Taking my Ph.D. advisor out for dinner after graduation I recently finished my Ph.D. in the U.S. and will be leaving soon for a job in industry. I have got a precious gift for my advisor as I really admire him and he is one of my role models and totally deserves it.

Now for giving him the gift I was thinking maybe I should take him out to dinner or something and then give him the gift. The problem is during these years we’ve never had such a relationship! Like we’ve been cool and he’s always been super friendly and supportive, but I have not even spoken to him over the phone!! Like we’ve either met in his office for in-person meetings or have been in touch via emails (although he twice invited the whole department to his house for barbecue and I went to his house, but that’s pretty much it).

So I feel like it might be a little weird to ask him out for drinks or dinner, especially since he has a family and kids and I’m single. I mean if I had a wife I would totally invite his whole family but now I don't know what to do.
I am not planning for a farewell party either otherwise I would have invited him.

Should I just go to his office like always and give him the gift and say goodbye? Or should I ask him out? Or should I ask his whole family out? What is the professional/moral way of doing this?

What is the professional/moral way of doing this?

I think that if you have never invited/been invited to a casual gathering involving the advisor's family, it will be awkward to do so now. If you feel like a one-on-one dinner invitation is too much, how about a lunch appointment?

I will say this - many universities have strict rules on receiving expensive gifts from students/subordinates. If your meaning of precious is simply "of significant emotional value" (say, you made a piece of art yourself, or found a book that they really like) that's fine; if you mean expensive (say, an expensive watch) - your advisor may not be able to accept the gift at all (or, as is the case in my university, will have to report the gift and then give it to the school).


what should you answer to your potential supervisor's question: Are you applying to other programs? I had an interview with a potential Ph.D. supervisor, and along the way, he asked whether I am intending to apply to other similar Ph.D. programs? I said: Yes, but that's because I don't know how admissions work.
Was that a good answer? What is supposed to be done in such situations?
Also, when the professor says: Ok, I will work with you to write the best competitive statement of purpose. Does that mean he is going to accept you?

The obvious answer to the first is that you will apply until you are accepted into a suitable and interesting position. For the second, it has no implication other than that he is interested. He is willing to give you advice, but your admission can depend on several things. The SoP is only one of those.
In some cases, depending of place and field, the professor may not be directly involved in decisions to accept you. But nothing is assured until you get an acceptance letter.


When to start seeking PhD positions? I'm about one year from receiving my master's degree. I have published a few papers, so I'm confident that I want to do research. I have been offered two different PhD positions at my current university, but I might not want to stay here. The reason for not taking the first position is that I don't like the advisor too much, and for the second position that they lack funding/other resources.

I recognize the early(?) offers are due to my hard work. If I would like to apply to somewhere else, when should I start contacting potential supervisors?

Also I need some strategy to get out nicely... it will be difficult to stay under the radar

It is never too early to look around for PhD positions. Start out by looking at what is advertised to see what is available and where. If you already know of places to go then get in touch with the department/research group to present yourself. Having a few papers under your belt will be a plus so provide a CV and the papers in your first contact and add a statement of what you want to do and why you are interested in that place.

Being focussed and showing you have a strong urge to continue is likely to impress.

I can understand it is difficult to say no to two offers and move away but remember that you are free to move. Saying no to a position without funding should not weigh you down. The other position is a little more sensitive of course. But, people move for many reasons, personal and professional. I do not think you need to explain your motives. A change in location is enough. Moving is a positive so there is nothing remarkable about doing so. There is, furthermore, no reason to bring up any negatives about your present location. If your move stirs bad feelings then it is a sign things are not right anyway.


Can’t get a Letter Of Reference with signed seal I’m kind of in a rut right now with my admissions for a program. I’ve requested for a LOR from a professor and they had no issue to do it for me. However, they’ll be sending it to my email. The only thing is the program that I’m applying for is asking that the LOR comes in a sealed envelope with the recommenders signature on the seal or the recommender mails it themselves. My recommender is out of the county and can’t do that at the moment (not to mention the program’s deadline to apply is in 2 weeks) and the only way I can get the letter is via email and I print it and send when I mail my application. Now I’m wondering do I just leave a note  stating that I couldn’t get their sealed signature but and I did not change any of the information provided, and they can contact the recommender for verification? Or should I just withdraw my application as a whole?

Try contacting the program's admissions office first before submitting the application, and as long before the deadline as possible (so, immediately). They may offer a workaround. For example, they may provide an email address to which your professor can directly send the letter. Even if it turns out that they allow you to mail the letter yourself, you need to check with them first.
I did this once when in a similar situation, where I could not submit the recommendation letters in the usual method prescribed by the program, and was told of an alternative method on contacting them.


Retaking an undergraduate course due to poor grade before graduate school applications Due to poor performance on a midterm for an advanced major class I am currently taking, I am expecting to earn a lower grade than I would like to (around a B/B-). I have earned A's in all my other major classes and I am concerned about how this will affect graduate admissions.

Alongside other options such as research for bolstering my future graduate school applications (I am currently a sophomore), I am wondering if retaking the class in the future would look better for graduate admissions. I believe that I would be able to earn a better grade if I retook the class, but I am wondering whether this would be a good use of my time and if it would (at least partially) make up for poor performance in this class, or if I would be better off focusing on other areas, such as getting in more research opportunities. I also have the opportunity to take the graduate version of this course, which I would also consider if this would help my chances for admission into a good graduate program.

Yes, it would look (a bit) better. Yes, focusing on other things is probably (not necessarily) a better use of your time. If the course is a foundation course in what you intend to pursue then it might be more important, but mostly because you have missed some necessary insights.

A single "bad" grade isn't likely to mean much of anything as the admission process looks at many things and isn't, fundamentally, driven by a few numbers. You might be far better off taking the next course in sequence if any and setting yourself up for still more advanced work than to "stall" for a bit while you make things up.

It feels like "grasping at straws" to me. If this would be an essential block, then you probably have far more important issues to deal with.

But do what you can to do better in future, possibly by asking more questions or doing more "exercises" in your courses.


Should I take PhD application recommendation letter from academic advisor? I am applying for PhD in engineering and wondering whether should I take recommendation letter from academic advisor during master's program.

He has 'professor' in his title. He was not my thesis advisor and I did not take any courses from him. His role was more like advising students which courses to take, approving their courses for the semester, judging whether a student meet with course requirements, etc.

This recommendation letter would be based on generalization, such as GPA. I know a recommendation letter should be specific, but can a letter from such professor help or harm?

Speaking from social sciences:

If it's easy for both parties to produce the letter, go ahead and have it. It wouldn't hurt, and perhaps you can suggest some general stuff that is absent from more specialized letters.

If it's too much hassle, then simply have an agreement to have the letter produced "later on" if it's wanted.

Your view about such letters is generally on the money: they refer to either class or research performance. But perhaps there are aspects that your advisor's letter can highlight. Bear in mind that many applications, etc., ask for a maximum of letters - so, if you already filled it with specialized letters, then this general one won't be needed.


Recommendation Letters for MS CS programs I have graduated nearly 5 years ago and I want to get a Computer Science Master's degree from an above average school in U.S. or Canada, preferably a thesis based degree.

However, I am having difficulty in getting recommendation letters since I graduated long time ago. And, even if I get any letters, my professors are not professional, they ask me to write them myself. Long ago when I asked for a position they did so and sure they will do the same now. So I got stuck in an handicapped position for my future grad school pursuits.

Please recommend me some ways to overcome this situation. Should I go for a one term non-degree program in U.S. or Europe to get a letter from a professional member of an academic community who is capable of doing this job.

End Note: I am in a third world country.

It's important to have at least one letter from a former professor, but especially for a professional master's degree, strong recommendation letters from work supervisors can also be effective, as long as they're tuned correctly.  I did this.  It's probably best to ask someone with an advanced degree if possible — not for the pedigree, but because they might remember academic culture/goals better than someone who hasn't spent time in the ivory tower.  It's important that your letter does not simply praise you as a programmer, but as a potential computer scientist.  The letter should emphasize your intellectual and creative contributions, your problem-solving skills, and your potential for further academic study.

Remember that writing academic recommendation letters is not a standard part of most industry management jobs; you are asking for a significant favor.  Nevertheless, you should strongly resist requests to write the letter yourself.  Have an open and frank discussion about the purpose of the letter, their perceptions of your matching strengths, the points that you think should be emphasized.  Give them your CV with appropriate points highlighted.  Then ask them again if they are willing to write you a strong recommendation letter; be sincerely willing to take no for an answer.

Signing up for a short non-degree program in U.S. or Europe is an excellent idea, but it's important to take proper advantage.  Don't just sit in class and get an A.  Talk with your instructors early about your goals for graduate study.  Try to get involved with faculty research, or at lest an independent study project.

Finally, I'd recommend pursuing both of these avenues simultaneously.  Give yourself as many options as possible!


Emails being ignored by University I am a graduate student in the U.S., specifically California although I am not sure it matters.

