Is it possible to do a Master's and PhD at the same time? I am currently in my master's and about to start my research. Is it possible that I can do my research with any institute in Europe or do my Ph.D. at the same time but from different universities?

In most European countries you can be considered for a PhD position only if you have already a master in a related field.

I also think that doing a master and a PhD at the same time will be too much work for one person.


Can I use open-source code for a simulation for my research? I am working on a paper and I found open-source code that I could use for running a simulation. Should I write my own code for that simulation? Will it be enough if I refer to the code in my citations/references section?

Yes, open-source code can be used for research if it is cited everywhere you use results from it. You may first like to verify that the code is indeed open-source by verifying that the license is one of these: https://opensource.org/licenses

This should be listed clearly on the website/repository/license/readme file. If this is not available, try contacting the author to verify that it is indeed open source.

Certain licenses additionally allow you to freely modify the code for your specific purpose; the link above contains details about this.


Are publications on arxiv.org valued by graduate admissions committees? Please see this question of mine first.

My question is: Does the admissions committee in grad school consider publications in places like arxiv.org as a significant achievement given the student has only completed bachelors?

I am asking this question because I have seen many math papers in arxiv.org that have not made new contribution to the field. In other words, those papers have not made new discoveries or solutions of the unsolved problems. This makes me wonder whether publishing at arxiv is considered a big achievement.

"Publishing" on the arXiv is not a big achievement; actually, it's not an achievement at all.  In terms of how prestigious it is, it's not really any different from putting an article on your own personal website.  The arXiv isn't a publishing venue, it's a preprint server---it's purpose is to serve as a public repository for potential articles.  It has various benefits (it's probably more reliable than your own website, it gives credible evidence about when an article was posted and modified, which is sometimes desirable), but it achieves those in part by not refereeing the articles on it.

However, writing an article as an undergrad is certainly a meaningful achievement, and given that it can take a while for a paper to make its way to being in print, an appropriate unpublished article is still a positive for an applicant.  Of course, the admissions committee wants to distinguish a good article from a bad one, and since posting on the arXiv isn't a good proxy for quality, the committee will look for others (recommendation letters, for instance, or possibly just reading the article themselves).


Can I improve a project after submitting it to a CS conference? How much can I improve a project after submitting it to an academic conference in CS?

Recently, I submitted my first conference paper. The work is honest, but it was rushed due to getting promising results only a few days before the deadline. Furthermore, the process of trying to justify the work helped clarify it in my mind, and there are experiments, baselines, and comparisons I now believe I need to run to be more convincing. Is it standard to keep working on a project until the reviewers respond, such that I can say, "Thank you for such and such feedback. We are now including such and such an experiment/table/figure to address this concern." The writing could also be improved, but I'm not sure what is an acceptable number of modifications.

No one can stop you from becoming smarter ;-).

In CS it is not uncoimmon, that you submit a first version of an algorithm / system etc., and improve it afterwards which might lead to the next publication.

In your specific situation it might be a good idea to include the optimizations in the revision, as long as you do not change the overall algorithm / experiments etc which would invalidate the review process. Wording and grammar issues can always be corrected.

I would suggest to wait for the review, adress all reviewers comments, and maybe you can use your newer results / ideas to do so.

Furthermore, you can always add additional information in your presentation. "In our paper we had the following results, but changing xyz led to even better results as shown here". Many people would consider making a new paper based on the optimized results, but without knowing your project it's hard to give advise whether it's a good idea or not (personally, I'm not a friend of incremental publishing).


Modified picture based on three different sources - citations needed? I am thinking about where the borderline is with citations.
I made a new picture based on three different sources, so I wrote under the picture "adapted from [3,6,9]." This, however, seems to be funny.

When do you need to include citations for your modifications of pictures?

It depends on what kind of information you are adapting from original pictures.

If original picture has some very well accepted content in field which you are adapting, you can modify it and use it in your figure. In that case you don't need to give citations. For example, if you are using symbols used in original figures which are well accepted in field, you can use without citing original source.

In contrast, if picture has some new content or some unique concept which you are adapting then you should acknowledge it. For example, if original figure is showing some unique symbol which is output of their new research or imagination, then you should acknowledge it.

However it is always best practice to cite all images from which you have adapted content.


Page number in "list of tables" This isn't an ideal SE site to ask this question, but I haven't found a better one. Please suggest one if you feel different.

In a "list of tables", what is the accepted convention for the page number for tables that flow over more than one page?

Word and Latex appear to default to the page on which the caption begins, but when the caption is below the table, it doesn't feel natural to me.

If you're trying for precision in the information that is provided to a reader in this list, the ideal solution would be to list the whole page range that is spanned by the table.

If that is not possible, then I think that it would be appropriate to think about this with the same logic that is used for pointers to other multi-page items such as chapter: point to the beginning, since that's where the reader should be starting.

Better yet, however, if you have to have a multi-page table, why not remove it from the "flow" of the text entirely and turn it into an appendix or a supplementary document?


Does the source of funding matter in determining academic promotion? Follow up question to How does research funding work in determining academic promotions? since it was too broad.

Based on this answer, one needs to get funding to be promoted. Does the source of the funding make a difference, e.g. will it matter whether the money comes from a governmental funding agency versus a private foundation or a rich philanthropist or even one's own pocket?

The point of assessing funding is not to ask, "Is this person funded today?"  Rather, it's to ask, "Will this person be funded in five, ten, and fifteen years?"

And the point of asking about funding is two-fold. Over that time period, will this person be performing high quality work that makes our department and university look better? And will this person be bringing in money that can be shared among other workers through indirect costs?

If you think about that, the various sources of funding do have different levels of attractiveness to the university/department. Someone who is independently wealthy and pays $500,000 per year to support their lab, is less attractive than someone who has an NIH grant that pays $500,000 to their lab, because the latter also pays overhead to the department and helps keep the lights on (literally).

Moreover, the independently wealthy person may lose all their money, or may simply unilaterally decide not to use it that way after three years. Same applies to a rich philanthropist (or the philanthropist may turn out to be a terrible person that the department doesn't want to be associated with).

On the other hand, a researcher who has demonstrated that they can get money from the NIH, or the NSF or another long-established government agency, this year, probably has a decent chance of getting more money from them in five and ten years.

So a source of funding that comes from a stable organization, with predictable and open funding plans, that covers overhead, would be more attractive than sources that are less stable, less open, and less predictable, and that cover less overhead.

Such stable organizations tend to be government-run (at least in North America, and I think in most of the Western world), but there are certainly private foundations that are just about as good, as far as promotion is concerned.

I don't know of an objective source that could rank the attractiveness of funding, though.


How/when to retract a project from a student? Take, for example, that a student is nearing the end of their thesis project.

The supervisor has an idea for a new method that can help to verify the results of part of the project. He does not think much of the significance of the idea at the time, [writes up a document outlining the procedure] and passes it to the student to implement.

A week later, a problem arises. The supervisor questions whether the idea was in fact more significant than he originally thought - i.e. could form a paper on its own, and has realised that answering the students questions on the specifics of how to implement the said method would take up more time/effort then just doing it themselves.

So, how would the supervisor go about retracting the new project from the student? From the student's point of view, they would have a strong motivation to try and implement the idea that has been brought to their attention since it is directly relevant to their thesis work. Yet the supervisor does not want to be hassled by the student on learning the specifics (that would form the content of the paper), and does not want the student to claim partial ownership of the idea. The student has not yet produced any results using the method that has been passed to them.

The issues that I see are as follows:

If the supervisor tells the student to relax and think about something else instead, they probably would not listen
If the supervisor works independently from the student to produce the paper (figures, text, observing trends), then the student could still claim that they were involved (?) since they would have probably started working on it too

With the way this question is framed, "retracting" the idea sounds both difficult and unethical. Based on the information given here, my advice, and the only ethical path, is for the supervisor to collaborate closely with the student on the work. If the idea is good, the pair should work toward a co-authored publication. This question states that, "since [the student] has more free time on their hands [they] could potentially have some results first." In this case, it sounds like collaboration with the student is very likely to help.

Working with students means teaching and mentorship. It means that supervisors are, "hassled by the student on learning the specifics" and it often means, "answering the students questions on the specifics of how to implement the said method [in ways that] take up more time/effort then just doing it themselves." This is part of the job of an academic supervisor.

Moreover, I completely fail to see why co-authorship and shared ownership of an idea between a supervisor and student is a problem.

That said, one of the most important jobs a supervisor has is trying to decide when and what to delegate. It was the supervisors job to be more thoughtful and they need to deal with the consequences — whatever they are.


Comp science PhD research topic I want to apply for a PhD in computer science. My end goal is to become a professor and teach at a university. I have interests in data structures, algorithms, networks and programming languages. I would love to apply for a PhD in algorithms but cannot figure out a research topic.

Can some one please suggest how should I go about it? I don't mind if I get into a PhD program in a field other than algorithms as the final goal is to teach.

Thanks a ton!

As far as I know, most research in CS involve some amount of data structures, algorithmics and programming, buy very little research is done exclusively about these.

