How to regrade an exam that was too difficult? Our multiple choice exam was clearly too difficult.

N questions.
N + 10 total duration (in minutes).
All questions have the same value (100 / N).
Wrong answers have a penalty of 25% (25 / N).
Only one correct answer per question.

What strategies do you recommend to consider reviewing the grades?

What we though of:

Remove the penalty for wrong answers.
For each student, increase the value of each correct answer.
Add X (e.g. 10 points) to each final result.
Add X% (e.g. 10%) to each final result.
Remove the questions with worst performance.

We can combine options and each one has advantages and drawbacks. Note that we use absolute grading (not grading on the curve).

What is your experience?

Follow-up: Thank you all for the feedback. In the end, we decided to review each question. In some cases (four in total), we decided to consider as correct some of the incorrect options that were not 100% clear (and had a significant number of students choosing them). Plus, we added a bonus of +1 points to all students. We kept the penalty for wrong answers since it would be unfair to remove it.

There isn't enough information here to really give good advice. You suggest the exam was too difficult. It may also be that it was invalid.  It may be that some of the questions were stated in such a way as to be misleading. There are measures of the validity of such exams, by the way. They measure the validity of a question by the proportion of students who answered it incorrectly compared to how those same students did overall. Some questions are negatively correlated with overall performance.

Another issue is what your institution permits. Some have very strict rules about this. They are IMO unwarranted and counterproductive, but they may bind you.

But absent such rules, you should care more about fairness than you do about numbers. To achieve fairness you may need to drop the exam or give an alternate. You may even want to rethink your overall grading scheme.

One simple modification overall is to give course grades based on the, say, 8 best of 10 assignments/exams/whatever. Then the question of a poorly designed quiz never arises. Another way is to have quizzes every day so that no individual quiz is determinative of much of anything.

However, some of the things that you might try will leave some students unsatisfied; especially the best students who worked the hardest. You can be kind to the strugglers, but not at the expense of the superstars. The situation is worst if the system itself puts the students in competition with one another for grades. Strict curve grading is IMO immoral as it makes it into a zero sum game where I can only advance at someone else's expense. If the system doesn't permit top marks for everyone (assuming it is deserved) then it is fatally flawed.

Your purpose, I hope, is teaching, not grading. Use the exam as a teaching moment. Even have a class discussion about the questions that caused difficulty. Try to learn why people did poorly. Even permit different students to have different sorts of adjustments as needed.

I used to have fairly strict rules about such things, but the understanding was always "This is the standard and you will do no worse than X if you do Y". And I always tried to make it an advantage to learn something even if was after the deadline or the exam. Make people want to learn, not just want to maximize points.


What to do about an ongoing research project that does not work? First of all, I am sorry if this sounds like a simplistic question. But I am a first-year PhD student and this is really troubling me.

As per the requirements of my department, all first-year PhD students have to complete a research project by the end of their first year. When my advisor pushed me to pick a topic to work on in fall, I have half-heartedly committed to an area that I had previously worked on in my undergraduate institution and therefore was no longer super-excited about. But it felt like a safe haven, and I didn't want to undertake a very ambitious project right in my first year.

But the research project I developed has failed to provide results, sadly. The experiments I conducted did not yield any interpretable results and I don't know at this point whether it was because of a design flaw or whether the hypotheses that we were testing need revision. But at any rate, my gut feeling is that the experiments are not salvageable and that it would be much better for me if I switched to a different project for the upcoming years. (Thankfully, my department doesn't seem to mind lack of clear results for the first-year project - what they care about in the case of newbies is that they completed a project, with or without publishable results.)

But I feel very uncomfortable about this and don't know how to broach the subject. My advisor wants me to continue working on the same topic in summer as well, and I don't want to give her the impression that I am a "quitter" - but at the same time I know that it is pure folly to pursue a certain research project that is hopeless. I've lost a year already, and if I stick with the same project because of my advisor, I'm afraid I might lose another year which would cost me dearly.

How can I tell my advisor that I would rather start working on a different topic?

If you are really doing research, then the results are not predictable. However, even when the research "fails" to reach some more or less expected end, you learn something. If all your research reaches the expected end, then you aren't doing research, but just confirming something already known, if only approximately.

To say that some experiment fails to find significance is actually knowledge gained. The relationship between the pre-conditions and the result are, at best, weak. If nothing else, you learn that the methodology wasn't sufficient to establish a connection. But all of that is knowledge and it is worth the effort to obtain it.

Moreover, along the way of doing such "failed" research, you may gain some insight into why the relationship is weak or non-existent. Even a failed proof in mathematics shows you something, even if it isn't as satisfying as providing an actual proof. Maybe the "theorem" isn't actually true in general.

The other issue, of course, is changing topics. If your research shows you that a certain topic is unlikely to bear "satisfying" results, then it is certainly proper to request the opportunity of looking at something else. Do that.

I worked in mathematics as a doctoral student on three problems. The first turned out to be so easy to advance that it lacked substance. The second turned out to be so hard to advance that nothing useful could be learned. Both of these were abandoned. Then I found just the right problem. Hard enough to have significance, but not so hard as to make advancement impossible. Luckily my advisor agreed with me on the abandonment of the earlier problems. But I had to ask and did so in a timely way.

However, don't neglect to keep a "research notebook" in which you record both ideas and insights for research as well as the progress made on failed attempts. This notebook gives you some place to "mine" for ideas in your future when you are looking for something interesting to do.


Can an advisor write a student's PhD thesis? I've recently discovered a strange situation.  A few years ago, a senior mathematician published a certain solo paper X.  A few years prior to that, one of his students wrote a thesis Y on the same topic, and large parts of paper X are copied verbatim from thesis Y.  In the thesis, it is indicated that the work is intended to be a joint publication between the author and the student, however neither the student's name nor the thesis are mentioned in paper X.

Note: I am not concerned about the general issue of duplicating material from a thesis in journal papers (this seems to be considered acceptable, e.g., How much overlap is permitted between a submitted journal article and a thesis? and How to avoid self-plagiarism when adapting dissertation into a paper?), but here the authors of X and Y are different.

This suggests some possibilities, none all that great:

the advisor plagiarized the student's thesis
the advisor didn't plagiarize the student, because the advisor actually wrote the thesis, and later decided the student didn't deserve co-authorship
the advisor and the student wrote the thesis together, but the advisor just claimed sole authorship (I believe the student left academia)

I know the advisor was working on this project before, so I suspect one of the latter two is closest to reality.  I certainly thing something about this situation is wrong, but I don't know the details of what, so my question is:

  To what extent is it acceptable for a student's advisor to physically write their PhD thesis?

I know sandwich theses are okay (depending on school), and in many areas theses comprise joint papers.  So I suppose it happens that in certain fields, that a student might not write any of their "thesis", except the introduction.  (In this case the introduction was copied also, but that's beside the point of this question.)

Note: In math, it is rare that the whole of a student's thesis work is published jointly with their advisor, even if the advisor did a lot of the work.  However, in math my personal expectation is that thesis should largely be written by the student; even if an advisor does most of the work for the thesis, it should be largely written by the student.  I'm interested in an answer for both math and non-math PhD theses, if there's a difference.

The salient point here is that a PhD thesis is supposed to be the student's work. What primarily matters both for appropriateness of the degree and issues of plagiarism is whose work it is, not who typed it into the computer.

Usually the student is the one expected to do most of the writing, and if they are not, I would probably consider it a red flag. But I could imagine circumstances where this might be entirely appropriate. For example, perhaps a student did the work but is unable to write it up due to a physical handicap or a mental condition that makes writing difficult.  I don't think it would be considered inappropriate for someone else to do the bulk of the writing--directed by the student concerning content--in such a case.

The situation you describe is indeed problematic. Even if the professor wrote every word of the thesis, it would be inappropriate to omit attribution unless the student literally contributed nothing to their own PhD project.

Either the student's PhD was not legitimate or the professor is plagiarizing the student. Quite possibly both.

Note: since you described extensive copying in a paper on the same topic, I'm assuming the copied text is a substantive part of the thesis. It would be somewhat different if the copied material is just something like background info shared between both. Though omitting a reference seems inadvisable in any case, it would be a much smaller issue.

Note 2: just to clarify, this is a general answer. I don't have any academic experience in mathematics.


Asking recommender to avoid talking about a project that was abandoned I'm applying to grad school and have requested a professor to write a recommendation letter. He said he'd be happy to write one for me. I had worked on two projects with him. While working on the first one, I was a full-time collaborator and I was able to deliver the targets we had set out. This was two years ago.
During the beginning of this year, we decided to start working on another project. However, I couldn't devote much time to it because I was working on a full-time job. My responsibilities on my job kept me engaged and I couldn't make much progress. Slowly this project fell through the cracks. Since the professor is an extremely busy person it is unlikely that he would recall details around the first project. I'm worried he would unwittingly be influenced by the failure of the recent project.
How do I request him to take into account the fact that I was busy with a job while working on the second one and hence factor the first(successful) one strongly into the letter? I do not want to ask for it directly because it would appear pushy.

