I sent an unupdated version of my MSc. thesis to a supervisor of a PhD project I am applying for I am being considered for a doctoral position and after what I think it was a very good interview, the project supervisor asked me for a copy of my MSc. thesis. Even though the results of the thesis have not been published yet, he assured me full confidentiality, so I sent the thesis for his appreciation.

Two days after sending the document, I have realized I have sent the wrong version of it. These version was very close to the final one, but with a few minor mistakes, such as grammar and a few misplaced commas, one legend that was partially wrong, and differences in text colour also in one legend.

I really want the position, and I am very afraid these minor mistakes will make me come across as sloppy.

Do you think I should send an email explaining the situation and, likewise, send the "good version" of my thesis? I am also very afraid that this will make me come across as sloppy. After all, I did not make 100% sure I was sending the proper updated version.

What would you do in my situation?

I really appreciate all the help!!!

Thanks!!

Even final published theses can, and do, have errors.

Don’t worry, if the errors are typos etc you will be fine, however if there is a serious error in the theory or analysis then that may be different.


Where can I find a collection of past exams w/ answers on various subjects? I am not currently enrolled in any university (too costly for me at this time), but I would like to study as much as I can in various subjects (Advanced Mathematics, Psychology, Computer Programming and so on.) I'd like to find out the areas in which I am adept in case I decide to attend a university later on in life. This will prevent me from working towards an area that I may not be good at or a line of work that I ultimately find out I'm not interested in (both of which have happened to many people I know.)

Are there any universities that provide past curriculums and exams (with answers) online to be used as study guides?

MIT's Open Courseware project has a lot of material of this sort.  Here is a link to the Course Finder, with courses organized by topic.  The depth of the offering will vary from course to course. Some have only syllabi, others have complete video lectures, homework assignments, exams, solutions, etc.  The coverage is quite broad and includes courses in all of the specific classes you have listed.


Creative solutions to convince research dean that I deserve PhD candidature I need your help please to suggest solutions to a problem I am facing during my PhD. My story is detailed below with the important events that are related to the story:

I just finished my first year PhD at the university. It has been a difficult year for me because I had a supervisor who left and another supervisor who left again. My wife had home sickness and financially I had my scholarship fund cut by 30%.

Now, I came across another obstacle in my PhD. During our first year, we have to attend a generic research course and complete tasks to confirm our candidature. Although I attended all lectures and completed all tasks, the course lecturer who turned out to be also the associate dean of research at the university decided that I have not done them. Her proof is that there is an electronic feedback that I have never completed after each lecture which she used to confirm our attendance. She mentioned this rule at the start of her first lecture. Because I didn’t know about this rule and because also sometimes my phone was without battery, I was not able to complete many of these feedback. I may have completed two or three out of eight.

Later, I went to the make-up class and tried to talk to her to convince her that I have done them all but because of all the stress I had from my other PhD issues, I may have become angry in defending myself which I regret now. At the end, she decided that it is OK to leave and I can send her an email stating my story which I did. Later, she sent me an email telling that not only that I still have to retake all classes but also I have to re- do all tasks. I thought it was not fair because I have proof at least that I have done the tasks. So, I did not fulfil her request because at that time 1) I was partly not thinking straight , 2) I was also still hoping to convince her that I have completed the tasks , 3) I was thinking of switching universities and thought I do not need to do them

Later and after I got admissions from a couple of other universities, I found that my wife is pregnant and the doctor told us it is difficult for her to move to another city. So we took the decision to stay at my current university. So, I went back to the lecturer and sent her an email to inform me about any remaining requirements but she still insists that I have not completed them. In fact, she talked to my supervisor after my email and suggested to terminate my PhD. She told him that one day I came to class, ticked my name and left straight away. This happened when I tried to convince her once at the beginning of a class but I was not able to so I left the class in anger.

Now, I have to stay at the university and she said I will not accept you just retaking the class. She told my supervisor that  I have to come up with creative solutions to convince her that I deserve the PhD candidature. So, I need your help please to suggest some solutions to her so she can be convinced. She is meeting me in two days to listen to my proposal.

P.S. , I really enjoyed her classes and learned a lot from them. I thought they are really helpful. In fact, she taught us how to file a patent and because of her I got inspired and filed one. She also taught us how to write a proper paper and now I am writing my 5th journal paper. I also learned how to do a better presentation at her class which got me to present at conferences where I won two awards. However. she is still not acknowledging my attendance at the lectures.

I talked to other colleagues who attended the lecture with me and they all were happy to testify that I attended the lectures. Also, one time she brought three lecturers from the university in class to ask them about any problems we have with our PhD. So I told them my supervisor’s change story. I am thinking to talk to them to see if they would remember my question. I also have an email to one presenter after he finished his lecture to commend on him on his presentation which I can show her to prove my attendance.

I am sorry for my long post. Appreciate all the advice I can get.

I think you are focusing on the wrong part of the issue here. Trying to prove your attendance is not going to help you at this stage anymore. Bringing in others like the guest lecturers is only going to make matters worse.

Instead, here is the three main steps I suggest (plus a very important bonus step):

1) Apologize.

As you report having to leave a lecture due to anger after talking to her, I would almost take it for granted that your behaviour was problematic. Apologize. Do not attempt to justify your anger.

2) Express gratitude.

You mention that you feel it. Express it, and be sincere.

3) Detail (maybe in writing) how you have applied the lessons you learned from her.

While Steps 1) and 2) are just plainly proper behaviour, and will hopefully make her want less to fail you, this step is about showing that you actually learned what you were supposed to learn. Really go in depth here. This is the base for your case to be advanced to candidature. Be specific over what you learned and how you used it.

Bonus step: Given the overall dynamics of your story, it is completely unsurprising that the lecturer is female and you are male (that is making an assumption from having a wife that got pregnant). Examine whether you have an issue with female authority (the answer is probably yes), and search for ways to mitigate this. This will probably take you way longer than the two days that you have, but it is going to be a worthwhile endeavour.


Can I request references from people in the program I'm applying to? Sorry if this is an obvious question. I earned a MS in psych, went and worked a few years, and I'm thinking I want to go back and finish out the degree, earn a PhD. More than one of my professors at the time I was in school recommended I go on, but for personal reasons it wasn't the right time. I know they'd happily write a letter now, but is that appropriate given they're also program faculty? My current employers are willing to write letters as well (I work in MH) but I know there's usually at least one academic reference, and if I can't use the graduate school ones that's going to be a challenge.

I think that would be a great idea: your references are supposed to be advocating for your ability to perform the work of the program, right? Well, who would know better than people running the program?

If one of the program faculty gets asked about you over coffee in the morning, and they say "Oh, AS2045? Yeah, he was in my undergrad classroom, and I think he'd be a great fit for our program, bring in a ton of good grants," then odds are, you're going to do well there.


Time organization for an engineer who works full-time and pursuing PhD I am an engineer working in Germany. I got my M.Sc. two years ago, and how I am going to pursue Dr.-Ing. along my job. I know that it will be tough, but I am motivated, and have time to invest.

My biggest problem is time. I need help how to organize myself the best, since I am not only working on my PhD, I have regular job as well. I am mostly interested in ground work (literature research and how to organize it, as well as tracking the progress). I would much appreciate experiences from people who are in same position (PhD and job).

I am currently doing my master in information science (on top of the PhD I already have) while having a (more than) fulltime job. There are some advices I would give someone planning to do something similar:

Be organized. I started to be much more organized than evere before and are using management tools in addition to organize my study times and keep track of deadlines, meetings, courseworks, ... Some examples: I have three google calendars with different colours, one for my private dates, one for my fulltime job and one for my studies. Trello helps me to keep track of long checklists, projects, deadlines and so on. My files, texts, scripts are organized systematically on my computer.
Clear your mind. Write down tasks and plans. The less you have to keep in mind, the better you can learn.
Say goodbye to perfectionism. No matter how much you try: While having a fulltime job you will never achieve the studying time a fulltime student has. If you try to be perfect in everything, this might simply demoralize you and if there is one thing you defenitely don't need, it's demoralization.
Plan breaks. If you don't plan breaks, you won't have breaks. Since you will need breaks to not burn out, plan breaks and days off. Even if you think you don't need a break, take breaks.

There are two articles with further thoughts, one on idealist and one on thefinancialdiet.


How should I handle poor English in reviewing an article that claims to be proofread by two native English speakers? I was asked to review an article written by non-native English speakers. I had never seen this before, but the manuscript includes a link to a certificate from a website called Textcheck that says:

  We hereby certify that Textcheck has checked and corrected the English
  in the manuscript named above.

  A specialist editor with suitable professional knowledge (M.Sc. or
  Ph.D./M.D.) reviewed and corrected the English. An English language
  specialist subsequently checked the paper again. The first language of
  both editors is English.

Unfortunately within the first few pages I'm already encountering clauses that make it obvious that this was not done to any depth. The issues are so blatant that even a quick glance by a native English speaker would catch them.

