My PhD situation is giving me anxiety attacks. Is quitting (and losing 2 years) my only option? I am currently in my second year of my PhD and I am having a horrible time. I feel like I am not cut out for academia and I frequently have anxiety attacks. I would like to do something else, and if it was a normal job I would definitely start looking for another job.

I'm worried I'll lose my reference (And he's a good reference to lose :() and I'm also feeling guilty. I have taken two years of funding and now I just want to leave unpublished? Ethically I feel terrible.

The trouble is it is massively affecting my mental health. I have had to seek help from the student services with this. I cry all the time. I've lost my motivation. I'd really like a job in the charity sector or in health education where I can help people and feel like I make a difference.

The trouble is I don't imagine quitting a PhD or considering leaving a PhD looks particularly great on a CV. I have so many reasons to leave and so many to stay. Any advice?

1- First, you would not be losing 2 years. In those 2 years, you learned things and developed your skills. In your current mental health state, it is probably hard to view this experience as positive, but I suggest you give it a try. Maybe make a list of the skills and experience you gained with your PhD.

2- Get professional help, as stated in the comments. Once you feel a bit better, you'll be ready to take a decision.

3- I get the feeling that most of your reasons to stay are linked with advisor-related guilt (funding, no publication, no reference for future work). You would be surprised, but most advisors are human, and did a PhD. He/She can probably understand your problems and help you reach a decision. Maybe he/she could even suggest some ideas to reduce your guilt (quit the program, but write an article on the side or help another person to pick up where you left).

If your advisor is not human (which, seems to happen sometimes), there's probably a department head that could mediate discussion between you and your advisor about quitting the program. But you need to discuss with your advisor.

Good luck and take care.


Advice needed : Reaching out to your past PhD advisor for a post doc opportunity I graduated with a Ph.D. in a STEM field from a good university in the US a few months ago. Thinking that I will benefit from a diverse experience, I did not continue under my professor for a postdoc position. I was jobless for the last few months, since much fewer job openings are currently available in my field. To add to the troubles, my employment authorization card (I am an international student) arrived very late due to the pandemic situation, which rendered me helpless. Now that reality has dawned on me, I was thinking of reaching out to my professor for support for the next few months while I keep searching for a job. A disclosure: my performance while working under him wasn't up to his expectation. But, he is a very nice guy and may show some mercy on me. Call it anxiety or fear of rejection, I have not taken any steps towards that yet. I Will greatly appreciate some insights on how I should approach this situation.

I think that reaching out and asking never hurts. The worst case is that they say no. Just explain your current situation, and why you're reaching out so late.
Do expect a rejection, not because of any issues they may have had with you in the past, but rather because postdocs are not cheap, and taking on an unplanned group member is never easy to do. This has nothing to do with your performance, just that hiring someone requires a budget and time to work with them.
If they agree to interview you and discuss your options, explain your plan for how to make things work this time around: alleviate any concerns they might have about hiring you. Treat this like you would any other interview, and come prepared.
You should not expect them to take you out of the kindness of their heart.
Show them how you can make their research better.
If you do an impressive enough job at that interview, and they have no opening, they may still offer you options that do not require them to hire you. For example, there may be teaching positions in the university or relevant industry jobs that they may be aware of and whose profile you fit.
Good luck!


Does the letter of completion for degree (PhD) allow me to use the degree officially in Europe? I received a letter of completion for my degree (PhD) from my University in the United States.
"He should be granted all privileges of this degree"
Can I use the degree by now in Europe for applications / official use? Or do I need to wait for the official date when I receive my diploma / transcript?

Perhaps you can apply for jobs already (explaining that you already finished your PhD). You could even receive a job offer, and start working on the immigration procedure.
However, many official applications (to the goverment, etc.) require you to submit a copy of your Diploma registered with Apostille. This is also true for many attractive immigration programs.
Don't forget to get this Apostille before departing from the US.


Is it appropriate for assistant professors to supervise PhD students? As pointed out  in another question, the general tendency today as compared from classical times is to make junior professors (at assistant level) more and more independent. However, I wonder that assistant professors (common in the US university) supervise PhD students.

The philosophy of academic ranking is to prepare academics for academic/scientific tasks.

Although, academics normally have postdoc experience before their appointment as assistant professors, it is not mandatory. Moreover, postdoc experience is not experience conducive for the supervising of students.

In relation to the above is it wrong that an inexperienced assistant professor (who is not far from his PhD studentship days) can take control of one or several PhD students?

Does it reduce the quality of the education/research?

Isn't it wrong that an inexperienced assistant professor (who is not far from his PhD studentship days) can take control of one or several PhD students? Don't it reduce the education/research quality?

For certain institutes I've been in, I would find myself asking the opposite question: isn't it wrong for senior professors to supervise students when they have little time for them?

Of course it is not always the case that full professors have no time for their students, but I have seen it happen many times: I've seen cases where students were meeting their official full professor supervisors once a month (or less frequently) and putting names of supervisors on papers that the supervisors had never read. This seems to me to be prevalent in research institutes where the hierarchy tree has a high branching factor to get value out of available funds (few Full Professors, lots of PostDocs / Assistant Professors, even more PhD students and Research Assistants, etc.); in such cases, the priority for senior professors is getting funding for and managing projects. In my case, when I was a PostDoc in such an institute, I was doing the day-to-day supervision of a number of students whose supervisor(s) had no time for them.

Of course it varies from place to place. But my hypothesis is that by the time you reach the Assistant Professor level, either you will have the necessary skills and personality to be a good supervisor, or you will probably never have those skills.

In summary: I don't believe that seniority amongst professors is a good predictor for quality of supervision.


Sharing set of exercises in a textbook (the morally right way?) This is possibly a more general question about copyright, but I think I can specify this question into question about teaching, especially on STEM subjects. I don't know exactly whether I should post this on academia SE or matheducator SE.

So, I have a printed version of a Calculus textbook (English). I teach Calculus not strictly following this book and have other delivery methods too (as all instructors should), but it helps me a lot to guide me in some cases. We as instructors also are told to tell students which references are used in this course, but DEFINITELY not to tell them (and better tell them not to) to pirate the ebook version of those references.

However, many students of mine admit that they do not know where to access the materials easily, other than using notes from me, and going to/borrowing from the library (which has limited stock here) and of course pirating (via downloading or copying). Those who only use my notes usually only repeat examples in the notes without doing much exercises as very few are given, as I expect them, and tell them, to find your own sources of exercises besides some that I gave, such as googling notes, libs, etc, legally.

While I cannot pretend that "Hey, I did not tell them to download, so it is not my fault if they do. Sorry, dear author!" since that's just morally wrong, I was thinking that maybe I can help them some way. I think that, at least, they have access to try problems and exercising, since I always make sure my notes cover all the needed materials, but still very much doubt that I have to quote some MORE exercises from the book. And then my question comes in..

Would it be that bad to just share them MORE exercises in the Calculus book that I have? Like putting them in my notes too, but instead of just 5 each lecture, I give them 20 that are based on the book. Significantly more problems as long as they do not repeat the just the same 5 problems or so.
If you ask me how I share it other than putting them in notes, well, can I just take a picture of few pages containing the intended exercises and share them through a messenger app (not through official site of course)? If that's a no, can I just rewrite/retype them again? This way, of course I will make sure that the exercises are taken from mentioned sources. Also, we are not english natives, so what about translating these exercises while typing them?
"Why don't you make your own set of exercises?" This seems to be the ideal approach, but I bought the Calculus book so that I could also show it to anyone near me..and quote some exercises. Also, I don't think making my own set of exercises is that easy, since it takes months to make variations (not just changing numbers/function) for one course WITHOUT reading from many other sources. Besides, these sold out books are to help me, meaning I can use the help to also help others, right? I use my own words to put the materials into the notes, but why should putting set of exercises into my own words also be a must?

If this is too wide, feel free to mark this.

Consider switching to an open text books. Several are listed on pages such as this one.

Or, at the very least, assign problems from open textbooks so your students can do more problems.


How to research about professors wisely? The application season is coming, and I'm going to spam the mailbox of every professors.

OK, just kidding, but not completely untrue. Of course I will do my homework. As Anonymous said, it is fine to contact a professor if you are:

  asking detailed questions about the professor's research, or questions about the research group beyond what you can discover on the Internet

Does that mean that I need to spend time to dig into their papers (actually beyond the internet), or just reading the descriptions in their website is enough? I mean, sure, just like asking questions in SE, the more detail you give, the more likely you get the answer. But I cannot only concentrate on some particular professors, I need to increase the chance of being accepted by, erm, spamming other ones. One PhD student says that he had to contact 17 professors in order to find the best for him (good fund, good research, etc). I think contacting 17 professors, with all emails are careful prepared and worth to reply, will drain my energy soon.