Generally, one only writes positive things in a letter of recommendation.  If you are writing a letter and cannot write positive things, do not write it.
Therefore, it is not necessary to ask that negative information be left out of a letter.
Should a reference letter for a student always be positive?


Can I pay a professor for revising my paper? I have written a manuscript but cannot find someone to help edit it, but I want to submit to a good conference. So can I pay an unacquainted professor to help revising my paper?
Thanks!

Yes you can pay someone to edit your work. It doesn't matter that it is a professor or not. But a professor might rather want to become a co-author than a paid editor. If the other person contributes content it might be a more valid thing to do.

You would need to acknowledge such help in any case, I think.


Finding specific types of manuscripts of a journal I am considering writing an article to a journal. This journal (Bioinformatics) accepts different manuscripts:

Original Papers
Discovery Notes
Application Notes
Reviews
Letters to the Editor
Conference Papers

In a different topics:

Genome analysis
Sequence analysis
Phylogenetics
Structural Bioinformatics
Gene Expression
Genetics and Population Analysis
Systems Biology
Data and Text Mining
Databases and Ontologies
Bioimage Informatics

In order to improve my article I would like to read similar papers of the same topic and type of manuscript. How can I search for Application Notes of System Biology?

If filtering by topic is not possible, at least filtering by type of manuscript would be desirable.

I can't ask my advisor for guidance, because he doesn't know the field. I tried using Google Scholar, but it doesn't retrieve the type of manuscript or the scope of each manuscript when I use the quotes. The advanced search of that journal doesn't include the options to filter by manuscript and scope. Pubmed doesn't list the types of manuscripts of this journal.

First, try the Advanced Search interface of the specific journal or publisher. In this  case:

Open https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/advanced-search.
Under "Find a specific article", select Bioinformatics and press the Search button (the one in the first row).
One the left, under "Article type", select the desired type, e.g., "Brief report".
Again on the left, under "Section", select the desired section, e.g. "Systems biology".

Now only articles of type Brief report, in the section Systems biology are displayed.

If such a search interface is not available or gives irrelevant results, there are more general approaches:

In Scopus Advanced Search, use queries in the form:

  EXACTSRCTITLE(Journal Name) AND DOCTYPE(document_type)

You can find the list of possible document types in the help (field code DOCTYPE).
In Google Scholar, try queries in the form (include the quotes):

  source:"Journal name" "Article type"


Are multiple APA citations supposed to make the same claim or do they combine? Consider this example from APA style:

  Studies of reading in childhood have produced mixed results (Albright,
  Wayne, & Fortinbras, 2004; Gibson, 2011; Smith & Wexwood, 2010).

Do all these cited works above claim that "studies of reading in childhood have produced mixed results" or is it a list of studies of reading in childhood that have produced mixed results?

Consequently, if I am writing a sentence where I cite from one work but I add a detail in my sentence from a different work, do I cite both works together?

I'm not sure how fully these issues are part of protocol versus just style, but my approach is to try to be clear which works are cited for what purpose (Marks, 2011), which can include separate citations within a sentence (Edgar & Poppins, 1999).

For the example you have there, I would assume you are citing different studies that had different results, rather than three sources that say "there are mixed results": however, I would also expect the later references to refer back to the older results if they are in conflict. I don't think it's necessary for you you clarify any more than that, but if the results of those works are very important to what you are writing, you would probably go into more detail about those particular studies and cite them individually.

To add to my answer based on your additional question in a comment: the citations should be inside/before the punctuation in almost all cases. And I would typically avoid referring to the same work in more than one place in a sentence unless it really made sense to do so (i.e., chronology/natural order).

  Children like to play games (Ralph, 1967), as do teenagers (Harris &
  Brooks, 1985) and young adults (Ralph, 1967).

I wouldn't consider the following wrong, though, either:

  Children, teenagers, and young adults all like to play games (Ralph,
  1967; Harris & Brooks, 1985).


Author did not make the major changes asked during the review process I recently had my first paper to review. Since it was the first one, I took great care to be as constructive as possible and to formulate correct and accurate questions / suggestions. At that time, I recommended two major changes for the paper and a couple of minor ones (figures, typos, ...).

I just received the revised version of the paper, with the response to reviewer. One of the major changes I recommended was not fully taken into account by the authors. They did provide a very short answer, but it did not convince me. I read the new version of the paper carefully, to see if the content was changed to fit my suggestion, but it was not.

I am wondering what I should do now? Should I resend the same suggestion, pointing out it was ignored by the authors? Or should I let it go and tell the editor all the other changes were done according to my review? How should I tell the author they did not take my suggestion into account without being rude?

There are three possibilities:

The authors think they have addressed your major comment: in this case, since you think they haven't, either they haven't understood your initial comment, or they believe that another change they have done is enough. It might be your fault (because you didn't explain your comment well enough) or theirs (because they didn't understand it). It's ok to point out that you believe your comment has not been addressed, and explain it in a different way, to avoid any possible confusion.
The authors disagree with your major comment, and did not change the paper accordingly: in this case, they should have explained it in the response to reviewers. It's ok to mention that your comment is not addressed, and it's up to the editor to decide whether the authors should comply and change the paper accordingly.
The authors did not see your major comment in the original review, or simply forgot to address it. It's ok to mention that your comment is not addressed, and if you believe that it could be addressed quickly (e.g., some references missing), then perhaps it can go as a minor change for the next version, to speed up the process.

In any case, it's ok to mention that your comment has not been addressed. You might not know the exact reason why, so it's always better to assume that it's just a mistake. The responsibility to accept the paper as such is not yours, it's the editor's. You simply mention that you believe something is wrong with the current paper, you explain why you believe it's wrong, and whether you think it should published without changing it.

A typical response in this case could be: "The new version of the paper addresses most of my previous comments, with the exception of XXX. Indeed, it is not clear how the authors address the fact that YYY (another version of XXX) in the new version."


Selling/Buying software in academia I have written multiple opensource programs as part of my PhD, and some of these programs require a dedicated server somewhere on the internet to work. Mainly it is online databases, but also things like project homepages, version update checks, usage-metric logging, etc.

I currently host all these website/databases for free from my own stipend, but as the services have grown, I'm now paying about 10-20% of my monthly stipend on hosting bills. It's not much, only about €100 a month, but you certainly feel it when you're main source of nutrition is unguarded coffee and biscuits.

So my question is how best to monetize software to academics if you're a one-man-band. I could set up a paypal account, or something similar - but never in a million years could I see my PI setting up a lab PayPal account. Donations for server costs would then most likely come from generous students/post-docs, and I don't really see that as a fair or acceptable system. I want people to pay from their grant money, as it should be. What is the best way to do this?

EDIT:
In light of the answers, I feel that "pay for it with your own grant money" is somewhat of a non-starter. Here's two reasons why:

The software developed was not a requirement or goal of the PhD. It was created as a side-reaction of the PhD as the software I wanted to use to analyze my data was difficult to use, expensive, non-existant, etc. Based on no real data, just my observations from working in the Open Source community, 99% of OS software is written to solve the author's current problem, which then gets generalized to solve other people'e problems too, so I don't see my situation as being unusual. Still, I cannot reasonably ask my PI for money on something that was never originally part of the PhD plan. One would even have a hard time justifying that the software was required for the PhD, if the original plan did not foresee using it. For example, one program gives highly-detailed Quality Control reports. Our data passes all of these strict/new QC tests. Therefore, was it even a requirement?
Following on from point 1, but really this is a separate issue, what my PI would be paying for would be for other people to use the software. To handle just the needs of my project, I don't need any online servers - I could make do with just local services and disk space. In fact i've already applied all this software to the project, so now it could just be deleted. No need to register domain names, no AWS hosting costs, no evenings spent making sure the community around my software is happy and productive, etc. In short, if my PI was generous enough to see my software as an integral part of the PhD and worthy of funding (part 1), he would also have to come to the conclusion that it's worth spending his grant money on other people's projects, which I am confident he not only would do out of principle, he might not even be allowed to.

So - I really only see two possible options going forward:

I apply for a new grant, totally separate from my PhD project, to cover the costs of hosting.
The community using the software/services pay directly, using some mechanism that I currently do not know about. Some way a PhD student can buy software online and charge it directly to their grant, rather than with personal funds.

You should let your PI know what resources you need to carry out your work, and discuss how such resources can be provided.  You should not be footing the bill in the first place, so there  should be no need to monetize to recover.


Can I have ResearchGate organize peer review of my paper? I've uploaded an article to ResearchGate, and ResearchGate asks me whether it has been peer reviewed. It hasn't, and I'm wondering whether ResearchGate can get it peer reviewed for me.

Is this possible and if yes how would I do it?

I think I understand your question now. You've uploaded your article to ResearchGate, and ResearchGate asks you whether it has been peer reviewed. It hasn't, and now you're wondering whether ResearchGate can get it peer reviewed for you.

The answer is: it can't. It just wants to mark articles shared on RG that have been peer reviewed elsewhere as such, but it won't have it reviewed for you. To get it reviewed, you would have to submit it to an actual journal.


