What's the meaning of "program"? I was reading this.

  Now here's some advice that isn't silly:  don't go to graduate school
  unless you get into a strong program.

What's the meaning of "program" in this case? What would be a strong program?

In this context, it is referring to the particular department or school, that is to say, "don't go to graduate school unless you get into a good university, or rather a good department." Don't go to graduate school for the sake of going to graduate school - make sure you're going somewhere which does good research, where faculty members publish frequently, has a history of graduates doing well for themselves, etc.


(Author Date) inline citations vs anonymous references with ISO 690 I am trying to use the the Czech language ISO 690 style in the (Author Year) variant. However, citing anonymous references seems unsatisfactory. I am getting just "(ANON. 2016)". That gives almost zero identification information.

How do people deal with this?

I was thinking of modifying the style and using ("Title" Year) instead, when neither author nor editor nor translator nor interviewer is available.

ISO 690 is rather unambiguous about this (section 5.6. "Anonymous works"):

  For  anonymous  works  cited  by  the  name  and  date  system  (see
  A.2),  “Anon”  may  be  used  instead  of  a creator's name. For
  anonymous works cited by the numeric system (see A.3) or running notes
  (see A.4), the title may be treated as the first element. If the
  creator's name is known, it may be supplied.

If your publication venue requires you to use ISO 690 with name-date, you really don't have any choice here. After all, consistency is why journals etc. require you to follow a citation/publication style.

As per appendix A.2, you can distinguish different anonymous works from the same year by appending letters: (Anon., 2016a) vs. (Anon., 2016b). This is standard in Harvard style derivatives.


Is there a reason a TA and a professor may have to travel together? I don't work in academia but I'm working on a screenplay set in that world. I was wondering if there might be a reason for a TA and a professor to travel together for work. If the professor were attending an academic conference, would it be normal for the TA to go with? Thanks!

In most cases, a teaching assistant would not have any reason to travel with their professor, since their responsibilities are around teaching. Perhaps if the class was an expedition for field work in an archaeological department or something (I think I have heard of a department doing this), but then it would have all of the students as well.

A research assistant, on the other hand, will often travel to a conference with their advisor, if they have a paper or poster to present. Thus, to me, the most likely case for a teaching assistant traveling with a professor is if they are also supervised in research by that same professor.


I get no advice or guidance from my supervisor I'm approaching the end of the first year of my PhD and I really am struggling to find what my research question is. I'm slightly panicing that I don't know what I'm doing yet and I get very little support from my supervisor.
I've spent time exploring the literature and I have a few broad ideas of potential areas. The problem is, when I discuss the topics with my supervisor, he gives me no advice or guidance about how to develop these ideas into research questions or whether these ideas are even valuable/ could make a PhD.
We meet fairly regularly (maybe once a month). But in most of our meetings it's just me bringing him up to speed on the research I've done and some ideas, and I really don't get any feedback that is constructive to me narrowing down a topic and really developing it.
I've tried to be more direct, and specifically asked 'what topic do you think has the most value?' to which he'll reply 'what topic do YOU think has the most value?'. He doesn't do a lot of independent research either as he spends a lot of time teaching, so it's difficult for me to just attach myself to something he has worked on.

I'm really not sure how I can get some feedback on my work and find a topic. Any advice?

Edit:
Thanks so much to everyone who has responded to this question. Your advice has been really helpful and constructive.

Several things come to mind:

First, know that this is frustrating for many PhD students and it is normal for people to feel anxious if they aren't on a set course for their dissertation at the end of year 1.

Second, is it possible that your advisor is not a great match for you? My dissertation chair was not an expert at all in my dissertation topic (no one in my program was), but he was an accomplished scholar who could help me develop skills in identifying appropriate literature and narrowing down a topic. You may want to consider if someone else in your program is a better fit and switch advisors. This happens sometimes. It's normal.

Third, this is why PhD programs have students assemble dissertation committees, rather than just work with one person. If switching advisors is not an option, find someone else in the area you want to research and meet with him or her. Invite him or her to coffee or lunch. If they are at a distance, ask them to talk on the phone. Many researchers would be flattered that you are interested in their area and want to pick their brain. This may help.

Finally, does the literature indicate that there are specific topics in this larger area that need to be explored? Maybe you are not consulting with the right literature or there is a lot more out there to consult with.

Hope this helps! Good luck!


How to set high class expectations and still maintain a good class relationship I usually have a good instructor-class relationship, but I am also an admittedly easy instructor - in previous classes my assessments have been on the easy side of fair.  This term I have set very high expectations for my class and the class is doing exceedingly well.  I am very impressed by their progress and their learning and professionalism is showing very clearly.  Unfortunately, the students aren't as happy as I'd like them to be.  I am getting the feeling that I've encouraged excellence through fear, and I'm cultivating frustration.  Students who were expecting an easy class are instead being challenged more than in previous years, and the workload is considerable.

I would like to continue setting these expectations for my students, since I think the learning and progress is worth it.  However, I also feel very strongly that the students should like and trust the instructor.  What are some strategies I can use to increase student satisfaction while also maintaining very high standards?

I should note a few things:

I'm asking this in general, but the current class I'm talking about is a required course that students in this major have historically not seen as being relevant.  I am working to increase the relevance to their discipline.
I have communicated to the students that I'm very happy with their progress and very impressed by it.

Let me second the post of Massimo Ortolano and especially point 2. there. But you can do more.

One way to keep students happy, both the really hard workers and the strugglers, is to give them a second chance when they fail to live up to standards. One way to do that is to permit students to resubmit work with corrections after grading. My experience is that you can be as demanding as you want to be as long as students don't feel trapped or disadvantaged by what they see as small errors.

I've permitted students to resubmit work even after I've discussed the correct solutions in class. Just going through the motions of typing out the correct answers is an educational experience - reinforcement. I've usually permitted more than one resubmission of the same work. You need to set a limit, though, if students neglect new assignments to re-do old ones. A bit of balance is needed.

To be fair to those who get it right, it is also useful to extract a bit of tax on the re-work. Say, only 90% of the difference between the first marks and the full marks can be achieved through rework. This also keeps people from being lazy about deadlines.

Note, of course, that regrading requires that the number of students not be excessive and that you develop efficient ways to see what has been changed when re-work is submitted. I just had students submitting new work also submit the old (with my comments) as well as highlighting changes.

But with respect to the point of students needing a while to learn to live up to new and higher standards, I also experienced this when I brought new and higher standards to a new job. Students in a Masters program had gotten the idea that good grades were pretty automatic. They were a bit shocked when I told them that it was possible for all to fail and that I would read and comment on all of their work. It required backup from the Dean, actually. But it didn't take too long in my case. Word spread quickly.


Is it good practice to share pre-print of PhD thesis? I know it's common practice for researchers to share the pre-prints of their papers on online repositories such as ArXiv , SocArXiv, SSRN, OSF. This practice helps speed up the process of receiving feedback from more people and it helps drawing more attention to the study.

Now, I've just submitted my PhD thesis to university/examiners and the whole process will take a while until I get my PhD defence (viva), eventual corrections etc until the university puts my thesis available online. My question is: is it Ok to share the submitted thesis manuscript as a pre-print online before having the PhD defence?

edit: I've recently been informed that The Center for Open Science (the same group behind SocArXiv and OSF) also has a preprint repository devoted to theses called Thesis Commons.

I think that question can only be answered by your University and your advisor. It is conceivable that they have some rule prohibiting it. I think that is unlikely, but you should learn first. Even if it is not forbidden, your advisor can give you feedback on whether it is advisable in your case.

If you were submitting to a formal publication, on the other hand, their rules might also be important to consider.


Promoting research papers with targeted ads I've seen a targeted ad on Facebook about a new study by a public university (linking to a news blog). The ad was paid for by the university.

Is it common in academia to use targeted ads, paid for by a project's money, to disseminate research findings? Does it have any ethical issues?

Actually the practice is old, though using Facebook may be new. My old alma mater regularly sends out publications and news items "promoting" research at the university. I think the intent is more to promote the university itself, however, though some of the news items are worth a look if the research suggests new breakthroughs in, say, medicine. And, I suspect that the practice has always included a certain amount of "targeting", though using older technologies. A special newsletter for billionaire donors, for example.

But, yes, there are ethical issues, and the university needs to consider the impacts of such things. I have doubts about "using a project's money". I don't know if that was the case or whether it was just the normal PR practice from funds allocated for that. And promoting dodgy research would have serious ethical implications, of course.

Note that my alma mater is a large US State funded place (an R1). In a sense, what they are doing is saying to the general public: Look at us, we do great things here.

And that same general public actually provides serious funding for the place via taxes and grants. So, pretty natural, so far as that goes. In fact, not reporting back to the public in some way about how the money gets spent would have its own ethical issues.


What is the US style to list the advisor's name of a master's thesis? In listing my master's thesis in CV I came across this problem: Should I put the name of my advisor in front of my name or should I put only my name (I have my advisor's name printed in my thesis) according to the US style?

