Level of detail when reviewing the language of a low quality paper I am currently reviewing a computer science conference paper. I like to give constructive feedback both related to the content as well as for language issues, such as typos or grammatical mistakes.

The paper I'm currently reviewing has significant language flaws. Mentioning each and every typo, wrong word order, and grammar issue would take me about an hour.  The paper will likely be rejected anyway, so I am not sure if these language suggestions will even be used. It would be different if the paper were likely to be accepted, because improving the language would further improve the quality of the paper.

Does it make sense to give thorough and detailed feedback on a poorly written paper's language quality in a review if the paper will likely be rejected?

From Alan Jay Smith's The Task of the Referee:

  Refereeing a paper can require considerable time and effort; don't waste that effort on a detailed critique of a badly flawed paper that can never
  be made publishable. Finding one or more fatal and uncorrectable flaws excuses the referee from checking all subsequent details.

The trick is to determine what is indeed "fatal". If you believe that your corrections have some non-trivial chance of improving a published paper at some point (possibly in a less-competitive venue), go ahead and make them, as you are contributing something to the body of literature. Otherwise, do not waste your time.

As an addendum, you are not a copyeditor, but a scientific reviewer. Ways to deal with papers with many language/grammar issues include:

If grammatical errors are very numerous, point out classes of errors, instead of individual ones.
Focus on errors which actually obscure scientific meaning, and let ones which are merely poor or nonstandard style go.


I left the acknowledgment part in a double blind review paper submission, what can i do? I forgot to remove the acknowledgment when i submitted my paper to a conference with a double-blind review conference. And the acceptance notice would be 4 months from now. I think it's useless to contact the chairs asking for re-submission as in top conferences they are not flexible.
But if i can be sure that the paper will be rejected then i can send to to another upcoming conference in during that time. But i do not want to deliberately revoke my paper from the conference!
BTW, the acknowledgment part shows my affiliation.

Send an email to the conference program chair right away and ask. The better conferences will be honest with you, either way. The answer could be no revision, but then you could move on.

These mistakes happen.


Submission of a part of a thesis to a conference? I just submitted a part of my thesis to a conference. But in the document, although in fact it is a paper to be submitted to a journal, I have mistakenly left a few words as “in this thesis, my thesis,.. etc”.  Because of the deadline and some timing constraints, I could not find time to replace them.
Do you think it’s a bad thing to upload a paper with thesis words in it? Would it be a negative consideration in terms of the perspectives of the scientific committee?

It certainly doesn't look good, but it really depends on the quality of the rest of the paper.

If it's an excellent paper (clear accept), then it will probably be accepted and have a suggestion that those occurrences be removed
If it's a weak paper (clear reject) then it won't make things worse.

The problems is if it's a borderline paper. It certainly seems sloppy to leave them in, as it's a clear indicator that you did not proof read your conference version before submitting, which reflects quite negatively. So if you're already on the borderline, this could tip the balance towards reject when you would have otherwise been accepted.

That said, this is highly dependent on the reviewers, the program committee, the quality of the conference, etc.

Regardless, it's certainly not career ending: it should not have consequences beyond possible rejection from the conference.


Publishing without an affiliation while having one There are many questions here about publishing without an affiliation. They have in common the situation that authors do not have an affiliation to use (for example they are unemployed). My question is different, an author has an affiliation, thus:

Are there downsides in publishing a paper without affiliation while working at a university? The question is general (including legal, ethical, and other aspects, such as possible career repercussions in future at the current or future affiliation).

The reason I am asking is that I know of a case of a person who was leaving a university for industry. The paper was written and accepted during his tenure at the university. The work has nothing to do with the new company. The paper was accepted just days before his new job, so he put the affiliation of the company (the reasons were also personal because he was not on good terms with the university), without the one from the university. The university was not mentioned anywhere. The company does not do any research, hence having a paper with their affiliation was irrelevant for them and for the job. I am wondering what would happen if instead he decided not to put any affiliation.

Some information:

The work has been done in private time without resources from the university (theoretical stuff that does not require anything except time and a computer, so no equipment, funds, and similar). The only resources I can think of are paywalled papers accessed from the campus network.
There is no conflict of interest, and the publication doesn’t conflict with the any work or policy at the university.

I cannot answer to each aspect you are interested in (legal, ethical, and other aspects) but I would like to mention some general aspects one should consider:

Most universities have publication guidelines which includes a paragraph about affiliations, see e.g. page 38 of the Guidelines for  research  integrity of ETH Zurich.
University prestiges and university rankings are partly based upon publication output. Some rankings use Web of Science and a publication is not assigned to a university if the affiliation is not given in the publication.

As you mentioned that the work was completely written in private time, the situation is extraordinary. I'd suggest to talk to the professor and the university administration. At least the author should give credit to the university (library) for the literature supply.


What's involved in reviewing an article? I've just been invited, for the first time, to review an article. The request was somewhat of a surprise to me, as I'm still a PhD student and I'd always thought that reviewers were generally PhD graduates. Judging by the article's abstract, I am moderately familiar with the subject area, as my master's thesis was on a similar topic. The article would appear in an online journal and would be relatively short (6-8 pages). I assume that my review would be anonymous.

I'm unsure whether to accept the invitation as I'm quite busy with my research.

If I agree to review the paper, what will be expected of me? How much time can I expect this to take?

Reviewing peer articles is part of a researcher's job, it's good you get to review an article, the fact you built your master's thesis on it probably means you can have a relevant opinion.

A review typically takes half a day in my experience, could be more depending on how familiar you are with the material, and you were probably given this review by a senior colleague that is part of the PC and will read your review before it goes to the actual journal.

Just read it slowly, note your "small comments" on the fly (typos, language etc separately) and then try to give an overall view of whether you liked the paper (e.g. an easy way is to make a small 2/3 line summary of each section as you understood it) and the gist of it as you see it. A review isn't much more than that. Being constructive in criticisms is a good practice

So, imho this is part of the job, and you should take the time to do it. It is experience building to review other people's papers.


What would be the best way to convince a professor to waive late submission penalties? I am a grad level student and I am completing my last course this semester.
The professor is reducing our grade by 20%/day if we submit our assignment late.
It is a lot. For example, my grade is 18/20 and he reduced it by 4 because I submitted it a day late. My total GPA is A+. It is a significant amount of grade that he is taking off. This will ruin my grade.

I understand that a late submission is not good. Having said that, I have always been trying my best to submit them on time. His assignments were more difficult than what he was teaching us during lectures and I always need to study extra books and material to solve problems.

I was thinking of sending an email and asking for him to waive the penalties. Especially now due to COVID it is somehow cruel to enforce these penalties.

What would be the best way to convince a professor to waive late submission penalties?

Reason for late submission: Due to my research internship, I have been working part-time in a company in another city (not the city that the university is located). So it was pretty hard for me to keep up with the deadline. Before COVID, I had to even commute in between cities to attend classes and that drained me.

Edited: I wrote this letter, please feel free to edit or add more details.

  Dear zyx,
     I am writing regarding the late-submission penalties.

  Due to my research internship and displacement, It was pretty hard for me to keep up with the deadlines.

  During this time I had to commute in between cities and I had only slid to follow up the course and solve assignments that I can save them for submitting my assignments earlier.

  Not accessing the in-person classes made me spend hours studying other references to solve my assignments.

  So I was wondering if you could please waive late submission penalties?

  Best regards,

  XYZ

Professors will say no by default to all such requests, but a lot of the time they secretly want to say yes, so you need to help them help you by providing all the relevant context, being logical and reasonable, and generally convince them that you are worthy of their attention and understanding.
Here is my attempt at a draft email.

Dear Professor xyz,
my name is ZYX, I’m a student in your Programming for Programmers class. I submitted the first class project one day late on February 17 and as a result you imposed a 20% late submission penalty, which reduced my project grade from 18/20 to 14/20.
I know that this penalty is in the course policies and accept that there is a good reason for such penalties and that you have the right to decide such things. But I wonder if you considered that such a high penalty may be unreasonably harsh? I am an excellent student and have worked very hard to maintain an overall GPA of A+ in the program. Because of the penalty it seems almost certain that my final grade for the class will end up lower than what my performance would merit without the penalty, which in turn would lower my overall GPA and future academic and career chances. The consequences seem disproportionate relative to the one time mistake of submitting an assignment late by just one day.
I therefore want to ask respectfully if you might consider waiving or at least reducing the penalty for this late submission.
I do sincerely apologize for the late submission, and for not contacting you in advance of the deadline to request an extension (something that in hindsight I obviously should have done when I realized I was going to be late). Normally I am very good at keeping up with my workload, but back in February, because of a research internship I was doing at [name of company], which required me to commute back and forth between [name of city 1] and [name of city 2] and took up a lot of my time and energy, my commitments ended up piling up in an unexpected way, which caused me to fall a little behind and miss the deadline. I nonetheless worked diligently to catch up and ended up managing to submit what I think you’ll agree is a high quality project the next day.
Thanks for your consideration. I hope you understand my anxiety and do not think less of me for making this request. In this difficult period when students like me are facing an uncertain job market and other unusual difficulties related to the COVID-19 crisis, we could use a bit of leniency.
Regards,
ZYX


How to proceed when you are coordinating a project among several research groups and they do not contribute to the progress of the project I am principal investigator in some project that involves other research groups from other countries. When I was writing the proposal, I asked them if they would like to joint the project, and they agreed. I wrote everything, all paperwork, etc. Now, 6 months after the project has been officially started, they are not contributing in any way to the project, only attending project meetings where they talk about their universities, but nothing about the project. I am really annoyed because the situation. From my point of view they should get involved, as my group does. Before asking them directly for the last time in probably in an unpolite way if they will do their assigned part, how would you proceed here?

