Dealing with listening/talking to researchers with difficult accents Often, when speaking English in research, you can find a great variety of (mostly, non-native) accents. Since I started moving in academic circles and a more international environment, I slowly learned to understand some of the accents much better. I can currently understand well most mild accents and some specific accents even if they are strong, but there are still both researchers with very strong accents and types of accents I have a very hard time understanding.

As networking, communicating, and generally talking to other researchers is very important, it got me wondering about what I can to to overcome this "accent barrier".

I've encountered this "accent barrier" in at least three different settings, and there's always problems arising for that:

speakers and presenters on conferences (or other big events)

I usually try and decide from the slides (and what I can understand) how relevant I think the presented material is for me, and then I would read the paper later on my own.

Still, it means that I could miss some interesting papers, miss some of the authors insight on the problem only mentioned in the presentation and loose a certain amount of time, because listening to a talk is much faster than reading (especially if one just wants to understand the basic idea).
poster sessions and social events on conferences / other manifestations

This one is a bit more tricky since it's more personal interaction. I would usually try and ask the person to clarify or reformulate the question, and then if I still don't understand try talking about something related to "keywords" that I succeeded to identify. If it's a social occasion, I would try to look attentive, smile, and excuse myself the first acceptable opportunity I get.

And again, I might be missing on some great ideas this way. Missing making some potentially useful contacts with the people from the community, and even possibly looking rude if I didn't understand something crucial.
interactions with people from you team/close environment.

With this one, I'm totally at a loss. I know how much team dynamics is important. If something like that happened, I would probably try and avoid one-on-one communication with that person as much as possible. Still, it would probably make me feel constantly uncomfortable.

What are some suggestions on how to act in such situations? They generally make me feel uncomfortable, and often afraid that I'll offend somebody. Again, I do believe that a little practice and effort can go a long way to understanding different accents, especially when they are not too strong. But (and I guess this also depends on ones mother tongue) I think a lot of people have problems with (probably different) strong accents.

I'm not a native English speaker but I do understand your frustration. Here are some of my experiences:

Embrace the elephant in the room

Time to time I found people around me are too "polite" to not tell me that they don't understand what I say. I have had a course evaluation saying that "the instructor is great but time to time I had hard time understand some words he said. For example, it took me a few weeks to realize he meant 'result' when he said 'ray-sult'." I was actually amazed by how much money this student spent to be confused.

Now, at the beginning of the course, I surrender myself and introduce the elephant. "I have accent, and if any of my pronunciations is off, you're more than welcome to correct me. Your input will help me to become a better speaker." Then move on.

I think the situation is the same in the native speaker's shoes. If you have trouble understanding a colleague. Tactfully ask for a few repetitions in an informal conversation, and then confess that you sometimes may not catch the full gist of the speech, and proceed to ask for a blanket excuse in the future should you need another repetition again.

"Fully understand" is likely an illusion

Your point about missing important materials in conference is well taken. Here are two reflections I have: i) realize that even you get the whole sentence, it's still a foreign language to the speaker and there will always be some loss in translation. ii) In a conference, it's probably hard to pick up all the little bits of information. On this point, you can Zen that over like watching a firework; let that go. Or if the curiosity is killing you, approach the speaker after the talk and clarify. If the conversation goes well you can consider exchanging business cards, and ask for a copy of their presentation over the e-mail.

Hold on to an ad hoc interpreter

When I teach in foreign countries, there would be English speakers whose speeches are beyond my cognitive reach. This is how I deal with it: i) Keep smiling, and rephrase the question as best as I can, and I know I'd fail, then repeat step i) for a few more times and keep calm and smiling, ii) eventually some participants who are more proficient would volunteer to translate. If no one does, embrace the elephant in the room and say "I guess I'm a bit stuck here, would anyone tell me what I missed in the question?" iii) once the question is clarified, answer it, facing the original questioner. For myself, I prefer to slowly pace up to the board, and write down my talking points. I think this would enhance the questioner's understanding if he/she has trouble listening to my speech.

Often enough, no one would help. And the questioner may just wave his/her hand and give up. Don't be frustrated. Invite the person to stay and talk, and perhaps then you can employ things like paper and pen to better understand each other.

Use writing

When communicating with colleagues who have heavy accents, I'd also rely a bit more on writing. Using e-mails, or using a white board in a meeting may help. On that note, I also bring a stack of index cards with me to meetings and classes.

Use international "language"

Smile, drawing, ... etc. are always good substitute or supplement to verbal communication. Avoid using very specific body gestures because one friendly gesture here may deem insulting in another culture.

Learn some foreign languages

It's actually quite interesting that comparing to my colleagues who are native speakers, I actually have an easier time filtering other countries' accents. I attributed to the fact that when sitting through English classes, our teachers put extra emphasis on highlightin how our mother tongue may cause some English words to be mispronounced. Then in university I picked up a couple foreign languages, and then now I have virtually no problem listening to people from those countries speaking English.

It may actually be impractical to learn all the languages. Here are a couple tricks I have used: First, just learn their basic pronunciation system first and if you have time, figure out how to say some basic general words. In the process, evaluate how the system may work if it's used to pronounce English. For example, Japanese system does not differentiate r and l, so you may expect hearing "running" and "learning" or "lighting" and "writing" pronounced identically. Mandarin does not have the -th and Th-, so Mandarin speakers may compensate with -ve and F- (e.g. A "fief" instead of a "thief".) On the contrary, Mandarin has an elaborated series of s or s-like sounds: si, zi, and ci, with different tongue-teeth positions and amounts of air blowing through the lips. So, you may expect emphasis on some syllables that would have been only lightly pronounced if spoken by a native speaker. Italian speakers, on the other hand, tend to clearly pronounce syllable-by-syllable and attach an -e or -a after some words. Once we put the same nouns spelled in English and Italian side by side, the reason would become apparent.

Second, read some books on how to get rid of accents or how to speak in British and American accent. Most of these books would have a chapter or so dedicated to explain major mistakes made by speakers from different systems. For example, Japanese speakers may have an extra "-gu" after all words ending with -ing; Chinese speakers may not distinguish clearly between -s and -th. These tips are not for native speakers, but by learning some major traits, native speakers can quickly filter the noise and get to the content.

Make an effort

It takes time to understand accents. But as you speak to a certain foreign person more and more, you should be more at ease. This is particularly important when dealing with your colleagues. Keep talking and keep categorizing their speech traits, and you'll get better at talking to them. Most of these advices may make you feel vulnerable or even stupid, but as an ESL and also a foreign language learner, when it comes to language, I think we cannot be overly reserved.


How to answer questions about whether you are taking on new doctoral students when admission is determined by a committee and a competitive process? Because I teach at a doctoral institution, I get plenty of e-mails from prospective students asking me if I'm taking new doctoral students in the next academic year.

I'm not always sure how to answer them. Because admissions are done as a committee of the whole, I might have a student, I might not. It depends on my colleagues and on the applicant pool. I also don't want to encourage or dissuade prospective students too much either.

Do you have a phrase or response which encapsulates this complexity?

You give one of the two possible answers:

No, I am not taking on doctoral students.
Yes, I am interested in taking on doctoral students but who actually gets a place is decided by the admissions committee, not by me.


What factors affect how long it would take to get a phd, either going via, or without, a masters? My speciality is statistics. I'm contemplating a PhD.

If I do a Masters first, that might take a different amount of time to reach the completion of my PhD from now, than if I just got a bachelors and then progress to the doctorate.

What factors would affect that?

The answer, as oft seems true on this site, is that it depends. I'll lay out a couple things that might change how long a PhD might take, and where coming in with a Masters or Bachelors might change that.

Is there a large course sequence? And will your department accept previous coursework? If there's many classes to take at the graduate level and your PhD university accepts the classes from your Masters, having obtained an MS would likely trim the time from enrollment to PhD compared to a student with a bachelors degree starting at the same time. However, if the department doesn't accept those courses (and many good programs might not) then you're not necessarily all that far ahread.
Is it easier to get funding? If your department treats students who have not yet gotten their MS (in a sequence where the path from bachelors to PhD also involves getting an MS midstream) as transient and less likely to be funded, you might find yourself distracted and pulled in the direction of "rent needs to get paid" more than a better funded student.
Your Dissertation. Want to know what makes a PhD take X amount of time? By and large, its how fast your dissertation gets done. How quickly that happens has, in my experience, far more to do with how long a program takes then what letters you have after your name coming in.


Is it OK to get external help during your PhD if it is acknowledged? I am starting a PhD, and an interested in getting technical skills I will need over the next few years.

Are there any ethical issues with paying for people to help you to get these skills, assuming they are fully acknowledged?

From what I have read, I am working with the assumption that it is OK, as long as they are not "contributing to the research". However, this seems a bit fuzzy to me. Where does the boundary between the acceptable and unacceptable input lie?

