"With editor" status for 2 months: is it normal? I'm a bit worried because one of my papers have been more than 2 months "with editor" status. It's a science journal (field: drug residue, food), from a famous editorial and impact factor 3.3. I'm used to 48h desk reject and I was wondering about the options of being so long with this status 1) very busy editor 2) my paper was forgotten 3) there is a mistake on the website

Oh, normally we have the option to send an e-mail to the assigned editor, but in this case there is only "view your submission".

Edit:

At the end it took 2 months but... We are under review!

Times vary a lot between journals and, I believe, disciplines. Two months seems like a relatively long period to me but not unheard of. Out of your three reasons I would not opt for 2 or three depending, of course on the form for submitting manuscripts. If it is digital I am sure 2 and 3 would not be high on the list, if it is manual, by post or e-mail, then the likelihood is higher.

I think a busy editor is one possibility. It is not clear from your question if this is "with the editor" after submission or "with the editor" after review. If we consider the former, the most likely reason, in my experience, is that it has proven hard for the editor to get reviewers to accept to review. This occasionally happens to me and I can say that it has no clear relationship to the possible quality of the paper. In the case of the former (after review), the busy editor becomes a more likely candidate since the editor should study the reviews, decide on the faith of the paper, and possibly provide guidelines for your revisions.

If you have any indication, from for example peers, what typical handling periods are in the journal where you submitted your manuscript, you should definitely contact the journal to ask about the status of your submission. Such requests are commonplace (too common in fact) so try to assess if the two months is long or normal in the case of this particular journal before contact.


How does one submit an article "informally"? Although I have read a lot in my area of interest (plant taxonomy and botanical nomenclature), in am no academic of it, having only a Bachelor of Translation degree.

It has taken me two years of waffling back and forth before I worked up the courage to write up a quick note (something not entirely dissimilar to this in nature, mostly bibliographical, but necessary nonetheless) which I'd like to submit to Phytoneuron. I call it "informal" because it is an independent, one-man journal with a relatively unelaborated review process where one sends the prospective article straight to the editor.

However, I have NO idea what sort of language one in my situation can be expected to address to a journal editor. That I am diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and have been told before my writing can be overly formal to comical or insulting degrees at times is not helping my crushing nervosity about the whole thing.

You could write something like the following. Short and sweet.

To the editor,

Please find attached an article for consideration for publication in the journal Phytoneuron.  I assert that this is an original contribution and it has not been submitted for consideration elsewhere.
Could you please acknowledge receipt of this submission?

Best regards,
Your name
Your Affiliation

Title of Article
Authors

Abstract

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Proin egestas odio non mi mattis rhoncus. Vivamus ultrices urna a ante tristique pellentesque. Nam tincidunt lacus a mi sollicitudin tincidunt. Curabitur malesuada, quam sit amet iaculis lobortis, enim lacus commodo turpis, nec elementum mauris libero ac enim. Quisque justo mauris, eleifend id ornare vel, luctus eget tellus. Etiam auctor ultrices tincidunt. Curabitur diam nulla, aliquam nec gravida a, consequat non nulla. Cras viverra massa id felis blandit gravida. Pellentesque enim mi, convallis vitae ornare quis, ornare sit amet dolor. Pellentesque velit urna, feugiat non tincidunt in, sollicitudin sed purus. Phasellus laoreet ligula nec odio mattis fringilla. Fusce sed arcu mi. Pellentesque dictum erat sit amet sapien pharetra porta.


Author order when senior and lead author same person I have an article I'm writing where I'm the senior author, but I also did the majority of the work and wrote the paper. I have two co-authors who have also contributed.

In my field (physical sciences) the norm is that the senior author goes last and the person who wrote the paper/did the majority of the work is first author. Everyone else goes in between.

What should the order should be in this situation when lead and senior author are same person?

I've been in a similar situation as a co-author in a paper where the corresponding and the senior author are the same. In this case, this author listed herself as the first author (since she made most of the work and wrote the paper) and the remaining co-authors were listed alphabetically. An important detail is that some journals allow or even require that you specify the contributions of each author.


Article about doing a PhD by prominent mathematician or computer scientist I vaguely remember reading an article(as an online pdf - possibly via twitter) on why one should/should not do a PhD; what doing a PhD entails. It was well structured and specifically mentioned that a PhD isn't for everyone. I also remember it was written by a prominent computer scientist(or a mathematician). Can anyone provide suggestions/hints about what article it might've been?

Here are some sources I have found that speak to the topic of not getting a PhD.

Perhaps this document is the one you are looking for? Both the authors are mathematicians with PhDs. I would not say they are necessarily prominent, but they are established.

http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/media/eps/schoolofmathematics/study/guide_2011.pdf

This is a short article reposted by a professor at Stanford University.

https://tomprof.stanford.edu/posting/545

Here are three other online articles about the topic.

https://medium.economist.com/why-doing-a-phd-is-often-a-waste-of-time-349206f9addb

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/15/should-do-phd-you-asked-autocomplete-questions

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/12-reasons-not-to-get-a-phd/

I will add my own brief commentary here. Obtaining a PhD has never hurt me financially. I have a well paying full-time job that requires a PhD. (Now should the job require a PhD is a different story). There are many, many, many jobs in my field (statistics) that prefer a PhD. I have never regretted obtaining a PhD.


What Plagiarism level of master thesis is acceptable? I am checking plagiarism of my master thesis.  It comes out 32 percent.  So upto what level of plagiarism is accepted?
My master thesis is on the topic of homomorphic encryption in Cloud and I uses turnitin online service for plagiarism checking.
Edit: I apologize that I do not included the detail that plagiarism level comes out 32 percent when I include my research paper as it is in my thesis. The paper are going to publish in IEEE conference. If I exclude this research paper, The plagiarism level is 12 percent.I also posted question related to it on academic stack exchange and if anyone interested, you can check the link
 Can research paper information be used in thesis writing?

The turnitin tool is saying that it thinks 32% of the text of your thesis could have been taken from other sources.

The software is a very blunt tool, and often has difficulty recognizing common turns of phrase and specialized terminology (e.g. I've seen "Without loss of generality we can assume that"  and "Traveling Salesman's Problem" flagged.)  It also doesn't recognize situations where there's a direct quote (properly delineated and cited) from another source.

Thus it's necessary for a human to review the report generated by the software to see what's going on.  Without seeing that report, no one can give you an authoritative answer to your question.  However, in my experience, I've never seen a paper with this high a score that didn't have significant problems.

To directly answer your question, no amount of plagiarism is acceptable in a master's thesis.


Does a student need official permission to publish an independent research article with university affiliation? When a junior student is doing research independently (for example theoretical), does s/he need official permission to publish a research article? In the article, s/he needs to introduce his/her affiliation. Normally, this affiliation is connected with the research funding.

Does studentship qualify him/her to use the university name as his own official affiliation, even if this affiliation has no connection with this independent research project?

First, check if your university has rules/policies/guidelines in place. If so, follow them.
Otherwise, use your university name as affiliation. No need to ask them. (Trust me, they are much more worried about people forgetting to use the affiliation, than the other way around!)


Is it possible to pursue a PhD while working full time and living in another country? I work full time as a Chief Operating Officer for a company and would like to pursue a PhD and study the population I am working with (women workers in fisheries).

I have been researching different programs in Gender Studies centers, mostly in English speaking countries.

I want to know if it is possible to pursue a PhD while working full time and living in another country? And if there are universities that are more flexible than others?

In regard to living in another country, at least in the US, most universities have a residency requirement (for example, Cornell's) that means you have to live there for some amount of time.

As far as working full-time, sure, it can be done. It will be extremely difficult and it may be a challenge to convince an advisor to work with you. A PhD is hard enough doing it full-time. Part timers seem to take 7-9 years in my field and finish with fewer publications.

Something that a potential advisor will ask you is why do you want a PhD if you already have a job and are going to continue working in that position? A PhD trains you to do research but you aren't really doing research as a CTO are you? If you just want knowledge in the field, then take some classes or study on your own.


How to arrange an invitation letter for research visit in another university (for PhD student)? I'm a first-year PhD student in Communication and Media Science. As part of the study program, I am obliged to visit the university abroad (the best would be in next year).

There I need to carry out part of my research, but I would also like to be able to participate in classes with other doctoral students and observe the work of the lecturers. I would like to do this (3 months) at universities in Finland and the Netherlands.

Is this feasible?  Where should I start? I have never taken part in an academic exchange before. Every advice would be appreciated.

In mathematics, in the U.S., since people in Paris are vaguely acquainted with me, some years ago I was asked to be a supervisor for an Ecole Poly undergrad's "senior project", more-or-less. I had spare time-and-energy at the time, and the people asking me were known to me, and certainly gave the impression that they were not just spamming. (The student was very good, and later won a prize for his paper, "back home".)

So I think if you can get your local faculty to contact people who know them, and can recommend you to them, it might work well. (But, sure, sometimes people are already over-committed, as I am currently, so I sadly had to decline a similar offer, although I knew it would have been quite fun... Just not enough time.)


