What Problems Are Applied Mathematicians Concerned With? I have been doing some looking around to try and learn a little bit more about what applied mathematicians work on in a more general sense and think that I could benefit from a question posted here. Research in applied mathematics seems to be something like a 'jack of all trades' type of discipline in which applied mathematicians can work across many different and seemingly unconnected fields that could benefit from mathematical modelling. But, modelling in a specific field seems to me to be the role of the domain specialist.
Then, what is the utility of an applied mathematician when domain specialists would (should?) be the people who tackle, solve, and model the problems related to their field of expertise? Where do applied mathematicians fit into the research puzzle where domain experts do not?

I am mostly going by your title question and your clarification from the comment. Because as it turns out, the only field most applied mathematicians add knowledge to is applied mathematics itself, only then someone else to apply this knowledge to something later, so there is a lot of internal stuff going on. But more about that later. First let me tackle the part of applied mathematics that is "exposed" to the sciences. (By which I choose to mean everything except maths for sake of simplicity)
What do applied mathematicians do with respect to sciences?
If you want to apply mathematics to something, there are essentially two (oversimplified) steps:

Write down a model of your problem. (e.g. differential equations, graphs, minimization problems, etc.)
Extract useful information from your model using maths. (e.g. find solutions, universal properties, minimizers, numerical approximations etc.)

People from the sciences¹ are certainly good at the first step, and they are taught a bit about the second step during their education or pick something up in practice. But that is generally restricted to some standard methods. In contrast think of applied mathematicians as kind of the opposite of this. The model a mathematician writes down might be a bit rudimentary and not be most realistic one, but he'll certainly know some more advanced mathematical trickeries to extract some additional predictions from it. And of course as lifetimes are limited, it is basically impossible for someone to get into the full depths of both sides.
Now one would think that this would lead to a clear division of labour. But what muddies the waters is that there are many models and not all of them are created equal. There are many models that may look reasonable but that are mathematically ill-posed, rendering their predictions useless.² There are also many models that look simple and are of interest to scientists, but where extracting mathematical information is impossibly difficult, while a less straightforward looking model might be easier to solve. (And for the converse, there are many mathematical toy-models with interesting theorems but no real applications).
People who focus on this would generally fall under the heading of mathematical modelling. But that is only a small part of applied mathematics.
What problems are applied mathematicians concerned with?
Contrary to your question, a lot people in applied mathematics don't deal with specific real world problems at all. Rather than that they work on improving the methods used for problems. These can be ways to prove certain classes of theorems and make predictions or they can be algorithms to numerically solve problems. Both are completely different but kind of have the same function for the sake of this discussion.
The important point is that the good methods are application agnostic. I don't want to prove a new theorem for each new application and I don't want my numerical algorithm to only work for a specific equation (there are some exceptions but those are by necessity, not by choice). So while many may look to some application as an inspiration or put it in the paper as an example, that is not their focus.
Notes:
¹As a sidenote, you called them "domain specialists", but that isn't a good distinction, as this is true for both sides. Applied mathematics splits in many domains and each mathematician will only be a specialist in one or two of them (e.g. statistics, or partial differential equations or, certain numerical methods etc.). They just might feel like "jacks of all trades" to you, because each of those domains will have some applications in almost all sciences, but they are still rather specific and fundamentally useless if the problem needs a different subfield of methods. Think of the two as orthogonal to each other.
²If a model M has no solutions, the sentence "Every solution to the model M fulfills property X" is true for any X.


How early should I start asking professors for a summer position? I am a high school student and have several professors at colleges nearby who are conducting research I find very interesting. I am going to ask them to consider letting me work under them during the summer, and maybe afterward throughout the school year. When should I ask? Should I ask in the coming weeks, to give them time to respond, or should I wait a few months until the summer is closer?

I would look at https://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/reu_search.jsp and https://cadrek12.org for programs at universities in your area that have open applications for the upcoming spring and summer semesters. These are likely to be low-paying internships that are part of ongoing research programs NSF already funds which are going to be looking for high-achieving high-school students to participate in research. The "U" in "REU" is for "Undergraduates", so college students, but many of the programs have portions for late high-school students, too, so read carefully. Your ability to read about the program and follow instructions will help determine your acceptability to them.
Broader Impacts, including impacts on K-12 students are a big part of NSF grant funding, and so many NSF-funded organizations in the US have something to offer throughout the year. That being said, individual professors may not. I think you'd be better served by looking at organizations within academic institutions (museums, computing centers, laboratories, etc.) than trying to talk directly with a single professor. For the reasons noted in the comments about busy-ness, a single prof. might not have the resources to supervise a single high-school student or even assign that supervision to a grad student. Look for labs and institutions that have such programs.


How to remove a co-author from an article published on arXiv? I have published an article on arXiv. I associated person X as co-author whereas he didn't contribute at any step of the paper. Note that he is not registered as owner of the article on arXiv and I didn't give him the password to access as author.

When I wanted to submit the paper to a journal, X began to do some harassment. After that, I decided to remove his name from the article on arXiv.

Questions: How can I remove a co-author from an article published on arXiv? Can he claim that he is the co-author on arXiv or for a journal submission?

Yes, technically one can modify the authors of an arXiv article. See the replace instructions on arXiv. See also this answer on Quora. But, as far as I understand these instructions, the previous version with the initial co-authors will remain on the server.

Note that it was no good scientific practice to initially associate a co-author to the paper that didn't contribute to it. Regaring the claiming of the authorship by X after removing his name from the paper, I have no answer.


Do letters of recommendation typically include a biography of the writer? A student asked me to write a letter of recommendation for graduate school admission in London and the student insisted that I include a short biography describing my job title and qualifications. I find this information is a little out of place. First, my degree is in progress, so I do not have any impressive qualifications. Second, I think such letters are intended to introduce the applicant, not the writer.

Is this common practice to include a biography of the writer in letters of recommendation?
Where does this information typically appear in the document? In the opening paragraph? As a separate, attached document?

Yes, this is relatively common. (In my opinion, not common enough.)

Recommendation letters carry more weight if he reader knows the writer's qualifications.  In particular, letters about qualification for graduate school carry more weight if the reader has some sense of the writer's track record for judging students' research ability.  (This is why letters from senior faculty are more valued — not because of their vast research experience, but because they've presumably seen and evaluated more students.)  The best way for the reader to understand your track record is to tell them.

But briefly, because as you suggest, the letter isn't about you.

I don't think there's a standard way to do this.  Some people put their bio early in the letter, say in the second paragraph (because the first paragraph is the actual recommendation).  I put mine in a footnote on the last page.


Spending on AI vs theoretical physics in academia I hope this question may fit this site:

My friends and I were having an argument based loosely on these two opposing views. One side claims that there is too much spending and financial backing by governments on research in non-applied areas. By "non-applied" I mean that given that we answer the question originally proposed there is no practical real-world application forthcoming from it. The example used most often was high-energy physics and the standard model.

The opposing view claims that the funding (by governments, but subtract defence costs for instance) for theoretical research is already comparatively low, taken against research in engineering or applied sciences.

Question:

How can we compare these claims? The closest source I found online is from the OECD:

https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ONRD_COST

These charts however do not break expenditure on natural sciences into subfields.

Also, please share opinions backed by some stats, please!

History is generally on the side of pure government subsidized research.  There are some ideas or projects so far removed from possible commercialisation or such risky for private enterprise that it only makes sense for governments to fund these.

The most obvious example is electricity.

  “Why, sir, there is every probability that you will soon be able to
  tax it.”

The quote is attributed to Michael Faraday in reply to William Gladstone, then British Chancellor of the Exchequer (minister of finance), when asked of the practical value of electricity in 1850.  The quote is disputed but still relevant to illustrate the general point that some of the most fruitful ideas originated in research of no apparent utility.

Another example would be X-rays and a more recent example would be the laser, "a solution in search of a problem" according to its inventor T. Maiman (who at the time was working for a private firm).

On a more abstract level, Robert Wilson, appearing in front of a panel to lobby in favour of a new accelerator at Fermilab, declared

  In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending.

Overall, the investments in basic sciences have funded generations of graduate students who have gone on to be productive (and tax paying) members of society.  Giving a bit of $$ to pure research keeps researchers (often time university faculty) busy outside of class times, enriches courses and trains or exposes future professionals to cutting edge technology and concepts.  Even with an extremely low probability of success (intolerable to private enterprise), a single breakthrough will pay for itself many many times over.


Proving that the PhD work was done prior to someone else's patent I'm in a peculiar situation, which I'll try to describe as concisely as possible.

Around three years ago I worked on something and I published a preliminary conference paper, which described the idea in great detail. I'm currently working on a PhD that's about this topic I published 3 years ago. Today I found out that there exists a patent that was accepted last year and it's like 50% about the same idea I published in that conference paper. Not 100%, it has some unique stuff in it and I'm pretty sure they didn't try to steal my idea, they probably came up with it on their own, that's why it has some additional features that I don't even need. But it's similar. I still haven't finished my PhD, but I'm worried—can this patent be a problem for me? I can prove with that conference paper that I was working on this idea years before the patent was submitted and published.