I'd suggest you try to discover which most specific field you're interested in.
In a very very very simplified picture, one can distinguish two very broad categories of research in CS:

About the systems: Computer architecture, Networks, Distributed computing, IoT, ...
About the content: Artificial intelligence, Machine Learning, Image/video/audio/text processing,...

Naturally there's a lot of overlap. And did I mention that it's also a very simplified categorization?


How does sending manuscript to new reviewers close the review loop? I had sent a manuscript of mine to one of the IEEE Transactions journals a while ago. After the first round of revision, I received some comments of two reviewers (let's call them A and B). But after the second round of review, the new comments I received obviously indicated that the two new reviewers (say, C and D) were not A and B (both C and D had explicitly noted that in their comment letters). The comments of C and D were mostly contradictory to those of A's and B's. The weird thing was that both C and D complained about some changes which I had applied to the manuscript according to what A and B had requested. Yet, the most perplexing thing, about the most-recent comments I received after the next round of revision, that is, the editor apparently sent the new revision yet to a new pair of reviewers (here, E and F)! Again, their comments are no where close to something harmonious with what the former pairs had asked before.
Now, I am confused to understand the strategy of the editor. To me, a review process has to be closed just like a loop, in that those who comment on a manuscript should assess the resulting revision. Otherwise, anyone else would pose new sets of comments and ideas which may simply contradict the former ones.
Can one explain how this way of review moderation yields convergence to a decisive result?

To me, a review process has to be closed just like a loop, in that those who comment on a manuscript should assess the resulting revision.

So you submit a first version of the paper. The editors invites some reviewers to submit reviews, and Reviewers A and B accept the invite. When Reviewer A accepts the invite, they have no way of knowing how the process will evolve. They know that they have to submit a review within a fixed amount of time, upon which three outcomes are possible:

accept as is;
reject completely;
recommend to revise and resubmit.

The first two outcomes mean that the process ends there. But consider what happens when the third outcome happens. An amount of time X will pass for the editor to make a decision, and Reviewer A has no way of knowing how much time, particularly since Reviewer B may be late with their review. Then, the editor will give an amount of time Y to the authors to perform their revision. Maybe you, as author, are very eager, and you only use an amount Z<Y of that time. So at some point, you resubmit your revision, and Reviewer A will be invited again to give a review. But X+Z time has passed. When Reviewer A was invited for their initial review, Reviewer A had no way of knowing:

whether any number of revisions would be necessary;
how much time X+Z would be.

Maybe Reviewer A finds themselves overloaded with teaching tasks when the invitation for reviewing the revision lands in their inbox. Maybe they had set a month apart for redecorating their house. This is why reviewers cannot, in general, be asked to commit to reviewing more than one iteration of a paper at a time.

You have run into bad luck to have been confronted with a completely fresh slate of reviewers twice. It is not nice to have to chase after a moving target. The prudent thing to do is to summarize the conflicts in the feedbacks, and send a message to the editor. It is their responsibility to resolve such issues, but they may not be aware that any issue exists. So you should make the editor aware.


Does anyone actually publish "structured proofs"? In 1995, Leslie Lamport published an essay in the American Mathematical Monthly titled "How to write a proof".  In the essay, Lamport introduced the concept of a structured proof, in which the traditional high-level proof is augmented by a sequence of lower levels.  Each level of proof expands each step of the higher level into substeps.  The amount of detail at the lowest level is rather extreme -- Lamport's proof of the irrationality of the square root of 2 runs to 1.5 pages.

The essay has over 250 citations according to Google Scholar, but I have never seen a proof published in this format.  In a PDF or on paper, the extreme detail could be overwhelming; but I think modern web publishing platforms could accommodate it very well (with hierarchical collapsible subsections for each part of the proof).

In any case, are there examples of proofs published in the format suggested by Lamport?

While most people use more traditional proof styles, the more exhaustive structured proof style that Lamport proposes seems to be adopted, at least in spirit, by machine-assisted proving systems like Coq and Lamport's own TLA+.  By bringing a very non-intuitive player into the loop (the machine), these systems force the mathematician to be much more explicit about every step and assumption, and encourage hierarchical structure by their use of programming-language style syntax.

These proving systems are typically quite expensive to use, and you generally wouldn't want to put their lengthy proofs into the middle of a paper---attaching as supplementary information is more the way to go.  They are, however, proving to be quite valuable in critical applications where dealing with every possible edge case is important, such as in the design of microprocessors or cryptographic protocols.


Is it proper to cite something when using it just as an example? In academic writing, is it proper to cite something to provide it as an example of something else? For instance, we have lines like this in a number of our papers:

  Many research endeavors, including environmental and coastal hazard prediction [1], climate modeling [2], high-energy physics simulations [3,4], and genome mapping [5] generate large data volumes on a yearly basis.

Each citation is merely providing an example of a research project that generates large volumes of data (more often than not, it's not even a paper, just a URL), and content from the cited source is not otherwise used anywhere in the paper.

I suppose I tend to think of citations as references to work whose content contributes to a significant portion of content in the paper. A citation then indicates some kind of "weighty" relation between the paper and the thing being cited. In the example I provided, it seems to me that invoking the "weighty" power of citation simply to say "yes, such a data producing project of this type does in fact exist, in case you were wondering"--and doing so five times--is somewhat excessive and that it might serve better as a footmark.

To me it seems these should either be footnotes or just be left out. In any case, it seems they should not go in the bibliography.

I am not sure about other disciplines, but this is certainly neither uncommon nor in any way frowned upon in my field (Computer Science).


Do I need second master's degree or not? I finished master's degree in "System analysis and management" (Engeenering). I have Bachelor's in Computer Science. Can I enroll to PhD in Computer Science now and change field research? Or me need enroll to Master's again (in Computer Science) for changing scientific research?

P.S. I'm going to enroll German or Austrian PhD.

There is usually not a formal requirement for PhD candidates to have a master's degree in the subject of their PhD. Indeed, having a master's degree from a field different to that of the PhD is very common in some disciplines.

The main thing to bear in mind is that applicants for a PhD programme must convince the admissions committee that they have the skills and academic potential that will be necessary to successfully complete the programme. When completing your PhD application, think about the kinds of skills and background knowledge that will be important for your PhD and explain why you have those skills, or why the admissions committee should believe that you are able to quickly acquire them


Is "How good am I?" a reasonable question to ask a supervisor? I have recently completed my undergraduate degree, in mathematics. As part of the final year, we had to complete a "project", which was effectively a 40-page (ish) dissertation on a topic of our choosing. This was done with the aid of a supervisor, one of the researchers in the department, for the duration of the year.

During the undertaking of this project, I felt like I developed a good relationship with my supervisor (who I met once a week, and who provided a reference for me for PhD applications).

At times, particularly when knee deep in PhD application stuff, I started to get a little negative/worried about my long-term prospects. This seems to be a fairly common problem, from what I read here. On more than one occasion, I was seriously tempted to ask my supervisor whether he honestly thought I was any good, had any reasonable prospects doing maths/a PhD/research, whether I should do something else, etc.

I never actually ended up doing that, because I always decided that it was a bit of an unfair question, and that I my supervisor quite possibly wouldn't know anyway.

My question is: In a scenario like the above, is that ever a question that one could expect a supervisor to answer/answer well? Is it easy to tell, from a supervisor's point of view, what a students prospects are in that field?

I would welcome such a question from a student I'd worked closely with, but I'd also like a bit of time to consider before answering.

But even better, is to ask - also - what you can be doing in the short term to get even better. Make sure the advisor understands something about your long term goals so he/she can best assist.

However, this implies that you have more than a transactional relationship with the advisor and each of you recognizes and respects the advice of one another. Some people are "brutally honest" and will say things you really don't like  to hear. Others are too "conflict adverse" and will tell you things that sound nice but aren't helpful. You will need to judge for yourself the quality of the advice.

But that is the reason for asking how to improve. It helps you directly, avoids personality issues to some extent, and helps you better judge the "raw" assessment.

In any case, if you are good enough to ask the question, you are probably pretty good anyway, even without knowing much more. I had professors in my background of whom I would gladly ask the question, others of whom I certainly would not, and still others for whom I'd think long and deeply before asking. But that was more personality than anything. If trust is there, it should be fine.

My own background somewhat influences my response here. When I was in secondary school I was told, on the basis of some standardized test, that I didn't have very good prospects and shouldn't set my goals too high or I'd be disappointed. This was largely based on mathematics. It wasn't a request to an advisor for guidance, however. The episode made me so angry that I decided to prove them wrong and later earned a doctorate (among other degrees) in math.


What should I do when a former student tells me about misconduct from one of their current TAs? While I was a TA for an undergraduate CS course, I built up a good teaching relationship with a student who was struggling. By the end of the course, she had turned things around and was performing much better.

We hadn't spoken since I was her teacher until she reached out to me about a graduate student TA in a later course who told her that she was so bad that she should just leave the major entirely. His comments seem to have damaged her self-confidence and she chose to talk to me, rather than to the faculty. I'm not at the university anymore, but I remain personal friends with that student's adviser.