Should an advisor care if their student becomes overweight? So your student is becoming overweight: does this negatively impact your research group in some way? Should an advisor care?

Becoming overweight is not an issue per se.  Major physical changes, however, are often a sign of an major ongoing mental or physical health event.  Rapid weight gain, for example, is often associated with depression or thyroid problems, both of which can have a major impact on the student's ability to learn and work.
As such, I would definitely be concerned if a student was visibly gaining a large amount of weight---not because of attractiveness or disapproval of weight, but because of what else it might indicate.

I would find it highly inappropriate, however, to bring this up with the student by saying something like "I've noticed you've gained a lot of weight" because there are also a lot of more benign reasons somebody might gain weight, including recovering from mental or physical health problems that would also be none of my business.

I would, however, notice it as a possible red flag, and start to keep a more careful eye out for other signs of distress, which might legitimately trigger a conversation about, for example, mental health.


How will be determined the format of manuscript before submission to journal? I would like to submit my paper to a math journal. In the section of instructions for authors there is the following statement which I am confused of its meaning, may you please help me to sort out of that.

  The manuscript should be in final form; once "communicated'', little change will be allowed.

Does it mean that I must write my paper in the final format of journal  before submission?

Usually, the journal's typesetters will get your manuscript into that "final form", so you don't have to do it yourself.

The sentence is saying that you should have all your content finalized before submission. Once the paper is communicated, you can't make any more changes.


My advisor is giving my idea to his new student, what should I do? Now I'm preparing for my thesis and have one article which is already published and my thesis has been developed from my previous work.

For my thesis, I derived a model based on the literature review, but suddenly my advisor gave my model to his new student.  Even though he is working his own, he has similar variables as my article and thesis. And it seems like he will be able to publish his article even earlier than me.

Since the model has not been used that often in my field, I'm not happy with this.

My advisor also gave the student my original article file (not pdf but docs). What do you think should I do? I cannot stop thinking about it.

What is going on may be entirely ethical, though questions remain. Multiple papers based on a single model is fine, even typical. Such papers can legitimately be written by different authors. Still not a problem.

But the originator of the model needs to be credited with its creation in any papers that result. Citations need to be given when possible. Otherwise it is plagiarism.

I don't think you need to be a co-author on the other student's work but you need credit for your work in anything that results.

And, you also need assurance that you won't be plagiarized and you need to deal with that issue soon, since the other student is not experienced, I expect.

Even giving editable documents to the other student may not be as big a deal as you think, since information can be extracted from pdfs as well.

Talk to your advisor and make sure that appropriate assurances are in place. If the other student is publishing a variation or an expansion of your work it can be completely valid. Perhaps a meeting of the three of you can provide assurance here. If everything is ethical, then no one should object to such a meeting.

You need to assure yourself that no one is "stepping on" your current work or plagiarizing it. But, in general, creating a model is not a "hands off" signal to everyone else.

The question of co-authorship may still be open if parts of your work need to be included in the work of another. But that might also require some additional work on your part to complete the work of the other student. That can be part of any conversation.


Some advices regarding the first research paper I am an undergraduate student in Mathematics and I think that I have discovered something significant in Mathematics. My friends and some professors to whom I have sent my ideas also confirmed its significance. They suggested me to write a paper on it.

But the problem is that being an undergraduate student in Mathematics, I don't know how to write a paper. Besides, the professors to whom I have sent my ideas weren't experts in this field and they have asked me to send my works to some experts in the field. But unfortunately I don't know anyone such and I see no point in assuming that even if my work is significant, they would give time to read it without dismissing it beforehand as a work of some crank.

So what should I do? Can some suggestions be provided?

Ask your professor to introduce you to a suitable expert.

If some of your professors think that your work is of substantial quality and probably novel, then they are surely fine with introducing you to some suitable researchers in the field. Note that, for example, a postdoc in the respective field may suffice. They should be willing to give your work the "badge" that in their oppinion, your work seems to have potential by writing that to the suitable researcher themselves. This should get rid of the problem that you describe in your second-last sentence:

"But unfortunately I don't know anyone such and I see no point in assuming that even if my work is significant, they would give time to read it without dismissing it beforehand as a work of some crank."

Note that an experienced academic in the respective field can add a lot of value to your paper, including improving the accessibility and providing a more comprehensive literature survey.


With GRE not being accepted or being considered optional due to Covid, which other aspects of application will be given heavier weightage? Due to COVID-19 many universities (at least many Physics departments) are not accepting or are considering the GRE as optional. So, which other aspects of my application might be given heavier weightage? Of course, I'll mail individual departments and check with them. However, any suggestions here will be helpful in planning my path.

All of them, proportionately.
PhD admissions in the US (the land of the GRE) are typically not based on a formula.  They are subjective.  Therefore you do not need to know how different parts of the application are weighted.


Is it worth it going to academic conferences as undergraduate without any research to present? In particular, I would like to focus on CS Theory conferences like STOC or FOCS.

I am interested in the presented topics and, of course, it would be useful to learn more about it for potential graduate research. But on the other hand, one can always read the presented papers when they are published. It seems that the most important part of conferences is networking, however, I do not see myself being efficient in networking at this point yet.

If the conference is "affordable" to you in terms of time and money, go for it! It will be a great way to see more about how academia works. As others mention, there are often some workshops for students, and poster sessions are great ways to learn about new ideas and ask (even basic) questions.

You may not get very much out of going to more than one conference without presenting, though. (If you love the first one and it inspires you to work hard on your research, maybe attending another without presenting anything would be a good thing, but much of the value for you at first will be in understanding how academics communicate with each other.)

Also, check if there are interesting conferences coming up in your region. Often local students can volunteer to help with registration desk or other key work during the conference in exchange for admission to some parts of the conference. This would be a way to get many of the benefits of attending the conference, without having to spend a lot of money to do so.


How to create an environment in which students can report teacher-student sexual harassment? I teach physics at a community college in California. A series of female students have told me about sexual harassment by the same tenured male math instructor. Two such incidents went like this.

one incident:

"Professor, I'm having trouble with my homework. Could you give me some help?"

"Sure, let's go have drinks and talk about it."

another incident:

"Professor, can I come to your office hours for help?"

"Sure. You know, my office is soundproof."

I reported the problem to the vice president who handles Title IX. She told me she needed the students to file formal complaints. In one of these incidents, the student was still enrolled in the guy's class. The VP said they could transfer her to another math class to protect her from retribution. I gave the students this information and suggested that they file complaints. A year later, it turns out that they haven't.

I suspect that almost no students at my school know how to go about reporting sexual harassment by a professor, and that almost none know that any measures could be taken to prevent retribution. My school is about to institute a mandatory online orientation, which will cover sexual harassment, but it treats sexual harassment as a general phenomenon and doesn't deal with any of the specific concerns, such as retribution, that arise when it's teacher-on-student harassment. I tried to convince the VP that we should do better outreach on this specific type of sexual harassment, e.g., with posters, including information about how students can be shielded against retribution. This seemed to make her very uncomfortable. I suspect that such a thing would upset interest groups such as the teachers' union.

A related aspect of the problem is that this is a community college, and it's a commuter school, so many students have weak ties to the institution and do not think of themselves primarily as students. The psychology is probably very different from what you see at elite four-year schools where you see this kind of thing.

How do schools create an environment in which students can and do report teacher-student sexual harassment? Are there best practices at other schools (possibly schools similar to mine) that should be emulated?

I refer you to the Student Conduct Administration & Title IX:
Gold Standard Practices for Resolution of Allegations
of Sexual Misconduct on College Campuses report from the Association for Student Conduct Administration. While this report is specifically about responding to complaints about student-on-student sexual harassment, many of the "best practices" described there apply more generally.

Some specifics from that document:

To better understand the climate on your campus, there is a list of "Questions to Ask Your Campus" on page 19 of the document mentioned above. These questions may help you identify the problems and a way forward for your specific college. (There is no one-size-fits all resolution to this problem.)
Find out if it is possible (e.g. for your Office of Institutional Research, if you have one) to conduct campus-wide climate surveys to understand whether existing efforts to inform students of sexual harassment policies and procedures are effective. If (as you suspect) they are not, this survey will serve as a baseline against which to judge the effectiveness of changes in how you present and disseminate these policies.
How comprehensible are your policies to your student body? Would your students feel the need to involve a attorney or a parent in order to understand the policies and procedures related to filing a sexual harassment claim?
Make it easy to report sexual harassment. A campus should have several avenues through which students can report (phone, in-person, email, and online form, for example).

To reduce the barrier to making a "formal complaint," make the student's first interaction as simple as possible:

  For example, if the first conversation includes something like, “You’re not going to want to go before a hearing board of three
  older faculty members that you might later have as instructors and discuss intimate details of your sex life,” that student is not likely to file a formal complaint.

