Can someone requests further modification after the revised deadline in an IEEE conference? If one has an accepted paper in the conference and he already submitted the revised version. Suppose that the deadline for submitting the revised papers has been finished last week for example. Is it possible to send a mail to the conference in order to request some further changes? In other words, can this be acceptable by the IEEE conference?

Any help will be very appreciated!

Contact the program chairs immediately. There is a moment in the publication process where changes are no longer possible, but this moment is not necessarily the deadline for revised papers.

Regarding the acceptability of such a request: Conference organizers are humans, too, so they will understand that people make errors and/or suboptimal choices. In addition, they might have an active interest in publishing the revised version: For example, a critical error that made it through the review process may reflect poorly on the conference and its organizers.


Is it okay to send a paper to a journal as well as for conference Few months back I presented a paper in conference and sent the same for possible publication in the conference proceedings. I got no response for a long time and with the consent of my supervisor sent the same paper to a journal with some modifications in the paper. I want to know is it okay to send the same paper to both? As far as I feel, its not right, still I need opinions. Thanks in advance.

Apparently conference has different meanings in different disciplines. In the fields with which I am familiar, conference publications are either limited to abstracts or are published in proceedings which are just as official as a journal In the former case there is of course no problem but in the latter sending the same paper off to a conference (for proceedings publication) and to a journal would not be correct. Therefore, you need to figure out what norms apply in your field, particularly whether the conference proceedings is a real publication.


What is the best way to see if students understood? I am teaching classes of a size of 20-25 persons.

During a class, what is the best way to get feedback from students? Concretely, I would want to get the following questions answered every ~15-20 minutes:

Did the students understand what I was explaining?
Are there any questions related to what was just discussed?

Ideally, I would also like to encourage weaker students to ask questions---without them being afraid of asking those questions.

Do you have any advise on how to best phrase such questions from my side?

I'm going to suggest that you are probably over-using lecture as a teaching technique. If that is the case, there is hardly any way to achieve the goals you set. Students don't learn something by hearing it once, or even twice. They learn by engaging with the material and that is impossible in the short term available in a lecture. At most, what you can elicit is a bit of ephemera from their short term memories. But that isn't learning. Let me suggest two techniques, but the first is, by far, the least effective.

Force the students to take extensive notes with paper and pencil. They can use full size sheets of paper, but should also each have a deck of index cards. Encourage/require the students to record on the index cards the three most important ideas from any given lecture (one idea per card). Take time periodically, if you like, but the end of the class period is likely enough, to ask them what were the most important three ideas. Students volunteer from their already prepared cards. You can accept or veto any idea. Do this every day. Also, encourage/require students to write questions on the cards and pass them to you periodically (this is your every 15 minute solution). Quickly sift through the questions and either answer them immediately or just incorporate them into what you do going forward. At the start of the next class, ask the question, what were the three most important ideas from the previous lecture. Again, volunteers can offer suggestions. Also, see my answer to a different, but related question at CSEducators
The above, still assumes that you use lecture primarily, but this is not an optimal teaching technique. Instead, you want to learn about and use a flipped classroom. A search for "flipped classroom" on this site will reveal a lot of discussion. I point you to an answer I gave for slightly younger students but which also applies here. I try, there, to outline the idea. But the key to it is that in a flipped classroom you use the face time to work with the students, rather than to perform for them. In a situation like this, you have no doubt about their understanding as you are involved directly in developing it.

Of these two techniques, the second is much more likely to be effective. In CS, it also gives you the opportunity to use pairing and group work so that the students can reinforce one another's learning, so that not every idea needs to come from you and so that you don't need to individually reinforce the learning of every student. Lots of wins can be achieved here.

Since it came up in a comment, let me add that one reason to dis-favor lecture as a primary teaching technique is that students have different "learning modalities" and lecturing disadvantages some students - those who are not primarily visual or aural learners. Active learning, combined with other things, is much more effective as it reinforces the learning immediately and drives it deeper into the brain's pathways. Every student is different and instructors should realize that most students are not like themselves unless they are doing doctoral level education.


Classroom participation – is there a gender issue? I recently talked with my advisor and several other professors from the same field about student–teacher interaction in class. Several of them said they had noticed that men participated in class and interacted with them significantly more than women, and that they thought this is a problem because:

Classes work better when students participate and there’s a dialogue
If students do not ask questions, they (professors) have no way to know whether the students are actually learning.
It is easier to recognize/get to know/appreciate a student, and therefore eventually write him/her a good recommendation letter or invite him/her to work with you if you notice said student in class.

All this got me thinking: is this a real phenomenon and if yes, why is it an issue? I think perhaps, it’s also a matter of perception: at some point in the conversation my advisor said he considered I was very quiet in class too, and I’ve never perceived myself as such.

One part of the difference is not that women are different in their willingness to ask questions, but anyone visibly different is. I was an undergrad in a class of 44. There were 4 women: two of one visible ethnicity, and two of another. My hair was a different colour and length than the other woman of my ethnicity. This meant everyone knew who we were. If we were late, asked a question that showed we hadn't been listening, or did anything else, everyone knew who did that. In contrast there were 5 or 6 white guys with short dark hair and football player builds who wore leather class jackets and sat at the back. There were 5 or 6 guys of several other ethnicities, and 5 or 6 nerdy glasses-wearing white guys with bad fashion sense. I got some of them confused sometimes. They all had somewhere to hide. They could blurt something out without much consequence.

If you would like more people to participate in your class, make sure you don't punish "bad" participation at all. It may be fun to be the person who answers a question with "I see somebody skipped the pre class reading" and then just turn away, but it ensures a large chunk of the class will not ask that sort of question again, and those who do will use up class time with defensive speeches about how they were reading the blah and blah "and on page (flip flip yes here it is, 73) it says (read sentence) and so I was wondering whether "permanent" is really appropriate here" and so on.

You can also call on students who don't ask many questions, asking them questions. My PhD supervisor did this constantly. Like 5-10 times an hour. "... and so if we reduce this completely, the result is ... Mrs Gregory?" (he was such a formal guy, called us all Mr and Mrs) and if I was following I would say the next line in the work, and if I wasn't I would say "I don't know" and he would call on someone else. This kind of approach keeps people engaged (you never know when you'll be called on) and gives everyone practice speaking up in class. (Plus it teaches you when to say "I don't know" - and he never had a problem with us not knowing.)


How can I tactfully decline my supervisor's suggestion and set boundaries? New here. So I just started my postdoc about a month ago (great time to start a postdoc during a pandemic I know). Learning the ropes and trying to kinda set my own path in the lab has been challenging and I find using my voice or voicing concerns to be hard. So my boss mentioned something about me possibly going to use a piece of equipment on another campus about 2.5 hrs away, it would require me to go daily for about two weeks. I don't really need this equipment for anything at the present moment but she has really dug her heels in about staying productive.

My biggest concern is I'm really serious about these stay at home orders and have been kinda putting that to the side to go to work daily. Because I am new I don't want to seem to difficult, but this recent idea just seems like too much in general let alone during these times.

I have a PhD and I thought that would magically make me more assertive alas it has not. Any ideas on how to tactfully set some boundaries especially since it is in regards to my health.

5h commute a day for 2 weeks is not acceptable, pandemic or not. To play it tactfully, I would ask the supervisor to pay for accommodation there for these 2 weeks. This will force your supervisor to:

pay for it, so reconsider whether it is worth it.
if she pays officially for it, she must check whether that trip is authorized by the university considering the pandemic, I know mine has forbidden all travel.
I think it is reasonable to ask for accommodation but would end up being a graceful way of dodging the bullet.


What criteria are used to rank graduate programs? I'm only asking this out of curiosity since I've seen posts/discussions about getting into "top" graduate programs etc. This mentally (wanting to get into a "top" ranked program) makes sense (depending on one's priorities) for undergraduate study, since the selectivity is what gives the degree its "prestige."  This may also hold true for law or medical school programs where rankings may reflect the level of training one receives and/or directly affect internship/residency opportunities etc. However, I'm not sure how this would apply to a research degree.
For example, in masters or PhD research programs, you're applying to conduct research under the auspices of a specific advisor. Thus, it seems that alignment of research interests and personal compatibility should be prioritized over "rank" of the program. Obviously one still has to meet certain admissions criteria regardless of the program they're applying to, but it doesn't make sense (to me anyway) to rank/judge research oriented graduate programs the way one would an undergraduate or "professional" program (i.e medical or law school etc).
Also, will the quality of one's graduate education or future academic career opportunities be affected by the rank of the program? Personally, my main priorities are location combined with compatibility of an advisor. However, I was curious as to what criteria are used to rank graduate programs and why would one prioritize rank of program over other factors.

What criteria are used to rank graduate programs?

