How can I get into computer science research as a high school student? I am in High-School but want to pursue research in Computer Science, but as you know High-School usually does not offer any such options or tasks.

So I want to explore avenues where I can get these options and tasks as I am very very interested and really want to do it.

I would also like to say that I have good-strong knowledge of C++, C and assorted APIs from that (3 years programming for 5+ hours daily). So I wouldn't call my self too new to programming and think I can handle programming and so on.

Now, these are my questions:

How can I get involved in research?
How can I contact academics to ask them for research position or even an intern position in research for that matter without coming across as a "waste of time"?

Good on you!

I have a relatively simple suggestion: do a replication study.  First, find a collaborator -- a fellow high school student or college student of similar skill and experience.  You'll learn more in a team than doing it alone. Second, read a dozen or so research papers (probably conference papers) in the field or sub-field that interests you the most.  Pick one, preferably the simplest one you can find.  Your goal is to replicate the methods as described in the paper and compare your results to theirs.  (Don't pick one where you have access to their code.)  Once you have a paper picked out (or a few), recruit an adviser/mentor -- either a college professor or an experienced researcher.  You'll want to meet with your adviser/mentor weekly to talk about progress and problems you encounter along the way.  Mostly, this weekly meeting holds you and your partner accountable for progress.

In my field (Computational Social Science) there are many simulation models that are simple enough to be replicated from their specification. This varies widely in subfields of Computer Science, so your mileage may vary.

The point to all this is to get you an experience in the realm of research without requiring that you first go through all the preliminaries.  By focusing on replicating one paper, you only need to understand the material and methods in this one paper. You aren't trying to break any new ground. Instead, you are following in the footsteps of other researchers.  If they have done their job well, then you should be able to replicate their results.  Replication is a valuable scientific endeavor in itself.


Masters w.o. thesis on the area I'm interested vs. masters w/ thesis on a different area I am currently a graduate student and it's my first semester. My advisor is not assigned yet and it must be done soon. There is a prof. that I would like to work with on analytic number theory, however, he says that he is so busy and already have 3 students. So, he does not accepting me with a thesis program but instead, he says that he can only accept me if I choose not to write a thesis. If I decide to work with him, I will be alone on my research. I really want to make a research on analytic number theory and do not want to make a research on something different like probability or numerical analysis even if they are also a good research option.

In conclusion, should I accept him and try to write a thesis alone or look for a different advisor on a different area? Also, is it important to have a masters degree with thesis to apply for a phD program?
 Thank you for your valuable suggestions.

Should I accept him and try to write a thesis alone or look for a different adviser on a different area?

This is up to you. You are pursuing a graduate degree and you have to take charge of your educational path. You have to weigh both options. A) Writing a thesis alone with no supervision and potentially having to struggle, B) Working under a different adviser who will supervise you, but it may be a boring/uninteresting topic.

Is it important to have a masters degree with thesis to apply for a PhD program?

This is dependent on the program. Some programs are more research heavy than others. I would scope out your future plans and tentatively look at what PhD programs you would like to apply for and see what their requirements are. I do believe that it is impossible to do "too much" work when applying for a PhD program, so a thesis may be in your favor.


Can I publish multiple papers with same methodology but different topics? I'm investigating differences in esophageal cancer incidence and mortality rates between my home state and the rest of the United States. There already exists a paper that performs this type of analysis for colo-rectal cancer using data from a pre-existing database (SEER).

If I used that original author's methodology (citing him of course) and gathered data from that same database, but adapted it towards investigating pontine cancer instead, would it be publishable, assuming my content is otherwise unique and competent?

If the former holds true, it there anything that could/would stop me from creating an indefinite number of research papers that are permutations of my original except with other cancers like lung, breast, skin, etc? Or even different states?

I don't want to do anything unprofessional or unethical here so I would like to know sooner rather than later. Please advice and thank you.

In general, the test for whether a result is publishable is whether it advances the state of human knowledge.

Thus, if X is a new approach that contributes to knowledge about Problem 1, then it could readily be published in either a methodology-centric venue or a problem-centric venue.  If X is applied to produce new knowledge about Problem 2, then that's less interesting from a methodology perspective (though it may still be interesting, depending on circumstances), but absolutely relevant for Problem 2.

So if the approach really is useful for learning about lots of different types of cancer, it's potentially publishable for each type.  At some point, though, generalization becomes more interesting, and it would be appropriate to write a (much higher impact) paper on the applicability of the approach for learning about all cancers.


Should I be considering a Accelerated Master Program? I'm a 3rd year undergrad in Mathematics and Chemistry. I find most of subjects I have encountered very interesting, like computer science, physics and my two majors. I try to be involved with projects with professors from different fields. I'm having a hard time to decide what I truly want to do. That's why I want to learn more about each subjects. Should I focus on one thing at a time?

The decision I need to make right now is that, I found two Accelerated Master Program (AMP) in both Chemistry and Computer science. They are both 5 years program. The deadline is the second semester of junior year. I heard from my Chemistry adviser that I cannot use any AMP credit to fulfill part of a PhD if I changed my mind later. I think AMP is a good chance for me to have a better view of those subjects without committing 5-6 years PhD work. I'm afraid once I go in depth and I find I like it then I will have to spend more time later.

Is it more advisable to pursue an accelerated masters program or just a bachelors degree when planning on possibly pursuing PhD program latter?

I would suggest to change your thinking style. There are many things we are passionate about them, but the life is too short and there is always a career competition. Therefore, most of us could be successful in one branch.
I suggest specify a deadline for yourself, ask others in these fields and at some point decide when your decision deadline come. By deciding I mean throw away all the other subjects completely from your mind.


Telling my supervisor I'm unhappy An update to yesterday's post.
A mixture of events has caused me to lose interest in my PhD project. I started on the back of losing a close family member which really didn't give me a good start.
Over the last few months I've grown less interested in the project and I'm growing increasingly frustrated by the lack of support offered by the faculty and supervision team.
I want to communicate this with my supervisor before I resort to handing in my resignation to it's at least noted that I'm unhappy
How do I break the news to them that I'm unhappy?

Simply state the honest reasons to your supervisor why you are quitting, in a respectable way since you might want to hear his/her point of view also. That will give you complete closure, and it will be satisfying for the future you.
There are three possibilities:

If he is not interested in guiding you, he will not even try to understand your situation. It is a win situation for you since you made the right choice.

He might have other reasons for not supporting you. Probably he does not want to spoon-feed you. Or maybe he going through something much worse than you. It is easy to judge another person.

You are simply not interested in the subject. The opinion of the supervisor might not move you.

After the conversation, think about it for one day or two. And, email him about your final decision.

Note: There is no need to feel sad about it. You should be happy that you figured it out early. I wish more people could be like you.


Quitting a postdoctoral fellowship I was awarded a rather prestigious postdoctoral fellowship that guarantees a generous salary, research expenses etc. for 2 years. It is in the same institution where I am working as a postdoc now, but would increase my salary by quite a bit and of course give me complete freedom over my research. I have not yet accepted the offer because I am struggling with a particular problem.

It is likely that in a year's time I will need to relocate to another country (for personal reasons). How bad is it to take the fellowship, knowing that there is a chance I will have to quit early? How frowned upon is quitting in the middle of a fellowship that explicitly specifies a 2-year tenure? Of course quitting a regular contracted postdoc job is straightforward, but I am not sure how it works with a personal fellowship—are there any additional consequences I haven't considered?

Edit: Just to provide some additional context, this is an individual fellowship (i.e. awarded directly to me) and the funding is internal (i.e. comes from the university itself).

Obviously, you need to see the contract, and preferably go over it with an attorney.  There may be a repayment agreement.  You don't know until you look.

As to whether you can leave this postdoc early, I recommend thinking about how public the info would be, and how your colleagues in your field would look at it if they knew about it.

Personally, I could never hold it against a postdoc if they left to grab a dream faculty position.  I imagine this happens with some regularity.  That said, I would personally think less of a person that accepted a two-year position with the secret intent of leaving after a year. An institution is making an investment in you, and you would be letting them down.  I would think of it as you entering an agreement in poor faith.

Needing to relocate for personal reasons after a year is a decision that only you can make. If it's important to you, you might consider honestly discussing your situation with the manager of whatever program you're involved with before you sign on the bottom line.  It may be fine with them.  They might even be amenable to some form of telecommuting! If you choose to do this, you should do it knowing that a revocation of the offer is a real possibility.


Can I be admitted into a grad school program at a different university if I quit my current program? I have completed the first year of my grad school program, but did very poorly during my second semester. I received low grades in two of my courses and failed the third due to health issues and an accompanying bout with depression. The problem is I no longer want to continue this MS program; I chose to enroll at this university because of the opportunity (it is #1 for my field of study), reduced tuition etc. Instead I want to apply for a five year Doctor in Psychology program elsewhere. What are my chances of getting into a competitive program if I dropped out of my masters? Should I complete my degree in order to avoid having the blemish of dropping out of grad school on my record? It seems like a waste of time and counteractive to pursuing my passions. I'm also concerned about the low GPA. What is my best course of action?