Should I point out major grammatical errors such as these in my review? Should I comment to the authors that they essentially got ripped off by this service (in more polite terms, obviously)? Should I comment to the editorial office?

EDIT: I also see that I can email Textcheck about the article. Should I do that? If so, what should I say/ask?

You should not email Textcheck about the article. The journal review process should be confidential, and you should not take the liberty to violate it. You should put the quality of the writing in your review. If it's still bad even after review by this company, then those are the breaks. It sounds like it still needs some help.


Should I use self-made animations in my scholarly presentations? What do you think about the addition of animations to powerpoint presentations? I'm not talking about the generic animations that can be added to powerpoint slides, but the use of animated films to illustrate a concept (I'm in biology by the way).

Despite going into the sciences, I've always had a love for the visual arts, and have been teaching myself animation for the past little while. I think it can be used as a great way of communicating scientific concepts, and will also likely make me stand out in a room full of graduate students. However, I'm not sure if this could possibly back-fire and make me seem less serious about the science? The type of animation I plan on making would hopefully be on par with ones made by professional medical animators.

I'm also a little unsure of the intellectual property aspects of this process. I have made short animations for my presentations before, and although people were quite impressed, my old supervisor seem to think that she (along with everyone else in the lab) could simply start to use my animation in their presentations. I didn't have a problem with this arrangement since it was my first animation, and I definitely was not expecting to be paid for it. However, as I'm starting graduate school and entering a different lab, I would be a little hesitant to agree if it were to happen again, now with animations I've spent a considerable amount of time working on (especially if I will not be the first one presenting it since I'm a new student). I'm currently thinking about showing an animation I made to a PI that I hope to work with in the end (made specifically to illustrate her research). Although I want to impress this person who I think is a great scientist, I also don't want to be taken "advantage" of... Would it be unrealistic to be paid for some of my work during graduate school?

Nate and cbeleites have handled well the finer points of the advisability of making the animations. I would encourage you to go ahead with them, but there are a large number of detail-dependent considerations that need to be made. I want to weigh in on the intellectual-property aspect of your question.

  Would it be unrealistic to be paid for some of my [animation] work during graduate school?

In a word, yes. You are already being paid to produce research and its corresponding dissemination materials. Asking your group to pay extra for a specific class of dissemination material will strike people as odd and probably as very selfish. I think it is unlikely that anyone will agree to this and you risk alienating your group and the rest of the community.

In addition to this, I do not think you should attempt to limit the spread of your animations. Instead, get ahead of the market, and engineer a situation where (i) people will want to share and use your animations, and (ii) people using your animations will bring credit to you and your group. More specifically:

Make sure all your animations identify you as the author, and your university and research group. Make this visible enough that viewers will see it and have enough time to register it, but discreet enough that users of your animations will not be tempted to remove it or skip over it.
Keep your animations publicly available in a visible and discoverable place online. This can be a YouTube channel, GitHub repository, university webpage, something else, or some combination of the above. Make it easy for people to find the animations from you, instead of getting nth-hand copies from someone in their lab.

This online space can then grow to include, say, your research papers, potentially turning some of your animations traffic into interested readers of your publications. This gives you as direct a benefit to your career from your animations as you can really hope for.
Provide clear licensing details for your animations, which could be CC-BY or CC-BY-ND. Make this clear but concise and easy to follow. It is up to you to gauge your audience, but I would claim that people are much more likely to use your content in ways that you would like if you (1) actively give them permission to use it, and (2) clearly state the ways you would and would not like your content to be used. If you provide your animations under CC-BY and state as the attribution requirement that people provide a link to your repository, you are creating a contract of sorts between you and those users, which adds a barrier on their side of the channel (they need to actively breach the contract to misuse the content).

Moreover, if you do this early then you can get ahead of the game and set clear rules for how you want your own research group to treat the animations. Make it easy for people, and particularly for your own group, to know how to credit you, and they are very likely to do it.

Academia is a weird place, and there are many ways to be compensated for work which are not monetary. (Think, for example, of journal editors and paper referees, who perform their jobs on a voluntary basis, in the understanding that they are service activities that actively contribute to their standing in the community, and therefore indirectly to the visibility of their research, their avenues for further collaborations, and ultimately them keeping their day jobs.) You should not expect direct financial compensation from your animations, but there is no reason why you can't market on them and use them to further your career. You just need to be somewhat more clever about it.

In this sense, the situation admits a clear analogy to the (sad) state of the music publishing industry over the past twenty years or so. People are going to pass around your animations, whether you want it or not, in much the same way that people are going to share music illegally if it is the cleanest way to obtain it. The music industry we have spends all its resources trying to clamp down on this, with little effect beyond alienating people; don't be like them. Instead, be like the music industry we wish we had: actively trying to harness the new technologies and media to generate new, fresh, legal ways to get the content, that actually make you want to use them. This is what I mean by beating the market.


How good is phrase in letter of recommendation describing my smart but unorthodox solutions? I have a LOR from my previous employer and I want to use it for the MSc application I'm preparing. However, there is a certain sentence in this LOR that even though I understand its meaning (based on facts I know of course), I don't know if it will be good for my application.

"Major characteristics of his job were the clean, well commented code and the smart, yet often unorthodox solutions."

How bad can it be for my application?

If I were reading this statement, I'd take it as quite positive.

Clean, well-commented code is a very good thing, especially in a young programmer
Smart solutions are good
Unorthodox could be good or bad, but going into an academic context it's probably more good than bad.


Is a letter of recommendation from undergraduate professor different from the major I am applying to OK? I am a recent electrical and electronics engineering graduate. Although an engineering graduate, the major I am applying to is International Studies. Is it okay to get a recommendation letter from your engineering professor as that is my last place of study? I haven't worked anywhere so a recommendation letter from an employee is also out of question.

Sometimes when getting a letter of recommendation you have to do what you have to do.  Letters of recommendation are generally supposed to be speaking of you in the best light possible.  Ideally you would want one for the major your are applying to, and, even more ideally, from somebody who has supervised you in a research setting.  BUT, sometimes you would be better off getting a letter from somebody with a lower title if they can speak the world about you in a positive light.  Remember, that the purpose of recommendations is to describe competencies, skills, and other personality traits that will enable you to succeed in graduate school, something that grades can't show.  As such, you will want recommendations to be from the people who know you best, not just people in a specific department.  Personally, even though I had done a small amount of research at my undergraduate institution, I asked for two professors whom I had TA'd under to provide me with recommendations for an REU I participated in that subsequent summer.
You haven't provided too much about your situation, though, so it is kind of unclear what the exact situation is for you, such as why you are going from engineering to international studies or why you don't have any international studies faculty at your current institution to ask for recommendations or why you think the engineering faculty may be better for providing recommendations.


What does "pers. commun" stand for in academic papers? I have encountered  "pers. commun." in some academic papers when referring to a source or reference . Like in :

  Authors also made sure that they covered the range of self-focused and symptom-focused constructs (Nolen-Hoeksema, 2001, pers. commun.).

  Attempts at using nutrient-solution culture for screening have been unsuccessful ( M.E. McDaniel, 1989, Texas A and M University, pers commun.).

What does it stand for?

I looked it up in some dictionaries but couldn't find anything.

As said by Thomas in a comment, it means personal communication.

Under this phrase, there can be any kind of communication: a discussion (in the university corridors, at a conference, before a couple of beers etc.), an email or whatever.

The communicated piece of information might be something already published, something that is going to be published, or something that will be never published but it is related to the communicator's experience.

For instance, while doing a certain research, I might stumble across some curious phenomenon of which I don't know the origin: the phenomenon might be totally secondary with respect to my research, but I'm curious and I ask someone else, maybe an expert in another field, the origin of this phenomenon. Then, while writing up a paper I might say: you see that bump over there in Figure 2? Well, it has nothing to do with what I'm saying here, but it's due to this and that, Jack told me (tacitly: I'm writing this in the paper because then you, reviewer, will not ask me: hey, what's that bump in Figure 2?)

In your examples, instead, the personal communications are really more related to the research described in the papers.


I need a reference letter but I've been out of school for 3 years Ok I need some advise on my situation. I obtained my BSc in Mathematics and Physics in Spring 2011, but I've been working in a programming position since then, in actuarial business. I want to apply to Financial Mathematics, but I need two reference letters. I was not a very good student back then, I skipped a lot of classes, didn't take care much, yet I've done ok in terms of grades. Anyway, the point is, I rarely spoke to my profs, so I'm not certain how I could ever be endorsed. I'm doing very well at the job, but I believe reference letters from academia are much more valuable than those coming from the industry.

Also, I think it's worth mentioning that I applied in the past, but got refused. Still, my personal situation has much positively evolved since then. I'm just not sure how can convey it.

Thanks for any comments/advise !

In your case it sounds like the strong letters you want from your former instructors are just not going to happen.  None of your professors from 2011 or before can speak to your recent good work in a mathematically relevant branch of industry.  They can only try to remember what kind of student you were back then, and it doesn't sound great.