I don't think you need to be too formal here. Just include whatever information you believe is relevant, for example:

  Master's Thesis: "Topic", at University X, supervised by Prof. Y.

Theses are different from regular publications anyway.


In Elsevier Editorial System, how do I resend a paper with "Submission needing revisions" status? I've received a letter from the editor about minor revision to my paper and, if I want, that I can resend revised manuscript. The paper is currently under "Submissions needing revision" in Elsevier Editorial System (EES).

Do I need to notify the editor by mail or somehow through EES that I will resend the revised version or just send it again right after making changes/replying to reviewers' comments?

The expected action would be for you to quickly but thoroughly make the necessary revisions to your paper. Sometimes the journal, through the electronic submission system or through the decision mail, provides a time frame for revisions. in my environment minor revisions is commonly expected within 3 weeks and major revisions within 6 weeks of receiving the comments. This is by no means a universal time frame so you should try to figure out what applies in "your" journal.

What is important is that you address each of the comments received and provide a clear account for how you have done so. You should make the revisions as quickly as you can. If you are uncertain about the time frame, send an e-mail to the editor and ask. Since a minor revision is likely to be follow by acceptance if revisions are made successfully, also go through and make sure your manuscript adheres to journal style requirements. This is usually given by an "Instruction for Authors" (or equiv.) but can also be gathered from looking at a recently published paper in the journal. Pay particular attention to the reference system.


I don't feel confident about my place in research. I am objectively less equipped for this career. How to move forward after a PhD? I got my PhD earlier this year. I have been productive during my PhD, published 4 papers during my 5.5 years duration in decent journals. My advisor was not an expert in my area of research, so my research ideas, methodology and analysis were completely isolated endeavour. This helped me become independent researcher but it also made me seriously unconfident in my technical know-how and research abilities.
My PhD was on a different field than my Masters and Undergrad degree. I took some courses to come up to speed, but I did not do many of the necessary courses because I thought I could self study them. I did self-study, but since I did not give exams or diligently solved many exercises in the book, I have a gap in the understanding of the core fundamentals of my field.
For example, one of the course I had to self study was numerical methods. I read the theory, made notes, did some exercises. But only retained a part of the subject because I had to add Newton-Rapson method in my code, so I just remember that.
Similarly, another course was Finite element method. I read the theory, made notes, did some exercises. But only retained a part of the subject because I did not have to develop FEA codes in my research. I used an opensource solver and focused on getting results for my research.
All these half-baked fundamentals made me realized that I am not equipped well for a career in research. I get overwhelmed when I start to revisit the fundamentals now. I feel I missed my chance when I should have studied more seriously and asked for help for the topics I was facing difficulties.
I had so much time in PhD to improve my knowledge and technical knowhow. After PhD and during postdoc, I am finding it harder to concentrate as I have to produce results at a much faster pace than my PhD and I cannot dedicate time to study and develop fundamentals. How to address this knowledge gap after a PhD?
Please don't say its imposter syndrome. I am just asking on how to improve technical/fundamental knowledge outside a university environment? Because, I feel it is not possible to gain deep understanding about a subject without the university/classroom setting.
I am really troubled and am worried about my career prospects. I have been looking for jobs in industry and at the moment I am not getting responses. So the postdoc position I am in currently will support me for the next year. However, I have to find something till then. If I don't have confidence in my abilities, none of this would matter. I would not be able to get a job.

While I'm not convinced it isn't just imposter syndrome, I'll also assume that you know something about it already.
However, you sound as if you know how to get the job done in research, focusing on what is needed to perform well. It isn't necessary, of course, to know everything before you start a project. Little would get done if that were true.
However, note that the situation has changed. In grad school and maybe in the post doc you were surrounded by a support system of people that you could bounce ideas off of and get feedback. The more independent you become the less automatic that is. So, I suggest that you try to reproduce that environment virtually by forming (or joining) a circle of collaboration.
A lot of very productive people maintain relationships with their former advisors and become part of that person's network. They invite others to come and speak or they go elsewhere to speak (and meet and collaborate).
It is very difficult for most people to do serious research in a vacuum. A few can manage it, but the collaborative network is a much richer environment for the generation and testing of ideas.
It doesn't have to be a classroom. You can take a much more active role.


Is it possible to apply for Ph. D. program in Physics with a CS background? Currently i am doing BE in cs. Is it possible to apply for a graduate program in theoretical physics without having a bachelor's degree in physics or mathematics?

I don't know if it's possible. It depends on the country. If you live in one of the members of the UE, it is- this is the so called Bologna Process.

But another question is whether you should do it and I strongly advise you not to. You need strong knowledge of Maths and Physics. I highly doubt you will be able to catch up with that. Even if you do, it will take up a major part of your PhD and you won't have time for real work.


What to say in one-minute presentation of a poster in a scientific conference? The chair person of my poster session has told each participant to make an one-slide presentation with one minute maximum speaking time (known as poster blitz or poster madness).

I am wondering what to keep on the slide and what to say in one minute? Is it Okay, if I speak my abstract only along with a figure? Could you please suggest me if there is any other good way of presentation?

I've seen this before and it can work very well.
Your only task in the one minute slot is to convince people that they should come and see your poster. Say what you've been doing and why it's interesting. You could use your abstract as a starting point but don't just read it out. Keep the slide really simple with the paper title and authors and a single, striking figure.


What kind of papers is it acceptable to read during working hours? In academia, one is forced to read papers that come out. Some of the papers I read are directly related to my work and then it is reasonable to read them in my working hours. Others are completely irrelevant and I read them just for the pleasure and to broaden my knowledge in other areas. These, I think, should be read in one's free time.

But then there are papers that are not directly related to what I am doing but may turn useful for my work, e.g., they may use a method that might come handy although they deal with a slightly different field. Should I read such papers at work as well or should I read them in my free time? How do I decide where the border between work-related and leisure-read papers lies?

A perspective from (theoretical) computer science:

One of the things that distinguishes academia from some other lines of work is that there is no well delineated line between "working hours" and non-working hours. Since you can probably be better paid elsewhere, academics tend to enjoy research. You seem to as well, since you read papers during your free time.

But that is the great thing about academia. Reading papers that you enjoy is work, since as you observe, reading in a field different from your own can nevertheless give you tools useful for your own work. So, I would say that you can read any paper you like during "working hours" and not feel bad about it.

Incidentally, one can always switch areas. If you feel that you are "forced" to read the papers that come out in your area, but there are other areas that you read for pleasure, perhaps you should work in those areas!

(Disclaimer: needless to say, to have a successful academic career, you can't spend all your time reading -- you have to spend some of your time writing! But there is no need to arbitrarily partition the reading into a work and pleasure pile.)


How to transfer from a pure math PhD to an applied math PhD at another school? I am currently a first year graduate student in a pure math PhD program in a top-100 university studying topology.  I declined offers from top 20 schools to attend this school because I liked the professors at this university and the location of the school was good.

After going to a couple of conferences and talking to some post-docs/grad students from other universities, I found out that the career prospects for someone like me look quite terrible (if I wanted to stay in academia).  Even grad students from Stanford/Berkeley (i.e. top schools) were having a bit of trouble finding a spot in academia.  Given that I'm really far down the "food chain" and I want to stay in academia, it looks very unrealistic for me.  Also, the math is really hard :)

I realize that I should go to a top-20ish school to have access to enough resources to make myself a competitive applicant in the future (I realize that I should focus on my work, but it's hard to grow a lot at my current university given the lack of learning seminars/seminars in general).

That said, I've been going to conferences and giving talks and "doing the right things."  However, I am finding that the current research I am doing is quite abstract and I don't have people I can regularly talk to about it.  I've recently discovered the subfields of topological data analysis and DNA topology and I'm finding those subjects really appealing in that I can actually see how my work might impact people and I can actually understand the material that is covered in seminars (the topics are very approachable).

From what the grad chair told me, I'm one of the strongest students that has entered this school's PhD program so I'm suspecting that, if I want to transfer, my letters of recommendation would be fairly strong.

However, the main issue for me is that I still do want to stay in academia.  I know that I don't need to go to a top 20 school to do "good" work but I don't see myself finishing my PhD at a school that isn't in the top 20.

So, that's the background.

I really want to transfer to a top (whatever that might mean) applied math program from my current institution.  I have only taken pure math classes.  I don't know how to nicely approach my professors and say "I don't want to stay here.  Please write me a letter of recommendation so I can get out."  My current plan is to say something like "I've developed some interest in applied math and we don't do that here.  I'm seeing myself doing research in applied math.  Will you write me a letter (etc)?"

How realistic is it for me to transfer to a (top) applied math program?  My GPA is currently a 4.0 and my undergrad was completed at a top 5 university (with a 3.8).
If it is realistic, how do I maximize my chance of being admitted into a (top) applied math program?
If it is realistic, what are some better ways to approach professors at my current university about this?

If it isn't realistic, I might just finish a PhD here.  I know that I can get more specialized attention at my university, but I thought I'd do a preliminary pass here to get a sanity check before I ask people in my department.  I am not familiar with people transferring from pure math to applied math programs.

