Handling collaboration requests from the authors of double-blind reviewed papers (after submitting the review) (I apologize if this is a duplicate, but I was not able to find any similar case on AcademiaSE)
I am finding myself in a very odd and unpleasant situation. The subject is "ethical" peer review in Computer Science.
I am a sub-reviewer of a conference. As such, I was assigned some papers to review (in double-blind format); however, for the papers I am assigned, I am able to see who the other reviewers are, and also their reviews on these papers. As a sub-reviewer, my name does not appear on the listed TPC of the conference.
Among the papers I am assigned, there is Paper A. I reviewed this paper and I liked it, albeit it had some flaws. After submitting my review, I was able to read the other reviewers' remarks - some were positive, some negative. My (positive) comments allowed the paper to pass the first round of review.
Now the problem: I received an email from a Researcher X who I did not know, asking a collaboration proposal; the email had Paper A in the attachment. Apparently, Researcher X found it relevant to include a proof that they're working on something to corroborate the collaboration request. I would be very willing to collaborate with X, as I consider their research group to be strong.
You can easily understand my awkward situation: what to do?
Things to take in mind:

My review has already been submitted and evaluated. Hence, I cannot turn down the review-request.
I can turn down the collaboration request, but I would lose a significant opportunity for my academic career.
Even if I warn the TPC of the conference to "retract" my review, I was still able to see the reviews of the other reviewers (as well as their names).
Moreover, my review has already had an impact on the future of the paper.
My name did not appear on the TPC list, meaning that Researcher X acted in good faith.

Given the timeline there is no ethical concern. You don't need to retract your review and you can agree to collaborate.
However, you should decline to review paper A if it goes to a next round. And in the short term you should refrain from telling the authors of your review. I don't see an issue in telling them later, after a final decision is made by others.
You might want to inform the program chair of the situation, giving the timeline. I doubt that they would have any complaint nor any reason to act.
Given what you say, the events seem to be entirely independent. Serendipity happens.


How do I find summer projects in math? I'm a sophomore undergraduate majoring in mathematics, and I'm pretty sure about eventually applying to graduate school in pure math. However, I haven't done much other than coursework so far, and I'm trying to plan a productive summer (learning something new, perhaps interacting with professors). By the time summer begins, I will have completed all basic math courses such as Analysis, Abstract Algebra, Linear Algebra, Set Theory, First Order Logic, etc. Apart from this, I've spent some time self-studying advanced topics such as Graph Theory, for example.
I think the above background is sufficient for me to at least learn about advanced math topics, if not do research at this stage. By advanced, I mean anything that would have at least one of the above topics as prerequisites, for example, Category Theory or Algebraic Geometry.

What do summer projects in math look like? I believe, for the most part, these would just be directed reading projects (which is great too). How do I find such projects?
Big Question: Would it be a good idea to cold email professors (ones who I've had no prior interaction with, but I really want to work with them at some point) and ask if they'd be willing to advise me on a reading project or such? I'm thinking of approaching professors at institutions different from mine - in particular, places where I'd like to go to grad school too. Would this be a good idea? I'm aware that professors are busy and they're not likely to respond to undergrad students from other institutions easily, but seems worth trying.
In addition, would it also be a good idea to reach out to postdocs or senior PhD students in math? I guess they could be good mentors for reading projects, too.

Lastly, if anyone has any other ideas for spending a productive summer in pure mathematics, do let me know! (apart from summer schools and REUs, I guess. Most of them are limited to US citizens/residents, making them useless for me).

Few professors will have any incentive to work with you. They are either busy in summer months or unwinding from otherwise intense efforts. If you have a personal connection to someone it might be different, but "cold contacts" probably will fail, even not getting any response.
But there are a few things you could try.
First, it may be that your current instructors could guide you if you don't put much burden on them.
Next, they might have maintained contact with their own teachers and can introduce and recommend you to a distant university professor.
Third, you can find the course requirements online for some topic of interest to you and get a copy of the textbook. Get the syllabus if available and follow it. This will give you access to readings and possibly exercises that you can do. Do a lot of them. Getting feedback on your results will be an issue, but maybe someone local can help you.
Finally, you might consider forming a study group if you can find others who are interested and work together to learn and give each other feedback. A local professor might help you arrange such a thing and even provide minimal guidance.


How to validate and submit for publication a paper as a graduate student? While attending a graduate course on an engineering subject (reliability of complex systems) I had an idea about a different approach to a known problem. The application of this different method to a known topic would simply require to build a model of the physical system under study and to do a few simulations. I have already done a test to see if this approach makes sense at all on basic problems (the one you would see in an introductory course on subject). After a quick search, I found that there is no literature that covers this aspect in our field of application (electrical engineering).

I told my idea to a colleague student that has "real world experience" on the subject and he was very enthusiast. Our cooperation would involve him bringing his experience (to evaluate the process and the quality of the results) and I would bring the computational skills (set up the simulation etc...). The paper would be about 5-6 pages plus results (and scripts if they can be attached).

Now I'm asking you: what is the correct iter we could follow to see if this paper is worth publishing? And then, assuming it is, where do we submit the paper for publishing? I'd be happy to publish it on my blog anyway but I think there is some potential for "more than a blog work" (if you can allow me the use of this bad description) and would like to know what are the options.

Also, I would like to add that I came up with the idea of a publication of this work because I came across a lot of short papers in this format (new solution/method to old problem). While I think our idea is not revolutionary, it might add some useful perspective.

TLDR:

We are 2 graduate students that have an idea for a new approach to a relatively old problem.
We already did some tests and the idea seems sound.
The paper would be approx 5-6 pages plus results.
The subject is related to realiability calculation in electrical engineering applications.

Where do we go after having written the paper for "proper" validation and publishing request?

Your situation is just like that of any other researcher. Work out your ideas. Write them up with proper citations of past and related work and submit to a journal that might be interested. The journal may be one of those you have found in your work and have cited.

Your advisor will give you initial feedback on your idea I hope and the editor and referees of the journal will also provide some validation. Your advisors likely have more experience and perspective than either of you, so take their advice about originality and possible importance. But, basically, in order to publish, you just do it and wait for feedback from the journal. Expect, as a minimum to have to rewrite based on reviewer comments.


What is considered a reasonable length for a math research paper? I've read that many mathematics journals have page limits. What are they, roughly? I think in one of Steven Krantz's pieces he says that if a journal is going to publish a 50-page paper, then "it had better glow in the dark." A friend of mine heard that more junior faculty (straight out of grad school) should avoid publishing papers more than 30 pages long.

Different math journals specialize in papers of "around" a certain length. Trans AMS, for example, publishes long papers. The web sites give the limits and they are, I assume, pretty rigidly enforced.

I don't know that such long papers need to glow in the dark, but they need to justify their length. It is possible that a single theorem has an exceeding complex and long proof, the details of which are mostly new. If the theorem is important, then it will be justified.

At the other end of the scale a paper with somewhat more modest results, but which presents a complete (and novel) body of knowledge that might be extended by others, likewise warrants a long paper.

But don't try to make a paper extra long just to try to get into Trans AMS. It won't be helpful. And don't make a paper short by leaving out essentials making it impossible to understand.

As short as possible, but no shorter, is probably the right idea.


In the UK, who owns the intellectual property of a thesis? Assume the following problem:

A person decides to create software for his thesis. His application turns out to be very profitable.

If he continues creating it, will the University own the intellectual property over the thesis or the application itself?

Will the revenue go to the university instead?

Is there any way the two parties can come up with a contract or agreement?
If the person leaves university and doesn't finish his thesis and instead releases his application, will there be any repercussions?

Depends on the University. The university (in the UK) I most recently worked at had an Intellectual Property policy that all IP rights for students stayed with the student automatically, which differed from the policy for research staff. But the university would be happy to get involved to help commercialise in return for a share, much as your suggestion about an agreement. However, other universities have other IP policies. But whatever their policy is, it should be easily available from their intranet though it might not be available to people outside the institution.


Our teacher is encouraging us to use cracked software I'm taking a course named Numerical and Computational Methods Based on Mathematica (Or in Chinese: "基于Mathematica的数值计算方法"), but Wolfram Mathematica is a bit expensive for me to afford. On the first lesson of this course, the teacher told us how to crack this software, and asked us to have Mathematica 11.0 installed on our computers by this Wednesday. However, I just don't want to use cracked softwares.

While it is true that software cracking is inappropriate and even illegal, almost everyone around me uses cracked softwares(such as PS, AE...). As far as I know, nobody in the rest of our class refuse to crack and install the software.

So what should I do? Having a talk with my teacher or simply quitting this course?

Follow-up:

Finally, I've decided to quit this course, because I think I can gain the same knowledge by learning Mathics, a free software recommended by some answers below.

Thank you for all the awesome answers!

Follow-up II:

I feel obliged to mention that now everyone can download the Free Wolfram Engine for Developers. From my understanding, the Wolfram Engine implements the Wolfram Language and is the very kernel of Mathematica, so this is basically a free full version of Mathematica, just without the notebook interface.

My advice is to just use the pirated software and not rock the boat, just like Drunken Code Monkey, for example, mentioned.

