How can I determine whether a student has written an excellent paper themselves, or hired someone else to do it? In class, over the course of a semester, I tend to build up a mental model of individual students' communication abilities. For example, one student might seem more or less eloquent than another when they speak. One might make more cogent points than another.

Occasionally, I will receive an essay which appears exceptionally eloquent and cogent, from students who seemed distinctly average. Of course, I make the cursory checks for plagiarism (searching certain unlikely phrases, etc.), but if nothing comes up, I sometimes still remain unconvinced that the work is the student's own.

Some sites offer to sell the services of trained academics and graduate students for menial essay writing, and often the questionable assignments look more like the quick and under-edited work of a master than the polished work of a novice. Of course, if the essays are paid for, and original, it's naturally very hard to prove it.

Are there any techniques I could use to determine whether an essay that I suspect was written by someone else, but not published elsewhere, is a student's own work? Are there any steps I can take to ensure I don't receive questionable essays in the first place?

Are there any techniques I could use to determine whether an essay that I suspect was written by someone else, but not published elsewhere, is a student's own work?

Ask the student to come to your office hours or a private meeting.

Then, say: "I was really impressed by your recent paper, it was an excellent piece of work! Let's discuss it some more."

Student who did the work will be able to discuss said work intelligently.

Student who didn't do the work is unlikely to be able to carry on an intelligent conversation about said work.

(This still isn't proof of any kind, and you can't accuse student of cheating without some evidence - but if you're lucky, student will at least be spooked enough to never do it again.)

  Are there any steps I can take to ensure I don't receive questionable essays in the first place?

Assign essays that are a few steps beyond, but still closely tied to, what's been discussed in class, such that somebody who wasn't in the class will not be able to produce the kind of essay you're expecting (the effectiveness of this depends very much on the subject matter).


How much do grades matter for a future academia position? I am completing my PhD and I was wondering how much does the PhD coursework grades affect future academia applications? My undergraduate and master's was somewhat decent grade wise (3.8/4) in both. However, I had taken two mandatory courses during my PhD and I got B+ and A- in them. It was not because of the difficulty in the coursework, but I was burned out with courseworks from master's and did not put any effort. My GPA turned out to be 3.56. I did not take any other coursework as my qualifiers committee found my theoretical knowledge adequate for continuing with my PhD.

Back of my mind, I am concerned that this will affect my postdoc and subsequent professorship applications.

Is there any academic out there in same boat as me but have made it successfully in the professional world?

In the US, at least, and in most fields, no one will look at your grades or care much about them. If they were good enough for your institution to give you a doctorate, they will be good enough for everyone.

I'm not sure this is universal, and would love to hear of exceptions. Such exceptions might occur in situations that have rigid regulations. Of course, if you are specifically hired to do X and you got terrible grades in X as a student, people might have some problems that need answers.


How to find graduate programs in chemistry based on my research interests I am final year Chemistry undergraduate. I have worked in areas of laser spectroscopy and astrochemistry. I would like to apply to grad schools along this line especially spectroscopy. However, I know that my specific research interests may make this question not extendable to what others may want.

  The best answer to this question is one that explain how you can search for graduate programs in chemistry where there are professors that are doing certain kinds of research, whatever that research might be.

One approach would be to look up interesting papers in spectroscopy or whatever you want to study and then identify what research groups they are coming out of. That is, figure out who is the senior author on the paper (often the last author) and then look at their website and see what else they are working on. Get a list of at least three maybe more like five different people doing research that you think sounds cool and who are at universities where you wouldn't mind working and check to make sure they are the kind of people who actually take graduate student.

Send each one of those professors an email outlining who you are, your research interests, and why you think you would be a good fit for their lab. Attach a copy of your CV.

Some of them will probably be interested in having you apply to their university's graduate program with the idea of taking you into their research group once you are admitted.


Do I need to get a reference letter from a postdoc host? I am currently a postdoc and will soon be applying for a faculty position in computer science. I am inclined to not ask my postdoc host for a reference letter when applying.

The reason I don't want to ask my postdoc host for a letter is because I have been a postdoc for less than a year and have mostly worked independently or with remote collaborators. So far I have only coauthored one paper with my host. (It's a good but not great paper.) Also, I am supported by a general fellowship -- i.e. I am not formally "tied" to my host, which means I don't think he feels strong "ownership" of me as a postdoc. It is not a true mentorship relationship.

I think my postdoc host would write a positive letter for me, but it would be weak for the aforementioned reasons -- he simply doesn't know me that well. I have other potential letter writers who would be able to write stronger letters.

What is worse? A weak letter from my postdoc host or no letter? Is this something I should try to explain on my application?

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

First of all: It seems you're on good terms with your host. Well, talk to him about this exact issue. He will probably sympathize and either let you in on drafting the letter, or at least agree with you in principle on what he intends to write. (And if he evades then you'll at least know there's something wrong.)

  What is worse? A weak letter from my postdoc host or no letter? Is this something I should try to explain on my application?

The answer depends a lot on whether the place/person you're interviewing for might talk to him over email/phone/Skype.

If they will certainly talk to him, then a letter - good or bad - is not very meaningful anyway. He'll tell them what he wants to. So I wouldn't bother.
If they will certainly not talk to him, then your actual merits regardless of his opinion are likely to count for more than his letter anyway, so I'd get the letter from him just in case, and mention in passing that you worked mostly independently. I'm not 100% sure I'd add the letter to the application, it depends on the circumstances.
If you can't tell whether they'll call him up or not, I'd use the letter just to be on the safe side - assuming you actually get the letter in hand and don't have to ask him to send it to them directly (a weird custom that exists in some countries). Better this way then for them to call him up and for him to say "Uh, Dr. Foo? Umm, yeah, he was here, umm, he worked on... let me see.. it was some... stuff, I dunno. We wrote a paper together at some point, it was ok I guess. Not sure what he did exactly."

But frankly I have to say that it's not clear-cut. I, for one, would not put much stock in recommendation letters unless they said something exceptional.

One last point: Perhaps you should ask your host to focus on specific traits of yours, your skills or strengths in some things he's observed, in which case it won't matter all that much that you haven't worked a lot together.


Would citations in blogs, public materials, arXiv and magazines increase citation count for the author? It is known that references from peer reviewed articles and public domain technical reports can increase the citation counts in Scopus and Google scholar. But does this apply to the works cited in the following?

blogs
publicly available online materials
arXiv
magazines

For instance, if an author X has a peer-reviewed article A and has A cited in each of the above mentioned items, how will his Scopus and Google scholar citation count be affected?

Scopus counts only peer-reviewed articles.

What Google scholar counts is less clearly defined. Intuitively, if something looks like an academic source, then its citations are counted. This means that arXiv is definitely in. I've seen slides for talks hosted on academic webpages being counted, but not in a very consistent manner. I would suspect that most blogs don't count. Mathoverflow does not count.


Can software based project be considered for the award of PhD? I am having issue in understanding the meaning of Philosophy in technical area. Suppose I have novel project that could be even patentable, can that be considered as a topic for PhD? The project is software oriented and can be developed on any standard computing machine such as PC/Tablet/Mobile phone. When I approached one professor for accepting me as his candidate for PhD, he started telling me that there is no Philosophical approach in my topic and it is just a project work. My topic was mainly related music synthesis involves developing algorithms to develop music from certain text based script files. Also no one did any work on specific topic that I opted.

Producing software, on its own, is generally not sufficient for a Ph.D.

The purpose of a Ph.D is to create new knowledge.  If you want to connect this to the underlying 'Doctor of Philosophy' concept, philosophy is literally the love of knowledge. No matter your field, to get a Ph.D you need to convince a committee of faculty that you have created or discovered new knowledge by the standards of your field.

If the software work advances the state of the art by creating new knowledge, then it can drive a Ph.D, but the degree is awarded on the basis of the new knowledge (and communicating that knowledge), not the software.  There are at least two ways this can arise in a software project:

New knowledge (new computational techniques, new mathematical results, new user interaction techniques, etc.) are needed in order to make the software possible.
The software can be used for experiments that produce new knowledge.

Either of these is fine, but the degree and dissertation rest on the knowledge.

As far as how much knowledge - my rough rule of thumb, which was taught in the Intro to Research class when I started my Ph.D, is that a dissertation in computer science should contain sufficient new research to carry 3 good papers (full papers in high-level conferences), along with the supporting material that didn't fit in the published papers.

Personal Story

My own Ph.D was heavily software-driven - it was largely the result of building and applying new software tools for recommender systems. However, this process resulted in the creation of new knowledge:

Building reconfigurable, web-capable machine learning software with dependency injection
New techniques for dependency injection to enable that software
A re-evaluation of commonly-accepted configurations for common algorithms, finding that several of them are sub-optimal
New research showing that different algorithms make different erroneous recommendations
A user study, powered by the software's interchangable algorithmic capabilities, finding differences in how users perceive the output of different recommendation techniques

Those are the things that formed the basis of earning my Ph.D. The software was an important part, but I didn't get the degree for building the software.