Get your feet wet in applied math to make sure you'll like it.  Apparently there is no applied math program where you are now, but you can still do this,  through a combination of self study and courses offered in your own and in other departments.  Look at some applied math programs at other universities to get a flavor for the variety involved, and to give you some ideas of what sorts of courses to look for.  Programming skills are not required for all areas of applied math but can really come in handy for some.
When you're ready to ask for recommendations, be honest, just say that you are hopeful an applied math degree will make you more employable.
I assume you'll want to pursue this process with some transition time, during which you'll continue working to some extent with your current program including your research project....  If so, please find some people to interact with remotely, in your area.


Which is better, a paper with pedantic vocabularies or a paper easy to read? Many say that

  A good paper is a paper which is easily understandable by a reader.

Actually when I am reading lots of papers in good journals, however, they are written with a sort of pedantic vocabularies, even though I can find simple and easy words which can replace the former.

Should I use a pedantic vocabulary but clear sentences in order for other people (reviewers, readers) not to underestimate me? I think the previous statement (clear sentences with pedantic vocabulary) sounds like contradiction, or irony.

What do you think about it?

FYI, I am EE/CS graduate student and good journals can be IEEE TMC, TWC and so on.

There is a third way:
Be pedantic about your vocabulary in the right way to make your paper more readable.

Using established, clear, and consistent vocabulary and defining it when necessary is the best way to ensure that you are not misunderstood. The main advantage of “simple and easy words” is that they do not need to be explained to the reader, but this also entails that you rely on the reader interpreting these words the same way as you do, which may be not given surprisingly often. Defined vocabulary does not have this disadvantage.

Moreover, you need to at least need to mention the established, “pedantic” vocabulary for context and to avoid the impression of reinventing the wheel. By consistently sticking to it, you avoid switching between different terms for the same thing, which usually impedes intelligibility.

However, you should also bear in mind that readers unfamiliar with this vocabulary may want to read your paper. For these readers, define the more uncommon words and cite papers explaining the basic underlying concepts. Papers are not difficult to read because they contain new words, but because these words are not properly explained or because the reader does not understand the concepts represented by them. For example if you write a paper on theoretical particle physics, readers will have to understand some elementary aspects of quantum theory to follow your thoughts. Using vocabulary that can only appeal to readers without this basic understanding of quantum theory is pointless and only raises false expectations.

Finally, if you get to introduce new concepts, you can try to choose words for them appeal to intuition, but this does not mean that you are relieved from the burden of explaining these words.


Lack of mathematical work during PhD and coping up with the requirements of postdoc positions I am a recently graduated 31 years old PhD in a STEM field. I have been applying for postdoc positions for the past few months, and have received rejections from almost all of them, with few yet to respond. With the academic year coming to an end, I don't have any hope of getting a position and I will continue as a postdoc or Research assistant in my PhD group.

However, one common reason mentioned in all the responses to my applications was that I don't possess the required mathematical and programming skills to work on the research field. My PhD research involved using Fluent CFD software to model has flow in a nozzle. I did not develop any code for that. I used python programming to develop different nozzle geometries and used it to study the flow.

I did not take any Finite volume method or Finite element method course or fluid dynamics course in my undergraduate or graduate school as my supervisor told me to self learn the concepts. I have published 4 papers in decent journals.

However, all the postdoc positions I apply to require code development for CFD and having academic background with the numerical methods. And since I don't have any experience with code development, I don't know if I will be able to do the job considering my lack of formal training.

Is this dilemma expected after PhD? What should I do to improve my chances in getting a position?

If you have the knowledge, but not the "qualification" in those areas, make sure that your letters of recommendation say that. If you don't have the knowledge, it might be a bit easier to improve Python skills than math skills.

Alternatively, you might be able to get someone to tutor  you in the math area and make sure your advisor and other recommenders know to mention it in the future.

A third option is to focus your statement of purpose and other application materials on your knowledge of these things, rather than just listing courses.


Should I ask for deferral before accepting a PhD offer or after accepting it? I am currently in a PhD program, and have applied and received offers to start another (changing fields). Both are in the US, so I do not need to finish a master's or anything. The plan was that I will finish this year in my current PhD program, take some useful courses, get my master's degree, and peacefully leave in good academic standing and start the new program. For some personal reasons, which lead to serious bureaucratic issues, I had to take a leave of absence from my current program. So now, I would have to just leave my current program with very few courses taken and start my new PhD in Fall.

I know all of the departments I have offer from are ok with that, but I am NOT! I think it may look really bad on my CV to have just a few courses from my current PhD program, and abandon it in the middle of a leave of absence and start in a different field. Plus, although I am changing fields, some knowledge from my current field, the courses I was going to take, and the master's degree, are going to be extremely useful at many levels (super useful transferrable skills and a master's degree in a field and from a very prestigious school that can significantly improve my qualifications and open more doors for industry jobs after my PhD). Additionally, just for the sake of my confidence, feelings, and my relationship with my current classmates and professors, I think it would make a big difference if I go back after my leave ends, finish this year, and leave with good grades at a nice point (end of the master's courses), especially because the department was very kind to me and helped me a lot with the personal and bureaucratic issues.

I have to respond to my offers by April 15th, and I wonder if I should talk to the departments I am considering, and ask them if I can put their offer on a hold and join the new program in 2021 after finishing my master's. I know that most departments are going to be struggling financially because of the pandemic, and that makes me afraid that they may really dislike the idea and reject that request immediately. So, I think it may be better if I accept their offer, then ask them to defer the start date for a year. That being said, there are two risks with that: 1. If they decide not to take new PhD's at all in 2021 because of the pandemic, I will have trouble with starting then, especially because all are small departments with <10 PhD students a year. 2. One might be ok with that and another might not, so if I ask now, I can choose the one that allows me to do that. On the other hand, if I ask now and they reject, there is no way I can do that after accepting the offer, and going for a likely suggestion that I reapply next year is very risky. So, I think I have a higher chance for getting a positive answer to my request from each individual department if I present them with a fait accompli, i.e. accept their offer, then say I want to defer, but possibly a lower chance than getting one positive response if I ask all of them now (but that might not be from my current top choice). I know for a fact that some departments always reject the request to defer an offer, but sometimes accept to defer the start date when a new student asks for it after accepting their offer.

So, here are my questions:

Should I ask the new departments I have offer from if they allow me to go back and finish my current program and defer my enrollment in their program until next year, or should I accpet the offer, and then ask them?
Does it make sense to choose based on whether they allow me to do that or not? (and so, ask now)

Congratulations on your offers.  This is really four questions.

Would I benefit from a deferment?

It sounds like you feel bad about "abandoning" your current program.  You should not.  You probably owe them nothing.  PhD programs benefit universities more than students.  Completing your master's will do nothing to change the fact that you are switching programs.  There is no reason to defer.

Should I ask for a deferment so I can finish my masters?

No, this is not a credible reason to defer unless the masters is required for admission to the new program.

Should I ask the new departments I have offer from if they allow me
to go back and finish my current program and defer my enrollment in
their program until next year, or should I accpet the offer, and then
ask them?

An important rule of negotiation is that you negotiate before you agree.  Accepting and then negotiating is dishonest, and more likely to fail.

Does it make sense to choose based on whether they allow me to do that or not? (and so, ask now)

No, enroll in the best PhD program you can.


What career option is the most viable if one has very wide research interests? I'm in mathematics, and have recently gotten an opportunity to do applied/industrial research for a strong research institute in my country. As of now I have two MSc degrees in math and engineering respectively, and I also legally qualify as an Engineer. I have a passion for math, but also physics, computer science, and engineering. Thus I have very wide interests and want to continue to do research and interconnect these topics.

I fear that if I choose to go into research (my country's rough equivalent to the latter part of a PhD) I will not have the opportunity to conduct research in different topics, but rather have to specialize myself in a subarea of a math field.

At a research institute I will not be able to do pure math, but I'll have a very good pay and I'll at least get to do some applied/industrial math and publish in those areas. I will also be able to get a doctorate (latter part of PhD) via the research institute, but again it will be in applied math.

Right now I'm thinking of trying it out, and switch back if I don't like it as much, relying on my publications and teaching experience to get in somewhere.

Going fully into academia doesn't seem a good idea if I want to have varying research areas, but at least I'll get to choose my specialization. Going into industrial research I will have a varying job, good pay, but not as much intellectual stimulus and I can't choose my projects. How can one approach this, and what can I do to make either of these a better choice?

My best advice, though it might not suit everyone, is to pick something, anything, that you are willing to work very hard at for a decade or so and become an expert in that field as an academic (my choice). At that point you can probably get tenure and with tenure you can set your own research agenda, more or less. But your ideal academic job may or may not be in your current country of choice.

In some academic jobs you can set the research agenda completely yourself, though you may need to convince people that you are contributing to the mission of the institution. But if you are a mathematician who made the grade in, say, topology, no-one will be likely to tell you that you need to keep doing topology, and few will tell you that you can't branch out into applied fields, or even quite different fields for at least part of the time.

