Is it okay for a thesis to have sections of very different lengths? I run into a situation where the logical division the material in the thesis I'm writing forces me to create sections of very different lengths. Matters are further complicated by the fact that the short section does not naturally divide into subsections.

Is this bad style to divide material like that? If so, what are some good techniques for correcting it?

Also, should the shorter section have exactly one subsection, or should it not have subsections at all?

The layout I have right now looks perhaps somewhat like this:

Section 1 (where I prove Theorem 1)

subsection 1 [10 pages]
subsection 2 [10 pages]
subsection 3 [10 pages]

Section 2 (where I prove Theorem 2)

subsection 1 [10 pages]
...
subsection 4 [10 pages]

Section 3 (where I prove Theorem 3) [8 pages total]

There's typically a great deal of flexibility in your thesis presentation, and as long as the lengths don't disturb you or your committee, there is no reason to force your work into some Procrustean bed of perceived length balance.

In my own thesis, the number of pages per chapter were approximately: 12, 4, 8, 8, 36, 12, 44, 16, and 6 pages, respectively.  While there may have been problems in the document, chapter length was not one that either I or anybody who encountered it ever had any complaint around.

In short: let the sections be the length that is best for them, and don't worry if they are different.


Can I decline a PhD program I have already accepted? Can I accept a PhD offer and later withdraw from the program before it even starts? Is there an etiquette for that?

I really want to do a PhD but they have put a deadline in accepting and I am currently interviewing with companies. Please advise.

Can I accept a PhD offer and later withdraw from the program before it even starts?

Yes, of course you can. They won't force you to enroll and they won't come after you legally. It's certainly not worth anyone's time. However, it does harm the department's planning because they might not be able to fill your spot. For more discussion, see the comments on this answer.

  Is there an etiquette for that?

Yes, the etiquette is to not do that. It's rude and you will burn bridges. A spot that could have been offered to another student may be lost. But if you're quitting to move to industry, you probably don't care anyway.


Is it possible to get another PhD in political science in Germany after getting a PhD in philosophy in Hong Kong I am doing a PhD with concentration on continental philosophy in Hong Kong (my MPhil also had the same concentration too), but I am really interested in political theory and political science and often audit relevant courses. I am wondering whether it is possible to get another PhD of political science in Germany, if I focus on empirical political science research or political theory, after finishing my current one, provided my German is fluent enough.

You should have a look at the "Promotionsordnung" (~Regulations for PhD courses) of the specific universities. As far as I know, it might not be possible to get the same PhD degree twice. They have to be from different fields. It should be possible to get two different PhDs as I know some people who achieved this in Germany.


What are the pros and cons of multidisciplinary research? Does doing multidisciplinary research enhance one's employment opportunities compared to doing a degree in "basic" sciences?

For example, is a Ph.D. in Nano-science/Nano-technology in any way better than a Ph.D. in Physics or Chemistry, considering employment in India or in Asia? Would like to hear perspectives from other regions as well.

(In India, the basic qualification for employment in universities or affiliated colleges, as Assistant Professor is M.Sc. with UGC-NET or a Ph.D. in the relevant subject. Multidisciplinary research is available only in major research institutes and a limited number of universities.)

This does not fully answer your question, but it is certainly one consideration.

Multidisciplinary theses are often examined by multidisciplinary committees.
Examining such theses is difficult, especially if the committee has no experience examining multidisciplinary theses.
 A consequence is that you will often be forced to conform to the conventions of different communities. In addition, the chemistry committee member may not see the thesis as a chemistry thesis and the sociology committee member may not see the thesis as a sociology thesis, because it lies somewhere in between the two fields and cannot be a complete thesis in both fields.


How to avoid sleeping in lectures? It's not that I cannot hold my attention - I find it a lot easier to put in sustained effort during research - literature surveys, practising derivations, and coding. I also find myself actively engaging in 1-1 (or smaller groups) discussions over long periods of time.

During lectures and seminars, it is a completely different story. I invariantly doze off within 15-20 minutes, irrespective of the content, presenter and class size. I despise it, and sincerely want to change it. Any suggestions?

EDIT : All your answers made me go through all the possible reasons for nodding off. In my case, it is most likely a case of lack of interaction (Peter Teoh's answer) since I have made through with long hours of both mental and physical work for consecutive days (hence mostly not a case of sleep deprivation). Thank you!

The first thing you need to do in order to address this issue is to understand why you are falling asleep.  Since you say that you do not have difficulty focusing elsewhere, it seems likely that there is something specific about the lecture environment that is triggering your sleep.  The approach to fixing it depends on the cause.

Two likely possibilities:

If you are extremely fatigued in general, then any significant chunk of time where you are entirely passive, like in a lecture, is likely to result in you falling asleep.  I had this experience as an undergraduate.  The only real cure is to start sleeping more at night.  Remember, you are not in a sprint, but running a marathon, and you need to pace yourself at a sustainable level.
Packed lecture halls often have dim lights and/or higher CO2 content in the room (due to how densely packed people are), both of which are sleep-inducing for many people.  If this is the case, for you, a good way to counteract it is to move your body and get your blood flowing.  There are many exercises that can be done while seated, which will not generally be disruptive if you do them toward the back of a classroom.  In some larger lecture halls, it may also be possible to actually stand in the back, behind the seats.


Job market in academia: applied/computational math vs. pure math Many people told me it is much more easier for an applied/computational mathematician to find a job in U.S. than a pure mathematician. I believe that it is largely due to the fact that applied/computational mathematicians have many advantages in finding jobs in industry. I wonder if this is still the case in academia, in particular research-oriented schools. Well, at least in the department I am studying at, most postdocs and newly-hired assistant professors are doing applied\computational math or potentially applicable math.

Specifically, Is it generally easier to find a job in research-oriented schools (regardless of ranking) if one works in applied math rather than pure math? (I naively believe that there is no special advantages for applied mathematicians to apply for a job in teaching-oriented schools. Please let me know if I am not right)

To avoid the tag that "this question strongly depends on individual factors", I want to clarify the words "generally easier". I want to know whether or not most research-oriented math departments (specifically refer to those with both pure and applied mathematicians. I know in some universities, pure math and applied math belong to different departments) are more interested in hiring applied/computational mathematicians as postdocs/APs and the reasons behind it.

Answers based on personal experience and objective evidence/statistics are both welcome here!

Applied mathematics is looks great for research oriented schools, as it is great for connecting field like physics into calculus, it’s evidence that you are aware of the connections and potentially build on them; pure mathematics doesn’t look as good, unless the field you are looking to research in is mathematics itself, as schools in general will assume you are more focused arithmetic, rather than the actual application of your degree to your field of study.


I have a figure showing that on different datasets, method 1 is x times faster than method 2. What is a good x axis label? I have many datasets(over 10000), and two data processing methods A and B. B takes only 1/2 to 1/5 time of A to run on them. I want to draw a graph showing on these datasets, how much B is faster than A.
I use the ratio of their running time.
E.g., on Set 1, A uses 30 sec, B uses 5 sec, and the ratio is 6x. On Set 2, A uses 180 sec, B uses 50 sec, the ratio is 3.6x.
Now I draw a distribution bar graph. The X axis is the ratio described above, the Y axis is the percentage of datasets with that ratio. So assume there is a bar at (X,Y) in the figure, it means "There are Y% datasets on which A takes X times compared to B".
What is a good X label for this kind of graph? Do I just write "Ratio of Running Time Between A and B"?

There are several possibilities. The one you suggested is OKish, but I'd prefer a shorter form like

Running time ratio A/B

Another possibility is to denote by t(A) and t(B) the running times of the two data processing methods and label the axis as

t(A)/t(B)

Finally let me point out that the unit symbol for second is "s" not "sec" [SI Brochure], and that a ratio is just 6, 3.6 etc. without appending any multiplication symbol.


PhD (at Oxford) vs staying at in the industry (Facebook) for a ML student? I am 26 years old and I got an offer for a PhD in Machine Learning at Oxford. However, currently I am a software engineer at Facebook and I am living a very well-off lifestyle.

I applied for the PhD last year, not knowing if I would get it and I decided to work as a back up. Now that I have a great paying job it is hard for me to want to do the PhD even with the scholarship. However, I know the work I can get after completing a PhD at Oxford is much more interesting to me (my work is currently not very interesting) and I could be making more than I am now.

My question is: will it be worth it do take 3-4 years to do that PhD (and graduate around 30) or should I just stay at Facebook even though the job is not very interesting for me.