In your case I would go with letters from people in industry who have skills and qualifications that would be respected by those in Financial Mathematics.  If possible, all but at most one of your letters should come from someone with an advanced degree, and you should make sure that they know you well enough to convey the positive arc of your trajectory in recent years.

You should also take any relevant standardized tests especially seriously: you certainly want a great score on the MATH part of the GRE.  I'm not sure whether the GRE math subject exam is required or applicable for master's programs in financial mathematics: I guess it would be at some programs but not others.  I think that either way it would be good to take some practice versions of this exam, and if you can see that you'll do well (over the 50th percentile is now a good performance from an American student) then you should consider taking it even if it's not required.

You may also have to face the reality that you'll be admitted to a lesser quality program because of your "checkered academic past".  If you're really serious about graduate school, you can spend one or two years in a lesser program, really light up the place, and then transfer into a better program.

Good luck.


Visiting Assistant Professor before a postdoc position? I am considering a 1 year visiting assistant professor position so as to have employment upon my defense in the next few months. However, after that time I would seriously consider other options including postdoc positions, but I wonder how difficult this 1 year "gap" would make obtaining a postdoc position. I would still be able to collaborate with the research group I am currently in and would also look to develop some theoretical/computational aspects of my research abilities during this time. I also have a paper to be published likely after my defense. Looking for any insight or if anyone else has been through this same situation.

If the alternative is a gap year then it is a good idea to take it or, at least, consider it.
Presumably a visiting assistant professor, if you don't hold an academic position elsewhere, is just about the same as a post-doc but under a different name, since it isn't tenure-track. It would, of course, depend on what is expected of you.
If the duties are very heavy on teaching, then it is more like a better paid adjunct. You probably want to avoid that. If it is similar to an ordinary faculty position, with some teaching and some research then it can have long term advantages for an academic career. But consider, also, what courses you would have to teach and how much support you get in doing that. And, some post-docs do teach.
If you are doing research (successfully) during this year as a non-student, you have the opportunity to change the relationship you have with the faculty, building up a circle of collaboration that can be advantageous for your career.
Overall, though, I'd think that it gives you more, not fewer, options.  And certainly more options than being unemployed for a year. But if this is the first option that pops up, don't neglect to look for others before you commit.


How important is it to submit papers early to a conference? Does the submission number in any way influence the way a paper is treated?

For instance, is it likely that an early submission will be picked up by a member of the program committee, rather than being handed over to a subreferee?  When I'm going through a list, I do have a tendency to be more concentrated on the first few elements.

Thus, is it a good idea, knowing that I'll be on time for the conference deadline, to submit a good draft a few days/weeks before in order to rank higher in the submission number, then update with a polished version?

With a typical peer-reviewed conference, submission number has absolutely no effect on the way a paper is treated.  Lots of excellent well-established folks submit at the last minute, and paper assignment is generally not done until the deadline is passed.  Furthermore, paper assignment is often done with the assistance of a paper-handling system like EasyChair, which includes randomization and non-order-based heuristics.


Is there any guideline or consensus about reviewer's scores from ACM? I have been wondering about if there is any document in which is stated the criteria for scoring an article according to ACM. For example, for the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing I thought that the scores were from 1 to 5, but I have seen some parts that they put a 6, or maybe is a typo?
Does anyone knows the ACM criteria or the ranges of those scores?

There is no such thing as “scoring an article according to ACM”.

I have seen scoring systems that rate papers on a scale from 0 to 3, from 0 to 10, from -5 to 5, from 0 to 6, from 1 to 7, ....  Scoring rules vary significantly from one conference to the next, sometimes even from one iteration to the next of the same conference.  These rules are decided by the program committee chair, sometimes but not always in consultation with the other members of the program committee and/or the conference steering committee.

Moreover, even when conferences use the same numerical scale, the meanings of the numbers change from one conference to the next.  For example, on a scale from 1 to 10, a score of 7 might mean "weak accept" (leaving 8–10 for "accept", "strong accept", and "best paper"), or it might mean "strong accept" (leaving 8-10 for "plenary session", "best paper", and "Turing award").

The publisher (in this case ACM) plays absolutely no role in the design of these scales.


Is it appropriate to underline key words in an exam answer? Some exams I have to take involve redacting long answers about a given subject. I know the corrector has to correct hundreds of exams, so clarity in both expression and calligraphy is key to set the corrector in the right mood in order to get a higher grade. I usually tend to be too circumlocutory, but in certain contexts explaining a term requires long descriptions that could make the key word "vanish" among a lot of explanatory sentences. A solution to that is to repeat the key word every couple of sentences, but that would only result in a waste of time (which is of paramount importance, since time is usually the limiting factor for me), and a verbose prose that is precisely what I'm trying to avoid.

In order to highlight such words, I usually italize them when writing a paper, but that looks plain wrong in hand-written texts, where italic letters are not so evident. So I underline them instead. I feel that should make the corrector task easier and faster, since that way they only have to scan the text looking for the key words to make sure the student has commented everything they were supposed to. I even had a teacher who highlighted such words herself prior to give a final grade.

However, I'm not sure how "standard" it is to underline key words, or whether it is regarded as a sign of poor writing style rather than an appreciated aid for correctors. I recently read from a well-known Spanish author that italic words were disrespectful to the reader since they were somehow telling them which words they should focus on, as if they were unable to work that out on their own. People in this post seem to agree it is not a good idea, but their alternative is to write a short abstract to sum up all the ideas they would italize otherwise. However, as you can tell, that's not an option when writing an exam answer.

So, should I underline key words when writing long exam answers?

Is there even a consensus about it, or does it simply depend on the corrector preferences?

Note: The scope of higlighting key words is not to make the correctors notice I've mentioned them, but just to make the correcting task easier.

Note: I'm not a native English speaker and I don't take exams in English, so please don't take this question as a sample of my writing skills. I can do better.

I do not believe that there is a strong consensus on use of textual emphasis in scientific writing.  In publications, I have often seen people use italics (and done so myself) to designate the first use a word in its definition; I have rarely (but occasionally) seen them used for emphasizing a key phrase.  Typically, in scientific writing one is expected to make the key phrases clear through prose alone---but of course, there are tricks to improve the visibility of key phrases in prose, such as use of lists, position of a phrase within a paragraph, etc.

In an exam, since things are handwritten and there is little chance to revise, I would expect standards to generally be more flexible.  Certainly I personally might find it a bit odd, but not at all problematic, for a student to underline words or phrases.  Your professors may or may not agree with me---as I said, I do not think there is any strong consensus.


Plagiarized programming assignment - How to proceed I'm a fourth year student earning a degree in computer science. I have a fairly high gpa, completed two research projects, and have conducted myself honestly through my entire career. A few weeks ago, we received an assignment comprised of 3 sections. My class partner and I decided to work separately on a single module and then collaborate on the last section. After a few days, my partner brought it to my attention that he had found the entire assignment on Github. This bothered me, but I ultimately made the decision to not back out if he decided to plagiarize his section. After completing both of our sections(I did mine honestly) we began collaboration on the final part. At this point, I made the regrettable decision to mimic a significant portion of the other programs structure.

I feel incredibly guilty about this. If this were an individual project, I would fess up to the professor and accept whatever consequences. However, since my partner(who I also consider a friend) is graduating, and starting a well paying job in a nearby city, I feel obliged to hope for the best and see things through.

I do not consider myself to be an unethical person, but high levels of stress and a bad influence caused me to make a bad decision. This I realize is my own fault.

We have not yet received a grade for the assignment, but I'm expecting the worst. How should I proceed? If I do get caught, what will the consequences be? If I don't get caught, is there anything I can do to relieve myself of guilt without ruining my partners career?

It's hard to judge whether your specific situation constitutes plagiarism, since copying "structure" has room for a gray area.

From what you've said though, I personally would take it to the professor.  As someone who has graded student coding work many times in the past, I can say I've definitely developed a feel for when code is copied, and it's usually very easy to check.  Every individual has a signature way of doing things that emerges when enough time is spent looking at their work.

Go in and say you intended to use it as a reference, but upon reflection without the looming deadline you feel like you overdid it, to the point of the work being too close to unoriginal.  Offer to redo it, but be prepared to accept whatever the professor says.  Personally, I can say I would be totally receptive to a student who owned up like that, but obviously there are no guarantees.

Unequivocally though, the worst-case scenario is that the professor figures it out on their own and agrees that it's plagiarism.  The fact that it's a previous student just ups the chances of that.  Plus your own gut is telling you you did something wrong, or you wouldn't be here asking us about it.

Good luck!

Edit: It's also worth consulting your syllabus.  It's possible there are explicit guidelines laid out for dealing with outside code that you should be very aware of before deciding and/or talking to your professor.


