploma it would be:

Honours Bachelors of science in computer science with distinction and a minor in pure mathematics (quite pompous).

In order to complete all of those whistles I had to do supervised research for two semesters. Being a naive undergraduate, I knocked on proffessor's doors, asking for a supervisor, and one of them, very generously agreed. He suggested a problem I thought was interesting and so I started the research. I originally started throwing analysis at the problem, and started trying to solve some really complex differential equations (which kept me motivated). However I did not make much progress, so after my supervisor marked that I needed to get something, I fully changed my approach and started using some geometric approximations to solve the issue. This generated some results, but was too simple. I'd like to say that my results were inversely proportional to how much effort I was putting in the research.

Time passed, I had multiple potential solutions and a way to evaluate them. On the last week before the final submission I realised there was a bug in my code base that was destroying the results (they were mathematically impossible). I tried to find the error, but the best I could do was identify an area where a mistake could have happened.

Finally I got my evaluation on the course after presenting it. The feedback said the methods were a bit naive and could be improved on, and it was dissapointing that I didn't get numerical results (I had visual results, not numerical), however since I was not a seasoned researcher they decided to be lenient and gave me an A anyway.

I applied to the grad program at my university, and asked the same proffessor to be my supervisor for the grad program. I am in desperate need of financial support until the grad program starts, and so my supervisor said I could do summer research for him and in the meanwhile we could discuss what the grad project could be. What he wants me to do is finish my previous work and get a publication.

The issue is that I legitimately feel that dinking bleach would be more motivating (I am using this metaphor to convey just how much anxiety this is giving me). This research really does not appeal to me in any way or form, and the interesting part is over, all that is missing is finding the bug, which could take more than two weeks to solve and implementing a couple of modifications to make my naive methods less naive if things go well, or complete failure to finish it in the worst case.

In addition to that I have been doing independent research simultaneously as I have been taking courses and doing everything else. Although this independent research still needs a lot of work, it's in a good place, I have already improved many of the papers I have read and have multiple ideas to explore. In an ideal world I would win the lottery tomorrow and I could just support myself while I carry on with this research.

I am not sure how to approach my supervisor and tell him I don't want to finish this research, nor how to suggest to do my research instead and get a publication out of that, or even if I should touch on this topic at all.

Talk to your supervisor when you know how long you will need to finish the publication.

You are currently in the phase of a project where you have to make very sure everything really works. This is usually the least motivating stage, but it is absolutely necessary. So your supervisor will (hopefully) push you to go through this phase and finish the publication, because finishing research projects is something you have to learn as a budding researcher.

Of course, not every project should be finished. If the costs (time invested) of a project outweigh the benefits (results and publication strength), your supervisor may want to abandon the project. It is important to find out how long you still need, and only then (if still applicable - maybe it's a two-week bug fix that doesn't feel like drinking bleach) have a discussion with your supervisor. You can bring up your independent research during that discussion as well - either as an alternative or as a next project.


Is it advisable to talk about "learning things I don't know in the field" as one of the plans for future in statement of intent? I am going to have a slight change in my field of study which is acceptable by the faculty I'm applying in for Master's. But because of this difference, I assume, I probably know less about the field than a Bachelor's graduate of the new field. In my statement of purpose, should I express that I'm willing to take care of the missing credits and I'm eager to learn what I don't know?

Although I don't want to say what you should or should not write, this is my suggestion.

There is a difference between a Masters by Coursework and Masters by Research, as in the latter you most likely will be asked to provide a new contribution to science, while for the former you will most likely 'simply' extend your knowledge through subjects.

Knowing it's an application for Masters by Research, I suggest reading up on the research you're interested in, mention why you're interested in it and how you can contribute to that field. I think the reviewers are more interested in your enthusiasm and how you can contribute.

Mentioning that you're willing to take credits is a sign that you're afraid of not knowing enough, and could be a sign for reviewers that you're not confident. On the other hand, it does show that you know your limitations - but when you decide to mention it, don't make it the main item of your letter.

In the research field however the learning does not always happen through subjects, it most often occurs through literature review. Although subjects are very beneficial if exactly in the area of research, I think that it's sufficient to demonstrate that you are capable of working in the field of study.


Is it common to refer to someone as "Prof. Dr. [LastName]"? I have generally only heard people refer to professors as either "Dr. Smith" or "Prof. Smith". However, I received an email that referred to the keynote speakers at a conference as "Prof. Dr. Smith". Is this common? (It is for a conference in taking place in the EU and I am from the US if that helps).

German academia traditionally expects that one will use all relevant titles, so Prof. Dr. is pretty common there. Likewise other places with an academic system related to Germany in some way. As you note, in the US this would be very uncommon and the two titles you mention often used interchangeably there, even when it isn't clear that both apply.

And, if I remember correctly, it is always Prof. Dr. and never Dr. Prof. since the professorship was earned after the doctorate and is a "higher level" honorific. But "Herr Prof. Dr." doesn't fit that rule, I guess.


For a numerical simulation paper, is it necessary to include boundary conditions and initial conditions in the paper? I am writing a paper on an engineering topic. We have an experimentally validated simpler model.

Questions:

The current paper extends the previous model for a more complex problem and explores the area numerically. Is it necessary to always include experimental validation for a numerical model, especially since we have already validated it for a simpler case? Is this enough for publication?
Since the primary domain equation, boundary condition and initial condition is the same (what varies between the simpler model and the more complex model is the parameters in the domain equation are more complex), is it necessary to include the boundary condition and initial condition in the paper as well, or can I just refer to the previous paper/include in the appendix? I am trying to reduce the size of the paper, and make it more readable.
The simulation methodology is more complex, because of the increased complexity of the domain equation. Does it help if I include the simulation methodology in the paper? Or should I just put it in the appendix?

Is it necessary to always include experimental validation for a numerical model?

Typically, yes, this is necessary. When you are going to publish an altered model (e.g., a more complex one), you need to demonstrate how the modifications play out in an experimental setup.

  Is it necessary to include the boundary condition and initial condition in the paper as well, or can I just refer to the previous paper/include in the appendix?

You may choose to either refer to your previous paper, or include them in your new paper (or do both). It is perfectly fine to refer to your previous publication, e.g., when you are trying to reduce the paper length, as long as the conditions are identical. However, when you want your new paper to be self-contained, or your previous paper was at a more obscure venue, it might be wise to include them in the new paper.

  Does it help if I include the simulation methodology in the paper? Or should I just put it in the appendix?

It is impossible to decide that without knowing the specifics, the journal's policy, and what is usual within your field.


I get overwhelmed while self studying courses. What can I do when I can't sit in classes anymore? I am learning a new numerical modeling technique (molecular dynamics) that requires learning graduate level maths and physics concepts. I am learning from youTube videos and books. However, I am getting all overwhelmed and am retaining nothing.
I am feeling disappointed because I am not able to grasp the subject that is very important for my postdoc success. My entire postdoc contract is based on the assumption that I can learn this in 6 months and produce results in the next 6 months.
I cannot sit through classes as postdocs are not allowed to do so in my university. I have access to online materials only.
I am feeling super stressed out and overwhelmed. Any advice?