The path to proceed likely depends strongly on four factors:

Does the project have clear and specific milestones in the contract that the collaborators are failing to meet?
Are the others subcontractors to your institution or independently contracted?
What type of oversight is being exerted by the funding agency, and how is the relationship with the responsible program manager?
Are you willing to burn a bridge?

Typically, as lead PI you are responsible for the execution of the entire project, not just your portion, and therefore have a responsibility to your funding agency to appropriately manage your subcontracting collaborators.  If the funding agency has instead decided to execute independent contracts to each of the PIs in the grant, then it is largely out of your hands and there is little that you can (or should) do.

Assuming you are lead PI, then if the contract (not the proposal) has requirements in its statement of work that they are not meeting by the given milestone deadlines, then you have much more leverage and a clear case for a "shape up or get defunded" conversation.  Similarly, if the funding agency is exerting strong oversight (e.g., in the USA, DARPA often threatens de-funding unless you meet strong milestones by particular frequent deadlines or regularly outperform other research teams; NSF has a much looser oversight process that often just wants to see that something interesting is being accomplished) then you have a strong case that their failure to perform is directly imperiling the whole research project.  In either case, as lead PI you have both the right and the responsibility to cancel their funding and redirect it to better accomplish the research tasks that you are being held accountable for.

If the contract doesn't have accountable goals and you aren't being held accountable for their behavior, however, then it is more just a moral offense to you, and you have much less basis on which to legitimately defund your colleagues.  Instead, you might look at it as a lesson for the future on writing more specific contracts that can give you the leverage you need to deal with non-performers.

Now if you do defund your colleagues, this has a high likelihood of burning bridges.  If you didn't trust them to shape up, why would you want to work with them again?  If they feel you defunded them unfairly, why would they want to work with you again?
If the mandate comes from the funding agency program manager rather than you, that may make the defunding somewhat more acceptable by making it "not your fault," but your colleagues may still see it that way.  Thus, if the relationship is more important than the money being lost, you may then want to just write this off as a lesson learned and plan more carefully for the future.

In short: there are no easy paths, but which one to walk depends on the balance of relationship value vs. accountability in your contract with your funder and your colleagues.


How to cite the original source of an algorithm and a secondary source that provides a clearer description of the algorithm? I had a situation where for a particular algorithm, it first shows up in a paper [1].
This makes [1] a primary source.
I found [1] a bit hard reading when it came to describing the implementation and fine details of the algorithm. But it was good at describing why the algorithm was needed.

I found another work, which was a masters thesis [2].
It included a step by step mathematical working from what was in [1] (and [2] cited [1] appropriately).
It helped me a lot. I could have done the mathematical working myself, but didn't.

So I am writing a brief summery of the Algorithm:

  The {{Foo}} algorithm allows the {{Bar}} problem to be solved [1]. It
  is based on the fact that {{Equation}} holds under {{Conditions}} [2].
  {{My own explanation of {{Foo}} here}}

Is this correct?

Something like this should be OK:

  The Bar problem can be solved using the Foo algorithm [1], which is based on
  the fact that Equation holds under Conditions. A useful and detailed exposition of the Foo algorithm and how to implement it in practice can be found in [2].


Should I call my adviser by her first name? I have worked with my adviser for a few months as a graduate student. Everyone, including her other graduate students, seems to call her by her first name. She never expressed a preference to me, so I've been calling her "Dr. Smith". She signs her emails with her first name.

I am worried that I am being awkward. I don't mind calling her "Dr. Smith", but during meetings where other students are present, it would be jarring to call her "Dr. Smith" while other students use her first name in the same conversation. So far, I have managed to avoid this issue by choosing my words very strategically to avoid directly addressing my adviser at all.

I don't wish my adviser to think that I am making some sort of statement by being unnecessarily formal. On the other hand, I don't wish to appear too informal either. Apart from that, once you've addressed someone by their title for several months, unceremoniously switching to their first name out of the blue seems like it would be very strange.

Is there any tactful way of resolving this predicament, besides waiting and hoping for the adviser to express a preference? I am in the US.

Excuse me, do you prefer me to call you Dr Smith or Ellen?

A polite question will solve all your doubts.


Unclear terms: Statement of Purpose, Academic Statement and Personal Statement I'm so confused. I can't distinguish between them. It seems to me that sometimes the statement of purpose (SOP) is the personal statement (PS), sometimes it is not the PS, and by the definition I'll give below, academic statement (AS) is the SOP.
Is the SOP a PS (or not)?
I think most people will agree that the SOP is another name for the PS, and you only need one statement beside your CV and research proposal (if necessary) to be written. That explains why in Academia.SE, we only have a sop tag but no PS tag or AS tag. And most of the time I see people ask about a PS question under the SOP tag, and accept the answer only says about the SOP. Except these two questions, where the posters notice that SOP is not the PS (I find them when searching for "personal statement" "statement of purpose"):

Academic Statement of Purpose vs NSF Personal Statement
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34698/how-to-best-answer-the-question-please-provide-us-your-personal-statement-why

To be clear, the first question asks about academic statement of purpose and only localize to the NSF Fellowship application. But the (sole) answer only discusses the SOP, so I understand that ASOP is the other name of the SOP (don't know if it also be the AS as well).
Is the SOP the Academic Statement?
Now, in the announcement for a fellowship I intend to apply for, it requires me to have both an academic statement and a personal statement. It defines them like this:

ACADEMIC AND PERSONAL STATEMENTS. Each applicant must prepare a one-page Academic Statement and a one-page Personal Statement. The first essay addresses the applicant’s academic and scientific background and preparation, previous research, and a description of the study and research proposed at a U.S. graduate school department. The Personal Statement includes information about the applicant’s background, practical experience, special interests, and career goals, with some attention to plans after degree completion. Applicants should also address how they might represent Vietnam as students in the United States and how they might represent the United States and contribute to Vietnam upon return.

More explicit details are provided in the link. Based on the definition of the AS, I think that it is the SOP as we widely know (or at least is this SOP). If then, what is the PS in this case? Is it the place for the "my first trembling steps" stuff?
Or, does the aggregation of AS and PS in this situation equate the SOP as we widely know, and the recruiters just want to make it explicit?

Your application is a chance for you to sell yourself, and prove to the admissions committee that they should give you money to do research.  Your personal statement should address your "background, practical experience, special interests, and career goals," but only in ways that prove you are a good researcher.

You shouldn't waste space talking about your childhood dreams, because usually those say nothing about your research potential.  Instead you should highlight parts of your personal history that would make someone want to hire you for their lab.


Depressed PhD student in USA, wanting to quit I am an international PhD student in Industrial Engineering at one of the average university. I have completed one year of my study. I already have an MBA from India. So it made sense to do PhD as I was very enthusiastic about this. I have good GRE scores, good academic history. I got TA position and funding for my first year. So I eagerly joined. But the moment I came here, I see new things each day: favoritism, racism. All the PhD students are made to complete 9 courses (just like MS students except the core courses), which doesn't make sense as I already had my masters. I got scholarships for 4 courses each semester but was forced to take only 3 courses each semester citing work pressure. Now I have got an RA position, but this doesn't have anything to do with actual research. I am made to sit in a local company with the workload of a full-time employee. This position is not in anyway related to my research proposal or dissertation topic. For my research, I will have to work concurrently with this RA position.

This is not I wanted. I wanted to work on my PhD in a lab, on the real problems. And not work for a company on shitty stipend and made to work as a regular employee. Moreover, my adviser is short-tempered, humiliates his students, yells, and bully. I have made up my mind to not be trapped in this environment for 4 more years.

What can I do now? I want to at least get a masters as I have a loan back in my country so, can't go back. I have three more courses left. Whom should I talk to? Can they force me to do PhD? or if I quit with MS, can they ask me for full payment of fees? Can they not allow me to quit with MS?

I can’t go and ask dept. secretary because my advisor will get to know my intentions from her. For MS we need to complete 9 courses plus thesis. I have so far done 6 courses. I plan to take 3 courses this semester. All the PhD students are required to do this coursework even if they already have MS degree from USA. The MS students have to do 9 courses (2 doctoral level) from a certain list. The phd students have to do 9 courses(4 doctoral level). These doctoral level courses have the core subjects as prerequisites. The department head is very shrewd favoring a certain section of students. Even for such MS students, he waived off GRE scores and core courses. I know when he will get to know my intentions, he will try to block my graduation and scare me. I am just worried that after completing all courses, they don’t block my MS.

