Changing research topic I am a Master's student doing a research internship. I do not have to defend the results of my research at the end of the internship; however, I would ideally get a publication out of this.

I am working with a well-respected professor in applied mathematics. When he suggested a research topic, I quickly agreed. At first I found the topic a little bit strange and uninteresting, but I thought that I didn't understand it well. It seemed like he had not thought about the topic a lot, but he seemed enthusiastic about it.

After learning more, I confirmed my initial impressions. This problem has been studied extensively before, and my special case doesn't seem all that special. I reported my findings to the prof and he seemed to agree. Yet he suggested that I perform several numeric experiments to further investigate. I did so, but didn't get any definitive results. My supervisor had said that if the experiments failed, we would change the topic. But now he just keeps suggesting new ones.

I do not like the topic and would like to change topics as quickly as possible. However, I do not want to be seen as one who just jumps from topic to topic when something doesn't work. During our last meeting I attempted to "corner" the professor, asking for the interpretation of the possible outcome of the experiment in advance. Also, I was seemingly displeased by the idea of more experiments because I was arguing about their meaninglessness. The supervisor said something like "you seem to be looking for the excuse to not do the job." I definitely want to do the work as I want to get results. Yet, I think our current efforts will be fruitless.

What should I do?

First, negative results are useful too: for instance if you can show that the method is inapplicable by trying every reasonable option to make it work, this is a result by itself and it might be worth publication. Since your intuition is that this method cannot work, why not try to prove it? It doesn't really matter that your supervisor doesn't share this intuition.

It's not very surprising that your supervisor insists on continuing in this direction since it was what you agreed to at the start. Now if this is not something you want to do, then you have no choice: you need to talk to them about switching to a different topic. Mind that it's not always feasible to switch to a completely different topic during the course of a research internship.

Without knowing the details, my impression is that it's probably in your interest to finish the work that has been started rather than restart something from scratch (I assume that it's only for a few months). The important lesson here is: don't accept a topic that you don't like in the first place. Keep this in mind if you choose to do a PhD later ;)


What percentage of research papers have been digitalized? Is there any research/study/survey that tried to quantify the percentage of research papers that have been digitalized?

I understand that the notion of "research papers" may need to be defined in such a study, as well as other boundaries (e.g., date range).

Not an expert, but I would argue that this would be neigh impossible to determine given the criteria:

Definition of 'research paper'. As you stated, this needs to be defined, would this only include peer-reviewed? Published in a reputable publication medium?
Definition of Digitization. Would microprint count? How about magnetic tape? Without a means of know what is and is not digitized, an accurate count would be impossible.
Knowing the upper limit of all knowledge, known-knowns (such as Google's Index of papers) Known-Unknowns (such as closed-circulation repositories), Unknown-Knowns (some repository that exists but the researcher doesn't know about), and unknown-unknowns (perhaps a hidden server in a soviet bunker from the 80's).


How to compose mathematical papers in engineering conferences? I'm just preparing a paper in an engineering context about a new mathematical framework to do something novel. I've something around 9 definitions, 2 lemmas and 1 theorem (in addition to some remarks for further explanations). Currently, these items are successively placed in the manuscript, in that there is nothing between each pair in view of extra explanations (except those sparse mentioned remarks), like this:

Def. 1
Def. 2
Def. 3
Rem. 1
Def. 4
Def. 5
Def. 6
Def. 7
Lem. 1
Rem. 2
Def. 8
Lem. 2
Rem. 3
Thm.

In one hand, some people around me say that such roster of mathematical stuffs without extra illustrations between each pair of items is incredibly tedious for the reader, because the paper is supposed to be an engineering one.
On the other hand, I've faced with a 6-page limitation for this manuscript and can not elaborate the stuffs, considerably, without violating the restriction. Furthermore, I've done my best to apply the necessary explanations as much as possible by considered remarks. But there are still situations in which 3 or 4 definitions are located at the paper next to each other.
Is this a poorly-organized fashion of proceeding-paper composition (especially in technical fields, not pure mathematics)?
Any idea for better arrangement?

Yes, it is considered good form, in mathematics, to have at least a sentence to introduce 'named' theorems, lemmas and definitions and navigate the reader through the results. And an "introduction" section --- you can dispense with the conclusions.