Not to mentioned that in the email setting, you don't have to be obligated. If the email require you to spend a lot of energy to answer it, and if you are super busy, you will likely to ignore it. This will waste my effort.

Q: So, how likely is a professor to ignore an email even when the sender does their homework? How many professors should I contact in order to find the best one? And how much effort should I spend for a professor?

Also, there is a probability that after I read some papers of the professor,

the paper is easily to follow, that I don't have any question. How should I email in this case?
the paper is hard to follow, and I meet my limit of knowledge. Is this the gold chance for me to ask, or should I self-teach me this? This could be a trivial question, and asking it may bother them, increasing the chance to be ignored. Especially that I want to switch my field (a little bit).

Anonymous' comment on  Is it unwise to contact the professor directly before getting admitted to a program in US?
Related: How to contact professors for PhD vacancies?

Does that mean that I need to spend time to dig into their papers (actually beyond the internet), or just reading the descriptions in their website is enough?

I strongly suggest you at least look over 2 to 3 recent, important papers of this professor. Not only will this allow you to write a mail that has a higher chance of being taken seriously, it will also inform you whether this kind of research is actually what you want to be doing for the next few years. This will indeed take time, but frankly, you should be willing to spend one or two hours to look over the work of a professor that you consider working with for your PhD. You don't need to read their papers end to end. Just figure out what research problems they work on, what methods they use, and so on.

  I cannot only concentrate on some particular professors, I need to increase the chance of being accepted by, erm, spamming other ones.

Here's the thing: for me, if your mail even remotely looks like you have been spamming professors with applications, your mail moves directly to my "Will never be answered" mailbox. Seriously. I have a keyboard shortcut for that. I assume similar things are also true for most other people in PI-y positions. Avoid spamming people at all costs.

Edit:
I will answer Ooker's follow-up questions here as they seem related enough to me.

  "How likely is a professor to ignore an email even when the sender does their homework?"

Very likely. Cold mailing somebody about a position is always a long shot. The difference between doing your homework and spamming, from personal experience, is that the former has a small chance of success while the second seems completely pointless to me.

  "How many professors should I contact in order to find the best one?"

I am not sure I understand. Given that your success rate with cold mails will be very small anyway, you (a) need to have a fallback plan anyway (this can't be your primary strategy to get into grad school, right?), and (b) it seems rather unlikely that you will have multiple offers that you then need to choose from.


How to list exchange studies in CV? Imagine you studied 6 semesters (fall 2017 to fall 2020) at a university and 1 semester (fall 2020 to spring 2021) at a second university in order to obtain your bachelors degree. Is it fine to list it in your CV like

2017-2020 ETH, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Bachelors Degree
2020-2021 KTH, Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, Bachelors Degree

even though one technically only received a degree from the first university and wrote the thesis for this degree at the second university?

It seems simple enough to be clear as your double bullets aren't, implying two degrees.

  Bachelors Degree: ETHZ, 2021 (with studies at ETHZ (2017 - 2020) with thesis work at RITS (2020 - 2021) as a visitor

It is clear when the single degree was given, and by which university as well as some indication that some study was undertaken at RITS.

Other variations work, of course.


How common is it for a professor to require students to work for him? I'm in a computer science master's program in a university in asia.  It's a three-year program, and halfway through our first year, our professor told us to come work for him at his company during our free time.  I thought it would be a good way to get some experience so I went along with it.  He gave us a little bit of pay but it was irregular and we never knew how much we would get.

After a while, he said we should come work for him at his company everyday unless we had class. My classmates and I didn't want to go anymore, because the work was only vaguely research-related and completely unrelated to our desired thesis topics.  At this point, we were all uncertain if whether what we were doing was just research or actually a job. There was no contract or anything.  One classmate said he wanted to stay on campus to focus on his research, and our professor belittled his research ideas and told him that working for him would be much more valuable.

At the end of my first year, I got a great offer for a part-time internship in another company. When I told my professor that I wouldn't be coming to his company anymore, he was not pleased.  He told me he wouldn't be able to help much with my thesis.  Eventually he gave me permission but it's most likely because I'm American, and I get treated slightly better than my local classmates.

When another classmate tried to leave, our professor gave him a very difficult software problem and said that if this student could solve it, then he could leave the company.  The assignment was in an area that this student has no prior experience in, so he was unable to solve it and was too afraid to try to leave again.

From what I've heard, this is a common situation in our department and in other universities in the area.  Since I've never done graduate school in the U.S. or anywhere else, I don't know if this is accepted behavior or not.  I want to inform my classmates of the choices they have. So, on their behalf I want to ask:

What kind of position is this? Would this be considered an internship, research assistance, or just research?

In the global academic world, do professors have the authority to require their students to work for them? Should my classmates have the option to do something else?

Related:
A while ago I read this question about masters students working for a professor's profit-making company.  I can fully understand the value of turning research into commercial benefits. I have no problem with this part.  However, in this answer, someone asks if the students feel coerced into working with him. In this situation, I believe the answer is a yes, and basically I'm wondering what to do about it.

To quote JeffE: Run, don't walk.

Remember that first and foremost, you are a student. The purpose of being a student is to receive an education - if you wanted to work full-time at a company, you would not be paying for graduate school.

  ...halfway through our first year, our professor told us to come work for him at his company during our free time...He gave us a little bit of pay but it was irregular and we never knew how much we would get.

Working for a company part-time as a graduate student isn't unheard of; not being properly compensated for your time, however, is likely illegal. That doesn't necessarily mean getting a salary, but it does mean getting more than just "experience".

  After a while, he said we should come work for him at his company everyday unless we had class. My classmates and I didn't want to go anymore, because the work was only vaguely research-related and completely unrelated to our desired thesis topics....There was no contract or anything.

A bunch of red flags here. First, if the work you are doing is not interesting to you, find a new advisor. Easier said than done perhaps, but the advisor-advisee relationship is one of the most important of graduate school - indeed, it's a significant part of what separates graduate studies from undergraduate studies.

Next, being asked to work for a company without any form of contract is indentured servitude at best...and quite possibly much, much worse. Think of it this way: would you ever work for a company like this if you weren't in graduate school right now? (Hint: the answer should be a resounding NO.)

  One classmate said he wanted to stay on campus to focus on his research, and our professor belittled his research ideas...

Again, advisor-advisee relationship. These are not traits of a good advisor.

  When another classmate tried to leave, our professor gave him a very difficult software problem and said that if this student could solve it, then he could leave the company. The assignment was in an area that this student has no prior experience in, so he was unable to solve it and was too afraid to try to leave again.

Yes, in graduate school you are asked to tackle tough problems. And yes, often you have little experience or background in that area. But the whole point of graduate studies is to grow your knowledge of a particular field that you find interesting - and your advisor is supposed to help you do that. This does not sound like helping.

So, to answer your questions:

  What kind of position is this? Would this be considered an internship, research assistance, or just research?

I'm going to go with "abuse". Get out as quickly as possible.

  In the global academic world, do professors have the authority to require their students to work for them? Should my classmates have the option to do something else?

No they do not (at least not in that capacity), and yes they should (unless graduate school in Asia works differently, the most you can be held accountable for is tuition and fees - beyond that, what you all do is entirely up to you). But the individual you are working with right now is acting highly unethically and possibly (likely?) illegally, and you and your classmates have nothing to gain by continuing this relationship.


How to search for articles from a specific journal in Google Scholar when the journal name is a subset of other journal names (e.g., Science)? A bit of an odd question, but I would like to search for a phrase in articles from Science (the journal). Yet I cannot do this on Google Scholar--if I specify in the advanced search that the source is Science or "Science," I get results from all sorts of journals with the word "Science" in them. "Science Magazine" or any further specification yields zero search results. Furthermore, Science Magazine's website search is terrible, and returns every article in the issue of an article containing a search term (my search is for "hierarchical model").

Has anyone else run into this? Can anyone think of a search term trick that might help?

Like Google, Google Scholar seems to support boolean operators. So one way to solve the problem would be to use "-source:[string]" (note the minus sign) to exclude by hand journals with names containing "[string]". This may take a few iterations of trial and error before you get only the results you want, and can of course also be used in conjunction with the "site:" qualifier to narrow things down further. E.g.

coffee source:"physical review" -source:"physical review letters"

Generally speaking, boolean searching is a powerful technique, and one that a lot of people seem to be unaware of.


How do graduate schools evaluate GPA? I am wondering how graduate schools like Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, and MIT evaluate the GPA?

Because you can boost your GPA by taking easy classes and in the application it only says enter your GPA. Do they consider classes students have taken?
Do they consider whether course are challenging or not?

As a filter.

The main purpose of asking for GPA in grad school admissions is to quickly weed out people (like me) who have actually low GPAs. Nobody is admitted to top PhD programs solely on the basis of their GPA, or even primarily on the basis of their GPA.  Other factors, including which classes you took, are more important.

If you have a high GPA, but no evidence of research potential, you will not be admitted.