This issue isn't something that you're likely to solve yourself. Instead, you're most likely going to spend large amount of time and energy on nothing and produce no results. The fact that your teacher just expects you to get cracked Mathematica is a proof enough that it's something completely normal and accepted by your society. Now, I'm not going to preach to you about your own personal ethics or if you should feel bad about the situation or not. Others have given more than enough options.

Instead, I'm going to talk a bit about how things like this are resolved in other places. I myself am from Serbia, a country that has been recently opening itself to the idea of actually giving money for software, so I've seen a bit of how negotiations between foreign software companies and locals work.

Basically, on one hand, the "manufacturer" of the software is suffering what some might consider a loss, since you, your fellow students and the institution aren't paying for licenses.
On the other hand, keep in mind that they also have a direct benefit from you: You're increasing the user-base of their software.
 Mathematica isn't new and it's not going to disappear because you aren't paying for it. Instead, it has a chance to thrive: You're using Mathematica and not competitors. That means that you'll be most likely comfortable using Mathematica and not some other tool that take getting used to. At your future employer's place, you'll probably feel more comfortable again using Mathematica than alternatives.

This means that your area is a very interesting potential market for Wolfram. Sure, you're not paying now, but directly, that fact doesn't cost Wolfram anything. Keep in mind that software prices are not calculated by how much a license costs (because it costs pretty much nothing and the trend is to reduce physical costs as much as possible), instead they're calculated by how much potential customers want to pay for it. In some cases, the "normal" prices might be very far away from what you can normally afford.

The bottom line for software companies is that they want money, specifically, more money than they invested into the creation of software. Their user-base is a potential source of money. If the users are paying, that's great, if they're the non-paying type of users, you want to convert them eventually into paying type of users using various methods (student licenses come to mind, for example). If you spend resources to convert the non-paying users into non-users, you just wasted your own money for no profit at all.

The result is that, if Wolfram has a sufficiently large user base in China, and at the same time, the political situation in China changes to a point where Wolfram can start negotiations on licensing, the educational institutions could end up getting real licenses for their computers.

These licenses could be either payed individually, or through an agreement with your government for a form of collective licensing. They might even be "donated" as a show of "good will". There might be an agreement for a combination of donated and purchased licenses or a certain ratio of tolerated "non-purchased" and purchased licenses, eg. you'll buy 5 and we'll let you use up to 15 licenses or similar. There might be an agreement that a company could be allowed (or maybe even given government backing) to persecute or at least aggressively negotiate with commercial pirates in return for giving licenses to government and educational institutions. Sometimes, it's much easier to put pressure on a large for-profit company that has money to pay licenses than to put pressure on a smaller institution that in the end won't even be able to pay anything.

Possibilities are great, depending on what the company and relevant institutions manage to officially or unofficially negotiate. Do note that, if the political climate is ripe-enough, such negotiations can be very profitable for the company. After all, some money is much better than no money, as long as it doesn't take too much effort to obtain it.


How does Faculty of Graduate Studies work? Canadian universities have Faculty of Graduate Studies for supporting graduate programs and students. However, I do not under stand how it can operates without conflicting overlap with the technical departments/faculties.

For example, someone is a student in Department of X, Faculty of Y. His academic and official matters are normally within the Department/Faculty. Now with the presence of Faculty of Graduate Studies, how is dealing with other different academic units?

How is the role of Faculty of Graduate Studies in parallel with the technical Department/Faculty?
Is there an equivalent system in the US or UK (an other European) universities too?

I can't comment on the specifics of the Canadian system, but in general the university wishes to ensure that standards and requirements for (say) a PhD in theoretical physics are equivalent to those for a PhD in German Literature. Thus, the faculty of graduate studies will be responsible for establishing the basic structure and standards to which the various graduate programs must conform. They then delegate the detailed implementation of any given program to the department concerned.

In practice, this may indeed generate all sorts of "interesting" internal politics, as the faculty of graduate studies attempts to justify its existence, and the departments try to assert their independence.


I am a PhD student seeking to collarborate with PhD student/professors from other department. How can I make this happen? I am a PhD student seeking to collaborate with PhD student/professors from other department.
I have never made such an initiative before, and I lack the general idea on how to start.
In particular:

If I already have some specific research questions in mind (which I will use for my dissertation research), is it important to ensure that the research lab is a reasonable match to my specific research goals? For example, if my field is natural language processing and I am specifically interested in doing a research in Transformer language models, should I ensure that the potential research lab for collaboration is also heavily into Transformer research? or can I try contacting any natural language processing labs in general, even if the lab's subarea of research is not a great match to my research goals?

My main supervisor is open to the idea of collaboration. To make the collaboration to happen, can I just contact the individual researcher/PhD student whom I am interested in working with? or should I first contact the professor who is leading the lab that the researcher/PhD student belongs to?

Should my main supervisor contact the research group on my behalf, instead of me approaching them?

If I collaborate with a research lab in different department, does this automatically mean that I will formally be a member of that research lab and have the professor who is leading the lab as my co-supervisor?

Is it okay for PhD student to collaborate with research labs from different university (assuming that my main supervisor is okay with this)?

Thank you,

Yes, go for it.  It sounds like a great idea.
Regarding your formal status with the other labs you collaborate with, as a grad student you could be considered more appropriately as an "intern" for them, which is not in the usual sense of the word, in terms of responsibilities, but I've seen the term used a lot in academia for researchers collaborating at other labs.


Humorous author pictures Some journals put author pictures and short bios at the end of the articles. Do you know of published examples in which the authors used humorous pictures of themselves, for instance with funny poses or unusual hats?

Yes, a group of authors (Đurić, Delibašić, Radišić, or Đuirić, Delilbašić and Radisic, as they signed themselves in the paper) trying to debunk the Metalurgia International journal provided outrageous pictures in their paper entitled: Evaluation of Transformative Hermeneutic Heuristics for Processing Random Data.

The, up to that point "respected", journal published the paper without any comments about the photos.


Are Shared Office Common for Lecturers Are there any standards in higher education (any country) on when lecturers (any level, any field) have a private office or a shared office?

I know it's a good idea to provide 'consultation time' for students as one-on-one teaching helps the student in so many ways. However, in a shared office it seems that some of the benefits of one-on-one teaching disappear. For example, the student is less likely to be concerned about how they look in front of others if it's in a private office but if there are other teachers (perhaps with other students) then your student will have those issues again.

So, are there any standards about private vs shared offices for university lecturers?

You're going to find answers all over the map for this one (i.e., there probably aren't "standards").  I personally like having a private office so I can get the most work done, but I'm generally comfortable with a shared space if it doesn't get too loud.  I have found that it is rare for students to worry about how they perform if they are just trying to get help figuring out the material.  If there are conference rooms or open classrooms available, that's sometimes a good place to tutor students, too.

For what it's worth, I never have closed door meetings with students because that has the potential to lead to allegations of improper relationships, etc.  If a student does have something private to discuss, I'll ask them to take a walk around campus where we are visible but can't be heard, or to go into a conference room that has windows into the hallway.


Sourcing lecture notes instead of publications I am writing an undergraduate dissertation and I have found some very good information from lecture handouts from other universities.
Will using these lecture notes compared to official publications or other dissertations reflect my dissertation in a bad light?
Of course I will source everything.

I firmly believe that one should cite what one has used... and possibly more. To use a source and not cite it is simply dishonest and fails to give credit where it is due. At the same time, yes, one also wants official credibility, which usually entails citing refereed-journal publications (although the latter is not a promise of correctness, either). If nothing else, citing refereed-journal publications is expected, so doing it is doing what one is expected to do.

(Lecture notes are not always mere echoing of textbooks or journal articles.)

So, cite both the actual source you used, and find "cite-able" sources to accompany, so you'll be both honest (and explanatory) and "formally correct".


Is it normal to be suspicious of a really interesting finding but in an obscure journal and/or by authors from unknown universities EDIT Since there are some misunderstandings regarding my question I'll try to rephrase, and also avoid posting questions late at night when I am really tired :)

A typical part of my work as a bioinformatician/data analyst is to check the relevance of my results, when I am drafting my articles, by doing a series of literature searches to see how my results relate to the field in general. This typically takes me beyond my own competencies, and into fields like histology, oncology, tumor biology etc..

Quite often I run into very interesting results presented in articles that were published in obscure journals with pretty low IF (say for example 1.0-1.5). Sometimes the authors turn out to be from a rather unknown university from a unexpected country. I realize that this is a bit controversial, and I really don't mean to be looking down on anyone's creativity or work ethics but biomedical research is usually expensive, with all the lab consumables, customised reagents/antibodies/proteins/peptides etc..

One such example was an article I found yesterday where the authors claim prognostic potential for a particular protein which also happens to be significantly regulated in my dataset. Naturally I was excited at first but then two questions arose:

Could these people have really done what they claim they have done?
If the work is legit, then why it ended up going to a journal that's so obscure, considering that the findings might be very relevant for patient care. Cancer and biomarkers are two "hot" fields and there are literally lots of well known avenues for publication, before you come to think of this one, or this one. If the results are as interesting as I think they are then they should have surely been published in a venue where they'd get more attention.