What should I do when I would like to move to a new lab because my current PI is abusive? I started to work in a Lab as a Researcher 4 months ago, with the prospect of being a PhD student. This Lab carries out research topics I am interested and passionate about but when I started there was only one PhD student working, so most of the research projects were stuck.

I am a very proactive and energetic person and I always try to give suggestions or ways to optimise experiments but my PI never listens (that's another issue, he does not like to optimise any new experiment, he thinks it is a waste of time and resources, and we actually end up wasting more resources in repeating experiments that are not working). He gets easily angry and just wants us to do exactly as he says (even though he usually forgets what he said).

I am not sure how to proceed. Should I just wait a little longer to see how things continue? should I enrol in a School before switching? or something else?

I feel depressed and no longer feel like the happy and passionate student anymore. I have a deep love for research and I don't want someone to interfere negatively on this.

A PI who is known to kick out some students, and graduate others after 10 (!!!!!) years, is not one you are likely well-placed with. I would certainly look into other labs. Leaving after such few months, when the period additionally was not officially grad school, might not be very hard. Just talk to other PIs, and, if possible, just profess greater interest in their topics as opposed to fleeing a colleague of theirs; it's better to leave on officially good terms, even if they weren't so good.

However, you cannot expect to always have a thesis topic served on a plate, and for sure not right when you start your Ph.D. - at least judging this from the U.S. perspective (if you are elsewhere, ignore the first half of this paragraph as all my experience is with the U.S. system). In many fields, finding your topic is an important part of writing your Ph.D. You might want to ask around in other groups or labs how things are there. Some advisers (I call them 'drawer advisers' - "What should I work on?", and the adviser opens a figurative drawer with topics they could not pursue yet) will do this for you; others won't. You also should listen to suggestions, and it's a bit early to expect your "optimizations" to be really, and always of use. If you genuinely dislike the PI's approach, you should see this as another reason to consider another lab (and try to be reasonably patient there).

The first version of this answer was wondering what exactly the adviser says or does which is upsetting. After your clarification, he seems unduly harsh, and I can see how that makes you feel depressed about your situation. I'm not convinced (yet) that this is because of sexism, but he sounds rude in ways that are simply not constructive for the close work necessary in a lab. Whatever the reason, it sounds bad, and I wouldn't take it. Some reasons (sexism for sure) could allow you to officially complain using your university's grievances procedures, but that's not a great start 4 months in.

Really, ask around, and see what else is out there. If nothing works at your current school, consider a gentler Ph.D. program approach with a period of coursework first, at another university, maybe in another country, a larger program size, and the almost inevitable student bonding which can be your support network.


How to deal with errors in well established papers I am currently supervising a Bachelors student for his thesis. I gave him a well-established paper to read of which I only knew the results but never checked the calculations in it. It was first published in 2006, is currently in its 6th version on arXiv and has about 330 citations, so I expected it to be mostly without mistakes...

Well it turns out I was wrong. My student stumbled over several mistakes and I found some more while trying to explain some calculations to him. In total we have found about 10 errors - some minor like a wrong index in a formula, some major like claiming that a function is convex while it is in fact concave and an inverted inequality sign in the final result...

Under different circumstances I would write the author, but I feel somewhat silly writing an email that basically says "Hey, this paper you wrote 9 years ago contains some errors." I really cannot imagine that we are the first to find these mistakes...

I also thought about commenting on the paper on https://scirate.com/ - this way the author needs not bother with it, but following generations could still see the corrections. On the other hand this could be a big insult to the author...

Is there any other way to make sure following generations don't stumble over the same mistakes? (The results are basically so well established, that active researchers take them for granted and don't try to verify the calculations - but following students will surely stumble over the wrong equations)
Should I just drop it? Should I still write to the author?
What is the "proper (scientific) way" to handle this situation?

The most important thing, I think, is that the core results stand.  This means that correcting the errors is not about substance (which might require a new corrective paper or a retraction, depending on the nature of the errors), but is instead about making the road to understanding easier for others who also read the paper.

Since you say the paper has been revised multiple times on arXiv, it seems there is a decent chance that the author may still be tracking on it and be willing to update and correct it.  I would thus start by writing to the author---it's entirely possible you're the first to notice the mistakes, simply because everybody else thought they saw the things that were supposed to be there (copyediting equations is hard).  If that doesn't produce a result within a few months, write to the journal and see if you can get the errata corrected in their version of the paper.

Beyond that, I think there is not currently a high incentive to put in further effort or to put material up on a third-party website, simply because I suspect that most people who look for the paper are unlikely to readily encounter such annotations.  Search engines are pretty useful, though (as this site readily attests), so there's no reason not to put the corrections online somewhere as an FYI to help others who might happen to search for "errors in Paper X."


License of code accompanying a published article Given a paper that introduces a new algorithm and upon publication copyright is transferred to the publisher.

Is an implementation of the presented algorithm considered a derivative of the published article, hence falls under its copyright?
Or can someone implement the algorithm at any time making it available under GNU independently of the published paper?
What happens if the author published the code under GNU license before submitting the paper that derives and explains the algorithm in detail?

I guess, on a more abstract level, my question is, how paper and code relate to each other?

Copyright only protects the expression of a work that is written down or otherwise placed in a "fixed medium." It does not apply to ideas or concepts.

In the case of a published article where copyright is transferred to the publisher, that copyright only applies to the written content and images in the article. It doesn't apply to the concepts in it.

If you write source code based on concepts described in a paper, you can apply whatever license you want to it - the copyright status of the paper is not relevant. (If the idea is patented, you may have to deal with that... but that is not related to copyright of the published article.)

See Does copyright protect the author's creative ideas? for more information.


Want a recommendation letter, but the professor passed away I am in the process of collecting recommendations for my PhD.
I was the best-performing student in final exams on three different courses, all given by a single professor. (The results of the exams are anonymized and published for a short period in my university.) These were the courses related to the fields I want to do research in.
There is nothing else this professor could have written about me - I didn't do any research in their group.
Sadly, the professor passed away after a short and severe illness last month.
Is there any way I can get a recommendation letter which acknowledges that I was the best student in these courses? Would another professor write that, given the death of the professor in question?

Your best letters will come from professors who know more about you than that you did well in their courses. I hope you have some of those.
You could say in a cover letter that your exams in this persons courses were tops in each, based on anonymized department reports. I doubt that you'd be required to provide evidence for that.


What exactly are academic librarians? My apologies for the title of this question, but I didn't know how to turn it. The fact is this is actually a set of many small questions.

I have completed my postgraduate studies in France where, unless I am mistaken, librarians that work in an academic library do more or less the same work as, say, librarians that work in a public library.

When I started to seek information about faculty jobs in Canada, I was struck by the fact that librarians seem to be pretty much considered as faculty.

Is that a fact? Is it the same in the United States? Is in the same in different types of institutions, i.e. more or less research/teaching-oriented?

I have looked at a few faculty collective agreements, and it seems like they usually include librarians. They seem to have pretty much the same working conditions, e.g. in terms of salary, sabbaticals and workload. The last agreement I read specified that librarians have a maximum of 12 hours of "schedules student contacts", in the same article that specifies that professors teach a maximum of 12 credits per year.

I would like to know what exactly is the job of an academic librarian, besides acting as "regular" reference librarians. I suppose they must keep up with the progress in their field and be able to assess the relevance of journal subscriptions and book purchases, but that probably doesn't account for the missing 23–28 hours a week.

Do librarians actually perform and publish research? If so, would that be mostly in their respective field, or in library and library science? Do they have tenure, and is the process similar to the one applied to professors?

Also, how does one become an academic librarian? Do you need an MLIS like a "regular" librarian? Do you need a PhD, and if so, must it be a PhD in library and information science, or in a field related to the position?

At many (but by no means all) universities in the US and Canada, professional librarians (usually with a terminal Master's of Library Science degree or perhaps a PhD in some academic discipline) are treated as members of the faculty, including eligibility for tenure, participation in shared governance, etc.

In many other universities, librarians are staff members and not considered part of the faculty.  In a few places, there is a mixture with some librarians on the tenure track and other librarians who might have an MLS degree who are strictly staff members.  Most libraries also have lots of support staff and student employees who aren't professional librarians.

In places where librarians are considered faculty, they are usually expected to be involved in some kind of scholarly (research) activity and in teaching students.  For example, a librarian who specializes in archival collections might produce a catalog of a special archive and publish it.  Librarians often teach courses in how to use the library to do research and might be involved in teaching courses in library science to future librarians.


Correct typo error in the article title that published Early Access of the journal I have a accepted  article that published under early Access.

Today, I have got the proofs from the journal to approve some changes. I have found a typo error in the title "Commutation" instead of "Communication". I have already sign the copyright form that contains the paper title.

What should i do?

Make your changes in the proofs, or at least tell the journal what changes to make. From what you describe, "Early Access" means the paper hasn't been published yet; the journal just put whatever was accepted onto their webpage. In that case the proofs are your chance to make changes - this is also the most convenient time for them.