Thanks in advance!

Help is very likely available. Consider contacting a neutral group at your university. Such groups typically include:

the omsbuds office/ ombudsman
the PHD student's association
the student government
counseling services
international students services
the graduate school

Your own university may have different groups.  Try some google searches, such as "(university name) help graduate student neutral". Start the conversation by stating you are looking for advice and alternatives to your present situation. Up front, specifically ask which parts of the conversation are confidential, or not. Usually, for example, anything involving physical harm requires the person you speak with to report.

When meeting, put together a short narrative that frames your problem. Consider in advance what you want, and what your questions are. Also be open to options of which you have not thought. Realize that most of these groups will be more likely to give advice on how to move to a more tenable situation than they are to wade in and fix the problems that exist. Some may, however, offer to facilitate discussions, and advise you on how to negotiate.

Finally, realize that the university has a stake in your success. Within reason, they will likely work to make things right.


latex and word template for conference submission I have seen in some conferences that they usually put two kinds of templates, one in Latex and the other one in word. The question that I have, and is because I will be on a conference committee in the next couple of months, is how to deal with the differences of fonts between both templates.

For what I know the Latex fonts are usually not found in Word, so how to do when one send the articles to print the proceedings. Should one person convert from Word to Latex or the Latex template should be made in a way that resembles the Word fonts?

Sort of easy question, but I have not been involved in conferences committees before.

Thanks

Both LaTeX and Word support similar font packages (e.g., Times New Roman). So you could simply ask all authors to use the same font family (or set up the templates to do so).

What happens afterward depends on who's the publisher. If it's published in-house, both versions may just be published "as is." However, if an external publisher is used, both versions will likely be transferred to the publisher's "house style."


Is it bad to apply for a second postdoc immediately after starting a first one? I have finished my PhD in pure mathematics 3 months ago, and have just (one week ago) started a 1 year post doc appointment in another area of applied mathematics (it has only very very minor links with my PhD, and I really don't know how it will turn out - but I am not very into it so far).

I have had this offer for a few months, and took it because my other post doc applications in areas more closely related to my original topic were rejected; I was on the shortlist many times, but ended up 2nd in the final choice.

Now I have yet another opportunity to apply for a post doc in a topic that is close to my PhD, back in my home country, with people who are world-leading experts in my field, at a world leading, prestigious department and university (my current one isn't). Another advantage is that my current post doc only has guaranteed funding for 1 year, while the one I want to apply for, has 2 years.

This post doc has a provisional starting date in 2 months time. This means I'd have only worked in my current position also for only 2 months.

In my situation, is it advisable on the application form to state that I have currently just started on a post doc, or say absolutely nothing at all (i.e. not even mention this on my CV)?

I am worried that it won't look good on my application that I am applying for new jobs after having barely started the first one.

(This answer assumed the OP was going to be job hunting after a few months for a new position following his current one.  Clarifications given in the comments shows the OP expects to leave the current one-year position after a few months, instead.)

If your first position is only a year long, then it is expected that you will already be searching for a new position before you've even arrived at the current one.  There's simply no choice: most committees are already forming short lists a month or two into the academic year.  This is what makes one year positions brutal: as soon as you get one you've got to start hunting for the next one, but your current post-doc position still expects to see you engaged and active in research and whatever teaching you may have.


I recently started my machine learning PhD and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing I started my PhD a few months ago.

Seriously, I don't know how I got accepted, but here I am. I am not a computer scientist, but come from a different STEM background. My knowledge in machine learning in general is pretty limited (for now, trying to catch up) and publishing something seems so far out of reach that it's overwhelming. I don't even know where to start. I'm reading papers on semantic segmentation and similar topics (which is the direction my topic goes in), and while I understand most of them technically, I completely lack the intuition to ask good questions about them, let alone identify some gap in which I can dive into to publish something. I read them and think "And now what?"

I don't dare to talk with my supervisor about this. She will think I am completely stupid and not suitable for the position.

Can someone suggest a pathway for me to somehow get the ball rolling and systematically work towards successfully graduating with a PhD? I'm really willing to put in work, it's just that right now I have the feeling I'm stumbling around in the dark and it's not productive at all.

Talk to your supervisor.  Your supervisor accepted you, and therefore she must think that you had something to offer her research group.  Don't phrase it like you did here.  Instead, come to her with solutions and not problems.  For instance, you need to learn to ask good questions.  That's great.  So why don't you ask her to recommend a good dataset that is common to use so that you can start exploring different methods?

Ultimately, you are in a PhD program and one of the biggest things you need to learn is how to read the literature to discover the open problems.  This requires you to read far and wide.  A big thing that will probably help you is to try to replicate results. You aren't doing this for publications, but to better understand what was done and why, and what the limitations were.  Take a recent paper and try to recreate it.  If you can't, go to a less recent paper that that one cites and so on.  Build your way up.

For what it's worth, I think that a lot of PhD students come in with a general understanding of the field but not much of a deep understanding. As an anecdote, in the beginning of my PhD I'd find a paper that was written years before I started and think "Oh no! They've solved all of the problems I thought were important!" I'd rush to my supervisor to show him the brilliant research, and he'd show me the limitations and how they were being addressed.  It seemed to me at the time that these papers solved their problems, but by spending time speaking to him I realized that that was not true - perhaps the data set was particularly simple, perhaps the researchers didn't try to expand their results too far, perhaps the domain in which the algorithm worked was so restricted that it was of no practical use.

Eventually, I learned how to do that on my own, first by looking for common obvious problems, then by thinking more subtly as I got better - and as I started doing my own research and making my own mistakes.


Do PhD students sometimes abandon their original research idea? If so, how do they cope with it? This might be a silly question to ask, but I initially had a great research ideas in mind during the early part of my PhD program but due to the unexpected circumstances I now think that I have to abandon them and start searching for new ideas from scratch (2 of my ideas were taken by other researchers in my field recently and I don't think I have capability to work on my other idea), which I find really depressing.
Does this normally happen for PhD students? If so, how do they cope with it? Do they just start all over again from the literature search and brainstorm for ideas?
Thank you,

Not only does this happen frequently to PhD students, it also happens occasionally to experienced researchers.  Many research projects are embarked upon in a somewhat speculative manner, where we do not really know what the answer to a question will look like until we get there.  Sometimes we get stuck and cannot get the answer to our research question, sometimes we get the answer but it is so trivial that we realise we were thinking about the scope of the problem incorrectly, and sometimes we get the answer and we then find out that others have already figured out and published the same answer before us (which is something that does not always show up in your initial literature review).
It is less common for experienced researchers to completely abandon projects, because we have pretty good a priori judgement of what will work, and we are also good at salvaging work if it does not turn out as planned.  Moreover, many academics tend to put unsuccessful projects "on hold" and come back and think about them periodically to see if they can be changed in some way to give fruitful research.  During my own PhD candidature and my subsequent research career as an academic, I have started and done work on several topics which I have subsequently "put on hold" or altered to such a degree that the initial topic was essentially abandoned.  I have had other topics where I did a whole lot of research, even wrote up a paper, and then subsequently found that I had merely rediscovered results that were already in the literature (under a name I was not familiar with).  I also have probably ten or twenty started ideas sitting around and stalled because I have encountered some roadblock that may or may not be fatal to the future of the project.  As you will see from some examples below, I have had some absolute doozies.
Mine have come about because I did initial literature reviews that were flawed, and I didn't realise that my research ideas were things that were already well-developed in the literature (under technical names I was not familiar with).  In terms of how you cope, well, you look at the silver lining --- often these aborted projects show that you are "on the right track" in terms of your ability to come up with interesting ideas, even though these do not pan out into publications.  If you are developing projects that are good enough for other researchers to "take them" then that means you are on the right track.  (In my case, other researchers were nefarious enough to steal my ideas and complete them decades before I was born!)  It is depressing when you think you have a great idea and then it turns out not to lead to anything, but you look on the bright side --- it is better than having no good ideas at all.