What would be the best course here? I was thinking of citing this patent in my PhD, but if nobody said anything about it until now, I'm worried I just might start opening too many questions.

Any kind of ideas are greatly appreciated. I'm really, really worried that my PhD thesis can become invalid because of this patent. Is that possible?

You are right to be worried about a patent in the same field as your thesis research.

You do have some protection in the form of having "prior publication" that shows your work predates the thesis. But this is not necessarily sufficient to protect your future work.

I would get into immediate contact with your thesis advisor, as well as the legal department of your university. They are trained in handling such issues, and can advise you as how best to proceed so as to protect yourself.

Note that the goal of talking to the legal department is not to file a lawsuit. The goal is to understand what are your rights as a researcher working in an area with an existing patent, and how you can show that you are avoiding infringement.


Double blind peer review when paper cites author's GitHub repo for code I and my coauthor wrote a paper and the project involved creating a (small) software library. Part of the novelty of the paper is the output of the code, which is a digital object not intended for by-hand manipulation. The code (open source) would ideally also be useful for others. One journal to which I was considering submitting this requires double-blind peer review, but the GitHub repo where the code is stored, referenced in the paper, identifies one of us simply by looking at the username in the url. We can of course obscure our identities in the paper as authors, but really need to cite the code repository.

I've not had to do double blind review before, and so it's not clear what we should do. My coauthor is going to run into more problems of this sort as they continue research with a similar mix of code-and-paper as output.

Is there anything we can do, at least as a first attempt to soothe the journals worries?

Censor out the repo's name, and provide code to the referees as an auxiliary file.


What questions to expect from Skype chat with potential supervisor for a Masters in Neuroscience? I am applying to a Canadian University for a Master in Neuroscience. I have contacted a professor and asked for a place at his laboratory even though he only accepts PhD and post-doctorate students. However, he said that he accepted me as his student but wanted to have a skype meeting for us to get to know each other.

I am a medical doctor and his area of expertise is more philosophy-oriented. I am not an expert in this area. My questions are:

Will I be expected to have a well established research proposal even though I am a master student?
Are master students expected to have solid knowledge in the supervisor area even though they have a very different background?
What are some questions a master student can expect from a skype meeting with his/her possible advisor?

Ok, my interview has already taken place. In case anyone has the same question, it was a very relaxed interview ( even though I was obviously very stressed).

The researcher asked me why I chose to contact him, what I wanted to focus on ( based on his previous projects), when I would start, how I was going to finance my studies and how long would I be willing to stay at his laboratory, etc.

I wasn't asked about neurobiology, physiology or any other scientific knowledge.


How do I filter out bad students from tutoring? I'm a grad student and I do some tutoring on the side for money. It's a sweet gig and I do like helping people learn. However I have had plenty bad experiences tutoring. Usually the really bad things (people wanting me to cheat, not paying, etc.) usually are pretty obvious right away.

However what I have a hard time with are students who simply don't progress at all. Like don't study, come completely unprepared and are just frustrating and awful to deal with. It can take a few weeks to become apparent and honestly by that point I would feel guilty dropping them, especially if they're friendly.

How do I weed out students before it gets to that point? How do I find if a student will actually study, come prepared, etc. It's a waste of my time and their money to have me repeat definitions to them an hour a week, week after week.

Run an introductory test

You're looking for students that can manage their time and responsibilities. The only way to test that is by trial. Prepare a short questionnaire that would give you an impression of what the student knows. Send it to the student several days before your first meeting and ask to complete it before the meeting. Depending on how strict you want to be, do or do not remind the student about this test. If the student completes the test before the meeting, he's more likely to turn out a responsible adult. Apart from that, the test provides a starting point for your first meeting.

Note: in my culture, first meetings with tutors are usually unpaid and considered a trial period. It's easy to drop a student after a trial meeting if he didn't do the test and didn't seem hardworking during the meeting. If you already established a payment routine, it's harder to drop a student.

  It's a waste of my time and their money to have me repeat definitions to them an hour a week, week after week.

For a lateral approach to the problem, grad students who recently started tutoring sometimes only plan to tutor brilliant students, like themselves. Because of that, new tutors think that the job will be pleasant, thought-provoking and fascinating, so they set a lower hourly wage. However, an hour spent tutoring should be properly recompensed, even if it was dull to the tutor. I'll leave for you to judge if my experience applies to you, but don't hesitate to raise your hourly rate so that you don't feel like you're wasting your time.


Conceptual graphs in a business subject PhD thesis I have my thesis ready now. I don't have many graphs apart from some for my findings. After reviewing papers and a couple of thesis in my field I noticed many of them presented conceptual graphs throughout their project. I am wondering if adding such conceptual graphs to my each chapter or specific section will make a good impact on the overall look of the thesis.

I figured out it's not an easy task. I read my thesis a few times now but I can't think of any graphs that I can make to conceptualise the main themes in chapters. The nature of my thesis is exploratory and I have narratively explained what I found.

So the question is, should I ignore the idea of making graphs? Or if it is a good idea to add graphs, what are some techniques that help in this process?

Whether the graphs add value seems to depend on the content of the thesis. If you don't perceive what those graphs would look like, then either none are called for, or you haven't recognized opportunities to use them. In the latter case, having someone with graphing experience read and reflect on the thesis could provide you with solid proposals.


Is postdoc experience valued by industry? I have recently finished my PhD and am currently considering my options. I have come to the conclusion that the teaching or the "publish or perish" nature of academia isn't really appealing for me.

I have been talking to several people regarding my thoughts and I have noticed an interesting difference in opinion; senior academics have been stressing the value of doing a post-doc before a potential move to industry, whereas industry contacts say that it's much better/easier to do the move to industry within two years from dissertation. I inquired further asking whether or not the postdoc years would be valued by companies, and the answer was essentially that:

  unless the postdoc years are immediately relevant to the applied job, it wouldn't really give any seniority, as companies want to nurture their own culture and staying in academia for "too long" might lead to certain "habits" not appreciated in corporate world.

I want to get further opinions on the matter; is doing a postdoc valued by industry in general? The field is life sciences and bioinformatics, if it makes a difference..

There certainly is no "correct" answer to this question, as it depends on two factors: (1) the company (some will see it as useful, most probably won't), and (2) the type of postdoc (with or without management tasks? project lead? PI on a small project? independent or highly dependent of a professor?).

However, at least here in Switzerland and for Computer Science, the rule of thumb is that as soon as you are 100% that you won't stay in academia, every further month spent as a postdoc is inefficient in terms of career development. Yes, some companies may count your years as postdoc as some sort of relevant leadership experience, but most won't, and even those that do will consider a similar candidate with the same number of years working in industry to be much more attractive.

There is also another angle to look at this - you are currently looking to move into industry, and you have differing opinions from people that are already working in industry and people that are not. In absence of any other information, you should probably give more weight to the information provided by the insiders.


Open Access for journals : extent of the content remix (CC-BY) license? I'm a co-editor for an open-access journal (in geography), which is listed on the DOAJ. The scientific committee is somewhat doubtful about the recent change of prerequisites of the DOAJ, especially the mandatory use of a license permitting "content remix"(CC-BY).

I'd like to know if this type of license is frequent or common in your scientific and geographic areas ?

Short answer - CC-BY is most common in OA generally but it's not
  ubiquitous, and you'd not be alone if you didn't use it.

It's certainly a topic of some debate. Generally speaking, humanities academics/journals are more concerned about it than the sciences (see eg the Royal Historical Society position. Concerns about commercial reuse (NC) are usually more common than about derivatives (ND).

CC-BY is by now more or less the standard in the sciences. Almost all all-OA titles that I've dealt with in the earth sciences & biological sciences use this as the default, though there are a small handful that use CC-BY-NC or CC-BY-NC-ND as their standard license (CC-BY-ND is rare), and a few that run on a more traditional "no license but we're always free to read" basis. I have seen CC-0 and CC-BY-SA papers but this is very unusual.

Hybrid titles (subscription journals with a per-article OA option) tend to have more mixed arrangements, with some offering only CC-BY, some a choice of CC licenses, some a generic "free to read" option, etc. Hybrid titles published by the major commercial publishers tend to have a one-size-fits-all license policy regardless of their subject matter.

Some numbers to illustrate this: in 2014 my institution published 93 CC-BY papers, six CC-BY-NC, and four CC-BY-NC-ND. Four of the NC(-ND) papers were in hybrid titles with a choice of license, the others were required by journal policy. As noted, this is a mix of publishing in the earth & biological sciences.

Meanwhile, much of the drive for licensing comes from funding agencies. These tend to either (a) require the CC-BY license (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, Research Councils UK), or (b) not specify a license as such (NSF, HEFCE). UK funders have been more aggressive about specifying a fixed license than US ones.


