Letting professors know who else is writing my letters of recommendation Should I let each of my recommenders for grad school know who else is writing letters for me? I often see it suggested on checklists of what information to provide the writers.

Would this help the writer in any way? The only way I can see it being helpful is avoiding potential overlap between letters.

Overall, in my experience (as many others will likely agree), providing letter writers as much [concise and straightforward] info as possible will almost always ensure for a better letter. This includes mentioning who else is writing a letter for you (especially if they are from the same institution).

One potential benefit is the letter writer might be able to plan what strengths of yours to focus on or what tone to write the letter based on the knowledge of who else is writing your letters.

For example, if you asked two professors with whom you've previously taken separate courses that you did very well in, they might both be inclined to mention your achievement in their course. However, if you assisted with research with one of the profs and they know your other letter is being written by a professor that will likely discuss your classroom achievements, they will know to focus most of their letter on your research capabilities.

It's also not unheard of for two letter writers that know each other to discuss your achievements/capabilities. This could include, as you mentioned, avoiding unimportant overlap or, more importantly, developing better congruence concerning the "main point" grad programs should be taking away about you.


Is writing a R package equivalent to a journal paper or PhD thesis chapter? I am a PhD student in Management, at Autonomous University of Barcelona.

While working on my thesis, I found that there is no piece of code or software related to a specific but important topic of efficiency analysis and benchmarking. I am really eager to invest part of my time and write a package in R in order to help other researchers as well as deeply learning the topic through coding. Moreover, when I publish my paper I can motivate interested researchers to use that piece of code and re-evaluate my work or extend it.

Now my question is whether writing such package equivalent to a chapter of thesis /a scientific paper. Based on the answer, I will decide whether to work on it right now or to defer doing so.

I will be grateful for any help you can provide.

Writing useful software is not equivalent to writing and article or a thesis chapter (which are generally not equivalent to one another either).  It may, however, be equally valuable for your career, depending on what you want in your career.

The real question is whether people will find it highly valuable.  If they will find it valuable, then it can be worth something to you.  If you want it to readily count towards a conventional academic career, then after the software is done you can write a journal article about it, and people can cite that.  If you search for "analysis software" in Google Scholar, you'll find many highly cited works of this sort, showing that it is certainly possible, even if not the straightest and most conventional road to take.


Master's degree without research? I am a new graduate student pursuing a master's degree in computer science. I currently am working in industry as a developer while in school. I see many posts on here and elsewhere about master's research. The university I'm attending doesn't require research (although there is a research path for the degree) but I'm on the course track. Is this a downside? I would like to get the most out of my degree but I am working 40 hours a week and can't really squeeze another 20+ hours working on research, plus my classes.

What are some (if any) of the downsides of not doing research for a master's degree when you plan on working in industry?

Edit: By research I mean writing a master's thesis or a paper on a subject, not research for classes on topics I'm not familiar with.

Yes. The simple answer is that a research master's degree is, all being equal, a higher degree than a taught master's degree. Just like a PhD is higher than a research master's degree, and a taught master's degree is higher than a (implicitly taught) bachelor degree.

I don't think we can comment on "downsides" in having a higher or lower degree. It depends on ones preferences in life.

EDIT: This is an answer to the original question: "Is a master's with research "better" than a taught one?".


Is it appropriate to email a professor with a simpler solution than the one she provided? I am in a graduate math program in the US, and the professor is teaching via online lectures. The proof she provideed for one of the theorems is a little bit tricky to understand. I think I found a proof that, though is about the same length, I think is much simpler. Could it be considered inappropriate to email the professor out of the blue and give her the proof?

Email the professor, explain that you came up with an alternate proof, and ask if it is correct.
If you approach it this way, it should be perfectly acceptable to anyone.  You get to find out if your more-clear approach is correct, and assuming it is, the professor maybe uses it in the future.  If it's not correct, you get to learn where you went wrong.  A good exercise for all involved.


Addressing Background Deficiencies In Statement of Purpose: An Initial Solution Background: Did an economics major after switching out of physics and I did a math minor in university with somewhat inconsistent math grades (A+, A-, D, C+, ... ). The reason behind my grade spread is, quite simply, a lack of consistent, deliberate, and persistent effort as an immature student. I am now very close to defending my MSc in resource and environmental economics with a 3.83 gpa in coursework, graduate awards, academic teaching & learning courses, conference proceedings, and hopefully a submitted paper for review by the time of my application , so there's been much growth for whatever that's worth.
Current Situation: I am trying to switch into mathematical biology to study similar natural resource problems I would in resource economics, but from a different perspective I find myself more drawn to. I have reached out to a potential advisor, they have my transcripts and CV, we are set for a video call to talk about me coming on as a PhD student.
Statement of Purpose: There are some math courses that I do not have as a result of not being a math major, and there are some courses I am planning to retake this academic year to boost the grades of the courses I did poorly in. In my statement of purpose, I am wondering how I can address the background gaps.
Initial Solution: After my chat with the potential advisor, I was thinking of writing out a concrete action plan (including MIT OpenCourseware, References to texts I would study from, and subject matter I would cover) to address the background gaps which would include a combination of taking courses and self-studying courses that are not being offered at my local institutions. This plan could then be submitted (appended?) to the Statement of Purpose.
The Final Problem: Given some deficiencies in background, how can one, or how should one, adequately address those deficiencies in a Statement of Purpose to communicate that by the time they enter the program, they would have a sufficient background to be successful in a program?
Many answers around Statement of Purpose tags have suggested that the statement be forward looking, and so I intend to not spend an inordinate amount of time talking about my history, and instead in the spirit of those answers, focus on the path forward.

If your potential advisor wants to fund you as a PhD student, then it is very likely you will be given admission as their student regardless of whatever background deficiencies you may have. This is especially true now that your potential advisor is aware of those deficiencies. In terms of writing your statement of purpose, it is probably sufficient to say that you worked with Prof. x to create a plan to remedy these deficiencies.


Alternative to overpriced IEEE articles I'm a typical student in a 3rd world country working to pay for college. My monthly tuition is about 300 USD. Internships average pay is 450 USD for 30h/week of work...
As I get to end of my bachelor, i'm required to write a dissertation, and when i start looking for articles and references if found this amazing paper: "QODM: A query-oriented data modeling approach for NoSQL databases" which lines 100% with my thesis. But it costs whooping 33 bucks! for a single source that might turn out to be not useful at all...

Are there alternative sources? (besides piracy, which i'm strongly against but is becoming really tempting right now...)

Contact the authors of the paper you are interested in; most often, authors will gladly send you a copy.


Should previous supervisors be mentioned in a personal statement for a PhD application? I'm applying for a physics PhD programme in the UK which requires a personal statement to be submitted. Since I have done several research internships in the field, I would like to mention the supervisors I worked with in my personal statement. Is it a good idea to do so?

Personal statements are usually about your motivation to work in this area or department or with this supervisor. Your previous internships could definitely be a part of this, such as e.g. "Internship 1 involved lots of analysis and data testing, which I enjoyed tremendously, especially..." or "Internship 2 with Prof. Kumar was great: her enthusiasm for ABC was infectious and I would like to learn more about...", but I think your personal statement should focus primarily on why you want to work in this area.

I don't think just mentioning your supervisors is going to help with your application without more information how your experience with you shaped your experience. However, you should definitely mention your internship experience in your CV and ask your internship supervisors for letters of recommendation!


Results or Methods - What comes first in discussion section? This question is about structure of scientific texts. This can be master thesis or published journal article.

The Disucssion section: Is there a reasonable rule why the discussion of results comes before the discussion of methods?

I often see this in published articles and I argue about that with my professor. But no one gave me a reason for this - not even a bad reason.

In my opinion the order should be different: Discussion of the methods first and then the discussion about results. The reason is that I need to see the results and their value/weight in the light of the methods they are obtained.

I am asking here because I am naive and optimistic and think there is a reason why all journals and professionals do it that way. I don't want to modify their opinion. I just want to know why they do.

In short: the assumption that the discussion of results always comes before the discussion of methods is wrong. There are no rules.

The purpose of a separate results and discussion section is to keep facts clearly separated from opinions/interpretation. What happens inside the discussion section depends on your writing style and the content/goal of the paper.

For example

if your paper presents new methods there is no difference between the discussion of results and the discussion of methods
if the uncertainty in the measurement methods may have affected the results, methods and results are discussed at the same time

A possible reason to discuss results first might be that readers are most interested in the results. Unless your paper is about the method itself an expert in the field probably knows the methods already. But as said, there are no rules.


HiWi payment in Germany for student with international bachelor's I am working at a German research institute as a HiWi.

HiWi jobs pay hourly wages based on the education level of the employee.
For instance there is a "without bachelors" and "with bachelors" wage.