Help students understand that even if they are not prepared to make a formal complaint, they can still get some relief from the situation (with "supportive measures" as they are known in Title IX). For example, in your scenario, the student should be allowed to change classes (and she should understand that she can transfer to another class) even if she is not ready to proceed with a formal complaint.
According to the April 2014 Q&A Guidance on Title IX from the OCR, the school's written Title IX grievance procedures should explicitly include "sources of counseling, advocacy, and support" for students. Does your school's policies include these? Are they adequate?

Another useful document is How to Protect Students from Sexual Harassment: A Primer for Schools, from the National Women's Law Center.


"Open Access": CC-BY licence Why would a scientist or mathematician want to publish a paper under the Creative Commons CC BY licence?  This licence allows the work to be modified.  Why would you want to allow a scientific paper to be altered?

Yet Arxiv at https://arxiv.org/help/license seems to offer only licences that allow changes.

Similary Nature Communications at http://www.nature.com/ncomms/about/open-access:

"Nature Communications articles are published open access under a CC BY license".

The CC licences that do not allow change are the ones with ND (no derive). So the natural choice would seem to be either BY-ND or BY-NC-ND. Can anyone shed light?

I work for a literature archive, and this is a very important question for me. Here is an example of how restrictive licensing affects our work. We host a large collection of biomedical publications. We developed a tool that identifies mentions of research data in the text. The tool highlights these mentions for readers to find it easier. If the article is licensed as CC-BY-ND (no derivatives) we cannot display the highlight, because it changes the article.
We are a publicly funded, free service that offers free open tools for researchers. But we can only develop new functionalities based on public data. The more restrictive you go, the less value we can provide for the benefit of all.


Should a paper be reviewed in entirety, if the introduction contains plagiarized passages? I'm very new to being a peer reviewer. I agreed to anonymously review a paper for publication, and while reading it for the first time, I was a little annoyed by the writing style. It sort of reminded me of the feeling I get when reading a paper from a student in an undergraduate Liberal Arts Math course. When I began to read it again, I was very uneasy about the writing, especially in the introduction. There were inconsistencies in style. Some short, dry sentences followed by longer passages using flowery language.  I looked at the references and noticed a few secondary sources. One was a NY Times article. I looked up the article online and in the first paragraph found a passage that was almost identical to one in the introduction section of the paper I'm supposed to review. I was shocked. And then I found more.

So far, all of the plagiarism that I've found is in the introduction. I haven't read the rest of the paper carefully yet because I'm fairly disgusted.

My question is this: should I even bother writing a review? If this were an undergraduate paper, the student would get an F on the assignment and get reported to the Dean. I want to write to the journal editor and just tell him that the paper doesn't deserve to be reviewed.

Has anyone seen this before, and what did you do? If you decided to review a paper like this, how would you phrase your feedback?

I think you've pretty much done your review.  You found a whole bunch of plagiarism up front, and that's enough to recommend rejection of the article.  Document your findings and report to the editor.  Even if the rest of the article turned out to be brilliant and original, there is no way it can be anything other than rejected and possibly even formal proceedings against the authors.


Postdoc in China: what are the possible difficulties and disadvantages? According to the research paper, where the comparison of postdocs in China and US was done, there are several global cons of Chinese postdoctoral positions, like low sallary and lack of permanent jobs. But, what are the other unofficial problems I could face if I go to China?

First, I really recommend everyone who is interested in postdocs to read this article - Postdocs in Science: A Comparison between China and the United States (November 2015) (link to pdf).
After it, I turned my search vector to China and found the position in good academic institution. I have my own subjective reason to go there and the pros are clear for me. However, I worried about any hidden specifics of Chinese science. For instance, my position is only for European researcher and it was opened at the institution’s web page during last 2 years. If Chinese postdoc is still not very attractive for foreigners, why is so (except money)?

Moreover, China has very old traditions and they probably influence at scietific ethic and standards.

This will be my first postdoc, therefore, could you please share with me your experience and knowledge regarding unpleasant specifics of Chinese science.

*Possible topics:
collaborations and attending conferences (local and abroad);
grants and project I can apply for (local and foreign);
duties and demands (help from colleagues or PhD student);
tangible and intangible benefits and attitude to scientists (see Laowai).

Some questions have been already discussed here:

What is the average postdoctoral salary in
China?
Is it possible to study in China without knowing
Chinese?

PS: I also will be very greateful if you mention the possible solution for a problem (maybe add some point to my contract).

I'm doing a postdoc in computer science at Nankai University, Tianjin, China.  You've asked about the negatives, but I first want to point out that I love living in China (my friends talk about how they should visit China one day; I live here!).  It's not perfect, but it's not nearly as bad as made out on Western media.  And I feel physically safer here than I do in any other country.

Some items that might be of concern:

Culture shock.  Have you been to China before?  Because wow!  It's a shock when you're new.  I recommend visiting (e.g. for 3 months) before taking up a job here.  Things you'll need to get used to:  chopsticks, squat toilets, pollution, crowds, haggling, real Chinese food, the great firewall (e.g. Facebook, Google, Dropbox are blocked), crossing the road, finding clothes that fit, fighting over the bill, people pushing in front of you, traffic.  A lot of the time, you won't really know what's going on because it was explained to you in Chinglish.  At other times, things won't make sense because they're just done differently in China.
Low salary (by international standards--well paid by Chinese standards).  But the university should cover accommodation (so no bills to pay), and cost of living is next to negligible (as long as you eat the local food; Western food incurs Western prices).
Language barrier.  Even if your colleagues all speak English, you will need to do things like buying food, taking taxis, etc., which will require some level of Chinese (unless you want to disturb your colleagues repeatedly).  You might end up misunderstanding important things (e.g. your salary level) because it was explained to you in broken English.  Also, how good are you at pronouncing Chinese names (your future co-authors names)?
Medical care.  Forget having privacy; expect to explain your medical conditions in front of maybe 5 other patients.  Oh, and probably one of your work colleagues will need to translate for you, and help you buy medicines.  (It helps if you know someone who's a doctor.)
Loneliness.  All of your friends will probably be through work.  They will go off and spend time with their family and friends, or go back to their accommodation, and you'll be left alone.  You'll be a kind of outsider, and people might be too shy to invite you to events, even though you are lonely.  (From my perspective, this is the worst aspect of living in China.)
Proofreading papers.  You're probably going to get asked to proofread/polish a whole bunch of papers.
Administration.  In order to get a work permit, there's a lot of forms to fill in.  You'll need a "foreign experts certificate", a "work certificate", and there's a medical check and an interview.  Many forms will be in Chinese (and your colleagues will likely need to fill these in for you).
Grants:  There's also special grants for foreigners: Research Fellowship for International Young Scientists (which I'm on currently), and the 1000 Talents Program.
No fixed address.  When people ask me for my address, it's hard to explain to them I don't actually have one.  (E.g. I'll stay in some random hotel for the next few weeks, then I travel to some country, and will stay in some other random hotel.)  I essentially live out of a suitcase.
Hard work.  People in China seem to work much longer hours than in Western countries.  (E.g. I'm in the office virtually every day, including weekends, from morning to night.)
Team work.  China is the country of people power.  Everyone in our lab helps out everyone else, and we end up with papers with many authors.
LGBT?  Don't be too obvious about it and virtually nobody will care.
Religious?  For my postdoc, a government official told me that it's okay to have and practice a religion, but not to preach religion.  (Easy for me; I'm not religious.)
Vegetarian?  It's tricky completely avoiding meat; it's easiest to just accept that you'll occasionally end up with meat.  (You'll probably need to get used to tofu and spicy food, if you're not already.)
Woman?  Expect groups of men (typically construction workers and gardeners) to stare at you, making you very uncomfortable.  Also, some Chinese men will think of you as "exotic".  (Oh, and I can't find anywhere to get my eyebrows tinted.)
Man?  You'll probably be requested to drink (lots) at celebrations, dinner meetings, and so on.
Bathrooms are disgusting.  Knock before opening the stall door (if there is a door)---it most likely doesn't lock and if you open it without knocking, you might interrupt someone (and you need to say "you ren" = "has person" if someone knocks on your door).  You'll need to get used to squat toilets and carrying around your own toilet paper.
People are less uptight about things.  E.g. people will compare skin colors; males will have pictures of sexy women on their computer; movie and software piracy is not a big deal (even on the lab computers).  Things that are not really appropriate in Western countries.
Other things: Random people will take photos with you (or of you).  Fresh milk is difficult to find.  Coffee is poor quality and expensive.  It's hard to get decent wine.  Don't drink the tap water.

The things you ask about (but I don't have a general answer):

Collaborations.  It's a bit embarrassing having to ask for letters of invitation from colleagues.  Other than that, it's been real easy for me to travel.
Conferences.  It's easiest for me to go to conferences as the professors are too busy, and I don't need a visa for most places.  I travel a lot.
Duties.  They're trying to make me associate professor here; which will require teaching a course.  I have no idea how I'm going to do that.
Attitude to scientists.  Held in high esteem, although you might be mistaken for a foreign student if you're young looking.  The public won't be able to understand what a "postdoc" is, though (it's easier to say "teacher").