Is this generally acceptable conduct for graduate students? Should I let the professor know? I think it isn't really the place of a first-year graduate student to give such unsolicited "advice," especially in such absolute terms at a time when the department has made it a stated goal to be more inclusive to women and underrepresented minorities. For context, the TA is a man.

Is this generally acceptable conduct for graduate students?

I think you know it's not. To tell someone that they are so bad at a subject that they should quit is definitely rude and out of line for pretty much anyone in a supervisory capacity, especially if their advice was unsolicited. That said, if someone asked for a fair evaluation, telling someone they might be more successful in another field isn't per se inappropriate.

It seems possible the TA was rude to her because of her gender. Anti-women bias in CS is well-known, books have been written on it. Unfortunately, we don't know right now whether this colored his actions. But, it does mean you should encourage her to report his actions in case he has been similarly rude to other students, but especially women.

As for what you should do, I recommend you help her and be supportive if she decides to make a complaint. However, you shouldn't make it for her. I say this for a few reasons, in decreasing order of importance:

You've stated you didn't witness this exchange, so as it stands, this is an issue between your friend, her TA, and the professor. So all you have to go on is what she said. It sounds like we both believe her that the TA was very rude, but maybe there was a language barrier on either or both parts.
You're not a professional advocate. You don't want to do something wrong and sink her case for her.
It's my personal philosophy that it's not your place to try to take care of someone's grievance like this yourself.
Unless she is committed to anonymity, the professor is likely to want to talk to her anyway. You can't answer all his questions as well as she can. But if you are willing, offer to come with her to the meeting with him for support.
Gender affects every interaction we have. The possible  gender issues only make this case more delicate. I would suggest any man to not try to "handle" this issue for a woman unbidden. (It doesn't sound like you are, but a note for other readers).

I would only go so far as to offer to pass on an anonymous letter that you put your weight behind, if she doesn't want to reveal her name to the professor. I would just stay away from putting her complaint into your words.


How to handle disagreement between collaborators on licensing academic code? A group of students including myself have developed a certain program/algorithm. I as the main coder behind this group have provided 95% of all the actual code. The other two involved parties have given 4% and 1% of the code each.

The code was created in an academic environment for a paper, but the actual algorithm has applications not limited to the scope of what was worked on during the duration of our work together.

I wish to release the code as open-source as does the other party who contributed 4%, as it has other applications, and potential uses, and we don't want to limit its use.

The problem is that the 1% is adamant about not releasing any code and keeping it. He will not listen to reason.

Can we just use a majority vote to decide this? Do I as the main coder have more say than the other two? We do not want to get any external parties(ie., lawyers) involved.

This is not a question about the benefits of various licenses; we know what each licence does. As Simon statrs: "it's about team dynamics, within academia, where collaborators disagree about whether to release the code at all." Two of us want to release. One of us does not. How do we proceed in such a situation?

If that other 1% of the code isn't anything special (which I'll assume is the case since your question would have otherwise made a point of it), tell the other coder that if he is going to be adamant about it, it will force you guys to rewrite the code, and he might not get any credit at all.  See how he "likes them apples".

Otherwise, you might search for his reasons (is he hoping to commercialize it?) and find a license that he's amenable to.  There are many licenses that support a basic idea of "open source".

I'd opine that you can't legally use his work without his consent, but you can rewrite it.  But if he made new IP (that is new thoughts/techniques that no one has coded before) encoded in that 1%, you will probably have to negotiate those rights.

Note that this opinion, is applicable within the academic community where a "shared intellectual commons" has been fairly active for centuries.  It may not be appropriate policy for commercial entities.


Where to put related works in a PhD thesis (Computer Science) My thesis consists of an introduction, background, literature review and a chapter for every approach I proposed. The literature chapter contains a related work subsection for every approach I proposed. These related work subsections describe the structure of the area in general (for example: computer science consists of Software Engineering and Hardware Engineering... Hardware Engineering can be divided into ..etc). They also mention and describe the tools proposed to solve theses issues.

I thought it would be better if I move the part where I mention and describe the tools from the literature into their correspondent chapters. So I will add a related work section after introducing and evaluation every approach I proposed. This allows a theoretical evaluation and for the related work to be precise and specific. It also keeps the size of the chapters balanced to some extent.

My questions: do you recommend it? (I found PhD thesis  that did that) & what do you suggest I call the section where I just talk about the structure of the area not the tools? (is "overview of ... techniques", for example, a good title?).

Personally, I think what you are proposing makes better sense in your case than having a traditional separate literature review chapter. Moreover, arranging the theoretical background in close proximity to the relevant methods would probably make it easier to revise the thesis for journal article publication after you've defended the thesis. However, if you choose to do that, I recommend that your "Background" chapter have a subsection dedicated to discussing the broad literature that spans the general theme of your thesis without specifically focusing on any one theme.

That said, ultimately, you need to talk to your advisor and see what they are comfortable with. If your advisor prefers the traditional dedicated chapter, then you should go with that. Your advisor needs to be comfortable with your thesis structure, too, since that would enable them to be will be your advocate with other people, such as your committee members or outside evaluators, who might not be used to your non-traditional approach.


I never finished my master's degree; how can I reflect the courses I took on my resume/CV? I completed some of the coursework for a master's degree in Hospital Administration, but I did not complete the entire program or graduate. Can I still include this coursework in my resume/CV? And if so, what should I write?

You might consider something like this:

  Education

  Undergraduate Institution  B.S. in DEGREE FIELD, August 2005-December 2010

  Graduate Institution  Graduate-level coursework in Health
  Administration, August 2016-May 2017

If you want, after the graduate level coursework line, you could list relevant classes. For instance:

  Relevant courses: Hospital Administration, Global Health Policy, ...


What's the difference between Advisor and Mentor? In a lot of Curriculum of undergraduate and graduate researchers I see they list their research experiences using Advisor and Mentor too, to describe that people who guide them in the research.

So, what's the difference between Advisor and Mentor in a academic space? I tried to find some information, but only got things about coaching, and business related. Thank you.

In the context of your question the answer of Bryan Krause is almost certainly correct - no real difference.

But in a wider context, the idea of a mentor is a bit broader than that of an advisor. An advisor will usually have some official relationship as an intermediary between a student and the university with official responsibilities. A mentor, on the other hand, can be quite informal.

In my doctoral studies I was lucky to have both. My advisor advised me on the specific doctoral work and the field. But I had a separate mentor in a quite different mathematical field in which I was much less adept. But he was and remains my role model for what a faculty member should be and he gave me good advice and aided by development at one critical point.

With that in mind, you normally have one advisor (exceptions exist), but you can have several mentors.


What is the origin of the "underwater basket weaving" meme in Academia? "Underwater basket weaving" is often used as a placeholder for "irrelevant, useless university course." (Despite the fact that it's an actual thing.)

More generally, "Basket weaving" and related courses (e.g. "quantitative basket weaving") are often used as a placeholder for "some university course."

This phrase appears several times on Academia.SE. It has also been used in official university documents (e.g., this sample curriculum change request, this sample assessment plan, this sample thesis title page, this guide to curriculum changes).

What is the origin of this usage? When/by who was it first used this way?

The earliest reference known to Wikipedia (as shared by jakebeal) is from 1956, but I found a few that were earlier.
First, perhaps a hint as to how this usage evolved, here's a mildly sarcastic 1919 reference about universities that have abandoned the ways of the Ivory Tower to offer such "practical" courses as plumbing and basket weaving (which presumably was a useful vocational skill in those days):

Higher education is becoming very practical indeed. It includes everything nowadays - excepting, of course, Greek and Latin - from plumbing to basket-weaving.
Source: "Studying National Parks," The watchman and southron. (Sumter, S.C.), August 06, 1919. link

The earliest usage I found that was specifically for "underwater basket weaving" is from 1953. It's in an article about slang used by the "younger generation" (implying that the usage is new, or at least new again):

Any snap course in school is "underwater basket weaving."
Source: "In a Hepster's Lingo, the Girl Who Likes to Neck is a Giraffe," Boston Globe, Oct 4, 1953, pg. A50

Throughout the 1950s, there are many references to "basket weaving" in the context of easy courses taken by student athletes.
Here's one such reference from 1952:

These may include courses in life-insurance salesmanship, bee culture, square-dancing, traffic direction, first aid, or basketweaving.
Source: "Magna cum nonsense," New York Times, March 16, 1952, SM68.