And, in fact, many academics do change their interests over time, even if they stay fairly close to the core field they started in.

But an industrial job, now-a-days, comes with many restrictions on what you can do and many requirements on what you must do. The days of old in, for example, Sun Microsystems or Bell Labs, are over. People in the successors of those places generally can't just think deep thoughts and try to build something interesting. But even in those old style labs, the people permitted to do that were few and had already risen through hard work in the lesser jobs for some decades that left them at the top of the heap. There are surely exceptions, but I think very rare.

But the bottom line, is that if you want to be a polymath, then you need to work very hard to build a reputation that lets you have the freedom to do what you want. It is just more accessible in academia, I think.


How to publish algorithm I have a new algorithm which I would like to publish.

I'm not a student, so I wanted to know a few things:
1) What should I publish? Just the algorithm with explanation? an academic paper? What are the principals of writing such one?
2) Where to publish?
3) What are the outcomes of publishing the algorithm? Legally or any other aspects I should be aware of.

Any other tips and helpful things I should know will be welcomed

Making an algorithm public is easy: you can put it on your webpage. By having it published as an academic paper (either conference or journal), you can  get reviews, which is interesting. Reviewers may help you evaluate the novelty of your approach. I thus suggest a paper, with at least:

a motivation for your algorithm,
a review of the related approaches and the explanation for its novelty,
the algorithm with explanations.

It is always a plus if you implement it also in a common computer language, so that others can check its efficiency, find bugs, allow improved versions. A working version of your algorithm in the shape of a code (compilable with instructions) can be put on GitHub for instance, for better versioning.

There are several algorithm related journals and conferences, for instance at the ACM Society:

ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software
ACM Transactions on Algorithms

and you can easily find many more, depending on the subfield your algorithm belong (combinatorics, optimization, real-time computing, etc.). Some are listed at the List of computer science conferences: Algorithms and theory.


I submitted the correct personal statement to the correct schools, but I realized I left highlights in my submission what should I do? I wrote my personal statements for two schools and they had the correct information for each school and submitted each statement to the correct school. But in my excitement to be completing my final two applications, I left highlighted sentences and words that I reviewed and finalized in my submitted essays. Being that I did this over the holiday, I labeled my drafts as "final" stepped away for a couple hours and just uploaded them to the portal and submitted my payments. I had a random epiphany scrolling through social media and realized my mistake. The Statement is completely edited and grammatically correct, but the highlighting is going to raise eyebrows. What is the best course of action in this instance? I do not believe that the portal used to upload my statements will cooperate to let me upload new versions of the statements since it is finalized. Thank you in advance!

what should I do?

No action is necessary.


Can we see the reviewers decision in the rebuttal phase? I have a question about the conferences with rebuttal phase. I know we can see the reviewers comments on our paper and we need to feedback properly according to them. But do they make any decision on "accept/reject" prior the rebuttal phase, and can we see it in the rebuttal phase?

I mean do we have to guess their decision based on their comments or we can see whether they already have decided to "accept/reject" based on the current state of the paper?

For example does anyone know how is it for the CVPR conference?

In general, the program chairs want to know early which papers should be rejected directly without a rebuttal. To this end, the reviewers provide preliminary decisions with their review. These preliminary decisions are often changed later, based on the additional clarifications from the rebuttal.

The preliminary decisions are usually not visible for the authors, but this can vary across specific conferences.


Applying to a top-program, but for a sub-field that program is not strong in Please feel free to correct the title, I am not sure how to formulate this crisp & clear in a sentence.

I am very interested in a particular graduate program. It's a top notch program, but I happen to want to work with an academic who is quite young still and not yet a professor, and although the program is o.k. for the subfield I am interested in, it is not stellar.
(Let's not discuss here whether this would be a clever move please)

Question: Will it affect my chances getting into the program, that is, would a university rather see students interested in the field they are already strong in, or would they like to see someone being interested in something for which the uni is not particularly known for?

Will the prospective advisor maybe have less of a say regarding my admission, than if I were to target a senior professor who would like to work with me?

There is no way to know. Some departments may rank candidates independent of their desired specialty while other departments may weight who the applicant wants to work with (and who wants to work with the applicant) heavily. For departments who give weight to the sub-field, the department might be trying to strengthen a weakness or only accept students in areas they are strong.

I am not really sure why the departmental politics matters. Trying to deceive (in a mild way) the admissions committee is not likely going to be advantageous. Your strongest application is going to be to talk about the area you are most excited about. Further, if you get accepted based on a falsely expressed interest in A, you may not be able to switch to B later.


What should I do about my supervisor's high demand? My research area is Computational Biology. My work involves in silico methods, I do not carry out any wet lab related experiments. My supervisor wants 4 chapters (apart from introduction and conclusions) for my PhD thesis. He said each chapter should be a journal paper (must be SCI indexed, with no article processing charge (my institute does not pay for APC's, and the APC amount is equal to my 3 months fellowship, hence paying APC alone is also not feasible) and above Impact Factor 2). I already have made a review paper, but that goes into the introduction. Hearing his demands I am a bit scared that I might end up doing PhD from 5 or 6 more years, and I do not want to do PhD for 7 8 years. I am in my 3rd year right now. He told me this after 1.5 year of joining. I do not think I will be able to give 4 more journal papers in the next 3 years.

My current work status is, that I am working on 3 papers simultaneously now. One work is 70% complete (can't say it is totally complete unless it gets accepted by a journal). Another work is 50% complete, and the third I have just started.

My questions are:

Do you feel that the demand of my supervisor is too much?
Is it even possible to produce 4 more journal paper in the next 3 years?
Is it possible to bargain the count of paper down to 3 instead of 4? If so, how should I do it?

Note: The advisor's rule is the institutes rule, the advisor has the last say in decising whether I get my degree or not. Many people from our institute graduates with just one journal article too.

Do you feel that the demand of my supervisor is too much?

I work in theoretical mathematics.  In that field, a requirement of four publications in journals of impact factor greater than 2 would stop more than 99% of students from getting a PhD thesis.  (I got my PhD in 2003 and am now a tenured, "full" professor.  If I'm not mistaken, I have zero publications in journals of impact factor greater than 2....but in my field we do not speak of impact factors when we talk about journal quality.)

The above paragraph is there only to tell you where I'm coming from.  In fact I do not understand the logic behind such a requirement -- in particular, I don't see where the number four is coming from, and if I wanted to impose high standards on my students I would do it in terms of the quality of their work rather than the quantity.  But I can't say that the demand is too much, since I am not in your field, am probably not in your country or university, and I am not working with your supervisor.  Whether it is too much is mostly up to the two of you to decide, along with other members of your committee and subject to the rules of your program and university.

  Is it even possible to produce 4 more journal paper in the next 3 years?

It is certainly possible for someone.  I would be willing to bet at any reasonable odds that there are students in computational biology who have this many publications in this amount of time.  I urge you to look in the literature of your field and see when, where and how often this occurs.

Perhaps you mean to ask whether it is possible for you.  That's a really good question, though of course we are not in a position to answer it.

  Is it possible to bargain the count of paper down to 3 instead of 4? If so, how should I do it?

The language of "bargaining" is not very apt, but: yes, you should certainly discuss the situation with your advisor sooner rather than later.  Your advisor is setting what I think we can agree is an unusually high bar -- you mention that other students in your institute have gotten their PhD with a single paper, and he is asking for four papers.  Note though that you said that that's what he wants.  Many thesis advisors have high expectations for their students and try to push them to do their best work.  (And the others are not very good advisors, in my opinion.)  However, (i) what you want your student to do, (ii) the least they need to do to graduate and (iii) what they actually end up doing are three different things: wildly different, sometimes.   Here you seem to be assuming (i) and (ii) are the same.  I think that they probably are not, but they could be in your situation.  The only way to find out is to ask.

Here are my specific recommendations:

Step 1: Do your research.  Find out the publication records of students in your area.  In particular, look at all the students who have gotten PhDs in computational biology in your institute and under your advisor.  Then pick a few other institutions for comparison, including at least one that would be regarded as better.  How often is it that students have four publications in IF > 2 journals before they graduate?  If this happens only a small percentage of the time and/or if it almost never happens at your institute or with other students of your advisor, that's a strong clue that the constraints you've been given are aspirational...or ought to be.

Step 2: Have a serious conversation with your advisor.  Show him the research you've done in Step 1 -- not confrontationally, but so that both of you will be working with the same facts. Then show him a plan of the work that you will do and the papers that you will have published by a certain time.  This plan should be serious but realistic: you should be able to defend the amount of time you'll spend at any stage.  Your plan should include a specific time that you want to graduate.  If your plan shows you with three papers for sure and very iffy on the fourth, bring that up explicitly with your advisor.

I think it is likely that you will find that your advisor is flexible on the requirements and appreciative of the thought you've put into your future.  However, it is also possible that he is absolutely intransigent and insists on more papers than you think you can reasonably write in the allotted time.  Well, if that is the case, far better to have that information now rather than three years later!  If you have it now, you have plenty of time to figure out how to respond to it.