Can I ask my supervisor to let me graduate early? I am a master’s research student. I am having trouble with my supervisor. I don't like either his research interests (as he is forcing me to do stupid things) or his attitude. I have the option to convert to a course-based master's but I want to consider that as a last option.

Is it advisable to talk to my supervisor directly about early graduation? I would tell him that I am not happy with the research and I want to write a thesis on a closely related but less intriguing subject and just finish my master’s as soon as possible.

Early graduation is often (usually?) possible, but only if you were quicker than other students with the necessary work, not as a way out if you don't like the program.

  Is it advisable to talk to my supervisor directly about early graduation? I would tell him that I am not happy with the research and I want to write a thesis on a closely related but less intriguing subject and just finish my master’s as soon as possible.

I expect that this line of argumentation to have a very small chance of success. If your main argument to early graduation is that you hate the program and want to get out, they will likely suggest you to drop out. If you want to have any chance at early graduation, find out where the bar is (in terms of required research output and coursework) and work hard to fulfill it as soon as possible. Then discuss with your advisor that you wish to graduate as you have done the required work (not because you dislike the work).

Stay far away from any argument that you hope they will lower the bar for you because you do not enjoy working with them. This will not have the anticipated effect: instead it has a good chance of antagonizing your advisor, in that way lowering your chance of early graduation. And you will need their goodwill to graduate early and (realistically also to  graduate at all).


Utilising assignment for thesis I had utilized an assignment that was under a free license to explain a part of my thesis but did not self-plagiarize by copying my own written work for an earlier submission.
Is it acceptable?

I'm still not sure that I understand the entire scenario, so this will be a bit hypothetical.
If you write something but it isn't published in any form then, later, you can simply copy and publish any part of it without citation or further comment. It isn't self plagiarism to use your own unpublished work.
Assignments in a course might, however, follow some rules beyond those generally accepted in scholarship. If the thesis is at the same institution as the earlier coursework, then, for purposes of keeping the faculty happy, it would probably be wise to mention that some of what you write was written earlier for a course.
But normally, student work for course assignments isn't really published, though it is shared in a limited way (with the professor). There can be exceptions, of course.
A way to be safe with all sorts of plagiarism, including self plagiarism is to cite if there is any doubt at all. Over citation will not, generally, be a problem. Under citation can be.


How to transition: leaving an EdD before completing to pursue a masters in another area I finished half of my comps for an EdD program that I really have no interest in finishing. I would actually like to pursue a second masters in a different area, but I have no idea how to do so, and it's a sticky situation to ask these questions of the university advisor. Basically, I want to move in a different direction with my career, and a second masters will bolster that rather than completing the EdD track I'm currently on. I basically have 12 more comps before I can even write dissertation anyway. Rather than pay tuition another semester for a degree I will not finish, I'm interested in how to transition and if I will run into any issues because I leave this current program with admission to another.

Finish it off.  Do it as fast and easy as possible.  The doctorate is more impressive than a second masters.  You are half way through.

Note I am extremely skeptical of academia and grad degrees and often tell people to do an MBA instead or just work.  But once you are in it, finish, finish, finish.

And remember, it is pass fail.  Just get through it with the minimum.  ASAP.


Am I taking a wrong approach while looking for an academic position in applied areas - brutal criticisms appreciated! After a PhD in pure mathematic, I wanted to do work in applied areas where I could bring in my pure math expertise. So I did two postdocs in computational medical imaging where I could apply my pure math knowledge coupled with machine learning (which I also liked because of my pure math background). But the reason I wanted to do computational medical imaging were:
1) I felt the market for pure math would be hard, and it'd be difficult to obtain a permanent position. However, if I worked in imaging, then my CV would show that I was capable of doing both pure and applied stuff, hence would keep my options open to industry as well.
2) I looked through some papers in medical imaging, and what attracted me was the mathematical tools that they used in these papers, but I didn't pay much attention to the actual unsolved problems in medical imaging. It was definitely not like I didn't care about these problems in imaging, but they were not the main reason I got attracted to it. But I went ahead with the postdoc anyway, but worked mostly on problems that were of somewhat general nature (e.g. problems at the confluence of differential geometry and machine learning, of interest in imaging. I didn't really work with raw images, rather some heavily processed images that'd fit my differential geometric model).
After finishing these two postdocs, I tried to continue in medical imaging, but for reasons that were not under my control, I couldn't, and thereafter, I tried to switch to industry and worked unsuccessfully in several companies for short times, and currently I'm again looking to move back to academia.
The reason I ask this question here is that, I recently had a long talk with a friend of mine who's also a PhD and successfully transitioned into industrial R&D from applied math/machine learning to autonomous driving. He told me that I took a wrong approach to working in applied areas. The reason to work in applied areas should be "I want to solve this problem in this applied area (in my case medical imaging)" as opposed to "This applied area uses this and that tools, which I'm already familiar with and like using, hence I must like that applied area as well". The second one was my approach, and I'd like to know if I were wrong? Even to this day, what principally excites me in an applied area is the underlying math I can bring in to solve the problems there, hence in a project, I seek to stay on the theoretical side, rather than the practical one. For example, I'm definitely more at ease with pen and paper, but I can and do code for a problem that requires machine learning, but I'm no fan of e.g. keep tuning parameters to obtain the optimal model like they do in data scientist positions (I had some, didn't feel passionate about and was unsuccessful) - I rather like to write an algorithm, prove its convergence if needed, and test it on small and gradually bigger datasets. MY QUESTION: Am I being wrong in my approach? Please be brutally honest! Is there a middle ground that I can take, and how? Thanks in advance!!

If you are making a mistake, it may be in narrowing your focus, closing off opportunities. Especially if it is you who is giving a too-narrow definition of your capabilities.
A math PhD should be able to teach (nearly) any undergraduate math course and many MS level courses. Every college and university teaches math and so needs people to teach those courses. The market is enormous. But for, say, medical imaging, there are few places that are truly interested. While it is also true that your skills should, and do, enable you to work on a vast range of problems, if you exclude those from consideration, or seem to, then your opportunities also close.
In a lot of ways a mathematician is like a Swiss Army Knife, being able to attack many problems, pure and applied, since they have a facility with abstract thought and how things fit together synergistically. But be careful, in any application, that you define yourself in a way that is flexible enough that others can see your potential.


Is it possible to complete the last year of a German Diplom in another university if ineligible in original university? I have a friend who was studying civil engineering in Dresden, Germany. He somehow got a very... VERY bad case of electronic addiction (he would just play online games and only procrastinate) and he lost connection to reality. He also had to go to rehab for this.

He is doing a Diplom, he has to write his final dissertation. He has over 20 semesters in the degree, it was a bit of a start and stop. This is a German 'diplom' meaning it is equal to a masters' so he holds no previous degrees.

Now he is ready to do the last part of his degree but he has been waiting for a decision from the university as to if he can continue his degree.

My question is, if this decision from the university is a "no", is it possible for him to complete his education? I mean is it possible for him to enroll in another university only for the last year. I think it is not possible in Germany to do this (something to do with having done too many semesters already), but maybe in another country.

Your friend seems to be very lucky, as the the civil-engineering diplom programme in Dresden is one of the very few in Germany that did not switch to bachelor/master yet (source). So if he did not automatically fail his studies due to some rule, he is likely to be able continue almost where he left them. For details, you would really have to check the university’s guidelines.
If this is not possible for some reason, there are a few universities where the diplom programmes have not fully ended yet, but I would judge it unlikely that any of them allows for new students to enrol, even if they only need to write a thesis.

More generally, there is a general German law (Hochschulrahmengesetz § 15 (3)), that allows students to transfer accomplished achievements:

Zum Nachweis von Studien- und Prüfungsleistungen soll ein Leistungspunktsystem geschaffen werden, das auch die Übertragung erbrachter Leistungen auf andere Studiengänge derselben oder einer anderen Hochschule ermöglicht.
(For certifying studying or examination accomplishments, a point-based system system shall be created that allows to transfer accomplishments to other degree programmes of the same or another university.)


Should I order references on surname or paper title when using Harvard style? I use the harvard referencing style.
One of our assignment instructions is:

  The reference list should be in alphabetical order

Lets use the following references as an example

  Kopecky, J. and Simperl, E., 2008. Semantic Web Service Offer
  Discovery for E-commerce.

  Sanvido, F., Sanchez, D., Mendoza, A. and Lopez, A., 2011. Dynamic
  Negotiation Layer for Secure Semantic Service Oriented Architectures.

Following the instruction I was given to order the references, is it generally implied that I should order the references by the first authors surname: Kopecky then Sanvido.
Or is it implied that I should order by the paper titles: "Dynamic Negotiation Layer..." then "Semantic Web Service..."

From Harvard website:

  The entries in the list should be in alphabetical order by the
  author's last name [sic].