Is it considered rude to point out typos, by sending an email to the reviewer, in a MathSciNet review? Is it considered rude to point out typos, by sending an email to the reviewer, in a MathSciNet review?

Will they be able to correct the typo, easily, with out involving MathSciNet technical team?

It is better to send the corrections directly to MathSciNet, through the mathrev "at" ams.org account. As long as they are just typos, we update the review directly. If you notice mathematical mistakes, we tend to involve the reviewer (if possible), since the changes will be more significant in that case.

We routinely update files for which we discover problems of this kind. It is not a problem. We appreciate your help in this regard!

As for the question of rudeness: I don't think it is rude, these things happen, and if you phrase the matter politely, it will probably be appreciated. On the other hand, reviewers cannot update directly published reviews, which is why it makes more sense to contact us instead.


Should work as a lab assistant be listed under work experience on a CV when applying for a Masters in computer science? I'm preparing my CV for applying to a MSc program in a specific Computer Science field. In the section of "Working experience" I've written about my work placement and the main job I've had the past few years (both are related with my field of studies). However, in addition to them, I was a lab assistant in my department for a whole semester. My question is, should I also mention this as a working experience? If not, what is the best way to include it to my CV?

I suppose you could include 'lab teaching assistant', but a research assistant would be of a better significance to include in an academic CV. If you do have other occupation to add over the years, you might not need add this one.


To what extent is reviewing work beneficial for young researcher's career? I'm a recently minted postdoc working in an applied computer science field. Occasionally I get requests to review an article, or even to serve as a technical program committee member in various workshops.

Should I basically accept all of these requests as long as the papers to be reviewed are related to my subfield? Or is the opportunity cost too high? Will this community service be positively viewed when I apply for academic positions?

I typically don't learn much from reading the papers under review, as the workshops I'm invited to serve are not that high quality overall, and many submissions are plain bad.

I judge my review opportunities based on the venue: if it is a known good venue, or if it is a little-known venue but there are good people organizing, then it is a good place to give service.  You might end up with all bad papers (after all, in a selective conference most papers are rejected), but you'll still learn things about the process and the way that other people are thinking about the field, and you'll give service that will help a venue or people that you like (and it's not bad on your CV).

Don't waste your time on junk venues: if a venue is not serious, you are only degrading yourself by associating with it.  Note, however, that "junk" is completely different than "low impact" or "high acceptance rate"---in many areas of computer science, a lot of the really interesting new work and research discussion originates in workshops or symposia that have very low impact and high acceptance rates (consider, for example, the AAAI Symposia).  What is important is whether the people and organizations involved are credible and likely to attract interesting work.


How to write/represent the state-of-the-art analysis in a research paper? I have found that one of the most common remarks from the reviewers is regarding the "state-of-the-art". Especially in terms of applied research. Something like:

The authors have not discussed the state-of-the-art methods properly.
The experiment/results should be compared with the state-of-the-art methods.
Etc.

As a novice researcher, my questions are:

What exactly does "state-of-the-art" mean in applied research?
How to properly discuss or analyse the state-of-the-art method in a paper? Should it be discussed in the literature review section only or somewhere else too?
In terms of applied research (like the application of data mining algorithms), how to compare the obtained results with the results of state-of-the-art methods? How to consider the results of state-of-the-art methods as a baseline and compare your own results with it?

Could anyone please explain with examples?

State of the art means the best known methodology. This should have turned up in your literature review and if it didn't  you have a gap. The gap would likely be in finding results in very recent papers.

The first reviewer comment could mean that you haven't actually found and discussed the current best available method to compare with, or that you are somehow misrepresenting it in your paper.

But it isn't enough to discuss in in the lit review section. You need to explicitly show how your results compare with the results of the best available.  Very possibly it would be a long section of a thesis, though page limits in papers provide a constraint. If your results are superior, you need to show how and discuss why.

As to number 3 on your list, the methodology you use is up to you to design and should be consistent with practice in your field, unless it introduces, also, a new comparison metric, in which case that needs to be discussed in detail as well.

For data mining, probably something along the lines of applying the "best known" algorithms along with your own to the same set of data is likely appropriate.

But you need to assure the reviewers that you compare apples to apples so that the results are directly compared.

Sorry, I don't have any examples.


Doing upper division pre-requisites for a second master's degree - need advice I have a BA and an MA in biological anthropology/bioarchaeology (as well as all my PhD coursework done, go me). I left that field and academia in general several years ago and ended up landing a job as a web dev/computer programmer, which is a skill set I learned in high school and never once studied formally in college or grad school.

I'm really in love with my current field however, and would like to get a degree in comp sci. After looking around, it seems a lot of local departments don't admit students at the undergraduate level who already have bachelor's degrees, so my option is to go in at the graduate level.

Biggest problem is my first two degrees don't do much for me in terms of satisfying prereqs for admission into an engineering MS program. I had to take lots of stats, for example, but no calc or discrete math. Additionally, I need to knock out a whole bunch of comp sci courses, many of which are either upper division or not available at community colleges.

Has anyone out there done this before? If so, how did you get the upper div or otherwise difficult-to-find-outside-of-a-major-university prereqs?

Thanks!

An anecdotal answer -

I am in an identical situation; I had done a bachelors in business admin and then an M.A. in economics.

My passion later turned out to be mathematics and I was unable to get admitted to an undergraduate program (or at least one where they would allow me to skip the electives).

What I did to overcome this was select some universities I wanted to attend and made appointments with the graduate program directors. I then went to see them in person and explained my situation and what I was hoping to accomplish. I then asked what options would be available to someone in my situation.

One of the graduate directors was very receptive to my case and admitted me into something called a "Qualifying year." I am technically a graduate student, but will be taking upper-level undergraduate courses for a year to get the background necessary for graduate level course-work. After this year, I have the option to apply to transfer into the full graduate program or apply to a different university.

A similar option may be available to you, though I imagine every university handles these things differently. Could be worth just going in and asking.


Review Comments for Program Chair -- what to write? I am preparing some reviews of conference contributions. The online review management asks me to grade the assigned papers, add comments for the authors and comments for the program chair. I cannot leave any field blank -- so I am wondering what comments I should give to the chair? To my knowledge, comments to the chair include suspected or actual cases of plagiarism.

Is there anything else, a chair might expect to read from me, the reviewer?

Should I give them a short version of my comments to the authors?

The conference homepage and the reviewer guidelines do not give any hints.
Thank you for your input!

There is no point why you should fill anything into this field, unless you actually have some confidential comments that should not be part of the comments to the authors.
You can fill the field in a boilerplate manner, by using a text fragment such as: "I do not have any additional comments beyond those to the authors."


Construct a network of citations I had the thought that I should run a computation on my document to see things like: How many times I cite each source, how many times I cite each author etc.
Then I thought that isn't enough.
What if I cite A_foo, B_foo and C_foo, but both A_foo and B_foo cite C_foo.
That is worth knowing.
A graph of citations between the texts that I am citing will revel interesting information.
For example nodes with out any parent, will generally indicate new and original ideas. While they may draw on other things, those things are distant enough from  my work that I am not citing them.
Nodes that have no links to any others, show that I am bringing in an idea from another subfield, perhaps.

This graph should be computable, I know google scholar maintains a list of almost everything I've cited, and for each thing lists who has cited them.

Has this been experimented with? Are there existing tools for the job?
If there isn't I might mess around with some python and put something together.

My references are all in bibtex.

I would like to construct a graph of the citations.

Strangely enough, this question was asked on SO a while back with no real good answers. There was a link to this question, which links to PaperScope, which looks promising, although there hasn't been activity on the project since April 2013. I've never used it that tool.

Microsoft's Visual Explorerisn't exactly what you're looking for, but it's related. Hubmed used to have a graph view but I can't find it now, maybe you can.

The problem will be that even going just two nodes out - your citations, and your citations' citations - will include thousands of papers from hundreds of authors. As discussed in the aforelinked SO and SU questions, simply choosing an appropriate way to display the data will be a non-trivial challenge, and making useful inferences from the results will probably be even more difficult. Still, it may be interesting. Good luck!


Is it against the rules to see someone's exam answers after the exam? We had an exam and got the results 2 weeks later but I got slightly less points than I expected and we could not check the corrections yet. I was a bit impatient and wanted to see where I could have got it wrong, so I asked one of my classmates, who got maximum points, to send me what answers he got so I can compare them. I want to point it out again, it was clearly 2 weeks after the exam, so I did not have any unethical advantage from it. But still, I am a bit afraid that we did something "illegal".
Is this action considered to be academic misconduct, or since it was after the exam, students are allowed to share their answers with each other?

Certainly it wasn't illegal in the technical sense and it is very unlikely, though not impossible, that some local rule would prohibit it. In fact, it ought to be entirely permissible for one student to aid the learning of another in this manner.
Even working together on "possible" exam questions before the exam should be permitted, even encouraged, IMO.
The point of it all is learning, not grading. There shouldn't be secret information.
On the other hand, there are some things that are best learned through struggle and not by reading answers. On a math test, for example, seeing the answer is very different from generating it. As a learner, you want to strive, as much as possible for insight, especially in those subjects that you are most interested in. That insight comes from hard work.


