My former adviser published an article from my master thesis in a predatory journal without my consent, what should I do now? My former master adviser published an article, which is derived from my master thesis, in a predatory journal without my consent. He put my name as the first and corresponding author and his name as the second author. I just found it when Researchgate sent an alarm to me that you have a new publication! Right now, I'm a PhD student in the US and he is a professor in a different country, which these kind of activities are common and there is not strong infrastructure against research misconduct like the US or Europe. I don't want to make my CV dirty by putting an article in it, which is published in a predatory journal. I sent an email to the editor and editor-in-chief of this journal in order to retract the article but I didn't receive any response after a week. I'm wondering is it possible to request a DMCA take down to Google by myself to at least remove it from Google Scholar or Google search or it needs to inform my current university and they do an action?

I don't want to make my CV dirty by putting an article in it, which is
  published in a predatory journal

All you need to do is just to forget about it. You don't have to waste time on contacting your advisor or Google.

Nobody read predatory journals. The amount of papers in good venues are already too much.
Nobody will remember your name until you have a strong publication record with different sets of authors. (Otherwise people only remember the most well-known authors)
When you are somebody to be searched for, you probably have other publications that appear in the first search results. Researchers are busy, nobody have time for an old paper that has not been cited, in an unknown journal.


Are three year degrees from India equivalent to Four years degree in the US? Is a three years bachelors degree in Commerce and three years bachelors degree in Law from India termed to be equivalent to have a four years graduate degree from the US?

US does not have centralized rules about such things. It's in the hand of each university how they want to handle it.

Very few US universities will admit students with a 3 year bachelors from India. You can check that by writing a mail to the admissions office of the respective university.

Majority of the universities however will not accept the 3 year bachelors. For these universities, you will have to complete 16 years of formal education(10+2+4). This means that you will either have to complete a masters degree or some additional one year degree.

Note that most of the B-schools accept Indian 3 year bachelors nevertheless.


Is a professor allowed to require me to give him permission to speak with my doctor before letting me make up an exam? I study in the USA.

Can a professor ask me to waive my right to privacy so he can talk to my doctor about my medical condition? He says he needs that in order to allow me to take a make-up midterm for an exam that I missed, even though a medical note certifying my illness is provided.

Also, the doctor that gave the note is usually a nurse practitioner (NP), but he instead wants a note from a doctor of medicine (MD).

That sounds like a big no to me, but that comes from Germany with very strict rules on privacy. Your medical condition is your thing, and yours alone. If you have a document that certifies your illnesss, that should be enough.

Check your university policies, what you need to provide in case off illness HAS to be written down somewhere. If it states there that a written thing is enough, it is enough. Point your professor to that document, if that does not help talk to faculty cousellors. They should be able to help you.


In mathematics in the USA, is it appropriate for your teaching letter of recommendation to be from a previous university? I am finishing a 3-year postdoc, and will be applying to many universities for positions, including teaching colleges and research universities. I have 4 good research letters, but none discuss my teaching. I had excellent teaching letters from my previous university where I received my PhD, but I am not as close to the professors in this university.

Would it be better to obtain a teaching letter of recommendation from my previous university that I know is very positive, or to obtain a potentially less positive letter from my current university?

I think it depends on what kind of job you are looking for.  For research universities, I suspect you can get away with it; I actually used a teaching letter based on recitation teaching from graduate school when applying for TT positions 4 years after graduating, because for a variety of reasons, there wasn't anyone else I felt comfortable asking for one from.  Honestly, I don't think job search committees put much stock in teaching letters just based on classroom observation.  Any value they had has been inflated away by the fact that they are always positive, and to be honest, most mathematicians at research universities don't worry very much about teaching skill when looking at hiring, beyond not wanting to hire someone notably incompetent.  If they do, they're much more likely to try to judge from your interview or from student evaluations rather than a teaching letter.

If you're looking into more teaching focused schools, it's harder for me to say.  Maybe I'll just leave that hanging and let someone else answer.

EDIT: To address the question of getting two letters, I agree with Noah.  I want to be clear that this advice only applies to research universities, but I think getting two teaching letters completely gets wrong the risk/reward calculus for teaching letters.  They cannot get you a job, they can only lose one for you.  Probably they won't even look at teaching letters until they get to the short list, but if they do, it will be to sort out bad teachers, not to separate competent and good.  By far the most important thing about a teaching letter is that it doesn't say anything bad.  By getting two, you are doubling this (small) probability for absolutely zero benefit.


Does vixra hold copyright over any submission to it? I have read the following links

vixra.org/practices
vixra.org/submit

The only relevant line seems to be

By submitting your documents to viXra.org, you declare that all authors and other copyright owners of the work have given permission for distribution on the website and that you will inform us of any change of conditions.

Does this mean that they do not hold any copyright over my work?
Sorry if I am being too naive. I want to make sure of everything before landing in a mess.
This question was asked in response to this answer

The answer seems to be: No.
See here: "viXra.org does not require that authors grant any specific license to viXra.org. Copyright is assumed to remain entirely with the authors of any articles submitted."


Which GPA is more important for applying to PhD programs, graduate or undergraduate? I have BE and MS from the University of Tokyo (a research university in Japan) and
I'm planning to study and do research in US as a PhD student.

My questions is: which is more important, GPA at graduate school or GPA at undergraduate school?

I have a GPA of 3.8ish at graduate school and a GPA of 3.4ish at undergraduate school.
So this is a very important problem to me.

There are several competing concerns that make this question difficult to answer.

As BrenBarn notes in his comment, more recent information is more indicative of your current skills. Especially if you show significant improvement, which most programs will take into account. Graduate programs will also (hopefully) consist of more difficult classes that are closer to the difficulty level of the material you will be tackling in graduate school.

On the other hand, applications seem to be very comparison-based. Applicants for a year are compared against each other and also against successful (or unsuccessful) candidates from previous years. This is anecdotal, but I know that some programs explicitly group and rank candidates based on their undergraduate institution for their first round of decisions (e.g. the top couple from each top-5 school are always accepted, the bottom third from most schools are rejected). The fact that most applicants to US PhD programs don't have a graduate degree means that your undergraduate GPA may be more convenient for these comparisons, so it might actually get looked at more.

In programs that do this, I suspect that your undergraduate GPA will be more important for getting into the group of applicants that will actually be considered, but that your graduate GPA will become more important after that, as the committee examines the borderline applications more closely. But this is probably dependent on the specific program and their procedures, and I don't think that there is a consistent answer.


Pedagogical pros and cons of requiring undergraduate students to follow open/reproducible research practices? I regularly teach an undergraduate course in which students are expected to complete projects that involve writing code. I also supervise undergraduates in other project and thesis work that involve writing code.

I am considering requiring future students to publicly release their project code, and any other materials needed to reproduce their work, under an open source license. (This would, of course, be stated up front in the syllabus, or before I agree to supervise a thesis student.)

(Fortunately, the research platform on which my students work is very well suited for reproducible research, having been designed specifically with that goal in mind.)

On the one hand, I have this vague idea that it's to the students' benefit to practice participating in open, reproducible science.

On the other hand, students may feel reluctant to release their code (for all of the reasons documented here). Furthermore, I want to avoid things that distract too much from the main goals of the course, which don't directly involve reproducible research.

Are there any specific pedagogical arguments for or against instituting this requirement?

(Note that I'm asking about the pedagogical impact on my students, not the benefit to the broader research community of having my students do open science.)

I applaud your willingness to further your student's contributions to open source.

There are lots of pros:

Build student's reputations (ancillary to professor and institution)
Create value for society
Students will have an even greater stake in code they know will reflect on themselves, and as a result will go to greater lengths to ensure they demonstrate learning and excellence.

Con:

Students (and stakeholders) may not wish to publish because of fear of negative impact to reputation.

Well, masters' theses and doctoral dissertations are, in most institutions that I'm aware of, are all supposed to be bound and stored accessible to the public, even if the public never reads it.

In all likelihood, the bad stuff will get rarely read or used. The good stuff will never get enough attention, but it will get far more than the bad.

Conclusion

It's a risk worth taking, but bounce it off your department head and be certain that they agree. They may decide that since they're undergraduates, it's unfair and not proportionate to require them to publish. Or they may insist that the requirement appear ahead of time in the course catalogue description.


When should we repeat a statement of a theorem before proof in a paper? When should we repeat a statement of a theorem before proof?

Suppose we have a theorem in a paper at the introduction or at the beginning of a section. However, a proof is given, say, six pages later after a series of definitions, lemmas and propositions. It would be convenient for the readers to repeat a theorem before we give proofs to recall hypothesis and notations (especially those who read an electronic copy to see in a screen). Then, however, the paper becomes redundant. Should we repeat?

More pragmatic question: Are there any guideline/style of journal papers/books mention when to repeat or not?

Added: Although I asked when to repeat, how to repeat can be found, for example, in section 6.10.1(b) in this style guide.