As pointed out by aeismail in the comment, the second criterion is the date:

  Works by the same author should be ordered chronologically, from oldest to most recent

Of course, you might have many articles with the same author and same year, in that case, they say that:

  If your reference list includes multiple works by the same author in
  the same year, identify them in your parenthetical citations and in
  your reference list by a lowercase letter after the year, assigning
  each letter in alphabetical order by the title of the work


Are publications in IEEE and ACM journals and conference proceedings considered decent quality by prospective employers in academia? Both the ACM and IEEE have their name attached to a host of conferences and journals.  Some are known to be better than others, but I feel generally that any conference or journal with the ACM or IEEE brands attached are considered decent quality.  (Questions like this indicate I'm not the only one to think so.)

Question: Are publications in IEEE and ACM journals and conference proceedings automatically considered decent quality by prospective employers in academia?  (When applying for postdocs, assistant professor positions, and so on.)  Or is it more nuanced than that?

Essentially, I'm asking what weight do these brands have.

The ARC ERA2010 rank these journals and conferences from A* (the best possible ranking) to C (the lowest possible ranking).  But it's possible that these rankings are not an accurate gauge of the community's attitude towards a particular journal or conference.

Within many sub-disciplines of Computer Science, conference proceedings, rather than journals, are the main publishing venues for new research. In contrast to journals, which have an impact factor, there is no unified metric to quantify the quality of a conference proceeding. Although there are indeed a number of categorizations, I haven't seen them actively being used to decide which venue to submit to. I found that within these sub-disciplines of Computer Science, academics are very aware of which conferences and journals are competitive and what the impact is of publishing a paper there. These are indeed mostly ACM/IEEE, thus, giving them a certain status by name. Nevertheless, just because the conference is supported by ACM or IEEE, does not imply that it is a high quality conference.

However, when you apply for post-doc or faculty position, there might be people on the hiring committee that are not fully aware of this. To mitigate this issue and emphasize this difference to other fields, I have seen several resumes that explicitly explain how the publishing model in their respective subfield differs from the "classic" journal based system. You can achieve this with a simple note in your resume before listing your publications. An example:

  Note: Within the field of (subdiscipline of computer science), selective peer-reviewed conference proceedings are the main
  dissemination of novel research contributions. Conferences such as
  (conf x) and (conf y) are highly competitive publication venues with 2
  review rounds that include reviews from 3 external reviewers as well
  as at least 2 associate chairs. These conferences have an acceptance rate between 10 and 15 % and papers that are accepted and published are refereed as full length papers.


How should a high-school student approach professors in research institutions about research opportunities? I am a high schooler who lives in the vicinity of many premier research institutions and am very interested in going into STEM. I know that I will have to ask a lot of professors to let me work under them before one agrees, so I was wondering how I could go about asking several professors.
I know that I will need to write a proper email for each one, not a mass email that I can just copy-paste. Another issue I thought about is if by some chance two professors agree to have me. What do I do then? How can I avoid that situation?

It might be better, if you can arrange it, to have one of your teachers help you with this. It may well be that one of your STEM teachers went to one of these universities, or has some contact there. If so, they can help you make contact, vouch for your seriousness, and ease the way.
This is much harder now in the pandemic, but perhaps it can be arranged in virtual space. A phone call from a teacher to a professor before you make contact will make all the difference. Even if none of your teachers have any contacts, a mail from them, introducing an "interesting student" will make your contact much more likely to bear fruit. Make sure that your teacher can say some interesting things about you and your interests and skills.
This should avoid the "bulk" problem and you can approach it one step at a time.


How to acknowledge oneself as the author of materials created in industry research position? I am an industry-based researcher. As part of my role, I develop various resources for use by our clients. They include manuals, codes, quizzes, factsheets and the like. In all cases, I am the sole author of these resources.

These resources carry the name and logo of my company. However, I also want them to carry my name (and title), so that I can claim authorship. I need to do this for a range of reasons, including demonstrating my research output, as well as ensuring no one else claims credit for them in the future.

Implicitly, my colleagues know I am the author but as many of them are taking better job offers elsewhere or retiring, there may be no one left to 'vouch' for me.

Currently, I put my contact details at the start or end of these documents, which basically says "For more information or clarification, contact [Name]". I want more that this but in a discreet manner i.e. I do not want to put my name on the cover page, as this would be too much in the "face of everyone".

The last point is important because these are industry resources and their "weight" comes from the fact that they have been developed under the auspices of my company. Hence, the copyright is held by the company. I have no issues here. Its the right thing, as I am an employee.

However, it is not the company but me who is developing these resources. My company will have no issue if I put my name somewhere in the documents but it has to be done discretely. The reason I am saying discreetly is because it is the company name and logo, rather than my name, that are important consideration for the end-users (including my CEO!).

I am looking for some strategies to have myself acknowledged in this context? In particular, I want it to be without any dispute that I am the author of these resources.

You should be able to place your authorship somewhere in the front-matter of the document without compromising branding.  I think the magic phrase you need is something along the lines of "Prepared by: [authors]".

To take one of your examples: in a manual, after the cover there is often a set of front-matter with history and disclaimers and such.  You can add "Prepared by" as its own little subsection or insert it into the version and history information.  This makes it absolutely clear that you are the author, without putting yourself in front of the company's brand.


Is there a way to do serious social justice-related work or research while working on scientific research? I am currently working in the sciences (broadly speaking, the STEM field) in the United States as a researcher.

I have been following quite closely to the social-political trend of the US for the past few years, and I am quite troubled at the direction that the administration, as well as a (seemingly) majority of the society, is taking us. I am troubled at the US administration's policy of travel ban, which has affected dozens of my actual colleagues. I am resentful of the lack of empathy of many Americans when it comes to police abuse and political corruption. Overall, I am not optimistic about the increasingly intolerant atmosphere against many racial minorities in the country. They are my colleagues, mentors, friends, family, and peers.

At the same time, I am also troubled by the use of technology to limit people's privacy and to influence people's opinion for the worse. A recent presentation at my University was on the topic of accelerating content ranking algorithms that can be used to influence social networks. I have read about how this automated algorithms can be used to isolate people into an echo chamber and cause extremist views. The presenter had no qualm about the ethical implications of these engineering decisions.

While there is a strong tendency in the STEM fields to ignore the social and the political, perhaps out of fear that it will distract from our work, I know that these things will not be ignoring us. I have read about the consequence of the rise of fascism in Germany, and its steep cost to academic research. I have read many stories of famed researchers becoming refugees, or being sent to concentration camps, or even committing suicide. I fear that this future may seem as far off from us now as it was to the researchers in the early 20th century.

How can I practically contribute to social justice (and human rights in general) while working in the sciences? Scientific research is very meaningful, but it requires a lot of focus and concentration. I understand that a scientific training has potentially stripped me of being educated on many social issues, and I can make up for it by reading about them. However, it there anything more I can do beyond this? Can I use my skills as a scientist to meaningfully contribute to research that can have a meaningful impact on social justice? Has anyone else found a coping mechanism?

Can I use my skills as a scientist to meaningfully contribute to research that can have a meaningful impact on social justice?

Yes, you can.

In the USA, there is an entire union dedicated to this: the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Science is essential for the progress of humanity, and social justice is no exception.

The environmental sciences (including, but not limited to, climate science) have informed what is now a huge worldwide and successful green movement.  Where there is pollution or climate change, the poor are hit hardest, as they have least access to adaptive measures.  Therefore, action on environmental issues is closely linked to social justice.
Engineers develop low-cost energy solutions that help bring electricity and education to rural areas of poor countries that previously had no such access.  Or cheap ways to filter drinking water.
Educate members of activist networks.  Many networks of progressive action are lacking in access to science or engineering expertise.  If your knowledge matters to society, it matters to them.  Reach out to those groups.  They will welcome you!

As an arbitrary starting point, you could consider the Craigslist Charitable list.  Are you a satellite engineer?  The space4peace group will welcome you (they will, too, if you are not).  Do you work in agricultural or plant sciences?  Surely some of the farm-related groups would love for you to come by.  Are you a nuclear (weapons) engineer?  Work on research on how to safely dismantle nuclear weapons.  Do you work in software engineering?  There's plenty of charitable programming to do, or to educate members of all kinds of groups how they can protect themselves from being spied upon.  Et cetera!  If you're into it, there's more direct action alternatives as well; a pipeline blockade may have get more attention if it includes a distinguished professor than if it consists entirely of "college dropouts".

You can combine this with an academic career (although depending on where you are and what you do, you may want to limit actions to stay out of jail).  Researchers at all levels from PhD students to professors are active in those groups.  It will be hard work, but it may well be that the volunteer time you spend with grassroots will motivate you, make your life more fulfilling, and ultimately even make your regular research work more productive.


Applying for a PhD - how and when to broach the fact that I have previously left a PhD program I am applying for a funded PhD project for which I am quite well suited in terms of academic record and experience. A few years ago I began a PhD program which in hindsight was not a good fit and I decided to leave that program at quite an advanced stage. I am personally secure with this decision and think that in some ways the experience even strengthens my application, and I want to be open about it. However, I am not sure when or how is the best way to bring it up in the positive light in which I see it.