In principle, as long as you give credit where credit is due, and as long as you do a thesis worth of work yourself, there need not be any problem.  A nice example: many large biosciences have lab-specific technicians or technicians in share core facilities who carry out routine work and protocols.  The student may not be paying them directly, but they are paid to do things for the benefit of the student's work (e.g., mouse colony maintenance, routine DNA preparation, sequencing, etc.) that may end up contributing to a thesis.

The specific examples of work that you want to outsource, however, are rather concerning.  If you are working on computer algorithms, then you should be comfortable with basic data analysis, plotting, and programming.  If you aren't, and need a tutor to help get your skills up to speed, that's fine.  If you're outsourcing simple but non-routine analyses that you should be doing yourself, however, it's likely to introduce serious problems because you will not be in a good position to debug the problems that will arise during analysis.  Furthermore, as a prospective future employer, it would also make me very concerned about your competence in your area of study.

In short: tutoring and outsourcing routine tasks if fine; outsourcing your core work is not.


Doing another MSc during PhD I've been a PhD student in a STEM field for less than year now. Before embarking on this journey, I was pondering between electrical engineering and computer science for my MSc studies, which I completed before starting a PhD (It was possible to branch from BSc to either field). However, even after completing a MSc degree and working on a PhD in electrical engineering, I still find myself intrigued by the field of computer science.

Would I be spreading myself too thin / hindering my PhD project severely if i started working on a master's degree (2 years) in computer science as a free-time hobby during my PhD studies? I have already completed some coursework related to the degree and there is some synergy between the fields.

I have a strong feeling that studies in computer science would be valuable in my future career. On the other hand, I do not know if I will have to increase my working hours on the PhD project at some point to the extent that I don't have sufficient "free-time".

I would like to hear if you have had similar experiences/plans and what did you do. thanks for reading!

Would I be spreading myself too thin / hindering my PhD project severely if i started working on a master's degree (2 years) in computer science as a free-time hobby during my PhD studies?

Everything else being equal and all things considered: YES! Unless you are specifically doing a part time PhD, a PhD is a full time job and there normally shouldn't be enough free time to take on master's level study in another subject. If you were my PhD student and you came to me with the idea of doing extra study unrelated to your PhD project, I would tell you it was a distraction from what you should be doing and could very likely lead to your PhD taking much longer than either you or I want it to. If you told me that you had a large amount of free time that you want to fill with academic study, I would help you find ways to apply that time toward your PhD so that you might advance faster on it.

Perhaps the best thing to do is to bring this idea to your supervisor and see what they think. They know you and your project, they will know if you are not being realistic about your available time.


Uni group project being used by companies for profit Our second semester group project is to bid for, develop, and attempt to "sell" a software solution. Local companies are the customer that provide the brief, and that we attempt to "sell" to.

I was under the impression until recently these were dummy projects, something the company already has so that our projects can be compared to their own as an additional method of measuring how well we did.

However, it turns out this is not the case, with one project going as far to say in the brief;

  "CompanyX would be interesting in commercialising any suitable finished products, or projects that could easily be finished to industry standards."

So essentially we're required to work for free.
Is this legal (in the UK)?
I've heard a bit about anything created for Uni work being the Uni's IP, does that come into this at all?

This question splits into a few parts.

First, are there malicious arrangements where people abuse students as labor?

Yes, there are. and this fear seems to be motivating what you are writing here.

There can be and have been instances where professors collude with companies to use their students' code or other forms of labor with the only compensation being credits. Chinese graduate students often described such things to me when they were in the US (particularly when they had advisors who also spoke Chinese and threatened their visa status and continued education to get them to cooperate).

Second, is this arrangement (the one you describe in the question). such a malicious arrangement?

That's not completely clear, but the answer is probably no. (1) there's nothing per se wrong with having your projects be used or evaluated by companies. If anything that's a great opportunity for real world exposure. (2) you can ask the professor in charge or speak with the IP office at your university and see if all of this is happening in accordance with UK law. Assuming you're not being forced to abandon your rights to take the class, there's no obvious abuse here. Presumably, you can even refuse to sell / grant rights even if a company is interested.

tl;dr - the mere fact companies will consider what you produce is not  enough to constitute abuse.


How to thank a good teacher? Say if you were a graduate of ABC university, and
When you want to thank a teacher of this university because she used to help you a lot in some courses or because she has the same hobbies and interests as yours, and you want to be friends with her:

Should you just send a thank you letter to her or buy her a present?
If you choose to buy her a present, should it be a brand-named and very expensive one?

As a college instructor, the one thing that has meant the most to me in terms of thanks has been when students tell my superiors how much they enjoyed having me as an instructor. Even just an email to my boss from a former student was a very solid form of thanks. It made me look good; it also made my supervisor proud of himself for one of his lowlings having success. For me at least, this was the ultimate thanks.


Is it normal to have several one or two month extensions after a fixed term contract postdoc? I'm frustrated by these short term contracts and would like some advice. I've been offered several one or two month extensions after my fixed term ended in May. My PI said he may have longer term funding next year but for now he wanted me to stay while waiting for grant results. I wondered if I should continue to live on these short term contracts and wait for the uncertain grant results or start looking for another job? I want to stay in academia.

As a fixed-term postdoc you should pretty much always be looking for another job, and your PI should expect this. Unless you have more than about 18 months left it is worth keeping an eye out for other plausible postdocs - it takes time to go through the process, if you get it they may be flexible about start date, and even if they aren't you have probably gained a year or so of security if the new job is 2 years. If you have longer than that left, is there anything semi-permanent you would be competitive for? It is a bad idea to wait until your postdoc is almost finished to start looking - academic jobs are difficult to get and you should expect to make multiple applications before finding something.
So definitely start looking now, if you haven't already. Of course it is nice to have an extra couple of months to fall back on if you don't get something else, but that's how you should think of them. And you should think of the possibility of your PI getting extra funding as no different to any other potential job you haven't got yet - you need to be pursuing multiple options to give yourself the best chance to get one of them.


Math preparedness for an Econ PhD I am currently getting my masters in Public Policy and considering getting a PhD in the near future. I'm looking for advice on whether to pursue a PhD in public policy or economics. I've heard that public policy phds are not as well received as econ phds on the job market. My fear with applying to the econ phd program is that I have not taken the advanced course work in linear algebra, matrix theory, real analysis and the other standard econ prerequisites. I will say though that a majority of my courses in my masters program have been quantitatively focused, having passed the equivalent of calc I and II, but my concern is that they are not in depth enough to make me a competitive candidate for admission.

Would something like coursera or MIT open courseware math courses in these subjects be sufficient? or should I take something for credit at a local college?

Appreciate the advice!

This type of preparation would be required for both an economics PhD and an econ-focused Public Policy PhD (one with a substantial number of courses in Econ department or co-listed). You would probably get admitted to a Public Policy PhD without real analysis, but you would then struggle in the courses if they were taken in the Econ department. Another area you would want to focus on is proof-writing.

I would suggest taking these courses at a 4-year institution if at all possible. You want the grades you receive to be reliable signals of your learning. The goal is to give the admissions committee confidence that you will succeed in the coursework. Many Econ and some Public Policy programs will force you to leave at the end of year one without satisfactory performance on qualifying exams.

You are correct that you can do similar work in both degree programs. In an Econ department, using the most flashy new methods is weighted more heavily, while in the Public Policy department, useful questions and answers are more heavily weighted. But if you find a dissertation topic with the right combination of questions and methods it would likely be acceptable in either degree program.

You are also correct that the Economics degree is more valued on the job market and will earn you a higher salary for the same position. I have a Public Policy friend who was told that he would have received a $10K higher starting salary if his degree had the word Economics in the name.


As a copy editor for a professional journal, how far should I go in adjusting the wording of an article? (It is important to note that the articles are generally written by people for whom English is not their first language)

I recently got my first article to edit, and realized very quickly how uncertain I was about how detailed I was supposed to be in my editing. The article was very wooden though and required a lot of editing to hold a professional English tone (to no fault of the author's, since English was not his first language). I am very good at editing and so had to settle on just going with what made sense to me, but I am wondering if there is a consensus or specific set of rules to follow.

For instance, I always use the word 'one' to denote an inclusive general view in my essays (ie, "If one accepts the premise of John Doe, then yada yada yada...), but this author continually used 'we', which seemed odd to me. I couldn't tell if it was something that needed editing, or was an intentional stylistic choice. I decided to be conservative there and left all the 'we's, but would really appreciate some input.

I think a reasonable rule to follow when editing an accepted manuscript prior to publication is to make the minimum changes required to conform with proper grammar as well as whatever style guide your publication uses. (The latter might include, for instance, citation formats as well as the use of British versus American English for spelling.)

If there is ambiguity in editing possibilities, I would propose the change to the authors, but also, if possible, flag it as an "author query" to ensure that the change is viewed and a consensus reached.


For early researchers, how does the ranking of a university relate to future career in high ranked universities? I am a longtime user of SE but posting as anonymous for the (not so) obvious reasons.