Hard new ideas VS Hard technical ideas? I'm a CS master student. During my early days looking for a thesis I noticed two categories of projects:

Projects a about completely new idea.
Projects about improving an existing technical concept.

By the first one I mean completely new stuff (something I'm doing now as my thesis). Such projects require intensive thinking to formulate them and put them into academic contexts and logics. While a lot of the time will be used to try and test new things as well as justyfing and putting the results into proper academic context and logic, very few time could be spent learning advanced stuff regarding your field.

In the other kinds of projects one would need to improve the running time of an algorithm or its performance. Such projects would require the student to go into very deep stuff regarding his field and become really advanced.

Now that I'm doing the first kinds of projects, I started to feel unconfident about myself and my skills when I see how the skills of other students who worked on the second type became. The reason behind that is I feel that my effort doesn't show up to people when they will probably read my thesis. Because they won't see advanced mathematics and algorithms as in the second type. How should I deal with this personal problem?

In general, the answer is: Provide the landscape of your field, and show how the new-ground you are covering is missed by other people who passed the question by.

If your thesis is a branch of of another topic, then show where the branching occurs, and how people on the dominant branch missed it; If your topic is truly novel, then show the problem its solving and why you found it interesting enough to spend a year or more of your life on it.

I have a feeling that intuitively you know the answers to these questions; get them out and people will understand why your thesis has worth.

90% of the advice from your last question still applies; It's incredibly difficult to do an apples to apples comparison between degrees, even under the same supervisor.

The crux of this question in my mind, which prevents it from being a duplicate, is how to present new-ground while avoiding comparisons to other work which has a stronger theoretical background.

A important part of the answer is almost certainly going to be 'Sit down and talk with your supervisor about this concern'. That's what they are there for. They will have a clear view of how this will fit into the landscape of the field, and will be able to help you avoid the feelings of theoretical inadequacy.


Does PhD GPA matter after grad school regarding academic funding? There are many similar questions regarding whether PhD GPA matters after grad school, but this question is specific to obtaining academic funding as a professor. When applying for funding, do funding agencies look at the professors previous GPA and take that into consideration?

It is extremely unlikely that anyone would care, especially a source of funds. They are interested in you research potential and your productivity. There might be various aspects to that for specialized awards, but no one will ask you for your doctoral level transcripts. They are largely meaningless in any case.
If you passed comprehensive exams then you learned enough to go forward and that is assumed if you completed a doctorate.


How do weak students who want to do PhD's get into masters programmes in the first place? One common piece of advice for weak students who want to go into academia is that they do a terminal master's degree first before applying to PhD programmes. This, however, bothers me for two reasons:

If I'm not mistaken, master's degrees are, in some places, often seen as the first of a two-part process to getting advanced degrees, where the PhD is the second part. (This is the sense I get of many non-American systems.) So finding a terminal master's programme doesn't sound that simple to me, although this may depend on the field.
I would imagine that there's still a need for decent grades / recommendations / etc. to get into a master's programme in the first place. Something like GRE scores can be readily fixed via preparation, but a lack of appropriate coursework (due to concentration mismatch) or poor grades cannot be, and this might also mean very weak recommendations. In some fields where doing research assistant jobs after graduation are common, this might be still resolvable, but it does not appear to be so in something like math or the humanities.

If so, how viable it is actually to get into a terminal master's programme in order to boost future applications to PhD programmes?

As per the comments, you are interested in finding information from various places around the world, so I will provide a perspective from Germany (possibly limited, as there is a partial focus on computer science and closely related degrees, with which I am more experienced compared to other areas):

  If I'm not mistaken, master's degrees are, in some places, often seen as the first of a two-part process to getting advanced degrees, where the PhD is the second part.

As described elsewhere, Bachelor and Master often form a consecutive unit in Germany. The reason is historical, as the former Diplom degrees were cut into two parts approximately in the middle to insert the Bachelor degree after the first part of the studies. Studying for a doctoral degree optionally followed for some students after graduating with a Diplom, and likewise, it now optionally follows for some students after graduating with a Master's degree.

Therefore, at least in Germany, the Master's degree is the second of a two-part process of getting "basic, industry-level" degrees (the first part being the Bachelor's degree). Accordingly, in 2011 and 2012 (sources only in German, sorry), about 3/4 of all students who graduate from a German university with a Bachelor's degree continued to study for a Master's degree.

The doctoral degree is something separate that only a smaller fraction of students who graduated with a Master's degree start, as it usually focuses on research rather than educating a highly skilled employee for the industry.

Therefore, as an answer to your first question

  So finding a terminal master's programme doesn't sound that simple to me, although this may depend on the field.

While there are some disciplines (chemistry maybe?) where traditionally many Master graduates continue for a doctoral degree, entering the Master's degree as a terminal degree before completing one's higher education and starting to work full-time is rather the default in Germany.

  I would imagine that there's still a need for decent grades / recommendations / etc. to get into a master's programme in the first place.

Again related to the aforementioned historical development, there is a strong feeling that whoever has successfully completed their Bachelor's degree must be allowed to continue their studies if they so desire (as with the former Diplom degrees, no-one would be kicked out in the middle of their studies, either, unless they actually failed the requirements).

While I am not sure whether it is always possible at all universities to accommodate everyone who would like to continue with a Master's degree, I could get some limited insight into the "selection process" for which Bachelor graduates may continue with the Master studies on a few occasions. The general guideline was that unless there were any absolutely terrible obstacles (with previous marks that are bad, and just enough to fulfil the minimum requirements to get a Bachelor's degree explicitly not counting as such an obstacle), every applicant should be accepted.

Hence, getting into a Master's programme is not an overly hard problem; chances that one has to abort these studies due to failing exams during the Master studies are likely to be considerably higher.

This leaves two final summarizing statements:

  If so, how viable it is actually to get into a terminal master's programme

In Germany, probably rather viable.

  in order to boost future applications to PhD programmes?

In Germany, it's not a "boost" in the sense that improves chances prior to getting the degree; for most, if not all doctoral programmes, having a Master's degree is a minimum requirement.


What kind of knowledge is required to do a PhD? I am currently in an engineer school specialized in Computer Science, and I will be done with it in a little less than 2 years. I spent a lot of time on some advice websites and this stackexchange regarding PhD for the future, as I would like to do some research (based on a internship I did before), and later on join the academic world (or at least the teaching world).

The big issue I am facing is choosing a laboratory that I would like to join. The first thing that came to mind was of course Computer Science related, but the real question is : What kind of PhD can I join ?

What kind of knowledge is required before engaging in a PhD ? Could I join a bioinformatics laboratory and do a thesis on a specific protein because I have some general knowledge on how proteins work and use my computer science knowledge only as a tool, or does my thesis have to be computer science related as it is my main field ?

As for context, the main reason I am searching for another field than Computer Science is because I did not find yet a subject I am passionate about in this field. I have a lot of knowledge in a lot of different topics that I can apply at work, but none of them is something I would consider researching on.

On the other end, I am very passionate about different topics that I would love to contribute on and where computer science would be useful as a tool.

I think everything is about your motivation. You need a subject you're very interested in and of course you don't know everything yet you need to do the job. This is part of your work. In the end you’re getting paid to teach yourself

  but none of them is something I would consider researching on

This is a bit strange and dangerous. You’ll be working on a field for multiple years and you should choose an area you really really like. Imagine you're forced to do stuff every day you don't really like... You'll be demotivated and quit your research.

However, I think your future research should at least somehow be related to the stuff you do during your studies. Otherwise you have no clue what you're going to do or how your daily work will be.

Maybe you should talk to other PhD candidates from a group you might want to join after you studies - just to see how their daily work looks like and whether this might be the stuff you want to do for the next years.


On understanding the "code" of recommendation letters This question deals with letters of recommendation written for students in the humanities, and in particular for those on the job market or those submitting to dissertation grants and fellowships. The question may also apply to letters of recommendation in the sciences.

On this site and in conversations with current faculty members, I have surmised that letters of recommendation are usually written in a kind of "code" (one post here described these letters as a "second language" you have to learn). Since most letters are invariably positive, I suppose that the code is just a subtle way of signaling the true value of a candidate's work or the true extent of their potential. Those who know the code are able to see through any hyperbolic language and decode a letter-writer's real estimation of their candidate.

A common warning about asking for letters of recommendation is: make sure you ask someone who already knows how to write them, or they could end up doing more harm than good. It makes sense that, if someone doesn't know the code, that person won't be able to communicate whatever it is that committees want to see in the letter.

This is all just my ignorant explanation of what I've observed, however, and I would like to ask for more information. I am especially interested in knowing:

-Is it true that letters of recommendation are written in such a clandestine way?

-If there is a code, what is it like? What kind of signals does it have? How do you know when you are reading about a candidate who really is great, versus a candidate who is just fine, when their letters may contain similar language?