With poor grades, it will be very difficult to get accepted at another program unless they are in in different fields (i.e., you could argue that during the course of the MS in psych, that you discovered that you have no talent for psych and that you want to go into a PhD for architecture or astrophysics). But that isn't the case for you.

However, you should know that you do not have to withdraw from your MS in order to apply to PhD programs. You can stay in your MS and apply to PhDs. You should note this in your application and state your intention to withdraw from the MS if you get into the PhD.

It will help your application TREMENDOUSLY if you can get a faculty member at your current institution to speak to why your performance was poor but that you have a latent talent that isn't reflected in your grades.

I should note that the likelihood that PhD programs will accept you given the poor grades will be pretty slight so I would not get your hopes up too much (or spend too much time and money applying to other programs).

Most "transfer" type students that we accept at the PhD level tend to want to transfer because of: 1) their original program is dissolving; 2) their adviser has left (either physically or mentally); 3) other issues about the original program that was not apparent when they applied.


Someone gave a talk proposing the idea; Should they be an author? I recently started working independently on a project that another student (who graduated) proposed about a year ago.

Should I offer to include them as an author?  Only if they plan to contribute something at this stage, or simply on the basis of proposing the idea?

I think inviting the student to collaborate on a paper is only fair. Whether or not the person should be a co-author depends on the person's contribution to the final product. Originating an idea may well be enough but can only be evaluated when considering the total amount of scientific input towards the manuscript. Proposing an idea can mean anything from just a lucky shot to a question based on deep understanding of the topic. Where "your" question resides is for you to consider. There are many posts covering contributorship (a development from authorship) here on acadmia.sx so I will not repeat what these responses discuss. But, it is clear that one should require any author of a manuscript to fulfil certain criteria and not just add names without thorough consideration.

So as a summary, yes, ask the person to contribute but do not give away authorship without a contributions (and the idea may well be enough).

And a final note, if you have not done so, also make sure you have not independently duplicated the other persons work if the person has continued working on the idea after graduation.


Is it normal to feel lost while following a mathematical / physical reasoning? I re-uploaded this question here, since a user from Physics Stack Exchange told me it might fit better.

TL;DR: I feel like I could not come up with most reasonings myself, so I end up feeling like I'm a phony, a bad student, or not good enough, and I can't focus on the actual problem.

I have been meaning to post this question for a long time. I am aware that this might be a little too personal for this forum, but at the same time I think I might not be alone here. And whether this is a common phase to go through during one's mathematical education or just something people have to learn to deal with, I think it could be of use to others. So here it is.

I'm a third year physics student in university. I am not American, but Spanish, and university/college here does not work like most Americans are used to, which is why I want to clarify this first. (You can skip this if you know how college works in most countries outside the USA). People can't choose what they want to study with as much freedom as people do in the USA: you just choose a degree, like Physics, or Mathematics, and then follow the curriculum with very little deviation. You can choose a bunch of optional classes to start leaning to a certain branch of your discipline, but that's it. No history, language, arts, cinema or biology classes if you're a Physics student. Therefore, a physics student is expected to have passed all of their mathematical training in their second year of university: linear algebra, real and complex calculus, differential equations, etc., and all of the major branches of Physics after their fourth year: Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Electromagnetism, Quantum Mechanics, and the rest of them. There is very little actual research, so students are expected to spend four years studying to get "the basics" down before they can help or research for themselves.

I wanted to tell you this to give you some kind of idea of the type of content that I might struggle with. Now, my problem is the following:

Every time I have to follow some kind of mathematical reasoning (even if it is applied to a certain physical problem), I get nervous and lost if I can't grip it the first time I read it. Sometimes because I don't remember the mathematics too well, sometimes because I just don't understand why they chose to complete a step in the way they did, kind of like when a professor suggests a change of variable that works for solving an integral and you think you could have never come up with that. Even after seeing the complete reasoning, I just don't know why they knew they had to do what they did to get there. And the most common one for me: sometimes I can follow the reasoning, but I have the feeling that I could have never thought about that myself, and therefore I'm just being a phony. When I feel like that, I just feel like giving up and checking the final result: "I am going to forget this anyway, since I could not come up with that line of reasoning".

Is it normal to feel like this at this point of one's education? This might be impostor's syndrome, or just the fact that maybe I am not very well prepared, or that I might need to find some kind of mental peace in the fact that this is common before I can actually sit down and do things.

Thank you all. You are a great community. I could talk to my therapist about this, but first I wanted to talk to people who might actually have encountered this problem in their lives.

What you are experiencing is very normal for a student. It takes a lot of practice solving simpler problems before you can, on your own, solve the harder ones. You have also discovered the truth that it is harder to produce a proof than it is to follow it. But it is also easer to read and follow a fictional story than it is to create one. That also takes a lot of practice.

In fact, it takes a lot of failed attempts before you learn to see the successful path. Even then it is hard.

Moreover, if you are reading the professional literature (published papers), note that most mathematicians will leave out all but the most essential steps. This is both because of page limits, but also because they are writing for people just like themselves, and not for novices, including students.

So, while it is discouraging, it isn't something to think of as an indication that you are a failure. It is just genuinely difficult to follow sparsely written proofs and even harder to produce the steps between what you already know and what you want to prove. And the more practice you get, the easier it will become, partly because that practice helps you recall what you once knew but don't remember very well, having not used it actively for a while.

Press on.


Can a bad last semester prevent me from getting into grad school? I submitted my graduate application form  for a university in January, even saying I would graduate 'with honours'. I'm not sure how I was suppose to know what I would graduate with, but what I wrote down before almost feels like a complete lie at this point.
Now I am in my final semester of my undergraduate degree and it is burning me hard. My program pretty much cornered me into the 2nd most sadistic set of courses I have taken. I have an average of 3-4 (3-5 page) assignments due every week, and the content itself is the type of stuff you need to allow yourself to digest (if I had the time). My grades are all over the place, anywhere from 30%-80%. The TAs marking them are cruel, with an all or nothing marking scheme.
I realize this may be a post to vent some frustration I feel, but I am genuinely worried about my future at this point. These are the very courses of subjects I wish to go into, and an outside observer might look at my marks and feel my work ethic and intelligence was simply inadequate. My other semesters have been ~80% and I don't exactly have any research experience to back my case.

Admissions decisions will be made based on your application materials and any sort of interview process that a given program uses; this will all likely happen before the semester is over so you won't have any grades finalized before then.
If you're accepted, you will get an offer that states reasons the offer can potentially be withdrawn. It's likely there to be some sort of clause that indicates the offer is conditional on completion of your current degree, and it may be written more broadly to something like "satisfactory academic progress". So yes, if your bad semester prevents you from graduating, it likely will prevent your admission. There's a chance possibility that a poor semester that doesn't prevent graduation could also affect your admission, but that will be entirely up to the program and nothing can be guaranteed. Given the ongoing pandemic I'd guess programs would be more forgiving of a recent slide. However, you'll want to make sure that you are able to be successful in the program, and if you are in courses now that will be relevant to your future you'll need to be sure you're staying on top of the material, no matter what your assessments look like. You also may see this as an opportunity to polish your time management skills, as these will be important in graduate school as well as in your current courses.


What challenges to expect for admission to Masters/PhD in computer science and engineering after chemical engineering undergrad? I am a Chemical Engineering undergrad, and interested in pursuing a Masters in Artificial Intelligence and/or Machine Learning. I have taken a few courses in the CSE department as a part of my minor curriculum plus a few other courses, and also doing some projects in the same side-by-side. Now in the past I have faced some difficulties while taking some courses in the CSE department, and not really sure if it is going to be easy (if at all possible) to switch my majors.

What challenges am I going to face in terms of application/selection, and how can I get by them?

I assume that CSE = computer science engineering?

Like Kitty said, pursuing a Master's degree in a different area/field might be easier than a PhD, at least in terms of admissions. Many PhD programs like to see applicants with background in the subject so they can tackle the more advanced courses immediately. As such, they might be more reluctant to take a chance admitting a Chemical Engineering major for a PhD in AI compared to admitting one for the Master's degree. In addition, PhD cohorts tend to be much smaller than Master's level cohorts, which means Master's level admissions might be (relatively) less competitive compared to PhD level admissions. You might also want to check out the discussion here (slightly different, but still relevant).

Personally, I switched fields from undergraduate to graduate school, and I got admitted to most programs to which I applied. I think the biggest challenge is explaining why you want to make the switch. A question that came up during my interviews was why I was trying to switch fields at the graduate level instead of the undergraduate level (i.e., answering the "if you are interested in this field so much, why did you get a Bachelor's degree in something else" question). If you have a good answer to this, I think you'll be at least moderately successful.

Reviewers of your application might also want to see that you have the necessary intellectual skills for the degree, but if you did well in your chemical engineering major, you should be fine because the math, science, and writing skills should all be transferable. You mention that you had "difficulties" in the CSE classes, which you may need to explain, depending on what exactly those difficulties were.