You must make this decision - no one else can make it for you. Things to think about:

Uninteresting jobs are bad. If you can't see your job getting more interesting, then say 5-10 years down the line there's a good chance you'll get so bored your performance starts suffering, and then you might get fired.
You know the industry very well since you have a first-hand insider view. What jobs do you enable by getting a PhD? If they're more interesting jobs (do you actually know they're more interesting, or do you just think they're more interesting?) that you will never be able to do without a PhD, that's a powerful reason to get a PhD. On the other hand, it's conceivable that you'll be able to do those jobs without a PhD simply by staying put, acquiring more experience, and doing well. You'll know better than anyone else.
Do you have a significant other or a family to provide for? If so, what do they think? Remember that usually, once people experience a luxury, going back to a less-luxurious lifestyle is typically a big no-no even if it was previously acceptable. Even if you can accept it, your significant other / dependents might not.
What does your current manager or other senior colleague think (if you trust them enough to talk to them)? Just as important, are they willing to rehire you after you graduate?
Is it actually economically better to do a PhD? Run some calculations. If you stay put, you earn $X this year, $X + [increment] next year (if you have one), etc. If you go to Oxford, you earn $Y for 3 years where Y < X, but then after 3 years you earn $Z where Z > X. How many years does it take before the second option exceeds the first, if it exceeds the first at all? The fewer years this takes, the more attractive the PhD becomes.

These things are too intricate to say more, unfortunately. As above, you must make the decision - no one else can make it for you.


Why are the number of reported sex crimes so high at Ivy League Schools? It seems like the % of sex crimes (rape, statutory rape, etc.) are way higher at ivy league schools / schools with a low admission rate compared to other schools.  Other crimes like assault and robbery are higher at schools with a higher admission rate.

https://www.collegecrime.org/schools
https://www.collegecrime.org/school/5225/criminal/harvard-university

Why is this?

Via NBC, these numbers may reflect higher levels of reporting, rather than more crime:

  Experts do not think the reason is because more sex crimes are actually occurring on Ivy campuses.

  "I think higher numbers of students reporting sexual offenses suggests there is a process in place that students feel comfortable going to," said Suzanne Goldberg, a Columbia law professor who helped write the university's policy on gender based misconduct.

  Goldberg says recording more sex complaints is not necessarily a bad thing.

  "I think actually all the data suggests that sexual violence including rape, including sexual harassment, including sexual exploitation and domestic violence, takes place fairly evenly across the population at universities."

Inside Higher Ed similarly reports:

  While it makes for good headlines, researchers and advocates say using federal reporting data to assess the prevalence of campus sexual assault or to rank the relative safeness of individual colleges is ill advised and even irresponsible.

  “It is really misguided to use sexual assault reports as rankings, because schools with higher rates are actually doing a better job of encouraging reporting and addressing the issue,” Laura Dunn, founder and executive director of the victims' advocacy organization SurvJustice, said. “By ranking schools with higher rates as unsafe, the media's uninformed coverage is actually discouraging schools from better addressing campus sexual assault. We don't want to push reports into the shadows; we want [assaults] to be reported and dealt with appropriately.”

and

  Clery data should not be used as a tool for comparing or ranking institutions, said Mary P. Koss, a professor of public health at the University of Arizona and a pioneering researcher on the prevalence of campus sexual assault.

  “It is a completely, totally invalid assumption,” Koss said. “In some respects, high numbers can be good. If you’re revamping your approach to sexual assault, you would actually expect the number of reports to go up. But even those high rates are not credible, as they are just the number of reports, not actual assaults. The bigger story is looking at those numbers in the context of how many rapes are being identified by climate surveys.”


Can I study Fine Arts at the age of 26/27 I am Indian and I don't know , is there any possibilities to join Fine arts colleges at the age of 26/27. My background is Bachelor of Science and working in a small IT company.But I am not happy with my current situation.I would like to change the scope , Can I start over again in Fine arts? Because , I am still a good painter.And I want to be a good artist.From my childhood everyone use to say ,I paint awesome.
Apart from that, I love paining still now , and I want to study more in this field.
Is it possible ? please help.I have none in my life to guide me.

Short answer: yes you can. The question should be: Should you?

Art is very difficult to live from. That's why many successful artists not only exhibit a significant dose of obsession, but ideally also some marketing skills, patience, strategic thinking, charisma. Yes, and luck, and not in small doses.

Note that one thing I didn't mention as requirement was talent - that, of course, goes without saying.

So, the prudent way is to keep your day job as a computer developer and develop your arts skills as a hobby and, when you have broken enough ground you will have some opportunities to participate at minor, later bigger exhibitions before deciding about taking the plunge.

Alternatively, you could consider taking advantage of your computer skills to combine your artistic ambition with computer-based art creation and/or marketing. There are quite a few artists who used the internet very successfully to become known and appreciated.

Doing a proper art degree, I suspect, would be more of interest for people going into art theory, art critic, museum curation, gallery management, and, especially if you start so late, I am not sure it is the right route for someone like you who seems to be interested in producing art rather than analysing/managing/marketing it - but of course, there may be very good arts schools in your potential target areas which would raise your levels of skills, we cannot judge that.

An alternative would be to find some arts master in your area and take lessons.

On the whole, leaving a paying day job for studying art is a very risky route. It's, of course, not impossible, but you need to be aware of the risks. Many artists end up not doing what they intended to do in the first place, even if they are very talented and have several of the skills above. By the time you finish your studies and decide that art does not work for you, your computer skills will be outdated, so this is what you have to take into account.

Good luck!


Can you submit an abstract that was accepted to a conference but not presented, for a different conference? Our group has submitted an abstract to a conference for an oral presentation (not the proceeding track), and it was accepted. We're scheduled for an oral presentation, but it seems like we cannot make it to the conference because of travel expenses.

I was wondering if we withdraw our presentation, can we submit the same abstract to a different conference? In particular, we're considering submitting it to the next conference of the same organization; would there be any upside or downside to that?

( I read this question, but this is about whether the abstract is considered published or unpublished and does not discuss whether it can be submitted for a different conference or not.)

In my field, and I think in other traditional disciplines as well, is pretty common to present talks or posters more than once.
Thus, your doubt has no ground. Presentations aren't papers, they are dedicated to an actual audience, so you could resubmit the "basically the same" work even attending this conference you cannot in fact attend.

(How many times it makes sense to present the same core depends on many factors I am not going to list here) .

I recommend you to explain to the current organizing committee, or the branch in charge of the scientific content of the event, about your impossibility and why. Let them know you will try to submit and attend the next conference.

Also, in case the current accepted abstracts go printed, try to reformulate it at least a bit. This has nothing to do with copyright or self-plagiarism but it something I always do not to convey the idea of laziness or that I and my coworkers are prone to sloppy copy and paste.


Why is the variability in faculty salaries between STEM fields so high? Checking the data from some public universities, I noticed that the variability in faculty salaries between STEM fields can be extremely large, even within the same university and for the same position.

For example, at the University of Michigan assistant professors in mechanical engineering generally make around $95k a year, while for Math the same position pays around $55k.

Why is this range so large?

Every job position is it's own little economy, and to understand it fully we basically need a wide-ranging understanding of economics. But we can at least hit the most obvious and easily understandable points, so long as we are clear that each position is distinct and unique in it's own right.

Let's say you need to hire a Professor of Basket-Weave Engineering. How much do you pay them? Well, I say we offer to pay them a $1. Ah, but that would be below minimum wage requirements generally, so that'd be illegal...ok, let's pay them $20,000 a year then.

Why pay them any more? Well, in short, we have a number of problems:

1) Quality of candidates - the best in the field just aren't willing to work for so little, they likely won't even apply even if they were rich because such a low salary indicates a lack of respect and seriousness of the position. So you likely won't get your desired quality of candidate.

2) Quantity of candidates - with such little pay you probably just won't get enough qualified candidates to seriously interview.

3) Actual acceptance - even if you get enough good candidates and make an offer, there is a good chance they won't accept at all because they have better offers.

4) Perception - national rankings and general public perception can be involved. Do you want to become known as the institution with McProfessors who are paid in beans?

5) Turn over - even if you get good people to join, they will likely leave when they get a drastically better offer. Even the most die-hard of loyalists will have trouble turning down an offer that's 4-10 times the salary they get now.

But why are similar positions paid so differently?

Each of the simple 5 conditions I outlined above vary by individual position. A Computer Engineering professor is just not the same as a Chemical Engineer - they are both engineers, but they have very different market factors involved.

Let's say they start off the same though, and you are able to hire and retain both at the same rate of $50,000 a year.

Now let's say IBM wants to put someone in charge of a next-generation computing research lab - will they want a Computer Engineer or a Chemical Engineer? I think it's pretty clear that they may very well have a preference for one particular type of engineer. The research produced could earn them billions, so they'd be happy to pay easily $500,000 a year for the right candidate. Not to be outdone, Intel, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and a dozen other big-name computer companies also want the same kind of candidate, and all are willing to pay the same.

Now you have a problem. If you want to hire a Chemical Engineer, nothing has changed - $50k seems to get people just fine. But if you want to hire a Computer Engineer, you are now effectively competing with dozens of companies willing to pay 10 times what you pay.