Having team-members split the grade among them by their personal contribution In a project-based class the submission is in teams of 2 (self-assigned teams).
In most teams, the grade is the same for both members.
However,  in some teams, I suspect that most of the work was done by one member, while the other was a "free rider". The suspicions are based on GitHub commits and on interaction during the semester. However, I do not have clear-cut proofs since I do not know how they split the work among them at home. I can test them personally, but this is not sufficient since it is possible that the free-rider knows what the other person did.
I am not allowed to change the grade structure in retrospect, so I thought of an idea that is based on mutual agreement: if the grade that the team deserves is X, I will tell them that their total grade is 2 X, and ask them to agree on a fair division of the grade among them. If they do not agree, then the grade is just split equally between them as usual. Effectively, this gives the free riders a chance to behave fairly and give some points to their friends who did most of the work.
The advantage is that the team members know much more than me what work each of them did. The disadvantage is that this may cause quarrels among team members. Is this a good idea?
EDIT: Thanks for all the answers. I am now convinced that this scheme might create psychological and social problems  that are better avoided.

A problem I see here is that this scheme may motivate people to divide the points "tactically". Say our group project is worth 10 points and I only need 5 for my goal (which may be the least passing grade or the best grade or whatever). Then of course I would take only 5 points and give 15 to my collegue (which is more than the project is worth).
Also, it might motivate people to look for their partners tactically: If I am somebody who does not trust other people and wants to do everything themselves (something which should ideally be discouraged in group projects), I choose the person who cares least about their grades as a partner and get much more points than my project is worth.
Moreover, with this setting, you treat the grades as some currency. students will find it okay to do less/more work because they can themselves discuss and haggle about the grade they got. IMO this is also not something which should be encouraged.


I am writing a briefing paper, and it only consists of facts and citations I am writing a briefing paper, and it only consists of facts and citations. Literally every sentence is a quote or a link to another source.

The topic of the paper is pretty much covered and there are no problems with a structure of it (my supervisor told that). The problem is that it is too dry.

How do I add my own comments to it?

I struggle expressing my own thoughts and I do not have an experience with writing. I do not feel like I am qualified to comment on such topics, in some way I feel like adding my own point of view is not right, as everyone should make their own conclusions from the given information. Am I wrong?

Even if all that you are doing is summarizing pre-existing material, if you aren't writing in your own words, you are likely to produce terrible prose.

In summarization, you are necessarily making decisions about what to include and what to omit. You have reasons for making those decisions. That is your perspective on the material.

A good briefing can be quite exciting and compelling, even if it is filled to the brim with citations.  Too many quotations however, is likely to be a problem, because those quotations are taken from a different context and will not flow together to make a narrative.

If you are having trouble breaking away from these prior words, I might suggest the following radical technique: having first made you collection of material as you have described, open a fresh, blank, document, and starting writing without looking at any of the original material.  In this circumstance, your memory will be not good enough to continue using only the words of others, and you may be better able to start developing your own expression and perspective on the material.


How to approach potential case study companies? Currently doing a PhD, got the initial literature research done and got to a point where I would want to approach companies in my domain to ask them whether they would be interested in participating (doing interviews) with me.

How do you approach firms (outside your network)?

I have made numerous attempts and get barley past the gatekeeper and having worked in the industry myself for some years, I get it. Why would I want to sacrifice my teams time to participate in research with (from their perspective) questionable outcome.

Any advice? How do you sell your research to the industry as a PhD student?

I do not know your field, but I have some suggstions:
1. Define precisely: what is in it for them?
If you are emailing person X in industry to participate in your interviews with some long email like

Dear X,
I am working on [technical research project Y] and I am looking to collect industry opinions on [Z]. I was wondering if you would be interested in helping out with [QRSTUV]...

then probably this email will be ignored or deleted. It is not clear to X why doing this is in their interest. And it sounds difficult for them to learn about your project and figure out how to help.
So I would focus on making your email simple, and explaining clearly why they might be interested.

Is your research likely to benefit the people working in this industry? Say so right up front and explain it from their perspective, not yours.

Is your research in a topic that many people in this industry share an interest in? Pitch this as an opportunity for them to share their expertise and knowledge.

There are many other possibilities depending on what research you are looking to do.
2. Do an internship with the industry
I do not know if this is an option, but in general it might be the only effective way to develop a collaboration. Once you have done an internship, many routes would be open, including collaborating with the industry as part of your research (depending on the field).
3. Get someone more senior (your advisor or someone with connections) to contact them
The industry people will always pay more attention to someone who has status and the possibility of real collaboration and funding that might benefit the industry's interests.


Is it justified for a teacher to refuse your project proposals just because he wants something unique? I'm new here and am not sure whether this is the right place to post such a question or not so rather than downvoting just tell me I'll move the question (as I don't want to be banned for having low rep).
I'm currently in my 3rd semester of university majoring in Computer Science and this question is related to a course I'm taking - 'Data Structures and Algorithms'.
A little bit about the teacher -> graduated from the same university in which I'm currently studying last year and was hired to work here
So, the situation is that we have to submit a project (GUI based application made with Java and JavaFX) by 2nd January. Now, here are the problems:
The teacher demands we

we implement every data structure we use from scratch (I have heard this is standard for this course).

only use data structures he hasn't taught us and that all our projects should have unique data structures. Basically, no two groups/individuals can use the same data structure and as you can imagine this will lead to some people being stuck with highly obscure data structure whose implementation or ways of implementation either might not be available or not clear for the person to understand.

use as many data structures as possible. I researched online on a few websites and found out that data structures are important but they are only a small part of the project there are a lot of other things.

As if that wasn't enough of a problem, he rarely responds to our queries on discord or through emails and the upper management doesn't listen to us.
I have also proposed a few project ideas but they were all rejected because there weren't enough data structures used or he didn't want us to use that data structure or some other reason. A few of these were:

Text Editor (not enough data structures).
Sudoku Solver (overused).
Any project that used stacks to implement history and backwards and forwards navigation (don't use stacks).
Todolist (too small project).

Now, I ask is it justified for a teacher to do such things just for getting a truly unique project?
We have barely 3 weeks left to start and finish our projects as not even one of use has gotten their projects approved yet.
EDIT:
Something happened last night, the students that were doing projects in groups collectively decided to not bother getting their projects approved anymore and are now going to go with whatever they want to, they will still use data structures but they are no longer going to strive to meet any of his criteria. They were extremely frustrated and being on the end of their rope they have decided on this and are saying that they will deal with it on the day of the evaluation.

It sounds like the standards are pretty high. It sounds like the instructor doesn't want you to be mediocre. It sounds like they are demanding some creativity.
Those are good things, actually.
It is hard to judge whether the standards are unreasonable or not but you would benefit by meeting them.
Are you permitted to brainstorm with other students? Do that if allowed. Have you asked for ideas from the instructor? Have you tried to take any of your original ideas and modified them to come closer to the standard? Alternatively, have you taken any really hard problems and tried to whittle them down to something that is doable and meets the standard?
It's good that you aren't being singled out, also. The farther you go, the higher the standards you will be expected to meet.


Why does the number of publications for computer science and economics PhD students differ by so much? As a CS PhD student, I'm often surprised at how few papers econ students have when they go into the job market. Even students at top universities typically have 3-4 papers, mostly still unpublished, whereas it is not uncommon for CS students to have more than 10 papers by the time they graduate -- some CS undergraduates already have 3-4 papers or more. As this blog post confirms:

  CS candidate typically have many papers while economics students typically have only a few polished papers.

I can see a few reasons that contribute to this, but I don't think they satisfactorily explain the phenomenon.

Econ students often spend the first year only focusing on classes and qual exam. However, a 1-year difference in a 5-6-year program is not that much, and CS has classes and qual exam of its own, though admittedly more relaxed.
The publication venue for econ is journals whereas CS publishes in conferences. However, top CS conferences usually have acceptance rates of 15-30% and people spend a lot of effort polishing their papers before the deadline, so I'm not sure how much more polished econ papers can be, whatever "polished" means. Moreover, many CS conference papers are turned into journal papers without major additional contribution.
The econ job market places a great deal of importance on a single "job market paper", so there is less incentive to work on other papers. However, wouldn't other papers to go along with the job market paper help toward a better profile? Even if econ students don't want to start big projects, there are journals such as Economics Letters that accept shorter papers, whose website even says explicitly: "especially young researchers and advanced graduate students are encouraged to submit their articles."

As I said, I don't think the reasons I described satisfactorily explain this huge difference in number. What am I missing?

I don't believe what you say is univesally true of all CS areas; it is certainly not true of mine. But more to your point, based on my conversations with colleagues in economics, one factor (possibly of several) is definitely the submission-to-publication delay: A conference turnaround is about three months, but a journal can be much longer, especially if major revisions are involved.

Here's some insight on the subject (published a while ago).


Writing a book chapter. Figure etiquette I am writing a book chapter in theoretical computer science. I would like to add figures based on figures previously published in relevant papers.