Am I being too harsh to be suspicious?

I am concerned by your choice of words:

"Obscure": one person's obscure may be another person's core community.
"Low IF": IF is very dependent on both community and "trendiness."  A lot of very good work is published in low IF venues because they are the appropriate place to publish the result.
"Unknown ... and unexpected": again, not unusual at all for something interesting to come out of an unexpected place.

All of these words, to me, point to lazy "popularity-contest" thinking in evaluating the context of a work.  Instead, I think that you should use more scientifically meaningful heuristics, such as:

Does the investigator have a history of solid work, into which this result fits?
Does the venue have a clear, well-defined focus and community, and does it have reputable management?
Is the work well-suited for the venue?

If a work doesn't pass these filters, then I think you should be highly suspicious and not bother digging more deeply.  If it does, however, then you should be just as skeptical as you should be for work coming out of a high-prestige laboratory in a leading institution---and no more.


Is novelty requirement for PhD restricts the selection of research question? From the answers to this question. We can clearly know that novelty is a basic requirement for a PhD degree.

Now, consider the following statements:

1) Is Goldbach conjecture true?

2) Is P = NP?

etc.,

All the questions have a lot of attention in that particular field and are not easy to get answers for them. But we cannot say it is impossible to get answers.

Suppose I'm a student and my PhD thesis should be novel. I am highly interested in solving one such question.

In this case, either my supervisor will forbid me in doing research on such question or there are more chances that I may not get PhD because of the sole reason of novelty.

Hence, to the best of my knowledge, either directly or indirectly, the PhD is narrowing down to the topics of recent origin, relatively easily publishable, less saturated etc.,

Isn't it true that the research question has been influenced by novelty aspect of PhD?

Well, it is slightly unlikely that a novel researcher will solve one of the very fundamental problems in their PhD.

But whilst working on a solution, you will most probably find different other intersting problems which are unsolved or novel an those can be published and can be the basis of a PhD thesis.

You will have to convince a supervisor that you

understood the problem well
have some novel ideas which have not been tried before

and with this you may find someone. But be prepared for an intense discussion. It hppens quite often that a student claims to have a solution for a very fundamental problem and after half an hour of discussion the idea is gone with the wind... A good supervisor wants to avoid such a situation during your PhD.


Including unrelated (but current) job on CV for PhD application? I finished my master's degree in September, and I have applied to PhD programs that begin in September 2017. Most of the schools asked for a CV with the application. I've had to take a part-time job in retail to make ends meet while looking for a better job, and I included the retail job on my CV under the employment section. My CV, of course, highlights my more relevant positions (teaching/research assistantships), along with my conferences, awards, etc. But I'm concerned that I may have made a mistake in including the retail job at all - I only felt compelled to do so because I wanted to be honest about my current employment.

Will including the retail job on my CV possibly be seen negatively by PhD admissions committees? I am hoping that it is a non-issue, but I am not sure.

Edit: I realize similar questions have been asked but I don't think my question is a duplicate of the one that was suggested. I'm asking about whether it was a good idea to include current employment, not hobbies and interests.

You've included a piece of information on your CV that's essentially irrelevant for the position you're applying for, and that's how it will be viewed.  Most people on admissions committees won't care, assuming your application indicates a high level of motivation for a PhD.  So don't worry about it.

That said, some people will probably want to know why you'll have a 1-year gap between the end of your masters and the beginning of your PhD.  Presumably either you applied to some places last year and were unsuccessful or just didn't apply.  Neither of these things would be held against you much—but there are potential concerns here that I would want to see cleared away in other parts of your application.  For instance, not applying last year might lead one to wonder how serious you are about a PhD and/or how on top of things you are.  Hopefully your letter writers/personal statement would put any such concerns to rest.


What does it mean to co-sign a letter of recommendation? To provide some background, I'm an MS student (CS - machine learning) looking to apply for PhD programs. I was looking for letter writers, and struggled to find the third.
I have the option of asking a postdoc that I've worked with or a professor who has explicitly stated that he "doesn't know me well enough to write me a detailed and strong letter, but if you have no one else I'd be glad to write one."
My question is, what does it mean to "co-sign" a letter? Many people have advised me that if a postdoc writes my letter then it would be a good idea to have our advisor co-sign it. As far as I know, universities send out requests to submit letters electronically and writers submit the letters online. My dad is also a professor (albeit not CS) and has said he hasn't heard about this ever since letters went online. What would this mean in today's context? Do some fields still request mail-in letters?

Co-signing something simply means that the co-signer also approves of the letter. For example if I wrote:

To whomever it may concern,
Seankala is a brilliant student.
Sincerely, Allure

If someone else were to co-sign it, it would become:

To whomever it may concern,
Seankala is a brilliant student.
Sincerely, Allure & [someone]

It means that that someone also thinks Seankala is a brilliant student.
Co-signing something doesn't mean one wrote or even helped write it. Here's an example of a co-signed petition. The petition itself was obviously not written by 12,000 people, but you can be sure they all approve of it.


Do editors like having cumulative thesis papers published in the same journal? I am going to submit a manuscript that, if accepted, will be included in my Ph.D. cumulative thesis. The cumulative thesis will be composed of two papers: the first one has already been published in the same journal to which I am going to submit the second one. So, in the best case scenario, I will end up with a PhD thesis having two papers published in the same journal. The papers are somewhat linked but different.

Now, I am writing the cover letter to the editor and wondering if it is a good idea to mention this aspect. Could it be good, bad or irrelevant?

It is always important to acknowledge past publication history in any paper or thesis.  For example:

If any portion of your thesis has been published in any form (such as a technical report, conference paper, working paper, or journal paper), you must acknowledge that prior publication in your thesis.
If any portion of a journal submission has been published in any form (such as a technical report, conference paper, working paper, or PhD thesis), you must acknowledge that prior publication in your submission.

In both cases, the later publication must acknowledge the earlier one.  Some publication venues impose restrictions or conditions on the later publication of the same result.  For example, in many fields of computer science, conference papers can be republished in journals only after the addition of significant new material; in other fields, republishing conference papers in journals is simply impossible.  In chemistry, even submitting your PhD thesis to University Microfilms may publication of your thesis research in a journal impossible [source].  Conversely, some publishers require that any thesis that includes results from a published journal paper not only cite that paper but include a copyright notice for the repeated text [same source].

But there is no similar expectation that you acknowledge future publications, because they don't (yet) exist.  It's really none of the editor's business what you might put into your PhD thesis—that's entirely between you and your thesis committee.


How can I tell if a website is safe for conference registration? I am registering for a conference in Canada but the payment link has a weird name like yizhifubj and the website is Chinese.
Is that normal? Are there any guidelines for determining if a registration website is “safe”?

You will not be able to get a definitive answer on this unless you contact the conference organisers.  Certainly the registration mechanism is - by modern western standards - backwards - and you are right to ring alarm bells and take extreme caution as it could well be a scam

That said, @GlenPierce answer is not the final word - and there are significant elements which indicate that the site itself is credible - these include

The actual payment IS done over HTTPS, and the certificate ties in with the domain name.  Of-course, this does not mean much, except that the domain has not been compromised.
The domain names associated with the site have been registered many years
The site purports to relate to academic.net - and, indeed, when you go to the academic.net website, the payment system does, indeed link to this domain name.   It is also relevant that most of conferences they have listed are held in China.
If you log onto the site, and change the meeting ID, it lists different headers for different ID's - that means that if the site has been hacked, its been hacked for a while, and there is a "non-trivial" amount of coding behind this - and yet Google have not flagged it as untrustworthy.

My inclination is to believe that this is more a case of incompetence then likely fraud (and this level of competency is not that uncommon in the parts of Asia I've been exposed to) - but I would still not register this site without confirmation from the organizer that it is legit.


Are there intellectual property concerns if I submit "under review" papers as part of my application? In my statement of purpose I talked about the papers that I worked on and two of those papers are currently under review.

Is it acceptable to submit such papers as part of my application? And are there any concerns on the intellectual property of the work (since it is yet to be accepted)?

Is it acceptable to submit such papers as part of my application?

Yes, you inform people about your work in progress. I do suggest to add the submission date for the two papers, and if a first review has been performed, its date too.

And are there any concerns on the intellectual property of the work (since it is yet to be accepted)

I would say yes, if you plan to patent some of the ideas, but it might be too late if you have submitted it already.

And yes in general too. I have seen at a conference C2003 two posters side-by-side, on very similar topics, by researchers from country A, and country B. As I new the researcher from country B, s/he told me that s/he submitted to C2002, which took place in country A. His/her paper was rejected, and s/he suspected his/her idea was used by country A reviewers. No proof though. To maintain your legacy, you can put the paper on a free paper archive, like arxiv. Depending on the precisions you give in your applications, this risk is more or less likely. Do not believe in unknown people honesty.


Review paper authored by a current collaborator I have a simple question about a math paper, since I don't have a lot of experience in reviewing papers. I have currently received a request for reviewing a paper for publication. I would normally have no problem in doing so.

The thing is that I am currently about to start a collaboration with one of the authors of this paper. This collaboration even appears mentioned at some point in the paper that I was asked to review (in the lines of "the author ... and ... are planning to ...", where one of the ... is me).