What are some typical reasons for a professor to not list their publications on their school website I know of a full professor who doesn't list any of his publications on his website.  He just gives name, title, email address and phone number.

Nothing more, literally.

When I search for his work internally through our library he has plenty of published work.

What are some typical reasons why he wouldn't want to list his papers online, especially in the publish or perish culture of academia?

I notice some other full professors do this too, nothing but a name, email and phone number is on their school website.  No advertising their work at all.

There are several reasons why this would be the case. The most prominent of which is simply they don't have the time to do it. Most institutions have departmental and faculty websites which contain such information (depending on how much the University/institute keeps up to date with it) and is managed by someone other than the professor.

Sometimes, the role of updating the website is relegated to lab members (postdocs/students/assistants) which may be people who don't know how to build or edit websites or aren't reliably updating them.

For example, I've been given reign over our lab's personal website (we have an official institutional one) but I have no idea how to code html or any other web-based programming. When trying to get personal statements or papers of note from lab members, very little will people actually reply with these details making the website partially filled out.

If you really care about the publications from a professor, look them up wherever your primary resource for articles is There's no hiding on there and I would be highly skeptical about it being an issue of 'wanting to hide their work'.


Why do some Universities give honorary degrees? Most of the question is the title: Why do some Universities give honorary degrees?

E.g. the President of Indonesia, Sukarno, got 26 honorary doctorates, and Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe has been awarded around a dozen honorary degrees.

What is the benefit for the Universities? Donations? Political leverage? Genuine attempt to give to somebody the recognition he deserves? If last option, why calling it a degree instead of using a more general term like award/medal/etc, like some other Universities do?

Benefits to the university include donations, drawing important people or celebrities to give commencement addresses, and publicity. I'm sure genuine attempts to give recognition are a factor at least some of the time :)

Here are some data points:

Higher ed writer Tim Johnson asked the University of Vermont for a list of honorary degree recipients from 2002-2012, and how much each of those people has contributed to the university over the last decade.

Of the 60 recipients, 35 were on the record as having made donations to the university, for a total of >$13.6 million for an average of $228,248. (Excluding one degree recipient with an outsized $9 million contribution, the average was $68,854).

According to the chair of the UVM honorary degree committee, it's not only a thank you for a donation:

  Gary Derr, UVM’s VP of executive operations and chair of the university’s honorary degree committee, defends the practice, explaining it has to do with recognizing individuals for outstanding achievements or service to the university, state, nation or world. A degree is not, he insists, just a thank-you for writing a fat check.

From the New York Times:

  "Sometimes they are used to reward donors who have given money; sometimes they are used to draw celebrities to make the graduation special," said Arthur E. Levine, president of Teachers College at Columbia University... "I've always viewed it as a last lesson a college can teach, by showing examples of people who most represent the values the institution stands for," Dr. Levine said.

An unusual benefit mentioned in the same article:

  Chapman University in Orange, Calif., awarded an honorary degree to the author John Fowles after he agreed to let it create a writing center and literary festival in his name.

Similarly, former George Washington University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg reports that "people have asked for an honorary degree in exchange for a donation" but adds

  We also give honorary degrees to people who don’t give us a penny. It's just because their lives are exemplary.

Another potential benefit to universities is publicity. Reportedly, when Southampton College awarded an honorary doctorate to Kermit the Frog in 1996 (commencement address here),

  31 newspapers picked up the story, a free marketing bonanza that raised the college's profile and drew hundreds of new admissions

Of note: honorary doctorates are an easy offering for diploma mills, since they don't have to pretend it's about anything but money. Here are some examples:

The University of Berkeley Online offers honorary doctorates for a minimum "support honorarium" of $2,000.
The Los Angeles Development Church & Institute awards honorary degrees for "a simple, one-time donation of $89." You can get the degree in a wide range of diverse fields, including Ufology.
The Abundant Life Bible College and Theological Seminary recently offered honorary degrees for a limited-time offer of $85, down from the usual $150.


Co-author refuses to share final manuscript or list of submissions While completing my PhD, I was assisted by my advisor in writing three papers. Because he had to go on medical leave for a period, we have been slow in getting them submitted for publication. (He did not allow me to submit the papers myself. He insisted on controlling the submission). I am first author on each of these papers.

Now that my former advisor is back from his leave of absence, he has begun submitting the papers without my knowledge. (I emailed him to ask about plans for submission and he informed me that he had already submitted the papers a few weeks prior). He has refused to share the final manuscripts or a list of journals that he has submitted the papers to. He just tells me to wait until the papers are accepted, then he will contact me. From what I can determine, he has told the same thing to another co-author (who was also one of his PhD students).

I find this behavior to be not only odd, but moreover incredibly unprofessional. While I am still a young researcher, I am not a complete push-over. I believe it is completely reasonable to ask that I be included in the publication process.

One major issue that I worry about is the authorship order. When I became his PhD student, a few people warned me that he would try to creep his way up to being listed as the first author on the final publications. (I guess that he did something similar to a previous student: drag on the submission process until the student graduates, then secretly slide his way onto the publications as first author).

What steps can I take to ensure that I am given a more reasonable say in the publication of these papers?

Side note 1: My advisor was fired from his previous position (where he was my advisor). As such, our former university is not likely to be willing to do much about this. He now works as an assistant professor at a different school. Because he is almost 10 years into his career and still not tenured, he is becoming desperate to get some first author publications.

Side note 2: I am in a stable position currently and am not reliant on my advisor for anything. My career is not leveraged by him.

Yes, your advisor behaviour is unprofessional and certainly against the ethical policies of virtually any serious publisher. I'd contact the other coauthor and write a joint email along the following lines (modify according to your knowledge of the situation):

  Dear X,

  We are disappointed by your refusal to share the final versions of the
  manuscripts and the journals which they have been submitted to. Journal policies require all authors to approve a submission, and not
  only does your refusal go against such policies but it also undermines
  the trust that should exist among coauthors.

  We kindly ask you to comply with our request. In case, we will take
  all the necessary steps to exercise our author's rights.

  Best,
  Y and Z

If they still refuse, contact the ethical or disciplinary office of their university, if there is one, or the Head of Department.


How important is Master thesis when applying for a Ph.D.? I am willing to apply for a Ph.D next year and by September I am planning to graduate from a M.Sc. in Economics. I am trying to choose my mentor for my final thesis but I was wondering which is the impact of a Master thesis on a Ph.D. application.

I know there are many thing that will be taken into account when analyzing an application but I thought a good thesis in the field for which one is applying could be a nice introduction as well as the name of the professor (the more "famous", the better) chosen as tutor.

Are my considerations right or wrong?

Sometimes choosing a famous name backfires.  If it's a hot shot with tons of students, he will distinguish among his students, when writing his letters, by giving strong letters to the strongest among his flock, and mediocre letters to the less spectacular.  Such a mediocre letter from a big name can be quite damaging to an application.

Even aside from that -- choose the person who fits best:

you are interested in their work
you admire the person ethically
they bring out the best in you
their management style suits you


Is being a poor writer a serious impediment as a researcher? Is being a poor writer a serious impediment as a researcher? I mean if you're particularly bad at writing reports and always get bad feedback as a student for your reports, does that mean my research career would never take off?
The question asks whether researchers working in teams are all required to contribute to composing the reports or can you get away with it if you compensate with other skills?

Yes, you need to be able to write to be successful in academia, as in many things.
But it is a skill that can be learned. You can take courses and you can practice. And, as with most learning, practice with feedback is the path. It isn't a short path, necessarily, but it is one that you can follow.
Actually, there are courses in both creative writing and technical writing.
You need to write with both precision and clarity and sometimes those are in opposition. But practice (with feedback) helps.


Present model calibration results in methods section or results section? I am putting together a paper regarding a fish habitat study. Habitat was modeled based on river hydraulics using a program called River2D for a wide set of environmental conditions. The models were calibrated using one set of actual observations of the study site hydraulics.

Essentially, we adjusted the model until the results we got when we ran it using the conditions under which the actual observations were made closely matched the actual observations.

In the paper my coauthors and I are putting together, we want to present the fact that we calibrated our models to within +/- 1% of a known set of conditions. We cannot reach consensus on whether this should be presented in the Methods sections as a comment on the robustness of our calibrations, or in the Results section as it is the result of something.

I am interested to know what other researchers have done when presenting the results of model calibrations in publications.

Thanks in advance for any input.

IMHO It doesn't belong in your main results section, as it isn't the results of your study - simply an intermediate step similar to testing the correct functioning of a bit of lab equipment. Nevertheless, it may be a substantial achievement in its own right.

If you must stick to "method" and "results" sections, I'd add a "model validation" subsection to the Method one. You may want to refer to it in your conclusions as though it were a result, to highlight how trustworthy you believe the model to be.


