Is this considered "research worth publishing" in computer science? I am a freelancer software developer and I developed only commercial applications so far. I am thinking of publishing a paper and I would like some help.

Is re-rewriting the core function of a world class - well known open source project (where performance is a crucial) and optimizing it to be 2-3 times faster, considered research?

I am talking about using the exact same computer and exact same input and compare the performance. The idea is to parallelize it as much as possible, modify (a bit) well known data structures to be faster for the specific case, use a more suited language and (a bit) more suited algorithms than the open source project used.

In my view, I am applying what others made. I don't create an entirely new algorithm or data structure. But on the other hand, I guess there are 1,000s of papers published out there and many of them add little value, while my work will help improve the open source project.

What do you say, is the above considered "research worth publishing"?

Is re-rewriting the core function of a world class - well known open source project (where performance is a crucial) and optimizing it to be 2-3 times faster, considered research?

It might be, but only under certain restrictions:

You need to be sure no-one has written about the improvement before. And I am not talking about the particular piece of code in the particular project you are looking at here, but about the conceptual idea of how to improve the code. If you want to present your work as a scientific contribution, it needs to be conceptually novel in a way that no-one has described the methods you use in an abstract way before.
You need to present your improvement on an abstract, generalized level. Modifying a particular project is nice, but it is not research. Showing a novel method how to modify any number of projects that feature a particular problem can be.
Your change should not be entirely obvious. While research contributions do not necessarily need to be totally unexpected or groundbreakingly obscure ideas, if many developers could make the same modifications to the project simply by applying their professional knowledge, your contribution is probably not considered valuable enough, even if no-one else has described the actual procedure before.

To answer concretely to your points:

  The idea is to parallelize it as much as possible,

This might be interesting for a paper if it involves any methods for parallelization that were previously unknown, and that can be applied to other applications, as well.

  modify (a bit) well known data structures to be faster for the specific case,

A "specific case" is usually not interesting for research results; it only becomes interesting if you can show the "specific case" is generalizeable in some way.

  use a more suited language

If you design a new language that is specifically suited for the type of applications in question, that could be publishable as research, at least if that language has conceptual advantages over existing domain-specific or general purpose languages for any class of applications. The mere translation into an existing language is most probably not publishable as research.

  and (a bit) more suited algorithms than the open source project used.

If those algorithms are already known, it is probably somewhat obvious that they could be used on that particular proejct. As such, this is not a research contribution.

  I am applying what others made.

Yes, fine.

  I don't create an entirely new algorithm or data structure.

Well, do you create anything conceptually new at all?

  But on the other hand, I guess there are 1,000s of papers published out there and many of them add little value, while my work will help improve the open source project.

"little value" is relative. In research publications, value does not mean a solution can readily be used. Rather than that, value is usually seen as the product of

the degree by which a problem is solved/situation is improved if the presented knowledge is applied
the amount of cases in which that problem occurred/to which the solution is applicable

Due to the second item, whether or not you already apply your method to one particular project is hardly relevant. As soon as it is known how to solve the issue, the research is done. Implementing the solution in a project may be helpful to the users of the project, but it does not advance the knowledge of humanity and as such, does not warrant a research publication in and of itself.

To summarize: A research publication is not about what has been done, but about what has been learned.


How is the salary of professors and researchers in medicine? For university-level researchers and professors, is the salary higher in the medical fields than in other fields? I suppose attracting physicians to teach may be harder, because they can usually get high payments working as physicians. Where can I find data about this in Europe, Australia, Canada and US?

For the US, I would have thought the data would be in the AAUP report, but I cannot find any data that breaks salaries down by field.

There is also CUPA-HR. The free data set has a break down by field with "HEALTH PROFESSIONS AND RELATED PROGRAMS" as a field. I would assume that this includes medical doctors, but also nurses. There is also some free data about non-tenure track salaries including "Medicine, Medical Clinical Sciences, Graduate Medical Studies".

In summary, I think defining the "medicine area" and equating job duties and responsibilities is tough. There appears to be a large variation in salaries.


Should I talk about my single "failed" course in SOP (failed due to a disturbing reason)? Background

I failed a course in one of the last few semesters of my undergrad. I had poor grades in most courses in that particular semester.
In the summer just prior to that semester, I had a disturbing experience in a foreign country (sexual assault by a guy, against my will and sexual orientation). It affected me very much while I was there, but assumed that I was alright after I came back to my home country.

However, in retrospect, I think #2 was indirectly responsible for #1. My grades were much better in all previous semesters and they recovered after that one.
I have already graduated from university and now wish to apply for PhD in the US/Europe (including few top univs).
Overall, my GPA is 8.9 on scale of 0-10, I have one conference presentation (conducted by top scientific society in my field) and one journal paper. However, the course in which I failed is important for my PhD field.
Question
I know that a fail grade is a huge red flag in PhD admissions, so I really wish to address it in my statement of purpose (SOP). But due to the disturbing nature of my reason, I am afraid that it might make my SOP "controversial" or just too "negative". I am also slightly afraid that it may be interpreted as seeking sympathy.
Most importantly, I'm afraid of bringing the fail grade into focus, which might have gone unnoticed otherwise.
Should I address my fail grade in the SOP or just let it be? Will transcripts be thoroughly checked?

Here's how you can address this:

I was a victim of a major crime during [month].  This interfered with my studies during [time period].  This is unlikely to recur.  I have subsequently done/will do [whatever relevant study] to make up for the disruption.  My performance in [course] where I got a grade of [good number] is indicative of my abilities under normal circumstances.

This is essentially the same way you would address a medical, financial, or family disruption.  The details of what happened to you are not relevant to your PhD application; just explain it in a way that shows you are likely to succeed in your PhD, even if you have a few bad grades.


Bachelor Thesis supervisor in a CV? I am currently working in a research laboratory in a University under the leadership of one of the university professors. This professor is in charge of several students doing their Bachelor Thesis but sometimes he delegates the supervising work to me and then I supervise some students during the whole thesis.

I do not mind doing that, I liked. My question is if this task can be added in a CV or if it looks not professional. How can I add or explain it to add it in a CV? I am interested in add it as a personal skill (something like thesis supervising) and academic (supervisor of project X)

You can certainly add them to your CV. There's no general rule on how to write CVs so it's more or less personal preference. For an academic CV, teaching might be an important point, so I like to include "teaching experience" as a section but I prefer only mentioning "supervision of 5 bachelor theses and 2 diploma theses", otherwise it would get quite long.

In the end: if it makes sense and the information provided shows your qualification for the job then you should include it.


Feeling bad about taking time off So I'm a first year PhD student in the UK working on an applied mathematics project. Excluding weekends I put in about 37/40 hours a week of work which leaves me pretty tired to say the least.
Normally I'll also work on weekends to keep the momentum going but lately I've been feeling really burnt out and despite the breaks making me feel more refreshed, I still feel guilty for "missing" out on work I should be doing. How do I combat this feeling and am I alone by feeling this way? I rarely take breaks.

Firstly, you are certainly not alone in feeling like you are missing out on work. In the competitive world of academia, everyone feels this way at some point or another, though it is rarely because they are actually not doing enough work. Also, I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to start a PhD while working remotely, as you have no colleagues or peers around you to gauge the "normal" level of work. Once we are all allowed back to our offices, you will see that plenty of PhD time is spent not working at all... my office had regular badminton matches during the working day, or we'd all stop for a cup of tea together, or go out for lunch or to the pub as soon as the clock hit 5pm (or before) :).
You will honestly be more productive if you stop trying to force yourself to work solidly for eight hours a day. One of the great benefits of academic work is the flexibility: if you're having a terrible day, there's nothing to stop you working for a couple of hours and taking the rest of the day off; conversely, if you're having a great day, there's nothing to stop you working late, chasing the solution to your current problem.
Furthermore, you're a first year PhD student, meaning if you started in October you're about five months into your PhD, which is likely going to take you between three and a half and four years to complete. During an undergraduate degree, it's common to work intensively for short bursts, while completing coursework or preparing for exams. A PhD requires a completely different strategy.
It's often said that a PhD is a marathon, not a sprint. In my personal experience, this is very true. You have to learn to pace yourself, since you don't have external deadlines any more (possibly excluding things like submitting a paper to a journal, but that is likely a self-imposed and flexible deadline). The only one you have is your thesis submission, still more than three years away. You can't keep up the high intensity work for that long. As you correctly recognise, you will end up burned out.
My strongest piece of advice is to stop working at the weekend. Your brain needs a break to be able to think productively and creatively when you are at work. Try to prioritise other, non-mathematical activities during the evenings and weekends -- go for a walk or run, read a book, draw, practice a musical instrument -- what ever you can do to relax under the current restrictions.
If you are worried about losing momentum, try writing a short paragraph or list of bullet points every Friday afternoon before you stop work, detailing where you are and what the next step in your work should be. You can even do this at the end of every day, to help you get started the following morning.
Finally, do you have anyone close to you who you can talk to about this? I suggest mentioning it to your PhD supervisor, as they can probably help you with time management or prioritisation strategies (and if they're a good supervisor, I expect they'll reassure you that you are working hard enough, and can afford to relax). If you are not already in touch with the other PhD students in your department, then perhaps send them an email and organise an online meeting, perhaps a virtual pub session on a Friday afternoon, where you can all chat and relax together. You will soon learn that everyone has gripes and complaints about their work, and how busy they are etc. It can be good to let off steam in this way.
In summary: take breaks (as many as you think you need times two), stop working weekends (unless you really, really, really need to, and I mean "PhD thesis is due in a week and I just found a huge mistake in my analysis" need to), and try to talk to your PhD peers at least once a week if you can (and don't just talk about work!).