Some (kind of embarrassing) examples from my own research career
Rediscovering the theory of identifiability: When I was in the first year of my PhD in statistics I came across an interesting problem that I thought would be a wonderful PhD topic and I spent many months solving it and writing up an academic paper for a journal.  I was extremely happy with my paper and thought it would be a big deal, since it seemed to me that I had developed an important concept that would be a great addition to statistics.  A couple of weeks later I got a desk rejection from the journal, and the editor was kind enough to gently inform me that while my paper looked very interesting, and was well written, my ideas "look a lot like the theory of identifiability" (a term I had not heard of at that time).  Using this new term I did another quick literature search and discovered a huge literature; my own paper had essentially rediscovered an important mathematical/statistical concept that was already developed and published in about the 1950s-1960s.  I had managed to get through my undergraduate degree without hearing this term, and so it had not shown up in my initial literature search, and my supervisors also did not alert me to it when I showed them what I was working on.  So, I have the "distinction" of being one of the discoverers of the theory of identifiability (never published), which I discovered about fifty years after its original publication!  It was depressing at the time because I had done a lot of work on it, but now I look back and laugh about it.
Rediscovering the theory of constrained optimisation via penalty functions: This one came a bit after I had finished my PhD, when I was an early career academic.  I had done a bunch of work on constrained optimisation (Karesh-Kuhn-Tucker method, etc.) and I had thought of an idea of an alternative way of doing constrained optimisation that I thought was novel.  Again, I tried searching for it in the literature, but I used the wrong words so it didn't show up.  (I think I was calling the method "optimisation via augmentation" which is not its standard name.)  I spent my Christmas holidays working on a paper on my method, and was happy with how it developed.  When the paper was almost finished, by accident (when looking at another problem) I found a reference to a paper that led me to another paper that alerted me to the literature on optimisation via penalty functions.  I had a look at the papers I had found and boom --- another project destroyed.  From memory, this stuff was done in about the 1970s, so this time I was a mere forty years late to the party!  In this second case I did not submit my (almost finished) paper, so it sits on my computer as a fun little reminder of my Christmas rediscovering penalty function methods.


Meaning of 'scholarly approach' for graduate award nomination I have been nominated for an award to PhD students. I have first been asked to submit a CV and a description of my research project(s). After that, I have been asked by the organisers (directly by email) to submit "a short statement about your research experience and scholarly approach (not more than one page)".

I would like to know what kind of information I am expected to include in that document.

There is not a public announcement of the award describing the requirements, and I feel a bit concerned about asking them directly for more information, since they might consider my ability to write that document on my own (without further description than that above) as something to qualify.

Any suggestion will be appreciated.

(English is not my mother tongue. I believe that's why the terms "scholarly approach" don't say anything specific to me)

Actually, I don't think "scholarly approach" is obvious even to a native anglophone. Consider the following a guess. Others may supply additional suggestions, I hope.

If you have rationalized how it is that you find (have found) interesting research problems, then you can say something about that. How do I go about deciding what is worth exploring. That is a useful question for any researcher to be able to answer. It also seems related to things about your research experience.

Since you are being considered for an award, I assume that you don't need, anymore, to rely heavily on your advisor(s). So I suspect that you may have given that some thought already.


How can I lookup the registering info of an ISSN number? While applying for an ISSN, applicants are asked to provide publisher name, country/city, contact info and editor name. How/where can I look up an ISSN number to get these info?

Of course for a single ISSN number, I can google, find the journal site and contact them via the website. But I am doing a research on a big number of ISSNs.

Moreover, how can I be sure it is not a fake number?!! Anyone can comeup with an 8 digit number, and call it an ISSN! IS there a main ISSN portal/service, where I can lookup ISSN numbers?

thanks

A partial answer:

You can check if the ISSN is 'fake' or not at this ISSN-Validator website. It doesn't provide much useful info though. All numbers entered are either 'invalid' or 'valid' with no further information given.


Citing the procedures of a research lab Is there a specific way to cite the unpublished procedures of a research lab, or even to use the lab itself as an information source for citation?
I'm writing a mock SOP for a course that requires a reference for the procedures, but my lab supervisor only told me to "cite the lab" for an unpublished and informal list of steps for MIC determination.

It depends if these procedures common in your field.

If they are you can briefly describe them as established (or widely adopted) practices in the field or naming the well known techniques. e.g., We used sample prep technique X, measured Y with Z equipment, and used A, B, then C tools to analyse it. Another option is to cite the published method or protocol in a journal and describe how (and why) your lab modified the procedure.

This citation does not have to be reputable journal (although it is preferred), it could be a thesis from a previous lab member or a lab's website, blog, or GitHub repo as long as the source is acknowledged and the full procedure can be accessed (reproduced, critiqued, or verified). Perhaps considering putting your procedure on GitHub? We do this for both our workshop lesson resources and procedures shared within the lab.

Failing that, your other options (in order of preference) are to cite articles "in press", "unpublished work" or "personal communication". Generally this refers to early access to data that your audience should be able to access once it's been published too. These are accepted practices in many fields but generally used as a last resort when a paper can't be given. Note that a "personal communication" is generally citing a person rather than a group, in this case probably your professor. Personal communications are cited in text but not listed in the bibliography. How accepted this is depends on the person the reputation in the field of you're citing and whether you can describe how they communicated it (e.g., in lecture notes, a seminar, or course laboratory manual). For example it is clear here why the personal communication is from a reliable source:

  This analysis used the method of Parker et al. (2009) designed for microarray data with the following modifications for RNASeq data (J. S. Parker, personal communication 2016).


PhD Application Email I am working as a researcher in a research lab, and I want to apply for a Ph.D. position. I have read that most of the professors read emails sent through professional email-id only. But my current professional email id is restricted to be used in the research lab only. What should I do to make my application email stand out?

An institutional email address is not a requisite nor it does make your inquiry looks less serious.
I personally was suggesting a receipt request, but apparently most people dislike the option no matter the purpose. I personally can see the difference between a peer of mine pushing for some action and a student in trepidation. However, as the chance that I would be the recipient is ridiculously low, don't ask for a receipt.
Be cautios and clear filling the subject field. I do suggest something like "PhD openings inquiry, name surname" or so.
I also suggest that the body part shows that you didn't choose the particular recipient at random. This can be very short, at this stage.


Is it necessary to provide links to the mentioned softwares' websites on my CV? I am writing my CV and, in the Skills section, I have listed the name of the softwares that I've worked with. Some of them are well-known softwares, but some are open source codes that may not be known to many people. So I linked to the softwares' websites when I felt is necessary.

I wanted to ask if this is appropriate, and is not insulting (presumptuous) to, say, the professor who is reading my CV.

Unless the software is very specific to the role for which you're applying (in which case, one would hope that anyone reviewing applications would be familiar with it...) you should probably not go into this level of detail.


Where to publish software-related work? I am a researcher in computer science. I am used to publish papers on computer science problem resolution (machine learning, optimization, disabilities, pattern recognition...).

In recent work, we needed to create a specialized software incorporating many complex technologies. This software is used to conduct other researches on which we already publish.

We are wondering if we can publish on how the software helps to solve our problem and on how we designed it with multiples technologies. A careful debate on the possibilities, choices and architecture would be incorporated.
The problem is this is the first time we would publish such article and we don't know where to publish. We are seeking good scientific journals (if possible with an impact factor) accepting such papers. If you know one, can you tell me?

If the software system is targeted for a research problem that is deep, recognized by the community, requires complex architecture and design, and from which a wide community can benefit from, then system conferences could be a good match.

I'll give you an example. Symbolic execution is a widely used and researched technique in software verification. People from Stanford developed Klee, a symbolic execution engine that aims to be highly practical and scalable. Making
such a system required taking care of quite some details. They published paper
on OSDI, and I believe they received best paper award. Klee paper.

Other than that, there might be conferences in your particular area that care
about building systems for the problems you mentioned, but I guess you already took a look into that. Hope this helps.


I want to write a blog post building upon someone else's paper, how can I properly cite/credit them? I want to write a blog post which builds upon an author's paper.

He uses a formal notation and academic language for describing his findings, I want to rewrite the author's examples in simple and more popular programming languages, and use a more casual language to explain the same concepts. I don't know if this is a relevant detail, but this is also not the only goal of the blog post. It covers other related subjects as well.

As someone outside academia, I wonder if this is considered OK and how can I properly credit the author.

Also, is using a standard citation format and clearly indicating the source of these ideas enough?

You have two issues to deal with. If you properly cite and attribute the ideas to the original author, you avoid plagiarism issues. If you don't copy too much, but properly quote, from the paper then you avoid copyright issues.

But, ideas are free to use and to adapt. Simplifying what you find in a paper is a good thing to do.

One doesn't obtain ownership of ideas by writing a paper.

I therefore see no ethical issue at all with what you suggest.


How to archive an academic blog or website? Academic blogs and websites are emerging as an important component of academic discourse.

However, I often lack confidence that the content will remain accessible in the short term (e.g., 5 years) let alone the longer term (10, 20, 50, 100 years).

An important function of journals is to archive the content and provide a stable citation system.

In particular, I'm worried about:

academics who change employment where the site is hosted by the previous employer
academics who die or lose interest in their content (e.g., domain names lapsing; site hosting fees ending)
Internet services that close down

Question:
What can an academic blogger do to ensure that their blog content remains archived and accessible in the longer term?

Digital preservation is an evolving area, and the ability to preserve websites over the long-term is one of the most problematic areas. There are several reasons for this: the dynamic nature of contemporary websites (especially in a format like a blog, where content is update regularly and interactive components such as commenting), hyperlinking (which will eventually lead to broken links and broken images, which, if you point to content external to your site, is out of your control) and the instability of Web formats (websites might look better in one browser than another, much less how websites hold up over time) are just a few of the challenges in preserving websites.