Reading and watching videos is not a substitute for learning. Treat the material like you would if you were in a class. Find exercises that you can do to assure that you have "mastered" the material. Take notes. Make checkpoints at which you can assess your progress. You learn from reinforcement and feedback. The latter is hard in online learning. Find someone who can give you some feedback and answer questions. Find a working group if possible and learn it as a group, reinforcing one another.
I wonder, also, whether you can informally sit in on a course while not taking it. A friendly professor might permit it and even let you take exams informally. I've done this as a professor, actually, when wanting to learn the basics of a new field.


How are mathematicians paid to do research? How are (pure) mathematicians paid to do research? Let's say my interests lie in the foundations of mathematics and I want to do research in that area. How am I going to get paid for that in the traditional context of academia?

In the US, 99% of long-term positions that involve being paid to do research in pure math are tenure track faculty positions, colloquially known as professorships (in the US, they follow the progression Assistant Professor -> Associate Professor -> Professor). A professor is paid to teach, do research, and to a lesser extent, to do a variety of other vaguely related things that are discussed in many places on this website and elsewhere.

Professors teach and do research. It is not true that (quoting from one of the comments) “mathematicians are not paid to do research, but instead do research on the side and teach to make a living”. It is also not true that (quoting from another comment) “at some universities, research is the main job and teaching is a necessary byproduct”. Perhaps some professors have the mindset that their job is “mainly” about one or the other thing, but that’s simply a matter of personal perception rather than an objective truth. The objective truth is that professors teach and do research, and are paid to do those two things. Nothing is “on the side” or is “the main job”.

It is also not the case that (as seems to be implied by another answer) all math professors have, or need, grant funding to do their work. Grant funding is good to have, and getting it is both a catalyst for and a side-effect of career success. It can also give your salary a modest boost. But most of the funding doesn’t go directly into your pocket, and there are plenty of math professors who have steady employment and do quite well in their research without having it.

Finally, there is a very small number of mathematicians who have permanent, full time positions doing only research. Examples of places where such positions exist are the Institute of Advanced Study, and Microsoft Research. Those positions are very prestigious and rare, so hoping to land one of them is not a viable career plan.


How to write proper nouns such as company names whose spelling is nonstandard in reports? I am currently writing a paper on accessibility and I am talking about some companies in my report. How do I write a company name, product or otherwise when the word is not spelled correctly?

For example:

  I went to ToysR’us at the weekend.
  I visited the Change4Life website.

Is it acceptable to just write it as normal, or should you put the word in italics or quotation marks?

I challenge your contention that these things are spelled incorrectly.  When you write 'Toys "R" Us' you are correctly spelling a proper noun.  Names are signifiers, and the entity who controls the name controls how it is correctly spelled.  I would not have told my high school friend whose last name was "Tomson" that his name was spelled wrong just because for most people it was spelled "Thompson."  Likewise, 'Toys "R" Us' has chosen a particular spelling for its title, and that's the correct name.

So now comes the question of how to communicate such titles, and here, I see four basic cases:

Just use it as written, and count on people to understand: not great with Toys"R"Us since quotes are semantically loaded, but fine for a well-understood "misspelling" like Google.
Often, there are commonly used variants that are simpler.  If you say Toys R Us, people will know what you are talking about even without the quotes, so its OK.  Same with the artist formerly known as Prince. If you say Toys Are Us, however, you've gone a step too far and "corrected" the name into something incorrect.
Put it in quotes, like I did in the first paragraph: 'Toys"R"Us' (here I made the unusual choice of single quotes because of the presence of double quotes in the name).
If you think it is still strange enough that you think people will think you misspelled it, you can add [sic] afterwards, as in "Tomson [sic]"

I don't like italics, as a solution, personally, since I generally see italics used for emphasis or for definition, and neither is the case here.


How can I get a list with all papers that cites one person's papers in the last month? I want to know which papers cite papers of author X in the last 30 days or 60 days. Is such a query possible? I don't know any provider that supports that kind of view on authors' citations.
I can use alerts from Google Scholar to get that information every week. But I want to do this as a search query right now. Semantic Scholar also does not provide this opportunity. Does anybody know a site that supports this query?
How can I acquire this information without using Google Scholar and going in the citation of every paper of the author and sorting them by date or restricting the date range?

Microsoft Academic provides something close. It creates a profile page for each author, and under the "Cited By" tab, you can see all the papers that cited that author's papers. I do not know how accurate it is in practice, however.
There doesn't seem to be any direct way to filter out citations by the last 30-60 days. But you could still get the information with a little bit of work. In the left pane under the "Cited By" tab, there's a "Filter By" option where you can filter by year. You can then sort the citations by selecting "Sort By Newest First" in the drop-down menu on the right, and then traverse the list for the duration you are interested in. This is not as bad as the case with Google Scholar since you don't need to check for each publication separately, all you need to find is the cutoff point in the dates.
There also seems to be an API to access the data, so you could look into that as well in case it is useful, and it may possibly provide more fine grained access to the data. I haven't tried using it, however.
Screenshot for reference:

Note: I am not affiliated to this service in any manner.


Is going straight from undergrad to a PhD program cheaper than doing a Master's degree first? I've been led to believe that it's much easier to get money (assistantships and fellowships) as a PhD student than as a master's student, and so it's cheaper to go straight to a PhD program if you know you want to get a PhD. This is supposing that you spend the same amount of time in grad school with both routes. Is this correct? And are there other significant factors in determining whether or not it's cheaper to go straight to a PhD program?

Edit: I'm hoping to study computer science, if that's relevant. If I do a master's, it'll be in the US, but I'm not sure if I'd want to do a PhD in the US or in France. You can just assume the US for this question.

Edited according to new information OP gave. I'm not a CS major so someone else could provide a better answer.

In my knowledge on the field of CS, I believe that most universities will give you full tuition waiver and living stipend, and you will be expected to work as RA or TA along the way. I do know some of the last year PhDs who taught intro class in undergrad CS as instructors.

  I've been led to believe that it's much easier to get money (assistantships and fellowships) as a PhD student than as a master's student

PhD students are more likely to be under assistantships and fellowships, and most likely it may be required for them to be under assistantships or fellowships. Some excellent Master's student may also get such opportunities. However, if you are referring to opportunity cost, the answer becomes more of personal preference than an absolute answer. If you know that you ultimately want to do PhD, it is financially better to go straight into PhD without having to pay for your tuition for Masters. However, going through masters may provide a better chance for your admission acceptance. You will also be more sure about your research interest; jumping into PhD is a huge investment, so it's wise to explore before committing. There are many CS majors that I know personally who went on to MS before going into PhD.

  And are there other significant factors in determining whether or not it's cheaper to go straight to a PhD program?

I think ultimately you have to check with the graduate programs about their funding. There are many Master's programs in CS that provide partial tuition waiver, and if you become a TA, they may even waive all your tuition in some universities. Look into your universities to see if they have such programs available.