Unless, you are facing a particular nasty page limit, those few lines spent repeating the theorem should not be a concern to you. Thus, the only concern you should have is what benefits the reader. Here, redundancy is not bad as such, but only if it annoys the reader and wastes their time. Therefore, you have to compromise between the following:

Readers whom the redundant information helps. In most cases, you have to expect that readers have not memorised the entire theorem yet, and this is clearly information that is relevant to reading the proof. Of course, readers can flip back to the theorem, but that’s a major annoyance (even if you can put the pages next to each other).

Even if the theorem equals the title of your paper and is something like:

  Every frasmotic contrafibularity is a compunctuous pericobobulation.

and you spend the entirety of the space between first stating the theorem and proving it with talking about the four terms involved, you cannot expect the reader to remember that, e.g., Theorem 2 was this titular theorem. Even if you refer to it as titular theorem, readers may need more time to understand this than to read the short theorem again.
Readers who are annoyed by the repetition. – In the situation you describe, I would expect that only very few readers do not need the theorem repeated to them. If the formatting is any reasonable, those should notice very quickly that you are restating the theorem so they can skip it.

Therefore, in most cases (including the one you describe), I would conclude that for the average reader the usefulness of restating the theorem outweighs the annoyance.


Author affiliation regarding I completed my master's three months back. Currently, I am writing scientific articles with collobrations in which I use the previous educational affiliation. Is this correct or should I use my current address as affiliation? Please do help me in this regard.

If you aren't still a student (or faculty) you can't use your previous university. But "Independent Researcher" is really enough. Affiliation is there for identification purposes primarily.

But you should probably not  use your current address. It is likely to change and become useless. But it might also attract spammy mails that never go away.

Some might list "none" or "unaffiliated", but "Independent Researcher" seems better to me. It isn't uncommon, actually.


Why is Reddit not a reliable source of experts? Some people say that you should take for granted for opinions on Reddit, because comparing it to academic journals is like comparing kindergarten to university. But I don't understand. Well, it's true that it is incomplete from a scientific point of view, but most active users in a specialized subreddit likely know what they are talking about. It also has the same peer review mechanism like Stack Exchange, and you can always visit users' profiles to evaluate their expertise. Saying a frequent redditor is not necessarily an expert is like saying top users in Academia Stack Exchange are not necessarily academics I think.

So if you can trust (to a certain degree) ideas from TED talks, Wikipedia, or Stack Exchange, then why should Reddit be an exception?

PS: I think the keyword specialized subreddit hasn't been implemented enough in the answers. Yes, all of the points are applicable in a generic subreddit, but I'm talking about subs that the fact one is in there means that they must have a certain level of knowledge, or else they can't never find out the sub. Any random person can create accounts, upvote, and write hilarious comments, but only those who actually have the knowledge can write serious ones and show the holes in my knowledge.

Related:
• Are TED presentations academically credible?
• Are there instances where citing Wikipedia is allowed?
• When should we ask questions on Reddit? (quite a misleading title in this context, but anyway)

Well, it's true that it is incomplete from a scientific point of view

Why did you write anything after this sentence?

This is probably a bit flippant. But seriously. It's "incomplete from a scientific point of view", according to your own words. Why do you need anything further to justify the fact that reddit is on a completely different level than academic journals? You are focusing too much on the identity of the writer, when you should have been focusing on the actual content. Science isn't about who wrote what; it's about the research. People can publish anonymously in top journals, if they are so inclined and the editors agree.

Not to mention that reddit (and this website) is a popularity contest. Any random person can create an account and upvote everything. Does writing a hilarious answer filled with private jokes make you a great scientist? No. Does it garner a lot of upvotes on reddit? Yes. Do you not see the conflict here? Calling this "peer review" is laughably naive. Reddit users don't go through the painful process of checking all the details of a comment before deciding to click on that arrow button.

  So if you can trust (to a certain degree) ideas from TED talks, Wikipedia, or Stack Exchange, then why should Reddit be an exception?

Just like with TED talks, Wikipedia, StackExchange, and journal articles, you should use your own judgment when determining what to trust and not believe blindly anything that is told to you. It's also true that if something is presented in the form of a funny anecdote on an anonymous website, you should proceed with extreme caution. I don't even understand why it's up for discussion.

PS: I certainly hope that you don't trust blindly anything written by top users here. StackExchange "reputation" is simply a measure of how much time one has wasted on this website. People who have never done any kind of research or teaching have garnered thousands and thousands of points asking braindead questions and parroting well-known talking points without really understanding what they are talking about.


Are you expected to bring poster presentations to academic conferences? BACKGROUND

I am attending an academic (engineering) conference where I am schedule to speak for my paper which was accepted, using MS PowerPoint/videos to assist my talk.  This is my first conference.  Currently I'm only bringing nice clothes and my lap top and the basics.  Due to lack of money, I'm only arriving on the day I'm scheduled to speak, then leaving immediately (cheapest roundtrip available).

QUESTION

Am I expected to bring a poster presentation to the conference?  Or is it typical to only give a talk (with a powerpoint, etc)?  I've checked the website and it says nothing about posters - but I don't want to be embarrassed and not have one.  I tried calling but couldn't reach an informed person.  Am I expected to be at the conference the entire time, or just for my talk?

Usually if you are presenting a poster, it's because you

submit a poster abstract to a call for posters, and it is accepted, or
submit a paper, and you are informed that it is accepted for a poster presentation instead of a talk, or
are otherwise informed by the organizers to bring a poster.

If you don't fall in any of the categories above, then in my experience, you aren't presenting a poster.


Can a masters student apply for a second masters in the same field at another university? Are students with masters degree allowed to enter a masters program in the same area at a good university?

Is second masters a good option for a better research experience and improving your CV before applying to a PhD in top programs? I am specifically interested in US universities and computer science.

Getting a second masters degree in the same field may be allowed, but it's extremely rare and I don't think it's a good use of time. I don't think it will help you get admitted to a PhD program. It would just look like an anomaly to the admissions committee. I think it would make more sense to apply directly to PhD programs.


Is it good to emphasize that one obtained a PhD from a prestigious university I was wondering whether it is a good practice for someone to emphasize that he obtained his degree from a prestigious university by including the name of his university always after his title, something like:

  Name, PhD (Caltech)

I have seen this in few occasions, but felt that it could be a bit offending to someone. Is this a discouraged behavior?

It could be taken to mean that your PhD from CalTech was a high point of your career and you want to make sure people know that. Depending on the context, that may be a bad or good thing. At a CalTech alumni meeting, it could be very good.


Can I use a figure under CC BY-SA 3.0 in an academic paper CC BY-SA requires that you distribute anything derivative of the work with the same license.

I found a very nice but complex diagram (let's say a CAD model) under this license and I  would like to modify it to add the relevant information on top of it for an introduction to a paper. Can I use this image on a scientific paper in any case, or I must make sure that the paper itself is under CC BY-SA?

Of course your revised figure must be released under a compatible license. However, I doubt that the paper as a whole can be considered a "derived work" under copyright law. Of course it is possible that the paper focuses so much on that figure that it actually is derived from it, but that seems unlikely.


Code hosting platform that allows sharing through link I am finishing my thesis (Physics) and need to add a link to all the codes I created to do the analysis presented in the manuscript.

The codes are not polished and they are intended to be public eventually but not just yet. So I need a platform that will allow me to have a private project that can be seen through a link for the review committee and for other students to see only. Github and GitLab do not offer this and can't find a webpage that does.

There are a lot of codes and they are separated by folders to distinguish the different areas in which they were used. So whatever webpage needs to be able to have a similar structure than GitHub.

Does anyone know where I could find this sort of feature? Thanks!

PD: If you know of the appropriate tags to use in this question I would appreciate you letting me know which ones those are.

Option 1

Based on your requirements, it doesn't seem that you need the code to be directly accessible from a browser. So the traditional solution would be to create an archive (e.g. zip file) protected by a password, and make this file accessible for instance through your institution website or Google Drive, Dropbox etc. Then you give the link and the password to whoever you want and they can download and browse it on their own computer.

Pro: protected and accessible through link
Cons: not accessible from a browser

Option 2

As an academic, you can have private Github repositories for free (probably also on other platforms). The people who need to access your code will need to have an account themselves, and you will have to explicitly grant access to them in the Github interface.

Pro: protected and accessible from a browser
Cons: requires people to create an account if they don't have one already

Option 3

Since your code is meant to be made public eventually, you could simply create a public repository and give the link to the people who need to access it. It doesn't really matter that the code is not polished or even finished, Github and other platforms are designed for projects under active development anyway (and you can  mention "work in progress" in the README file to make this clear). Additionally it's quite unlikely that anybody would find your code among the millions of repositories, unless you advertise it in a paper or webpage.

Pro: accessible from a browser, no need for an account
Cons: accessible to anyone who finds it

Option 4

I hesitated mentioning this one since it's kind of hacky, but for the sake of completeness: Overleaf is a platform meant for sharing Latex documents. Like github, it is backed by git, so as far as I know you can actually create a directory structure and push any file there. Then you can share the repository as a link, which contains a long random key so it's impossible for somebody to find it by chance.

Pro: private, accessible from a link, no account required for people to access it
Cons: kind of a hack


Should I publish a journal article on a new device instead of waiting to patent it? I have developed a device that would be patentable, however I have no funds to get an international patent.