How do I get into a Computer Science Masters without an undergrad in CS? I have discovered that I enjoy computer science immensely and I would like to pursue a masters degree in computer Science.

My undergrad was Neuroscience (biology) with a minor in Bioinformatics. I have a 3.2 gpa, and an 77 percentile GRE, which I understand is not amazing but ok.
But, I've gotten all A's in any computer science class I have taken, (data structures, algorithms etc.)

I would like to get into the best possible program, for example MIT, I understand this may be unrealistic with my grades and would like to ask what are my options and what should I do to get ready?

Ideas:

Retake the GRE get better score
Take a Comp Science GRE subject test
get real life experience
put code online, open source
Get work experience
Screw the masters get a job

I'd love to hear what you think is the best choice for setting up a successful career in computer science. Thanks!

Many schools will require you to take remediation courses if they do not feel you meet the course requirements for the graduate program. They will be fairly upfront about what they think you would need, but it will mean taking more Bachelors level classes at cost before being accepted to the program.

In general I would show any additional work you have done to improve your programming skills, including code you have written.

A lot of qualified people do not apply to top schools (I.E. MIT) because they do not believe they would get in. But I would not recommend focusing on any one school and instead find a few programs you like and apply to all of them.

Some schools will allow you to take classes as a non-degree seeking student, which would provide both a way to prove yourself and also gauge the program and its suitability to you. I would check with the program to see how many credits they accept through this method though.

As an aside, I am in the same boat. I majored in Mathematics with a minor in Physics but have been working as a programmer for the last three years. I am now looking into online masters programs in Computer Engineering or Computer Science.


What is considered a standard time for asking a status update from the editor for various stages of peer-review? What is considered a standard time for asking a status update from the editor for various stages of peer-review?
I have heard that editors get irritated for asking a status update for the manuscript.
But the problem is getting timely reviews is absolutely necessary for submitting a PhD thesis.
Hence it is extremely important to get review within a stipulated time.
Since peer-review is time consuming,  my question is:
When can I ask for a status update from the editor for  a manuscript which is roughly twenty pages long for the following stages of peer-review?

Manuscript is "With Editor" and it is not yet sent for peer-review.
Manuscript is sent for first round of review  but the reviews have not yet reached the author
Second round of review when the manuscript is under minor revision which includes correction of typos, grammatical errors etc.
Second round of review when the manuscript is under major revision.

I can see two reasons where asking for a status update is any reasonable:

You have a practical use for the information, i.e., it would actually affect a relevant decision you make. For example, when you know that the journal is only waiting for one reviewer who is trustworthy and promised to submit a report next week, you would not plan a lengthy vacation so you can react to the decision. If you just want a prognosis to soothe your impatience or similar, that’s not a practical use.

Things are taking too long and you hope that nudging the editors will get them to take relevant action such as reminding reviewers. Mind that this is too long with respect to the standards of the field and journal, not your own time constraints. For details and particular what is too long, see: Is my paper under review (or similar) for too long and if yes, how should I react?.

In particular, there is no reason to expect that asking for status updates is accelerating anything unless Point 2 applies. It’s like repeatedly pushing the crosswalk button.
If you want to communicate something to the editors, do it explicitly (and not implicitly by sending frequent status requests).
Specifically, just tell them why it is crucial for you to have a decision on this paper within whatever your deadline is.
Even then, this will likely not considerably accelerate the process or ensure anything, but at least the editors might give you a prognosis as to how likely they will be in time or tell you when it becomes evident that they cannot make a decision in time.

Hence it is extremely important to get review within a stipulated time

First, are you sure? You can usually already search for postdoc positions and similar without your PhD being actually completed. Second, just that it is important does not mean that you can do something about it. Sometimes, things are just a matter of luck; this is usually one of those cases.


Is it okay to scan a book (that I own) strictly for personal use? I have a physical book from an Australian publisher which is nearly a thousand pages long, so it's quite hard to carry around with me. It is a book of worked solutions for a math textbook. It has no digital version, presumably to prevent people form distributing it online.

Since it would be much more convenient for me to have a digital copy, would it be okay to scan a copy of the book to keep with me, strictly for personal use? By "okay", I am asking more about its legality than its ethicality, preferably in the US.

Although I probably intended this question to be more general, here is the information for this specific book.

There is a disclaimer related to copying in the front page of the book, which says:

  Except as permitted by the Copyright Act (any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review), no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any enquiries are to be made to the [publishing company].

The first part of this statement seems to suggest it might be allowed for private study, which seems to be the situation I am in.

One other notice that can be found in the book, right below the above notice:

  Copying for educational purposes: Where copies of part or the whole of the book are made under Part VB of the Copyright Act, the law requires that the educational institution or the body that administers it has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL). For information, contact the Copyright Agency Limited.

Part VB of the Copyright does not seem to apply to me as I am not a teacher (I am not a lawyer, either!). Is my only option in this case to contact the Copyright Agency or the publishers? I assume that if there is no resolution, I would have to try to obtain permission specifically from the publisher, which seems to be the safest option.

I am not a lawyer. This is a general caveat, and it is also why I don't know which copyright law applies: Australia's (where the book was published) or Germany's (where you reside). I would think Australia's, but I don't know for sure.

Under the laws of both countries it is illegal to make a full copy of a copyrighted book, but different exceptions apply. In brief: Under German and Austrian law, only manual copying is allowed. Under Australian law, you can legally scan a book that you own for your private use.

In Germany and Austria

According to the Urhebergesetz (copyright-holder law), a full copy may only be made by handwriting or -typing (§ 53 Abs. 4 Nr. 2 in Germany and § 42 (8) in Austria). This restriction also covers non-commercial personal and research purposes. An exception applies to works that have been out of print (for at least two years in Germany).

In Australia

The Copyright Act governs the reproduction of artistic, literary, dramatic, and musical works. Presumably this is an open list that includes also scientific works. The following information is taken from the official brochure "A Short Guide to Copyright Law".

In general, reproducing a copyrighted book is illegal, but there are exceptions.

There is a "fair dealing" exception for, inter alia, research purposes. Whether this exception applies depends on "the amount and substantiality of the portion copied". As a rule, several articles from a journal or one chapter from a book may be copied.

The most important exception for your case, however, is the format-shifting exception. It "allows certain types of material that a person owns to be copied into a different format for private or domestic use. For example, a book can be scanned into an electronic form".

Finally

On a pragmatic and ethical note: You bought the book, and there seems to be no ebook version that you could buy instead of scanning the book. Thus no harm is done if you scan it. As the German adage goes, "wo kein Kläger da kein Richter" (no plaintiff -- no judge).


Changing methods/ methodologies mid-project Is changing research methods/ methodologies in the middle of running a research project a good thing? Are there any best practices for doing so?
Links to projects that document a methodological shift mid-project would be much appreciated.

Do you keep a methodology notebook? If not, it is high time you start now.

It is important in the experimental sciences to always document exactly how the experiment is performed, and it is often recommended to keep a methodology notebook aside from your data notebook. All current and past/obsolete methodologies should be documented and dated (so it is clear exactly when your lab switched to a new methodology). All data on experiments should include reference to the correct methodology. (A lab wiki may be a good way to manage this.) For a bit more discussion you can see this guideline from the neurosurgery department of UCSF.

Changes in methodology may or may not be a good thing. A change of methodology obviously introduces a new variable into your research. And depending on the research outcome, the data pre and post methodology change may or may not be compatible, and it may or may not be ethical to present the data as one single dataset. So if your experiment only has limited number of runs for which systematic bias that may be introduced by the new methodology cannot be statistically ruled out, you may be better off not switching. (Unless, of course, you are in the biomedical sciences where sometimes methodological shifts are compulsory, even though it means essentially aborting the experiment.)

Methodological shifts are not forbidden per se, as long as all the methodology are clearly documented. The issue is more with how you interpret the data afterwards: it maybe necessary to present your data as two separate experiments instead of one single experiment. (Depending on your field there are different culturally accepted level of "fudging" when it comes to the methodology section of a paper; you should always have an argument handy as to why changing the methodology does not really change the experiment.) As long as each data point can be clearly referenced to the method that was used to obtain that data point, your experiment is reproducible and ethically you've covered your behind.

(This, of course, does not address the bureaucratic issue of whether your funding agency and such would frown on deviating from the funding proposal, and whether your research institution have specific guidelines concerning methodology shifts.)


Considerations When Serving on Thesis Committee I am part of a masters student's thesis committee for the first time in my career, and am unsure what I should be doing be during the question session following the public presentation.  I have read the whole document and have made comments about edits and corrections I would like the student to make, and have prepared a list of questions I could ask the student.  However, I am unclear on a few things:

What criteria should I use to evaluate the student's work?  What is necessary to consider their work good enough to pass?
If there is a disagreement among committee members, how does that typically get resolved?
What should my goal be with the questions I ask?  I am already familiar with the theory and experimental design of the student's project, and could easily find myself digging into details or trying to test the student's overall knowledge of the field, but I'm not sure these would be useful ways to spend time. As the most junior person on the committee I expect I will be last, and unsure how much I'm expected to contribute to the examination.