I wonder whether there is an ethical dilemma. Perhaps it's completely normal and standard and I'm just making a big deal out of it. I'm sure it depends on the discipline, so I wanted to hear about this from people in the math world. Thanks!

If one author is too close to you, you should decline. I do not review for recent co-authors and current collaborators of mine but I start collaborations with people I reviewed.


Distinguish opinion from suggestion while reviewing a manuscript? First time reviewer here. My purpose as a reviewer is to make recommendations on how the manuscript can be improved, right? In this effort, should I distinguish my solid expert opinion from mere suggestions?

For example, if I see an error, then I believe I should professionally but firmly point it out:

"X is not a valid conclusion because of y. It should be removed."

However, what if the issue is not a clear-cut error but rather a matter that, in my opinion, would strengthen the quality of the manuscript?

Should I use the same firmness? (Option A)

"X should be added because of y."

or distinguish this as an opinion (Option B):

"Perhaps it would be beneficial for X to be added. Consider including x due to y."

As an author on the other side of things, I would appreciate the distinction so that I understand what either needs to be changed in a revision (or needs to be strongly justified why the reviewer was wrong) versus what I can freely disagree with the reviewer about without having to make a strong justification about why I disagree.

This issue is giving me pause because I've rarely or never seen Option B in reviews of my own manuscripts. All comments by reviewers are similar to Option A.

My apologies if my examples are too vague. I tried to make the applicable to the whole community here which requires ambiguity unfortunately.

You have space. If you have a scheme of what to do, just follow it. Read further if you don't have any scheme:

Your purpose as a reviewer is typically NOT to make recommendations on how the manuscript can be improved. You are NOT asked for suggestions how to improve. You are asked for an evaluation. I suggest the following scheme:

[

Summary:

...

High-level issues:

X is not a valid conclusion because of y. It is wrong to include x into the paper.

...

Low-level issues:

...

Improvement suggestions:

Perhaps it would be beneficial for Z to be added. Consider including Z due to W.

]

Include "improvement suggestions" only if you really wish to or if you are asked for that explicitly. If in addition you are asked for "nondisclosed comments to the editor / program-committee" or something else, then include such parts, too.


Including false attempts in resarch statement I am Masters student in Mathematics.Currently I am studying modular forms.I am interested in integer partitions, Modular forms. I am working and thinking about problems which are arising during my studies.Besides this I am trying to understand connections of these problems to another field of Maths and physics. Actually I am preparing application for fellowship grant , there is requirement of Research statement.So How can I write down research statement having no strong result? Should false attempts during thinking about problems be included in resarch statement?

It is probably fine to indicate that you have already studied the problems/questions that you are exploring and that you have "narrowed the field" by rejecting certain unfruitful approaches. If you already have "strong results" then the research is behind you, not ahead. Focus more on the importance of the questions you are exploring than the failed attempts to answer them. In mathematics, some problems are inherently difficult. Some are even impossible, but things can be learned and math can advance even for those problems.

It is especially valuable, if true, to point out that some of the attempts to answer the main question have also raised new questions that are fruitful for exploration.


Should I cite a result if the paper doesn't include a proof? I'm writing a mathematical paper. In it, I use a lemma. The lemma is not hard to prove and I have verified it myself. The proof is too tedious to include in the paper, so I want to just include a citation. I found a paper that includes the result. However, that paper does not actually include a proof. I cannot find any other place where this lemma appears.

I see three options:

State the lemma without proof or citation.
State the lemma without proof, but cite the paper (that states the lemma without proof or citation).
Provide a proof of the lemma.

Which is most appropriate? Option 1 is easiest, but might annoy some readers who don't believe me. Option 2 seems like a cop out. Option 3 is safest, but I don't think it's necessary, as the proof is really just a long and boring calculation.

ADDED: To be clear, the lemma is basically an integral. The proof consists of splitting up the domain of integration to remove absolute values, evaluating each of the parts (easy enough for symbolic integration packages like mathematica), and then joining them back up. This is "obvious", but messy because the expressions are quite long. My writeup is two pages.

Maybe a better way to phrase my question: The result is trivial -- I think so, the authors of the other paper think so, and the journal they published in thinks so. Should I still provide a citation? Is it misleading to cite the other paper without clarifying that it doesn't provide a proof?

Citing the other paper seems necessary in any case, as they have stated the lemma before you. This is for attribution. Citing the other paper for evidence seems not appropriate, as there is no proof given there.

If the lemma is not rather obvious (say the obvious proof strategy works in < 5min), then stating it without proof would be very bad form. Put in an appendix if you don't want a boring lengthy proof to spoil the otherwise elegant paper, but put it somewhere people can find it.


Should I scold the act of cheating before an exam? Usually when I'm applying an exam on my students, right before giving them the questions sheet, I tell them not to cheat. I usually warn them that I will not be inspecting their every move, but I will be watchful to make sure that no communication, electronic device or consulting will be done/used.

To complement this, I always make very mean and bad comments about cheating. Stuff like "your diploma will always be tainted if you go through the University by cheating, I'd rather use it to clean my soles" or "you had all the opportunities to ask questions, consult me, the textbooks, Youtube videos, lecture notes, class monitors and myself and the other teachers before this exam. I was always honest with you and expect the same thing in return and nothing else. If you're having personal problems that are affecting your studies, there are other ways to try to circunvent it instead of cheating". I once even said (with a class that I had some liberty to say so) that, by cheating, I wanted them to look at the mirror, every day of their lives, and face how much an intellectual failure they've become.

Now, I try to make it clear that those are jokes. But I'm sure that they get that these jokes had a truth behind it. My question is: are there ethical reasons not to do so? My point is, if I can't resource to my students' conscience to be honest, then I can't resort to anything, since I can't possibly outsmart 75 or so students every time I'm applying an exam if they want to be creative at cheating.

Treat ethics seriously. Students should be aware that their actions do have consequences, and should be held responsible for their deeds and misdeeds. Jokes are inappropriate, and references about "cleaning your soles" with cheating-tainted diplomas are probably a little too hyperbolic.

That said, you can certainly give a warning to your students not to cheat on the exam. In some places, you must give such a warning as part of the exam instructions!


Good questions for a student-advisor compatibility test There are online a good amount of tests aimed to assess "compatibility" between two persons in a given life or work commitment situation; for instance, between coworkers, roommates, lovers, dungeons'n'dragons players.

Basically, the idea is asking questions to which there is no true correct answer, but different possible viewpoints based on personality, opinions and general attitude. Two people can check easily if they are on the same page on a number of controversial points, and early discussion helps identifying possible reasons for disagreement.

It would be interesting to come up with similar questions for the phd student/advisor relationship. For example,

  A good advisor should:

  a. provide detailed guidance and tell their student what to investigate in great detail, even on a day-by-day basis.

  b. leave their student free to choose their work agenda, but arrange regular meetings to check on their status and make sure they don't go astray.

  c. give their student a problem and tell them to come back when they have an interesting result, even if it is months later.

I would like to gather several specific questions of this kind as answers to a community wiki question.

Let me continue along the lines of @paul and @pete in a shortened quest for an answer.

I have been a teacher, although at this time I simply "work for" University of Richmond in a staff position. Lately I have been musing over a similar question involving the interaction between MDs and their patients. As patients we can forget that there is a sense in which we are hiring the doctors, and that the doctors are doing work /for/ us. While it is an asymmetric relationship, it is possible to bring it into balance.

The interview is likely to be short from the {doctor|advisor} side: A cardiologist is unlikely to be of much use for my orthopaedic problems, and an advisor is likely to be able to cut short the interview rather quickly if the subject matter is ill suited. So, let's suppose the question is really "How do I as a {patient|student} select a {doctor|advisor}?" It is a search for compatibility, yes?

"How did you get into this line of work?" I always ask this. I want my doctor to have gone into medicine for the same reasons I got into computer science.
"What has kept you in this line of work?" I really want the answer to match my own reasons for having worked with computers and software every day for the past four decades: I cannot imagine doing anything else.
I know what success/victory conditions are for myself. So I ask "In my case, what does success look like for you?"

You are likely to spot failure/incompatibility in five minutes; which allows you to move on to the next candidate. If you can talk at ease for 15 minutes, you likely have found someone with whom you are compatible. Remember: the match need not be perfect to be successful.

So in your case, you are looking for answers involving a continued desire to have substantive interactions with students (rather than just "problems"), and someone who likes to frame and revise the problem, but allow the student to work alone as evidence of success.


Teaching visual tools for visually impaired students? I am teaching a module related to data visualization. Thus, of course, most of the tools are visual tools, that is, tools for visualizing summaries of the data.
I have visually impaired students, which makes it really difficult to teach them these tools, as it involves two- and three-dimensional plots and graphs.
Creating an audio substitute for these is very complicated, but of course it is essential to make the teaching material available.
What are the main rules for making this kind of material accessible?