I suspect that it might be better to write a research paper on the device so that people can read about it and provide funds for a patent, however I am worried that somebody can patent my device after reading my research paper.  Alternatively, I could wait for a year or so when the college can get me funds and a patent lawyer and patent it with me.

Which should I do?

If you are university affiliated, you should try to find your Office of Commercialization, or something similar. Generally speaking, they can help you through the process, and many universities help cover the fees for patents they consider to have likely commercial potential.

If you publish, that counts as a public presentation, and starts the clock ticking in the U.S.:

An old article on the subject: http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2001/10/patent-first-publish-later-how-not-ruin-your-chances-winning-patent

Other people know this - they're not likely to "provide funds" to you out of the goodness of their hearts if they can just wait a year and use your now patent-free invention. You don't have to worry about them patenting it, but you also lose out on the protection.


Is the personification of concepts or terms accepted in academic writing? The subject of velocity therefore also concerns itself with the capacity to process real-time data...

Would the above sentence be appropriate in an academic paper, specifically the use of the word concerns?

This is a habit I consistently notice in my writing when explaining concepts or subjects: I write as if the concept or subject is a person and then attribute words that are usually used in conjunction with human capacities, i.e., I personify.

I am not a native English speaker so my instinct may be wrong, however, I cannot remember that we were ever taught it is wrong to write in this way.

I cannot comment on your specific example, because I do not know what it is supposed to communicate.

As with almost any writing device, I think personification is acceptable if:

it conveys some idea better or more concisely than alternatives,
the target audience can be expected to understand it,
there is no loss of precision when it is needed.

Now, the audience of academic writing consists to a considerable extent of non-native speakers, and precision is often paramount. Therefore, the above conditions constrain the use of personifications much stronger than for other types of writing.

Still, there are many cases where a personification is appropriate, for example when you already rigorously defined some concept and now want to explain it by other means. Many such personifications have found their way into scientific terminology or everyday language to the extent that we probably would not even perceive them as personifications anymore. For example, consider the usage of inherit in biology, computer science, and many other contexts. Also, I have used five personifications in this answer so far (mostly unintentionally).

Example 1

This is from my own academic writing and slightly shortened to reduce context dependence:

  These incompatible results show that the model suffers from an inconsistency.

This is a personification:
A scientific model cannot suffer.
If I had been forbidden to use personifications, I would have written something like this instead:

  These incompatible results show that the model is inconsistent, which is a considerable problem.

Since I consider this rather clunky, I do not expect anybody to misunderstand my use of suffer, and this is not a matter of definition, I opted for the personification here.
(Now, to some of you “which is a considerable problem” may redundant here, but the paper’s target audience it is not, as evidenced by some of the feedback.)

Example 2

Again from my own writing and slightly modified:

  SymEngine is aspiring to replace the pure Python core of the better-known SymPy.

SymEngine is a software package; it cannot aspire.
Without personification I would have written something like:

  SymEngine is developed with the goal that it replaces the pure Python core of the better-known SymPy.

I consider it as likely that somebody stumbles over this more complex sentence structure as over my use of aspire.
For everybody else, the alternative does not add anything.
Again this is a high-level description where precision is not of the essence.


Can I mention interest in two somewhat different research areas in my SOP? I am applying to 8 schools in research area X of applied physics. I have some research experience in a very closely related area and one publication in a solid journal.

One of those schools has a professor working on very interesting topics in area Y. I emailed him and his reply was quite positive, saying I have an excellent record, but had the usual "the admissions committee makes the decisions not me, but I will be sure they carefully consider your application". I also know at this school we don't pick advisors till the summer of the first year. I have 3 years of experience in the theoretical side of area Y, 3 journal publications and a few talks/posters.

There are 3 scenarios I can think of:

Mention both X and Y, but I'm worried it would hurt my chances. I could focus mainly on X and mention Y in 1 or 2 sentences in my intro. I would also add 2 sentences to mention this professor's research near the end + 2 more professors from area X.
Mention only X, it makes me look more focused and this university has many more faculty in that area, but I'm worried this will burn bridges with the professor from area Y.
Mention only Y. I wouldn't be very keen on this as I would waste the tens of hours I spent on a mini-literature review of area X before writing my statement.

Edit: To clarify, I'm not asking whether I should mention my work on area Y or not. I certainly did mention all my prior research experience. I am asking whether it's okay to mention future interest in BOTH areas. e.g. "I am interested in topics A, B, C (from area X). Moreover, I am interested in topic D (from area Y)."

Stop calling it an interest when you have publication proving expertise. I'm "interested" in the Real Housewives show. You need to find a better set of verbiage. You are at the edge of the field in two areas but it remains one field. Let the professors fight over who gets to work with you. Let them fight over who gets published with you. You need more than one vote to get in, so get all votes. You are accomplished in two areas of one field. Show that you are young and scrappy and willing to do the work and they will put you to work wherever they see fit. I'm wondering if current students "do their own thing" or basically apprentice on professor pet projects and publish for the professors. See what has been published. They want someone to do the work and keep the school top tier, but they don't need any competition later, right? Focus on what an honor it would be to be mentored by them at such a great place. They have to actually work with you and sit for office hours with you, so be that guy who gets the work done between meetings and isn't needy yet takes all suggestions and is deferential.


Can I submit my mark sheets as academic transcripts? I have not yet received my academic transcripts from my University and the application deadline for a PhD program that I am interested in is already near, and I won't be receiving my transcripts before it. Can I submit my mark sheets to the University? If yes, then should I mention it somewhere that I am submitting my mark sheets instead? And where should I mention it? They have asked for a CV and a cover letter, so those are the two other documents I'll be sending. Or should I first contact the University and find out if it is okay to do so?

Most universities realize final grades aren't available, and will usually accept an partial transcript showing what's been completed up until that time.

However, not all programs will be willing to accept "unofficial" transcripts such as grade sheets and printouts from the registrar's office. If there's a concern on this point, you should contact the specific departments and programs to which you're  applying and ask them for guidance.


What masters level courses should one take to prepare himself for a future career in the Internet of Things? I am a graduate student looking to pursue MS in Computer Engineering. I wish to have a future career in the Internet of Things domain. Can someone suggest me the courses I should take that would prepare me for the same?

Internet of Things (IoT) is a very large cross-disciplinary domain. Therefore, if you want to become a well-rounded IoT professional, I think that you would have to take core classes from essential to IoT disciplines, such as electronics engineering, computer science / engineering, embedded software development, information systems and data science. Obviously, if you want to focus your career toward a specific part of IoT spectrum, you would have to study relevant topics at a more detail than the rest (which is still important, firstly, to be well-rounded enough and, secondly, to be ready for potential changes in your professional interests). Reading corresponding Wikipedia article, which is quite comprehensive, should be a good starting point and provide you with more information on various disciplines and areas of study, relevant to IoT subject domain. Good luck!


What is FLA in the Elsevier manuscript submission checklist? Elsevier Clinical Biomechanics journal requires the submission of a mandatory checklist along with the manuscript. One of its entries include the following.

  The section heading 'Introduction' should be used for all FLAs.

What is FLA in this context?

In Elsevier nomenclature, FLA is an "article doc subtype" acronym for "Full length article". Other article type acronyms include BRV for book reviews, NWS for news, PGL for practice guideline, and so on.

The checklist requires you to have a section labelled "Introduction" for a full length article. For other article types, this is not required.

I hope this helps.


Telling my supervisor about my medical condition I am a graduate student and I am more than half way through with my thesis. I was diagnosed with epilepsy 3 years ago, and in order to control my seizures I take Depakote. Now my seizures are under control, but the medicine has side effects, which hinders my productivity at times. This hindrance causes delay in my work, hence I have a feeling that my thesis will take longer to complete but he does not fund my thesis.
Should I share my medical condition directly with my supervisor or should I first contact the disability center in my college first and let them tell him that?
UPDATE
So I spoke both with the disability center and my supervisor, and things worked out according to my expectations. Both the disability center and my supervisor were very understanding.
Thank you all for your support and suggestions!!!

Contact the disability center first.
You haven't listed a location, but most developed nations have laws prohibiting discrimination against individuals with disabilities, and mandating reasonable accommodations for their disabilities. The university disability office will likely have a better understanding of the university's policies and procedures as well as what reasonable accommodations you're entitled to than a random professor will (unless that's their research area or something). Additionally, helping you is literally their job, so you might as well take advantage of their services; it's not going to cost you or your lab/work group anything to do so, after all, and they should keep the contents of your communications with them private.


Prefix Dr. or Mr./Ms. if I have an MD but not a Ph.D. in medicine? I am sending in an article to a ScholarOne journal: should I mark my prefix Dr. or Mr./Ms. if I have an M.D. but not a Ph.D.?

First, note that the title that you give to a ScholarOne manuscript handling system probably doesn't matter at all --- more than anything else, that is in there to avoid offending you if you are particular about being given your title.  The actual publication of the paper will typically omit titles, so putting in the title just regulates what the system will call you in email.