Where can I publish the draft paper of my masters thesis? I'm Iranian and now working on  a paper related to my masters thesis. Unfortunately, in my country copyright violation is not unusual and some professors publish students' papers in their own name, excluding the student from the co-author list. I want to publish a draft of my paper including both my name and my adviser in the author list so that I can claim partial ownership of the paper if my adviser attempts to unethically exclude me from the author list at a later date.

Where and how can I publish my draft paper submitted in my name and my thesis adviser's name?

PS: I eventually want to post my article to JASSS-Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation.

The thing to do is to check your target journal's submission guidelines: what you're looking for, is their attitude to preprints - a preprint is a draft of an journal article, made and distributed before publication.

If they're happy that preprints do not constitute prior publication, you can submit a preprint to a suitable archive (making sure you get the permission of your co-authors first), and this will help establish your precedence.

In the case of your target journal, the "how to submit" page says:

  Posting a manuscript on a pre-print server such as ArXiv or SSRN is not considered to be duplicate publication.

So in this case you're ok to submit your draft article to a preprint archive, to establish that this is your work and not your supervisor's, and it won't damage your chances of getting published in your target journal.

We have a number of other questions about preprints, and you might find lots of useful related information on the answers there.


Is it advisable to get a recommendation letter from industry for a Masters program in Computer Science in the US? Most US colleges require three letters of recommendation from prospective Masters students. There are two professors that I have worked with extensively in my institute, and I am sure that they can give me excellent recommendation letters based on my research work with them. The only other professors who can recommend me are professors with whom I have not interacted with too much outside class, and may not be able to give me much more than a "He performed excellently in my courses" recommendation. I do not feel that they can add much to what the first two professors say, seeing that I performed well in their courses too.

I worked at a large software company as an intern and left a very favourable impression with my manager there. He has said that he would be willing to write me  strong letters detailing my teamwork, coding ability, communication skills  and ability to work with tight timelines.

I wanted to know which letter MS programs in the US would value more as a third letter - the impersonal "He is a good student" from my professor or the more personal and authentic one from my internship manager.

There is no definite answer to this question because it may depend on the judgement of the person reading the letters, and on what is actually in the letters.

But with that being said: professional experience is very different from coursework so it will most probably be beneficial to show that you can do both.


Sign research contracts in a private university or create a "ghost" company We are a research group from some private university and we offer research contract services. The problem is that when we get customers, the contract is signed by the highest authority of the university, and we appear on the contract as second players. Also they get 20% on the budget, and all intellectual property that might come from our work. I do not know whether the same situation is in public universities, but we do not like this and we are thinking about other alternatives, for instance, since we have now a lot of potential customers and contacts, to sign the contracts through a smallest possible company that we would create, so that our university would never know about this. The problem is that with this approach, we can not hire people for working on the projects in our university, so they should work out of academia, and we would never get officially recognition for this work. So it seems we have only two options, we stay in this university and accept the situation, or we leave completely and create a spin-off. I would like to know your opinion or advice about this, or what would you do in our situation.

The situation you describe is fairly typical of research contracts—if you are employed at a university, then normally the university is the one that negotiates contracts on your behalf. This is usually for legal reasons, although it does, as you indicate, usually come at the cost of having to give the university some of the money in the contract as "overhead."

As you also indicated, however, it is possible to form a start-up company; there's nothing wrong with doing so in most countries, and such companies can engage in contract work with private firms. However, there are often restrictions on receiving government research awards unless they're partnered with universities or other approved non-profit organizations.

Some points to consider:

How much of your business leads are the result of the identification of your group with your host university?
Will you have enough outside business to support your staff through this outside research income?
It is quite likely that much of what you save in overhead payments to your university may go out to your government in the form of taxes as well as to pay for other business expenses you have.

You cannot expect to run a company while on-campus, using university resources. If this is discovered, you can almost certainly expect to be terminated for misuse of university resources (and worse, possibly public resources as well, depending on what country you're in). At a minimum, you would expect to have to have off-campus resources, and employ your contract employees separately, if you want to maintain this arrangement.


Backlog as a measure of difficulty of submission Is the backlog of a journal correlated to the difficulty of submission (with acceptance) to a journal?

I would imagine that a journal with high backlog could be more selective in publishing journals (if they have so many journals to choose from).

At least in mathematics, this seems anecdotally true.
For instance, Annals of Mathematics has one of the largest backlogs (and is also notoriously among the more selective of math journals).

On the other hand, I suppose it could be possible that backlog is merely a measure of how slow or fast the journal is, and could have nothing to do with difficulty of getting accepted submission.

The backlog of papers refers to those in the pipeline already accepted for publication. If there is a bigger backlog, it can mean a longer wait before it actually is published after being accepted for publication. There would be only a small correlation, if any, between that and the "difficulty of submission"; do you really mean difficulty of getting a paper accepted for publication?


Review response to quite positive review comments - first grant I recently received the review reports for my first grant. All four scores were 5 out of 6. The comments are also mostly positive. Two criticised a bit about the pathways to impact and the support from the department, but nothing major.

What do you think I should write in my response? I've drafted a version and made a response to each point raised by the reviewers. However, my mentor thinks that probably the reviewers were not enthusiastic enough or something like that - and that’s the really serious thing, and that I need to emphasise my proposal is great, not to answer the "lazy" questions from reviewers.

I am a bit confused. What shall I write then?

I assume your question is about one of the UK Research Councils, probably EPSRC. If that's true, then 5555 is currently considered quite a low score, and such a proposal is not likely to be put forward for funding during the Panel meeting (unless you have a year with unusually low competition level, or someone in Panel is really keen to fund your research). In fact, the competition levels in EPSRC right now are so insane, that even proposals scored 6666 are not always supported.

The fact that you have "lazy" comments from Reviewers makes your situation even more difficult, as you are not given a good chance to stand for yourself by answering the questions. Your mentor is right that at this stage you have to write a really brilliant Response to Reviewers to make your proposal fundable.
Good luck with it.


Can reviewing papers help increase your credibility as a researcher? I was wondering if reviewing papers for established journals was a way to increase ones credibility as a researcher?

My question is related to the fact that the journal editors, that are (frequently) known scientists in your domain, will read the review you made.

I was wondering if we can therefore assume that they will, to some degree, evaluate your reviewing work, and therefore yourself as a scientist, based on your review? Lets imagine I know the editor, and I might want to have a position in his/her lab, then my reviewing work might weight in my evaluation?

Yes, it helps in more than one way.  Community service is a relevant part on an academic CV.  Although reviewers for individual papers are normally secret, it does not need to be secret that you have reviewed articles for journal X.  You can write that you have done so on your CV, and if needed (but I don't think it should be), a journal editor can confirm.

It works the other way around too: being asked to review a paper is an independent confirmation of your credibility as a researcher.  The first times it happened to me, it was really an ego boost.  Wow, someone else than my supervisor thinks I know something about something!  Great!


Why do theoretical computer science people use Comic Sans in their slides? I have no data to back up this observation, but it's something I have noticed consistently in research talks and teaching material: People from the theoretical CS community seem to use Comic Sans a lot, a font-face that emulates the look and feel of hand-drawn fonts in comic books. Is this merely a convention or is there a deeper reason behind it?

EDIT1: Since a couple of users requested examples, here's what I came up with in a 5-minute search:

Probabilistic model checking in practice
Symbolisches model checking
A complexity measure on Büchi automata
Fundamentals of programming languages
Formal modeling methods

EDIT2: The point of this question is not to collect opinions, but to find out reasons why TCS people use Comic  Sans (and the answers so far already did an excellent job in this matter).

There's no deeper reason behind it. I think people just like it, particular its informal feel.

Theoretical computer science is a pretty informal and laid-back field. Although in many fields Comic Sans would be considered unprofessional, the standards for "unprofessional" in TCS are much more relaxed. For example, I've observed that it's far more common for professors and students to be on a first name basis with people in the TCS world, and the tone in which papers are written are much less formal. It is typical for times problems to be described with little narratives or jokes, and often problems retain names based on how they were originally presented. For example, there’s the Handshake Lemma, the Traveling Salesman Problem, and the Arthur-Merlin Protocols. That’s not to say that informal names and presentations of theorems don’t exist in other fields, but in TCS I would go as far as to say it is typical.

Heck, in his recent landmark paper on Graph Isomorphism, Laszlo Babai wrote something that could very reasonably be interpreted as a sex joke. In many fields innuendoes such as the one found in his paper would be considered wildly inappropriate. I don't know if the sex joke was intentional, but the line (although it's been noticed by many people) hasn't seems to cause any blowback or embarrassment.