After three months in the American university system I am almost convinced there is an organizational level plot to ignore my emails, or people's emails in general. From Health Centre personnel to personal advisors it seems no one manages to answer an email.

Over the course of four weeks I emailed this employee at the Student Health Centre, not once, not twice, but four times. Each time I would receive an automated response "We are very busy bla bla bla will reply in 48 hours", and each time I patiently waited a week without response...After a month I decided that the only way to get an answer to my question was to corner said employee in their office and ask them!

Later during the quarter, I attempt to get in touch with my advisor. I get an half baked reply to my first email (it seems they couldn't be bothered reading past the halfway mark), and then nothing to my several other emails. (Just to be clear, I am not spamming anyone. We are talking about one email per week at most) As it turns out, said advisor went on sabbatical leave between my first and second email - and didn't bother to inform anyone or set up automated email responses...

Even later during the quarter, I get a new advisor. I email said advisor asking to set up an appointment since they need to sign one of my forms. As you can imagine...nothing, no reply, nada. Send another email a week later....nothing, tumbleweeds in my inbox.

Over the four years of my undergraduate degree, I think only one of my emails did not receive a reply. Given that my undergraduate was in the U.K., is there something about the American system that makes people not reply to their emails?

I am aware that most graduate lecturers have outside jobs, but it seems even in person some staff have little to no clue as to what their task is, they are slow in getting back to you, and are not helpful in general.

I was just wondering if the issues I am encountering are related specifically to my university of if it is an American issue?

Thanks!

Is there something about the American system that makes people not reply to their emails?

I've spent my education and career in the American system (including California) and haven't had any particular problems with people being unresponsive to emails.  This is probably specific to your institution and/or the individuals involved.

That said, in your academic life you will certainly encounter more people who don't respond to your emails, so you need to be comfortable with other forms of communication, and to have strategies to handle such cases:

Call by telephone
Visit in person
Talk to an administrative assistant
Find another person who can help with your issue
Escalate to a superior
Ask a colleague if there is a particular reason why the person might be unreachable (e.g. sabbatical, leave of absence, vacation, has quit, medical problem, is dead, etc)

And as mentioned above by Anyon, it is also an important skill to write emails that minimize the effort needed for the recipient to read, comprehend, and respond.  This also will improve your chances of a useful response.


Letters of Recommendation when applying afresh to a new PhD program I'm currently enrolled in a PhD program in the US. Before picking up my master's degree, I'll be applying to a different PhD program that's more suited to my interests. I will be able to get two letters of recommendations from my undergraduate university and one letter of recommendation from my current graduate institution. Does this combination seem all right? If possible, I can get a second letter from my current graduate intuition as well, but I suspect that letter won't be very strong due to my not having done a lot of work with that faculty member.

Does this combination look all right?

(Again, for the U.S., especially in mathematics, my field...) Generally, the more recent the basis for letters, the better, by far. For that matter, having 2/3 of your letters be pre-graduate program might make admissions committees wonder what happened in your graduate work.

If you can get an absolutely stellar letter from undergrad, that might be helpful, but also really try to find two solid letters from your graduate program, attesting to your capacity for graduate work, rather than just saying you aced undergrad material.


How can I carefully find out if a professor's work is well-respected within the department? I am a first-year PhD student interested in working with a professor at my university. I have had two nice meetings with him and liked the project ideas we discussed.

But a student told me that he thought the professor's work was derivative and mostly hyped. I asked my academic advisor (a professor who suggests courses to take, answers questions, etc.), who agreed. The thing that stood out from his answer was: "Yeah. Professors talk about other professors, and ..." Which suggested to me that this was not a solitary opinion. The advisor's point was, without being primed, essentially the same as the other student's: the work often seemed like a rebranding and slight modification of other people's work. FWIW, my academic advisor is the research advisor of the student who first warned me. I didn't tell them what they each said, but I can assume they have talked.

Anyway, now I am wary. How can I better judge for myself, given that I am too junior to honestly know if the work is derivative. The professor is quite young but has been publishing in the top journals/conferences in the field.

First of all, every academic has their own opinion of others' work. Just because a student (or your advisor) thought that someone else's work was not significant does not necessarily mean that it is the truth. Although your advisor cites "others" in relaying his opinions, maybe your advisor and the professor in question hate each other, maybe the department places little importance on the professor's work, etc. On the other hand, note that if the professor is publishing in the top journals, then there are some people who think that your professor's work is great also! The point here is that most of the time, opinions are subjective.

There are a couple of ways that you can judge someone's work, being junior.

The first is to see how their students do after graduation. Look at their recent students and postdocs, and see how many remain in academia. Did they manage to secure good positions? Are they productive with research? These are good indications of whether your professor's work is derivative or original.

Secondly, talk to the older grad students or postdocs. They have been around the field long enough to understand what work is important, but not long enough that they are straightforward with you. Talk to a lot of them, and see if there is a consensus, although it would be difficult to get a fair sample!

But most of all, do what interests you! It is good to have an influential advisor, but unless you really believe in your work, I don't think it matters too much whether your research is important or not.


I realize I made a huge mistake in my thesis and am not sure what to do. I'm defending very soon (days away). What should I do? I realize there is a somewhat similar question posted, but my question is different in that I found a pretty big mistake in my thesis. It's such a big problem, it changes my results. I almost wish I hadn't noticed, and been so careful to go back and check every thing, because I really don't know what to do about it except fix the errors/interpretation errors and discussion (today). I defend very soon (in days). It's possible that my committee won't notice it, but I feel like the guilt might drive me insane. I'm worried that my chair noticed it in the past, but they didn't correct me because they feel I'm incompetent (which I feel in ways I am when it comes to stats). Should I re-write it and let my chair know and ask what to do? I need to defend soon in any case. I wonder if I could just present as though I'd already corrected it and e-mail the revised manuscript beforehand. I'm just not sure how they would perceive someone who overlooked such a obvious mistake. Any advice would be appreciated.

The thesis and thesis defense is less about having the results you wanted to have, and more about demonstrating that you know how to do good quality research and can work on that somewhat independently.  It's about figuring out what questions to ask and what methods can be used to find the answers, and then applying those methods to come up with answers.  What the answers actually are is not as important [for the purposes of passing a thesis] as the process you took to get those answers.  Your discovering this issue and taking prompt action to fix it shows attention to important details and integrity in the knowledge-discovery process.  Sure, it would've been better if you'd caught that earlier, but you've caught it now, before your defense, and you're rewriting the discussion and conclusions to reflect your best analysis of the data.

In my opinion, your having found this and your efforts now to promptly fix it say more [positively] about what a thesis is supposed to evaluate than most completed theses.

Don't panic.  Talk to your supervisor and committee.  Tell them what you found.  Revise your document to reflect the new understanding.  Maybe you'll have to delay the defense a bit, but more likely you'll present at the same time and talk about what you found; the committee might require you to deliver a revised document [some weeks after the presentation] reflecting that before they sign off.  That might take you some time to do but it should be OK, and will leave you with work you can feel is more solid.

Kudos to you for finding the issue and having the integrity to stand up for it.  This should help you in the long run and the core evaluation at issue here, at the cost of some extra work to revise and maybe some scrambling to re-practice your revised presentation.

Edit: Congratulations on passing!


Consecutive holidays for faculty in the US In India, the faculty have a provision of consecutive holidays for at-least 15 days to 3 months based on the college. After the completion of final exams of a semester/year, these holidays are given by institution to both faculty and students before the start of a new semester/year.
Almost all the colleges have such a provision. This includes universities and other academic institutions.
In top end institutes, the holidays are minimal (15 days). But, holidays are not absolute. This means that if the faculty receive intern requests then they have to guide the interns. And some private colleges have at most 3 months of consecutive holidays.
I am wondering whether US faculty have any provision of such consecutive holidays? And on average what is the range of number of holidays?
Note that the holidays in this question refer to consecutive holidays only and not to casual leaves, health leaves etc.