That said, Dr. is a correct title to use as an M.D.  In fact, many people will argue that opposite, that it is Ph.D.-holders whose use of the title is dubious!


Let the second author to go to the conference instead of the first author who also wants to go There was a master student who was supervised by a lecturer for his dissertation. They also decided to write and submitted a paper, whose first author was the master student, based on the dissertation. The paper is accepted but it also creates an issue about who should go and present it since there is enough funding for only one person to go to the conference.

The master student wants to go as he is the first author and did most of the work. On the other hand, the lecturer wants to go for networking purposes, e.g. meet other reseachers and find potential collaboration. Moreover, he also reasons that as the student is about to graduate and won't work in academia anymore, it does not have much benefit to fund him to go to the conference.

My question is that whether the lecturer's decision is reasonable.

You're going to get a lot of opinions on this, but I think that if the second author wants to go primarily for networking purposes, he should pay his own way. The student wants to go, did the majority of the work, and is the primary author of the paper. The fact that the student will leave academia after graduating is irrelevant. The student should have his travel paid and present the work at the conference.


Is there some generally academic accepted categorization of subject areas and subject categories? My question in the title is general.  To help you understand why I'm asking the general question, I'll add ... the SJR (SCImago Journal) ranking is based on the SCOPUS database.  In both the Web of Science and SJR journal ranking, they categorize "Information Systems" under "Computer Science".  I'm personally interested if there are some other major academic search engine, that categorizes "Information Systems", somewhere other than "Computer Science"?

However, to answer my question, please answer the general question, since that applies to many more SE users.

Australia and New Zealand rely upon the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC).  This standard comprises of Type of Activity (TOA); Fields of Research (FOR); and Socio-economic Objective (SEO).

You would be most interested in the Fields of Research code specifications.  In the FOR code, Division 08 Information and Computing Sciences includes group 0806 Information Systems which is specified here: http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/21AF3378B57615E7CA25741800047563?opendocument

Sources:

http://www.arc.gov.au/applicants/codes.htm#ANZSRC
Industry experience


Fellow student asked question from take-home exam on Stack Exchange In an advanced university course on computer science and problem solving, one of my fellow students asked for a solution to a home exam on one of the Stack Exchange sites. The question he asked is taken directly from the exam without modification also stating that this is practice question for the upcoming exam. He got the solution. There was more than one question.

The professor always creates questions that are unique. It clearly states that questions on the exam must only be directed to the professor himself.

Now for the moral dilemma. I feel very uneasy about reporting although knowing that it will hurt future students and in the long term the status of the school. Will it affect me? Most likely not.

I would like input on how others would reason about this.

Let's be clear here. From your description, the student clearly cheated by violating the take-home exam's stated policy that (quoting from your comment on @user2768's answer) "it is prohibited to ask anyone for an answer". Thus, your question reduces to the generic question of "should I report a fellow student who cheated?", to which the answer is "yes", as discussed endlessly on many previous questions on this site, e.g.:

Is it okay to report classmates cheating on exams?

Is it reasonable to report another student for cheating when it has no impact on me?

When is it acceptable to report classmates who cheat on an exam?

Should I report cheating to my professor? If so, how?

One can debate (as some here are doing) the viability of take-home exams as an assessment tool, since such exams create relatively easy opportunities for cheating, but that is besides the point. The student cheated, and should be reported. The "moral dilemma" you are referring to is a completely bogus one created by the outdated cultural conditioning that exists in many societies according to which "ratting people out" for bad behavior is morally wrong -- see my analysis of this issue in this answer.

Edit: I noticed that you wrote in a comment that “his account is filled with questions related to assignments in different courses”. Thus, he is not just a cheater, he is a serial cheater, which makes the case for reporting him much stronger. I suggest saving evidence of his cheating (screenshots etc) before reporting to prevent him from hiding his wrongdoing by deleting the questions.


Is it frowned upon to go to office hours as a graduate student? I'm a graduate student (PhD, first year) in physics, and there have been a few times where I just can't figure out something regarding the material/subject of the class. Normally I just tell myself that since I'm a graduate student, I better be able to figure it out myself without the help of the professor, or any other "higher-ups" in my department for that matter. This usually leads to success, but not without a fair amount of work. Sometimes the end of my problem seems to recede faster than I make progress, and I usually have other stuff to do, so I get really tempted to just ask the professor, specifically by going to their office hours.

My question is, is going to office hours in a graduate course seen as a bad or "inferior" in US grad schools? I'm obviously not talking about spamming the professor with impulsive and ill-conceived questions.

EDIT: Some people in the comments are saying "Well you're a graduate student, and there are office hours, so obviously you can and should make use of them." Life isn't as simply black-and-white as that. The focus of my question is on the unspoken, possibly subliminal, perception of going to office hours as a graduate student which, by its very nature, is not explicitly stated in "official" text (e.g. syllabi, student conduct guidelines, etc.). Such latent social phenomena are present in every situation and culture. Stated explicitly or not, general academic culture expects graduate students to become independent researchers. I was wondering whether this underlying expectation affected the perception of going to office hours as a graduate student, which by definition is a partial dependence on the professor. This topic is nuanced by the various ways in which one could "go to office hours" (e.g. fully prepared, unprepared, in-between, etc.) and by the variation in perceptions of those various ways. Therefore I think it's nontrivial and worth asking about.

Grad students who come to office hours with good questions that show serious engagement with the material (e.g. attempts to solve the problem themself) are generally seen as mature, hard-working students.

It is also a good way to get to know faculty in your department, which can be useful e.g. if you are looking for a research assistantship, or recommendation letters, etc.

Personally, when I teach, I like when students come to office hours with good questions - it helps me see how students are understanding the lesson, where common points of friction are, and thereby improves the quality of my instruction. It also helps them do better in the course, which is of course a goal we have in common. But, I enjoy teaching and engaging with students. Some faculty in my department don't like teaching, and don't like office hours - but even those faculty members don't look down on students who make (good) use of them.


Should I provide TOEFL/IELTS results for a PhD admission? So I'm a citizen of non-English speaking country, but my master's program in STEM field is fully conducted in English. Should I provide TOEFL/IELTS results when applying for a PhD program in USA or Europe? I accept that it may vary and depend on a university and country, but what should I expect in common?

It is common for a degree from an English-speaking country to exempt you from taking the TOEFL. However, it is much rarer for an English masters in a non-English speaking country to. In the US, the general rule is that they want the degree to be from an English speaking country, although exceptions can be made. It's best to consult the admissions departments of the particular schools you are interested in.

To quote a few websites:

Princeton (emphasis original):

  The ONLY exemption for this requirement is if your native language is not English, but you earned (or will have earned before enrollment) your bachelor's degree or a Ph.D. in its entirety in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, or Anglophone Canada.

Harvard:

  A strong knowledge of English is essential for successful study at Harvard, including the ability to understand and express thoughts quickly and clearly. Although you are not required to take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or other proficiency exams, you may submit your scores if you have done so.

MIT

  Students who have received instruction in English in their primary and secondary schools and students who have been in the United States for four years or longer and have received a degree from an American institution may be eligible for a waiver of the English proficiency exam requirement by sending a written request to the department or program to which they are applying.

Berkeley:

  To qualify for a TOEFL exemption you must:

  Have a basic degree from a recognized institution in a country where the official language is English.
  Have completed a basic or advanced degree at an institution, in the United States or abroad, where the language of instruction is English and the institution is accredited by one of the United States’ regional accrediting* agencies. (United States universities only)
  Have completed at least one year of full-time academic course work with a grade B or better at a regionally accredited* institution within the United States.

UChicago (emphasis added):

  The English language requirement may be waived if the applicant is a native of or studied in full-time status for at least one academic year within the last five years in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand or English medium universities in Canada or South Africa. Students who studied in English in other countries, for example, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc., are not exempt from the English language requirement.

Oxford:

  ... been educated full-time in the medium of the English language throughout the two most recent years before the 15 October application deadline, and who remain in full-time education conducted in the English language until the end of the school year in their home country.

Cambridge:

  If you don't have one of these formal qualifications but are currently being taught in English, please contact one of the College admissions offices for advice.

King's College of London:

  Nationals of the following [all English-speaking] countries, or applicants who have successfully completed an undergraduate degree (of at least three years duration), a postgraduate taught degree (of at least one year) or a PhD in one of the following countries are not required to complete an additional English language test:


Should I publish a given unit of work in more smaller papers or fewer larger papers? Having just spoke with my advisor, and speaking on occasion with other professors, I have come to the impression that one should not "subpublish."  Let me say what I mean.  I'm a 3rd year graduate student right now, and the professors I talk to seem to say that it is not a good idea to publish many small papers along the way to a result: that is, holding fixed the total mathematical content across N papers, it is best if N is minimized.  I was trying to understand why.  My advisor cited the reason of "reputation" and I have invented my own reason that perhaps there is an upfront cost to the process of writing and submitting a paper so that although effort per length may be constant, it is to my advantage to pay the upfront cost as few times as possible.  (Finding a referee is the only upfront cost that comes to mind, but keep in mind I've never done this before.)