There are, however, several things you can do to help preserve your website:

Backup—keep your content stored in more than one location (on your server, on your hard drive, on an external hard drive, in the cloud, etc.) and don't use an external service as your primary storage location, as they can collapse at any time (Geocities was a huge service when it was shuttered);
Keep up to date in changes in file formats and browser software—when browsers get updated to view HTML 5, 6, or whatever may replace HTML in the future, will they be backwards compatible to be able to view the blog you're authoring today, or will you need to migrate your website to a contemporary format?;
Utilize pockets of expertise on campus—archivists on many campuses have been working towards digital preservation solution and your university's archivist (especially at larger universities) may be able to provide solutions for the long-term preservation of your website; and
Consider normalizing your website to a preservation format—although creating a copy of your website as a PDF may mean losses in functionality (in terms of interactivity), it is a way to preserve the content and appearance of the site in a file format that is considered a safer bet for long-term preservation.

The Library of Congress also provides some tips on how to design preservable websites including following available web and accessibility standards, embedding metadata and maintaining stable URLs.

  Taylor, N. (2012, February 6). Designing Preservable Websites, Redux.
  Retrieved May 23, 2012, from
  http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2012/02/designing-preservable-websites-redux/


Is it possible to join academia with a structured PhD? There are two types of PhDs in Germany(or, in other parts of the world, like, Ireland): structured, and individual.

A definition of structured Ph.D. is as follows:

  Usually, in structured Ph.D. programs, the thesis advisor has a
  pre-planned or a pre-defined research proposal which he intends on
  carrying forward through his Ph.D. student. The Ph.D. student then
  does some preliminary studies based on this proposal, based on which
  the student sets his own objectives. Basically, in such structured
  programs, a few of the objectives are already set and the may, or may
  not add a few more, depending on some of the results obtained in his
  preliminary work.

Is it possible to join academia with a structured Ph.D.?

In practice the distinction is gradual. Some structured programs don't function as well as advertised, meaning that the PhD students are pretty much left on their own, while some advisors of individual PhD project are very structured. Sometimes individual PhD students can participate in (parts of) a structured program, etc. etc.

In the end if you get a PhD, then you got a PhD regardless of the type of program. No one will know, and no one will care one way or another. In practice a well functioning structured program is beneficial as the students tend to learn more and the network of a given cohort in such a program tends to help as well.


LNAI conference accepting papers as accompanying proceedings I have submitted an article in a conference which publishes its proceedings in LNAI/LNCS series. However, in the conference website we can see the following text :

  Proceedings with accepted papers are expected to be published in the LNAI/LNCS series (Springer-Verlag), and distributed at the conference.
  Besides, papers, that according to the evaluation of the referees, are not suitable for the LNAI but that have some merits will be published in accompanying proceedings and scheduled in the conference program.

This statement is confusing to me, especially the second part, which specifies that papers that have some merits will be published in accompanying proceedings and scheduled in the conference program.

Today, as i'm writing this, my paper was accepted for publication at the downloadable (with ISBN) proceedings, and due to corona virus, the conference is cancelled.

My question here, is my publication have the same value as regularly accepted paper.

Thank you

An idealistic answer would be "It is the contribution that matters, not where it is published." But, of course, it is a thing to worry in our academic world. Usually, LNAI/LNCS proceedings paper would be given more weightage (at least perception-wise) than the papers published in some unknown publishers with ISBN.

It seems that the conference has two kinds of acceptance: accept for LNAI, accept for ISBN. Based on the quality judgement by the conference panel and the reviewers, the paper is weighted to be published in either LNAI or ISBN proc. What my guess is that the papers which are of good quality (i.e. contribution is significant) would go for LNAI. Good luck!


Best aspect ratio for conference presentations? As it is relatively easy to setup an arbitrary aspect ratio for my Beamer presentation, I am wondering what would be the best aspect ratio for my presentation slides?

I think the 4:3 aspect ratio would be suitable for lecture notes as it leaves no blank margins when I print out 4 on 1 handouts. But for screening purpose, would it be necessary to go for 16:9? As suggested by this online article, in most cases 16:9 is more suitable, however in the end it is a matter of preference.

Any suggestions besides that?

In the following, when talking about displaying a presentation with a certain aspect ratio on a projector with a certain aspect ratio, I always assume that the presentation’s aspect ratio is preserved and black bars are added at the appropriate sides. Never have the projector digitally warp your presentation: It destroys hinting¹ and may make fine lines invisible.

The best aspect ratio is the one of the very projector you are presenting on, as you can make best use of the space. In particular with projectors, you do not want any content to be unnecessarily downscaled as their resolution is very low to begin with and the projection area may be rather small (and thus difficult to see for the audience). An okay 16:9 presentation may be rendered unreadably small, if displayed on a 4:3 projector.

Now, depending on your presentation and how dynamical you program it, adapting to a different solution may be a rather simple thing with Beamer (apparently in contrast to Powerpoint, going by the article you linked). I once changed a presentation of mine from 4:3 to 16:9 in about half an hour, and this included recompiling complex animations and a lot of perfectionism – a “normal” presentation could be adapted much faster.

If you do not want to adapt, the choice essentially depends on the average age and purpose of projectors in your conference venues (I would guess that newer projectors or projectors mainly used for movies are rather 16:9). Thus it depends on your field and probably also your continent. Anyway, most projectors I have encountered so far had a 4:3 resolution and most of those who hadn’t had a resolution very close to it. I’ve only encountered a single 16:9 projector. I thus use 4:3 as the default.

¹ To give you an idea, the following shows this sentence as natively rendered by my computer (with hinting) and the same text digitally stretched or squeezed:


Do I own the copyright to my Master's thesis? or does it belong to my university? I am just done with my Masters degree in one of the universities in Germany.  I am wondering if I can make my Master's thesis open for public to download and read.

I am not talking about submitting it to a journal or a conference, I am just asking if I can put the PDF file I submitted to my professor on my website. My question is that if I do put on my website, will I run into copyright issues and stuff of that kind?

In Germany, the student is typically owner of the copyright (including Verwertungsrechte) their thesis.
These theses are parts of exams (Prüfungsleistung). Such work must be solely produced by the student, and the thesis typically also contains a declaration specifying this. This implies that the work is owned by the student.

You can read through the forms you signed and the exam regulations (Prüfungsordnung): if no exclusive transfer of rights is mentioned, they are yours for sure. If an exclusive transfer is mentioned it is probably void according to the source I link below.

Exam regulations forbid that the professor (who's considered a public official person for the exams) or the university accept anything from the student that is not specified by the exam regulations. IP rights are not in that list. The university can and does ask for a certain number of copies of the thesis (in paper and/or electronically), this comes with a license to use these copies, e.g. to put then into their archive and to make them available in the university library (the same kind of license you get when buying a book). However, I have not yet seen an exclusive transfer of rights in that context. AFAIK the Prüfungsordnung can also specify that the thesis has to be published, though I have met that requirement only for PhD theses.

Students are typically not employees at the university. Often the exam rules explicitly forbid that students can be paid/hired by the university for the thesis. Thus, IP rights could only be transferred to the university by an explicit contract. However, contracts saying that "all transferable rights on the thesis go to university otherwise you cannot do your thesis here" are void because they are considered to be established under undue pressure to the student, and are considered acceptance of benefits by a public official (Vorteilsannahme). There seem to be ways of having a valid contract before the exam that transfers the IP to university, but I gather this is rather complicated to get right.
After the exam is finished and the student has  grades and certificates, valid contracts to transfer rights to the university can be negotiated.

Source and highly relevant reading (in German) Helmut Messer: Rechtsgrundsäte zu Diplomarbeiten.


Cover letter for mid-career application in mathematics I am in my seventh year after my PhD, and am applying from a tenure-track position in Mathematics.  I am working with a job coach, who is suggesting a 2.5 page cover letter for tenure-track mathematics positions.  This seems long to me, I always thought that in math 1 page was max, but are the rules different when applying mid-career?

I think that the length of the cover letter is the type of thing that differs greatly between research institutions and small liberal arts colleges.

At the small liberal arts college where I work, 1-2 page long cover letters seem to be pretty common. (I'm also in math.) There's no length requirement of course, but it's expected that in addition to the normal stuff (who you are, a bit about your teaching and research experience, potentially stuff about working with undergrads if it is relevant) applicants say a bit about what makes them a good fit for the school. Basically, small liberal arts colleges tend to have their own distinctive personalities, and it can be a major problem if your cover letter comes across as super generic. Also, remember that a lot of small schools don't really have research groups in any particular area. Thus, if they're hiring an analyst one year there is an excellent chance that it's because the previous analyst just left / retired. People will read your research statement of course, but many won't make it past the first page or two. In contrast, every member of the department will read your cover letter. So if the cover letter you send to our small liberal arts college looks like you could have sent it to a large state school as well, that'd be an issue. Having said all of this, it's not like you need to be super long winded in your cover letter. If you can say everything that you need to in less than a page that's totally fine! It's just that a lot of people will be reading your cover letter, so if you want to explain why you're committed to working at a small school like ours or explain the context of your decision to apply to our school (which could very well be the case if you're applying mid-career), this would be the place to do so.