Prior to taking the job, I was told that I would be paid the hourly rate "with a bachelors" because I have a B.A in Economics from North America.

Im am currently studying a B.Sc in Molecular biology.

Now the institute says that there is a law which says that they will not recognize my North American education because Im currently studying a B.Sc in Germany. Thus, they are only paying me at the "without bachelor's level".

Does anyone know of the laws surrounding these issues.

Thanks,
D

Usual disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

What the institute says is completely wrong: there is no such law.

The salary of Wissenschaftliche Hilfskräfte (HiWi, student doing scientific work) varies by state and by university, and it is not regulated by law. As explained in Chapters 3.3 and 6 of this document (unfortunately, information about this is only available in German), these student employees are in most cases not even included in the worker unions, and tariff negotiations do not apply to them (the only exception being Berlin). This means that these salaries are almost exclusively decided by the employers.

The only available "official document" are the Richtlinien der TdL über die Arbeitsbedingungen der Hilfskräfte (Guidelines of the Tariff Association of German States about the working conditions of the assistants), which are just guidelines, not a law. These guidelines only provide a maximum salary (not a minimum), and distinguish between three groups of students. The highest salary group is for students with a Master's degree. The second-highest salary group is for students who, among other options, have a

  Bachelor-Abschluss

i.e., a Bachelor's degree. There is no clause that says that currently studying another Bachelor's degree disqualifies you from being in this group.

This said, getting your foreign Bachelor's degree recognized might take some effort, but I would at least ask them what law they are talking about.


Dealing with burnout from long review process There are a number of other questions about dealing with non-response or the length of the review process and some here about burnout in academia. I'm in the end of getting a paper accepted, but (thankfully) the reviews have been reasonably prompt.
I just sent in a finalized manuscript, which is the fourth version of the paper I've turned in. (Maybe this is normal and I just had unrealistic expectations?) After this I also anticipate receiving a typeset version to review, as well as dealing with any correspondence on the figures or tables from the paper. I'm just feeling quite burned out by the process and wanting it to be through.
What advice do you have for dealing with a long, intensive review process? How do you approach each phase of the process with a healthy mindset?

I can suggest two things. The first, and probably most important, is to have other things to occupy your mind and your time while the process goes on. Don't wait for replies on submitted work, but get the next thing into better shape.
The other thing is just to accept that the system is out of your control for all practical purposes. Editors and reviewers (especially) have their own work schedules and you have no control over that. The quality of the reviewers is not something you have any say over. When you do get a reply, respond promptly, of course. And if you find long delays between communications, ask about the status and ask for an estimate for completion of the current stage. But just accept that it is a fact of life, not unlike the weather.


How seriously will "related" areas be considered? In ads about faculty positions, I often read phrases like "We are seeking candidates with interests in X, Y, and Z, but other related areas will also be considered"

In such cases, do candidates not specialized in X, Y or Z have a chance? Or how "exceptional" do they have to be in order to have a chance?

The answer to your (real) question is: Apply anyway. A department's hiring strategy is many times not fully expressed by an ad, never mind the fact that it's something in constant motion.


What's my job title? I'm currently a graduate student that conducts the labs for a statistics course. The labs themselves only form a part of the course and the other part consists of lectures where they get a theoretical background of the subject. I'm not sure what I should put as my job title, since I'm both an adjunct tutor and lab demonstrator of sorts.

You should list whatever your official job title is, as designated by the university.  (If you aren't sure, ask whoever hired you.)  You should do this even if the title is vague or misleading, in which case you should add a few comments on your actual job duties.

One reason to stick to the exact title is CV verification.  Some employers (both academic and non-academic) actively verify CVs, and if they call up your university and ask whether you were employed at job X during a certain span of time, then it's best if they get a definitive "yes" rather than a "kind of" or "there's no such job title".  In particular, some universities care about distinctions between seemingly similar titles, such as teaching assistant and teaching fellow, so you should make sure you aren't inadvertently awarding yourself a title that your university considers fancier or fundamentally different.


Sex with professor as graduate student What are the do and do nots with regards to sexual relations between a professor and graduate student?
As long as they aren't your advisor or on your committee is it considered OK?
How does this work?

I’ll address you as the graduate student based on the phrasing of the question, hope I’m not being too presumptuous.
In the US, the professor can’t be your advisor if sexual or romantic relations are taking place. They can’t be on your thesis committee. They can’t be teaching a class you’re taking, can’t be supervising you as a TA, can’t be writing you a letter of recommendation, can’t be in any position of authority over you whatsoever, during the relationship and most probably at any time in the future. If none of those things are an issue and you’re a consenting adult, and barring any specific institutional policy to the contrary, you’re in the clear and are free to behave in any way that any other adult is allowed to.
Keep in mind some people in academia would still feel uncomfortable with the situation and may be critical towards you and/or the professor if they become aware of the relationship. Depending on the details, your and the professor’s professional reputation and career may be at some risk. Sex tends to make people uncomfortable, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not.


Is it common that you can't finish the exam questions during PhD study? I'm a first year student and twice now I have been unable to finish all the problems during the exam, which had never happened before I became a PhD student. And to be fair, even if I had been writing without stop, I might still have failed to finish the exam questions. Is this common? I believe my professors are trying to push us beyond the limit, but it is frustrating.

P.S. I'm not complaining, I just try to cope with it with right attitude.

This is completely dependent on the course and instructor.

Yes, I have taken exams where it definitely wasn't possible for anyone to finish. The professors either gave us more time or only graded the problems we attempted.

Talk to the instructor about your concerns!


Is it okay to inquire about the status of a paper when the online submission system shows no update three months after submission? Around 3 months ago, I submitted a paper to a Math journal for peer-review through an online submission system. The same day I received in my e-mail an acknowledgement saying that the paper had been received.

The problem is that the status of the paper on the online submission system is still "Manuscript submitted".

I think this means that the paper has not even been assigned to an editor yet (once this happens, the editor will probably start looking for reviewers), but as far as I know submissions are assigned to editors within a few weeks (I once submitted a paper to another journal and when an editor had been assigned, the status on the online system changed to "Editor handles" or something like that).

I know that publishing is a long and complicated process and I'm not trying to rush anybody, but sometimes manuscripts are lost in the system. In fact, this has once happened to me, so I just want to make sure that the paper was not lost in the system.

Should I send an e-mail asking for the status of the paper?

PS: I think that, at the time of submitting the paper, I didn't choose any specific editor to submit the paper to.

Yes, you should send a quick email asking for an update. In my experience, every electronic manuscript submission/tracking system seem to be different. Even different journals from the same publisher who use a unified log in system, seem to have tweaks to what you see. I think that after one month at any one stage, with the exception of "under review", it is perfectly reasonable, and probably desirable, to ask for a status update. The time a manuscript spend "under review" is often very field, and even journal, specific and can range from days to 12+ months.

When sending an email, be polite and explain that you just want to make sure that you do not need to do anything at the current stage. In all likelihood the status update will be no more informative than "we are working on it" (i.e., they haven't lost it), but that is informative.


MPhys Physics to Theoretical Quantum Gravity/Particle physics PhD Do universities accept Physics graduates in theoretical PhD positions? I will finish my masters this year and I want to proceed in a theoretical physics phd. I'm not sure yet as to the exact subject but I want to do theoretical research in either Quantum Gravity(LQG/String Theory).

Do I have decent chances in being accept in a purely theoretical position?

Do universities accept MPhys Physics graduates in theoretical PhD positions?

Yes they do. People change field all the time, and moving within a field when going from undergrad to PhD is perfectly acceptable, provided you can demonstrate that you have the interest and aptitude.

    Do I have decent chances in being accept in a purely theoretical position?

Well, I know nothing about you except that you're a final year MPhys physics student, but that puts you in a better position than someone studying biology, or fine art.

Your chances will be improved if your dissertation is on a theoretical topic or if you have done any theoretical modules (eg QFT, GR, astroparticle physics, even cosmology). You should have good grades in these, and any mathematical modules you've taken.

The answers to this question: Will an off-topic Masters hurt my chances of a PhD place? may reassure you that you don't necessarily need expertise in the field you want to go into; having research experience in any field is generally sufficient, along with good grades. A good personal statement/ statement of research interests can also go a long way to convincing the admissions committee of your interest in the subject*.

I would also recommend speaking to your personal tutor/ dissertation supervisor/ other potential referees as soon as possible, as UK physics PhD application deadlines (for funded places anyway) are usually quite soon after Christmas.

*Please don't take this the wrong way, but it will probably help if you get your personal statement proofread by a native English speaker, or otherwise be sure to check your grammar very carefully (you made quite a few mistakes in your question).


No students show up to class -- what should an instructor do? Suppose an instructor shows up to teach a class and no students are present. Assuming that the instructor's institution has no formal policy on such matters, how should an instructor proceed in such a situation?