If finance is one of your concern, the advice that I've heard is to work after undergraduate in research institutions or industry. In that way, you can earn some money for yourself, while boosting your resume and giving time for yourself to discover if you like the research topic you were initially interested in. If you end up in an industry job with little research aspect, publishing papers along the way is excellent way to show admission committee that you are interested in academia.


Is my potential phd supervisor ethical? I am an international student from an Asian country. I recently emailed one PhD supervisor at a well-ranked university in London with my CV attached to see if there are any PhD opportunities for me. The supervisor replied to me very quickly and invited me to have a Skype conversation with her.
She only asked about my research interests but nothing else during the Skype chat , which I actually considered as an informal interview (she even didn’t introduce her lab to me). After the Skype chat, she asked me to write my own proposal and proceed with the formal application, which made me to think at least she was happy with my application. After that, I drafted a few research ideas and sent them to her. She finally agreed with the ideas and edited the proposal for me for a few times.
From sending her the first email to finishing the research proposal, it took me around three months. We had more than 20 emails and one more Skype chat during that time. As it was an extremely complicated and tiring process, I think the reason why she continued to help me with the proposal was because she wanted to take me as a student. Otherwise, she can say no in any stages during this process.
The requirement of the university is to have a formal interview for all prospective phd student. The interviewer was the phd supervisor. However, I was rejected by her after the formal interview, which I couldn’t understand at all. If you want to reject me, why did you spend so much time on me and give me false hope? I just think this is not very ethical, as if you said no earlier, I would have had chances of finding other supervisors in the same university (I really wanted to get into this uni, the supervisor was actually less important).
So I am wondering here how you think about this supervisor (i.e why she rejected me in the end while writing the proposal with me during the past three months) and if this is normal in Western/UK culture?

Here is another perspective: a professor offered you substantial help with your application and you end up complaining that they wasted your time. Trying to figure out whether you’d be a good fit, they discussed research with you  at length and help you draft a research proposal (which you hopefully use to improve your acceptance chances in other applications). After several days (or weeks) of discussion they decided that you’re ultimately not a good fit.
There can be a million reasons: another student was a better fit, funding was denied, research needs changed and so on. Rejection sucks, and I do sympathize, but it sounds like the professor went waaaaay out of their way to help a stranger; their reward? Getting trashed online for it.
Your lesson from this should be to not place all your chips on one advisor so to speak. When I interview candidates I implicitly assume they’ve applied to at least 10 other places and discussed their work with others. I had prospective students and research fellows rescind my offers after I had invested a ton of time and effort into getting them admitted. It sucks, but that’s life.
Edit: seeing the discussion in the comments regarding foul play, I don’t think that’s likely. While there might be a chance of that, think about it - why would anyone not want to hire someone who has great ideas? I don’t see the causal relation here. Coming into research with a non-cooperative mindset won’t help you in the future.


What gets a paper rejected after conditional acceptance? In computer science conferences, the following publication timeline is somewhat common for conferences:

For those who have been involved in program committees, what gets a paper rejected after conditional acceptance? Further, does this happen often? Is there a common percentage of papers this happens with?

I have been a part of computer science program committees that actually do reject papers that do not meet the conditions of their acceptance.

In my experience, papers are generally classed into two categories, essentially corresponding to "minor revision" and "major revision" for a journal. The papers that are basically acceptable in their current state are in the first category, and the organizers mostly just trust that the camera-ready will be acceptable as well---after all, it's in the authors' interests to improve it further.

Papers in the second category often get assigned a "shepherd" or, in rare cases, a second round of review, to ensure that they actually meet the minimum quality standards of a meeting. In my experience, this second category is much more rare than the first, and is not used by a large number of conferences.  In general:

The big first-tier conferences are often already overflowing with strong submissions, and don't need to bother about trying to cultivate borderline papers.
More specialized or not-quite-as-good conferences are more likely to make provisions to help turn borderline papers into solid papers, in order to make sure they end up with enough strong papers.
Low-ranked conferences often aren't very choosy in any case.

Turning to understanding the state of a particular paper: look at the process you've been told is going to happen. If you're being told about something like another round of evaluation or a shepherd, then your paper is likely borderline and you probably need to work hard to improve it to keep it from being rejected.  Otherwise, "conditional accept" is likely to be more a matter of wording than serious judgement questions.


What can academics and students do to reduce racism in academia? I am a postdoc at a university in the UK. Before I came here, a friend warned me that racism is common in the UK. True enough, during my first few months here, I have already received a couple of racist gestures and jeers, including one instance inside the university campus, possibly from a student.

What I would like to ask is this: what part can we play, as academics and students, to reduce such instances of racism in the academic settings?

I come from Indonesia, and being Chinese, racism has been a part of my life. I have seen signs of improvement, but when I grew up, I still remember how it was. I am not complaining about UK, although I must admit that during my study in Norway, I experienced hardly any instances of racism or discrimination whatsoever. I am not asking which country is the worst. I share my experience just to show that it is real. I am not asking how to cope with racism, either. I am asking if there is anything I can do, or we can do, as academic community, to reduce instances of racism in academia, to make it a better environment for an increasingly international academic population. I am citing UK, because that's where I am now; it could have been another country. But wherever I am, I have a part to play in making it a better place.

One of the forms of racism that UK universities suffer from is that they use unfiltered student opinion to inform hiring as well as evaluation of academics.  Academics with foreign accents or unfamiliar (or particularly formal) appearances that the students don't like then suffer.

Interestingly this form of racism is widely understood and largely eliminated in the retail sector where no one would be allowed to choose the race of an employee based on the preferences of their customers.  It is also a form of racism we could easily eliminate from academia if we honestly faced up to it.

I think the point of my answer has been slightly lost (see comments below). The point is that the students are not asked "Can you understand what the academic says clearly?". They are merely asked to rate the academic using a number and are not required to give any reasoning. This hides any prejudices they have and allows the hiring/evaluation committee to use racial preferences without having explicitly to admit they are doing it. The committee just says "They got low student evaluation scores".


Will a publication in one subfield of my discipline help me get into graduate school in a different subfield? I am a psychology undergrad student. I am currently working on a project that will be submitted for publication later this year. However, the project I am working on is in the sub-field of psychology that is not of my interest (environmental psychology). I am planning to apply for PhD programs in social/personality psych. (Sadly I didn't get a chance to conduct a research project in that field.)

Although my publication could be a strong evidence for my research potential, my concern is that this publication is irrelevant to my research of interest. Thus, how can I convince the grad school that I am a good candidate for the social/personality field?

Even if your publication were in physics or economics or any other field, it would still be a positive component of your application. When I look at graduate applications, a publication record--while not essential--is valuable because it signals the following:

Interest in doing research
Initiative to get into a lab and work on a project
Familiarity with what primary research is actually like
A close enough relationship to a faculty mentor for me to pay particular attention to that mentor's letter of recommendation

All of these hold in your case.