What is the best time to apply for a PhD in physics? I am currently an international senior undergraduate physics student, with a 3.41 GPA and no research experience.

I want to apply for PhD program in USA, and I am confused when it is best to apply;
1) before finishing my bachelors degree.
2) waiting to finish it and get engaged in research during my senior year.
3) finish my bachelors degree, get engaged in research, and do a masters degree.

I need to know: does waiting for option 2 and 3 really increase my chances in getting accepted for a PhD program in physics or biophysics? Or should I apply now and save some time?

For a physics PhD in the USA, experience after a four year bachelor's degree is not expected.  However, if you have a three year bachelor's degree or your degree comes from a country with many applicants like China or India, a master's degree may be very helpful.  You should make an application plan no later than the August 1 before you graduate.  This allows time to prepare for the September Physics GRE.  Applying the year following graduation should be a backup plan.


How to interpret reviewers comments for an accepted conference paper? our manuscript was accepted as a full paper at a new but what seems a quite respectable conference venue (indexed in Scopus, good papers in the previous years, quite critical peer review). The manuscript was already squeezed to fit the page limit of 10 pages. Although the paper was accepted, there are really a lot of reviewers comments from 3 reviewers, and i do not really think, that we can address even most of them, because there is not much text to cut, and much additional text, and figures would be required.

I am not very experienced, but I co-authored some journal papers, and there was the possibility for several major and minor revision iterations, but at this conference there apparently is no time for this, since they speak about "camera ready submission", together with a rebuttal letter, as the next step.

I agree with most of the reviewer comments, but many points they bring up have been omitted for the sake of brevity, in order to meet the page limit. It was our intention, to present the main idea as a conference paper, and submit an longer and extended manuscript to a journal in a later stage. In fact it was my impression, and that of my supervisors, that the conference paper can have some preliminary flavour to it.

What is the usual way to address such a situation, and in what perspective should i see the reviewers comments, for a conference. Are they required modifications (similar as in a journal review), or should they be interpreted as suggestions for follow up work, and does the acceptance means that in its present form it is accepted? Is it necessary to retract the paper, if we can not implement many of the comments? I also do not really understand, why they already mention that the paper is accepted, compared to journal papers, where it is only accepted after all reviewers are happy. Is this usual for conferences?

Any suggestions, or clarifications about the difference between reviews of journals and conferences would be very welcome.

This can depend on the venue.  You didn't mention field, so I'll discuss Computer Science, with which I'm familiar.  Many conferences simply accept a paper, provide reviews, and expect "best effort" to address the comments.  They don't really enforce them.  Some have shepherds who receive an updated draft and comments on the reviews, and then "approve" the final version for the conference.  In practice, most of these are also best effort, but the effort is greater, as multiple iterations may be needed.  Only a very small number of conferences actually have shepherds who can truly stop a paper from being published -- usually this happens at those few conferences where the list of accepted papers is kept confidential until the shepherds approve.  This prevents the embarrassment of having a discrepancy between the list of papers and the final program, and I don't know that I can point at an actual instance of this being done, though I've heard rumors.

In your case, it sounds like you have a very good case for limiting your changes to those that fit, and addressing them in an extended (journal) version in the near future.  Your position here would be weakened if the conference allows extra pages after acceptance, with or without an explicit over-length fee, as some conferences do.

The one thing to watch for would be the tone of the reviews.  If a reviewer says "I think the paper should also do X" you are free to not do X.  If it says "this paper can really only be accepted if it does X" then there is greater pressure to address it.  If in doubt, it is probably reasonable to ask the program chair(s) to weigh in.


Prestigious institutions with open admissions policies Has any college in the US managed to unite being prestigious and being open access, at undergrad or grad level. I mean open enrolment in the European sense, where they have kind of minimal requirements (language cert, high-school and not much more).

I wonder, given that they could charge thousands $/year, what's the problem with admitting mass-wise new students (and provide them with decent teachers, materials and the like). Why limit the number of clients you get?

There are two fundamentally opposing ideas here. Yes, it would be nice if everyone could afford, and be admitted to, a top-tier university. But that's simply not how prestige works.

If you admit lower quality students, the number of truly excellent graduates is diluted and your university will lose prestige.
The loss of prestige may mean a gradual decrease in the quality of faculty, as the very best are hired by other prestigious universities. You'll certainly need to hire more professors to teach the extra students, and can you be sure that all the new hires will be just as good as those you've already got? There are only so many researchers in the world worthy of Nobel prizes.

An everyman's university will never have the prestige of a university such as Oxford, Caltech, or MIT. The key to the success of these top universities is consistency. Damn near every one of their graduates is a top performer, which is very desirable to employers (and also quite attractive for prospective faculty).

Once you lower the barrier to entry, their perceived quality will head downwards, and the flow-on effects will snowball.

There are many very excellent (and open) universities that are not as prestigious as they perhaps deserve, for example ETH Zurich is a truly excellent university that is open to all Swiss citizens who have passed their high school exams. This Times Higher Education ranking page shows somewhat quantitatively the elitism that is at play.


What can I do when my transcripts have mistakes? My transcripts contain a mistake on the grade I took for a course. I applied before two months to change me the grade but the process is slow. Until now nothing has changed and I need to apply for graduate programs. What should I do? How should I inform them that this grade is wrong and the official transcripts will contain the appropriate number. What GPA should I write in the online form? This with the wrong grade or the right one (calculated by me).

More information:

This mistake was not my fault, it was the professor who accidentally wrote a "D" instead of an "A-". I have contacted him after I noticed it on the online system, but it is a long process to change a grade in my university. Two months have passed already and they told my that the grade will be changed before Christmas, but the deadlines are soon and I need to find a way to inform them. The case is that, in most courses, I have "A" and,  in a few of them,  "B". I am applying to very competitive courses and this might ruin my chances of getting admitted.

If you can't wait for the school, and the professor agrees that this was his error, ask him for a letter saying so (on school letterhead) which you can attach to the transcript. Ditto for the school itself. If employers have some evidence of the error, and have someone they can contact to confirm the correction, this should be manageable.


Very demanding adviser I have an adviser who wants to know every minor details of my work and spend countless amount of time arguing with me over insignificant things. Basically, she tries to control everything I do, from number of hours I spend on homework, what books/papers I read, what font/color I use in my presentations, to whom I talk to with regards to research. Is this considered normal? If not, is this a good reason to change the adviser?

Edit: Sorry for the lack of details.
Status I'm an MS/PHD student in my second year of MS. Probably 3 more years of PHD.

Communication I've tried to communicate my concerns; but she usually has the "my way or the highway" attitude". If I insist on something, she ends up sarcastically saying, "if I don't like it, I should consider finding another research adviser". Unfortunately, I'm not the only one in this situation; she seems to be having the same problems with her other students as well. I once mentioned to her that I might leave her group, but she told me "she's the one who's admitted me and no one else would work with me." Indeed, she's a very big name in her field, and it seems to me almost impossible to leave her influence if I choose to continue the same line of research/department/school.

Advisors come in many flavors, from those who are very hands-off, to those who micromanage.  If you are really spending countless hours arguing over details that are seemingly unimportant (although what books/papers you read is most certainly not unimportant!), then you need to have a serious conversation with her about it.

That kind of conversation is difficult as the advisee -- if she is paying for your degree, then you work for her, and she has a lot of leeway to determine what she thinks is important.  You have to tactfully lay out for her why you think she is micromanaging you too much, and see what she says.

At the end of the day, if you don't agree with how you are being advised, you have a number of possible avenues:

Talk to another faculty member (probably the department chair).
Talk to the faculty ombudsman, if there is one.
Do nothing, and carry on.  PhD programs don't last forever (though they often seem like it), and if you can still produce good work while working for the advisor, it can still work out in the end.
Try to find another advisor (or, possibly, another school)

Changing advisors is not a trivial thing, although many people do it early on in their graduate career.  That also involves tact, as professors generally don't like other professors poaching their students without a mutual discussion about it.

Bottom line: before you make any long-term decisions, have a discussion with your advisor about your perceptions, but be tactful and have a plan on what you are going to say before the meeting.


Is a "lecturer" position sufficient for a career and not a temporary position? Can it ever be useful if not intended as permanent? I am a visiting assistant professor at a selective liberal arts school for psychology, first year post-grad. I have five publications but probably won't get any offers for tenure track positions without an additional postdoc. I also am trying to find a position in which research is an element, but not the first priority of the job (which is a really narrow path, it seems).

I haven't been able to find a lot of information specifically about "lecturer" positions in US universities. I know they can come with some security and focus mainly on a lot of teaching. I enjoy teaching and would be happy to make it the focus of my career, but I am still holding on to the ideal of the tenure-track line. If I did take a lecturer position at a high-ranking school, I figure I can depend on potentially a better starting salary than a tenure line at a smaller or lower-ranked school- while it would be at the cost of career growth, would it be incorrect to assume I could just make a living that way and possibly get some job security down the line? (For example, I know there have been "senior lecturer" designations and such that seem to indicate security of employment). Or even if there was stability but no growth?