Before enrolling in a PhD program, you should identify your personal goals and needs, and evaluate graduate programs yourself according to your own criteria.  When doing so, consider life both during and after your graduate studies.  Mathematical formulas for ranging graduate programs do exist, but they are inaccurate and measure something different from your personal needs.  An applicant to a graduate program should be sophisticated enough to perform their own evaluation based on a range of data sources.
In short:  Don't rank graduate programs in same way universities are ranked.
Further, your supervisor is usually more important than your program.

Also, will the quality of one's graduate education or future academic career opportunities be affected by the rank of the program?

This is a duplicate.  University rank/stature - How much does it affect one's career post-Ph.D?


What are opportunities for academic math outside of academia itself? I finished my PhD program in pure math a few years ago and have been in industry since then. I would love to continue my academic career, but (long story short) I was treated badly by my program and left with the doctorate but without a postdoc or much in the way of a publication record or connections (thus making the doctorate close to pointless) I haven't had much trouble finding jobs in software engineering or government labs, but I haven't found the work there to be interesting or satisfying.

Like pretty much everyone who goes into math, I love math for its own sake, and I love research. Is there anything available outside of academia where I could undertake something close to pure math research? Ideally, I'd like to beef up my publication record and make some connections, but a tech company doesn't seem to be the right place to do that. Although the jobs are certainly there, coding and engineering really aren't my things, and I'd like something more strongly related to math and more academic and research-oriented in nature.

If you are a US citizen living in the USA, you can work for NSA (which, if I recall correctly, is known to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the country) provided you pass their background check and satisfy their other requirements. However, your research will likely be classified, so you will not be able to publish it in the regular math journals.

Should you happen to be in the UK, their counterpart of NSA is GCHQ. Many other countries also have similar organizations.


Evaluation criteria for 3-minute teaching demonstration over Skype? I have been asked to participate in a Skype interview for an academic position in a STEM field.  One focus of the institution is innovative and non-traditional teaching methods.  This is the first interview/contact after submitting my application package.

The Skype interview is scheduled to last 15 minutes.  As part of this interview I have been asked to teach something I am "passionate about" in only three minutes.

I am struggling with what the evaluation criteria might be for such a short demonstration.  If I were evaluating a short teaching demonstration, these are the things that I would be looking for:

enthusaisiam
the ability to communicate in the language of instruction
the ability to engage students
use of appropriate visuals
including an interactive or active learning segment
checking up on the audience to see if they are understanding the lesson

However, I don't see how I could authentically include the last three items in a 3-minute lesson.

Questions:

What do you think would be the search committee's evaluation criteria?
Should I try to incorporate active learning and visuals?
Is it appropriate to ask what the evaluation criteria are?

The easiest thing is to ask what  the criteria of evaluation is. Given the small time they probably want to see if can you actually teach something in three minutes. This take incredible content and communicative mastery to find a topic that fits within this time limit and can be explained. The typical expert knows too much to share with such direct and concise simplicity.

In relation to visuals, I would have one as a maximum that I might explain to my audience. I would  not try to do any active learning because just explaining what to do will take up all the time and there will not be any time to discuss whatever you had them do.

You  could consider asking a question or two during the demo. However the question should not be open ended because of the time constraints. You want to use the questions to lead to the goal of the lesson.


Pure maths "dropout" wanting to finish MSc thesis Personal background
I'm currently in my thirties. I began my math path with self studying some of the university courses while in high school thanks to the guidance of a prolific mentor at the university ( he passed away a few years ago in a tragic accident). Then it continued a bit backwards and by the time when I entered university I started out with PhD and masters level courses in pure mathematics. Mainly because those were the interesting courses that kept my motivation high. I took the more mantatory courses towards the last years as "fillers".
I was in the process of starting out with my 4th year thesis in my third year of studies (older type of Master degree) when my PhD programe application that I had good letters of recommendations for got rejected. This rejection together with becoming a bit burned out and feeling a bit of general social abstinence from the solitary nature of my self studies led me to abandon pure maths. Instead I started to study applied maths. I got into finance/insurance without a thesis where I'm working ever since with mainly mathematical modeling.
Current situation
Maths has always been my passion. I generally feel motivated by my work but there's a longing for some more of an intellectual challenge. I opened some of my old books in Algebraic Geometry during the COVID-19 quarantine and noticed how much I actually remembered from back then. This lit my spark in a way I have not experienced with my otherwise mundane work. My motivation other than the pure interest I have in the subject is that I feel that not having a thesis is a failure that I want to remedy. It will also be useful for future work prospects I believe. I don't think I will become a researcher because I don't have the time and dexterity with two kids or the brain plasticity at this age. It's a long road after all.
I'm currently self studying algebraic geometry from the "bible" Hartshorne amongst other books. I have a past PhD course in algebraic geometry but since it was so long ago I'm attending a masters level course in the subject. I'm also thinking that completing it will help convince potential advisors that I'm serious and that I'm not just talking.
I have enough credits from my past studies for a masters in pure mathematics. The things I lack is a thesis. Two actually, one B.Sc which is a prerequisite for a M.Sc these days.
Questions

Given my perhaps a bit unorthodox experience with mathematics and the fact that I don't have any degree. How do I approach professors and ask them to take me on to write a B.Sc thesis? I feel like my age and long hiatus might put many of them off. Normally I would probably visit them in the office and talk, but these COVID-19 times when everyone's working from home that's not possible. I don't want "anyone" as a supervisor because I'm not doing this only for a degree but because I see it now as my hobby. So I want to write it about a subject that I will enjoy.

When I was in the process of thinking what I want and how I asked a few professors about  supervising a M.Sc thesis (even though I don't have an actual B.Sc degree yet, I didn't know this was required) through mail. Everyone of them replied that they didn't have the time in the coming period but that I should ask professor X. Did I burn my bridges with them?

Taking a semester off from work for the B.Sc (I will take time off once I get to the M.Sc, however), is not an option and I do fine currently with studying on the side of my other obligations. I want to combine my work and writing the B.Sc thesis by planning to write most of it during the summer and some as I am on parental leave with my our newborn next year. This seems very specific and might put off many potential advisors. How do I touch on this subject in my contact?

You have a lot of advantages, actually. First, though, ignore the age issue. It isn't something you can change and time moves on no matter what you do.
You seem to have contact with appropriate academics in your field. You can probably exploit that. But, since you are a bit non-traditional, for someone to take you on they might be concerned about whether you would be a burden or not.
Let me suggest a path, though there are others, certainly. Find a project that you think has merit in your field. Write up an outline of a thesis and fill in some parts of it, such as the literature search. Include a few ideas that might be developed into theorems, but which aren't currently known (yes, hard, I know). If you can't do that much, at least name one or two "threads" that might be pulled.
Take that to some professor that you have contact with and ask whether they think this has promise, first, as a bachelor's thesis. If yes, then ask whether they will guide it and get you over that first hurdle. It might be that a second thesis can follow the first along the same lines. Spell out your academic needs and background as you have here. A period of burnout after intense study is pretty common and many of us will understand that and have possibly experienced it.
But the outline will show someone that you are serious and the existing personal relationship will assure someone that working with you will be relatively easy and not a waste of time.

Even if the professor doesn't normally teach at the B.Sc level, they might be willing to work with you if you make their task easy. Note that I'm assuming that the bachelors thesis is an absolute requirement that can't be avoided. If so, tackle it first, even if your paper is more advanced than would normally be required.


What do people usually wear to conferences? I'm going to my first conference in about a month, where I will be presenting a poster.

How do people usually dress for conferences? Do I need to dress more smartly than usual? Is formal dress (e.g. a suit) normal? Or does no-one really care?

I'm a PhD student, if that makes any difference, and both my university and the conference are in the UK. It's a biology conference.

It depends a lot on the event (some gatherings are more formal than others) and on your status (win a Nobel prize, and you can wear anything you damn well want), but in general, you're not really expected to wear anything fancier to an academic conference than you would for a normal day at work or in class.

In practice, most people do tend to dress up a little bit, just to look their best, but still, even if you just wear your normal clean everyday clothes, you're not going to embarrass yourself (any more than you usually do, at least). As the other answers note, "smart casual" is the usual style here.

Nothing says you can't wear a suit if you want to; I see people do that all the time in conferences. Then again, some of those people also wear a suit to work every day, so...

Still, if you're in doubt, why not ask your advisor (or someone else in your group who's been to similar events before)? That's part of their job: to teach you the basics of academic work, which certainly includes presenting your work at a conference.


How to cite my own submitted but not yet published work? I plan to submit part of my current work to conference A. I then wish to submit my whole work to a more prestigious conference B. As for the part submitted to A, there is no point of repeating it again. So I will just cite my submission to A in my submission to B.

But the problem is that the submission deadlines for A and B are roughly the same. So actually the moment I submit the work to B, my partial work submitted to A has not been published yet. I have not even been notified of its acceptance.

Can I still cite it? My concern is that even if I can cite it, one will find nothing online.