Other than these, I think you'll just face the same challenges as everyone else applying in terms of making sure your recommendation letters are strong, standardized test scores (if applicable) are good, et cetera.


Can it be viewed as a negative for PhD applications in the US if I have children? I am currently working on PhD applications in Engineering to start in Fall 2020. I am in my late 30s and have one child. I am planning to apply to at least one quite highly-ranked school in the US.

I am wondering if it might be seen as a negative for the admissions process that I have a child? I have heard that top US PhD programs are not looking for 'balance' and that they typically expect candidates to give everything to the program. However, I have heard of people doing PhDs with kids (even having kids during a PhD program) and still being able to complete without any major problems.

In particular, should I avoid mentioning that I have a kid in my application/personal statement? Or, conversely, should I mention it? Would it be seen as dishonest in some way, if I gain admission and then turn round and tell people I have a child?

I doubt that you will find any general problem in the US, though it is possible that some individual professors might take issue. Some labs, for example, expect long continuous hours at the bench.

I don't know of laws in the US governing this, but there may be some.

There are tons of grad students with children. I had two kids in the final years of my doctoral study. But, you don't say if you are a single parent. In such a case, I don't think you would find discrimination, but I do think you would find it hard. But then pretty much anything and everything is hard for single parents.

In many subjects, of course, you can actually work while tending a child. Mathematics, for example, or Literature. Even CS folk can do quite a lot at home on a laptop.

And note that there is nothing special about academia with respect to "giving your all". Many employers expect exactly that.

My suggestion is that you don't mention it in applications, but because there is no need.

And, of course, professors may have kids and are still able to work effectively.


Is it acceptable to refer to theories to support an argument? In my field, education, there are many named theories, for e.g., the “Atkinson-Shiffrin memory model”, which educators often talk about and debate.

While writing various graduate papers, my professors have often asked me to cite various named theories to support my arguments. Can theories generally be used to support arguments? Are theories more than just names for ideas? Can any person coin a new theory, or is there some process by which a theory gains recognition and support before it is deemed a “theory”? Can I really cite theories to add support to my papers?

Are theories more than just names for ideas?

No, they are just names for ideas.

  Can any person coin a new theory, or is there some process by which a theory gains recognition and support before it is deemed a “theory”?

Anyone can coin a new theory, and the term “theory” does not imply any special status.  For example, the flat earth theory is a theory, just not a good theory.  As a general rule, people don't spend much time talking about theories unless they are valuable or controversial.  If you make up a new theory without some real insight, probably everyone will just ignore it.  But that doesn't mean it's not a theory - it's just not a useful or interesting theory.

  Can I really cite theories to add support to my papers?

Part of the point of citing these theories is to show how your work fits into the field.  You are engaging with and responding to certain ideas, refining or extending some of them and correcting or refuting others.  It's important to describe these ideas in a recognizable way, so readers will see the context for your work and can better understand what you mean.  Sometimes the best way to do that involves referring to named theories.  If you can explain how these theories help justify your conclusions, then that will add support for your ideas.  (You're taking advantage of the fact that many experts already understand and agree with these theories.)

Another factor that may be relevant in graduate papers is proving that you understand these theories and can explain how your work is related to them.

  While writing various graduate papers, my professors have often asked me to cite various named theories to support my arguments.

I'd strongly recommend discussing this with them.  People on the internet can offer general comments, but only your professors can tell you exactly what they are looking for and why.


Who does the pre-copy-edited version of a paper belong to? I am aware that the copyright of the pre-peer review version of a paper belongs to the author. Does the post-peer review but pre-copy-edited version still belong to the author? I thought it may do because at this point the manuscript can still be rejected.

As I understand it, post copy-edits the manuscript belongs to the journal.

The key here is not actually the history of the manuscript but the submission of a copyright transfer that moves the rights in the manuscript from the author to the journal.

If you sign a copyright transfer form (or a co-author does on your behalf), then all of the versions of the manuscript transfer in ownership to the journal. Author-friendly journals will then typically grant back a wide variety of rights, including the right to distribute preprints, and there are interesting interactions with preprint servers, academic networking sites, etc. The fact of ownership, however, is changed, and that typically applies to previous versions of the work as well.

Because of this, it is also true that the journal might publish your work but never actually own it!  For instance, the ACM now allows authors to choose between transferring copyright and retaining it but giving the ACM a license to publish.  There are pluses and minuses to both approaches, and it is still very much a question of evolving practice.


Standard recommendations and steps for writing introductory books Suppose I plan to write an introduction to, say, statistics that's intended both for self-learning and as a companion to a university course.
Is there any standard advice about the following?

Defining the scope of the book
The planning of the writing process
Organising the table of contents
Models for organising the content of each section
Maintaining coherence in the writing style across the book (especially when writing in co-authorship)
How to write exercises/problems
Models of interaction between content and exercises (and lessons)
Any other topic related to the writing of a book like this

The answer should to be useful for introductory books for which these questions apply. However, the answer could use statistics or any other field as an example.

My recommendation (having done something like this) is to first teach one or more courses in this area for at least five years before writing your text.
Start off in year 1 by making slides or notes for your lectures using LaTeX. If you post those, you will have an incentive to get them right (and students will also find some errors). Fix the mistakes as you find them before year 2. After year 2, consider changing the organization or splitting up some material if students have more trouble with it.
After five or more years, you will have come up with a sensible organization of topics. You will know how to foreshadow and set the exposition up for later developments; will be familiar with common questions and misunderstandings; and, will have exercises already written (with answers).
Then write the book using your slides or lecture notes as a skeleton and incorporating the exercises you found helped students the most. (Don't forget to thank the students who found errors.) You can also add in topics you wanted to cover but previously did not.
As I mentioned, LaTeX is your friend for this. With the right organization, it can make your table of contents for you (as well as a table of figures and tables), create an index, and show a list of references with clickable URLs (if you create a PDF file).
After that, teach a couple of classes using the text and you will find areas to improve. You will also likely see tweaks to make your old slides/lecture notes fit the text better.
As for publishing, you can choose an academic press or self-publishing. Both stink.
An academic press will not do much editing, will probably re-type all of your hard work and introduce errors, will charge a high price that students may not want to pay, and will likely give you no revenue; however, they will distribute the book widely (often to libraries).
Self-publishing using a print-on-demand place will get you about the same amount of editing help, will earn you zero credibility, and will receive far less distribution. However, you may actually make a little bit of money, you will have much more control over pricing, and nobody will retype all your work and introduce errors.
I know people who have done both and most thought both options were not great but more seemed to be considering self-publishing because academic presses seem to offer so little for services now.


Should I include a paper with a low impact factor in my CV I'm a Masters Student who has an old paper. I wrote a paper years ago with a research group in my old school. However, it's a really simple idea and was published in a not very reputed journal (Impact Factor 0.3). It was a long time ago, and honestly I would rather not be affiliated with it.

International Journal of Advanced Trends in Computer Science and Engineering

Should this be included in my CV?

http://www.warse.org/pdfs/2013/icetcsesp%2010.pdf

It's relevant to what I'm doing now but just not very important and I consider it a not very good use of my time

Yes, probably.

An academic CV should be a comprehensive record of your academic past.  It is not like a professional resume where you include precisely the (true!) information that you think will be to your advantage.  It is very likely that anyone reading your CV will assume that they are looking at the complete list of your publications.  So omitting a paper because you think it will make the reader think worse of you is something that, if discovered, would be regarded as inappropriate by many.  (And in many academic fields nowadays, such a discovery would be quite easy to make.)  If it is a standard convention in your field to include only "selected publications" in your CV, you could do that...but of course it could make the reader curious as to what was not selected.

Let me also say that not wanting to include a publication because of the low impact factor of the journal it was published in is at least one step further along on the path to impact factor insanity than I had heretofore heard of.  A paper is not good or bad because of some numerical measure of the journal it is published in.  Further, not all papers are our best papers and this is so obvious that there should be no shame in it.  However, if you really think that a paper is so weak that you might later regret publishing it: think harder, and if you're convinced then don't publish it.

Added: According to @ff524's comment, the impact factor may be the least of your worries.  But I think my answer applies even if you're published in a "predatory" journal.

Further Added: People may be interested to know that I have a publication in a journal whose publishing company, SCIRP, is on Beall's list.  I won't tell the full story of how I came to publish the paper there except to say that this is a journal in which one ostensibly has to pay to publish, I was curious what happens when one submits to this journal and is not willing to pay, and in the answer in my case is that they published the paper anyway.  (Yes, this "experiment" was not well thought out nor necessarily ethical behavior on my part.) Moreover, my opinion of the journal has declined in the intervening years since I published the paper.  Nevertheless I list the paper on my webpage and on my CV: on the one hand, I feel obligated to.  On the other hand, despite the fact that the paper was published in a journal some of whose practices look pretty shady, the paper itself is a real (though rather modest) research contribution.  In fact, from what I can tell (the subject of specialty of the journal lies outside of my core expertise) a good number of the papers published in this journal are solid.  (So the journal is in some ways predatory and some ways legitimate.  I find this very strange, wish I understood the situation better, and again, I wish I hadn't published there.)  I would much rather have a line on my CV that shows that I made a naive, questionable choice of where to submit a paper than have a CV which is not intellectually honest.