Did I make a mistake in being too honest in the PhD interview? I had an interview on Tuesday on a PhD topic and during the interview I was a little nervous.
I regret saying that I don’t like machine learning since the PhD topic requires using machine-learning tools. I explained that I don’t like it since I took a machine-learning course at university, and the professor taught us the subject in an unpleasant and boring way. His teaching manner seriously wasn’t clear.
I also told them that I will give myself a chance and learn it again in a better way since they don’t require deep experience in it.
I shouldn’t have told them this information because it could be an easy reason to reject me.
I have asked the professor in the interview whether he liked my profile. His answer was that he still has other students to interview... I mean if he did like my profile he could have simply said yes.
I still have some hope because if he didn’t find me suitable he would have rejected me the next day. Instead, when I asked him when I would get an answer to my application he told me next week.
I’m feeling bad. I was overly honest, and sometimes was too informal with my speech and facial expressions.
Did I make a mistake in being too honest in the PhD interview?
Update: I have read an article the professors have sent me where they have used a machine learning tool. I made further search and I was able to understand it. I have been invited to another interview and I did so well. They were friendly with me and I kept my honesty in everything. I asked them more questions and they clarified that there are different methods in the PhD and machine learning is just one of them. I told them that I no longer have fear towards ML since I no longer find it complicated. At the end I explained my interest that meets the goal of the PhD program. They will give me the final answer after one or two weeks. Please wish me luck :) I am glad that I have used Academia site and I thank everyone for their comments and answers that I found beneficial.

I want to make two points here, both are indirect answers to your question, but still open to interpretation with regard to your specific interview.

Interviews are less like taking an exam, and more like going on a date. It is possible to do everything right, and still not click. Equally, it is possible that you do many things wrong, but the other person is willing to take a chance on you, because they see something they like and willing to invest on. It is therefore not really worth it mulling over the details of the date in any meaningful sense, since you'll never really know what it was that did or didn't click. Having said that, just like a date, you would want to sound honest, but not arrogant, and generally not put the other person in an uncomfortable position for the sake of 'honesty' if you expect to establish some sort of relationship with them going forward.

There is always a way to rephrase a negative into a positive, and it typically pays off to do so. You come across as a more approachable, less negative person, who sees the good and the opportunity in things, as opposed to the negatives. It's generally a good way to go through life, too. So, in your case, you could have rephrased

"it was boring and it was the prof's fault but I'll look at it if I really have to"

into

"I am reasonably comfortable with the topic; however, I felt it was not given the time it deserved in uni, and my exposure to it so far has been more theoretical. Therefore I look forward to seeing an interesting application of this field in a real-life setting, and to improving my skills in this area: I'm very thankful for the training opportunities on offer in this job -- this is in fact one of the reasons that led me to apply here (blah blah, continue on positive spin)".

Regarding the second point, as a personal anecdote, I was taught this by my own PhD supervisor during my PhD. A large part of my PhD involved improving a field in which one of the most influential papers had many (in my opinion) naïve assumptions which weakened its conclusions. I approached this in my work from the point of view of "we build Y which doesn't suffer from the errors in X, who did bad things x,y,z". My supervisor thought this was unnecessarily harsh and had me rephrase it as "X pushed the field forward by proposing X. We improved on this idea by addressing improvements in areas x,y,z, which we believe make the general direction proposed by X even stronger".
Now, "technically", both versions say exactly the same thing, and both are 'honest'. However, imagine I wanted to invite Prof X to be my external examiner in my PhD viva at the end of my PhD. Which of the two formulations do you think would predispose them more positively towards my thesis?


How many words is a typical scientific publication (particularly in biology)? I've heard anywhere from 2,000 - 10,000 words is typical for a publication in an average journal. What's your experience?

This source mentions that they're "typically 3,000 to 10,000 words in length". This page may give you some tips on the length of specific parts of the paper, as well.

BTW, I think the length of the publication can also be dependent on where you are submitting it. Also, you can check yourself creatively by going to sites like http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/, and copy+paste the text into a word counter. ;-)


Latin abbreviation for "see there" I am writing a paper and want to reference another source. In academic Hebrew, this would be said using the abbreviations for, "See (source)" or "as explained in (source), see there". Is there a comparable abbreviation in latin?

Quod vide, q.v. in short.
I agree with the other commenters though, its pretty obscure in English writing.


As an undergrad student, how should I ask a professor for an opportunity to do research with them? I was wondering what I should do in this situation as an undergraduate student:

About a month ago, I applied for and did not get into a program that allows first-year students to work on research projects that professors put forward, with the intention of introducing students to research, which included a research stipend, housing, etc.

I was very interested in the professors topic of research, and was wondering if it would be okay for me to ask the professor for the opportunity to work with him essentially as an unpaid intern, as I would really like the opportunity to learn more about the topic.

Would he view this attempt to do research under him as desperate? Or would he appreciate the opportunity to have an extra research assistant?

I know that the answer would depend on the professor himself, and on my relationship with him, but how do professors in general feel about students coming up to them and asking to be a part of their research?

Absolutely, with no qualifications, approach the researcher and ask what it would take to do research in his/her lab. As a first-year undergraduate student, it's very likely that you don't have the knowledge to contribute to the projects. So approach humbly, asking what you can do to prepare yourself. Ask for suggestions for a review paper or a few research reports that would bring you up to speed. Ask if you can attend lab meetings as a fly-on-the-wall to absorb the controversies and decisions being made day-by-day. The very worst possible case is that you're told, "no." If so, you're already there. Next worst is that you invest your time and get only an education out of it. That's not so bad. You'll be positioned very very well for next year.

Good luck!


What are the ethics of getting help from online forums? As an engineer, sometimes in my research I come across a mathematical problem that either is beyond my mathematical skills, or I know that someone, somewhere must have seen something like it before and can point me in the right direction, hence saving me time.

Asking on math.stackexchange often does the trick, but I wonder what the ethics involved are. For instance, if someone provides a complete answer, and the result turns out to be integral to the paper, should I offer them authorship?

PS: I'm not talking about a result that is novel in itself - i.e. it would not be considered as a contribution to mathematics. The result will be an application of standard mathematics to a particular engineering problem.

Asking on math.stackexchange often does the trick, but I wonder what the ethics involved are. For instance, if someone provides a complete answer, and the result turns out to be integral to the paper, should I offer them authorship?

If someone else made an integral contribution to your work, it seems appropriate to offer them coauthorship, yes.  You go on to say:

  I'm not talking about a result that is novel in itself - i.e. it would not be considered as a contribution to mathematics. The result will be an application of standard mathematics to a particular engineering problem.

I see what you're getting at, but still: if you did not have the knowledge to write the paper, then asked someone for help, then based on their help you can write the paper, then it seems that they deserve to be offered coauthorship even if what they provided was from the perspective of their discipline completely routine and well-known.

One example that springs to mind is the Hardy-Weinberg Principle: this is a famous (and, in my understanding, rather important) law of genetics whose mathematical content really does seem to amount to: if p+q = 1, then p^2+2pq + q^2 = 1.  The history of this is not what I had assumed it to be: it is not a collaboration between Hardy and Weinberg (Weinberg was a German physician who had independently discovered the law at about the same time).  Rather Reginald Punnett was having trouble defending Mendelian genetics against an argument of Udny Yule that dominant alleles would weed out recessive ones and thus genotypic frequencies would not remain stable in the population.  Punnett brought this up to (the great analytic number theorist) G.H. Hardy who happened to be his cricket partner, who duly submitted a letter to the journal Science.  As the wikipedia article points out, Hardy makes his take on his "contribution" pretty clear, e.g. in the phrasing "a little mathematics of the multiplication-table type is enough to show...."  It is interesting that this is not called the "Hardy-Punnett Law" (though there are Punnett squares, which seem to my inexpert eye to be pretty much the same thing).  One striking thing about this example is that the mathematics here is really trivial: it is hard to imagine any mathematician (or engineer, etc.) who would not have been able to answer the question.

Of course, just because you offer someone coauthorship does not mean that they will take it.  Most mathematicians I know are not interested in being coauthors of papers in other disciplines for which their contribution was purely mathematical and is regarded by them as "trivial", "well-known" or both.  If someone declines coauthorship then it seems largely agreed upon that you can go on to write the paper by yourself and include a clear acknowledgement of their contribution.


Is it possible to publish a research paper using an alias? Say, I want to publish a research paper. But, for some reason, I don't want to expose my identity.
Is it possible to publish a research paper using an alias?

Yes, it's possible and plenty of people will have done it.
Rather than try to repeat what has already been said in other answers on this forum, I'd invite you to take a look at the many questions that deal with what name people should choose when publishing articles. The short is:

It doesn't have to be your real name, but it should be the name by which people in the community know you in person, so they can associate the paper with the author.
You want to choose a name that will allow you to continue publishing under for the entirety of your career.