How can I help my advisor not lose face when changing from a thesis to non-thesis program? I am a comajor masters student who is experiencing difficulties in timely responses from my advisor. It has taken an average of almost 4 months for me to get feedback each time I have received feedback on my thesis since leaving campus.

As a result, I am trying to  convert from a thesis to a non-thesis based MS, take an additional course this fall, and be done. I would need to modify my program of study to include some independent study credits (requiring my advisor approval), representing my non-published thesis work, and be done this fall. The additional work is well worth it to me to avoid the uncertainty of depending on an advisor who is unreliable for timely feedback.

Because of these delays which are likely going to make even a fall thesis defense impossible, I have been in contact with the Ombuds office at my University. At their suggestion I then talked with the faculty who is the director of my graduate program and both seem to think this is the best outcome. The graduate director thought my advisor might resist this idea because it causes him to lose face.

I need my advisor's permission to convert to the independent study.If I do not receive this, I will have to take some additional credits - which I am prepared to do, though this is non-optimal.  Technically I need his permission to switch committees, too, though I have been told him refusing this is incredibly unlikely. Having suggested the idea to my advisor via email about a week ago, I have (unsurprisingly to me) not heard any response.

What strategies should I use to work with my advisor to change my program of study and committee which help him save face, but simultaneously causing my issues to be resolved in a way which results in him signing the paperwork?

The only reason I care is I want him to approve my program of study change, so I have to take less credits. If I didn't need this approval I would just drop the paperwork off to change my committee and be done (and easily escalate if he refuses)...

Why are you worried about helping save face for this person?  It sounds like they have been nothing but problematic.

If the department is OK with you switching to a non-degree program and graduating, just do it and get out of there.  Based on what you have reported, there seems to be no benefit for you doing otherwise: you're just making a lot of excuses for what is very poor behavior. For example, it doesn't matter if supervising your thesis is "low priority" and your advisor is "very busy"---supervising your thesis is part of your advisor's job.

Given that you are have already engaged both the program director and the Ombuds office and gotten their encouragement to proceed on this path, just go ahead and finish your degree without the thesis.  The only disadvantage you are likely to have is that you're not going to be able to get a good recommendation letter from your former advisor---but then, would you have been able to anyway?


How to justify selection of existing algorithm for a new application area? So, I have found an application which could benefit from a machine learning algorithm:

There is a pretty standard method in my area of research for design of experiments and I have discovered that one step could be automated to save time. The automation can be done with a variety of standard machine learning algorithms and I've selected one that:

is used pretty often, according to literature
provides very satisfactory results (high accuracy) on my data

I am currently writing a paper on my findings. My question is, how could I rule out the alternatives or at least justify my choice (for example, in the "related work" section) against other algorithms that could possibly work better/be more suitable?

Considering machine learning is not my strongest skill, I have tried to implement most of the other state-of-art algorithms to compare to, but for some of them I just don't have the knowledge to do so.

*My question is similar to this one: What's the best way to justify your choice of baseline methods for academic paper?, but the difference is that my paper's novelty is about the new application area, rather than a new algorithm.

There is a pretty standard method in my area of research for design of experiments and I have discovered that one step could be automated to save time. The automation can be done with a variety of standard machine learning algorithms and I've selected one that:

It sounds like you are working out a problem in your field that has never before been addressed using machine learning algorithms, and you are the first to try this approach.

  is used pretty often, according to literature
  provides very satisfactory results (high accuracy) on my data

The application of such machine learning algorithm has provided you good results, where I assume that good means at least good enough as the state-of-the-art in the field.

  My question is, how could I rule out the alternatives or at least justify my choice (for example, in the "related work" section) against other algorithms that could possibly work better/be more suitable?

If my assumptions above are correct, then your paper's main contribution is to solve a known problem in a novel way. This is sufficiently good an achievement that does not need to be justified. It sounds like your only problem is to convince a community of academics that are not normally exposed to machine learning, that your choice is reasonable (NOT optimal) and your results robust.

In machine learning - both in academia and in industry - you often find yourself
using a model that is good enough: it does not have to be the best, nor the most complex; what has to do is do the job correctly and provide interesting results. All you have to do in your paper is then to explain the algorithm and show why the results are robust.


Can you still do a postdoc if you definitely don't want to become a professor? Will your advisor think less of you for doing so? I'm a senior grad student struggling with existential angst. I'm fed up with my advisor, to the point of fantasizing about quitting my PhD. I likely don't want to become a professor. But at the same time, I still love my field of study (in the biosciences), I like research, and I have a postdoc lined up starting next year at a great institution working on a project that I am really excited about. Also, due to conflicts with my advisor, I am really worried I won't be able to graduate in time to take this postdoc job. My questions are:

Is it still worth doing a postdoc? Another way of asking is: have other people set out to do postdocs with the clear intention of not becoming a professor?  I don't mind the low pay and I'm excited about the topic, so my guess is yes... but I'm worried it might hurt my chances of getting a job in industry or elsewhere afterwards (not sure what I do want to do instead though).
Would it be a terrible idea to TELL my current advisor that I don't want a career in academia in the long run, but still want to do a postdoc? I feel that it might help with the current impossible standards he/she is holding me to, and hence speed up graduation. But, I'm worried that both my current and postdoc advisor will assume it means I won't take science as seriously, and hence won't do a good job as a postdoc.

1) If you are truly interested in the work, then yes, it can be worth doing. A post doc could also be a path to a long term non-professor role in academia, though those positions are quite rare and are definitely undercompensated. You should probably be aware, though, that your time as a post doc isn't likely to count much as "experience" in the non-academic fields unless the work is very closely related to an industry.

2) I have certainly heard stories of students that were pushed through by their advisors/departments at their request after not expressing interest in academia, so maybe this could help you - personally I think that's silly and isn't how PhDs should work at all, but reality doesn't always match the ideal. Have you done enough to earn a PhD in your department? It isn't clear what exactly your conflicts are with your advisor, and whether you are being held back when you should be allowed to graduate or if you have not been productive enough to have earned the degree.

It's also hard to give you advice on this because your current situation with your advisor suggests there isn't a lot of confidence that your advisor has your best interests at heart. That said, at least in the US where I have experience, the reality is that most PhDs in the biological sciences will not get professor jobs, regardless of their desires: the math simply isn't in favor of it when each professor graduates multiple students and yet universities aren't growing exponentially. A good advisor should understand that reality and take some interest in preparing students for whatever they want their post-PhD career to be like. In that context, I wouldn't really be interested in having a PhD or postdoc advisor who could not accept that reality, and from the advisor's standpoint I would expect the same level of productivity out of graduate students and post docs regardless of their career goals, except for being honest with them about the caliber of work that is required for those goals.


Is attending (and presenting at) a summit taken as an "honor'' in a CV elevating the chance for tenure-track applications? I've been selected by my school and an external committee to attend this-year version of this summit. As far as I've been informed up to now, the agenda is attending a bunch of interviews with both scientists and non-scientists to broadcast my research (panelists are supposed to be some Nobel Laureates).
To me, the only potential motivation to attend it would be the case based on which such attendance will be considered as an honor in my CV (something similar to, or even more significant than, what a "best paper award in X conference" does bring to mind). Namely by honor, I literally mean whatever may make my CV fancier than before to entice typical admission committees assessing assistant professorship applications. Additionally, I have to pay half of the commutation cost which is a great repulsive factor if this summit really wouldn't make any sensible impact on my future chance to hunt a tenure-track position.