There are physical devices that permit the blind to feel three dimensional graphs. Do a search for something like "haptic graphing device for visually impaired" to see some of the possibilities. They aren't cheap, of course. One of the most interesting, I think, is one designed at Stanford University.
A simpler Braille printer might be adapted to make 2-D graphs, but may not work for 3-D.
Three Dimensional printers are a possibility provided that you have enough preparation time for creation of the models. They tend to be rather slow.
There are also haptic feedback gloves that might be adapted.


Does a journal retracting a paper also renounce copyright? Every now and then, a journal retracts a paper for some reason or another.  I'm wondering what impact retraction has on copyright, assuming the journal (or its publisher) was given its copyright.

Question: Does a journal retracting a paper also renounce copyright?

The notion of "retracting" a paper implies "we don't want it" to some extent (particularly if it is a journal-initiated retraction), which I feel may be interpreted as renouncing copyright altogether.

Good question. As far as I can tell, the answer is "no" and the journal retracting the paper still retains copyright (if it was given the copyright in the first place).

Here're some retraction policies: one, two, three. Although the question you ask is not discussed, two things can be noted:

Even if a paper is retracted, the publisher still distributes it (as in, it's still available from the journal's website). What changes is that the publisher makes it clear that the article is retracted.
The publisher only stops distributing the paper if they are legally obliged to do so (e.g. if the copyright is actually held by someone other than the authors, and the authors had no legal standing to sign the copyright to the publisher).

Since the publisher needs the copyright (or permission from the copyright holder) to distribute the paper, the logical answer is "no".


How do I tell my advisor about mental health problems? I'm an undergraduate student (20f). I have 2 academic advisors - one in the Honors College & one in my department. I met with the Honors advisor recently to discuss study abroad and we somehow got on the topic of me not ever taking breaks. My GPA had fallen the past semester, and she warned me that if I don't start taking care of myself, I could burn out before getting my PhD (which is my goal).

I've suffered from anxiety/depression for years and recently begun to see a psychiatrist and counselor when I stopped eating, starting passing out, and developed repeated thoughts of suicide. All of that happened this past semester when I took an independent study with my Dept advisor, and I don't think he noticed. I want to be able to continue my research, so I'm trying to take care of myself. Unfortunately, that means I need to diminish my work load some.

I've been working with my Dept advisor closely for 2 years. He's helped me go to undergrad research conferences, get published, get grants etc. Always there for me academically, but the relationship's still very professional. We're officially starting my thesis work in the fall, but I told him I would start the readings this summer (halfway through the list). However, if I'm going to slow down the pace, I feel like I ought to give him reasons so he doesn't just think I'm slacking off. At the same time, I don't want to make it overly personal and make things awkward between us. He always asks how I am and it's a joke between us that I always say "tired" and he says "me too." I know that he pushes himself incredibly hard and never gives himself a break.

I would really appreciate examples of how I could word the email. I was thinking of asking him to meet some time (we're both in town over summer) to discuss and then tell him. Would it be better to do it over email? How do I tell him that I can't handle my current workload and still expect him to respect me as an academic?

Good for you for recognizing your illness and for getting professional help.

My answer has two parts.

Regarding how to tell your adviser, I suggest that you can write a short, factual, but non-personal email that contains all the information you want him to know.  Something like this:

  Dear Professor X,

  I need to tell you about a health condition that I have struggled with
  for some time.  I have a psychological condition involving anxiety and depression, and I am receiving professional medical treatment for it.  We have a course of treatment that is appropriate but it will take some time to be effective.

  One consequence is that I will need to be more careful about the
  amount of stress I am experiencing, including avoiding a stressful
  work load. I have decided that my past work load (including X, Y, and Z) is too much and not healthy for me.

  Considering the alternatives, I have decided to focus my effort on X and Y, and to discontinue (or cut back on) Z.  I remain committed to academic excellence and my career goals, and I believe this new work plan will be more likely to be successful than my previous work patterns.

  I will be happy to meet with you to discuss this decision and alternative suggestions you might have. However, there are aspects that I hold private and will not be open to discussing.  Thank you for understanding.

  Best regards,

  Student

You only need to meet in person if the Department adviser requests a meeting.

The second part of my answer comes to me intuitively based on the way you have written your question and the background.

I sense that you might have a belief in perfectionism -- that the only acceptable level of effort is 110% and the only acceptable level of results is perfection. You might have a very negative association with being perceived as "lazy" or "slacker" if you take any vacations or breaks.  You might also believe that any error or misstep is a sure sign of unrecoverable failure.

If these resonate with you, then they need to be addressed to avoid recurring patterns of overwork, exhaustion, and eventually burnout.

Since you are seeing a professional psychologist and counselor, I suggest that you raise these questions and your responses with him/her.  No need to respond here (in public).

EDIT:
Anticipating some objections, I know that making explicit mention of "psychological condition" and "anxiety and depression" may be risky and may go against cultural norms.  As a matter of ethics and morality, I believe it is important and necessary for all of us, individually, to act against those cultural norms that are harmful and counter productive.  In this case, it is prejudice against mental illness, but I hold the same views regarding racism, sexism, and other cultural dysfunctions.

Of course, each individual needs to weigh the potential consequences of going against cultural norms.  If you can't bear the potential consequences, then don't do it. You'll have to leave it to others to push for changes to cultural norms.


How to estimate standard error of journal impact factor based on impact factor and number of citable papers? The impact factor (and other indicators of citations per document per year) is often used (controversially) to evaluate the research impact of a journal.

Critics of the impact factor often point out that it  based on a skewed distribution with outliers. For example, many papers may have zero citations, another set may have a small number of citations, and finally a small set of papers may have a large number of citations (e.g., 50 or 100, etc.).
In general, I've read that this profile is typical of many mid-tier journals.
Thus, this is used to suggest that the impact factor may be influenced by outliers.

I agree that this distribution of citations does highlight that the impact factor overestimates the median citations per paper (as is the case with any positively skewed count distribution).

But another critique is that the impact factor is unreliable because of this distribution.

Thus, my question is:

What formula can be used to calculate standard error of the impact factor for a journal?

Presumably, this would help both critics and advocates of the impact factor to be able to quantify the uncertainty in estimating the impact factor. It would also assist in assessing whether it is appropriate to say that the differences in impact factor over time or between journals are a reliable difference.

Initial thoughts:

The standard error of the mean is commonly estimated as: s / sqrt(n), where s is the standard deviation of citations per article, and n is the number of citable articles. So presumably, the main factor that would reduce the standard error would be the number of citable articles published in the journal over the period. But unless we have the raw data, we wont have the standard deviation and the skewed distribution might lead this formula to underestimate the standard error.
Use existing literature to determine the distribution of citations over articles. Hopefully, its a distribution that can be approximate by knowing only the mean, or where the mean provides a good estimate of the standard deviation
Then apply a formula to get the standard error of the impact factor.

I think the standard error (of the mean, commonly estimated as s/sqrt(n) as stated in the OP) is a robust and good estimate for the uncertainty of the impact factor. It would certainly be interesting to know this together with the impact factors. Unfortunately, the standard error cannot be computed merely from the impact factor and the number of citable papers.

Note that the impact factor, being the average citation count, follows a normal distribution, even if the citation counts themselves don't (according to the central limit theorem).

A completely different question is whether, in view of skewed distributions of citation counts, the traditional impact factor (=average citation count) is a good measure for journal impact.


Is it wise to contact the editor of a journals with my concerns regarding the length of the acceptance process? I have finished writing my first paper to be published in a journal. My intent is to try to publish in a high-impact journal (there are two candidates from the IEEE Transactions class). However, my advisor and another professor, who is close to our research, both suggest that I should refrain from trying to aim that high, i.e. first publish in a lower ranked journal. They state that the reason is not the insufficient quality of the paper, but rather the length of the acceptance process, which is in their experience particularly for first-time authors very prolonged. The argument is, that I would lose many months, perhaps even more than a year in the back and forward process of rejections and resubmitions, when all this could be cut significantly, if a l. All that seems a bit pessimistic to me, of course, I don't want to wait so long, but I was under the impression that such a process would take at most 3-4 months.

Are those considerations regarding first-time authors deemed accurate?
Would it be appropriate/advisable to contact the editors of the journals with my concerns regarding the length of the acceptance process?

PS: the field is computer science

I was under the impression that such a process would take at most 3-4 months.

No. 3-4 months would be, in my experience, extremely quickly for Computer Science transactions. That would mean that your submission would get accepted without modifications in the first revision, which almost never happens (and even then 3 months would be very fast). 1 to 2 years for the entire process is more common.

However, this has nothing to do with it being your first paper. It is the same for every submission. Those journals have pretty rigours peer review, which simply takes some time.

That being said, it will also be similar for other non-spam journals. I am not aware of any reputable CS journal that would suit your 3-4 months expectation.

  Would it be appropriate/advisable to contact the editors of the journals with my concerns regarding the length of the acceptance process?

The answer would very likely be "deal with it or submit somewhere else". Frankly, if a journal had a reasonable way to cut down on the time required for the review process without hampering review quality, they would arguably do it anyway. They are not going to "make an exception" or anything of this ilk.

  my advisor and another professor, who is close to our research, both suggest that I should refrain from trying to aim that high, i.e. first publish in a lower ranked journal. They state that the reason is not the insufficient quality of the paper, but rather the length of the acceptance process

I would assume they meant not "a lower ranked journal", but rather "a conference". Review durations for conferences are indeed much more predictable (and, generally, shorter, in the 2-month range on average).