Subtle (and not-so-subtle) humor in scientific literature Tonight I was scrolling through my RSS aggregator (which includes subscriptions for several journals I follow) and this abstract caught my attention. The article's title, as well as the name of the software it describes, includes a subtle reference to this popular internet meme. This gave me a good laugh, and an excuse to watch that ridiculously silly video again.

But on a more serious note, this is not the first time I have seen the use of subtle (or not-so-subtle) humor in the title of a scientific journal article, conference abstract, or poster presentation. Sometimes the humor is even injected into the body of the publication itself. But in general, we as scientists are expected to write in such a way that our findings are easily communicated and easily reproducible. The focus is on clarity, objectivity, and reproducibility.

There are of course no formal rules about the use of humor in scientific literature, but are there any de facto rules? Do these de facto rules depend on the field (computer science vs genetics) or the publisher (Oxford Univ. Press vs BioMed Central) or the journal's impact factor (Nature vs Frontiers in Genetics)? Does humor even have a place in scientific literature, or would we be better off without it?

I see humorous titles in scientific articles now and again, like the "Wizard of Odds" joke in a recent commentary in Epidemiology. One should however be somewhat cautious. The general use of "marketing gimmicks" like questions in the title have been suggested to increase downloads but not actual citations - which flawed or not flawed form the basis for how both the paper and you as the author are evaluated.

Consider this finding:

  The results of the current study indicate that in two prestigious scientific journals in psychology the use of exceptionally amusing titles (2 standard deviations above the average rated amusement) was associated with a substantiate ‘penalty’ of around 33% of the total number of citations. The present results were found in both of the examined journals and cannot be attributed to potential moderating effects of the title length and pleasantness, the number of authors, the year of publica- tion, and the article type (regular article vs comment).

While that might not be perfectly generalizable, I think it's pretty easy to say that being overly clever is hazardous.


Paper on mathematical analysis using tools from other (almost unrelated) field: how to introduce them? I'm a PhD student working in Stochastic calculus/Malliavin calculus, and I am currently writing a paper (my second one), in which I use tools from probability theory to solve an Analysis problem.
My idea was to write it in such a way that not only a probabilist could read it, but also an analyst (since the problem I "solve" has more relevance when considered from the Analysis perspective).
In order to achieve this I had to write an first section with preliminary results where I tried to "translate" some of the concepts/tools into a more "analyst-friendly" language since I am not sure if the general public working in mathematical analysis has some familiarity with Malliavin/Hida-calculus.
The problem is that even though I need only a few lemmas from Malliavin/Hida-calculus,  in order to prove those I've ended up with a 15-pages-long "introductory" section, while the statement & proof of my result can be written in at most 3 pages.
This seems somehow "unbalanced",  what do you think?  Is it always necessary to provide a proof for the "intermediate lemmas", or maybe I could write something like "the interested reader in refer to ...".
If this was a paper for people working in the field I would certainly ommit some.
I know this is something I could discuss with my supervisor, but he is a probabilist and I would like to listen the opinion of some analyst.
Thanks in advance!

An appendix, maybe
In many other fields it is typical to first choose a journal and only then start writing. In mathematics this is often not done. But here it might be relevant to consider your target audience and thereby target journal.
If the problem is from analysis and you want to publish it in a journal devoted to analysis (or in any non-stochastics journal), an appendix with the stochastics might be appropriate. In any case, formatting the paper so that it can be read without the material in the appendix is a worthwhile task. It also makes it simple to react to referee comments concerning the usefulness of the appendix, if you get such: you can keep it, integrate it back into the main text or remove it with only a little trouble.
If you think the paper is of (more) interest to people into Malliavin calculus, or would be easier to publish in a journal close to stochastics, then maybe leaving out the basics is desirable. But remember to motivate the problem sufficiently.


How do I minimize the number of "unknown unknowns"? There's a famous quote from a former US government official regarding the things we know, the things we know we don't know, and things we don't know we don't know. Likewise, there are many colorful versions of this too (my personal favorite - careful, some cursing involved).

As a soon-to-be second-year graduate student, I'm rapidly discovering just how much damage that last category - the "unknown unknowns" - can be. To wit: I was given a project to work on by my advisor that seemed straightforward enough, and I was confident I could successfully complete it within a few weeks. I even tried to pad the time required by asking for a month.

Fast-forward a month, and the project was "working" in only the broadest sense of the term. I ran up against a number of problems - ranging from being bottlenecked by other lab members who were struggling with their own projects that fed directly into mine, to taking a wrong turn and attempting to use a software package that didn't work correctly, to discovering numerous times that what I had coded was extremely clunky to move forward and needed to be refactored.

In each case, I learned something new (usually several things) that made the next iteration of my work more successful - and yet after 3 iterations over the course of a month, the project itself is still barely working, I'm rather sleep deprived, and at this rate I'm likely to miss an important deadline to gather results for a paper (it won't torpedo the paper, but it will likely weaken it).

What I'd like to know is this: are there any strategies I can follow to try and minimize the number of obstacles before I start a research project? I spent nearly a week prior to starting this - and several days over the last month - reading nearly a dozen related papers, sketching out ideas, but I only just realized that I was researching the wrong topic (specifically: "how are multiprocessor scheduling policies designed" while I should have been researching "how are multiprocessor schedulers designed" - a subtle difference I think). To be honest, I'm not certain I can sustain this level of stress for the duration of my degree program.

If you wish to minimize the known unknowns, them you would have to explore more studies published in the area you are researching on. Your advisor, provided he is well versed on the topic, could help you out with this. On the other hand the unknown unknowns can only be discovered by exploring the topic yourself with extensive experimentation and see whether the concept has been published before. To know what is really unknown, you would have to know everything that is known.

Well that would be the holistic view. But coming to the practical view, the known unknowns would only point to the knowledge your thesis committee or reviewers know that you don't but aware of. And, unknown unknowns is more or less the same only that unaware of what they know.

So it would be better to understand the practical implications of your problem and not to get yourself stressed out too much.

Hope this helps.


Should students have access to past exams or an exam bank? Something I never understood is how in so many undergrad classes North America, the students are allowed to have past exams that they are allowed to study over.

It never made sense to me because it is apparent that this practice could cause so many problems, especially as exams accumulate over the years, e.g. leading to inflated grades. I do not exclude myself from this practice.

As an example, in one of the classes, I knew only a small number of students had access to an exam around that was given around 5 years ago (literally gotten through one of the student's relatives who took the exams years before), and one of the question from that past exam was very similar to another one that was given in the actual exam. This doesn't seem very fair to me.

Finally, I always felt that my work was delegitimized with access to these resources, and over the year sort of adopted a pessimistic view on learning and knowledge, seeing that so many of my peers became arrogant and prideful despite having had access to these external resources. It was not until I did grad school much later on (where past exams are virtually non-existent) did I "let go" of those feelings and regain a bit of confidence in my own capabilities.

Should students have access to past exams or an exam bank that they can study? Why does it not constitute as cheating? My background is in STEM.

As a professor, one has to assume that all past exam questions are available to students. Some student organizations debrief members after exams and capture the questions for such an exam bank.

Some professors realize this and take action accordingly, not reusing questions, or not using enough of them to matter substantially. Others think, probably mistakenly, that they can set rules forbidding the use of such "resources". The rules will be broken by at least some of the students. I don't know of any effective way to actually prevent access to old questions. So, just assume that they are available.

My own opinion is that the professor should just assume that it will happen and, if they want to make the test taking "fair" will make old exams available for study. Some even go so far as to give out the final exam on the first day of class, to be taken later, though I suspect that not many do that.

But old exams are useful for honest students to study from if they don't expect to get those questions on their own exams.

Of course, coming up with new questions each term/year adds a bit of work, but if the course is so "stagnant" that an exam from a few years ago is still being reused then the prof needs to do a better job.


Problem with a cheater supervisor I am a third-year PhD student in Germany, and I have some issues with my supervisor.

To make a long story short, he does not read my research drafts but instead, he asks us to review papers he takes from conferences as a reviewer, and then he submits them with his name to make a reputation.

He also bans me from writing my thesis. Other students in the past including master students have had similar problems regarding their master thesis. And recently a PhD student quit after 3 years of working in his group and a few other cases in the past.