Can someone expand upon how reputation is relevant here i.e. for fixed mathematical content why it looks bad to come out with many small papers?  Are there also benefits to the community or the knowledge pool that I'm trying to expand however slightly by writing such papers if it all comes at once in one big paper?  One would think that if I "subpublish" that actually since my results become available more immediately that it would benefit the community if I did so.  The only person it would seem to possibly hurt is me if I were to get scooped.

Are there other ways in which upfront costs to the whole process of publishing may happen?

I am interested in all my questions in both advantages and disadvantages to me, and also to those who would use my work.

In math it's generally better to aim for fewer, longer, better papers.  There's nothing wrong with publishing short papers if that's what best fits your discoveries.  However, given the choice you should not publish your results piecemeal as you derive them, but rather try to collect and polish them and craft coherent, substantial papers.  There are several reasons for this:

Publishing partial results piece by piece makes it harder to write understandable papers.  A few papers later, you'll wish you had done things a little differently, and you'll start writing things like "by the same idea as in the proof of Lemma 3 in [15]" because the statement of Lemma 3 doesn't quite say what you need now.  But it's too late to change it, so your next paper is either cryptic or repetitive, and neither one impresses readers.  Or you find an ad hoc way around it, but your paper ends up being a little less natural.  Basically, this is a form of technical debt.  Once you have enough technical debt, the only good solution is to write a clean exposition from scratch.  Every topic eventually reaches this point (which is one reason we have expository papers and books), but in the meantime you'll minimize the problems if you gather related ideas in one place and write them as a coherent unit.
If you break your work into papers in unnatural ways, you risk looking desperate for publications.  Each individual paper may look like you don't understand the big picture or don't think your work is going to amount to anything substantial.  These are not messages you want to send to readers.
If you want a serious research career, you need to publish in good journals.  Taking a long paper in a prestigious journal and breaking it into three short papers in less prestigious journals is bad for your CV.  Experts might know those three papers amount to something substantial when combined, but a non-expert looking at your CV won't be able to tell.
Many people in your subfield will form an opinion of you without having studied your work carefully.  For example, plenty of people who have never read any of your papers will see you give talks at conferences or will see references to your work.  Because they don't have a global context for your work, to a first approximation they will judge you by how good they think your average paper is.

  One would think that if I "subpublish" that actually since my results become available more immediately that it would benefit the community if I did so.

If you reach a nontrivial milestone that is genuinely exciting or useful for other people, then that could be a good reason to publish a paper now, rather than sitting on the result while you try to complete a larger project.  On the other hand, there's much less value in presenting a steady stream of partial results taken out of context.

Of course career pressures sometimes interfere with ideal publishing.  If you're going on the job market soon, then writing a suboptimal paper now is probably better than writing an optimal paper later.


Vancouver style citation and multiple sentences I use a numbered citation style in my research paper. How should I use a citation when I have multiple sentences from the same source?

E.g. for one sentence it’s easy:

  My apple is red (1).

However, for many sentences:

  My apple is red (1). Yours is green. And your pet’s. (2.)

Is it right to put a dot after the number two to indicate that the citation applies to every sentence after previous citation?

I'm not certain whether or not you are technically current about the meaning of a dot after a citation in this particular style.

What I am certain about, however, is that any such convention is extremely subtle and easy for a reader to misinterpret, both because it's not standard in most styles and because a period is not particularly visually salient.  I would thus strongly suggest using other means, such as how you actually construct your prose, to signal more clearly to the reader which facts belong together as a cited bundle.


Choosing which project advisor to ask recommendations from I did a research project, in which I was advised by two researchers. Most of the time, it was a PhD student who defended and transitioned to post-doc during the project. But my official advisor, with whom I talked less often, was this post-doc's own advisor, hence more established and with a "full researcher" position.
I am not sure which researcher I should contact about letters of recommendation for PhD applications. They both gave me good feedback and advice. It was the senior advisor who graded me (close to a perfect grade), but as I said, the post-doc advised me more often.
Note that I am not yet applying to anything, I just want to ask if they would be willing to write recommendations for me in the future.
Would it be better to contact the post-doc, the full researcher, or both in a joint e-mail? Does the job title make a big difference, or is it more a matter of how closely they followed the project?

Definitely contact them both. The email doesn't need to be the same to each, but inform each that you are also asking the other.
But try to write it in a way that gets you some feedback about what each would write in an actual recommendation: "I hope you view my contributions in a positive light. I found it a valuable experience...."
The senior person's recommendation would have more weight. Both people writing would also be good if there aren't other, better, choices. But you need someone familiar enough with your contribution so that their recommendation seems genuine and not pro-forma.


How to maintain a good relationship with advisor when there is no need for it but I want it? I want a good relationship with my advisor. But he is very busy with his projects and I am very busy with my master thesis as well. It is very clear to me where my project is going, I just need time to get it done. So basically, for now I don't need to meet my advisor and he doesn't have time anyways. For technical questions I can always ask some PhD students from him and I work usually at home.

I guess emailing once a month with updates would only overload his email address. Do you have any other ideas how to keep a good relationship with my advisor although there is no direct need for it? No matter how good of an advising this is, what can I do to make a good relationship?

Keeping your advisor up to date with how your work is going is important. You might think that your work is going along the correct path, but it is quite possible in research to start heading off down a path which - while possibly interesting - may not be the route your supervisor wants you to go down (at least, not without discussing it first).

One way of damaging a good working student-advisor relationship is to end up in a situation where your advisor is demanding to know why you have taken the research in a new direction, without consulting your advisor for his/her advice.

I do not think that a monthly update is going to overload your advisor's email account - unless he or she is an internet hermit. If you are worried about annoying your advisor with information overload, you could always end your initial email reports with words indicating that you are more than happy to talk face-to-face about your progress, or say that you are happy to make the email updates less frequent.

No advisor wants to be left in the dark about what their students are doing. A good advisor will not consider a regular email update from their student a negative prospect - so long as you don't try your advisor's patience with multi-page long emails. For an MSc thesis project - where time is tight - I think that reporting on a monthly basis is about right.


Appropriateness of dedicating my thesis to a Jewish mathematician who died in a concentration camp I am a Muslim student in a non-Arab country. Would it be unwanted/inappropriate for me to dedicate my thesis on Tauber theory to Alfred Tauber, and more generally to all those Jewish mathematicians who died in Nazi concentration camps during WW2? I thought it would form a nice opportunity for some remembrance of the fact that so many people whose work we value today were affected. I was greatly saddened to learn about the fate of A. Tauber and wanted to do something with that. On the other hand, a mathematics thesis might not be the place to "confront" like this.

Aeismail’s answer is spot on: who you choose to dedicate it to is entirely up to you (modulo political expedience). I've read theses dedicated to martyrs and I've read theses dedicated to cats. Do what you feel moved to do. See answers here for some discussion.

As for how it would be received by the Jewish community and Jewish mathematicians, I am confident that the answer is "extremely well," based on my experiences and conversations about similar tributes. On a personal level, as a Jewish mathematician and descendant of survivors I would find this incredibly meaningful to come across and quite likely be moved to tears by a well-written dedication along these lines.

A tip about writing the dedication: one common mistake that people writing about the Holocaust make is to paint it as “unimaginable” or “unprecedented.” Although it is by far the single largest genocide in terms of total number of people killed (6M Jews, 5M others includes Poles, the disabled, and homosexuals) that usually rubs me the wrong way. The Holocaust is without a doubt the most socially prominent, but definitely not only, example of persecutions of Jews or of genocide as a whole. It’s also not the most recent or “last” (I see people use this term) genocide, nor has Nazism gone away. Today there is genocide in Myanmar against the Rohingya people and in Iraq against the Yazidi. Today neo-Nazis openly march in Virginia, USA while targeting Jews in their chants and waving the swastika. These facts are things people tend to be unaware of, and so people can sometimes accidentally take away from their tributes through inaccurate or dismissive words.

I think a dedication to Tauber and the others who were murdered would be lovely, but caution you to think carefully about the wording lest you accidentally minimize or dismiss the aforementioned facts.

A couple of people seem to have missed the fact that there’s a direct connection between Tauber and your work. To explicitly state that for anyone who is reading this: the field that is the topic of the dissertation is known as “Tauber Theory” and (presumably) Tauber’s work was foundational and central to the field and the dissertation.


Could I change my research direction after graduated master? For example, if I finished a topic on the computer science field and graduated as a master degree, could I change to a topic within the psychology or any other field. Just because I'm more interested in doing research in psychology.

You can always change your field, but it may not be trivial to do so. Study in a new field, and getting accepted in to a program usually assumes certain prerequisites. If you don't already have those, you will need (a) to get them somehow and (b) to convince others that you have the skills.

People change their minds about what they want to do. Others recognize that, so there are no hard barriers. But there may be a long period of study to achieve what you want.

Also, study of some fields, like CS or mathematics or statistics may make some things in other fields easier as many of the tools used in research generally are based on one or more of those things.

But you may have an easier path overall if you spend some time exploring your options before you set out on the journey.