Can anyone speak to maintaining a lecturer position as a kind of permanent position? I know that they are generally term to term, or are on some contract every x years (for example one of the positions I applied to is renewable on a 3 year contract). I know that lecturer positions are not really helpful to transition to tenure-track lines focused on research, but what about teaching-focused schools? Or, even, if one just stops at lecturer?

I feel at the moment that taking a lecturer position would sort of end my tenure-track aspirations on paper, but also I don't want to end up doing term positions or adjuncting for 10 years (true stories about this have been told to me). I could do a postdoc but the return rate on those is generally later in the year, which comes at the expense of current opportunities if I get any offers. Additionally, although I'm young in my career I am already feeling myself fatiguing and I don't want to go through years of moving, instability, financial insecurity, etc. I started grad school initially thinking of the classic tenure track position, focusing on research, etc. but I didn't really enjoy the research aspect as much as I thought, so I shifted my focus to teaching (apparently not a good move). Since I don't actually know anyone who's gone in for a lecturer position or what kind of growth there is there, can anyone weigh in on their stability, enjoyability, growth etc?? And if I take it and do want to try to pursue a tenure track line somewhere else, could it ever be useful?

The context here is clearly the US system.  I'm responding based on my own experience working with people in such positions at my institution and elsewhere.

This is ultimately a personal decision.  There are certainly many institutions where instructors have been employed for decades and even reached retirement.  Having a stable job is better than having an unstable job or no job at all.

However,

Lecturer/instructor positions are not generally tenure-track positions.  You won't have the protections of tenure, and if your institution comes on hard times, you'll be one of the first to be laid off.
Although some institutions have "senior" instructor or lecturer job titles, there isn't nearly the same scope for advancement as for a tenure-track faculty member.  In particular, tenure-track faculty can advance from assistant to associate to full professor and ultimately into department chairmanship or higher administration.  In terms of salary, you're likely to be stuck at a level below the tenure-track assistant professors for the rest of your career.
Instructor/lecturers seldom get to teach any but the lowest level (remedial, developmental, and first year) courses.  You probably won't have the opportunity to teach advanced undergraduate or graduate courses.
You may not have much control over the syllabus, textbooks, etc.
Teaching loads can be very high in these positions.  There just won't be time for any professional development.
Taking one of these positions for a year or two might help your chances of getting a tenure-track position at a teaching-oriented institution (because you'll have gained some teaching experience to balance with your research background), but after you've stayed in such a position for a while (say five years), your chances of being able to move into a tenure-track position at even a teaching focused institution will decrease substantially (because at that point your research will have stopped, and even teaching-oriented institutions want some research from tenure-track faculty.)

In short, it's a deprofessionalized dead-end job.


Should I attend a job interview after I've already accepted another offer? I applied for several postdoc positions recently. One made an offer which I accepted. Since then I've been invited for an interview for one of the other positions. Is there any benefit to attending? Is it an opportunity to make potentially useful contacts (in a relatively small field)? I should add that I have no experience with academic interviews (the position I secured was through contacts). Expenses will be paid.

Once you've accepted a job offer, you are supposed to inform other places that you've applied that you would like to withdraw from consideration.

If they still want to invite you over to give a talk knowing that you can not be considered for the position, go ahead. But, you must tell them.

To do otherwise would be a serious breach of ethics. You do not want to gain a reputation as someone who engages in unethical behavior (don't assume they won't find out).


Is there any (known) way to have Arxiv waive the endorsement requirement? I’m trying to submit a preprint of my paper to the Arxiv as an independent researcher. My academic background is in theoretical physics; I have a PhD in physics, did a postdoc, published several papers in Physical Review and PRL before taking a job in industry. I’ve been working in industry ever since, so I do not currently have an affiliation (i.e. an .edu email). I’ve spent the past few years working on my research project independently, and I’d like to submit to the Arxiv and have the community review my results.

I’m currently stuck at the “not endorsed” step. I’ve reached out to qualified endorsers in my subject per the Arxiv’s endorsement process but got no replies. I then contacted the moderation to appeal, but they rejected with what seems like a template reply (“We insist submitters be affiliated...”)

Given my situation, I am wondering if there is any known way to make the Arxiv waive the requirement of endorsement? For example, does the Arxiv make an exception for former academic researchers who have previous publications in peer-reviewed journals?

Just to check, your first request for endorsement emails were hopefully to your thesis advisor/postdoc advisor. If they haven't gotten back to you, either you definitely haven't waited long enough or there may be some other issue (they don't want you to submit to arxiv without them looking at it first?).
Worth looking to see if there are other ways to get a .edu address. If you are a researcher in a relevant industry, you could potentially get some degree of honorary affiliation with a local university just by asking the right people. However, this is probably much harder than getting an endorser! You should also look into your PhD and undergraduate school's policies: many offer "alumni" email addresses that are .edu - but I'm not sure if this is sufficient for arxiv's purposes.


Can a course title be similar to a book name or a course at other university? Is there any issue with using a course title that is similar to a book title or a course at other university, or it would be better to have a unique name?

I think the question here hinges upon how specific the book title is. If you could not repeat book titles, there would be hundreds if not thousands of calculus and organic chemistry courses in violation, for instance.

However, if the title of the book in question is Sprockets and Doohickeys: A History of Widgets in 20th Century Television, you might want to find an alternate title do the course. Technically it's not a copyright violation, but it does betray a lack of independent thought on the part of the instructor in a specialized course.


What can be some strong reasons not doing a masters? I am writing a motivation letter where I have to write why I am directly applying for a Ph.D. position without masters. What can I write so that it seems valid and convincing to the professor?
(The Ph.D. will take 4 years anyway for people who will apply from bachelor, the 1-year preliminary course then 3 years Ph.D.)

For any application, for school or a job, the key thing is to make sure that everything in your application indicates a successful future. In Germany, where a masters is mostly "expected" it might be hard to convince an advisor that you are ready unless you have done some exceptional things otherwise. Having the master's gives the PI a better chance to evaluate your future, based on your past. So, there, and in some similar places, the hurdle is pretty high.

In the US, by contrast, less is expected since the program is longer and involves coursework that can be used to help make predictions. Also, in the US, you choose the advisor later, giving everyone a better chance to evaluate.

But, what you can write to convince people must involve listing your past successes and other suitability for the proposed position. Just being a good student in a classroom situation probably isn't enough. A different situation if you have some research behind you and some publications.

Convince with deeds, not words, but get letters of recommendation that back you up.


Lack of congruence in mathematical abilities versus writing abilities in faculty Because of my background in mathematics and statistics, I have been called upon by my department (the Math/Stat Department) to assist faculty members from the humanities and linguistics departments in performing routine statistical analyses for a few of their publications. While the actual statistical analysis is very low level (basic undergraduate statistics), I am of course more than happy to do the simple work and be given co-authorship on a paper.

However, in the course of performing these statistical tasks, I have found that some of these professors do not even know how to perform elementary tasks such as finding the average of a set of numbers, adding fractions with single digit denominators, or calculating 45 cubed ("There's no button for that on the calculator!"). These are all tasks that I literally knew how to do when I was in elementary school. It did not take a PhD in math to know how to do these things (or even a high school diploma).

Because of this, I have begun to wonder why we seem to be completely fine with supposedly  "well-educated" (is that too harsh?) people being entirely incompetent at mathematics. Some of these people that I am asked to help have what I would deem to be 2nd or 3rd grade math skills. What if I, as a math researcher, only wrote on a 2nd or 3rd grade level and had to call upon the English department to write my papers for me?  Or what if I could not even identify who painted the Mona Lisa (or that such a painting even existed)?

Should I suggest that my university begin encouraging 'non-math' faculty to become more competent in core mathematics?

I am not saying that these professors are charlatans and do not deserve their faculty positions. They are very knowledgeable on the specifics of their topic. And I am not trying to berate people for whom math is not their strongest subject. However, I wonder if there are steps that the academic community could begin to implement that would enforce a higher standard of competence in basic mathematics among "non-math" faculty.

Writing is part of your everyday life and an essential job skill, as a STEM academic. The comparison between your writing skills and the basic math skills of a humanities professor is only valid to the extent that these math skills matter for the humanities professor's job. By all means, if their mathematical inability is hindering their research or teaching, they should brush up. But frankly, I trust them to make that call, and to seek out the many resources that are already available for that purpose, if necessary. If they need "encouragement" to do this, I question whether it would be all that helpful. You could teach them to add fractions, but if they didn't use it regularly, they'd forget again. If your only reason for why they should know math is that you as a STEM academic know how to write, I think it's a stretch. It would be like a physical education professor coming to the math department and saying "I remember geometry, why can't all of you lift weights?"


