How do I approach a supervisor who seems to be unconcerned with my projected end date? I am a Master's student two years into my degree and am planning to defend in the next few months. My supervisor is generally condescending and discouraging which unfortunately seems to be quite common for student-supervisor relationship. Until now, I've taken things in stride and have kept my head down, but as I get closer to the date that I'm hoping to finish, it seems he is continually putting up more and more barriers to actually finishing. When I push back or gently suggest alternatives he gets more and more difficult to work with.

Without going into too much detail, I now have a complete draft of my thesis that I would like to have him read for feedback and edits but instead of going through the whole thesis, he wants to go through each section back and forth until it's "as good as possible" and then move on to the next.

As he tends to take a week or two to make edits and he refuses to look at other sections while I'm working on his edits, it seems as though he wants this to take as long as possible. He has recently lost funding and I am no longer receiving funding from him so I'm wondering if it's in his best interest to have me around as long as possible. I understand two weeks can actually be a good turn-over for edits, but in context with other issues we've had, this just another in a growing resistance to any progress being made.

How can I best address this situation to ensure I can defend in a timely matter? I'd rather not go to the department head because I think she'll be obligated to take action as he has had other formal complaints made against him recently.

I've spoken with a committee member who has suggested I reiterate my goals and timeline for defense but this is something I do regularly and I don't think it will help in this instance.

Edit to add information from comments:

We have made numerous calendars and schedules that seem to go by the wayside the minute they're made. I suspect that having me on as a student is an advantage for him at this point, as he has no funding to secure new students and no longer has to fund me. The longer he holds onto me, the longer he can avoid pressure from the department to take on new students, projects, etc.

It sounds like it may be time for you to lay all this out to the director of graduate studies in your department.  Here are some suggestions in case you decide to do so:

You can take a friend with you for moral support if you wish.
Make an appointment. If someone asks you for a reason, you can say something brief, such as "ask advice about my graduation timeline."  (That's to get you a foot in the door.)
Speak calmly.  Just explain your experience so far, and leave out the part about your fears and how long you've been working on it.  Leave out your conjectures about your advisor's possible motivations.
The administrator may ask you some questions about your timeline and you may, of course, answer them.
If the administrator makes a suggestion or advises you to do something you've already tried, don't nod and say you'll try that.  Tell him or her calmly what has occurred when you have tried that.
Ask him or her if s/he can get back to you by (name the date that comes up in 6 days).  That way, if you have to go up the chain of command, you'll be able to say, "I met with Prof. YY a week ago."
Document the conversation by sending a thank-you email that same day.  E.g. "Thank you for meeting with me today to discuss etc." and include a bulleted list of the points covered in the meeting.
If the administrator does not commit to getting back to you, you may jump to the next level without waiting.

I think that in most departments a five or ten-minute conversation with the director of grad studies will do the trick and either your advisor will start moving, or the department will find some other way of getting you out the door.


How to deal with lots of information as a Computer Science student? As a Computer Science student, I have to deal with a lot of new information every day. While learning new concepts, we also have to learn multiple programming languages at the same time, learning mathematics and a lot of other stuff. I am a very committed student, and i invest almost all my time into university, so my Grades are really good.

The problem that i encounter all the time, is that i am overloaded with information, that i can't process as i would like to.

Five days a week, for about 8 hours a day, we get presented a lot of material. At my university, it is common practice to present about 50 to 100 slides per class each week. So at the end of each week, 300 or often more new slide are given to us students.

Me, as a writing and communicative type of learner, I try to summarize all the content, that we study every week.

But with the semester going on, the stack of unprocessed slide (and taken notes) grows bigger and bigger. And it really freaks me out. (And from experience I know, that at the end of the semester, the pile of notes is put into a folder and never looked at again...)

I feel more stressed each week, i can't really focus on all the assignments, that are also given to us every week, because i know, i have to summarize all the information for the upcoming exams at the end of the semester. I often have the feeling, that, if i don't sum up the content and make a lots of notes, i will forget the things i´ve learned in class.

I have tried a lot of things, to minimize the efford of summarizing: I tried using Tools like Evernote or OneNote, creating Documents for each topic, I even created my own InDesign-Summaries (which looked admittedly really nice ;D). But at the end of the day, the problem seems not to be the way, i summarize information, but the way i process and consume the information.

For programming, as a computer science student you need not that much knowledge of the languages, you can just google it. But for the rest of it, there's a lot of stuff to know.

Question:  What could I do to reduce stress from my studies and become a more effective learner?

It is hard to diagnose a problem at a distance and I'm not sure I have a good sense of the core issues, but one thing seems to stand out in your post. I wonder if you are trying to treat every fact and bullet point as of equal weight, value, and importance. That normally isn't true, even in technical subjects like CS. A good lecturer will come to class with a few (about 3) important points that need to be made. Everything else will support those. You want to walk away from the class knowing what those are.

Of course, some professors will walk in with a big powerpoint deck and just run through the slides as if they are all important. Those lectures may sound good, but a more focused approach would be better for them and for you. You can't affect that, of course. But if it is possible for you to do it, try to get the professor to distribute those slides prior to class. My strong advice is to print them out on paper, maybe 2-up or 4-up, and take notes directly on the printed slides. No more than a few words per slide. Don't try to capture every word.

I also wonder what you mean by "summarizing" your notes. Some people would, again, mean trying to capture every thought. Capturing them by typing them isn't actually very effective in getting it into your brain, as opposed to your computer. What you want is to distill the notes into the few key ideas that make the rest of it easier to grasp.

However, don't neglect to do the assigned exercises. That is where real learning occurs. Focus especially on the assignments.

If your university/professor permits, it might be worth forming a study group with some (three or four) of the other students. Get together a few times a week and exchange ideas about what is important and also ideas about how to learn the stuff.


Wrong citation? What should I do? PLEASE SEE CLARIFICATION BELOW

I noticed that one of my citations is "problematic". It is from a book, but I found a Scopus reference that show it as a conference paper, with no authors. So I thought it was simply a mistake (because the paper is very old) and added the authors of the book normally, as the book or paper were published on the same year and the chapters are in fact other revision papers, but they are all the same.

Now it came to my attention that the "authors" are in fact the editors of the book/paper, and I don't know whether I have done something wrong or not by citing them. If someone looks the reference using the "authors", volume and year they will find normally the book, but not the journal I referenced in the paper, which is from the same publisher as the book.

Would it look like plagiarism or another ethical problem just because I mixed the two references, which are identical, but are written differently?

EDIT To be more clear, my citation is similar as if I cited a whole issue of Science (Science, 4, 2010) with the author name appearing as the editors of that particular issue.

You honestly attempted to make a citation, but made some mistakes in providing the correct information. This happens sometimes and absolutely is not plagiarism because you were clearly not trying to pass off others’ work as yours.

What you are responsible for is making sure the error is fixed. If the manuscript has not been published then all you need to do is correct the reference in a revision or at the proof stage. If the article has been published you should contact the editors for guidance about the best way to proceed.


Ethical Problems Brought by Academic Paywalls The question is simple. I am working on a topic. I came across a paper that is behind a paywall which my research institution (i.e. university) has no access to it and it may or may not be relevant to my research. If I skip it and some reviewer says that work is quite close to the work I have submitted and I should cite it, or even worse it is so close that it is on the edges of plagiarism.

I have the option of obtaining it from different sources without paying. Should I take it to avoid such claim? If I pay there is a good chance that I wasted money. In today's world literature is so vast and there are so many false positives and a paper might cost up to 40 bucks.

Let me flip that question. Suppose I created a publishing firm. I and my mates do superb research and publish on a journal of our publishing firm. (Assume our research quality is good, so omit academic nepotism.) One catch, our firm charges and exorbitant fee (say millions) for granting access to libraries and universities. Then we start waiting. When I see other research quite similar to ours, I press charges that our work has not been cited or acknowledged and the situation is plagiarism. I am the academic equivalent of a patent troll, except that you cannot see my work until I sue you. Should the poor guy suffer a plagiarism charge just because I kept my research behind a paywall that he/she cannot reach?

Professors and other academic people I ask about it pretend to be either unconscious or dead. Just kidding, they usually offer to send the papers that I cannot reach. But it does not answer my question.

p.s. There is a similar question here citing the problem but not the ethical dilemma. Are there any known Universities that refuse to pay for paywall access to academic journals?

EDIT due to possible duplicate reports: There are three questions which all refer to the same problem: unfettered access to academic research. I paraphrase and summarise three questions below. Suppose there is a body of research (say, group of articles) that are beyond the researcher's reach due to lack of resources (no ILL, no institution access, no sufficient budget etc). Should the researcher take the "gray" ways to obtain it? If not is he/she responsible for research he/she does not have access to? If so, where do we draw the line? How much is too much to pay to access research? (hence the publisher question) It is not the 80s anymore. Research is published almost faster than one can read and it is readily available (at an inflated cost). So, thorough examination of literature to conduct original research is unjustifiably more expensive than before.

