Details to include on the cover letter for sourcing part-time tutoring/marking positions Many universities have a job section and invite prospective applicants to submit their CVs that (as I understand) are placed in a database and sourced if a part/time tutoring or marking role comes up. The database (as I understand) is searchable. There is no deadline for this submission (i.e. ongoing).

From the point of view of the university (lecturers searching the database), what are some key things they look for when employing a recently minted PhD?

Key things to include are

Relevant experience - such as tutoring, teaching, marking,
Educational achievement - you have a PhD, presumably this is in a field related to the field in which you will be marking/tutoring,
Other experience relevant to the role, e.g. working with students in any role such as mentoring, personal development, group work, and
Some evidence-based statement relevant to the proposed work.

For number four, this is an opportunity to show that, for instance, you are able to work alone or as part of a team, that you are able to work to deadlines (important for returning marked scripts), and that you have excellent written and oral communication skills (important for feedback). Your comments in this statement must be backed up with evidence drawn from your past experience, work or training.


Why are there no standards for awarding PhD degrees? I am considering doing a PhD however I was surprised to find out that there are no set standards for a PhD in research.

For example, one study could test 500 patients, while another, tests only 10, yet both students are awarded their PhDs. Then there are retrospective studies, which are easier than starting a new study. Finally, there are some PhDs that are purely research and then there are some that are based on essay writing.

However, at the end of the day, the degree is the same, Doctorate of Philosophy, it does not mention anything special for those endless sleepless nights of analysing data and being able to pull off amazing statistics, as compared to a student of any other field.

So my question is, why bother going the tough route when it makes no difference at the end of the day, unless there are careers out there outside of academia, that specifically asks you, what type of PhD do you have?

Why are there no standards for awarding PhD degrees?

There are certainly standards for awarding PhD degrees. I think you mean to ask why are there no grades? It's a subtle distinction perhaps but an essential one.

If somone holds a PhD, what does that tell you? It tells you that the university awarding that PhD feels that that person is capable of pursuing independent research in the area of the thesis. Different universities may have different ideas on how to measure that, but typically a PhD will have to have published at least one peer-reviewed contribution (often more, sometimes many more).

  However, at the end of the day, the degree is the same, Doctorate of Philosophy, it does not mention anything special for those endless sleepless nights of analysing data and being able to pull off amazing statistics, as compared to a student of any other field.

Your degree does not mention anything special (e.g., a grade). If you work harder than your peers, you may end up with the same degree on paper, but your head will contain lots of special information useful for lots of jobs, and your publication record will show lots of papers with lots of citations useful for lots of jobs

In other words, your grade is your demonstrable research output.

How else would you propose to grade or differentiate or categorise different PhDs? How could those grades be compared across different supervisors, different examination boards, different universities or different areas?

  So my question is, why bother going the tough route when it makes no difference at the end of the day, unless there are careers out there outside of academia, that specifically asks you, what type of PhD do you have?

A PhD is a requirement of many jobs in academia, and some research positions in industry. Typically PhDs are competing with other PhDs for positions, hence holding a PhD in-and-of-itself, is just the entry point. After that, candidates will be judged on what they did during their PhD and afterwards. If you spent "endless sleepless nights of analysing data and [pulled] off amazing statistics", you'll have lots to talk to the hiring committee about.


Neuroscience- NIH-IRTA for a international student I've finished my bachelor in Cognitive science and mathematics and I'm looking for research opportunities in the US, starting in a half year. Are there any programs for people in my position? The NIH-IRTA only works for citizens and permanent residents. A year ago I've been on exchange to a top American college, but didn't make acquaintances with any of the PI, as the classes were lead by TA's; can I still use my exchange to find an internship somewhere in the US?

Most of the major US founders limited their funding of junior people to US citizens/permanent residents. these same funding bodies (e.g., NIH, NSF) will happily allow PIs to hire international people on grants. Your best bet is probably to find a PI who is willing to hire you directly off a grant.


How to publish an article that is only one page long? I am interested in publishing a journal article that is only 1 page long. Most journals want more lengthy articles. The area of focus is Chemistry. How to sort through all the requirements without reading each journal individually? I think maybe a consultant knowledgeable in this area would be ideal.

Basically you’re asking to write a short letter, comment, or communication. Some, but not all, journals allow for such submissions, although usually they are in response to an existing article in the journal.


What is a good process for developing a new course from scratch? If all goes according to plan,
I will be teaching a new course in the next academic year.
Although I do have some experience teaching an existing course
which was previously developed by my colleagues,
this will be my first time preparing and teaching a new course from scratch.

I have done some thinking about my new course.
When we propose a new course,
the university where I work requires us to submit a document
which specifies the name of the course, a brief course description,
the course's learning objectives,
the structure of the course assessment,
topics or key words,
and recommended/suggested readings.

Right now I'm feeling a bit stuck.
How should I go about creating a new course from scratch?
I need to create a lot of material, including:

lecture slides and/or lecture notes
assignments and projects
quizzes and exams

Clearly, it would be a bad idea to wait until
the start of the semester when I am teaching
to create all of this material.
How much should of this material can and should I prepare beforehand?

I strongly recommend backwards design as a way to plan and build a course. The key idea is to start out by clearly laying out for yourself what results (skills, concepts) students in the course should end up with, then figuring out the assessments that will assess this, and then course activities, assignments, etc., that will feed into this. This works very well, in contrast to the "standard" approach of focusing first on content -- making a bunch of readings, slides, etc. -- and then asking later what sort of tests one can make, which invariably leads to the realization that the assessment gets at peculiarities of that particular content rather than the goals you really wanted. With backwards design, things make much more sense. There are a lot of good references on backwards design (just google it), e.g. this.


How will a 'fail' in a course affect chances at graduate school admission? I'm a second year computer science student in Australia. I hope to apply to one of the top 10 US universities for MS or PhD program. I have received high distinction (highest grade possible here) for all my courses since my first year of university, have done an internship at a major company, and have published one paper. However, I received a 'fail' for a course I took at my current university while I was a senior in high school, which shows on my university transcript. Will this greatly affect my chances at graduate school?

Short answer, since I've already addressed a similar case in the answer mentioned above: this should hurt you very little so long as you can maintain your current record throughout your undergraduate program of study. When I consider graduate applications, I am not interested in how a person performed at age 17 or 18; I am interested in how he or she will perform in my program. Four years of high marks and outstanding additional activities are a good indicator. One bad grade from high school is irrelevant.

If the transcript is sufficiently vague that someone could possibly be confused about this, have one of your letter writers mention the situation in the letter. But my personal feeling is that even this is unnecessary.


Transition from Computer Science to Statistics I have a B.Tech in Computer Science & Engineering and I want to apply for statistics gradschool. My interest is in stochastic calculus. I'm from india and I have limited exposure to statistics. I have a work experience of 3 years in software development.

Will I get rejected from decent level schools ? What should I do to improve my chances ?

I think it depends on which country you want to apply for the Grad School. In Japan, you have a very Math oriented entrance examination for the Math department, and is usually the most important factor that decides whether you get in or not.

In USA, the educational system is different, since Undergrad education is often not oriented to a specific area, and you have a good chance as long as you get a high GRE score and have a good set of Recommendation letters (preferably from the Dean of your Univ. if you are not from the US).

As an example, take a look at Stanford's admission requirements:

International Academic Credentials

For India, you do need some kind of engineering background, but other countries like Japan, can in theory apply as long as they have finished an undergrad regardless the discipline.

Bear in mind though, that a PhD in statistics has a hefty load of subjects that assume that you have some mastery on math and advanced math(which, to be honest, the GRE does not cover). So you might have to throw in some hours just to level even with the rest of the students that have math undergrads.


How to convince a research supervisor to proofread the paper? I have written a paper, conceptualized, executed and written by me. I have sent it to my supervisor for proof reading and it has been more than a month, he has been sitting on it, without any comments or any progress. It is the first paper I have written and do not have much experience of sending it. I have been calling my supervisor but he ignores the call. He even sees the messages and does not reply.

He is very polite in nature, though it is very hard to get things done from him.

What are the methods you have been using to get things done, by your supervisor.

I think you can send him a small piece of work at a time, such as the introduction.

Try to utilise his/her time for the most important part of the work. For the introduction, you can ask him/her to proofread your contributions paragraph.


How to respond to a two very different referee reports? So, I just received my manuscript back from a journal and the editor said that I should "make the moderate revisions necessary as outlined in the referee reports and then send back the final manuscript".

One of the referees gave grammar, structural and content advice, while the other one said he does not believe this manuscript expands the current body of knowledge.

These are vastly different reports and the editors wording makes it seem like the paper is "nearly finished". How should I handle the referee reports? Obviously, I will make the straight forward corrections that ref 1 asks for, but:

How should I respond to a referee who believes the content of a paper contains no expansion of the current scientific knowledge in a field?