Sometimes in this kind of venues you are allowed to put the proofs of your theorems and lemmas in an appendix (which doesn't count against your page limit). Ask the organizers if it is the case.

If not, then leave everything as it is; it seems that you have no better solution (assuming that you have already tried to save as much vertical space as you can).


What is the best technique to represent similarily among different methods? Lets say I have 3 different methods. I am trying to find the best technique to represent similarities (or differences) among these methods.

One way I thought of is to create a table and create my own correlation methodology (e.g., high, medium, and low). However, I am not sure if this is the best way to do it.

Here is the corresponding LaTeX code I created (just in case):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{booktabs}

\begin{document}
\begin{table}
    \centering
\begin{tabular}{llll}
    \toprule
             & Method 1 & Method 2 & Method 3 \\
    Method 1 & High & High  & Low \\
    Method 2 & Medium & Low & Low \\
    Method 3 & Low & Low  & Low \\
    \bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\caption{Level of correlation among different methods}
\end{table}
\end{document}

I assume that the high, low and medium corresponds to some analytical values and are dependent on various factors. So how about to assign some values to all constraints and so to this high, low and mediums also. Then finally show as an shaded matrix plot e.g.,


exchanging emails between professors I am going to send an email (including my CV) to a professor who has offered a postdoc position. Regarding recommendation letters or (any other contacts such as exchanging emails about me) between potential mentor of postdoc and my Ph.D. advisor, I would like to know that : Will the professor of postdoc send email to my adviser directly to ask a recommendation letter or any other questions about me without informing me?

Usually, one should not do this because it might have implication on your current position, especially if you are not selected afterwards.

Especially in academia, people might know each other very well and in such cases one might be tempted to make a short phone call or talk at a conference.

If you want to avoid this, you should explicitely mention, that you don't want that your current advisor will be contacted because [insert good reason here].


Why is that when your first upload a paper onto ArXiv, Google Search shows that it has been uploaded to "https://128.84.21.199" Has anyone else noticed this?

When I uploaded a paper onto ArXiv, and after two days when it finally shows up on Google (in Google Search, of course), Google says the paper can be found via the link https://128.84.21.199/pdf/arxiv_ID_of_your_paper

This wouldn't have been a problem if wasn't for my browser issuing a warning before clicking on it

Can anyone explain what is going on here?

That number is the IP address for arxiv. Typing "arxiv.org" into your browser is effectively the same as typing that number (the domain name will get converted for you).

Why the error? The HTTPS certificate is assigned to a domain name, not to the IP address (which is good, because IP addresses may change). Even though in this case, the domain name would result in this IP address, your browser thinks it is trying to use a false certificate.

To avoid this error message, just replace that number in the URL with "arxiv.org" and the error will go away. A worse workaround would be to replace "HTTPS" with "HTTP".


How do admission committees in US grad schools avoid a 'Native Speaker Bias' in evaluating recommendation letters? For the first time (I am a relatively junior professor), a student has asked me to write a letter of recommendation for him for graduate school application in the US. I was glad to do so, as he is an excellent student who has performed research with me - we have authored a paper together.

On going through my letter now, it seems a bit ... unnatural. I have used the same adjective on multiple occasions - I only know so many ways to say that a student is 'good' at something. I am also sure that some of my word-choices will be noted as peculiar to the native speaker - most of my English writing experience is in academic contexts. While comparing to random examples that I have found on the internet, my letter seems boring and dull. I am also sure that my letter will have grammar errors of some form or another.

I wanted to know how admissions committees avoid having biases towards letters written by more talented writers, or by native speakers. If you were to put two letters having similar contents in front of me - one written by me and one written by a British or American or any other native  English speaking professor, I would say that theirs is definitely superior, and I would feel more positively to their student.

I think your question falsely equates being a "talented writer" with things like knowing correct English grammar and spelling and knowing many synonyms for "good", which native English speakers are better at than non-native ones. Those things may indeed be correlated, but they are far from the same, and there are many native English speakers who are crappy writers, and plenty of non-native ones who are "talented writers" who can write a very compelling letter of recommendation, whether grammatically correct or not.