This seems contrived, as normally you can at least read the abstract to find out if you need to read the paper.

If you do need to read the paper, you have valid ways to do it, such as interlibrary loan, without paying $40.  It's not free, but not a huge expense.  You can opt to not read the paper, in which case you'd be doing your professional practice a misdeed.

Lastly, there is ALWAYS similar research by other people, who have not seen or heard of your paper.  It is NOT plagiarism to independently come up with something on your own.  There would normally be no charge of plagiarism, and you are wasting your effort serving as a patent troll.

If you are a publisher charging exorbitantly for access, you would build up your reputation, hire editors of stature, maintain a staff that keeps papers moving through the business, maintain a list of good referees, and do many other things to try to add value to your service and repository.  If you build up your reputation, institutions would subscribe.  If you can't establish a reputation, you'd go broke.

  Should the poor guy suffer a plagiarism charge just because I kept my
  research behind a paywall that he/she cannot reach?

The most likely scenario is that the person will not face a charge because no plagiarism occurred, as your paper has not been read.  Another likely scenario is that the paper were acquired through legal and nonexorbitant or free means like interlibrary loan, prepublication sources as required by NIH under the Public Access Policy, etc.

There are sound reasons to advocate for open access, but the fear of forcing plagiarism probably isn't in the hit parade.

Lastly, I encourage you to find the papers you need by legal means, so no, I don't feel acquiring the paper for free through extra-legal means is the way to go.


Publications for small time research I've been working on an interesting sorting algorithm that is efficient for an array of problems. I wrote up a paper on my findings and it has turned into about 5 pages.  I've researched pretty thoroughly and there aren't any papers that use the method I have found or solve the problem I was working on as efficiently.  I'm curious if there is an easy place to publish work.  I got my undergrad in statistics and never did research so I don't really know how the process works.  Just checking to see if y'all have any recommendations.

it is at least somewhat common to find a collaborator with more publishing experience, who can help with the process. i would encourage that because personal conversations are a much higher bandwidth connection than Q&A on this site.

if you are intent on getting your work out there alone, you'll choose to target some point on the spectrum from likely rejection at a high-impact journal to certain acceptance at an unimportant conference. a journal that has already published related work is a good option. read their web site, look at their document norms and submission process for an idea what would be involved in getting a yes or no answer. (if it's a no, of course, you get to start over, somewhat wiser.)


What would be my affiliation if I'm a Masters student? The question title pretty much says it all. I'm now a graduate student pursuing my Masters degree. Will the university I'm enrolled in be my affiliation when writing a paper?

Yes.

And be sure to get it in there before you graduate. Though if you are not moving straight to another uni and plan on publishing more, if you talk to your prof they might hook you up with "affiliate" status. This means no money or much of anything else other than the ability to claim affiliation.


Why do some instructors care so much about attendance? It seems that in higher education, some instructors either do not care at all whether students attend, and others care minimally (often resulting in a 1-5% attendance grade or tie-breaker rule).

However there are also many instructors who seem to feel very, very strongly about attendance, and take it upon themselves to enforce this in various ways.

For instance, I was shocked by a recent question claiming that 15% of the grade would be lost for missing 2 lectures - according to the question author, the class meets so frequently that this would constitute missing less than 3% of the lectures! While this seems like an extreme case, it seems like it's not uncommon to find professors who may deduct 10% or so for missing a small fraction of lectures.

Why are these professors so preoccupied with making students attend? If attendance is so crucial to doing well in the class, wouldn't the students who don't attend do poorly in the exams anyway? Why additionally punish those students who did not attend, but did well regardless?

Let me start off by saying that it is very unlikely that attendance requirement is purely to protect the professor's ego, as one comment suggested. Any serious educator would understand that the goal of education is not so that the students become increasingly reliant upon the education system. Rather, the goal is to produce students that are increasingly independent, critical, and confident in their own reasoning. If I were a professor, I would be glad that the student can succeed without my help, rather than the other way around. To punish a student for being able to succeed without the help of lectures is simply contradictory to the goal of education.

With that being said, here are some more plausible reasons:

The class is discussion based. This is quite straightforward: if you
don't attend the class, then you do not learn. The in-class learning
experience cannot be compensated by self-study, and exams may not be
an ideal measure of such experience.
The class meets very infrequently. There are certain classes that meet only once per week. Missing one class means missing a significant amount of work. A related example is science lab requirement. In my undergrad institute missing one lab (without advanced notice) means that you automatically fail the class.
The lectures contain information not otherwise (easily) available. This is more relevant for higher-level classes, where there are no standard textbook and the way the professor teaches the material may be unique. The professor may want to make sure that students attend lectures to get the information they need.
Culture. In some culture regular attendance is associated with deference to the system and/or the lecturer.

One finally note: contrary to what OP stated in the question, it is my personal experience (in the US) that very few professors would deduct a significant amount of points due to a lack of attendance. Instead the focus, if there is any, is usually on participation of class activity (which, of course, can only be fulfilled if you attend the class). What OP have described seems like rare exceptions rather than the rule.


What are some of the issues one should keep in mind while choosing between a fully funded offer and another with no funding? I have been offered a place for a masters program in 2 places. One which is fully funded and another one where there is no aid that has been offered at the time of admission.

I guess if the everything else was the same between the two then the answer is obvious, which is to go for the funded one. But the problem in my case is this:
In the fully funded case I have been offered a place in a research group I have no primary interest in (and no previous knowledge of) and something which I would not have definitely chosen if I was given a choice. So in sum, although it comes with a lot of money, the work is something I'm unsure if I will enjoy.

In the second case, there is no aid. The tuition fee + living is something which is not completely unaffordable for, I hope to manage those with loans and some family money. Aside that, I feel there is a lot of flexibility (or at least some flexibility), as I can choose my domain of work and my advisor once I have enrolled, and maybe been through a semester. Also the coursework here is a lot more closer to my preferred area of research.

Additional info: Comparing the two universities as such, the second one (the one without aid) is higher ranked than the other one (with full funding).

So given all this, how do you think I should make a decision and what is your opinion on the same?

Edit: Both programs are research-based and require a thesis.

There are four outcomes to your master's program:

You don't complete the program.
You complete the program and can't find a job dependent upon the degree.
You complete the program and get a job dependent upon the degree.
You complete the program and continue in academia.

If you take the position with support, you will be better off in case (1) and (2).  Case (4) is a tie -- you can shift research groups for your Ph.D., and you will be better off financially, but you have to spend 2 years doing things you don't entirely like.  Case (3) is the only case that's a clear win for the no-support degree; you'll have 2 years of chasing your joy, and a fairly small debt that you'll pay off soon in a high-paying field.

What's left is to evaluate the relative probabilities of the four cases.  You need to be objective here, and use the evidence you have: the expert judgement of the graduate programs to which you've applied.  Admittedly two data points is quite few; it would be helpful to know if you applied to other programs, and what those results were.  However, in the opinion of the more prestigious program, you are not one of their best candidates (or else they would offer you support).

In summary, choosing the no-support program is a large gamble.  You should take it if you're confident that the program made a mistake in not offering you funding -- you have tremendous talent that for some reason has not been revealed in your record.  Absent such a situation you should take the support.  You might change your mind and decide you like that sort of work.


Returning to academia after a long peroid A person I know has been teaching undergraduate students for about ~8 years. She has a master in science and she is ~41 years old. For personal reasons, she quit her job five years ago. She would like to return to academia by enrolling in a Ph.D. program.

In my opinion, the chances of getting a funded Ph.D. position is really low because she got her master ~13 years ago and she could not find such a position after applying several times. My question is that if she has a reasonable chance of a funded Ph.D. position in Europe or north America if she spends some volunteer time in a lab and publishes one paper?
How realistic it is even to get a volunteer research work in a lab?

I should add that I have read several questions with regards to age and starting a Ph.D.. It seems the age is not important, however, in her case she already applied and failed to get even interview. Those people who have started a Ph.D. at a similar age might have paid for their study which is not possible for her.

I'm positive on her situation to get a funded Ph.D. if she tries hard enough. There are tons of PhD programs in the world, and based on her background you described, she could be a valuable, encouraging and branding story that a department may prefer.


How to obtain the files created by previous university researchers, both legally and physically? I'm a post doc at a U.S. University.  I need the files of a grad student research assistant who has left the lab.  The student was a funded  RA.  The student created files (data, codes, simulations, etc) for a few contracts the lab had, which funded him.

This student has been very difficult to contact, and stubborn to send the files.  Compounding my problems, the student did his work on 2 computers: (1) his personal laptop, and (2) a lab computer which has had its hard drive wiped.  It is important to note that the student used the university internet server the entire time (it's the only way he could use university licensed software).  At this point, I have given up on him sending the files.

Questions

1) What legal maneuvers (in the US) do I have to get the files from this ex-research assistant?  I understand that he would own some of the intellectual rights of the files, but the lab and sponsor would also have some ownership.