Follow carefully the indications of the editors, and to the best of your ability try to follow the ones by the referees. Usually both agree and so there is no conflict. When there is, then the editor's opinion wins, as they are the ones with the power to decide whether your manuscript will be accepted or not. That being said, it is wise to not ignore the comments from the referees even if they seem to have been ignored by the editors. If the referee claims your work does not add anything new to the field, what would you answer? I would try to see it as a valid criticism and answer it the best I could. Think that this kind of question can come also in e.g. a conference! In that context what would you answer?


Is it really legal to submit a work to a venue although we already uploaded it as a reprint somewhere like Arxiv or researchgate? I am wondering if it  is legal to submit a work as fresh manuscript to a journal although we have already uploaded it somewhere else as a preprint?
Most of the journals/publishers require that the work at hand should not be submitted anywhere else. So I am wondering how the people who firstly put stuff  as a preprint on the researchgate and ArXiv deal with this issue!

The answer is simple: those same journals have an explicit exception for preprint servers.
Consider, for example, the Nature family of journals, whose current preprint policy says, in part:

Posting of preprints is not considered prior publication and will not jeopardize consideration at Nature Research journals. Manuscripts posted on preprint servers will not be taken into account when determining the advance provided by a study under consideration at a Nature Research journal.

If you are wondering about a particular journal, the Sherpa/Romeo database is a good information source and often easier than searching the journal's own pages for the applicable policy.


Dealing with a slow moving project as a professional researcher I have an undergraduate degree and I'm working as a medical researcher in a research lab, affiliated with a University. I've done very little since being employed, due to problems such as:

lack of usable samples for projects
equipment being broken down for long periods of time
issues getting trained on equipment & techniques
waiting on reagents with an otherwise unspecified delivery date

Sadly, roughly the first 6 months or so into work I was given very little to do so had to try and self direct as much work as possible, which I filled by teaching myself software programming and data analysis automation. There were several attempts to get me trained on things that would support my project but due to people being too busy or not wanting to give up time for their own work, every attempt failed and the training would get forgotten about. This was a difficult situation as the people training me were not actually a part of my group (I don't actually do any work with my team), but collaborators/colleagues/students from other labs in the institute.

Programming worked very well for a good 4-5 months but now I'm back into another rut with all of my equipment being out of order with an unspecified ETA on repair as well still waiting on reagents. Whilst I know this happens in science all the time, when it comes on the back of nearly half a years worth of not a whole lot it's hard to keep spirits high.

This has caused a severe reduction in morale and 'excitedness' about work and I often come in day to day feeling depressed and unhappy because all I can do at the moment is busywork (lab stocklists, cleaning, etc). How do people go about dealing with a slow moving or otherwise stagnant project for long periods of time?

I should mention that I love the environment I work in, including my boss and the people I work with. I got the opportunity to move to an entirely new state and experience a different way of living, which has been very nice. My boss is happy with my work (I was re-contracted) and says I have very good ideas and is sympathetic to my current situation but has little to offer in terms of solution, granted he's not able to speed up repairs or make my reagents come in faster!

Clarification

I thought this warranted a clarification. I have done some work which has contributed to the project and provided some good insight. I am now trained and fully autonomous in the work that I need to do. My only restriction at this point is having the equipment I need to work and the reagents for them. A problem which is kind of rife throughout medical research.

First, I'm not from your area and I don't know how things usually work in medical labs. But I have participated in several research project in field of computer science. Some of these projects were just as you described, and even though the fields are different, I think the situation is the same.

My simple suggestion is to leave that lab for good. That might be a very bold decision, but unfortunately people like you (and me) have to take this bold decision for a brighter future.

You have mentioned that the lab environment is very good, you love your boss and your collegues. That is great! But that is not enough. Simply put, the things you have done goes in your CV. Not your good relationships with your boss and collegues. As a person who is at the beginning of their career, you should activate your potential before it is long lost.

I recently moved to another country from my hometown. And that was not an easy decision. Just like you, I had very good friendships, and perfect relationships with my supervisors. Thus, most of my relatives told me that these type of friendships are not to be found abroad, and I was gambling by leaving such a good environment.

They were right. I do not have very close friends in my workplace here. We do not usually go out for a few drinks occasionally as I did with my collegues back in my hometown.
However, I found two things way more precious in my new workplace.
Shared ambition and productivity.

I still do the job I love, I have good relationships in my new workplace, I have a great and friendly boss, and I actually work!

To sum up, every single research project I have participated was exactly as you described. Despite the good relationships and laughter, lack of productivity and drudgery work made me feel like I'm wasting my life there. I realized that I was not happy. I moved on. I'm happy. If you prefer being productive for the expense of slight decrease in the close relationships environment, realize that you are not happy. You should move on. You will be happy.

Also, if allowed, I suggest you also ask this question in Workplace.SE.


Clarifications needed: UK research positions In addition to various US-based positions, I am currently considering (applying for) several research positions at a couple of well-known UK universities. While I researched the topic somewhat, I am not too familiar with specifics of academic system in UK and, thus, would appreciate clarifications.

Questions:

Despite being offered at the same salary level, I assume that a position of researcher is higher in rank, responsibilities and expectations than the one of research assistant. Is my assumption correct universally or it might depend on department or specific research project?
Is employment at UK universities at-will? Specifically, I am interested in the context of (postdoctoral) researcher positions. If the academic employment is at-will, is it ethical to leave early a research position, associated with a multi-year project (for valid reasons and assuming no teaching is involved)? If not, how such issues should be handled gracefully? I don't expect such things to happen, but it is better to have some situational awareness in this regard.
Are there any differences between positions with the titles of researcher or research assistant and the ones with the same titles, but prefixed with "postdoctoral"? (You can answer from both UK and US perspectives or either one, whatever environment you have knowledge about.)

Re the middle point: on anything but a casual labour contract, "at-will" employment does not exist in the UK. You cannot be fired by your employer without a reason, although note that many of the protections do not kick in until you have had a certain number of years in the job, and hence may not apply to fixed term contracts (IANAL).

From the employee's side, legally, there is nothing to stop you leaving at any time, after the period of notice specified in your contract. That does not mean that it might not have career implications - but I will leave that for more experienced people to discuss.


Will the preprint published to the figshare be available on Google scholar? I have published a preprint of my research paper on figshare. Will it be indexed on Google scholar (like a published research)?
And if it does, then how many days will it require?

I got email from figshare :

Thank you for contacting Figshare support.
Content should be automatically indexed by Google Scholar, but it usually takes some time before that happens. In theory Scholar is focusing mostly on text documents (.pdf, .docx, etc.) but we have applied their guidelines across the whole set of items. We can confirm that we are currently working with Google in order to improve our coverage.


How does having baby affect tenure track offer or tenure track success? I am a PhD candidate with one child (18 months) and one year left in the PhD. My husband and I want at least one more child. I am trying to learn about the relative pros and cons of having a child during the summer after defending vs the summer after my first year on the tenure track. I don't feel 100% confident that I will get a tenure track offer, but I also have some good signs. Here is what I came up with:

Baby after defense/summer before starting tenure track:

(+) I will be 1 year younger, giving more flexibility if decide to
have a 3rd child, possibly bounce back sooner etc.
(+?) I have been told the first year of tenure track is typically less productive research-wise because of teaching responsibilities. I have successfully done the "teach with new baby" thing during grad school, but my research definitely suffered during that semester (partially because my class was a new prep). If I am going to have reduced research output, the first year might be the time to bite that bullet?
(-) Pregnant on the job market, face possible discrimination. This would be more of an issue at flyouts when I would be showing.
(-) I didn't get morning sickness with first pregnancy and 3rd trimester pain was manageable, but no guarantees of easy 2nd pregnancy. Difficult on the job market.
(-) Moving to new city while super-pregnant or with infant (really least of my worries)

Baby after first tenure track year:

(+) Would likely get time off the tenure clock
(+) Not pregnant on the job market, perhaps get better offer
(-) Might have a greater impact on research to have infant during 2nd year, which is typically more productive than 1st (so I have heard)
(-) Perhaps hurt reputation with colleagues/will have to have weird and awkward conversations about my pregnancy with new colleagues (At least this is my experience in grad school - 50%+ asked me if my pregnancy was planned, etc. So awkward.)
(-) If we want a 3rd kid, that will be pushed back closer to tenure review.

Am I missing anything? Does anyone have any real-life observations about timing an academic baby?

(Just to put my experience first: I'm a man, and had my first child about 7 months ago, around the same time I went up for tenure.)

This is one of those "your mileage may vary pretty massively" questions.  My general recommendation is that it's better to have to the baby once you're more established in your job, but there are so many moving parts, no single recommendation can work.

Some people have a less productive year the first year they are on the tenure-track (I don't think I did), but in many disciplines, that's because they are assembling a lab, which I'm not sure you want to be doing with a new baby either.  In my opinion, the minuses you list are pretty big.

If I were going on the job market as a pregnant woman, I would be very worried about unconscious discrimination.  I don't think you would have problems with this most places, but it often just takes a couple of people in a department to sink your candidacy, and they could be influenced by the pregnancy without knowing it.