Can I include new experiment results in a Camera Ready submission? I have a paper accepted at a X conference. I have been working on changes for the camera ready version. I have some results from experiments that I ran after the paper's initial submission.
Questions:

Can I include the results of this new experiment in the Camera Ready version?
Will I need to inform the program chairs of this change?

No, this would usually not be allowed. One important aspect has not been explicitly covered in Buffy's answer: bypassing peer-review.
Adding new experimental results can significantly alter the paper's contributions and conclusions, and adding them while submitting the camera-ready version bypasses the peer-review process. This is also the reason why many conferences that allow rebuttals to reviews do not allow adding new results even in the rebuttal. For example, the guidelines of CVPR 2021 state:

The author rebuttal is optional and is meant to provide you with an
opportunity to rebut factual errors or to supply additional
information requested by the reviewers. It is NOT intended to add new
contributions (theorems, algorithms, experiments) that were absent in
the original submission and NOT specifically requested by the
reviewers. You may optionally add a figure, graph or proof to your
rebuttal to better illustrate your answer to the reviewers' comments.


Switching from Economics to Computer Science? I just graduated undergrad with a Bachelor in Science in Economics with a Minor in Business. I hope one day to get a Masters in Computer Science as throughout undergrad I self taught myself programming and got a job in finance at a very respected hedge fund where I'll be combining my finance and coding knowledge (essentially an analyst position where I'll be doing data analysis to support traders at the firm.)

The job will 100% pay for grad school after 1 year and I want to go for a program in Computer Science or Data Science. I'm wondering what I need to do to prepare for this and what programs are available to me given that my undergraduate degree is in a unrelated subject.

I have an overall GPA of 3.3 due to a particularly poor performance freshman and sophomore year and doing especially poorly in Spanish but I received a GPA of 3.7-3.8 my Junior and Senior years while taking a more advanced and quantitative course load.

I've taken 2 elective classes in computer science and received As in both of them although neither class is a core class for a comp sci curriculum.

I also have around 4 years of self-taught coding experience both in my private life and through several internships that I participated in while at college. I'm proficient in several languages (Python, VBA, Java, and SAS).

What type of programs can I expect to be accepted to and what can I do to increase my chances of success? I've heard that I should take ad-hoc core programming classes and study hard for the GRE but apart from that I'm lost.

This should be a comment but I need a little more space.  Also, the question should be closed as duplicate of who knows what.  I know I've written this before but I still need to find some system for keeping track of the common answers I've written.

Step one is to look around and pick one or more subfields that appeal to you.  Then, pick a couple of specific programs (a program means a department in a particular university) that make your mouth water.  Do this by reading some of the professors' bios and research program descriptions.  You can also look at grad student bios and perhaps also some of the professors' publications.

Once you've got your eye on a particular program, look at their program of studies (requirements for the degree) and the course descriptions in the catalog.  Make sure you understand what's a prerequisite for what.  You may need to go backwards a bit in your reading, to trace through the undergraduate prerequisites as well.  (Check the schedule of classes too, because some departments list phantom courses in their catalog which are never actually offered, and you should ignore those in your analysis.)

Compare what you see with what you already learned in coursework, on the job, in internships, and in self-study.  Now you have a list of what it would be good to cover prior to stepping into the classroom in your new field as an incoming grad student.

If you discover some question during this analysis, do not hesitate to contact the department.

Once you know what you are missing, you can of course do some self-study, but I would actually recommend that you take at least one course formally, if only online.  You can enroll as a non-matriculated student.

When you are applying you can present as many transcripts as you have.


Is it unethical to submit for review multiple articles which overlap in some respect? I am well aware of the ethic guidelines in the academic publishing world regarding submission for publication of the same article to multiple journals: I know this is broadly considered unethical and creates a bad reputation for the author in question among the academic community (this eventually giving way to negative repercussions –presumably and informal, tacit type of ‘black listing’).

I have a slightly different problem here:

I am wondering what happens if I submit a series of articles, one different article to one different publisher, but all of them more or less at the same time: each of these articles would consist of a theoretical premise (a formula of principles according to which a text’s analysis will be conducted in the article), which is common to all the articles in object, and then the main body, different in every article: that would be the analysis itself (on the basis of the formula) of the works of an author –a different author in every article.

The field of research is humanities (literature). I am attempting to determine, on the basis of existing definitions of a literary trend (the aforementioned formula, which itself is a sum up of existing definitions of the literary trend, by other researchers), which authors and which works of theirs may be plausibly associable to the trend.

So, to sum it up, the formula of analysis (the definition of the trend) is the introductory part of each article. Conceptually speaking it is the same for all of them. I could change the exposition from one article to the other for the sake of not using the same exact text in all articles. The concept(the theoretic formula), however would remain the same: it would mostly not be my own original contribution, give or take a few corrections or specifications I am adding. The main body of the text –the original contribution to knowledge- is the analysis of the author’s text: this is the greatest part of the text and it is different for each article (one author for every article).

Much of this research has already been done in a draft form. Hopefully at some point in the future, and if these texts are published as articles, I’d be able to organize them (along with a few necessary additions) into a broader text to be submitted for publishing as a book.

So the question is: would this strategy be viewed by any reviewer/publisher/editor as a breach of ethic guidelines in the academic publishing sector? Would it cause me problems of reputation in it?

You should avoid self-plagiarism. Having an identical section in both papers would be ethically questionable. They could have the same overall meaning, but I would try to rephrase them differently as you might already have done.
Also have your papers cite each other as being submitted, and possibly update the final manuscript with full citations.
It may be a good idea to let the journal editor know that this is happening. They may be able to provide you with specific guidelines.


Are there any examples of people who successfully did a startup AND worked in academia? Or is it better to just choose one? I'm a newly minted PhD researcher from Sweden who just finished my defense this summer (after a really stressfull and draining final year). Ever since then I have been thinking about my future in academia. I basically decided I wanted to build a startup together some friends of mine and we are now in the middle of developing a note-taking app for academia to make it easier to write and organize notes when writing research articles. We've received a bunch of really encouraging feedback so far from the people who have signed up for the free test version. However, I realize that the more time I spend on this, the less time I have to build my academic profile, publish papers and so forth.

So my specific questions are:

Are there any successful examples of people who have managed to both be part of a growing startup and continue on in academia?
I've currently chosen to work in academia only part-time (making basically 1/3 of the salary that I made as a PhD student, just barely enough to pay the bills so I don't take from my limited savings) but I keep hearing the advice that it's better to go all in and remove any safety net? Is this good advice or is it better to do it gradually?

There is a huge literature on the topic of academic entrepreneurs (and entrepreneurial academics). A recent review of the literature can be found here. Similarly, there are many books on the topic (e.g. here and here). Plus millions of blog posts (e.g. here).

I think it is hard to generalise. For example, this paper highlights the multitude of dimensions involved in the extent and success of entrepreneuring, some outside the control of the individual. This paper distinguished between three groups. First, the ‘entrepreneurial academics’:

  These are individuals who planned to stay in a university but also spent time working in spin‐out companies. They had experienced a number of operational difficulties in trying to develop this new career type and many felt that although the government and universities said they want them to work like this, they had been slow to adjust their own policies and procedures to take account of this change.

A second group, consisting of:

  individuals who were in the process of developing a new kind of career as technology‐transfer professionals. Notably they were younger than those in the first group, and more junior within their departments. The majority wished to stay working in a university context but did not see themselves staying at the laboratory bench.

Finally, the third group:

  made up of younger people who have either recently completed their PhD or have been employed on postdoctoral research contracts. Most seemed unsure where their future direction lay and were using [a research program] to develop the knowledge, skills and resources that they saw as vital to the development of a successful career. ... The scientists in the third group were well aware of the traditional scientific career path and its status but saw it as largely unavailable; a relic of the past that was now only offered to the lucky few. Their aim was to find, or develop, a career path that would allow them to use their science, provide opportunities for growth, and offer a degree of security unavailable to the large numbers of postdoctoral scientists who find themselves in a seemingly endless spiral of short‐term contracts.

Relatedly, this paper offers and tests a model of career path, concluding that:

  entrepreneurial self-efficacy, type of research, perceived role models, number of years spent at an academic institution, and patents are significantly related to the formation of academic-entrepreneurial intentions, regardless of cultural context.

A similar approach is taking by this paper.

The bottom line is that success as entrepreneurs depends on many conditions, some outside the control of the academic. There are different models in which academics engage in these activities, some involving moving away from academia. All in all, beyond anecdotal evidence, of course there are successful entrepreneurial academics. Whether you can be one or not is something you must confront with the evidence above and your own insights.


Should I aim at publishing a single-author paper on my PhD? This is the situation. I'm a 2nd-year PhD student in Computer Science. The research group I belong to is very large, and during my first two years I have worked with many different people from the group, and also gathered a lot of contacts from other universities. In fact, I haven't really met my supervisor, let's name her Alice, for anything besides administrative stuff.