In principle you can cite other, submitted work in a research paper. Just give the authors, paper title, and either "Submitted." or "Submitted to [venue]." in the reference list.

However, both as a reviewer and reader, I usually find this disappointing. I already came across several cases where I wasn't able to find the cited paper even years after publication of the paper with the citation. It is well possible that the cited paper is rejected, and maybe someone just doesn't follow up to really get it published. As a better alternative, check whether you can put a preprint version of the paper you want to cite online (e.g. on arxiv), and just cite that.


Can I be successful as a lone wolf researcher in mathematics? I am not a people person, and therefore I usually work alone.  I'm quite content with this, and I have actually been able to achieve some wonderful results (to me, anyway) working this way. However I worry that nobody else will really care about my research.

Are there examples of modern day mathematicians who have been successful (as recognized by the mathematical community) working alone?

How can I get more people to be interested in the problems I'm interested in, without being able to connect on a personal level?  Even if I'm not able to collaborate with anyone, I'd like to create some level of dialogue between other mathematicians and my publications. That is, I'd like for them to perhaps answer some of my questions, and for them to pose new ones that I could possibly answer.  So far, I have failed to achieve this.

Plenty of mathematicians are introverted, quiet, and typically prefer to work alone. (Also, plenty of mathematicians are extroverted, boisterous, and prefer to work with others -- but I believe the profession does a reasonably good job of welcoming various personality types.)

All successful mathematicians whom I know spend some of their time and energy engaging with the mathematical community. Going to conferences or chatting with colleagues are good ways to do this. There are also ways such as MathOverflow to interact with mathematicians online. And simply reading the (contemporary) work of other mathematicians is also a form of engagement.

If you want your work to be appreciated by others, then I recommend taking the time and energy to appreciate others' work. For example, are there any questions asked by others, for which your work gives any insights? If you can help people answer questions they are interested in, then it is quite natural that they might take an interest in your own work as well.

Good luck!


Falsified student signatures in class attendance list I am required to keep a tag at the students' attendance of classes by the rules of the university where I teach. The students' attendance cannot be lower than 75% of the classes, or else they automatically fail the course. To do so, I am required to handle them a signature sheet in each class. I am also expected to keep this sheet as proof I really taught the said class. (Not that I agree with this system, but the director can inquire a teacher and they must be ready to present this "proof", so I must abide by this rule.)

I have already come to terms with the fact that this is not really evidence of the students' attendance: they come late, leave before the class is finished, sign the sheet, and that's fine. However, even so, there are many absences and there is also the case of those students who falsify their classmates' signatures. I have already warned them on the first day of class that that won't be accepted, but in some cases the warning went unheeded.

The question is, I've had experience that the directors will also doubt the veracity of the attendance sheet, possibly accusing me of being too unyielding and uncompromising, even hinting that I must have falsified the whole thing with evil intentions. Because, according to the directors, a significant majority of the students must pass, regardless of their efforts. I have tried to be more "accepting" of absences (mainly if the student has good grades), but I cannot swallow having to condone falsified signatures. Should I follow the "culture" of the faculty that don't care the least about this fact (attendance and falsified signatures), despite their own rules? Or should I follow the rules and face the (possibly unpleasant) consequences?

The system you're describing sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare to me (both for the students and for you; these things generally go hand in hand). I would therefore sympathize with (and turn a blind eye to) students tricking their way through it to the extent that is necessary to let them focus on the actual work. It's sad that they are getting free lessons in forgery when they ought to be learning something more wholesome, but as long as they are doing the coursework without academic dishonesty (as in, homework plagiarism), this should not count against them. A class is not a test of conscentiousness.

If you want to push your students to attend the class, there are other methods that don't involve automatic failure, such as giving mild homework hints in your lectures.

[Extended from my comment.]


Value of a German Industrial PhD in India I have an offer for a full time job with a contract for 3 years in which I would be a PhD candidate in Germany at a reputed firm. I would have a supervisor at a technical university besides a supervisor at the company. The area of specialization is wireless communications. My plan is to go back to India in a couple of years and start working as an Assistant Professor in an IIT or some reputed institution in India.

Will this PhD have the same importance as compared to a PhD done at a university when looking for such Professorship in India?

As to address the second part of your question, almost all IIT's have a strict requirement that after your PhD (Which can be from Germany) you need to be a post doctoral fellow for a minimum of three years (assuming you took 3 years to do your PhD, bringing your total experience to 6 years). It is also mandated that this must be outside your home country.

Hope that helps.


Performance of the Toronto Paper Matching System (TPMS) for (conference) paper review assignment [EDIT (2016-11-11) based on a comment]

I have been invited as a reviewer for the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing  (ICIP 2016, on image processing, in a broad domain sometimes associated to computer science). The ancient system was based on ticked keywords (by benevolent reviewers) in a list (and on the area chairs' expertise).

The novel system is called TPMS. It is based on the paper Toronto Paper Matching System: An automated paper-reviewer assignment system. It uses a machine learning ("statistical matching") technique based on a sample of the reviewer's publications. It has also been used for CVPR 2016 (Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference).

Has the TPMS system   been successfully deployed?
Do reviewers or editors have a quantitative evaluation  of the efficiency of such systems?

Laurent Charlin's reference (http://papermatching.cs.toronto.edu/webapp/profileBrowser/about_us/) suggests that it's been adopted by "over 50 conferences", including the following conferences:

European Conference on Computer Vision
Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence
Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems
Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
International Conference on Computer Vision
International Conference on Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence and Statistics Conference

And it also "keeps the profiles of 8,000 reviewers". In machine learning circles, this is just about as good as it gets with non-mass-market data. The size of the training pool and the fact that it's been continuously worked on means it is likely to have become a fairly reliable tool.


When I reapply to universities which have previously rejected my applications, do I have to pay application fees again? I applied to a few US universities last year and they rejected my application because of my low GRE scores. Now I want to reapply again to the same universities.  Can you explain the process to reapply?  My concern is about application fees.  Is it required to pay application fees for the second time?

Generally, there is nothing special about a reapplication; you apply just as if you were applying for the first time.  You will submit all the required materials again.  Of course, you will submit updated transcripts and scores, and you will probably have revised or rewritten your application essay, so you'll submit the updated version.  Letters of recommendation will also need to be resubmitted; you should ask your letter writers to update their letters to reflect whatever you have been doing in the last year.  And yes, you do have to pay another application fee.

Most institutions will give your new application a fresh look; the fact that you have previously applied and been rejected should not prejudice them against your current application.  (However, people are human, and if some of the same people are still on the admission committee, they may have some memories of the weaknesses they saw in your previous application.)

Of course, to have a better chance of acceptance this time, you should have made yourself a stronger applicant!  Hopefully you have better GRE scores and stronger letters of recommendation, and can report some additional helpful and relevant coursework or work experience in the year since your last application.


Scientifically meaningful sources of bibliometrics Whether we like it or not, modern academia is increasingly being measured, in some vain attempt to get objective measures.  Although it is unwise to fight 'being measured', it is at least possible to steer the measures away from meaningless ones, backed by peer-reviewed research that establishes this unrefutably.

There are a lot of different metrics that have been defined - I am not looking for those.  What I want is pointers to the research behind the scientific validity of those metrics.

So the question is: where should I look for scientific assessments of bibliometrics?

Although just a start, we had a "journal club" over at the stats.se site on such bibliometrics, and had a chat over this particular article;

  Arnold, Douglas N. & Kristine K. Fowler. 2011. Nefarious Numbers.
  Notices of the AMS 58(3): 434-437. PDF link from publisher

  Abstract from initial ArXiv print:

  We investigate the journal impact factor, focusing on the applied
  mathematics category. We discuss impact factor manipulation and
  demonstrate that the impact factor gives an inaccurate view of journal
  quality, which is poorly correlated with expert opinion.

As far as scientific assessments the authors in the above article are pretty negative of such rankings, and give a few examples of editors having citation practices that intentionally inflate their journals rankings.

I'm sure more literature on the topic exists than this though (so I look forward to any other suggestions).

Unfortunately the transcript from the chat is currently not linked to in the applicable thread on meta stats. But I will update here if it becomes available.


Contacting prospective advisors before graduate school applications - courtesy or annoyance? Last year, rather late during the MSc application cycle (after one round of funding was allocated - tardiness due to an abrupt change in my life situation), I emailed two professors from two schools that I most wanted to go to. I had perused their webpages and decided these professors had the specific research interests closest to my own.

My reason for contacting them before finishing my applications for their respective schools was that the applications included a large section for specific research questions that I wanted to investigate. So, I emailed these professors asking a bit about their work, because their webpages of course featured surface-level stuff.

One professor was very receptive and invited me to Skype with her so she could better explain herself and I could ask her questions. With her support, I was able to write an application that met her standards quite quickly.

The other professor told me - paraphrasing, of course - that he was too far into the process of choosing a new student for his research group to spend time helping me finish the application.