If it helps to narrow down the question a bit, assume that the enrollment is no larger than ~20 students or so.

I am in the US, but responses tailored for other physical locations are welcome, too.

The above question was inspired by the following related one: Is it okay for a professor to leave the classroom only 5 min past the class start if nobody has shown up?

At my former institution the rule of thumb was a lecturer waited 15 minutes and if no one turned up then the he/she was free to leave (this was common when the period was devoted to a problems class). However, even if one student out of the class turned up then we were expected to present the lecture.

The only case where I didn't follow this was one time out of a class of approximately 30 students one solitary student turned up. This was rather extreme so I checked and found that the students were on a field trip that day (I hadn't been informed which was rather bad) and the student who had turned up often missed lectures and had, apparently, missed the lecture when the field trip was discussed.

Because of this, the majority of students had good reason to be away I decided not to take the class since, effectively, the students on the field trip would have been at a disadvantaged through no fault of their own.


Benefits of being a guest editor of a journal? In recent months, I've begun receiving invitations to serve as a "guest editor" for various journals from publishers I've worked with in the past that I believe are reputable.

I recognize that there's significant workload for such an issue and very little, if any, compensation, but I'm wondering what the benefits are for tenure-track faculty to serve in such a capacity. Is it worth the investment to do so, relative to the time required?

Disciplines are typically organized in loose groups around a fairly small number of persons. They organize conferences, are editors, are on boards of professional organizations, etc. They are always looking for the next generation, new researchers who could take over when they retire. Being a guest editor for a journal, organize a workshop, chair a session, etc. signals that you might be the next generation. Having a reputation of being the next generation won't hurt when you aply for your next job. It is also good practice for when you become a regular editor.


If my friend sent a recording of his lecture; Is it against the law? I don't attend university, but I would love to learn to further my IT skills, is my friend allowed to record his lecture and send it to me? Is there any law against this... Or is he free to do what he wants for example post it on YouTube?

Any feedback is appreciated.

In the United States, the person who delivered the lecture owns the copyright if the lecture is "fixed" in tangible form.  That recording fixes the lecture in tangible form, even if the person who delivered the lecture didn't make the recording.  So, in the U.S., it's (probably) covered by copyright.  (I'm not a lawyer.)

The person who made the recording, if not the person who delivered the lecture and thus owns the copyright, absolutely shouldn't post it any place, e.g. on YouTube without the permission, preferably in writing, of the person who delivered the lecture.  That person should ask before sharing it with a friend; probably most professors would allow that.


Copyright of microscopy data acquired by myself The question is the following: What is the copyright of imaging data (microscopy) I acquired during working in a research laboratory? Can I use this on my homepage / personal website?
I took the images with a microscope on my own. So is this my data?

Copyright law varies over the world, but in many places data itself can't be copyrighted, but interpretations of it can be.
From the Wikipedia article: "Copyright may apply to a wide range of creative, intellectual, or artistic forms, or "works"."
Your best action is to contact the source and ask them. It may be that what you have is "data" or it may be something else to which copyright does apply.
And copyright doesn't necessarily mean "no use whatever". There are permitted actions also.


Can a PhD student apply for another PhD program in some other university? Would it make a negative impact on my PhD application if they get to know that I am already enrolled in PhD and now applying for another program in their University?

Yes, you can apply, just as anyone else. But yes, it is possible that people in your current program would take it as a negative. And, yes again, that the other university or program might rank you a bit lower if you already have a "suitable" position in a doctoral program. But I doubt that the last would be a large factor in most cases.

But there are a lot of reasons to switch. Some of them are very important. If you have a serious need to switch, either for personal or academic reasons, don't hesitate to explore your options and follow up on good ones. This is especially true if you don't think  you have a good path to success where you are now.

People understand that others change their minds and their directions. They understand the need to move locations and situations. They understand that some qualified students are in a bad situation.


How to efficiently get multiple outputs for a given set of inputs? Background: I was reading about Google's Hybrid approach to research. This prompted me to think about how in academia I try to get multiple output from the one set of inputs. For example, I might try to

Present a talk and and then write up a journal article
Write blog posts and question-and-answer combos on StackExchange to force me to learn something that I need to know in order to write a journal article.
If I learn a new technique in the process of writing a journal article, then present a tutorial on how to apply the technique.

I've also heard senior academics talk about employing this approach. E.g.,

publishing an article in a journal as well as reframing the content for a magazine or newspaper

Question

What are the most important examples of getting multiple outputs for a given input?
What is a systematic way of incorporating this into your project planning?

Your answer to this question will depend somewhat on your long term goals.  Everything you mention: talks, journal articles, blog posts, tutorials, magazine articles, etc. can be worthwhile in the right circumstances.  Most of what you describe consists of taking variations on the same theme to different audiences.

In what circles do you most want to be known?  More generally, how will you measure success?  Say for example that your primary goal is to get tenure.  If you're at a high research school, then publishing an expository article for undergraduates may well be viewed (by your tenure committee) as a waste of your time.  In contrast, if you're at a liberal arts school, this may be considered just as valuable as getting a research article in a top journal.

You asked about incorporating this into project planning.  I suggest that you decide which audiences you are most excited to reach.  This will likely be largely independent of the particular project.  Then as you start on each project, think about how you can tailor your message to suit each of these audiences.  You may be surprised by how often you find you have something valuable to say to each of your target groups.


Can one without a single paper on a topic write a review paper about it? I am faculty in a technical field, and I started exploring a new research direction that I could work on in the coming years.
I have not worked yet on this particular topic I am exploring, but after reading a bunch of papers, I have a solid grasp of the state of the art and research opportunities.
Given that I read many papers and made lots of notes, I started writing a review paper summarizing the literature and discussing a research agenda. There hasn't been such a review paper published so far.
However, many journals are very particular about review papers. Their guidelines often state that it should be written by an expert established in the field (presumably one with many papers), and some journals even state that they welcome review papers by invitation only. I have written review papers before, but in this case I do not have a single paper written on this topic yet, so I am not sure how to proceed.
Would it be wise to continue writing the review and submit it somewhere? What strategies can I employ to increase the chances of having it published in a good journal?
As a solution, I can contact a more established person and offer co-authorship, but that does not have my preference as I am halfway writing the paper and I can finish it on my own.

The simple and short answer is Yes!
You have the freedom to try and publish anything you want, assuming the publisher is accepting it.
Now the long answer. Your concern is that since you do not have any expertise in this area you might do a poor job. This concern is valid and indeed there are high chances that you will do a poor job. But there is no rule written in stone that you cannot write a good review if you spend sufficient time and effort in learning about the new area.
Let us also explore a few more questions.
Why do we need to write review articles and if you get it published, will it be useful?
Review articles help many researchers in understanding the state-of-the-art in their field of research and sometimes new researchers actually start by writing review articles, in the first year of their PhD. And some of them end up doing a decent job with that.
Review articles are of a different nature. Some of them are written by experts in a field to make it more popular and they try to include reviews of articles written by their collaborators with the goal of improving their citations. I believe your goal nobler and you should carry on with it.
I am from the field of computer science and I just wrote a blog reviewing vaccinology 3.0 and how data science is enabling it. While doing this review I learnt a number of important concepts regarding vaccines and my review are also useful for an audience which is of similar background.
Since you are writing a more formal review you have more responsibility but with proper care and hard work you should be able to do a good job. Moreover, you will always get feedback from the reviewers which will help you a lot in further improving your understanding of the field.
Best of luck!


Poster - should I send the file to all my collaborators? I'm a PhD student and I prepared a poster for a conference. Do you think I should send the poster file to all the co-authors? The list is quite long so I mailed the draft only to a few of them.

Yes. Everybody who is listed as an author should see and be able to contribute to the poster. You wouldn't want to be listed as an author of a work that you have never seen either, right?


How do teachers learn to grade? I teach math with about two years of experience now. In general I have found that all the cliches about graduate school teaching you "how to research but not how to teach" are true. But I have also found many great resources (at my institution, online, in print, etc.) that are helping me, over time, work through my teaching deficits.

...in all things but grading.

I struggle with many grading decisions: from small things, like grading individual homework problems, all the way up to life-changing things like evaluating master's degree defenses.  What I lack is a coherent philosophy of grading that might motivate my various grading policies/strategies/choices.

Interestingly, I have not found good resources for this.  Yes, my institution provides a tiny bit of guidance, but it is very broad.  This forum contains a hundred or so questions tagged with "grading", which is a good start, but I wonder if there are resources that provide a more cohesive treatment of the subject.

I want to hear about theories of grading.  I want principles which flow naturally from the theories.  I want applications and strategies which build on the principles.  I want to hear different viewpoints on the issues so I can evaluate their relative strengths and weaknesses as I come to understand my own thoughts better.  In short, I want it all.

Do any such resources exist?  Can anyone point me in the right direction?  If these don't exist, why not?