What are the guidelines for minimum "implementation/proof-of-concept" requirements in computer science research? Some aspects of computer science research requires some form of implementation and an according evaluation. I have not yet seen where the minimum level of implementation expected for an academic paper is defined. For example, if   a "novel" work requires a persistence layer and a researcher uses a file based method e.g. csv. Will that be wrong? Will his architecture point to a database or a file system ?

Your implementation needs to be good enough to evaluate the concept you want to evaluate - no more, but certainly no less. What this means in practice is largely dictated by what kind of evaluation or experiments you want to do. I have basically seen four broad classes in Computer Science:

Proof-of-Concept (PoC): you only want to show that your idea can be implemented, so you only implement your idea (often in a fairly naive or bare-bones manner). Note that this is often good enough for a quick demo, but not good enough for a paper (because reviewers usually feel that the conclusion that something can be implemented is not satisfactory by itself).
Evaluation Prototype: in addition to the PoC, you want to evaluate how well your idea works in some quantitative manner. For instance, if you are building some novel file system, you probably want to not only show that it can be implemented, but also that it works better in some dimension (e.g., faster) than existing systems. Your prototype can still be bare-bones, but you presumably need to build the core parts well because otherwise your evaluation may end up showing primarily that your prototype sucks. In a way, your prototype results show a sort of lower bound on how your idea works - that is, if your results are good your idea is validated, but if your results are not good, it may be because they idea does not work or your code is too bad of an implementation.
User Study Prototype: in addition to quantitatively evaluating your prototype, you may want to run one or more case or user studies with it, or conduct a controlled experiment. Now you need to improve your evaluation prototype with at least a limited amount of bells and whistles, because it is hard to run an expressive user study if your system is almost unusable to anybody but yourself. In this stage you may be adding a GUI and a bunch of features that are unrelated to your science, but which may be needed even in trivial practical usage.
(Simple) Product: the final stage is that you plan to actually release your implementation in some manner to the public. Maybe as part of an open source project, as a consulting delivery to a company, or even in the context of a spin-off company. You will now need to add many more bells and whistles unrelated to your science. Further, now you need to start caring about documentation, a release cycle, not doing breaking changes, etc., all of which are basically irrelevant as long as you are just building a prototype for your science.

So what does this mean for your project?

  For example, if a "novel" work requires a persistence layer and a researcher uses a file based method e.g. csv. Will that be wrong? Will his architecture point to a database or a file system ?

I generally suggest my students to follow a lean approach:
what kind of experiment do you plan to do? Will it matter what kind of persistence layer the prototype has? If no, then build whatever you can do quickest and where you are most confident that it will work correctly - but keep in mind that even the simplest prototype can sometimes run through all the phases above, so at least plan for the possibility that you may need to swap out your persistence layer for something a little more state-of-the-art than a flat text file later on.


Must an "academic reference letter" be from a university-employed researcher, or will other researchers do too? I'm applying for a post-doc where they ask for two "academic reference letters".  Does the adjective "academic" strictly mean they must be from people working in academia?  In my field, a good deal of research is performed at meteorological agencies, and I've co-authered several papers with a researcher employed at such an agency.  Would a letter from a researcher who publishes lots of papers (5 1st-author articles in 2 years), but is not associated with any university, be considered an "academic reference letter"?  Said researcher has a PhD, but further academic titles.

Better safe than sorry: check with the institution you're applying to, they may have formal requirements about this.

However, I don't think it's likely to be very narrow. The important points are that the recommendation letters come from people with a good track record, i.e. people who clearly perform high-quality research, and that they have worked closely with you in the past. Whether they're affiliated with a university, a meteorological agency, the NASA, a museum, or even (may God have mercy on your soul) The Industry… it doesn't matter much.


Preventing leaking exam papers/cheating using phone cameras? I work at an educational institution where exam papers are considered protected. Leaking the exam question sheet and taking photocopies or camera shots is considered illegal and is strictly prohibited. I am not here to argue about this policy but to ask about the best ways to enforce it. Students have been taking pictures of exam papers during exam time, leaking them to subsequent sessions or posting them with solutions and often selling them to students of subsequent semesters. Though we don't use the same questions between semesters, they do exhibit some similarities at times for some courses.

Even with strict invigilation and requests not to bring cell phones to the exam room, there have been some incidents. Lockers are out of the question, as is collecting all cell phones before exam time. I would welcome any suggestions.

This is not the answer you want but I have to get it out of my chest. (My background is engineering).

The best, most effective and easiest way to completely avoid students taking pictures of exams, selling them and making a profit out of that is:

Publish online all previous exams as an exercise book.

The questions in an exam and the exercises done before the exam should not be more different than an exam and a previous exam, actually old exams make for perfect exercises and practice.

The point is that studying the courses and making a few exams/exercises to practice should be easier and lead to greater success than checking the whole compilation of past exams, which should anyway lead to a good knowledge of the contents of the course (in a more tedious way than reading the theory and checking this with a few exams).

Personal story: When I was in high-school the homework would be much harder than the exams, anyone making the homework (optional) would get good qualifications and the qualifications would reflect actual good knowledge about the subject. In the university there were exercises, but they were explanatory and very basic, the questions in the exam were much harder. This made the exercises useless, students needed exams from previous years just to practice in answering the questions, and I hated that.


What to do when a reviewer is late while daily posting about other activities on social media? I am an associate editor for a journal. I have asked an academician to perform a review for the journal, to which they agreed. The reviewer is already 6 weeks late (6 weeks after the deadline), not replying to our reminders (2 already), and recently I noticed on my social media feed a number of their posts (shared by people I follow) about how they are using the lockdown to do a lot of non-academic stuff, which is fine but I feel it no longer justifies using the lockdown as an excuse for being late.

In this case, should I consider un-inviting the reviewer?

Sorry if this may sound like a rant, I just felt that it is inappropriate to use such a difficult situation to justify being late, while actually doing something else.
Extensions are automatically granted in this journal. Reviewers just need to reply to our reminder to get an automatic extension. However, if we do not receive a reply, we cannot grant the extension.

You have to separate two things.

First, it seems your journal has certain procedures regarding late reviews. You say that "if [you] do not receive a reply, [you] cannot grant the extension". You have not received the reply, so simply do not grant the extension. Do whatever you do whenever you do not grant an extension; I assume that this means telling the reviewer that they are relieved of their commitment to review the paper due to being 40 days late and not replying to reminders, as well as finding a new reviewer and probably notifying the author(s). What you saw on Twitter is not involved in that.

Second, you have to think about your relationship with this reviewer. Unless you have a very compelling reason to continue asking for the services of this reviewer, then I would consider not asking anymore. Being very late – I assume that 40 days is a long time for a review in your field – is one thing, not answering emails is another, both combined with public posts about spending all their time on non-work related stuff is not great. Unless the tweets are about helping the authorities deal with the outbreak or taking care of vulnerable persons close to them, I understand your frustration. Referees provide a very valuable service for free, but committing to do something, not doing it, and not communicating about it (while being clearly able to) is not okay.

Perhaps this is worth pointing out. I would guess that the tone of the tweets also matters. If it's something like "great, I'm stuck at home so I have an excuse to stop working", I think being annoyed is fair. If it's rather "wow, dealing with confinement is hard, thankfully I have these activities to take my mind off it", I would be a bit more wary. Dealing with the current situations is difficult, and for some even more so. I don't know what country the reviewer is from, but in some places, it has been forbidden by law to go outside your home (except for essential reasons) for weeks/months. This takes a toll on the mind. It can cause emotional trauma, even PTSD or depression, according to experts. Keep that in mind before cutting off the reviewer.


How much time should someone take to respond to a PhD admission offer? I have received an admission offer for a PhD at a prestigious US university. However I am also currently working in another lab outside the US with a potential to also receive PhD admission there.

I think the deadline to respond to the US school is April 15 but the professor asked me politely to give an answer within a reasonable amount of time, also my former supervisor (which has no interest in the matter) suggest not to string along the US school and try to make a decision well before the deadline.

I feel it might be unethical to wait the last minute because I respect the professor and he might lose good potential candidates. On the other hand I want to wait and see if there is a concrete possibility of pursuing a PhD at this other place.

As soon as you are sure, or April 15, whichever is sooner.

You have no ethical obligation to answer before the April 15 deadline, especially if you are waiting for an offer from another department.

On the other hand, it would be nice to answer earlier if you can.  So it would be nice of you to contact your current department's admissions committee (either directly or through your lab director), tell them that you have another admission offer but would prefer them, and ask if they're likely to offer you admission.  If they haven't decided, it would be nice of you tell them about your April 15 deadline and ask them when they expect to make up their mind.

(I'm assuming that you prefer to stay in your current lab.  If you'd rather accept the pending offer, even if you got an offer from your current lab, then what are you waiting for?  If you're not sure, then what more information do you need?)