Now, I have been working on something with professor Bob, who works in a different university. Most of the work has been done by me, and since Bob is now out of time he said it was better for me if I continue this work with Alice. The thing is that I've been doing this pretty much on my own from the beginning, and I know I could finish it on my own as well. Also, as I said initially, my group is very relaxed in terms of student-supervisor relation, so I'm thinking of just continuing the project on my own and submit a single-author paper to X conference.

My specific questions, given the above, are the following:

Should I pursue this on my own and just do it without notifying my supervisor? (it's important to say that in my group this happens often, but not for single-authored papers; i.e. a lot of students work with many other professors somewhere else without notifying their supervisors, and that's all fine).
If you think I should talk with my supervisor instead, then how should I approach her? "Do you want to get involved in this" or "Can I work on this on my own"? (maybe it's relevant to say that my supervisor has co-authored some papers with me in which she hasn't really done much, not even the first-core idea, so maybe the same principle should apply here?)

I know this is very much dependent on how things work at my place, but I would love to hear the advice from other researchers as well.

All of the doctoral work I'm most familiar with in CS has been published as single author work. You may want an extensive acknowledgements section if you have worked with others. There may be some corners of CS in which there is some division of labor, such as complicated data gathering v data analysis algorithmics that would be an exception, but I think that is still rare.

Even in cases in which an advisor supplies the initial problem, it is fine in most of CS to publish as a single author. Mathematics is similar. It is in the lab sciences primarily that the standards are different as the very existence of the lab is essential as is collaboration with other lab people.

But yes, speak to your supervisor and lay out your reasoning as here. You might even write up a draft that includes the ack section if you are far enough along. What you want to achieve, however, is a plan that makes everyone happy (enough) and leaves your advisor as a supporter of your work and future.

But if you are in one of those subfields in which such multiple authorship is the norm, then your advisor should be able to convince you of that.

But a rule of thumb might be the distinction between "I built this and you helped" vs "We built this together". There is a fuzzy area between them, of course. In general, though, it is best to know in advance which situation you will fall in to.


How to handle multiple years lost to test preparation on CV? In 2011, I passed the Master's degree in mathematics with more than 80 percentile. I had a dream of becoming a research scholar in one of country's reputable mathematical institutes.

However, here in India, PhD candidates have to pass a test called National Eligibility Test before facing the interview board of such institutes. To prepare for the test, I disconnected myself from the outer world. Unfortunately, I failed the first three times but managed to pass the test in my fourth attempt, and subsequently joined the institute of my dream for PhD in 2013.

Because I didn't do anything other than preparing for the test, I have a hard time filling the 2-year gap in my CV. Whenever I look at it, that 2-year void pains me as most of my fellow scholars can show an uninterrupted career path on their CVs. I do understand myself that my mathematical knowledge grew in that two years, still I can't find a single demonstrable item to support my case.

Most people either clear the national test in the first or second try, and most of the rest would choose to leave the field forever, or get involved in guest lectureship in some institutes while preparing for the test. For me, however, I found it hard to make the time for anything else on top of studying, and hence I did nothing else. Now, I really wish to have such examples in my CV.

My question: have you lost many years in order to prepare for tests or exams? If so, can you suggest some examples on how to explain that lost time?

I agree with @socialsciencedoc's comment, although I think that what s/he describes is a more common phenomenon in the social sciences than in STEM fields.  In the former, it's rare to be a 20-something PhD, and in the latter it most certainly isn't: not getting your PhD in math until you're 30 makes you (slightly, and certainly inessentially) older than average.

Anyway, I am not really scrutinizing gaps in candidates CVs until after their PhD (at which point I am!).  Having a gap between undergrad and grad is still very common in STEM fields: e.g. many people do a couple years of high school teaching before the siren song of academia lures them back.  One of my current PhD students did some high school teaching (among other things...) and will be over 30 when he gets his PhD.  In his case, he acquired some skills in his "gap years" that are proving useful to him as a student and future mathematician.

Spending multiple years only studying for an exam is not something that most Western academics would be so familiar with, I'm afraid.  I'm not sure how to spin that positively.  So I would just not explain the gap at all.  Put your energy into what you can now control: getting a PhD in a timely manner (in math, four or five years is ideal; six is still totally fine; after that it begins to look like you lack sufficient locomotion) and, of course, proving some great theorems in your thesis work.  My eye would probably slide right over this gap in your CV...and I think that is exactly the way you want it.

Added: I missed this sentence reading your question the first time: " I do understand myself that my mathematical knowledge grew in that two years, still I can't find a single demonstrable item to support my case."  That's great; truly.  So your time was actually well spent, and I'm very glad to hear that.  You don't have to further justify that that time was well spent: it got you into the great university that you now attend.  So I think you have little to worry about, actually.


Is there any disadvantage to having open-access publications? Is there any compulsory rule for researchers to have publications in restricted access publication platforms? What if one has majority of his publications in open access journals?

No. The important point is whether the journals are good (= publish good papers) rather whether the access is open or restricted. This being said, in many fields AFAIK the better journals are access-restricted.


What is a good way to proofread for a journal article? What is a good way to proofread a journal article before you submit it? I would like to do more than just spellcheck.

Proofreading is really hard.  The best way to proofread is to ask a friend to do it, who is less familiar with the material and therefore will be more likely to spot inconsistencies and errors---especially the bigger gaps in logic and tangles in presentation that are so difficult for an author to see.  You're simply too familiar with the technical material, and will inherently read it non-linearly, where a new reader will not.

For doing it yourself, I recommend printing out a copy of the material on physical paper and reading it out loud to yourself.  Reading out load has two big advantages:

It slows you down a lot, thereby forcing you to pay attention to every word.  Ordinarily, most of us actually read at a whole-phrase or whole-sentence level, which lets us hallucinate in things that are not there.
Reading out loud engages your language system through two different channels, thereby increasing the salience of any error and making it more likely for you to notice it.

You don't have to print it out---reading it out loud on a screen can work too---but I like printing it out because that also lets me take the paper into a different context with less distractions for doing the proofing as well.


Do US professors/group leaders only get a salary, but no group budget? I was reading an interview with MIT Professor and physics Nobel laureate Wolfgang Ketterle in which he explained that he gets no budget, has to acquire funding even for his secretary, and this is one major difference to Germany (where he was offered to be director of a Max Planck institute). In Germany, a professor has a budget depending on negotiations before he was hired and negotiations when other universities try to entice him. A small average group has around 500k €, a professor around 100k €, employees around 200k €, investments around 200k €. This can vary, but roughly the right order of magnitude for experimental sciences.

Now I also heard professors at Ivy League universities often get a multiple times the salary of German professors, even in top universities like TU Munich. I expect they see this also only as their salary.

Is the case of Prof. Ketterle at MIT representative, and what does this mean when comparing PhD or postdocs in both countries? Are PhD students in graduate schools rather financed by the institute? Or does the number of PhD students in group already depend on the funding success of the professor?

It’s interesting to me to know, because it implies in my opinion a very different necessity of activity and career planning when being a PhD student or postdoc in Germany vs. the US to keep yourself financed. The brain drain and comeback of German academics from the US is a neverending story in German academia.

Certainly the US and German systems are very different. For starters, there is no US national system for higher education (or for lower education, either). The individual states here all have individual systems of higher education, but funding can be problematic there and can vary with the political climate. Also, many of the top institutions, including MIT, are private institutions, without regular government funding. It is too broad to say that no US professor gets a budget, but generally speaking, in most fields, it would be rare to get a budget beyond salary that comes from general university funds.

Instead, those fields that require such things as laboratories rely heavily on grant funding from NSF and other, similar, agencies as well as private funding. Grant writing becomes a treadmill. In some places your tenure decision may be heavily influenced by your success in getting grant funds for yourself, your lab, and for student support.

It is true, however, that some departments in scientific disciplines do maintain general laboratories. Chemistry and physics labs, for example. I know of one cyclotron run by a physics department, but I assume they require lots of grant funding to keep the particles going round and round.

Many, probably most, graduate students are funded as teaching assistants, paid, modestly, by the university for the services they provide. Research assistants might also be paid that way, but, more likely, are paid by grants of the PI of a lab.

There is very little secretarial and staff support in most fields in the US unless it is grant funded. The once exception, I think, is that universities have offices that manage grants awarded to faculty as assurance to the funders that funds are properly spent. This office may even be responsible for managing private grants, as has been my experience. It is also likely to offer help in obtaining grants and for seeking out grant opportunities.

Postdocs and other limited-term positions might be paid out of grant funds or out of general departmental funds for faculty. This would depend on the field. But, I would guess that it leaves an individual some room for negotiation, being less regulated.

I'll make a guess that Germany, as a society, puts a higher value on education generally than is true in the US. Certainly relatively few tax dollars go to education at any level. This wasn't always the case, but seems to be a continuing and increasing trend.