One principle is that the instructor should aspire to grade in a way that results in the grade being most closely correlated with those aspects of the knowledge and skills being assessed that the instructor considers important.

As an example, it is a common belief among instructors of university level mathematics courses that exam questions should test conceptual knowledge rather than facility with arithmetic and other low-level calculations. For this reason, most instructors would take off only a very small number of points, or not take off any points, for a small error of arithmetic in an otherwise conceptually correct answer. However, some instructors might consider accuracy to be an important skill to test in and of itself, and may impose a heavy penalty of points for even small arithmetic errors. So you see, the grading function chosen by the instructor reflects that instructor's view of what's important. Decide in advance what's important to you, and grade accordingly.


Should I normalize inconsistent proceedings titles? I work in a discipline where titles of published conference proceedings are notoriously inconsistent.  (Perhaps all disciplines are like this?)  For example, various years' proceedings of the same annual event may be officially titled a dozen different ways:

Proceedings of the First Annual Conference of the Society for Underwater Basket Weaving
Proceedings of the 2nd Conference of the Society for Underwater Basket Weaving
Proceedings of the 1998 Conference of the Society for Underwater Basket-Weaving
SUBW '99: Proceedings of the Annual Conference
Papers from the Fifth International Conference for Underwater Basket Weaving (SUBW 2000)
Society for Underwater Basket Weaving: Papers from the 6th Annual Conference in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan
SUBW 2002: Past Successes and Future Directions
(etc. etc.)

Sometimes the titles aren't even consistent in the same volume of proceedings—different names may appear on the cover and the inner title page!

My question is, where one's publisher expresses no preference on how one's bibliography is formatted, is it better to keep such titles as-is, or to normalize them?  For example, one possible way of normalizing the above entries would be as follows:

Proceedings of the 1st Annual Conference of the Society for Underwater Basket Weaving (SUBW 1996)
Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Conference of the Society for Underwater Basket Weaving (SUBW 1997)
Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Conference of the Society for Underwater Basket Weaving (SUBW 1998)
Proceedings of the 4th Annual Conference of the Society for Underwater Basket Weaving (SUBW 1999)
Proceedings of the 5th Annual Conference of the Society for Underwater Basket Weaving (SUBW 2000)
Proceedings of the 6th Annual Conference of the Society for Underwater Basket Weaving (SUBW 2001)
Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference of the Society for Underwater Basket Weaving (SUBW 2002)

The disadvantage of doing this is that your bibliography is no longer an accurate reflection of what's printed in the proceedings themselves.  If any libraries hold copies of the proceedings, they may catalogue them under the original titles, so a reader wouldn't be able to find them there by searching for one of your normalized titles.

However, I think normalization has some significant advantages.  For one, it's always clear which conference of which scholarly society you are referencing—something which isn't always the case when using the original titles.  Since many proceedings nowadays are published online only, normalizing the titles could make it easier for readers to find the society's web page, and through it the proceedings.  Nowadays many proceedings can be uniquely identified by ISBN or DOI; including these identifiers in the bibliography makes it less important to faithfully transcribe the title.  Using consistent titles also makes it easier for readers to search your bibliography for references to papers in proceedings volumes of interest, without having to know or remember their original titles.

A third option would be to list both the original title and the normalized version, though I think this is rather cumbersome, particularly when the two versions differ only slightly.

Am I missing any more advantages or disadvantages?  Do any popular style guides speak to this issue?

The Conference on Precision Electromagnetic Measurements (CPEM) is one conference in my field that suffers from the same problem, complicated by the fact that the proceedings are called conference digest, instead (digest is put sometimes at the beginning, sometimes at the end). I have never seen works from this conference cited in the same way, and given that this conference started in 1962, if there were serious problems in finding the proceedings in the libraries, probably some form of standardization would have come out along the years.

In general, I try to be consistent, at least within a paper. Your example, composed of both the full and the abbreviated titles, seems fine to me: in any case it gives the reader, even one not familiar with your field, all the possible search keys to identify the volume (and one familiar with the conference would probably not care anyway).


Changing major after BS and MS in CS and double major in Physics for PhD in Mathematics Before telling about my background, I'd like to say that I did look at several similar questions, but neither involved my case (at least, not as far as I could see).

Now the background: I majored in Computer Engineering. I have expected more of Computer Science, but it was mostly business-oriented coding education (maybe I am being a little too harsh on this). So in my second year, I applied for a double major in Physics, thinking it might be more satisfying. In fact, I did enjoy Physics more than CS (or, CE in my case), and found it much more challenging and meaningful.

However, I ended up finishing my main major (CE), before Physics, so I applied for MS in CE in the same university, feeling the workload might be too little otherwise. I got accepted, and am currently enrolled in this program while taking 2-3 courses left from undergraduate Physics program. (My subject in MS is Computer Vision.)

But one thing I noticed over these years is that, for Physics I do not feel like I have the right mindset (seems that I lack a practical approach to things), and CE feels a little meaningless. Considering that I focused on Mathematical Physics, and more of the mathematical stuff in CS, I thought maybe Mathematics is the right place for me. But I cannot yet tell if I genuinely want Maths, or just whining about what I have at my hands.

So I have two questions, actually:

What are my chances if I apply for PhD in Number Theory?
Do you recommend changing the field? Can you share other people's experiences in similar cases?

For the application part, I must add that I do not have an outstanding transcript in neither of my majors (around 3.4 GPA in both fields -Physics might be around 3.5 too), although I did get a paper published which was about relativistic quantum mechanics.

Edit: This question is different from what is suggested as duplicate as this particularly involves the case of a double major background. Specifically, whether the case of double major suggests the admission committee a versatility in working different fields or not. So I do not think this should be regarded as a duplicate question.

Edit2: Experience in proofs
I have taken Discrete Mathematics and Formal Languages and Abstract Machines, in which we mostly used induction to prove things. Apart from that, in the mathematical methods courses we have gone through the proofs of Stokes' theorem, divergence theorem, etc. Although I mostly can understand a proof reading through it, and working out some things that seem off, I would not say that I am good at mathematical proofs, nor that I am much experienced with them.

What are my chances if I apply for PhD in Number Theory?

Every PhD program has different requirements and the admission's committee evaluates different aspects of a candidates application. So there is no real answer to your "chances" of be admitted if you apply for a PhD program in Number Theory. However, with that said, if you can show rudimentary course work and experience in Number Theory, that can work in your favor. I do have close friends who majored in Business, Political Science, etc. who took the minimum requirements for medical school admissions (basic bio, chem, physics) and were admitted because they were able to distinguish themselves from the rest of the applicants. The same situation applies here. You may not have an extensive background in Number Theory, but that's not to say you won't be admitted to a PhD program and be great at it!

Do you recommend changing the field? Can you share other people's experiences in similar cases?

You need to follow your passions for where you want to take your career. I have had friends who pursued what they thought was their "dream" career, only to recognize that it was not at all what they had imagined - and wasted all that time thinking that it would change, that if they put in more effort than it would be exactly what they imagined it. On the other hand, I've also had friends who took a job that wasn't what they had wanted/dreamed and it turned into a great career and they absolutely love it! It all depends on what you want your future to be.


How to attract student attention in difficult/technical topics When teaching, at some points I sometimes have to go over "boring" technical stuff. By doing so, I see students attention decreasing: they look at their mobiles, at their laptops or, in lab environments, fool around in facebook, youtube etc. Their attention comes back when the lecture moves on to "lighter" subjects.

The thing is that you cannot just omit the content from the slides, as it is crucial for the course (e.g. IPv6, TCP/IP protocols etc.). However, only a small percentage of the students seems to be interested, even after I underline that the material will be examined in the final exam.

The question is: how to increase student interest and maximize the percentage of students that actually assimilate the lecture content?

First of all, you can't expect that all students are interested in the same manner. Concentration has its ups and downs over time. Also, some things are dull and will remain so, no matter how good a lecturer presents or how interested the audience is. This doesn't mean that you should skip it on the exam, students just have the choice to absorb it in class or later by themselves.

You seem, however, to face that the majority of students is uninterested. You could try to change the dynamic of class, for example, by going over the "heavy" parts at the beginning. That may include that you pace your schedules so, that that particular part of the curriculum comes at the beginning of the next class. If the "heavy" part is too elaborate, try splitting it into meaningful blocks, that can be intersected by "lighter" material, of course in a meaningful way. Ideal would be blocks that you can cover in 20-25 minutes.

Being a good lecturer is not only about the eloquence of talk or the skill of rhetoric, it is also about understanding that how to "pre-chew" the material for a given audience to keep their attention but still convey the knowledge. Dull things must be included, you can't change that. You can, however, change how you approach them.

PS: I don't think forbidding cells, laptops, youtube, etc. would help very much.