To me, a talented writer is someone who has a good ability to communicate complex ideas effectively in writing. In the context of a letter of recommendation, the grammar and spelling may be poor and the choice of words can be clunky in certain places but the letter can still tell a good story about why the student is worth admitting and be more persuasive than a dry, boring but grammatically flawless letter written by a less talented writer. So, to the extent that students whose letters are written by talented writers enjoy an advantage in admissions decisions, that advantage is not what I would call an unfair advantage or a bias; at least, it's no more unfair than many other merit parameters that applications are judged upon, many of which are unfair to some extent. (In particular, with letters of recommendation there is certainly some unfairness that is intrinsic to the whole system of LORs that academia is built on, since how effective the letters are depends on many random factors, including how talented the writers happen to be).

To summarize, as a general rule I don't think there is any particular "native speaker bias" that needs to be avoided. Admissions committee should read the letters and be impressed by each letter precisely to the extent that it makes a compelling case for admission.*

*The only possible exception to this conclusion is in the case of letters coming from countries where many academics really can't speak or write English very well. Those letters in some cases can be extremely difficult to extract any useful information from, and an applicant with such letters is probably not going to fare too well, perhaps unfairly. However, I don't see what can be done about that -- that is essentially one of the flaws intrinsic to the entire LOR system, as I mentioned above. The system may be flawed, but as far as I know no one has yet found a system that works better.


Tips & Examples for Academic Video Making in CS and Related Fields? Computer science conferences these days often ask authors to make short videos based on their papers. The short ones might be 30 secs in length. The longer ones might be about 5 min long.

These videos, if made well, can attract people to your talk during the conference, and also serve as a great introduction to your paper for future readers after the conference.

I'd appreciate some tips and advice on how to make these videos good. If you have a favorite example of such videos, I'd love to see it too!

SciFund ran a class last summer on making academic videos.

Some tips from that course that I found helpful:

Start with a "hook" to grab viewers' attention, use dramatic tension to keep it. See e.g. this video. (From Week 2 of the course.)
In your script, emulate the way people speak, not write - it will sound much more natural. (See Week 3 of the course.)
When you record your voice-over, use good equipment (you can get a cheap lav mike that works with a smartphone and has pretty decent quality), record in a quiet place, keep your tone level. (From Week 3 of the course.)

All of the class materials are available online:

Week 0
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5

As for examples of good science videos, Vox has some nice examples of videos that are both appealing and informative. See e.g. this one, or this one. Although theirs are for a general audience, not a specialist audience, a lot of the principles are the same, and I personally find it useful to note things that I think they do well (production-wise) that I can emulate.


When did it become inappropriate for a professor to smoke during lectures? Sidney Coleman smoked during lectures he gave. Was this universally acceptable behavior at the time? When did smoking during lectures become inappropriate?

Some older universities have lecture theatres of mainly timber construction.  At those places, I'd suggest it was always inappropriate.  Otherwise, I'd say it became inappropriate as soon as there was clear evidence in the peer-reviewed literature that passive smoking has serious deleterious health effects on otherwise healthy adults.  A quick Google Scholar date-range search suggests that this happened between about 1979 and 1981.
The "universally accepted" half of the question, of course, may be a very different matter.


How to shut ears to office gossip? Our institute has office spaces for the PhD students with a number of cubicles in the same room. I happen to be an introvert and dislike people talking to me when I am in the office space, or otherwise. But people just love to gossip. They will talk about how bad their supervisor is or how bad my supervisor is, and even though a lot of what they say might be true, it takes a lot of unnecessary toll on me. It makes me very unsettled about my future.

I simply do not understand why people love to talk so much. Are they trying to be helpful? Are the seniors among them trying to guide me? How do I make it happen that I keep going to the office space and not have to make small talk or gossip with other folks there?

I like the headphones idea, and perhaps a baseball cap, worn rather low, would help in a similar way.  Some more ideas:

You could put an embroidered sign on your cubicle wall (or a
calligraphy version) saying something like "If you can't say
something nice, don't say anything at all" or "If you can't say
something nice, say it in French."  If those are too blatant,
perhaps you could post the latter phrase in French.  Or choose one
of the many images available online that represent the concept.
I particularly liked "NO Trashing OR Bashing Zone."
When someone approaches you and starts yakking, there are two ways
of stopping them:

(a) Look interested, respond with a wide variety of facial
expressions, but without saying anything.