2) Could the files still exist within the university somehow? This RA wiped his company computer's hard drive before leaving (a relatively common practice for any exiting employee).  Since the student used the University internet server, the files could have been monitored and even obtained legally (I think).  In the US it's legal for an employer to monitor an employee if they're using company property (Internet server, computer, etc). Is it common for a major research university to obtain backup files of all the researchers' work through the Internet server?  Are the files of grad student research assistants typically obtainable within a research university (not the published dissertations but the actually files, codes, data)?  Or are the files forever gone (at least  from a practical point of view)?  I've talked to IT people but have not reached a knowledgeable person yet.

3) If you were a researcher who left your company, would you expect (and be okay with) future employees scouring your company computer, or possibly obtaining your personal laptop files via the company Internet server (don't know if this is even possible?) ?

4). What are the ethics of this situation? What are the formalities of these situations?

Any information would help, this is really holding back the progress of the lab and my required deliverables.  The grad student left spontaneously after the semester  - otherwise the professor and lab director would have obtained the files from him.

Talk to an attorney or post your question here: https://law.stackexchange.com/
The files could still exist in a Univeristy network but you have not provided enough information to know for sure. Maybe someone here can help: https://security.stackexchange.com/
I would not keep sensitive personal information on a work computer and would have no grounds to compain if others later gained access to that data.
I see no ethical problem with recovering any and all files on the University netowork. Ethics regarding file recover the personal computer of the RA would depend on the ability to first obtain a court order to search it or demand the data in question is turned over in which case I see no ethical problem.


Can I publish in a field completely unrelated to my present field? If yes, what about affiliations? I'm a scientific researcher working in material science and have a couple of good publications in reputed journals. However, I'm also very interested in topics like philosophy, psychology and political science. I have some written material in these fields which I want to publish, but I'm not sure how to proceed. What affiliation should I mention with my name, as I'm not connected to any university/institution presently.
Should I contact some academicians working in philosophy, psychology, political science & related fields and offer them to include their name in the publication if they like my manuscript?
Moreover, I would soon be commencing my PhD in my main stream. Will the above mentioned collaborations be detrimental to my academics?

Should you ever include people as author for liking your manuscript? No!

Can you try to get in contact with an academic of your favourite field, discuss your ideas with him/her and ask if they'd like to write a publication with you? Sure thing.

Will publications in a foreign field hinder your main Phd? Depends.

Will you find the time to do both in parallel properly? If not, which has preference? If you do it before you start your main PhD or you are happy to develop that other paper slowly as a hobby, it may not affect your main work.

Will it affect your reputation in your main field? For most people it should not have any impact at all. A few may value your additional interests others may see this is a diversion or as a potential risk for you to jump ship and switch your research areas. But overall, I'd think those are few and they'd even themselves out.
With respect to industry, many recruiters even claim they look for candidates that do something unconventional as a hobby/side interest. So in industry you may even win some minor bonus points.


If I publish my PhD thesis chapters, can my thesis be later still published as a monograph My supervisor told me that it is not required to publish my papers before submitting my thesis.
We are required (in German universities), however, to published our monograph thesis later as a book.
One of my chapters is already published as a book chapter in Routledge (it's too good an opportunity to miss). The published chapter is not entirely the same as my thesis chapter, as the Routledge editor edited it too (asking me to add this and that, which I did).
Now, another chapter of my thesis can be published in a conference proceeding too, if I so wish.
I understand that this is common practice for a cumulative thesis, but can it also be done with a monograph thesis?

In most places, PhD theses whose chapters are simply reproductions of work published elsewhere is acceptable. At the very least that's the case when you just publish the thesis yourself -- the situation might be different if you publish with a company that will likely insist on transferring your copyright to them.
Regardless of this, as in most of the other questions on this forum, the right answer is almost always "Talk to your adviser".


Changing the thesis topic and supervisor I am currently doing my Master's degree in Computer Science. So far, I am at the very beginning of my work, just started with the research. My supervisor is the same person who supervised me during my Bachelor's. I was very satisfied with collaboration with him. The idea for my Master's was to build on the grounds of the application that was build during my Bachelor's. That was planned from the start of our collaboration during my Bachelor's.

To be honest, I was not very satisfied with the application created for Bachelor's thesis, because I was working and doing double degrees at the same time and created it in a big hurry. Furthermore, I believe that I was able to defend my thesis on time hugely because of my promise to improve the application further during my Master's.

Here comes the problem - I am no longer interested in my Master's thesis topic that much. I came up with another idea, which would include changing the field of research, hence, changing my supervisor. The new idea makes me way more excited, because it is associated with my hobby. I believe that changing the topic would dramatically increase my motivation resulting with a better outcome. All of that makes the decision quite tough for me.

To sum up - is it okay to abandon my supervisor and the improvement of my application written for my Bachelor's despite the promise? Thank you very much in advance.

By all means you may go for your current research interest. Switching research area isn't uncommon. It will give you a refreshing start with new challenges (it did for me when I switched from data security to machine learning).

Interest and determination is the prime factor in research that's worth more than knowledge in the field. I've noticed quite a few grad students (both PhD and masters) who have put themselves in random fields without interest and regretted their experience dearly.

As for your promise, it is advisable to state your reasons as in your question to your previous supervisor. But the decision remains yours.


How to associate an arxiv paper on Google Scholar with the rest of my account? So I'm just beginning my PhD and I want to associate this paper that I put on arxiv with my Google scholar profile, but I don't see how to do this.

Is it possible to do so?

ArXiv papers take a few days to get indexed by Google scholar. It should show up eventually. The procedure to add it your profile is no different than with any other paper from any other database.


Advisor wants me to break our group out into a different area This is my first year in graduate school. I am studying computer science. Our group has 2 faculty advisors and ~8 students (faculty are married). The group is established in a niche part of the subdiscipline of computer science that I study.

My advisor really wants our group to break out into a second niche. I was chosen to lead the effort to do this. It wasn't clear why I was chosen, but I am older and have work experience and I am unique because I also recently finished my undergraduate and have a very strong background in mathematics. Our group are mostly 1st and 2nd years, there are 1 or 2 4th/5th year students.

I love the area they want to break into, it is interesting to me, but we have no one in our university that specializes in this area. My advisor wants me to figure out a solution to a problem and publish my ideas, but has not set any expectations beyond "you need to submit a paper."

Is this something other people have experienced? Is it normal for a first year graduate student to be asked to single handedly publish work that will establish a new area of research for a group? Are these standard expectations? In the industry usually there were step-by-step expectations that culminated in selling a product.

Road blocks I am facing:

1) Advisor doesn't set expectations beyond "submit a paper"

2) Advisors have all the other students working on different projects, people don't have time to help me.

3) Only 4 of the 8 speak fluent English (as well as both advisors).

4) I am also teaching ~40 students, 2 labs, work heavy engineering course

Is this just how graduate school is? Am I doing something wrong? Did I just land in a difficult group? I am so worried I am too stretched thin to accomplish anything. I want to communicate this to my advisor, but I am worried I will become a burden in my first year which will be a bad thing for me.

I don't see it as very unusual. The advisor seems to want to have several projects going at once to maximize the chance of success on at least some of them. It is common, where I've been, for different students to work on different things.

But as you go along, you will need continuing guidance. Setting a simple expectation at the start (write a paper) is probably fine as long as it doesn't end there. And you will also need to depend on the ability of the advisor, and his general experience, to get you over any hard spots or know when it is time to move to a different problem if the chosen one turns out to be fruitless.

It actually sounds like he has some faith in you to carry on. That can turn out to be a great thing.

And, as you go, keep notes on other directions that your work suggests might be good to explore in the future. Having lots of "irons in the fire" is a good way to avoid getting stuck.


A university does not allow its employees to use its affiliation on papers done in spare time; how normal is that? Together with a colleague from a different university, I wrote a paper that has passed peer review in a respectable journal and is currently in press. The topic of the paper is very far removed from our usual research areas; let's say that my colleague is a chemist but the paper is about history (all details changed). We collaborated and wrote the paper in our spare time.

Now my colleague spoke to some university administrators and was told not to use university's affiliation on any papers that are written in the spare time / are outside of his or her direct responsibilities. As a result, my colleague wants to remove their affiliation from the paper.

I should add that my colleague is a senior researcher employed by the university, and that it is quite a well-known university in Western Europe.

My question is: How weird is that? Is such a policy common?

I was under impression that universities are only happy when their affiliation is used, and unhappy if it is not used.

Generally the opposite is true in the United States -- the university wishes to have jurisdiction over all work done using university resources -- which includes the laptops and computers we use. Since faculty are exempt employees presumably we have no "free time," but instead work 24x7 for the university (except for the summer months for 9-month employees). So basically any idea that I come up with from August to May of the calendar year and that I use my school resources to work on, is the property of the university unless specifically disclaimed.

Just ask your patents and licensing office to sign a document saying that your university hereby releases you of all possible intellectual property and inventions that may come out of your paper (even if it's in History!) and see if they change their tune.