In the caption of each Figure I will cite the original source. Obviously, the figures that I will include are not the original ones but are made by myself.

However, since the figures are explaining abstract proof concepts there is not much freedom to make them really different from the originals apart from minor changes.

Am I still at risk of legal retaliation from publishers?

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and the following is just my opinion.

Copyright protects expressions but not ideas or concepts (https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html). If the figures are entirely made by yourself expressing the ideas of the original works, while the original sources are properly cited, I don't think you have anything to worry regarding copyright.

Also, in many countries, a design of simple words and/or simple geometry shapes are not qualified for copyright protection. See the Wikipedia article for Threshold of originality.


Can I write the diversity statement around my ADHD? I am applying for PhD in physics, and realized that a lot of schools have the option to provide "diversity statements" or "personal statements". As a foreigner, I can't seem to grasp what I should write about...
Can I write about my ADHD and how it influenced my study, along with how it made it hard for me to make friends because of a cultural thing called "nunchi" (reading the atmosphere of the room)? Or will mentioning something like ADHD at all put me in a negative light? I know that in Korea, if I mention this, it wouldn't go well... But I heard that diversity is kind of taken very seriously in America so was wondering if it would help me or not... or is ADHD even considered "diversity"?

Look around, but I think @Anonymous Physicist is right that this isn't about you but about how you will handle diversity in your interactions with the university community you are likely to encounter if you are hired as a PhD student at this school (and maybe as a Teaching Assistant (TA)). See, for example, Vanderbilt's Center for Teaching's definition of what their Diversity Statement expectations are.
In that case, I would say that you should weigh your own personal experiences as a person with ADHD against others who are different races or from other countries or ... against what you have experienced before bringing it up. It's unlikely to be considered relevant, in my opinion.


Citing a paper with multiple versions In my area (computer science) it's common for a paper to be posted on arxiv, then appear in a conference a few months later, and finally appear in a journal several years later. This raises the question: which version should I cite?

The general practice I've seen is to cite the latest version. However, I do not agree with this general practice for several reasons:

The chronology becomes unclear. e.g. I might say "Bobson [Bob14] builds on the seminal work of Adamson [Ada15]" It looks like the chronology is backwards, but the correct chronology is that [Ada15] appeared on arxiv in 2013 and then appeared in a journal in 2015.
The most recent version is often not the best version to read. For example, the conference version of a paper is usually heavily abridged (due to a page limit) and the journal version is hidden behind a paywall and strangely formatted. Thus the arxiv version is usually the best version to read.
If I am citing a specific part of the article (e.g. "Theorem 4.2 on page 23") that only appears in the arxiv version or has a different number in the journal version, then it doesn't make sense to cite the "wrong" version.
It means I have to keep updating my citations as the paper moves through different versions. And this leads to inconsistent citations.

The only advantage I see to citing the most recent version is that it  indicates how "good" the paper is, as indicated by the prestige of the conference or journal.

I am often tempted to cite the arxiv version in these cases, as it is gives the best chronology and is usually the most readable version. (I can justify it by saying that this is the version I actually read.)

Is going against this general practice acceptable? Might I annoy someone by not acknowledging that their paper appeared in a very prestigious venue? Or would someone be unhappy that I don't have the venue information in my references?

How should I cite articles that have multiple versions? In particular, how do I communicate (i) the correct chronology, (ii) the version with the right information, and (iii) the conference/journal that accepted it?

One solution is to cite all the versions, but I think that is impractical and confusing - and I have never seen it done.

In math we have the same issues.  Here is what I do, most of which is standard:

If a paper has been published, always cite the published version.
If you want to point out the chronology, in particular because it is not clear from publication dates, do it in the text.  People understand that publication dates do not align perfectly with when the papers were originally written.  (My papers don't appear in the order I wrote them.)  If you refer to arXiv versions, it is easy to see the chronology, at least up to the level of month/year, from arXiv ids.
If something is accepted to a certain journal/conference proceedings, you can say "Journal XXX, to appear" in the references.  If you want to say something was announced at a certain conference, you can say so in the text.
Make references (e.g., theorem numbers) to the version you cite.  I personally like to include version numbers in arXiv citations for this reason (e.g., arXiv:1601.0000v37).  If you want to refer to something that appeared only in a previous version, I would cite the published paper if published and say in the text something like: This result appeared as Thm A.B.C of an earlier version (arXiv:1601.0000v36) of [citation]" possibly with some remark about why it's not in the current version.  (Hopefully, if you're using it, it hasn't been removed because there was an error in the proof.)  But if the paper has not been published, you can either do a similar thing or just put a citation to the version you want to refer to.  However, it's probably best to point out in such situations that the result doesn't appear in later versions so the reader doesn't accidentally check the wrong version.


Why do some Thomson indexed Journals not have impact factors? My paper was accepted in a conference, and among their journals there was this one:
https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/0974-6455
And this one :
http://soeagra.com/abr.html#
And while inspecting their websites, I couldn't find their impact factor. is this sign of low quality or what ? Knowing that these are Thomson indexed journals.
Thanks

First things first, Thomson Reuters no longer manages impact factors; they sold the business to Clarivate Analytics.
Clarivate Analytics is not an index; they are a business. They manage multiple databases, such as ESCI (Emerging Sources Citation Index) and SCIE (Science Citation Index Expanded).
To have an "official" impact factor, you need to be indexed by the SCI (Science Citation Index). If you are indexed by SCI then you are in some sense "indexed" by Clarivate Analytics, but the converse is not true. The journals you mentioned are not indexed by the SCI, therefore they don't have impact factors.
Does this mean they are low quality? Not necessarily, e.g. it's possible for a new journal to not have an impact factor simply because it takes time to be indexed by the SCI. But it's certainly not a good sign.


What to write in the email for sending PhD application to a research group's head? I am applying for a Ph.D. position in a research group. On the group's webpage, the leader of the group has asked to send him CV and Motivation Letter if someone is interested in a Ph.D. position.

I have prepared the documents, but I am wondering that what should I write in the email by which I will send him the documents?

Should I write about why am I interested in his work?

Should I talk about my educational background?

Or just simply say "Dear Professor, Attachment is my application for Ph.D. position in your group?"

Your CV has your background. Hopefully you have written an SOP (Statement of purpose) giving your goals for grad study and beyond. In the email you can probably best help yourself writing about why you want to work with him, but make it honest and not too "over the top". But a bit more than just your last suggestion. How does this group fit your SOP?

If he gets a lot of applications he will quickly sort them into two piles. You want to be in the pile for "further consideration".


How badly will my future job prospects be affected after having my PhD graduation date extended by more than 3 years (due to health)? Do I still have the possibility of a career in Academia? Can publishing merit (Qualitative and Quantitative) save me?

It will probably have very little effect. Most jobs / grants / fellowships / etc that are time-limited for early career researchers,

Are based on time since submission or graduation, and pay no
attention to when you started;
Allow you to argue for longer if
there has been documented sickness (as well as maternity, and some
other things)

The time taken might raise eyebrows on a CV, and if you are worried about not getting as far as interviews because of it you could consider mentioning in covering letters, but "I took longer because I was ill. Now I'm better" is a perfectly reasonable explanation that no sensible person will hold against you.
(if you can't say "Now I'm better", that may unfortunately be a different matter)


How to cite conference contribution that appears later in a Journal Supplement People from our group attended some important conferences (Annual Meeting of the Biophysical Society, etc) and sent abstracts that were accepted as posters or talks. Later, the abstract appears in a Supplement of a Journal (in this case, Biophysical Journal).

My question is, in such cases, can one cite this publication in the CV as a regular paper? Otherwise, what should be the best way to cite it?

They are not usually listed on the same list as “regular papers” in a CV. The reason for that is that they are not peer-reviewed. In the fields of physics, chemistry and biology, it is most common to list your scientific production in a CV by breaking it down into the following categories:

Peer-reviewed articles
Book chapters
Conference proceedings
Invited conference talks
Conference talks
Conference posters

I looked at examples from the Biophysical journal supplements, and the abstracts are quite short (one paragraph or two). Even though it is published in print, it is too short to be considered proceedings. Thus, I would list it as either a talk or a poster. That is was published as part of a supplement to one journal does not make it very different from any other conference.

In some countries and in some fields, it may also be typical to further break down between national and international venues (journals, conferences, etc.).

As a side note, the journal webpage has some information on how to format such citations:

  Smith, R., S.E. Jones, T.J. Smith, (2006) Histone phosphorylation in DNA damage. 2006 Biophysical Society Meeting Abstracts. Biophysical Journal, Supplement, Abstract.


Citable code snippets as gists I have several code snippets shared as gists in GitHub. How to make them citable with a DOI?

I know whole repositories in GitHub can be made citable using Zenodo or Figshare (guide). But as I have mainly R functions as gists, I don’t want to build entire R packages to make it citable.

What are the other options available?