Let me be clear that the latter professor didn't say any harsh words and I have nothing bad to say about him. That said, the purpose of my question is to decide whether it's better for me as a prospective MSc student to email professors ahead of time like this. Was the latter's rejection likely due to my tardiness rather my emailing him? The more receptive professor made the point that she always wanted to have prospective MSc students write their own research proposals and get her approval before submitting the application. Is this common? If so, then I guess reaching out beforehand is a good thing to do, but earlier in the application cycle?

Thank you.

Actually, it can be either a courtesy or an annoyance, depending on a number of things. A cold email from a student in an unrelated field that looks like a mass mailing is clearly annoying and will be discarded without an answer. But an initial contact from one of your professors with a recommendation to look at you, especially if they are colleagues, will meet with success. Most contacts are somewhere between these extremes.

I think you were lucky to get responses from both. The fact that neither was dismissive suggests you had a good approach.

The prof who refused you, I suggest, was being honest. Others were in the pipeline already and there was little time, as you say, to make a good and fair analysis.

I don't recommend sending out resumes blindly to a bunch of folks. It is unlikely to result in any success. But when you are stuck and in a time bind yourself, you do what you must. But having a faculty advocate initiate a conversation in your case might have been an even better way to proceed.

And, as always, do your homework. If your background and interest are aligned with those of the recipient you stand a better chance. Even better if you can indicate that you know something about their work. Blind praise of their work, not knowing what it really is, is easy to detect and such letter easily slide into the trash.


How to encourage students to work more carefully and independently? One of the challenges of advising students is working with students whose "quality control" expectations do not agree with that of the advisor. When such mismatches occur, how do we encourage them to provide "better" quality work. Note that it's not the number of hours being worked the concern, but rather issues like returning a marked-up manuscript with half of the important suggestions left unaddressed, or leaning too much on the advisor or more senior members of the group for help.

I recently heard a nice angle on this problem. Computer Scientist Olivier Danvy, adapting Buddhist philosophy, stated in a recent presentation that you need to inhale before you can exhale. What he meant was that in order for grad students to produce quality work, they need to see, read, ingest and understand quality work. Perhaps you can show them the difference between the high quality work and low quality papers you've also come across. Try to get the student to gauge where his/her work fits in relation to these other papers.

You'll also need to explain that even though poor quality work can actually be published, that this is not a good thing. Not good for science. And not good for building a career.

Many iterations of corrections is important. It takes time. But for every comment that is ignored, you need to find out why it is ignored, and make the student aware that it takes your time and is annoying if you need to make the same comment over and over again. Maybe the student does not understand the comment. Maybe the student is overwhelmed by the vast amount of comments. Maybe that just missed it accidentally. Maybe they just disagree.


Paper in revision stage but a similar paper was just published We have submitted a paper to a journal and got a major revision request. We were planning to resubmit our revised manuscript very soon, however, we noticed recently that a paper was published that basically studied the exact same thing with the similar conclusions.
How likely would our paper be rejected due to this rather than the fault of our studies? Or if rephrased, would it be ethical of a journal to suddenly reject a paper if a similar study was just published, even if all the revision queries are answered and there was no link between them?

Sad for you, but things like that happen.
Something that might help: Usually, there is a note in a paper making transparent when it was initially submitted, when a revised version was submitted and when it was accepted for publication. If the other paper was accepted after your initial submission it is obvious that you could not have known the contents of that paper. In that case, as a neutral observer it is nice that two independent papers describe similar findings, i.e. reproduce the results. In that sense, your paper is worth publishing in any case.
You might be able to use this as an argument in a possibile discussion with the editor. However, there is a realistic chance that neither the reviewers nor the editor have heard of the other paper, so will not ask for any information in this direction.
Of course it would be best practice to make your current knowledge transparent to the editor anyway and maybe include some discussion about the other paper in your own paper. If I was the editor, and if the other paper was discussed properly, I would probably accept the paper for publication, given there are no other reasons not to do so (but this is my opinion).


How important is the publication venue for academic hiring and grant applications? A comment in this question says: but spending some money to publish in a high rank journal can open more funding opportunities in future, doesn't it?.  In another post, JeffE writes in this answer:

  Personally, when I read a CV, I only spend a second or two on the self-declared research interests and jump straight to the publication list..

If a candidate (either for hiring or for a grant) has good science but the publications are not in the most prestigious journals, but in slightly less known journals (but still journals that are not obscure), does that significantly hurt their chances?  Or is it really the content that matters and is the venue of publication less important?

Note that my question is specifically about the venue of publication.  These related questions do not answer my question:

What can I do as a graduate student to maximize my chances of obtaining a professorship?
How important is number of publications and prestige of the publication outlets for getting a tenure-track job?
How important are citations when applying for jobs or promotions?

There is probably not a single truth here but I would make the following statements:

Having a good publication record is the basis for basically everything in academia. The question is then what is good? As a fresh PhD student citations will be near zero (I am guessing in most fields). Having publications in citation index listed journals is therefore a definite plus. Having several as first author is a must (see What does first authorship really mean? for a discussion) I would also argue that having papers not part of the PhD (even if not first authored author) is a plus since it indicates activity.

As a new post-graduate you need to improve the publication record as best you can. You need to show that you do your own new work but also be part of collaborations in some mix. Building a publication record takes time and will partly be up to your own efforts and in some way also by chance (you never know what opportunities lie ahead).

To get employed, you can basically only compete with a good publication list. Everyone knows this takes time and I am guessing all fields have their own "standards" as to what is a reasonable publication rate. In my field where papers are based on field investigations, 2-4 papers per year is considered acceptable, the longer-term average should be towards 3-5. The rate is thus an aspect that should not be over-looked.

Typically you will have a dip post-PhD because it takes time to build or get into a new environment and to start writing new papers. Having something on the back burner for that period may thus be useful to bridge the gap.

As a final note, the citations will be more and more important after a few years. In my field it usually takes a few years to start getting citations because the results will inspire someone to apply for money, go into the field for new investigations, and then write papers. In a lab or theoretical environment such response times may be lower so check with seniors in your field what applies. A good question to ask is perhaps if there are ways to promote ones work to increase citation records, I do not have the answer to that question.

Bottom line: publish in as good journals as possible. Good quality counts but a reasonable publication rate is also necessary. Citations will come with time.


When a professor takes an affiliate appointment in another department, do they get an increase in salary? Let's say an associate professor of Math makes 120k per year USD in a United States university and takes an affiliate professor position in the Quantitative Biology department.  Would they get additional salary for doing so, or is it simply more responsibility for no incremental salary, kind of like service work?

I have never heard of a joint appointment in a second department being tied to a salary increase. It’s possible that in some rare situations such an increase will be negotiated as part of the deal for a professor to take on a joint appointment, but generically, the answer to the title question is “no”.

On the other hand, the answer to “or is it simply more responsibility for no incremental salary, kind of like service work?” is also “no”. Being a joint appointee does not involve “more responsibility”, rather it’s more accurate to describe it as a shift in responsibilities. Professors without a joint appointment already have a full time job, so they cannot increase their responsibilities (at least in a formal sense, and to a large extent also in a practical sense). If a professor takes on a joint appointment in another department, it’s likely because the professor simply likes the idea of being involved in the other department because their interests are aligned with that move, in the sense that the professor wants to have collaborations with other people in that department, wants to advise students in that department, wants to teach courses offered by that department, or similar things. But they had a full time job before the change in appointments, and they have a full time job after the change in appointments, so the total amount of work they are expected to do overall does not change.


Will a mail to the journal asking about the status of my article have a negative effect on the decision of the article? One of my journal article was submitted to a journal last year. It has been under review for more than 3 months now. I want to send them a mail asking for my article status. It is given in the website of the journal that the average time for first decision after the article goes under review is 8.5 week. Is there a chance that this mail may affect the journals decision, like they may think that I am being pushy and might just not even go through the paper and reject it?

It most likely won't. I think it is normal to push the editor if there is a significant delay. Check what the average time for receiving reviews is first.

I have done it when there has been a significant delay and it hasn't been a problem.


Is it possible to get back into academic research after being dropped due to funding problems from 6 year postdoc? Due to funding issues, I was dropped as a postdoctoral researcher with a 2 week notice. Due to seniority (6+ years) and funding climate it has been exceedingly hard to find a position within academia in the US. I was good at research. I have publications. I have skills. But I am "old" and where it was easy to get a postdoc, now it is difficult to find anything at all. I do not have an institution, so that makes garnering funding in the US very difficult, and I am not competitive with the other candidates for Assistant Prof positions.  Most "training" programs will not take anyone more than 5+ years out of PhD. I just want to continue my research, now nowhere to do it. I have seen "Research Assistant Prof positions" and other non-tenure track opportunities but these are few and far between, I wonder if that means the competition is as fierce or worse than for TT positions. I have been looking for positions for almost a year now...and that cannot look good. Is this just a pipe dream to continue in academia and research? Any recommendations as to how to get back in?