Note also that many American universities require their faculty to fill out a "Faculty Activity Report" every year that details all of their publications (as well as service/teaching work). The university uses it internally to determine promotions and retention; but it also forwards this data to organizations such as the National Research Council -- that determine university and department ranking using criteria such as number of publications.

Thus it is in the university's best interests (both for IP and for ranking purposes) to capture every single faculty publication that it can. So I would think your scenario would be implausible for most R1 universities in the USA, at least.


How exactly does submitting an interdisciplinary NSF fellowship proposal affect your chances at winning it? I've received differing answers from many people on this. I'm proposing a planetary atmospheres project and while I'm submitting it to Geosciences - Climate Dynamics, I'll also probably include "Physics and Astronomy - Astronomy" and "Physics and Astronomy - Theoretical Physics" as part of the "% of program for Primary Field of Study". I'm in a geoscience department, but my adviser is a theoretical physicist and I come from an Astrophysics background. I'm slightly hesitant about including panels beyond geoscience though, since the physics/astronomy applicant pool is far stronger than the geoscience applicant pool, and there may be much bigger expectations expected from people in physics/astronomy.

One person told me that they might just average the scores of the reviews from both panels, while someone else told me that it can't hurt at all.

  Is your proposed graduate program interdisciplinary?

  Note: Interdisciplinary research is defined as a mode of research by
  teams or individuals that integrates information, data, techniques,
  tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more
  disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental
  understanding or to solve problems whose solutions are beyond the
  scope of a single discipline or area of research practice. Please
  provide an estimate of the balance among the Fields of Study
  represented.

According to the NFS

  Your application will be assigned to the field of study you list first
  in the Proposed Graduate Program section. ...
  Therefore, you should choose which field you list first carefully,
  with consideration of which panel has the most appropriate component
  fields. ... All interdisciplinary applications are clearly marked as such during
  the review process. Many panelists have interdisciplinary expertise
  and are capable of evaluating interdisciplinary applications.
  Additionally, if necessary, the panel can transfer your application to
  another panel for either a full review or for commentary and feedback.

While in some cases they might average the scores, this does not appear to be a requirement. I would suspect that in most cases they would do the review within a single panel and rate you accordingly and only seek expertise outside the panel if absolutely necessary.


How can a phd student lobby against university wide publication restrictions? Recently, my university has expressed that it wishes to enforce compliance with Plan S, an European-wide initiative to 'transition' towards open access publications, for all researchers employed by the university.

I think that while the plan has good intentions, the execution seems to ignore important features of the publication process in my field, and could be actively harmful for the development of my scientific career (I have a more detailed description of my concerns at the end of this post).

While I don't think I am the only one who would oppose this plan, nor that this concerns only phd students, I would like to have my objections to this plan heard or considered. It seems the university board would like to treat this as a 'done deal' (only shortly after announcement, in spite of initial resistance), and does not see keeping the status quo as an option.

How can I, as a (relatively new) phd student, most effectively lobby against this decision?

I have thought about the following methods, which I can easily do (and will do). However, I am unaware of their effectiveness.

Contact the phd council of my department. These people are easily approachable, and should have more experience with influencing university policy than I have.
Discuss the matter with my advisor. I'm sure my advisor would have an opinion here, and I think he would share some of my concerns, as this also affects senior researchers.

The main concern I have with this plan is that it seems to ignore the primary publication venue in my field (computer science): conferences. The workflow for publishing in my field is roughly as follows:

Submit to a conference.
Simultaneously to 1, publish a freely accessible pre-print on the arXiv.
If the conference paper was accepted and generally well-received, publish an extended version of the conference paper in a journal.

Many conference proceedings of top conferences in my field are not in open access and do not appear to be pressured by plan S to do so. (the entities that control these conferences include ACM, SIAM, and IEEE, who have quite a stake in closed-access proceedings and where the influence of European researchers does not seem to be particularly big.)

Plan S explicitly states that releasing freely available pre-prints is not enough to be compliant. This may make sense when publishing to non-open access journals, as it means the 'official' and hence mostly cited version of the publication is still not open access. However, publishing in conferences without open access proceeding does not have the same problem: For almost all important work, there will be a journal publication later, which can be open access. The journal version is the version that will usually get cited, rather than the conference version. In the mean time, any researcher can freely access the pre-print on the arXiv.

Note that disallowing publication at these venues also has the secondary effect that it hinders my option of attending these conferences. They are often held in North-America, and costs for travel+attendance are not cheap. It is therefore not easy to get sufficient funding to attend one of these conferences if you are not presenting or at least publishing something at the conference.

Plan S is explicitly meant to change the publishing practices of researchers, and the business model of publishers. This comes after decades of half-measures that did relatively little towards open access, and nothing to prevent subscription costs from increasing. Therefore, it will be difficult to convince your university and/or Coalition S to accommodate the existing practices in your field.

Some large American universities are committed to open access, irrespective of the field: for example Harvard, or the University of California. And the situation is evolving relatively fast. In this context, it may actually not be impossible to convince conferences to offer Plan S-compliant options. Lobbying for that would still be quite an effort: the first thing to do might be to contact well-known open access advocates in the field.


Does having a more successful professor write your letter of recommendation improve your chances of having your application accepted? My question is about academic careers of a professor who would want to write a recommendation letter for someone. Some professors in my university have better academic career than others, for example they would have graduated from better/more well-known/higher ranked universities around the world, better resume/CV, higher GPA in MSc. and PhD, etc.

Question: Does a stronger professor's letter of recommendation raise someone chance for his/her application to be accepted?

Some basic contexts:

Apply in PhD program in computer science
Apply for US universities

Recommendation letters are all about trust: why should the person reading the recommendation letter believe the person who is writing it, when they say that they should place trust in you?
Thus, all else being equal, a professor with better qualifications provides a stronger recommendation.

Other considerations, however, can be more important, as it all boils down to the basic question of trust.  For example:

A little-known professor who knows you well and has worked together with you is a better recommender than a world-famous professor who can only say: "This student was one of 100 who got a good grade in my giant class this year."
A professor with a close colleague in the department where you are applying may be much more trusted in their recommendation than a world-famous professor who nobody in the department knows personally.

Furthermore, you probably will have more than one letter writer, and diversity in your letter-writers can be a virtue: some more prominent, others more in depth, etc.  Thus, you really need to look at this as a whole package, and say: "What is the combination of people who will, as a collective, present the most favorable and trustworthy picture of me to the particular places where I am applying?"


Should I be asked to serve as a peer reviewer for other universities' Pre-Proposal Support efforts? I received a request from the sponsored projects office person at a well known university, asking me to peer review a grant proposal that was in preparation at their university.  The idea was for me to help their researchers to write a more successful grant proposal.  I felt that it was something of an abuse for them to even ask me, and they were damaging their university's reputation by making such requests of people.  They wrote back to correct what they termed my inaccurate and/or disagreeable assumptions and conclusions.  They said in effect that I am a bad academic citizen for not being willing to help them with this.

My questions:  Is this a reasonable thing for universities to ask?  Or is it unreasonable or even damaging to their reputation to be soliciting this kind of help?

[Edited for length.  If you want to see the original email exchange, look at the edit history.]

Science, and academia more broadly, is and should be a community effort.  Of course, we should all work to support the common cause of advancing and disseminating knowledge.

Science funding is a different story.  Funding agencies establish a competitive process for different researchers or groups of researchers.  It is hard for me to imagine any good alternative to a competitive process for funding, but we can't deny that any specific funding competition is a zero-sum game.

Thus we as scientists unavoidably relate to each other in two fundamentally different ways:  As collaborators in a global scientific quest and as competitors.  (It's not just funding that forces this on us:  For example, we also unavoidably compete for job opportunities.)

Universities have a direct financial interest in having their researchers win competitions for grants.  So they put resources into improving their researchers' grant proposals.  One can't fault them for doing so.

But we should be candid about what the universities are specifically trying to do when they put resources into improving their own grant proposals:  They are trying to win more grants.  If they also contribute to the global effort of scientific research because grant proposals get better, great, but that beneficial effect is better understood as arising directly from the competitive process.

If [Unnamed university] wins more grants, then undeniably, some other institution wins fewer grants.  That is the university's goal, and specifically the goal of [A particular Office at Unnamed university].  But that is not my goal, and in fact opposed to my goal with respect to funding competitions.

I object to being asked to help [Unnamed university] win more grants, and I strongly object to the insinuation that, because I object, I am not a good citizen of the scientific community.  It appears to me (through very unscientific departmental-lounge polling) that others agree with me.  The reputation of [Unnamed university] has suffered greatly in my eyes because of this issue, and if, as I suspect, others feel the same way, [Unnamed university] is hurting its own reputation more broadly by acting in this way.


Is a good idea to inform potential PhD Advisor that I sent my application for joining his lab? I sent an email to a potential PhD advisor few months ago where I expressed my interest to join his lab, he replied to me the next day mentioning to me that he would be happy to apply to the program through he is currently recruiting.

Yesterday I sent my application.

Is a good idea to inform him that I sent my application? because I didn't apply directly to him but to the program of the institute he is working and I am a bit nervous.