(b) Say, "I don't want to lose my train of thought, and I've got a deadline -- can you tell
me the rest tomorrow?"
Start coughing, grab an empty water bottle from your desk drawer, point at your throat, and walk quickly to the bathroom.  If the person is still in your visitor's chair when you come back, point at your throat and communicate nonverbally that you can't talk -- until he goes away.
For the really stubborn person who needs a more careful explanation -- just tell them the truth: "I'm the sensitive type, and when I hear negative remarks, I soak them up like a sponge, and they affect me way too much.  This is nothing against you -- but I have to protect myself.  So when I hear you starting to tell me something that's going to affect me this way, I'm going to say, "I'm sorry, Rafael, but I don't want to listen to this."  (And then if he tries again next week, say it.)


Full length articles or multiple letters to publish in Journal? Prior to submitting a Journal article, I had a conversation with my supervisor about whether it was suitable for a letter (max 4 pages) or a more detailed article (max 12 pages). My position was that the core contribution (a new method) could be concisely and completely be described in less than 4 pages, and should therefore be a letter. The complication was that some progress had been made on the application of the method to a particular problem.

I therefore wanted to publish the first letter straight away, and later publish a second letter later dealing with the application. My supervisor didn't like this idea. He said it was "playing the game" to increase one's own H-index, and it was more suited to a single article. I subsequently took his advice to submit a full length article. However, now (with the article submitted over 3 months ago, and still under editorial review) he has changed his mind and says it's "up to me" as to whether I would like to withdraw it and resubmit as 2 letters...

So my question is whether there is any disadvantage to publishing research as a series of short (more concise/readable, and faster reviewed) letters in the same Journal?

(In this journal the letters are also mandated as open access, which is an option rarely used for the full length articles, and may improve findability)

My advice would be to go through with the submission as is. If you were to withdraw the manuscript you would then have to write the two new papers and go through review for each of them. These steps take a lot of time and effort, both of which you could spend on original research (e.g. use this new method to solve various other problems).

The only case where the resubmittal might be interesting is if your results are so novel and significant that you are almost sure you can publish them in a high-profile journal (more prestigious than the current one). Then again, if they had this kind of potential I guess your advisor would have spotted it...

Generally speaking, having two papers (one of them as a letter in a prestigious journal) is of course more gratifying than one long publication and looks better on the CV. There are however two points to consider:

The results need to be important enough to warrant publication as a letter. In particular, the (uncertain) benefit of having it published must compensate the investment in time and effort (see above).
The "long paper" should contain enough new material to stand on its own. "Salami slicing", also known as the search for the "minimum publishable unit", is frowned upon. Although this behavior is not apparent from the publication list, it can be detected by careful examination (e.g. by the candidate's referee on a hiring committee).

See also this thread for more details.


Are non-Western University PhD's really frowned upon? I am completing my master's by thesis this year at a small university in the West. I would really like to pursue my PhD (Maths/Stats) in Hong Kong, but I've been told by my supervisor and others that  a PhD from a non-Western country is looked down upon by employers. Especially in my desired industry (finance).

This doesn't really make sense to me because Hong Kong is obviously a very developed city, the language of instruction is English, and it's a big financial center. The universities I'd want to enter (University of Hong kong and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) are also ranked in top 100.

Is my supervisor wrong here, or is this something I should seriously be considering?

I am particularly concerned about Hong Kong or Singapore employers, but also of ones based in Europe and Australasia.

All degrees have value somewhere. What you need to think about is where you want to work when you complete your studies. Obviously if your goal is to work in Asia or particularly in Hong Kong there should be no problems with a Hong Kong degree.

Another concern to consider is whether you will work in academia or industry. Sometimes academia needs to hire people whose degrees are recognized by the local government. Sometimes for political reasons one country will not recognize another country's degrees unless the university is transcendently elite. This forces the university to look elsewhere for talent.

In industry, they usually do not need to hire people with degrees from government recognized countries.


Finding some errors in my "IEEE conference paper" after presentation but before publication Two days ago, I presented my accepted paper in an IEEE conference. While I am presenting, I noticed that I really made 3 mistakes in the notations! I don't really know why I didn't make attention for that before! For example, in the first place, I wrote lambda instead of alpha. In other place, I forgot to put an absolute value to the variable used. In the third place, I forgot a parenthesis for a group of variables. The problem is that in this part (very mathematical part), I have a lot of mathematical notations, and so I made these errors.