Anyways, the main reason I am writing this is that about two years ago he asked me to work on a remote project (with another group remotely) to have a joint research paper. After doing all the things that he and the remote professor ask me to do, my so-called supervisor now does not allow me to write my paper based on the result of this research, and I found that he (and the remote guy) are replacing me with another student on this project and are ignoring all of my works. I have been working on a private repository in GitHub, but I do not have a master user.

What are the possible solutions in this case? How can I defend my rights? Is there any way to collect evidence from the repository or emails? Can I bring these people to court?

I have tried to talk to my supervisor many times, and it doesn't work. Also, the head of our department does not want to involve himself in these jobs.

This is an update to the answers and comments below:

Thank you guys! I need to write this long response to Buffy and other people comments:
 Indeed I am looking for a proper advisor. However, for now, I want to get my paper published (the remote project). Even though I must change my supervisor, still I devoted 2 years of my life on this work. So, I think it's my right to have this paper in my CV even if they write the paper separately.

It was a kind of deal between my so-called supervisor and me and his friend (the remote professor) to have a paper in the end.

How can I collect proofs regarding all the ideas and technical works I have been putting in this project? (for example, has Github any option in these situations? )
Can I write an abstract about this project with some details and upload it somewhere like Arxiv or Researchgate. Does it force them to put my name at least as a co-author for the paper?
Having some screenshots or recorded screen from the history of the repository can be helpful? (in case they kick me out of the git repository )
Is there any international, Europian or American student association or similar things to help people like me?

I'm surprised that you have found any reasons to stay. I don't predict that you can have any happy future if you stay in this situation. There is clearly a lack of respect, maybe both ways.

I can't think of any path to success whatever if you stay. Even if you can force better behavior, the resentment will come back to hurt you when you are ready to move on. I wouldn't expect any decent letters of recommendation.

None of what you describe is proper. I hope it is uncommon.

Find a better situation, even if you need to change universities. The head's lack of interest may make staying also impossible.

Unfortunately, this advice comes with a heavy cost since moving will be difficult and you may not be able to take your research with you. The less developed it is, probably the easier it is to carry it away and continue. But you need a supportive advisor.


When mentioning the author of a journal I am using in my Literature Review, should I mention author's credentials? In my Literature Review, I mention the authors of the published papers I use and the results found in their study. My question is whether I should reference the author's credentials alongside the field in which they belong to or is this unnecessary?

Ex.1 (With)
"Joakim Ruist, a researcher in the department of economics at Gothenburg University, studied the effects of refugees on public finance, finding similar results."

Ex.1 (Without)
"Joakim Ruist studied the effects of refugees on public finances, finding similar results."

Ex. 2 (With)
"In contrast to the conclusions drawn by Ruist, Alden and Hammarstedt, and Storesletten, Bo Rothstein, Professor in Political Science at University of Gothenburg, argues the sustainability of the Swedish welfare state is not under threat by refuge migration."

Ex. 2 (Without)
"In contrast to the conclusions drawn by Ruist, Alden and Hammarstedt, and Storesletten, Bo Rothstein argues the sustainability of the Swedish welfare state is not under threat by refuge migration."

What matters is the work presented in the paper. So you just write

  Ruist [1] studied the effects of refugees on public finance, finding similar results.


Is there a (text)book on how academia works? Is there a (text)book on how academia or science works? What I'm looking for is not anecdotes and tips, but actual insights presented systematically, like any textbooks in every disciplines. This book should provide connections between varieties in academia, and how the root of seeking new knowledge shaping the varieties as they are now. I think this can be categorized as an application of sociology.

Some questions I want to know:

How does a new theory spreads out and be accepted?
Can it answer everything?
How do governments fund researches?
[to be added]

Meta discussion: How to make the question asking for books on academia/science not a shopping list?

The study of the higher education and academia is a huge area of research, and I must admit, I am no expert in it. While some publications are opinion-based, as Massimo Ortolano notes in his comment, there is a growing number of research-based works on academia developed within different disciplinary frameworks, which includes those developed within the framework of academic sociology, as you mention in your question.

Among the trailblazing works in the sociology of academia were the publications by R. K. Merton, and also
R. Whitley, The Intellectual and Social Organization of the Sciences (1984), and P.  Bourdieu, Homo Academicus (1984), focusing on French academia.

Among the recent notable books in this field, I can cite M. Lamont, How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment (2010), based on a study of US grant peer review panels, and
J. R. Posselt, Inside Graduate Admissions: Merit, Diversity, and Faculty Gatekeeping (2016), based on participant observations about a number of graduate admission committees at US universities. Tracing the differences between the branches (varieties) of academia and explaining them is a major theme in both these books. But there are many more.


Can an Iranian journal accept submissions from Israeli researchers? I am an Israeli researcher and am planning to submit my paper soon.

I noticed that an Iranian journal¹ has suitable editors and am considering submitting there. I wonder whether such a journal might accept my submission.

Are there are any general rules prohibiting Iranian journals from accepting submissions from Israelis?

¹ It is a journal of an Iranian society, published in Iran, and almost of all of its editors (but not all of them) are Iranians.

As it is mentioned by others, it does not hurt if you contact the editor and simply ask. However, as an Iranian, I am nearly sure that you are not allowed to do so. It does not work to think logically about the question. Iran and Israel relation is in such a bad state that it effects all aspects of the society. I think that it creates a lot of unwanted problems for the editors that committed to it if they accept to review or publish your paper.
If you are curious about publishing in that journal, you may need to use other affiliations of yourself (e.g. IEEE member) and a non country-specific email domain, as in this case they probably do not notice to your nationality.


What level of computer skills should a university instructor expect students in a business class to have? This question has been bothering me for some time as I had to fail a student as you'll see later on. I am hoping that another SE member has seen a student or may have even been a student like this.

During my course - a business course, not a writing course - I had a  student in my class. Every week I assign a paper based on the reading students should have done, but not based on questions they can answer directly from the text book. The questions pertain to current or recent events within the business world involving their studies.

Most students say it takes them anywhere from 2-5 hours working on the assignment that is due each week. I've never had an issue with a student not being able to finish the paper in time and I am more lenient in grading a paper that has less than the assigned pages than most.

Now, this student, I will refer to her as "A", seemed to be falling behind around the third week of the course. I quickly noticed that all of her citations for her research on the weekly assignment were books and textbooks but not excerpts taken and cited from online sources.

After a class I sat down with A and asked her why she prefers citing so many books and not looking online for the sources. I also asked if that's how her old school had required students to do most of their research.

My question was followed by that she doesn't really understand how the internet works and the only thing she really knows how to do is use a Word processor. I don't care what platform my students find their sources on from but I was now concerned because she, like I said, seemed to be falling behind.

When asked how long she spends on the assignment each week she said it takes her 3 days of going through books in the university library and the local public library. I advised her to seek out a librarian that works at my university and ask for a tutor there that I personally knew and would be willing to help her.

In the end this student kept falling more and more behind as the semester went on. An assignment that shouldn't take more than a couple hours was taking A days to complete, and with a final research project worth 30% of the grade she would have no chance of completing it on time using just books as resources without the help of the internet to at least guide her to the correct books.

Is this a common thing to happen with some students and could I have done more without giving the student "special treatment"?

Certainly it is reasonable to expect your students to be comfortable with a word processor and with basic internet research.

However, once in a while you will have a student who doesn't meet one of these, or some other basic skill expectation.

When this happens, you want the student to get up to speed ASAP.  You offered a helpful, practical suggestion for this -- gold star!

If your first suggestion doesn't work, then you may want to go to someone in your teaching infrastructure, such as a dean of undergraduate studies in your department, and let them know about the problem.  That person may take it from there, or give you another suggestion, or advise you that you've done all you can to get the student to remedy the deficiency, and remind you that sometimes the best motivation for change is failure.

Separate from the above, there is something you can do to help the student be more successful, in terms of your own teaching.  I'll give you an analogy.  Suppose a middle school social studies teacher assigns a project, with the instructions that to accompany the text, five hand-drawn illustrations are required.  (This example is taken from recent real life -- incredible but true!) Suppose a student in the class has some sort of difficulty (physical or otherwise) with hand-drawn illustrations.  Would it be fair to reduce this student's grade if the project is missing the five hand-drawn illustrations?  Of course not.  This student needs an educational accommodation, so that he can demonstrate his knowledge, without getting hung up on the form of demonstration.

Your internet-challenged student needed an educational accommodation too.  We don't want the student to get evaluated on her internet research skill if that in itself is not the primary (or even secondary) academic goal of your course.  (Please correct me if I'm wrong -- I'm assuming that internet research skills are a means to an end, not the end itself.)

You can do some brainstorming on your own when you see that a student needs an educational accommodation, and you can ask colleagues, friends and the disability office.  (Not because this student had a disability, but because the folks in the disability office are used to thinking outside the box.)  Once you've got a few ideas as a starting point, it's time to run them past the student to see if she has a preference, or any additional ideas.