Thanks in advance!

If that makes you feel better, sending a quick email is probably fine. Something along the lines of:

Hello Dr XXX,
I have just submitted my application to program Y, as you have advised. Looking forward to hearing back from them!
Best,
Student

Even if you don't get a reply, a quick note like this should be sufficient to remind the professor that you are still interested in his lab. Good luck!


What does overhead rate mean? In US, universities often have a fixed overhead rate around 50%, or at least that's what I heard. But I don't know what it exactly means. How does this affect how much grant money goes where?

The 'overhead' generally refers to the funding that doesn't go directly to research expenses (salaries of researchers, cost of experiments/consumables, etc) but to the supporting expenses (salaries of administrative/support staff; cost of facilities and utilities, equipment depreciation) of services that are neccessary but not directly related to research.

It often is set by university administration to some fixed rate (50% sounds high to me, but it depends on country and research domain) that is taken from all grants and used to fund those 'common' expenses.


What is the correct form of conferences/proceedings/transactions name in a citation? I usually try to get citation from publishers website and import it into a reference manager like endnote. I have doubt about the correct form of conferences/proceedings/transactions name in citation. As an example, the provided citation for this paper in IEEE format is this:

  D. Bi-Ru and I. C. Lin, "Efficient Map/Reduce-Based DBSCAN Algorithm
  with Optimized Data Partition," in Cloud Computing (CLOUD), 2012 IEEE
  5th International Conference on, 2012, pp. 59-66.

It seems to be misplaced but as you could see in the "published in" section of IEEE webpage of the paper, the conference name is the same as this citation.

The same holds for proceedings and transactions.

Is this way of citation correct?

I suspect that the reason citations are done this way (and now we're verging on english.se territory) is to allow for meaningful alphabetical ordering/indexing.

In this case, the "IEEE transactions on" is the generic part of the name, and should not be used for alphabetical ordering/indexing. This is analogous to how in indices you'll often see things like

  Korea, Republic of

rather than

  Republic of Korea.


How long should a CV for Masters application be? I am applying for a masters programme in the Netherlands and am required to submit the CV. All the previous CVs I have written had been for internship applications so normally they were one page long. Keeping them short was not difficult since I just had to exclude irrelevant academic experiences.
However, apart from grade transcript and english language certificates, CV is the only document required - No SOP and recommendation letter. Hence, it my only opportunity to present myself properly, but I know what is considered proper in this situation. I was thinking to include:

Internship experience (it's relevant)
Academic experiences (research assistant position, additional coursework, summer schools)
extracurricular activities (student organizations, competitions)

Should I:

a) Include all the above mentioned information and describe activities in detail, which probably means a 2-page CV

b) Include all the above mentioned information but try to write it in one page

c) Choose only the most relevant information and write it in one page

Thanks.

Ok. The proper CV is the one that is well-tuned to a particular job. So, in general, there is no best CV template. If you apply for internship and other industry jobs, you might need a differenrt CV than when you apply for a master or Phd.
The rule of thumb is to show the person who is reading your CV that you have the majority of the job requirements in their job posting. If it is a master program, then they probably have listed some requirement. You should try to tailor your CV as much as possible so it can show the best version of you in terms of those job requirements. For example, if one of one the requirements is having experience in doing research, then putting a research project you have done or a publication (if you have any) would help a lot.

So, again, you should read the job requirement (in this case the master program requirement) very carefully and tailor your CV accordingly.


Is this an academic discourtesy? I co-wrote an original short paper with a senior colleague on the history of science. It was submitted some months ago, and was reviewed and rebutted several times before it was finally accepted and is now in print. Its topic is somewhat controversial. During the review process we had to battle to be allowed to 'air' our opinion about one particular issue.
To our surprise, a few weeks ago the same editor (with whom we had engaged at length during the review process) then published a short article in the same journal, one quarter of which ALSO mentioned the original topic we had drawn attention to and had indeed battled over.   No mention at all of our original published work was made - even though we had published only a few weeks before, and we had had to negotiate in detail in terms of what we said about specific topics.  Is this an academic discourtesy? It feels somewhat dishonourable - especially since our work put forward an original, highly-relevant viewpoint and is very recent.

If I understand your question and comments correctly, the sequence of events is this:

The editor handles your paper at time X.
The editor submits their own paper, with a submission timestamp after X.
The editor does not cite you.

If this is the case, then the editor should certainly have been aware of your paper at the time that they submitted their own, and thus been able to cite you.

Failing to cite you thus seems likely to be a case of scientific dishonesty.  There are, however, certain circumstances where failure to cite might be acceptable, such as:

Other papers similar to yours are already cited (e.g., "phenomenon X has been noted a number of times, including [cite, cite, cite]")
You are somehow misinterpreting the date stamps

From what you've written, however, it seems unlikely that one of these cases applies, and more likely that you're dealing with a case of dishonesty.


Searching for specific characters in publication titles Is there any way to search for articles that include a specific character in their name? For instance, suppose you want to find articles that include $, £ or € in their title.  When I have tried to search for such characters in PubMed or Google Scholar, I fail to get any results.

For Google Scholar I believe it depends on which character you're after - regular letters are fine, but certain special characters (like $, @, and punctuation marks) are stripped from the submitted search query, and won't work. That is, that's the case for the regular Google, and while I haven't found official documentation stating this, as far as I can tell, Google Scholar has the same behavior.

PubMed replaces certain special characters (such as $) with spaces. See this help section.

For more reading, see these related questions on StackOverflow:

How can I use a search engine to search for special characters?
Looking for special characters in Google


Is it okay to request to do a reading project with a professor at a later time if he had politely denied it before? I was planning to do a reading project with a professor in my institute and had asked him in the last semester whether it would be possible for me to do it under his guidance.  However he had politely denied the request saying that he was a bit busy at that time and maybe we could try it at a later time. Since the semester had ended, I was wondering  whether it would be appropriate for me to approach him again with the same request especially as he had told me that he was busy at that time. However, I was wondering whether it would be considered as bad manners as I might be forcing him to reject this for a second time even though he had hinted to me before. Does someone have any experience with this kind of experience and if so could you please help about what is my best course of action?

Yes, it is fine to ask.

However, if you want to increase your chances that he will agree, make it a formal and specific proposal with stated goals. In other words, make it easy for him to say yes and to create criteria for your evaluation. Say what things you will deliver at the end.

That way, even if he is busy, he might just decide that you won't add enough to his work to cause issues elsewhere.


What to think of zero feedback at a conference Is it commonplace to give a presentation at a conference and not have anyone ask a single question afterwards? What should one make of such silent feedback?

This is extremely common.  Usually the session chair will at least ask a question to be polite.  But...

I am certainly disappointed when I don't get any questions after a talk.  Indeed, my primary gauge of the success of a talk (by myself or someone else) is whether it provokes interesting questions.  Whenever I have listened to a really great talk, I've always had many questions afterward.

In my experience as a member of the audience, the most common reason that a speaker gets no questions is that the talk is too narrowly focused and does not contain enough motivation or context.  That is, the audience cannot digest the talk in relation to other things they know, so they cannot form meaningful questions.

Thus the lack of questions is often a sign that you should spend more time on introductory material and present the meat of the talk at a higher level.  Often it is more effective to draw analogies and pictures or diagrams rather than to get lost in technical assumptions and extensive notation.  Your talk is an opportunity to advertise your research and provoke interest; it is certainly not reasonable to expect the audience to digest the details of your methods or results in 15 minutes or even an hour.  Yet most scientific talks still try to do the latter.  I believe this is why so many conference sessions are almost devoid of questions.


meeting with Executive VP for Academic Affairs during faculty interview This is a first for me. This will be at a SLAC for a TT position. This is in addition to a dean so do you have any idea of what to expect from this meeting with the Executive VP for Academic Affair?

At a small (selective or not) liberal arts college (or a small engineering college like mine), there will typically be relatively few faculty members and as a result, there may not be as many levels of management as at a larger university.

For example, at my institution, we have about 120 faculty.  Until recently there were no deans between the department chairs and the vice president for academic affairs.  Under that system, the vice president for academic affairs was doing the work that a dean might do within a larger university.  Note that he had fewer faculty than the dean of a large college within a big university might have to supervise.

The vice president will probably have questions for you that are similar to those that a dean might ask.


Would an honest researcher actually have to pay back their salary? Recently, I read the answer by Hexal to the following question here: Not including student who contributed very little as coauthor of paper and I was scared. Much more than scared, I could not sleep the following night. In the question, a project leader asks whether or not he should include a visiting student who showed "good motivation", but did not contribute anything to a certain project as a coauthor (to one of the project's papers).
There is a downvoted answer with -40, saying that if the student writes that she wants to be a coauthor, the project leader should write her an e-mail:

[...] Therefore, we would appreciate it if you return the salary you received for the internship. Please transfer USD ... to the account ... until .... If we don't see a reverse payment, we feel necessitated to undertake legal steps. Thank you for your cooperation.