Here's a reference in a quote from one of these athletes, from 1953:

A varsity baseball player said he had received offers from San Francisco University guaranteeing him passing grades.
"I hardly would have had to go to classes," he said. "They told me I could major in basket weaving if I wanted to."
Source: "Other Schools Made Bids, Spartan Athletes Content," Newsday, March 3, 1953, pg. 50

The 1956 reference with "underwater basket weaving" that Wikipedia cites:

Why should he be given a better deal than those students who are attending college in order to get a "real" education ... majoring in underwater basket weaving, or the preparation and serving of smorgasbord, or particularly at Berkeley, the combined course of anatomy and panty-raiding?
Source: "College 'Pro' Football Hit," Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1956, pg A4

There's also many about plain "basket weaving" that year. For example:

Several schools screamed to high heaven about the fact that these so-called students, or at least the majority of them, couldn't pass the basket weaving examination and that their grade transcripts resembled those of the village idiot.
Source: "Cronin's Corner," Los Angeles Times, May 26, 1956, pg. B3

and

It was explained rather superciliously that they had a stiff struggle to get minimum passing grades in basket-weaving, musical appreciation or Loaf and Sleep (Letters and Science) courses.
Source: "Sports of the World," Atlanta Daily World, Nov 13, 1956, pg 5

I found these by searching ProQuest databases, the results unfortunately don't seem to include permanent links. Hence the lack of links.


Will medical institutions reject an applicant based on being 28 years of age? As I've contemplated the future over the past year, I have returned over and over again to the idea of becoming a doctor -- specifically, a neurosurgeon. However, I recognize that as a 28 year old Physics BS who would need to take a year of postbac courses before even applying to medical school, I might face unreasonable challenges should I choose to pursue this goal. I recognize that by the time I would be ready to apply, I would be 7 to 8 years older than the typical medical school applicant. My main fear is the idea of getting partway down the road to becoming a doctor and then being unanimously rejected by the institutions (schools, residency programs, employers, etc.) based on my age, rendering my efforts fruitless. Is this a likely outcome?

In the US, being 28, 30, or even 40 is not a problem for getting into med school. I was 26 when I was admitted, and I was far from the oldest in my class. In fact, by my senior year, they had admitted a couple of students older than my current age at the time! If you haven't been slacking off in between college and now, it could make you even more competitive because you can point to past successes and have interesting stories for the interviewing process. A typical medical school in the US could easily fill each class with biology and chemistry students fresh out of college with high GPA's and MCAT scores. Someone older might have all of those, plus the strengths of a rigorous career or valuable experience outside of medicine. You can differentiate yourself from the rest of the pool.

Now, to the main issue of age. By the time you finish the pre-reqs, ace the MCATs, and finish 4 grueling years of medical school, do you think you'll have the energy or motivation to do an even more intense additional 7 years of neurosurgery? Neurosurgery is competitive enough that they can pick whatever candidate they want. While not a given, you will likely face some "soft" age discrimination for intense/competitive residencies and fellowships. For this stage, you'll have to work extra hard to convince them you can physically compete with the youngin's, much less complete/survive the program. Once you finish your neurosurg training, you won't have problems finding a job. Once you're board eligible/certified, no hospital cares what school you went to, how old you are (to a point), or what you did in the past. All that matters is what you can do for them, ie increase billing by a zillion dollars.

You can get more detailed responses and support from the forums.studentdoctor.net website. There's even a sub-forum for the "non-traditional" applicant, which honestly, isn't so non-traditional anymore!


Referencing a board game rule book I'm writing a paper on a board game,
Labyrinth, and I need to use some parts of the rule book. How should I reference this? I'm using Harvard reference style.

EDIT: I hadn't notice this earlier.

What can be found in the start of the rule book is this:

  Author: Max J. Kobbert

And in the end, this:

  © 2007 Ravensburger Spieleverlag

EDIT 2: I found a link to the rule book. The real one contains for several more languages but the content is the same.

Link to rule book

The point of referencing is to allow others to determine what you've referenced and to look it up in turn.

Harvard has tools for citing multi-media formats, such as board games.

Inline: ([Rulebook] 1986).

Biblio: [Rulebook] 1986 Labyrinth (boardgame), Ravensburger.

Consult a full style guide and model off the nearest multi media work, for example, album liners to a CD.

Are you sure 2007 is really the date of the edition and not the printing?

(Kobbert 2007).

Kobbert, MJ 2007 '[Rulebook]' Labyrinth (boardgame), Ravensburger Spieleverlag.


CV and PI for a Master in Germany I recently finished Medical School and I'm interested in getting into a MSc program in Cognitive Neurosciences in Germany.

Regarding my CV, what should I emphasize? I only have two articles in press and another one is under review at a well positioned journal. However I am worried because I don't know if they are too few. Are publications determinant for a Msc program admission, or... are grades and research experience ( i.e. working at my Uni research lab) more important? Also, is teaching experience something important for admission?

Also, I spoke recently with a lady working at admissions in Berlin and she told me that in Germany, specifically for a MSc it is not necessary to contact your possible principal investigator before applying, because you choose your research group during the second year. Is this true? or should I contact a possible PI and ask him for admission before applying to the University?

Most German students coming out of an BSc program will not have any publications at all. Most of our BSc programs are 3 year programs with a 3 to 6 months thesis at the end, which is not enough to get publishable research. And it's just plain not enough time to get something published if you are directly applying for a MSc. Getting a paper written and accepted on top of writing a thesis takes months. This is of course a generalization - but from the about 70 students that graduated with me (Biology), none had a publication at the end.

Teaching experience is also usually not necessary. MSc students only rarely have to teach anything, that's for PhD students/postdocs /professors.

MSc programs are also usually more general than you seem used to. The first year is taking courses, the second year is doing research and writing a thesis with a group you got to know in that first year. There is no need to get in contact with a specific professor before applying and they might not be able to help you have a successful application anyway. You might of course want to look around already so that you know there's a few groups you'd be interested in working with at the university you choose.

Publications and research and teaching experience are of course not a bad thing, on the contrary, they give you an advantage when applying and you emphasize them in your application . They are just not required because German students often don't have publications when graduating from their BSc programs. Grades are very important for universities here, in fact, when I applied for my MSc (which was 9 years ago, though, when Germany was just starting to switch to the Bachelor/Master model), they were really the only thing the admissions comitee looked at. The university website should tell you a bit more about what they expect, though.


How do you earn opportunites to review journals or conference papers? Critical reading is a very useful skill for most PhD students (and postdocs and researchers in general).
Instead of assuming that everything you read in a scientific paper is right, it's useful to learn how to evaluate the paper critically: e.g., to question its content, to identify shortcomings and limitations and ways it could be improved.

Experience with reviewing papers is a powerful way to gain experience at critical reading of papers. Writing reviews for journals and/or conference helps a PhD student learn to get better at reading a paper with a critical perspective.

Unfortunately, review opportunities for PhD students are rare.

For instance, it is rare for PhD students to be invited to serve on program committees or asked to review papers. In addition, some may think that PhD students are not competent enough to write correct reviews of scientific papers.

How does one solve this problem?  How can a PhD student get opportunities to practice reviewing papers?  What would you suggest to a PhD student who wants to do some reviews?

I'm going to address your question, but first, I have some issues with it generally:

  I think that one of the problems of most PhD students (and postDocs and researchers in general) nowadays is that they don't read scientific papers with a critical judgement. They often think that everything is right in a scientific paper; they're not used to doubting its content...

This is manifestly not true in my opinion. Indeed in my experience (and I've seen this shared by others), I've watched faculty members reign in students who had torn into a published paper for what were essentially minor methodological flaws that wouldn't change the substantive findings of the paper one way or the other. I think a far more common problem is "failing to see the forest from the trees".

  But, anyway, review opportunities for PhD students are not many.

They can be. I've reviewed 4 or 5 papers for journals in my time as a PhD student, and a disheartening number of conference abstracts.

  How does one solve this problem?

There are three ways I've gotten papers to review:

Your advisor puts in a good word for you. Essentially, a journal asks them to review a paper (or if they're an editor somewhere, a paper hits their pile) and they redirect it to you, either formally or informally.
Publish. All of the papers I've reviewed are in areas where I already have a well received publication, which bypasses the "Journals don't think PhD students are competent" problem.
Some conferences put out calls for reviewers. Keep an eye out and sign up.

  What would you suggest a PhD student who wants to do some review?

Publish. The strongest way I've ever ended up getting papers to review has been from papers I've published. Talk to your advisor. Look out for opportunities - I've seen at least three calls for reviewers in my time expressly open to students. This also gives you an experience being reviewed, which is important both for honing your own skills as a reviewer, and something you need to learn how to deal with.

  Are there any open-to-review journals where one could train oneself?

You don't need a journal to do this. One of the most useful things you can do to train is to get a faculty member to support a journal club where, in addition to presenting the paper, the student writes a critique in the style of a review. Not only does this force you to read the paper you're presenting more closely, but it will let you learn in a protected, mentored environment rather than "out in the wild".


Publishing in a Procedia journal versus a 'proper' one I’m torn between asking for my (somewhat weighty) conference paper to be included in an issue of Transportation Research Procedia, versus submitting it separately to a journal with an impact factor, e.g., Transportation Research B. The conference paper will have to be peer reviewed to qualify, but the journal advice says,

  The Transportation Research Procedia does not have, and is not eligible for, an Impact Factor as it does not publish primary research, full length, peer-reviewed articles.