I can't really make much sense of the question, but I can explain how time off usually works in the US, though of course there are variations.
Professors aren't really typical employees. They likely technically have a set number of days they can take off and need to register them in some HR system, but usually no one is watching closely to make sure they are working on a work day (unless they don't show up for class), and even being absent from an office is not a very good sign a professor isn't working. Taking an extended vacation (a month or more) might be more noticeable, but even then, no one outside their lab is likely to even notice unless they are missing committee meetings or other responsibilities. Professors tend to be pretty self-motivated to work on their own research, and they won't be able to keep up with expectations for funding and publication if they take too much time off. Smart professors will still take some time off, though: however much they need to keep some balance in their life and remain productive during their working time.
Some days of the year are "days off" for everyone working for an employer (for employees in the entertainment/hospitality/retail sector this doesn't apply to them). These typically occur around secular or Christian holidays, and are usually just a single day or sometimes two consecutive days (for example, December 31st and January 1st). In practice, professors may work on these days anyways.
Academic calendars have some other breaks, most often a week in the spring for "spring break" and some time between semesters (often much of either December or January). However, these are mainly breaks for students, not employees. Professors could take this time off, but in practice those with teaching responsibilities often use that time to get caught up on grading and prep or focus on research.
The rest of time off is covered by "vacation days" allocated to individual employees (perhaps this is most similar to "casual leave" that you mention?). In principle these can be taken whenever an employee wants, but in practice their employer may designate days they can't be used. For someone teaching a course, it would be expected that no vacation days would be taken that conflict with being present to teach the course, except under exceptional circumstances (during which a professor would be expected to find their own substitute and communicate with their students unless they are physically incapacitated).
Some faculty under teaching contracts are only employed for 9 months of the year, during the typical fall/spring semesters, and are either not paid for the summer or have their 9-month salary prorated to give an income over the whole year. They don't have summer responsibilities directly, but this is the time they would have to devote to their own research, side projects like authoring books, and towards preparing courses for the next semester. Most will try to get these months covered by another salary source, however, and then do not have the time off.
If it was important to a professor on a 12-month contract to take a month-long vacation in some summer month, they can almost certainly do so assuming no conflicting responsibilities, but that would use up most/all of their annual leave. For an assistant professor on the tenure-track, there might be strong personal pressure to not take this sort of break as it might make it harder to achieve tenure, but that's really up to the individual. Longer leave in the form of "sabbatical" may be arranged, but typically professors on sabbatical still use this time to be productive in some way (for example, writing a book, travel related to their area of research, visiting collaborators at other institutions).


Why do errors exist in peer reviewed publications? I found a mistake (not a misprint) in an article which has been published in a very good math journal. According the available data, the article was in peer-review process for more than 8 months. But I do not know why the referee(s) did not notice that. What are reasons for this kind of articles?

People make mistakes.
Manuscript authors, reviewers, and editors are people, and people are not perfect. Even if every person involved in the publication of a manuscript catches 99% of all errors, it's still possible that some errors will go unnoticed. This likelihood of course goes up  when authors/reviewers are careless, but it can never be eliminated entirely even with very meticulous review.


Graduate application: Institutions that I have attended I am applying for a Master's degree program, and in the application I'm asked to list the institutions that I have attended and to attach the transcript for each. I have attended school A for a Bachelor degree in a related discipline to the program I am applying for. But later, I attended another undergraduate School B which is completely irrelevant to my major. It would take me a while to get a transcript from school B.

My question is: Must I mention School B in my graduate application? Or should I just mention A since it is the one relevant to my major and the program I'm applying for ?

Safest stance: mention both.

School B may be "irrelevant to my major", but mentioning it is going to add to the application. Though we are talking about an application here, and not about a CV, something related happens in a typical CV too. You assign more significance to stuff that is more relevant to your major, you put a general heading Other relevant information, and include other not-so-relevant bits over there. Over here, you need not put a separate heading. but still, mentioning it (with a clear pronouncement that you've done it though it ain't directly relevant to your major), can only add to the application. What do you lose by mentioning it!

As far as the issue of transcript from B is concerned, apply for the same - that would serve the purpose of authentication. If there isn't enough time to get it before the application deadline, write an email to the department saying that you have applied for the same on ( insert date here ), and some delay in receiving it is anticipated. If possible, you can forward the application (for the transcript) too, along with this email, to serve as a direct confirmation. Maybe, you can also add that you will communicate the same as soon as it is received. That would be a correct and safe statement. And I don't think your masters-degree-school will consider it a wrong stance, since the crux of their decision will certainly not be based on this part. This is only going to be a point in your favor (if it does count at all), but certainly isn't the bone of contention for your application.


Masters programs that require publication (with extra requirements) My university requires me to publish* in order to defend my master thesis and receive my diploma. It took me four years to complete this requirement, instead of the usual two in my country. Because all deadlines have already expired, I have to request exceptional approval to defend my thesis. I would like to know about the situation in other universities in order to build my argumentation.

Is the requirement to publish during a masters degree common? What about the list of requirements below? If uncommon, what other universities/regions have similar requirements?

*: The full list of requirements for the publication in my program is:

Has to have acceptance letter (submission is not sufficient, but waiting for actual publication is not required).
Limited to a government-issued list of "good" journals and events. The list is admittedly large, but still incomplete, infrequently updated, and contains mistakes. During my masters there was no event of my area in my country, for example, but some predatory journals were included. This list was not created to evaluate students, and is being "reused" by the program.
The student must be the first author (to avoid just adding names to a submission).
The advisor must be a co-author.
The thesis content must be related to the publication.

In my part of Europe this list is the minimum suggested for a PhD. By suggested I mean that it is common, in the sense that is customary, but not strictly required, i.e. there are ways to graduate without it, your advisor just needs to work extra hard to get the committee to approve you thesis.

Master students are encouraged to publish, but that is in no way a requirement. Many of them publish as first authors a short paper on a local conference, or a poster at an lower tiered international one. Papers with more impact are not unheard of, but are usually limited to co-authorship.

The "list of good" venues is a problematic point for many computer science departments. For example, while it is widely held that for computer science, conferences are the primary publication venues, my institution still insists on at least one journal publication for PhD students as it is a recommendation that holds for all departments at the university.


Crediting Authors who are not Cited in an Article but have influenced it using Chicago Author-Date System in the Humanities How would I credit an author's particular article who is not cited in my text but who has influenced my work? I am not referring to any kind of general mentorship or any personal connection. According to the Chicago manual current online edition in chapter 15:
"Each entry in the reference list must correspond to a work cited in the text."
The problem is I am not quoting or paraphrasing this author's ideas rather they stand as a ground of influence on my approach. It seems strange that someone who has influenced my work would not be included in the reference list, meanwhile if I quote one sentence or one word of someone else they end up in the reference list.  This seems lopsided to me, even unjust.
I could consider explicitly adding a paragraph about the author's article in question and thereby open up the requirement to include them in my reference list but what if I feel that approach breaks the flow of my article?  Sometimes we want ideas to be under the radar as opposed to in the reader's face. I am open to any ideas, or possibly the Chicago style has an answer for this.

This question hinges on the relevancy of citing this additional source. Whether or not it is appropriate to cite the work depends on the scope of its influence on your work.
For example, if you use a methodology or structure in your paper that is unique to a certain work, you should cite this. As per Chicago guidelines, you would cite the author and year without a specific page number (unless relevant sections are distinct).
However, if you write a humanities paper on new age magic because you were inspired by Harry Potter, this is not appropriate. Even if you otherwise would not have conducted your research without having read Harry Potter, it is completely irrelevant to the paper.
It is tempting to recount the path you take researching a subject when you are writing about it, however this is rarely relevant to your thesis. Cite work when credit is due, otherwise leave it out or use a formal acknowledgement.


Is there a recommended font and size for a job application? Is there a recommended font and size for academic job application? Usually I see Times New Roman being used with a 10 point font size for research papers, but I don't think that it is the best font and size for reading.  Can I pick a font that I prefer, or is there some "best practices" that people expect and I should follow?

It really doesn't matter what font you choose, as long as it's not unprofessional.  You can safely choose any font you might use for a research paper, 10 to 12 points in size (preferably 11 or 12, for the benefit of those with poor eyesight, but 10 is OK).  It's not worth worrying about this too much.  You can't help your chances through elegant typography, and the only way you can hurt them is if you do something ridiculous.  Any effects on readability are probably small, and I don't think most hiring committee members have strong opinions on the matter (while the ones who do don't always agree).


Is there such a thing as listing too many areas of future work in a thesis conclusion? I am finishing up my thesis and am currently focusing upon the conclusion. There I have a section on future work.

I have quite a few areas that I think require follow up or investigation. However, is there such a thing as listing too many areas of future work in that it will look like one hasn't done enough to tackle them? Or that the research is sub-par?

I do not think that the number of areas of future work (let’s call them prospects) is a problem per se. Rather, your prospects should be good, i.e., they should be substantiated by the thesis and by possible additional arguments and not be too speculative. This should give you a natural limit, as a given thesis should can only allow for so many good prospects.

Of course, it can always happen that a careless examinor is put off by the plain number of prospects in your thesis, but that’s a risk you have to estimate yourself. This applies to too many prospects as well as to few. An often quoted rule of thumb is that a good thesis raises more questions than it answers.

If you frequently communicated your research progress to your supervisor, they should already know how productive you were without looking into your thesis. Moreover, if your research was comparably unproductive for some reason, writing what could have been done can mitigate this to some extent. This in particular holds if the unproductiveness is not your fault (e.g., if the particle accelerator you were supposed to be working with was unexpectedly out of order for a year).

As always, you should probably talk to your advisor regarding the specific expectations for your field and type of thesis, the pecularities of particular referees as well as whether individual prospects are good or bad.


Most efficient way of booking academic supervision appointments I'm wondering if there's a more efficient method of booking an academic supervision appointment. The method I experienced was a schedule on the professor's door, first-come-first-serve.

How do we employ technology that is the most efficient (reduces scheduling time, permitting all students to view sign ups)?