You can find some more considerations in the answers to other questions.
But it's possible that I misunderstand the question. Maybe you are interested in a one-off publication under a pseudonym because you don't want to be identified as the author? That's uncommon, and as an editor in a journal I would strongly argue against this because the free exchange of ideas also requires that one can have a conversation with an author. If the author doesn't want to be identified, that's not possible, and it's to the detriment of the development of science -- even though I understand that there are cases where a younger colleague may not want to write a critique of some senior scholar's publications, for example. I understand that such cases happen, and I get that publishing under a pseudonym is one solution that one can pursue, but I still think that that's not quite the right avenue either.


Should one research multiple independent topics while pursuing a PhD? While pursuing a PhD in an experimental field, one usually researches a given topic and conducts experiments that are rather closely related to this topic and one another. I imagine this specialization can be beneficial as one attains expertise in the research field and can work in a timely and focused manner.

However, I can also imagine that this specialization may make changing your area of research more difficult when applying for positions as a post-doc. Therefore, I am wondering about the advantages and disadvantages of researching scientific questions one is interested in, but that are irrelevant to ones PhD thesis on the side.

The main downside is that it takes a significant amount of effort to gain enough specialization in a given topic to be proficient enough to perform useful experimentation. Given that a a graduate student you're spending almost all your time familiarizing yourself with the topic you're actually performing research on, it would be very difficult to become an expert in an area unrelated to your work.

That being said, many research topics are very conducive to multi-disciplinary research. To use myself as an example, I usually tell people that I'm a cross between a neuroscientist, behavioral psychologist, signal processing engineer, and statistician. A colleague of mine started his research examining how to use the lungs as a power source for an implantable device, and ended up publishing a significant paper in the field of organic chemistry, fairly unrelated to his intended research. Becoming an expert in your own field enables you to research some pretty interesting and diverse topics.


How long does it take for a recruiting process to finish? I think the title says it all, but here it goes. I am a final year PhD student in pure mathematics. My PhD has been running smoothly and I will graudate on time next summer.

This year I started applying for postdoctoral/assistant professor positions in Europe and in United States. The reviewing processes for these positions have already started, for example the earliest one started in mid December.

As times passes I start to worry that the reviewing process will take longer than I expected. I understand that the people in the search committees have other things to do an that they may have large numbers of applicants to review. But as someone who will be unemployed next September, I am worried that there might not be enough time for me to look for alternatives if these applications turn out to be unsuccessful.

Hence, I would like to ask what the normal period of time is for a recruiting process to finish. A side question might be if I would be notified if my application was unsuccessful. In a few job announcements it is stated that only the successfull candidates will be contacted. Hence if it is not stated otherwise in the job announcement, can I assume that I will be contacted no matter the outcome?

First off, timings are very different in different countries. I have experience applying in Germany, UK, US and Sweden, with radically different time scales. The US runs on a very steady clock, where there tends to be a season for applications, for interviews, for notifications, and relatively few events happen outside this rhythm, while elsewhere is much more anarchic with respect to timing.

Shortest time periods I have had in the UK where a polite refusal has shown up as quickly as within about 2 weeks after the deadline.

In the US, you would usually apply during September-January, interview January-March, and be offered a job February-May or so. Slightly different timings are in effect for postdoctoral positions versus professorships, and there tends to be a second round of applications when schools scramble to cover teaching needs for the fall.

My experience with the US also indicates that you should not expect full information from everyone. Finding out you were not considered by simply not hearing anything from the school for several years is not an unusual situation.

UK schools have been diligent about letting me know one way or another.

German schools have sometimes delayed up towards 2-3 years before letting me know.

And the Swedish system is a beast almost entirely unto its own. For one thing, the process is utterly transparent: the list of applicants, as well as external reviews of the candidates and the minutes of all the committee meetings are all a matter of public record, and is usually distributed to all candidates directly as a matter of courtesy. The process is one of the lengthiest I have ever seen — it is in no way seen as unreasonable that well over 1 year passes from application deadline to notification.


Difference between a "general" and a "generic" confidential letter of recommendation? In the context of applications to tenure-track assistant professorship positions in computer science in the US, I see both terms:

general confidential letter of recommendation
generic confidential letter of recommendation

What is the difference in the meaning of the terms?

There is no difference.  They both refer to a letter that discusses the applicant's achievements and qualifications for a general type of job (postdoc, assistant professor, etc) without being tailored to the expectations of a particular employer.


Author qualifications to list in medical journal I'm a computer scientist collaborating with colleagues in our medicine faculty, and I'm writing a first draft of a manuscript we'd like to co-author for publication in a medicine journal (actual journal TDB). Looking briefly at similar papers, I notice that it's common for authors to have their qualifications (MD, PhD, etc.) listed along with their names. This isn't a convention common to my own field, and I wondered whether there are standard guidelines for which qualifications to include. I have several, including Masters, and a doctorate (DPhil) equivalent to a PhD, but no medical degree. Which should I use, and is it appropriate to use "PhD" instead of the actual doctorate title to avoid confusion?

If there are guidelines they’ll be in the instructions to authors in the journal you’re targeting.

If there aren’t guidelines, just list the degrees you have.

Definitely don’t substitute PhD for your DPhil. It won’t be as confusing as some, and lets the reader take a view on equivalence.

(The far more common confusion in medical journals would be the MD.  In US system medial education that’s a basic medical qualification that almost everyone has (unless they have a DO). In the British system it’s a higher degree equivalent to a PhD, and if someone lists their qualifications as eg MPH MD there’s no quick way to tell which they’ve got).


Grey literature, point it out as such in the bibliography? For my project I rely on several sources of information including such that is not peer reviewed (conference proceedings, industry reports, master thesis, interviews). I wonder if I should mark them as being not peer reviewed in the bibliography, for example adding the nature of the publication:

  Boo 2013: "A question on grey literature". Stack Exchange April 2013. Forum post.

or

  Boo 2013: "A question on grey literature". Stack Exchange April 2013. (not peer reviewed).

Are those sources included within the list of peer reviewed articles or is a separate chapter within the bibliography necessary (as is often done for websites)?

References are references, and the reader already has all the information needed to make his decision on the quality of the source (the trust he has in the source) without you adding information. You don't need to separated references in different “sections” (which would make it much harder to read), or adding information. It is clear from the reference itself:

  boo2060, “A question on grey literature”, Academia Stack Exchange (http://academia.stackexchange.com/), 26 April 2013

that it is not a peer-reviewed journal paper, which would have a very different style:

  T. T. S. Boo, “A question on grey literature”, Academia SE Monthly, 17, 13-14 (2013)


Should I grant an extension on an extension? A student asked for a homework extension due to unforeseen circumstances in their personal life. I am generally accommodating about this type of thing if they come to me in a timely manner, but this student did not follow up until a week after the homework was originally due. (It is online homework, so I have to re-open the homework in order for them to work on it again.) I asked him to email me which sections he missed and he did not.

He spoke with me in person again two weeks later and again I told him that it was fine, but that he needed to email me right away and come to me in a timely manner about these types of things in the future, or else I would not be so accommodating. This was the end of the class week, so I was planning on giving him the weekend to work on these assignments and have him turn them in at the beginning of the next week.

However, he did not email me until the night before our class, so I would have to give him time this week to complete the assignments instead. At this point, the assignments were due over a month ago, so I am wondering if it is reasonable for me to tell him that he is no longer able to complete the assignment since he waited 4 more days to email me.

This would, to me, seem to depend not on dates and length of delay, but on the reasons behind them. I can easily see deciding in either direction, based on what the student gives for an explanation.

Everything may be perfectly explainable, including not sending emails. Or you could decide that the student was just slacking. But base your decision on the reasons, as best you can determine them, not just the time factor.


Can I contact the author as a reviewer? In my field (chemistry), the authors are known to the peer reviewers. A critical point is vague about a manuscript I am reviewing; it can be rejected or accepted based on this point.

Can I directly contact the authors to ask for clarification or I must conduct all correspondence via the editor? I know that the normal procedure is to contact the editor, but I thought it is faster to directly contact the authors, as it may need multiple communications.

Can I directly contact the authors to ask for clarification or I must
  conduct all correspondence via the editor?

No, you really shouldn't contact the authors directly. I can see two options regarding the possibility of doing that: you can do it either from your normal email account (or in a similar way that discloses your identity, e.g. a phone call); or you can do it from a throwaway account that preserves your anonymity. Both of those approaches seem very wrong to me, but the first is much worse than the second.

In the first approach, you would be spoiling your anonymity as a reviewer. That would make your entire review useless. The whole point of anonymous peer review is that you can be honest in your review without having to worry about the authors knowing who you are (and without others having to worry if you were influenced by the knowledge that the authors know your identity). You may think that this is a problem only if you intend to write bad things about the paper, but it is just as much of a problem if you want to write good things, since the journal and its readers want to know that you wrote those good things out of an honest motivation and not to personally ingratiate yourself with the authors.