Submitting to a weaker journal to get your notification a little bit faster does not seem like overly good advice to me. If they indeed were speaking about a lower-ranked journal, you should consider the possibility that they were sugar-coating their judgement that your paper is not good enough for a very strong journal.


Spelling mistakes in published conference paper at IEEE Xplore I have published a paper in a conference proceedings of an IEEE conference. The paper has been published since December of last year. Unfortunately, I found some spelling mistakes in the text. Is there a way, how I can correct them? Does anyone have experience with IEEE. On the web I only found information about how to correct metadata (https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/become-an-ieee-journal-author/publishing-ethics/guidelines-and-policies/policy-correcting-metadata-in-the-ieee-xplore-digital-library/) but I could not find any information about spelling errors.

It may be impossible to get a change made, but a possible approach would be to contact the program chair of the conference (or the conference chair if necessary) and ask for advice. They will know what is possible and what is not.

But it is also likely that the errors are merely a nuisance and not fatal to the work. It hasn't been a long time, yet, but over a longer period things get harder to change and more likely to be ignored.

Print versions are quite unlikely to be changed for anything but books that go through multiple printings with some editor intervention between printings.


Can i go to university without finished high school? I wasn't sure if this would be off-topic or not.

Basically i have half finished high school here in Slovenia, it's slightly different here, i went to 3+2 program. I have finished 3 years but i don't wish to continue the extra 2 years, especially because they're not teaching me anything, in 5th year they teach about programming stuff i knew when i was a first year. And the extra two years would earn me a diploma for finished high school, not sure how the 3 years are called in English. So instead of wasting 2 years i thought if i could even apply for University in UK? I have a friend who lives in UK which would make it easier to move, but my question is if i can even apply? I've seen undergraduate courses and the requirements, but nothing there can apply to me? Or at least i'm not sure, is there some kind of exam that i can take or something similar?

Thanks in advance!

I'm sorry but no, you can't. Every respectable university requires a high-school diploma (or equivalent degree) for students to enroll. Exceptions are extremely rare and apply only to highly gifted students in certain subjects.

However, you can self-study in your free time with more advanced textbooks and online courses. If your home-town has a university, you may be able to attend some lectures as a guest, without being formally enrolled.


Do I report conference posters to researchfish? For RCUK funded PhD students in their 3rd year onward they are asked to report to researchfish.

I'm in this position and can't find any information on if I need to report conference posters or not.

Does anyone know if I need to report conference posters to researchfish? If so what category does it fall under?

Thanks

My experience is with RCUK grant reporting - I've helped some of our PhD students with reporting but only informally so can't speak to exactly what's expected. That said, this is the advice I'd give them...

The general approach for grantholders is that simply attending/speaking at a conference is considered business as usual and not something you need to report unless you a) the paper was published (in which case, it's a "publication"), or b) you were specially invited to speak ("awards and recognition").

For students, the guidance (sec. 18) is a little less explicit - however, when they say you don't need to report conferences, they discuss it in the context of "instances where you communicated your research", which would seem to imply that they include giving a paper or a poster alongside conference attendance.

If in doubt, though, your institutional reporting contact should be able to advise - there's a list here. And congratulations for thinking about this now - most people won't give it any thought until early March!


Am I obligated to finish my post-doc term before starting my tenure-track job? I am currently a postdoc at a research university. I had originally intended to stay at my postdoc for two years, and this was the understanding I had with my postdoc adviser.

However, I decided to speculatively apply for a few faculty jobs, intending to defer any offers for a year. I have now obtained a faculty job offer to start at the end of one year of my postdoc.

After much reflection, I believe that it is better for my family life not to ask for a deferral and to start the faculty job earlier.
In the event that I take the faculty job offer,
I still intend to continue and finish the research work
which I have started with my postdoc adviser,
so I will not be hurting my adviser by starting but not finishing my postdoc work.

Question: Do I have an ethical obligation to stay at my postdoc for two years, because that was my initial plan and was what I told my postdoc adviser?
Should I expect him to be understanding when I choose what is best for my family?

The following timeline may explain the sequence of events more clearly:

March 2014 I was applying for postdocs, and I told my potential postdoc advisor that I was intending to stay for two years at the university if he were to give me an offer.
April 2014 I was hired with a one-year contract starting August 2014. My adviser explains that there is a good chance my contract will be renewed at the end of the year.
Sept 2014 I decide to apply opportunistically for a few faculty positions just in case I can get a good offer, and intend to ask for a deferral, so that I would only start my faculty job in August 2016.
I told my postdoc adviser that I was applying opportunistically only for a few jobs,
and that if I got a job offer, I would ask for a deferral.
Jan 2015 I get a faculty job offer to start in August 2015.
By this time I changed my mind and feel that starting in 2015 is better for me and my family.

Additional relevant details:

My research area is applied mathematics,
so the only requirements for my research are
a decent computer and an Internet connection.
I can collaborate productively with my postdoc adviser effectively
even if I am not physically in the same location as he is.
I did tell my postdoc adviser that I received a job offer.
However, my postdoc contract has not yet been renewed for the second year,
and we have not yet had a conversation about when to renew the contract.

Congrats on getting a tenure track position!

You are not the first person to whom this has happened.  Of course, there may be specific circumstances that make the early departure more difficult - say, if you are the only person who can operate a certain instrument in a lab.  But people do leave post-docs early, from time to time - it's not at all unheard of.  And, if you applied opportunistically, you probably have a job that you are happy to take.

My advice is to break the news to your advisor as soon as possible - once you have made the decision to accept the offer. Your current institution might still be able to find a replacement for next year, which would be good for them. If you reflect on it, it's hard to see real advantages of telling your advisor later.  And there is a good chance they will be happy for you that you got a tenure track position.

Remember that you will still be in touch your advisor professionally, so you want to try to keep the relationship on the best terms that you can.


Does an author have to submit an article to Math databases once it has been published in a journal? Let us suppose one publishes an article in a peer-reviewed journal that is archived, indexed, etc. in databases such as Zentralblatt, ResearchBib, etc. Does the author have to manually submit his/her information and his/her journal article to those databases, or this is done automatically by the journal or by such databases?

For Zentralblatt or MathSciNet, which are by far the most important databases in mathematics, there's no need to manually submit anything.  I would assume the same is true for any comprehensive database (if you depend on author submissions, you won't get anywhere near complete coverage), but I suppose it could depend on the particular case.  I've never heard of ResearchBib, so I can't say anything there.


What is the meaning of posting a position-opening announcement multiple times at a research-focused institution? There was a position-opening announcement posted in a department's homepage of a research-focused institution in the US on February 14, 2015. I firmly believe my experiences and track record make me an excellent fit for this opening. Therefore, I applied for this position on-time. It was mentioned in the opening description that  application material must be received by April 14, 2015 to receive guaranteed consideration, though the search will remain open until the position is filled. However, the strange thing which I noticed that the same opening was posted again in their homepage with new a submission deadline (i.e. June 14, 2015). I then reapplied for this opening. Two months later from this new date, I contacted the Chair of the search committee and asked the status of my application. However, I did not get any response from him.  Just today I got notified from job search engine (verified also in their homepage) that the same opening has provided a new application-submission deadline which has been set to November 1, 2015. I am curious to know what this means. Does it mean that they have not found any suitable candidate for this opening or something else?

I don't know what kind of position it is, but are you sure it's not additional instances of the position being offered?

That said, it sounds as if they're not getting the applicant pool or number of applicants that they want.  In my experience, hiring committees want three or four good candidates, even if one stands out from the rest.

Maybe they have found that your qualifications don't meet the requirements as well as you think they do?  Your not getting an email back from the search committee chair is probably significant -- or maybe your email got lost in the internets.


Does applying for a patent first make it more difficult to publish (or vice versa)? After working on a project some times, some results are obtained and we decide to publish it. I know publishing a paper and applying a patent can actually happen in the same time, but is there any difference for their priority?

For example, if I obtain a patent first for my results, will it make it more difficult to publish the same results in academic paper, or vice versa?

If I do it together, will there be any conflict between them?

In the U.S., you may file a patent application up to one year after the invention is described in a publication, in public use, or on sale. So if you publish something on your invention and also wish to patent it, you only have one year from the date of publication to apply for the patent. Similar rules may apply in other countries; it's a good idea to consult a lawyer.

There is no conflict the other way around; you can publish after the patent application (or at the same time) without issues.


Should I address all my research experience in my personal statment? I'm an undergraduate applying for PhD in engineering, and I've been involved in 3 different research projects. The first project is rather unexciting for me, and I chose not to ask the professor for a letter of recommendation. But I still worked on it for about 8 months and did some solid work (no publication though). As I do not intend to work in the same area for my graduate study, I don't want to talk about that project (have to keep the statement concise!), but will it seem weird if there's a research experience in my resume that's not mentioned anywhere else in my other application documents?