I think that you need to decide whether what you really want is to be in research or to be in academia.

It sounds to me like you right now you are considering only positions at major research universities.  With respect to that, you are indeed in a very bad position: competition is fierce, funding is getting tighter, and if you don't already have a network of people interested in you at this stage in your career, you are likely to find it difficult to secure a position of this sort.

There is, however, a much larger universe of possibilities if you really want academia or you really want research.

If you really want to stay in research, there are often a much larger number of positions in various flavors of government, non-profit, and industrial research, including many that are very similar to academia.  In some fields, the amount of cutting-edge research being done outside of academia is actually much larger than the amount being done inside of academia, if one was to count up the whole bizarre ecosystem of startups, foundations, consultancies, pilot projects, little-known sub-departments in large companies, etc.  Life is typically somewhat less stable in this world than with tenure, but likely no worse than you have known as a postdoc and in many cases much better.  By your user ID and 6-year postdoc (ouch!), I'm guessing you're in a biomedical field, and this is definitely the case for much of biomedical research.
If, on the other hand, you really want to stay in academia, there are a much larger number of positions at institutions whose mission is primarily educational. A key challenge there will be if you have not been doing any teaching at all as a postdoc, but you'll likely be quite competitive in terms of your intellectual credentials.

So yes, your dream of going directly from postdoc to tenure track is likely not going to happen, just based on the numbers and how you describe your current status.  If you step into the demi-monde world at the borders of academia, however, you can likely find a path to continue your research and, if it is fruitful, may even find yourself coming back into traditional academia through a side door.


Advantages of delaying/accelerating PhD application I'm an Australian maths undergraduate student, and our academic year ends at the beginning of December. I understand that PhDs in the USA (and elsewhere?) generally start before this time, about September. So, if I want to pursue a PhD overseas, I have a long time to kill in between my undergrad and postgrad degrees.

Consequently I've been investigating the possibility of cramming the remainder of my undergraduate degree into one fewer semester, so that I can graduate at the beginning of July (2014), just in time to start a PhD overseas.

However, this would mean I would have to send out applications in December this year, before I have actually finished my degree. I am particularly concerned because in Australia the last year of an undergraduate maths degree is an "honours" year, which comprises the main research component and the most serious coursework.

Does anyone have advice or experience?

  Would I be substantially more competitive for a top university if I delayed for a year and had an honours thesis and good results from many advanced classes under my belt, compared to applying early and having only a promise of an honours thesis? Or, would it be a minor issue with good letters of recommendation?

The academic year does start around September in the USA and I think most European countries.  At least in Europe, this doesn't necessarily mean that you would have to start your PhD in September.  For example, I did my PhD in the UK and started in June.

Note that your 'competitors' won't have finished their degree yet either when they are applying.  They will be slightly further along, having already started their final year, but not significantly so, I think.

Is cramming the rest of your undergraduate degree into one semester less at all a realistic option?

I do think you are likely to get stronger letters of recommendation once you are in your final year, because you will have been doing more advanced work and will probably have closer contacts with faculty.

I don't think that having some time between your honours year and your PhD is necessarily a bad idea.  My husband started his PhD only two weeks after finishing his MSc, and he really could have done with more of a break.  I had almost a year between my MSc and PhD, but I spent six months of that doing research.

One of my friends from Australia managed to get part-time teaching work at his undergraduate university until he went to the UK for his PhD.  Or if money isn't too much of an issue, you could take the opportunity to go travelling.

EDIT:  I'd just like to add, along the lines of Dave Clarke's comment, that you should bear in mind that your honours year will likely be a lot more challenging than previous years, and so 'accelerating' this year might turn out to be a bad idea.  I certainly worked harder in my fourth year of university (honours in New Zealand, so quite a similar system to Australia) than I have in any year since.


What's the purpose of writing one's academic biography in the third person? I see some academics – both professors and grad students – write their biography on their university webpages in the third person, and it sounds really weird.

What's the purpose of writing about oneself, e.g. research accomplishments, research interests, in the third person?  Is it considered more professional to do so?

It reads very arrogant and self-indulgent, so I wonder if I'm just missing something.

When I wrote a biography of myself, it was because someone in administration asked me to so they could put it into a prospectus, where there would be lots of biographies in a row all in the same editorial voice.

It was specifically required to be in the third person for that reason: all the profiles are presented as though they have been written by the omniscient author of the document. It wasn't written that way because I wanted it to be, but for an actual purpose.

Once written, that biography went on file and was put everywhere that needed one. That includes the university website, future grant applications, other advertising material, commendations for students, reports, papers, and sundry other places. Sometimes I copy it there, and sometimes it happens without my even being involved (sometimes without any actual person being involved!).

In particular, it's useful to put it up front on a public website so that collaborators can easily just copy accurate pre-written text in when they need to provide a profile of me for one of their own purposes.

There are places that I've written a first-person biography, which is generally a lot shorter. Those are places that are 1) in my voice, and 2) where it was worth the fuss of rewriting something tailored to the situation. In general, and particularly for things published by the university, my "official" biography just goes back in again, because it's there, it's been edited, and it's comprehensive enough.


Include figures from publications in thesis (Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0) I would be interest what is common/best practice to include figures from published papers/literature in my thesis (Which will be published open-access). The figures of interest are copyrighted by (Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0).

It would depend a bit on the specific form of "open access" which doesn't have a clear meaning, but is a set of principles and practices. The license on such shared work can be no more restrictive than the original. That is probably the case, but it would be worth checking the specifics. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access


How long do the Marie Curie IF grant results take to come out? I submitted a Marie Curie postdoc fellowship at the beginning of September and as of now (Jan) I have not heard back —I have checked the ECAS portal. The website does not give a single Gantt chart or time frame ironically. So I would like to know how long have people waited?

I am also wonder if a long wait is a possible hint of rejection, like with jobs. Has anyone got a feeling that this is case?
I know there is a accepted, reserve, rejected list, which would suggest that this isn't the case.

The Guide for applicants says that information on the outcome of the evaluation will be available in February 2016. For reference: I applied in the previous round (the timeline was the same give or take a few days) and received a notice that the proposal was approved in the beginning of February. There was no communication before that, so I wouldn't read anything into that.


Where do you place the link to open data in a manuscript? Assume you are writing a manuscript and you have uploaded your raw data to a relevant hosting site (e.g., The Dataverse Network, FigShare, etc.). Where in the manuscript should you indicate a link to this?

This question was posted on twitter and one suggestion was to include a link in the author notes and the results.

I am sure there are many ways to do this, but I have recently started to end the paper with a specific (unnumbered) section Further Material (or something like this). For an example, you can check this preprint of mine.

Before, I primarily gave a link to the online material as a footnote somewhere in the Experiments section, or wherever else it made sense from the text flow. However, it happened to me more than once that a careless reviewer overlooked these footnotes, and complained that the data has not been made public.

Some journals will also allow you to upload accompanying material to their website. However, at least in my field this is so unusual that I would be afraid that potential readers will not even look for the material on the publisher's website.


Is there a term for "PhD at a department" vs "PhD at an (independent) research institute"? All PhD students are getting their PhD from a university (as far as I know).

But some PhD students follow a PhD program that is just a standard program at their department (e.g. department of math, or physics, or sociology), do research under a supervisor who is just affiliated with the department. The supervisor may also be affiliated with research institutes, but the relation between the PhD student and the supervisor is not created via, or dependent on, or related to those research institutes: the relation is solely based on the fact that the PhD student and supervisor are affiliated with the same department.
Then there are PhD students, who (though they are of course also affiliated to a department) are enrolled into a PhD position that is specifically affiliated with a research institute. For example, there may be a research institute that is affiliated with university X, all researchers there are affiliated with X, but it is a somewhat separate institute. The PhD student would be specifically linked to that institute, rather than merely to his department.

Are there generally accepted terms that distinguish between these two types of PhD positions?

I'm involved, as adviser, in a PhD program that falls exactly in your second category. The program, which is briefly presented here and here, is jointly run by my university (POLITO) and by the Italian national metrology institute (INRIM), which is a governement institute. Half of the available positions are paid by POLITO and half by INRIM. Frequently students are co-advised by advisers from both entities (this is not mandatory, but it's useful; and the student list on both sites is not up-to-date for what concerns co-advising information).

However, the degree is awarded by the university only, and there is no formal distinction between the students that get their PhD from the above program and those who get their PhD from a program associated to a single department within the university. I'm aware of a couple of other similar programs in my field around Europe (here one in Germany), but I've never heard of any specific term distinguishing them.

Different is the case of a double degree which is awarded by two universities.