Can I include a copyright notice in my paper? Alright, so I'm kind of curious if it breaks any sort of standard style to put in a copyright notice somewhere at the start or end of my paper. The specific context I inquire for is coursework, not general release. Yes, I get that it would be pretentious, but this question is more just a curiosity than genuine applied inquiry.

So, for example, let's say I write a paper about the role of computer science in military tactics as my final paper for some class. I put on the title page "copyright 2016 <my name here>." Would this be in direct violation of MLA, APA, or Chicago style?

Then, extending the example, let's say I feel so proud of the paper that I'm contemplating giving it a general release on my blog. In that case would I still include the copyright notice on the copy I turn in?

Of the three listed I am only truly familiar with Chicago style, which if you are writing on military tactics is the style you are likely using, and that is the only style which has significant discussion of copyright notices.

There is nothing against copyright notices in the Chicago style. In fact, the University of Chicago—the publisher the Chicago Style—requires a copyright notice in their dissertations. Notably, however, dissertations are formally published, in contrast with course papers.

That said, as pointed out in the comments, it is not necessary, since it is under copyright without a notice. It is pretentious and even a little insulting, since the unnecessary copyright notice implies that you think that A) your ideas are so good and B) that your readers/advisors/colleagues are of such a low moral character that might steal them but for this little notice you put on it. It is also well outside the norm for anything not formally published, and will look weird.

The only exception to this would be if you are intending to distribute your work under a separate license, or if something you use in your paper is under a copyright or a license which requires a notification. For example, some of the Creative Commons licenses require notification if you use some of the licensed materials. It will still look a little strange, but people will understand, since it is legal stuff.


Why do so few universities offer OpenCourseWare videos of their lessons? OpenCourseWare has become more and more popular over the years, and quite a good number of universities make their lessons available in the form of online videos. However, compared to the total number of universities found in the US or rest of the world, the offerings are quite small. It seems to me that OpenCourseWare is a great way for schools to draw attention to themselves, so why is the percentage of schools offering OCW courses small?

Making an OpenCourseWare course isn't as simple as getting a team of kids with videocameras and uploading the course onto YouTube. There is a surprisingly high standard that the Professor and the University attempts to meet when they prepare a course to be deposited onto OpenCourseWare.

Stanford had built entire classrooms for the purpose of sharing online classes. Many of them have 3-4 cameras controlled by two operators while another is entirely responsible for the sound. Classes that require a balance between boardwork, slides, and discussion require a very well-trained team of videographers to recognize what they are supposed to be looking at without breaking the rhythm of the course and capturing the intent of the lecturer.

Ask any Professor how prepared their lectures are. Despite how absent-minded most professors seem, there is a large amount of practice and slidology behind each lecture. OCW adds a whole other layer to preparation since the course actually has to run on schedule and conclude with the course completed. The materials used require additional thought since OCW is limited to only a single camera. Look at some of Yale's early OTC courses; the professor will make references to a figure and the camera will be focused on his gestures rather than the actual information that they are trying to portray.

Lastly online courses are extremely expensive and don't truly make the return on investment as one would imagine. For instance, Utah State was forced to end their OpenCourseWare initiative.


Does doing an Industrial Postdoc after PhD make an academic career more difficult? I'm doing a PhD in Engineering and want to have a career in academia. I've been learning some people in engineering are able to do so-called industrial PostDocs where you do research in a company.
However it seems that most people who do this then go on to work in industry. Is it possible to do an industrial PostDoc then go back to a university and get an academic position? What are some factors to consider?
I'm guessing that doing an industrial PostDoc would hurt your chances to later get academic positions because you wouldn't have the same teaching experience. I actually can't think of any way in which is could help more than doing a normal PostDoc in a university lab.

Pros:

Builds connections (which will be useful no matter what)
Experience with a different kind of science
More money (and you can probably leverage the higher salary into more money if you go back to academia)
Many academics think patents are magic and if you hold some you're a sorcerer

Cons:

Runs time off your post-PhD funding clocks
Some academics think industry is beneath them
Not being able to talk openly about your industry work can adversely affect your ability to even get another academic job

Teaching is irrelevant unless you want to only teach, in which case you can just teach a night class as an adjunct while holding your industry job. Many PIs will not approve you teaching as an academic postdoc because they feel like they own you and it's a waste of your time.
It is, generally, possible to come back to academia after some time in industry, but does have some drawbacks (and you'll have to work harder after you come back to catch up a bit with your competition that stayed on a purely academic track). If you can catch up, it does actually look good and you will be competitive.


How should a mathematics major choose between doing a Masters or PhD? I would really appreciate any advice or suggestions anyone might have. I am currently a senior mathematics major, about to graduate in May. For two years, I have planned on going for my PhD in pure mathematics (my highest interests have been in algebra, number theory, and discrete math). I applied to 8 PhD programs and 1 masters program, the masters program just for the heck of it. I was accepted into the masters program, but I was rejected from 6 PhD programs and wait-listed on the other two. Neither of these last two would I really want to go to, but I would be happy at either of them nonetheless.

Now, the masters program is at Ohio State and gives full tuition waiver plus a minimum monthly stipend of $1950, plus a significantly reduced health insurance bill. The program specifically is the Master of Mathematical Sciences with concentration in Computational Sciences. The department is super lenient as to which courses I can take outside of their main core courses, as long as my course plan fits the computational theme and as long as my advisor signs off.

So, my question is, should I go to the masters program or should I go to one of the PhD programs (if I'm even accepted; again, I'm still wait-listed)? Will finishing this MMS program at Ohio State help my chances of getting in to a top-notch PhD program in the future? How common is it (in mathematics) for mathematicians to earn a (non-"incidental") masters degree before pursuing their PhD?

Thanks! Let me know if you want any clarification or further information.

I'm not in mathematics so take my answer for what it is.
The fact that you were turned down by 6 PhD programs suggests that your applications probably weren't too strong. Maybe you had bad grades, bad test scores, bad recommendations, etc. Or you simply overestimated your application strength and applied to schools beyond your reach (i.e. top 15 schools).

Whatever it is, you need to overcome these shortcomings in your credentials. A Masters degree could be a great way to prove that you are grad school material, especially if you can demonstrate that you fit in academia by publishing article(s). This could be a jumping point to a decent PhD program. Generally, graduate programs would rather accept successful masters students over successful bachelors students, simply because good masters students already know the system and how to make it work.


PhD supervisor making me do a LOT of non PhD work 2nd year PhD student going into 3rd and final year in September, in the UK.

My PhD supervisor is a brilliant researcher, and for the most part I enjoy working with her. I do have a second supervisor but she is essentially useless.

My project is pretty hectic, I enjoy working on different components at once. That said, I have a defined research question and thesis chapters.

However, recently my supervisor has tasked me with helping on lab work for a project which needs to be completed for a grant application. This project has nothing to do with my PhD (other than I will be using the same method). It involves about 10-12 hours of hands on time per week. This is a significant amount of time out of my work which is intense enough without this. I mean I would frequently work from 7-7 on it alone.

I have been told I can only be paid for the weekend work (which consists of about 1 hour of the weekly 10), but this to me seems dodgy. The work has nothing to do with my PhD and is directly impacting my ability to get stuff done.

The fact is I'm scared of saying any of this to my supervisor, as at the end of the day I am planning to do a post with her and I feel like if you present as inflexible it could hurt me down the line. However I do feel a bit taken advantage of, and at the end of the day considering that doing this work for a few months is only prolonging my thesis submission.

Just wondering if anyone else has experienced anything similar or has any advice?

Although there may be a number of people here who are quick to claim that no PhD advisor would ever take advantage of the cheap and free labor that PhD students can be coerced into (by means of using degree and thesis requirements as a figurative cudgel), I think that it is somewhat common that PhD advisors make use of such free labor. This should not be.

This being said, there are a few things to consider:

The grant application you are assisting in might be a direct means of funding your future research. That is the "pay off" for you. Nothing happens in academia for free. Make sure that you are being compensated, but also keep in mind that not all compensation is directly and immediately monetary.
A few months of weekend work is sometimes part of "paying your dues" in academia and can open up further opportunities for you. (Such as a future post-doc with this professor).
Address your concerns as to timeline with your supervisor. If she dismisses your thoughts entirely, you may want to consider if this is really a professor you want to do a post-doc with.


In what situations would "self-plagiarism" be authorized by a professor? A lot of universities say "Cannot submit this work in whole or in part to another class without prior written consent by the instructor."

What is an example of a situation where a student would get consent for this?

I first note that the idea that students' work is somehow not a part of their personal body of work, thus owned by them, and re-purpose-able however they like, has always struck me as very strange. In fact, this seems to me quite contrary to any notion that universities are creating intellectuals and scholars. That is, there is a powerful implicit assumption that students would never do anything at all if not commanded to do so by instructors in officially scheduled courses, so somehow do not deserve credit for any work, and do not truly "own" it.

I myself have absolutely no objection to anyone's re-use of work they happened to do before I asked them to do it. :)

All the better, in fact, if they had the sense and drive to do it before being asked.