I think also you're neglecting the fact that if you have your baby after starting your new job, you will probably be eligible for maternity leave.  Most places I of in practice give a semester of maternity or paternity leave, though with some caveats (at my current institution, it's usually possible to get a semester off teaching, but with other service duties still required after the first few weeks).  I've known people who had babies late in postdocs who really lamented missing out on this.

The matter of your reputation with colleagues is pretty hard to game out.  I'm sure there do exist departments where showing up either with a new baby or immediately becoming pregnant might make a bad impression.  This would mean your colleagues are jerks, but unfortunately, it's hard to guarantee your colleagues won't be jerks. I feel like it's likely to be a wash though, since colleagues can just as easily be weird about the fact that you have a baby, as that you are pregnant.


The status remained "awaiting for reviewer selection" after 5 months since re-submission Anyone give me some advice:
I have made a major revision after receiving one very positive feedback and one very negative feedback for my manuscript. Then I revised and resubmitted. It is almost 5 months since resubmission. The status is remained “Awaiting Reviewer Selection” since then. I have emailed the editor several times, but I still have not received the feedback.
Have anyone had this experience and please give me an advice.
Thanks!

Contact someone else from the journal. This could be the editor-in-chief, the associate/managing editor if the journal has one, or simply the journal office. The journal is the only one who's able to solve your problem.

If the journal never replies regardless of who you contact, then you'll have to assume the journal is dead, withdraw your manuscript, and submit elsewhere.


Is offering to work for free a bad idea for an undergrad researcher? I’ve read that PhDs are almost always funded, and being accepted into a PhD program without funding is equivalent to a polite rejection.

Is this also true for undergraduate research? For example, many universities have a fund for undergrads to do one or two semesters of paid research, but students must look for other funding sources after that.

Is it wise for undergrads to offer to do research work for free, or does it devalue the undergrad’s work in the eyes of a PI?

This question assumes the setting as an R1 university in the United States, for a student in a STEM field like computer science, mathematics, or electrical engineering.

If you are a student who is getting something of (educational) value out of your research, and don't need the money, it's not necessarily a bad idea to do undergrad research without getting paid for it. (If you weren't a student, this would probably be a very bad idea, though.)

Personally, however, I will only supervise students who are either getting paid or getting some kind of independent study credit. (I'm not the only supervisor I know with this policy.) I don't want to put time and effort into supervising a student who is only very loosely committed to the research project.

I encourage you to consider that option - independent study or thesis credit - for undergraduate research.


Electrical Engineering Master of Science: Taking Letters of Recommendations from different departments or fields I would like to apply for Master of Science about electrical engineering, in USA. Most universities require 3 letters of recommendation and I am a little confused about from whom to get them.

I scored a very high GPA but I did not participate in any kind of research activities. However, there are many professors that know me very well, particularly my enthusiasm, my potential, my passion to learn new things and my ability to critical think and judge the information without taking it for granted.

I want to apply to the schools with the "electronics, semi-conductors" branch.

However, the professors who know me well are from : 1) electrical engineering, power electronics area 2) electrical engineering, computer branch and 3) mathematics department, I took differential equations and calculus from this professor.

I want to ask the followings:

1) Are old professors regarded more important or less important compared to younger professors ?

2) Is it OK to take letter of recommendation from a professor in another discipline or even different faculty, knowing that he will write a very good letter ?

3) Is a letter of recommendation from a famous faculty member that does not know me very well is better than a letter of recommendation from a less well-known professor that knows me very well ?

4) Is a professor that did his/her Masters or doctorate in USA regarded as more important compared to ones who did not ?

1) Are old professors regarded more important or less important compared to younger professors ?

  I cannot speak to this, but in general, a well known researcher in the
  field you are applying to is more valuable than a not as well known
  researcher. For example, Terence Tao is only 41
  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao), and Manjul Bhragava is only 42, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manjul_Bhargava). Their age is considered decades younger
  than many profs in math, but I would wager any mathematician would do
  anything to get a recommendation letter from the profs I have mentioned above.

2) Is it OK to take letter of recommendation from a professor in another discipline or even different faculty, knowing that he will write a very good letter ?

  I can speak to this. I am an electrical engineer who has done a MASc. and two of my
  recommendation letter were from mathematicians, one pure and one
  applied. But then again I applied for a very mathy branch of EE.

  I would not consider semiconductor research to be an extremely mathy branch of EE, (compared to research in signal processing, or control theory)
  and this is coming from another EE. In semiconductor research they
  need people with good simulation skills and will be able to write
  softwares of which the theories are grounded in PDE. You can find an
  applied mathematician who works in PDE (preferably computational PDE)
  or a physicist who will provide you a letter.

3) Is a letter of recommendation from a famous faculty member that does not know me very well is better than a letter of recommendation from a less well-known professor that knows me very well ?

  The best case scenario is that you receive a letter from someone who
  knows you very well and who have written a good letter. Otherwise, you
  need someone who knows you a little but will write a good letter. The
  last you want is someone who knows you very little and will probably
  write an average letter.

4) Is a professor that did his/her Masters or doctorate in USA regarded as more important compared to ones who did not ?

  This is an important question and I think it is highly dependent on
  the tier of school you are applying to. I can't imagine the top 5
  engineering universities will ever perceive a letter from a reputable
  researcher from overseas (outside of US or even Canada) to be less
  valuable.


Forgotten to answer question Seeing Forgot to answer exam question and thinking back to my exam that I wrote a day ago, I think it might be me who forgot!

I recall the last few exam questions but not answering them!

Should I speak to the professor to see if anything can be done or should I leave it be?

(all the details match me... A+ so far and also submitted a draft earlier...)

If you want an A+ then of course you could ask. Maybe he will consider the previous draft, maybe he won't; but it never hurts to ask.

You should be aware, though, that he is not obligated to give you points for it; it is completely your fault for forgetting to answer the questions. Therefore, don't demand points but ask nicely if there is any chance to consider the draft, you will have better chances this way.


Official reference doesn't include author I want to cite an IEEE norm in a document. They provide several way to cite it on their website and in particular bibTeX. This is perfect because I use LaTeX.

However, the citation does not contain any author field. This raise a warning.

Should I keep this warning or modify the entry to avoid it? And in this case, what should I enter as author?

Link to the norm page. In abstract, go to download citation.

For example bibTeX citation only:

 @ARTICLE{4610935,
journal={IEEE Std 754-2008},
title={IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic},
year={2008},
pages={1-70},
keywords={IEEE standards;floating point arithmetic;programming;IEEE standard;arithmetic formats;computer programming;decimal floating-point arithmetic;754-2008;NaN;arithmetic;binary;computer;decimal;exponent;floating-point;format;interchange;number;rounding;significand;subnormal},
doi={10.1109/IEEESTD.2008.4610935},
month={Aug},}

In my experience, the bibtex entries provided by many publishers are often quite bad, and IEEE is one of the worst offenders here. So it is quite common that one has to edit them before they become usable.

For this specific entry, the type "article" is clearly wrong, and the root of the problem.


Is it possible to spend a couple of years after a post doc working as a bioinformatician and then return to academia? I have been a postdoc for 2+ years now with 1 high impact paper and couple more possible in the next 6 months. I have just got an offer for a Bioinformatician position with a decent salary (CAD 80K). I am wondering if it is possible to work as a Bioinformatician (which is a staff position) for a year or so and then pursue academia again? Will this be a good idea to take the Bioinformatician position now, whereas my current PI thinks I have a good chance to attain a faculty position in two years? I have a co-first author publication in Nature Genetics (IF 29), one co-first possibly in Cancer cell (IF 21) and at least one first author (probably IF 6). Thanks a lot for your feedback!

As long as you are doing your own research and publishing, I don't think this should necessarily be a problem. If the position is de facto similar to a post-doc with a higher salary you should be fine and it will probably just be treated like a second post-doc.

However, if you are just giving services and not leading any research project that can be a problem.

So the bottom line is what matters is mainly what you actually do and less the title of the position - I know of someone who after completing his PhD took a bioinformatician position in academia, rather than a post-doc, and used that to get a faculty position.


Harvard Multiple authors- Alphabetical or not? I apologise if I have missed this in the Harvard guidelines but I was wondering whether the order of multiple authors matters. For example a book by A Smith and A Jones. How should it be written:

(Smith & Jones, 2014)
 Smith, A. and Jones, A. 2010. Another Book. 5th ed. New York [etc.]: Book Pub.

or must it be written alphabetical of surname:

(Jones & Smith, 2014)
Jones, A. and Smith, A. 2010. Another Book. 5th ed. New York [etc.]: Book Pub.

I understand all the other rules regarding the list been alphabetical and date ordered where multiple authors exist but haven’t seen anything explicitly mentioning this.

Thank You

Always use the order of authors as given in the book or article, regardless of the reference style (Harvard or otherwise).

The order of authors has some significance in many disciplines (for example, in my field the first author is the one who did the most work). So, no referencing system asks you to change the order of authors.