How to get more info pre–job-interview I've applied for a position in the library of the local campus of the state university, and they've asked to set up a phone interview. I'm not a naturally outgoing person, and I'm even worse on the phone, so I'm going to be preparing for this as heavily as I can. I would love as much information as I can get on the interview itself. I'm comfortable speaking about the job & its responsibilities, since I exceed their list of necessary & desired qualifications. But if I know whom I will be speaking to and what, specifically, we will be talking about, it would help me be more comfortable during the conversation.

So what I'm wondering is whether it's kosher to ask for any info as we're emailing to set up the interview — who's on the search committee, what issues they will want to focus on, that kind of thing? I don't want to look like I'm trying to game the system or anything (much less actually do so). Is there any way for me to get more info without that appearance?

So what I'm wondering is whether it's kosher to ask for any info as we're emailing to set up the interview — who's on the search committee, what issues they will want to focus on, that kind of thing? I don't want to look like I'm trying to game the system or anything (much less actually do so). Is there any way for me to get more info without that appearance?

This question would be a better fit for The Workplace Stack Exchange, so you might want to ask it there. For what it’s worth, my opinion is that it would be a very bad idea to ask those questions.  Preparing for the interview is fine and certainly advisable, but you should not ask for this sort of information.

Specifically, asking who’s on the search committee definitely sounds like you’re trying to game the system. I’m not seeing how this could possibly be relevant for any legitimate interview-preparation you want to do, or what reason you could have for asking this other than wanting to do research on those people (or possibly even doing slightly creepy things like scouring the internet and social media for info about them) to gain an unfair advantage in the interview. Definitely not kosher.

As for the other question, it’s maybe less unreasonable, but in my opinion simply makes you sound inexperienced and insecure. The “issues they will want to focus on” obviously pertain to the position you’re being interviewed for and to you, your skills and qualifications. What more of an answer could you reasonably expect to get, and, particularly, what more of an answer could you expect that isn’t perceived as giving you an unfair advantage over other candidates being interviewed? Again, this is just my opinion, but it seems to me that any benefit you might get out of the answer you’re given would be outweighed by the bad impression you would be leaving by asking the question in the first place.

Sorry the answer isn’t more positive... Good luck at the interview in any case.


Where do other countries fall on the US-Europe continuum for PhDs? My understanding is that for most US PhDs:

applicants are expected a bachelor's but not a master's
applicants are required a statement of purpose but not a research proposal
applicants apply to school before choosing doctoral adviser
first year or two is coursework followed by exams then finally dissertation

while for most European PhDs:

applicants are expected a master's (and has to be a research master's and not a taught master's?)
applicants are required a research proposal
applicants choose doctoral advisor before applying to school
almost no coursework

So:

What countries or states outside Europe and aside from the US are like the US?
Which are like Europe?
Which are in between Europe and the US?

For example, PhDs in Country A seem to be somewhere in the middle:

most PhDs require master's but...
...may waive the requirement if the applicant has bachelor's with honors (or bachelor's without honors but in an honors course or something like that)
some universities require research proposals (and choosing a doctoral advisor first) for PhDs in certain fields but only statement of purpose* in other fields in the same university
some universities require research proposals (and choosing a doctoral advisor first) for PhDs in certain fields but other universities require only statement of purpose* for the same field

*or something which in my opinion is closer to a statement of purpose than a research proposal

In Canada it is standard to have a Master's before beginning a PhD. There are a small number of direct BSc/BA to PhD programmes but they remain the exception. Most universities will admit PhD students who do not have an advisor already lined up, but if you already have an advisor lined up you're more likely to get in.


How to balance looking for fast journals and avoiding predatory journals? I found a question (What are "fake", "shady", and/or "predatory" journals?) regarding a list of predatory journals (https://web.archive.org/web/20170111172309/https://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/). This list is said to record many fake or shady publishers.

I am under special circumstances where I would benefit from "speedy" publication but I by no means want to avoid peer editing and submit to falsifiable journals. I have found many shady sites such as http://gssrr.org, which I assume are scams (they look really scammy to me) but are not on the aforementioned list.

I want to avoid things like this at all cost. My question is how/where to search for reputable journals that have a fast publication time (maybe journals which publish short articles?).

You could post a pre-print to arxiv while your paper is in submission. That offers a compromise. Your paper appears publicly with a time stamp within a few days and in due course you will get a “proper” peer-reviewed publication.

Unfortunately peer review is hard to accelerate, since the reviewers are unpaid and busy. (Some economics journals offer money as an incentive, but even that doesn’t always work.) All the journals are going to ask more or less the same people to review, so they are all going to be equally slow. Any journal offering rapid peer review is making a promise they can’t keep.

One other thing you can try is to submit to a peer-reviewed conference. (This is standard in computer science, but rare elsewhere.) Conferences have a fixed turnaround time (usually 2-4 months), since there is a physical conference that needs to be arranged.


How to respond to a tough referee report? We received two referee reports from the editor, who made a major revision decision. One referee has a long list of comments, while on the whole it is positive towards our paper. But the other one gave only half-A4-page comment with strong criticism on the paper as well as some other works in the community, as you can see as follows, which is very tough.

Review report:

  The manuscript considers proposition. The authors carry out their study in the framework of an approximation. Unfortunately, the approach used in the manuscript
  is totally wrong since reviewer's scientific objection. This issue representing a pitfall for many
  researchers in the past (and unfortunately sometimes in the present)
  is thoroughly described in one reference deleted here, which is an article of another author.

  Therefore, I recommend to reject the manuscript. I do not see a
  possibility to repair it and to reduce it so that it will fit for
  publication.

After I read the reference provided, I think that the approach used in our work is correct and the results presented are reasonable, because none of which directly contradict with the reference cited by the referee.

My questions are: what is the best practice to respond the editor and how do I refute the criticisms of the referee?

I apologize if my question is too general for this site. Thanks for your help!

The main problem with this as a review is not the brevity or harshness (neither one of which is necessarily inappropriate) but failure to adequately explain/justify their objection to your work.

A good review should give objections/criticisms that stand on their own.  References should be used to support the reviewer's points, not given in lieu of any explanation.

In addition, it seems that it is also not obvious how the reference relates to your work.

Make the focus of your response not this reviewer is wrong but I don't understand this reviewer's point.  Explain why your work is different from that discussed in the reference and why you think the objections don't apply, and thus it is not clear to you why the reviewer objects.

In addition, you ought to ask the editor what they have in mind by major revisions.  The "major revisions" response sounds like it was halfway between the responses of the two reviewers.  But that doesn't mean it is a coherent synthesis of their positions.  It doesn't seem there are any changes that would satisfy the second reviewer (indeed, they have pre-announced that).  So what does the editor expect you to do with this request?  I would seek clarification on this.

It may well be that the difficult reviewer will not have their way in the end (the fact that the paper was not rejected by the editor as they requested suggests this).  So you may be able to simply add some more supporting text for your approach, have their inevitable reject decision overridden by the editor, and be fine.


Is it appropriate to use a previous (recent) letter of recommendation for a different application? I have an outstanding letter of recommendation from someone who I am no longer in regular contact with and it would be a hardship to contact them in person (to receive a signed letter). This is the kind of letter that I could run for president on.

I did not receive the scholarship that I originally needed it for.

Contacting the original author is no longer a real option. Is it appropriate to use this letter again for a subsequent application for an unrelated scholarship? (Note that the letter specifically mentions the first scholarship, not the one I am not considering using it for.)

I was considering simply attaching a short note to the front stating the reason for this.

However, something is nagging me in the back of my mind that this seems a little unprofessional. Should I pursue a letter from a different author instead?

I do not think you should reuse the letter as is, for two reasons:

The letter writer did not intend for it to be reused, or else it would have been written more generically.  It's generally not reasonable to use such a letter outside of the circumstances envisioned/authorized by its author.
You would have to explain that there's no realistic way to contact the writer, and that is itself a red flag.  It looks suspicious to say "here's what Professor X would say if you could contact him, but you can't".  A letter isn't worth much if the committee couldn't in principle contact the writer to confirm or ask further question.

Certain rare cases might merit an exception, such as reusing a letter from someone who has since died.  (Where the death is a matter of public record, everybody assumes that of course the writer would have updated the letter if death hadn't intervened, and they are inclined towards flexibility because of the difficult situation.)

How hard would it really be to contact the letter writer?  If it's inconvenient but not impossible, then it could be your best option.


Are academics more tolerant of biological and philosophical differences? My internal model of academia is that (1) as a group we are one of the most tolerant of biological and philosophical differences (e.g., gender, sexual orientation, and religion) and (2) that we are likely to take extreme views on issues related to our research. I have no evidence for either of these and they seem potentially at odds in that it seems strange that people would be so passionate about their research and be blase about their religion (or any other philosophy). Is there any work that characterizes the level of tolerance of academics on various issues?