Yet Further Added: I will record here what I found on the web concerning the question of whether an academic CV should list all publications.

1) This link from UC Berkeley's Guide to CV's as part of an academic job search says "List all the papers and presentations you have delivered or will deliver."

2) Our trusted friends at Elsevier weigh in on the subject and seem to come to the opposite conclusion:

  It is advisable to list your most reputed publications in ranking of type, such as books, book chapters, peer-reviewed journal articles, non-peer-reviewed articles, articles presented as prestigious conferences, forthcoming publications, reports, patents, and so forth. Consider making an exhaustive list of all publications in an appendix.

Please direct further questions on this article to its author, "Elsevier Biggerbrains."

3) Caroline Eisner at academic coaching and writing says

  When you list your publications, begin with the most recently published, or those out for review (list these in italics), and move down your list to the one published first. If there are early publications (or conferences) you are no longer proud to list, or you no longer care to publicize, leave them off the list. If you delivered a paper long ago, and it is not relevant to your current academic self, don’t include it.

4) This University of Washington guide to academic CVs writes

  List your published works in reverse chronological order according to publication
  date.  Use the reference style appropriate to your discipline.  If you have multiple publications,
  consider dividing them by type such as articles and book chapters, or
   refereed and invited
  papers.  If an article has been accepted for publication, indicate ‘in press’ or ‘forthcoming’ in
  lieu of the publication year.  Consider bolding your name on each publication.

It seems to give the impression that all publications should be listed.  (There is also the implication that there will not be so many.)

5) The University of Kent counsels structuring the CV so that the most relevant publications are highlighted, but the implication is that all should be included.


Submit a paper to a conference where co-authors are in the committee? I recently read a paper whose co-authors are found in the conference committee.

Although they are not in the executive committee, they are in organizing committee and all the committee people know each other well.

So I am wondering how this can happen? I mean, is there any regulation, either ethical or by law, that prohibits this type of thing? Or it's allowed?

For any reputable conference, authors with a conflict of interest will recuse themselves from discussions about their paper. They won't have a vote on the paper, and if things are very well administered, other committee members won't even know that the paper is from that particular author, only that the author has a conflict of interest. Indeed, there are many reasons for a conflict of interest:

Current or prior colleague at the same university.
Current or prior collaboration or co-author on a paper or papers.
Current advisor / student relationship.
etc.

These guidelines are generally spelled out in the paper submission guidelines, too (if you are an author and have a conflict, you should list them). Also, in many program committee meetings, committee members go in and out of paper discussions based on whether they have a conflict for a particular paper or not.

  is there any regulation, either ethical or by law, that prohibits this type of thing?

Ethical: sure (see above).

Legal: no. I'm not sure why people think there are a lot of legal rules that dictate how independent, non-government conferences and journals are administered. I've seen this in a number of questions recently, and the bottom line is that a conference has its own rules to abide by, and that's about it. Conference organizers have a vested interest in making things fair to the extent that they don't want the conference to have a bad name, but they aren't in the position to be bound by any laws pertaining to the way the conference is administered (outside of normal law-abiding behavior).


What to do if you do not understand a lot coming up with a research interest? PhD admission I know it is strongly advisable to read up on your prospective PhD supervisors' work. However, I find that most of the things are too esoteric and I would need a substantial period to absorb them. I do understand perfectly the overview of the area that they are working. I have some questions:

In writing my research interest/statement for getting into a PhD, how detailed should it be?
Is it okay to mention that you would like to work on a general field (e.g. CFD in multiphase) and not propose an specific direction?

At least in the US, I don’t think most research advisors would expect undergraduate students to have the ability to understand everything in their published work. The idea is to be familiar with the general ideas, methods, and “top-level” results. If someone comes in with more than that, it’s a bonus.

In other countries, where the PhD program follows after a master’s degree, the expectations are naturally a bit higher.


Should I anglicise foreign names of people/places/organizations in my research? What does academic community think of anglicising foreign names in their research? For example, saying Istanbul rather than İstanbul (with capital "İ"), or, author's name, Tasan, instead of Taşan.

For anything that's not written in the Latin alphabet, use the standard transliteration from the relevant alphabet (e.g., "Vladimir Putin", not "Владимир Путин"). For people's names written in the Latin alphabet, keep the accents if possible. For place names, if there is a standard Anglicization, use that (e.g., "Cologne" rather than "Köln", "Istanbul" rather than "İstanbul"); otherwise, keep the accents (e.g., "Lübeck" and "Şanlıurfa").


Website management for group seminar I am planning to start running a group seminar, with talks scheduled regularly, at my institute.

The seminars might be of interest for people in neighbouring areas, too, so I would like to have an "archive" website with all the abstracts and a calendar of the upcoming seminars, and of course I'd like to send out e-mail notifications (and optionally also a RSS feed/calendar widget for the more tech-savvy users).

Is there any software or service that can help me automate some of this setup? I thought of opening a blog-type site on some hosting site, probably either Wordpress or github/Jekyll.

Do you have experience working with similar tools? Do you think they would really save me some time? Or maybe is it better if I just add a page to my academic website, send the mails manually and forget about the other fancy addons?

A site hosted by your university, on your university website, will probably be a better choice than an externally hosted website. This is because you'll be able to immediately identify the seminar series with your university, and that will help to improve its branding. (It also looks a lot more professional!)

As for software, there are a lot of different options. I can't really offer a lot of guidance on this, as we have staff whose job it is to maintain our websites. Which one you pick will depend a lot upon the kinds of features you want, and how steep a learning curve you're willing to negotiate.


How much of humor in a formal academic writing is considered as disrespect? In a formal academic writing (in the everyday sense), is it appropriate to use phrases such as "step out on" to titillate the reader?

Since I am not a native English speaker, and since I have not yet accurately catched the general range of humor in the US, I wonder if using such phrases would be instead considered as a disrespect?

Your first priority should be to convey your ideas to the reader. Given that I, and many others, have absolutely no idea what "step out on" means, I would suggest that you avoid the phrase. On the other hand, I think humour is occasionally acceptable, but it needs to be timeless humour.


How to politely inform potential PhD supervisor that I must wait before responding to an offer? (Two-body problem) I am a physics student in the UK.

A university (university A) has made me a PhD offer. The email from admissions was very clear that there is a 30-day time limit on this offer. As it happens I am likely to accept the offer, but do wish to take advantage of these 30 days. This is because my partner has also applied to university A, and their application is going well, we think it probable that we may both get offers from this university. However, there is a second university (university B) who has already offered my partner a place and will get back to me in 24 days.

In fact, we will both accept the first of A or B to make us both an offer. Perhaps this is not the best reason to chose a PhD place, but that is beyond the scope of my question.

The professor who would be my supervisor at university A has emailed me to encourage me to accept A's offer sooner. Clearly, I wish to remain on good terms with this professor, in case I do end up at university A. I'm not sure that telling A about the two-body problem is a good idea. How can I politely tell A that I will not accept yet?

Edit; I did inform A of my reasons for hesitating. Not only were they very sympathetic, they did their best to get my partner interviewed sooner, and helped them find an intern-ship with the relevant people.

In my opinion, since you are already accepted, there is no harm in telling about the two-body problem; if you end up going to University B, Prof@A.edu would likely feel better about that reason than some negative impression of them personally or of University A.

You are well within your rights to take the full 30 days to decide. Certainly not all professors are equally versed or sympathetic towards the two-body problem, but most have experienced it, if not personally, through their colleagues, friends, etc.

Ultimately I think it is your choice whether or not to explain your reasoning, but I would personally lose a bit of respect towards your Prof@A.edu if they were unable to accept you stating simply "My offer gives me 30 days to respond, and I would like to take that entire time to ensure I make the right decision for me. I will inform you immediately of my decision once it is made."


Is there a standard for capitalization in references of math papers? How do you capitalize the titles of references in a math paper? Would you rather write:

  Global smooth solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations

or

  Global Smooth Solutions of the Navier-Stokes Equations

? The latter capitalization is the usual capitalization, where every non-grammatical word, and all names, are capitalized. But the former variant seems to be common in the references. The only exception seem to books, which are usually capitalized as on their titles.

I have been skimming over the list of references in mathematical papers by well-regarded researches, but I have not found a definitive pattern. In fact, in many publications, neither the author nor the editor seems to actually care.

Every journal has its own preferences for this. Use a citation management package like BibTeX or EndNote, and follow the style guide of the journal you submit to. In the end, it doesn't truly matter as long as your readers can find the article, but it's best to follow the journal's instructions in the case that they do actually care.