In the second approach, the problem of giving up your anonymity may not exist, but it's still unethical to go behind the back of the editor. The editor is responsible for the quality and the integrity of the peer review process, and needs to be informed of any communication between you and the authors. You may trust your own judgment that you would make sensible use of the information you would be getting from the authors, but the editor might disagree, and it is not your place to appropriate his or her jurisdiction over the review process. As an example, perhaps the journal or editor take the approach that the paper must be judged solely based on its submitted form with no room for clarifying questions. Or, perhaps you would reach a sensible decision to accept the paper based on additional details the authors emailed you, but you would then neglect to require them to add those details to the paper, leaving the paper flawed from the point of view of the journal and its readers - and so on; one can imagine many ways in which a reviewer, no matter how sensible and well-intentioned, can screw up this process in some subtle way due to not having the perspective and experience (and knowledge of the journal's policies) that the editor has. That is why the editor needs to be involved.

  I know that the normal
  procedure is to contact the editor, but I thought it is faster to
  directly contact the authors, as it may need multiple communications.

First of all, why should you care which way is faster? You are the reviewer. It is not your problem if the process goes slowly, it is the authors' problem, and they should have thought of including the missing details when they wrote the paper. Second of all, if multiple communications are needed for the paper to have a chance at being acceptable, then quite possibly you shouldn't be bothering to request clarification in the first place. To me this state of affairs suggests a pretty strong likelihood that the paper is simply not acceptable in its present form, so you should either flat out reject it or make a "reject and resubmit" (or "major revision required") decision, and write back with a report explaining what details need to be added or clarified to make a more in-depth evaluation of the paper possible. It would then be the authors' responsibility to comply and submit a better version if they want the paper accepted.

To summarize, it is understandable (and noble) that you want to be efficient and help the authors improve their paper. However, as a reviewer you are not required to go out of your way to help the authors with an elaborate back and forth exchange of information and critique, and you most certainly should not do so without the involvement of the editor. If you really want to have a detailed communication with the authors, I don't see anything wrong with that as long as it is done through the editor and with their approval.


Grad Application: Does a bad exchange semester matter? My grades in my home university are good but I went to a top university in Europe for exchange during spring term in my junior year, and I did a poor job there. I took four courses at graduate level and I failed several. The courses I chose were probably too hard for me and I was not aware of that at the beginning (after all only graduate level courses there are taught in English).

I would like to know if I should submit my exchange transcript for my graduate application in the US (MS, phd/Ms)? I know some universities like Stanford only require transcripts from universities you attended for at least one year.

Another problem for me is that I have only one hardcopy official transcript from the university I went for exchange, and it is not likely that I will send it out for application purpose. Of course I mentioned this experience in my CV and SoP.

It does totally depend on the inherent nature of your overall program. Exchanges are often considered within the main path of the program. If so, you have no way to camouflage that poor performance. But if you can, legally and reasonably, skip that part, such that your program would not be under effect of any gap, you better leave it and try to augment the rest of your academic trace.

You need to prepare official certified copy from the university, which did issue that transcript. Take that copies into account for the apply.

Best


What is the point of journals nowadays? I'm not sure if this question is too broad or opinion-based, but I have been wondering about it for sometime.

In the old days when communication was not as abundant as is today, periodicals were a very effective means of communicating one's research and findings to interested people. Books and personal letters were also available, but were either not suitable for short communications or narrowly accessible. Thus, journals made sense at that time.

Today, however, especially with the widespread use of the internet, I find it hard to justify the existence of journals other than to preserve the status quo from the past. In fact, I can see several disadvantages such as:

Economic burden on institutions and individuals.
Unnecessary delay in publication due to processing and reviewing times.
Subjective editor/peer-review process with many decisions made based on personal and/or journal-specific reasons.

So my question is: are there any real advantages of having journals nowadays? Wouldn't it be better to adopt an open publication method (maybe similar to that here at SX) in which people can rank, cite, and vote on publications instead?

The primary reasons for the continuation of academic journals are correlaries to some of the things you've mentioned as negative.

Peer review. This a key driver for academic publishing in general. It provides a way to control the quality of published material, and an enforcement of accepted standards, and (for the author) feedback prior to publication.
Communication. Journals provide a means of communicating research to a targeted audience. Conventional subscription-based models do so for a fee, while the rapidly growing open-access model (which I highly commend) provides even broader and easier access for researchers, students, and others.

In short, journals serve to curate content to meet the needs of a particular audience, and thus they are unlikely to completely disappear in the near future.


Which license should I choose on arxiv.org for later publication? I wrote an opinion piece for a journal but it was rejected.
I would like to put it on arxiv.org because now I do not have time to rewrite it, but I would like to circulate it. And, there are more important things to do. But, at some point I would like to submit a rewritten version to another venue. Which license should I choose on Arxiv?
https://arxiv.org/help/license

I think there are two factors you will usually take into account:

The policy of the journal or journals you expect to submit the work to.  You must choose a license that is permitted by that journal.  You can easily determine what is allowed using Sherpa/Romeo.  Just search for the journal and look at what is allowed for "submitted version" (or accepted version) in a subject repository.

Your own preferences.  This is straightforward -- read the license and make sure you agree with what it allows/doesn't allow.

When in doubt, the minimal non-exclusive license is the safest bet.


How to choose between very good journals in mathematics? I finished preparing a math paper, and am now trying to decide where to submit it.

I read How do you judge the quality of a journal?,
but it seems that the answers there mostly deal with how to judge if a journal is good at all.

The journals I am considering (see list below) are all very good. But how can I know how do very good journals rank?

I know my paper is not at the level of Annals,
so I considered the following journals:
Selecta mathematica,
Duke,
Compositio Mathematica,
American journal of mathematics,
Advances in mathematics,
International mathematical research notices,
and Crelle journal.

How can an author compare the quality very good journals such as these? Is there any reasonable way to use public data in order to sort them from best to worse?

Note: this question is looking for an answer about a general method, not necessarily a particular ranking of those particular journals.

Is there any reasonable way to use public data in order to sort them from best to worse?

Not really.  To start with, there isn't a remotely well-defined notion of ranking.  For example, it depends on the subfield (some journals attract better papers in certain areas than others), it can vary over time, and it depends on the specific goals you have in mind.  More importantly, people just don't always agree: I know some people who would argue that one of the journals you listed is clearly a better choice than the others, but they wouldn't all choose the same one.

The explicit rankings I've seen do a poor job of accounting for these factors.  At best they are mediocre (perhaps valuable as a first cut for distinguishing between journals at very different ranks, but useless for fine distinctions).  At worst they are positively misleading.

Fortunately, choosing between well-known journals like these is not so difficult.  You should look them over and try to gauge which ones look to you like they are publishing the most important papers in your area, while also asking around to get other people's opinions.  (Ask mentors of yours, ask your friends or collaborators, ask colleagues at tea.)  If there's a clear consensus among the people you ask and it's consistent with your own impressions, then you're done.  If there's a clear consensus that disagrees with your impressions, then you need to think and talk a little more.  If there's no clear consensus among several options, then it doesn't really matter which of them you choose.  After all, journal prestige matters only to the extent it is perceived to matter by the community; if the community can't make up its mind, then there is no right choice.

Carrying this out takes a little time, but it's worth it since you learn more about how things are perceived in your research area.


Can acing the upper level course compensate background of no basic course in graduate application I am an international master student in Germany who wants to apply graduate schools in US or Canada. I have an unconventional background, I want to study mathematics but I don't have courses of basic analysis and abstract algebra. Due to language problem, I can't take the course in my university. Now if I get good grades in upper lever (graduate) mathematics courses, can it compensate that I don't have basic courses?
Would it be a big disadvantage in Phd application?

It would look slightly odd, but good grades in advanced courses would generally be seen as sufficient to show that you understand the material. In the end, graduate admission committees aren't so much interested in knowing how you acquired necessary background knowledge than knowing that you have it. How that is demonstrated is secondary, and acing upper level courses is certainly one acceptable way to do so.


How many on-campus interviews (for a tenure track math position) do you typically need to get one offer? I was wondering, on average, how many on-campus interviews one needs to get one offer? For those who landed a tenure-tack job, could you please share your information?

I expect that conventions for interviewing vary greatly between fields, countries, etc.  I'll answer based on my experience with mathematics in the U.S.

  I was wondering, on average, how many on-campus interviews one needs to get one offer?

At an individual level, you can't say for sure.  Not only is the variance high, but there are also systematic differences between candidates even aside from overall ability: some people come across much better on paper than they do in person, while others interview really well.  There's no way to figure out in advance how many on-campus interviews you will need to get an offer.

However, you can ask how many candidates are interviewed for a typical opening, and that will tell you the average number of interviews needed per accepted offer (just not in a way that says much about individual candidates).  That varies between departments, depending on how decisive they are, how energetic they feel about interviewing, and how much funding they have for the search.  I'd estimate that interviewing three candidates is pretty typical, although I don't have precise statistics.  It's not likely to go below two except in unusual circumstances, and interviewing six people for one position sounds rather high to me (although not unheard of).