There is a recent study which generated quite a bit of noise and seems to indicate that racial and gender biases do indeed exist in academia (at least in the U.S.). The researchers sent e-mails to professors pretending to be a prospective graduate student, and response rates varied widely depending on the ethnic- and gender- markers in the purported student's name.


My supervisor does not want to publish my research I just graduated from grad school and to say that it has been hell is just a euphemism. My supervisor has been a bully all the time and every thing that I did and didn't please my supervisor was met with fierce retaliation.

The right thing to do was to leave, but for many reasons I couldn't and I was trying to think of the situation as another challenge of life.

Even after graduation, my supervisor did not let go. The latest action was to block the publication of my work which is essential in progressing in my career. My supervisor does not want to hear about publishing anymore and keeps saying (in the rare occasions where my emails are replied to) that I can point to my PhD thesis, that should be enough, no need to publish, no preprints even. We are talking about three finished papers, the essence of all of my struggle during those years.

Can I publish by myself? Should I report this behavior and seek help from the University or a senior? By experience, students in the lab who seek help from outside get punished even harder. What would be the best way to get control over my work? I am less interested in confrontation and focused towards moving on and taking credit for my work.

If you are the sole author of a work then you can publish it. However, if your supervisor needs to be listed as a co-author for contributing content, not just custom or courtesy, then he can block it as any co-author can.

On the other hand, even if he must be co-author on a joint work, you can probably write an independent paper and publish it without any "permission." This would only be false if you have signed some agreement with the professor or the university to yield rights to them. That would be unusual for dissertations, but you would be aware of it if it bound you, I think.

Note that the ideas that you develop in your studies are free to be used. It sounds like your supervisor is trying to "own" ideas. Other than patent, that isn't allowed in the laws of most places. You might also seek guidance from the research office of your university. They will know whether you are bound or not, though they may lean in the direction of the university.

If you try to publish and he then interferes it will be the time to escalate the issue.

But if your work depends on the work of others you have to consider their rights as well. Normally properly citing that work is enough. Contracts can be limiting of course.


How to proceed after academic dismissal from PhD program (plagiarism) and successful completion of master's? I was dismissed from a (Canadian) PhD program on the charge of plagiarism. I had muddled up sources, and the professor insisted I deliberately did it to get higher grades.  My student advocate informed me that plagiarism is plagiarism, whether intentional or not, whether only on a single line or not, and regardless of the professor's motivation. So, I admitted to the charge, while looking for ways to avoid a repeat and rebuild my reputation.
I did inform the tribunal that this was a single sentence in a 22-page document, and that I was traumatized during this period as the state had taken custody of my two children.

The tribunal upheld the charge but recommended that the provost should consider a minor punishment. My advocate suggested I should not contest the recommendation of the tribunal. However, four months later, the Provost decided to dismiss me because I did not appeal the decision, and because I had failed to inform the professor of my personal challenges when I took the course.

When I was dismissed, I completed a master's program at another university with a GPA of 4.0/4.0. I discussed the plagiarism incident with my master's supervisor.

Now  I want to apply for a PhD Program in a separate, but related, area (my current supervisor does not work in this area and so could not supervise me), and I am wondering how to go about it since I am required to disclose all the post-secondary education attended. I would appreciate any suggestion on how I can navigate this muddy waters.

As mentioned in the comments, I do not think that you will be able to find a supervisor who does not know you well already if you have a record of dismissal for plagiarism.

You could try:

Telling the truth about your dismissal (lying or omitting that you were dismissed would likely be grounds for getting dismissed again).
Explaining, with evidence, why it will not happen again.
Do not mention the nature of the trauma you experienced.  Academics are not likely to consider any kind of trauma to be an excuse for plagiarism.  And they are likely to have strong opinions about how children are raised.
There is no need to give the details of the process leading to your dismissal.


What is Cumulative Impact Index of a journal? I recently came across the term "Cumulative Impact Index". I came to know about it here, which includes the statement, "publication of
5 International Journal papers, each Journal having a cumulative impact index of not less than 2.0".

I knew of peer-reviewed, but as this term was bit new I surfed the web and visited Impact Factor on Wikipedia, but it is still not clear.  Can any one of the learned members may kindly explain to me, preferably with an example?

The term "Cumulative Impact Factor" (or cumulative impact index) has been used with different meanings by different authors.

One definition is that the cumulative impact factor for an individual author is simply the sum over all papers that the author has published of the impact factors of the journals that the papers were published in.  e.g.

You've published 3 papers in Journal A that has impact factor 1.2.
You've published 1 paper in journal B that has impact factor 1.9.
You've published 2 papers in journal C that has impact factor 1.7.

Your CIF would then be

CIF=3*1.2+1*1.9+2*1.7=8.9

Like all bibliometrics, it's a very crude measure.   You can get a high score on this measure by publishing a lot of research in journals that aren't very prestigious, or by publishing a very small amount in highly prestigious journals.

Furthermore, the metric says nothing about the impact of your research compared with other papers in the journals in which you've published (e.g. you might have published a very widely cited paper in a journal with a low impact factor but you won't get any extra credit for that.)

The term "cumulative impact factor" has also been used for measures of the impact factor of a journal over extended periods beyond the usual definition of impact factor.  See for example:

http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/impactofcumimpfacs.pdf

I don't believe that ISI has ever defined this term in their formal reports on the impact factors of journals, so I'm afraid that any use of the term will depend on the particular group or person that is computing the cumulative impact factor.


What "soft-skills" does one need to succeed as a mathematician? My question is about "soft-skills", i.e. knowing how to handle Latex, giving a speech or giving a lecture, or other knowledge that could be useful for a career in mathematics.

Skills that (all) mathematicians need, but which are not necessarily something that one learns studying the mathematics of text books or lectures.

This knowledge should therefore benefit mathematicians of varying disciplines and not only the algebraic topologists or the number theorists.

A few that come to mind, and are probably valid in other fields also --

Learn how to give good talks.
Learn how to describe your research informally. Say you meet someone at a conference, and they ask you "What do you work on?" Can you convince them that what you work on is interesting?
Learn how to come up with interesting questions that you don't know how to answer.
Learn how to read a paper. Can you figure out "the big idea" without getting bogged down in the technicalities?
Learn how to meaningfully participate in a math discussion when you're less than 100% sure what's going on.
Develop a gut feeling for when a subject will come in useful. For example, "This lemma feels like I could use algebraic geometry to prove it", without knowing initially what that form would take.
Get a sense for what other researchers in your field consider interesting. What is worth writing a paper about, and what is worth giving a talk about?

There are many, many more -- and none of the above are easy.


Can I request to see a reference about me? From USA universities, Can I request to see a reference about me?
Do they offer the Right to Information and request the information provided in a referee report about me to release?
I can have this service from the UK.
I ask this because my current PI congratulate me on an interview for a postdoc position, next time he followed up and asked how did it go. Later I found he sent a negative referee report about me and not to hire me. (long story  short, they were my PI's colleagues - so, through the Right to Information I got told to request HR to have a copy of all the referee reports)
Still PI doesn't know if I know about his backstabbing, however, I want to make sure this from another place in the USA to confirmed if that was a personal attack or if it was due to I applied to his colleague's group.
If this is genuine backstabbing, what actions I can take through universities / academic level, without going to courts.
I had/have to put this PI as a referee for someplace where they know which lab I am coming from.
PI is famous in the university for this kind of games he plays, however, he has top political power as he has billions of grants, and staff/students afraid to talk in public.
Edit:
To answer few of your Qs /comments:
To @Jon Custer : "how do you know the report was "negative" vs "not positive enough given the other applicants"?"
I am specialized in using a few lab techniques. PI has written in the report, I do not! (Funny enough PI is the one who doesn't know these two techniques - I got trained by a postdoc and a tech at different institutes and attended a workshop).
However, the rest of the world believes PI is an expert in this very field and specialized in this specific technique, as he published dozens of articles. The Truth is, He does not know the technique, all come from a technician and a postdoc (both postdoc and tech left the lab, I have a referral from the tech, that I got trained from the tech)
To: user151413; "Reference letters are an assessment, which can be negative. (Otherwise, what's the point of an assessment?) "
This would be true if it was an honest assessment. The problem here is deliberate lying, and giving false information in the assessment.

As a general rule, institutions are very reluctant to give access to letters of reference to anyone and candidates in particular. That's because they know that if they regularly shared these letters with the people being written about, letter writers would stop giving honest assessments.
As a consequence, regardless of matters of law or regulation, you should expect that universities will not give you the letter. You may have a legal way to obtain such a letter, but you will likely have to sue the university to obtain it. Whether that's worth your time or money is a case you need to evaluate for yourself -- taking into account that knowing what is in the letter does not actually change anything. It's not like the university will offer you the position you were seeking just because you know what was in the letter.


Etiquette and guidelines for sending pre-published work to other people? So I've just written up a report that could eventually turn into a publishable manuscript, but since I'm new and this would be the first paper that I've ever written, I'm definitely going to need quite a bit of feedback before submitting it (especially since it's important for research to be interesting to multiple individuals if it's ever going to be cited).