Not sure what you need beyond standard calendaring software, such as Outlook or Google Calendar or whatever. Simply set up a recurring meeting and meet at that time.


Code sharing between co-authors During a collaborative experimental project in my PhD, I developed a rather intricate simulation + data processing tool. The work was published with myself as the lead author. One of the collaborators, who is located in a different country, was keen on extending that work and, based on ideas and inputs during the course of the project, she got one of her students to prepare the experiment at their end. (Meanwhile, I finished my PhD and am now working as a Postdoc at a different group).

Recently, they got their first results and now to bring this study to a conclusion, the collaborator requested me to process their experimental data through that tool I had developed. I haven't been offered an authorship yet but chances are fair that I would be if the tool gives publication-worthy results (As also mentioned above: I have already contributed a bit in this study through ideas). My question however is, in the event I am offered a co-authorship, am I obliged to also share the entire code with them?

While I am certainly open to giving them a gist of how the tool works (or to even get it lightly reviewed) via code snippets, screenshots etc., I am wary of simply handing them all the files. This is due to the fact that we had had some authorship issues with the collaborator in the past (though I wasn't directly involved at that time). If they have the files, there is a good probability that they would obtain the results themselves, publish them, with my name -- at the very best -- being in the acknowledgements section.

Additional info in response to some answers: Certain parts of the code are generic and could be useful to the broad community. Being pro open source myself, I intend to release those parts publicly soon. The other part of the code is very specific to the current work and would be of use to only a handful of people, including the collaborator's group.

I will give the answer I have given a million times already on this forum: Communicate.

If you're unsure whether or not you processing the data will yield a co-authorship, write an email asking exactly this before you do the data processing. If the other side is an experienced researcher, then they will understand that as a postdoc you have many obligations to juggle and that you need to spend your time on things that will yield publications.

If you're unsure whether or not you will be expected to share your code, write an email asking exactly this before you start working with them. They may ask for it, and in that case you will have to discuss with them under what conditions you would be willing to do that. Or they may not even want your code and simply be happy to rely on you this time and in future times to do the data analysis in return for co-authorship.

In both cases, you can spend your day worrying and speculating, but you will never know the answer unless you simply ask what's on your mind. Communicate!


What are factors leading to rising tuition costs over time? Is there any published work that quantifies the roles of different factors on rising tuition in the U.S. over the past half-century?

I've heard a number of explanations bandied about, such as:

increases in admin overhead
IT infrastructure costs
Baumol's cost disease
more expensive facilities
reductions in state funding over time (public institutions)

What I'm looking for is some quantitative analysis that tries to estimate how much each of these different factors contributes to the average increases in tuition over time.

The Delta Cost Project, a nonprofit organization in Washington DC, issues reports each year with information about college spending. The highlights of the 2011 report, which I recommend browsing through, states that:

  For the majority of institutions, increases in tuition do not translate into increases in spending. In fact, at most public institutions, tuition increases attempt to compensate for lost revenues from state and local budget reductions, but actual tuition increases are less than half of the actual reduction in state and local appropriations.

Later in the report, other sources of tuition increases are listed, including increases in benefit spending for employees (primarily public institutions). Salary fluctuations are not significant factors; in fact, spending on salaries has gone down slightly over the past few years.

For those interested, I strongly recommend checking out the highlights listed above, as well as the full report, for more details.


How to politely negotiate working conditions/expectations in an ongoing advisor/trainee relationship? I have to decide whether I'm staying/leaving my lab soon, but would need a few changes on my PI's part to erase my doubts about whether it's a good idea to stay. Lets assume for all intents and purposes that my advisor really wants me to stay:

I need continuous advising. My advisor tends to have really busy streaks where she will basically lock herself in her office for weeks when overwhelmed (grants/papers etc). Although we still see her every day, it's just in passing, and she's mostly unaccessible. This has been at times detrimental to my project, which is also very exploratory. This is the most important thing for me, but I cannot think of a good way to "demand" it. Only good thing is that she makes it clear that she's also learning, and has asked for suggestions for how to improve.
I need constructive feedback. For better or worse, my advisor has taken to only praise me and give positive feedback. I'm here to learn though, and this is not helpful. I would like to ask her to teach and mentor me.

I also want to make it clear how important these are to me. If I stay and they are not met, I know I will end up dropping out instead of wasting my time, but that's definitely better unsaid.  So I have two questions: 1) do you think I should even have a conversation with her, and would you be offended if you students discussed "expectations" with you (I won't phrase it that way obviously. 2) Any advice on how to have this conversation effectively and politely?

Additional detail: I've never brought up any of this, and have just "sucked it up" with a smile. I can't continue doing that though, as it will be wasting years of my time.

I think you should absolutely have a conversation with your PI.  I also think that you can discuss your needs in a mature, polite, and straightforward way such that there is no ultimatum and no negative feelings.

Step 1.  Email your PI requesting a meeting for this discussion specifically. "Hello PI, As you know, I have to make a decision about transitioning into the PhD program by March X.  I was wondering if you could meet with me to discuss this. Thanks, Azzzzzz." This will eliminate the surprise element regarding your conversation with her about these non research related things. That is, if you unexpectedly brought this all up during a regular meeting, it could catch her off guard and lead to a less than positive outcome.
Step 2. Be open and honest with your PI. But do so in a way that leaves room for your PI to be the mentor.  That is, your post has several hints of arrogance and also suggests that you are really worried about there being a potential for confrontation. That is not the right mindset.  You need to focus on what you both want. Your PI is a mentor, and as such wants the best for you, but you have to actually allow her to mentor you. The tone of your conversation should not be: "I need this and this," but instead, "I'm concerned about my growth in this program and so I want to get your insight about these things..." Be open and honest and humble. Keep in mind that you are on the same team.
Re: continuous guidance. Ask your PI to schedule weekly or maybe 2x weekly meetings with you. This way you have a dedicated timeslot with her regardless of how busy she is. Again, do not present this like, "I want weekly meetings," but rather, "one thing that would really help me is if we could dedicate a time for weekly meetings."
Re: constructive feedback.  I once worked with an amazing PI who would often withhold feedback. But a trick I learned is that if I asked them, "Would you do it like this?" or "What do you think can be improved on XX?" Once I specifically asked, they gave it to me! I appreciated that I had some independence to make my own mistakes and learn from them, but at the same time, whenever I needed a little more guidance I just had to explicitly ask for it.
Re: constructive feedback (part 2). In addition to using the above method in a more day-to-day kind of way, you could also just tell your PI that you want more constructive feedback. Your PI sounds pretty open to suggestion.  It's entirely possible she doesn't know that you feel like you aren't getting enough. Have this meta conversation with her. Again, frame it in a way that does not point fingers at her for not providing it, but instead in a way that humbly asks for more of her input so that you can grow.

This really shouldn't be just the one conversation.  You should use this initial discussion as a starting off point where you can be more open and honest about what your needs are and what expectations your PI has. When something comes up address it sooner than later, don't suck it all up with a smile--no one benefits from that.

A final thought is that if you are harboring thoughts related to pay and job offers while in a PhD program, it's possible that pursuing a PhD is not the right fit for you. Even more generally, thinking about "what could be" or "what if" seems unhelpful at best and detrimental at worst. Still, having these thoughts might be a hint about what is the best decision for you.

I hope this helps. Best of luck.


Suggestions needed in my tricky PhD situation I am a PhD student and I hate my supervisors. they are bossy, do not allow me to explore my ideas because they have their own agenda and vision. Force me to publish in mediocre conference. Force me to cite all their friends and other students even if their work is irrelevant. They do research to further their academic careers rather than the love for science.

I have followed them and have finished 2/3 of my PhD life successfully. They have given me good feedback in recent yearly reports.

But I suddenly realise that this is not for what I started my PhD. I started my PhD to learn and explore Science. Gave up a top position in a company as a scientist to educate myself more and see myself stuck doing nonsense.

Now I am considering leaving my supervisors and alter my direction of study with someone else. Which implies I might have to work doubly harder and spend more time and probably eat up all my savings.

Should I live the hateful life and just get done with my PhD or should I take a bold step and do what I am passionate about. I have no interest in academia. I want to work in industry. I have come here to learn.

I'm addressing your particular goal of "I wish to change the direction slightly and explore more relevant techniques to solve the same problem I am dealing with".

One particular suggestion is to use a kind of "red herring" strategy: Work on two directions in parallel. The one direction is the boring/phony stuff that your supervisors want you to do, and that you will mainly discuss in meetings, thus giving them the impression that you buy into their game. The other direction is the direction you actually want to follow. The time to first mention this direction is when you have made some substantial results - you may then calmly announce that you plan to submit them to a specific conference.


Extended Abstract Publication I am an undergraduate student in Electrical Engineering, and I presented my research as a poster at a reputable IEEE conference. In addition to this, my 2-page extended abstract was fully peer-reviewed (quoting the conference site) and published in the proceedings as a 2-page paper. Would I be able to count this as a publication on my CV? Is being peer-review and published in the proceedings the only criteria for something to be counted as a publication?