Is a separate submission likely to be worth it (i) for dissemination of the research, and (ii) for REF (Research Excellence Framework) return?

The journal information site says the following:

What is the Transportation Research Procedia?
The Transportation Research Procedia is an open access product focusing entirely on publishing full sets of conference proceedings, enabling fast, world-wide dissemination so that conference delegates can publish their papers in a dedicated online issue on ScienceDirect. (see link: Website)

Which means that this is actually NOT A JOURNAL. And, essentially not equivalent to a journal in any sense. It publishes the proceedings of the recently organized conferences in the related fields. Simply put, it indexes online the papers which are accepted and presented in the conferences.
Why it can not get an impact factor?
Actually, it can not; because, it is not a single proceeding. It is a collection of multiple proceedings. Say for example, International conf. on Transportation Engineering A, International Conf. on Civil Aviation (these are just names, ignore).
Even if it tries to get any impact factor, then it would be completely biased given the number of conferences and their corresponding standards of accepted papers.


How to describe affiliation in between college and grad school? This question is similar to another one on here, but the details of my situation are not quite the same: Affiliation in the transition period between studies at different universities

I graduated college recently and applied to and was accepted to grad school. However, I deferred my admission for a year so I could complete a fellowship, which I have not yet begun.

1. How should I describe my academic affiliation now?

2. How should I describe my academic affiliation once I start my fellowship?

3. How should I describe my academic affiliation once I complete my fellowship but before I begin grad school?

It seems improper to list my former university, since I graduated and therefore should now be completely unaffiliated from them. Also an undergraduate has a tenuous academic affiliation to a department at best, at least in my opinion. On the other hand, the fellowship isn't really an affiliation with an institution either (even though I formally had to register at a university as part of the process, although I actually haven't completed the registration yet since this needs to be done in person). And for the grad school I haven't begun studies, and even though I was accepted and have an e-mail address there now, I feel like I would be counting my eggs before they hatched.

Honestly I know my situation is kind of strange, and maybe it would be best to say 'unaffiliated', but at the same time, for example if I posted something on ArXiv, I wouldn't want people refusing to take it seriously at all because I am 'unaffiliated', especially if they wouldn't think that way if they knew the specifics of my situation. That being said, they lack a snappy quick description.

Despite the differences in circumstances, I believe that the top answer in the linked question can be adapted  to your case as well.  Now, during the fellowship, and during graduate school, you will be registered with some university.

The fellowship period is a little odd, but they had you register with a university for a reason, and it seems that you will be affiliated at least tangentially---unless people with your fellowship list themselves as an affiliate of the institution giving the fellowship, which happens in some cases as well.  Check and see what other people with your fellowship have done, and it should be clear.

During the gaps, use your last affiliation on publications, since you will almost certainly have done at least some of the work there.  As for describing your current situation during the gap, you don't have to say "unaffiliated", you can just be clear, e.g., "I finished at X in June, and am starting at Y in September."


Authorship on a manuscript that has gone through significant changes I have an MS in a scientific field and have published several papers in the peer-reviewed literature in that field. Three and half years ago, while still working in that field, I began a side-project (unfunded, to be worked on in my spare time) and asked for assistance on that project from a faculty member at a nearby state university and a graduate student. They saw and commented on early drafts of that manuscript and indeed, the faculty member had the initial idea for the unfunded side project, though neither the faculty member nor the graduate student (now post-doc at a different university) did any data collection nor analysis.

This manuscript has sat untouched since June of 2014. Neither the faculty member nor graduate student has asked for an update in the 3.5 years since.

I am no longer employed in the scientific field in which I received my MS, however I have continued to publish (albeit sporadically) in the peer-reviewed literature as an "independent researcher," mostly with extant data from previous projects. I recently picked up the above-described manuscript and began working on it again, changing significant portions of the methods, results, and text. Because of the changes I have made to the manuscript, I am considering dropping the faculty member and graduate student from authorship of the manuscript and including them in the acknowledgements.

Do I owe authorship to the faculty member and graduate student that were initially coauthors but have not contributed anything to the recent development of this manuscript? The manuscript isn't groundbreaking in the least (even in my field) but does advance the available knowledge.

I agree with the answer by @BrookeMcKnight.

I would add that, importantly, even if you have made substantial changes, it is your responsibility to reach out to your coauthors and afford them to opportunity to contribute further to the updated manuscript, otherwise you are somewhat stealing the authorship from them.

They may prefer to substantially edit what you have done, to provide minor comments, they may disagree entirely with publication and ask for major revisions or for their name to be dropped, etc - the key is that your responsibility is to give them the opportunity to participate and make those decisions. Their initial contributions did not expire over the 3.5 years the manuscript sat unworked on.


When to add a coauthor to a paper I am working on? I am doing a phd in computer science.

Months ago, I was having an informal discussion about my research topic with my advisor, and he came out with a very high level conjecture about my research topic, something like "I have the feeling that A implies B".

Now, I am working with other people on a different project, and during the work for this paper, I realized that what we were doing demonstrated that the conjecture of my advisor was correct (so A do implies B), and this makes a lot stronger our paper.

Now, which is the right etiquette to follow in terms of authorship of the paper?

Should I ask my advisor to join the project as a coauthor because the paper proves what he informally conjectured?
Should I simply speak to him notifying this fact and add him in the acknowledgement?

I have a great relation with him, but I am not sure on how to behave with respect to this topic.

First, yes, you should speak with him. There different ways how to approach him and I would suggest to inform him about your progress (something you should do anyway) and to just ask him how to proceed regarding co-authorship.

In general, merely posing a conjecture does not merit co-authorship, but you could ask, if he would like to contribute to the paper (e.g. by checking/rewriting the proof/statement of the conjecture, providing more intuition as to why this conjecture is true, putting the conjecture in context with references…).


First published date vs Issue date: Which do I cite? I need to cite this paper https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1088868311417243 . However the year it was first published (2011) and the year it was published in an issue (2012) are different. When I cite it, I will provide the issue and volume numbers, so what year do I cite it by, the first publish year or the first appeared in issue year?

This journal (like many if not most journals) publishes articles online before formally assigning them to issues. Cite the issue date.
Prior to most journals moving completely online, journals would formally accept articles and then take weeks to months before publishing articles.
As online access became more common, journals would publish articles as "online early access" or similar terminology during this wait.
One warning, sometimes these online early access articles are not completely proof read (e.g., there may be small copy edits or changes to the final version of the paper). This usually does not occur until the issue date.
Last, you can also find older articles that have were published online after their paper print date (e.g.,  https://doi.org/10.2193/2005-680).


Should I (student) share my data with a researcher I don't know directly? I am currently a graduate student, and for a course I gathered hundreds of thousands of records (not confidential, but difficult to access if you don't already know about them and know who to talk to) and spent several months cleaning, combining, and organizing them into a usable dataset, upon which I then performed statistical analysis.  The project is complete and produced interesting results, but likely I won't turn it into a paper anytime soon.

I found out yesterday that the professor supervising the course spoke to one of his friends and mentioned my project, and the friend asked for my dataset (the cleaned one I produced, not the raw records) to perform his own analysis.  Should I share it with this friend?  If so, is there a way to ask to be acknowledged in any publications that result?

The data were originally public records, but I did a lot of work that required years of specialized subject-matter knowledge to compile them appropriately.  Are there other risks I haven't considered?  I feel a little uncomfortable being asked to share a large amount of work with an academic I don't know at all, and while I would like to help advance the field in general, I don't know what's reasonable to expect here.

Update
As suggested here, I emailed the advisor saying I was not comfortable giving the data to someone I did not know (he wanted me to upload it to a file system I was shortly to lose access to), but that I'd be happy to discuss with his friend directly if he wanted to put us in contact.  He responded saying that he would look for a different dataset.

TL;DR - talk to your supervisor (which to be honest is the answer to about 90% of the questions on here, but hopefully this answer helps structure that discussion).

First of all, you might need to check whether you are even in a position to make this decision. The ownership of intellectual property arising from student projects can be a complex subject and you might want to check with your Knowledge Exchange and Commercialisation office or equivalent before sending a large dataset to an external partner. In most cases this is likely to be a formality and there will be no issues unless the dataset might be used commercially, but they may want to put a simple Material Transfer Agreement in place to define how the recipient can use or further distribute the dataset.

Assuming it's up to you, essentially you have three options:

give them the data without restriction. Best-case scenario: co-authorship, worst-case: nothing.
refuse to give them the data. Best case scenario: nothing. Worst-case scenario: you and your supervisor look bad and you damage a potential future relationship with a collaborator or employer.
give them the data after taking some actions to increase the likelihood of acknowledgement. There are three real options here:

3a) (mentioned by @gvgramazio) upload the data to a public repository. The preferred repository varies by field but I'd use an academic data repository like Figshare. You get a citeable DOI but this is not a publication, so if you're looking for publications, this doesn't help (it should, but that's another discussion).

3b) publish the dataset in a data journal like Nature Scientific Data; then everyone can use it but has to acknowledge you by citing the source.