For background, the student is at a different institution than I am, and my department does not have graduate students. We're both in the same city in the United States. I have talked to the student's advisor about the project itself, but I haven't gotten a clear sense of what I should be doing in the exam. The student's institution only lists administrative requirements for scheduling and submitting documents on their website, and doesn't seem to provide guidance for the contents of the thesis.

Internally within the committee, asking the committee chair is the best option. The chair should be able to fill you in with the procedure and what kind of angles the questions usually take. Be aware that the chair may still insist that you should decide what kind of questions to ask. And from my experience serving in committees, they did mean it.

Externally, since your institute is in the same city with the host, why not go attend a public defense there? That way you can also get the tone right. Do know that, however, tone/attitude can still vary greatly within an institute.

As for what to ask... first, I'd say don't ask any structural questions that would destroy the student's work. Those should be cleared up before the committee signed off the student to present. Second, unless it's for clarifying some question in the results or data, use open-ended questions. From my experience, I usually ask 1-2 clarifying question (e.g. on a limitation they suggested, etc.) and 1-2 "what if's" (e.g. what would you have changed if you can redo this work?) or "how should this work be carried forward", etc. That's just my style, I like to start by making it feel like the candidate is a student answering questions to end with treating the candidate as a new expert who can make recommendations and broad takeaway.


Applying for masters again, will the application be evaluated on the basis of undergraduate/Bachelors or the most recent postgraduate grades Applying for masters but have a previous uncompleted masters on my profile. Will that grades from that masters be factored in when the admission committee evaluates my application. What if i have very good GPA is Bachelors, but got bad grades in Masters due to some circumstances.

The admission committee will see your entire record.  It is up to them to decide how to consider and weigh the various parts of it - different people will feel differently about this, and there is no way to know what the sense of the committee as a whole will be.

If you had special circumstances that affected your grades, you should address them in your statement of purpose or cover letter.

See also:

How do you get a bad transcript past Ph.D. admissions?

Should I mention a "math depression" I went through in my letter of motivation?

Applying for PhD after a poor master's


In the EU, can I start an R&D company and apply for research grants? I am from an EU country and hold a PhD degree in structural mechanics. I have two questions:

Is it possible to start a company dedicated to R&D only and apply for research grants for my own projects and ideas? I would be the one hiring research staff and I would be supervising their work.

Does anyone know any funding organization, body or foundation that is able to fund privately-held companies?

A significant part of the EU's research framework program (current Horizon 2020) funding is for industrial and technology research, so companies (or consortia which also contain companies) are eligible for funding.  However, the idea here would be to ultimately aim for developing a product - thus, a pure R&D company like what you mention might not be the right target.  (Of course, you can always aim for having a company whose product is intellectual property.)


What are UK A-levels worth in the USA? Background: I was born and raised in the United Kingdom and have a number of GCSEs and A-Levels. I am now living in the United States (by marriage/green card), and am looking to apply for jobs. Some of the jobs that have just caught my eye was Tutoring either Writing or Study Skills, at a community college. One job has the following requirement:

  Documented two-year degree from a regionally accredited institution or its equivalent (junior level status at a college or university)

So, I am wondering, could my A-levels could be considered the equivalent of a US Associates degree?. I realise this is somewhat ambitious (especially as I only have two A-levels and a one-year BTEC roughly equivalent to an AS; but I do have other educational work experience)

I am aware there is no official rulebook for equivalency, the US Department of Education states it (source), but I am hoping there may be some unofficial but persuasive equivalency out there - like an agreement made by all the Russell Group universities or their US equivalent, or a court case, or something else quite decisive.

A summary of my reasoning and research so far is as follows:

Arguments For A-Level = Associates

The University of Michigan will accept Freshmen who only have 5 GCSE's (source), putting the beginning of A-levels on par with beginning a Bachelor's as a Freshman. (However they add that "IF A-levels are being taken", give predicted grades...)

Arguments For A-Level = High School

A-Levels are completed at 18 years old, the same as the US High School Diploma

Arguments For A-Level = Something In Between High School and Associate's

UCAS in 2013 listed the US High School Diploma as being equivalent to GCSEs, but gives UCAS points for US Advanced Placement Tests anywhere between 20 and 120 points (on the old UCAs system, 120 was one A-level at A grade, source), without giving points for Associate Degrees (presumably because they are too high?) (source from University of the Arts, London)
Various students have stated that their institutes have treated A-Levels as being equivalent to US Advanced Placement courses (anecdotal sources)
Chavagnes Private School (UK) states without source that UCAS treat AP as A-level; and also mention that a student with A-levels could expect to find themselves discounted for some of the first year's work of a 'university'. (source)
A US Associate's Degree is listed as being equivalent to a UK HNC, that is, equivalent to the first year of a UK Bachelor's Degree. (source from an e-learning provider) That is, above A-levels, but not by much.

 I have asked my American wife, who completed two AP's while in high school, what the different grades and groups for the Advanced Placements, given in the UCAS document, actually mean, and she doesn't know.

If there is any more evidence I can use in addition to the above fragments, especially statements by a university like my one from Michigan, I would be very grateful for them to be provided.

The short answer is no, you cannot use A-levels to establish equivalency to a junior college degree.

A junior college degree, or having junior status at a four-year university, is equivalent to two full years of study at the college level (typically about twenty classes). Three A-level courses, if they're treated as the equivalent of AP courses, would likely equate to less than two semesters of study.


How to get priority acknowledged, when a paper in mathematics is a special case of your own paper, but it does not cite your work? I am a researcher in Mathematics and I have recently found that it has been published a paper X whose main result is a (very) special case of a result of mine, which has been published more than an year ago. From the journal log, I can also see that paper X has been submitted after my paper has been published.

However, the author of the paper X was not aware of my previous result, indeed she did not cite my paper.

I am wondering if it would be possible to make the journal of paper X acknowledging my priority on the result, and in such a case how to do so.

I have often seen journals publishing short notes with the title "Acknowledgement of priority", in which it is explained that a published result was already proved by someone else, but I have no idea of how it works.

Thanks for help.

UPDATE: I wrote to the author of the paper and I have got no response.

I agree with @Dan Romik's answer.  I also want to say that in this set of circumstances, it does not really seem necessary to take any heroic actions in order to acknowledge priority: since the OP's paper was published more than a year earlier: okay, as the record lies, the OP has priority.

I agree that the OP should make sure that the community knows that s/he had the stronger result first, and that contacting the authors of the later paper is a good idea.  But I think the OP should do this with a winner's grace: this is going to be much more awkward and painful for the authors of the later paper.

I also want to mention that this kind of thing happens in mathematics all the time.  For instance, a few days ago I found out that the main result in a paper I published a few years ago appears, in much stronger form, in some "Lecture Notes" from 1974 (that were apparently never formally published: they are not listed on MathSciNet).  Well, gosh.  I haven't decided exactly what to do about this, but please be assured that I am not rubbing my hands greedily at the thought that my too-complicated-partial result has "priority" in some formal sense.

Added: Concerning the author's

  I have often seen journals publishing short notes with the title "Acknowledgement of priority", in which it is explained that a published result was already proved by someone else, but I have no idea of how it works.

I did MathSciNet searches for "acknowledgement of priority" and "acknowledgment of priority" and got 62+25 hits.  When you remove double counting, false positives and papers analyzing priority disputes from long ago (e.g. Euler versus d'Alembert), you get about 70 genuine instances of the sort the OP describes.  Restricting to theoretical mathematics over the last 30 years, I found 9 genuine acknowledgments of priority.  Moreover, among the entire group of 70, only a few are written by someone other than the author of the original paper.

From this, I would suggest that "the way it works" is that the author herself must be moved to make an acknowledgment of priority, but that this is done only in a small minority of cases.  As I said, above, I am myself considering writing an acknowledgment of priority.  If I do so, then in view of the above numbers I will be a world expert on the subject, and I will add more details to this answer.


W2 Positions in Germany after Postdocs elsewhere I am currently a research fellow in Europe and am possibly interested in permanent positions in Germany. I can find resources about how one climbs through the ranks in Germany from W1 to W2 or from Habilitation to W2. I know that German academia is quite competitive, but they do make senior hires from outside of Germany.

My question is:

Does Germany require a Habilitation or W1 before hiring someone for a W2 position if they are coming from outside of Germany? If so, is this rare? What's the standard trajectory in German academe for someone that has done postdocs elsewhere?

Does Germany require a Habilitation or W1 before hiring someone for a W2 position if they are coming from outside of Germany?

Not generally, and often not even for people from "within" Germany. The strict Habilitation requirement is in the decline, also and and particularly in the best universities in Germany.

What is required though is a "habilitation-like" career stage / qualification. That is, there should not be any doubt that you would be able to receive habilitation easily if you applied for it with your current CV. This is generally no problem for candidates that already hold a position comparable to a W2 professorship (say, an associate professor in the US or a Senior Lecturer in the UK), but if you are currently a postdoc it is important that you underline your independence in research and teaching, your standing in your community, as well as your ability to acquire grants and external funding (i.e., the criteria among which habilitation is usually decided).