Adding an affiliation to an accepted paper I am the corresponding and the first author of a paper which has been accepted for publication in a journal published by Springer.

I have an important question that is I would like to know whether I can add another university as my second affiliation (before, I only use one affiliation for me) and what should I do to make this addition.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Yes, you can make this change. The easiest way to do it is to wait for the journal office to send you the proofs. If you're worried this might be too late, you can also contact the journal office directly.

Don't email the editorial board because their role is over (they handle peer review, and this is not a peer review issue).


How to approach student in lab with very bad English? Short version
I am a senior postdoc in a research lab mentoring a first-year graduate student from another country, and he has very poor English:

Would it be rude or unethical or just silly to suggest he improve his English?
If it is appropriate, what should I suggest he do, and how can I do that without coming off rude or racist?

Longer version
Person X is bad enough with English that it is holding back our ability to do science. It is very hard to understand what he is saying, and he has trouble understanding very basic (e.g., first grade) level sentences spoken fairly slowly. It is so frustrating at this point that I basically try to communicate via email, which is sort of unfair to him. I am his main source of scientific guidance in the lab, as the PI is not usually around.

If it matters, he is from China and in his 20s (I only bring that up because maybe there are cultural or language issues here I should be sensitive to, but also he isn't a teenager so maybe he will have trouble improving).

I should add that most students, by this time in their tenure as grad students, have improved dramatically in their English (we have a lot of international students). His case is unusual in that he has really not improved at all. My guess is that this is because he speaks his native tongue at home (I have noticed this) and doesn't speak English much outside of lab.

Communication is crucial in science, and this person cannot communicate well (in English). OTOH, I worry about violating all sorts of professional or personal ethical boundaries, and offending him, if I bring the topic up.

Another option is that it is pretty much useless. That is, he is in his 20s, and isn't going to improve significantly, so maybe I should just look for advice on how to make the best of the situation. I'm not saying this is true, just throwing it out there as a possibility.

There has been a related question about students in classrooms. This is different, as I work with this person almost every day in a laboratory setting (
Should we tell students they need to improve their English?).

As an adviser or mentor it can be interesting to learn how the person you are advising/mentoring is feeling. Based on the response, you might gain a clearer idea on how to approach finding a solution. It seems that the individual in question understands written English quite well given you mention you have chosen to communicate via email. I would suggest sending them a message asking them how they are feeling with the program so far and with their work in the lab, and what are some challenges he has faced or is facing. You could ask whether he feels his English proficiency has been problematic so far, and add a couple of other items to like working with the equipment and colleagues, for example. This opens a space for conversation that is minimally face-threatening to the individual and invites them to seek advice and guidance to help their better functioning in the lab.


Effects of Game-based Learning on Motivation for Learning I found many studies discovering the impact of game-based learning on motivation for learning.

For example, these papers

You can also find a summary of them in this book chapter.

However, it is still unclear to me if this motivation is for entertainment or for learning. I was wondering if there is any study showing that students who are adapted to this method of learning have a higher motivation to pursue learning in other forms. My concern is about long-term effects of this method of learning. What is the intrinsic reaction of K-12 students who have adapted to game-based learning when they start higher education in which game-based learning is not provided? Will they have a higher incentive to study? or a lower incentive, because they prefer to play games rather than studying?

I'm a higher ed instructional designer. Our industry is beginning to integrate serious games(a term that seems to be replacing educational games) and the principles of gamification into our courses, particularly those that are online. We know that K-12 students are using Learning Management Systems, mobile devices, and games to learn (whether formally or informally), so we are getting ready for them.

On gaming versus studying: A well-designed serious game and/or gameified learning environment IS studying. Instructional designers like myself who are present on a team developing a gamified online unit of instruction or course are there to ensure that pedagogical best practices are embedded in the content. I can't really answer a generalized statement about higher or lower incentives/motivation because no specific audience has been defined. Individuals, and their reaction to different types of curriculum, vary.


After awarding PhD, if the PhD work is not worth or scientific misconduct of experiments etc. whether Can it be challenged? I found people getting PhD without studying the concerned subjects for the work and did not do the experiment. Pictures and results were manipulated. published in Journal and got the Ph.D (by publishing in Paid journals and bribed the external examiners)

During this case, can we challenge the PhD degree? Kindly let me know what is the procedure.

Depends highly on the university.  In the US, this would be a case to take to the dean of the graduate college, or an office of research integrity, if one exists and the problem is more systemic within a lab or group.  My university has an office that handles all allegations of research misconduct & ethics, for instance, but for issues regarding students, this is typically handled by a dean.  As Buffy says, getting a PhD revoked is probably going to be very hard, but this seems like a more systemic problem that should be brought to the attention of the school.

For the most part, US universities (perhaps with the exception of "for profit" schools) take this sort of thing very seriously.  In other parts of the world, the incentive structure is usually somewhat different and the university may not take steps to rectify the situation.

I suppose the other question you have to ask yourself is this: does this just make the students look bad, or the whole university?  It sounds like you may be a PhD student at the same university, in which case you would prefer if the university maintains a good academic integrity reputation, and hence pursing this at the institutional level might be worth it.  If you think it's just a few "bad apples", then it might not be worth your time - their misconduct won't win them any favors and will probably sort itself out.


Attending university-sponsored club events as a faculty member? I'm a new (and hence young) faculty member, in a city where I don't really know anyone. I also really enjoy swing dancing.

The university has a swing dance club. I don't think there really is an issue necessarily, it's a public space in full view of a large group. However, because it is dancing, that means you are in contact with your dance partner (i.e., a student)...so it's giving me pause.

Looking for gut reactions, others who know their school policy, etc. Yes, I could just ask someone, but I really enjoy it, I sort of don't want to get an official school "no"...

Didn't know what to tag, ethics/policy seems the most appropriate?

EDIT: An update. On advice of one of the answers below, I did reach out to the club's admin. They said that it is open to any faculty/students who wish to learn/do some swing dancing.

Further update, HR passed me to dean, dean said they have no issue, and that he knows other faculty are part of various student clubs too.

The short answer is that this really does depend on the strictness of your institution's conduct policies.

However, I would think that in such circumstances—in particular, it's a club where everybody knows physical contact is required—it would be understood that such contact would take place. Therefore, so long as the contact is limited to what is appropriate for dancing, I don't see why there would be an issue.

(You may also want to look for off-campus swing dancing opportunities—getting away from campus may be helpful for work-life balance.)


Is there any appropriate way to offer cash to a lecturer or TA for private tutoring? Due to financial issues, I've had to work in order to support myself alongside my degree, and unfortunately due to work obligations I've had to miss some lectures and classes.  Due to not spending much time at the university, I also don't have many friends who would be willing to help me catch up.

Would it be appropriate in any way to ask the lecturer or the class TA to help me on a 1-on-1 basis?  I think I've managed to fall behind sufficiently far that I would need several hours of help to catch up -- could I possibly suggest to the professor that I can offer you £50/hour for your time?  I don't want it to be construed as bribery or anything inappropriate -- I just want to pay the person fairly for his/her time.

Is there an appropriate way to do this?  I know that in my high school some students paid teachers for 1-on-1 tutoring, but I'm not sure how it works in university?

For context, I'm in the United Kingdom, I'm doing a master's degree, and the end-of-term examinations are administered anonymously (i.e. the person grading does not know whose paper he/she is grading).

At my university in the USA, it would likely be illegal for the instructor or the TAs of the particular class to participate in this. There is just too much of a (perceived) conflict of interest since they are evaluating you for a grade for the class.

However, there would not be anything barring you from approaching a graduate student who was a former TA for the class; nor would there be a problem in approaching an instructor at another institution or someone who is at your institution who is not teaching your section of your class that term. You could even ask an upperclass student who took the class last year to tutor you.

Your department secretary may be able to connect you with a grad student who needs a few extra dollars and isn't in the conflict-of-interest position to tutor you directly. Or post something in your local craiglist or student bulletin board system.


Express interest to join mentor's group with whom a fellowship application got rejected I applied for a prestigious US national laboratory post-doctoral fellowship with a potential mentor. Unfortunately, I got rejected. However, I am very much interested in working in this mentor's group. Note that I am not sure if he is aware of my rejection. I need advice on the following two queries:

Should I send another email expressing my interest in joining this mentor's group (i.e., on funding acquired by him)? If so, what would be the most polite way to ask him?
Or should I wait for the next fellowship call and apply then with the same mentor?

Go for option 1. How you contact him depends a lot on your relationship.
Generally, keep it simple. Inform him that your application was not successful and try to get to the next step, another application, or asking for other options.
This could be an option, but as said, the formulation depends a lot on your relationship and the PI's personality.