I am an early academic researcher (though I have been working in industry for a while prior to academia), and my PhD is in Information Technology, from a fairly high ranked university (Top 100 in my area). I have been offered two tenure track positions.

Position A: Large, established, and high ranked research intensive university (research focus but limited options)

Position B: Small, young, and low ranked university (some alignment with my existing research, university is not research intensive but teaching load is attractive, some interesting research projects going on).

Salary, benefits, and package in general is almost equal. I have a good publication pipeline, and both universities are aware that I will focus mostly on my research.

My main question is, for early researchers, how does the ranking of a university where one begins the career relates to a future career in high ranked universities?

If I accept position B, would my affiliation with the low rank university affect my future progress?

Another related question is, are there any pros and cons of joining a small and young university (for early researchers such as myself)?

UPDATE: This is supposed to be comment.
I don't strictly intend to use a tenure track job as a stepping stone to a more prestigious school, but as an early academic, in the initial two years if there are opportunities in more prestigious school then I would like to move (I know many people do, I don't see why this is seen as a negative thing)

Let me tell you what I told a friend who was struggling with a decision between a great department without people in his area and a good department with people in his area (including collaborators):

Go to the better school.  They're not in the same league, and you may have a chance in the future to get more people in your area.  You can still travel to the other school to collaborate, but you'll get much better students and postdocs at the better place.  You'll be in a better environment exchanging ideas with top people.

This answer of JeffE to a related question discusses the "better environment" aspect more.

He did in fact go to the better school, and afterwards was happy with his decision.  One thing he remarked was just because of the what university it is, they had top people coming in all the time and he got to interact with so many of them in a year, which wouldn't have been possible at the other school.

While I won't say this is universally what you should do (there may be other factors that matter to you here), I don't see much advantage of B, unless the people at B are truly top people in the area (in which case they might leave soon) that you want to work closly with, and wouldn't be likely to if you went to A.  Since you say University B is not research intensive, you may not have as much time as you would for research at University A (e.g., the teaching expectations might be much more per class, or more administrative duties).  Note there can also be tension in a department when part of the faculty is research active and part is effectively not.


Should I notify students that I've interacted with after getting sick, by email? I saw a bunch of students today during my office hours (~15-20 out of a class of 96). Then around noon I went downhill quick, and now I'm sporting a fever over 100 F.

I don't know necessarily what I have, but it seems reasonable to assume it was already there when I had close interaction with the students this morning.

Would you send an email to students notifying them? Would you wait until you went to the doctor (which won't happen until tomorrow, if I go)? If you would email them, how/what would you say. Note, I also don't know exactly who all I saw, so I was going to send a class email.

Either you infected them, or you didn't. Sending an e-mail about it will not change that (enough time has passed that telling them to wash their hands now will make no difference).

Therefore, it only makes sense to send an e-mail if it turns out to be something where early treatment can make a big difference, or where ignoring it can do harm. (IIRC, this year's flu is an especially bad one, and students might be tempted to dismiss it as just a cold. It's good to remind people that the flu kills and that they need someone to check in on them every few hours.)

Technically, an early warning might also let them avoid people until they are sure they aren't infectious, but in practice that is unlikely to happen as "I was in the same room as someone with fever earlier" probably won't be accepted as a valid reason to skip class...


What affiliation should I use for a paper that I partly wrote in a previous institution? I am writing a research paper to be submitted to an IEEE conference. Part of the work was performed as a part of my University. I have graduated from there and am no longer a part of the university. My work has evolved and I would like to publish these results. What should my affiliation be for this paper? Should I use my old university as my affiliation or using something like IEEE-RAS member is fine?

To the best of my knowledge, you would need to somehow indicate both but a similar question has been asked and answered before:

What affiliation to put on an academic paper for alumni authors?

You have to acknowledge that part of the work was performed when you were at your university. I had a similar situation where I did part of the work when I was at university as part of my PhD and then completed the work when I took up a position at a research institution. For the paper, I was listed as having two affiliations.


Alternatives to Excel to store experimental data As a part of my thesis, I collect data from students and I combine their data in a single Excel sheet.

The experiment consists of 200 trials. Every trial gives me three numbers:

The answer is correct (1) or incorrect (0)
Participants' rating of their confidence in a 5-point scale
Reaction time

However, Excel has some weaknesses.

I cannot write three numbers in one cell
Excel doesn't warn me when I mistakenly change or delete data
The formulas become too complex as I just want "average correct answers when confidence is 4 or 5 and Reaction Time is less than 2 seconds"
There are too many rows columns

Below you can see an example how I try to handle my data: (notice the dots, in my original file there are hundreds of rows and columns)

So, I was wondering if there are some other good software (for mac os, if possible) for storing data. Or, do most experimental psychologists store their data in Excel, too?

Edit. I am aware of the existance of other stack exchange sites. You can vote to close if you think this problem is off-topic, but please don't post unfriendly comments.

I thought this problem relates to academia more than other "computer science, programming" stack exchange sites because most psychologists in academia encounters this problem, but they handle it very "manually" because they don't have a programming background. I thought there are some user-friendly software for social scientists.

Thanks for your valuable answers.

This answer is assuming you are either interested in or already experienced in entry-level programming.

For the programming language Python, a data structure package called Pandas exists. To use it, you can utilize basic python syntax which is not that hard to learn.

There is also extensive documentation and online help on SE forums available. When coming from Excel, you might want to check out this tutorial.

Disclaimer: I have not used it to a great extent, since I did not have any applications for it, but a coworker of mine uses it on a regular basis, and has grown very fond of it despite not having any previous programming experience.


Handwritten presentation slides? Since it takes a lot of time to type presentations out using Beamer, PowerPoint, etc. (I need lots of equations) I have been thinking of shifting to handwritten slides (example).

Does anyone here have experience with handwritten slides that are not "transparencies"? What hardware/software will I need to prepare slides like these?

I see essentially two possibilities:

Write out your slides on paper, then scan them.
Get a Tablet & Pen combination and write directly "to your computer". I don't have experience with hand-writing slides this way, but I recently acquired a Wacom Intuos Pen which you could use for this. It has the additional benefit that you can use it in web conferences to write on a shared web whiteboard (this is the use case I personally got it for).

In case 1, you can scan your notes directly to PDF and present them. If you want to mix "classical" slides with your handwritten slides, you will need to mix PowerPoint or Beamer slides with graphics files containing your handwritten slides. You may need to experiment a bit with what picture format works best here, in terms of both file size and graphics quality.

In case 2, you can create PowerPoint presentations and write directly into the presentation with your Pen, which makes integrating "classical" and handwritten slides quite a bit easier.


Advice on: Quitting your PhD because you dislike the place and the associated project? I'm a year into my PhD (electrical engineering). I loved my topic from the beginning, and the direction in which my research is going. My advisor is also a really understanding and experienced Prof.. However, I am an international student here (Netherlands) and I don't like living here. I cannot necessarily point out one particular aspect of it, but life in general doesn't "feel happy" and is now getting to me. The place where I live is also kinda dull. I doubt I could go on like this for 3 more years. Normally, in times of stress elsewhere, the social aspects or something outside work always brought up my motivation, without really trying. That here is seriously lacking, at least from my perspective.

I find the university's attitude towards international students a bit indifferent. And, I dislike the graduate school.  Its very disorganized. I would like to point out that I have lived in many places before (in and outside my home country) and this isn't the first time I got out of my house. I even have 3 years of work experience. I enjoyed studying in the US and made good friends easily. May be it was just accidental, I don't really know.

To make things worse, my phd is associated with a project, which is a highly disorganized, almost a bloody joke and would mostly get worse over time. I knew this earlier, but thought it would get better. It isn't. People in the project aren't thinking like engineers, sometimes ignoring physics, in short. This causes a lot of stress sometimes and could affect my research output itself.  Having said that, my output for the past few months is not great either, due to stress, but I see that as a temporary thing.

I am contemplating quitting the PhD but continue to work on the research, from my home country, without a job/salary, to do justice to the topic. I haven't communicated this to my prof. yet, but he knows I have second thoughts. I came here only for the love of science, to improve my skills and not to escape my country (may be the general mentality in my country towards research, however, its not good here either). Having said that, I'm open to new cultures, people, etc. There are limits though. Reports of rising xenophobia in Europe also bother me at times, worrying about how it would escalate in the future.

In short, I feel the cons are outweighing the pros (funded phd, awesome topic, good prof.) and the cons might invoke lot more stress in the long run. I have no issues with the stress of learning and discovery itself. I understand that this is the essential stress. What I find difficult (and made me quit jobs) is the stress caused by bad policies/ attitude, peers, society, etc. And I find putting up with these things a waste of time and mental energy.

I would appreciate your opinion or recommendation on quitting in such a situation. Thanks for reading

I am not international, but understand what you're going through.  In fact, when I was in undergraduate, I had an Italian friend in your exact position who left after a year to go to graduate school in Europe...so it certainly does happen.  A couple pieces of advice:

1) have a plan for where you are going before you leave.  I'm not sure about the Netherlands, but the economy in the US is not completely back to normal and it can take time to find (good work)...even for well educated folks.  As you said, having a funded PhDs is a pro, so don't waste it!  At the very least, use this time to study all of your interests, not just your dissertation topic.  For example, if you want to become a computer programmer, master some languages, contribute to some projects and document your work on (e.g.) GitHub.  This can help out A LOT if you decide to leave.