My errors do not affect neither the results nor the conclusion since while I am citing another paper and writing some of its equations in my paper, I made these errors. So I think the reader will detect these errors when he reads the cited paper (it is very embarrassing for me when the author of the paper I cited sees that I made errors in his equations! very embarrassing). I think an interesting reader to my paper will only consider that these errors are due to the lack of enough revisions before the camera-ready deadline, I hope! (what do you think?). I am really very sad because in this case some researchers will consider me as a "careless writer".

The paper is not yet published online, but I have already presented it (two days ago) in the conference. So I am wondering if it is still possible to contact the committee and tell them about the errors? do you think they can provide me a chance to send them a correct version? is it still possible?

BTW I have submitted the corrected version on ArXiv and researchgate. But I don't know if the researchers will make attention that the errors are corrected on ArXiv for example? do you think the reasearchers mostly read papers on ArXiv rather than reading the official versions present in IEEE Xplore?

I would say it's worthy to try, there's no shame in doing it.

Contact them and tell that you have found some typos which you would like to correct before publication. Attach to the email the corrected version and another pdf with the highlighted changes, where they will be able to easily spot the minor issues you found.


How should I adress (grammatically) a referee whose gender is unknown? I'm responding to an anonymous referee who made comments and suggestions on an article I wrote.

Since I don't know the gender, I thought of two possibilities:

We agree with the referee on its comment...
We agree with the referee on their comment...

Is either of these the proper way to refer to the referee? Or should I just write "he/she" "his/her" on every occasion?

The use of singular they, as in your second option,

We agree with the referee on their comment...

is perfectly appropriate. You can also use some other alternatives, most notably he/she, as in e.g.

We agree with the referee on his/her comment...

I would discourage you from using some of the more niche alternatives, such as Spivak pronouns, in correspondence that's this formal.

On the other hand, your first alternative (We agree with the referee on its comment...) should not be used under any circumstances. It is considered extremely rude by native English speakers, since it reduces the referee to the level of an inanimate thing. If you use it you can hope, at best, to come off as someone with a very poor command of the English language.


Is a Polish PhD degree in engineering equally respected in North America? Is a Polish PhD degree in engineering equally revered as a North American degree (i.e., from Canada or USA) in the area of academia and job-market?

No, it generally wouldn't be as revered. If you look at the university ranking systems, Polish institutions are generally not as  well ranked, or regarded as North American institutions. This is also true if you look at the specific rating given for the quality of engineering education within these universities. For example, see:

http://www.topuniversities.com/qs-world-university-rankings
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings


Why should I enter a pure math PhD program if I most likely won't end up in academia? Assumptions:

The typical pure math PhD-bound undergraduate goes into a pure math PhD because they are [insert reasonable prerequisites for pure math PhD, (not the focus of this question)] and they want to end up in academia.
(With some exceptions) A pure math PhD is for people who want to enter academia.

Since most pure math PhD students won't end up in academia, we must wonder, given the above assumptions, the following question.
Question

Aside from the easy answer (see below), why should the typical pure math PhD-bound undergraduate enter a pure math PhD program if they will (1) probably not achieve their goal of entering academia and (2) probably have a few hard years after their PhD in chaotically bouncing around post-docs (never knowing when the end is in sight) and eventually readjusting their career goals to go into industry?

(1), (2) are based on observations one can easily make by browsing this site and talking to professors. This question may be abstracted to

Why should one go on a 5 year journey to achieve something they will probably not achieve, and upon failure, will subsequently face irreversible consequences (i.e., time lost, financial insecurity, etc.)?