All in all, would a "presenter at summit X" add anything big to my CV (considering I've some scholarships, an IEEE thesis title, a best paper award, etc.)?

I think this strongly depends on the field.

In pure mathematics, I think nobody would be the slightest impressed by "represented my university in the future research leader summit, which managed to heap 25 nobel laureates into a big pile". It might even have a slightly silly and vain vibe (whereas everyone would be ecstatic about an invited talk at the ICM).

But this could be completely different in other fields; so I think your best guess is to trust the opinions and reactions of the (senior) colleagues in your field.


MS in Mathematics, having trouble finding work outside teaching algebra 10 years ago, I got an undergraduate degree in IT/CompSci from a good school. I spent most of my hours playing video games or drinking beer, and learned only enough to get a barely passing GPA. I never used the degree, as I joined the military and did the minimum amount of time for my paid education and got out.

7 years later, in 2016, after traveling and busing tables for a couple years, I realized that I had been wasting my life. I realized that learning is cool, and that I'd wasted a great opportunity both to learn interesting things and to have a rewarding career. So, I decided to go back to school.

I applied the graduate Math program at WVU, for no other reason that I got a B in Calc 2, one of my highest grades in undergrad. They let me in even though my undergrad GPA was abysmal (2.5 or so), and that I didn't have any of the prerequisite math classes to get in. I agreed to spend the first two semesters taking undergraduate differential equations, basic linear algebra, proof writing, etc. After that, I started taking a full load of graduate courses. After three years, I survived to get a piece of paper, but having retained little actual mathematical ability.

I was exposed to a lot of math, but because I was so far behind the learning curve, very little of it stuck. I was too busy trying to pass/survive to be able to learn much. What I did pick up lies mostly in the realms of numerical methods and differential equations. It is important to note that I learned almost nothing, even in these two areas. I graduated this summer, and can only talk in very vague terms about what I was exposed to.

Now, I am unemployed and wondering why I ever gave up waiting tables. I can program a little. I can read a math textbook without my brain exploding, and that's about it.

Now, I spend about 10 hours a day reading textbooks on ODEs and Numerical Methods, as well as working practice programming exercises from Project Euler and sites like it. I'm slowly working through Khan Academy's probability and statistics courses, as I never learned any of that in school.

It's dismal. I'm depressed because I worked so hard to try to bring myself up and correct a life time of laziness. I'm still working at it every day. My wife goes to work, and I read until my eyes bleed, occasionally checking my email for the most recent employer rejection letter. Now it seems like I should never have left waiting tables.

So what's the question here? This:

What do I do? What do I study, and how long is it going to take before I know enough to be marketable?

I can teach community college, but the thing is i loved the stuff that was covered in school, and I want to apply it. Sad thing is, I'm too dumb to get a job at anything but teaching algebra to bored college kids who don't want to be in class.

First of all, jobhunting s u c k s. It sucks even more when you're trying to get into a field and it sucks further if you're not in a major metro area. It's a massive timesink with terrible ROI, but it needs to be done in order to get a job at all. The truth is that whether you get hired isn't going to just depend on your skills and experience, but also on whether the person reading your résumé thinks your skills and experience line up with what they think they want, and you don't have a lot of control over that. So honestly it's impossible to predict how long it will take before you find something.

That being said, your situation really doesn't sound so horrible to me. You're interested in and studying things that (1) you want to do and (2) employers are looking for. You have a master's degree in a marketable field. As for whether you feel you learned much during your degree, it sounds to me like you're just in a bad place with a killer case of impostor syndrome. Some employers might want to see your transcript, but they're a lot more interested in what you can do for them. So maybe try putting together a portfolio of the kind of work you want to do, which might include models or software that you developed or small projects that you did for free or for cheap for someone. (These are pretty standard suggestions.)

Finally, you can't be everything to everyone. It might feel like you need to cast as wide a net as possible, but it sounds to me like you might be spreading yourself thin and that's contributing to your frustration. Narrow it down some by considering where your best bets are in your geographic area and what you really want to do. For example, if coding is the right path, then back-burner the modeling, or vice versa. Good luck.


The concept of state of the art references in review of a paper My question is that what improvement in introduction of a paper or other parts of paper the authors should do when the reviewers wrote the following sentence:

The authors have missed many important state of the art references

Thanks in advance

I think the statement is very clear. Wether your literature research was incomplete or the reviewer just wants two of his own papers cited once more, we cannot tell.

Make sure you can exclude the first possibility, then try guessing, and either be bold in your rebuttal letter, or cite some more.

(If the reviewer gave no hint to specific references, I'd suspect that you might have a somewhat grave problem: Either you paper is indeed crappy, or that reviewer just doesn't want it published, or wants it delayed, for his own good.)


Specifically academic alternative to LinkedIn It is well-known that LinkedIn is used by scholars too, but I think that the business-friendly structure of your profile-page makes it markedly less suitable for academic purposes. Is there a specifically academic website that includes the same characteristics as LinkedIn plus the possibility to add some more scholarly elements in your profile?

ResearchGate is more academic. It allows you to add your research publications, not just papers. It also has a stackexchange like section and a Jobs section, that features listings to research and advanced positions (PHD, Post-Doc) in academic institutions and in business.

As @StephanKolassa noted you should scout Research Gate before joining (follow the link in his comment), as any other alternative.


Understanding a proposed schedule of a journal special issue For my first time I submitted a manuscript to a journal special issue months ago. The special issue had a proposed schedule as follows:

Submission deadline: 1st date
Papers reviewed: 2nd date
Revised papers reviewed and accepted : 3rd date
Notifications to authors: 4th date
Publication: Approximate date

A- If it is supposed to send a revision on the (3rd date), does it mean that review comments/scores will be delivered at the (2nd date)? In my case I didn't get review comments even after many days of the (2nd date).

B- The (3th date) mentions "Revised papers reviewed and accepted". Does it mean papers are accepted for granted after the first review round and need only a revision? I thought that usually there are 2 review rounds before final decision.

What the different dates imply would seem to be the following.

1st date: you need to have your complete manuscript submitted by this date

2nd date: Reviewers must have provided their reviews by this date

3rd date: between the 2nd date and the third date you need to revise the paper and possibly have another round of reviews if necessary. This deadline thus includes work you the editor and you and possibly additional reviewers. The manuscript should be sent in so that an editor can evaluate it and possibly find it acceptable. This this deadline probably involves a lot less time for you than just the time difference from 2 to 3 implies.

4th date: You will hear about the fate of your paper by this date at the latest.

5th date: the publication is expected to be out in printed form or assembled on the web (depends on what is seen as the final product)

So the time line may seem straight forwards but particularly date 3 is possibly preceded by a lot of work from more persons than you. I am sure an editor will want everyone to on the toes fo that stage so as not to unnecessarily delay the process.