Applying to Graduate School with misdemeanor charge? I am currently a 3rd year undergraduate student at a large public university. I am a music performance major. I'm very interested in applying to graduate school for either performance or music technology, which I am receiving a minor in. My biggest concern is that at the end of my freshman year I received a misdemeanor possession of marijuana  charge. I paid the fine and have been done with it for a while. Unfortunately, I can feel it haunting me still and the closer and closer I get to graduation and applying to graduate school the more I feel it creeping up on me. In my state nothing is offered to "remove" it from your record such as some states have diversion class.

So my questions are:

Is this something I should be extremely concerned about?

Will a university or conservatory completely disregard my application because of this reason? Or will affect their decision on my acceptance?

I didn't lose my scholarship because of it (and actually I have received more money from the school of music after applying for other scholarships) but will I be ineligible in the future?

Anything helps.

Thanks.

I probably would not worry about this at all.  Conviction of a misdemeanor (as opposed to a felony) would not disqualify you from any of the U.S. graduate programs that I have been familiar with.  Schools will not necessarily even ask about misdemeanor convictions on their applications, nor will they be running criminal record checks on their applicants.  It is, of course, possible that some faculty reading applications at some schools may be vociferously opposed to admitting anyone with any kind of criminal history.  However, most places simply will not care.


What do I do if I cannot give a good reference to my PhD student? I've seen several questions from students about bad supervisor references but this is on the other side.
I have a PhD student whose priority during their PhD was family (had two children in 3 years) and social life. They are smart but simply did the minimum for the PhD. We had a talk some time ago and they were clear that their target was the minimum requirements set by the school and nothing more. Which is fine by me, since that what they want.
They've now asked me to write a reference letter for a very prestigious ECR fellowship. I personally know many members of the committee. The reference guidelines ask me to address the candidate's ability to work well under pressure, attract funding, take initiative, work independently, etc.
I am conflicted. My options as I see are:

I write a statement of facts. Worked in the group from X to Y, published N papers, etc. However, this will basically signal that I cannot support their candidacy since I don't address the specific guidelines.
I tell the student I cannot give a support letter. However, given they haven't worked with any other professor or group, it will leave them in bad place.

Any other options?
Update: Some more information based on questions/comments below.

The student was clear after the first year of their PhD (pre-COVID) that they want to do the minimum. For example, the requirement set by the university is to have "publishable" work and not to have published. So, the student did not want to go through the publication process except for "easy" conferences (2). All of my other PhDs until now have had 1 journal accepted and at least 1 submitted by the submission date.
The fact that they focus on family is the positive aspect for me. E.g., if they did the minimum because they were lazy, I wouldn't have problem to say I don't provide a reference letter. I don't know how many hours they actually put since I don't keep monitor (also, last 9 months have been remotely due to COVID).
I don't believe I can truthfully say that they comply with what I'm asked to comment on. E.g., good organizational skills: they have missed multiple deadlines, missed meetings, missed report submissions for their own funding which has a fixed yearly date (!). The excuse is always family or technical problems, but for the 3 years of joint work, I cannot truthfully say they have good organizational skills. I'll not extend to other aspects, but similar picture.

A student who did the minimum during their PhD has very little chance of getting a prestigious fellowship.  In the sciences, you must have publications to get prestigious fellowships; a student who did the minimum will not.  Your role as a mentor is to guide students to attempt things they might succeed in.  Tell the student they will not succeed in this application.  Tell them to compare their record to past successful applicants.
You should not write the letter.  It will not help the student and it can hurt your reputation.  But you should have told the student that they would not get a letter for prestigious fellowships when you discussed their goals for completing their PhD.


How can I find out when an Editor intends to publish my paper? My manuscript was accepted in an ISI journal 6 months ago, but it is not published online yet. I found that the journal published online some manuscripts that were accepted after my acceptance date. Therefore, I sent several emails to the journal Editor but, I did not receive any answer.

How can I find when the journal aim to publish my manuscript?

Typically, a publisher uses an online system that allows authors to track the status of their paper. Double-check your inbox (particularly Spam folder) for a automatic email from such system (search the journal name for example).

If you are sure that you did not hear from the publisher and the journal editor within 6 months, I would say, it becomes worrying. The academic publishing was never a particularly fast process, but this situation probably oversteps the limits. Consider writing to the support team of your publisher and to Editor-in-Chief of your journal with inquiry. Also, consider sharing the name of the journal with your peers to prevent future misuse of anyone's precious time.


Can analyzing data from an existing public online database be considered orginal work? I wish you all a Merry Christmas. I have a question but found no solution to it using the search function.
I would like to ask whether summarizing and analyzing data from an existing online database could be considered original work? The database is freely accessible and it does not require registration. Data is completely anonymous. I can give an example:
Let us assume there is a database that contains information about the food quality at hospitals. People can upload their experience to a database without providing names / identifiable information. I would like to analyze the data and summarize it to answer basic questions (e.g. if people were satisfied with the food quality in hospitals in 2020 based on the ratings).
So I am not referring to a situation where one needs to register, e.g.:
Using public profile data from website for research
My field is medicine.

Yes, the analysis is original, provided that you haven't been beaten to it by someone else. Data is just data, but it is the analysis that gives it meaning. Extracting that semantic content is what is important in research.
But "summarizing" may not be enough, depending on what you do.
And the source of the data has little bearing on the validity of the analysis.
Of course, editors and reviewers will have a say in the value of the work.


How to respectfully challenge advice My question is regarding how to go against advice given by advisers/faculty in a professional way, specifically in applying to graduate schools (but I am interested in the general case as well). Due to my poor test scores, one of my mentors has explicitly said that I should not apply to school X and Y. However, the location of the school and research interests of the faculty align well with my preferences so I want to apply anyways (although I must agree with my adviser that my chances are slim at best). How should I let my adviser know (he is likely to be a letter-writer for me as well)?

On a related note, should I follow his advice? I don't want to "waste" time applying to a school that is a big reach for me but I also don't want to lose hope.

For the general question: One answer lies in the question itself. Challenge the advice with respect to the advice and your advisor. That is, appreciate and acknowledge the experience of your advisor (not necessarily in words, but at least "internally").

Moreover, give some reason. "Thanks for your advice on the topic, but I would like to do...  because..." I feel like "I'd like to do it anyways" is not the best reason...


Should CV include special note about published 'cover articles'? I just published an article and, when I saw the journal, I was surprised to discover that they put my article on the cover.

My question is, should I update my CV to make special note of the fact that my article was not just published but is the cover story in a particular journal?

A cover article is noteworthy, but not all noteworthy material goes on all CVs. I include a note about cover articles on my CV iff I am also including citation counts. I only include this extra information if the CV is for something that is trying to evaluate the "impact" of my research.


A bibliography with entries in several scripts How should a bibliography cite works titled in several scripts?

Up to now I've been putting all titles into a single list, in the original scripts and in the alphabetical order informed by their otherwise unused transliterations. For example, Матюшкин (Matyushkin) could come right after Mason, but the transliteration Matyushkin would not appear.

I have a book in hand from Princeton University Press in the 1950s that also uses a single bibliographic order, but includes only transliterations and title translations, not the original-script references. That makes it hard to track down a source because the reader has to be able to back-form the other spelling, which may be ambiguous or nonstandard. The title translations are useful, though as they involve the creation of new text, they can make an entry not match references elsewhere to the same work.

Filled with doubt, I wonder if there is a standard approach to this problem.

For non-Roman scripts, it's common to have separate bibliographies. I imagine that this was especially the case when switching languages required switching codesets or linotype font sets.

So you'd have:

English language bibliography
Chinese language bibliography

and so forth. There's even a question on the TeX.stackexchange on how to do this: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/343307/put-chinese-language-entries-before-english-language-entries-in-the-bibliography

These days, it's easy to mix the two together as unicode solved many of the font issues. But separating them allows you to use the name ordering system most appropriate for that language.


Masters Admissions and Academic Dishonesty The summer before my last year of undergrad I committed academic dishonesty in one of my summer classes. I received a sanction of a course grade of 0 and a notation on my transcript until I graduate, which would be June of 2015. I decided to take a year off in light of my transgressions (I wasn't suspended but felt that if I could do something that heinous I needed to take a step back and reevaluate  everything).

I'm a psych&stats major and I wanted to eventually work in research or some related field as I work as a RA at school and it's something I'm interested in. My overall goal was to find work after graduation and at some point when I have some career direction apply to a Master's program. However, in light of the academic dishonesty I'm not sure how it will affect my application, or if it's something that's redeemable?

Thanks for reading.

However, in light of the academic dishonesty I'm not sure how it will affect my application, or if it's something that's redeemable?

From a graduate admissions point of view, relatively speaking, having a note on your transcript concerning your academic dishonesty violation is not as bad as being kicked out of undergraduate studies altogether (as noted in this answer here to the following question: Is it possible to do a Master's degree without obtaining a Bachelor's degree?).

So, your school is giving you another chance. It's up to you now to make the most of your remaining time in your undergraduate studies. In my view, here are some things you can do to improve your chances of admission at the graduate level:

Do really well in your remaining coursework.
Take up a research project (or two or three). You should do this anyway if you are serious about graduate studies.
Build a professional network, such as professors for your courses or your research project advisor. In addition to helping you become a better student/researcher, these folks will come in handy when it comes time to submit letters of recommendation along with your graduate studies application materials.