So this means that, on average, you won't get most of the positions you interview for, but you have a realistic chance at them.


Do reviewers become biased about research papers written by authors of a previous low quality paper? In single blind paper submissions, reviewers can see the author names and affiliations. Suppose two papers are submitted in a conference, one of them is fairly well written and the other one is a low quality paper. Also, one or two authors are common in both the papers. If both the papers go to same reviewers for review and reviewers review the low quality paper first, do they become biased while reviewing the fairly well written paper? Do the chances of selection of the good paper become less?

I would distinguish between two papers in parallel (as in your example) versus a history of bad papers.

If I'm seeing a good paper and a bad paper that share an author, and I don't yet know that author well, then the bad paper probably won't affect my opinion of the good paper too badly (unless we are talking really embarrassingly bad).  I'll have a mixed opinion, but I'm still forming it.

On the other hand, there are certainly some authors who have built up a history with me such that I see their paper and think: "Oh no, I hope they've learned from last time."


How to request other researchers to read one's paper for suggestions? Suppose a researcher uses the application of another researcher's idea in his domain. Given that original researcher knows basics of his idea better, he may help correct any mistakes and give valuable suggestions. In this way, the quality of research paper will be increased. But at the same time, giving away one's complete unpublished paper to unknown person is a matter of a bit worry. In your opinion, should he ask for suggestion or not? If yes, what is a proper way?

It is perfectly acceptable to email your paper to another researcher, and ask if they have any comments or suggestions.

It would also be perfectly acceptable for him to not reply. If he does, the reply might be something short like "Thanks for sending, looks like a nice piece of work!"

If you do write, I'd recommend you do the following:

Keep your email brief and to the point.
Do not ask him to check your paper for mistakes. That's your job. If you feel that you can't do this on your own, then I'd suggest that you offer to make your paper a collaboration with him.
Don't try to be indirect, or hope that he reads between the lines. If you would like to ask him to do something, then it's good manners to do so plainly and directly.

You might also search for and read the many "Why isn't so-and-so responding to my emails" questions which (with good answers) can be found on this site.

Good luck!


When is a not updated software considered deprecated in the academic world? Currently I'm writing a thesis in Computer Science for which I need to introduce and compare several open source tools that are available for performing a certain type of testing (mutation testing) on some piece of code.

To reduce the number of tools (initially  more than 25), I set two limits :

The tool must have been updated in the last 5 years to be present in the list, otherwise it is considered obsolete.
Only tools that work for one of the 3 most used languages are considered. I defined them with the TIOBE index (Java, C/C++ are equivalent for the tools and Python).

I arbitrarily set the first condition to five years, but I would not be able to justify this number if needed. I didn't find a study or article with a point of view on the subject.

So my question is: After how many years without updates would such a software (or any software) be considered deprecated?

I don't think there is such a standard, certainly not one applicable to all of academia. For your thesis, I would suggest that it might be more useful to talk about "recently updated" / "currently developed" software, rather than labeling the rest as obsolete.

"Deprecated" signals that the creator no longer recommends using the software. I can't think of any real examples for a full software package (i.e. going beyond deprecating part of an API), but I guess it might happen if the software is known to produce bad results.

Software might be "obsolete" if it has been de facto replaced by a better option, but certainly not just because it's old. Even then, the old option might be good enough. Visit a couple of (established) experimental labs in the sciences, and you'll likely see lots of old equipment still running old software. Changing it all out would just be needless overhead, and not be guaranteed to help. There's almost always a better place to spend the money you might have... From another angle, if you consider numerical algorithm implementations and libraries as tools, there's a number of them that have gone decades without updates, yet are still routinely imported and used in new software development.


What happens if a professor's interests shift dramatically? Let's say Alice is a professor in underwater basket weaving. She likes the topic, has several PhD students & postdocs, a lab, and so on. But then one day, her husband Bob is knocked down by a car and loses both his legs. Suddenly underwater basket weaving doesn't seem so interesting anymore, and she wonders why she's working on it instead of on robotic limbs.

I imagine in situations like this must have happened before. What usually happens in these cases? I'm guessing the obvious thing to do is to finish supervising all the PhD students, wait till the postdoc contracts run out, and then switch. But a shift like this would probably mean a change in department as well. How would that work? Would the new department even be willing to accept Alice? Alternatively she could stay in her old department, but then she would be a professor of underwater basket weaving that's working on robotic limbs. That doesn't seem sensible (the old department would presumably not be happy, and even if she's tenured such that the old department can't just get rid of her, how is she going to assemble a new research group?).

Also, assuming that robotic limbs is a very different field from underwater basket weaving, Alice is likely to start as a novice. How would that work then? Does she enroll as a Bachelor's student? Does that even make sense?

What is the process of switching fields like?

Related, but considering relatively similar fields with probably different motivations for changing fields: How do academics change their area of research in the middle of their academic career?

Assume that the change is gradual, not abrupt. Alice will want to learn something about the new field so that she is able to do effective research in it. No new department is likely to accept her until this happens. She is also unlikely to completely abandon the old field due to the many constraints, both financial and ethical. Yes, she needs to see to the needs of her current students somehow, and may need to keep publishing in the old field if she wants good annual evaluations.

Once she has a few nice publications in the new area she can start to look for a new position. She probably doesn't need to get any additional degrees unless that is needed to obtain the expertise in the new field, but it would probably help her job search to have some formal qualification in the new field.

One way to get some expertise is to try to collaborate with experts in the new field, first as a junior partner. It is best, of course, if she has something to offer her collaborators, perhaps some research perspective from the old field.

For smaller jumps, of course, it is much easier. Many people switch back (and forth) between math and computer science, for example. This is true even though the basic research methodologies in those two are quite different. I switched from math to CS over a few years at a time when the institution I was at needed expertise in a developing field (long ago). But a person who switches here likely is able to use many of the ideas in the "old" field to enhance their work in the new.


What is the significance of the overview slide in a presentation? The first slide which follows the title page of my presentation is the overview slide. It has the title for each section to follow in the talk (thank you Latex!).

My question is how much time is to be spent on the Overview slide, given the talk lasts twenty minutes? Should I talk about each section's one-line-synopsis to let the audience mull it over? If the answer is no, how do I transition smoothly from the Paper Title Slide to the one on Motivation for the talk (For example : Why I love Science?).

I often skip the overview slide in short talks. Instead, after giving motivation I simply say what the talk it is about: This talk will introduce you to Nutella, analyze its deliciousness, and compare it to peanut butter. Finally, we will talk about Nutella extensions - chunky Nutella, with chopped hazelnut.

In general, the overview slide allows the listeners to pace themselves, and understand where in the presentation you are.


PhD interview question when you don't know the answer How should you handle a question in an interview for a PhD program when you don't know the answer ?

Should you try to just say something even if this is wrong or just tell the interviewer that you don't know the answer?

In most cases, the interviewer does not care about the "answer", but rather about how you answer. I would answer honestly with something like "I do not know, would you like me to try and work it out?"


What visa to be employed by a company while completing a PhD as a foreign student in the US? I am a foreign PhD student in engineering in the US. And I came here under a scholarship provided by the company I was working for. However, now they are offering to hire me during my PhD. I would be an employee of this company while being working full time toward the completion of my degree. It would be a way for them to retain me and pay for my degree. I am currently studying under a F1 visa.

So my question is, what would be the visa and type of contract and visa I should use ? CPT, OPT, changing to J1 visa, something else?

Thank you in advance for your time and reply.

If you are going to be employed full-time (>20 hours week), you will not be able to use F-1 without CPT/OPT authorization.

Since you are still working on your degree, OPT will generally not allow you to work more than 20 hours per week (during school in season). CPT authorization can technically give you the full-time off-campus employment option; however, you are supposed to actually do work for the company, not finish your degree requirements per se. The International Student Office of your university will help you to determine if you are eligible for CPT and figure out if your plan works.

I would consider different options:

be employed by your company in your home country and consider the L-visa for intra-company transfers
get OPT while on F-1 but work part-time for double the salary if that is a viable option for your company

Changing to J-visa has its own consequences and I am not qualified enough to discuss them. In any case, you should consult a lawyer at your company (who are supposedly the ones doing all the heavy-lifting for you) or at least some external immigration lawyer.


Applying for more than one faculty position in a department I am coming to the job market this coming fall and a university that I am very interested in has a number of faculty positions that were posted simultaneously. Consequently, they are all positions that would be appropriate for me to apply to given my research.

Now, my question is-

is it a faux pas to apply to more than one position in a department?
Is this especially so with a competitive/elite university (e.g. Duke, MIT, University of Chicago, Standford, Carnegie Mellon, etc).
Do elite universities care more about exact fit or research productivity?