3c) set up a material transfer agreement that defines how the recipient can use the data and what you get in return, which can formally include the option of coauthorship in some form if a manuscript is produced.

With option 1, the most likely outcome depends on their character. Are they a good person to collaborate with? Do they have a good reputation as a collaborator? This is probably the most important question, since if they're a good person to work with then I honestly can't see them not including you as a co-author anyway in this situation, although this could vary by field. Another, related consideration is whether might you potentially be working with (or for) them in the future, and if so if this might increase your visibility or chance of a job. If you don't know them, the only real way to assess this is by asking your supervisor, who knows them and also has an interest in supporting you.

Option 2 - refusing outright - really isn't likely to end well.

Option (3a) - a data repository - guarantees acknowledgement but not necessarily in a form that's useful to you, and option (3b) - a data paper - is the most work and guarantees acknowledgement in a form that's likely to be useful to you, but both (3a) and (3b) mean you're less likely to get a co-authorship.

Option (3c) is trickier. In my field MTAs are increasingly common but also very unpopular with some researchers. As the provider of the data, having it covered by an MTA is the safest option but negotiating one can be intimidating. Fortunately, most institutions have offices to handle this sort of thing.

You also need to consider a few other questions:

how helpful are the different possible outcomes going to be for your career? In my field you are assessed primarily on publications in peer-reviewed journals so 3b is preferable to 3a. However, if the friend is able to acknowledge the data by citing it, they are less likely to include you as a co-author unless you make further substantial contributions to the analysis (which they don't have to give you the opportunity to do).
Does their proposed analysis sound exciting? If it has a good chance of resulting in a really, really good paper and relies heavily on your dataset, then a chance of a co-authorship on a really high impact paper might be better than a lead authorship on a data-only paper.

Ultimately, most of these questions will be things your supervisor is able to help you with. So I'd arrange to talk to your supervisor, explain your concerns, and ask which option they suggest.


Can I publish a survey as an academic article? I am about to run a survey on large number of engineers in a specific field and ask them about a few specific methods they use for in their industry/research.

Like:

Are you a researcher/engineer/student?
Which of the following methods have you heard about? A B C D E
Which of the following methods have you used in your work? A B C D E
etc ...

I would like to know if such a survey has any academic value for being published in an engineering journal/conference such as IEEE or Elsevier?

Also, do you know examples of such papers?

I note a couple of things. Your paper wouldn't be about Engineering per se. But it might be related to Engineering Education. This would be the case if the paper is exploring gaps in education or ways to improve it.

Note that "education" here doesn't necessarily mean formal education. It could be about how new techniques percolate through the practitioners and how that can be improved (Training, workshops, ...)

I don't believe that IEEE has a SIG (special interest group) dedicated to education, but such SIGs normally have conferences and publish proceedings and maybe journals.

In particular ACM has an education sig (SIGCSE) that is very active, holds several annual conferences in the US and abroad and publishes conference proceedings, though no formal journal (informative newsletters, etc. only). Some education related things show up in Communications of the ACM. However, the ACM is almost entirely software oriented, whereas IEEE, while concerned with both, focuses more on the hardware side.

With no specific Education SIG at IEEE, you may not find a comfortable resting place for your paper there.


Would a professor be angry if I neglect to take classes within the research I'm working in as an undergraduate? I am an undergrad currently working in the lab with a great professor and doing interesting work. I promised the professor that I would take more relevant courses related to the research I'm working on to help me with my research.

However, I found that there are some other courses that are more interesting to me and more marketable as a career skill. I want to take those instead but also continue working with him, but do you think he'd be angry if I went against his strong recommendation to take more relevant classes?

The professor can certainly be angry with your decision to go against his recommendation; however, this is far more likely to happen if you do it without explaining him several things:

your intention of not taking the courses he recommends
your motivation to take the other courses instead
and most importantly, your motivation and expectations from working in his lab

You certainly don't have to follow his advice and try to explore as many options as you want as an undergraduate, but I would give your professor an explanation BEFORE and a chance to make his points one more time. If the professor is actually "great" and professional, he would totally listen to you and understand your decision – nothing to be mad about.

Sometimes, professors treat some of their undergrad assistants similar to the grad ones. That is usually a good sign – you seem professional and valuable enough. However, this comes at a cost of them unintentionally assuming you want to continue working in their lab forever. With you clearly explaining your reasons, motivations, and aspirations, you have a chance to be as professional as you can be and maintaining the best possible relationships.


Is it common to work concurrently on projects with PIs other than your advisor? Is this a common occurrence? Or is there some expectation to remain loyal to one's advisor and only do projects related to his/her vision. Field is computer science.

It very much depends on your relationship with your PI, funding sources, etc. For example, a PI might discourage this kind of work if you are solely funded by one of their grants, wherein they need most/all of your research output heading toward a specific objective. On the other hand, it might be necessary to work on other projects if you have a gap in funding and need to take a research assistantship elsewhere for a semester or two.

In my own experience, even within a given department (or even a given PI), there's also a component of how interested a given student is in pursuing other projects, and how well they balance their time.


Which journals or conferences have publication accessibility requirements? When submitting papers, I often see some elaborate requirements for submission formats, but none pertaining to accessibility. Which journals or conferences have publication accessibility requirements? (put aside accessibility conferences)

I am mostly interested in the field of computer science > machine learning, and English-speaking venues.

Working from the guidelines you linked: http://www.si.edu/Content/Accessibility/Publication-Guidelines.pdf, I think APA style (and probably many others) meet many of the requirements. Most of the accessibility recommendations relate to the final printing (e.g., matte paper) and not to the electronically submit manuscript. APA style recommends 12 pt Times to be used as the font with double spaced lines, 1 inch margins, and a ragged right margin, which seems to tick all the typesetting rules apart from the use of a non-recommended typeface (but as a translational typeface with high quality printing it might still be accessible).


Is it OK to ask for deferral of graduate school admission because one has failed courses to make up? What would happen if a student was admitted to graduate school (only consider US institutions here), but failed a course later and would have to wait till the next time to take the course to make up for it and get the bachelor degree?

Do they have a chance in this situation to apply for a deferment of admission for a fraction of a year?

I suppose it's okay to ask.  But since graduate admission is generally contingent on successful completion of your undergraduate degree, I think it's much more likely that the graduate institution will rescind your admission.  You would need to make a fresh application in the next admission cycle, with no guarantee of acceptance, and the failed course would tend to weaken your application.


How do you decide whether or not to collaborate with an acquaintance? Some time ago I met someone at a conference who was doing research in an area that I was just beginning to delve into. We've had a few (minimal) e-exchanges since, and recently they suggested we "work together on something" - the "something" being the project I'm developing, I think.

I like the idea of working with this person and even sharing authorship on the project I'm starting, but I'm still somewhat new to the research side of academics and - based on the mixed experiences I've had collaborating with people I don't know well - I feel very cautious about jumping into a collaboration with someone whose work I don't know well (they're still a student and don't have much out there yet) - and more importantly, whose work ethic I don't know at all.

Does anyone have an approach to potential collaborations - particularly with people you don't know well - which may help to minimize the possibility of things going awry?

It is good to be wary if you don't have much experience with the person and their basic ethical patterns. On the other hand, collaboration is a good thing generally if people contribute on an equitable (not necessarily equal) basis.

It depends on how much risk you are willing to take here and how important this particular project is to you. Once you agree, and the other person contributes anything, it will be difficult to back out. If success in this project seems vital to your future, I'd suggest not taking on much risk here. If it is "just another paper among others" then you can afford to take a chance.

But, I'd suggest that you work out the issue at the beginning of the project and not hope for the best. In particular: Will you be co-authors of the work? Who is the first/primary author of the resulting paper, assuming that is a consideration? Or, will one of you be the author and the other get appropriate acknowledgement? How much effort is each willing to put into the project. If it is a major effort for one party but just a minor (hobby) project for the other, then misunderstandings are possible. Are you willing to do the work yourself if the other party quits? Will you still be OK with co-authorship in that case?

Think about the worst case. Is that acceptable? But think about the most likely case, given what you do know about the other person.

Lots of questions on this site arise because participants didn't set up parameters and understandings at the start. The writers are mostly unhappy with the outcome and wonder how to recover. There are usually comments that indicate these things should have been worked out early and it is too late, at the end, for a happy outcome.

However, I think that most collaborations are more successful and can lead to long term productive relationships. Valuable, but with both upside and downside potential.


My paper has been provisionally accepted, but my latest results are not as reported in the paper. What should I do? After presenting a paper at a conference last year, I was invited to submit an expanded version of the paper as a journal paper. The review of the paper has recently been concluded, and the editors recommended acceptance subject to minor revision.

While the paper was under review, however, we developed a more accurate approach which reveals that the finding reported in the paper was too optimistic and what was proposed in that paper did not seem as promising as previously thought.

I have been contemplating which action to take:

Withdraw the paper.
Revise the paper significantly to include the new methodology and the new results.
Keep the paper nearly as it is, only addressing the reviewers' comments (none of the reviewers questioned the previous approach), but adding a note that our latest approach produces something quite different.