Now, this answer is downvoted. I am also not sure if the downvotes/comments are because this approach is not appropriate for the given situation or not appropriate in general.
This scared me a lot. I always thought that one would never have to pay back earned money (except for extreme reasons, like fraud probably?).
Now, I do not plan to not work. But I know some asshole professors who, when their students say that they do something else on their weekends than working, they tell the whole faculty that their student is not working. I've never heard of someone asking back for money, though. However, I am scared now that I will work for such a professor, we do not manage to write a paper together and then they make me to pay my salaries back after some time, which I cannot afford.
So, my questions:

Are such threats something that happens sometimes / often?

(I would probably be scared enough if I got such a letter since lawyers are expensive but) Did students ever go to court because of such a letter and do judges approve this?

Are things like this supported by universities or their legal departments?

I would be interested in answers about the situation all over the world – if this is not possible, I would be interested in Europe and Northern America.

No, that answer is ridiculous.

In North America, as long as you were working honestly*, the only reason you would ever have to return money is if you were accidentally overpaid (i.e. they paid you more money than you earned).

* I assume you aren't actually trying to commit fraud


Is it appropriate to rewrite and republish another author's useful but very badly written paper? I found an engineering-related academic paper from a number of years ago that was published in an obscure journal, likely not peer-reviewed. The English writing is very bad, like it went through three languages in google translate, and many key parts are nearly incomprehensible with awful grammar and incorrect word usage all over. Organizationally it's rather a mess too.  While it took me quite a long time to decipher it all, I recognized the value and importance in it, and I think should be more widely seen, as there is really nothing else published on this specific topic.

I was interested in potentially redoing the paper to better present and explain the ideas in it. I would want to add my own ideas of interpretation and application too.  I wrote to the original author and they responded, and I think they'd be ok with the project? I couldn't discern a clear answer from them yet.

In the sense of academic standards, what is appropriate in this situation? Is it acceptable in the first place to redo and republish someone else's full work? Do I become a new co-author, or simply an "editor", or new main author while at the start somehow noting it's a rewrite?  Or where is the threshold between plagiarism and a newly written paper if I redo it from scratch, but following and using all the original author's ideas and data, and then add my own thoughts?  I really can't maintain any of the original written content as-is, because it's just so badly done.

Personally, I would be very happy to read an abstract along the lines of

  ABC is an important problem because of XYZ. A solution to this problem was presented already by UWV et al., but is not widely known, partly because of the technical nature of their presentation. Here we give a readable presentation of UVW et al.'s ideas, showing that they can be interpreted in terms of PQR, and we give applications in the field of JKL.

If the paper is mostly a reinterpretation of existing work it might not get into a top journal, but if the problem is important and the solution is a good one, your paper will be a valuable contribution and is likely to be widely cited anyway, since most people implementing it will be working from your paper and will cite it along with the original.

There is no danger of it being seen as plagiarism if you are presenting their ideas in your own words, and state at the start that this is your goal. The other authors will likely be happy as well, because their work will become more widely known as a result of yours. There is no need to involve them directly at all, although of course this is possible as well.


Proper way of marking dimensions of a drawing in a paper In a paper I am writing, I will give a figure that shows the mechanical dimensions of a object. I was wondering what the right way to reference the dimensions was, since I have seen multiple ways of this being done.

One way I have seen it done often is with parameters in the drawing, and text describing the values (either in the full text of the figure caption). For example:

This way offers you the flexibility to talk about the same values in a equation (for example, "It was found that performance was optimal when R1 = D2/2")

An alternative is to have the dimensions directly in the image. This way the reader can just skim through the figures to have an idea about the dimensions, instead of having to read the paper to know them (which can be useful, as often we might want to quickly scan a paper to see if it is what we are looking for before reading it entirely).

This would look like this:

And finaly one could combine the two, and have it say for example "W1 = 7" in the figure. I don't like this that much as it starts to get very messy and crowded very quickly, and lowers the clarity of the figure.

Is there a ''correct'' way to do it?

In my opinion it depends on why the figure is part of the paper.  Say you wont to emphasize a particular set-up , for instance in experimental section or whatever section dealing with experimental details (size and shape ) because necessary for the discussion, then I would explicitly quote the numbers.

If you are to discuss relation which are general then use letters

If a wish a particular triangle I would cite three numbers. If I discuss Pytagorean theorem is fine and more useful to draw A, B e C.


What information should the speaker transmit during the title slide of a conference presentation? Any standard presentation starts with an opening slide which displays the title of the presentation, name of the speaker and collaborators, affiliation and some attractive image.

Before any conference presentation the chair of the session usually tells the audience the name of the speaker and the title of the presentation. I have seen the following scenarios happen:

Speaker completely ignores the title slide and goes straight into the rest of presentation (assumes that after the chair gave the introduction there is no need to repeat his name/title)
Speaker gives an "extended version of the information". Example: "My name is X and today I will be talking about [insert more verbose version of the title]. I work in University U and collaborate with Y and Z". This can already serve as an introduction or an overview about what will be addressed during the presentation. (Should there be an overview slide for this instead?)

So, how important is the first slide of a presentation? What information should the speaker transmit in it? How much time should the speaker spend with it?

Does it matter if we are talking about a conference presentation vs invited presentation at an institute?

EDIT: Based on comments - I am aware that this question may be opinion-based but, as Dirk stated in the comments, the answer should be "based on how the different options are perceived by the audience", what impact the beginning of the presentation has in the audience and how it sets the rest of the presentation. Also, I should point that I am still in the beginning of my academic's career, and I still don't have a name that everyone will recognize straight away and immediately know what I do.

I've heard the following advice: When the people in the audience see somebody they don't know, they'll be asking themselves "What kind of guy is this?" for at least some minutes. I guess anybody does this, mainly subconscious. This implies that it is harder to convey technical information in the first minutes, since people work subconsciously to find out who you are and what they should think of you.

So when I start my presentation I always have at least three sentences that are not technical. This can be "Thanks to the chair for the (nice, warm) introduction.", "Thanks to the organizers (I prefer to give names here) for having me here (at this nice place/great session).", "My name is...  and I will speak about...  (collaboration with...)...". There could also be a sentence about the meeting in general or one that relates the talk to previous ones at the conference.

This may cost you one or two minutes which you loose for your precious technical content, but I think it's worth it if at least a few people in the audience don't know you already. If you don't spend these few sentences, the chance is higher that you'll loose these people from the very beginning. Anyway, conferences are (in my understanding) as much about people as they are about research. If I go home from a conference and didn't have had nice conversations and met a few new people, it wasn't a good meeting.


Resources to improve presentation skills I will defend my thesis soon. It would be great if someone could suggest me any good course or resource to improve my skills.

I recommend Presentation Zen, especially the book. Even though it stays on a fairly high level (and is definitely tailored towards business & marketing), its main ideas are very useful for academic presentations.


Who launches a private non-profit university? Universities are normally non-profit. For public universities, it is understandable that governments invest the taxpayers' money for education purpose.

However, investors of a private university should invest a huge amount of money (campus, buildings, facilities, staff, etc.) without ambitious hope for financial gain. At best (after a few years), a new university can earn enough money (tuition fee and donations) to operate without financial benefits for its original investors.

Who invests in private universities?

It cannot be financial investment, and not all cases are charity. Then, how does this system work? as it is rapidly growing in many countries.

Who makes the huge initial investment?

I'm only familiar with the US, but my understanding is that most (if not all) private non-profit universities were started with a single large gift from a wealthy individual, family, small group of individual, or a charitable foundation (usually started by one of the above).  In many cases the institution is named after that person.

I'm not sure in which countries the number of private non-profit universities is "rapidly growing".  I only know of a few recently started institutions in the US.  One with which I'm somewhat familiar is Olin College.  According to their web site, the college was started with a $460 million gift from the F. W. Olin Foundation, which in turn was founded in 1938 by Franklin W. Olin and funded by his personal wealth.

Such gifts are considered "charity" in that their main purpose is to benefit the community, and the donor doesn't receive a financial benefit.  Of course, any given donor could certainly have personal motivations other than a genuine desire to do good (attention, guilt, fun, taxes, etc.), but there is really no way to guess.


Forced to Quit PhD although the hard and proved work I am a first year Ph. D student, and I have been working on a new topic of research.  I worked day and night to prove something new and verified it. I began my Ph. D while my supervisor was on travel, but he returned before I had been here for long.  When he returned, he told me we have to stop and not continue without any reasonable reasons.

After a few months he began treating me poorly---always belittling and underestimating---although I got two grants from a top conference, made videos and podcasts, and constantly received praise for my good work and personality.

It seems that I have been treated as a competitor, not a collaborator.  Although agreeing with my approaches in private, my supervisor said false words to the committee to take the decision and stop my Ph. D work!

It is not surprising, as there was another former senior Ph. D student who I met on campus, who was not allowed to defend his Ph. D: this same supervisor claimed he was not able to finish his dissertation although he had published in a peer reviewed journal and having citation as well, it was scary and not familiar.