Another factor may be academic age - in many cases academically older candidates will find it easier to communicate that they are in a career stage comparable to W2 professor than excellent younger ones. I have the impression that in Germany many commissions either do not, or fail to, properly normalize qualifications based on academic age; that is, they will often prefer more modestly qualified senior candidates over very promising younger ones.

Finally, another challenge may be language. You may still find a requirement to be able to teach in German in many job postings for positions in Germany.

  If so, is this rare? What's the standard trajectory in German academe for someone that has done postdocs elsewhere?

I think the German trajectory for most people from within and the outside is like that:

PhD student -> postdoc (sometimes for many, many years) -> [optionally] W1 / junior professorship -> either W2 or "bad" W3 professorship, depending on experience -> W3

In most cases, none of the steps after PhD student -> postdoc happens automatically or based on a tenure clock. The usual way to e.g., get one's W2 position upgraded to W3 is by getting a competitive offer for a W3 position at another university. Also note that traditionally many academics in Germany never held a W1 position, but rather did extensive postdocs and/or one or more "Vetretungsprofessuren" (akin to a visiting professor).

  is this rare?

(I am assuming the question is whether it is rare that a postdoc from the outside gets hired at a W2 position)

It's not rare, but it is also not insanely common. While full professors do commonly get hired from the outside (especially at the top institutions), my impression is that most are already in a professor-like position before making the move. This naturally also means that most outside hires seem to be on W3 rather than W2 level. As always, when one is trying to break in from the outside, you are in a slightly disadvantageous position in comparison to somebody who is already "in the system".


Asking senior scientists for a subreview I am a junior postdoc (1st year) part of a program committee in an international conference. As a member I have been assigned with several papers that I would like to delegate to subreviewers.

I have in my network researchers who are also postdocs but, they could be regarded as senior. Is it rude, or weird, to ask them to subreview a paper? If so, should I try to find PhD students or other postdocs in my range? If not, to what extended may I ask for a subreview?

You can always ask and they can say "no". It's surely not rude and weird; people are asked to review stuff all the time. The probability is not too low that one or more of them will say "no", but you may be lucky.

In my experience, more senior people are more likely to say "no", but of course if they say "yes" they will be the more competent reviewers. And some say "yes".

Don't be worried about asking somebody something that they don't want to do. If you ask and they say "no", it won't reflect in any way negatively on you.


Do I have a better chance for a PhD in a field I have research experience in or one I have had better courses on? I'm applying for PhD programs in Computer Science, which allow a year of rotation and courses, before the student officially joins a lab for their thesis. I've had research experience in Computational Biology, but being a Math major, I've had a relatively (relative to average CS graduates) large number of courses on (or related to) Theory CS (I took quite a few advanced courses on topics closely related to Theory CS).

I have two questions:

1 - Do admissions committee generally view an applicant in my situation more qualified for doing a PhD in Theory, or in Comp bio?

2 - Assuming I'm considered more qualified for Comp Bio, is it a bad idea to express interest in working in CompBio, and claim I want to work with an advisor in that area, while I actually plan to do my PhD in TCS? I mean, given that once I get in I'll have the freedom to choose my advisor and I'll have enough time and opportunities to even gain research experience in a different area, could there be any negative consequences in expressing interest in CompBio (and even introduce some vague research ideas), and then if admitted, try to work on TCS?
(moral issues with doing this are of course a different story)

Apply for and do the PhD you actually want to do.

The skills gained by having research experience are generally subject transferable, so if you want to do theoretical computer science, explain what skills and knowledge your research experience in computational biology gave you that would be applicable to that field. It could even be something as simple as saying "my experience in researching x topic in computational biology got me interested in computer science as a field of research, which I want to explore further, focusing on theoretical topic y".

Don't try and game the system. Be honest about your interests and the experiences that have led you to them.


Should I use the book that is recommended by the professor? My physics professor's course is BASED on a book, so he recommends buying one particular book. The book is good, but there are many other, better books.

Would it be a good idea to buy books other than what the professor recommended?

Note: I can't buy both, because those books are expensive!

You would probably just be making additional work for yourself by using a different book, even if it is superior. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't do one thing or another, just be prepared for the extra work that might be implied. This might be especially true for exam preparation.

Some professors will ask students to read a section of the text before a lecture so that they are prepared for what will be said. Usually this would be by chapter/section rather than by named topic.

But, if you have the option to speak to the professor you could ask him this question, mentioning the other proposed book(s) and getting his advice. Perhaps he will tell you why it is ok or not ok. Perhaps there is some feature of the suggest book that he will be especially dependent on for the course.


How can I determine the funders of an article? Who funded the article "randomized controlled trial contrasting the effect of 4 low calories sweeteners and sucrose on body weight in adults with overweight or obesity "? In general, how can I determine the funders of research articles?

In general, you can find often find the sponsor listed in an article acknowledgement or registration of the protocol. The article was preregistered as NCT02928653. Upon going to the preregistration site I see the sponsor is Purdue University.


Is it okay to begin a chapter without an "introduction section"? I'm writing my phd thesis. In some chapters I simply begin the chapter with one or maybe two (at most) paragraphs that mostly gives the outline, and then I begin the sectioning. That is, this paragraph has no section, the sections start right afterwards. I'm wondering if this is normal and acceptable or should I put it in a separate section?

This is how it looks in latex:

\chapter{System Modeling}

A paragraph giving the outline of this chapter. Section ?? discusses this and that. ....

\section{Equation of Motion} %this is the first section of this chapter

In general, sections should be organized to create a chapter just like subsections are organized to create a section and subsubsection should be organized to create a subsection.  In other words, the important unit is the largest one, and the smaller elements (sections, subsections, etc.) are used only the assist and guide the reader in their understanding of a large chunk of narrative.

As such, I would consider it the normal and preferred case to begin a chapter with prose, setting forth an introduction to the chapter before the first section heading.  In fact, a particularly short chapter might have no section headings at all, as it is a good rule of thumb to note use any textual subdivision until you need two of them (e.g., don't divide a chapter into one section, or a section into one subsection).


Paper submission with company affiliation A friend of mine submitted a paper to a conference, about a topic he was working on in his company. Recently, he got fired from his company so unfairly due to colleagues jealousy (seriously). He already got approval for publication when he was there, but the submission was made arter the firing. The work was a side project, not exact responsibility for him. And he was the only author from the company.

Is he obliged to add his company name as his affiliation? They are not going to pay for the registration and travel sponsorship. He doesn't want to mention he even worked there.

If I am understanding this correctly, the paper was submitted while the person was still working for the company.  If this is the case, then the affiliation should stay the same as it was at the time of submission, as it sounds as though the work was explicitly done as part of their responsibilities at the company.  A second affiliation might later be added, for the person's new position, if it is appropriate and the conference supports this, but the first should remain.

If the paper was submitted after the person was fired, that is a much bigger problem, and it is unclear from what you have written whether that would be appropriate, ethical, or even legal.


Switching from industry to research(informatics) Backstory: I was working in a research institute as a research assistant during my bachelor and master phase. I received my M.Sc.(informatics) about 2 years ago and since then I am working for a company in the industry as a software engineer.

A few weeks ago, the professor I was working for in the past gave me a job offer at his institute. Basically he wrote out of nowhere and I was very glad and accepted his offer. A condition for me to accept was that I can pursue a Ph.D, he said yes.

Now I face a very troubling problem: I have never written a paper in my life.

I wrote some things during college but nothing that was actually published. I like reading papers, but reading and writing is a different story...I was also not really involved in actual research, my previous work was concentrated on programming. Now I am a bit worried that I might make a bad appearance in my first weeks or months, I guess the professor thinks highly of me(for a reason I don't know) since he gave me that offer.

I have 3 months until my new life as a full researcher, with a complex research field I almost know nothing about. I am worried that I sit in meetings and do not even understand the basic concepts of their research.

What can I do to prepare myself for this situation/job?

First, don´t panic.

Second, when you start as a researcher, most professors will accept that you are far away from perfect - however they expect your hard work, your willingness to go through an intensive thinking process and so on. Typically, you will be in a more or less intensive coaching environment, where he coaches you. Of course, the majority of work has to be done by you.

The theoretical part will grow. At the beginning, you will have intensive research of what others are doing/have done. You will read many conference papers and on that way you will learn much about your field as well as academical argumentation. If you want to start now, go to an academic library, search for Journals and conferences on your topic and start reading.

My PhD took 4.5 years, and it was not always easy, however, it was worth doing it.


Unintentionally disrespectful in the Statement of Purpose/Academic essay I am applying to Master's program in Computer Science. In my Statement of Purpose, I mentioned the names of a few Professors with whom I would like to work. However, accidently, I failed to address those Professors with a respectful title (I mentioned A and B, instead of Profs A and B). Now that I submitted my application to that graduate school, I am unable to change the uploaded SOP document. I realized this mistake within a few minutes after submission of my application.