I am personally not comfortable with option 3, although it may be the easiest and fastest thing to do. I am deliberating between options 1 and 2. Option 1 because the result doesn't look as promising as before and may not be interesting enough to warrant publication. However, if I withdraw the paper, there is no chance to warn readers that the results presented in the conference paper were too optimistic. Hence option 2, which is the option I am inclined to take. It however needs more time and I am not sure what to say to the editors.

A good review panel would not select your paper purely due to the impact of your result but also with respect to your approach to solving the problem. This may include how existing methods were modified and how novel methods are applied. This would also concern your analysis of the methodology along with related results.

Withdrawing the paper (option 1) should be the last thing you ought to be thinking about. That is unless you plan to publish it in a different journal after much improvement, but this also has its own implications.
There is nothing wrong with going for option 2. In fact it is to be most welcome in the ethics of research. Hopefully the reviewers would also appreciate such honesty.
Most may prefer option 3 as this would mean that your paper is published without any further ado. But since this makes you -- the author -- uncomfortable, you rather don't do it. It is not worth the feeling of regret once it gets published.

Convey your points precisely and see if you could try to describe the fallacy of the overly optimistic result in your communications. You may also include this as part of the updated manuscript if possible. Note that all communications to the reviewers must pass through the editor as part of the procedure.


Is it important to include my supervisor name in research paper I have done a research paper with someone in industry, while doing a Phd. Is it important to include my supervisor name also in research paper. Will three names be a good thing or should i go with 2 names.

Authorship should be decided by who made intellectual contributions to the work, not by feelings that three is or is not a better number than two.


Feeling unprepared for PhD because of poor educational system in my home country. Should I leave PhD to retake courses somewhere else? I will give some background. I am from a third world country, and I am doing my math PhD in Europe.  During high school and university years I participated in many maths competitions, and even got to the pre-national team. (I mention this just to show how interested I have been over the years with the topic.)

Here is my problem: my education is not the best. I would say it is mediocre at best. By education I mean the whole system of the country. I pretty much had to learn everything on my own during those years, starting from Analysis. So, even though I took courses, they were meaningless, because the level was very low and in many cases the professors were not experts in the field. On top of that, the interaction with other students was almost null, I was very ahead of all of them.

Despite that, as I said, I studied very hard to get to where I am now. However, I have to admit that due to this personal training, there are many topics that should be basic with which I don't feel comfortable about: ODEs, PDEs, Numerical Linear Algebra, etc. This is due to time constraints because I feel capable of learn anything.

To summarize so far: I have been a lonely man in a cave with a book for the last 7 years. That being said, I managed to get some decent knowledge in the area I am currently working in.

Fast forward to the PhD program. As usual in Europe, there are no courses involved: only research. And there is were my conflict lies: I am very unsure of myself because I think that everyone has a better education than me and hence they are better prepared. Another issue is that the institute were I am is very small and hence there is no ‘big purpose’: no one seems to care about you. Also, the institute is not well known, so that I am also afraid that the ‘brand’ issue will affect me later.

I feel like I don't belong there, and that I could do much better if I go to another Program that starts the courses from the beginning. However, the way I am doing it right now has got me very demotivated and it is starting to affect my research: I have been here for a year already and so far I am only at the middle stage of a first paper. The paper is not that strong, because after I got the results I found that someone has done it before (I lost months on this).

I guess that what troubles me most is the fact that, due to lack of data, I can not compare myself (main source of motivation, in a healthy sense of course) with the rest of my peers and that is the main reason for my insecurities. The comparison is in the sense of me being sure that I am roughly at the same level of my colleagues. I know no other way to do this other than taking the same courses and tests. This comes naturally with a program in which one take courses on the first year but, as explained earlier, I didn't have this interaction with really good students. Due to this, I am thinking of quitting and starting all over again somewhere else. Also, I don't think this is a case of the Impostor Syndrome: I am sure that with proper training I could get far, I just haven't had the opportunity to take a bunch of graduate courses.

Should I proceed?

In the European programs I have been involved in, there is no (or a very minimal) fixed curriculum students need to go through. However, students do follow specific courses to learn specific techniques. Typically/ideally the student discusses with her/his advisor what is needed for the project, what is needed for her/his future career, and where the gaps in her/his knowledge is, and how to fill those gaps. This is the kind of discussion you need to have with your advisor.


How to read without specific purpose? Posting for a friend, but in first person for simplicity.

I am a research master student in linguistics of a particular language. In my bachelor thesis and some coursework I specialised on a very specific topic. There is enough to explore in this topic to also write a master thesis on it and continue to do a PhD on a slightly broader topic. I will write my master thesis from February onwards and am now preparing for it with an extensive literature review.

My advisor suggests that it is better to not specialise too early in my career, to avoid having trouble getting grants for other work in the future because all my work so far would have been so specific. Thus he wants me to do a much broader literature review, which would allow me to approach my specific questions from a larger perspective.

I see her points and agree. However, I have trouble reading texts of which most is only sideways related to the specific questions I have in mind. So it feels my reading is very inefficient, because I read relatively little that I can use directly and doubt that much of the other things I read will persist in memory. I find the texts interesting but they do not stick (perhaps because I cannot relate them to enough concrete other memories).

What are some techniques I can use to get more out of my general background reading?

It is pretty much a universal truth that if you want something to "stick" in your mind, you need to work with it. Reading isn't enough as it is too passive and only affects the short-term memory.

To learn something you need to get it to long-term memory and that actually requires rewiring the synapses of your brain.

The easy way is to take notes on what you read. Paper notes, handwritten, are preferred as they are more effective at "changing the brain" than typing them. But is is also reinforcement to later transcribe the notes and that will help with retention also.

For me, the best means of taking notes initially is on index cards. This prevents me from just copying long passages, since the cards are small. I can put a title and a date at the top and maybe a sequence number. If I use just one side for primary notes, I can use the backs for other things. I can rearrange my notes by rearranging the cards. I can insert cards. I can select a subset of cards (say as class notes). I can easily discard a card if no longer needed.

But even better than notes that just describe what you read, are notes that capture your own thoughts. You can make hypotheses about the text, for example. You can relate them to other texts.

Another aspect of using index cards is that they come in different colors. You can use the different colors for different kinds of ideas.

You can also carry some subset of your "idea deck" around with you using a simple binder clip. You can carry a few blank cards with you (always) to capture thoughts on the go.

But for your specific use, you could use the cards specifically to note both the relationships to your current work and how the new ideas differ and might take you in different directions in future.

But the bottom line, is to make your reading active not passive. See The Art of Changing the Brain by James E Zull for a description of the brain science behind active learning. I've mentioned this book in other posts here also.


Providing Methodological Support to Colleagues Outside One's Expertise a Career Killer? I have a friend who works at a small university with limited resources. Since he has a gift for methodology and statistics he frequently supports colleagues with their studies. He helps with the methodology and data analysis often. It is not uncommon for him to support people in Education (his field), English, TESOL, and Business since to do simple studies in these fields involves descriptive stats, regression, ANOVA, etc. In other words, basic research methods

In exchange for his support, he gets to be second author on these papers.

His concern is all this wide variety in research on his CV. His own research is focused when he's the lead but whatever his friends want to study is up to them. There aren't too many others available to help out with the technical aspects where he works at. Therefore, If he ever applies for a job somewhere else, what would a committee think of such a chaotic CV?

I can't think of a case where research or publications outside one's core area would have hurt an applicant, and would think that most departments actually think positively about it. What's important, though, is that the research and publication record within one's core area remains strong and prolific. If you only publish a paper every other year in your own area, but 2 every year with people outside your area, then a department might legitimately question how much you actually bring to their table.


Strategy for revealing pregnancy to new department/department chair I am a new tenure-track assistant professor who is expecting a baby in January (just after spring semester starts). I will be arriving on campus in the next couple of weeks and need to tell my department chair I am pregnant quite soon, as the teaching assignments for spring classes will be made shortly.

I am assuming that I will not get any leave and I will need to teach my spring class, either in person or online. This is because I am in the US, and FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) protections don't apply until one has been employed for a year and the university doesn't offer anything beyond what is required by FMLA.

My current strategy is to shoot the chair an email mentioning that I am on campus now and that I hope we can meet before the semester starts. During the meeting I plan to be straightforward and tell her I am expecting. I will tell her I am hoping to stop my tenure clock for a year and ask her to strategize with me on how to meet my teaching obligation in the spring, given that I will be due around the second week of classes.

What are the most important considerations when having this type of conversation with my chair? My main concern is my reputation in the department. I don't want to make a bad first impression, and I worry that some people might perceive this  unexpected turn of events negatively.

Update: I took the advice here and met with the chair about a week after I got to campus. I emphasized my commitment to my various projects and my plan for not losing momentum. She took everything in stride. Although I didn’t get a teaching release, she arranged for me to teach an online class where most of the work happens in the second half of the quarter in order to meet my teaching obligations during the quarter when I gave birth. This put me back to work at about 4 weeks postpartum, but I could do it all from home. Ultimately, I still tried to forefront my work in work conversations. I don’t think that the pregnancy affected my reputation in the department.