One method of dealing with this is to ignore it. Sure, you'll lose the most money-motivated or even the best candidates to companies, but you'll still be able to get what you want. But what if more and more companies want computer engineers? What if it gets to be that there's a shortage of above-average candidates, and so industry will throw stupid amounts of money at any computer engineer who seems even vaguely above-average? You'll be left with only below-average engineers or ones who are outright hostile towards industry. If you expect to get grant money and support from industry partners, you are going to be in trouble either way.

So it might turn out that it easily makes sense to pay $200,000 a year to get a Computer Engineer (because, frankly, you have no real other choice anymore), but why would you pay any more for a Chemical Engineer? Their market hasn't changed any, so why waste money?

Complements and Substitutes

But now we also realize something interesting. While the tech companies prefer computer engineers, they realize that IT engineers have similar knowledge and work almost just as well. They might still prefer computer engineers, but with less demand or less pay they will make use of them too (even if they were still working slightly outside their field!).

Now you will find, thanks to the concept of substitutes, that other fields are being effected by the tech bidding wars. Pretty soon you'll be paying $150,000 for IT engineers. But what if tech companies realize that, sure they prefer the specialized knowledge of computing and IT people, but research is research - why not identity suitably brilliant Chemical Engineering PhDs and hire them? Sure it might take them a little longer to get up to speed in the field, but whatever - they may still prefer other fields, but they'll take what they can get.

Next thing you know within a few years you went from paying everyone $50k to having to pay no less than $200k for a Computer Engineer, $150k for an IT Engineer, and $100k for a Chemical Engineer - minimum! Any less and all the really desirable candidates pass your institution over with ease as the other offers they get are just too high. Meanwhile professors whose primary role is teaching CS101 still command little more than that $50k, because industry just isn't super excited about people who can teach entry-level courses.

And what if other institutions start competing for top candidates, just like the industry has been doing? As Artelius points out, Baumol's Cost Disease is a hypothesis that seeks to explain increases in salaries when productivity of the job itself hasn't changed, if you are interested in further reading.

This little fictional story isn't far off exactly what has happened not only in Engineering fields, but all fields. My own adviser once pointed out to me that even people who do the same job, in the same field, get paid differently based upon what program they earned their final degree in - Psychology faculty just get paid less than Business or Engineering folks, even if they both work in the same exact applied research field.

People Are Different, Want Different Things, and Value Things Differently

Ultimately this is the bottom-line - people with similar titles are not paid the same because our system is based upon relative values of individuals, groups, and the economy as a whole. People are different, want different things, and don't assign the same universal value to all things. One agent might not be willing to buy something for more than $10, while another agent considers it a steal to get that thing for less than ten times the price!

Even more importantly, no one really wants to pay more than they have to to get something they want. It is almost universally true that if someone pays X for something, it's because they didn't think they could get an equivalent thing for much less.

And we got to this wide variance in salaries even while ignoring concepts like price-based value perceptions (national rankings that weight faculty pay as part of their rankings, for instance), vanity/political capital (deans or department heads who believe larger pay and budgets means more esteem and rank), paying a premium up-front to reduce turn over due to cost considerations (don't want someone in charge of a big funded research lab to leave every few years, so you make sure they are considered extra-well-paid so they don't jump ship), or even differential income value of a position! Not all positions bring in the same amount of community support or grant money, nor do all departments get the same support from higher-level administration (MIT just might not care that much about their history department but considers their robotics department mission-critical, for instance).

But even if we ignore all these factors, the simple 5 factors at the beginning of this answer are more than sufficient to explain a difference in faculty pay, to say nothing of differential industry valuations/competition. The true reason faculty salaries differ so much is due to a combination of all these factors and more.


Misguided use of offensive figures in student presentations I recently had an experience while overseeing student presentations in a course I am teaching. While the concrete situation could be handled without much ado due to some special circumstances, I thought the general problem interesting enough to ask for opinions here.
The case is the following: In a course for first year students, all participants are tasked with presentations of a course relevant topic. As part of the preparations, students are encouraged to make the presentations as lively as possible. One student had included a couple of biographical slides (encouraged), but one of the cartoon figures of a key person was drawn in the unmistakable style of "Der Ewige Jude" from national socialistic propaganda. From context, it was clearly unintended. The student had just googled for images, and this came up. The presentation as such had absolutely nothing to with history, and this was just a biographical introduction slide.
Obviously there is a learning opportunity here, but how should I handle such a problem? In particular since the course as such has nothing to do with European history. Some potential issues I already considered:

Having such a figure on a slide could be quite offensive to other students, and as such, the mistake should be addressed.
But by addressing the issue, I risk derailing the discussion about the course topic in question completely.
By addressing the issue in plenary, I risk discouraging the student from making lively presentations in the future.
By addressing the issue in private, I risk giving the impression that I don't care about such issues.

Let me stress that I am talking only about unintended use. Had the student started regurgitating anti-Semitic propaganda, I would have engaged immediately.
How can I turn such a situation into a positive learning opportunity, without discouraging the student, and without drawing too much attention from the main topic?

Derail the discussion, then re-rail it afterwards.
Keeping the class on topic is useless if students are too uncomfortable to learn.  You are obligated to intervene, once you have learned how to do it.  Here's the method I was taught:

Interrupt.  Example:  "Sorry, I'm interrupting."
Question.  Example:  "Do you know what stereotype does this image represents?"

The purpose of questioning is to allow someone to indicate that they are ignorant, or to allow themselves to correct an error.  In my experience, students usually realize they did something wrong and correct themselves.

Educate.  Explain why something is offensive/discriminatory/whatever.  Example:  "This image is in a style that was used to depict [identity group] as having [trait].  It is a dishonest message and disrespectful."

Once the issue is addressed, direct students back to the usual learning activity.

without discouraging the student

Prejudice is inherently discouraging.  Your students can't learn ethical behavior without being discouraged by awareness of unethical behavior.  Hopefully, the "Question" step will at least reduce the hostility of the interaction.


Are there still journals who only publish their papers in the paper form? As far as I can say, for the papers published nowadays, there is usually a possibility to get an electronic version of the paper. (Often it requires payment or institutional subscription, but many publishers offer the papers free of charge for older issues.)

Are there still journals, which do not offer possibility to get electronic version of the paper online and use paper version as the only way of distribution of their journal? If yes, is it the case only for small publishers? Are there differences between various disciplines? (I have experience mostly with mathematics.)

Yes. But they are more or less irrelevant at this point. Very, very few people will bother to read them.

One journal in my own field was strictly print until a couple of years ago. They are finally included in one database, but with a five year embargo (meaning only very old articles are available electronically). Another newer journal with a similar target audience is completely open access. Obviously, the open-access journal is getting cited more, the established paper-only one less and less.

In my opinion, the aversion to making a journal available electronically is based on old-fashioned technophobia. There is no serious rationale for it. Yes, they could get more money from actual subscriptions if libraries and/or individuals were willing to pay for them, but that's simply no longer a viable model.


Am I beholden to a professor that helped my application - would it reflect poorly on me if I don't join that professor's group? I have just joined a PhD program in the US that I am very excited about. I was accepted despite not having the top grades usually required, in part thanks to good results on my GRE, and in part thanks to a discussion with a professor within the university, who gave me an informal interview and put in a good word for me (the professor is not part of the selection committee). He is all but ready to offer me a spot in his research group, but I would like to have a look at different research groups that might be more in tune with my expectations for my PhD. His group is fairly tiny (as an aside, from your experience, does group size have an influence on the quality of research?), and the research seems quite number-crunching-heavy and I was hoping for more experimentation (we're not in CS).

On one hand, I am very grateful for the opportunity I am given; on the other hand I want to make the most of that opportunity and it could mean not joining that professor's group. Essentially, am I acting spoiled by not automatically accepting that proffered hand?

Assuming you've been accepted by the university and the department (and have it in writing, i.e. an acceptance letter) -- the short answer is no, you aren't beholden to them.

The longer answer is that while you aren't beholden to them, it sounds like they already expect that you'll be joining them. How to approach this depends more on the faculty member than anything else. Some faculty members, when told that you "want to shop around and see what the university has to offer", will gladly nod and tell you that makes perfect sense, and they're hoping you'll still join them. Others may consider this a "rejection" of their help, or even a betrayal, and thus your bridge with that faculty member is burned forever.

Here's the trick: you want to avoid the latter category of advisors anyway. So tell this potential advisor the truth, see how they react, and best of luck at your new university!


Locating the journal in which a paper was published I found a singular paper on an extremely specific CS topic on arXiv. How would I find which journal this paper has been published in?

I ask because I would like more detail on this paper, however according to various questions on this site, the authors of the papers would be inclined not to respond if the paper is not already published. Being a first year undergrad, I have no intention of "stealing" their research or doing anything close to what their paper suggests, however I would appreciate a look at the code as the paper is slightly unclear about a few methods used.