I'll do a little quick brainstorming myself, just to get the ball rolling:

Ask for the student's email address, and send her three specific internet links you would like her to read in preparation for each assignment.
Once a week, print out three specific articles you would like her to read, understand and synthesize for that week's topic.
Mix it up.  Sometimes make a small group weekly assignment that requires collaboration.  Make sure everyone has gotten into a small group, and ask the students to let you or the TA know if their group isn't working out, so regrouping can take place.


What does it mean to be on a short list? I recently applied for an academic job that did not request letters of recommendation at the time of application, but only a list of potential references. I just now received an email from the search committee chair that I had made it to the "short list" and to please contact my references to arrange for my letters to be sent.  I thought that a "short list" was the list of people who were going to be flown out for an in-person interview, but it seems that the "short list" in this context just means "the list of candidates whose letters of reference we'd like to see".  Is there an agreed-upon definition of "short list" that I'm missing?

Nope, there's no widely agreed upon definition of "short list".  Sometimes a committee draws up an official short list, while sometimes people informally talk about a short list based on who is being seriously considered even if there's no official list.  Sometimes the short list consists of the people being interviewed, sometimes it's the people for whom letters are being requested, and sometimes it's in between.  Things can get more complicated when there are several forms of interviews (e.g., interviews at an annual meeting vs. fly-ins).  Sometimes a reference to the short list is a meaningless pleasantry meant to soften the blow of rejection when a committee member knows an applicant personally.  Ultimately, the only thing you can say for sure is that it's better to be on the short list than off it.  Beyond that, you have to guess from context or ask for clarification.


Professor creating math Youtube channel? I am wondering if anyone can offer any advice: I currently am an adjunct and teach a bunch of undergrad math classes, like Calc, ODE, etc.
What I want to do is to create a YouTube channel and show people how to do Calc, ODE, and other undergrad math topics. I want this channel to be for personal gain and not affiliated with my university. I would create the channel completely separate from my university, using a personal account only.
My question: is there anything potentially unethical about this? Can I create (public) math content on YouTube that is similar to the content that I am teaching? Any advice is helpful.

This is a great idea, and at my university people would generally be delighted if you create a public math resource of this type.
In terms of ethics, I don’t see a problem as long as you don’t start making the web materials a required source for your own students, since that would put you in a conflict of interest.
Also, if you use university-owned equipment in creating the online materials, in some cultures this could be deemed ethically problematic, so you might want to check with your department how they would feel about it, or take care to create a full separation between the time and resources you dedicate to your teaching job and the resources you use for the YouTube channel.
Other than that, as I said I think it’s an awesome initiative. Maybe the biggest concern I can think of is that if you become too successful as a famous YouTuber, people around you will get jealous. That’s not an ethical problem but maybe a practical one to think about...
Anyway, good luck with it!


University website says "when such conduct [unauthorized collaboration] is common, it becomes acceptable" - does this mean plagiarism is allowed? I have been accused of plagiarism from my prof, since I have an answer from a Facebook page based on our course, and a lot of students got their answers from there. The Facebook page has previous labs and assignments from graduate students or senior students who have already done the course, thus there were around 14 students with the same mistake including me. But I went through my university web site and it states for the TEACHING ASSISTANT (TA) that:

  Academic Dishonesty in Laboratory Environments

  Academic dishonesty is a serious problem in undergraduate labs. This
  is partly because the culture of lab courses sometimes fosters
  plagiarism. Lab exercises may remain unchanged for years, making it
  relatively easy to obtain lab reports from previous students. Since
  students generally work in pairs, the distinction between acceptable
  and unacceptable collaboration can become blurred. And sometimes lab
  work is simply not taken as seriously as other scholarly work. The
  main forms of academic dishonesty in laboratory classes are:

  Plagiarism in laboratory assignments and reports

  Among some students there is an academic culture that accepts a
  certain degree of academic dishonesty in labs. Students buy and sell
  lab reports from the previous year and some try to "help" junior students
  by "handing down" lab material. When such conduct is common, it
  becomes acceptable, and many students may not realize the element of
  dishonesty involved. In addition, in most cases the entire class is
  writing up the same report, so there is bound to be an enormous
  exchange of information.

I think the paragraph above says that at this point this academic dishonesty becomes acceptable. Does that sort my issue at any point?

You are misreading that passage.

"It becomes acceptable" is intended to mean "acceptable to the students".  To rephrase:

  When such conduct is common, students come to believe that it is acceptable.

But such students would be mistaken in that belief, from the institution's point of view.  I think the clear meaning of the passage is that such conduct is not acceptable to the institution and is considered plagiarism and academic dishonesty.


Is it bad style to use time-related adverbs (like "recently") in academic writing? I was going through my supervisors corrections and comments on a particular section of my thesis and I realised that he consistently removed words like "recently" when referring to literature, i.e.

  "In a recently published study, monkeys were taught discrete algebra when listening to Beethoven through one ear, and Beyonce through the other"

I haven't had the opportunity to talk to him about it, so I figured I might get a reason as to why words/phrases like that are not desired in literature. Besides it might be helpful for others as well.

Question(s): Is there something wrong with using phrases like "recent study"? If so, is it specific to a field (biomedical science in my case) or to a particular type of publication (thesis vs a regular article, for example)?

I find that there are some places where temporal context (e.g., "recently") is appropriate in discussing the literature, and others where it is not:

When I'm justifying the "Why now?  Why is this interesting?" nature of the work, typically in the introduction, timeliness is often important, and I'll use words like "recently."  This helps show that researchers are currently interested in the work in the paper, and can help motivate the work by showing how it's filling in a newly recognized gap.
When I'm surveying a landscape of work, on the other hand, it doesn't matter when work was done, just how it relates.  Then I would not note the time of publication.

Your colleague might have been over-zealous (some people have notions or phrases that they just hate), or you might have been giving information that wasn't actually useful in context, and thus should be deleted as distracting.  It's impossible to know without looking at the context in detail, but hopefully these principles can help guide how you think about it.


difference between symposium and workshop? I am not sure if it is too naive, but can anyone please let me know the difference between a symposium and a workshop.

I aim to submit my paper to a conference where call-for-paper is for the symposium and workshop both. I cannot understand where I should submit this paper.

Where are the chances of getting submission more? and what are the criteria in both?

By your description it seems like the main or the principal track(s) of the conference are the symposium(s) and that the workshops are sided events. So, typically, workshops are smaller, more focused on a given subject or theme within a larger research field. The symposium is, typically, wider with several subjects being contemplated within a research field. For example, a conference in Software Engineering (wider) can have a workshop on Model-driven Software Engineering (specific).

So, usually, it is more easier to be accepted in a workshop, if and only if, your contribution is really focused on the subject of it. For the main track, it is typically more complicated because there should be clear contributions to the state of art in an area of study, with well-stated results and more detailed research.


Reference list order in a thesis Currently I am writing my master's graduate thesis. I am confused that which ordering style is more formal in a thesis reference list. For instance, consider the following three reference lists that I took as it is in order:

  [1] M. Fedrizzi, S. Giove Incomplete pairwise comparison and
  consistency optimization European Journal of Operational Research, 183
  (1) (2007), pp. 303–313

  [2] Z.S. Xu Goal programming models for obtaining the priority vector
  of incomplete fuzzy preference relation International Journal of
  Approximate Reasoning, 36 (3) (2004), pp. 261–270

  [3] P.T. Harker Alternative modes of questioning in the analytic
  hierarchy process Mathematical Modelling, 9 (3) (1987), pp. 353–360

Here the reference lists were not written in alphabetical order. Is there a general rule (convenience) for better formatting?

There are two systems: list the references in alphabetical order, or list the references in the order they are cited in the text. In my experience, which of these two systems is used depends on the academic field you're in.

Before computers made searchable pdf files common, the first system was really useful when looking for a specific author or reference in the bibliography, and the second was really useful when looking for where a reference was cited in the text.

With current technology, I don't think it really matters which system you use, although you should pick one and stick to it. My advice would be to check some other theses submitted to the same department to see how they did it.


Can one publish ideas well before one has evidence proving the ideas work? I am rather disappointed by the existing research in my area of interest. There is a big disconnect between the solutions practitioners need and what researchers look at.

I have read everything available on the subject in e-journals.
I have many ideas which I believe can solve some small problems in my field.
I also have ideas for paradigms (or major expansions of existing paradigms) which I believe can help the researchers and practitioners look at the problems in a different light.
I am not in a PhD program, so I lack the advice, time, resources, and know-how for setting up controlled experiments to validate these ideas, so I can only address them as thought experiments or identify the nearest related experiments not directly testing my ideas.

Can I publish short here-is-an-idea paper (e.g. “Proposed Solution for X” or “(new) Model for Y”) well before having any means of providing some proof?

Generally, no.

Insights are a dime a dozen. Insights with evidence are how science (social and natural) proceed.