I don't think that when and how you reveal your pregnancy (as long as its professional) will have much impact on your career, especially compared to the fact of being pregnant and having another child.

I would advise meeting with the department head as soon as possible and reiterating your long-term commitment to the department. You two have the same long-term goal: your being a successful assistant professor and earning tenure. It is in your department head's interest to be helpful to you.

Before going into the meeting, I would decide what I wanted. You mention wanting to stop your tenure clock for a year. Do you want an unpaid leave if possible? While it is good to be flexible, it is also good to know and communicate what your best outcome would be, in case they can accommodate you.

One outside-the-box solution might be if you could defer the start of your assistant professorship for a year and teach your fall course(s) as an adjunct.

If you have started thinking about grant applications or other things of interest to the department head, it would be fine to also talk about those at the meeting.

Good luck!


How should I go about making CV as an undergraduate? I'm just an undergraduate math student, and I need to make a CV for a research application. However, from the CVs that I have already seen I have nowhere near enough to fill probably half of a page. I mean I can really only put my education history which is 3 schools. What else should I put?

Before starting research, An undergraduate student really only has a résumé. A curriculum vitae is generally intended for someone who is intending to pursue a career in research, and has a somewhat "standardized" format (although there are still many variations).

But as a young student just beginning to do research, I would recommend that you focus on listing skills that you have that would make you appealing to someone interested in hiring you. If you have more than the standard training for someone at your level in university (more courses, have already done research projects, etc.), then you should list that information. Similarly, if you have special skills (programming languages, familiarity with specific techniques or tools, etc.), then those should also be listed.

Any jobs that you've held that might also prepare you for such an experience would also be of interest.


Clarification on Teaching Prep definition So my question is say you are teaching 3 Health 101 classes... one is a regular 15 week class in a classroom... one is an online section and one is an accelerated online 8 week class would this be considered 1 prep... 2 preps or even 3 preps as they are all 3 Health classes but all are somewhat different in what would need to be done and when.

There is no official definition of teaching prep.


Can I add a link to my ORCID Id in the statement of purpose? Is it a good practice to add a link to the orcid ID in the statement of purpose for a PhD admission application?
Also can I add a link to my published paper? Can I include an abstract as well.

Your ORCID would be better off placed on your CV, either next to or below your name. You can certainly cite your published paper in your statement of purpose, if it is relevant to the work you want to pursue in your PhD. You should also list your publications on your CV. It might be worth looking at the websites of a few professors in your field, to find examples of how they structure and format their CVs.


Would being a teaching assistant influence your research? I see that a TA position requires 20h every week which almost equals 2.5 days workload. Wouldn't that be too heavy for a Ph.D. student? If I don't do the TA, I could save the time to do high-quality research but I will lose 18K AUD stipend, which would make my life difficult at Sydney. Is it worth doing a TA?

A 20 hour per week teaching assistantship is fairly common in the US.  In some departments TAs actually work less than the full 20 hours per week, while in other departments the actual work load really is 20 hours per week (of classroom teaching, preparation for teaching, grading, office hours, etc.)  This varies somewhat by discipline and across universities.  In mathematics, TAs traditionally have heavy workloads.  From what I know, the patterns are fairly similar in Australia, but you would have to determine how things actually work in the department where you will be studying.

Yes, having to work an actual load of 20 hours per week as a TA will slow down your research compared with a Research Assistantship (20 hours per week working on your thesis and closely related projects) or a fellowship (no work requirement.)  However, it does pay you, and the experience in teaching can be valuable.

Students working as TAs often take fewer courses per semester than students on fellowships.  For example, a TA might take 9 credit hours of courses while a student on fellowship might take 15 credit hours.


Is it recommended to have a free-standing background chapter to avoid cluttering the main text with different topics? Some general recommendations on master theses are:

a master thesis should be readable without looking up external references
a master thesis should present the topic in a way a someone with a bachelor can understand it

Based on these, I want to have a background chapter which explains particular concepts individually, out of context of the thesis problem. The reader would skip any topic they feel knowledgeable about in this chapter with the confidence that parts of the thesis problem was not skipped when they did so, because the chapter was free-standing.
I feel operating-system internals and malware analysis are not common knowledge, but I don't want to talk about them more than necessary, only the relevant parts. I could weave this into the main text, but I feel it would make it harder to read for both the inexperienced reader and also the experienced reader if at every turn I have to explain other concepts.
My advisor has allowed me to make such a chapter, but I haven’t seen any free-standing background chapters like this in any other papers. What is the consensus?

I don't know if there is a broad consensus but I have seen background chapters in several papers I read recently in my field (computer engineering). If you have the space to spare (I guess a master thesis will not have a strict page limit?), this seems perfectly reasonable. Make sure to only describe things that are relevant to your research, and highlight/foreshadow how they will matter to the rest of the paper. This will also help clearly demarcate your own contribution from prior work.


Is it okay to cite the same source in two consecutive sentences? I am writing a paper (about the usage of renewable energies) and I have the following sentences:
"In 2016, wind and PV contributed about 12% of Europe's electricity supply [SOURCE1]. A study carried out by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission concludes that a tripling of this contribution is needed in order to reach the 2030 target [SOURCE1]"

Is it okay to cite SOURCE1 in two consecutive senteces. I am talking about naming the source. Or is it more advisable to use the source information only once at the end of the second sentence like:
"
In 2016, wind and PV contributed about 12% of Europe's electricity supply. A study carried out by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission concludes that a tripling of this contribution is needed in order to reach the 2030 target [SOURCE1]
"

I appreciate your input. Thanks in advance.

Is it ok from an academic point of view? Absolutely. It is never wrong to cite a source that you use. However, it might be "wrong" from an flow-of-the-text point of view. I would sidestep the issue by just reformulating the two sentences. Something along the following lines would perhaps resolve your problem:

"As noted in [SOURCE1], wind and PV contributed about 12% of Europe's electricity supply in 2016. That study, carried out by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, concludes that a tripling of this contribution is needed in order to reach the 2030 target."

or even

"As noted by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, wind and PV contributed about 12% of Europe's electricity supply in 2016 [SOURCE1]. There, it is concluded that a tripling of this contribution is needed in order to reach the 2030 target."


How valuable are publications in lower-ranked conferences for MS admission applications? I have finished my undergraduate in Computer Science and am currently looking for admissions to top US universities for doing my MS.

I have a publication in the IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Computing Research, to be published in IEEE XPLORE. The conference has a h5-index of 13 and a h5 median of 17 in Google Scholar.

I am unsure about the value of this publication and what impact it would have on my MS applications for top US universities. Would it impact negatively or positively and if it does impact positively, how far would it help in the admissions?

I am querying about the value of the specific conference mentioned above and its potential impact on my MS application.

When applying for grad school, the biggest thing is to demonstrate aptitude in research. You do not need to have a paper in a top-ranked conference to get into a good grad school. The fact that you have a conference paper is significant enough as it is.

Will a top-ranked conference paper improve your chances over a paper in a lower-ranked conference? Yes, of course. But having a conference paper in a reputable conference should never hurt your standing.


How many reference letters to submit? My question is related to, but not a duplicate of How many recommendation letters are enough?

In that question the job requires 4 letters and the applicant has 5 good letters. I am applying for a TT faculty job that requires 3 letters of reference and allows up to 5 letters of reference. I have 5 people who have and would be willing to write letters for me. While I have never seen the letters written by my references, I believe that 3 of them write much better letters than the other two. My question is how many letters do I submit?

Potentially useful is that my three "primary" references know my research and teaching inside and out. They are also excellent writers with effusive personalities and well respected within the field (and department) that I am applying to.

My secondary references also know my research, but not my teaching. Their writing and personalities are less effusive. I have never collaborated with them or worked directly with or under them. I feel like they have less "invested" in me and that this probably reduces the quality of the letter. They are also in a "competing" field and would potentially sell me as the "wrong" thing. I wouldn't expect their letters to be bad or saying anything negative. I am just worried that they will not be positive enough.

Definitely, having more recommendation letters can prove the popularity of applicant among his/her colleagues in workplace, but just a  negative (or even less positive) recommendation letter can destroy a possible recruitment, as it can strongly affect the impression and judgment of search committees.

A negative (or not-positive) recommendation letter can attract the attention of review committee to weak points (even if they are imaginary induced by the recommendation letter).

It is not bad that a recommendation letter emphasizes on teaching or research only. This is somehow the reason that several recommendation letters are needed (by people who knows the applicant from different perspectives).

Just keep in mind that a search committee always try to foresee any drawback in prospective recruitment. If a recommendation letter states negative points, then, the search committee must consider this risk (for bad recruitment), as there is an evidence for that in the application under review.

NOTE that recommendation letters normally should assist search committee to discover what they have NOT already found in resume. A tiny negative point has more effect on search committee rather than many recommendation letters stating an evident point, they already knew from resume.