Yes, it is a publication and should be included in the CV. You would be wise, of course, to mark it as an extended abstract.

You may want to publish a longer version as well, so marking the abstract as such will cause less confusion when/if that happens.


Are two undergraduate degrees better than one master degree? I have finish my BSc in physics. I want to work in a interdiscipline like biophysics or econophysics. Because these are mainly physics, one can study higher with spending little effort to understand biology or economy concept. However, I think that having a stable knowledge in other discipline would also help you better in researching. Since I have studied physics, mathematics isn't a problem, therefore I can skip it to shorten the study time, which means the amount of time I spend will approximate to the master degree duration (I hope so). Another point is I can be more flexible than one who only know his/her specialization.

The biggest disadvantage is I don't have a master degree, of course.

Disclaimer: the following is my practical experience on research. I have no idea about the opinions of admissions committees and the like, but it probably depends greatly on the country and the relative quality of master's and undergrad education.

I am a theoretical physicist by formation (5 years degree). Then I did my master's thesis (I had taken enough courses) in Bioinformatics, and I am doing a PhD in Biophysics.

When I start a new project (or tackle the next sub-project), there are a bunch of things about Biology and Chemistry that I don't know, but most of them are actually quite easy. I am sometimes lacking "the bigger picture", being able to my questions into a broader meaning, but that is not so important. For example, my master's project was to improve the number of identified peptides in an experiment using computational techniques, and that is a very clear goal. What to do with this improved results? Obviously, we can improve the things we already do. But, are there biological questions it can help answer? I am not sure, but there are experts on that.

For the middle picture range, I rely on my advisors. They are also physicists, but they have learned along the way pretty much what they need. And after just a few months, I was surprised of how much I was able to help the new members of the lab.

Actually, I believe taking another undergrad degree would not help so much. Of course, I would be faster at the beginning, because I would know what things like "the $C_\alpha$ residuals" mean, but the actual meat of the project, where we spend months, is probably not covered (or not covered in enough detail) in most undergrad degrees. And the main reason is that these details are known only to those who have actually worked hands on with it.

Let me give you an example: in Physics we talk about spectra all the time, and all the information you can extract from it, with perhaps, the only limitation is the noise of your instrument. The truth is, unless you have a VERY expensive camera, you are going to find very funny stuff, like two spectra taken right after the other, with exactly the same experimental set up, will not have, on camera, the same intensity; and even the profile of the line. To compensate for this you need to get clever, and it very much depends on the details, so it is very difficult to teach unless your lecturer is an expert in spectra analysis and can tell you how they do it. And still, most people can just rely on the spectra pre-processed by the experts, so they don't need to know this. Unless, of course, you want to work with raw spectra yourself (been there).

Lastly, a master's or a PhD has some courses. They are usually quite specialised, targeted for your level and background, and can bring you up to speed in the things you need to know about your field quite nicely.

And to add some peace of mind, my former lab hired a postdoc coming from computer vision. His biological knowledge had quite big holes, but nevertheless, in a couple of weeks he was already doing amazing stuff with very good ideas.

Bottomline, go for the advanced studies. You can always take Biology or Economy on the side (for example Open University or unofficially at Coursera).


Using parts of previous work in dissertation I'm currently getting towards the end of my Master's year, and so I am working on my dissertation.

I completed a couple of projects for a module (assessed by report) in my third year that are relevant to my Dissertation, which include the geological/geophysical background to the region, and also the background theory of the methodology. These, however, are not published pieces; they are written coursework reports.

So these sections for my Dissertation are essentially written in different reports.
My question is whether it's acceptable to assimilate this information in my Master's write-up? (Mainly the methodology, there aren't many ways to concisely convey the information and theory, c1000 words.)

This probably matters, and my dissertation supervisor is the same person who marked the other pieces of work.

Thanks for your help.

The only correct answer here is: Ask your supervisor!

You are not exempt from rules about self-plagiarism just because your previous work was unpublished, but without knowing the material, there is no way for us to be sure what side of the line you are on. Since your supervisor is also the person who previously graded this, it is natural to ask. Your supervisors job is, after all, to supervise.


Research Associate job reposted, shiould I reach out to the PI? I applied for a research associate position when I was at the final stage of my Ph.D. The job description matches my profile with 80%, the 20% included some scientific skills that I didn't have, but they said that they're considering applicants who are willing to learn. This was perfect for me cause this is I have seen those concepts that they're asking for when I was a Master's student, I just didn't have a detailed knowledge of those concepts.
I have prepared hard for the interview and even started reading some research articles. Basically, I started working on my own cause I loved the project. But the surprising thing is that I didn't hear from them at all!. When I reached to the HR team, they said that 'they raised the bar pretty high and only choose candidates who are a close match', my initial reaction was laughing but I decided to take the L and move on.
A few days later, I noticed that the job is re-posted again (previous applicants will not be considered). I also completed my Ph.D and I am available immediately. The job description is still the same and it's really frustrating cause I deserved an interview at least. I want to write an email to the PI, is this a good idea?

A significant proportion of academic jobs are advertised publicly, but in reality they are created for a pre-selected candidate. It is extremely frustrating that many talented candidates routinely waste time end effort applying for jobs where they will not be shortlisted, even if their skills are a close match to published job specification.  I am sorry to hear you find yourself in this situation. The old boys' club is still strong in academia and it hurts normal candidates a lot.
For an individual like you, it is probably advisable to move on and apply elsewhere. Some places have a more fair assessment process for all applications, and the more you apply the higher is the chance you will be invited for an interview.
Good luck.


Determining the appropriate research design I am currently working on my master's thesis. My primary task is to perform qualitative research on the development of a purpose-built software application.

I realise that I am now doing things in a rather backwards fashion, as I have already decided how I will do my research -- now I am trying to find an established research design to back it up.

My research approach is as follows:

I will first do a literature review of the current research in the field and develop a proof-of-concept mockup based on this and my own initial ideas. I will then conduct interviews (5 or so) with professionals from the field, and improve the mockup. Then I will arrange an iterative series (well, only two actually) of workshops with acutal users to determine their impression of the current design and content. The plan is to improve the mockup after each workshop. The final result will be a conceptual design of the software application and perhaps a suggestive software requirements specfication.

I have looked into different research strategies, such as "grounded theory" and "design science", but they both seem to be too time consuming. My time limit is 20 weeks in total.

Are there any developed research strategies that would fit my methodology?

In this instance, I respectfully disagree with @Wrzlprmft's comment. The core of this question is clearly focused on the research design / methodology and, thus, fits the scope of Academia.SE very well. Software development in this case simply represents the context of the applied research.

In regard to the essence of the question, I can offer the following insights and recommendations.

In my opinion, grounded theory (GT) is not a good fit for your study, as GT is typically used for designing general theories, rather than applied ones.
Design science seems like a pretty good fit, so you might read up and consider strategies for compressing research, performed, using this approach, to fit your time frame.
You might also consider other qualitative research designs and approaches, such as content analysis, narrative analysis and others (see more details, for example, at Qualitative Research Guidelines Project).
I would especially recommend you to pay attention to action research, as this research approach seems to fit quite well with your planned study. For more details on action research and other qualitative approaches, as well as likely the most popular qualitative research software ATLAS.ti, see this page.

Finally, I would urge you to pay attention to your terminology, as it might be very confusing not only to potential readers, but to the authors themselves. For example, your phrase "theoretical design of the software application" sounds... quite strange and reduces the clarity of your work and, thus, potentially, can hurt readers' impressions from it. I think that "conceptual design of a software application" sounds and reads much clearer. Hope this helps. Good luck with your thesis!


Alma mater (USA) refuses to remove my name from public search The professor of a US university where I graduated from with a master's degree maintains a website that he makes available for public search. He lists students that attended one of his courses, including the groups they were in and the topics they chose for presentation. When someone does a public search with my name using google or yahoo, this information comes up.

This has been published for many years and I recently requested the IT department and the professor to block my name from public search. I do not provide such information myself online and it is more than annoying for me that this information is available on the internet. So far, the university has refused to remove my name.

Which department of a university handles complaints of such a nature? Is there any law that entitles me to get a removal? Do I need to hire a lawyer for such a silly issue? What course of action do you recommend?

In the United States, educational records - including the fact of your enrollment in this particular course - are protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

FERPA prohibits disclosure of personally identifiable information from education records without the student's consent (except for directory information, which class enrollment is not - and you also have the right to limit disclosure of directory information, on request).

You can contact the professor and insist that he remove your information from his site, as he is illegally disclosing course enrollment without your consent. You can also find out who fields FERPA complaints and questions at that university (typically the registrar's office) and ask them for help in limiting disclosure of your education records. If this doesn't help, you may file a FERPA complaint here.