A personal statement is not a narrative version of your CV - rather, it's a description of your research interests, and how what you have done before helped shape those interests, and how they leave you qualified to start graduate school to pursue those interests.

If some of your experience turned out to be a dead end, and it doesn't fit said narrative, there's no need to include it.


Do I have to be secretive about my research until it's published? I'm a Master's student studying Computer Graphics and Animation. I've already proposed my thesis and have been deep in prototype development for a while. I've gotten some pretty cool results already (mostly pretty pictures and animations). I'd really like to share some of the images I've created to get the attention/support of other graphics researchers and to encourage public interest in the field. However, from day one my advisor has encouraged me to keep most of the details of my research a secret until I've published my work. I've gotten almost the opposite advice from other sources.

Besides some protection from stolen ideas, what other benefits are there to keeping my work a secret until it's published (or submitted to a journal/conference)? Are there compelling reasons to start sharing some of my work now?

If you act in spreading out your work without official publication, against your advisor's explicit suggestions you risk:

making a costly mistake in that you find your work being presented by others without attribution (I for sure know cases where this happened)
upsetting your advisor if the work included ideas that he wanted to accumulate credit for using in a publication
taking away the impact that a well-established impressive publication can achieve and exchanging that for a gradual acclimatisation of the community in the sense that "yes, we always knew this works, it is kinda obvious" (I have witnessed this too, namely that an idea which nobody seemed to have before, but was pushed incrementally rather than in a singular step was later called obvious)
losing credit for novelty if someone else presents it even if you are attributed; after all, the work has been presented, and your later publication will have lost freshness  (again, I am aware of a concrete example).

That being said, there are benefits of being open, namely when it is unlikely that people will claim the work, or it is hard to copy, or so exotic that people are not likely to engage in it. In this case, your problem is to convince them that it is good work and you have to permit them to acclimatise to it, anyway. Then, being open and spreading the idea to get them to get used to it is helpful. This is the counter scenario to above setting.


I'm 23, completing a Business BSc, should I start a Computer Science BSc? I‘m just curious and looking for some other opinions. I am currently pursuing my last year of my Bsc in Business. Because of that, I’m strongly thinking about my future and playing with the thought to work in the computer science industry. Because I live in Switzerland I would have the possibility to start after my Bsc a Bsc at ETHZ. Now I don’t know if I really should consider this career path since it would set me back for a lot of year to enter the job market (or do you think a Bsc at ETH would be enough?). However I really do believe that the skills I would learn and the institution itself are outstanding.
My friends and family probably wouldn’t understand me and sadly I have no friends which are pursuing this degree.
I don’t know what answer I should expect but maybe opinions related this issue with myself  Thanks!!

You can work in the technology industry with a BSc in Business, you don't need a BSc in Computer Science. That said, it depends what exactly you want to do. Regardless, rather than acquiring two bachelor degrees, consider a MSc in Computer Science, rather than a BSc. That's the more common approach.


Number of Papers published in area of work I'm looking for some statistics related to the amount of papers published per year in an specific area. Some papers about Superconductivity said there was like 15000 papers published about superconductivity in high Tc iron-based superconductors. I'm interested in the area of fluid mechanics of swimming microorganism. Any idea where can I find this statistics? (like scopus, etc)
Many Thanks!

I would recommend the following sources of information to get some statistics on your specific research topic:

Scopus (as you mentioned)
Web of Science
Engineering Village
IEEE Xplore
Science Direct
ACM Digital Library
Taylor and Francis
Google Scholar (Need to be extra careful in cross-checking where the information comes from as it might include sources of information other than academic papers)

Out of the six options, I would prioritize the usage of Scopus as it is easy to search for documents and get summary statistics. You need to do some extra manual work when searching in other databases as others are not very user-friendly as Scopus.


What is the average salary of assistant professor in New Zealand? What is the rough salary one should expect from a research university in New Zealand, say in mathematics or sciences areas, at the beginning assistant professor (called Lecturer in NZ) level professor?

You can find the current collective agreements for all universities on the Tertiary Education Union's website. Entry-level salaries for a lecturer, and the low point of the senior lecturer range, at the start of 2021 were as follows (all NZD):

University
L1 salary
SL1 salary

Auckland
83,602
106,285

AUT
73,966
91,226

Waikato
77,402
95,883

Massey
74,478
93,335

Victoria
79,276
99,870

Canterbury
79,671
102,142

Lincoln
73,018
92,723

Otago
82,416
103,678

The average is about NZ$78,000. These generally have annual percentage adjustments built in, so the base rate increases each year. There is generally also an automatic progression within a grade for current staff across several steps spread between the lecturer base and senior lecturer base, and it is generally possible to be appointed mid-grade as well according to experience (e.g. working time since PhD). All of this varies from school to school, and there are also other payments that may apply, so you should check the agreements for particular details you're interested in. If you're not a union member these rates will generally apply to you when you start as well (by law, historically, but the situation may change).
A couple of the agreements linked above have expired, and may have been replaced but not yet made available on the website, and some contain increments that hadn't come into effect yet. The general area of the numbers is right, though. There is a fair amount of variation between institutions, particularly the largest and smallest universities. There's also quite a bit of variation in how the scale works above that lowest-level entry point and how many steps there are (between 6 and 9 before moving to SL).


Outsider Contributions: Are They Possible, and How? The current system of producing knowledge in academia, think-tanks, research laboratories funded by large organizations, and similar has the benefits that there is usually some oversight, the people involved have been trained on how to conduct and contribute to research, and how to communicate their results to the literate portion of the society they are supposed to aid.  (The above is subject to debate, but I prefer to assume it for the purpose of the question below.)

How can a person with no contacts to any of these contribute, or learn how to contribute, to the production of research, in spite of lack of oversight, funding, and training?  As examples, a person who finds an alternate and faster method of DNA replication, or finds influences of Jane Austen among current bloggers that suggest a certain societal trend, or has a new way of analyzing large portions of astronomical data, or finds a way of speeding up numerical simulations of models of biological systems involving capillary blood flow.  How does such a person present such an idea or method?

One can write to authors on the appropriate area; how likely is this to succeed?  One could look at an appropriate journal, attempt to copy the style, formatting, and phraseology of the articles and then submit their write-up to that journal, but without affiliation; with what result?  One might attempt to use the Internet to strike up conversations with like-minded individuals and find a willing ear and eye; are there enough willing ears and eyes?  One could start a blog or just put up a web page announcing the work; I have done that, but I have too many connections to be considered a complete outsider to academia, and I want to pose the question for those who are so outside.  Further, how could someone searching an index find that page among many that are computer generated using similar phrases?

There are several spins one can put on this.  Let us further assume that the primary goal is to present the idea/form of knowledge, and receive little or no more than the recognition of making the contribution and the satisfaction of seeing it used.  In particular, potential degrees, awards, or jobs are not part of the scenario or motivation.  In this day and age, would blogging be enough?  Also, for fun and to make answers less trivial, assume the outsider is not and is not likely to enroll in a university.

Added: To address a comment, enrolling in a university would likely provide many of the desired contacts, but with some cost.  The outsider may have had a university education, but this question makes the assumption that contacts there are stale or otherwise not accessible or appropriate, making this person more of an outsider.

Most of our audience here are academics and the OP is Not Quite An Outsider, I think I don't need to explain how important peer review is to research results. If the outsider needs the explanation, please use the peer-review to read related Q&A.

Obviously, the outsider has at least two options: submit the manuscript to journals and/or having blog posts of his own.

One of the effective ways to get your paper to be peer reviewed is to send the paper to journals. It is true that some journals tend to ignore papers written by authors without affiliation. I personally have this experience. I am retired and am not associated with any institute. I do have experience that my manuscript was rejected without any explanation. However, the quality of the paper makes the difference. If it is indeed a very good paper, some journals would take it and send to referees. I personally have that experience, too.

The second option for an outsider is to have blog posts. I occasionally come cross blog posts when I search on the Internet (I am a retiree, I have plenty of time). My personal experience is that more than often good blogs are written by good scholars who are insiders. I bumped into many poor quality stuff written by outsiders quite often. They just don't make sense to me at all. I usually read the first couple of paragraphs to determine if I want to continue to read them. Unfortunately, most of them written by outsiders are of extremely poor quality.

Of course, the outsider has another option - arXiv. I think it does not make too much difference with regard to your question.

To me, the key issue is the contents. If you do have something very good, publish it. Somehow, somewhere, your article will be read by others. However, if you never receive college education, I seriously doubt your stuff is good. You do need at least basic level knowledge to do research.


How much would an outside second Ph.D. supervisor get paid in the U.S.? I have been asked to consider being a second supervisor on a Ph.D. project for a doctoral candidate at a U.S. university. As I am in the Netherlands, this does not fall under my normal employment. Does anyone know where I might find information about the normal fee for this type of supervision?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

As far as I know nothing.

I've never heard of outside supervisors (in industry or academia) ever getting paid anything.

You should talk to your employer, if he is willing to donate some of your time for this supervision. (Depending on the research being done, there may also be some benefit for him.)