If it turns out I am off base on this, I'd appreciate hearing about that too.

I am writing from the perspective of mathematics in the United States.

To the best of my knowledge there is not really any "code" for recommendation letters.  However, there is a quite large amount of inflation, enough so that writing without an awareness of the current levels is a bit like Dr. Evil holding the world ransom for one million dollars.

The process abets this inflation in many ways.  Many grad school recommendations have a bunch of questions asking for the candidate to be numerically rated on a bunch of different metrics -- including things like "honesty", "integrity" and "leadership" -- and you can say things like "The best I have ever seen," "In the top 2%," "In the top 5%", and so forth.  It's more than a bit silly, but having both written the letters and read them I can say that most successful candidates are getting top or nearly top marks in every category...no matter the fact that in most interactions with students, things like honesty and integrity are more conspicuous in their absence than their presence.

To get a sense of the inflationary regime it is very helpful to compare letters written by (many) Europeans to letters written by (most) Americans.  Recently someone whom I have a substantial professional relationship with applied for a postdoc at my institution, and afterwards (he didn't get it, but he got a good one elsewhere) he asked for feedback.  I told him that one of his letters was essentially only one paragraph long (and I told him which one!).  That paragraph was uniformly positive, and I can't point to any specific, factual thing that was missing from it.  However, at the current state of inflation, most letters are two to four pages long.  A one paragraph letter just won't do.  It is not necessarily code for "the candidate sucks".  It might also mean: "I am too busy/selfish to write the letter that I know the candidate needs", "I am not familiar enough with the current state of inflation to write an appropriate letter" or even "In my part of the academic world no one natters on for pages at a time; is it different in yours? What's wrong with you people?!?" In this case, I would suspect the latter.

Added: Inspired by some remarks in @David's answer, let me mention that there are certainly things that will be read in ways that may not be what a naive writer would intend.  I wouldn't call this "code," but others might.  Some examples:

A good letter must explicitly mention that the candidate is both intelligent and talented.  In the absence of this, any other praise may be read as a nice way of saying that the candidate is not intelligent and talented.  Saying that someone is a hard worker without saying they are bright will be read be many as meaning that they are only a hard worker.
Praising someone's teaching must be done carefully, lest it sound like you mean to say that the candidate does not take their research seriously or even does not intend to further pursue their research at all.
Female candidates are often praised for being team players while male candidates are often praised for being brilliant, individualistic and perhaps even iconoclastic.  You should keep this in mind when writing and reading letters for female candidates.  When describing a strong female candidate I make a conscious effort to use the "good male words" like brilliant, gifted and so forth...and also to back them up, of course.


How do I use potentially copyrighted images in my course material? I teach at a school and I create PowerPoint presentations to use in my classroom.  I also need to upload the PowerPoints to my school website for my students to access.  Access is restricted and students must sign in with their school codes.  Can I use images I find on Google search?  Are all images copyrighted?  If they do not have an "ownership" stamp on them, are they ok to use in this manner?  Nothing is being sold and the presentations are taken down at the end of each year.

Images found in Google search don't belong to Google.

I can't speak to fair-use under academia, but I can say images aren't fair game just because they're found on Google images

There are, however, places you can find images you can use. Wikimedia has a ton of images that can be used, with a wide variety of licenses for re-use. Flickr is another that comes to mind.

I want to reiterate that I don't know fair use under the realm of academia, but would ask permission and highly recommend captioning photos in order to give credit where it's due.


How can I proceed if my email is not working, and I am in the middle of creating proofs for my new accepted paper I received an acceptance letter for my article and the letter said that the manuscript will be transferred to the production department and work will begin on the creation of the proof. They also said that if they need any additional information to create the proof they will let me know.

Now the problem is that my establishment email (the email that I was using to communicate) is not working because of problems with the university's servers, and I don't know how long it will take to solve the problem.

How can I proceed?

Many journals have an online system where you can log in and change the e-mail information. If not, just contact the responsible person (by using another e-mail account).


Europe: Central Academic CS Job Market Service like CRA? When searching for faculty positions in CS, I find the service http://cra.org/ads/ very useful. There you can find many job ads from North America based institutions. Is there any similar service for Europe?

Is there any similar service for Europe?

Unfortunately the answer to this question is no. The closest equivalent, at least in the German-speaking area, is Academics.com. I am not aware of a similarly complete portal for the rest of Europe.

Additionally, the most complete list for the German-speaking area is definitely the newsletter sent out monthly by the "deutschen Hochschulverband" (essentially the union of German university teachers). This list has rather official character and is pretty much complete for the area. However, you need to be a member to receive this newsletter, and one can only become a member by having been employed in an academic post at a German university.

(or you know a member and ask him to forward you the newsletter each month)


Include websites in literature review section of paper? I am writing an APA style literature review synthesis paper for a class. This week we are working on the Literature Review section of the paper, including statistics found from the articles we are reviewing. I will be citing and reference websites such as HHS.gov (for information on HIPAA) and Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary for a definition. My question is, do I write a paragraph about these websites in the Literature Review section of my paper?
I hope this isn't too confusing. I've emailed my instructor 3 times, but she is not understanding what I am asking.

I'm assuming you're just getting one or two facts from each of those sources. Just cite them briefly in the Introduction (or whatever part of the paper you introduce that information and definition). The reader will see that they are official government sources, a dictionary, etc., that you are citing for one fact, and so you do not need to spend time introducing the source in the text. The references to the websites should then go in the "References" section at the end so people can look them up.

If you were doing a literature review about how a word changed over time, then perhaps it would be appropriate to cite the dictionary entry there. That is, if there is a substantial chunk of content from that source, then it is an appropriate one to talk about in detail in the Literature Review section. Mainly, a Literature Review in a research article is there to set up: "Here's what other scholars have said about this topic," and you include some summary, critique, and synthesis. (Your assignment may have you spreading out the critique or synthesis into other sections.)


Where do all the research paper annotations go? Today, an increasing number of research papers are publicly available. At the same time, a community of researchers and students are reading those materials. We are highlighting, commenting, finding connections between topics, contradicting... in general digesting that knowledge.
Where does all that information go? Is there a project/app/platform that allows me to access the comments and annotations of those who read the papers before me? Something like a line comment on github.
Being science a collective endeavour, why is something like that not the standard way of doing research?
Am I missing something?

I was recently introduced to this site: hypothes.is (I have no affiliation). In essence, any PDF with a URL when opened with their layer allows you to see comments and highlights from anyone else who has chosen to use it, or sub-groups you can join or arrange.
I have not seen anyone in academia use it, but perhaps you could start. It does seem like it could be useful for a small group of people who want to understand a paper.


How do I politely remind a professor to respond to my request for feedback I have just started my MSc studies. My professor asked me to do a literature survey and I sent some papers to him 2 weeks ago. He wanted some time to check them, but I have not yet got any email. I think two weeks is quite enough to check them.

should I send him a reminder?

Would it be a polite reminder?

Email subject: "kind reminder"

Dear Prof. XXXX,

I would like to check if you have had time to read papers that I sent to you on X July. I would be grateful if you take a moment to look into it.

I will be waiting for your answer and many thanks in advance.

Best Regards,

After two weeks, you're within your rights to send a very polite reminder to the professor to have a look over your stuff.

However, I wouldn't make the subject title 'kind reminder'. Be efficient and help them out, make your title 'MSc Literature Survey' or something to that effect.

As for including when you were last in contact with them in the body of the text, I would leave that out. It might just be me but it comes over as a little passive aggressive. If you're wanting someone to help you out, best not to rub them up the wrong way before they've even started.


The difference between literature review and background sections of a dissertation I was assuming these two were the same. What is the difference between them? How does one relate to another? The context here is an MA (Master of Arts) level social science dissertation in UK education system.

Should background talk about relevant research done? If so why does literature review exist? Or should the background chose only a few literature and discuss them throughly?

Context: I'm in a US PhD program and thus my answer may not be fully appropriate for Masters in UK.

In the US, a Masters thesis is required rather than dissertation, which is required only in PhD programs.  In Social Sciences, a Masters thesis shows that you understand the relevant research in some depth and that you can also apply this research to some specific problems or questions.  In contrast, a PhD dissertation needs to contribute to research in some important way (even if the contribution is narrow or small).

There are no widely accepted rules for what is appropriate for Background or Literature Review chapters, or whether your thesis should include either or both.

What follows are my views, based on reading various theses and dissertations.

A Background chapter is best used to present contextual or prerequisite information that is important or essential to understand the main body of your thesis.  Perhaps there were some historical developments that set the stage for your research questions or thesis.  Perhaps there was some debate over key terms or scope of your subfield.  Perhaps you are bringing together several disciplines, and you need to explain which aspects of each discipline you are including and not including.

A Literature Review chapter builds a conceptual structure that ties together all the key ideas from all the relevant literature.  By "conceptual structure" I mean an organized way of linking individual ideas together so that their relative importance and interrelations are clear and obvious to the reader.  What are the main ideas?  What ideas support these main ideas? What are the contradictory ideas?  On what basis to people decide what ideas or positions to support or oppose?