2) having a good advisor and topic are the most important pros.  I live in a great place (nyc area) with great friends...but my advisor and I have communication issues (I chose poorly) and my topic is not so interesting.  For me, these cons (sort of) cancel out the pros as they make life miserable more often than not.  On the other hand, if you live in the middle of nowhere...I can understand why you'd want to leave...but you may not find such a great advisor and topic elsewhere!

At the end of the day, of course, you have to choose for yourself.  But I would say that if you are currently doing what you want to do and/or this is the kind of work you would like to do after leaving/graduating, then you should stay. At least until something comes along you know would be better for you.  Plus, things could get better for you at school within the next year or so (graduate school is long) and the you would be leaving for no good reason!

Good luck!


Manuscript and journal submission author order differs? PI recently submitted a manuscript we have been working on, but the author order has been swapped without our knowledge. The manuscript has long indicated the author order being A, B,... E*(corresponding author/PI), but now it was recently changed to B, A,... E* on the submission details form. The submitted manuscript title page oddly indicates the same A,B,...E* order. Has anyone else come across this before, and is it worth asking PI about it?

Things happen. Online manuscript systems can be confusing and frustrating. If you are not paying attention, mistakes can be made. Assuming the PI did the submission, I would mention it to the them. Something along the lines of

  I noticed the order of authors is different between the title page and the submission form. I believe the title page of A, B, C is the correct order. If it is, we should make sure we fix the submission form before publication. If the order is now B, A, C, I would like to discuss the change.

I would do this in person and in a friendly manner. If B did the submission, things are messier, but I would still mention it to the PI directly. If C did the submission, you can email them directly noting the discrepancy.


How do I add a little bit of personality to my SOP without turning it into another "trembling steps" narrative? I wrote my SOP very closely to JeffE's answer here: Choosing research ideas to include in a statement of purpose Just a very straightforward, all research no BS statement.

My 3 letter writers liked it quite a bit and said it was very well written and "ambitious". However, I received a comment saying that, while the technical aspect is very solid, I should "say something more about myself as a person". He said I should elaborate on "what drives me and my interests, and what is it about my research that makes it so rewarding." I asked him for clarification but didn't get a very clear answer so I thought I'd ask some academics what they think.

I'm very passionate about my research (as is expected of anyone applying for a PhD, nothing new here), and after 3 years of research experience in multiple areas of physics, and 4 semesters of TA'ing, there's honestly nothing else I imagine myself doing. It's very simple, I really have no other explanation. Research is rewarding because I enjoy discovering and learning new stuff, period. I don't want to make the world a better place (would that I could), and I haven't been passionate about solid state physics since I was in diapers. I'm not one for cliches.

My introduction currently discusses: a) my general research interests in two sentences b) my goal to work in academia.

How should I add a flavor of personality, as my professor suggests?

I received similar feedback from a professor who doesn’t subscribe to the “trembling steps” narrative, so I felt it was advice worth following. I navigated the problem by adding a “because...” to a few of my sentences. So you could say something like “I did research on X for [number of years] because I feel it is important/worthwhile/interesting etc.” You’ve prepared yourself for grad school and have lots to show for it, so if you start thinking about why you decided to do those things, it’ll make it easier to add a “because” here or there, which should make your statement stronger.

Think about your field and what you want to contribute to it. Why is your field worth studying? What makes it important? How are your unique attributes going to advance your field?

I would avoid directly saying something about yourself as a person. The wording of the statement should be enough to convey your voice, and your accomplishments discussed in the letter speak enough to your personality and passion. Just like in creative writing, show don’t tell. Ask yourself what you want the readers to know about your personality, and rephrase your existing sentences in order to convey that sentiment if you feel it is lacking.


What skills are needed to sustain a research group? As a young academic, I am struggling to set up a research group that produces papers or proposals on a regular and sustainable basis. I had my share of PhD students, but nothing structured in a proper group or centre. I am also aware that when an academic starts collaborating with others, s/he sooner or later realises that several skills are needed to achieve a quality submission, and that not everyone can excel in all the needed skills.

What type of skills are needed in a cohesive academic group or research centre?

I try to only work with people who are capable of excelling in all the skills needed to perform and write up high-quality research.

That's not to say that some of them (particularly students) won't need training in those skills in order to excel, of course.  But I definitely don't believe in having 1 guy who only collects data, 1 who only analyzes data, and 1 who only writes (or some such scheme).  If you pursue such a scheme, you may be crippling people.  They'll likely have a hard time in their next job, when nobody holds their hand through the other parts.


Research Methodology Books for beginners in Computer Science research I am looking for Research Methodology textbooks in the field of Computer Science. Most books I came across are useful to social science, economics etc.

In our part of the world a person who wants to do research should study a course in research methodology. But most books in research methodology are from social science, economics perspective.

Would like to know some from technology/computer science/engineering perspective. Some must read books for general reading also would be good

Research methodologies are usually independent of your area. Often, the application of some methods and the examples used to describe them differ depending on the area. For example, empirical research is a methodology that can be applied whether you do research in CS, psychology, or physics. This methodology teaches you how to conduct experiments that are sound (by minimizing different threats to validity) and how to analyze the data in a statistical way (e.g., when to use which statistical test to accept a certain research hypothesis).
In medicine, you might conduct experiments to analyze the effects of some drugs whereas is CS, you would do some performance experiments to analyze the effects of some optimizations. The methods used in both areas are the same, the application might differ largely though.

Hence, it would not harm to study a text book from psychology / statistics, because the tools you learn there are also valuable for CS (e.g., knowing the difference between qualitative and quantitative research or descriptive and analytic). Furthermore, there is no CS-methodology (at least I am not aware of).


How many times can you present the same material at different conferences before it becomes stale? I just finished my PhD in Mathematics and am in between my PhD and postdoc positions.  I was very fortunate to have the ability to present my research to seminars and conferences over the last couple of years. My complete results all reduce to a standard storyline and I feel like I have spoken about it to various audiences a lot, especially the specialists in my field. I have a conference coming up with the specialists again and I am a bit concerned about giving a talk that is just a minor mutation from the talks before.

My question is therefore:

How long can one talk about the same material in the conference loop until the talk becomes stale?
Is a repertoire of multiple research talks expected of a recent PhD?

It's important also to look at your audience. If you're likely to be giving the same talk to two audiences that overlap significantly, then the time between talks is less important than the fact that the audiences will perceive the talk as 'stale'.

For example, you might give a talk at a general interest conference, and then a slightly modified version of it at a workshop with specialists, many of whom may not have attended the general interest conference. That would be fine. You might then go on the colloquium circuit and give the talk at venues with only small overlap with the specialist group.

But if you gave the same (or similar) talk to the same (or similar) audience more than once, that would be a problem.


Is it appropriate to "cite" random conversations as the inspiration for a research direction? In my research internship report, I'm mentioning a successful deep learning experiment. I performed it because another researcher told me it gave them good results for a similar problem.
I need to justify why I tried this, but I can't cite something un-published like this conversation. Is it appropriate to mention it in a footnote, like "according to other researchers, [...]"? Should I search for a citable source that says the same thing, or just drop the justification?

You can cite it as a "private communication" but it's more common (at least in my field, which is physics) to mention the person in the acknowledgements, for example, "We thank A. Smith and B. Jones for useful discussions". You can make the phrasing more specific if you want, for example, "We thank C. Davies for an insighful discussion about deep learning that inspired our approach to this work".


What are the consequences for missing a semester grade reporting deadline? It is obviously doing a disservice to students waiting for their final grades who might need them for financial aid purposes etc. Course faculty involved in this would also at least have some explaining to do for essentially not doing their jobs. Beyond that, what do the consequences entail for those two levels and beyond e.g. program or department administration and higher?

Probably none, especially now, and especially if it is a one time thing.
Bad things happen. The "higher ups" need to deal with those effectively so that they don't recur.
But there won't be much beyond a possible apology and a report, though a reexamination of policies may occur.
Pandemic disruption is pretty widespread. Misfeasance also, I suppose, and repetitions and/or carelessness will have repercussions, up to termination. But people aren't perfect.


Submitting thesis without supervisors' reviews I am a Ph.D. student, about to finish my thesis draft. My case is a bit special as I didn't receive any guidance from my supervisors. It is very unlikely that they know details about my work, results or even what I propose in my research.
I have submitted three journal papers but I will receive reviews, not before my thesis submission. As, I don't have the official approval of my results, so I have second thoughts about my work. Although, I have worked hard enough and was honest in my research.

I request the suggestions about how can I proceed? Is it ok to submit my thesis to reviewers/reporters without my supervisor's reviews?