While not in the field, I see two options.  Even if none of them is giving a doi, either:

A) Consider runmycode.org as a deposit for your code. It is backed for example by the French CNRS, the nation's largest body of public research, the Alfred Sloan Foundation, and Elsevier as a larger publisher. One major axis of action actually is to preserve code used in journals.  The service is for free, and all languages are permitted.  Consequently, Elsevier's Journal of Computational Science encourages authors to do so:

  You can enrich your online article by uploading relevant computer code and data to the RunMyCode repository. Once published, your article on ScienceDirect will be linked to a dedicated RunMyCode companion website via the "Data for this article" application displayed next to the article, in the right hand side panel. This linkage will allow readers to access your code and data via the RunMyCode companion website. To create a companion website, please go to: http://www.runmycode.org/home

(source, accessed on June 30, 2017)

B) Secondly, lesser for the intended publication in a journal than for broader re-use of your coding by others, there is a dedicated CRAN website here to submit R packages to their servers.  Obviously, to be checked with the policies of the targeted journal.


How to nail a Ph.D. interview when the professors work is not a good fit with your background? I saw an offer for Ph.D. positions (USA) where 4 professors were on the list. I chose one (Prof X) and wrote my SOP according to his research and applied.

Now another professor (Prof Y) from the list asked me for a skype interview. Now I am wondering how to nail this interview as I really want to get a position.

Prof Y's work doesn't fit well with my background and my publications (so I was wondering if he just takes the interviews and selects students?)

If he asks me if I have any questions regarding his research, I am afraid I can't ask a smart question.

The email was kind of super positive where he wrote he is very impressed with my CV. I don't want to miss this chance at any cost. Is it ok if I tell him that I have a little knowledge about his work during the interview?

In the US this probably matters less than you think, though I don't know your field. In most cases, however, a research advisor isn't chosen at the time of acceptance, but later, maybe a lot later. First, you need to pass qualifying exams and before that, take whatever courses are necessary to enable it. If you are already prepared for those exams, then it is shortened, but still an essential step.

So, you are normally joining a "department", not a specific PI's lab. It may well be that Prof Y is just handling lots of the interviews for the group of four and they are collectively looking for a group of good students to join.

While it might be otherwise, the above is the normal thing in most fields in US.

So, the fact that your research focus isn't the same as that of Y may matter little as long as you show you are prepared generally, that you are interested, and, perhaps, that you are flexible. The last can save you and get you in the door, after which you may have more options.

It should be fine to say that you have more experience and even more interest with topic M than topic N if you are asked specifics. But it might be a mistake to say that you would never consider N.

In other countries the situation is quite different and application is more commonly made to an individual professor than a department.

But I was several years into doctoral study in math before I linked up with my research advisor. Though I entered with only a BA.

In chemistry it might be a bit different, but only if the four professors ran separate labs, separately funded. But the fact that they advertise as a group, suggests not.


What makes good research questions good? I am in Computer Science and currently in my proposal phase. For my problem statement, I want to come up with good research questions. However, at the moment I am struggling with the definition of "good" research questions. My professor usually comments that my current questions are not "why" questions, but instead are "yes/no" questions.

Any recommendations what make good research questions good?

Do you want to know the answer?  Really?
Do you realistically have a good shot at finding the answer, in a reasonable amount of time?  Really?
Will lots of other people be happy to learn the answer (even if the question had never occurred to them before)?  Really?
Are you sure nobody already knows the answer?  Really?

If you can answer yes to all eight questions, it's a good research question.

(Unfortunately, some of these points may depend on what the actual answer is, which of course you don't know.)


How does one maintain academic contacts? How do you stay in touch with researchers whom you meet at conferences? My intention is to stay in touch for possible collaborations and job opportunities.

Usually I meet people, we talk and I send them a "thank you" mail but later I get confused how to take this forward and maintain this contact.

I do send links, my preprints and interesting website questions and stuff once in a while but more often than not, I don't get a reply.

To build and maintain a network of professional relationships, one should develop, maintain, and express genuine interest in other people and their work. Introducing oneself at conferences is a good start, as is recording and updating contact information, and setting up a system to remind yourself to reach out to people regularly. (There are various tools for this, ranging from a spreadsheet, to social network services, to CRM software. If you use gmail, you may want to try "contactually" for the mechanical part. )

Sending your contacts updates on your work is useful. And these should be targeted... it's ok to use a broadcast medium like twitter to announce new work to the world, but avoid sending out mass-email -- instead target those people who are likely to be most interested, and include a brief personal note that puts the new work in the context of their interests.

Most important, keep track of what others in your network are doing -- new publications, new projects, working papers, promotions, etc. (Social networks can be useful for this in some fields for tracking people directly, tracking working papers in your discipline, and disciplinary news can be quite useful, google scholar can also help alert you to new publications from people in your network. ) And when someone in your network is starting something of interest, re-connect -- with congratulations, a useful comment, and possibly some information on your own work (if it really is of interest with respect to their new project).


No response from summer school. Should I email? I have applied to a summer school program in math for undergraduates. On the application website it says that notifications of acceptance or rejection will be sent out in March.
As March is nearly ending and email is the only means for them to contact me I'm wondering whether maybe I should cautiously ask, if my application has already been reviewed ? This is because I'm considering the possibility that maybe something went wrong with the email (yes, I checked my spam folder) and I definitely don't want to miss the summer school just because I didn't respond in time to an email that never made it to me.

(It may be helpful for the answerer to know that on the summer schools website it says that we can send them email in case we have other deadlines so that they can try to decide sooner upon the mailers application.)

Ask. That is, send a polite email inquiring if there is any news.

There's a possibility that the decisions have simply not been made yet - the organizers of the summer school, just like the rest of us, are busy and bad at keeping to deadlines - but it's still okay to ask (politely).


In what circumstances do departments permit graduate students to complete their program off campus? I believe that the law could make better use of formal logic. I've been accepted into a good law school. After I graduate, I'd like to use part of my career to explore ways lawyers and the law could practicably use logic.

On a number of warrants, I believe that completing a graduate degree in logic (either a master of mathematics, or a master of philosophy) would help me accomplish that. That said, the university that operates the law school I plan to attend doesn't offer many logic courses. I have a school in mind whose math and philosophy departments teach a great deal of logic.

However, my circumstances are such that I'd need to complete my studies in logic while studying law. Preferably, I'd study logic during the summer terms and law during the other two terms. Although, many instructors don't work full-time during the summer, which could make that plan less feasible. Alternatively, I've considered completing the course work, or pre-studying, during the summer months, then rendering the course work and completing the exams during the regular terms.

In sum: I plan to study law away from the school where I'd like to study logic, so I could go to the school where I'll study logic during the summer terms, and only occasionally during the fall and winter terms. Thinking in or out of the box, what could I do to make this work?

Thank you.

This is really something that will differ depending on where you are, what field, and even who your advisor is.

For example, at my previous institution, the rule was that you couldn't work on your dissertation remotely until after your proposal date (meaning you are fairly far into your program - proposals at that institution were 2-3 years in for many) and only with your committee's approval. Some chairs could, and did, refuse.

Others were extremely laid back, and probably wouldn't have objected to skirting that rule.


How to respond to a citation request which is not relevant? Often, as soon as I submit a pre-submission paper on the arxiv, I receive a couple of emails from other researchers pointing out their previous relevant work, which in their words is connected with mine and deserve citations.

Sometimes, it happens that their work is really connected with my work, and perhaps even anticipating it. For some reason I was not aware of that, my fault. In these cases, I usually add the citation and even refer to the work in a more extensive way.

However, most of the emails just point to works that are indeed on the same topic, perhaps also very important works in the field, but which are not even similar nor related to my work. In this cases, I really don't know what to do.
I could inflate the reference of the paper, giving credits to papers which really did not contribute in any way to my work. Or I could just ignore it, with the hope that one of the authors of that papers will not end up to be one of my referees...

What is the common practice in this cases?

(see also this question for another point of view)

Opinions vary, but I think it is very important to acknowledge prior art, that is, priority. To leave important prior (strongly related) work out of a bibliography is to communicate the idea that there was no prior work. Indeed, one can "cultivate" lack of references to one's competitors by carefully not looking at their work, thus, seemingly having no obligation to cite them (or otherwise acknowledge their existence!?!) But this is inappropriate, as it would convey a false impression to your readers, as well as being unfair to your competitors or predecessors. That is, it's not only what you use or rely on, but works that came before yours.


Should I take a Certificate for University Teaching while doing a postdoc? I have just gotten a 2.5 year postdoctoral fellowship (philosophy) to do my own research project at a University (I am connected to a relevant research group and professor, but basically the project is my own and I have secured funding for stays abroad). My department is now offering me to also take a University Teaching Certificate (200 hours spread over 1 1/2 year). After completing my PhD I was teaching as an adjunct for 2 semesters, so I have teaching experience (designed my own courses etc), but not an official paper on it.
My friends in academia tells me I should go for it, and some even say I should ask for more teaching and try to get my department to change my title to "assistent professor".
I, however, am thrilled to look forward to 2 1/2 years with just doing research and getting some more publications done. I only have a couple really good ones at the moment (I have two small kids, so time is limited already). Also, the job market here is not very good at the moment, so I don't think there is any chance I will stay at this university anyway, and all though I would prefer to stay in academia, I have to be prepared to look for jobs other places when my contract ends. I might also have to leave my country, if I really want a tenure-track job, and then I wonder if the teaching certificate will be considered legitimate anyway.