To give an example of where I am coming from, imagine a junior scholar's research area focused on "Diversity in Academia" (to use as an example). Within the past year, they have published in index journals on

economic causes of diversity
rates/trends in diversity
a meta-analysis on diversity
a large-scale experimental study on diversity

The university has positions on-

policies of diversity
economics of diversity
diversity in education

In other words, all of my research is applicable to those three positions so I am uncertain how I should approach them.

You imply this is a US institution you are concerned with. While only they can answer the question directly, and you should ask them, I think an application that covers all of the positions, would likely be acceptable.

I've assumed this is for a single department, of course, which likely has a single hiring committee. If they are hiring for three closely related positions then I'd think that they could decide which is a better match for yourself and themselves.

I would simply state my qualifications in an application, emphasizing elements that would be suitable for each of the positions. If you are interesting enough to them that they want to actually follow up and talk to you then you can refine things a bit, but I wouldn't try to guide it too much in the application.

In fact, I think a lot of places would find it odd to get three applications from the same person for a position in one academic department. That is so unless, for example, they indicate that there are actually three committees with three different chairs. In that case, you could send identical applications to the three chairs, mentioning that you have sent identical requests to the others.


management in academia I want to explain the particular situation in my university, and advice for how should I act (or at least how my mental status should be).

Traditionally, the management positions in my university (dean of the science school, head of studies, director of PhD program, etc) has been taken by either Full Professors (with a longstanding research record) or Associate Professors with some kind of recognition (an strong research record, mostly).

From a time on, there is an phenomenon that is happening: Full Professors are not willing to take these positions (most of them they have acted already taking such positions) and younger Associate Professors are more interested on research that on management (which is on the other side, something normal, as I think the same :-P).

My point here is that now all these positions are taken by people (mostly Associate Professors) without research perspective (people with 20 years at university but with 2-3 research papers), and without global perspective. The consequence is that the institutions are decreasing the excellence and the level, and this is something I consider very bad.

I am very active on research and I would like to continue in this way, but I am very worried about this, because I love the institution and I believe that if everybody contributes (just a little!) the things would go better.

Here is my dilemma: as an Associate Professor who loves the institution I am and who wants the best for it I am considering starting doing some management, because I do not like the situation I am seeing. Of course I would prefer to continue focussing on research, which is why I am at the university. My point is that my colleagues (associate professors) that do not care about this issue and continue focussing on research will have an easier path in the forthcoming years to be promoted to full professors (and being clear, a better salary is also something to take care in a decision).

So: which is the mental state I should take: as I want the best for my institution I should sacrifice a little (or a lot) my research time in order to do some management, or should I be more egoist, focus as I am doing, in research with a more chance later to be promoted to Full Professor and take this more apathic point of view?

This is a good question, but I don't see how anyone other than you can answer it. You write that you "[love] the institution ... [and] do not like the situation I am seeing." You also write that "I am very active on research and I would like to continue in this way." You have to ask yourself (i) whether you have the capacity to address both of these things -- some people do, and (ii) if not, which is more important to you. In other words: Would you be happy 5 years from now knowing that you did the best research possible but that you let your environment fall apart? Would you be happy 5 years from now knowing that you tried your best to make your university run well, at the cost of answering the research questions that drive you? Some people would answer 'yes' to the first question; some 'yes' to the second. No one but you can answer this.


When to remove college leadership positions from CV/resume? This easily could be moved to the Workplace site, but I ask it here because I am in grad school and it's relevant to me finding internships, jobs, and/or academic positions.

When is it time, or is it ever time, to remove college leadership positions from one's CV or resume?

I was captain of a varsity athletic team in college and president of a social fraternity. Given only that, I could easily see someone saying "big deal, how does that show me you can write my software/prove this theorem/etc." However, in grad school, I have been president of my department's grad student association and started a popular journal group in my department (to list things that could be bullet-ed). I assume my adviser would also likely highlight similar leadership activities within our research group in any professional recommendation.

The reason I ask this question is primarily because I think those positions show a behavioral theme or track record. In all positions (other than the reading group, obviously), I was elected by my peers, and I can name specific accomplishments associated with each. Even if I am looking for research positions, I imagine that leadership/entrepreneurial spirit is a desired quality (?). Maybe I'm completely off-base. Hence my question. If relevant, I am within a decade of my undergrad.

So should I draw attention to those roles on my CV or website?

I'd suggest removing them as soon as you stop being a student or reach your late 20s, whichever comes first.  Keeping that stuff on there too long may cause hiring managers and others to view you as stuck in your past and possibly adolescent.


How to address graduate school recommendation letter? Since I'm applying for grad school, I'm currently in the process of acquiring recommendation letters from my professors. They usually ask me a few questions about how to guide the letter, such as what do I want to emphasize and how to address the letter?

How does one address a grad school applicant's recommendation letter? I mostly settle for "Dear Madam or Sir". Is "Dear Graduate Admissions Committee" or some other alternative considered better?

According to Wikipedia

Dear Sir or Madam or 'Sir/Madam' (If the gender of the reader is unknown).
To Whom It May Concern (If the writer wishes to exclude the gender of the reader from the salutation and/or to convey that the reader should forward the copy to one more suited to receive or respond appropriately).

As @Davidmh has mentioned it is least concerned. I personally have chosen to use "To Whom It May Concern" when I applied to grad school as in some grad schools the recommendation letters might get forwarded from the admissions staff to various professors.

Edit : The first is British English and the second is American English as mentioned by @Davidmh


Changing Engineering Specialisations after Undergrad I am wondering whether it is generally possible to change engineering specialisations after completing a bachelors degree.

I'm currently completing a bachelor of engineering with honours in chemical and materials engineering. I am interested in completing a master's in aerospace engineering as I have a significant interest in aspects of jet propulsion.

I feel there would be a lot of transferable skills which may help me - i.e. thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, pumps and turbines, heat transfer, and materials; although they would be applied in a different context.

I guess my question is, as long as there are some transferable skills to your field of research, can one change specialisation without significant difficulty at the postgraduate level?

In general, it is possible to switch disciplines within engineering between the bachelor's and master's programs.

However, this does depend a lot on the nature of the programs and how closely related they are. For instance, it's probably easier to go from chemical to biomedical engineering than it is to electrical or civil.

It's also worth pointing out that you may need to take additional coursework that candidates with a degree in the discipline do not.


Is it possible to get second master while I already have one? I am in a difficult situation and I am looking for some guidance. I have done my research and I have come to the conclusion that it is best for my mental health to take master and leave. Unfortunately, I already have a master's degree (in another field) and I am a 4th year PhD student and have only one year left to complete my PhD. Also, I am the first PhD student of my adviser. I realize that, I am extremely close to finishing and will probably be encouraged to continue. However, my mental health has been declining over the past several years.

Earlier this year my dog (who was everything to me) passed away from cancer and I never really had a chance to grieve and have been continuously working since then. His passing caused me to spiral into a much deeper depression than I was in before and in the past several weeks, I have been had episodes of de-personalization, where I have a memory of something that I have done in the past but I was proud of that. But, then that memory is not mine anymore. It seems it's a different person. I know this is related to the stress that I have been accumulating over the past few months and it is getting worse now. The only thing that alleviates my depression is that the thought of leaving academia and this town to move on with my life. I can honestly say that after finally deciding that getting master degree and leave out, is what I want to do now and I haven't been happier in years. Even though, it isn't finalized I think this is a good indication that I am making the right decision.

I have also realized that I don't want or need a PhD to get a job that I want. I really just want to go into forestry or be a greenhouse manager. I am burnt out, unhappy, unmotivated, and uninterested with my research because I can't get anything to work and don't expect to be able to complete my research in the next year. The main reason I feel I'm in grad school at this point is that I feel like I would disappoint my adviser. I know that's not a good reason to stay, especially since staying might be more detrimental for her chances for tenure than just finding another student to replace me on my project. I have decided to tell her that I am thinking about getting master degree and leave tomorrow to gauge her reaction. I need to have her approval before I do leave because I have been her student for 6 years now and need her reference. So if she is not on board with my plan to getting master degree and leave out, then I think I have to stay, but I know my work will suffer a lot in the next year and I doubt my ability to finish my research on time.

What I am wondering is whether or not I am justified in wanting to getting master degree and leave out, if it is bad to have two masters degrees? Will I still be able to find a job if I leave with a second masters?

Your own health is more important than any degree. You should attend to that. If you can do both, perhaps working with a therapist while deemphasizing your degree work for a while, then that might be an option. Stress and depression are very serious.

Your advisor seems to be invested in you, so you may have an option of a pause or a slower rate of progress. But a second masters won't impede your current goals so it doesn't sound (from here - which is far away) as a poor option.

However, if you can find a therapist who can help you with the health issues, he or she would be a better source of advice on your future plans than anything you will get here. In fact you may get advice of a complete different sort that neither you, your advisor, nor the community here could think of.

But for the direct question, I can't think of any downside to having more than one master's degree.