Thank you a million in advance

That depends, first of all, on the PhD regulations of your department or your university. The conditions that have to be satisfied in order to submit a thesis vary from one institution to the other.


How to deal with students who refuse to do anything except take exams? This is a follow up to my previous question. Some context:

I teach at a new Fachhochschule-type institute, where my course is 5-day, 1 hour/day course to 20+ students.
I am actively teaching, providing the material, and encouraging the students to always ask questions.
My course is structured to have 4 days of lecture and 1 day of practical. In the practical, I explain a real-world problem and give the students graded exercises.

In week 1, the exercise in the practical was to prepare a half-page report on a short consultancy problem. I gave them 7 full days to write the report. No one asked questions or stated any concerns before the deadline.
The day after the deadline, only half the class had submitted on time, half of which only at minutes before said deadline. I was gobsmacked, since even half of the submitted results were very poorly made (one even stated, in the report, "excuse me, but I didn't understand anything"), by totally missing the point or even copy/pasting definitions without context from the lecture notes. In total 1/4 of the class actually proved that had sit down and worked actively on the practical.
The next day I explained that their actions were completely out of line, since in 6 months they are supposed to go in the workforce, and this behavior of completely ignoring and not giving notice to the professor would be very detrimental to their careers. I refused to evaluate any latecomer who did not advise me on time. My stern reaction did upset the students who didn't submit. I even received an 1-page email (double the size of the report) from one of the students claiming that my job is only to teach and their is only to take exams, and they are not obligated to do any extra work I give them.
Is there anything that I can do to improve the cooperativity of said students? Should I modify the final exam mark structure or organize the lectures differently? Since this is my first shot, I don't really know how to proceed.
Clarifications and Update:

It is technically true that the student's grades (according to university policy) are determined by exams only.
But, I am allowed to have practicals and other assignments count as part of the exam score. My mentor confirmed this.
I think these students are bad apples because they are clinging to this technicality rather than doing the useful assignments (or at least respectfully letting me know of their concerns in advance).
Based on the discussion here and with my mentor, I have decided to count the practical for extra credit only.

Welcome to higher education! Students will use formal assesement to guide their learning, and no amount of cajoling, or appealing to their sense professional or intellectual propriety will change that. Some students will always work above and beyond what the assessment requires of them, but most won't.
Assessment is how students comprehend what is the stated aim of a course. Instead of fighting against it, you might embrace it. For each learning outcome there should be an assessment that is aligned with that outcome - that is, it is impossible to successfully complete the assessment without have met the learning outcome. The learning activities are then designed to meet the outcomes. This might seem like "teaching to the test", but in fact it is the opposite: in "teaching to the test", the assessment defines learning outcomes, here the learning outcomes define the assessment. Biggs and Tang [1] refer to this as "constructive alignment". [1] is a good read for the evidence that students have more or less always measured what they are supposed to learn by what they are assessed on.
Thus you would ask "what learning outcome am I hoping my students achieve by this homework, and where is that assessed?". If the learning outcome isn't assessed anywhere, then it should be. If it doesn't meet a learning outcome then perhaps it shouldn't be set.
In practice we either make homework credit bearing (even if only a tiny percent of the overall credit), or, more frequently, ask an exam question that tests the learning outcome that a homework is aimed towards, and a student won't be able to answer without having done the homework. The final possibility is that the homework is practice for what will be tested in the exam. In this case you need to make this abundantly clear to the students. Even then, you will probably only get a fraction of the class doing it. The consolation is that this is the part of the class that deserves to do better in the exam and undoubtedly will.
[1] Biggs, J and Tang, C. (2011): Teaching for Quality Learning at University, (McGraw-Hill and Open University Press, Maidenhead)


Backing out of a verbal postdoctoral job agreement with my PhD advisor I recently finished my Ph.D. and had a strong interest in working with a particular professor as a postdoctoral fellow upon finishing. This professor happened to be the examiner of my thesis, so I could not contact him until I completed the thesis defence.
Before the thesis defence, my Ph.D. advisor offered me to stay as a postdoc for 2 years. I agreed since it was the best opportunity available at the time. The agreement is verbal, and I am now awaiting the official written job offer.
Upon finishing my defence, the examiner contacted me and showed a strong interest in hiring me (as soon as possible). It seems that we both think that we are an excellent match. He is also an excellent professor that I think will help me getting ahead in my career. It seems to be a much better opportunity than what I have now.
The only problem is the promise I made to my Ph.D. advisor, who strongly wants me to stay with him. I have a few questions about this situation:
1- What would be the best approach to handle this?
2- How bad will I look of I back out on the verbal agreement?
3- Could this cause damage to my career or burn bridges with my Ph.D. advisor?
4- Considering that I will need recommendation letters from my Ph.D. advisor in the future, how likely will this affect my ability to obtain these letters?
5- A solution I am considering is staying temporarily (6 months) with my Ph.D. advisor so that I am not fully backing out on my word. What do you think?

TLDR: Many of your questions depend on details of the field and your personal relationship with both professors involved. The best you can do is handle this like any other professional opportunity by putting yourself in your advisor's position and thinking of ways to turn things positive for all parties. Assuming reasonable people on both sides, clear and honest communication on your end has a good chance of producing a satisfactory outcome. Your idea in questions 5 should imho only be done when the 6 months are clearly communicated as transition period to train your successor.
The answers to your questions depend strongly on details of your involvement in the lab in which you did your PhD and the relationship between your advisor and the other professor. A few (but by no means all) things to consider are:

Do ongoing projects depend on you (e.g. because you're the only one
who knows how to handle lab equipment, simulation code you wrote or
similar)?
Are you currently supervising undergrads in their research?
Does funding for the lab depend on you personally working there (e.g. if you acquired grants that go whereever you go)?
Do your advisor and the other professor get along professionally or would you be 'switching allegiances'? The fact that they both served on your defence committe suggests to me that they would get along, but this may depend strongly on field and country / academic culture. If they get along, maybe they can cooperate via you and publish a few papers together.
How much trouble did your advisor go to in order to secure funding for you?

Answering these and similar questions are a means of determining, how badly your walking back on your promise would set your advisor back. Once you have established this, you have a much better perspective of the gravity of the situation and may find means of making it less hard on your advisor (or realize that it is not that big a deal after all - in many cases, I've been very cautions and even nervous about situations like this just to get responses like "That offer sounds great, how about a 6 month transition period to hand over ongoing projects, then go for it!").
There are also several upsides for your advisor: Switching positions after your PhD might be generally expected (depending on field), and is generally benefitial to your careers as you will be exposed to different ideas and a whole new network of possible collaborators. Having students that rank high in academia is always good for the advisor. Also a more in-depth cooperation with the other professor might benefit all parties.
For the moral perspective: What's being done to postdocs contract-wise in academia would be unthinkable for most other employees almost everywhere. Strings of 1 year contract, having to acquire own funding, you're expected to be mobile on a global scale, relatively little money given the value of your work force in the industry etc. That it would in my opinion be unreasonable to condemn your for having accepted the only job offer you had on hand at that time. However, I cannot tell whether your advisor is aware of this. Many are not or deem it beneath them to think in such frivolous terms as quality of life of worker's rights, because "we're scientists", and they're part right. Since a career in science is always somewhat of a gamble (unless you get a Nobel prize out of your PhD), it takes a lot of idealism to stick with it in the long term.
As for your suggestion to stay 6 months and then move on: I would only recommend that if these 6 months are clearly communicated as a transition period (to hand over ongoing projects, train the next person on equipment and code etc). If you do not tell your advisor that you will move on after 6 months, you've technically held your promise to sign the postdoc contract but violated the spirit of your promise anyways, which may just create more harsh feelings.
At any rate, feel good about your job perspectives (since at least two independent parties are trying to secure your services) and congratulations on your newly acquired title.


Is it appropriate to assign Mechanical Turk-type tasks as extra credit? By the end of the term, I always end up with quite a number of D and F students who want to improve their grades. Meanwhile, I usually have lots of menial tasks on hand during the summer, e.g. data entry, translations, proofreading, photo tagging, etc.

None of these tasks is work I am assigned or paid to do.
All of the tasks relate to my courses in some way and the resulting efforts would benefit the next group of students who attend my courses in the subsequent terms.
My school has no official "dead week", but naturally these tasks would occupy time that presumably the students would otherwise use for final exam preparations.

Is there any ethical or professional reason deeming it inappropriate to assign such tasks as optional extra credit, allowing students to move their 50 to a 60 or 60 to a 70 after ~10-15 hours of repetitive work?

As I see it, the grade in the class is supposed to measure a student's mastery of the material. Letting students improve their grade via unrelated menial work is not consistent with this standard and seems dangerously close to letting the students wash your car for extra credit.


Translating academic CV - translate names of papers/thesis? I have found links on academia-SE pertaining to translation of documents here and here, but those were not for a CV. Please tell me if my question is a duplicate.