Mistake in uploaded file type after revision I have revised my manuscript in Elsevier's journal and uploaded it along with the point-by-point reviewer comments responding. I found I have made a mistake in uploading the file.

There is the list of file types need to submit in the author page as follows:
1. Manuscript (revised manuscript)
2. Respond to reviewer
3. Revised manuscript with Changes marker

For the file type number 3, I uploaded the wrong file, which lists the changed in manuscript in detail instead of the full manuscript with changes marked.

I wonder Do I need to write an email to the editor to explain about that? Anyone has experience in this problem please give me the advice.

One more question: how long should we wait for the status change from "with journal" to "with editor" or "under review" for the revised manuscript?

Mistakes can happen.
You should email the editor or they might notice it and ask you to upload the correct one.

"One more question: how long should we wait for the status change from "with journal" to "with editor" or "under review" for the revised manuscript? "
It depends on the journal, you should check the journal website for more information or ask directly the editor.


Google Books fair use and paraphrasing I am writing some essays for some MBA courses and I will start writing my master thesis soon. I always prefer to source ideas out of books and journals, rather than online resources. Google Books is a miracle in the sense that I can find genuine free book resources and it allows me to verify any secondary and tertiary information I have.

However, I've been reading about this fair use rule recently and I am unable to answer this question now: if I want to paraphrase a specific idea (for example, the definition of "value" in marketing as stated in book x by author y), can I still go on and paraphrase it and include all the required citation? Is this still considered fair use? (I am asking this because I read that the fair use should be "trans-formative", yes sometimes I am commenting and analyzing others ideas but most of the times I am paraphrasing others ideas just for the sake of adding relevant information and literature review (especially in essays))

Fair use (in the US) has nothing to do with being "transformative." Here's a quote from section 107 of the US Copyright law (highlights are mine):

  Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

I'm am not a lawyer, but as long as you are paraphrasing sections and including the correct citations, you should be good.

EDIT: As Oswald Veblen points out below, there is more to copyright here than what a casual reading of the law would lead one to believe. Please see his comment below for more information.


Fee discounts for full time PhD Students; is this discriminatory? In computer science many conferences provide a fee discount for graduate students. This is ok, but many times these discounts are limited to full time PhD students, and not available for part time ones.

Now, part time students many times are less lucky than full time ones, as often they don't have any scholarship, so ideally they have less resources than a full time student; so why these discounts are only for full time students? It would seem more natural the opposite..

This is not discriminatory. A large number of full-time PhD students, mostly among top-tier schools, sign a non-compete type of contract that ensures that they will not have a job while attempting their degree. So for conferences awarding discounts on a financial need basis, part-time PhD students who typically have the liberty to work if they wish, do not qualify for this financial assistance. Of course corner cases exist etc. , but in general, this is the mentality.


emailing contacts after applying for faculty jobs I was talking to some colleagues at work and they strongly advised me to contact people that I know at the universities I applied and let them know that I submitted my application and have interest in joining their departments.

I thought about writing a message but I struggle on what I should ask them specifically. I don’t want to look as I am asking for a favor or being inappropriate. Any 'example' or comment on this will be very valuable.

It is a good idea to reach out to your connections at the places you apply. You want to

let them know that you are applying,
express your enthusiasm about the place,
remind them briefly about your research,
ask them to bring the application to the attention of their colleagues on the search committee.

For example:

  Dear Susan [or Dr. Williams, if you are not on a first-name basis],

  I was intrigued to see the recent advertisement for a faculty position in the area of cosmological neuroeconomics in your department. While I have a year left on my postdoc, your program matches my interests so well that I did not want to pass up the opportunity to apply. Moreover, I've always loved New England and would leap at a chance to move back to the area.

  I know we had a chance to talk about my work on hypothetical ultimatum games in extraterrestrial populations at the San Francisco meeting last summer, but you may not know that I've started to move into the area of inflationary neuroimaging. I have [list a few findings or directions here].  As such, I feel that I would bring an important set of skills to your department that is already so strong in this area.

  If you think that I might be a good fit for your department, I'd be most grateful if you would bring my application to the attention of your colleagues on the search committee.

  Best wishes and see you at AACNE in Chicago next summer.

  Sincerely,

  John Smith

You are not asking for a special favor or doing anything inappropriate. Instead, you are doing your colleague a favor by letting her know that your application is in the pool, and you are doing their department a favor by helping them sort through the hundreds of applications that a department may receive.


How to keep track of attendance and student-submitted excuses for absences? I will be teaching an introductory class, in which attendance is important, with approximately 60 students in 3 sections.  I'd like to have a system that:

Enables me to quickly mark whether a student is present.
Allows students to see their own attendance record but not other students'.
Lets students provide information about their absences.

For small classes, students email me (or I email them) for information about absences, but it would be overwhelming with this many students.

A single Google spreadsheet would be great for data entry, and students could use comments to annotate their absences, but it wouldn't protect students' privacy.

Any suggestions (besides not tracking attendance)?  My school provides Google Apps and Blackboard, although I'm willing to use other solutions.

UPDATE: I know a hack that would work in Blackboard would be to create a fake assignment for each day (attending class) and enter attendance information (0 or 1) there.  This is not ideal because (1) entering data into Blackboard is slower than putting it into a spreadsheet, (2) it would bloat the grade listings seen by the students, and (3) I don't think students could add a comment to the "grade" (the excuse).

There is a similar question, but it does not address how to incorporate excuses/explanations, which, to me, is the tricky part.

There is a sort of a solution using Google Apps, but it's ugly and it's still very much imperfect (more on that at the bottom).

You could create a master spreadsheet (that for the sake of example has the internal ID of "masterSheet") that looks like this:

      A          B         C         D         E         F
1| Name       | 9/1 | 9/1 Comment | 9/2 | 9/2 Comment | etc.
2| Student A  |     |             |     |             |
3| Student B  |     |             |     |             |
4| Student C  |     |             |     |             |

Then you'll create another spreadsheet for Student A:

    A            B                                C
1| Date | Attendance Grade                 | Comment/Excuse
2| 9/1  | =IMPORTRANGE("masterSheet","B2") |
3| 9/2  | =IMPORTRANGE("masterSheet","D2") |
3| etc. | =IMPORTRANGE("masterSheet","X2") |

You'll then make columns A and B (as well as cell C1) uneditable except by you.  You don't necessarily need to type in the IMPORTRANGE() stuff manually, and you do it formulaicly much easier if you have both the master and student spreadsheets go in the same order (although it's possible either way).