Winter internship for Indian students (computational physics) I am 3 year BS MS dual degree student (at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research) in Physics and I want to learn computational skills for my future career needs because we don't have computational physics course till the 8th semester.

Do we have any provision of winter internship in India?

Yes!

Keep in mind though that most such internships at places like IIT, IISc, ISI, TIFR etc. are likely to be unpaid and you will most probably have to bear costs on your own.

The way to getting them is to email appropriate professors that you like and then ask them if you could, given their availability, work with them over winter.

I do not know if there are industrial research internships in India over winter. Most of them seem to be restricted to summer.

Source: When I was a graduate student in ISI, there were 2 students from IISER who worked in our lab for a couple of months over winter (Dec-Jan)


Recommendation Letter from a non-PhD referee I am applying for a PhD program and I am in the process of choosing people for recommendation letters. Being someone in the final year of  master's program (and not been involved with many people in research), one of my potential referee is my internship guide. I had worked with him closely for 3 months and a paper came out of the work.

He does not hold a PhD. He is not involved with research in a big way. He holds a Senior Manager post and possesses 20 years of experience. Although he can write a good recommendation letter, will it carry weight considering his background?

I would think at least twice about getting a letter of recommendation for admission to a PhD program in X from someone who does not themselves have a PhD in X or some closely related field.  (No PhD at all is to my mind no worse than a PhD in a totally unrelated field.)  The reason is that a grad school admission letter makes an argument that you (i) are a strong candidate for the program compared to the stream of candidates known to both the recommender and the readers in the department and (ii) will succeed in the program.  Someone who does not have a PhD in a closely related field to X is simply much less convincing with regard to (ii) than the majority of people who do.  One also worries about (i).

In my experience, all the letters you get for admission to a PhD program should address (i) and (ii) and not too much else.  Thus getting a letter from someone who directed a corporate internship you did or non-academic job you had or volunteer experience you have is a poor choice unless these experiences are directly, intimately related to (i) and (ii) above.  For instance if you are applying to a PhD program in chemical engineering then if you worked for a chemical engineering firm and did research that academic chemical engineers find significant (so especially if you published any academic papers), then great: get a letter from someone there, whether they have a PhD in that field or not.  Also, qualifications are correlated with credentials but not perfectly: everyone has their own example of a famous academic who happens not to have this or or that academic degree.  If you are interested in a program on the border of mathematics and philosophy and can get a recommendation letter from Saul Kripke, do it!  Don't be deterred by the fact that he doesn't have a PhD: that would be ridiculous.

Back to your situation.  About your potential recommender, you write:

  He does not hold a PhD. He is not involved with research in a big way. He holds a Senior Manager post and possesses 20 years of experience.

This does not sound like a good choice.  By "not being involved in research in a big way", he cannot speak to your research potential as well as someone who is.  Since he does not have a PhD, the readers will probably wonder about how trustworthy he is (relative to other writers) when he insists that you will be successful in a PhD program.  Unless you have a good reason to believe that the faculty doing admissions will know this person personally and esteem him highly, I would avoid getting a letter from him.  However, if you feel like he is uniquely well qualified to speak to issues (i) and (ii), then it might be worth trying to have him give information to a more traditionally appropriate letter writer.


Do I need to re-send the same GRE test score if I want to apply for the same graduate program again? I applied for a master program of university X two years ago and was rejected. Then I went to another master program and now I am about to finish. I want to apply for the PhD program of university X this year, and I have no plan to re-take the GRE test. I am wondering if it is need to re-send the GRE score to the same department of the same university.

It depends on the university. Many of them don't retain materials from applicants whom they ultimately did not accept. However, their policies regarding GRE scores may differ.

Shoot an email to the department; they should reply within a few days.


What exactly defines an invited speaker? Simple question: how do you know that you are an invited speaker for a conference?

For example, receiving an email "For your information, this is our next conference" is obviously not an invitation. What about "I would like to invite you to contribute"? Is there an strict definition of Invited Speaker?

There are a number of different forms of invited talk, but to me, a clear distinction can be made by considering whether the decision to have a person speak comes before or after any associated submission.

If the organizers of the event have decided they want Dr. Smith to speak, based on Dr. Smith's record, and then afterwards negotiate the particulars of topic and content of the talk, then it's an invited talk.  There might or might not be any publication associated with it, depending on the particulars of the venue.  This covers keynotes, seminars, symposia, and many other forms of talk.
If the organizers ask Dr. Smith to submit something, and then decide whether they want the talk based on what's been submitted, then it's not an invited talk.  This is the typical case for conferences, workshops, etc.

What can make things confusing is that the word "invite" is often used in solicitations for submissions of the second type, particularly by low-quality or predatory organizations that are trying to trick people into thinking it's an invited talk, rather than just another request for submissions.

If the judgement comes after the submission, however, it's definitely not an invited talk---and if the judgement comes before because it's a terrible venue, then you shouldn't go even if it would give you an "invited talk" line on your CV.


Equivalents of PubMed in other fields I work in biomedical sciences, and whenever I need to look up an article - or find recent references about a certain field of biology - I just go to PubMed, because it collects information from the vast majority of "serious" journals (from Cell/Nature/Science to niche publications).

Are there equivalents of PubMed (comprehensive and easy to use) in other fields, except for Google Scholar and ArXiv? For example, in physics, chemistry, geology, electronics...?

Unlike PubMed, many of the discipline specific indexing and abstract services tend to be run as proprietary services:

For Engineering there is Engineering Village
For Chemistry there is the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) SciFinder
For Theology and Religious Studies there is Index Theologicus
For Philosophy there is The Philosopher's Index and PhilPapers
For Geology there is GEOBASE and GeoRef
For Economics there is EconLit and RePEc
For Mathematics there is Mathematical Reviews and zbMATH (hattip Dave Renfro)
For Electronics and Computer Science there is IEEE Xplore
For Agriculture there is AGRICOLA and AGRIS

Wikipedia has quite a full list that might be of further interest:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_databases_and_search_engines


How can I earn a professor's attention if I am not his/her student yet? I am trying to find a professor to do my first research under his/her supervision. I am a high school student. However I have already self-studied all the BSc and MSc (Pure Mathematics) books [based on Melbourne Uni]. But I haven't done any research and I need to have some professor to help me to choose a topic, access to non-free-papers, publishing, etc. Most probably I won't need for the learning part, i.e. to ask professor
on more understanding the texts (i.e., tutoring). Although not asking for teaching Mathematics to me may result in much less taking professor's time compared to professor's student, but professor
prefers to not spend on someone off the street asked him/her to do research with.

I already have asked two professors to do research under their supervisions and in reply I have been rejected, saying "I would prefer to supervise my students" or similar, (one was just yesterday).

I am interested in doing research on Real Analysis and I know there might be some other professors to be interested in guiding me even a lot but they are not specialized on Real Analysis.

I should also add here what I am saying when approaching:

As I quickly rejected in the first try by emailing, I decided to go to a professor's office in person with no previous meeting time; the result was a bit better in the beginning but no success.
I speak: "As I found Mathematics the most supreme beauty, a true Paradise, I started and committed to Mathematics. I had a consecutive study plan and I have studied ... [name of books]. As I was keen to have a big impact on Mathematics, so I decided to analyze books (like what a critic does with a paper to publish) rather than studying. I know that I need a lot to learn before doing research (which I don't know what to study next) and afterwards I don't know how to proceed in research. It would be a great honor if you please help me in my journey..."

My questions are: What's wrong with my actions and speaking? and, what should I say or do in order to 'win' a professor's heart?

PS - I took your kind and helpful advises in the other question, and I decided not to be isolated from 'the system'. However, it's not that easy to find my way on my own. By the way, I truly appreciate for all your guidance.

What's wrong with my actions and speaking?

Nothing's wrong with your actions, although they are not likely to lead to success.  As for your speaking, the paragraph you quote is not ideal, but I don't think that's why you are getting turned down.  Instead, the problem is that the system is just not set up to provide research mentors for high school students.  I regularly turn down requests for high school research supervision, for several reasons:

Like many faculty at research universities, I have more local students who would like to work with me than I have time to supervise.  This is particularly true for undergraduate research, and I end up turning away many undergraduates because of a lack of time.  The ones I end up working with typically have very strong backgrounds, and I'd be reluctant to turn more of them away to free up time to supervise high school students.
It's much easier to vet local students.  If they have never taken any of my classes, I can ask my colleagues about them.  By contrast, it's much harder to evaluate high school students.  It's already difficult to quickly gauge mathematical talent and background, and that's not even enough: I'd also want to know how hard working someone is, how overcommitted they are with other activities, etc.
I don't think high school research is particularly important, and I question whether it's even worthwhile.  For the vast majority of high school students (even ones who are exceptionally talented), spending a few more years studying the mathematics that's already known is at least as worthwhile as doing research.  The number of people who have genuinely reached the stage where they should be doing research, but who are not yet prepared to go to college, is minuscule.  By contrast, there are lots of people whose main motivation seems to be that doing research at a young age looks impressive, and I'm not eager to encourage this.