I don't have any direct experience with being on a hiring committee at a research department, but my impression has always been that the cover letter is considerably less important at these sort of places. (Perhaps it's even seen as an unnecessary formality? I've always found it weird to read 'Enclosed you will find...' when it's just a PDF file on MathJobs and not even a physical letter.) For example, when I was a postdoc I had a number of friends that used a computer script to insert the names of the schools they were applying to into a generic cover letter. It's not clear to me that this affected any of their searches in the least. Hopefully someone with some experience at these sort of places will respond to your question, but I think that at research schools there are much more likely to be well-defined research groups with members that are going to be able to read your research statement carefully and already know your letter writers, and that these sort of things are likely to vastly outweigh anything you could write in your cover letter.


Cultivating relationships with professors beyond your advisor I am a PhD student and I'm interested in pursuing a career as a professor upon graduation.

I am interested in cultivating relationships with professors beyond my advisor so I can actually have other people to write recommendation letters for me when I go on the job market.

How can I best go about with this? That is, what are good pretexts for me to approach other professors?

Take classes with them. Go to their seminar talks and ask questions. Attend any social gatherings and chat with anyone you're interested in. Read their papers and drop by their office with a couple of questions.


Company logo in my lecture slides I'm currently working on the slides for my database lecture. During the lecture I want to talk about different tools and available programs for database management. Am I allowed to use logos on my slides? What copyright should I put? Here is an example:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MariaDB_Logo.png
Is "All company logos subject to copyrights. All rights reserved." sufficient?

You are probably permitted to do this as long as you aren't creating a "product" for use with the trademarked logo. Generally speaking, trademark law is distinct from copyright law.
See a non legal description for example.
In your case you are using the logo for purposes of description and identification, which is normally permitted.
But note that the rules and laws aren't universal.


Do people actually buy research articles? Research articles are often priced at 20-40 USD. I know that typically a researcher's institution subscribes to myriads of journals, and that some research articles are accessible online for free either legally or illegally, but I am curious to know some numbers that would help quantify how many / often individuals buy research articles, and how much money journals make from this source of income.

I am not looking for guesses or opinions, but actual numbers.

I tried digging through the 2013 annual report of Elsevier. Under "Revenue" (page 111) they list both "subscriptions" and "transactional" - but the latter include not only reprints, but also books etc.

As you can see, even if we lump books and reprints together, it is still less than subscriptions.
To get a more complete answer you may have to ask them directly.


Leniency in journals' paper structure "guidelines" (required sections and divisions) I have observed in the "author guidelines" of journals, that results and discussion may be requested as

distinct "results" and "discussion" sections,
or as combined "results & discussions".

In particular, more qualitative observation based topics tend to prefer the latter, while direct quantitative measures that may be the dominant tool in the field may be the impetuses of choosing distinct sections.

Has anyone had any experience with journals and just how rigid they may be when it comes to the hierarchical distinction/formatting of results and discussion sections?

My thoughts are that a journal may be more willing to separate the sections than to combine. But I am trying to gauge whether it will even be worth approaching the journal to inquire whether they would consider a manuscript with a combined "Results & Discussion" sections.

I hate it when a journal decides to stretch you on a Procrustean bed of arbitrary structure, since many research projects simply do not fit on such.  Some really want you to fit their arbitrary structure, while others will bend, and it's not really possible to know which is which and how much flexibility you've for unless you talk to an editor.

That said, I've often found that with a little bit of mental gymnastics in how you approach "results and discussion" you can generally make things work.  Consider, for example, this decently-cited paper of mine, which didn't really fit the "intro - results - discussion - methods" format desired by the journal, since it was about a (fairly complex) method.  Well, if you think of the method as being the result, then we essentially shove the whole paper as we wanted to structure it into the "results & discussion" section, with our preferred structure as subsections.  The "methods" section then contains all of the boring details about protocols for the validation tests that we ran.

Bottom line: often a journal really means it about its structure requirements, but that actually constrains you less than you might think.


What is expected in a 5 minute postdoc interview presentation? I have been invited to interview for a postdoc position at a good university. They asked me a different question to most of my other interviews. For the presentation they want me make a 5 minute (maximum) PowerPoint presentation on the following topic "How does your previous experience in vascular biology equip you to fulfill this post?".

How do I go about answering their question? I assume it would be: one very brief slide showing an overview of my career, then techniques so histology and why that’s useful to them. Do I show any of my own data?

With only 5 min maximum, keep it to the point and interesting to them. They made clear what matters to them in their question

  How does your previous experience in vascular biology equip you to fulfil this post?

Find out about the post as much as you can and also the department (what do they specialize in). Find out what and who they want. Understand what your role will be, what their goals for this position are, in what direction to head. For example, research topics, but maybe also teaching duties etc.

Then use the presentation to show them why you are the perfect candidate for the post. Tailor it to their needs, no unnecessary information (you only have 5 min). This really depends on the requirements, but could be experience with relevant methods, openness to learn and use new methods / technologies (examples?), tutoring students etc. All the relevant experience for this post.


Does anyone still care about the name and address of a publisher? As a follow up question to my previous one, under which circumstances is it reasonable to include the name and/or the address of a publisher in a citation?

In my opinion the most important characteristic of a citation is that it uniquely identifies a given publication and makes it as easy as possible to access it. This, however, is usually already given by title, authors and, if applicable, the title of the collection (proceedings, journal...). If available, a DOI alone would be sufficient for that.

As secondary feature, further details provide more information about the properties of a publication without the need to look them up explicitly. For example, the year is usually very interesting to assess the timeliness of the related work.

Neither the name nor the address of the publisher seems to fall in one of these categories, even though it might be reasonable for example for some exotic books that are otherwise hard to find*. For this reason I usually omit the publisher's name and address in citations, partly to keep them brief, partly since I am not aware who the publisher actually is, partly because others in my area of research (CS) do the same, partly because I am too lazy to put work into something that seems superfluous to me. Sometimes, however, the publishers and their addresses are added during copy editing, so there seem to be at least some people with a different opinion than me.

Is it considered bad academic practice to omit the publisher and the address?
What are other advantages or disadvantages?
Does it depend on the type of the cited publication? Books might be different from articles in journals or conference proceedings.
Does it depend on the type of the publication I write? In a short paper, brevity might be more important than in a PhD thesis where accuracy is essential. What about a publication list in a CV?
Does it depend on the area of research? Maybe we computer scientists are just lazy?

*Maybe someone wants to drive to Heidelberg to ring the bell at the Springer office just to be told that it a given publication was actually published by SpringerOpen in London...

It's always important to know the venue for a scientific publication, not just in case you have to track it down, but also in order to understand what sort of review or other vetting process (if any) the publication will have gone through.

For a conference or a journal article, that's the name of the conference or the journal.  Thus, I wouldn't typically bother including the publisher---although many such effectively include the publisher in their title (e.g., IEEE Signal Processing, ACS Nano, Nature Methods).

For a book, however, the publisher is the venue, as they decide what merits publication and how to try to ensure validity. Knowing that a book is published by the Oxford University Press means something, just like knowing that a conference is sponsored by the IEEE.  It's not a guarantee of correctness any more than journal peer review, but it does imply some basic degree of quality control.

As for address: while it might theoretically be useful for disambiguation, these days most large publishing organizations have multiple sites and are really anchored by their online location rather than their physical location. Thus, I find address completely useless in a citation of recent work and will omit it unless forced by a publisher.

Finally, note that all of this does change if you're talking about works that are not accessible electronically (e.g., much of the literature before the 1970s or so), for which as many hints as possible are useful if one must track it down.


Do I need in text citations for an article on a historical event if I have links? I am writing an article on a historical event chronicled by Plutarch and translated by the Harvard University Press and have used certain ideas and facts from his writings in my own article by summarizing some of his statements and combining it with my own ideas. I have a link to the writings that I have referred to at the end of the article, but I was wondering if I needed to add in any in text citations to give proper credit to him and translators of his work.

This is a pretty clear-cut case where you need in-text citations, especially given the multiplicity of possible translations and editions available. Not doing so could definitely get you into trouble with plagiarism accusations if discovered after submission.


Letter to the editor from the referee Nowadays most journals use electronic forms for the referees to submit their recommendations to the editor.

However, if that's not the case, how should the letter to the editor be structured?

In the referee report I have already mentioned some points I consider should be revised. But, do I have to explicitly state these points in the letter? or should I just say that the points mentioned in the referee report should be considered before publication?

The cover letter should probably state:

The title and authors of the article you have reviewed (short list of authors "X et al." is fine)
Your recommendation for the disposition of the article (accept as is, reject, recommend major changes, etc.)
Any other important information that you wish to note. This could be anything exceptional, whether that be good (perhaps the article should be considered for "cover" status) or bad (for example, if you suspect something dishonest).

All other points can be addressed by referring the editor to the referee report.