So I'm wondering - how should I phrase an email asking someone to look at my work? Which people should I ask to comment on my work? And how would it differ from professor to graduate student? I'm thinking that my research can be interesting and helpful to a few grad students, so they can often provide a lot of help (that, and they have a lot more time than professors).

If one has time, I'm also wondering if it's a good idea to send the manuscript to people sequentially (e.g. send it to a 2nd person only after getting feedback from the first). That way, no effort is lost if two people suggest the same set of changes.

1) Talk to your advisor. She or he should be aware of your intention to send your work to a third party, and can even suggest you the right persons to send your work to.

2) Usually you can ask only people you know personally (or your advisor knows personally).

3) In our university internal review of two colleagues is required if you want to publish a technical report. So, sometimes showing your manuscript to somebody else is required.

4) You might like to stress that the manuscript you are sending is still a preliminary version, and ask the reviewer to keep confidentiality issues in mind.


Dangers of allowing students to resubmit assignments There are two closely related questions here:

If a student submits their assignment and is unhappy with their mark, are there any dangers (which I might not be seeing) in allowing the students to do so? If I would offer for one, I would offer for all, but should I be offering it in the first place?
If resubmits are unavailable, some students ask me to 'pre-read' or 'pre-mark' their assignment. The end result is that when they submit officially, that may actually be the second submission. Clearly doing any 'pre-marking' or the like takes time and energy and, so far, very few students have taken advantage of this until right before the submission deadline (at which point I stop because I don't have THAT much time to offer them). Are there dangers in 'pre-marking' assignments?

Note: These assignments constitute either 50% or 100% of their total mark.

One of my concerns is that the student would have lower motivation to maximize the quality of their original work and just correct what was marked as a problem area - like a production worker depending on a Quality Control Inspector and not paying as much attention to the quality of their work the first time around. Are there other issues as well?

EDIT: I should add that these are business management subjects so student answers are not easily right or wrong but more about how they justify their analysis. Therefore, there is not an issue of "giving the right answer."

Should I be offering it in the first place?

Dangers:

You spend even more time on assignments, limiting your time for other endeavors.
Students might get into a "grade grubbing" mode where they simply re-submit marginally better answers in order to improve their grade.
Students do a poor job initially because they know they will have a chance to re-submit, and they might as well take their chances that you'll give them decent marks for inferior work.

Benefits:

Overall, students spend more time on the assignments, leading to better knowledge and ability to do the work.
You can provide helpful information to guide them to better answers (because you're seeing first-attempts). This level of grading also takes more time.
Students are happier because the stress of a hard deadline isn't so bad.

I think the benefits outweigh the dangers if you're willing to put in the extra time to re-grade. As I've said in other threads, I've used auto-grading homework for a some classes (probably not relevant in your case), but I've used the strategy that I'd have deadlines for all the assignments but that the week before the final I'd re-open all the assignments and tell the students they can re-do any questions they missed. I don't tell them I'm going to do this until I do it, in order to keep students from simply waiting until the end to do all the assignments.

  Are there dangers in 'pre-marking' assignments

I think it's great that you're being creative with the assignments (e.g., pre-marking, resubmittals, etc.). Again, it comes down to your time -- if you have motivated students who want pre-marking and you have the time, I can't see a problem with it. It wouldn't surprise me if the best students are the ones who want pre-marked work, but then again I've had some less-capable students jump at chances like that to do better.


Does stating multiple degrees from a single university on a CV disadvantage an applicant for a research or lecturing position? I have a bit of a potentially unusual situation with my CV.  Over the years while I worked in an unrelated field (to pay the bills etc), I completed multiple degrees - all degrees were completed to a good standard.  The degrees are either in education (earlier ones) or physics (later ones).

However, most of the degrees are from a single university - including the final few, which were in closely related fields. All culminating in a PhD.

My question is - is there any disadvantage to having multiple degrees listed from the same university on a CV when applying for a postdoc or lecturing position?

No, there is no disadvantage to having multiple degrees from the same university.  Normally you should not leave any degrees out of your CV.  There are advantages to having experience at multiple universities, but that does not have to be in the form of a degree.


Is it ok if I write to all professors that are offering Ph.D. positions the same email? I saw some Ph.D. positions from a particular university. Most of the projects align well with my interest. So before applying, I want to write the professors some queries (e.g. just to know what he is expecting in the candidate or even I am eligible or my profile meeting his expectations or not). Is it ok if I send the same mail to all the professors I want to work with, even when they are from the same department? If they ever come to know any candidate sent the same email to all his colleagues, will it be harmful to the candidate?

It is okay in the sense that it doesn't violate any ethical rules. However, I think it is unlikely that you will find success on this path.
Professors receive an unhealthy number of emails every day, and this increases with an unhealthy number of PhD application emails in PhD application season. If you want an email to a professor to be successful, it may pay off to carefully balance two counteracting forces: on the one hand, you want to be economical with the professor's time, and on the other hand, you want to stand out in a positive way. The most straightforward way to stand out is to be specific about the professor's research: why are you particularly interested in working with this person on this project, and where in this project do you see a first solution strategy that could potentially lead to a first paper?
It is a big ask to craft an email that satisfies these constraints. However, generic emails are very likely to be ignored. So that route is probably best avoided.


Are there websites for hosting solely academic videos? I have a video from my simulation and would like to add the link to my journal article. However, I do not want to post it on YouTube since I do not want my video next to some random video. Are there websites dedicated solely for this purpose?

Usually the journal will host the videos as supplementary material, but if you want to host it externally, there are options. For example, figshare (see also this blog post).


What are the differences between M.Sc, M.Tech and M.Eng.? Based on this other question where the OP asks whether or not a second Masters degree is possible, I realized that I am not sure what the difference is between Master of Science and Master of Technology.

I have graduated from a Swedish university and after 5 years of studies (Bologna process) I got my undergrad (kandidat) and masters (examen) together as it is very common here. I double checked my diploma now and even though I have graduated from the technical faculty and an engineering program, I am given a Master of Science. I believe there is no Master of Technology degree in Sweden, so I am not sure what it means. To make the matters worse, I stumbled upon another similar degree, Master of Engineering.

I would really appreciate some insight into the differences of these degrees, and whether or not they would be considered interchangeable abroad (read: outside Europe).

There are some differences, especially in the concept of the programs M.Eng./M.Tech. and M.Sc (and M.A. obviously too).

From my experience, and Wikipedia states this also, the M.Eng./M.Tech. degrees are rather given by Universities of Applied Sciences (at least in Germany, Canada, Finland etc,) and seldomly by Universities focusing on research. Any program that is research oriented will thus very likely give M.Sc. degrees.
The M.Eng. is even given as an undergraduate Master in the UK (see the Wikipedia Link) that gets granted immediately (without a bachelors in between).

For the career of a graduate, the title itself is not too important as aeismail mentioned, since any employer will have a look at what's inside (= the student track record).

Because there are so many slightly different programs, especially in computer/information engineering/technology/sciences I am not sure where universities draw the line regarding the "not granting a 2nd masters degree in the same field/area/discipline" policy.


Does "Apply for scholarships, get accepted and then refuse" help in your CV? I have a situation. I want to apply for Ph.D programs in the United States at the end of this year. And right now, there are many programs in Europe open for application. Hence, I wonder if I should try to apply to them, get accepted and then refuse the scholarships.

Is it ethical? I am worried that it could affect my reputation and my LoR would no longer be appreciated in the future, leading to mistrust in my lecturers who wrote my LoR. On the other hand, getting accepted may prove my competence and prowess.

If the answer is yes, should I put it in my CV for future application?

Thank you for your help

Do not do this.

Programs in the US generally do not care if you've been offered admission to programs in other countries. You are judged on your aptitude for research and to make future contributions in your field. If you cannot convince an admissions committee this between your record, your statement of purpose and personal statements, and your letters of recommendation, then how will you get an offer in Europe—when generally the same materials are needed to get you through the process?


How should my name and affiliation appear in a scientific journal publication as a student? I am an undergraduate student who is co-authoring a publication for a scientific journal for the first time. My advisor has asked what I want my name and affiliation to be but I need some guidance.

My full name is Elizabeth Grace Duncan, but I go by Lizzi. I go to Virginia Tech which has the full name Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University although Virginia Tech is also an official name. I am majoring in statistics and minoring in math.

I'm thinking I should say my name is Elizabeth G. Duncan and affiliation is Virginia Tech Statistics Undergraduate. Is this appropriate detail? Any help is appreciated!

In terms of “standard” conventions, I would suggest:

  Elizabeth G. Duncan, Department of Statistics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

If the research you’ll be publishing was conducted as part of a research group, however, you might list that affiliation instead, e.g., “Applied Statistics Lab, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University“