Professor has multiple email-ids? The professor I am trying to contact has multiple email-ids listed on the department page. I mailed to one and got no response sice two weeks, then I mailed to the other and still no response since a week. I was wondering if he was receiving my emails at all and I decided to check more into the department page and found out that it hasn't been updated for about a good 10-15 years. All the student lists refer to people who passed out decades back, this made me think that the email-ids listed may also be outdated. His recent papers show a different email-id, at this point I am in a bit of a fix, since I don't want to sound rude by pestering him with emails (if he indeed did receive it and chose not to reply) but at the same time I'm not sure if he received them at all? Would it be good idea to mail him at his most recently used email-id?

Yes, write again to the most recent (as mentioned on publications) email address. If you worry about making him feel like you are spamming him, explain shortly that you tried the what you think are old emails first, but then found this (now used) address. The old "excuse for double posting" might also work in slightly changed wording.

You cannot expect someone to check all old email addresses, especially should those be from a different university. Of course it could be that all your emails were forwarded or are connected to the same mailbox, hence you might want to include a short note explaining your potentially multiple emails.


How do I cite two near-identical papers by the same authors I am referencing a paper that appears to be a textbook example of self-plagiarism. The same authors have published the same paper in two different journals several months apart. The differences in the text are minor (copy-editing level), except for one short section present in one but not the other.

Should I cite them both, or just the more extensive one?

Cite just the more extensive one.

If this is indeed a case of self-plagiarism (in the ill-intended sense, i.e. artificially increasing one's apparent productivity), you will at least not provide the benefit for giving the authors two citations "at the price of one". At the same time, you provide your readers with the pointer to the more extensive resource.

Note that there are quite some arrangements where authors may publish an extended version of a previously published work elsewhere. Normally, this implies

more than just a short section of additional material (e.g. in CS, the threshold is usually said to be around 30% of new content when publishing an extended journal version of a conference article) and
a reference to the earlier work in the more extensive work.

However, the former may vary by field and venue and be subject to exceptional circumstances (e.g. a "special issue" may aim at mostly repeating an existing work with the primary goal of reaching a wider audience rather than disseminating new material as such), while failure to achieve the latter may be malicious, but may just as well be an oversight.


Is there a way to check to which scientific journals a specific library has access? Is there a way to check which journals are available in a specific library/university? For example, my university library has access to some, but not all, the scientific journals related to Machine Learning in Springer. It would be helpful in case I need to move in order to get access to a specific topic or group of related papers.

These come to my mind:

The best way is to ask the librarian to give you a list of journals available in their library.
Check the website of the library/ university you are interested to study in, they may list the journals and publications which they have access to.
Very few journals/ publishers list the libraries/ research institutes where their journals are available in.
Also, you may email the journal and ask their customers service whether they are available in a specific library or not. I have never tried this and I am not sure whether they are going to answer you.


Do researchers study topics outside their field for fun? This question is partially inspired by this one. Do researchers, who actively publish, even have time for that? They seem to be a busy lot. I am not talking about publishing outside the filed, but about studying for the sake of learning just for fun and curiosity, as a form of amusement.

Is there any known case of a researcher who, by studying a topic outside his/her field for fun, had an insight for a novel approach or solution?

It seems that studying is only done (by researchers) when "it might be useful". Is that true?

That, maybe, would explain why most of the researchers I know, speak at most, three languages. They would have little time or incentives to learn the fourth or fifth.

Fundamentally, a researcher studying a different field "for fun" is in no other situation than anybody else studying "for fun". It's a hobby, just like reading, going to the theatre, or sports. Some engage in this hobby, some do not. Whether they "have time for that" is really the same question as whether they have time for any other hobbies - some do, some (especially on the tenure track) are maybe a bit crunched for time, and choose to use their little spare time on something a bit farther removed from their daily work grind.

  Is there any known case of a researcher who, by studying a topic outside his/her field for fun, had an insight for a novel approach or solution?

I am sure there is. Note that "having a an insight" is not a particularly high hoop to jump over. My students "have insights" all the time, the question is whether they are important, work well enough, and are generally more useful to pursue than the myriad other ideas they could use.

My gut feeling is that you rather meant whether somebody had a big breakthrough in a different field as a "hobbyist". I think this used to be more common in times past. I can't really think of a recent example (at least in the STEM fields), as plenty of time and resources (both of which a hobbyist definitionally does not have much of) is required for major breakthroughs.


Should a Statement of Purpose cover Purpose or Capability or Both? I am applying for OMSA degree from Georgia Tech and the application requires me to submit a 4000-character long Statement of Purpose.
My question is this:
Should a SOP cover my capability and show me as someone who can clear the course, or should a SOP cover why I am interested in the degree and how it will help me in my career?
This is what the website says:

Personal statements

Goals and career plans, and reason for applying to this program. Up
to 4,000 characters allowed for response.
Other graduate programs to which you are applying
Statement of purpose

Your statement of purpose should include exactly what they request: "goals and career plans, and reason for applying to this program".


How to recruit strong REU (undergrad research) students from other institutions? Occasionally we find ourselves with some REU (research experience for undergraduates) money in hand for summer research on a particular project. This funding is allocated for undergraduate students who are US citizens or permanent residents to gain research experience.

Sometimes we can not find eligible students at our own institution who are both qualified and interested in working on the project, and we would like to recruit some strong candidates from other institutions.  (Or, even if we do have qualified students locally, we want to give opportunities to qualified students at other institutions.)

However, we are not an "REU site" with a regular program in place for recruiting undergrads, handling applications, etc. Rather, we sometimes apply for and receive "REU supplement" funding for a particular project. Then we are left with a recruiting problem.

How does one go about finding and recruiting strong undergraduate students from other institutions, when there's no pipeline in place?

Take the HPC REU as a good example (obviously you won't be able to do everything that they can do as an REU Site, but there are many things you can try to do). It was my top choice for REUs when I was a junior undergrad even though I never heard of the school. When undergraduates read the website they know exactly what they're going to do. For a student who doesn't know much about the subjects, showing a list of projects makes them interested even if they do not understand all of the details.

Also, invest some time in training. You are saying that you cannot find "eligible students at our own institution who are both qualified and interested". Do a bootcamp in what they need to know. Most of the students who attended the HPC REU knew how to program but didn't know anything about high-performance computing, so the detailed schedule showed us that we would learn this (and get credit). Most of the time undergraduates take "standard" classes so they will never learn these research skills even if that's what they want to be researching, so showing them that your REU is the jumpstart to their research career in the particular field generates the interest. Also, if you can show that this is applicable to them even if they are not into research, then you have a large crowd. If you look at other REUs they also have a few training weeks in some useful subjects as well.

Another thing is to try and make it a group project. Undergraduates haven't had enough time to learn subjects to "research-level" yet, and if it's an interdisciplinary project, it's almost impossible. Many mathematical biology projects take a group of students where one knows math, one can program well, and another may just be a straight biologist. They work together to solve the problem (or get as far as possible) and learn from each other.

Although I found my REUs via their websites, I know others that found out about their REUs via departmental emails. Send emails out to friends/administrators at other institutions to forward to their administrators. Some of the best places for recruitment can be liberal arts colleges because sometimes the department may not have every subfield. In a liberal arts college there are close ties between students and faculty and so many times the faculty will know about subfields that students are wanting to try out. Then the faculty may even forward the email to some of their students saying "I know you're interested in ______, check this out!".

Also, be ready to adapt what you're doing to the undergraduates. Most REU projects don't result in a publication, so if you're looking for undergraduates who will help you on your current project, it's probably a waste of time. Of course you don't want to go too far out of your expertise, but play around with ideas and try some new things. For example, if you're an experimental scientist who's interested in trying machine learning for your type of data, pair up with a new faculty member who does machine learning and get a group of undergraduates to try doing some machine learning on your data under joint supervision. Again, it's most likely not going to end up with results, but this new collaboration can turn out to be an exciting result itself.

Lastly, think about being the undergraduate. What is the undergraduate looking for? First and foremost, the best undergraduates are looking for what will look good on a graduate school application. Cater to that. Make the summer bootcamp worth credit. Guarantee that at least a technical report will be online. Teach them a few programming languages. Give access to GRE classes. Etc.


On Submitting to the Journal of Applied Mathematics Letters On their "guide for authors," they state the following regarding referees:

  (1) Please prepare a list of 8 (eight) proposed reviewers. You MUST
  include Full Names, Department, University, Country and Email
  Addresses for each proposed reviewer. It should be a globally
  geographically diverse list of potential reviewers; there should be no
  more than two suggested referees from any particular
  area/region/country. If you, or any of your co-authors, have submitted
  to our offices previously, please note that should not include
  reviewers on lists for your manuscripts in the last 2 years. All
  proposed reviewers MUST be fluent in English to ensure the integrity
  of each review and the correct processing of all manuscripts.

  (2) Proposed reviewers MUST BE experienced, well published researchers
  who are knowledgeable in your area of research. The editor-in-chief
  depends heavily on your suggestions for the choice of reviewers and a
  list of weak reviewers can be the basis for rejecting a submission.
  (Also minimize the number of leaders in the field who are typically
  too busy to be reviewers.) In addition, proposed reviewers MUST NOT BE
  former co-authors, instructors, co-workers, advisors, students, nor
  have had any other personal/working/professional relationship with you
  or any of your co-authors.