You already took some time off from your studies to reflect on your actions, but it bears repeating: Don't dwell on this indiscretion. All you can do is move forward and utilize every bit of time you have left in your undergraduate studies to increase the odds in your favor of admission to a graduate program.

Edit: OP mentioned that they are an RA, but my 2nd bullet point above is added for future users in a similar situation.


How to change to Mathematics PhD program following M.S. in Computer Science? I wonder if anyone can give me some advice about how a computer science graduate shifts career to mathematics? I'm currently doing a Master's degree in computer science and i was thinking about doing a PhD in pure mathematics? so I was thinking is this transition feasible? how can I make this leap of faith?

Kindly note that currently -after graduation- I nearly don't do mathematics anymore, currently all what I am doing is writing software and administrating open source operating systems. In undergrad levels I took an introductory course in discrete mathematics and some calculus courses.

someone told me: Yes, the transition is feasible but it requires I take some courses and attend some math classes even as a special student (no degrees, no exams). But I thought I can get other opinions and views.

Take a look at Is it easy to change your major after starting your PhD or masters, if it is necessary?, which is somewhat similar.

In particular, unfortunately, it sounds like your current mathematics background is very far from what would be needed to enter a math PhD program - it's maybe 1/4 of the coursework that would be expected. You would need to have preparation equivalent to that of a BS in mathematics, and that sounds like it would be the equivalent of 2-3 more years of full time coursework for you.

To be honest, I don't think that the coursework you describe can even have given you much of a sense of what pure mathematics is, much less what it is like to do research in the area.  One needs rigorous proof-based classes such as real analysis and abstract algebra.

I would not really advise you, or anyone, to even think about grad school in mathematics before they have enough of a background to reasonably understand what it involves.


Tips and good practices for creating a personal web-page First, apologies if this question has been asked before. I could not find any reference.

I am a math PhD student, about to finish my studies and start searching for a post-doc position. In preparation, I have started to design a personal web-page.

However, I have found myself facing several considerations (see below for examples), which leave me a bit confused.
I am probably not the first person to find himself in such a situation I was wondering whether there is some list containing good advice and practices for creating a website.
Certainly, it all boils down to personal preferences at the end.
But, I'm hoping for some rule of thumbs to follow, which will help the page be more accessible/inviting.
Any references or tips will be most helpful.

Some concrete examples of questions:

Is it better to put a more casual or more formal image?
What are the merits of having everything on a
single page as opposed to multi-page divisions (i.e. contact, publications etc.)
What information is a 'must'? For example, I can't see a reason to upload my CV.

I've made a couple of websites for early/mid-career professors.

As with many website projects, there was consultation needed in the "What does the client want?" stage. Like you, they wanted something to match the "industry standard" for people in their position. So we did some research. I looked up a few dozen professors, PhD candidates, and postdocs in their field and from their institution and took notes. I also looked at specific institutions and specific professors they mentioned.

In general, the existing sites were more formal than casual (except in photo choices), they absolutely all included a CV given its necessity in job-hunting, they were mostly simple in design, and more than half were a single page. The younger they were, the more they tended to have interesting designs. I may also have imagined that the young were more formal, not yet feeling the freedom to play and risk seeming unserious. Many of the clunkiest were the highly limiting templates provided cheaply or freely by the institution, but sometimes those were better than what the person might have come up with; some people had evidently learned basic HTML circa 2001.

WIth this information, one of my professors decided to match the majority fairly exactly, and the other to just slightly one-up it. Neither wanted to stray too far from the boundaries we'd researched, turning down more modern features like a dynamically filterable list of publications.

One quick frame challenge for you is that I'm not sure if by "personal webpage" you mean to distinguish it from a professional one. Only one person in my research had two sites, and it was confusing, particularly since the content was largely the same, so it was hard to tell which was more up to date or authoritative. There's no need to divide your web presence unless you have a hobby to share that's totally unrelated to your work. If the goal is to make you findable by other researchers and institutions, make it professional.

And finally, let me draw your attention to my earlier "in their field" and "from their institution". You can add "at your career stage" if you like (or not if you want to be aspirational). My findings may not match yours when factoring in those things. I suggest you spend a couple of hours skimming a bunch of academics' websites taking notes on what's there and how it's presented. Find out what's appropriate for where you are, and set that as your baseline. If you find that 10% of people in your position put up a CV, leave it out. If 90% of them include it, start making yours presentable. And bookmark the sites you find most effective.

Have fun!


Multiple introduction in an academic report My university requires me to hand in 3 candidature assessment reports over the course of my PhD (the third being essentially the thesis, I'm on my first one). The report has the structure of a thesis (this isn't a requirement, but is how I'm structuring it). My thesis topic is actually fairly broad, so the actual journal papers will be on subtopics within the field. I have a main Introduction which introduces the broad topic, then separate sections that basically reproduce a draft paper and placeholder for a second paper which I will be starting on. Each section will have its own "mini-introduction" to introduce the reader to that subtopic. So my question is, is it normal to have multiple introductions in a report?

It is good writing practice to think of any document as having a hierarchical -- even fractal, if you're into these things -- structure: Every section contains a mini-introduction that spells out how what you're going to discuss in the following connects to what you've done before, and a mini-summary at the end that sets the stage for how what you just did leads to the next question.

At the sub-sub-subsection level, these mini-introductions and mini-summaries may be just a sentence or two long, but it's good to get into the habit of seeing that every section could be read on its own by connecting it explicitly to material before and after.

As such, it is entirely appropriate to have the mini-introductions you talk about in your question.


expectations when applying for an adjunct position I applied for an adjunct lecturer position through a university's web site at the beginning of August.

I assumed I would be put into an 'adjunct pool' of some kind, or simply be declined . . . or something.

However, no one has reached out to me. I've logged into their application site several times since and my application is still active, supposedly. I have never taught before so I guess I'm not sure what my expectations should be. Is this normal? What should I be expecting?

In industry, hiring decisions are typically made very quickly.  When I was at Microsoft, if everyone on the interview loop liked a candidate, we tried to let them know before they even left the building that they should expect an offer.  We had to, because in industry, good candidates only stay on the market a few days before they get and accept good offers elsewhere.

But it's a completely different story in academia where hiring decisions often take months.  It's likely your application will have to be put to a faculty vote before they can make an appointment, even for an adjunct position, and often the votes are batched.  You say you applied in August, but Fall quarter probably didn't start until September.  And even after everyone's back for the start of the new academic year, it could be several weeks before their first department-wide faculty meetings.

Also, realistically, adjuncts are bottom of the heap at a university.  You're part-time hired help brought in as cheap labor to cover classes when they need you and ignored when they don't.  So deciding what to do with you is unlikely to be a high priority.

Bottom line is that what you're experiencing is pretty much what you should expect.  Sorry to deliver the bad news.


Multiple outlets publication Perhaps, it's a naive question, but I'd like to have some clarification of my own thoughts on the subject. I'm curious about what is the rationale or need of 1) transferring copyright from authors of an academic artifact (paper, chapter, book, etc.) to a publication outlet and, consequently, 2) an inability for the authors to publish their work via other publication outlets.

I realize that the above is somewhat questionable from the ethical perspective of accumulating publication credit for essentially the same work. However, I think that this problem has an easy solution (which I've seen used by some people) - specifying in CVs and other materials that paper B, published in journal BB is the same (or lightly changed) as paper A, published in journal AA.

Assuming that the ultimate goal of scientific research is to enrich the human knowledge on a global scale is much more important than the above-mentioned slight ethical concerns (which can be easily alleviated), publishing scientific artifacts via multiple outlets IMHO makes quite a lot of sense from the perspective of exposing the work to a larger potential audience, which, ultimately has a positive effect on scientific research knowledge sharing and distribution.

Publishers have to eat too, and if you can take the same thing you published with them and publish it again with someone else, who will buy it from them?  Their argument is that they invest in the publication process and need to get a return for it.  I have some skepticism about this argument (these days, universities could pretty easily and cheaply operate open-access online publications, etc. etc.), and am personally a much bigger fan of open access, but that's the standard argument.

N.b. there's also a (smallish) benefit for authors in having a central place to go for things like reprint requests.

Also, many publishers these days are ok with a certain amount of republication.  For example, most copyright transfer agreements I've seen for journal articles explicitly allow the author to republish in a larger book, e.g., a collected papers book or a follow-up.


Why are my submissions not accepted by top conferences, while similar papers from others are accepted? I'm doing my PhD in computer science. I had a few tries for top rank conferences like IJCAI, CVPR and ICML but my paper was rejected from them and consequently I sent the papers to second tier conferences for the sake of having publications.

However when I compare my work with some accepted papers (in previous years or current year) in those conferences, I see similar technical level or novelty in them comparing to mines.

For example reviewers more often mentioned I just added something to the pre-existed approaches or combined already existing things from the literature to shape an algorithm, which I noticed is a common case notable number of papers in the top computer science conferences.