Of course not everyone will share these reasons, but I think they are reasonably widespread.  To maximize your chances of success, you should keep these issues in mind.

The most straightforward one to address is how to evaluate your background and talents.  You need external evidence, such as a letter of recommendation from a faculty member, ideally combined with some feedback and advice.  You could try taking an advanced course at a local university, or attending a summer math program for high school students.  Another possibility is strong performance on a math contest.  (That's less meaningful, since it measures only a limited form of talent and doesn't come with feedback/advice, but participating in a contest is less expensive than taking a course.)

It's worth applying to research programs specifically aimed at high school students, such as RSI.  There aren't very many of them, and they don't admit many people, so you may not have any luck with this.  If you target individual faculty members, you may have better luck if you choose people who have supervised high school students in the past, since you know they are in principle open to the possibility.  (You can sometimes tell this from their web sites or CVs.)  Faculty members at schools that don't have particularly strong undergraduates may be more excited by the idea of working with a great high school student, while faculty at Princeton have plenty of top undergraduates to work with.

If your search for a research supervisor works out, that's great.  But if it doesn't, you shouldn't worry that it's a negative judgment of you.  You're trying to do something the world basically isn't set up to facilitate.


Leave out the last chapter as it anyway should be addressed in second edition? I am an amateur (not affiliated with an academy) mathematician.

I have written a research monograph (see my site).

The current status of the book is that it is well written and is reasonably checked for errors. However there are serious errors in the last chapter. I may remove the last chapter and try to publish the rest of the book without it.

I sent my book (not yet including the last chapter) to several publishers. They all say either that my book is too original and rough for book form and should be published as articles first, or that my research is unmotivated. (I disagree and consider my work fully motivated.)

And now my book is in consideration of a publisher. After I sent my book to the aforementioned (last) publisher, I realized that before writing second volume of my book I need first create second edition of the first volume (which is in consideration now). I had two ideas how to rewrite it when it was already in publisher's review.

I doubt what to do with the last chapter (which as I've said above is currently erroneous). The simplest thing is just to remove it now, because it anyway should be rewritten in the second edition (and the rewrite is rather massive).

Should I for now remove the last chapter and leave this work to the stage when I will write the second edition of the first volume?

Or maybe should I stop any publishing attempts until I finish writing the second edition? (I'm afraid that if I happen to die, my work may be lost unpublished.)

I disagree and consider my work fully motivated.

This is a key point.  The issue isn't whether there exists compelling motivation, and you may be right that there is.  Rather, the issue is whether you have successfully communicated this motivation to readers who have spent far less time thinking about the topic than you have and who lack the perspective that comes from developing a subject from scratch.  You'll have to work extra hard to articulate the motivation and communicate it successfully.  If the readers still don't understand why are you doing something, then that itself amounts to a communication failure (regardless of whether you feel they ought to have understood).  You don't need to communicate successfully with everyone, but you need to do so with a large enough audience.

I'd strongly recommend trying harder to address this before publishing the book.  You can consider the editors who have looked over your submissions as a random sample of readers.  Many of them fail to understand the motivation behind your work, which suggests that many readers would find it unmotivated even if someone agreed to publish it.  Ultimately, the goal should be not just to get the book published, but to get it read and understood.  The feedback from publishers is helping you identify what you need to work on to attract readers.

  Or maybe should I stop any publishing attempts until I finish writing the second edition?

Are you proposing to publish the first edition while you are already working on a second edition, or to submit the first edition as a draft while telling the publisher that you are working on serious revisions?  The latter could make sense, while publishers are unlikely to agree to the former.  (Publishing a book takes time, effort and money, and nobody wants to commit these resources to a mathematics book that will quickly be out of date.)

But the fact that you already have large-scale changes in mind suggests that the book might not be ready to submit for publication.  You don't need to have completed all possible revisions before approaching publishers, but your chances of acceptance go down if you aren't presenting approximately your best work.

  Should I for now remove the last chapter and leave this work to the stage when I will write the second edition of the first volume?

What's the alternative to removing it?  If you have in mind fixing the mistakes now, then I can't advise you on which approach is better (since I haven't read the book).  If you mean keeping the incorrect chapter in the manuscript and not dealing with the mistakes until later, then that sounds like a bad idea.

  I'm afraid that if I happen to die, my work may be lost unpublished.

I can understand that this is a depressing possibility, but I wouldn't worry about it now (assuming you are no likelier to die soon than other people your age).  If it makes you feel safer, you could always ask a friend or family member to try to get your work archived somewhere if you died unexpectedly.  I can't say they would necessarily succeed, but it couldn't hurt to try.

By the way, the publishers who suggest publishing research papers first have an important point.  The mathematics publishing system is set up to work that way, and it is not particularly well adapted to publishing large chunks of unfamiliar research in book form.  It's certainly possible to publish research monographs, but you may be making things unnecessarily hard for yourself.  Unless you have a very strong reason to prefer a book, I'd recommend trying articles instead.


Do generalist journals try to make sure every subfield is adequately represented? If so, how? I am curious: what steps do generalist journals follow to try to ensure that every subfield (e.g., number theory, differential geometry, combinatorics, etc. for pure mathematics) is adequately represented, as the journal deems suitable?
To ask the question in a different way: a generalist journal will typically publish many more papers in one subfield compared to another subfield (in an absolute sense and/or relative to total volume of papers in that field). How does this "publication rate by subfield" come to be? My personal interest is in mathematics, though the question applies to any academic field.
There are two sub-questions here: one for high-volume, "good" journals (e.g. Proceedings or Transactions of the American Mathematical Society) and one for low-volume, "top" journals (e.g. Annals of Mathematics, Acta Mathematica). It is a given that such a journal would have a diverse editorial board (in some cases, subject to constraints such as university affiliation), which is already a partial answer to the question. So the question is whether journals conscientiously or systematically do more than this.
My understanding is that for a journal like Proceedings or Transactions, each subject editor has a certain page quota of articles that they can recommend for publication. What I don't know is whether such a page quota is the same for each editor, or whether this varies by subfield. Or how they decide how many editors per subject. Presumably one subfield may be significantly larger than another, or a single editor might end up being the contact point for various subfields. I also don't know how final decisions are made based on the recommendations of subject editors.
For the very top journals, the discretion of the editors would presumably be a more important factor. But is "we've already published in this field recently" or "we haven't published in this field recently" often a consideration?

I think you are suggesting that there might be some sort of quota system and I doubt that such a thing is done, or even viable. You are interested in fairly broad areas of specialization within mathematics and, while I'm not in the game anymore, I have to guess that there are plenty of papers submitted in each of the categories (or they would be dropped or coalesced).
But the editors, and especially the editor in chief, is most interested in publishing the highest quality papers. Those that are interesting. Those that make serious advances. Those that suggest new ways of approaching mathematical questions. The "balance" will come naturally, due to the sheer number of papers.
But, if I'm the editor in chief (as I'm not), and I have two papers, one in a recently popular field and one in a less popular one, I'm going to choose the better paper. The other consideration would be far down my list of criteria. If I have a great paper and an ok but not earth shattering one, it is an easy choice.
And if there is some imbalance between the number of papers published in a subfield, I'll have to guess that it is related to the number of practitioners and the current state of the art in that field. Some fields have fewer researchers, and some threads of research get "stuck" for a time. Publishing "extra" papers in that field seems counterproductive at the moment decisions need to be made.

For the specific technical questions about quotas and such, you should ask the EiC of TransAMS, for example.


I may not be admited to the school that have the professor I have interest in. What should I do? I have been following a professor whose research I really like. To simply illustrate the impact of his research, let me quote a quote from Quanta Magazine:

  [He] says he usually gets two responses: “You’ve opened up a whole new theory, and you’re an idiot.”

We have exchanged many emails, and I have nailed my proposed research to the point where I believe that it suits his research very well. I am really satisfied with this.

However, I lack 5 points in TOEFL to reach the minimum requirement of this school. So I have to apply to other professors in other schools. Because he has opened up a new theory, other professors research doesn't have that much in common with my proposed one. I have no complain about that, and I think I would still be happy to work on a research that deviates from my proposed one. The next professor who has research similar to my proposal, has refused me because he doesn't have intention to admit more student this year (but he says he will be glad if I apply next year).

Q: If I really want to work on this research, can other professors advise me well? In my knowledge, I also need to work for them, to enrich their research, so chances are that I have to work on a different research. And if I do have to change my proposed one, which one is more advantageous, accepting it or waiting another year to apply? It's kind of a shame to spend a whole year preparing for grad school, then suddenly have to wait for another year; but I can deal with that.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Until you've actually been admitted somewhere, it's a really bad idea to pin your hopes on only one advisor, only one school, or only one set of research directions.  Sure, there may be one particular advisor that you seem to "click" with more than any others, but you should not think of that as your only option until you actually know that it's an option at all.