Recommender sent me letter to submit I am applying for postdoc positions this fall, and have three references.
My main two writers are doing everything as I expected.
The third agreed to write a letter for me--and he wrote a very good letter. It was very positive and I was even impressed by how personal it was, given that we do not know one another all that well.  He is also very well-known/famous in the field.  However, he simply gave me the letter to use as I wish, so it won't be customized for each position or anything.
I do not really have any good sense of what to do with this, when I apply for postdocs.
My PhD advisor said that he agreed it was strange, but "I would keep the letter and when requested send it and say he sent it to you."  I am just not sure what the least awkward way to do this is.
(I want to add: both my advisor and I are quite certain this letter will help my case.  My first two letters are going to be great, and are written by people who know me very well and will be tailoring, etc.)
Should I simply include, after the contact information for two references on my CV, "An additional letter of recommendation from ________ is available by request."?

Edit after some exchange in the comments below: I recommend that you contact the writer of the third letter and tell them that what you really need is them to send the letter directly when asked, and to pass on contact details now. This problem seems to be the result of a misunderstanding, and busy high profile researcher or not, if a misunderstanding is happening, it makes sense to clarify things. If you don't get a response, you can still use the letter you have.
Original answer:
Personally I wouldn't have worried about simply including the letter. What's wrong with that? It's a good letter, and if they don't believe it is genuine they can contact the writer. Where I work, such letters are not that important anyway. Personally I'm fine if a candidate is able to present two or three such letters by qualified people in which there is nothing worrying, and that's it. As most candidates fulfill that, these letters play no further role in decision making (frankly even unsuitable candidates can come up with glowing reference letters, so these are not that informative; even some high profile people write nice letters for everyone). Of course I can't guarantee it's like that everywhere.


Who is a "Vowel" in a panel of Jury for a Master's Defense? I have to give my Master's defense soon. I am provided with the name of a "Jury", a professor. And two professors in my 'vowel', one of whom is my advisor. (total 3 on Jury)

What is the definition of this 'vowel' and what does it mean? What is their role in relation to the 'jury'?

My university is also Portuguese and the Portuguese word is Vogal (singular).

"Vowel" is likely a translation error from Portuguese, Spanish or another Romance language - probably caused by Google Translate.

In a committee or a board, a "vogal" or "vocal" is a member without a specific role. For example, in a committee I was recently to grade end-of-degree dissertations, the three members were the president (tasked with chairing the committee), the secretary (tasked with writing grades down) and one "vocal", with no specific task besides deciding grades with the other two members.

Another meaning of "vogal" or "vocal" is vowel. Both meanings come from the Latin word for voice or speak, because a "vocal" is a person who just speaks in a committee and vowels are sounds or letters that can be pronounced alone.

I tried to find a translation into English but no dictionary gave me a suitable one. Then, I would translate "vocal" to "board/committee/jury member". Maybe boards are organized in a different way in English speaking countries.

Just for reference, definition of vogal in Portuguese (see meanings 3 and 4), and vocal in Spanish (meaning 5) and Catalan (meaning 2).


Position and prominence of 'Acknowledgements' in a publication What is the appropiate position for the 'Acknowledgements' in a paper? Are there policies by (mathematical) journals where to put them?

Furthermore, is it common to make acknowledgements a \paragraph (in Latex), rather than a \subsection or a final \section?

I generally make acknowledgements their own \section and place it at the end of the paper's body, before the references or any appendices.

But I really don't think it matters.  The referee is not going to care, and it won't affect the acceptance or rejection of the paper.  If the journal has a preference, you will hear about it from the copy editor when the time comes to correct the proofs.

You might as well check the Instructions for Authors to see if it addresses this, but otherwise, just pick something reasonable and don't worry about it.


Can an editor examine a PhD student whose manuscript is under review in their journal? Do conflict of interest arises when a journal editor, who is handling a paper under review, acts as an examiner of the author's PhD thesis?

Does it depend of the review stage? Will the answer change if the review is already finished before the editor is nominated as an examiner?

In the US system, my main concern in such a situation would not be conflict of interest in the thesis examination but rather would be conflict of interest in the journal reviewing process.

In the US system, a good advisor generally ensures that the examining committee are people likely to approve if the student does good work (e.g., no philosophical enemies) and ensures that the student does not go up to defend until they are certain to pass.

Members of a thesis committee are thus typically either members of the same department or close external collaborators, who should typically be barred by conflict of interest from handling a paper from that student at a journal in any case.


Is it considered unethical to pay participants differently based on some quality? Let's say you are recruiting two groups of people, English monolinguals and bilinguals. If you're having a hard time recruiting enough bilinguals, the natural, free-market thing to do would be to offer to increase how much they are compensated to attract more.

Assuming that both groups complete similar activities in the same time frame, is it unethical to pay one group more than another?

Would the answer be the same if the quality wasn't the part of the design? For example, if your monolingual group is older on average, is it unethical to post an advertisement for an increased rate for young monolinguals to bring your group averages back to comparable?

I have never seen a research group do this, presumably because of how time-consuming it would be to do, but I haven't found anything to suggest that it is wrong to do.

I'm asking here because I briefly discussed this idea with someone, and she seemed to think the IRB would take an issue with it but we didn't got much further.

I don’t see on what grounds anyone could regard this as unethical, but one might legitimately wonder whether paying the two groups of participants unequally might inadvertently create a bias that would compromise the integrity of your conclusions. After all, your research is presumably premised on the assumption that the participants from the two groups are both fairly typical representatives of those groups. But if you pay participants from one group $10 and those from the other (for argument’s sake) $5000, the participants you’re likely to get in both groups might differ in some ways that you didn’t expect - for example, the lower-paid participants might be people who are more motivated by an altruistic desire to help scientific research than the higher-paid participants

Whether this is a genuine concern or not depends on the difference in the pay and on the precise nature of your study, but it’s something to think about.


Method section: small experiment for parameter setting The size of a time-slot in a simulation has an effect on accuracy and on computational resource requirements. Trying out possible sizes (1s, 1m and 1h) I identified 1m to be the only smart choice. Defining this at an early point of the method section would greatly simplify subsequent issues like mathematical denotations and data collection. Is it allowed to do this or does all generated empirical data need to be packed into the result section?

In my thesis, I kept similar issues separately, but referred the reader to the results section discussing results and conclusions from side experiments that lead to certain decisions. This allows to use the results before they are presented in detail.

In your case, the methods could read:

  Preliminary simulation to determine time slot

  description

  main simulation

  Based on teh results of 1. (see link to results section), a time slot of 1 min was chosen.
  ...


Should I inform my letter writer about a summer school rejection? Should I ask the same professor to write me a letter for grad school? I'm an undergraduate math major (just completed my second year), and I had applied for a summer school (online due to the pandemic) in one of my interest areas. I have taken two courses in this area with the same professor (one of them was a graduate course if it matters). I did pretty well in both courses, i.e. got As.
I requested the aforementioned professor to write me a recommendation letter for the summer school, which they gladly did - but unfortunately, I did not get accepted (the school has about a 14% selection rate).

Should I inform the professor (i.e. my letter writer for this program) that I have been rejected? Do they already know, in which case I don't have to do anything? Do programs typically inform about acceptance/rejections to letter writers too, or do they only inform the applicants? This is my first time applying to a summer school, so I don't really know how this works.

Also, given this experience, would it make sense to ask the same professor again to write me a letter for graduate school applications? I don't know what went wrong - (i) if the professor didn't write me a strong enough letter, or (ii) if I really wasn't good enough to get into the program. It's probably the latter, but given the probabilistic nature of this dilemma, I really don't know what conclusion to draw. Moreover, graduate school applications are going to be far more important than applying to a summer program, so I should know what to do.

Please let me know in case any clarifications are needed. Thanks a lot!

Yes, you should tell them and yes, it makes sense to ask them again. Likely the rejection wasn't due to the letter they wrote, but to the level of competition for positions in the program.
But, in general, your letter writers should be people who know you and your work well and can make a confident prediction of your future success. I assume that this is one of those people. And informing them might get you an even stronger letter.
Note, of course, that the standards are different for a summer program and a graduate program. And the competition won't be less. Apply to universities that fall over a range of rankings so that you have a better chance of acceptance. If you apply only to top ranked small schools you greatly lessen your chances.
While a summer program has a fixed number of "seats", applying to several schools opens the number of possibilities.


How important is the exact name of an undergraduate degree? How important does one think the exact name of a degree is? Suppose a student had a BASc in Software Engineering (Bachelor of Applied Science, somewhat common in Canada) or a student with a BSE degree (Bachelor of Software Engineering, as awarded by, say Waterloo), would you perceive the students differently? Do you know of instances where this may have affected a student in a job search or in grad school admissions?

The students would be perceived the same. When applying for a graduate program, you submit your transcripts. The classes you took, your letters of recommendation, and your grades would be more important than the name of your degree.


What's the ethics of (paid) proof-reading college admission essays? A friend of mine is looking for undergraduate or graduate students in the US to proof-read college admissions essays from high school students back in my home country. There will be pay, but the proof-reader can also do it pro bono. Given that the students are not native English writers, "proof-reading" means more than spell-checking, and more like writing coach.

I have always felt torn about this. If I help a student, doesn't it make it unfair to others? This is especially serious because in college admissions essays, the story and the voice of the essay matter a great deal. In contrast, paid proof-reading of graduate dissertation is much more justified, because the make-or-break factor is the scientific substance, not the prose.