In front of committee, he lied, and said something without proving. I asked if he can make a detailed constructive criticism, but he could not.  All I can say that they are a gang literally, and he said words that show that he is jealous and doesn't want to see me having self confidence in my self. I know no one will believe me, but this is the truth.

Honestly, I am distressed and I'm losing sleep.  I had this dream where there were many people who saw me fail.  All things considered, I don't know whether what happened is good or bad, and I definitely don't know what I should do next!

I would be grateful for your advice and whether there is someone has encountered any similar situation.

You describe a very difficult situation that has only difficult solutions. It seems pointless, even dangerous, to continue with this supervisor and, perhaps, even at this institution. It may be impossible to change the behavior of the supervisor, even if the department puts pressure on him to change.

However, though difficult and disruptive, you may be able to take the work you have done and use it as a firm basis for application elsewhere. I would normally just suggest changing supervisors at your current place, but it may not be possible and if the current supervisor is truly vindictive, then he might still be able to interfere.

But if your current and previous work is good, you can find an academic home somewhere. If you decide to move, investigate any future supervisor at least a bit so you don't get in to the same situation again.

You don't suggest that this could be a case of pure sexism. If it is, then in some places you can make a case for sanction of the professor, of course. Sadly, sexism is too accepted in too many places.

Let me add that I can't judge your work. It may be that your advisor thinks your work has less value than you do and that is his reason for his behavior. Of course, you have stated that others (reviewers, editors, etc., if that is the meaning of your second paragraph) have given validation to your work by publishing it.

But even if the professor is correct, it doesn't excuse bad behavior toward a student. If he thinks you are on the wrong path, his job is to guide you to a better path, not to disparage you.


Going to JMM (Joint Mathematics Meetings) for Jobs without interview invitations? Is it worth it (about $1000) to go to the JMM without any in-advanced-scheduled interview invitations?

Unfortunately, you really will not know until January 2 whether you have any interview requests.  In my past experience, only about half of the JMM interview lists have been determined by Christmas, and some are not determined until right before the meeting.

Some departments are willing to do Skype preliminary interviews instead of Joint Meetings preliminary interviews, but Skype interviews can be hard to schedule, and a department that has already talked to a number of excellent candidates at the Joint Meetings has little motivation to schedule such interviews.

You should be aware that, for many jobs, a JMM preliminary interview isn't worth much.  I have heard of departments interviewing as many as 80 people for 1 position at JMM, though 20-30 is probably the usual number, and a few departments prefer longer interviews with only 10 or so candidates.

Finally, essentially zero research universities interview at JMM, though some of the top liberal arts colleges do.  If you are not interested in positions where teaching plays at least as important a role as research (and for most of the positions interviewing a much more important role than research), don't bother.


Writing Statement of Purpose As a Bachelor Student (Physics) I'm a third-year bachelor of a science student. I'm shortlisted for an interview for the Integrated Ph.D. course. I'm Physics major student. It's asked by the institution for a Statement of Purpose.

One-page original research write-up by the candidate (research statement of purpose).

I have never written a statement of purpose in my whole life and this is the first one. Now after searching for what it is. I found several posts which help me a lot and the most important one is this one. If I summarize the points given in the answer as

What have you already done?
What are you working on now?
What might you want to work on in the future?
How does my department fit your research goals?

Well, this is it, and for me, it's quite satisfactory.
Now the shortcomings as a bachelor's student are that we are not exposed to real research. We just get an introductory idea of different branches of physics. Now the problem is, As a bachelor student, I haven't done any research work in the past (I did an intern on Astrophysics but it was based on introductory knowledge) nor I'm currently working on any project and apart from a little glimpse, I have not a big picture of what I'm going to do in future. I know I want to be a particle physicist but I don't know what specific thing in particle physics, I want to do work in and It might possible that the interest might divert to some other path, say Astrophysics.
This eliminates the first three points. The fourth one, again, I can only say, the department itself help me decide what I need to do in future. It gives me an understanding of the subject and so on.
So It seems there Isn't much to say in the Statement of Purpose as a bachelor student. So I want advice on How should I write my statement of purpose?
Please ask any information you need about me if necessary.

I'm not studying in United State. I'm a student from India. And I don't understand what's common between this and

How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?

SOPs are a rather dreaded part of the application process for many students in the tagged geography, precisely because there is a big gap between the expectations and method of working that students are typically used to. The previous comments and answer are indeed relevant. Given your current situation, I'll add some specific things that you can think about, leaning towards pragmatism rather than the ideal.
(1) The SOP is essentially a narrative that has to sell. (Arguably so is most research, but that's another tale). You must know your audience. Don't make one boilerplate SOP for all the departments you apply to. Visit their websites, read up what they work on. Try to use social media to speak to current students. You may not know what you want to work on, but you must know with reasonable veracity what they work on. Don't start writing your SOP without doing this. The underlying benefit (arguably the real reason) is that you will me more updated about what is currently happening in the field now, and this will help you cultivate your interests more sensibly.
(2) Treat each SOP as an independent and exclusive document. Once you've identified the department & professor/group you would like to work with the most, think of everything you've heard, learnt or done that may be relevant to the topic. Oftentimes this is a research project, sometimes it is a class that really interested you and motivated you to read up further. Sometimes it is even a personal experience or anecdote that left a deep impact on you, inspiring you to move towards the respective field. You need not have done concrete research work on it, but you should be able to demonstrate some interest or passion, or even a convincing motivation.
If you are not able to find yourself motivated by a certain field, it may be a strong indication to look elsewhere - one more underlying benefit.
(3) Connect your background (educational, personal if it is relevant), your motivation/experience/interest and relevant achievements to the field of interest. Avoid irrelevant history. The badminton championship you participated in is unlikely to be helpful, unless you are using it to make a point about striving for excellence. Or being fascinated by the aerodynamics of a weighted shuttlecock. I hope you catch my drift here.
(4) Take seriously the last segments, which describe how the university could help you achieve your goals, and equally, why you are a good fit for the university. Be very specific about the first. You should be able to demonstrate that you know what the department/group is known for, what sets them apart, what sort of impact they have. Use details if possible. If you've been able to speak to some students there, mention it (show your efforts and initiative). As to why you are a good fit, describe your attributes and qualities; but ensure that they relate to the personal history/experiences/achievements that you previously mentioned. This adds continuity, keeps you honest and prevents the SOP from reading like a boilerplate job application.
Take your time with this, and remember to respect the reader. Its a big opportunity for you and an important investment for the group/department that you join. The worst thing that you could do is treat it flippantly and churn out something that doesn't show serious thought.


Composition of faculty senate a) Is it discriminative or non-democratic to require that the senate of a university or faculty should contain at least 2 (or 3) professors, or associates?

b) Is it discriminative or non-democratic to require that the senate of a university or faculty should contain at least 2 bachelor students, 2 master students and 1 PhD student?

c) Can your dean influence the composition of the senate at your faculty?

d) How do you elect the members of senate at your university/faculty?

Not sure what you mean by "professors" because that varies from system to system. It is completely normal that there be a quota on the number of "academic staff" (i.e .professors in an American sense) on a university senate. I don't think it is unusual that there be a quota for "chairs" or "full-professors" (i.e. professors in the British sense).

At our university the senate is composed of:

The president/vice-chancellor of the university (1)
The vice-president of research and vice-presdient of learning and teaching (2)
The deputies of the above (2)
The pro-vice-chancellor of each faculty (5)
The head of research and head of learning and teaching of each faculty (10)
The head of each academic department. (43)
35 staff representatives elected from those on grade 8 and over (Lectuer in Brit-speak, assistant/associate professor in US, or equivalent from professional services). (35)
The 5 full-time student union officers (5)
One undergraduate student from each faculty, elected by students in that faculty (5)
Two post-graduate students elected by the students union (2)
One mature student elected by the students union. (1)
The librarian.

Whether or not this is discriminatory or democratic is a matter for debate I suppose. I'd only note that senate being democratic is not specified in the university's statues.

The powers of senate are a matter for discussion and in recent years the power of senates in most British universities is not seen as that great, with the exception of Oxford and Cambridge whose equivalent bodies (Regent House and Congregation) include almost all permanent academic staff at the university. However, while these bodies nominally have the final say, they are so large and unwieldy that they seldom intervene.


Associate Deans' power If a student complains to the associate dean about an adjunct faculty member, does the dean have the power to intervene?  In this case, the student is complaining because the faculty member won't accept late work, although the syllabus states that this is so.   Can the associate dean override the syllabus and force the faculty member to accept the late work?

Your question is unclear.  Does the syllabus say that late homework will not be accepted?  Does it say that late homework will be accepted (until when? for what acceptable reasons?  with a penalty?)  You also have not described why the homework was not turned in on time.

As a general rule, as long as policies, procedures, and other rules are being followed consistently and fairly, higher-ups tend not to intervene.  It's unlikely that a dean would intervene to overturn the decision of a faculty member to not accept late homework when the syllabus specifies that late homework will not be accepted.