Even under optimal circumstances, there is a good chance that you won't be admitted to a particular school, or that a particular advisor isn't taking new students, or that your newest grant proposal won't be funded by a particular agency, or that your latest paper won't be accepted by a particular journal, or that your latest experiment will fail, or that you won't be able to hire a particular student into your research group.  It doesn't matter how hard you want it, or how much you deserve it; you will never get everything that you want.

And you are applying under less than ideal circumstances—your TOEFL is below the minimum requirement for your first-choice department.  Unless you can improve your score before they make admissions decisions, it's safe to assume that you will not be admitted.  Don't worry about it; don't be afraid of it.  Accept it and move on.  But don't withdraw your application!

Meanwhile, cultivate other options.  One of those options might be to spend a year improving your language skills.  Another might be to apply to other advisors in the same department (although that's unlikely to work given your TOEFL score), or to other departments.  Yes, that might mean changing your proposed research, but your research career will span decades; there's plenty of time to go back to your initial proposal later.  Or you might be able to find other advisors who will work with your original proposal.

How do you know which option to pursue?  You don't.  Try them all.

I generally advise undergraduates in my department who are interested in graduate school to apply to 5-10 different departments and simultaneously to apply for industry jobs.  Apply to options that you think you might be a good match.  Remember that any particular application has a small chance of being accepted, especially at top schools like Berkeley.  Play it as a numbers game — your goal is to set up enough options, with a wide spread of probabilities, that you can reasonably expect to get a couple of offers.

Once you have those offers, then start making a decision about which one to accept.


Faculty positions: What to say in a statement on diversity? Some job ads of US schools require a "statement on diversity". I am not based in the US, and have never written one before. What should one say in a statement on diversity anyway? Am I supposed to state how I would increase the (ethical, scientific, or with regards to other aspects) diversity of the faculty? Would something like "Since I come from Africa, I would make a big contribution to your diversity since currently all faculty members at your department are white" usually be expected?

This should not be a statement about your personal diversity ("I am from Africa"), but rather a statement about how you can contribute to creating a diverse academic community, and how you can help students from diverse backgrounds succeed at the university.  As Noah Snyder rightly points out in the comments, your personal diversity would be an obvious thing to include here with a discussion of how that will help you further the goal of attracting and retaining students from diverse backgrounds.  If you have no relevant personal experiences, then this should be a discussion of how you plan to further the university's goal of attracting and retaining students from diverse backgrounds.

UC San Diego, which requires such a statement, maintains a webpage describing what should be included.  The entire page can be found here.

A few bullet points from their document:

  What is the Purpose of a Contributions to Diversity Statement?

  The purpose of the statement is to identify candidates who have professional skills, experience, and/or willingness to engage in activities that would enhance campus diversity and equity efforts.

  Are there any guidelines for writing a statement?

  The Contributions to Diversity Statement should describe your past experience, activities and future plans to advance diversity, equity and inclusion, in alignment with UC San Diego’s mission to reflect the diversity of California and to meet the educational needs and interests of its diverse population. Some faculty candidates may not have substantial past activities. If that is the case, we recommend focusing on future plans in your statement. A more developed and substantial plan is expected for senior candidates.

As candidates may not have particular past experiences, there is also some advice on "planned activities:"

  Planned Activities:

  The first step is to gather information on activities you would like to pursue while at UC San Diego and how they might fit into the research area, department, campus, or national context. You may consider but are not restricted to current or ongoing campus activities.

  For each proposed activity you include, describe the role you envision having and what you would like to accomplish in the next two to five years. Who would you like to engage in your efforts, and how would you plan to engage them? Be as specific as possible, but realistic in terms of your effort and time commitment.

In addition to the quotes above they have more information, including several example statements, and additional resources.  They also have a section on how such statement are considered.

Of course, all of this is specific to UCSD, but I imagine it generalizes to other institutions reasonably well.


How do you deal with being stuck in mathematics research? With a few other professors, I have been working on proving a certain mathematics conjecture. Our solution seems to be working perfectly in computer simulations but we can't find a proof. (..its a very big result if it works!...)

I have been trying pretty much everything I can think of. Nothing is working.

What do you do in such a situation?

A journey of a thousand li begins with a single step.

Rather than aiming for a big result all in one go, why not break the problem down by aiming at some smaller results that will bridge you towards where you want to go.  For example:

If you restrict to a much more limited range (even to a single scenario!), can you show the result for that special case?  You may then be able to generalize bit by bit.
Can you identify some property P such that, if property P holds, the overall result will hold?  You can then separately try to show that your system has P and that P implies the desired result.
Can you break your system into little pieces and take an inductive approach, where you show that if all but one fragment are correct, then the last fragment will be correct too?  You can then show that this holds for larger and larger fragments.

Complementarily, if the simulations work but you can't find the proof, it might be the case that the result does not hold, but it appears to because your simulations are all coincidentally close to some special case.  I have often seen this happen to people.  So an alternate approach that you can take is to try to break your simulation.  For example:

What happens when you hold all simulation parameters constant except for one, and change that parameter greatly, say across a range of a couple of orders of magnitude?
What happens if you radically alter the initial conditions, e.g. making initial conditions extremely homogeneous or heterogeneous in a strongly correlated way?

If the simulation fails in more extreme conditions then, well, you know why you couldn't find a proof.  If it doesn't fail, then you may gain insight into why it doesn't.


How to advertise a paper to increase citations? Of course, the best way to improve citations is to write good papers which presents sound, interesting, and important results.

However, assuming that one has a nice paper published in an important journal (e.g., PRL, or PRB), what one can do to improve citations, and in general to make people read, or at least aware of, the paper? A partial answer is to upload it on the arXiv, and presents the work to relevant conferences on the topic. Is there something else one can do to advertise a paper, especially online?

PS: I am concerned with hard-sciences, in particular, physics.

Aside from giving excellent talks at important conferences, here are several other ideas.  I've seen all of these work (although rarely all for the same paper).

Maintain a freely available copy (or at least an arXiv link) on your personal web page.
Keep your CV up to date, including links to freely available version of all your papers.
Make sure Google Scholar and similar indexing services are indexing your paper.
Announce / brag about your paper on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, LiveJournal, etc.
If you have pages at clickbait sites like Academia.org or ResearchGate, upload copies (of the arXiv version) there.  (But if you don't, don't start now.)
Write a blog post about your paper.  Better yet, convince someone else with a well-read blog to write a blog post about your paper.
Give invited talks about your work at other universities/labs.  If necessary, invite yourself.
If you are a student, ask your advisor to brag about your new paper.
If your paper significantly extends the work of other authors, or applies it in a novel way, contact those authors directly with a link to (a free version of) your paper.  (But don't send a copy to someone just because you cite them.)
Whenever your paper provides an answer to a question on (for example) physics.stackexchange, answer the question and include a link to your paper.
Develop a reputation for stellar work, so that people in your field regularly check your web page / arXiv / indexes / journals for your newest papers.

The last method is by far the most effective.


How can I find if my viXra paper is cited? I've published a paper in viXra and I would like to know if someone else cited it anywhere, but I don't know how. Is there a kind of global index for citations? Does it include “alternative archives” such as viXra?

Most established academic journals are indexed in what are logically called “journal indexes”. These indexes commonly record all publication metadata, and usually also include a record of all citations. Such indexes are thus called citation indexes.

Now, the problem with viXra is inherent to its “alternative” nature: it is most definitely not indexed by conventional players (Web of Science, CrossRef, PubMed, CAS, etc.). You thus have two ways of looking for citations to your paper:

Google Scholar includes content from viXra in its results (see this search’s first hit, for example). It probably also records citations of such articles, but the quality of citation matching is limited by Google's heuristic algorithms. They're good, but not as good as DOI-based mechanism that commercial databases nowadays employ.
A regular web search with you name, or the title of your paper. This is not as automated, but it may give good results as to who is citing your work, especially if this is one of your first papers and you don't yet have a large web presence.

(Obvious caveat: if your name is John Smith or Li Wang, web search will not help much.)


Do reviewers tend to reward or dismiss the use of new languages in scientific computing projects? In the past I used to use a lot of Python/R/MATLAB which are the standard in many scientific disciplines. However, recently I have dived into Julia and now everything I'm doing is in Julia (including workshops, blogs, etc. to help teach and promote it!). And there are a lot of very good reasons to use Julia for these kinds of projects.

However, if I am to be publishing algorithms which have Julia code, should I be expecting backlash from reviewers? Should I have alternative versions (like a MATLAB version) also included until Julia gains more acceptance? I am curious as to whether other's past experience with using new tools was a headache, or whether reviewers tend to find it as a little extra novelty.