Proceeding through your bullets:

You mention e-journals. Have you read the "literature" in traditional journals/books/whatever the field's standard is? There's a lot of good reason to be suspicious of e-journals, so you may not have a full view of the field.
Belief in ideas doesn't make them true(r). Sorry.
Is there a reason that you think that these expansions of paradigms haven't been considered? Are you sure that they really have never occurred before?
Perhaps that's the argument for obtaining a Ph.D. or research master's --- to demonstrate that ideas have empirical heft.

If you really want to make a difference, you will have to offer evidence that your ideas work or have worked, beyond the logic you offer.


Authorised agent for joint authors in publication agreement For the publication of a paper each of the joint authors needs to sign a publication agreement with the publisher. Instead, only one author can sign as an 'authorised agent for joint authors'. Ignoring the specifics of this particular publisher, how does an author become an authorised agent generally in this respect?

They're taking the word of the person who signs, that they're allowed to speak for everyone.

Or, in some contexts, the person is authorized by their own institution. For instance, a VP of a company signing for all employees who were authors,


Is it acceptable to put the blame on an instructor during an oral exam for a mistake? During class, I asked my instructor about a certain thing that didn't make sense to me. Basically, there was a problem that I couldn't figure out how to solve using the methods we've studied. The instructor told me that the problem couldn't be solved using those methods. As this aligned with my own suspicion, I took her word on it and moved on.

During the oral exam, I was talking about this, and said that the problem was not solvable. The examinator said that it is solvable using those methods, and he explained how.

My response was "ah, I see, that makes sense", and then we kept on discussing.

But now, after the exam, I am thinking whether it would've been acceptable of me to just "put the blame" on the instructor by saying that I got the wrong information from her?

On one hand, that is the truth, and by telling them this, I might avoid being held responsible for a mistake that wasn't entirely my fault.

On the other hand, and this is how I felt during the exam, it felt to me out of order to bring up the instructor in the exam. She wasn't there to defend herself, so it seemed wrong to talk about her "behind her back", so to speak.

That is an annoying thing that happened to you, and I can see why it would bother you.  University instructors are human, and we sometimes make mistakes, or misunderstand a question from a student, or have blind-spots in our knowledge.  It is certainly annoying to a student if this leads them to error.

However, there is a bigger issue here.  Setting aside the interpersonal issues of whether or not it is advisable to "blame the instructor", I would suggest you take a broader view of your responsibilities as a tertiary-level student.  By university level, it is expected that students are no longer children or adolescents, and they are old and ugly enough to critically assess what they are told by their teachers, and proceed on the basis of rational inquiry and evidence, rather than on the basis of faith-in-authority.  If you are told by an authority figure like a university instructor that X is true, then it is up to you as a student to seek evidence/argument to confirm this claim, and treat the claim with scepticism if there is not a clear and convincing explanation.

In your case, you were told something that was false by an instructor.  Since that thing was false, presumably your instructor could not have backed up the claim with a water-tight argument, had you inquired about the reasoning for the claim.  You say you "took her word for it", but that is not what tertiary-level instruction is about.  By taking her word for it you rejected the standard of reason and instead adopted the heuristic of believing that which is plausible, and is confirmed to you by the assertion of an authority figure.  You paid an appropriate price for that by getting caught in an error in your oral exam, so hopefully, lesson learned.

In this case your instructor probably just made a mistake when she asserted that error to you, or misunderstood your question.  However, in my view, it would even be legitimate as a teaching exercise if she intentionally gave you a wrong answer and then tested to see whether you would parrot it back to her in an oral exam.  The point here is this: you do not go to university to learn to uncritically repeat the assertions of authority figures with PhDs; you go to university to learn to reason rationally, based on evidence and logic.  You failed to do that in this case, so you made a mistake.  That is great, because university is where we go to make these mistakes, get penalised for them, and then learn not to do them again.


When is it appropriate for a post-doc/grad student to be the senior author? This is slightly different from What does author order indicate?. Our group has debated when would it be appropriate for a student or a post-doc to be considered the senior ie. the corresponding author.

As an aside, for CV building purposes, would it be more beneficial to be the first author or the last author? Does it matter if one is an academic vs. in the industry?

In my field (Computer Science), I usually assume that the first author and/or the "corresponding author" is the one who "did most of the work" and the last author is the one who secured the funding to do said work.  In some cases the latter does not exist (e.g., if a publication is not funded by a research grant/contract) or these are both the same person.  In my opinion and experience, the author with the greatest technical contribution should be the corresponding author.  This is because most inquiries to the corresponding author will be technical in nature.  If I were interested in contacting the authors of a paper for a non-technical reason (e.g., an inquiry to team for a competitive proposal) and I were unfamiliar with the authors (which is unlikely), then I would do a quick Internet search to determine if any of the authors are advisors of the others and contact the most senior one in terms of academic rank.

Therefore, I think it is perfectly appropriate and even desirable for whomever provided the greatest technical contribution to be the senior author.  This may vary by discipline and/or country, however.


How to effectively manage a new collaborator? As a 3rd year PhD student in a Canadian university, I've been given the opportunity to work directly with my supervisor's long-term collaborator, who is a young faculty member in an Australian university. I shall be visiting him for a month to initiate a (STEM-theory) project and am looking for advice on how to make the collaboration fruitful.

More specifically, it took time for me to understand my own supervisor's priorities, strengths-weaknesses and way of working. With that understanding, I have been able to work effectively with him. How can I quickly learn the best way of working with my new collaborator?

I just wanted to comment that your choice of words in the question is somewhat inappropriate: you do not "manage" a new collaborator when your collaborator is more senior than you are. As a graduate student, you cannot have any reasonable expectation of asking for and receiving commitments from a professor—if anything, it's the other way around, even if you will be the one doing the majority of the work!

However, this also tells you something about how to handle the process. Remember that the professor is quite likely to have many more time commitments than you will. Therefore, you will need to be cognizant of that when making plans. What takes you a few days of effort may take your collaborator substantially longer, if he has to do it himself. So it may be very useful to find out if there is another point of contact you will be working with in the other professor's laboratory group, and ask if you can coordinate things directly what that individual.


How important is the keyword section in a paper I am writing a computer science paper that has a keywords section that comes directly after the abstract. Currently I have just one keyword in there, how important is that section? Do I have to come up with as many related keywords as I think of, or nobody actually uses this section and I can ignore it?

The number of keywords you should use depends on the journal you will submit your paper to. They usually require 3 to 5 keywords so they can direct the paper to relevant reviewers and editor.

It also makes it easier to get recognition since search engines utilizes keywords instead of scanning whole papers.

In short: No, you definitely should not ignore it. You should write down related keywords but do not exceed the number of journal.

Additionally each journal has a "Author's Guideline" documentation. If a submission fails to meet these guidelines, your paper is most likely to be rejected even before evaluation.


What to do when principal investigator publishes your work without putting you down as a coauthor? Say I am post-doc in the USA, and my PI (principal investigator) just published a review I wrote, with pictures I took of my experiments without putting my name as the author. What tools do I have at my disposal to get what is rightfully mine?

The first thing to do is to realize that you are on dangerous ground and that nothing good is going to come out of this situation. Having your colleagues (including your PI) think that you are accusing your PI of academic dishonesty is a major black mark against you, even if your PI has done something wrong.

While it is important to vent, you need to do this very carefully. You cannot vent to any of your work colleagues or anyone who knows your PI. Even a post in a public forum like this is dangerous. Yelling in your closet at home is probably best. Even better would be in a closet in a hotel in a foreign country. I am not kidding, no one can know about this until you can deal with it calmly.

Once you can calmly deal with the issue calmly, schedule a meeting with your PI to ask what you could have done to get authorship on the review. Do not accuse your PI of stealing your work, or even hint that you deserved authorship. Hopefully this discussion goes well.

If the discussion doesn't go well, or even if it does, after a little bit, schedule a different meeting to discuss authorship on all the work you are currently undertaking. This is something that doesn't get done enough, and can cause major problems like this.

At that point you will hopefully have a clear understanding of your PI's policies on authorship. Now you need to decide if they are unfair, or were not applied in the case of this review. If the PI's policies are unfair (or not applied fairly), you need to find a new advisor ASAP. Once you have secured another position, but not before, think about leveeing accusations of academic dishonesty.


Starting of cover letter for academic jobs I have sent an academic job application with a cover letter starting "Dear Madam or Sir,..." and I've just realised that the correct form is instead "Dear Search Committee Chair,...". Have I made a huge mistake?

Probably not. I doubt anyone is going to catch it and, if they do, they probably won't care.


How should I respond to a reviewer's complaint about self-citation? Recently, I submitted an article and got a response from a reviewer that I cited 6 of my own articles out of 44. The reviewer said that it’s a cheap act of self promotion.

If I do not cite my own work, how can I expect others to?
Is it bad practice to cite your own work?

The reviewer didn’t say I cited senselessly, rather he complained about the citation of my own work. How to respond in this given situation?