Hi [prof],
unfortunately, our application for xxx funding got rejected. I am still very interested in joining your group and working with you on xxx. Should we try to apply for grant xyz? Do you have any other suggestions?
Yours,
nxkryptor


Are arXiv papers more read than the journal versions? I have a conference paper which is published at IEEE with some errors unfortunately. But I have submitted a version on ArXiv without the errors.

As a researcher, I honestly prefer reading versions on ArXiv because I always think that if such an error has been detected by the authors in the official version (i.e., IEEE, Springer, etc.), they will of course have tried to correct it in their ArXiv version. That is why I usually prefer to read ArXiv versions or that ones present on the authors’ personal page.

Some researchers told me that papers on ArXiv (or HAL for example) are more read than the official versions. Is this true?

Well, statistically speaking, ArXiv requires no reader subscription, so more people have access to it (regardless of what publications they or their institute pays for). Ergo publications on ArXiv have the potential receive views from a wider audience. Whether this translates to citations or not is another argument.

It’s relatively common in my field to see an author "park" some research on ArXiv before submitting it to official publications or conferences. The publication process can take a while (and conferences have fixed dates), but the paper might as well gather interest and citations during that time.

I’ve never heard of anyone publishing on ArXiv after publishing in a journal, but I have seen post-conference extended papers (which go into more detail without the page limit). I don’t know what copyright you signed over (or what access level your publications have) when you published but I’d be wary about infringing the official publisher's copyright by posting on ArXiv.

———————-Edit———————

Well, according to comments, some journals explicitly allow publishing to ArXiv (or related sites) after publication. That might depend on gold access level, but it makes sense for journals to make ArXiv an ally rather than an enemy. Relevant xkcd.


What to do if a professor confused me with another student in a letter of reference? Last year one of the recommendation letter writers wrote incorrect information about my character and this was the reason I was rejected when I applied to graduate school.

After hearing about the rejection the professor realized his mistake and told me about it. Basically, he wrote I had serious mental health issues, but this was about another student.

I will apply again this year, what should I do about this error? Can the professor simply mention this on his new recommendation? How will the committee view an error as serious as this?

I am flabbergasted that the Professor here would not take the initiative to correct his own mistake.  Writing a letter of recommendation for the wrong student ---and making negative remarks that do not apply, that cost the student a graduate position--- is a huge stuff-up.  Any decent marginally-competent person would be mortified at making this mistake and would immediately take action to correct it, without having to be asked.  (It might be too late for the admissions process that occurred, but the least the Professor could do is to write to the affected universities and correct the record, so that it doesn't negatively affect you in future applications.)  It is good that he told you about the error, but that is really insufficient without him taking some further action to correct the error.

If this Professor has not already taken it upon himself to correct his error by writing back to those universities, to at least correct the record, then he is a total deadbeat.  You should consider putting in a formal complaint to your university.  This could also be legally actionable as negligence, breach of contract, defamation, etc., and it reflects terribly on the university that the student would be the one to have to take the initiative here.

If you are more forbearing than me then you should take Strongbad's excellent and sensible advice of approaching the matter gently, to get a good reference for next time.  However, if you are as pissed-off about this situation as I am reading about it, and you decide you want to go full scorched-Earth, here is an alternative course of action:  Speak to a lawyer and get him to write a letter to the university putting them on notice that their negligence/defamation has caused actionable damage to you, and that you expect them to take action to "mitigate that damage".  (They will know what this means.)  Make an appointment with a senior administrator at the university (e.g., their legal counsel, vice-chancellor's office, etc.), and turn up with a senior support-person (e.g., a lawyer, or if this is too expensive, at least a middle-aged person who knows how to handle these situations).  Reiterate that the university has been negligent and has defamed you to other institutions, and this has caused actionable damage to you.  Ask them for suggestions of how they intend to go about mitigating the damage to you, and make sure these are accompanied by guarantees.  Advise them that if the damage to you is not mitigated by a successful application in the next round of grad-school entry, you will be left with no choice but to make a formal complaint to the relevant university Ombudsman and take legal action to recover damages.


How should I ask my advisor on help with something I should know how to do? I am creating a mathematical model in R (programming language) as part of my thesis. I created the first part of the model no problem and sent it to my advisor. She said I did a fantastic job on it. For the second part, I need to look over some class notes as we did it in class last year. This part is very challenging and I even remember in class that I didn't fully understand it. I have been working for 3 days trying to create this model, but I am not even close. I just can't figure out the code to use. I am trying to use the same code as we did in class, but my model is quite a bit different than the class examples so I can't figure it out. I tried looking online as well, but this type of model analysis is not very common so there are not many resources available.

I need to get going on the project so it may be better to meet with my advisor so she can show me how to do it. But I am afraid to ask as this is something I should know how to do. I would like your help with drafting up an email to ask her for help.

The way to frame your question can have a huge impact. If you did your due diligence and researched some material on this (books, lectures, papers, StackExchange!), and are still stuck, then there is a chance that your questions are more than valid.

If you start your email or personal question by: "I have tried three ways to do this.."  and then show/tell them that you have honestly tried your best, your supervisor should help you out. That's what they are for.

Also, feeling like a fool today may accelerate your advance in the future. Postponing communication like this is not always wise (given that you've done your part).


When one does not have well-defined research interests for PhD Programs I'll be applying to tier II PhD programs in Mathematics. I've made a switch from another field to Mathematics, and, given that my primary major was not mathematics during my undergraduate, I don't have well-defined research interests. I have some idea that I'd like to work in analysis, but I'm not sure of which field -- differential equations, functional analysis, geometric measure theory etc. I still, at the very least, need to study all these subjects in more depth to be able to make an informed decision. Moreover, I come from a background where I studied multiple subjects in college -- Economics, Physics and Mathematics -- and I consistently realized I'm more interested in the mathematics of all the subjects I have studied thus far. So, right now, I am more interested exploring more mathematics out there, so I can make informed  choices about my research interests at a later time.

So, my question is: how do students like myself sell their research interests in the personal statement addressed to graduate admissions commmittee?

In mathematics it is common to have little specific idea of what you want to do in a PhD at the point of applying. Unlike in many arts subject, for example, your supervisor will largely choose the research question for you (hopefully with your input). At a graduate open day, we were told that SOPs range from 'I want to do a PhD in pure maths' to 'I want to prove the Riemann Hypothesis'. Indeed, my own loosely said 'this is what I've done, so something a bit like that might be good'. Exactly how much detail you need to give will depend on the structure of the PhD programme, and local rules/funding arrangements.

I think the thing you will need to set out clearly is why you've chosen to switch to mathematics, and how you will achieve the same standard as those who have done a maths undergrad/major.


How much say does an associate professor have in accepting a foreign intern into his lab? Let's say the professor had a lecture abroad and met a very keen and promising student there. He agreed on giving him a position as a student intern in his research at a university laboratory. It is completely outside of any publicly open positions but the prof seems to be very impressed by the student's smart questions and interest. However, apparently, it's the university who has the final say whether they will officially invite him or not. The university is Japanese. What are the factors upon which they make the decision? And what are the odds they will agree to that?
I am sorry if this question is off. It's torturous not to know if there is any hope or not.

Different schools have different procedures, but as far as I know, a formal offer of admission will come from an admission officer (or a graduate officer), not from a professor.

Usually, the most a professor can do is to recommend a student for admission to a program, and possibly indicate that she/he has already met the student.  The admission process itself is usually handled by a separate officer, which will check if all the admissions requirements are met.  Those might include various academic requirements, suitable background in the primary or a cognate field, language requirements etc.  (These requirements might be checked at the departmental level, and a recommendation then forwarded to the appropriate admission officer.)

In some cases, admission may depend on the availability of funding, so that a student who applies knowing a professor can guarantee funding has an advantage.

Funding is usually the trickiest part, but I am also aware of cases where a student had found a willing supervisor but the file was rejected on academic grounds.


What is a professor called who teaches only one class and who works in the industry during the day-a visiting professor still? She teaches a class at night and she works in the industry during the day. She has a PhD though.

Is this still called a "Visiting professor" (which I thought meant you were permanently employed at another university as opposed to a job)?

Moreover, is there a distinction made between a visiting assistant professor vs visiting associate professor vs just visiting professor?

I believe the best term (in the abstract) is "adjunct professor." "Visiting" does not seem to apply, for the reasons you state.

"Adjunct" conveys some useful information, and is important in the politics of how academic departments function. Many adjuncts do not have professional ambitions in academia; they are well established in their professional field, and teach a course in order to stay in touch with the academic world, to add credibility to their name, or similar reasons. So, while from an academic perspective an adjunct might be considered less academically qualified, from their professional perspective that might not be especially important. Also, bringing practical experience into the classroom is highly valued in many disciplines.

There has been a great deal written in recent years about the efficacy and ethics of universities, community colleges, etc. hiring more adjuncts, at the expense of tenure-track professor positions. They do so, in part, to save money, which is seen by many as an infringement into the academic quality/integrity of a university. Worth looking into.