How give a recommendation letter to my professor when I need it back? Basically, i have asked a professor if he would write a recommendation letter for me and he graciously agreed.

But for some reason, this recommendation letter needs to come back to me because it has to be in my complete application I need to send in the end. (The complete application is a hard copy that needs to be mailed)

Do I mail the professor a hard copy of the recommendation letter with a stamp so he can send it back after he fills it out? If I do this, do i ask him for his address? (its summer now)

Or do I send him an email with the soft copy of the form attached and ask him to print it out and mail it to me?

Thanks!

She or he could write your recommendation letter, and put it in a sealed envelope. Then, you submit your application with the sealed envelope.


Applying to graduate school at my undergraduate institution I did my undergrad at a school which is near the top in my field of interest, and I'd like to apply to its program in that field. While my application would certainly not make me a more-likely-than-not admit, I think it's competitive enough that applying is worth the time and money. However, the responses to a previous question suggest that applicants like me may be less likely to get in than comparable students who went to a different undergraduate institution. Should I take this into account when deciding whether or not to submit my application?

Some additional information that could be relevant:

I graduated last year, and have spent that time doing research at a lab which is not affiliated with my undergrad institution. I have done more research here than during my entire undergrad career.
I am not laser focused on a single research group at this institution, or even a single sub-field. Indeed, one of the reasons that I would like to apply is that it has strong research in more than one of my favorite sub-fields.
I'm also applying to a few schools in a related but different field this application cycle, and my undergrad institution has a strong program in this field as well. Does this discounting effect apply to admissions committees considering applicants who are changing fields?

Edit

In response to the opinion-based hold (which I don't disagree with), I'll try to ask a more specific question. Suppose my probability of acceptance at this top school would be p if I were coming from a roughly equivalent but different school, and my actual probability is q given that I did my undergrad there. What values of q/p are typical? I'd still like to know even if the answer is something like "it varies so much that the value could be 0 or even greater than 1", or "maybe around 0.8 but with a huge standard deviation." I have decided to apply already anyway, but I'm still curious.

Policies vary widely by program, but many top programs tend to encourage—and some require—that their students apply and attend other graduate schools. In part this is to encourage diversity in training experiences, so that students are not working in a single group for an extended period of time. I have heard of programs where they will admit their own students only if they haven't gotten in elsewhere (but students at such programs usually can get in somewhere if they are sufficiently qualified!).

As for the last question, again, this really does depend on the program. However, in most cases, I think the fact that you attended the same university but in a different department means you won't be viewed as one of "their" students, unless you were closely affiliated with that program somehow—for instance, if you did undergraduate research with a faculty member in that program.


How can we find who owns an old book's copyright? How can we find who owns an old book's copyright today, especially if the publishing company who printed said book no longer exists? This would also apply for other (non-book) publications.

Columbia University Libraries has a helpful document that provides guidance on determining the copyright status of books published in the United States. The guide provides links to online resources to allow you to determine the copyright holder.

  Researching the Copyright Status of a Book: Protected or Public
  Domain?

  A project of the Copyright Advisory Office Columbia University Libraries
  Kenneth D. Crews, Director

  www.copyright.columbia.edu


Reviewing a paper with suspiciously good results I'm currently reviewing a paper which deals with iris recognition, submitted to a top conference in the field of biometrics. The paper's main contribution is a recognition model that, while presented as novel, is in fact essentially a very simple convolutional neural network.
However, in the experimental section the method is compared to several state-of-the-art approaches (including deep CNNs) and while the state-of-the-art achieves 70-80% accuracy, the method from the paper gets close to 100% accuracy. In addition, the methods were tested in 2 scenarios, first with 50 identities, then with 100 to recognise from. All the state-of-the-art methods performed worse in the 100-identity case (as expected), however the paper's method actually saw a slight increase in the performance accuracy.
This to me smells fishy, to put it mildly. However, there are 2 considerations:

Technically it is possible (however improbable my experience in the field says this is), that the simple approach just handles this specific problem that much better than the deeper convolutional networks.
Even if the experimental work was devised improperly, this may not have been done with ill intent. Simple mistakes in the training/testing procedures (such as training the model on the testing data) could conceivably cause such a discrepancy, without malicious intent on the authors' part.

To put it bluntly, I intend to reject the paper, however I would like to do so without making either direct or implied (possibly unwarranted) accusations of misconduct on the part of the authors.
How I have currently addressed this particular issue in my review (listed next to other shortcomings of the paper):

In the experimental section it is unclear how the models were trained. How was the data split into training, validation, testing data? Did all the trained models (including the [redacted] model) use this same data split in their training? In my experience a (near-)100% accuracy is unlikely to be achieved, regardless of the chosen recognition method, when the dataset is difficult enough that state-of-the-art methods (like [redacted]) only get 70-80% accuracy. Oftentimes such unnaturally high accuracy points to a mistake in the training/testing process (such as testing on previously-seen data). The fact that the performance improves from the 50-category case to the 100-category case, rather than dropping off as it (understandably) does for the other approaches, makes this even stranger. I would suggest the authors either publicly release the training/testing data and the code used, or provide enough detail in the experimental section to make these results directly reproducible.

Is this an appropriate way to address such results? Should I confer with the conference editor on this and voice my concerns to them directly?

If it's technically possible but unlikely to be correct, in my opinion the best option is to request major revisions asking for more details and results, such as evaluating the model on new datasets, providing the code and trained model to the reviewers, etc. It's good to be skeptical, but it is weird to outright reject a paper that you believe might be correct without making sure that it really is incorrect. In other words, if you submitted a paper with a surprising result, would you want the reviewers to reject it simply because they are surprised, without determining why it is wrong?

Is this an appropriate way to address such results? Should I confer with the conference editor on this and voice my concerns to them directly?

For most journal submission sites, there are comments sent to the authors, and comments for the editor only. The latter is a good place to send comments to the editor. You could also email the editor directly if the journal submission site does not provide for private comments.


Is it true that foreign students have very limited academic prospects in Germany? My question is about this apparently well-received answer on Quora:

  Q: Which PhD programs in Germany would you recommend?

  A: NONE...The German Ph.D. system is feudal and archaic. At the top is the professor, who, unlike his Anglo Saxon counterparts, can take as many Ph.D. students as he wants. 20 to 30 is very common. They are used to do the grunt work. If you are a foreign student, the professor will do nothing to help you stay on, network, or find a job in Germany....

  In Germany, [it is very difficult to find an academic job]. In practice, unless your Professor pushes you, and he will only push a bunch of favorites who are German, you won't get a job. Why do you think there are so few foreign faculty in German universities? And surprise! Those who are there have PhDs from the Ivy League...If you take a PhD and then try to move to industry, you need to have a job that requires a PhD, and...it will be an immigration officer who decides that....

Is this really the case? I have known few non-German people with German PhDs and none of them mentioned these issues. I especially find it unlikely that anyone can have 20–30 PhD students worth of grunt work in fields like mathematics. Many of the other issues also seem to be present in other countries. On the other hand, there is also this article, which largely agrees.

To narrow the question, let's ask specifically about foreign graduate students in mathematics who seek academic careers.

The German Ph.D. system is feudal and archaic.

Sounds like an opinion. Let's check all points to form an own opinion.

  At the top is the professor, who, unlike his Anglo Saxon counterparts,
  can take as many Ph.D. students as he wants.

True. But it's more like "as many PhD students as he can pay".

  20 to 30 is very common.

No. More than 6 is rare in math, more than 10 is extremely rare. About 1 to 4 is more common.

  They are used to do the grunt work. If you are a foreign student, the
  professor will do nothing to help you stay on, network, or find a job
  in Germany.

This can be true for any professor in any country as well. I do not see any evidence why German professors are worse than others in this respect on average.

  Of course, they are happy to see you leave for your own country to do
  technology transfer!

I have no idea where this conclusion comes from. In Germany the companies often struggle to get good applications and there is no reason for anybody to be happy when a well qualified PhD graduate leaves the country to work somewhere else (except to be happy for that person...).

  In Germany, unlike in most other countries, a PhD qualifies you only
  to teach as a docent.

No. A PhD qualifies for a bunch of jobs depending on the discipline. What is probably meant is jobs in academia. See below.

  To become a professor you need another degree a Habilitation. After
  that, you need to be called to the chair.

Not anymore. There are more ways to become a professor. There are junior professorships (vaguely similar to assistant professorships), you can become a junior group leader at Max-Planck institute or a bunch of other research institutes, get your own funded research group (DFG and BMBF are just two agencies with funding in this direction) and of course being a productive postdoc (with or without doing a Habilitation) is possible.

  If you cannot find a job in the 12 years after your PhD you are barred
  from applying to academic jobs.

No. What is true is that there is a law that says that you can only work on limited time contracts for six years after PhD. But this excludes contracts based on grant money and I've seen more exceptions to this (e.g. for junior professors). Even if you leave university, there is the possibility to return to academia (depending on the discipline) and a professorship at a Fachhochschule even requires work experience in industry.