You can certainly write to the authors to ask for the code even if the paper is not yet formally published. While the chance of them sharing it might be more if it is formally published, I don't think it is rude to ask. You could perhaps include some context on why you are interested, if you do so.

Nevertheless, to find out where a paper has been published (if any), you could try the following:

Search Google / Google Scholar.
Check the "Comments" metadata in the arXiv submission. The final publication venue is often mentioned there.
Check the websites, Google Scholar profiles, DBLP profiles, etc. of the authors.
Check with your university library.

You could check the databases of individual conferences, journals, or societies as well, but these would almost certainly also show up on a Google search.

For your broader goal of finding the code, a few suggestions, before contacting the authors:

Check the paper thoroughly, look for any links in the text, particularly in the introduction or experimental sections, and in the footnotes.
Search Google, GitHub, and similar resources. Sometimes there are third-party implementations available, in case that is helpful to you. If the authors have given a name to their technique / tool, searching by this name, in addition to the paper title, can help.
In certain fields, there may be specific resources available. For example, in machine learning, paperswithcode.com maintains a database of papers along with code by authors and third-party implementations. For several popular tasks, it also maintains leaderboards of methods and their associated paper and code.
Check the authors' web pages and their labs' web pages. A link to the code might be available in the publication list.
Check for implementations in future papers that cite this paper (unless the paper you are looking at is very new). Others may have compared their methods with that of the paper, and may have an implementation included in their own code. Survey papers are also a good place to look.


Is it okay to charge for a software created during a uni project? Disclaimer: I'm not entirely sure whether this is on topic for this SE site, but it seemed the most fitting.

Prequisites:
In our masters programme in Computer Science, doing project work is mandatory and we get credits for it that count towards our degree. The projects are of different nature, most are more on the research and experiment side, but some are "commissioned" by companies, who can pitch a topic to the supervising professor and the professor can then choose to accept this as a semester project. We're in Germany, if that's relevant, and no contracts on the topic have been signed, neither with the company nor with the university.

The situation:
Over the course of the past semester, me and five other people have created a website for a company on the grounds of that software project. While the company had input (defining the goals, tools to use, giving feedback, etc.), all code has been written by us, without any "teaching" input from the company. The company now wants to launch the product we created, and is looking to get quite the revenue from it.

While we knew from the beginning that they would probably launch the website and make profit of it, we also assumed that we would be in some way compensated for our work that we - essentially - did for free, should the project actually launch into production.

However, in a discussion today, our sorta supervisor was a bit baffled today when we brought up that we would still need to talk about usage rights. He also seems to not be very knowledgable on the topic.

The question:
Is it generally considered okay for us to request compensation for our work, and withhold the transfer of usage rights should the company not agree to pay us? We're of course not looking to be paid significant amounts, seeing as it was a uni project after all, but we have created a product that can be launched to production as is, which will generate them at least some revenue.

You'd have to check the case of your specific school and country. At least here in Chile, by law everything a student creates as part of their classes belongs to the school.

Sure, they'll probably be generous in their relation with you, but you must at very least talk to them.


Master thesis is reaching a dead-end and supervisor doesn't seem to understand? I'm halfway (3 months out of 6) through my masters thesis and the problem involves using a few open source software libraries to the analyse data. But essentially the problem is that after the data has been analysed, which is basically fitting data into a function, and the performance is good, I was basically done. There was no original work and anyone could have done that. So my supervisor then wanted me to explain why it performed so well, but the problem is that the algorithm is basically a statistical model and well-documented, with no relation to the data, so I would be just regurgitating summaries and superficial explanation of how the algorithm works, and the source-code basically does what it says. I explain this to him, that this would be a dead-end because the algorithm works with any data, and it was like explaining why a camera took better photos of my car than my drawing, which is down to the camera itself not the car, and my supervisor wants to why the car performs so well with the camera.

I am just stuck and worried on how I was going to write a thesis on this. I have done nothing new and my supervisor still wants me to go deeper to find a link, even though there may not be one. Should I ask an academic supervisor for advice? Should I just stick it out and develop a weak link between those two? Should I swap projects to something more experimental where at least the results are original since it was self-measured?

I'm halfway...through my masters thesis and the problem involves using a few open source software libraries to the analyse data[, which I've completed already, what should I do for the next three months?]

You could analyse the data using different techniques, draw conclusions from your analysis, ...

  [My supervisor wants me to] explain why it performed so well, but [this is well-known].

Perhaps your supervisor wants you to demonstrate that you understand the well-known method, i.e., to explain the statistical model, the algorithm, etc.

  I am just stuck and worried on how I was going to write a thesis on this.

You haven't mentioned the requirements for your thesis (they vary between universities). Perhaps you can edit your question to expand upon this.

  my supervisor still wants me to go deeper
  to find a link, even though there may not be one.

Discovering the absence of a link is a research contribution (albeit, such research isn't considered so highly)

  Should I ask an [administrative] supervisor for advice?

I don't see how an administrator can help.

  Should I just stick it out and develop a weak link between those two?

That's one direction. Alternatively, find a better direction (and negotiated with your supervisor that you'll study that).

  Should I swap projects to something more experimental where at least
  the results are original since it was self-measured?

Your halfway, swapping projects would be risky. Perhaps you can perform experiments on your data?


Should I Quit University? As a computer engineering student, I think this is the right place to ask for help about my career. Well I am in my sophomore year at one of the leading university in Turkey. I want to specialize in information security. However, I want to clarify something. "I have been - and always shall be" an average student. My student life has never been so bright but I have enough passion and resources to be an ethical hacker. Sometimes I think what they teach us in the university is waste of time. People can learn coding, operating systems, network, database etc. from the internet. So here is my question: Should I quit my university and stay behind the doors,do what I love, for a long time or waste two more years with the pressure of everything you do or don't will be graded?

You need to understand that a University degree (assuming it is a degree course you are enrolled in) does not attempt to teach you all the skills you need in order to be successful in your chosen career. What it does do is give a good grounding in your chosen area, but more importantly, provide evidence of your ability to apply yourself and achieve a widely recognized level of accreditation. If you are after courses that provide more specific vocational skills, and there are plenty of these in the computer science industry, it may be that you should search for a better suited program. These types of courses are usually shorter and more intensive than a degree course.

Whether your university degree will be useful to you will depend very much on what you intend to do with your career.

If you plan to design and develop your own software systems or products, and then fight to have your products recognized on the global market, and build your reputation from scratch, then a degree may not be much use to you. There are some examples of success stories of people who dropped out of, or never went to, university, so nobody can tell you it can't be done. But I think you will need to be extremely good, and lucky, to be able to do that. You may also need to have a back-up plan in the meantime in order to put food on the table.

However, if you ever plan to work for somebody, or a company that does not know of your reputation and amazing ability, then you will need to somehow demonstrate that. A degree is the first step towards demonstrating to those who are likely to employ you that you have been able to apply yourself in a recognized mainstream course of learning and been able to reach recognized benchmark standards. Once in your job, you will then be expected to learn the specifics of that position, and what better way to show that you are able to learn and apply knowledge than to have a piece of paper from a university to show that you can. It will be a nationally (and in many cases, and importantly not all cases, internationally) recognized accreditation. Once you have embarked on your career, it will be the references from previous employers that will vouch for your ability, and the degree will matter less.

What I would be asking myself as a prospective employer is whether someone who claims to have passion and ability to access resources, but lacks the application and commitment to successfully complete their degree is the right person to employ in my team.


When to apply for permanent positions while having a lengthy postdoc I am less than half way through a five year postdoc/fellowship in mathematics. Some places have talked to me about possible tenure-track positions over the past year. As the years go by, I am getting conflicting opinions on whether I should stay put for the full five years and then go with momentum on the job market or put out applications selectively each year. In the latter case, I don't know how selective to be as I don't know what "level" of institution I should be focussing on. My mentors give conflicting advice on this, so I don't know where to go with this. The places that have hinted at positions are solid, but not perfect for personal reasons.

My questions are as follows with regards to going on the market early:

How do you know when you are "ripe" for the tenure-track market?
Will I be shooting myself in the foot applying this year for a position that may have a position in my last year of postdoc?
If I take a permanent position early, will this make it much more difficult to obtain a better position later?
How can you tell what level one should look to shoot for when applying early and not wanting to take too low of a position on your (personal) ranking?

Some thoughts:

  How do you know when you are "ripe" for the tenure-track market?

The easiest thing to do is to try. If you get interviews, then you are ripe. (But the reverse is not true! The way the market is, in many fields you may be ripe but still not get interviews.)

The second easiest thing is to ask your postdoc mentor.