On the one hand I could place my enrolment on my CV under PhD Student or similar and discuss some of the advantages in my cover letter, but neither of these seems an appropriate place to discuss my reasons for leaving and I don't want to raise a red flag without having the opportunity explain.

The other option is to not mention it until the interview stage. This I could easily do as I was also employed throughout the time that I was enrolled and so would have no employment gap, but this feels dishonest and also denies my the opportunity to capitalise on some of my skills in my cover letter.

My preferred solution is to put it on my CV and discuss it in terms of skills and experience in my cover letter but not to broach the question of why I left until it comes to interview. My hope is that in the right light it will not in itself prevent me from getting to the interview stage. I am looking for a bit of feedback on that plan, or some alternatives if it sounds career-suicidal. I am particularly keen to hear from academics or admissions tutors as to how you would look upon such an  application.

For a variety of reasons you should reveal it early as part of your education in the CV or other materials. But you don't need to give any reason there. Just that you were in a doctoral program (and maybe ABD) from such a date to some later date.

You are probably required to give transcripts of all educational endeavors, and it would be a lapse to omit any.

There are a lot of reasons for leaving a doctoral program and only of a few of them reflect badly on the student. Not passing comprehensives might be a negative and being expelled for ethical lapses would certainly be. But those are only a few of the possibilities, including just becoming disillusioned with the program or with an advisor. Money. Family. Medical.

But later, in an interview, you will probably be asked and then is the time, IMO, to give reasons.

And, if you think the experience strengthens your case, then, in a Statement of Purpose you could say how it supports your future goals.


One First author paper, what are my prospects in academia? I completed my PhD about a year ago and I'm currently one year into my post-doc. I had a first author in a mid-level journal and have only one citation to date. I also published a chapter in a textbook but I don't know how much weight that holds. While there are prospects of getting some data published at the end of my post-doc, it is probable that these would still be in press at the time or may not even get published at all. I'm pretty worried about the low citation index of my paper. I know I'm not ready to apply for a fellowship yet but what are my chances of nailing another post-doc.

To be frank, in molecular/cell biology your chances are rather slim. The 'standard' is almost 3-5 papers from your PhD which can be expected to be out by the end of your first postdoc plus some output from your postdoc. Of course, it is stupid to judge people only by their paper metrics, but this is what very many people in academia do. If you are lucky, you find a person who is not that quick with her judgement and searches for the hidden gold, carefully reading your letter and CV and the reference letters or is giving you a chance and invites you for interview. That can happen (happened to me once), but is rather rare.

Chances are even lower if the hiring process involves a committee panel or external reviews (as for grants or scholarships). Competition is often high, so you will usually only have a chance when you get very good/top marks from all reviewers. Because if there are three candidates who get 3 A+'s and then there is you, and even if just one of the three reviewers was only looking at publication output (chances for that will be veery high) and gave you a B or C, then you are already out and the decision will only be between the top-rated candidates.

On the other hand, a combination of a convincing letter AND the luck of being at the right time ready for the right job AND a bit of luck of hitting a person who is not overemphazising your publication output might put you into your 2nd postoc. Your chances are low but not zero.


Can a rejected manuscript be submitted to another Elsevier journal? Can one submit a rejected manuscript from one Elsevier journal to another relevant/similar Elsevier journal after apply the given feedback from the reviewers?
Is there any minimum wait time?
Is it recommended to do so?
Would the other Elsevier journal know the status about the previous submission to the first journal? Will this have any impact on the decision of the second Elsevier journal?

In general, when a paper is rejected, you can resubmit it to another journal as soon as you feel you are ready.  There is no minimum waiting time, and it doesn't matter whether both journals have the same publisher or not.

As far as I know, publishers don't generally share information about submissions between journals.  (However, it could happen that the second journal would require you to tell them about any previous places the paper has been submitted.)

In theory some publishers might have special rules, but I've never heard of this.


Should you discuss childhood economic hardships in SOP? I am currently filling out a few PhD applications for computer science, and I have noticed a strong pattern in Statement of Purpose (SOP) guidelines that try to incentivise you to discuss your economic background, and how that shaped your life. To be clear, I am not against this, I understand how overcoming poverty can be a huge part of someone's identity.
I grew up in a third world country, where my family was below the poverty line for a few years during the recession. My family's financial situation has since improved tremendously after my father immigrated to another country for work.
However, I can't help but be overwhelmed with extreme sadness when I think of that period of my life. I go to a therapist every week and I haven'd even had the ability to talk about that period  without having an emotional breakdown. There was simply too many stressful and pitiful memories during that period.
So I am left in a dilemma, should I discuss this in my SOP? I've really only discussed this with my long term girlfriend, and no one else knows about it. I feel it can provide a better "context" about my achievements, but to be frank, I believe my application is already competitive given my research and publication background without that context.

To begin with, I think it is silly that application processes even ask about these things, but that seems to be the way of the world now.  If the guidelines recommend that you discuss your economic background (in the case where it is seen as a desirable "diversity" requirement) you could do this in a fairly short and sweet manner, which communicates the basic situation, without becoming too emotive.  I think this is likely to be the best way to do it, and it also jibes nicely with your desire to avoid dredging up issues that are upsetting to you.
I would think it would be sufficient to give a one or two sentence explanation similar to what you have already given in this post; i.e., that you lived in country X and lived below the poverty line during years Y-Z, but your family has since become better off.  This will give the desired context you want, without having to delve into deeply personal territory.  If it were me, I would even preface this by noting that the guidelines ask for this information, and then giving the basic information you have given here.  You could then follow this up with some simple aspirational statement --- e.g., that you would like to build a successful career to ensure that your own children do not have to endure the financial hardships you experienced growing up.
I don't think you need to worry too much about this, since your own desire dovetails nicely with what will work well anyway.  Most academics are interested in objective qualities of students more than background issues.  Even those academics who are particularly interested in diversity requirements, and positively predisposed to "under-represented" candidates, will tend to expect a light touch here.  They are usually going to be more impressed by getting all the relevant information in a way that lets them know there was some hardship/obstacle to overcome, but not laid on too thick.  Your goal should be to show that you are strong enough to have achieved high quality outcomes under circumstances where you faced hardship (while being careful not to sound like you are bragging).


Tattoos in the Workplace I'm an undergraduate mathematics student finishing my degree.  I plan to go to grad school, and ultimately aspire to become a professor.  I really like tattoos, but I'm hesitant to get one because it could affect my future job.

Of course, if I did get one, it would be discrete and innocent.  What I really want is the axioms from ZFC wrapped around my upper arm.

I'm very interested in hearing people's thoughts on tattoos in the workplace, particularly from people who work in mathematics.  Do you think it is acceptable?  How would you judge someone based on their tattoos?  Do any of you have tattoos?  What are your experiences?

Tattoos that can be easily concealed in sensitive times (during interviewing, etc.) should never be a problem. Further, academia is in general a pretty tolerant place when it comes to looks. As Suresh says, we are used to much weirder things in terms of look than a small tattoo. You'll be fine.


Research publications for Masters by Research I do have little research experience on "Web Security" and I made some inventions in that. I have patented my inventions and now when I was trying to apply for Masters by Research in Information Technology in some X University they are asking for Research Publications. I never came across them in my past and I don't know its importance. May anyone tell me

Its role to the admissions committee.
How important they are as compared to patents.
How and where can I release my Research Publications?

If you're going to be doing a master's degree by research, then admissions committees are going to want to see evidence of any previous research that you've done. That way, you're less of a risk for them to admit you, because you've already learned many of the skills you'll need to be successful.

The "currency" for establishing this are patents and research publications. I assume you're familiar with patents, since you ask for a comparison. Basically, research publications will be considered at least as important as patents, as they generally represent a significant amount of original research. (Patents may be a matter of development rather than research.)

As for how and where to release research publications, that depends on your field. In CS, my understanding is that generally means that you have to publish your research in conference papers, which means that you'll have to get your research work written up and submitted to a conference. Then you'll need to get your paper accepted, and then you can publish.

If you don't have any publications, don't worry. If you still have research experience, a recommendation letter from a research supervisor can also help to establish your qualifications. (Absent some evidence, though, most graduate programs will remain skeptical.)


Writing a mathematics paper As a sequel to my previous post “ Redundancy of letters of recommendation for scientific and mathematical majors”, I wish to ask a relevant question.

I have been informed that a master’s student of mathematics is not required to have published a paper in order to be admitted to a doctoral institution. However, my applications all experienced rejection so I am trying to write my first paper.

However, my knowledge in mathematics is limited and in a limited time I cannot come up with an impressive result. On the other hand proving a small result and having it published is against my scientific principles, but I think I will finally do it.

Is it possible that a high gpa (19.5 out of 20), a simple published mathematical paper and a good TOEFL grade, but not good letters of recommendation or lack of letters of recommendation will guarantee admission to a top-tier university?