Choosing between a funded PhD offer and a possibly funded one I have been admitted into two PhD programs at universities A and B. A offered me funding, however B asked me to apply for state funding before discussing internal funding. The deadline to accept the offer from A is early January, and I will not recieve the results of my application for state funding at B until February. I really want to go to B, but I am afraid of rejecting A's offer and not getting state or internal funding at B. What should I do?
I was thinking about:

Asking A for more time to consider my options before taking a decision.
Contacting B and explaining that I have a fully-funded offer from A, but however, they are my first choice and I need to know whether they will give me funding if I do not get it from the government before rejecting A's offer. A is really prestigious and well placed in rankings, so I though that bringing them up while contacting B would play in my favor.

Would this be a wise approach to my problem? May this just worsen my situation? I would greatly appreciate any advice or suggestion. I am desperate about what to do, this is a really important dilema that I have never faced before.

Yes, you can try those things.  It is unlikely to make your situation worse.  Only A and B know if they are willing to help you.


Is it a good academic practice to tell the reader in the introduction what the essay is about directly? Is it academic to tell the reader in the introduction what the essay is about directly?

For example, after some introductory ideas, you tell the the reader this essay or section discusses so and so.

Or should the writer end the introduction with the thesis statement that indirectly tells the reader what the essay is about?

I'm not sure what you mean by "essay", but for an academic paper in general, the reader should be told a minimum of four times what the paper is about and what your contribution is. This should be stated in (1) the title, (2) the abstract, (3) the introduction, and (4) the conclusion.

That is a typical North American style. In some academic cultures, such as Northern Europe where I'm sitting, it's common to not do any of that. In a typical paper here, you can read all of the four parts mentioned above and still have no idea what the author is bringing to the table. You're guaranteed to annoy many readers that way.

So my answer to your question is: Tell the reader as soon as possible what the point and punchline of your paper is. The reader doesn't want a mystery novel, he wants to know as soon as possible whether your paper is worth reading.


Is it bad to make a joke during a presentation ? I am a PhD student in economics and working on stuff like Hopf bifurcations and limit cycles used often in mathematics.

One of the graphics that I will use for my presentation is very similar to one of the photos in album booklet (dark side of the moon) of the legendary progressive rock band Pink Floyd. Here is the link ;

Album cover

It is like a limit cycle (it is a heartbeat sequence, note that there are also bifurcation analysis for heartbeats) and gives a quick idea about the concept.

I am wondering if it is really appropriate to make this kind quick jokes during presentations. Anybody having bad experiences about that ?

I would encourage you not to force humor into - or out of - a presentation, depending on your goals for the presentation and the context of the situation you are in.

The thing with humor is it is deeply contextual, and how it is received depends heavily on the delivery, the audience, and how you are perceived as the 'performer'. For a Brilliant, Serious Scholar, a light-hearted joke can help to improve your likability and make the talk more memorable and understandable to a wider audience. On the other hand, a Mewling Youngling cracking wise can bring about eye rolls and grumbling and help to cement an impression that you are insufficiently serious, plugging your talk with frippery because you don't have anything really substantive to add.

It's annoying - and often unfair - that two people can say the same thing and have the reception of the statement be completely and utterly different, but in practice that's how it goes.

Your talk is your performance, your work, and you decide what impression you want to give, how you present yourself, and how you want people to view you. Humor can be a useful part of that, neutral, or counter-productive.

Personally, as a one-size-fits-all suggestion, if you plan a joke I suggest you also support it in such a way in the slides that you are free to skip it without it harming the presentation. You can then decide, on the spot and based on your read of the room and intuition, to use it or leave it out. Jokes bomb for lots of reasons, so don't try to lean on it too heavily, regardless, and don't set yourself up for needing the joke to kill to give a good impression.


Journal paper plagiarism, use of same words So, I came across this paper in my field (let's call it paper A) and there was a reference for an equation that they had borrowed from another paper (let's call this paper B). Everything well-cited and fine so far. While reading through paper B (the one that they referred to), I noticed that paper A had also copied over the conclusions!

Obviously, it is very common that 2 papers reach to the exact same conclusions, but shouldn't it have been rephrased somehow? I am talking about 3 bullet-points like: "Factor X is proven to be more significant than Y, where the results in tables 6,7 indicate method 1 describes interactions and square terms better than method 2".

Numbers and indices are different, but the words are EXACTLY the same. Is that allowed, am I just being paranoid?

=== Edit ===

To clarify, by "exact same conclusions" I meant to say that both papers study the effect of a set of independent variables on a response variable. Both follow the same methodology and conclude to something like "A affects the response variable Y the most. Using methodology Z proves that the experimental procedure is faster and more accurate than any other algorithm." and so on.

The conclusion is more sort of qualitative discussion of their results, more than quantifying "A affects the response 83%, whereas B only 4%". But this description of the quality of the methodology (which is not novel but well-known by the way) has been copied over word-by-word from paper A.

They have repeated the experimental procedure of paper A slightly modified (because of the different equipment used), so it is normal to report different numbers throughout the paper. My question is whether they should be allowed to use the exact same sentences in the conclusion to describe the very very similar results they came to.

If the conclusions are written in exactly the same manner in both papers, and the conclusions themselves are sufficiently long that there is no way the repetition could be "innocent" (for instance, "X increases with temperature when Y is present" can only be said so many ways!), then plagiarism has occurred.

In such a case, you should report the situation to the journal in which the later paper appeared and indicate that you believe plagiarism has occurred.


Is it acceptable for authors of papers in a special issue of a journal to review each others' papers? A journal publishes a special issue on a controversial area of research studied by a rather limited community of researchers.  Would it be acceptable for the editor of the journal to use the authors of the papers comprising the special issue as the pool of reviewers, so that each paper is (anonymously) reviewed by two of the authors of the other papers ?  Would this constitute a conflict of interest, given that all of the authors will be receptive to other papers supporting this line of research?

Edit: The editor also works on this topic, and it is an area with some controversy.  Should the editor include scientists who have published papers critical of this topic in the pool of reviewers, even if he personally doesn't agree with the criticism?

In general I would say it would be very poor judgement to use only authors from the special issue as reviewers. But, if the theme is such that they would constitute the best choice for reviewers it might be difficult to avoid. The best way, in my opinion, to try to circumvent the problem is to use one reviewer from the group and one external. this way it is possible for an editor to identify issues.

One problem with the scenario you paint is that it seems you suggest the editor is more trustworthy than the authors, or conversely that authors would be worse than the editor. Although I am sure some special issues may suffer from problems such as those you describe, most scientists, editors and journals want high quality work, not sloppy work and so the process is to some extent self-correcting.

In terms of publishing, the term conflict of interest is usually not considered other than in situations where, for example, an author has received help from a person who later is requested to be a reviewer or where the author feels that a certain person will not provide a fair assessment of the work. Usually such conflicts will be flagged by the people involved since the editor is in no way positioned to know about all such potential problems. It is thus not difficult to trick the system but uncritical reviews are usually quite easy to see through.


What happens if a letter of recommendation contains incorrect info about me? I'm specifically talking about Ph.D. programs. One of my letter writers is a well-known professor in the field. I did a 5-month research project with him last year through a fellowship from my university, and he knows my research output well, but is a bit scatterbrained. The project in question was considered "graduate level," and took place in Europe. This professor also traveled a lot that year since he was was nominated for an lecture series that had him traveling around the world to give talks at universities and labs. This unfortunately meant that our meetings were less often than we'd have liked, and were usually strictly research focused.

Last year, he wrote a reference letter for me for another fellowship, and he sent me an outline of things he would write about in the letter, asking me to look it over. He incorrectly wrote that I was a masters student (I was an undergrad at the time, to date only have a bachelors degree) and that I spent those 5 months doing work on my masters thesis (it was just an independent research project funded by my home university). I corrected him right away on that, but as I said...he's quite scatterbrained outside of research matters.

I think this professor's letter would carry a lot of weight in the programs I'm applying to since I know he has good things to say about my research skills and work ethic, and his name is well-known. But hypothetically, what happens if a letter of recommendation contains factual errors like that? From my transcripts and CV, it's quite obvious I've never been a masters student. Would that inaccuracy hurt me? Would the rest of his letter carry less weight? I'm probably being paranoid, but I'm curious about what happens if a situation like this occurs.

For those of you who have been on an admissions committee before, how would this impact my application?

Edit: (additional info garnered from comment)

The letter was originally written for my fellowship over a year ago now, and after I corrected the professor on the masters vs bachelors issue, I was told the corrections were made. If he uses that letter as a starting point [for a new letter], I should be ok. He was just keynote speaker for a conference this week so hopefully he's less busy after and more responsive (usually is). He is a European prof and I'm in the US.

(Also adding: the reason I'm slightly concerned and asked this question is because when he wrote the first letter, he had my CV and made that mistake. He's known for being scatterbrained among the entire lab outside of research. He somehow can remember obscure details about my project without needing reminders, though...)