One thing I do not have in my papers is bringing unnecessary but sophisticated math jargon to show something important is happening. For example, I noticed in other's papers although the contribution was for instance adding an extra objective term in the optimization framework, they used complicated algebraic representations or visualization techniques to related their contribution to some bigger underlying phenomena! But the short answer is they did it because it obviously should make the outcome result better.

From another point I'm not sure if I try another top conference (with a new work) and my paper gets rejected, then would it damage my or my supervisor's reputation in the field?

So although I still have great enthusiasm to try for the next relevant top conference, I got a feeling that I'm missing an important ingredient from the recipe!

PS: My advisor is not so competent in this regard and I'm among the first group of his PhD students and you can guess the rest.

One thing I do not have in my papers is bringing unnecessary but sophisticated math jargon to show something important is happening. For example, I noticed in other's papers although the contribution was for instance adding an extra objective term in the optimization framework, they used complicated algebraic representations or visualization techniques to related their contribution to some bigger underlying phenomena! But the short answer is they did it because it obviously should make the outcome result better.

I can think of several ways to interpret this observation, some more charitable than others.

Computer science research papers are not about the results per se, but about the techniques developed to attain those results. It's possible that in the revirewers' eyes, the apparent connection to the larger underlying phenomenon is the main contribution of the paper.  The main contribution is not merely that the outcome is better, but at least an attempted explanation of why the outcome is better.
People are bad judges of the quality their own research results. More to the point: Your opinion of your research is irrelevant; only your peers' opinions actually matter.  If they find your papers less interesting than others, then by definition your papers are less interesting.
Emerson was wrong.  The world will not beat a path to your door if you merely build a better mousetrap.  You have to sell your results.  For your papers to be accepted, they must follow the cultural expectations of your audience.  If the IJCAI/ICML/CVPR audience expects a certain level of mathematical sophistication, then papers that do not display that sophistication are less likely to be accepted, even if that sophistication is unnecessary.
It is very easy to confuse mathematical depth/complexity with importance/difficulty. Top theoretical computer science conferences have a reputation for preferring more mathematically "difficult" papers to papers using more elementary techniques, and lots of reviewers assume without justification that any result that appears straightforward in retrospect must have been easy to derive.  But unless someone proves that P=NP, "trivial" is different from "nondeterministically trivial".
Because CVPR, ICML, and IJCAI are enormous conferences with low acceptance rates, acceptance decisions have high variance.  Given the breadth and complexity of the field, the ridiculous number of submissions, and the limited time for reviews, it is impossible for the program committee to make fully informed judgements about every submission.  There is an element of randomness even at smaller conferences, but for larger prestigious conferences, the randomness overwhelms the actual "signal".  In 2014, NIPS ran an experiment with two independent program committees; most papers accepted by one committee were rejected by the other.  It amazes me that anyone found this result surprising.
PC members are apes; they do apey things. As in any other large community, there are sub-communities within machine learning that prefer their own papers to others.  Even though submissions are blinded, reviewers can identify tribal affiliation—if only subconsciously—by writing style, citation patterns, choice of method, choice of data set, or choice of evaluation metrics.  If you're not in the right tribe, your papers are less likely to be accepted.


What format should the Methods & Materials section of a thesis be in? I am writing my thesis in biology, and am not sure how to format the M&M section of my thesis.

One option is like an experiment protocol, with a lot spaces, itemized lists of steps, etc...

Another option is more like an article, which is usually more dense, and harder to comprehend, but takes up less space.

Which format is the norm for a thesis?

Thesis writers generally have much more freedom to format them as they please. The only real requirement is that it follows any guidelines of the department and institution to which it is submitted, and receives the approval of the writers' thesis committees.

That said, I believe that these days, space should not really be a limiting consideration for a thesis writer. The methods section should be as long as needed to convey the necessary information. In addition, since this is not normally a journal publication, there is much more room to explain things in detail—which can be very useful for future members of the lab group who might follow up the same project.


What are Industrial Case Studies and why are they required? I searched on the internet about this but found no convincing answer. I have to submit a paper to a conference where they are also asking for an Industrial Case Study. I contacted the conference chair about this, they replied:

  If there is a pragmatic solution to a problem or there is an innovative application developed then an Industrial Case Study is required. For more details you may search for case study submissions for similar conferences.

The domain is KDD (Knowledge Discovery in Databases). I did search but did not find any good stuff.

Could anyone help me out with this?

I could not find a specific definition; however, I found a few Industrial Case Study examples from your and similar fields that may be useful analogs for you to model your case study off:

"An Industrial Case Study of Immediate Benefits of
Requirements Engineering Process Improvement at
the Australian Center for Unisys Software" (Damian et al. 2004).

"http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA446147" (Cook and Wolf)

"Process Monitoring using a Combination of Data driven Techniques
and Model based Data Validation" (Duchesne et al. 2007)

"Signed Directed Graph Based Modeling and its Validation from Process Knowledge and Process Data" (Yang et al. 2012)


Ethics of not referencing StackExchange in a publication? So I'm feeling a bit guilty. I've been working on a publication proof (my first) of an interesting theorem. The issue is I've been using StackExchange (Mathematics) to answer some similar questions when I get stuck on much smaller parts of the proof.

So the question here is, is it generally ethical to put just my name on a paper, even if I may not have come up with the lemma's using only my ideas, or is there a good way to I should reference StackExchange in a publication?

On one hand, most of the stuff I received answers for was for a learning purpose, similar to  that of me asking a professor or teacher, not so much as a co-author. And although relevant to the publication, the answers I received could be very common in other proofs as well and were not directly related the lemmas themselves.

On the other hand, it was not necessarily my ideas that first assisted the lemma, but those of others through SE.

Take for example a question I asked earlier today. I wanted to see an alternate proof to an equation, so that I could use it as a new method of proving a lemma related, it as the original proof (Euler's Thereom) could not be generalized with such a method Proving $a^{(p-1)p^{k-1}} \equiv 1 \pmod {p^k}$ without Euler's Theorem. The proof I was looking for was simply done using the Binomial Theorem. Therefore the idea of using the Binomial Theorem in my proof will assist me in my own similar generalization. But even though I was just given the tool, the work will be done myself.

In my publishing experience, and from what I have seen elsewhere, I think the most appropriate thing to do in this scenario is to simply have an acknowledgment. This is standard for most professional publications.

For example, consider the article Counting Triangles to Sum Squares by Joe DeMaio that appeared in the College Mathematics Journal (a periodical of the MAA). Here's a snippet from the article:

As you can see, it would probably be appropriate for you to have an acknowledgment section at the end of your article that ran something like this:

Acknowledgment: Many thanks to members of the Math Stack Exchange community, anonymous and otherwise, for helpful comments and suggestions.


Tutoring as a undergrad student My school provides undergrad students with the opportunity to tutor the classes where they received an A as an extra-curricular program. I have received an A+ in some classes and think that if I have a chance to be a tutor of that class, it will help enhance  my understanding and teaching skills.  However, tutoring is so time-consuming that if I do it, I might give up one of the lectures next semester.

So, my question is: Is it worthwhile to be a tutor if I want to go to grad school?

Tutoring is definitely a great way to gain more confidence and knowledge in a certain area as well as help you to decide if you enjoy the subject/teaching it and want to go to grad school. However, it sounds like you know the class really well as you received an A+ and it isn't worth dropping a lecture just to tutor. Grad schools do not put nearly as much weight on tutoring to warrant sacrificing other things that would benefit you.


How to handle the plagiarism on references? Recently I received a plagiarism report on my accepted manuscript. It is highlighted that total 25% text appeared in other sources though they are cited properly.

When I checked the report, I found ~20% text appears in references only and another ~3% text is due to the use of a long phrase "The tropical cyclone wind speed climatology". This phrase was actually very frequently used in one of my another paper. The rest ~2% text appears in introduction and methods. In methods, I had used some well known mathematical equations and related descriptions e.g. which variable denotes what.

So how to deal with this situation? How can I convince to the editor?

25% similarity is low. Similarity in references should also be discounted. I suspect it's either a mistake or something you don't have to pay attention to - you mention that your manuscript's already been accepted, and they might just be sending plagiarism reports with the acceptance email as a matter of course.

If the editor also said something like "please correct these plagiarized text", I'd write back saying that the similarities outside of the bibliography are minute, and ask for clarification.


Is it possible to pursue two distinct research interests in the same discipline? Is it possible or legitimate to pursue two distinct research interests in the same discipline in the context of an advanced academic career (PhD and beyond that)?

For example, can I  have two research interests the one concerning History of Economics and the other concerning Mathematical & Computational Economics in a PhD program in an Economics department where there are always professors that have these but usually not the same person?

Or for example, can I  have two research interests the one concerning Political Theory/Philosophy and the other concerning Mathematical & Computational Social Sciences(Political Science) in a PhD program in Political Science department where there are always professors that have these but usually not the same person?

Just for the record, I have postgraduate academic education from prestigious universities both in Computer Science & Applied Mathematics and in Social Sciences(mainly Economics) & Philosophy. For this reason, I want to maintain both my strong qualitative and quantitative skills and have these, two in each case essentially, quite distinct research interests.