  In practice, unless your Professor pushes you, and he will only push a
  bunch of favorites who are German, you won t get a job.

This is an overgeneralization.

  Why do you think there are so few foreign faculty in German
  universities.

There are not a lot foreign professors in Germany. Probably the required teaching in German plays a role? Other than that, foreign applicants are treated equally.

  And surprise! Those who are there have PhDs from the Ivy League.

No.

  If you are a Masters then look for a job in industry. If you take a
  PhD and then try to move to industry you need to have a job that
  requires a PhD and in practice it will be an immigration officer who
  decides that.

Immigration officers play a role, but I don't know of any PhD graduate who could not get a job that was offered to them because of immigration policy. As noted in the comments, there are simplified rules as of March 2020 which I don't know yet (link in the comments).


Should I inform the graduate admissions committees (of all the Universities I have applied to) of the acceptance of one of my papers? I think if it was a standalone question then the answer would be an unequivocal "Yes". So I will present you my situation: while applying to graduate school I had mentioned that two of my papers are under submission at 2 different conferences (I had given the names of the conferences as well). One of them got accepted today and the other one was rejected a few days back.

Now the thing is, I feel that informing them about the acceptance might increase my chances considering this is my first paper and I'm an undergrad currently (is this a myth?). But the issue is, if I inform the committees about the accepted paper alone then I feel guilty about the fact that I'm deliberately concealing information about the rejected paper. And if I don't, I feel I might not be making any use of the fact that the paper got accepted somewhere.

Can someone tell me what could be done?

Ben Norris' comment is right.  I will elaborate a bit.

As an undergrad, having an accepted paper is much more significant than having a rejected paper (i.e., the net perception is very positive even if they learn about both).  Furthermore, rejection is probably temporary (you'll probably resubmit after improving it and it may get accepted) whereas acceptance is permanent.

Tell them about the acceptance.  If they ask directly, tell them about the rejection.  But there is no reason to feel obligated to broadcast a paper's rejection.  The people reviewing your application certainly don't list their paper rejections when they apply for a job or a grant!


How do I reference a literature review? I have a paper which is a literature review about a specific topic. How can I reference some texts from this literature review if I want to paraphrase that in my research proposal for PhD?

If it is a small quote (1 or 2 sentences) you can put it between quotation marks " ... "

If you want to quote a paragraph, the most used ways is to indent the text you quoted sometimes with or without quotation marks.

However, I beleive the previous two cases are only necessary when you need the exact wording. Although it might be necessary some times but it is usually not the case. You can reword the important part you want and cite the review article. An even better way is to check the original research paper that the literature review cited then you cite that ( unless what you needed was a critical analysis done by the literature review author)


Letter of recommendation from professor who is not longer at your university I am applying to graduate school in US for MS and Phd program. I wonder is it a good idea to ask for a letter of recommendation from someone that I took his course and I did amazing in his class and he knows me very well but he is now professor at another prestigious institute ?

It's not just a good idea, it's an excellent idea.  Your professor is still in just as good a position to speak to his experience with you and his assessment your abilities as he was before.  You say he has moved to another good institution, so there is no reason for his opinion to be discounted just because he moved---changing institutions is not unusual.  In fact, if he is happy to write you a good letter, it will look even better than if he was at the same institution, because even after changing institutions he still remembers you and cares enough to write.


Mentioning that my paper extends my project X: compatible with double-blind review? I am going to submit a paper to a conference that uses double-blind review. The paper extends my project X, which was published somewhere else last year. In order not to break the anonymity, in the paper shall I hide the fact that project X was mine? (If I don't they could simply look at the reference associated with project X to identify the authors.)

Yes, refer to Project X without stating that it is yours.

In my field, instructions to authors for conferences that are double-blind reviewed often say:

  Do not omit references to provide anonymity, as this leaves the reviewer unable to grasp the context. Instead, a good solution is to reference your past work in the third person, just as you would any other piece of related work.

In reality, of course it is often obvious that the paper under review is likely to be an extension of the cited work by the same author. However, as an author, it is not your responsibility to make sure that the reviewers can never identify you. It is only your responsibility to

  make a good-faith effort to preserve the anonymity of your submission, while at the same time allowing the reader to fully grasp the context of related past work, including your own.

Citing your own previous work in the third person is a good faith effort to preserve anonymity, and (at least in my field) that's all that's required.


How to cite a new journal in abbreviation form which is not found in existing abbreviation list? Recently, I want to submitted a paper to IEEE, I encounter a problem when I want to cite a paper from a new journal, for example, Systems Science & Control Engineering . According to IEEE standard, all papers submitted should have the abbreviation form of journal name in reference, however, I can not find the abbreviation form for the journal I want to cite. How to solve this problem?

I tried this abbreviation database JabRef/reference-abbreviations and not found.

There is a list of journal abbreviations issues by ISI where official abbreviations are found. There are many places where the list is found but the best updated will likely be the one at Web of Science. your journal is not listed here as far as I can see but abbreviations follow certain guidelines so it would not be difficult to "guess" what abbreviation should be suitable. My guess will be Syst. Sci. Contr. Eng. based on other existing abbreviations including the words that make up the title.

Note, however, that this is still not the formal abbreviation and I would add a note to the fact to the editor when submitting the manuscript so the journal can decide what to print based on what you have provided. It is possible that the copy-editing will catch this as well but declaring your actions will always help editors in their work and will be appreciated.


Hiring coder for parts of publication I'm designing and implementing an algorithm for 3D mesh segmentation. Probably I'll publish the results. However, I'm also interested in using this for commercial means, and to do so I need to hurry with the implementation. For that reason I'll need to hire some coders to implement parts of my algorithm.

In my publication, Do I need to reference this coders? Is this allowed in academia?

You would typically mention this type of help in the acknowledgements section, if at all. It is well understood that developing tooling requires manpower and that there are others on the team aside from the researchers, and it is up to the authors how to acknowledge that assistance. For what its worth, if their contribution was so significant to warrant authorship, that should be a discussion among the research team.

You mention "cite" in your question; this sort of mention would not go in your references, in case that was your thought.


Non-English literature: should we check for prior work? How far should we go when considering the possibility that a (non spectacular, bur relevant) result has already appeared in any other language different from English?

Is it safe to ignore non-English publications in some fields like computer science, chemistry or physics? That would be assuming that foreign researchers will publish in English, if they are serious about it.

Is it safe to ignore non-English publications in some fields like computer science, chemistry or physics?

I would try my best to not ignore. If you are citing a paper that has cited a non english journal, I would read the citation to see if its relevant to my paper. Translation tools, although not always accurate, would give you a sense what the paper is talking about.
Maybe this article can answer your question to an extent.

http://www.ete-online.com/content/5/1/12


How can faculty best telegraph work-life balance challenges under COVID to our administration? Work-life balance is more challenging for faculty than ever under COVID-19.  What are equitable, privacy sensitive ways to telegraph needs at the individual level?  What are acceptable accommodations to suggest?
To be clear, I am looking for strategies for individuals. If you are underwater from the fallout of this pandemic, it is hard to even join the cause, much less organize. In comments directly below can be found exemplars of the viewpoints these individuals are up against: they are dead weight, complaining, or not team players.
This is a unique year in which to attempt to find solutions: administrative members are distributed, and unofficial channels of communication are often not operational. The unofficial conversations that used to help resolve these kinds of situations are more difficult. Further, faculty and administration vary widely in their interpretation of the current crisis.
This was highlighted for me when a tenured faculty member in a recent meeting was pushed by a dissenting faculty member to point out that she was the vulnerable member in her family, due to obesity, and so could not be physically on campus.  No one wanted that moment to happen, and yet it did.
There is, simultaneously, a call to step up and come back to campus, often explicitly.
https://president.ufl.edu/updates/2020/07/in-person-classes.html
Regardless of academic rank many are responding to personal challenges ranging from lack of child or elder care, to personal COVID-19 high-risk status, to more exotic things which are more difficult to categorize. My international students are trapped in their home countries, visa-less. Impact is everywhere, and even a faculty member with no 'traditional categories' of difficulty might well be under water. At the same time, universities are making hard choices and cutting positions or asking more, sometimes both.
The impact is clear. My own unit has lost a number of our best people, who have left for the relative certainty and balance of industry, or simply left to focus on the complexity of their own lives. Anecdotally, more women than men have left. I am in the US, where things are admittedly presently a bit more extreme, but I think that this question can generalize across university systems in many countries.
It is my belief that one major lack is a good way for individuals in need to communicate their need. For many reason, they may hesitate. This problem extends up the chain: my dean and provost are both high risk, and both working in the office.
So, what are equitable, privacy sensitive ways to telegraph needs at the individual level?  What are acceptable accommodations to suggest? How do we address the untenable state of work-life balance in academia under covid-19?
Aside, that is, from leaving.
UPDATE: I have moved to an industry position, sacrificing my academic 'family' for the health and well-being of myself and my family. I have valued the contributions of this community in my academic life, a chapter I now close.