I have just moved to France from an English-speaking country for a PhD. My French is not amazing currently; this is a work in progress and I'm going half-time on my research to take an intensive language course in May. However, in June I hope to attend a school which will be taught in French, and for this reason I need to translate my CV into French to apply.

Question:

When translating my CV from one language to another, should I:

translate the names of past works e.g. the name of my masters and bachelors dissertations? Or leave them in English, as they were submitted to my past university?
translate the names of publications (and leave the name of the journal as-is)?
leave the names of the university and the qualification as-is per link 1, or put in parentheses the French name equivalent of my prior qualification?

And mostly: Are the rules different between translating a CV and translating a publication/bibliography?

Things can be different in the humanities, but English is the language of science and, in a STEM field, you can reasonably expect whoever will read your CV to be able to understand the titles of your works (if they are in English).

However, if, as a courtesy to the reader, you wish to translate the titles anyway, don't eliminate the original titles, but put the two versions side-by-side.

Your last point is more critical:

  leave the names of the university and the qualification as-is per link 1, or put in parentheses the French name equivalent of my prior qualification?

The name of the university should be absolutely left as-is, unless
the university itself does not provide an official French
translation, which I doubt (on the other side, universities from non-English speaking countries sometimes issue statements about official English translations of their names or department names).
It's not always easy to find equivalences among qualifications in different countries, and it's almost impossible for grades. Thus, if you want to provide a translation, leave the original qualifications and grades too, so that the application committee can employ their equivalence rules, if they have any.


Why are most scientific articles locked behind a paywall? Can someone give me a legitimate, convincing argument as to why scientific papers should be locked behind subscriptions and paywalls? That unless you happen to be on a campus, you can't get view a manuscript without paying an often extortionate amount?

Once upon a time, before the internet existed, the only way to distribute scientific content to a worldwide audience was through print. There are obvious costs related to printed publications such as paper, ink, printing, distribution, etc. Commercial publishing houses were established, which took care of this task, as well as the editing, the type-setting, organizing the review process (mind that the reviewers are typically not paid, but they still have to be found, contacted, etc, and all of that also costs money in a pre-internet era).

Many of these commercial scientific journals gained a certain reputation over time, and it became attractive for scientists to try to publish in the highest valued journals. For the publishers it was (and is) attractive to maintain the journal's reputation (e.g. expressed in its impact factor, etc), in order to attract an abundance of high quality manuscripts, select the best ones, and keep a large audience.

This was (and to a large extent still is) the status quo when the internet arose. This is also basically the answer to your question.

Now with the internet, it is perfectly possible to reach a large worldwide audience without the costs of printed journals (e.g. ArXiv). Also, peer review could be organized in an alternative manner. However, the commercial publishers have a lot of interest in keeping the old business model alive, as it is the source of their revenue.

So why are things largely as they were 50 years ago? There are a couple of reasons for this. For one, there is the absence of a platform that fully replaces the ring of scientific journals, including a reliable peer review process (or accepted alternative). Furthermore, people tend to do what they are used to doing in the past, and senior researchers (the ones who take the decisions) are used to publish in the traditional venues, and teach the juniors to do the same. Lastly, many researchers are (at least partially) evaluated with respect to the reputation of the venues they publish in, which keeps the old and established journals alive.


How to cite multiple papers published in different years by the same authors in APA style? http://www.easybib.com/guides/citation-guides/apa-format/how-to-cite-a-parenthetical-citations-apa/

In APA style, we have to use ampersand(&) instead of 'and' when we cite multiple authors in the parenthesis.

Ex) This is the sentence (Smith & Williams, 1989).

When I cite two papers by the same author, should I use comma, or 'and' or ampersand?

(1) This is the sentence (Smith, 1989 & 1991).
(2) This is the sentence (Smith, 1989 and 1991).
(3) This is the sentence (Smith, 1989, 1991).

What if there are three or more papers?

(1) This is the sentence (Smith, 1989, 1991, & 1993).
(2) This is the sentence (Smith, 1989, 1991, and 1993).
(3) This is the sentence (Smith, 1989, 1991, 1993).

These are the examples given in the sixth edition of the APA manual. They are separated only by a comma.

Training materials are available (Department of Veterans Affairs, 2001, 2003)
Past research (Gogel, 1990, 2006, in press)


What is the equivalent of French Travaux Diriges (TD) in Anglo-Saxon Universities ? and who leads them? I made my predoctoral and doctoral studies in France. Even after a few postdoctoral years in Anglo-Saxon like Universities, I am still lost for some mapping between the French system and the non-French system, hence my question. (As a matter of fact, the French system may look from outside even more complicated if not obscure because the higher education splits between the Grandes Ecoles system and the University system. Whatever.)

In particular, I am wondering if a Lecturer in Math and/or Physics can lead TD like sessions in an Anglo-Saxon University ? I am looking for a position outside, not to say far away from, France.

Based on the discussion in comments and the Wikipedia article linked to above, TDs appear similar to a "recitation section" at some US universities. At my undergraduate university, the teaching assistant (TA) would get together with some subset of the students of the main lecture course who are assigned to that section and go over exercises assigned by the professor and cover or re-cover things from the lecture that were not very well understood by the students.


Paper rejection based on unfair review I have seen couple of questions related to rejection of submissions to conferences (CS). Coming to my case, this is my third rejection, I agree that first two were fair decisions as the paper was not clear and needed more thorough experiments. However in this third submission I have put in all possible effort to make it the best considering feedback from prior submissions.

I received initial comments from 4 reviewers with no scores and based on their comments it was on borderline. Since there was a rebuttal phase, I have sent a response clarifying issues raised by them. I received my final notification today and it was a 'reject' decision. The final reviews had comments from an additional reviewer. His comments are atrocious and unfair. He pointed out that he is rejecting the paper as some issue X was not addressed at all. However we have addressed X with a thorough evaluation in a subsection and results put up in a graph. I'm sure that this reviewer has not read it properly. If he raised his issue may be on the way we solved X, it would have been more appropriate.

I know that appealing to the PC chairs would be a futile effort but at the same time I do not want an unfair review. This feeling of rejection based on unfair review is depressing me. How do I go about it. I feel the only way out is to resubmit it for another conference in near future.

Please advise.

I feel the only way out is to resubmit it for another conference in near future.

That about sums it up. Negative reviews and rejections are hard to swallow. They are common in academia and you cannot let them get to you. The best thing to do is step away from the manuscript. If you need to cry, cry. If you need to scream, scream. After a while, generally for me a week or so, try and look at the reviews again. If they still piss you off, step away from them again. Once you can read the reviews objectively, start to tackle them. This might mean agreeing with the reviewer, or seeing where the reviewer got lost, or that the reviewer is simply a fool. Once you have taken everything from the reviews that will improve the manuscript, file it away and if necessary cry and scream again. Then resubmit the manuscript to the next conference.


Importance of supervisor support in being accepted for PhD this may seem like a silly question, as I know every institute is different. However, I was wondering how likely is acceptance to a PhD program when you have a supervisor on your side?
Background: I am applying for an incredible PhD in Ireland. I have very interested supervisors, who loved my proposal and I had two very promising meetings with them, one via Skype and one face to face. They offered me a desk and a new lab to set up, but they informed me it's now down to the academic council. They informed me it’s a formality and there is a high chance of acceptance unless something dramatic happens.
I will add I do have a weak undergraduate degree, but a strong masters which resulted in a publication. I also have worked as a lab technician in Italy and London so have a good bit of experience outside academia.
I may be overthinking a bit as I am waiting for feedback from the college, and starting to feel the nerves.

Unless you fail to meet the minimum requirements for admission, having an advisor who is willing to support your application and commit the resources to support you as a graduate student is generally sufficient to get admission in Europe (and at many schools in the US). Most of the time, even under “normal” circumstances, the people responsible for admissions will want such a statement of support from someone in the program before an offer is given.


Criticism on 1st Year PhD report In my institution I am required to pass a first year assessment for my PhD, which I have done so successfully and without any remedial action required.

However, the examiners report is quite critical. For example, it states that my talk was overly-technical for the audience and that my report assumed knowledge from the reader of many field specific terms. It also stated that I focused too much on my own theoretical interests and the report did not have a wide enough scope. It also listed several improvements that could be made to the report, although these were minor imo.

Some areas were good, for example my viva performance was quite satisfactory and apparently I'm a highly motivated and creative student. However, the amount of space given to criticism was proportionally much higher.

Should I be worried about this?

I think that the criticisms which you describe are within the scope of constructive criticism. While you should not ignore them, they are not in themselves indicating any kind of "failure".

Depending on your discipline, and on the particular supervisor(s), feedback on progress reports of this nature can vary greatly. Some supervisors only write comments if they have serious concerns; others, who are basically satisfied, may still wish to give detailed suggestions for improvement. So it is difficult for strangers on this site to offer conclusive advice; you should probably approach your supervisor or some kind of departmental "Postgraduate Tutor" if you are worried about this report.