It's possible that if there are unusual extenuating circumstances (e.g. the student was hospitalized after a car wreck and missed the deadline), and the faculty member is unreasonably insisting on applying the rule without considering those circumstances, then the dean might intervene.

On the other hand, if the syllabus said that late homework would be accepted (perhaps with some defined penalty) and the faculty member refused to follow the policy in the syllabus, then a dean might well intervene.


Impact of student suicide on PhD advisor’s tenure prospects If a PhD student kills himself, how does that affect the advisor?  Does it count against him for tenure purposes?

To get the elephant out of the room first:

If you are contemplating suicide and wondering whether you will hurt the tenure case of your advisor by this, stop this thought right there and get counselling. The tenure case really is of no concern in this question. I am sure your advisor would also agree to this.

Now, assuming that this is a hypothetical question, or it concerns a suicide that already happened.

A suicide of a student will very likely not hurt a tenure case directly. No educated person in her/his right mind would react like "he killed this guy, he must be the worst teacher ever!" I would rather expect a wave of sympathy and compassion about the loss. Of course, whenever a student leaves (for whatever reason), the tenure case is indirectly hurt a little, simply because the advisor needs to start from ground up with a new student, who is likely not going to be very productive for some time.


Extremely lost and unmotivated in new lab, what am I supposed to do? I'm currently in a Ph.D program for pharmaceutical sciences. Long story short my background is cell biology and I originally worked in a Cancer lab. My lab relocated and I could not follow. I was placed into a medicinal chemistry lab. This is how things work here, we get little choice. Anyway, I love my PI hes great, and my lab mates also great. However I have no clue what I'm doing. I have a project thats moving along nicely but once again . . . I don't even know why it's moving along.

I don't understand chemistry, I have a mere 8 credit hours from my undergrad in chemistry, and now I am asked to operate under conditions that would require a significant chemistry foundation. In my eyes all I have been doing is mixing what I am told to mix, run it through a column, perform TLC, NMR, and mass spec, and that's it. I don't know why I'm using one solvent over another. I don't know the mechanism behind any of my reactions, and hours and hours of googling has yet to teach me anything about them. No matter how many questions I ask (and I ask a lot) I don't retain anything or understand half of it because it's all upper level concepts to which I have no base to put them on. How am I suppose to defend any thesis like this? How could I ever start a career? I have no motivation in lab because I don't understand anything,at all. I don't have either the time or the drive to teach myself years of chemistry I never learned. Moving labs is 100% NOT an option here. I don't know what to do, any advice is appreciated.

This does seem like a difficult situation but don't lose hope!

  Moving labs is 100% NOT an option here.

That means that you will have to adapt to your current environment - i.e. to learn some core chemistry concepts. Without them, it is indeed difficult to find motivation to work on a project you don't understand.

  I don't have the time, nor the drive, to teach myself years of chemistry I never learned.

Time: I'd say that catching up on the background is one of your main priorities and is essential for your future as a researcher (given the circumstances). Luckily, you don't have to catch up on "years" of chemistry - start off with the areas that are most essential to your work (not specific questions, however, but rather general topics that are closely related to your experiments).

Drive: As you keep broadening your horizons, keep track of all the things you've learned to stay motivated! There will be a lot of things to catch up on but try to notice all those little moments when the knowledge that you've acquired makes your job easier - there will be a lot of them, and they certainly count.

  No matter how many questions I ask (and I ask a lot) I don't retain anything or understand half of it because its all upper level concepts to which I have no base to put them on.

Sounds like you already know what you need. Whether it is auditing a class, reading a textbook, or taking an online course, you need some foundational knowledge to build upon. Googling won't cut it.

Most importantly, be patient. It will take a while to become proficient in a new area, but it's certainly possible. Celebrate small victories and use this as an opportunity for growth. Good luck!


If I got 1.0 for Master thesis in Germany, can it be summa cum laude in my CV? I graduated and got an M.Sc. degree from a German university.
I got a grade of 1.0 after my master-thesis defense.
In this case, can I use "summa cum laude" on my CV?

I would think that would be a dangerous move. List what you have the way it was formally granted. If you think it necessary provide a reference to an official definition so that those who don't understand its significance can learn to do so.

But it isn't really the same thing. Summa Cum Laude is usually (often at least) in the US based on grades for coursework.

If you are suspected of trying to mislead, it will be bad for you. Tell it like it is.


Publishing in low quality conference vs posting in arXiv We got a small set of good outcomes from some work that we were doing in recent months. However, the outcomes are not so good to be published in good conferences (CS).

So, we decided to post and keep it online via arXiv.

Recently, one of my friends rang me and asked to publish the work in not-so-reputed conference (preferably, IEEE).

I was wondering, is it a good idea to publish it in bad quality conference? Will it give a bad name to us?

Could we get some inputs although we know that the work could still be published after arXiving?

It probably depends on the "bad quality conference".

There are some conferences that are not the "top" conferences, have relatively high acceptance rates, and don't necessarily get the most exciting new results - but still do legitimate peer review, have respected experts in the field on their committee, and generally attract good attendees from good programs, albeit not with their very best work. These conferences are very much worth submitting work to and attending. You will get to network with people who are generally doing high quality work, get useful feedback on your own work, and hear some interesting talks.

(Many of the workshops that are co-located with the "top" conferences also fall into this category. These are especially useful, because you can also attend the main conference, and some people from the main conference will attend the workshop. They have many of the benefits of publishing in the "top" conference, but have much higher acceptance rates and are often a good venue for less mature or less exciting results.)

Then there are conferences that don't do high quality peer review, whose organizers and TPC are not particularly well known or respected, that have a very broad scope (so the attendees are barely interesting in one another's talks), and whose proceedings are riddled with plagiarism and work with serious methodological flaws. I would strongly recommend against submitting to these. You will not gain any of the benefits mentioned above. You will waste money traveling to and attending the conference. Publishing in such a conference will preclude you from ever publishing this work in a more reputable venue. It can also signal a lack of judgment with respect to where to publish - while many people will excuse this as just a lack of experience, it is still not the impression you want to leave on people reading your CV.


Does PNAS allow authors to request referees who have not co-authored with them but work at the same university? I'm looking to request an academic who works in an entirely different department and is an expert in the field, but he is in the same university and we have yet to co-author a paper together. Do you know if PNAS allows that? Is it too ethically ambiguous?

Though I have a letter published in PNAS, I don't know PNAS policy on recommending reviewers.  I suggest the following:

Recommend this professor/researcher, making clear that he/she is at your university and in a different department.
Make clear that you've have not co-authored a paper together and have no other common interests (e.g. funding).
Explicitly tell them that this is a potential conflict of interest in the reviewer role (bias in preference of the same university), and that you trust PNAS to make a judgment in this particular case.
Make other recommendations for reviewers so that the PNAS editors have other choices if they aren't comfortable with the controversial recommendation.

The main principle in these cases is to be open, forthcoming, and transparent.  Even if the PNAS editors do not take your recommendations, you shouldn't be hurt by making them.


My potential advisor is suggesting a project that I don't think I have the knowledge to take on? My potential Masters advisor seems very interested in taking me on as a student since my first email to him was 5 days ago and he is already discussing which project to do with me. He said he aims to work on a project with his grad students that will help them with their future goals. He mentioned one direction I could go with a project. However, it requires a lot of math and statistics. I actually enjoy statistics and what he's proposing sounds very interesting, however, I am worried I don't have the knowledge to take on this project. I took 2 stats courses in undergrad and he has my transcript. I will also be taking 2-3 more stats courses in my masters. These courses will be more applicable to this field. It would be much easier to find a project for me to do if I go with the way that he's proposing. How do I raise my concerns to him? What should I say?

First thing, in a master or in a PhD, you are a student and it's normal to learn new things. If your potential advisor wanted someone for this project that already knew how to do it, he/she would hire a postdoc. Actually, learning new techniques, in statistic or other, is what every scientist do, during their entire career.

Second, you are already planning on taking additional statistical courses and your potential advisor knows your background. It seems to me that you will be fine and that you can do this. This sounds a lot like impostor syndrom and you should read on that. In that case, I wouldn't talk about that to a potential advisor. Do talk about it if you need to, but preferably to professional help or people who know you. For the record, I wouldn't hesitate in talking about impostor syndrom with my advisor, but I know him, he knows me and we have an healthy mentor-mentee relationship...

If you still want to touch the subject with your potentiel advisor, do it simply:

  I'm very interested in this project, but I'm worried I don't currently have to knowledge to do it. Are those courses sufficent to help me with the project? Will there be additional help available ?

This is the good moment to enquire about lab resource, which can be professional statistical help or colleagues. Good luck.


Should I write to invite a professor to be my PhD thesis examiner? My supervisor has already invited formally the professor to be my examiner.
Do I need to invite the professor personally as he may learn more about my work?
Is there any conflict of interest to do so?

The way in which doctoral examiners are selected will differ between countries, between universities within countries, and within schools. Ask your supervisor for advice on what you should do here and follow their instructions.