Part of what drew me to the journal was the short article size and the quick publishing time, however I fail to see (1) how this process can allow for expedient publishing and (2) how to gather said referees. I am supposed to gather a list of referees from around the world that I do not know while also somehow making sure they are "not too busy" to act as a referee.

Is there any coherent way to accomplish a process such as this? How should I go about gathering said referees?

(I'm expanding my comment into an answer.)

First of all, I think this journal is asking for too much. Asking for eight recommended reviewers is unusual in itself (I have heard of journals requiring 3-5 names, but in my field it's usually not mandatory), yet this journal is doing just that and making a lot of additional hard-to-meet demands. For example, in a narrow field it's going to be near impossible to find eight researchers that are both knowledgeable in said area, and who haven't had any professional relationship with you or your coauthors...

When used well, the practice of suggesting reviewers can help expand the reviewer pool, or clarify to editors what their reviewers are knowledgeable about. When used this way, however, it seems more like a weird test, or maybe a bad sign that the editors don't have any contacts themselves. But hey, I guess if you want to submit your work there, better play ball.

  I fail to see (1) how this process can allow for expedient publishing

In theory: The journal has a limited pool of people who have refereed for them in the past, and they might be mostly booked already, so the journal starts asking authors to suggest more potential reviewers. In the best case scenario the author suggests n new, great names and they can ask 1-3 of them to review the paper. The more possible referees, the higher the chance that some of them can write a quick report, which provides the expedient publishing you're after. However, the big downside is that if editors trust the suggested names too much, the peer review process gets ripe for abuse. I think that's what they're trying to address somewhat with the additional requirements.

  (2) how to gather said referees

Usually I have a take a more "free form" approach to this, but here's a potential algorithm:

Normally there will be a couple of people you just know would be interested, and be good reviewers. Start writing their names down in a list.
Go over the bibliography (mostly for the current paper, but possibly similar older ones) and pick out people you think could provide a constructive and in-depth critique. Write their names down in the same list.
Check the references highlighted in step 2 again, and ask yourself if you could include a coauthor of the person noticed in step 2. (This mostly is a way to select more early-career academics rather than the more obvious names of the leaders in the field. )
Think outside the box of the current paper. Do you know of any other people who have studied similar problems, or applied the same methods elsewhere? Who wrote books and papers you learned from, but didn't use directly in this work? If they seem suitable, write their names down too.
Next, go over the list, and try to come up with a motivation for each name. Remove names if they don't satisfy whatever requirements you might have. Also, in steps 1-4 you might have added authors that collaborate closely with each other. Try to reduce that if possible.
Ask your advisor, coauthors, mentors, ... for advice.
Repeat as necessary.

Now, my impression is that mathematics papers usually have shorter bibliographies than physics papers, and that there are fewer coauthored papers, so... good luck I suppose.


Tips for work-life balance when doing postdoc with two very young children and a one hour commute I have a postdoc position in my dream lab with PI, who leads the field and has very cool projects for me. The thing is, I have two small kids (youngest is 3 weeks old) and I live one hour away from my prospective place of work. I have a great nanny and a wonderful daycare, but I am still worried if I can pull off the lab work and all the writing and not abandon my children. Anybody in the same boat? Tips for survival?

I'm a postdoc and I work maybe 40-45 hours a week.

Things that make this work:

I don't check my work email at home. I did that in the past, now I don't. I never missed something (although once in a while a colleague will call with something really urgent).
I don't do everything around the lab. I clean up my own stuff in the lab, and I will do my "chores" but I'm not going to be involved with buying stuff, reorganizing stuff, salespeople, "better" kits / reagents, saving money, discussing the who-does-what etc.
I don't do all the experiments I can do. I can think of many things that are very interesting, but some are just more interesting than others and you can only do so many. Maybe at a certain point what you can think of still fits in the time you have (and you're going to work more to do it), but in the end there are only 24 hours in a day, so you have to start cutting at a certain point. Why not now?
Related: I don't write long papers. I gather the proof, make a point, find the holes, plug them and that's it. I don't do certain experiments "because everybody does them" or "because 4 methods to prove we made a known compound is better than 2". And your "interesting side-phenomenon" will probably be moved to the supplementary info.
And the most important one: I don't expect working more is getting me ahead. Good papers are. Smart questions are. A keen eye is. Collaborating with great researchers is. Of course you need to spend the time and effort and be productive, but there's no A for effort, nobody is going to think you're a better researcher because you did 20 experiments this week and even publishing a few more papers isn't going to make a difference.


Does the usage of mathematical symbols work differently in books than in theses? From what I know, one cannot use a mathematical symbol for two different notations in a thesis. Is this right? The thing is that I am trying to cite a book in my thesis, but this book uses (tau) for both viscous stresses and reynolds stresses. Can I do the same in my thesis or do I have to choose another notation?

Bear in mind that I am new to academic writing, thanks!

So why not just define a tau with a subscript v and a tau with a subscript r - make it clear in your nomenclature and you're sorted.

See:


Publishing on arXiv effect online scholarly profile This question is closely related to this:
Options to publish a paper "as is" without being able to produce "more results"

I'm curious if posting on arXiv adds to your online scholarly profile, such ason Google or CiteSeerX. I know some arXiv papers indexed by Google scholar that have quite a few citations in good peer-reviewed journals directly, but conversely I can't find an example of an arXiv paper in the publication list of any author on their scholarly profile (though I have found the subsequent peer-reviewed versions listed).

Are arXiv papers somehow excluded on such profiles? Do they not affect you h-index on such sites?

This seems relevant if you don't want a low tier publication on your CV but do want your results to be out there and visible for someone viewing your track record.

Both Google Scholar and CiteSeerX can detect arXiv publications.  I know for certain on Google Scholar because it has detected mine (and it is also adding to my H-index on the site).  For CiteSeerX, if you search by publication venue, you will find many publications in arXiv.  Both systems will, however, attempt to merge versions (and Google Scholar at least allows a person to do this manually as well), so a subsequent journal publication can supersede the arXiv version, making such an arXiv version apparently invisible even if it is part of the profile and collecting citations.

Neither system makes any guarantees, however, about how quickly it will detect papers in particular venues, so it is possible that arXiv is updated less frequently or more erratically than others (particularly for CiteSeerX, which is often plagued by maintenance issues).


What can I do if I have a massive personal problem with a future student? I am a teaching assistant for undergraduate engineering classes. I will be in charge of running lab sessions, helping students, and assigning grades. I have an extreme and insurmountable personal problem with one of the students in one of my lab sections scheduled for next semester and am concerned with my ability to grade them fairly. I will be talking to the Professor of the course about the issue and would like to approach them with different options that would be beneficial for both myself and the student in question. Ultimately the question is:

What can I do if I have a massive personal problem with a student in one of my lab sections?

edit: the nature of the problem is that the student violently assaulted my girlfriend, I retroactively see why the nature of the problem is important to the answers for the question. Charges were filed and I stand by the seriousness of the accusation.

the nature of the problem is that the student violently assaulted my girlfriend [...] Charges were filed and I stand by the seriousness of the accusation.

The fact that there is a criminal case involved makes this situation much more serious than just disliking someone. It doesn't matter whether you think you could behave impartially or not, the appearance of a conflict of interest is what is important, and that is most certainly present here. If the student is doing poorly, the student could accuse you of unfair treatment regardless of your behavior, and there would most likely be an investigation. It's better to avoid that possibility entirely.

You need to talk to your professor immediately. Depending on the status of the case, tell your professor that your girlfriend and the student are on opposite sides of a criminal case. This should convey the seriousness of the conflict without disclosing too many personal details. Keep in mind that there are privacy issues with saying too much about your student's personal life, in particular when it comes to criminal charges.

Work with your professor to figure out what the best solution is, whether that means switching sections with another TA, switching the student to another section, or putting in place defined procedures to prevent bias on your part (such as anonymous grading). It may be a good idea for your professor to involve an ethics adviser from the university, since the conflict of interest is so clear. Regardless of the outcome, by officially reporting this potential issue ahead of time, this will reflect positively on you in the event that the student does make any complaints.


License to tie to an extended version of an accepted paper while submitting to ArXiv? We recently submitted a paper to an IEEE conference, where it was presented and appears in the proceedings. We now wish to submit an extended version of the same work onto ArXiv.

In addition to acknowledging that a short version has appeared in the IEEE conference, are there any restrictions on the kind of license that we can tie to the extended version?

Let me expand my comment, since I think it was misinterpreted. Suppose you produce some work and license it with a permissive license. In the future, you can relicense that work with an even more permissive one, but not a more restrictive one. People can rely on the earlier permissive license for that work, but only for that work.

However, if you produce a new work, you can license that however you wish, or not at all. You can even put "Copyright - all rights reserved" on the new work. But that doesn't change the license to the old one. Anyone relying on only the older work can rely on its original license. But if someone wants to use the new work somehow, they have to abide by its license (or lack thereof). Of course the two works would need to be sufficiently different for this to have any real meaning.