I would recommend you to take the certificate now. The reasons are the following:

Although research excellence still remain to be the most important criteria for early-career faculty members, it is rarely a single criteria candidates are compared on. In the UK it is increasingly common that new faculty members are expected to teach from their first day in the Division; an evidenced skill and knowledge of the process can give you an advantage over other candidates, excellent in research and research only. I don't know what is the situation in other countries, but I have a gut feeling that academia across the globe is becoming more dependent on student fees, and hence the emphasis on teaching skills will increase.
You seem to do really well on research front now, having your own fellowship funds, etc. You are clearly appreciated and valued in your current Division. However, you will need to establish yourself in the new place in the new role of young but fully capable faculty member. This could include a lot of teaching, plus a lot of administrative work you're not familiar with now. Transition from research-only postdoc to a faculty is not a smooth one. It is quite important to be prepared to the faculty role as much as you can, before you take it. So, it is worth spending 200 hours now rather than later on top of other commitments.
It is not uncommon for people to move between countries and departments and having their certificates recognised. Commonly, HRs would need some evidence, but as soon as they can read the document, they are likely to accept it.


Involved in potential friction in department over a postgraduate seminar I co-organised - should I worry? I am a second year PhD student at a UK university. Halfway through my first year, I voluntarily took over the organisational duties of a monthly, school-wide postgraduate seminar, along with two other students. This seminar is open to all postgraduate students and staff in the school. We are supervised/overseen in this undertaking by the doctoral programme director (DPD), who is my personal PhD supvervisor (and with whom I get on very well). Our organisational duties include organising speakers (two per seminar - one a PhD student, and one a member of staff or external speaker), scheduling the seminar dates/times and arranging food (pizza).

An important aspect of each seminar is our "skills talk" - given by a member of staff or an external speaker. This talk is given on some area of formal skills training, such as health and safety, equality and diversity in the school, writing up of theses, acquiring and using academic grants, etc.

Recently, our organisational "supervisor" - the DPD - recommended a small change to how we organise speakers for the "skills talk" aspect of the seminar. This involved sending an email to the heads of the research groups in the school, asking whether they could organise some small number of staff speakers from their respective research groups to speak at some of the future meet-ups of our seminar. This email was approved by the DPD and then sent out.

This was met with a request from one of the heads of research groups for a meeting with us as organisers. During this meeting, remarks were made which I found alarming. Specifically:

"You, as students, should not be emailing the heads of groups telling
us what to do"
"It is not right that students are organising a seminar meet-up of
this nature, involving skills training in areas such as health and
safety"
"I am very concerned with the nature of your organisational duties"

We organisers have of course fed this back to the DPD, but the reason that the nature of the remarks alarmed me is that they appeared to imply potential consequences for us as organisers, outside of the seminar itself. Is this something which we should be worried about?

I don't see anything that you should be worried about, as you've said in your question, your supervisor is the DPD and is the one who approved everything you did.

This head of research group probably didn't know that your activities were approved by the DPD and just thought this was a bunch of students adding to his workload. My expectation is that the DPD speaks with this head of group and they sort things out between them. Your personal supervisor will have your back on this one and has more clout than the group head.

I share the concerns about health and safety though. That sounds like it should be done by a health and safety professional, which your institute will have, rather than student lead.


Is there anything wrong with faculty socializing with grad students? I was a little bit surprised to read this comment thread on the Chronicle of Higher Education, which suggests (among other things) that faculty shouldn't fraternize with grad students. I think this site has a different slant than CHE, so I thought I would bring up the question here. Is there anything wrong with faculty socializing with grad students?

I agree that professors should definitely avoid getting romantically involved with grad students, or getting drunk with them. Moreover, I agree that a heightened sense of boundaries is important.

But is there any reason for a professor, who would otherwise be interested, to decline offers to attend parties thrown by grad students, or to go hiking with them, or to play soccer with them, or to go to bar trivia with them? I've observed this to be common in math departments, and appreciated by faculty and students alike.

I suppose it depends on whether one views grad students as hoi polloi who need to be kept on the other side of a "class boundary" (as the CHE comment put it), or whether one views them as colleagues who just happen to not be as far along on their academic journeys.  I prefer to see them as colleagues.

For what it's worth, when I was a grad student my advisor often had us (his research group) over to his house for dinners and drinks, and I'd often play racquetball with one of my dissertation committee members.  This made us feel appreciated and made it much more palatable to put in crazy hours when needed to meet a proposal or paper submission deadline.  And now, as a tenured faculty member, I take my students out to lunches and dinners and beers and hiking trips (alas, I'm too old for racquetball now).  I enjoy getting to know my students as whole individuals, and find that the socialization engenders a sense of community that makes things more pleasant for everyone.

Socializing with students is very different from being "buddies" with them: the relationship between a professor and an advisee is very different than that between friends.  But IMHO this is no different than any other professional relationship with any other colleague: there are some things that are fine to share and others that are best left unexplored.


Manuscript evaluation for becoming an editor I was wondering how editors evaluate manuscripts. They certainly do not have time to read the paper thoroughly. What are the key points to look for when evaluating a manuscript as an editor?

Different editors treat this differently. Some of the things I looked at:

Does it look like a serious research paper? If not, desk reject.
Does the paper pass plagiarism detection? If not, desk reject.
Is it plausible? The methods used should conceivably lead to the results. If it's not plausible, unless the authors provide a convincing explanation, desk reject.
Is the paper review-ready? A paper that has lots of typographical errors, has figures without axis labels, is written in incomprehensible English to the point where I cannot in good faith ask reviewers to wrack their heads deciphering the paper, etc - reject and resubmit.
Is it within the journal's scope? If not, desk reject.
Does the paper have anything interesting to say? Chances are I won't be able to judge the significance of the paper myself, but the authors ought to have written something in the introduction about why their research matters. Something like "this material is important because of [reasons]. Nobody has ever done [calculations] for this crucial property. We do it in this paper and suggest [methods] to make an even better material." would be helpful. If the authors don't give a reason for why their research matters, a desk rejection is more likely.
What tests did the authors conduct? How do the authors know their results really are reliable? If no error analysis is performed, desk reject. The same goes for any standard tests, e.g. before one can claim that a new drug is effective, I'd want to know if there was a control group, if the results are statistically significant, etc. If the authors do not discuss these standard things - desk reject.

Beyond this it depends on what the reviewers say. Reviewer reports can be very varied so it's hard to make statements about them, but the idea is the same: I read what they say and come to my own conclusions. It is possible that I don't understand what the reviewers or the authors are saying, in which case things can really seem like a coin flip. Peer review isn't a scientific process. As a personal guideline, when in doubt, I accept the manuscript. Another person might lean towards rejecting.


Letter of Recommendation From A Coach I was recently asked to write a letter of recommendation for a young women that I coach for a sport. I am aware that she is a good student, however my only interaction with her is through coaching. She is an Olympian and I have coached her since she was a child. I have never written a letter of recommendation. Several of the colleges she is applying to have an online portal where the "letter" is to be written. How might I transform my knowledge of her as an athlete to be of interest to ( -U.S.) colleges ?

The skills required to become an Olympian are (with the exception of athleticism and a talent for a particular sport, which I’d imagine are the least exceptional part of the package) obviously transferable to the setting of college education. A letter from you attesting to your firsthand knowledge of the young woman’s skills would be, as others said, extremely valuable and useful to the colleges she is applying to.
My suggestion is that you simply describe your experience of working with her, and what good qualities you are convinced she has based on that experience. Focus on things that would help a college predict that she would do well as a student and enrich the educational environment for her peers. For example, you mentioned she is hardworking and “laser focused”. Those are obviously awesome qualities. Anything else along those lines would be similarly useful. Does she have good leadership qualities? Is she an inspiring person to be around? Etc.
Also, given that you seem to have a lot of experience with the world of international competitive sports, it could help if you manage to describe a bit of that world and put across just how hard it is for a young person to get into the Olympics in your trainee’s particular sport or event. Of course, it’s common knowledge that this is an insanely impressive and difficult thing to achieve, but more concrete details from you are sure to drive home the message that this person has exceptional abilities and would be a coup for any college to admit.


How to get IEEE promotion code I want to join IEEE community by purchasing IEEE student membership. On the check-out page there is a field for entering promotion code which offers discount. How can I receive a promotion code?

A set of promotion codes often would be dedicated to the people, who are members of IEEE and has been promoted to the upper membership level, typically. Those members are supposed to present those codes to the other people, willing to become new members of IEEE. For example, an IEEE Member will receive a couple of promotion codes, as he/she has been promoted to IEEE Senior Member. He/She could grant those codes, as gift, to the others (especially his/her students), to be considered for the membership discount.

All in all, you better find any recently-promoted guy around yourself and if any, he/she would, probably, be able to provide you a promotion code, as you need.