The answers here of Solar Mike and corey979 are correct, but let me point out two additional issues.

First, it might be that without your citations you could validly be accused of self plagiarism. Readers of the current work need to be able to trace back the ideas to earlier work. This is why we cite ourselves rather than just reuse old work.

Second, if you want a mental check on whether a self-citation is proper or not, just ask whether you would still be giving this citation if the other paper were written by someone unknown to you. If the answer is yes, then it is certainly proper - even essential - to cite it. If the answer is no, then you should probably forgo.

As for a response, you could simply ignore it. However, if you think that it is affecting the editor's decision, you could point out the self-plagiarism aspect.


Why do math journals' aim and scope provide so little information? When one encounters a journal one does not know, one way to obtain some information about it is via the journal's "aim and scope" in the journal web site.
However, I noticed that for many journals, this section provides virtually no information about the journal.
Here are two examples that I think demonstrate my question.
Inventiones mathematicae - this is clearly one of the best mathematical journals, generally considered one as the top 3 (or 5) journals. Yet, nothing about its level is mentioned in its aim and scope. Instead, it says:

This journal is published at frequent intervals to bring out new
contributions to mathematics. It is a policy of the journal to publish
papers within four months of acceptance. Once a paper is accepted it
goes immediately into production and no changes can be made by the
author(s).

Mathematische Zeitschrift - while clearly not a top level journal, it is still considered a good general journal. Its short aim and scope contains a bit of history about the previous editors, and then says

"Mathematische Zeitschrift" is devoted to pure and applied
mathematics. Reviews, problems etc. will not be published.

In both cases, there is not even a hint about the level that the journal aims at.
My question is — why do journals make the choice of providing so little information about the type of papers they wish to publish?

No information is probably better than misleading information. Any journal can talk about accepting "outstanding contributions", or whatever, on their homepage, without actually having high standards in practice. If you want to know how good a journal is, their aims and scope is not a good place to look. Either go to some independent source (e.g. Scimago journal rankings) or (more work, but perhaps more reliable) have a look at what they've been publishing and try to get a feel for how strong it is.
Most mathematics journals, however, will be specific about which areas of mathematics can be published, or at least, as specific as they need to be. A journal that specialises in a particular field will usually say exactly what parts of that field they like (and don't like). Here's a random example:

The research areas covered by Discrete Mathematics include graph and hypergraph theory, enumeration, coding theory, block designs, the combinatorics of partially ordered sets, extremal set theory, matroid theory, algebraic combinatorics, discrete geometry, matrices, discrete probability, and parts of cryptography.
Discrete Mathematics generally does not include research on dynamical systems, differential equations, or discrete Laplacian operators within its scope. It also does not publish articles that are principally focused on linear algebra, abstract algebraic structures, or fuzzy sets unless they are highly related to one of the main areas of interest. Also, papers focused primarily on applied problems or experimental results fall outside our scope.

The journals you mention simply don't need to say anything about areas, since no area of mathematics is off-topic for them. If the paper is of sufficiently high quality, they will publish it. However, it's worth bearing in mind that some journals which do in principle publish in all areas still have preferences making the bar higher in some areas than others. A good way to gauge this is to search for papers published in that journal on mathscinet in, say, the last ten years, and see what proportion of them have the relevant primary classification (this breakdown is available with the search results). For example the figures for Inventiones are:
Algebraic geometry (126)
Dynamical systems and ergodic theory (89)
Differential geometry (75)
Number theory (70)
Partial differential equations
(45)
Group theory and generalizations
(41)
Several complex variables and analytic spaces
(38)
Manifolds and cell complexes
(31)
Topological groups, Lie groups
(22)
Probability theory and stochastic processes
(20)
Global analysis, analysis on manifolds
(19)
Functional analysis
(14)
Commutative rings and algebras
(11)
Functions of a complex variable
(11)
Nonassociative rings and algebras
(10)
Statistical mechanics, structure of matter
(9)
Algebraic topology
(8)
Quantum theory
(8)
Associative rings and algebras
(7)
K-theory
(7)
Fourier analysis
(7)
Combinatorics
(6)
Convex and discrete geometry
(6)
Mechanics of particles and systems
(6)
Operator theory
(5)
Relativity and gravitational theory
(4)
Mathematical logic and foundations
(3)
Measure and integration
(3)
Fluid mechanics
(3)
Field theory and polynomials
(2)
Category theory; homological algebra
(2)
Special functions
(2)
Ordinary differential equations
(2)
Systems theory; control
(2)
History and biography
(1)
Linear and multilinear algebra; matrix theory
(1)
Real functions
(1)
Potential theory
(1)
Approximations and expansions
(1)
Abstract harmonic analysis
(1)
Calculus of variations and optimal control; optimization
(1)
General topology
(1)
Statistics
(1)
Astronomy and astrophysics
(1)
Information and communication, circuits (1)


What is an EngD degree? What is the purpose of an EngD degree (for example of Data Engineering) and what are its advantages over a PhD?

Based on the information provided on Manchester's website the primary difference between PhD and EngD would appear to be that the EngD contains a formal taught component. I suggest you contact the university for more details about exactly what is involved in each case.

Whether or not you see the EngD as advantageous seems likely to depend entirely on your personal circumstances. From a future employer's perspective, I doubt the choice of EngD or PhD matters: they are likely to be far more interested in what you did than which program you enrolled in. The University of Manchester has an excellent reputation, so any degree from them is likely to be taken seriously.


Why did my professor criticize my performance indirectly? I'm an international graduate student studying theoretical physics in a US university, and I'm in my 4th year of PhD study and plan to graduate at the end of the 5th year. Yesterday, I heard something from my advisor really hurts me.

Yesterday afternoon, I was working in my office while my professor was having a meeting with a prostdoc in our group in the small meeting room just outside my office. We are in a suit-like office so that there is a very small common meeting room outside our offices. The meeting room is very small and very close to my office, so that I can hear what they said rather clearly. Usually I will close my office door when there is a meeting outside, but yesterday I left my door opened because my professor planed to have a meeting with me after they finished the meeting with the postdoc, and there was only a short period of time between they started the meeting with the postdoc till the time we scheduled to meet.

And then in the middle of their talk, I heard my professor talking about she was very happy about a new graduate student is about to join the group, so that the new student can help the postdoc to run part of the numerical calculations, because "XX is not productive as before", where "XX" is my name.

As a background, before the new postdoc joined our group about 3 months ago, I had a great time working together with our former postdoc, who is also international with the same nationality as I'm. We worked very closely together with many of the projects, and published several papers together in about two years. Just before the end of last year, my professor assigned me to work independently onto a new project which is in a new area that no one in our group has any experience before. It went smoothly until early this year when I plan to take my general exam. I originally plan to take my general exam at late February, but until the very end of approaching the exam data, the exam was rescheduled one month later and moved into March, due to misunderstanding of emails between our department and the graduate school. So in that two months period, I almost stopped updating the new project and totally devoted into the preparation of my general exam. After I passed my general exam at the end of March, I thought I could pick up my research, then I was caught by another unfinished project we started last summer. This project is a collaboration between our group and an experimental group, and we did have some disagreement of the results between the experimental data and the theoretical simulations from the beginning. Then this project get stop-and-go until just after my general exam, we get pushes from the experimental side that they want to finish the project and submit a paper soon. Since the former postdoc is already left, I was placed to in charge of it. I have to deal with all the conflicts between the experiment and theory results and exchange drafts of the paper with the experimental side, and almost have no time to deal with the new project I was doing. The last important update of my project is about 7 weeks ago.

I think I'm a hard working student, at least in the standards of my friends in my department. I work almost 10 hours a day and almost 7 days a week. After I hear about her criticism yesterday, I almost started to rethink whether it still worth my devotion into this.

So, what should I take from my professor's criticism of my performance, in her talking with others, under the obvious condition that I can hear it? She never criticized me before as far as I know. And what suggestions do you have to deal with this situation?

Your advisor said, in the context of a conversation on a new student picking up some of the workload in the lab,

  xslittlegrass is not productive as before

and you seem to have interpreted this as a personal criticism, i.e.,

  xslittlegrass is not working hard enough. I'm disappointed with xslittlegrass's performance

I question this interpretation. Your advisor is eager for the new student to arrive because she recognizes that there is a lot of work to be done on the current projects in the lab, and that your attention is on other things right now - hence your low productivity. That's not necessarily a bad thing. You simply can't "produce" a lot on "your" project right now.  You have been splitting your time and efforts between multiple things: your exam, the collaborative project, and "your" project.

Next year you'll be even less "productive" - you'll be writing your thesis, devoting time and effort to your job search, making sure ongoing projects transition smoothly when you graduate. That's a good thing :)

I also question your characterization of the situation as "under the obvious condition that I can hear it" - your advisor probably did not expect you to hear this conversation. As you said "usually I will close my office door when there is a meeting outside" - so usually you do not hear meetings going on outside. I don't think your advisor noticed your door was open, thought "xslittlegrass can hear this meeting," and decided to use it as an opportunity to give you some indirect criticism in middle of an unrelated conversation.