("Wait, but I am working for them! Wouldn't they want to keep me there?" Having a postdoc placed into a well-regarded tenure-track position is good for your mentor's reputation. It is in his/her interest to maximize your chances of getting a permanent position.)

  Will I be shooting myself in the foot applying this year for a position that may have a position in my last year of postdoc?

Yes and no.

If you are obviously underqualified now, your application file will be passed over and forgotten by the time you try again in two or three years.

If you are somewhat qualified, but not the tops, they may remember your earlier application. Then in addition to judging you on how you compare to other applicants the committee may also try to compare your new file with their impression of your file from before. In other words, you need to show growth in the intervening years.

If you are good enough to get a position now, why not take it?

  If I take a permanent position early, will this make it much more difficult to obtain a better position later?

Only your personal investment and inertia at your new permanent position.

I would advise against the thought of "shopping" for the best position at this early stage in your career. Unless you are one of the superstars, your goal should be just to get a job first. Worry about better opportunities when they actually happens. Or as the saying goes: A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.

  How can you tell what level one should look to shoot for when applying early and not wanting to take too low of a position on your (personal) ranking?

Realistically, the calculation goes something like this:

Final year at postdoc: apply for everything, take whatever you get.
Year -2 at postdoc: If I get this job, I stay employed for three more years! I'll happily take a pay-cut for that.
Year -3 at postdoc: I have two more years to polish my files. Let's just feel the water and only apply to places I would really want to work at.

If you are really unsure: more than two years from the end of your postdoc you can afford to be a bit more picky (and err on the side of thinking that you are a superstar). You really don't want to be offered a position that you have to reject because your postdoc is "better".

One last comment: if you are good enough to attract a tenure-track offer during the earlier part of your postdoc from a large enough institution, there is a non-zero chance that you can ask for a later start date in order to "finish things up at your current position".


Should I include a title page and abstract if the journal does not specify anything at all? Novice here. I am looking to submit a manuscript to a journal, Monthly Review. The journal website does not specify any template whatsoever except for the instruction to use Chicago Style, 16th edition for referencing. Should I include an abstract and a title page with a short bio in the submission  (as is the custom in most social science journals I know of)?

Papers aren't normally published in the exact form of their first submission. I suggest that you write the paper as you think it should be written and submit it. Let the editor and reviewers decide if you should make modifications.
The title page is unlikely to be necessary in a first submission as it can be added later if needed (unlikely here). But an abstract might be helpful to the editor in choosing reviewers and to the reviewers in getting a quick overview.
But they will likely, in this case, ask you to remove them for publication. It is a process. Flow with it.


Can I pursue a bachelor degree at 42? What should I consider when deciding whether to do so? I am contemplating pursuing a bachelor degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering or System Engineering. Not to look for a job with it but just to expand my knowledge. I have a reasonable income as a programmer.
I have a certification in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from City&Guilds 20 years ago but ended up being a self-taught programmer. for the past 15 years, I have been able to win and deliver myriads of projects projects successfully. I'm versatile in various programming languages: C/C++, Java, Python, Rust, Haskell, Lisp (and its derivatives).
I thought of expanding my knowledge in Electronics Engineering either by self-thought or via school. My worry is, I will end up having my degree at 47 if I enroll.
What do you suggest I should consider when making this decision?

Firstly, to answer the actual question at the top: yes, absolutely. There is no age limit on doing a degree. It is not at all unusual for people significantly older than you to complete degrees.

My worry is, I will end up having my degree at 47 if i enroll.

Is that a problem? Most people with degrees have degrees at 47 - they just happen to have had 26 years to forget most of the material in between. Sure, having a degree earlier might have been a financial/career advantage, but unless you've got a time machine (in which case present it and collect all the degrees you could ever possibly want) you can't change that, so your choice is, instead, between being a 47 year old without a degree and being a 47 year old with a degree - I can't see any particular disadvantage to the latter, unless the process of doing the degree course is going to cause you problems (via stress, loss of income, cost, work-life balance issues, etc.).


Attendance to a workshop I just finished my master's degree in a university, and I got accepted at a university for a PhD about a certain topic, starting from September (meaning I am "officially" not a student of any of the two until then)

My future supervisor brought to my attention a workshop that is taking place in the last week of July and the first week of August that is exactly about my research topic. Moreover, most of the "big names" in that area are going to be there. He actually told me that if I am able to go there, it would be

The problem is that the workshop is in a rather expensive country, and it lasts two weeks. I did the math (lol) and between travel and accomodation it would cost me about a month's stipend.
Now, as I am sure you all know, the economic situation of a Ph.D student isn't exactly marvellous, so I am rather hesitant to spend this amount of money on any thing.

I have, therefore, two questions for you:
a) Would it be appropriate to ask one (or both) the universities for any amount of funding they may get me?
b) Is there any external way, like some small scholarship, some organization or I don't know (wanting to go to an unfunded conference should happen quite often), that may help me with the expenses?
c) Would it make sense to spend my money on this and start my PhD life abroad with basically no savings?

One last thing: if it helps, I am an EU citizen, and all this is taking place in EU.

Ps: to answer the most common questions: the registration period is over (but I may get in anyway if my supervisor sends an email), and there was no planned funding in the first place (so no chance of getting any later)

Edit: Just noticed this was 3 years old. Hope the answer is useful to others.

I had a similar issue (though I finished my undergraduate at the same university(UK) I was given my PhD position.)

I had submitted a poster and was accepted at a conference. However, the conference was in September a month prior to my start as a PhD student and 2-3 months after I ceased to be a student. Technically as I was no longer a student at the university they had no responsibility to pay for me, but never forget if you are even a future PhD student they want you to do well.

Together with my future supervisor we contacted the person in charge of the budget for conferences and explained the situation, along with all the relevant costings for attendance.

It was accepted.

My answer to you is:

First you need to do your second question. In my field of Computer Science the websites offer "early bird" attendance rates, rates for students, and in some cases of large conferences offers on payment of accommodation etc if you fall into certain categories (for example if you want to volunteer to help). Once you know the true cost you can do the second point.
With your supervisor(they will know who is who) contact the budget holder for conference attendance at the University you are going to do your PhD at. As above, state what is going on, why it is important and how it will help with your future as a PhD student at that University.

Hope you get your workshop approved!


How long after submission of revisions should you wait before it is reasonable to enquire about manuscript status? The following question asks about how long after making a submission you should wait before contacting the editor to enquire about the status of the submission. (i.e.,  When / how should I ask about a manuscript's status in review? ). Many people suggested that after around 6 months, it was reasonable to contact the editor to enquire about the status of the manuscript.

I have a manuscript where we received a positive set of first round reviews. We submitted revisions. It has now been five months. So my question is:

When is it appropriate to enquire about the status of submission of revisions?
Would you use the same rule of thumb that you use for initial submissions (e.g., 6 months or so)? Or is it reasonable to enquire about the status of the manuscript sooner? Alternatively, would you be less inclined to enquire about the status because there is more to lose by irritating the editor?

When is it appropriate to enquire about the status of submission of revisions?

At any stage of the publication process, you should feel free to check in whenever you think the referees / editors / typesetters / whoever have taken a reasonable amount of time to do the job, and you are beginning to worry that your paper is not being processed in a timely way.  I don't think that is any fixed amount of time: in particular six months was suggested by one pure mathematician for papers in pure mathematics.  It happens that I also use six months as a rough guideline (I am also a pure mathematician), but I will adjust in either direction if it seems reasonable.  For instance, if the paper is so short and easy that a qualified referee could do it one sitting then six months doesn't make any sense.  If the paper is 50 pages long and hard even for me to read, six months doesn't sound like enough time.  Of course what I think is an appropriate amount of time is a subjective judgment but informed by my own refereeing experiences.

  Would you use the same rule of thumb that you use for initial submissions (e.g., 6 months or so)? Or is it reasonable to enquire about the status of the manuscript sooner?

If it seems clear to you that refereeing the revised version should take much less time than the original version then sure, inquire (or "enquire," depending upon where in the anglophone world you are) sooner.  In my experience, most referees do turn around minor revisions much faster than the original report.  The flip side of this is that the editor will of course try to get the same referee to do the revisions, and the referee might have become busier in the meantime.  Anyway, all you can do is ask.

  Alternatively, would you be less inclined to enquire about the status because there is more to lose by irritating the editor?

I am feeling a bit jaded about the publication process right now -- the quality of service that an author can expect from their submission experience varies so wildly as to seem like a fairness issue -- but I am not so jaded to think that editors would allow their feelings of "irritation" at this (completely appropriate and expected) authorial behavior to influence their processing of the paper.  I have seen a lot of weird stuff happen over the years, but I've never seen that.  However, I've witnessed many, many instances of authors who don't stand up for themselves and get victimized because of it.  So I think it is much sounder strategy to "irritate" editors more rather than less often.  Either that or cultivate a kind of inner peace that allows these kind of delays to, truly, not bother you.  For that I think it helps to do a fair amount of refereeing of one's own!