To add to @Buffy’s answer, in all math graduate programs I’m aware of, at least in the US, letters of recommendation are a requirement. So a “lack of letters of recommendation” is actually a guarantee that you will not get admitted. This is not something you can solve by publishing either one “simple” paper, or even many non-simple ones, except in the indirect sense that if you publish many papers then good letters of recommendation are likely to follow more or less automatically.

Keep in mind that this applies to all programs, not just “top-tier” ones.


Purpose of meeting with the dean and provost during campus visit I was invited to a campus visit for a faculty position at a university in the U.S.
The visit will include a job talk, a class presentation to students, meeting with faculty members, meeting with the dean of the school and meeting with the provost from the university’s president’s office. This is by no means not a small university.

I was wondering what is the goal of meeting with each one of these parties. I do realize that I am being tested as much as I am also doing the same, but I would like to know what the dean and the provost would want to talk about with me.

Meetings of this sort are pretty standard, but my experience is they're usually at a later stage of the process, like a second visit. Deans don't like to waste the time if the candidate doesn't pass muster of the faculty.

For better or worse, the Dean and the Provost carry a very big stick.  Your recruitment can be halted in a split second if one of them decides that way. The way it goes is that search committees make recommendations to Chairs and Deans.  At intermediate stages, they will advance a handful of applicants for consideration.  If the Dean or higher up says to the Chair "I would prefer if you don't hire that candidate"  that's usually a done deal.

In subtler cases, they can come up with "extra" resources to make your package a bit more exciting if they feel you're worth it, such as bumping the size of your startup package with discretionary funds.

If the Deans or other high level officers want to meet with you at an early stage, that's could be just due diligence, providing a reality check, but it could be almost anything.  Could be a young department or chair, and the Dean feels the need to keep an eye on the process.  It could also be an indication that the search has advanced to a fairly late stage, and they want to make a hire quickly.  It could also mean that these officers take a very active role in the management of their faculty, which could be a good thing.  It could mean that they take a very active interest in a campus with a family-like leadership style.  It could also mean that you're being considered for a very strategic hire and that they have a key interest in making sure just the right person is brought in to advance their programs.

There's also the possibility that you're a desirable candidate, and they want to impress you by showing high-level interest in your recruitment right from the start.

It's very hard to know exactly why they're directly involved without asking them.
In any case, be responsive to their questions.  Use earlier meetings with other faculty to try to get a feel for the slot you're being recruited for, and in your big meetings, be the person they're looking for.


Special museum visiting hours for academics? Anyone who has been to the Louvre knows what a zoo it is. With creaking floorboards and gawking tourists stacked up five deep in front of popular works it is not a conducive environment for study.

Are there special visiting hours at major museums for art historians and other academics that allow them to examine works undisturbed by large crowds?

Generally no, there is no time set aside for academics only in nearly all museums. Academics are members of the public like anyone else and are invited in when the museums are open. With advanced notice, researchers may be allowed to view some items in the museum collection that are not on display (depending on a lot of factors), but for items on display you are expected to access the galleries like anyone else.

All that said, many academics who work seriously on museum material and move in museum circles often are invited to visit museums at non-opening times (e.g. On a Monday when the building is closed to the public but staff are working). Usually if you are let in at this time it is for a clear purpose, such as working with or visiting a curator, and you aren't left to wander about on your own as that's a huge security risk. I've been in many museums before opening, after closing, or on closed days, for various reasons (projects, personal tours given by friends who work there, filming, etc). "Because the public is noisy" has not been one of those reasons. I do my gallery observation work during regular opening hours with everyone else.

For the Louvre, go on their weekday late night opening. There are surprisingly few people there at that time and the lighting is magical.


How to properly cite other papers in my slides? We recently submitted a paper, and now I'm creating some slides about it for future presentation. There are papers that we have cited in our paper and I need to cite them in slides too because they are directly related to our work. What I would like to do is inline citing when you just mention author's name, or conference name, or the year. I have seen works in which what is mentioned is the first author's family name, e.g. (Patterson, 2013). And I've seen those who just mention conference name and year, e.g. (PPoPP, 2012).

I want to know which one is more appropriate, or actually correct? Where to use one, and where to use the other? Or should I use something different?

Well, in my field, it's certainly the habit to mention only the authors and the year, unless it's really old. So I would have

  Theorem [Doe, Soe, 2010; Smith 1997] There is ...

The reasons are:

If someone needs the full citation, he has the proceedings / book of abstracts.
The only interesting things in the citation are:

It's not your result, you borrow it from elsewhere
Which people did it -- quite likely you have some of them in the auditorium, they can get upset if you don't credit them, and they'll be pleased if you point them out.
How old is it -- is it something known for years, or is it a "hot result"?

If you publish the presentation online after the conference, it might be a good habit to add the whole bibliography of the proceedings as a last slide. It can be in a small font since it's only for people to read it on the computer.

The key of a talk is not to be precise, but to show the most relevant information!


Review website for research groups I was wondering if there is a website that allows you to rate research groups/professors that you've worked for. I know about 'http://www.ratemyprofessors.com', but I was thinking about a website specifically for academic reviews, and this example is more or less limited to lectures.

If my research is correct, there's currently no such options, it sounds like an idea to implement something similar. What do you guys think? Would you be interested in using something like this?

The goal of the project would be creating transparency in science, and the build could be similar to glassdoor. There are for sure some concerns about the sample size and anonymity, especially in the case of smaller research groups, but it might still be better than nothing.

There are unfortunately numerous issues that I see with this.

Many research groups are small enough that anonymity would be next to impossible.
Similarly, most professors only advise a few students at a time and it would take forever to build up any sort of meaningful amount of reviews on any one professor.
Most research groups are transient. As students graduate, the group will be changing on what is likely a yearly basis. Just because Jim and Jill were great to work with in the Bonsti Lab three years ago does not mean that Jim and Jill will still be there now.
RateMyProfessor is somewhat of a cesspool at times. It can certainly show overall trends (such as 23 reviews that mention that the professor cannot write a clear test or 19 reviews that all mention how messy a professor is), but such trends would be too subtle to notice over just a few students.

One is likely best served by just speaking to current graduate students in the lab of one's interest. Students usually know if there is an overall troublesome situation in a given lab.


When applying for a PhD is it worth mentioning awards received for achievement in final year high school exams? I am in the process of applying for a PhD at the univerity where I am currently completing my undergraduate.

The application has a section for awards.
I don't have anything to show for my time as a undergraduate (my university doesn't really acknowledge achievements in coursework).

I have several awards from my tertairy entrance exams/subjects completed in highschool.
Such as:

Award from my current univerity for being the highest ranking disabled applicant for undergraduate.
Award for being one of the highest scoring in my state for a particular tertiary entrance subjects
Several awards from my highschool for topping the school in particular tertiary entrances subjects

Are achievements/awards gained as a result of actions I undertook in highschool relevant to my application now?

I'm not talking about things like merit certificates in lower years of highschool (Its not impressive to piles of those), just things relating to my tertiary entrance exams/subjects, particularly the first two which are awarded by the university and the state, for achievement in final year of highschool.

High school awards are unlikely to help much but they probably won't hurt you either. I think it's fine to include them on a short "early-career" CV but move them to the very end to signal that you understand that these are not important measures of your current qualifications.

Who knows, if they are really awesome, they might might even help. I saw a graduate student CV once that listed being ranked first on a province-level college admissions exam that included many tens of thousands of students. Sure, it was a long time ago, but I was still impressed enough that I remember this now. I think I kept my high school awards on my CV until I started thinking about going on the faculty job market as a PhD student. At point, they just seemed completely irrelevant.


Wrong date in certificate My university made a mistake on my graduation parchment, which is the graduation date (they wrote the whole date in words so I guess that's how they made mistake, even I myself take years to realize that). But luckily, it's correct in the transcript.

Should I inform them to correct it now? It's been years since then. Problem is I'm in the middle of an application and the deadline is coming soon. Should I just submit as usual and respond if inquiry arises?

Very few places look at certificates when looking at applications.  Certified transcripts are considered the authoritative source.  If it's correct in the transcript, then that will be fine for the application.  If they wish to validate the transcripts, they will contact the institution directly whose records will match the transcript, not the certificate (almost certainly).

As for correcting the certificate, some institutions allow you to contact their registrar's office and request a re-printing of the certificate.  If it has been many years, the biggest problem is often that the Provost/Chancellor, etc. of the institution may have changed, so the signatures may not be the same as when you were issued your degree.  The specifics depend on institution.  There's no harm in calling or emailing them and inquiring.


What is a reasonable expectation for privacy of exam and homework grades? I went to a large public state school for undergrad.  In most of my classes, great measures were taken to keep assignment and exam grades private.  When I became a TA, I had to complete a privacy/FERPA training that detailed exactly how assignments could be stored, returned, etc.

There was the occasional instructor that had free-for-alls with students digging through piles of assignments with grades written on the front.  However, this wasn't the norm, with most assignments being returned by request at office hours, or having the grade written on the second page.