If you are really concerned about this comment, it's often helpful to have a "checkup" with your advisor. You can ask her directly: "Are you satisfied with my current work? Do you think I am allocating my time and efforts in a useful way?"


Is it appropriate to submit co-authored paper when asked for a writing sample when applying for an academic job? I'm a grad students on the academic job market (social sciences, US). Many postings ask for 1-2 writing samples. Is it ever appropriate to send in a paper that has a co-author? I do have other sole-authored products I can send in (book chapter, manuscript under review), but this is the only work that's been published in a well known journal in the field. (I was second author.) Would committees rather see co-authored published work or is there a large premium on sole authored writing samples?

The relative value of co-authored versus solo authored articles varies from field to field, so you should really ask your advisor or some other trusted expert from within your field.

With that said, there is nothing in principle that should rule out submission of coauthored articles as writing samples. Obviously, articles where it is clear that you had a large contribution - e.g. articles where you are first author - are preferred. By submitting such an article in a job application package, you are tacitly implying that you took primary responsibility for the writing of the article (or possibly co-primary responsibility).

Here are some more concrete examples:

A solo-authored paper. Yes.
A first-authored paper with your advisor as second author. Yes.
A first-authored paper with several co-authors on a project of your devising and implementation. Probably.
A second-authored paper with another graduate student, the authors are in alphabetical order. Maybe, but it's not ideal.
A conference paper where you are 3rd out of 6 authors. Not appropriate.


How honest should one be with their students when talking about the realities of academia? January seems to be that time of the year that I ponder this question often. After the grades have come out, I always get a few students with very low grades (D or lower) coming to talk to me, and wondering whether this grade will have an impact on their future ambitions of going to a top graduate school and becoming a professor.

Another related event that happens in January is that it's the interview season for tenure-track positions in my field. The market is getting increasingly tougher, and plenty of very strong postdocs that I know don't have any interviews.

Watching these things always makes me wonder if it's a bad thing to be discouraging to the students.

Sure, technically it's true that even with a couple of failing grades, you can still gain entrance to a top graduate school, given glowing recommendation letters. And sure, I'm sure that some researchers weren't phenomenal in graduate school but they flourish in their later career.

However, in today's tough market I think that these things are becoming rarer, and in general, unless you stay on top of the track you don't really succeed in becoming a professor/researcher. So I often wonder if it's better to tell the students a bit more of the honest truth. That their ambitions are possible to realize, but that the competition is tougher than they could ever imagine. That they should definitely have a plan B in place. That even if they succeed in becoming a professor, their life might be very different from how they imagined it to be (struggling with a two-body problem, working for a university that you never dreamed of, and so on). I, for one, might have appreciated an honest answer, and maybe that would have changed my career trajectory. And I think enough people with doctorates work for jobs that they could have gotten before going to graduate schools.

So, as an educator, it is bad form to be discouraging. But I wonder if it's actually in their interests to really know what's in store. Do you do this? That is, do you tell your weak students with unrealistic goals that their goals are unachievable?

I am a student so this is coming from a student's perspective.

I think you should be honest with them regarding what going into graduate school entails. For my case, none of the professors I initially talked to encouraged me to go to graduate school, and for good reason. Each of them stated what the cons were to going to graduate school and how the academic job market is now much more competitive than when they were a fresh Ph.D. graduate. Was this discouraging at first? Yes. However, it also helped me in cognitively organizing why I wanted to go to graduate school and I was able to set a firm goal and stick with it.

Those professors often told me that the reason why they would encourage students to take a gap year and think long and hard about the next step is precisely because students often make the assumption that Ph.D. is the obvious 'next step' when it very well might be the exact opposite of what they wanted.

Coming from a student's perspective, I appreciate honesty from professors because it helps me to realize the reality of going into graduate school and potentially what kind of sacrifices I need to make (e.g. a good chunk of my youth, vacation time, etc.). However, I never found it appealing when a professor, who I aspire to be like, tells me that I'm not good enough to ever do what they do without additional feedback.

In my case, when I first approached those professors about my plans to go into Ph.D. to become a professor, my main advisor looked at my records and told me what to expect, where I currently stand, and what I can do to improve should I wish to stay on that path. I think the last bit is the most important piece of feedback I received. The first two parts can help me in deciding if this is the correct next step for me, but the third part is what will help me achieve that step despite the challenges.

So all in all, if I were one of your students, I would appreciate honest commentary on my goals as well as the additional feedback on what I can do to improve so that the choice of pursuing a Ph.D. is still ultimately my decision. This also helps students to develop and mature, I think.


What items should I ask for in my startup package? I have offers for tenure-track computational biology positions at a couple of U.S. research universities. What sort of things do I need to budget for in my startup package?

I'll hopefully be in your position in another year or two, so I'm not speaking from experience. But a few things come to mind:

Laptop (be specific) and associated technical support
Any software licenses you need to complete your research and teach
Office space and furniture
Lab space
Lab equipment (be specific)
Access to shared lab equipment as needed (be specific)
Access to server(s) where you can test your code/algorithms/etc.
Access to cluster computing resources (if that fits in with your research)
Lighter teaching load your first 1-3 years
Lighter service load your first 1-3 years (not sure if that's something you would explicitly ask for though)
Salary (and benefits where applicable) for any students, staff, post-docs you will need to be successful in getting papers and grants written
Money for other miscellaneous expenses that you envision will be necessary
Money to travel to 1-2 conferences per year

I'm sure others could think of more to add...


How to find out the corresponding author of a paper? I am interested to know how to find out the corresponding author of the following paper (which is just an example for the discussion here):
https://epubs.siam.org/doi/abs/10.1137/19M1242859
It may require an access to read the full paper. Due to the copyright I prefer not to say take screen shot of the paper, but inside I find nothing indicating who the corresponding author is.
Let me elaborate more about my concern. Suppose I am the corresponding author of the paper above, and I intend to use it in a funding application. The funding provider may then check whether I am really the corresponding author. Would they contact the publisher to verify it? If so, would the publisher disclose the details? If it happens so, why don't the publisher simply list out who the corresponding author? Or the publisher would tell that in this journal we don't take the significance of the corresponding author?

I tried to take a look at the metadata.
My first attempt was at CrossRef (http://api.crossref.org/works/10.1137/19M1242859). There, in the author field, it seems that I. K. is the "first" author, while the two others are "additional" authors. However, "first" does not have to mean "corresponding", of course.

My second attempt was to download the metadata at Web of Science (full record, tab-limited file). There I found under the column RP (i.e. "Reprint Address") the information:

Kogan, IA (corresponding author), North Carolina State Univ, Dept Math, Raleigh, NC 27695 USA.


What does "Top 10%" mean in edge cases? Imagine you want to apply for a stipend. Only the top 10% of ones class are eligible. The final grade distribution (German grades) is like this

1.0 - 3%
1.1 - 2.5%
1.2 - 7%
...

The complete table comes as an official addendum to your transcript of records, which shows your own final grade.
Obviously the university screwed up the grading in the past years and gave out way too good grades, which led to a kind of inflation. In other fields at the same university it's more like

1.0 - 0.1%
1.1 - 0.3%
1.2 - 2 % ...

Imagine now one has a 1.2. Can he just say he is top 10% based on this table? IMO one has to be opportunistic here and not think much about it: Less than 10% have a better grade than you -> you are top 10%. People will probably not even check the table, as 1.2 is usually much better than top 10%.
But my friend in question has a bad feeling about it and is "scared" it will be conceived as cheating. What's your opinion on this? Is there any authoritative legal information on this?

Is there any authoritative legal information on this?

I am not aware of any jurisdiction in which applying for a stipend for which you are not eligible is illegal. For obvious reasons, eligibility is bindingly determined by the stipend giver, not by the applicants.
The rule "top 10%" does not seem to be stated clearly. If the students that got 1.2 in your class are included, then the statement

12.5% of the students in the class are in the top 10%

would be true, which seems to be a contradiction. If, as Nuclear Wang proposes, the students with 1.2 are not included in the 10%, then the statement

Only 5.5% of the students in the class are in the top 10%

would be true, which also seems a contradiction. As both plausible interpretations lead to apparent contradictions, it is reasonable to have doubts about the actual meaning of the rule. So if the rule is not stated more clearly, just apply and let the stipend givers decide. That is their job, not yours (or your friend's).


I mistakenly chose the CC BY 4.0 license on arxiv. Can anyone take my paper and publish it in a journal or conference? I recently submitted an under-review paper to arxiv. I mistakenly chose CC BY 4.0 as the license. I suddenly found out that I've done that mistake. Can anyone publish my paper in a journal or conference? Is there any way for changing the license? Would you please guide me on how bad is the situation for me? What are the consequences? I have worked hard on this paper and it is important to me.

Can anyone publish my paper in a journal or conference?