Factors contributing to Research apart from publishing Technical Papers I want to pursue M.S. from USA.
I know that it is required to have a background of publishing technical papers for getting admit in a good University.
But I wanted to know whether is there anything else apart from publishing a paper that constitutes as "Research" by the Admission authorities?
Thank You.

A senior thesis (or, if you're engineering, your senior project, if you did one) would probably be a good thing to showcase, as it demonstrates both your ability to perform work in a group as well as your ability to write.
Internships are great. They show that you can work and it also can serve as a reference.

If you've done anything else particularly notable (e.g., won a nationally recognized science fair), you can mention it, but the number of people who've done stuff like this is pretty miniscule.


How far should I help students with learning extracurricular skills? I am currently a teaching assistant for both master and PhD students. Part of my work included helping and supervising them during several lab experiments (physics). One task of the lab experiments is to write a program to numerically calculate values and simulate them afterwards. The students are allowed to use any programming language they want to use (except stuff like Brainfuck and Whitespace, of course), as long as they provide the source code with the result.
While the master students are not having any problems with the problem, I got was asked by the PhD students if I can help them do the programming in Excel, as that is the only thing they can use and know for "programming".

How far should I now go and help them? I know that doing the task they are assigned to is impossible to do in Excel, but they never used any other language or programmed themselves. I am able to teach them how to achieve the programming goal, but based on their current knowledge that will take a lot of time, which I also need for my own lab tasks. Should I thus simply tell them to drop the course, or should I try to help them, and if yes, in which extent?

If you are a TA and have questions about what to do, almost always the first thing you should do is ask the instructor.  The instructor should clarify exactly how you should be assisting them, and what the prerequisites for the course are.  I would be wary, as a TA, of suggesting students to drop the class.


Is it plagiarism to publish a table that was published earlier in a different journal? I need to a include a table which contains the basic characteristics of study participants. However, in a related previous publication that dealt with a different hypothesis, the table was published. The present submission deals with the same study population but a different study than previous one. I need to give the basic clinical characteristics of the study population.

Will it be appropriate if I just cite the previous publication in the table title?
Will that prevent me from getting accused of self-plagiarism?

The fact that you deal with the same study population means that you have the right to show information about the population just as much as in both studies. To cite the other study, particularly the table, is perfectly fine. But, if the table is key to the paper, for example, in the methods section, it seems more appropriate to include the information in your new paper. It is also perfectly fine to reproduce the table just as you can reproduce a figure from another paper but then the table might include or lack information that is superfluous or needed, respectively in your new study.

I would therefore suggest that you create your own table and format it to suit your purpose best. You should also cite the other study and state that your new study is based on the same study participants as the previous study and then also refer to both tables to indicate the kinship. That way it is obvious that you are not trying to conceal that the tables contain the same information but that the information is key for both studies. It should be clear to the reader that there is a common basis for the two studies.


How problematic is going by a preferred name while publishing with my full name? I grew up with a nickname, and I prefer to be called as that. It is quite different from my first name. When I introduce myself I usually just use the nickname.

I plan to use my full name in publication, and I have published papers using the full name already.

My question is, how problematic is this choice? Should I try to change it? I would imagine someone not relating me to my papers/ not able to find me from the nickname.

I don't think this will be a problem. A large part of the research community will know you through your publications, and as long as the name is constant across those, you won't have a problem.

Amongst colleagues/researchers who also know you personally, this wouldn't be an issue since you can convey the dual name to them during interaction. For instance, your email signature could be something like Jay (John Doe). Similarly, if you use academic networking sites, you could either give the full name or the dual name (i.e. Jay (John Doe)).

The only case where this could potentially be a problem is, X talks about you to Y as 'Jay', and Y searches for 'Jay' (s)he may not come up with the right results. I think this is largely surmounted if you use Jay (John Doe) in written communication often enough, so that X passes that information along to Y. I have had colleagues tell me about a person, and also what name he publishes under, so that I can find him. If people hear it often enough, they make a strong association.


Why do educators use curve to adjust the performance? It bothers me when I tries to remember how many highschools or universities use curve to adjust the final grade for their student based on the class average.

I know failing the entire class would be unacceptable for the faculty that taught the class but watering down the materials or curving the grades to fit the standard was it necessary? What if there are few outstanding students that are ahead of the curve? wouldn't it be unfair to them if the curve was adjusted to the class average?

Sometimes, I started to question education standard for grading.
What are the standard?

Knowing the materials and able to apply them?

Putting all relevant summary on one test paper?

Giving homework that count towards grade?

Quizzes to remind student how well they do for that subject?

If above are all taken into consideration. Why are instructors still applying the curve to adjust the class average.

Instructors often use some kind of curve to adjust for the varying difficulty of exams from one year to the next.

The general idea is that if (for example) the class average on an exam is lower than it has been for the same course in previous years but the quality of the students' work is the same, then the exam given this year might have been more difficult than the exam in previous years. It would be unfair to students (and also reduces the signaling power of grades) if their grade is strongly dependent on the year in which they happened to take the course. An instructor might choose to adjust the students' grades to account for this.

It's generally unwise to assign grades in a way that is strictly norm-referenced, without taking into account the students' demonstrated mastery of the course material, for reasons described in this answer. For example, if the class average on an exam is lower than it has been in previous years, but the average quality of work submitted by students is also worse than usual, then the average grade of the class should be lower (to preserve "fairness" and also the signaling power of grades.)

Some instructors might use a curve for other reasons, e.g. if their department has a policy about the maximum number of "A" grades an instructor can give out. (Like this example.)


Follow-up email to submit my Cv I've sent an email to a potential supervisor and I've gotten an email today from the chair of Graduate Studies that says "we would be very pleased to accept you". Now what should I do? in my first email I've just talked about my interest and how it would be an excellent fit to the supervisor's research interests. I think I should send my CV this time, but to whom? The supervisor or The chair of Graduate Studies?

I've sent an email to a potential supervisor and I've gotten an email today from the chair of Graduate Studies that says "we would be very pleased to accept you".

That mean the potential supervisor forwarded your email to the Chair of Graduate Studies.

  Now what should I do? in my first email I've just talked about my interest and how it would be an excellent fit to the supervisor's research interests. I think I should send my CV this time, but to whom? The supervisor or The chair of Graduate Studies?

Since they want to work with you, the best thing is to ask them about what is next. Send an email to the Chair of Graduate Studies (since it seems it's their job), asking for what is next etc...


Telling PhD supervisor I published a paper about my thesis without telling them or listing them as authors? I am in my 3rd year of PhD. In my program, it is a requirement for PhD students to graduate with a paper that is published in a Scopus Index journal.

Before I entered, and during my PhD, I had already published a few papers to a Scopus index peer reviewed journal (for topics not based on my thesis). At the moment, I am trying to publish a paper as a part of my thesis (with my supervisors' names), but my supervisors keep criticizing the paper and making me rewrite it again and again. This has been going on for two years.

However, I did submit another paper (a part of my thesis) under my own name and without my supervisors' knowledge, and it was accepted. This paper was done without any intellectual contributions from my supervisors - no writing or reviewing. When I told my supervisors about the paper (but not its acceptance,) they were angry that I hadn't included their names, and they asked me to include their names in it. Unfortunately, the editor said I couldn't as I had submitted it initially as one author only.

I am aware that it is my fault that I didn't ask them beforehand, but I know in my heart that if I had included them, it would have taken months or years to even get their approval. In all honesty, they would have ended up demotivating me. I am now really scared to tell them that it has already been published and I cannot add their names.

Can you give me any advice how to handle this situation?

The answers here are generally explaining the fact that supervisors should not be omitted from the authorship as they are supposed to direct and contribute to the research.

The critical problem is, you are saying that they did not contribute at all, and they, naturally, did not write or review the published article. Still they try to add their names as authors when they learned about the article submitted. You can not be an author if you did not even review the article, just this information is sufficient to see that the ethical misconduct is mostly on their side.

Your problem is, you can not both submit an article without making "such" people authors and at the same time maintain a good relationship with them. A one-author paper is, for me, much better than giving credit to the people who disregard the functioning of the academy, by both hardening the situations unnecessarily and also making academic misconducts. Even if you somehow get your advisors' names added to the paper, they will never ever forget this. At the same time, you shake the ethical ground of your publication by this act of "correction", and it may, in the end, cause the rejection to your paper.  All the while, you will still be considered untrustworthy by your advisors, quite rightly in their perspectives.

Your only choice is to forget about updating the author names, and find some other ways to correct your relationship with the advisors.

And please keep in mind that in academy, at least in Turkey, almost everyone faced in a situation that more than the bulk of work done by someone and just because their advisors don't like them they don't give authorship to the corresponding researcher. And these advisors made their Ph.D. in top-tier universities of USA. I think you will most likely face such problems from now on.