Viewed this way, what becomes clear is that a Literature Review chapter is less about "literature" and instead is mostly about "review".

For what it's worth, in my dissertation I will not have either chapter. Instead, I've decided to have a chapter called "Foundations" to cover both of these needs.


Should a colleague receive authorship for identifying a research gap and reviewing a manuscript? A colleague of mine identified a research gap / problem and reviewed a manuscript of mine addressing said problem. Otherwise, he/she had no other contribution to the conceptualization and execution of the solution and to the writing of the paper.

Does he/she deserve authorship? I don't believe so but I have acknowledged his/her contributions in the acknowledgements section. If this is not standard practice in science, I am more than happy to include his/her name in the list of authors.

Identifying a research gap and reviewing a manuscript does not seem to warrant authorship to me.

Things would be different if your colleague had also worked with you in designing the study, experiment or research project to address the gap she or he identified. Or if your colleague had written part of the manuscript, say the summary of the existing state of the art.

Different disciplines have wildly different conventions on what constitutes enough contribution to warrant authorship. For instance, the American Psychological Association offers resources and a helpful scorecard. At the first link, we find:

  An author is considered anyone involved with initial research design, data collection and analysis, manuscript drafting, and final approval. However, the following do not necessarily qualify for authorship: providing funding or resources, mentorship, or contributing research but not helping with the publication itself.

This does not seem to cover your colleague's contribution under the specific conventions in psychology.

I suggest you look over the websites of associations in your field, and/or of relevant journals/conferences, perhaps the venue where you are considering submitting your work. There may be similar resources specific to your field.


What is the difference between "interpreting" and "reporting" research in a scientific publication? In line with this question, I would like help with writing a results section in a Computer Science paper.  There are many useful suggestions online [1 , 2], but I am confused about one of the key points in these links:

  avoid interpreting the results rather than just reporting them. Just present and report the observations and measurements, factually and informatively, without discussion.

What is difference between interpreting and reporting?

Any skeleton/guideline to follow?

Actually the links you provided are excellent and give a good basis to start with. There's not much to add to it. Reporting styles of results sometimes differ from field to field so I think it's best to examine the style used by some of the papers that you cite that are similar to yours.

  How do you make the difference between interpreting and reporting?

This is usually the hardest part. A good way to start is to simple make a bullet point list of observations only. For example:

This is a green apple.
Each apple weighs 50 g.
Each box of apples weighs 2 kg.
There are 20 boxes.

This is going to be a boring, unexciting list. But this is exactly how it is supposed to be. Once you got the list, you can create a nice paragraph from it. Notice how tempting it is to just make the short calculation noting how many apples there are, but no! This is an interpretation and not merely an observation.

There are, however, some "obvious" one-word interpretation that sometimes can go to the results section. For example, you may point out that the apple is a Granny Smith cultivar. Or you may note that a 2 kg box is a standard size box. These immediate interpretations should be obvious to the reader, so he will not have to ask "why" when reading. The reason for putting these in the "Results" section instead of the "Discussion" section is that they may distract from the main point you are trying to convey in the full interpretation of the data.


What type of lawyer (criminal, civil, family, etc.) would I need to help me deal with issues of academic misconduct? What can stop a university from doing whatever they want and screwing students over in terms of accusing them unfairly of cheating, plagiarism, or a misunderstanding of professor authorization of essay re-submission in a second class? Also trying to take a student's degree or credit away after the course is completed/graduated with little evidence and no proof of circumstantial evidence that truly happened at the time of the incident? I ask this since they are private and go by their own rules and apparently there is no standard policy for how all universities are supposed to deal with issues. There are a lot of cases where businesses "screw people over".

This is in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.

Thanks.

Now that you've supplied sufficient information, the answer to your question seems fairly clearly spelled out within the university's own policy documents:

Section 6.6 shows that the decision-making process is not just a single professor "screwing you over," but rather:

a determination of academic misconduct shall be decided
by the Department Chair/Program Director based on a discussion between the student, the
instructor, and the Department Chair/Program Director, as well as a review of the evidence

At some point, it leaves the department and ends up in the hands of a Dean, who also meets with the students. The full details of the process are spelled out in Section 7.

If the student is unhappy, they have a right to appeal to a Senate Student Appeals Board (Section 8), which seems a peer body rather than a faculty body.  The full details of that process are spelled out in another linked document.

This looks like a pretty typical set of checks and balances: the individual professor is involved, but the key decision-making is not done by that professor or even within the department, and the faculty is in turn checked by appeals to a body of students.
Now, if your professor, the department head, the involved dean, and the student board are all convinced that you are guilty, you've got a more serious problem on your hands. Getting outside legal help might be warranted, but based on what you've written here, it seems like it's also quite plausible that you've either committed an offense and don't understand why it's an offense, or else that you've done yourself a disservice in the process by alienating people who might otherwise have helped.


What content should be on a CV vs. LinkedIn when applying to graduate school? I tried asking this elsewhere and got answers from people who do not know the difference between a resume and a CV. I figured academics would.

I ask this question because my LinkedIn is pretty detailed. It has a lot of the same content as my CV, except in the terrible organization enforced by LinkedIn. I figure it might be more effective to use my LinkedIn more like a resume with the highlights, pointing to my CV (which is linked) for extra details. But I'm not sure how to go about it.

For context, I am an undergraduate applying to graduate school. I have many research presentations, awards, and experiences so it is a lot of content to shove on a LinkedIn. I only included content relevant to my research or related technical experience, but it is still a lot to read.

Academics don't use LinkedIn, so it doesn't really matter what you've put there.


Should I link my research in my SOP? I have done some independent research that I wish to mention in my SOP. The full account of what I have done till has been published as an e-print on arxiv.org. Can I give a hyperlink to this e-print in my SOP?

I would differ a bit from both of the previous two responses.

The SOP and the CV serve different purposes. The SOP is the high-level summary (some would say sales pitch) for why your work is interesting and why you should be hired. This needs to be tightly written and compelling, and part of being compelling is highlighting particularly unique, interesting, or high-profile publications. Importantly, I've been told by several hiring committee members that more people will read your SOP than your CV - so if something's important, don't bury it only in the CV. The CV is more of a "data dump" in which you list everything that you've done that may be of interest. You don't necessarily want all of this detail clouding up your SOP, although you want the hiring committee to have access to it if necessary. Think of your SOP like a glossy brochure and the CV like a dictionary - the former is intended to be read while the latter is intended to be referenced.

So, that said, I think it's both a mistake to leave your publication out of your SOP entirely and also to list all of your publications there (if you have many). Reference only the key ones that support the rest of your story and include a hyperlink in a footnote if you think that a reader might actually follow it. I would suspect that this will be a rare event, though, and I would encourage you to put enough detail from this publication in the SOP itself that a reader won't have to follow the link to get the gist of what you did.


A professor has only proofread my paper. Should I include him as author? I am currently working on a paper in Computer Science. I am the sole author of the paper. Every aspect of the paper, the idea, the implementation, figures, plots, results are all solely based on my efforts. Since I wanted it to be accepted into a good conference/journal, I wanted it proofread. I approached a professor who is doing research somewhere close the same field (not exactly the same field) as my paper's. He made corrections to the paper based on semantics and visual aesthetics. Should I include him as a secondary author? Is it ethically wrong if I just mention him in the acknowledgements section? How should I go about dealing with this situation?

I would thank him in the acknowledgments. Although there is no set standard for what is required to be an author, it is generally accepted that they must make a research contribution. Proofreading definitely doesn't meet that criterion (or any of the other criteria that I have seen).

I did this in one of my recent papers. I just said:

  We would also like to thank Bob Bob for his helpful feedback on a draft of the paper.


Put an AMS offprint (of my paper) on my academic page I have an article published in AMS Contemporary Mathematics.
I want to put my publications on my academic page.
So I went to AMS site, log in, download an offprint, upload to the server which
hosts my page, and gave a link to it.

However, this offprint has the following statement at the bottom
of each page, in red color.

This is a free offprint provided to the author by the publisher. Copyright restrictions may apply.

I am not sure what I did is proper. Besides asking AMS directly, do you have
any thought about this?

The Sherpa/Romeo database is a great resource to find out what kind of re-use the journals allow. In your case, it seems that you can put online the final version of the paper that you submitted to them post-refereeing (with a statement like "published in..."), but not your offprint or the version which is on the publisher website. This is slightly inconvenient because the page numbers will differ, but it is the most common arrangement in mathematics.

The database is only indicative, though: the only legally binding terms are the ones in the copyright transfer agreement that you signed prior to publication, after your paper was accepted (they had you sign one, right?). Read the small print.

This is the theory --- in practice, I have never heard of publishers going after authors for putting the wrong pdf online, at least in mathematics. In general the AMS as a publisher is considered a Good Guy, so I would advise you to respect their requests anyway.