To be honest, I would consider this to be a major flaw and almost certainly invalidate the letter. It may bring to attention the rest of the application, including the potential that it may be invalidated, too.

In my university, I was faced with a situation in which the reference letter had a discrepancy with pronouns. The applicant was female but the referee was writing using male pronouns (ie., he, him, his). We ran the letter through TurnItIn and found that the letter was cribbed from a source from the Internet. The entire application was rejected.

Admittedly, this is an extreme case. Still, it will raise red flags about your application. Our assessment team is rather experienced in these sorts of issues.

I recommend revising this if possible.


How to acquire 3 recommendation letters to apply for jobs when working with 1 advisor? We all know that usually when applying for a post phd academic position students need at least three recommendation letters. But what can we do if we have only worked with our advisor and we have no other close professors in the department to ask. This refers to the case when the student took classes, had a little teaching experience, but never got to the point to know some professor well, or collaborate with researchers from another place.

Some sub-questions:
1) how well does the writer need to know the student to write a decent recommendation?
2) how research recommendations are looked at when applying for purely teaching job?
3) how non-research recommendations are looked at when applying for research job?
4) what else can we do in a short period of time to acquire those recommendations?
5) is there a way to avoid submitting recommendations, at least in the first stage of the application process?

You need to strategize with your advisor, or a trusted mentor, about this.  You need recommenders who have a high opinion of your work, are willing to put in the time to write a good letter, and know how to do so (which rules out more people than you might think).  Ideally, you need advice from someone who knows what sorts of letters different people write and can help you choose who might be most appropriate.

What I recommend for my students is:

A letter from me, which will discuss in detail what they have done, why it's important, what the student's key contributions were, what the future might hold, etc.  I'll also sit in on a class the student teaches and talk with them about teaching, so I can put in a reasonably well-informed paragraph about that, but the focus of the letter will be research.  (I'll have a different version of this letter, which emphasizes teaching more, to be sent to highly teaching-oriented jobs.)
A teaching letter from someone in the department who is well known for excellent teaching and can evaluate the quality of their teaching.
A research letter from another faculty member in the department.  This will be from someone the student has met with at least a couple of times each semester for the last year or two, if not more often, so they will be in an excellent position to write a serious letter.
A research letter from someone at another university, typically someone I know who has interacted with the student at conferences, seen the student give at least one talk, and read at least one paper by the student.  This proves that the student is developing a reputation outside their university, and it supplies a letter from someone who has less of a vested interest in seeing the student succeed.

Of course, it's hard to set up (3) and (4) on short notice.  It's often helpful if your advisor asks someone.  I can say "You remember my excellent student Alice, the one who wrote the paper on X?  She's graduating this year, and I think she's going to do very well on the job market, but she still needs one more recommendation, and we're hoping for one from another university.  Could you help?"  By contrast, there's nothing a student can write that will be as effective.  (From a student's perspective, the letter is a favor to the student, but faculty sometimes think of it as a favor to the advisor.)

The biggest problem is if your advisor can't or won't help with this.  Then you'll have to pick the most supportive people you know and ask them yourself.  It's helpful to offer to meet with them to tell them about your work, to make sure they are fully up to date.  You should send them copies of all your application materials.  It's also helpful if you supply additional background and commentary, to help give them more of a feeling for your work and its context.  This makes it easier to write the letter, by supplying interesting ideas and facts the letter writer can mention.  (That's the lazy approach to writing a letter, but if someone is going to be lazy, you want to make it as easy as possible for them.)  Make sure everyone writing a research letter actually plans to discuss your research.  It can really hurt your application if a letter just says "Bob took my advanced phrenology class and received an A.  I was particularly impressed with his insightful questions regarding retrophrenology, and I became convinced that this bright young man has an extraordinary future in pseudoscience.  I haven't read any of his papers, but his advisor assures me that they are wonderful, so Bob has my strongest recommendation."  When you get your Ph.D., you should be judged based on your research (and teaching), not your performance in classes.

You should request letters at least one month before the deadline.  It doesn't really take a month to write a letter, but it can take a number of hours (looking at papers and application materials, thinking, and then writing).  Any given week may be very busy - for example, someone may be travelling or facing a major deadline - and faculty members often have to write dozens of letters, so if you do not ask far enough in advance, then there may simply not be enough time for your letter.  If you need a letter very quickly, then you are asking for a huge favor, and the letter probably won't be as long or compelling as it might have been otherwise.

As for some of your sub-questions:  The writer does not need to know the student well, but must know something about the student's work (for example, from papers or talks).  For most academic jobs in the fields I know about, there is no way to avoid submitting recommendations with the initial application.


Is there anything you can do when a professor discusses some of your personal concerns with other professors potentially mockingly? I am an undergraduate student. Recently, my interest about a particular (difficult) field – somewhere between physics and maths – arose, a field that is only briefly mentioned in some lectures. For that reason I decided to ask the only professor (Professor A) who could know more about it. Professor A also happens to be a professor that is, in polite words, student-unfriendly. I simply asked if he could suggest some books or topics I could read in order to get prepared for a book that had the whole theory of that difficult field I was looking for.

His first reaction was laughter. He said that even he himself has not “touched” this particular field and that no one else in the whole university could. In the meantime, he used several provocative phrases to describe how poorly educated in maths students are for such purposes. It is also known that Professor A generally talks with many students in a bad manner and generally misbehaves. Still, he is a good researcher, and other professors respect him for that (and only that – they know about the misbehaviour).

Anyway, the next thing that happened is that many other professors know about this situation and their behaviour towards me is strange. One of them is a professor I would like to work with (Professor B).
I strongly believe that Professor A said something wrong/different about our conversation.
Right on the day I talked to Professor A, Professor B cancelled (not postponed) a meeting: I went to the meeting and he had already left the building. I sent an e-mail saying I came but did not find him. I also included maybe we could meet another time. The reply contained: “I am sorry, but I heard from other professors that you have already discussed the topics you wanted to discuss with me.”

Well, something’s not right.

I definitely can’t ask Professor B directly: “what did Professor A say to you?”. Is there anything I could do? Before contacting anyone else, can I do anything to verify what they had talked about? Or what else could I do?

I was going to vote to close because you're an undergraduate, but I checked the fine print and I think we're okay here -- this is a situation which could easily occur to a grad student.

If you still want to talk to the guy who canceled your appointment so rudely, I suppose you could visit his announced office hours and try pretending the whole thing didn't happen

However, if you don't mind being patient, the other approach would be to learn from this experience that your department is a gossip den, and be more circumspect in future; and trust that after some weeks or months, the good guys in your department will realize that you are a serious student worthy of helping.  This approach could be called taking the moral high ground and biding your time.


Why would manuscript status change from "awaiting reviewer decisions" to "evaluation requests sent to reviewers"? I submitted a manuscript two weeks ago to a journal. I was following the progress of handling my manuscript depending on the status revealed by the journal's website within my account.
The status history showed the following:

1. Manuscript accepted for processing
2. Evaluation requests sent to reviewers
3. Review is pending
4. Awaiting reviewers decision
5. Evaluation requests sent to reviewers

The journal never informed me about the decision. What are the reasons behind this behavior? Is this normal ?

This happens frequently if e.g.

some reviewers agree to review, but don't submit their reports by the deadline (or tell the editor that they won't be able to complete the review after all.) Then the editor tries to find additional reviewers. Or,
the reviewers' reports come in and they are conflicting, so the editor wants more reviews to help him/her make a decision.


Do I need to contact the author before using data available in supplementary material or open data linked to article? More and more journals require authors to make their data available, as an increasing trend to open science and reproducibility. If I want to use some data openly accessible that is linked to a publication, do I just need to cite the data source in my manuscript or will I also need to contact the authors to let them know I am using their data or to ask for permission?

The future of scholarly research will be based on open data to ensure accountability, transparency and independent replication (e.g. Warren et al, New Engl J Med 2016). Thus, we need to be ready for similar scenarios.

  Do I just need to cite the data source in my manuscript or will I also
  need to contact the authors to let them know I am using their data or
  to ask for permission?

Unless there is an explicit policy you need to follow (quite uncommon indeed), you just need to provide the precise citation to what you accessed. However, contacting the authors could be a smart choice: they could provide you additional data or collaborate with you more actively.


How could I network during my Phd? I am thinking a bit ahead of time and I would like to do some networking with some groups in my research field, for probably a future postdoc opportunity with them after my PhD. However I am afraid my supervisor prevents me to do that, she doesn't seem very happy with the idea of me doing some research stays somewhere else, or even going to conferences, and most likely she would connect me with anyone during and after my PhD, so how could I do some networking ??

I have a few suggestions.