Therefore, how can I rectify this blunder? Is it advisable to send an email those Professors regarding my mistake? Or is it wise to email my concern with a modified SOP to the graduate department?
Finally, will this error can hurt my graduate school application?

The culture regarding the academic titles is quite country-specific. In some countries (e.g. Germany) academics are more often referred to by title and surname, Prof. Famous, even in a classroom. In some countries (e.g. UK) students will address their lecturers by their first name, but refer to them by their title and surname in official writing.

However, these traditions rapidly change now because of the cultural mix in academia. With the growing numbers of professors with unusual names for European cultures, it is a more common practice now to include both name and surname after the title, e.g. Dr. Hu Rich.  It is impossible to maintain the same standard, and I don't think that academics generally care too much. It is still considered a good tone to keep the titles in official academic writing, but I don't think we expect all MSc candidates to know this.

Overall, my advice is: don't worry to much, don't write to correct it, just make sure you do it properly next time.


How to deal with non-reproducible research? For context, I am a PhD student in bioinformatics, working partly in development of new statistical models and partly in applying models to data.

I recently came across a paper which describes an interesting approach to clustering data. This method would have direct use for data I was working with at the time. The model itself was also interesting, and I am interested in using ideas from their paper to solve similar problems in my field.

I tried to use their published modelling software to analyse my data. It crashed my R session. For context, errors in R code rarely cause the session itself to crash; usually they result in an error message, which one may easily find the source of.

Unsure of whether this was my mistake (due to a coding error or data misspecification), I retrieved the data from their publication and attempted to run the code which they state produces the outputs in their paper. This lead to the same issue. I flagged this issue on the software repository, and another user mentioned having the same issue. I have replicated the issue in multiple independent environments using different software versions. I have also informed them that I have narrowed the error down to one or more lines of code, though I cannot exactly explain why it occurs (it would be too time-consuming to debug as I am not familiar with their code).

The authors initially did not respond to the issues raised on the repository, and only did so after I emailed the corresponding authors several weeks later. They have only stated that the software works on their system and suggested that I try different software versions, which I have now done with no change in outcome.

My initial goal was to ensure the issue was reproducible, and to raise it to the authors' attention. If the issue remains unresolved, and the authors largely absent if not uncooperative, how should one deal with this? I do not feel that this amounts to research misconduct, however I also feel unable to trust the results in their paper, given that the code which should replicate their results does not function in any respect.

R crashing

  errors in R code rarely cause the session itself to crash; usually they result in an error message, which one may easily find the source of

yes. There are a few situations where session crashes are more probable:

with compiled code and
libraries installed on the system (as opposed to R packages) which are incompatible across versions/OS boundaries
particularly libraries that are "close" to the OS (I've had trouble in the past with interactive graphics across OS boundaries Linux vs. MacOS vs. Windows)

Thus, if the lines in question can (easily) be replaced by equivalent (though maybe slower or more memory conuming) R code, the crash may be avoided and the scientific merits of the model may be evaluated.
We may have an example here of the famous "premature optimization is the root of all evil".

Amount of cooperation to be expected?

As author and maintainer of scientific/academic software packages I certainly appreciate bug reports etc. I even more appreciate bug fixes, btw.

However, I also have only limited resources available to maintain such software, and the longer back the publication was, typically the less resources (e.g. new employer is not willing for their staff to maintain projects at former universities) are standing agaist increased maintenance requirements. (Probably less of a problem here as the paper is quite recent compared to some code that was developed years and years back)

Please also have a look at Why do many talented scientists write horrible software?

The authors may be seeing the publication of the code as them being extremely nice in giving the public not only the abstract description of the model but even an example of an implementation.
In fact, they may even have had an uphill fight to get permission to publish their code under an open license (I've been in the situation of not being permitted to do this by an academic research institution.)

Of course it would be much nicer if they had written more rugged code in the first place or would now help you debug. But you don't have any kind of hard right to their time.
I'm chemist and we sometimes have lab procedures that are difficult to describe in such detail that another lab with somewhat different conditions is [easily] able to reproduce them. Thus, people visit other labs to learn their techniques - this means a whole lot of effort for both sides and IMHO that needs to be appreciated. Similarly, I appreciate if a package maintainer does put in the time to deal with my bug report. And in consequence, I try to make it as easy as possible for them.

There may be a mismatch in software development ability/possibilities here: guessing from the crashes that their code isn't at the highest level of robustness and that you didn't find them using continuous integration etc. vs. you providing them with a Singularity container: they may not know how to use that or may not have the possibility to use it or may not be willing to put in the time to get that particular virtual machine up and running.

I may add that in many places (including universities and research institutes) there is in addition daunting burocracy to get the IT department to install further software on their machines (and they are the only ones with installation rights). I teach for the carpentries and it is not unusual to find course participants do not have the necessary software for this reason - even if they are officially sent to the course.

You may get further if you ask them whether they do have the ressources to resolve the issue with your help and how you can help resolving the issue.

Misconduct?

  I do not feel that this amounts to research misconduct

No, it isn't misconduct - it's just that the situation could be nicer.

It would be academic misconduct if the code at the time of writing and submitting their publication on the authors' machines had not produced the results described (incl. crashing and not producing any results).

In contrast,

writing code that is not portable or
fragile in the sense that it is quite likely to break when its surroundings (OS, interpreter, dependencies) evolve and
abandonware

are not scientific misconduct even if it is not "best programming practice".

Trust in their results?

That's a difficult one.

On the one hand, with the possible exception of computer science, the scientific ability of the authors may be quite uncorrelated to their software development abilities (see linked answers above)
On the other hand, if their software doesn't calculate what they think (claim) it does, then also the scientific content may be compromised.

For the case in question:

I tend to think that crashes (or stopping with an error message) are often relatively harmless in terms of scientific integrity of the paper. Short of blatant misconduct (claiming results that weren't obtained) this points to the code not being robust/maintained in an evolving environment (or data/formatting subteties) and not necessarily an incorrect implementation on their system.
I'd be more concerned about the lack of unit tests confirming the results of calculations that actually run through: statistics offers lots of possibilities to have logical error which lead to wrong but often even plausible numbers. That's what is scary to me...

What to do

Be extremely nice to them.
In many fields, it is not (yet) standard to publish code at all. They did you a favor in giving you an implementation that presumably works on their machine. In fact, as long as it takes you less time to fix & test their package than to write & test your own implementation of their paper, you have a net gain!

I don't want to insinuate that you are not nice to them.

However, my experience of some 10 years as (more or less active according to the ressources described above) maintainer of an R package is that the majority of help requests is answered with RTFM and many bug reports do not provide a minimal working example that I can reproduce and there are a few insistent and obnoxious help requests that suck up your time like a black hole because they try to offload the time they should put into learning R onto you package maintainer. While I try hard to treat all requests in a professional, friendly and timely manner, I also sometimes fail in that (most often fail is: timely). (And I have to say that those bad experiences are offset by also receiving extremely well written issue reports, sometimes with immediately usable pull requests and finding online contributors whom I'd otherwise never have known and even occasional "thank you for this package" emails. But there's a whole lot of truth to bad interactions producing far more impression than good interactions.)
You may just have had the bad luck to happen to be the one after a couple of toxic requests and/or may have inadvertendly triggered such an alarm with the authors.
Again while that is not the ideal interaction, you best bet to get the issue resolved is to be so supernice as to convince the authors that not all interactions on the internet are bad... Gives you good karma, too.
Encourage collaboration and make it easy for them: do put in the time to dig into those lines for debugging. Or write an R workaround and ask them to be so kind as to review your suggested changes.
In order to get the code up and running, ask them whether they can provide you a sessionInfo () of their system and the versions of the relevant underlying libraries. The logical step after you trying several configurations that didn't work is to try and get a reproduction of "their" system to work.
Of course, it is completely fine if you decide to stop sinking time into a not-so-well designed package and either

write your own implementation of the model described in their paper, or even
completely abandon that model if you distrust the science behind it.


Can I submit my paper to arXiv with a header that says "Under review at X" when it isn't? Previously I submitted my paper in MS Word format to arXiv.  Now after almost two years, I decided to submit an updated version in LaTeX format.

To create the LaTeX version of the document, I downloaded a template from here that added a line at the top of each page saying:

  Under review as a conference paper at ICLR 2016

Do I have to remove that notice, or is it OK to leave it as is?

Remove it.  It is not appropriate to mislead people as to the submission or publication status of your paper.  You should also remove any other reference to the conference appearing in the paper (e.g. a logo).

Additionally, you'll have to upload your LaTeX source to arXiv in order to have it posted, including the conference style file, so you should make sure its copyright allows this.

(Even if you really had submitted the paper to that conference, you typically wouldn't acknowledge this in the preprint.  The reason is simple: if the paper isn't actually published in that conference, people will be able to infer that it must have been rejected, and this is something you'd probably rather were not publicly known.)

Update: Here is a question from someone who used a template that included the name of Journal X when submitting to Journal Y, and had the paper rejected on suspicion of double submission.  While I think that Journal Y was out of line in doing this, it does illustrate that these sort of misunderstandings can have serious consequences.