Has there ever been a trend in academia like the one we're experiencing with Data Science? At a panelist event that I attended recently, exactly 100% of the current students and alumni in the room who didn't have PhDs in Machine Learning stated that they wanted a PhD in Machine Learning -- and they all wanted to know how and where to accomplish this goal.  I'm honestly not sure whether most of these students can even describe what machine learning is.  There were long lines to talk with computer science PhDs, who are directors of research either at a university or in industry, e.g., Google, Goldman Sachs - everyone was so infatuated with the thought of getting into Data Science.

Does any field in the past compare to the current field of Data Science, in terms of trendiness and importance?

Was it Probability Theory?  Fourier Analysis?  Number Theory?  Mechanics?      Law School?

This coming semester, I really wanted to follow my interests and study measure theory and functional analysis - just skimming through the table of contents of the functional analysis book by Reed and Simon was pretty exciting in itself.  Yet, it's hard to drown out the Data Science influence, and I feel that I should be "wiser" and take machine learning / data science courses instead.

A respected math PhD student in our department advised me that, "if you study some subfield of algebra deeply, then in the future perhaps a dozen people might understand your work.  But if you get into Data Science, it's a field that's projected to grow for decades to come, and if you land in industry instead of academia, all of the skills are transferable, unlike the skills gained from studying algebra."

Does any field in the past compare to the current field of Data Science, in terms of trendiness and importance?

Yes. It has happened before, it is happening now, and will again.  There was programming in the 80's and 90's.  Then Software Engineering...
Back in the late 40's and 50's there was a big boom in nuclear physics, and nuclear engineering.

Don't get a degree because you think that there might be good jobs.  Do what is interesting to you (and something that is likely to get you a job.)  If you like Data Science, then do it.  If you don't, then don't.  you are going to have to live with doing the work all day, every day for many, many years to get a PhD.  If you aren't in love with it, then you will not succeed.

Since a PhD is a long-term commitment, takes a lot of patience, costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time during the term, it is not to be undertaken by an answer on the internet. It is your decision.


Does changing department affect my rank? I am a PhD graduate from department of CS. I might get an offer to join as an assistant professor at a different department (industrial design) to work in a multidisciplinary project. My question is that if I change my department or even my institution in future would it affect my rank? Will my researching effort being counted in future?
EDIT
I need to clarify that after the end of my contract, I will be evaluated to be promoted as an associated professor. My question is that since I might work for industrial department, the rank given to me would be valid if I join, say, CS department?

When you receive your job offer, it will offer you a specific position/rank. It would be unusual to offer someone a lower rank than they already have, but not inconceivable when moving between universities (i.e. moving from Northern State University to Harvard). It would be very unusual for a department within your university to offer you in effect a demotion.
You would always have the choice to not accept.


List of approved Competency-Based Education schools Does the US department of education publish a list of universities that they've approved for Competency-Based Education?  I've only discovered articles where they've approved a couple schools at a time.  I'd love to find a complete list so that i can do a thorough comparison prior to choosing a program.

Competency-Based Education can be generically described with these bullet points:

Classes do not have a set end date.  They end as soon as you're able to pass the necessary assessment test(s) for that subject.  This could be in as little as 2 days if you're already knowledgeable on the topic.
You don't pay per class.  Rather, you pay a flat fee for a block of time (typically 3 or 6 months).
You're able to take as many classes as you want within the 'subscription' timeframe.  The only requirement is that you pass the assessment of class1 before starting class2.
Competency-based programs are typically in an online-only setting and do not require any time to be spent on a campus.

One benefit of this style of program is that efficient students can acquire a degree in a much shorter timespan than if they enrolled in a typical structured program.  The end cost also has a high probability of being significantly cheaper than a structured program.  Competency programs are commonly between $6000-$9000 per year.

There's a preliminary list here of experimental sites with programs participating in the DoE's Competency-Based Education experiment. (Via this page about current DoE experimental initiatives.)

The list is watermarked "Preliminary" and is dated 4/16/15, so keep this in mind in how you use it - it may not be completely reliable or up to date.


Why do universities require official confirmation of scores before admission? Why do American universities want official GRE/TOEFL scores before admission? It seems to be a waste of time and money for prospective applicants. They can easily use the scores claimed by students in first stages and ask them official scores after admission.

On the other hand ETS can send official scores directly to universities electrically via Internet without additional cost.

The problem is that many students will resort to cheating, if necessary, to secure admission to graduate school. Just about any method or loophole that can be exploited will be. For instance, when I was an undergraduate in the 90's, one of the graduate departments stopped admitting students from China for several years because they had multiple instances where applicants had stand-ins for interviews to determine their English skills. Similarly, at my current school, we have recently had a rash of applications come in with faked English competency certificates.

Therefore, American graduate schools (and programs in other countries which ask for test scores) are increasingly (although not exclusively) relying on officially submitted documents. Scores reported directly from the College Board would presumably be less likely to be subject to manipulation.

As far as why not just ask for a paper copy: American departments usually only have one admissions cycle per year. Therefore, admitting someone who is ineligible because of fraudulent documents usually means denying someone else who is qualified the ability to be admitted. Therefore, schools want to know that the students are officially eligible before they are admitted, and will not hold up the process until later. Schools that do rolling admissions likely do not have this problem, and could perhaps use the method you have suggested.


Pursue a German PhD with a Masters from the USA? In December of this year (2020) I'll graduate with an MA in Applied Linguistics from a US university (via distance learning/online). I have been living and working as a full-time teacher at a bilingual school in Germany since 2012 and specialize in bilingual education (English/German) with a focus on the subjects of History and English. After graduating, I would like to pursue a PhD in a related field (linguistics) at a university in Germany with the career intention of conducting research and lecturing/instructing at a university. I have seen a lot of German universities host paid PhD research projects with very interesting topics, which seems like a direction to pursue, but I am not sure if the pay will be enough to support my family. I am the main provider for my wife and son (3 y.o.) and we won't be able to financially handle a huge cut to my current salary (about 4,000 Euro gross/brutto per month).

As to my questions, I am looking for some advice about the potential career-path. Does it make sense for an American to pursue a German PhD with a BA and MA degree from the US? Financially, would it be possible to continue to support my family while pursuing a PhD in Germany? Is it worth it at my age (35 y.o.) to pursue a PhD?

If the information helps, I plan on staying in Germany permanently as my wife is German, I do not want to continue teaching at the secondary school level, and I am fluent in German. Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated!

You can compute your prospective salary yourself: http://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/c/t/rechner/tv-l/allg?id=tv-l-2020

Typically, TV-E13 but only 50% or 65% depending who funds your position. Whether that is enough is up to you and your wife. A career at the German university is a high risk gamble, and it take quite a while before you know whether you make it or not. If it does not work out, then you will have invested a lot of time in a career that did not work out.


How to avoid "presentism" or "historical transposition" in writing papers? I am seeking any published writing style guidance or good/best practices to help with writing a paper so as to avoid introducing the taint of what is called "presentism" also known as "historical transposition".

I found this webpage at RationalWiki which gives a good solid definition of the topic, and points out that there are two very different uses of the word, one for historical matters and one for philosophical matters.

  Please note: I am NOT interested in the philosophical context of this word (i.e. the contrast to eternalism).

In essence the following excerpt seems most relevant to the topic I am asking about...

  presentism is a style of writing or argument that can be fallacious, depending on the circumstances. [...] Another common form of presentism is allowing present-day moral judgments to creep into characterizations of the historical figures. [...] In good scholarly historical work, like in law, it's imperative to separate the consequences of the action from the intent.

Hopefully such guidelines can help writers in two ways:

Show the researcher/writer how to identify subtle forms of presentism and related pitfalls that may creep into the text.
Show how to write a paper in a manner that helps the reader to avoid their own tendencies towards a presentist view.

Presentism is the concept that we as humans have a tendency to interpret history using modern world views by either condemning the past based on modern day societal norms (ex: ridiculing American 19th century indecency laws such as bathing suit requirements) or else discounting the significance of past societal norms that once were but are no longer acceptable (ex: asserting that sending people to debtor's prison can not happen in modern America). There are other more subtle forms however, such as the perception of implicit superiority of the present over the past in general.

Follow links on historiography - there are lots out there.  Historiography is both an academic discipline and a name for a text that outlines and contextualises a question with particular focus on how and why and when and where it was approached by whom.

Reading in this area will help you to understand why 'presentism' is an issue in academic writing and how to spot it in your own thinking and writing.

The other advice I can give is to say that if you pay attention to any good academic writing you will see that there are clear indications of what is intended as empirical and what is inferred.

Proper use of references and citations will help you to avoid accusations of being wholly subjective.  If you want to get across a value statement why not find a quote from someone contemporary to the event whose opinion mirrors your own.  Do not forget to include and consider opinions that contradict your own as well.  You can weigh the merits of an argument voiced by others.  Of course, ultimately, your findings will be influenced by your own background and social context.  Try to be clear and honest with yourself and your audience about when and how this is happening.