Initially, the student will just see

    A            B                                C
1| Date | Attendance Grade                 | Comment/Excuse
2| 9/1  |                                  |
3| 9/2  |                                  |
3| etc. |                                  |

As you put in their attendance grades for each day, it will show up automatically in theirs, but they won't be able to edit it if you properly protect the range.  Now, for their comments.  You'll do the exact same thing, but in reverse, and you'll get:

      A          B         C                           D         E                           F
1| Name       | 9/1 | 9/1 Comment                   | 9/2 | 9/2 Comment                   | etc.
2| Student A  |     | =IMPORTRANGE("studentA","C2") |     | =IMPORTRANGE("studentA","C3") |
3| Student B  |     | =IMPORTRANGE("studentB","C2") |     | =IMPORTRANGE("studentB","C3") |
4| Student C  |     | =IMPORTRANGE("studentC","C2") |     | =IMPORTRANGE("studentC","C3") |

If a student enters in a comment in their spreadsheet, it will show up on yours.

Now, a few comments about this:

It's ugly.  It's awful.  But it basically does what you want.  But there's also a security consideration that will greatly reduce its efficacy to be effectively useless.  Besides the fact that a student could get access to your original spreadsheet by using IMPORTRANGE() on their comment field, Google Apps requires a user to have viewing or editing privileges to the document referenced by IMPORTRANGE().  There are many ways ways to obfuscate, but it will only ever be obfuscation, and not real security.

What you should do from my experience

Just use Blackboard.  It does NOT take that long to take roll with it.  It is a spreadsheet.  On day one of the semester, I take five minutes and create a column for each day of class, and then don't have to worry about it again (and if you're teaching the same classes, ideally they're on the same schedule and you can either merge the course or clone the course so you only do it once for all three).  Then each day I just hit in 5,enter,0,enter,5,enter,5,enter,5,enter,0,enter (5 is fully present in my personal system, 0 is absent).

All the attendance columns get pushed to the bottom of the student's view (the right of the instructor's view) by using Grade Center -> Manage -> Column Organization.

For students to contact you, make it clear they must use a standard subject line that can be caught and filtered in your e-mail program into a specific e-mail excuse box.  If I accidentally marked them as absent and they weren't, or if they had an excuse, they are instructed to e-mail me using a subject line CC'd to themselves that begins "Attendance:" and that gets filtered into an attendance folder for that semester (you may want them to also add in a section, if you don't have merged courses) where I can then deal with it.  At the end of the semester, I have students verify that I properly tended to any necessary changes in attendance grades and then the one or two mistakes (if any) can be fixed then.

I regularly deal with 120 students a semester (4 sections x 30 students) and have had no problems with this set up.

Unless you have an attendance-specific module in Blackboard that provides the functionality you want, you are going to have problems finding anything that is FERPA-compliant or that is not going to be a giant PITA to use.


In-text reference (APA style) for website How do I make an in-text citation for an information acquired from a website (If the writer and publication date is known)? Is it necessary to write out the full URL? I found APAstyle.org's explanation ambiguous.

From Penn State University Libraries

  APA in-text citation style uses the author's last name and the year of
  publication, for example: (Field, 2005). For direct quotations,
  include the page number as well, for example: (Field, 2005, p. 14).
  For sources such as websites and e-books that have no page numbers,
  use a paragraph number.

So in your case you could cite (Author name, Year, Paragraph Number).

Here is some more information when you do not have page numbers from Prudue University OWL

  Sources Without Page Numbers

  When an electronic source lacks page numbers, you should try to
  include information that will help readers find the passage being
  cited. When an electronic document has numbered paragraphs, use the
  abbreviation "para." followed by the paragraph number (Hall, 2001,
  para. 5). If the paragraphs are not numbered and the document includes
  headings, provide the appropriate heading and specify the paragraph
  under that heading. Note that in some electronic sources, like Web
  pages, people can use the Find function in their browser to locate any
  passages you cite.


What is the difference between symposia and oral sessions? On the conference I attended both oral sessions and symposia had topics and speakers in a row so it didn't become clear to me where exactly is the difference? Is it in the duration of the lectures or the expected audience size or something else?

This may very well depend on the conference in question, the field, etc.

In the conferences I go to, which are in the biomedical/public health realm, broadly:

Symposia are all talks addressing a unified subjection/question/theme. "Should we be using universal contact precautions to address MRSA?", "Are causal inference methods and agent-based modeling methods compatible with each other?", etc. These talks are often deliberately solicited by the organizer.
Oral Sessions are often just collections of interesting talks on a much broader subject - "Infectious Diseases", "Bayesian Methods", etc. The talks themselves are often unsolicited, and just happen to be the best/most interesting/best fitting talks selected by the organizer.


Where to search for conferences and workshops in computer science? I'm a master student in computer science. I'm still working on my thesis and probably I will publish a paper, however I really have no idea where to look for workshops and conferences. I often hear my supervisor talking about some conferences and workshops and mentioning them, but I get no idea how he knew about them. Is there such a central website or search engine for this?

I'm new in research, never published a paper before.

A very good site for CS conferences and journals call for papers and their respective deadlines is A Wiki Calls for Papers.


Switching university after master's to do PhD somewhere else I will get a master's degree early next year. I would like to do a PhD somewhere else than at my current university. However, since I have already a more impressive publication record than many of the second or third year PhD students at my department, my supervisors are expecting me to stay. I need their reference letters to leave, so what I should do? I think they will be extremely unhappy when I tell them I will be leaving, since they have invested a lot of time to work with me (which has resulted in the said publications).

Trying to hold you hostage by withholding a letter of reference is highly unethical. If they would do that to you, you're probably better off leaving without a letter from them than staying. Otherwise they may be willing to take advantage of you in other ways if you stay for your PhD. Besides, would you ever really be able to trust each other after such behavior?

In the end, they may be disappointed, but if they've gotten several good articles with you during your master's, you've held up your end of the implicit deal in getting a master's degree. Lots of folks (in some countries and some fields) move between master's and PhD. This is normal. They will probably be willing to write you a good letter after they have some time to reflect.


Good style for frequent references to some paper I have an document extending paper [A & B, 2000]

On my work, I make many references to [A & B, 2000], some times several times on the same paragraphs as there is some need to compare both approaches.

How do I make reference to [A & B, 2000] without being redundant?

Example:

 Our work compares with [A & B, 2000] on the following:
  - The approach presented in [A & B, 2000] makes (x) assumption on (...)
  - The (something) differ from those of [A & B, 2000] on (...)
  - Performance of X was not reported by [A & B, 2000]

(there is quite more content in between the references on the actual document, but still look overwhelming)

Check your target journal's style guide or advice to authors, but my approach is to use the citation format the first time I mention it and then just mention the authors by name or pronoun when I refer to them later. E.g:

  Our work compares with [A & B, 2000] on the following:
    - The approach presented by A & B makes (x) assumption on (...)
    - The (something) differ from those of A & B on (...)
    - Performance of X was not reported by A & B

Even that can get redundant. You might say say:

  Throughout the following section, we compare our work to [A & B, 2000]. In their work, they make assumptions about (X) ... Additionally, (Y) differs between A & B's method and our because ... They also do not present performance of (Z) in their work.

It depends a bit on your own style, but my approach is always a bit more conversational.