First authorship dispute I spent 5 years doing my PhD research (4 years experiments, and one year writing the manuscript, making the figures and getting it revised and submitted by the supervisor. We submitted the paper (I was the first author) which is rejected with a recommendation for one more experiment, and resubmission. Three colleagues did it, as my scholarship was ended and as I was busy writing the thesis. I was shocked that the supervisor (PI) put one colleague instead of me as a first author, who just carried out this last experiment with help of two other colleagues (were added as co-authors). That colleague was busy doing her own project and did not do that much to my project except for that last experiment and revising the manuscript and giving some comments for correction. I refused the new order, though the paper was sent to the journal. How could I get my first authorship?

Unfortunately there is not much you can do -- you can try to get the editor of the journal involved, but it is almost certain that the editor will not involve themselves in authorship disputes that have nothing to do with the scientific content of the paper. Also there is a high chance of severe damage to your relationship with your advisor, which needless to say is not ideal immediately before your PhD defense.

If you have a trusted faculty mentor outside of your advisor, you could try approaching them about the situation, for advice and psychological support, if nothing else.

Some journals allow several authors to share "equal contribution" credit for first authorship. This may be a compromise that is easier to negotiate with your adviser and the new students than outright first authorship.

Finally, as a practical matter, depending on how much first authorship on this particular papers means to you and your future career, it may be best to give in and move on. Treat the incident as a painful lesson in why it is important to explicitly discuss what each collaborator expects to get out of a project in terms of authorship order, both at the very beginning of a project and whenever involving new collaborators.


Can I reuse parts of a chapter from a text book in my thesis? This question is related to this one. Only this time it's not about a journal paper but a chapter in a text book.

I am first author of the chapter in the text book that was published by a renowned publisher. I would like to reuse parts of the chapter for my PhD thesis (including a citation, of course).

Is this acceptable? Is there anything different with respect to the situation with a "normal" paper? Is there anything I need to pay special attention to?

EDIT: The publisher allows reusing my own work in my thesis.

I did this in my thesis - my introduction was going cover a lot of information overlapping 3 textbook chapters I'd written, and I really didn't want to write it all again!

I did check with the publisher first, however (just an email asking for their consent), and added an acknowledgement to them in my acknowledgements page. I'm sure this was probably over-zealous, but it felt better to err on that side of things.


Can a person register a conference using someone else's credit card and still get IEEE membership discount? I am in a situation where my paper is accepted in IEEE conference and only one of the author is IEEE member. For IEEE members, there is some concession in the registration fee. Can that co-author register the paper using my credit card while availing the concession(which is only for IEEE members)?

In case, this varies then, what would be the best way to proceed?

Generally speaking,

the name of the person registering does not have to be the same as the name on the credit card. You can pay for your co-author's registration if you want.
the IEEE discount applies if the person registering is an IEEE member, regardless of who is paying.

If your co-author is registering to attend the conference, it's fine for him to use your credit card (if that's what you want) and he can still get the IEEE discount, since he's an IEEE member.

If you're the one registering to attend the conference, you can't get the discount if you're not an IEEE member.


MOOC's for failed modules in PhD applicaiton I'm applying for PhD's (from the UK) with a low 2:2 BSc and a Distinction MSc, and performed very poorly in a few certain modules of my undergrad degree (including failing two 3rd year modules) which pulled my grade down. In my MSc research project and the MSc modules most relevant to my PhD field of study, however, I obtained high firsts (80%+).

I'm taking online courses on the failed undergrad topics on edx and coursera to strengthen my previous weak points and fill the gaps in my knowledge. Is it worth highlighting this in my application, and if so, is it worth paying for the verified certificates? I'm aware of the general opinion that mentioning MOOC's in a SOP isn't detrimental but does little to strengthen an application - in my case, would it at all counteract the bad module marks?

By and large, in the UK, MOOCs completion does not help your chances of admission; they are almost entirely ignored during the admission process. The only things that are considered are your results in your accredited degree programs. Paying for a certificate will not validate your MOOC participation in any way that Universities recognise; you should only pay for a certificate if you want a certificate for yourself, they do nothing else (take it from me, I lead a MOOC).

The good news is that an excellent MSc result can do a lot to make up for a poor Undergraduate result. How you did as a postgrad is much more indicative of the kind of PhD student you would be than your undergraduate record. Consider writing a cover letter that takes your record head on, explains how you've matured as a researcher since then, that you are ready for real research, and your MSc is proof.


When and how should the content of courses in a sequence overlap? My Computer Science department uses a three-course sequence (A, B, C) in which A is optional. Because both A and B are on-ramps, their contents overlap a good deal, and students who take the slower, gentler approach see several of same topics twice.

My colleagues and I have diverse views on the value of this approach. While we appreciate the subject review that students get in this model, some of us would like the courses to be more complementary. A theoretical basis for our planning would help. Are there established best practices for sequences of courses with overlapping content?

Actually, there may be an entirely valid pedagogical reason for this. If some of your students come with little background, say in programming, then they need to get experience with it to be successful later. I assume these early courses are heavy, at least, in programming.

It turns out that people learn, primarily from reinforcement and feedback. That means repeating things, to some extent, so that lessons are deeply learned and insight arises from both practice and the feedback that ensues.

Many students come to a CS degree already having learned quite a lot about programming, though they may also have misconceptions. But the A course is likely intended to take the other, relatively inexperienced, students up to the level of those with a programming background earlier. Thus, students start B at more or less the same level of skill and insight, making that course easier to deliver and making more students successful.

But taking out the overlap would probably be a mistake and give worse results, as students would, then, get less reinforcement of those topics. You don't learn something by seeing it only once. And it is harder to learn a lot of topics if the first time you experience it, it is in a sophisticated context. Introducing important topics gently and then reinforcing them later is a learning technique that many people use. It is called a Spiral Approach, where each turn of the spiral takes you deeper into the topic.


Why does the Discipline of the Bachelor Degree matter for most Non-US Architecture Master Programs but not for US Architecture Master Programs? After some research, I've noticed that in the US it's mostly possible to apply for M.Arch programs regardless of the Bachelor discipline while outside the US a Bachelor in Architecture is required.

Why is that?

The master in the US takes 3 years for non-B.Arch people while in US/Europe it takes 2 years for B.Arch people.

Can one additional year make up for the 3 to 4 year Bachelor degree?

Or is this whole idea just a marketing-gag of the US universities?

(And if anyone has some experience: In general, how successful are non-B.Arch people in M.Arch programs?)

In the US, a bachelor's is almost always half or more liberal arts - that is, a bunch of different subjects outside the major. It is run in such a way that basically little more than literacy and slightly more than arithmetic are assumed to have been developed in previous education.

For example, a student often has 4-5 classes each semester for 4 years. Of those, only 1-2 are usually in the major each semester, though some majors start with 0-1 classes in early semesters to "get the general education classes out of the way", then later semesters are more focused. This is one of the reasons double majors are not so rare here - if you can count some of the other majors requirements as "general education" (you often can), and take electives in the second major, you can end up managing to do both majors without taking much longer to earn the degree.

At the master's level, the extent to which a closely related bachelor is preferred varies, but is rarely required regardless of subject - only at very picky departments is it a big deal.

Is 1 year of focused master's education a replacement for having a same-subject master's degree? It isn't a perfect replacement, but mostly yes. It will tend to be more demanding and hard on the student as they have to play catch-up, so this is not as attainable for all students - but it is well within the realm of human possibility, especially when motivated by the fact that all the coursework is much more likely to be strictly necessary to support future courses. There is a lot of optional "not that hard to figure out on your own if you actually cared and had a use for it" stuff in higher education, after all.

I personally know some CS and art/design people who've done MS in architecture in the US and they seemed to do fine. I'm sure it is harder the less applicable your previous education is, but it is not at all an alien thing here to switch subjects like this.


How to maximise one's chances of getting a good postdoc position? I am at the beginning of my PhD studies. Although that is a bit too early to plan one's carrier after thesis defence, one should still have some long-term goals in mind. Hence the question - what can one do during one's PhD (mainly as far as long-term activities are concerned) to maximise the chances of getting accepted for such a position?

Few things that come to mind:

High quality research published in high reputation journals (obviously).
Creating a contact network at conferences, research visits and through scientific collaborations. One might get to know one's potential postdoc supervisor or recommendation letters from established researchers.
Online visibility through blogging, social networking etc.
Good teaching experience. PhD students often have to teach but some might try to get on with the necessary minimum. Having a good record (e.g., from student evaluations) can be advantageous.
Experience with grant administration - helping one's supervisor with grant proposals, reports for grant committees etc.
Maybe some experience with paper reviews (towards the end of the PhD). Or is it still early for that?