How critical is TA experience in grad school if I want to pursue a career in academia? I got accepted into my dream program at one of the best universities in the US, and I'll be working under an excellent, very well known advisor whose interests align very well with mine. However, since I will likely be getting a multi-year fellowship, and due to how this specific program is structured, it seems that I won't be getting much TA experience, if any at all.

I love teaching and enjoy it very much, and I already have 2 years of TA experience as an undergrad. How much would it affect my future TT applications if I have a (hopefully) solid research record but not that much TA experience? I don't want to turn down this opportunity but might have to if it turns out I won't get the TA experience I want/need.

EDIT: My field is applied physics/electrical engineering/materials science (very interdisciplinary research area so in theory I could be hired by any of these departments). I hope to work at an R1 school.

Two years is probably enough, especially since your two years' of TAing went so well.  You may want to concentrate on demonstrating yourself as a researcher now.  However, if you have time to spare, I'm sure you could offer your services to the person in your department who coordinates TAs.  As I probably don't need to tell you, you'd want to keep your advisor in the loop.

Consider that a fellow or research assistant is sometimes pressed into service to lecture in place of the advisor in case s/he has to miss one or more classes.

When you feel ready, you could expand on that idea, and ask someone (probably your advisor, but it could be someone else too) if you could be a guest lecturer for a particular topic in a particular class.


How to get recommendation letters for graduate admissions when my social anxiety makes it difficult for me to make connections? I understand references make a huge difference when applying to graduate programs.

Over my years in university, I have spoken to professors about projects / exams / papers. I definitely make use of their office hours.  I also go to a top school and am set to graduate with high honors. I am an extremely determined and motivated person. Although I have made use of the available resources, this is an extremely difficult/rigorous school and thus very few people achieve anywhere near a 4.0. My cGPA is a 3.5 and my GPA over the last 2 years is a 3.7. I have also been involved in a lot of organizations related to my field of interest/research. Including, volunteer on three projects at a renown research hospital and research for an undergraduate science magazine.

However, I have severe social anxiety. I understand this is “no excuse” in academia for not making connections, but it is extremely difficult for me to be around other people. It is severe. It has been a huge step for me to even go to the office hours (which I am proud of myself for doing), but I have not stood out from the crowd and I doubt any remember my name. I have never wanted anything more (graduate school), and yet my mental illness is a severe restriction on my life. I have been seeing a psychiatrist and have made huge improvements since high school (when the social anxiety became severe).

Is it necessary that I only acquire references from professors with whom I have developed a close relationship? Should I discuss these struggles in my application?

I can see this is a difficult spot for you.  After all, to be good at your work doesn't necessarily require you to love interacting with people, but to get into the field you require letters of recommendation, which are best achieved by... interacting with people.

A few thoughts:

Are you more comfortable communicating over email?  If you can combine a good email correspondence with good course work, I think there's a path to overcoming this.  You can easily email your professors (using the less verbose style of your revised OP!) and ask about graduate school, research interests, and finally letters of recommendation.
Have you taken classes with the same professors repeatedly?  This is one piece of advice I give to undergraduates a lot.  Each good semester with a professor helps reinforce the positive impression.  Assuming you still have one semester left before finishing, I would prioritize doing this again.  Speaking for myself, student's names I only see once are often quickly forgotten unless I've gotten to know them in person well, but student's names I see repeatedly start to stand out regardless, especially if they've done solid work.
Related to 2, have you taken only very large classes with the professors you want letters from?  If so, and if it's possible, you might try to get into a smaller section they're teaching even if it's of less (but not unrelated) interest to you academically.
You would be surprised how far showing up to office hours with good questions will get you, I think.  You said you've managed to overcome your anxiety enough to do this, and I don't think you should underestimate the benefit.

In summary, find alternative ways to build relationships with the professors, through repeated interactions and electronic communication.  You don't have to be chumming it up regularly with your letter writers in person to get good letters of recommendation, though even the few visits to office hours you have managed will have likely helped.  Also make sure you read the posts others have linked in the comments regarding mental health issues and PhD admissions.

Good luck!


Should I mention in my letter of recommendation that my student has bad handwritting? A student I taught is really a good student but writes like he is writing with his wrong hand.

The college where I teach requires every one to administer a subjective final exam for 60% of the grade. Its a 3 hour exam and people usually fillout a 30 page booklet. I know many lecturers gave him bad grades because they were too impatient to read his answers they gave him B+ or a B when he deserves at-least a A. I know this cause I taught him Data structures using C and he performed very well while he got a mere B grade in a C language course.

Should I mention this in my LOR or will mentioning this have some bad consequence for him.

I can easily grade 3 students in the time I grade his one paper. So I can imagine how some universities could see him as a liability.

I would not mention this no, this should not have any consequence to the students application, it may be a little out of place. It would be worth advising the student to inform any future places of study about his handwriting he may be able to get some alternate support with regard to exams.

I would not see this student as a liability, just maybe needing a little extra support in this area, it is fair for an examiner to not spend ages marking one students paper due to bad handwriting, so long as they give it a fair go and a good effort.


Unprofessional to write (in a paper) that something is "really cool"? Is it unprofessional to write (in a paper) that something is "really cool", for example, when describing a colliding black hole simulation?

It sounds unprofessional and unscientific. Imagine also your readers in 30 years, what will they think? They may not even take the paper seriously. Indeed, current potential readers may not take the paper seriously.

What would you think if you read an old paper that describes a black hole simulation as "groovy"?


Requesting feedback from a postdoctoral application I have recently applied to a postdoctoral position, I reached the interview stage (which took place by video conferencing with the group leader and a postdoc), and was ultimately rejected.

I would like to ask for some brief feedback so that I might be able to improve my future applications, but the only email exchanges I have had were with the HR/recruitment people during the application process (it is a nameless 'recruitment' office that got back to me with the outcome of the application).

Which route would be best for asking for feedback: -

(i) email the HR/recruitment people to ask if the group leader would be willing to provide some brief feedback

(ii) email the group leader directly (as I have no previous email contact with them, I would need to find the email address from their website)

Some pitfalls I can see to asking the HR people are: (a) that they may just not pass on the message if they are busy; (b) it could be more work for the group leader if not done directly with them; (c) they could ask the group leader in person who then forgets; (d) I am also a little worried that the HR office may pass on the message in a not very kind way (e.g. "X candidate wants to know if you can send feedback" - rather than the more polite email I could send directly thanking them for their time); (e) if there is any policy of not allowing panels to provide feedback.

Some pitfalls I can see to asking the group leader directly are: (a) it may not be taken very well since there is an online system in place and a recruitment person who manages the application process; (b) they may be even more busy than usual and dislike the direct interruption; (c) as I don't have their email address I would have to find this online, which doesn't look very casual - I would prefer not to come across as someone angrily looking for an explanation for why they have been rejected, I am genuinely just trying to improve my future chances of finding a position.

I am sure there are many other factors I haven't considered.

Finally, please can someone suggest any tips they may have for writing a request for feedback? What format of email would be least irritating for an interviewer aside from just being brief? Does anyone have direct experience of this (from either side)? Even anecdotes of things you may have received in the past that were particularly good/bad may be helpful.

Asking for feedback on your application from someone who has turned you down is generally unlikely to yield useful information, and it may annoy them by making them choose between saying something unsatisfying or not replying.  Here are some of the issues that have run through my mind when I've been asked for feedback (which is not common but happens every once in a while):

I wonder whether I'm dealing with someone argumentative or difficult, who will try to dispute my explanation or change my mind, use the feedback as evidence in an accusation of misbehavior or dishonesty, or misquote me to others.  Even a perfectly reasonable applicant might feel upset if they re-apply next year and get rejected again after having felt they addressed all the issues I raised.
In most cases there's nothing objectively wrong with an application.  All I can say is "your application was good but we liked someone else's better", which is not informative.
Comparisons with other applications are crucial, particularly with the successful application, but all the details of other applications are confidential.  It's difficult to explain why we liked someone else's application better without revealing anything that isn't already public knowledge.  There won't be a simple quantitative explanation ("you should have published two more papers in high-prestige journals"), but rather a subtle qualitative comparison that is difficult to summarize in the abstract.
Furthermore, letters of recommendation are one of the most important parts of an application, and their contents should not be revealed to the applicant.  It's tough to give useful feedback without touching on the letter contents, especially because most concerns I might mention would at least make it clear that the letters didn't resolve these concerns.
In some cases, I can identify a problem with an application that is not based on letters of recommendation or direct comparisons with other applicants.  However, these problems are often not easily fixable (e.g., "we just didn't find your paper topics interesting").  Pointing them out feels like adding insult to injury.  It might be useful for the applicant to hear that they never had a chance at this job, but I don't want to be the one to say so.  The best case scenario is that the applicant always remembers me as the person who delivered this insulting news, and the worst case scenario is that I make the committee look foolish if we misjudged the applicant.