For example, can I have two research interests the one concerning History of Economics and the other concerning Mathematical & Computational Economics in a PhD program in an Economics department where there are always professors that have these but usually not the same person?

Practically speaking, your PhD topic will need to be on one topic, so you will need to choose to some extent. Relatedly, you will also need one (and usually exactly one) advisor - you can have the other person as a member of your committee, or sympathies permitting, just as an unofficial mentor and collaborator, but typically the formal advisor will need to be one specific person.

However, this should not prevent you from conducting research on both your interests. Typically, there are two ways to go about this:

Find a topic that naturally integrates your interests. For instance, you may write a thesis in political sciences, but with a healthy dose of econ (which almost automatically also includes plenty of applied maths), or you may write a thesis in economics, but with a focus on political implications of economic theory. In this example, both versions sound completely reasonable to me. Of course, if your actual interests are farther apart, this becomes less reasonable.
Choose one of your interests as thesis topic, and work on the other as side topic. This you can do in most cases, as long as there is some understanding between the disciplines (and your advisor is generally in favour of side projects, which apparently not everybody is). This course of action has the disadvantage that ultimately, you will lose time to work on your thesis, and your thesis may accordingly take longer to complete or be less compelling than if you worked 100% on it.

That all being said, a common advice given to students is to remain somewhat narrow in their academic interests early in their career, and only start to branch out and diversify once one is strongly established in one particular aspect of a field or discipline.


Doing a second PhD in different field instead of a Habilitation I just started a 3-4 year Post-Doc position in Department A, to work on a topic on the border between two fields on which they also work in Department B.

In some European countries the usual situation is to do a Habilitation in A.
However, theoretically it is also possible to get payed by department A, and working on projects for A, but doing a second PhD department B as an external PhD candidate (as if i where in an external research institute), in stead of doing a Habilitation in A.  Doing a "external" PhD, at an other place than the supervising Professor is quite common in Germany, Italy and a few other EU countries. But only if the other place is a research institute or company, doing that in another university group, or university is very uncommon/rare, especially when it is about doing a second PhD.
I am not easily persuaded by uncommon/rare by itself, so i would like to know the pros and cons of taking this unusual path?

Honestly only see more advantages (more collaborators, shared expertise) especially for topics that are on the border between two fields. A Habilitation can easily be waved if you have enough publications. It seems to me that a second PhD in B will later make it easier to change fields to B, beyond only the topics on the border between A and B. On the other hand i do not know any people who did something like this. And i can not really predict the consequences or reaction of such a unconventional route. And i also do not want to freak out my new boss by mentioning this idea, if the majority of you would consider it as very inappropriate.

What are the pros and cons of extending your research field by doing a second PhD in another direction stead of deepening while doing a Habilitation in the same field?

EDIT: The current Position is in Germany. Although i would be interested in staying in Germany, i would also like to hear about perspectives on this for  other countries. That also makes the value of the question more general.

As has been covered in other questions e.g. Is doing two PhDs a good path? or After PhD in Aerospace Engineering, could I be admitted into a top university for a second PhD in Computer Science?, there is rarely a need to pursue a second PhD to change fields. Once you have acquired the basic research competence, you can shift fields at any point in your career (as indeed you are already doing by publishing in a CS field).

Moreover, the volume of research required for a PhD thesis and a Habilitation is quite similar. Rather than going back and doing a second PhD, would it be possible to start pursuing more collaborations with the CS department and publishing CS research, so as to eventually obtain your habilitation in CS? Or interdisciplinarily with research from both fields, if you would like to keep your options open?


Dutch Higher education degrees have a major or a minor? The Dutch education system adds a major or minor to their Higher professional education or University education? I saw some examples as: HBO Management (would HBO be the degree and Management the major, or HBO Management is the degree). I am doing a comparison with the US education system.

(As mentioned in the comments) It is possible to do a minor while at university in the Netherlands - for example, on the Biology course of Radboud University, it is possible to do 15-30 ECTS on a minor subject.

This website gives more information about higher education in the Netherlands, but you can confirm for yourself by looking at the course descriptions at other universities.


What is a shared task? and what is the purpose of it? I noticed lately the increase of conducting shared tasks, what are they and what is the rationale behind them? why do we need them since we already have workshops and conferences?

The rationale is to get a bunch of smart people together to actually solve or at least make progress on open academic problems. I've never been to a "workshop" that actually did any work on the problem. Conferences are typically just people giving presentations and not really working on problems in my experience.


Shall I give a template to the rec-letter writer? Many professors, specifically in China, wants students to provide at least a template (half-written letter). In US, is it similar? I've read an article from Harvard Business Review website saying that it is better to enclose a template. https://hbr.org/2010/04/how-to-ask-for-a-reference-let-1-2 I think HBR is a credible source for US professional practice?

However, I am afraid that this practice would seem really creepy to some most honest professor. For example, I once informally ask a professor if he wants a template. He decisively refuses.

After that experience, I never mentioned about a template in US. However, later, some professors (in US) asked me in a vague way that they want a template. So I am kind of confused. What is the default way?

Here are my options:

Include the well-written template letter along with my materials (he might be insulted)
Mentioning that I am going to include a "narrative list of accomplishment in third person tense", along with my PS and CV. I would also mention that this is just to save his time and minimize his trouble; it is not to force him to write me in this way. If he does not refuse, then I send him all documents. If he explicitly says that he does not want the "narrative essay in third person tense", I would just have him writing the letter or switch that guy.
Ask the professor directly if he wants a template letter written (he might be insulted but he might just think that I am ignorant)

Asking for a template letter is bad practice, albeit probably not uncommon in some countries.

Generally speaking, I'd avoid volunteering any template, and if the professor asks for one, think carefully whether you really want a letter from them.

When you ask for the recommendation letter, just include your CV, possibly a transcript of your exams, and then ask the professor if they need further information. This may be similar to your point 2, but avoids suggesting a narrative.

You don't specify your field, but I think the above is sufficiently broadly expected in STEM fields (in my experience, even those who ask for a template, frequently recognize that it's bad practice). Therefore, I definitely disagree with the author of the linked HBR article.

Points of view similar to mine, if not even stronger, can be found elsewhere on this site. See for example:

This very detailed answer from Pete L. Clark

This comment from JeffE


Blinded manuscripts and arXiv Very recently, I have submmited my paper to a journal published by Springer.
As required by the  policy of the journal, the manuscript must not contain the author's name and the corresponding contact information. However, I published the paper to arXiv as a preprint.
My question is What will happen next? My manuscript can be sent to reviewers?
Thank you for your supports.

Thomas is correct--any journal put out by Springer as well as by university presses will have a specific policy about preprints. Look for the policy on the journal home page or the press's "authors' rights" web page, which often has information for prospective authors (i.e., authors who have submitted a paper for consideration but haven't received a decision). For example, the "Guidelines for Authors' Rights" for the University of Chicago Press's journals division  (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cont/jrnl_rights#faq6) states:

"To avoid citation confusion and compromising of peer review, we discourage online posting of pre-prints and working papers. If you choose to submit a pre-publication version of your paper to a non-commercial, discipline-specific pre-print or working paper archive, however, we require that appropriate credit be given to the journal as described above and ask you to remove the working paper from the archive after your article is published or replace it with the published version. Any version of your paper submitted to a pre-print or working paper archive can be made available only under a license that forbids commercial reuse, or you will be required to remit the appropriate fee to make your article available in the journal under a comparable license. If you deposit the published version of your article, it may be made publicly available only after the appropriate embargo period* has been observed. You are responsible for informing the manager of the archive of the embargo period that must be observed.

Please also note the comments elsewhere in these Guidelines regarding prior publication and anonymous peer review and the use of copyrighted material in your article.

*The embargo period is twelve (12) months unless otherwise required by mandate."

So I would advise checking out the specific journal's policy as well as Springer's "authors' rights" pages. Depending on what you find, you may be better off removing your essay from the preprint archive, if that is possible, at least while the essay is under consideration for publication. Good luck!


presenting evidence of research to grad school committees I am filling in a form for a Masters application. At the top is a question asking to describe research experience (if any) and interests. It's in an engineering field, if that matters.

I have worked on a research project where something somewhat novel was designed, but unfortunately, did not publish a paper. However, I would still like to mention this and talk about it. Since committees are usually looking for strong evidence of research potential for grad programs, what is the best way to express this outside of a 1-2 paragraph description in the form? Would a simple website suffice? Would people in the committee click a link to an external page?

While a link to a website is probably fine, it might not be followed up, so make your short description clear. A link to a page on a university site or other obviously "safe" domain is preferred, of course.

And, if you have a CV to submit, you can mention it there as "unpublished undergraduate research".

But the "best" way is to have one of your letter writers mention it in their LoR. This is especially true if the project supervisor is one of the writers. But another professor who knows of the work can also make a brief mention.