Are there any other things I missed? I am looking specifically for the situation in theoretical physics and PhD without coursework but experiences of others might be relevant and interesting as well.

I am also in your current situation and look for the same. Here is something I have learnt so far which are important to get postdoc job in good quality institutes. Here is the list without order:

Publish in under-spot conferences and seminars
Reference letter from pioneers of the domain (if you can liaise)
International collaboration, research, and publication
Face-to-face visit. If possible try to make an appointment with potential postdoc supervisors and visit them in person. It helps both of you to better evaluate and decide.
Search among friends of your friends for an open position. I use Microsoft Academic portal "http://academic.research.microsoft.com/" to search co-authors of my supervisor or academician friends of mine to see if there is any potential postdoc supervisor in their network. So you can give a try and if found, ask your supervisor or your academician friends to play a role and introduce you to potential boss. I think it should work well.
Upload your papers everywhere you can (take care of copyright issues) and try to increase their visibility and citation; the higher citation, the better chance.
Make your professional account in Google Scholar and keep that up to date.
Enroll in academic organizations like IEEE and get membership. It gives lots of benefits and is like a mark of attachment and care to the society.
Collaboration invitation. Try to prepare a paper and get in touch with potential postdoc supervisors to invite them collaborate. This can be a venue to exchange couple of emails and get to know each other more. You can later use this opportunity to request for position.
Try to get chance to visit potential labs as visiting scholar. some institutes welcome visiting PhD students under different schemas like student exchange or international collaboration.- Volunteer job in varied community; not necessarily academic environment. Try to show your passion to work independently in every workplace regardless of the details.
Online Connectivity. Active participation in online networks like Linkedin, Researchgate, stackexchange(here), and so on.
Patent is also important since institutes are increasing concern about patents and desire their postdocs to produce patent beside publication. It also enhance your industrial career too.
Keep sending application for advertised positions and don't get disappointed.
Keep sending email and follow up to potential postdoc supervisors with potential postdoc projects (it depends on your field) even if they have no current position. Your messages may impress them and motivate them to hire you to work on a project you define. If yes they can apply for funds (I know one of my friends in CS got offer in this way).

I hope these points help you better hunt a good postdoc in good research group.

EDIT: Patent is modified to address some concerns on wording.
EDIT2: Some change in the order to better highlight their importance.


At what point should I no longer include my former professor as a coauthor? I graduated from university somewhat recently with a four year undergraduate degree and during my junior/senior year I worked on a research project with a professor.

At the beginning of the project (nearly three years ago) he helped me a lot with understanding the background/context of the research, but after so long I was the only one contributing to it (he's an applied mathematician and I'm a computer scientist, and the project is a computer based A.I. so I have been the only one programming it).

Now that I've graduated and have continued working on the project, and maybe will try to publish within the next year or so, I'm wondering if/how he should be included as an author/contributor?

Edit: At no point has he ever actually contributed to the project in the form of code. All he's done is mentor me through the concepts, bridging the mathematics and biology/chemistry so that I could understand it and translate into computer code. Additionally, all the code design and approach has been developed by me.

I'll copy and paste my answer from another question earlier today:

Everyone who makes a sufficient contribution to your paper for authorship should be an author on your paper (and no one else).
It doesn't matter what institution they are at nor does anything else: everyone that contributes at a level appropriate for authorship is an author.

Probably the best person to judge this is your former professor. Have a conversation with them about where the project is at and how you see their contributions and ask whether they think it is appropriate if they are an author or if you should be a sole author.


How to determine the merit of an encyclopedia? Scholarly articles and books have citation counts (in for example Google Scholar), as do specific people in citation metrics such as the Arts and Humanities Citation Index. Even universities have ranking systems, such as the QS World Rankings. If I wished to familiarize myself with the reference materials in another language efficiently, is there any way of simply searching for the most "cited" or perhaps widely circulated encyclopedias in that language - to hone in quickly on the analogous publication of Encyclopedia Britannica in, for example, German, Chinese or Hindi?

I have considered searching for encyclopedias in a certain language on worldcat.org, but I cannot order the results (so far as I know) by "number of copies held by libraries worldwide". Google Scholar does list the number of citations for an encyclopedia, but I can't get a list of all encyclopedias ordered by citation (so far as I know). Web of Science, so far as I know, does not index encyclopedias.

Is there any way to achieve this?

Thank you.

This might not be what you want hear, but I think this kind of product doesn't exist anymore in any meaningful way. Essentially you are asking what would be a reputable universal encyclopedia (with a grown up target audience) in different languages.

I checked a large high quality German book store (Kulturkaufhaus Dussmann) and I didn't find a single one matching your query. There are a number of kids general encyclopedia, for different age groups and of different quality and there are a whole bunch of very specialized encyclopedias, from Star Wars to medical but no universal ones for grown ups.

20 years ago this would have been a good question and there were multiple options in all major languages that could be compared to each other but this is not the case any more.


Changing the main topic of research I started my PhD about a year and a half ago in an area that I will call A, which is quite applied. I've been doing a lot of programming and coding, and although I've learnt a lot and we've been doing some progress recently, I strongly feel that I haven't got any important result worth of appearing in a doctoral thesis. Even when we complete our current project (something that, I hope, is going to happen already in the near future), I won't feel like I've done any truly significant/original work. It is a nice work, but we've spent way too much time in a problem and we just don't have many results or important conclusions. I've been working on developing methodologies and improving little things, but I haven't got any concrete scientific result yet.

However, in the last 4/5 months we started thinking about a different problem (in collaboration with another professor) in a different area, B. B is a more theoretical area, and although A and B are loosely related (and ideally our work in B would be at some point applied to our work in A), they are very different topics. The thing is that I'm very happy with our progress with B, where recently I finally managed to do some hard computations and reach some interesting results with which I'm quite satisfied. Now, I feel that continuing our work in B could be really fruitful and -since we already have several ideas and plans- could soon yield some very interesting stuff. In combination with what I have already achieved, I definitely deem this work worthy of a doctoral thesis.

The problem is that B was, at least initially, a side topic, and my grant and my initial doctoral project was clearly associated to A, but not B. Working in A I feel like I'm stuck: yes, I write code and I do stuff which is sort of important, but I am spending a lot of time in something that it is not yielding very relevant results and that I don't think is going to give enough material for a thesis. However, A is like my main topic and I can only spend bits of time working on B once in a while.

That's why I've been thinking about the idea of discussing with my thesis advisor the possibility of changing my main research topic and start focusing on B, while keeping A as a side topic. He is a very nice person and has always been helpful and supporting, but I fear he is not going to take it well, since he clearly has more interest in A and has always thought of B as something nice but that "shouldn't distract me too much".

Maybe I should just accept things they way they are, or does it make sense for you to talk freely about my concerns?  I don't intend to fight or anything, but having at least a conversation about the whole thing would be nice.

Any similar experiences to be shared?  Ideas?

There's only one thing to do here, and it is having a talk with your thesis director. He's most likely the best qualified to :

answer your worries with A being not valuable enough and if it's worth pursuing
assess the scope of the grant and the leeway you have with this

Doing a thesis on a subject is a commitment. Don't give up because you 'feel' it's going no where, prove it's not going there first. Also, finding similar results in different initial conditions, while not exciting regarding finding the next innovative thing, is not necessarily worthless. It's good to have results doubled checked/confirmed, found by other methods, or  if another result is expected, the work also serves as excluding things that don't give this expected result. Which is a result by itself.


What to write in an impressive about me section Can you give me some suggestion on how to write an impressive about me section in my cv?

I know I'm supposed to give relevant information (I'm a scientist, by the way) which is not directly covered by my academic background and career, but basically I don't have a clue about what to include (for example, should I add the description of some traits of my personality?).

I'm particularly thinking about some sections of the second page of this one www.teemeurope.eu/documents/europeanCVformat.doc namely PERSONAL SKILLS AND COMPETENCES and OTHER SKILLS AND COMPETENCES and the linkedin profile

It looks like what you are being asked for here is sort of a hybrid between an academic and conventional CV. I dislike this sort of form filling CV but if its what you've got to do...

Personal skills and similar sections generally are looking for your soft/transferable skills. Good communications, team-working etc. Try and not just state these but add some qualification e.g I'm good team working which I have developed/demonstrated during whatever project or competition or something. It's very easy to say you have some skill but far more convincing if you can demonstrate it. Similarly be prepared to defend anything you say in an interview.

For an academic CV you should focus more on your publications and academic work etc. and keep your personal skills section fairly short. When given silly form type CVs to complete don't feel obliged to complete all the sections. I would definitely just remove the Artistic skills section if I was doing this (I have none!).

Here is a similar template which also has some basic instructions and an example (admittedly non-scientific) http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/en/documents/curriculum-vitae/templates-instructions

For advice on writing actual academic CVs see http://www.careers.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Academic-CV-2012.pdf