I much prefer the idea that each student develops a body of expertise, often expressed in write-ups of various technical sorts, if only as notes-to-self, which can be brought to bear in various situations. Not that everyone is required to give up all fruits of their own prior work, to avoid some highly commodified, artifactual stigmas about "self-plagiarization". Sometimes the answer to a question does not change just because it is asked repeatedly.


What do you recommend me doing if my math instructor isn't very good and I know I can learn the same content better elsewhere? Currently, my math professor isn't very good and I have had plenty of experience using Khan Academy and my Googling skills. However, I'm afraid that if I diverge from the class, I might accidentally study something he's not testing us. Or he might go out of order and teach us chapter 6 when we're suppose to be on chapter 2. Up to this point he hasn't done anything like that and has actually been very good at keeping on schedule. I have a syllabus with the concepts listed for each day and a textbook to corelate with it. The textbook is incomprehensible but nothing a little Googling and Khan Academy can't solve. I don't mean to be rude but listening to him feels like a waste of time.I would really like to diverge from the teacher

I know other students have been in a similar situation. What do you recommend doing?

Or he might go out of order and teach us chapter 6 when we're suppose to be on chapter 2. Up to this point he hasn't done anything like that and has actually been very good at keeping on schedule.

So why do you think he will do it? In your question, you do not give any examples of what he does wrong. Be careful not to become overconfident and think you know better than anyone, this might come back to bite you in the future.

If your issue is that you feel that the course is very slow, and you want to learn faster, then you are doing the right thing: study on your own at your own pace.

If you really feel that the lectures do not bring you anything, it is your decision whether you want to skip them. Assuming there are no attendance requirements, no one is going to stop you. This is university, you are responsible for your own decisions.

Make sure that you are ready for the test though. If the course provides access to past exams, that is a good way to gauge if you know the content that is going to be tested. If the professor uploads his slides, that will also help you know what was taught. Otherwise, it might be worth asking a classmate what the professor is covering.

  I might accidentally study something he's not testing us.

I do not see how that would be a problem. If you learn more than strictly required, good for you.


Researchgate and Elsevier sharing policy We already have a similar question but it does not seem to address the issue I have. Assume I have a manuscript that is accepted for publication. When I look at the sharing policy of Elsevier, I see that I "can share my preprint anywhere at any time".
The moment my manuscript is accepted, there seems to be a different set of rules. Why is that? Can I still share my preprint wherever I like?

I would like to share something through researchgate.net. Can someone help to clear these two specific questions?

Regarding the rules of Elsevier, can I share my personal pre-print (not the final publication) at any time, no matter if my manuscript is accepted or published?
Can I upload the graphics or images from the pre-print to researchgate since they have such functionality or is this not allowed?

Take Elsevier's definition of the preprint:

  This is the author's own write-up of research results and analysis that has not been peer reviewed, nor had any other value added to it by a publisher (such as formatting, copy-editing, technical enhancements, and the like).

The preprint is the manuscript version that you initially submitted to the journal, and it stays the preprint version even if later versions are being revised through peer review, are formatted by the publisher, and are the published formally. Elsevier's policy makes clear that you can share the preprint anytime. They just "encourage" authors to put the DOI link on the preprint once the final version is published.

As you're allowed to share the full preprint anywhere, I don't see what could stop you from sharing portions of it (like graphics) anywhere as well.


Personal statement to apply for graduate school with a change in major I live in Vietnam and did a Bachelor of Business (Economics and Finance) from an Australian university, Vietnam campus. I am planning to apply for statistics for graduate study in the US. I have always been in math-specialization classes since I was in grade 3 and I attended the best highschool in my country. However, when choosing undergraduate major, I was not fully advised and chose finance, the hottest career in my country. My family's financial condition back then was also not so great for me to think about studying abroad. However, now my family's financial capacity is much better and I also realize the opportunity in statistics in the US.

Really appreciate any inputs about how I should present my case so that the admission committee can realize my ability and passion for statistics, especially from someone who has done this before (change major from undergraduate to graduate)

People's interests change.  This doesn't require an explanation.  Here's an example:  I started college unsure whether to major in music or math.  I started out doing both.  It worked great the first semester.

Second semester: I got to my first day of Calculus II a few minutes late, and had to sit in the back.  It was a terrible room, long and narrow, and I felt disconnected from the teacher, and completely lost.  I was a pretty immature 17yo, and decided then and there to drop the class without giving it even a second chance.

Fast forward: I did the music degree, worked in an orchestra job for several years, paid off what I owed a relative for my cello, and went back to school for math and computer science.  I spent a year and a half taking math and CS courses, and got a programming job in my college's IT department.  I found out COBOL was boring, and applied to grad school.

In my personal statement I left out ALL of the above, and talked instead about my interest in combining math and computer science.

I didn't say, If I never play Ravel's Bolero again, it will be once too often.  I didn't say, As a COBOL programmer the closest I got to using my math was calculating GPAs.

Math is the language of science.  Statistics help us make sense of experimental results.  There's plenty of positives about statistics you can talk about in your personal statement.

There is no need to cover whatever meandering route got you to statistics.  All the committee will want to know is whether you are academically prepared for graduate study in statistics, and whether you have the imagination and commitment to do original research.


Why would the editor in chief add a new reviewer after the first round of revision? I have a manuscript submitted in a journal, and there is a newly-added reviewer after the first round of revision, which is surprising for me. The three other reviewers remain the same in the second round (this round) and agree with acceptance of the manuscript.

I don't know what reason is behind adding a new reviewer. Any thoughts?

While this is rare, it's not necessarily bad, and probably reflects more on the associate editor or the reviewers than you.

One of the jobs of an editor is to ensure that reviewers are sufficiently well qualified, objective, and thorough in their evaluation of a manuscript. Likewise, an editor-in-chief needs to ensure the handling editor is doing their job well as well.

It's hard to say without more details, but my guess on the most likely cause of this situation is that there was some issue with the original set of reviewers, such as:

Too many were your recommended reviewers
There was a critical missing perspective
One or more of the reviewers turned in a low-quality review (which the editor might have forced them to improve before it got to you)
The journal usually requires more than three reviews

This could be caused by bad choices by the handling editor or by having more than three reviewers originally assigned but some failing to return reviews.

Whatever the case may be, I would recommend not worrying about it too much. You can inquire with the editor if you wish, but don't be surprised if you don't get a particularly informative response (especially if the reason is a mistake they might feel embarrassed by).

Bottom line: it's not so strange, and your paper is probably still in good shape, though its fate is never certain until accepted.


Should the table of contents of a thesis include beyond heading level 3? Should the table of contents of a thesis include beyond heading level 3?

I would like to know if there is a rule specifying this issue either in MLA or APA?

In general, tables of content shouldn't span more than two pages, otherwise they lose their utility of being a quick guide to the structure of the content.

A good keyword index at the rear of the document can handle many of the issues in their stead. That is, if you want people to be able to quickly see where you described the laser engraving process, then "laser engraving" can have a keyword in the index. Or if you make an argument against Talcott Parson's sick role, similarly you can note both "Talcott Parsons" and "sick role" at the back.

(note: I do encourage my grad students to CREATE extremely detailed tables of contents that lay out their entire argument. This helps them write their dissertations as it gives a roadmap and structure. But when it comes time to submit their thesis to the university, or revise for publication, they should strip their table of contents back down to a minimum of one or two levels).


What are "executive members" of a conference or journal? I am working in the Computer Science field and when working on one internal review of our department, I am asked to fill in the following items:

List of important committees of which you were an executive member (these committees typically own A-journals or A-conferences)
e.g., ACM SIGSOFT, ...

May I ask what are executive members? Surely I have served as PC of a number of Rank-A conferences in our field, but to my best understanding, there are no such executive members in anywhere. For instance:
https://sosp19.rcs.uwaterloo.ca/organizers.html
Could anyone shed some lights on this? Thank you very much.

These conferences typically have an Executive Committee, consisting of the Chairs of the various threads in the conference. Some typical examples are the Conference Chair, Program Chair, Tutorials Chair, Posters Chair, Educator's Symposium Chair, etc. It will normally be around ten people and they are responsible for the overall running of the conference with each having primary responsibility for one aspect (other than the conference chair who has overall responsibility).

This Executive Committee will meet several times in preparation for the conference, usually face to face and usually at the Conference Venue at least twice. The meetings are where problems are addressed and, hopefully, solved.

An "area chair" may also have a co-chair to aid with their area. They might attend meetings or not, but are ready to serve if there is some issue with the chair. There may also be a few others with somewhat lesser responsibilities. They are arguably part of the Executive Committee. Doctoral Symposium Chair might fall into this category.

The Program Chair is a special case and there is usually a Program Committee with several members. They may meet separately from the Executive Committee and are responsible for the overall program. They see that the right papers are accepted and that everything in the main program fits together by assigning papers to sessions. Again, they are arguably part of the Executive Committee.


Is it common for doctoral dissertations from for-profit schools to be unavailable? I've been trying to find the dissertation of someone who advertises that they hold a "doctorate of management" from the "University of Phoenix". The degree requires a dissertation, but the school does not require the dissertation to be published, apparently, because neither is the work listed on ProQuest, nor does the University's own library hold it. My liaison indicated that the author may have deliberately chosen not to distribute the work. I have not yet been able to obtain a copy.