How to structure a proof by induction in a maths research paper? I am 16 years old at the time of writing (so I have no supervisors to seek advice from) and I have written a mathematics research paper, which I plan on submitting to a journal for publication.
For a couple of the assertions that I make, I use proofs by induction. Now, in school we're encouraged to write proofs by induction in the following (rigid) format:
Base case:...
Assumption(s):...
Inductive step:...
Conclusion:...
I have noticed that no research articles that I have seen have written proofs by induction using this sort of format. The authors usually make it flow much more smoothly, eg 'For the base case, the result is trivial. Now assume the result holds for some $n=k$, so that... Now consider the expression for $n=k+1$...and by the inductive hypothesis this equals...hence the result is true by mathematical induction.'
So, is it good practice to write proofs by induction in the pretty rigid structure I first outlined or is it ok/better to write the proofs more naturally so that it flows better?
Thank you for your help.

As you probably have observed by now, by reading articles, people generally do not write steps down explicitly when those steps are considered "obvious." This trend is not special to proofs by induction.
In fact, this is true at any level, but what is considered "obvious" to an audience of people holding a PhD or with significant progress towards a PhD is different from what is "obvious" to someone taking first year calculus.
Think about it this way: people reading research articles know math quite well already. What they are interested in is what is new in your paper; demonstrating "obvious" facts is just a distraction. And, if you are at the stage where you will read several papers in a week, you generally want those papers to get to the point.
For people who are learning math, it's entirely different: you're probably only reading 1 textbook at a time, and the whole thing is new to you. So, you want everything explained in lots of detail because you've never seen it before. But again, if you're reading a calculus book, you probably don't need an explanation on solving a quadratic; you already know that. If you're learning induction, you want it spelled out; if you've seen proofs by induction ten thousand times, you don't need it spelled out for you.
Since you are a bit new to this, I would like to give some more examples about how proofs by induction are typically structured in upper undergraduate/graduate/research levels. Now, when it comes to proofs by induction, there are generally two categories: proofs where the induction step is "obvious" and proofs where the base-case is "obvious." Sometimes both are easy, but it's very rare in my experience to find a proof by induction where both the base case and the induction step require a lot of work to prove.
I suppose on the rare instance where both the base case and the induction step are non-obvious, I might split the proof into two lemmas or possibly I would call these "claims." In every other case, I write statements such as "the base case is trivial" or "the general case (the induction step) follows by induction."
I would also point out that there are even times where a proof will "prove" something by induction without the author ever writing that induction is being used. For instance:

Let f(n + 1) = 2f(n) and f(0) = 1. Then f(n) = 21 f(n - 1) = 22 f(n - 2) = . . . = 2k f(n - k) = . . . = 2n.

Induction is being used implicitly within the ellipses, but it hasn't been written explicitly so. I, personally, like to write "by induction" at the end of such a statement, but not everyone does.
I think your intuition of generally following how other people write mathematics is appropriate. You can deviate slightly, sure, but it's also good to understand why things are written the way they are and so it is great that you are asking this question.


Are the contents of discussion between a University and a student private or public? I have the opportunity to reject an offer from a University in US. As a follow up email I was asked which university did I choose and what was the reason behind it. Can I simply ignore the follow up mail, or can I divulge the information as a good  gesture?

Personally, I do not like to reveal stuff, but is the information where I am going to study or whether or not I received funding from a particular university public? If I reveal it to staff of another university  will it not be a problem?

You're not obligated to tell them. Whether you tell them or not would be unlikely to have an impact on your future either.

They're probably not going to track you down and find you, and would mostly use the information to improve recruitment in the future.

Imagine if you told them you chose University X instead because you had family there and it was easier to secure housing. That's a sound reason, and unlikely to cause any sort of mark in the off chance they were tracking you.

I would try to avoid saying anything bad about the school, though.


How to cite a paper which has been presented and included in proceedings but not yet published online? I have submitted my paper to a conference A, where it has been presented and is included in the proceedings and is yet to be published online and would be completed in few months. How do I cite this paper in my follow up work to be submitted to another conference B, whose deadlines are way before the previous work can show up online?

Ask the conference chair or, preferably, the proceedings editor how to proceed. They may have already specified what the reference will be. Otherwise, cite the paper as you normally would, but without the date of publication, but naming the venue and "to appear" as part of the citation.

And it may be moot in any case as things may become finalized for the earlier conference before they need to be set in stone for the newer one. The deadline for final copy is normally later than the deadline for submission.


Skipping same old introductions I’m working in the area of adversarial examples against neural networks. A standard research paper generally starts off an introduction with something along the lines of the below, but probably with a bit more guff:

  Neural networks are increasingly used in safety and security critical applications, such as medical image recognition or facial recognition in surveillance footage. However, the networks are vulnerable to malicious attacks through the manipulation of input data. With adversarial examples...... etc.

Considering there are hundreds of papers which start with the same introduction, would it be acceptable to skip over writing my own guff? Possibly just reference existing papers and mention “existing uses and problems” (or something like that).

The scene has already been set by hundreds of existing papers, so why would I need to set the scene again in any of the papers that I create?

Or would something like this generally fail to pass peer review? Obviously there’s many different criteria for different journals/confs etc.

You need to include the introduction to your paper because it might be the first paper in that field the reader is about to read.


How can international students improve chances of getting into top US/UK schools I graduated last year from my university which is located in a developing country. It is the top university in the country but relatively unknown to the outside world. I graduated from CS at the top of my class. Additionally, I was able to get an internship at a very well known research "company" in Silicon Valley for a couple months. Currently, I am working as an RA at my university.

After saying this, I would like to apply to US/UK universities for Masters and then PhD but got very depressed after browsing these websites gre math profiles and gre physics profiles since international students seem to get rejected from the top universities relatively easy.

I would like to know if there is any advice that will enhance my application so that I can have a better chance to be accepted at both US/UK universities as an international student.

N.B I did not do the GRE's as yet - will complete them later this year.

When applying to the UK, if you hold the equivalent of a bachelors degree with honours, at first or upper second class, you usually do not need to take a masters degree. I know this as I didn't have a masters, and I was actually advised by my now-advisor that it was not necessary to have one, since a PhD supersedes it.

Having held an internship with a major research company in Silicon Valley, you should be in a great position to apply for a PhD. With your awards and ranking in the class, I'm relatively confident you would do very well in applying for a PhD in the UK. I can't speak for the USA as I'm not familiar with that system, but their PhD program includes what amounts to a taught masters as well.

I can't concur that international students are rejected hugely often. Certainly not ones of your ranking in the class, with awards and significant internships. Even the fact you had a scholarship to study your undergraduate degree is positive in the eyes of admissions teams.

While the process of applying for a PhD differs across countries, if you have a contact at a university you're interested in (or perhaps an idea of a prospective advisor), you should reach out to them. Many universities place the incoming applications into a "pool" on an internal portal, where academics can browse through candidates. I'm sure this isn't the case everywhere, but it's definitely the case at some institutions. If you are able to apply with a specific advisor in mind (who you have communicated with), you have very good chances.

As a small personal anecdote which hopefully shouldn't be irrelevant to this answer, I applied to a named supervisor, with their knowledge, having previously discussed the idea (and actually having met them and discussed it). Having done this, I then understood I was guaranteed to be accepted, given how the opinion of the academic was so significant in their application system.

While this won't be the case everywhere, if you were to apply with the credentials you stated, and it was in a relevant field, I'd be calling you back ASAP. Funding for an international student is sometimes slightly more difficult to organise, but that's not a barrier - actually the majority of our current PhD students are international. This university, while not one of the immediately named top universities, is actually top within a couple of fields. Don't overlook a university without checking where the appropriate department lies on the REF scale (research excellence framework, used to rate the quality of research output).

I'd therefore recommend you look into how the application process works, and plan your submission for any personal statement or case-for-support questions. Having some interesting and well-written answers should be enough. You have industrial experience which you should focus on, as well as your academic performance, and current research experience. That's a lot more than most (accepted) applicants have!


Why there is no enforcing body in validating contributions? In undergraduate or graduate courses, marks and remaining measures are awarded or attributed solely based on the work done by a student.
Even in team works, marks can be varied by checking the contribution of individual students.
But, coming to research, there are no rules or an enforcing body, which checks the individual contributions of all the authors mentioned in the paper. Why is it coming under ethics, but not enforcing?
Is it because of the reason that it is difficult to implement or infeasible to implement?

Actually the "enforcement mechanism" is the entire academic community. Papers, for the most part are written by specialists, often for other specialists. Every reader can make a judgement about both ethical concerns and contributions. Every reader can criticize any paper that they read.
One problem with a "centralized" scheme is that the expertise is so varied that it would take a gigantic organization to do so. That "gigantic organization" is the entire scholarly community.
Moreover, as to contributions by individuals in joint papers, that is probably best left to the authors themselves. Most journals insist on some form of agreement among authors in this by asking them all to "sign off" on the paper.
And your judgement about what is a "minor" contribution vs a "major" one might well differ from mine. But this is because there is so much variation in the kinds of contributions: time spent, "effort", key ideas, writing, organization, creation of the enabling lab, ...