The field is numerical analysis, more specifically developing new computational methods for stochastic (partial) differential equations. It's written in Julia because from my experience I get massive performance increases over other scripting languages while requiring minimal coding/debugging time. In the paper, everything is written as psudocode for legibility. Note that R/Python/C have language binding tools which can allow someone (with some work) to use the code as a blackbox, but MATLAB users would have to re-implement the code themselves (the langugages are quite similar)

I tend to get annoyed reading a paper that has its code examples in an atypical language for the area. I don't want to have to learn the language to understand the examples. Unless the paper is about the language and its features or advantages or disadvantages, the example code should be as straightforward to understand as possible, and using a toy or hobby language to provide algorithm examples makes the review harder to do. I'm likely to decline to even do the review if I don't think I'll be able to get through it easily. For example, working in high performance computing (my area), unless the paper is about the advantages of a new run-time system with its own language, I don't want to see some sparse matrix algebra routines in Haskell or Julia since I don't come close to speaking or understanding either of those languages. I'd rather you use a made up psuedo-code description of the implementation and not even provide the actual code unless you're making a specific point about the implementation that's part of the new results.


Handicap for PostDoc and Academia Jobs from having a PhD from low ranked universities I am located in the U.S. and the field in question is pure mathematics.

I am wondering, as a doctorata degree holder at a lower tier institution (AMS Group III), how much of a disadvantage will I be at when trying to obtain a postdoc and academia tenure track jobs at say a Group I/II school after graduation? How realistic is it to have such goals and are there anyone out there that has accomplish such feat?

If all hopes are not lost, are there anything I can do to improve my chances down the road (aka polish my CV)? Otherwise, should I drop out and reapply to another program?

Thanks.

I can only answer for my own job market (UK) and field (biology), but in general, what a good pedigree gives you, is second chances. If I was hiring a postdoc, I might take a chance on someone graduating from a good lab at a good uni without a publication under their belt, while from a less well regarded uni, or a research group I'd never heard of, I'd definitely want to see evidence of the ability to do publication quality research.


Chances of landing a post doc (Banach Space Theory) and tenure track position? Currently I am a 2nd year PhD student in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. My research interest lies in functional analysis, particularly Banach Space Theory.

I would like to know what are the chances to land a post doc in this field after my graduation and subsequently a tenure track position. If possible, I would like to have some statistical information to observe the trend.

I frequently visit (literally everyday) Mathjobs to get an overall idea on how many post doc positions available on analysis (no PDE, by the way). Unsurprisingly, it is not a lot.

I know that it is extremely difficult to land a post doc nowadays due to oversupply of PhD graduates (I assume most PhD graduates would like to stay in academia). However, I do not want to stuck at working post doc and cannot rise to tenure track. I think this defeats the purpose of doing a post doc, as it is an intermediate step of obtaining a tenure track position. If this is case, then I think it would be better to work elsewhere straightaway after graduation.

EDIT: Geographically speaking, I prefer working in developed countries such as USA, UK, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Australia, etc.

Statistics won't help you here. Getting a job isn't a random selection process. Every candidate is different. Every position is different. The selection process is designed to match skills with requirements, even if it does so rather poorly. But on a purely statistical basis, assume that your chances are zero.

If you want a job as a math prof, independent of sub-field, write a lot of good papers. Learn to be a good instructor. Get some experience in advising others, etc. Then look for jobs that seem to match your skills and background. Become known in your sub-field and in the larger world of mathematicians (attend conferences, say). Use your advisor(s) to meet people elsewhere through introductions. Do some collaborative work with people elsewhere. Assure that your advisors are extremely happy with you and with your work so that you get marvelous letters of recommendation.

Expect that the process will be very competitive. You need to find a way to stand out from the crowd. When 200 applications arrive for any position you want to have yours wind up in the short (explore further) pile rather than the tall (no interest) pile.


Google scholar changes my profile into non English language, how to fix this? Hi Google Scholar changes my profile into Thai language, how do I change it back? My Google account language is English. I contacted Google several times but never got any response: Google seems don't have any client service, disappointed...

Thank you very much @Anton @GoodDeeds @ Solar Mike.
I tried the way shown by Anton and find my own language setting is already English. I also know the way to manually change the display languages by GoodDeeds. The problem I encountered is that whenever other people searching my name in Google, my Google Scholar profile will be popped up, which shows only in Thai. I hope to find a way to let Google Scholar automatically display the languages in English as what they did before. The main purpose is to help others to read my profile in English.  This problem happened about one year ago, I contacted two or three times Google through certain online feedback form, but was never replied and the problem was never corrected. I will probably try to use Twiter or Facebook to contact Google

Visit your GS profile, and go to settings section, where you will be able to handle Languages. Direct link is: here


Should an e-mail application to a lab for a masters thesis include attachments, or should I wait for these documents to be requested? I would like to ask a researcher in a foreign institution to do my master thesis ( 5 months worth of research in Experimental Physics ) under his supervision.

I have written both a motivational letter and a short, coincise email stating what my intentions are.

Should I only send the coincise email, and wait for them to ask me for a motivational letter + curriculum, or should i attach those to the mail?

Otherwise, would it be better if I wrote the motivational letter in plain text under the mail, so that if they want to read it they won't have to ask me for it?

I know from my previous advisor that he often rejected such proposals if they were not coincise enough because he did not want to waste time. He told me that he mainly answer those who "tickle" his interest in few words, but I would like to hear more opinions.

Here is the short mail I was thinking of:

  Dear Professor, I am a graduate physics student at the University of
  QuantumState currently on my first year of my master.

  During my four years of studies I developed a keen interest in the
  peculiar laws that describe lower dimensional quantum systems,
  alongside a passion for the challenges that are encountered in the
  experimental study of such systems. I would like to dedicate my master
  thesis to an experimental study in this field, in particular, I would
  like to do so under your supervision in your research group.

  Alongside my interest in the field ( and I know that your institution
  is one of the top research centers in the area ), I also have a strong
  personal desire of moving to Copenhagen: if during my stay you would
  find me a suitable addition to your group, I would be more than
  looking forward to apply for a Doctorate position at your institution.

  The timeframe allotted by my university for work on the master thesis
  is the period going from february 2016 onwards (usually 5 months). I
  know that it is very early, but to do the research in a foreign
  institution my university requires me to obtain a statement of intent
  from the external advisor long before.

  Attached you find a more throughout letter about my interests and Ideas, and my curriculum.

  Best regards,
  Me Myself

I do not know what the customs are in physics, but professors get requests like this a lot, and most of them feel like form letters (i.e., as if a student is sending out a bunch hoping someone will be interested).

If you want to get noticed, be very explicit as to why you are interested in this person and their lab, and if your desired research aligns with projects you know they are doing, say so with explicit references.  Your paragraphs above sound very generic, something you could have sent many places.

Also, please consider:
- if you are excited about a large project the professor is doing and would be happy to do a project for the professor that they need done, say so.  Typically, if you have an idea already, that might be less appealing than being interested in doing something that the professor wants/needs to be done.  Of course, having as specific interesting idea also shows you understand the area and the professors work.
- if you have funding and will not cost the professor anything, say so.  Oftentimes, professors don't have spare funding to pay for a visiting student (especially one they do not know) ever if they wanted to.
- I would somehow (perhaps in the longer document) give an indication of experience you have (don't just tersely list it on the resume).  A big question a professor would have is how much experience you have and how likely you are to be able to do something good in a short few months.

I would also definitely include the attachments of the long statement and resume in your first message.  If the professor gets through your note and is interested, they would probably appreciate knowing more about you before replying.

Remember: the most precious commodity to a professor is their time.  You need to convince them that the time they will invest in you is worth it.


How to convince labmate to graduate? Graduating, in a 2 person research group? I work in a small research group, there are 2 graduate students.
My advisor is fairly new, and I'm not sure when his tenure date is actually set for. Not necessary info, but pertinent.)
The other graduate student got here a year before me and worked with our professor a lot to set up the lab and has contributed to all of my works. He started in the group with 2 M.S. degrees from different universities.
I'll have the necessary attributes in order to graduate 2 years from now, my 5th year, but I'm not sure how I can leave a group at the same time if my other labmate will be also leaving that year...
I can't imagine staying for a 6th year for no reason. Only because my boss doesn't have enough funding/ likes keeping the group small.
Yes a lot can change in 2 years, but if my labmate isn't apply for jobs for next Fall/Spring, then how am I supposed to apply for jobs next year...There's no way we could leave at the same time and leave my advisor with only 1 graduate student (if he were to hire a new one NY then).
How do I push my labmate to apply for jobs? He's already got some great publications. He's totally ready to go.
I'm part worried that he's not ready to push his way out. I'm not sure how to get out without this turning into a difficult situation.

How many graduate students your adviser attracts at any given time to his or her lab isn't your responsibility. Your responsibility is to yourself and your career. If you think it is time to graduate and if you think you have sufficient material to defend your thesis, then it is time to graduate.

Leave the details of how to run the lab after your departure to your adviser. It might make sense to discuss your hopes and plans to graduate at a particular time with your adviser well in advance (it's always a good idea to communicate!) so that she can plan accordingly. But, this planning is her job, not yours, and it shouldn't be a factor in your considerations.