Let me suggest two things. First, the administration is probably acutely aware of the challenges you face and have many of the same issues themselves. Losing some of the "best people" is, itself, a wake-up for administrators.
One of the problems is that large universities (especially) move very slowly and have a lot of inertia. But this sounds like a problem that should be addressed in a bottom up fashion, rather than asking for a top down solution.
Meet with other faculty in your own and other departments. Perhaps there is a faculty association of some kind or even a union. List the problems you face and come up with sensible solutions for them. Try to think of more than one solution, some of which have minimal effect on overall finances, though they might require reapportioning funds.
If appropriate, get department heads involved in this and even deans. Discuss among yourselves how you think it ought to be and then work on those issues, probably one at a time. The long term viability of the institution may be at stake as times change and there is no clear end point to the current difficulties. For state-funded institutions you may even need to enter the political arena to obtain changes, especially additional funding.
If you first get public/open recognition of the problems from administrators you have a better chance of pushing proposals for solutions.
Don't neglect working with other departments. There is a lot of expertise in solving problems among the faculty generally. Some of those people are experts in proposing solutions to social problems and dealing with inertia and opposition.
Small-scale short-term solutions may not be sufficient. There are no guarantees that the university will return to what it was a year or so ago. Think and plan for the future. The universities that do this best will have the best chance to succeed.


Can a professor shout at a student? Is there any possible penalty (from the educational institution) for the professor for disrespecting a student?
What can and cannot do a professor in terms of respect to a student?

Under normal circumstances, faculty should never yell or shout at a student. However, faculty are also human beings, and there is always the possibility that under emotional strain, they can lash out at a student.

I will admit to having been guilty of this once as an advisor, when a student came into my office for a discussion about his research, and made some statements that betrayed a total lack of awareness of what he was doing (and this was a "veteran" graduate student who should have known better).

In the context of teaching, students have reason to expect that the faculty member should not shout at them. However, it is unreasonable to expect that any disciplinary action would be taken against a faculty member for a single infraction.


How to best start offering consulting services as a Ph.D. student? I'm wondering how to best start offering consulting services as a Ph.D. student? In particular, how to think about stating a consulting business while in graduate school.

A potential partner and I have skills that fill a market need. Both of us are adamant about pursuing non-academic work after the Ph.D. We both are wondering, what are we waiting for? In addition, both of us had has smaller consulting opportunities thus far (these fell in our lap), but would be looking to take this to the next level, and essentially replace our research assistantships with this work. Actually, there's no guarantee that either of us will have research assistantships next year, so it might even be a necessity.

Graduate school seems like a great time to start doing this work. Frankly, I'm unsure about how much a Ph.D. would change this opportunity for us down the road.

How would people go about navigating this while in graduate school?

In advance of the "check with your advisor or department" responses I should add two more things.

1) There's nothing in our agreement with the department or student handbook that stipulates that we can't work outside of the department while a student. It's not encouraged when you are getting a research assistantship. This would replace the assistantship.

2) We both don't feel like our advisors are adequately preparing us for non-academic careers (frankly because they have never worked outside of academia) and are fine with what this might mean for those relationships. It's more likely that they would be supportive of us stepping out of the lab and taking an untraditional route to finishing the Ph.D.

I experienced working as a consultant during a year in a PhD program.

On the upside, I earned more than my cohort was in our fully funded program.

On the downside, stepping out of a lecture to take a client's phone call was one of my experiences. Having to handle the fallout of another client's death during finals was another, when one client suddenly became several smaller ones.

I found I was losing the support of the head of the department, and I didn't like my grades.

I had confounding issues: one was that my clients and wife were in a town a 3 hour drive away from my program and another was that I was scrambling to catch up with the math required, as I underestimated the preparation required. I found the workload to be unsustainable and withdrew, enrolling in a local Masters program instead.

I'm now likely earning more than the majority of my former cohort, while not facing the stress of the publish or perish monster or dealing with undergraduates trying to understand why you gave them an F for lazy slapdash work. However, I would consider mine a cautionary tale.

I assume you want to complete your degree. To do so, you'll want the support of your department. You may underestimate their desire to see you become a hugely successful academic eventually rising to tenure at an Ivy. They may become dismayed by your desire to work in consulting.

On the other hand, there are hugely successful academics who are also very entrepreneurial consultants.

That said, you don't want your advisor or department chair to think of you as a consultant, unless that's already expected of you. Ideally, you want them to think of you first and foremost as a successful academic. I would avoid loudly publicizing your services until you finish your dissertation (which you should probably finish sooner rather than better, in alignment with this strategy).

Instead, you might profile your ideal client-type and ask your current clients that best fit that profile for introductions to similar ones, or at least to identify them for you. Then, like any sales pitch, you should do your homework on the potential clients, and go put yourself in front of them.

I wouldn't rule out the assistantship either. It likely means high quality time with a great scholar. That should align with your values, considering your current efforts at education. Don't be dishonest about your intentions, but do be discrete. I hope my advice helps.


How would I preface being on the president's list in the same way that someone can be a “winner” of an award, on a bullet list (Referred here from English SE)

I'm trying to write a bullet list of accomplishments for a scholarship renewal, and I'd like to include that I am on the University President's list.

Typically in a bullet list of such things, you (and this is extremely difficult to phrase) "preface" each item with a word, such as "Winner of x award", or "member of x club." (Where "winner" and "member" are the words in question.)

Seeing as the Presidents list is neither an award nor an organization per se, how would I preface such an accomplishment?

I would typically term inclusion in such a list an "honor," as in "Awards and Honors."  If you want a verb, however, I would not use "honored" but simply "included", however, as in:

  Included on University President's List, Miskatonic University


What academic discipline does "Productivity Science" come under? I wish to categorise my large collection of electronic documents. I need a foolproof set of categories to put each document in. I want to use a classification system similar to how university schools are organized:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_disciplines

Some of my documents are productivity tips (similar to Dave Allen's "Getting Things Done" book). I can't find an academic category under which productivity comes. The term "productivity science" doesn't seem to be a widely accepted term.

What is the most natural category to put the study of "Productivity" in? Psychological Sciences (or other Social Sciences)? Applied Sciences/Professions? I'm tempted to put it in Psychology because I have other documents based on Learning, Memory and Performance. The four of those seem best suited to Psychological Sciences.

There is no such thing as a

  a foolproof set of categories to put each document in

With paper documents the document had to "live" in a single locations and therefore needed a primary category/label/tag. You then had lots of different indexes that would allow you to find the document from multiple places. You often had to walk to a different library to collect the document. This system was/is inefficient and problematic.

Electronic documents can "live" in multiple places. The concept of assigning a single primary category to an electronic document is dated and silly. You should either modify the file directly to add helpful metadata or create a database that lets you externally create searchable metadata. This then allows you to easily search for the document, and related documents.


How to tell my MS advisor I've changed my mind about doing a PhD with him? I did pretty much all my important bachelor and master courses within one working group, which maybe was not that efficient, but it offers a very nice and comfortable environment and colleagues.

Currently I am about half way done with my masters thesis in a similar working group within my university, which I had not much contact with before. They work very efficiently, and I am catching up and learning quickly, yet I do not feel too comfortable around them. Both working groups basically do very similar work, but use different programs and approaches.

I'd like to point out that there is no conflict because of me "switching groups" and there are no shared projects between them.

Some time ago, I got offered a PhD position in my new working group, and my supervisor encourages me to get my master thesis done even more quickly, so I can fill his PhD position. I signalized him that I would be interested and ever since then he is very convinced that I will stay. On the other hand, I also know about possible upcoming positions in my old group as well as in other groups/places, which look very intesting to me. I fear that my masters thesis quality is suffering, which would probably make it harder for me to apply for other positions.

I feel hardly pressured to tell him that I am hesitating to accept his offer and seriously thinking about going back to my old group or somewhere else, but I don't dare to do so. He has no idea about this.

The question is: what is an appropriate way to tell him, and is there a good timing for this? Am I putting his guidance for my master thesis at risk here?

Two points:

First, just because your new supervisor offers you a PhD position does not mean that you are in any way obliged to take it. That said, don't hide the fact that you are going to consider sending applications out to a variety of programs. The thing that will cause hard feelings is if your advisor thinks you are going to join his or her group and turns other people away, only to have you leave. If your supervisor is a professional, he or she will recognize that you pursuing other opportunities is not personal. You have to do the best you can for your career, and if that means taking a better position elsewhere, then you should do so. (Note that you can also get outside offers and use these to negotiate better pay as a PhD student, but that's a different issue, and somewhat more complicated politically.)

Second, don't under any circumstances work for a group that makes you be slow and do poor work. Academic hiring is cutthroat competitive, so if you want to actually get a job, you're going to have to produce a lot of very good work, and you're only going to do that if you're surrounded by other people who are trying to do the same who push one another.