For example you could publish a textbook under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-SA, say) and then a second edition with all rights reserved. The first edition still has its permissive license. Only the material in the second has the restrictive license.

Note that I am not a lawyer. But the basic idea is that you can't "lock up" IP once you make it available, but you can make it more available if you like.

And, in general, a work that isn't specifically licensed is considered in many (most?) places to be copyrighted. But laws do differ.

So, your best option is to be explicit about the new work's license.

An example, sparked by a now deleted comment:

UC Berekely created a version of UNIX, the BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) with its own permissive license. Apple built OS X (macOS) on top of BSD and used many of its elements. But macOS does not have a permissive license, but a restrictive one (or none - all rights reserved - proprietary software). But Apple didn't "lock up" BSD and anyone can still depend on that original license for their own work. But the copyright holders of BSD cannot, now, put more restrictions on their own license that would, now, invalidate OS X. They could, however, make it even more permissive.


Should I mention potential collaborative opportunities in my research statement? Would it be beneficial to mention the names of potential collaborators in my research statement?

Over the last year I have been discussing future collaborative work with research groups from other Universities. We have not submitted any grants and there is nothing official yet, but it appears that both of us would definitely pursue this if/when I start a faculty position. Would it be appropriate to mention this?

I presume this is job interviews in academic positions.

The appropriate place to mention such possibilities is only in your proposed research plan. When you do state names, state where the person is located and what role that person is to play in the collaboration.

Example

Defining the Role of Cats in Human Mental Health

For this project, I will ... bla ... bla ...

Potential Research Collaborations

Dr. Joe Smith, Sociology Department, Pet Friendly University, Cat Heaven, USA (123) 456-7890, j.smith@...
As a renowned cat psychologist, Dr. Smith will contribute his expertise to evaluate whether the cats are happy during the study. We plan to jointly supervise the graduate student on this project.
Dr. Alice B. Nice, ...

Potential Research Funding Sources

The Society for Improved Mental Health (SIMH)
...

Certainly, you will have vetted all of your statements that you make with each of the potential collaborators BEFORE you submit your document for the job applications. We on the other side of the interview will be contacting Dr. Smith as demands warrant!


Elsevier Journal waiting time after review process I have submitted a revised manuscript that has been "under review" again for the past 7 months. After a long wait, I have written a polite email to editor inquiring about a long delay in the revised review once I got positive reviews and minor corrections. It has been almost 3 weeks the Editor did not even replied to my email and still the status is the same. Any suggestions How long I should wait? or is it normal a practice by PHYSICA A journal of Elsevier?

I have no idea about  PHYSICA A (I am from another field).
You may try to write to Elsvier Support: https://service.elsevier.com/app/contact/supporthub/publishing/
Maybe they can somehow push the things.


Can one do mathematical physics research without much knowledge of physics I've looked around a little but did not find something that really answers my question.

I'm a (pure) math student currently applying for Ph.D. My interest are in fields that are closely linked to physics, mainly PDEs and analysis in general. I have basically no basis in physics except for some very basic reading.

My question is: is it really possible to do good research on the maths of a subject such as quantum mechanics, kinetic theory, general relativity, etc... without prior knowledge beside maths ?

I should finally add that this question is for a Ph.D. in West Europe, and that the programs I target do not have a taught component (even if it is probably possible to follow some courses if necessary).

Historically, most of the mathematics was developed to solve physical problems, and a fair amount of physical intuition helps to understand the ideas behind the mathematical methods, interpret solutions and check that their mathematical form is consistent with subject-specific problem, and also to develop new methods and communicate them to the users. So in general some background in Physics improves your chances to do a successful research in Applied Mathematics, and in particular to carry out PhD program.

However, there are some areas of Maths where you do just fine without any Physics. For example, general analysis of PDEs can lead you into functional analysis, and I don't think that analysis of properties of Sobolev spaces relies hugely on physical intuition.


My recent paper on arxiv does not appear in my google scholar account? I posted a paper on arXiv recently. But it doesn't appear on my Google scholar account. Although it has appeared on the Google scholar accounts of my co-authors. How can I link my Google scholar account to my arXiv account or should I add this paper to my scholar account manually? Thanks.

The linked question is related, but not exactly the same -- in that question, the problem is an article showing up on your profile but not listing the right venue, whereas here, the problem is that the the article does not show up on your profile at all.

In your case, the solution is much simpler: just go to your profile, click the + button, "add articles", and search the article and select it. You don't have to upload a manual citation; Google scholar allows you to associate any article with your name that you want.


Invited talk: etiquette for canceling A day before I am supposed to give an invited talk at a conference, I find myself battling an awful flu. Can someone help me figure out the right etiquette here? Do I tough it out and travel to the conference to give the talk anyway (and risk infecting dozens of people), or pull out of it citing bad health?

If you're seriously ill and risk either your health or the health of the audience, the correct course of action is to cancel. Just remember to add many apologies to the email/phone call.

It's up to the organizers of the conference to manage risks -- including cancellations, and if they did a poor job at risk management, they'll know better next time.

Edit: By 'many apologies' I mean 2-3. One at the beginning of the message/call, one at the end.


How to write the introduction of a stapler PhD thesis? It looks like I am going to have three articles (if all goes well) that are dealing with quite different fields (psycho-accoustics, time-series analysis and machine learning). I do not have a single clue on how to start writting the introduction for a thesis that should tie these together ...
Do you have tips for writting introduction when dealing with "sandwitch"/"stapler" thesis ?

As a comment says, this really is a question for your supervisor. I'm assuming it was your supervisor's idea to put your three papers together in the thesis, so perhaps they have suggestions on how to make them fit together.
If it was your initiative, check with your supervisor first. They might propose to leave out one of the papers so that the resulting thesis will be more homogeneous (at the expense of being shorter).
My thesis included only some of the publications I did during my PhD, those that were part of a larger project. In the meantime I did other things which have not been included in there.
Otherwise try to find a common denominator to all the papers, no matter how far it is, write a section about it, and then specialize to the topics at hand. I suppose there has to be a common denominator of some sort, but I'm not an expert in your specific field.


CS conference paper rejected but recommended for conjunct workshop Earlier this year my paper was rejected for conference A with 3 highly rejects, so I tried to revise it and then submitted it to conference B. This time I still got rejected with 1 weak accept and 2 rejects. However the program committee has just told me that my paper can be a candidate for one of the conjunct workshops and if I agree they will forward my paper to the workshop for review.

The thing is the deadline for conference A next year has just been extended so me and my advisor are considering resubmitting the paper to it. I have already been revising the paper before conference B contacted me. My first submission to conference A got really bad (but very helpful) reviews. This time the reviews are more positive as their main concern is only about experiments and evaluation that need to be more thorough. They hardly have problems with my design, which used to have a lot of flaws pointed out by the first review. So should I try the workshop with probably higher chance to get accepted, or should I bet my 2nd chance with conference A?  By the reviews I know that my paper is getting better, but since it’s already the 2nd rejection, I am not so confident that I can make it...

Nobody can tell you what you should do.

But I can tell you what I would do: Agree to have the paper sent to the workshop, and then make absolutely sure that my next submission to Conference A doesn't suffer from the same problems.  Get this paper out the door, learn from my mistakes, and move on.  There will always be another paper.

In my experience, a unanimous "strong reject" is an unambiguous signal that conference A does not want your paper, and even major modifications are unlikely to rescue it.

On the other hand, the meaning of review scores vary significantly between sub-fields of CS, and between conferences in the same sub-field, and even between iterations of the same conference.  So you really need to ask someone that works in your specific subfield how to interpret the narrative content of your reviews.  In particular, ask your advisor.


How do search committees judge the publication list? As I understand, the search committee held a meeting to shortlist a few candidates from tens (or even thousands) of applications received. Thus, they should decide by a quick look at the CVs. The list of publications is the most important part of a CV, but how they can judge the quality of publications?

Many of the committee members are not expert exactly in the applicant's field to know all the high impact journals. On the other hand, by the growing number of open access journals by unknown publishers, there are similarities in the name of high and low impact journals.

A committee member spends a few minutes to read an application, how he or she judge if this list of publications justifies being shortlisted?

First of all, you should not presume that a committee member spends just "a few minutes". Even for large volume searches, a huge number of applications fail some very basic filters (Do you have a PhD or equiv.? Did your cover letter show some flicker of recognition as to what you were applying for?, etc.) that affords the committee more time on the actual applications that may or may not make the short list. In my experience, searches are massive expenditures of time on the part of the committee and are taken pretty seriously - after all, they're talking about spending potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars and having to work with someone for 5+ years.

And while search committee members may not be experts in the exact subfield in question, there's good odds one of them has a notion of the broad strokes of what's a good journal and what's not. It's also possible to look these journals up if it's unclear - or to ask colleagues closer to the field in question "Hey, have you ever heard of the International Journal of Epidemiology, and is it any good?" (For reference, the answer is 'Yes, and Yes').