Is this obscurantist practice rare at good universities & common at for-profit universities?

Any other factors at play in the unavailability of a graduate dissertation in the United States?

I don't know about for-profit universities, but the practice at "good" US universities is generally as follows.  Before being eligible to graduate, the student must submit a copy of the dissertation to the library and to ProQuest.  By default, after being processed, it is then immediately available to the public from both sources.  (In some cases it might not necessarily be available online, or might require a fee, a visit to the university's library, or an inter-library loan request.)

The student may be able to request an "embargo", in which case access to the dissertation's text is restricted for a period of time.  For example, this could be used if the student intended to commercially publish the dissertation or related material.  At my PhD institution, this period can be up to 2 years; any longer embargo requires the special approval of the graduate dean.  Even in such cases, I would expect that the library and ProQuest would still show the dissertation in their catalogs; they just wouldn't allow access to the text.

In your case, "embargo" sounds like the only possibly legitimate explanation. But if the student graduated several years ago, or if the university library and/or granting department cannot confirm the dissertation's existence, I would declare shenanigans.  (Maybe NSFW).


Should I Cite a Journal's Page Number, or an Article's? When I'm citing a page in a journal, and the article has an independent page numbering system, should I cite the page number of the journal or the article?

I'm not certain what you mean by an article with an independent page numbering system, but I assume you mean the following.  The published journal article is, say, on pages 25-48 of the journal, but there is also a preprint available online with different formatting, and it is numbered from 1-23.  Not only the page divisions, but even the number of pages differ, so there's no easy way to transfer a reference between these numberings except approximately.

The most important rule is to be clear and correct: you should leave no doubt or ambiguity about which numbering system you are using.  If you cite only one version of the paper, then you should use the same numbering used there.  If you cite several versions, then you need to make sure your references are clear.

The second rule is that you should focus on the "most official" version of the paper, whatever that is.  In most cases, a journal paper is more official than a conference paper, which is more official than a numbered technical report in a series, which is more official than a random preprint.  You want to cite the most final, complete, and authoritative version, and the one most likely to be accessible to future readers.  There may occasionally be subtle cases (for example, a paper that has been reprinted in books with corrections or additions), but this generally means the journal version.

P.S.  The only other interpretation of the question I can think of is for journals like Physical Review, where an article has its own page number (like 032326) and then the individual pages are given subsidiary numbers (like 032326-1 through 032326-8).  In that case, if you want to cite a specific page you could refer to it as 032326-3, or maybe just 3 if the context is clear.  In the bibliography, you would write 032326:1-8 or just 032326, depending on your bibliography style.


Should I cite all R packages I used? Intro: R is a open-source software tool for statistical analyses and graphics, which is heavily used in different science disciplines and which is becoming more and more popular (although it is already quite popular in many areas). In addition to the base version, people from all over the place develop so-called packages, upload them, for example, to CRAN, where they can be freely downloaded to use.

Q: I am writing a manuscript for a peer-reviewed psychology journal and used a lot of R packages in my work. Of course, I want to and will cite R itself and the packages that I relied on heavily (e.g., to simulate or analyze data). However, I have also some packages, of which I used only a single, little function. For example, I used the odd function from the gtools package to determine whether an integer is odd or even. As far as I can see, the function is only a single line long, and I could have written it myself (but I didn't!). On the one hand, I want to give credit to these developers, on the other hand I don't want to blow up my reference list and confuse readers. So the question is, should I cite every single R package I used?

BTW: Note that R has the nice function citation("some package") to access citation information provided by the package authors; see also citation() to cite R itself.

YES.

There are lots of reasons to and no reasons not to (unless you're under some kind of strange space/ink constraint).

Here is an important and underappreciated reason why:

Most of the people who make the kind's of R packages, in fact the people who made R itself, are other academics. Meaning: They didn't get paid specifically for the time they spent making lme4, ggplot2, stargazer etc. Software development is very unappreciated in academia. Imagine spending a lot of time writing and maintaining a package that is used by thousands of people in your field and then being asked by a tenure/promotion committee why you didn't write more papers or do more experiments. It's very difficult to get someone who isn't a user (or even a software-minded person) to properly appreciate the time and skill involved in making good software.

The only way to convince university systems and leaders that the work you spent writing that software is to show them in a way they understand, that means citations. They're not going to care about your StackExchange reputation or how much juice you've got on github, they need something Scopus can compute and they can itemize and count.

Much of the workings of academia is based on beans. Much of the effort at universities is dedicated to counting and managing those beans. How many students are in your program, how many grants are awarded, how many Ph.D. defend, and how many papers are published and cited are all very important beans which decide who gets resources. It would be sad indeed if someone who wrote a useful R package didn't get the credit they're due and thus be allowed to make more wonderful tools. Imagine if Hadley hadn't started working for R-Studio, he might be standing in front of some committee someday asking him why he spent so much time writing "software" instead of "papers," or trying to explain why he can't take on a third course this semester because the dept chair doesn't understand that writing software is something that actually takes real time.

Also consider this:
Most scientific papers are cited fewer than 10x, if ever. A reasonably useful R package is likely to impact many more people than any "real" publication, but that person get's no credit if you don't cite it.


Is typical ebook reader with pdf support enough to read scientific papers I am considering buying either an e-book reader or a full tablet. My main motivation is to read books and scientific papers and I really don't need all the extra stuff tablets can give me.

My only concerns are

whether e-book reader (that has pdf support) will handle many different layouts used in articles (how well will 2-column A4 page fit in an 800x600 e-ink display)
whether it will display math properly

Do you have any thoughts and (more preferably) experience about this?

No. Not sufficient. Kindle DX, an almost full-sized page, was not big enough. Refresh rates are not fast enough for flipping back and forth. Zooming interface is terrible. E readers are good for simple flow text, one page after the next. That is not how I read papers. Tablets do much better.


Why do some individuals who are productive PhD students at leading Western institutions, then publish infrequently as faculty in their home country? I am a computer science student from Turkey. While I was checking the websites and publications of various CS Professors in Turkey for my future studies, I noticed a strange trend. (Excluding minor exceptions)

Usually, these professors hold a Ph.D from leading western institutions, and during their Ph.D they have published papers at extremely competitive top venues, like ICCV, ICDM, ICML and other places depending on their research interests. But, after returning back to Turkey and starting in an academic position, they can't even get their papers published in second tier venues.

So, what might be the reason for this ? If these people can publish during their Ph.D then why can't they do now ? Also, CS is not a field where extremely expensive lab equipment is required. So why are these people unsuccesful at publishing in top conferences/journals ?

The problem that faces faculty at second- (and lower-) tier institutions including those in foreign countries is that research is often not valued or not given the resources necessary to flourish.

For example, at many national universities  faculty have considerable responsibilities other than research, including teaching and national and local service. They may not have enough (or any) quality graduate students to help with teaching,  to inspire them to explore new research areas, or to conduct research together.  They may also have much more administrative duties with much less administrative support.

Finally, there may be little incentive for them to do or publish research. They may have civil service salaries that are not adjusted for research output. External consulting or tutoring may be more lucrative than doing work within the university.


interviewing for postdocs with two groups collaborating in the same grant, should I mention it? I have a skype interview for a post-doc at a big research group with PI-A, who is the leader in his field and would be a great opportunity if I got the position.

At the same time, I have been in conversations with PI-B and PI-C about a co-mentored post-doc to work on a recently awarded grant. The work for the grant will be done in collaboration with PI-A. The grant describes a post-doctoral position for the laboratory of PI-A to do the work for the collaborative project under PI-A,B, and C.

My questions are:

Should I mention my conversations about the project in my interview with PI-A's group?

Should I mention to PI-B and C that I am interviewing for PI-A?

I would start out by assuming that all of the PIs will know if you apply to any of them. If the conditions for the various positions (pay, etc) are similar then I see no reason not to mention it. Perhaps the three of them together can find you a slot, even if one can't. This would probably be different if the pay and such were quite different.

And note that working with a top researcher is only sometimes better than working with others. The top person may have less hands-on participation at that point in their career.

On the other hand, there can be issues with non-tenured supervisors, who may have little time for anything but getting their own tenure.

But the collaborative possibilities you mention sounds like a big plus.


Tuition fees vs enrolment fees? What is the difference between tuition fees and enrolment fees? The University I'm planning to apply for MA studies, requires Non-EU students to pay 1500 euros per semester for tuition and 150 euros per semester for enrolment.

At least in Germany, the difference is that everybody (including locals) has to pay enrollment fees. Those are fees that cover some administrative costs and also often include the compulsory purchase of a semester ticket for public transport and money used to subsidize the student canteen. Tuition fees actually cover some of the costs for teaching you.

All Bundesländer, except Baden-Württemberg which charges 1500 € from international students, have abolished tuition fees for undergrad studies and many for grad studies.

References:

http://www.internationale-studierende.de/en/prepare_your_studies/financing/cost_of_education/