Startup package, for assistant professor in USA: should I ask for a an extra PhD or an extra post-doc? I got an offer for a tenure-track assistant professor position in USA, Department of Engineering. The university national ranking is between 35th and 65th at the US News website. I was offered a single PhD, fully supported for 2 years (partial support for the remaining 3 years) and then I was asked how much I need for equipment. I have two questions:

Should I ask for a second PhD or a post-doc (I think for 1 year)? Some people told me to get a PhD since supervising a post-doc does not really count much for getting Tenure, while it matters a lot if one is mentoring PhDs. Other people say: get a Post-doc, he/she will be much more productive and he/she will get you papers out fast, and your mentoring effort will be on the PhD. What is your suggestion?
I am actually also debating if I should also try to ask for a third person (in that case surely a PhD) since I am not asking too much money as for equipment (just computing cores in the supercomputer). And I need workforce since I have various good research ideas. Would I sound too greedy?

So basically, should I ask for a total of 3 persons (2 PhDs + 1 post-doc or rather 3 PhDs?) or 2 persons (2PhDs or rather 1 Phd + 1 Post-Doc?)?

There are a number of factors to consider.

PhD students take an indeterminate amount of time to finish. Committing yourself to getting funding to cover the last "few" years for 2 or 3 PhD students is a stress you may not want your first year.

The cost to a department of a PhD student and Post doc can be vastly different. In some cases a PhD student means allocating a student from a general pool directly to you, such that there is no change in the schools budget. In other cases the stipend, tutuion, and fees all show up on the school budget. In other cases the number of PhD students may be limited (e.g., the department may not attract lots of good students) in which case a PhD student is way more "expensive" then a post doc. You ideally want to ask for whatever is cheapest (which includes money and political capital), for the department.

Another thing to consider is what is typical for a startup package. Also what can you justify. Often startup package negotiations are between the department chair and the dean. While it may seem like you are negotiatin with the chair, you are often equipping them with the information to battle the dean on your behalf.


Editor's mail with no reviewer's comment Recently I submitted second revision of my manuscript in a highly reputed mathematics journal. My first revision was a major revision while the second one was a minor (with some terms like paper is ready to be published). After submitting my second revision I got an email from the editorial board which asked for further revisions of my manuscript. But, what is troubling me is that there were not reviewer comments in the mail. Also there were no attached files with reviewers comments.

Edit: I took only three days to resubmit my second minor revision and after another five days I got this mail with  no reviewers comment.
Also, there is only one reviewer for this manuscript.

Edit: At the end of the mail that I received it is written that "Reviewer's comment"  but it is showing blank. Submission status is "submission needing revision" (Revise). But I am not able to find the reviewers comments.

I am worried. How come this is possible?

Instead of trying to second-guess what might have happened you should simply contact the editors and ask what revisions they wish to see you perform. The reasons for the lack of information could be any of the suggestions given but could also be a mistake, an attachment that was not passed on or a mail sent by one person who has not seen your recently provided update, the list of possibilities is long.

So, e-mail the editor or journal and briefly explain what you received and how the lack of information makes revisions impossible.


Choosing appropriate words for lay summary of a health research project The lay summary of a research proposal is often needed to secure grants and get wide public support and engagement, especially in health research.

I understand that the more a scientist understands her research, the more her ability to explain it to the public and to write an excellent lay summary. It should be easily readable, and should use everyday words instead of complex terms and scientific jargon.

Problem

Apart from structuring the whole summary, the word choice could be challenging, especially for non-native speakers who don't directly work or have sufficient contact with the public.

One could:

ask for help from relevant patient and public engagement (PPI) groups or native colleagues: they can even help revising the whole document, but I think scientists should improve their own public writing skills in the first place
look for synonyms in dictionaries: this could help, but general dictionaries don't tell which synonyms are understandable by the average people
read related articles in websites that provide health information to the public: this is potentially very useful for familiarisation with non-jargon language, but may be time-consuming.

Questions:

Other than asking for help from others, what are (other) effective ways of finding out whether the words and phrases I use in a lay summary are appropriate to the public audience, and if not (which is more important), finding better alternatives?
Is there something like a "dictionary" to translate common or domain-specific jargon words/phrase to simple English (similar to 'academic word lists')?

Ways of finding out whether the words and phrases you use in a lay summary are appropriate to the public audience:

One approach is to put your text into something like simplewriter.

http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/

It highlights words which are not part of the most commonly used 1000 words in English.

That specific program is a little bit limited, more for an audience of children but there are similar text editors which can highlight complex or rare terms.

If you limit it to the 20000 most commonly used english words things should be readable by most laypersons.


can I submit in a new journal after submission in a predatory journal who force to pay in order to withdraw? after submission of my article, I realize that it was a predatory journal. I ask to withdraw my manuscript but they require to pay half of charges. what can I do?
If I do not pay, can I submit in a new journal? thank you

Could you provide some more details? In which country are you based? Where is the journal based? Is the journal WOS-listed?

Here are some basic orientations:

If you are certain that the given journal is a predatory journal, you can certainly retract the publication. Predatory journals are designed to maximise income and minimise expenditure. Accordingly, these journals are certainly not interested in a lawsuit (especially an international lawsuit). Emails are a matter of empty threats in that case.
If you are uncertain about the degree of predatory-ness, simply retract the publication based on the most relevant limition/flaw of your study. State explicitly that you feel that the quality of work does not fit their criteria of "high-quality, peer-reviewed science" (quote whatever the described on the webpage). Write the email in a manner, which puts them in "double bind" dilemma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind). Force them to either agree with the retraction at no cost, or to openly have to admit dishonesty regarding their "high-quality" peer-review process.
If it is just a low-quality but not predatory journal, be fair and go along with the submission this time and stay away from the journal in future.


Can I patent a model that I described in a paper or that I adapted from a model proposed by someone else? Is a patent more prestigious than a paper? Academic papers in engineering sometimes propose a new model to tackle  prior difficulties. These proposed models are not usually patented. For example in experimental papers and many power electronic papers, the models are fully available.
I have a published work that proposes a new model, but it is pure computer simulation and math.

So, my questions:

Can I patent my own published paper?
Can I use others' paper and patent their idea? (specifically
experimental for papers)
If the answer of 1 or 2 is not, how many modifications do I need to
apply in my model be able to patent it?
If I have an original idea to propose a new model, what should I do then: A patent or good rank ISI paper?

You don't patent papers. You patent ideas.

You can't patent other people's published work because their published papers are clear evidence of prior art.

Why do you want to patent a computer model in the first place? Why do you want to restrict people's use of it? How lucrative will it be?


Using rage faces in presentation I was asked to give a talk at a workshop. I plan to tell a short story, 5 - 7 minutes, about how my collaborator and I came up with the idea presented in the talk. This story would:

Give the motivation: I have this problem, and my collaborator had a solution for a (seemingly) unrelated problem.
Explain the contribution: I did this and he did that.
Explain the intuition of the solution: he said this and we recognized that etc

I think the story would be interesting, and as it involves two people, I wonder if I should use two rage faces representing my collaborator and I (yes, I often visit 9gag).

On one hand, I think it would be funny. On the other hand, I'm afraid people may think I am not polite/unprofessional, in particular old people. The workshop is co-located with a top tier conference, and I don't want to leave any bad impression.

Update: Thanks everyone for the answers. At first, I intended to use the avatars on our homepages, but I think it's very award to keep showing my face from slide to slide. That's why I think about rage faces, the reason is that they are very simple, but emphasize the emotions very well: struggle, then confused, then surprised...

But I understand not many people like it, so I will think of other way.

TL;DR: If in doubt, leave it out.

In talks, avoid anything that can offend or be misunderstood, especially if you do not know your audience. It is ok to make self-deprecating jokes, but you want to keep the atmosphere somewhere between serious to light (depending), but outside the sentiment of sadness or anger if you do not have political ambitions. Your "angry faces" may be funny, but never underestimate that they may be misunderstood (including people believing that you did have a fall-out with your friend in the preliminaries of this work - you would be amazed at what people can read wrongly into a throwaway remark).

Myself, I am quite happy use caricatures in talks, but spend time choosing them carefully to help to highlight the scientific point, never on a meta-level. People are busy enough trying to understand what you are doing, do not waste their brain power on issues you think are funny, but irrelevant to the matter at hand.

But if you think something can backfire, you are probably right. If in doubt, better one caricature/clever idea less.


How many years of industrial experience needed for a Mechatronics Professor? I have a Bachelor's in EE and Master's in Automation and 3 years experience, including 2 in software development. For me, an academic career would be both more meaningful and professionally rewarding in its flexibility.

I think someone with experience but without formal qualifications could teach a subject such as mechatronics well.

How I might switch to teaching mechatronics? Should I stay in industry for a few more years and then move straight to being a full-time professor? Or, should I work part-time for a lest prestigious college and try to progress incrementally?

Note:
I don't want to obtain a PhD. Rather, I'd prefer to obtain the necessary qualifications while part-time, while working as a professor.

Your answer seems to confuse teaching with being a professor. One can teach without being a professor. Furthermore, and although this may be controversial, I think the quintessential characteristic of a professor is a scholar who can carry on substantial independent research.

Neither teaching skill nor experience in industry counterbalance the lack of that.