Check out LinkedIn and join groups based on your field of interest. Simply having a profile and stating your field of study will help people find you. Comment on articles, or even write posts, because it will help people see your name. Don't be scared to message people you don't know.
If you have the money, let your supervisor know you're taking a week or whatever off and go to the conference yourself.
If you don't like the last point, look up speakers at conferences and point out ones to your supervisor that would be applicable and helpful for your studies. Remind her that it may bring you more insight or better ideas for your own work. Let her know that you can work on your studies during non-conference hours if necessary.
Watch for alumni events within your own faculty. If there are none, ask other professors or the department head if they know of any talks coming up that may be of interest. Just because you have a supervisor doesn't mean you can't talk to other professors.


Believe in yourself or your supervisor for your own PhD thesis when you feel it is ready for submission? I am a PhD student. However I published more top-ranked journal articles than my supervisors within a 3 year period of time. As I am becoming more and more experienced, I feel uncomfortable whenever I talk to my supervisor for their comments on my PhD thesis. The comments are not penetrating and they do not seem to understand. It is hard for me to take their advice as I do not trust them enough academically. I told them I am not going to win a Nobel prize and I just want to finish my PhD to move on with my life, not a piece that I will be truly proud. Should I express my concerns to my supervisors openly by saying I am not comfortable with their advice, or what should I do with it? They are nice people but academically speaking, not strong enough.

Towards the end of your PhD studies you should be the ultimate world expert on the narrow topic of your thesis. You should be familiar with all published related research, and have added new knowledge through your own research.

It is your responsibility to convey that knowledge, in your thesis, in a form that other researchers in your area can understand. It is essential to getting your PhD that you convey it in a form that the committee that evaluates your thesis can understand.

If the examining committee don't understand it, they should reject it. At the best, your writing is not good enough. At the worst, fuzziness in the thesis reflects actual muddled thinking and the research needs more work to sort that out.

Regardless of whether your supervisor will actually be on your examining committee, they are the best surrogate you have for testing your thesis. If your supervisor does not understand your thesis, it is not ready to submit.

Looking at the bigger picture, the smarter you are, the more academically advanced you are, the more of your time you are going to spend explaining things to people who know less than you and need more explanation than you would. Your thesis is a good place to work on those skills, with an expert audience who will give feedback.


Physics masters and PhD degrees in England/UK This question is about academia in the UK/England. I understand that in physics, the PhD thesis one produces must be of their own studies, almost like publishing a paper. If you will, a kind of discovery they themselves or along with others have made.

However, I'm not so sure about a physics masters thesis, if there even is one?

I'm assuming here that you do have to produce a masters thesis as I've seen people ask about masters thesis questions for other subjects, please do correct me if I'm wrong.

In a physics masters thesis, is it the same basis and a PhD thesis (something on research you've conducted yourself)?
Is it a thesis question on something you find interesting and you're just writing as a good a question as you can about it (so something someone else has discovered)?
Or is it something completely different from the two of these?

I'm not sure how much this question strongly depends on Physics/UK, so let me detail how it is done for Computer Science in France (as far as I know, the French and British systems are quite close on this, and hard sciences tend to have a common academic process).

The PhD thesis is indeed a novel contribution to the state of the art, and demonstrates the ability of the candidate to be an autonomous full-time researcher. In many fields, it's usually required to have several publications before submitting the PhD thesis.

On the other hand, the Master thesis corresponds to an research internship done in a lab (usually the one in which the candidate will pursue her PhD). The role of the Master thesis is two-fold:

First, it demonstrates that the candidate has acquired some techniques taught during the Master, and that she was able to use them to solve a particular research problem.
Second, it's a first step for the candidate into the world of research. Often, the Master thesis constitutes the first chapter of the thesis.

(note that I'm talking here only about research-focused Masters, as there are also industry focused Masters, for which the thesis has a different role).

As such, the topic of the thesis is usually a "simple" research problem, defined by the advisor based on the interests of the student. By simple, I mean that even though the exact solution might not be known, the advisor is usually confident that the solution can be found in a reasonable amount of time.

Note that in France, the time constraint is quite strong, and the thesis must be written in 6 months maximum, otherwise the Master is not validated at all, and therefore the topic of the thesis is usually not an open and complex research problem.


Conference/workshop does not provide for 'poster logistics' - is that normal? I'm supposed to present a poster in an well-rated Computer Science conference, or rather in a workshop within that conference. This is the first time this workshop will have posters (the larger conference has had them for a while). However, I've not received any information about the logistics of getting the poster printed and delivered - just a general note, after my inquiring about it, saying that I'm at liberty to design it any way I like and in any dimensions I like. In a previous conference at which I presented a poster we were told to submit a PDF of dimensions X x Y by a certain time, and that was that - the poster was printed and set up someplace. The opposite case seems strage, ridiculous even: For 10 or 20 (or 100) people, coming in from different countries, to each have to arrange for the printing of a poster and either bring it from overseas in a special container or to have to coordinate with  print shops in a city they don't know.

The conference is held in a couple of weeks and I'm getting worried... of course I've contacted the workshop organizers about this, but - was I wrong to expect this to be taken care of? Is there some kind of other option of arranging this which I'm missing?

I'm answering from an HCI-related subfield of CS:

What you describe - attendees print and bring their posters themselves - is completely normal.

While I do not rule out it exists even in my specific field, I have never encountered a conference that would print posters for you. Any time I have participated in, or just looked at the CfP for a poster session, attendees were merely told the available board size (and thus, the maximum allowable size for the poster) and asked to prepare their poster in time for the poster session.

Typically, attendees then have the poster printed at their home institution (and get compensated by the institution as a part of the conference attendance cost). This has the nice side-effect that, at least in smaller places, you might already get in touch with a few conference attendees at the airport, because you notice the people walking around with poster tubes. At some point before the poster session (depending on the conference, already at the beginning of the conference), attendees will take a few minutes to affix their posters at the boards they have been assigned (or just at any boards, if the poster space works in a first-come first-serve manner).

The poster belongs to the attendee/their employer and they are free to do with it after the poster session what they like. A possible procedure that has been followed by many people I have been in touch with is to take the poster back to one's home institution and place it on some wall in or near one's office.

A word on your impression:

  The opposite case seems strage, ridiculous even: For 10 or 20 people, coming in from different countries, to each have to arrange for the printing of a poster and either bring it from overseas in a special container or to have to coordinate with print shops in a city they don't know.

In a way, that's true. But then, note that poster printing (well, any graphics printing) comes with a certain deal of variety and "risks". Colours might be messed up, the size/margins might be unfitting ... add to that that different regions of the world are used to (and thus base their poster templates on) different paper formats. Thus, it is desirable to see the poster when there is still some time to make some corrections.

As for the special container - any university institute I have encountered owns several of these, for exactly this purpose. Note that if you want to bring back the poster (as described in my text above), you need such a container anyway for the way back, so there would be no point in carrying the container there without anything in it.


My co-authors don't want to help get our manuscripts published anymore. What should I do? Recently I've had three different sets of co-authors give up on the publication process.  Here are the three cases:

Publication was rejected on the basis that additional work was needed, amounting to repeating all the experiments.  One co-author has retired, another left academia, and a third just isn't interested in the field anymore (and has also left to work elsewhere).  To do all of the work myself seems a little unreasonable if after all that I'm still 3rd author.
Publication was desk rejected by multiple journals (5 so far) due to either being "too theoretical" or "too applied".  The other authors wanted to just turn it into a tech report, but after I started reformatting it, they decided they didn't care if it got published anymore due to the multiple rejections and wanting to move on to other things.  2nd author left our organization recently.
Publication has been written, but one of the authors refuses to move forward with the submission process because they are unsure if our conclusions are right.  Unless we have a "bullet proof" (their words) interpretation of our results, we can't submit.

I don't want to give up, but it's demotivating to have co-authors who don't care.  Is it worth it to keep fighting these battles all by myself if they still benefit?

Parts of your question are too circumstance-specific to really be answerable without more details, but a couple of the final points can be answered a bit.

  Is it worth it to keep fighting these battles all by myself if they still benefit?

You sound like you resent the fact that they still benefit.  That’s the wrong thing to be focusing on: the question is, do you (and your field!) benefit enough for it to be worth your time and energy pushing the work through to completion/publication?  If so, then do it — and if they benefit, then that’s a bonus, and with luck they’ll even be grateful to you for it later.

If you feel a third authorship isn’t worth the effort it’d take, but e.g. a first or second authorship would be, then discuss this with your co-workers as honestly as you can.  Say something like: “I think this work is worth the effort to get published, and I would be happy to do the main share of the work from here; but given the amount of work needed, I think in that case we should consider changing the author ordering to reflect it.  Would you be willing to consider that?”

  I don't want to give up, but it's demotivating to have co-authors who don't care.