On the other hand, perhaps this a trivial matter compared to all the other unfairness that the admission process entails e.g. test prep, going to a good high school, or even being born to a better parents.

Thus, I want to ask how admission officials think about this? And does the argument change in any way if pay enters the equation?

Having a qualified reader provide more than superficial corrections to an admissions essay is a valuable asset, and one which is almost certainly required for top tier institutions. Many American students are literally surrounded by qualified readers with diverse perspectives, while international students may have fewer contacts with the requisite mastery of the language. If the only competent advice a student can obtain is from a paid reader, they are still only narrowing the gap with their American peers. I think there are only two ethical arguments to consider here.

First, is the paid service worth anything? If the criticism and corrections are junk and the service does not increase any student's chances at all and the service provider should reasonably be aware of this, then it's clearly unethical.

Second, does the contribution of the reader go substantially beyond what an American student would receive? Specifically, do the contributions of the paid readers potentially cross the line to misrepresent the abilities of the applicant? If the submitted essays are not representative of the, as you put it, story and voice but also of the English competence of the student, it could be a disservice both to universities and to inadequately prepared students.

If you are clear of these two issues, I see no ethical complaints. Of course, a generous person might donate their time, but that doesn't make a student who needs to earn a living unethical.


Write 'According to Wikipedia' in a PhD thesis I am writing a PhD thesis in robotics and I was wondering if it sounds good to start a phrase with: 'According to Wikipedia ...'

Do you think I can do that or not?

"According to some unknown guy on the Internet, I can say that according to Wikipedia..."

No, you should avoid that. Wikipedia is open, so it can be changed by (almost) everyone and you have no guarantee that the given information there is correct. While many articles are very informative, it might be better to take the actual source (given on the Wikipedia page) and make sure that this source is credible (e.g. published in a good, peer reviewed journal).


Supervisor published my thesis figures without including me as an author The supervisor for my PhD thesis has recently published a paper with another student. In this paper, the other student has replicated one of the chapters of my PhD thesis for publication.

For reference, after completing my PhD I moved into the public sector and did not publish my thesis work myself, due to concerns with the underlying methodology.

However, of the five figures in this new paper, two figures have been taken directly from my published thesis. This is very easy to prove, as some of the figures are photographs and are identical to the work published in my thesis. My thesis is available as a digital download online at the same research institution my supervisor currently works at.

I wasn't consulted regarding the publication or use of my research, and was not listed as an author on the new paper (or even in the acknowledgements). The figures they have published were produced solely by myself, without assistance from my supervisor or the other student.

This finding makes me question whether they did indeed repeat the initial experiment, or whether they instead used the leftover materials from my research (specifically, extracted RNA/cDNA) to re-run a handful of analyses and republish my thesis chapter without me.

I have contacted my supervisor by email for clarification, but my questions are:

Is this academic misconduct and/or plagiarism?
If so, what is the appropriate avenue to follow to correct/resolve/dispute this? (e.g. is it appropriate to contact the journal or my supervisor's university to report this? What are the first steps?)

is this academic misconduct?

That depends. Your thesis is published, just not in a journal. It’s published as part of your alma mater’s repository and anyone can access it, your advisor in particular. Regarding the figures: it really depends on how they did it. If they copied them without citing your thesis that’s pretty clear cut plagiarism which is wrong under any standard of academic publishing. If they cite you (saying something like figure taken from X), that should probably be okay. This is especially true if your advisor helped design and generate these figures (they’d be a coauthor of sorts). Again, you should be credited regardless, and if a citation is missing it should be noted. I’d be extremely surprised if your advisor wouldn’t be willing to cite you, my guess is that the student who wrote the paper forgot to (remember hanlon’s razor!).

  what is the appropriate avenue to correct this?

You could first try and reach out to your former advisor. Ask them. Maybe there’s a simple misunderstanding here. If there’s a dispute the most direct course of action is reaching out to the department head, or vice dean of research and inform them. If you have contacts on the department (a trusted professor who’s sufficiently senior), might be good to hear their opinion on the matter.

Contacting the journal or anyone external should be a last resort I think. But if you feel like you’ve exhausted your options with the department and nobody’s listening, it may not be a bad idea. Again, expect a laconic response: some journal editor will be extremely hesitant in dealing with such cases, especially since the paper is out.

Good luck!

EDIT: I missed this part

  the other student has replicated one of the chapters of my PhD thesis

That is unacceptable plagiarism even with citation. Lifting entire chapters (even paragraphs) is never okay. The figures are a much more minor issue. Start with that!


Using a github code for my journal paper I'm conducting research on cyber bullying classification. I recently found a github repository containing code on sentiment analysis which looked at different machine learning algorithms, doc2vec + ml classifiers and a word2vec + cnn model. My dataset is different and I do use different machine learning classifiers than the github code does. However, the way the code in the repository trained the cnn model and the word2vec that was used is exactly the same.
Would using the code in the repository for my problem be considered plagiarism?

It would be plagiarism only if you don't cite the source. There's no plagiarism issue if you properly explain that you use this source code as a basis for your implementation and make it clear that it's not yours (preferably by citing a paper from the original authors if any, if not just give the github link).
Whether this will be considered an original contribution by the reviewers is a different matter. It might be ok if your motivation and data are significantly different from what the original authors did.


Why would a prospective advisor ask if I'm meeting other advisors? I am currently in the process of changing my advisor and hence looking for new prospective advisors at my university.  I got interviewed by one and she asked If I was in touch with any other advisors. I told her what the truth was but what exactly is the reason for asking this question?  What does the potential advisor want to know?

One reason an advisor might ask this question is to know how time-sensitive the decision process is. If you're not considering other advisors at the same time, there is no competition and the potential advisor can spend some more time making her decision.

Another reason might be to gauge your interest in her research activities based on the other people to whom you're talking. Are you looking only at her field or are you looking more widely? Since you're coming from someone else at the same university, she'd likely be using such choices as a means of determining your level of interest in what she's doing. In other words, she probably wants to know if you're just looking for any advisor, and she happens to be someone you're talking to, or looking at her as a serious option.


Doctoral symposium after graduation A few months ago I submitted my work to a doctoral symposium. At that moment I was PhD student and the work was accepted.

Now I am just graduated and my question is if I should still attend the doctoral symposium as graduated instead of as student.
Moreover, I have checked the conference schedule and it has a slot for me.

What is the best way to handled this situation?

As multiple comments have suggested, contacting the organizers appears the appropriate option. Although the symposium is strictly titled 'doctoral symposium', the organizers may be more interested in allowing you to showcase your work and to practice your presentation/dissemination skills (I am guessing it is for the latter).

But, will you be physically and financially capable of attending the meeting?


How and where should images be cited? I am currently working on a paper where we use one image from another paper. How and where should I denote that?

Currently, we have the image source only in the caption like this:

\caption{Comparison of a \gls{CNN} for classification (top)
         and a \gls{FCN} which creates a heat map (bottom).
         \cite{long2014fully}}

The right thing to do when plan to include an image from another article is to first ask for the permission from the corresponding author of the article. If approved, you may include the image and cite them along with the lines after the caption

  Included with permission from [citeno].

General citation would only allow you to refer information in literature. Any form of replication whether it is an image or even a set of sentences of text is not permitted without acknowledgement from the authors of the published material to be referred. The exception is for quotes and equations (with appropriate citations). That doesn't forbid you to use the text at all. It means that you ought to rephrase the information referred in you own words.


How to address email to a professor who prefers informality? How should I address an email to a professor who hates being called "Professor ___" or "Dr. ____?" He has made it very clear to students that he prefers to be referred to by his first name in person, but I have been told time and time again that one should be more formal when writing emails. Is this always true, or should I simply follow how he prefers to be addressed in person?

If the professor explicitly says not to call him by his last name, then don't. It would actually be more impolite to ignore his request in order to conform to some abstract "formality" rules.

However, even if you are addressing your professor by his first name, you can still preserve some degree of formality. Some common norms include:

do not use slang
avoid excessive contractions (e.g. use have not instead of haven't)
use your full name in the signature
be polite

In general, the rule of thumb is to be respectful and professional in your communications. Sometimes that includes addressing the person as "Professor X" or "Dr. X", but it does not have to. Just make sure you sound polite!


Will reviewers see acknowledgements in double blind peer review? In the acknowledgements section of a paper, I am thanking some well known people in the field I am working in, for helping me revise the paper.

Just out of curiosity: Do most conferences blank out the acknowledgements section? I feel like these people will add bias to the reviewers decision.

There is no reason that you need to put anything into the acknowledgements section until it is accepted and you are preparing the camera-ready version.  It is perhaps the only portion of a paper's text that can't really be affected by peer review (unless you do something remarkably unusual).  Furthermore, some acknowledgements must always be left our in order to maintain double-blind review: for example, funding should be acknowledged in the final document, but grant information breaks blinding.

Thus, I would recommend that you treat acknowledgements just like you treat author information: blank it for blind review, and add it in for the camera-ready after acceptance.