How can I gain access to a database to which my university does not have access I'm a PhD-student in economics and I'm planning a scientific paper on a certain topic. For this purpose I need access to data from an economic database. There exist several companies, which provide the desired datasets in their databases.
But the problem is that my university has no access to any of these databases. It is also possible to buy certain datasets there individually, but my research budget is far from sufficient to buy this data.

So I would like to ask if there is a possibility to get such data on another way?

I had already considered whether it makes sense to write this article with a researcher from another university that has access to one of these databases.
The disadvantage in this case is that the name of the other researcher stands on my paper without having made any significant contribution.

Furthermore I thought about doing a short research stay at a foreign university, which has access to a database. However, this is hardly feasible under the current global circumstances.

Unfortunately, my PhD-supervisor also has no answer to my problem.

I would be very happy if someone in a similar situation has found a solution and can tell me about it. I would like to ask not only specifically in the field of economics but in general. It may be that the solution can be transferred from another area to mine.

I would ask your university librarians -- they tend to be resourceful and under-used! At least for journals to which the university does not subscribe, there are typically ways to request single articles, often through inter-library consortia. I wouldn't be surprised if similar things exist for brief access to databases.


How should I cite a conjecture to which no written record can be found? Suppose that a famous mathematician E (long deceased) made a conjecture (C), but no written record of this can be found (either because none exists, or because it exists in a very obscure source). Then, a senior mathematician S, who knows for a fact that (C) was conjectured by E, tells another mathematician X about this problem, and indeed X manages to prove (C). Just to clarify: S is sure about the conjecture, but does not have a publicly available source for it.

This creates a problem: one of the reasons for X's interest in the problem was the question asked by E. Without context, the problem is still interesting, but less so, and it would be better to include a reference to the conjecture whenever communicating the result. Presumably, in verbal communication this is not a problem, since one can simply explain how things are. But what about publishing the result?

I see the following options. Which of these are most widely accepted? Is there any better alternative?

Not mention E at all, simply state the result as is.
Mention that (C) was conjectured by E but not make effort to justify this.
Mention that (C) was conjectured by E, try to use elaborately justify that.
Keep digging for a reference (the real question here is - for how long.).

The question is most natural in mathematics, but I suppose it makes some sense in other disciplines. Feel free to post non-mathematics based answers/comments.

"Which of these are most widely accepted?" sounds like you're asking a poll-type question, which is not quite kosher for this site.  I believe that the situation is sufficiently unusual that there is no "standard" answer.  Nevertheless I will say what I think.

First of all I want to express some skepticism of the premise that the information that Conjecture (C) was made by famous, long-deceased professor E is an important to the extent that the work of the paper would be less interesting without it.  If Conjecture (C) had been well known to the community and many other people had worked on it and/or written about it, then its provenance would be key information: those who knew about the conjecture would make a clear audience for the paper and would vouch for the prestige and value of the work.  But if no one  -- or almost no one -- except S has prior familiarity with Conjecture (C), then the information that it is due to professor E becomes more of a piece of trivia / personal motivation for professor X.  If the provenance of the conjecture had really been a key motivation for X, then one wonders why X did not verify this before working on the problem.

Second I want to say that I think you are using "knows for a fact" in a way different from the way I would use it.  If S is "sure" about the provenance of the conjecture because he saw it in print once but now cannot locate that printed source -- then actually he is not sure, I would say.  Often someone thinks they saw a certain piece of information in print, but when they go back to check it turns out they did not remember it accurately.  In fact probably every working academic has had this experience more than once.  I'm sure S is great, but "S says it, and S can be relied upon" is not really convincing to me no matter who S is.  In a professional context, the things that one is "sure" about should be verifiable: if E is a famous mathematician, then it should be possible to get a comprehensive list of their publications, and then with sufficient effort one can look through all of them, including "obscure conference proceedings".

The way I would handle the situation is by first corresponding with S and making sure that S is completely comfortable with being attributed the claim that Conjecture (C) was first made by E: if this gets published, then S may get asked some questions about this.  If they are not comfortable I would go with something more mild like mentioning S in the acknowledgments.  If on the other hand S really insists that Conjecture (C) is due to E, then that is what X knows and X can put that in the paper in that form, i.e., something like

  Conjecture (C) was conveyed to me by S.  According to Professor S, the Conjecture was first made in a paper of E.  Unfortunately we have not been able to track down a reference."

I would also be prepared to get some questions about this from the editor or referee when you submit the paper.

Finally: have you asked about this on MathOverflow?  This would be a very appropriate question on that site: if the paper exists then someone ought to know how to find it, though you may not know nor even know how to find that person.  Even if the question does not get answered in this way, you (or X) can still point to it as proof of your due diligence in the matter.


Options with a Diploma in Theoretical Physics (A failed MSc) To put this bluntly a number of our class are facing a real prospect of failing their finals myself included. By fail I mean not obtain MSc. and instead obtain a Diploma.

What are our options if we instead obtain a Diploma in HEP Theory and not an MSc?

Will any other programmes take a student with a diploma for a repeat?
Is a PhD still a reality for those of us holding offers?
How can we explain this to future employers when "no-one fails a masters degree if they put the work in"

I am unsure if the reality of the volume of work we have undertaken nor the academic credentials (on paper) of those attending and potentially failing, will strike a chord with any reader who has not been in this exact situation. Consequently, I will save our despair for the MSc. coffee room chat and keep the question on its intended topic.

The reality...

Out of those risking failure the grade average is between 70%-95% (mine is 86%)
This includes a number of scholarship recipients with perfect undergraduate grades (GPAs)
No resits

I emphasise that if any of the concerned did fail this would be highly unexpected and possibly a bit embarrassing for the programme due to the merit of several high calibre students in this group (I would not consider myself in this list) not to mention the time invested by all. This does not change the outcome of a fail for the student.

To be blunt: not good. Top school or not top school, if you can't get an MSci, maybe you are just not cut for it. Yes, HEP theory is intellectually the most demanding field, but it is also currently in least demand and I've seen some very very good people leaving the field after pushing two postdocs. So really, if you insist on doing HEP theory and can't get an MSci, maybe it is good that you get cut of years of depression before it is too late. Another observation is that in HEP theory very few people push the field forward and the rest are completely irrelevant (i.e you write some stupid lagrangian, get eom, write not a very good paper and repeat; it is really not helping anyone. Very few other fields have this dichotomy)

Now, some people get into other fields and flourish. I know a person who had 1.5 postdocs in HEP theory, doing so so, some papers, some citations, but no real permanent job offers and he switched to biophysics, applied some easy peasy mean field QFT methods to neural networks and to them this was science fiction and now he is a star in that field. I also know another person, a stundent. who would do mind-boggling two loop integrals and wanted to do some data analysis and was so hopeless that it was embarrassing for all involved. So not all transplants are successful.

My advice would therefore be: if coding/data/algo is something that excites you, think seriously of moving into data science while it is still hot. If deep questions excite you but you can't get an MSci, think of transitioning to something a bit softer, maybe cosmology, nuclear physics, with some pheno/data component. But note that those fields are still very competitive. If you insist on doing HEP Theory, go ahead, but be warned that most likely you will be jobless.