It's only in rare cases that I have genuinely useful feedback, something fixable that I can ethically reveal to the applicant and that might make a real difference in the future.  (This usually indicates that either the applicant's advisor is negligent or the applicant is not listening to advice.)  I've never had someone ask for feedback in this situation, although it might happen someday.  In a few cases I've tried to communicate this information through a backchannel, such as one of the applicant's letter writers.

In your case, there's almost certainly nothing seriously wrong with your application on paper, or you wouldn't have been interviewed.  Assuming you didn't do anything dreadful during the interview, you presumably fall into the second case above (your application was good but another was even better), and I doubt anyone will be able to give you satisfying or useful feedback.

If you decide to ask for feedback, I'd recommend indicating that you are aware there might be little or nothing to say.  For example, you could send a thank you e-mail and include something along the lines of "I realize that you may have no constructive feedback to offer beyond that another candidate was an even better fit for the position.  However, should you happen to have any advice for how I can strengthen future applications, I would greatly appreciate it."  This relieves the pressure by giving them an easy way to decline to say anything substantive, while bringing up the topic just in case.  I don't think there's any need to do this, or that it is likely to result in useful feedback, but it can't hurt.


Ethics of making students purchase lecture notes I have a professor who has published his lecture notes in the form of a book. The only way to get access to his lecture notes is to purchase them from an off-campus bookstore. To me, this seems like a highly unethical, if not illegal, practice. Shouldn't students have access to lecture notes as part of the tuition fees that they have paid?

A common question seems to be whether we are actually required to purchase the notes. To clarify, he routinely skips teaching chapters in class and asks them to read them from the notes on our own. So yes, we have to buy the notes if we want to be taught the entire syllabus.

Edit: The notes are different from the textbook. The textbook is not really needed, while the notes are fully needed. I'm seeing people confusing the two and claiming that many professors prescribe their own textbooks for the courses. My question is to whether access to notes should be free and universal for every student in the lecture.

(This answer is based on US university practices.  I don't know if it is directly applicable to Canada, but the two systems generally tend to be similar.)

It's hard to be sure, but this might be a practice that's old-fashioned but not unethical.

First of all:

  Shouldn't students have access to lecture notes as part of the tuition fees that they have paid?

Not necessarily.  If the course requires materials that have a non-negligible cost, then typically students will be required to pay for them separately.  This includes textbooks, lab supplies, and, as in this case, custom-printed "course packets" of notes or other reading material.

Now, normally the university has its own service for printing course packets and selling them "at cost" through the university bookstore.  However, it sometimes happens that professors decide that some other bookstore or print shop can produce the packets better or cheaper, and so they have them made and sold there.  This may or may not be technically allowed by university rules, but it may be tolerated, especially if it's actually saving money for the students.  Note that in such cases, the professor normally doesn't receive any of the price of the packet; it all goes to the print shop.

So this isn't a completely unheard-of system for distributing printed material.

You could certainly ask the professor why they've chosen to do it this way.  My guess is you'll get a response like "I used to use the university bookstore, but the packets were always late / fell apart at the binding / ran out of stock / cost twice as much."  So you could try and complain about the use of an unofficial distributor, but be careful what you wish for.

It raises the question of why the notes have to be distributed in printed form at all, instead of electronically (in which case there should be no costs at all).  I can imagine this happening if the professor is very old-fashioned and  hasn't ever realized that this would be better, or if the notes don't exist in electronic form (e.g. they are handwritten or typed on a typewriter), or just "has always done it this way".  But it would be reasonable to suggest, either directly to the professor or in a course evaluation, that they consider electronic distribution.


Meaning of "recommend with reservation" In my reference my tutor has put down that he recommends me with reservation.
Is that a good thing? What does "recommend with reservation" mean?

Thanks everyone for your help.
I spoke to my referee and he realized he had made a typo. I have contacted the universities and told them. They have given me an email address for my referee to submit his reference again which I have passed on.
The rest of the reference letter was amazing and I am sure that the admission tutor would have picked it up as a typo and would have rung up my referee.

No, it's not a good thing. With reservation means that there is a some reason not to recommend you.

However,  "recommend with reservation" is an odd turn of phrase. I suspect it is a typographical error and should read  "recommend without reservation" - which is a good thing. If this is a typo, it is a seriously unfortunate one and you should definitely ask your recommender about this (particularly if you don't know what his reservation could be).


How to deal with incompatible labmate? I'm having trouble with one of my labmates that is severely impacting my work. He is a more senior student than me, but only has been in my lab for two months since my advisor came from a different university last year, and this student didn't come initially (he was supposed to graduate at the old institution but didn't).

No one else in the lab works on similar research to me, so when this student came I thought it was nice to have someone around who was experienced in similar research topics to talk to and potentially collaborate with. Right away he told me he planned to publish many papers with me while he's here, and then wrote me up a research plan. My advisor is quite hands off, and he has not mentioned to me that I am supposed to work closely with this student. I like my advisor's hands off approach, and certainly didn't ask another PhD student to write up plans for me. Even though I am a junior PhD student I am very self-directed and thus far my advisor has mostly let me dictate the research problems I work on.

Very quickly, my relationship with this other student has deteriorated to the point where I can't even go to the lab if I want to get any work done (and since I'm in engineering, most of my work is tied to my lab). He talks nonstop. And I do mean nonstop. If I'm trying to work (not paying attention to him), he interrupts me constantly to talk at me, and it is rarely work or research-related. I usually come in early in the morning, and he comes in in the afternoon. As soon as he comes in he starts telling me stories, about his work, about his childhood, his parents, anything. It doesn't stop. When I try to leave after being in lab for 12 hours (say, 8am-8pm) he stops me and criticizes me for leaving "early" (even when I point out if he works from 5pm to 3am it's actually less time in the lab than I've spent), saying I'm not a real PhD student if I don't work all night.

He has decided he will be a coauthor on all of my papers (without my invitation, and without my advisor's input), but he has not done anything. Initially I tried to meet to work out a plan for some experiments, and he didn't show up to some of them and at the others just ended up talking at me. He also touches me on the arm constantly and will stand behind me when I'm at my computer and rub my shoulders. He flatters me constantly, calls me "cute", says I'm going to be "famous" for my work. I don't see him behave this way with anyone else in the lab.

This is a lot of complaining, but the main reason I'm worried is 1) I haven't gotten anything done in the 2 months since he showed up; and 2) I know my advisor highly values students who can work well together (the older students said he fired a couple of students at the old university for refusing to work with one of the other students).

What do I do? I want to talk to my advisor but don't want to come across like I'm difficult to work with. I'm in a tough situation because this other student is more senior and has a long history with my advisor. I have immense respect and gratitude towards my advisor, but I have only been in the lab for a year (after leaving a toxic lab with a terrible advisor) and haven't yet established a good track record of research results. I've been working at home and hiding out in other labs to try to get my work done, but I can't stay away from the lab forever since I have to build stuff and run experiments. I'm worried my advisor is going to fire me for lack of results (another thing this student tells me constantly).

Sorry for the long rant, but what should I do? Should I try to talk to my advisor? Should I disappear until I have good results to show so he can't fire me?

You need to have a discussion with your advisor about the situation, if it is as untenable as you claim.

Before you do, however, may I suggest that you consider rescheduling your day, if possible? You said your labmate does not show up until 5 pm in the afternoon, while you arrive at 8 am. That gives you from 8 am until 5 pm to work on your project without your labmate hanging around. I would plan my day to spend as much of the time between 8 am and 5 pm in the lab, and then conveniently "disappearing" to the library between 5 pm and whenever you want to leave. Use this time to catch up on journal reading, emails, and any other tasks that you otherwise wouldn't have to work on because you're busy in the lab. This may give you the time to be productive and get some results to show your value, if you think that's a concern you need to deal with before speaking to your advisor.

The other issue is dealing with your labmate deciding to be a co-author. That's actually the bigger issue here: unless your labmate makes substantial contributions to your paper, he shouldn't be a co-author. Moreover, he shouldn't be deciding unilaterally that he will be a co-author. It's your research, and you should have some say in who collaborates with you. Now it's possible that your advisor might want to get your colleague "out the door" and might ask you to collaborate on a paper or two. However, if that's the case, that should be something to determine via discussions with everybody involved. [Note that the question is "nominally" about undergraduates, but the advice there applies to any research situation.


How much does participation in online predictive challenges (DREAM, Kaggle, Innocentive) improve your resume? I'm getting curious about all these online predictive challenges going on, such as DREAM, Kaggle and Innocentive.
Surely they all are good occasions to work on new projects and new ideas, to know other collaborators, to get important training about science, and to possibly win some money

And also they could represent a good point in one's resume. So I was wondering: in job application processes (in both industry and academia), do candidate selectors care about the participation of the candidate in any of these challenges?

If yes, how much?

If no, why not?

At the very least, it shows you are actively interested in the subject.  Participation can be enough to show you are more enthusiastic about the subject than other applicants.  It is also helpful for entry level data scientist positions where experience isn't necessarily expected, but appreciated. If you have won any competitions, or if you are at the 'Master' Kaggle level, definitely include it.