It’s not necessarily that they “don’t care”.  They may feel as frustrated and torn as you — caring about the work and wanting to see it published, but feeling dispirited about the chances of that, and that at this point their time and energy are better spent on other things.


Tension between "publishable" and "motivating" research topics I am half way thorough my second year as a posdoc and I have a reasonable production (4 published papers in good journals and two other under review). I also have several ongoing/potential research projects and I am finding it hard to figure out how to manage my time and energy regarding them.
Here is the problem: among these projects, there are some that are fairly secure in terms of publication, meaning that I feel confident that within reasonable time and with reasonable effort those projects will lead to papers published in good journals (let us simplify assuming that "good" means Q1). However, these are not particularly motivating problems/proposals (for me). The main issue is their lack of motivation, mathematically in particular and scientifically in general. It is not that they are not good problems at all, or uninteresting in their entirety, they just don't seem to have an underlying mathematical or scientific question to them.
On the other hand, there is a handful of potential projects that I find motivating, some of them proposed to me by other mathematicians (tenured professors with solid careers) and some of them my own, but whose perspective of success is much less clear. These are interesting questions and/or research directions but there is no certainty that I will be able to get something out of them. And on top of that, they require an important time investment.
I am tempted to follow a strategy based on working on the "publishable" projects just the amount of time required to move forward with them and dedicate the rest of the time to the other projects, but I would appreciate points of view, comments or suggestions on the matter.
I could not find a question to which I would say that this is a duplicate, although I do think that these issues ought to be common for people at my stage of the career.

I guess my advice would be, first, to get a permanent position, say on the tenure path and then get tenure. Do what you need to do to set a baseline.
Second, there is no reason why you need to make a final decision now and never review it. In the short term you could (probably should) work on stuff that gets you to tenure primarily, filling in with ideas on more interesting topics. Then, as the world becomes more secure you can morph into a situation that seems more satisfying.
Just keep notebooks of ideas as you go along, so that when you think of something "interesting" that might be pursued, you don't lose track of it later.
Stay flexible. Establish a base. Then move on.


What are the best methods for independently publishing an academic book? I am a statistician and am thinking of writing a book on variations of regression.  I submitted it to one place who said that even if they accepted it, they would pay $1100.  That's very little. So I am thinking of self publishing but was wondering about the best methods - LaTeX? Pressbooks? or what?

"Best" in terms of ease of use and ability to produce the files needed for a book in various formats.

My advice is to go with a commercial publisher if you are so luck as to have one already willing to do an advance.  They have the marketing channels to do something with your book.  No promises of course, but self published works are incredibly unlikely to break through into being used.

Just take care of yourself in terms of rights and such.  (You need to give them the work in question of course, but make sure it does not impact any future production.)  Also, even while negotiating rights, realize they are "a customer" and really the most important one.  So don't be a jerk.  If anything try to establish a connection to be exploited later and give them a little "come on" (without making commitments) that you are up to publishing more with them.


Can I negotiate a research assistant position if my PI moves to a new univerisity? I am currently in the second year of my post-doctoral fellowship. My PI will be moving to a new university in ~9 months.

As the story of the potential move developed, I was honest with my PI during discussions and told him that it was likely that I would go with him if he left, but it was never discussed in detail.

Now that more specifics are known, it is time to talk details. I would like to negotiate for an upward move to a research associate position. I believe this would be fair considering I'm sure I will "lose" some amount of research time while the new lab is getting set-up. However, I'm worried about negotiations because a) this is not a "new" job, just a continuation of my fellowship at a new location with the same boss, b) I've already indicated that I would like to move to the new location, and c) my resume has not yet reached a point that I am able to strike out on my own for any other upward job move (though, I can probably make a lateral move to another post-doc, that is not ideal).

My questions are:

Is it reasonable to ask for a title promotion in this situation? Or do I have no room for negotiation?

What else should I add to the negotiations in order to help my career progress to the best of its ability during a transition to a new university in another state?

I think it is more than reasonable to ask for a "bump", but you may want to reconsider moving. The way I see it is you are currently in your 2nd year as a post doc and the move isn't for 9 months so at the time of the move you would be approaching 3 years as a post doc in the same lab. This is getting to be a long time and you do not want to lose the time associated with the lab move to move to a new lab for a year. You need to make the move to the new lab desirable enough that you want to stay for 2+ years. The reason you may want to reconsider the move is that you would be effectively doing 2 post docs in the same lab instead of 2 labs. This means less of a chance to learn new things (both technical and interpersonal skills) and meet new colleagues (specifically ones who can write letters of reference for you and help you get the next job).

If you chose to stay, the argument for a bump is that (1) this would effectively be your second post doc, and (2) you would be taking a hit in your research associated with the move and need additional support to over come that. The reason keeping you is advantageous to your PI is continuity and the ability to get started quicker. Finally there is the issue that the PI probably has a start up package so can actually afford a bump (both salary and resources).


Two professors want me to work at their labs, and I'd rather work with one of them than the other I'm an undergrad who wants to do research but I don't know many professors, so I asked my school's Dean for Undergraduate Research for help. He told two professors about me, and both showed interest in having me in their labs.

So my problem is, I only have time to work for one of them, and I'd rather do research with Prof.A than Prof.B because Prof.A is more senior/experienced professor, and just seems to be a much more interesting and approachable person than Prof.B. However, they share almost exactly the same  research area/interests, so I can't really say "I prefer working with Prof.A because his research interests align better with mine". But of course I'm not going to say to Prof.B's face "I think I'll have a better time working with Prof.A" either...

How should I politely/gracefully let them know of my decision?

I don't think you have any obligation to explain the reason for your decision.  Just tell Prof B that after consideration, you decided to work with Prof A, and thanks for his interest.


Paper stuck in “ASAP” status: what does it indicate? I am looking at a paper by some colleagues, that has been in ASAP status for 4 months now. In that particular journal, “ASAP” indicates accepted papers after the authors have corrected the proofs: i.e., they are just like the final paper, except they have not been attributed an issue and page number yet (and have thus not yet appeared in print).

Most papers in that particular journal only stay 2 or 3 weeks in ASAP status, before being assigned an to an issue. This paper stands out, being the only one so old on the website. Yet, no indication additional information is given on the publisher's website.

What can cause a paper to be stuck so long in ASAP queue? Would it be impolite to ask the corresponding author what's going on? (I admit it would only be to satisfy my own curiosity…)

As was mentioned in the comments, one possibility is that the editors are waiting for a better time to publish the paper, perhaps as part of a special issue or to highlight the paper on its cover.

Another possibility is that the authors have not fulfilled some requirements for publication like signing a copyright transfer form or paying the page charges.

Or perhaps there are some problematic issues about the paper.  Maybe the topic is controversial and some members of the board don't want it published, or perhaps the editors suspect some unethical publication practice.  (If it is this last reason, then perhaps it would be impolite to ask the authors about it.)


Are non-computer science PhD students using ML/AI techniques expected to publish in top CS conferences like NIPS/ICML? I am a second-year Ph.D. student where my topic is focus in the domain of civil engineering. However, I am also utilizing several machine learning/artificial intelligence in my application to achieve my end goals. While I understand that publishing in top computer science conferences such as NIPS, ICML is definitely a plus to my resume and achievement, I'm wondering will it be out of my research focus? From what I understand those paper submitted there are focused on producing theoretical contribution in the computer science domain and it would take quite some time to produce such contribution and I feel like I will drift away from my research topic. I'm asking this as I'm sort of being forced to submit there (aka supervisor pressure).

Any suggestion?

Most conferences in any field are looking to present advances in that field. This is usually called novelty. If you are using standard techniques in AI/ML in your work then it may not be seen as very interesting to CS folk, unless the application is, itself, somehow, novel. The standard for that will be fairly high.

So, ask yourself where is the novelty in your work and publish/present in journals/conferences in that field.

But the bar for submission is low and it will be reviewers who make the judgement about suitability. So, if you want to do a trial submission, to see how your work is judged, you are free to do so, making your advisor happy. But, I agree that your general research trajectory is more important.


What is uncited references? I came across this article which has section named uncited references.

Why it is there and what is the purpose of that section ?

Note that the article you linked to is a review article. A review article summarizes primary literature, often reporting on the most important findings regarding a particular question or questions being addressed. In reviewing many articles, there may be papers that the author(s) reviewed in order to derive the results and major findings of the paper, but that didn't have anything interesting or exemplary of the major findings to report/cite directly in the manuscript. In that case, the author(s) would still need to cite the paper somewhere because it was part of the data collection component of the manuscript.
Journals may deal with those references in different ways. When feasible, authors may have few enough references such that they fit into a table in the manuscript, or they may report papers used in the data collection as supplementary data. If neither of those options is used, the author must cite those papers somewhere in the manuscript because they were a part of the study, and an "Uncited References" section may be one option for doing that.