Search for StackExchange citations with Google Scholar Is it possible to use Google Scholar to search for publications that cite StackExchange users, questions, or answers?

cf. my Meta StackExchange question "Publications that cite Stack Exchange" or "Academic papers using Stack Exchange data"

According to this answer to "Publications that cite Stack Exchange":

Legally, anyone citing a Stack Exchange post must credit the author's user profile (among other things), which looks something like this:
https://site.stackexchange.com/users/#####/username

A Google Scholar search for "stackexchange.com/users/" yields many results.


Thesis in use, potential employer wants to see source code EDIT:

Let me clarify things and specify my concerns:

I wrote a program for my thesis that solved a problem for the target establishment.
The establishment now uses the program with my consent but nothing was signed and everything was verbal.
I applied for a job and that company now wants to see my program source code because it's relevant to the job I'm applying for.
My advisor is directly tied to the establishment using my program. I have notified him and we have scheduled to meet up and talk about it in a few days.

My concerns: ( just want to get more info before my talk with my advisor )

Is my program source code still my own? Have I accidentally given up my right to share it? Can my advisor and the establishment prevent me from sharing my source code to the company I'm applying for?
The source code is also included in the published thesis I submitted, doesn't that make it open source in a sense? Does that mean neither me or my advisor/establishment can claim ownership or anything of the code?
Are things different because my thesis is applied  to an actual situation as opposed to a theoretical situation? Like there is a period the thesis isn't made public (open source) like a grace period before it's open to the public?

This can be broken down into two issues:

(1) Can you show the new company your source code/can they ask to see it?

They have only asked to see it, not to use it. Maybe as a way to assess your skill, see if you fit their requirements etc. No problem in sharing this. You could even share a copy of your thesis. If they want to use the code, and say so, you can look into licensing options.

(2) Have you given away your right to share it?

No, because the absence of any written contract works both ways. It is part of your thesis, so it is still formally yours. Until and unless the target establishment tries to copyright it in some form, you have the right to share it.

An exception has been pointed out by David Z - there is a possibility that your advisor's 'tie-up' with the target establishment could constitute a work-for-hire agreement, and this may restrict your freedom to share. If such a case exists, either you or your advisor must be aware of the details and can find suitable redressal. If you were not made aware of this, ignore all concerns and share.

Do get your adviser's consent and guidance anyway, and also check your university policy on IP.


Is there an efficient way to give a large class of students feedback about their assignments? I am the course lecturer of a large undergraduate course
with about 700 students in the course.
One of the challenges of teaching such a large course
is grading the assignments and giving students feedback.

Here is some information about the grading process:

The students submit their assignments electronically,
using a learning management system
The graders grade the assignment by filling in a spread

I would like to give the students two types of feedback:

Students would receive their scores for each question part,
e.g., 1A: 10/10, 1B: 5/5, 1C: 2/5, etc.
For each question part where marks were lost,
students would receive some comments about why they lost marks,
e.g., wrong units in 1B, did not round to an integer in 2A, etc.

Is there an efficient way to give a large class of students
such feedback about their assignments?

I considered asking the TA to email each student
their score for each question part and the mistakes that they made.
However, this seemed to me to be very time consuming and impractical.

Response to questions in comments

Question:
How many students does each TA handle?
Is the group of a particular TA consistent throughout the course?
That is, does the TA handle the same students for the course?
Are the "graders" also the TAs?

Answer:
We have about 5 PhD students who take the role of graders,
i.e., their job is only to do grading.
We also have 1 TA who is a recently graduated BSc student,
whose job is primarily to do admin work,
although she also helps out with a little bit of grading.

Question:
What is the learning management system?
Do you know all of the available features on this system?

Answer:
We are using the Canvas learning management system.
It is possible to give comments for each student's assignment;
however, to the best of my knowledge,
this has to be done one assignment at a time,
which means that giving feedback this way would be fairly time-consuming.

If the class has 700 students there should be a lot of students who are making the same mistakes. Therefore, I do not see much benefit in personalized feedback due to the impracticality of the context.

I would consider it wiser to determine what are the common mistakes that the majority of the students made and provide the same feedback to all students on how to address these common mistakes. This will help the majority of the students without having to commit to the time-intensive effort of personalization.

If there is someone who wants additional explanation they can speak with the TAs.


How to be creative in doing research? Besides hard work, is there anything that one can try to be creative in research? On this site, is there a lot of people who can publish more than 5 or 10 papers per year? I would like ask them, if it is possible to train oneself to do that.

I have been a hardworking student. For four years, I have tried to publish one (first-author) paper per year, and I feel that this is my limit. This rate is enough for me to get a PhD, but it is never enough for survive in academia.

I'm going to start my postdoc in a couple of weeks, and I'm really worried, thinking about my career. I really love research, but I'm afraid I'm just a mediocre scientist, who will end up as a postdoc for 10 years (or forever).

I would like to suggest that you read the speech "You and Your Research" by Richard Hamming on how to do great research.  It's one that I revisit every once in a while when my own scientific motivations are becoming unclear and need to be refreshed.

In reading it, it's important to keep in mind that the speech is thirty years old, and it is addressing things that happened even decades before that, so there are some jarring cultural gaps both with regards to science and with regards to the rest of society.  Nevertheless, I find the central ideas to be still very relevant and valuable today.

Importantly, Hamming distinguishes between things that you need to do in order to not fail and things that you need to do in order to have a real impact.  These are very different, and it is important to distinguish between them.  Important research is not the same as any of the "productivity metrics," and the correlation is often a trailing indicator, not a leading indicator.

For example: you say you are concerned that you are publishing only one paper per year.  Step back and ask: why am I concerned about this?  You can publish lots of papers without ever doing anything really creative or important.  You can have a full, tenured, and comfortable career that way.  And honestly, that's an OK choice to make.  Some people go too far the other way, and strike out so deep into their own creative world that they can never publish their ideas, and they also fail to have an impact (indeed, the most extreme of them we label cranks).

In between is the dangerous and subversive world that Hamming describes, where you teeter back and forth on the balance between compliant conformity to metrics and egotistical creative rebellion.  It doesn't guarantee greatness, but it may be a fascinating ride, and it just might get you somewhere really worth going.


When to submit as a "Brief communication", when as an article? Many journals, especially in the life sciences, offer the possibility to submit results as as a brief communication.

I'm wondering when to choose this way of publishing. If I don't have enough results for a large paper because it used to be a "hobby project" that should be put to an end, but the results are interesting and I want to publish them, should I opt for a brief communication?

How do I choose between this form of publication and an article?

This includes the question of how small a "real" article can be.

The answer is often that you submit an article, and the journal says "We might accept this if you can make it a brief communication, which means 1 table, and X words".  (Where X is a relatively small number.

Write the article and see if it naturally fits into their criterion for brief communication. If it does, submit it as such, if not, submit it as an article. The length of a 'real' article depends on the journal, but I've had a lot of papers rejected and this only happened once because the article was too short.


mixed two fields, and now each field thinks you are an alien I used tools from another field to get results in economics.
I can see other preprints doing that, but none get published.

Anyone in a similar situation?
You mixed two fields, and now each field thinks you are an alien.
How did you get out of this?

My paper usually boomerang with: "interesting but more suited to a specialized journal".
(whether the journal was specialized or not)
(no matter if I rewrote with the journal in mind or not)

Disclaimer: Never been there myself, and I've never been an official reviewer for a journal.

In general, combining different fields is seen with good eyes, and should be done by researchers all the time instead of reinventing the wheel on each field. Terence Tao is well known for combining different fields of mathematics in his research.

That being said, a paper that combines tools and concepts from very different fields, and specially fields that have different kinds of people (i.e. economics often attracts humanities-oriented people, who despise deep mathematical theorems, while pure mathematics sometimes attracts people who dislike subjectiveness). Then reviewing a paper such as yours requires a lot of effort by the everyday referee, who usually only needs to learn about the precise contributions of the paper he/she is reviewing.

By tools you mean mathematical tools? Software tools? Reviewing code is borderline unthinkable for people in several humanities fields, specially more experienced folk who never had to write code for their research before.

On the other hand, maybe if everyone in economics fails to understand (or is not willing to go through the effort of learning) your tools, you might have a very confusing paper in hands that no one believes is worth the effort, so you might actually have a presentation problem: Your paper is hard to read because of style/clarity reasons. So a not-so-lazy reviewer thinks the lack of readability is meant to hide poor content. Thus, he/she concludes it is not worth the effort of taking a course on the tools you've used only to review the paper. Maybe the results you present are also not-so-great, which would make the paper still valid but demotivates the reviewer as well.

The suggestions I can give:

If you are allowed, publish the code for software tools, or maybe for some mathematical tool, publish code that proves them. This improves reproducibility of your paper.
Consider splitting in two papers, and submit each part to a specialized journal. So economics people are referred to the mathematical/software paper they don't want to read, while mathematical/software people are referred to the economics paper they also don't want to read. This way you don't ask referees to evaluate what they can't understand. Maybe also publish a third paper summarizing the joint conclusion after these two base papers are accepted, so that their individual validity is much less in check.