Acknowledging a Mistake in Research In a few weeks, I have to make a presentation on my research. When conducting my research, however, I made a small mistake. Unfortunately, I do not have the ability to conduct the experiment again, and I am not sure how to go about acknowledging the mistake in my presentation. All of the tests I have been able to do suggest that this mistake did not impact the results. Furthermore, my research was in physics, and the results conform to well-established, theoretical laws. I know that it is only right for me to acknowledge, but I fear that all of my research will be judged poorly because of this one, simple mistake (that I deeply regret making). How can I go about presenting this? Are my fears warranted?

I am always in favor of the approach of disclosing a mistake and sharing any work you have done towards understanding the impact of that mistake, whether it suggests the original result is still viable or not. For example, depending on the exact type of mistake you made, it might be possible to model the influence on the outcome (e.g. if something is out of focus, but you know how out of focus it was, you can estimate the expected scattering of your resulting data).

Certainly someone can judge you based on whatever their personal criteria for perfection are, but especially if you are an inexperienced researcher I would lose much less respect for you under these circumstances than I would for someone who was going to judge you poorly after making one mistake, acknowledging it, and studying the likely impact of the mistake. Your issue would be one of learning to be a careful researcher; their issue would be one of personal character. Which is easier to resolve?

I would also point out that showing you will acknowledge a mistake in one area of your work does not discredit the other work; if anything, it suggests you have more self-awareness and insight into your data than someone that presents everything as if it is definitively free of all flaws.


I'm going to start my PhD with weak foundation in research I did my masters in Computer Science last year and it was a taught masters so I didn't do any type of 'Research'. The problem that I encounter now is that I'm going to start my PhD in the next few days and I don't have any idea about how to do it (I don't know how to write a literature review, for example.)

So, Is it possible to do it or will be very difficult in my case? And do you know any books that can help in building the foundation for me to be able to do the research?

Cheers!

So, Is it possible to do it or will be very difficult in my case?

Unless the faculty in your new department are negligent sociopaths, they would not have admitted you to their PhD program without a firm belief that you could succeed.

Your lack of research experience could make your PhD more difficult than for other incoming students, but mostly because it will take you more time to settle into a research pattern.  If you want to speed up the transition, get involved with research as soon as possible.  Do not fill your weekly schedule with standard homework- and project-heavy classes.  Sign up for independent study/research credit.  You're unlikely to produce publishable research in your first semester, but that's okay; your primary goal is to develop research habits, not research results.

In fact, I'd suggest getting in touch with faculty in your new department now to arrange for independent study time in the fall and to ask for reading suggestions.  If you know who your new advisor/supervisor will be, ask them first.


Do editors ever "overbook" referees? Is the following common? An editor for a journal sends a paper out to, say, three or four referees. After getting the first two referee reports, the editor makes a decision and tells the third and fourth referees not to bother (so that they have potentially been wasting their time).

I can see this happening in some circumstances, e.g. if one referee finds a substantial error. However, I was asked to referee for one journal, and I get the impression (which I have not yet confirmed) that they typically send the paper out to lots of referees and take only the first couple of referee reports.

This practice, if it is indeed what they are doing, seems likely to produce quick turnaround times, but also seems disrespectful to referees who might be half-finished when they are told their reports are no longer needed.

Is this common? (In particular, in mathematics?)

I think this one will be very hard to answer with hard data. So, I'll just throw in some anecdotal evidence, along with a few things learnt from some editors that I know.

From a reviewer point of view, it has happened to me exactly twice in a decade (i.e. very rarely) to receive an editor's review saying “I've reached a decision based on input from other reviewers, and you do not need to review the manuscript”.

The first time, the email came as my review was already overdue (a week or ten days), so I suppose the editor asked another reviewer when I didn't reply on time, and the new reviewer was fast to reply.
The second time, it was sort of the other way around: I was asked to review a paper, then 5 days later the editor wrote, saying the reviewer who was uncommunicative had finally replied, and my review was no longer needed. He apologized profusely, and offered to actually wait for my review if I had started doing it and wanted to finish. (I was happy to let it go.)

I think for an editor, growing a list of trustworthy and willing reviewers is crucial. So, they simply cannot make them work for nothing! (pun intended)


Why do most U.S. Ph.D. programs accept fewer students with masters degrees? In the US, most Ph.D. programs accept far fewer students with master degrees compared to students who just graduate from college with a bachelor. Why is that the case since master students are supposed to have more background and maybe more research experience than students who just graduated from college?

I'm not sure that your basic premise holds. What you've stated is not common knowledge, and you don't give any particular source for your numbers.  More importantly, you haven't answered @NateEldedge's question about total numbers vs. acceptance rates.

Based on my own anecdotal experiences, however, my guess would be that the actual circumstances are this:

Students with a Masters are more likely to get into a U.S. Ph.D. program than students without a Masters, for exactly the reasons that you suspect.
Most students interested in a Ph.D. program, however, apply directly without bothering to get a Masters first. As a result, it may well be the case that most U.S. Ph.D. students do not have a Masters.

The underlying reason that would cause such an apparently counter-intuitive situation is that in the U.S., it is typically the case that a Ph.D. and a Masters are both terminal degrees that serve different purposes. A Masters is frequently a focused collection of coursework in support of one's profession, whereas a Ph.D. is an apprenticeship into the world of research.  As such, most U.S. Ph.D. programs do not require or expect applicants to have a Masters, and there is often little incentive for students inclined toward a Ph.D. to delay and acquire one, unless they have some particular reason (e.g., they aiming to shift fields, improve on a past poor record, or escape the effects of a poor undergraduate institution).

Note however, that in other parts of the world, like Europe, Ph.D. programs are organized to assume that students have already acquired a Masters, and in such programs it is the case that nearly every Ph.D. student will have a Masters.


Does IEEE accept a previously rejected paper for peer review? A few months before, I have submitted a manuscript to an IEEE journal. But, unfortunately, it has been desk-rejected (because the manuscript is written like a report). The editor has mentioned in an email not to submit this manuscript again in the same journal.

However, I am planning to submit it again in the same IEEE journal because, I have made so much modifications and believe that this time the manuscript is up to the mark.

I have mentioned the above issue in the cover letter.

Is this a good idea? I mean does IEEE accept a previously rejected paper for publication? Because, the editor has explicitly stated not to submit the manuscript again. Does the editor consider the fact that we have modified the manuscript a lot?

If it has sufficient changes and answers the concerns of the editor you will probably get a new hearing.

However, if you think of it as the same manuscript then perhaps you haven't made sufficient changes that it will be considers as new, rather than a resubmission.

However, if you have done the necessary work, I think your note accompanying the manuscript (NEW manuscript) should be sufficient. It is a courtesy to them so that they can be reminded of the history.

And of course, make sure it doesn't read like a "report". You may be able to get some local advice on that.


Is asking questions with very short answers on major exams recommended? As a part of TA work, I need to give questions for major exams. I need to evaluate the answer sheets of students later.

Let us consider the following simple examples of questions:

1)  Briefly describe natural numbers.

The answer to this question is not unique. It depends totally on the student's perspective on natural numbers. And the answer is generally long.

2) How many natural numbers are there in total? Is 6.6 a natural number?

The answer to this question is too short (Infinite, No). The answer does not depend on the student's perspective on natural numbers. It tests the knowledge of students regarding natural numbers.

I want to give questions of second type, which can test the student's knowledge and intelligence in detail and avoids long answers, ambiguous answers, long evaluation time, partial marking, unnecessary bargaining for marks by students, etc.

But some of my colleagues and faculty are saying that it is similar to multiple choice questions and fill in the blank questions, which are not recommended for major exams, which need long answers. I am confused, but strongly want to give answers of type 2 (single line answers).

Assume that there is no copying during exams.

There's a bit of a false dichotomy in the way you present things. Exam questions can have a long answer without being hopelessly vague and subjective. In college-level math, one usually can't avoid asking some questions with long answers, whether they're problem-solving, proof-based, or conceptual. Partial credit is just part of the deal, as is handling the occasional student seeking more partial credit. (You have to at least hear them out, because it's always possible you've made a mistake.)

However, there are different views on this; I once had a professor who gave an entirely true/false final exam, with no explanations or partial credit, in an abstract algebra class. His reasoning was that over an exam with say 40 questions, the effects of random guessing would average out to a roughly equal small bump for everyone. I was skeptical, but after taking the test I was confident that the same people did well on it, as would have done well on a traditional "solve this problem, prove this small fact, etc." exam. But this may have worked because abstract algebra has a lot of questions with a concise statement and answer, but that require real understanding. (One T/F question I remember: The Galois group of the fifth cyclotomic field is cyclic.) I don't think it would work for every course; at some point in your math education, someone needs to read the gory details of your solutions and give you feedback.

By all means, look for opportunities to make good questions that can be graded quickly and objectively, but a lot of the time, there just aren't many questions like that.