They'd need to attribute the paper to you.  Most journals will only accept papers written by the person who is submitting the paper.

Can a journal publish my paper on its own?

Yes.  You already gave permission to do so.  A legitimate journal probably won't do so.
Possibly a predatory journal might do so if they wanted to pad their journal.

Is there any way for changing the license?

Effectively, the answer is no.  The CC BY 4.0 license is irrevocable.  If you release the paper under a different license, people can just take the copy they received under CC BY 4.0 and distribute that.

What are the consequences?

Anyone can take your paper and publish it wherever they want, even if you don't provide individual permission.  However, they will have to cite you.  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ provides an overview of these permissions.

How bad is the situation for me?

It's not that bad for you.  CC BY 4.0 still requires attribution.  Unless you're trying to make money selling your paper, there's usually no reason to care if people freely distribute your paper.  Of course, many journals will refuse to publish a CC BY 4.0 paper (e.g., because they sell access to the paper or because they want an exclusive license).
Edit to add more details in reply to comments

Is it legal for someone to publish my paper without asking for explicit permission?

Yes.  Anyone is free to "redistribute the material in any medium or format." Mind you, they still have to attribute the work to you.

Can they do so without contacting me?

Yes.

Someone I dislike published my work.  Do I have any recourse?

Not usually.  Many licenses, including CC-BY 4.0 are specifically designed to prevent authors from having recourse, except if the license terms were violated.

Why would someone design a license that blocks authors from exercising control over how their work is used?

By disclaiming control over your work, licensees are protected from rogue licensors who later retract permission.  Similarly, licensees can spread the work without working with the licensee.  Licensors wishing to spread their work as widely as possible may wish to avoid placing any barriers on distribution of their work.


If you disclose an invention, are you still able to file for trade secrecy? Say I have an invention that I have already disclosed. I am now trying to seek a form of Intellectual Property for it. Am I still able to seek trade secrecy since I've already disclosed about the invention? If I can't file for trade secrecy, am I still able to file for a patent?

No. Trade secrets are not registered. Voluntary disclosure pretty much destroys trade secret status. If you want to have a trade secret, don't tell anyone without a non-disclosure agreement in place. A patent may be available to you depending on your jurisdiction. Consult an attorney in the location where you want to protect your invention.


What is a reasonable time to resubmit revised papers after they have been peer reviewed? I'm pondering on how much time I should plan to finalize a paper that has received a 'revise and resubmit' letter from the journal editor.

I know that I should return it as soon as possible. However, given that I have other work to do I would like to know if there's an unwritten rule on how long should I take to resubmit.

Many editors report the deadline in their decision letter. However, I have seen some decision letters without a deadline.

Please note that most submission systems provide a Due On date. See this screenshot from Manuscript Central:

If there is no indication regarding a deadline either in the letter, or in the submission system (or the journal website), the best for you would be to contact the handling editor.


Gender, Independence, and Authorship I have attended a few panels on applying to post-doctoral/junior faculty positions, and the topic of authorship and research direction always came up. All of the faculty on these panels noted that successful applicants needed to distinguish their research from their PI's by pursuing novel questions and publishing first-author papers.

But the women faculty also noted that regardless of the novelty of a question, a woman coauthoring a paper with her PI (even if she is a first author) is seen as less independent than a man coauthoring a paper with his PI. Consequently, the suggestion was that women should pursue sole-author publications or publications with colleagues at similar or earlier stages of their career.

These panels included faculty from physics, chemistry, and anthropology, but I want to focus on the natural sciences.

There are a few questions I have related to this advice.

Does it happen? Is what these women faculty describe true? For those of you who have served on faculty/post-doc selection committees, have you seen the evaluations of comparative candidates differ according to their gender?
Latino and Black applicants: There were no Latino or African-American faculty on these panels, but the reasons the women faculty gave for why women should go the extra mile in establishing independence seem to also apply to candidates from underrepresented groups. Have you seen evaluations differ according to whether candidates were from such groups?
Establishing Independence without Sole-Authorship: Supposing at least one of the answers to the previous questions is in the affirmative: It is not always possible for young scientists to develop sufficiently independent projects that lead to sole-authorships. How else might a candidate demonstrate sufficient independence from her PI? Recommendation letters can conceivably convey the quality and independence of a candidate, but are there things the candidate can do herself?

I recognize that the answers to these questions are likely opinion-based, but I am primarily looking for the opinions of stackexchange members in order to gauge whether the issue the women faculty cite is unique to my university.

Does it happen? Is what these women faculty describe true? For those
  of you who have served on faculty/post-doc selection committees, have
  you seen the evaluations of comparative candidates differ according to
  their gender?

Yes. This does happen. It is often hard to recognize - there's a degree of implicit bias at work all the time that's difficult to detect, because rare are applicants with genuinely comparative applications. It's easy to write off something one way or another - the prestige of the journals in question, the conclusions of the paper, etc. But I have, at times, seen it.

  Latino and Black applicants: There were no Latino or African-American
  faculty on these panels, but the reasons the women faculty gave for
  why women should go the extra mile in establishing independence seem
  to also apply to candidates from underrepresented groups. Have you
  seen evaluations differ according to whether candidates were from such
  groups?

While I encounter this less commonly because of the wide underrepresentation of these (and other) minoritized groups generally, I have seen it happen.

  How else might a candidate demonstrate sufficient independence from
  her PI? Recommendation letters can conceivably convey the quality and
  independence of a candidate, but are there things the candidate can do
  herself?

A couple things come to mind:

Being the PI on your own project. These may be small pilot grants or the like, no one expects you to land an R01 or the like. But it suggests some driving of your own research project.
Collaborations with not your PI. Your PI does not have to be on every paper you write, and it's possible to establish side projects etc. with other researchers. This occasionally has to be done with caution, due the the balancing of commitments, but it is possible.
If your job applications end up with a "Chalk Talk" where you outline your research agenda, nailing that. In my experience, this is where most candidates where I am, regardless of their gender, race or ethnicity, fail to establish their independence. You need to learn to tell the story of you the researcher, and how what you've done is, by and large, a logical arc into what you will do as an independent researcher.


How to address a Dr. des.? How do you address a Dr. des. (Doctor designatus), for example in e-mails?

Dr. John Doe
Dr. des. John Doe
John Doe
…?

While the formal title is Dr. des., there are good reasons to simply use the form of address you would use to a “final” doctor: the title is only temporary, and the person will eventually have the title or Dr.; moreover, PhD candidates having freshly attained their goal will probably enjoy you using it.

For those who wonder what Dr. des. is, it's a temporary title, like US presidents are “president elect”:

  Following a successful defence, the title of Doctor designatus (Dr. des.) may be used until the doctoral degree is gained.


Citing sources of problems in assignments This question was raised by Dave Clarke here.

When a textbook author approaches a topic in a novel way or presents a particularly interesting example, I believe that a teacher who creates lecture notes using this novel approach or interesting example would be doing the right thing to cite the originator of the approach or the example.  Similarly, whenever I copy a clever (and clearly unique) problem from a textbook and give it as a question in an exam or an assignment, I try my best to indicate (in the exam or assignment paper itself) the source of the original problem.

Does anyone know of any written document indicating whether or not it is considered unethical to copy a published problem and put it in an exam or an assignment without citing it?

I'm a textbook author. I agree that it's hard to formulate a cut-and-dried answer to your question. One criterion to consider: If a colleague would compliment you on a copied problem or question because it was particularly clever or insightful, you should probably consider a citation. Stated differently, if you're getting academic credit (even if informal) for the contribution, cite the source.


Academic fair use and using publication images in your thesis In the introductory chapter of my thesis, I've been surveying the previous work in my field. As part of this, I've used images from some of those publications and included them as Figures in my own thesis.

Occasionally, I have slightly edited them - for instance, changing the labelling.

I usually only use one image from each paper.

My understanding is that this falls under academic fair use, and I do not need permission from any of the publishers to re-use these images in my thesis.

Am I correct?

Update:

It is fairly easy to get permission using RightsLink with most publishers. Just fill out the form on the website and you get the licence immediately.

Bill Barth's comment is extremely important - fair use is a defence rather than a prophylactic and I for one don't want to be in a position of having to defend my use of Figures in a court of law.

Of course, it is extremely unlikely that any publisher would do such a thing, but my feeling is it's better to be safe than sorry.

You probably have a fair use right in the US to use images from copyright-protected works without permission from the copyright holder since you are using them for a critical purpose. But, -BUT-, fair use is a defense to a copyright infringement lawsuit that is not guaranteed to be successful. If you are sued by one of the copyright holders, you will have to assert this defense to them and probably also to a judge or jury in a court of law. This may cost you (or your institution if they choose to defend you) a large sum of money to take to court. $100k would not be unheard of. Given that, unless you have this kind of money just sitting around, you would be well served by asking the copyright holders (not necessarily the article authors, more likely the article publishers) for permission to use the images. It is usually granted.