I recently started attending a well-known private school for my master's degree.  With one exception, all of the classes with paper homework assignments have been returned either in the free-for-all method, or in large drawers in an open part of a campus building that can be accessed by anyone at the school.  Personally, I'm past the point of caring if other people happen to see a homework grade of mine, but it was just a bit surprising for me based on my previous experience.

Is allowing other students to see assignment/exam grades a violation of FERPA or did my previous school simply have more strict institutional privacy guidelines?  What is a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding homework and exams?

Edit: Both institutions are US-based

The answers in the comments are correct.  FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, makes "education records," which include grades, private and protected by law in the United States.  Students can reasonably expect their homework and exam grades to be held private from other students.  (Students acting as TAs can necessarily see such grades, but are bound by FERPA to keep them private.)  A search for FERPA will tell you more than you could ever want to know.


Transfer Over of EPSRC Funding When Changing Universities This situation I'm in currently is the following. This is all based in the UK (England, more precisely). I'm at university A with full EPSRC for a maths PhD. However, I'm not getting on well with the university, and would like to change to university B. (The particular reasons for this aren't pertinent to this question.) I've looked on the EPSRC website and I can't see anything that says this isn't an issue. Ideally I'd like to move to university B at the start of next year (so not wait until the new academic year).

I've spoken with university B about this, and they are happy to have me, subject to being able to be funded. The person I spoke to said they were unsure if I could get funding, as they'd heard that EPSRC will only fund someone once, and so since I've already had a term of funding, they wouldn't fund me again. They aren't sure on this though.

Does anyone have any knowledge of such things? Surely while changing university during a PhD wouldn't be common, it can't be that uncommon?

Note the close relation to this question "Is transferring to another university an option for an unhappy PhD student?", but that mine is slightly different. The university to which I would transfer have said that they would have me, subject to getting funding, so this is not an issue.

From the tags I assume that you are a PhD student funded from EPSRC.

Unlike First Grants, Standard Grants, and Fellowships, PhD stipendships can not be transferred. The reason is that the EPSRC does not fund a PhD student directly. Instead, EPSRC funds Centers for Doctoral Training, and successful candidates get their funding from these centers. PhD students have financial "contracts" with CDT's, not EPSRC. Every CDT has a separate budget. For this reason, if you want to move universities, you can not take your stipend with you.


Publishing a mathematical research article on research which is already done? Recently, I was working on some mathematics (number theory) and try to do that just for a math fun. Prior to that, I did not refer to any literature or any research articles, as I was doing this for fun. But I went in very deep and spent almost 15 days on that as it was getting interesting.

After one stage, I was able to represent the numbers in a series representation but was not able to find the equation. After a few more days of work, I was able to extract the equation. Now, I can represent that series in one equation. This makes me very curious, as all this I did just by trial and error method and found on my own.

I know that, making equation of some series is not a big task. But, the way I came to that equation is making me think to publish an article on that.

I thought to search on whether this equation is available or not, and as it was expected the research on that has already been done.

In this scenario, can I publish a research article on the topic?

An article is not about you. It is not a reward of effort. In an article you try to communicate to the readers, so it needs to contain something that your readers want to read. If something is already done, then why would I want to read it? Maybe, you have variation, or a special case, or a more general case, that makes your equation or your derivation thereof different and interesting. But if that is not the case, then the answer is simply no.


What is the role of processing editor in a journal submission? I submitted a paper to a high impact factor journal in my field a 4 days ago. Today, I received a email from the journal editor with the following description:

Thank you for your recent submission to TTT journal. XYZ will be the processing editor for your paper referenced above.
Your submission has been been assigned the following manuscript number: ARBITRARY007.
You will hear from the processing editor's office when the review process is complete (please allow 2-3 months for this).

So, what does this mean? Will it go to the reviewers and take 2-3 months for review? Or will it take 2-3 months for the processing editor to decide if it should be sent to reviewers for getting reviewed or be rejected?
What's the role of processing editor in this workflow?

The email clearly says that you will hear from the processing editor's office when the review process is complete, and that the review process will take 2-3 months - so your first interpretation is correct, it will go to the reviewers who are expected to finish reviewing in 2-3 months.
Taking 2-3 months to decide to send the paper to review would be pretty extreme.


Is it common for a lab to pay for international moving expenses? I am a senior postdoc. My lab is moving from UK to Austria, the IST specifically.  We have been told reimbursement for moving is not possible.  There are tax benefits that we need to apply for, which would of course not cover the moving expenses directly, but over time.
And even so, we would have to apply for them, and may not qualify.  Shouldn't personal relocation expenses (at least partially) be paid for by the lab or receiving institution, at the very least as a sign of good faith?

I assume you didn’t just walk in to the office one day and got told “pack your things! We’re moving to Austria!” Instead, my guess is you were asked if you were agreeable to the idea of moving, told under what terms, and agreed (well, perhaps with the alternative being that you would become unemployed, but still).
If my guess is correct, the time when you were asked would have been the best time to ask the question about relocation expenses. If you have already agreed to the move under terms that do not include covering your relocation expenses, then sure, you could bring it up now, but it’s possible that that ship has sailed; if the PI or receiving institution are stretched for cash, they have little actual incentive to be receptive to your wishes.
Bottom line: there is no “should” or “shouldn’t”. In the workplace, you commonly get what you have leverage to ask and can get people to agree to give you. It sounds like you don’t have that kind of leverage in the current situation. Perhaps your PI will be understanding and agree to your request, which is reasonable after all. But there is no rule or ethical principle that says what should happen.


How much time is typically spent reading reference letters? For graduate school applications, I have to submit three reference letters. For those who are on the admission committee, how much time do you spend reading these letters?

EDIT: I am applying to PhD in the hard sciences.

EDIT2: I am applying to schools in the US.

When I was on the graduate admissions committee, for each application that I personally read, I would read all three reference letters.  In general I would do this about as quickly as my reading speed allowed.  If there was something especially notable in a letter, I would either mark it down or orally call my colleagues' attention to it.  In a substantial minority of cases I would look up the writer on the internet and get a sense of their academic profile.

I estimate that the average amount of time I spent on the "first run" through a single application is about 6-10 minutes.  For the majority of the applications, a first run is sufficient.  But then when we get down to ranking the candidates in any group that could potentially get admitted, we go back and reread the applications as seriously as is required to make the rankings.  This could conceivably involve comparing one letter to another.  Relevant passages may get read out loud which takes...as long as it takes.

A well written graduate letter is not a subtle or difficult piece of writing: it makes a clear recommendation and lays out the evidence in a way which is apparent on a rather quick reading.  As a rule of thumb, if I felt the need to spend much more than ten minutes on any single letter, I would consider contacting the writer directly and asking for more information and/or a clarification.


Confidentiality of thesis data: PhD with industrial partner In the field of Mechanical Engineering, when doing a PhD in a University but in partnership with a company, at some universities, an agreement is signed between the company and the university (or Laboratory) in which the company remains the owner of all files provided (e.g. geometries, meshes) as well as the results produced, but allows for publication of most of the results. The line drawn between what its supposed to be published and what remains strictly confidential is hard to draw and often depends on the company as well as the topic.

Usually, in order to preserve this confidentiality, researchers scale the figures to unknown values and do not provide geometries or mesh/material properties for example. I was wondering if this common practice in scientific publication can be applied when writing a PhD Thesis. Basically, are all results presented in a thesis supposed to be public and more importantly, is an independent/external researcher supposed to be able to reproduce all of the results ?

The standard for a Ph.D. thesis is simple and universal: it must make a contribution to the sum of human knowledge.

As such, all results in a thesis should be public and presented in enough details to allow another researcher with sufficient background to reproduce them.

It's fine for some of the work that you are doing to not be public, just so long as enough of the material is public to make up a Ph.D. thesis.  For example, if you have figures scaled to unknown values or missing geometry information, then you need to ask: is there significant scientific value even without this information?  For example, if the proprietary figure is an example of how a method was applied, that's probably OK as long as there are other forms of verification elsewhere.  If the proprietary figure is the verification, however, and it's missing critical information, then that is not OK.


START v2 (Softconf): what markup is allowed in reviews? Softconf's START Conference Manager v2 is a web-based conference management system that is widely used, at least in the field of computational linguistics. Academics using the site enter plain-text reviews, but the site appears to support a limited range of plain-text markup that gets rendered in HTML upon review submission.
For example, *emphasis* is rendered as emphasis and * item on a new line is rendered as:

item

This feature is undocumented, but knowledge of the feature could help reviewers write more engaging and legible reviews.
I tried to guess the markup for other formatting styles, but without success. The two patterns above look like Markdown or reStructuredText, but **bold** does not work, nor does `monospace`, so it appears to be some custom solution. Does anybody know what other formatting styles are supported?
In the absence of official documentation about the feature, the answer to this question can make the information more discoverable for future reviewers.

I emailed Softconf's support and Rich Gerber replied with the following:

The review is always considered a plain text entity, but to display it we insert a bit of markup where we believe markup is warranted.   But *this* will add emphasis, and you can also use bold tags like this.   There is also implied ordered lists, by numbers starting lines.  You can also insert HTML super and subscripts.  That's about it.

That is:

*emphasis*
bold
* bulleted list item
1. numbered list item
xsuperscript
xsubscript


Will a conference paper submission have greater credibility if a teacher is a co-author? My lecturer is encouraging us to submit papers for a famous conference. He wants us to write the paper, show it to our teacher/him, bring it to a publishable condition, mention the teacher/him as the co-author and then submit it. I've seen some of my senior's papers published in journals with the teacher mentioned as the co-author.

I've seen earlier questions about ethics and authorship when mentioning co-authors, but the basic question is whether a paper submitted to a conference would have greater credibility and a greater chance of being accepted, if a teacher or a renowned researcher is mentioned as a co-author?

Assume the student is writing a paper for the first time, but does some diligent searching to figure out best practices for paper publications, prepares good test cases for experiments, and presents some findings very well in the research paper. Will the research be able to stand on its own merit and get accepted even if it is this one novice author? Does it really need an experienced co-author?

ps: This document says "Acting alone is a risky strategy, especially for those just out of graduate school. With seasoned coauthors, the probability of acceptance will likely more than double"

UPDATE: IEEE is clear on authorship:
IEEE considers individuals who meet all of the following criteria to be authors:
1. Made a significant intellectual contribution to the theoretical development, system or experimental design, prototype development, and/or the analysis and interpretation of data associated with the work contained in the article;
2. Contributed to drafting the article or reviewing and/or revising it for intellectual content;
3. Approved the final version of the article as accepted for publication, including references.

Contributors who do not meet all of the above criteria may be included in the Acknowledgment section of the article. Omitting an author who contributed to your article or including a person who did not fulfill all of the above requirements is considered a breach of publishing ethics.

Authorship should not and, apart from inherent human bias, is not taken into consideration when evaluating a manuscript for publication. If the conference is reputable, you should trust that the committee will attempt to minimize this kind of bias by choosing equally reputable reviewers.

Rather, what you should be pondering is whether your department head has contributed sufficiently to the proccess for them to be granted authorship. Conventions vary by field: see this and this.


How to notify admissions that one quit another program? I completed one term of a master's program before finding it was not what I expected, so I promptly quit. Now, I am sending fall application letters to other master's programs, for which I will be a paying student, but am uncertain how to mention this previous program, or whether that is even necessary. I do intent to send a transcript, as I want to transfer a few credits, however, should I mention this elsewhere in my application? Place a line on my CV? Mention this previous program in my application letters? Offer an explanation upfront describing why I left the program?

I found generally useful advice in Is transferring to another university an option for an unhappy PhD student?, but the answers do not explain what etiquette one should follow in reporting such a situation.

The important thing here is that you realize that you do need to report this information to schools to which you will be applying, as it will matter in their deliberations over your application. That said, you do have some degree of latitude in finding the best way to inform the schools of this. If they have a "special notes" or "additional information" question in the application, that might be a good place to put such information. Otherwise, you would want to mention it somewhere in the cover letter (if you get to include one) or personal statement (if you don't).

However, this information should be provided by you; don't leave it for the people writing your recommendation letters to mention. That will just raise more red flags.


Is a second bachelors degree worth it? I'm about to finish up a BA in linguistics and am looking at some interdisciplinary options for grad school (specifically in cognitive science).

I have a competitive GPA in my last two academic years, though my first year was a bit of a wash to say the least.

I was thinking that it would be a good idea to go back for a second degree for the following reasons:

to boost my cumulative gpa (my academic performance in first year was a pretty big blow to my cgpa)
to gain a better understanding of my research interests. (There are certain science courses that I haven't taken that make me feel downright incompetent without, such as first year physics and math.)

However, I'm acutely aware that I know nothing when it comes to grad school admissions, especially when it comes to interdisciplinary programs such as cognitive science. Is a second degree worth it?

Unless you have in mind a second degree in a completely different field, I think you'd be spinning your wheels.  You can probably take those physics and math courses in post-baccalaureate status; check with the institution from which you got your degree.

If you are thinking of a second bachelor's degree in a field similar to your first, go for the master's degree in that field instead.  Your freshman year GPA will probably not keep you out of most programs since you have a solid record in your final years.  Presumably you'd get good recommendations from your upper division professors.


How to search who exactly to cold-email for a research internship? I am interested in cold-emailing some professors to ask whether they would be willing to offer a research position to me. However, I am not sure who exactly to email. I have an idea of the sub-fields of economics that I am interested in, and I've tried reading some of the journals in those subfields. However, as an undergraduate, most research methodologies don't make much sense to me (isn't this a universal undergraduate experience?). To be clear, it's not that I don't understand the research at all. Sometimes the choice of a particular statistical model used in a paper makes perfect sense, but at other times, the statistics involved is way too advanced.
I also do not attend a research university, so I cannot email any professors at my own institution (I am pretty sure no professors in the economics department at my university are taking on mentees; I've tried asking!)
So, how should I approach this process? Where should I begin this search? Should I target professors in my home state or who are otherwise geographically close? Should I target those who are tenured, old, and established? Should I target younger professors? What about those at lesser-known universities? My observation was there that there usually are a couple of professors at smaller universities who do some really interesting work and are also somewhat well known in the field. Should I target exclusively these professors? Should I look at recent articles from a field journal and just start emailing authors of those articles that I can understand, to a certain degree, and whose topics I am interested in? And what exactly should I write my email to the professor, given that the research they published was most likely beyond my understanding?
P.S. If this is relevant, the discipline is economics.

You're right that it's hard for an undergraduate to know where to start, and you've done the right thing by asking professors at your own university first.
The next thing to try would be to ask those professors again, but instead of asking to work with them, ask for their suggestions of a couple of people at other universities who you could get in touch with. You can do this iteratively: each time you email someone to ask for an opportunity, say that you understand if they're too busy to take on a student and ask if they have a suggestion for someone else you can contact.
Those more senior to me may weigh in on this, but it's generally frowned upon to offer your work for free. If the professor isn't able to compensate you financially, would you be able to get course credit for your work? I'm not too familiar with the US system, but perhaps it is possible. I would avoid working for free if you can -- it sets a precedent and allows professors to favour those who have their own financial support (and thus puts less well off students at a disadvantage when looking for research opportunities).
Keep studying the literature if you can, and persevere with emailing professors. To maximise your chances of a response, keep the email polite and to the point. Good luck!


What percentage of a professor's salary is paid for by tuition? Is it possible to determine what percentage of a tenure track/tenured professor's salary is paid for by tuition? At my UK university, our school budget includes income from student fees (we only get a portion of the fees each student pays), grants, and central university funds (presumably some of this is indirectly from student fees). I am curious if a calculation could be made for STEM departments at US R1 type universities. Presumably some of this information may be available for state schools.

I think the answer I am looking for would be something along the lines of the ratio of the total amount of tuition fees (hopefully divided up into undergraduate and graduate fees) given to the department divided by the total costs of teaching (again, ideally divided up into undergraduate and graduate costs). In other words if a department gets $500,000 from tuition fees and the teaching costs are $1,000,000, then 50% of the teaching costs are paid for by tuition. Teaching costs would have to include space charges, IT charges, printing charges, and the cost of staff time. These all seem to be known, well defined, quantities. An exact estimate of the cost of staff time would require going through each member of staff and prorating the salary by the percentage of time allocated for teaching (e.g., 0% for someone who has bought out his teaching and maybe 40% for someone who has not). Presumably, someone in the university/department has access to these numbers.

This is only a guess as to what an answer will include, but if there is a different (more general) way of getting to the answer, that is fine too.

I think that you'll never be able to sort this out. Most universities cross-subsidize departments to the point that even individual departments don't know how much of their own faculty lines come from the tuition of students majoring in that subject vs. tuition from other departments' students. Does the English department fully fund itself through the fees students pay for English classes? I doubt it. State funding, though a diminishing portion of most state universities' budgets, picks up some fraction of the costs.

Also, departments see level funding in the face of modest fluctuations in class enrollments. If 45 students took Calculus I last fall and 52 sign up this fall, the department doesn't see increased revenue for that. The department has a number of faculty lines coming from the dean's office to teach the projected enrollment. If that spikes or drops off substantially such that more instructors are required, then the department has to negotiate more or fewer lines with their dean.

That being said, I think that most departments negotiate expected breakdowns in effort with the faculty they hire. Of a typical 9 month appointment, a faculty member might be expected to do 35% teaching, 35%  service, and 30% research (or whatever), and that might be the expectation regardless of whether the teaching load is a 1-1, 2-1, or 2-2. Where, again, it's entirely unclear whether that 35% teaching is completely funded by tuition or partly funded by tuition, central endowment, and/or a local named chair.