The easy answer:
The typical answer is: "Follow your heart, and do it if you can't imagine yourself doing something else." But this is an emotional answer which is automatically true for every undergraduate who is very serious about a pure math PhD. And just because you think something will make you happy doesn't mean you should always do it. Sure, a PhD is fun, but it seems like a PhD gets really not fun very quickly upon graduation.
Overall, it's very easy for naive undergraduates to accept this "follow your heart" answer because us pure math PhD-bound undergraduates tend to think "Others have trouble, but I'm special." That's an extremely naive and unrealistic way to address the fact that most graduates from pure math PhD programs experience employment difficulties.
My background:
Mathematics undergraduate applying to PhD programs. I like math, I think I'm mentally and academically prepared to enroll in a pure math PhD program, and I have aimed to enter academia for a while. I know that with the right institution I would love a pure math PhD, but I want realistic career goals and not some naive expectation of "grad school -> PhD -> post-doc -> tenure" in going into a pure math PhD.
Note: My background is not really a background. It is included to reinforce the fact that I'm your average pure math PhD-bound undergraduate, who would probably do just fine in PhD program, and therefore this question might apply to similar undergraduates who are also not trying to be so naive about their career goals.

why should I enter a pure math PhD program with the goal of entering academia if I will (1) probably not achieve this goal, (2) probably have a few hard years after my math PhD, and (3) probably end up in industry in which case I could have taken a less stressful route and even prepared myself better with a PhD in another field?

With the mindset that you are showing by the very loaded way your question is phrased - including several rather misguided beliefs I will address below - consider the possibility that the answer is “you shouldn’t”.
What are these beliefs I’m referring to? They are:

Something is not worth trying if the probability of success is lower than 50%

The definition of “success” in pursuing a pure math PhD is to have a career in academia

Any argument for pursuing a pure math PhD is not helpful or worth considering if it is “vague and subjective”.

In fact, these beliefs are not true in any universal sense. The decision to pursue a PhD in pure math is a personal and completely subjective one. It’s right for some people, and not right for others, and for each person it’s either right or not right for different reasons: e.g., for some people who do define success as an academic career it’s still the right decision because they are talented enough to defy the average not-so-great statistical odds you are referring to; others simply define success in completely different ways.
Likewise, the people for whom the decision does not seem like the right one also differ in the reasons why they reach that conclusion. Some are passionate about math but don’t think the effort, stress and opportunity cost are worth the risk of not achieving the dream of an academic career. Others may be so mathematically talented that they can know with a fairly high degree of certainty that they can have an academic career, and yet nonetheless find other opportunities more alluring.
Your question suggests that you want someone to come here and persuade you to do a pure math PhD by giving you some objective, scientific reason to do it. That’s not how it works. You’ll have to do your own thinking and make your own decision based on your own ideas of what matters most in life and what kind of life and career you want. I said at the beginning of the answer that it sounds like a math PhD may not be right for you, but of course I don’t know you and may well be wrong about that impression, so don’t let it prevent you from making the choice that’s right for you. Good luck!


Is it an appropriate way for a student to ask for marks? A student requested to meet marker(me) to talk about midterm. He thought the mark was unfair. But we met, he just told me to point out why he was wrong. He got 0 for that question and I had no idea why he thought the mark was wrong. I was unable to give a very clear explanation. And the student just got angry, like I owed him. After this unhappy experience. I decided to let students state why they think the marks are wrong and attach snapshot in emails. If I think the reason is unjustified I will just point it out and refer them to the instructor. Is that a good policy?

Short answer:

  It is expected for an evaluator to give appropriate reasons for the reduction in marks. However, I welcome your new policy -- it portrays openness and trustworthiness.

Detail:

Evaluation of answer scripts can be a tiresome work and it is only human to make mistakes at times. We usually take extra care when evaluating the final exams, but most would not pay that level of concentration for a mid-term assessment. It is only natural for some students to doubt the marks awarded for some of their answers. In such cases, I believe the students have their right to claim for the marks which might have been overlooked.

When asked why the answer is wrong, it would be the duty of the evaluator to state the reasons clearly. Only then the student can correct the mistake in future. The whole point of assessment tests is not only to measure how much the students have learned but also to set them on the right path and know where they are going wrong.

The following approach sounds more diplomatic for a student when asking for marks:

"Sir/Ma'am, may I know what is wrong with my answer so that I could give a better answer next time?"

When the evaluator explains the answer, the student can then point to where the explains concepts appear (if they do) on her/his answer. Then, the evaluator can make the necessary correction in the marking.

Politeness is the key. This approach is what I have adopted for my whole life as a student and expect the same for my students too.

Your approach seems quite new yet attractive to me. Usually, clarification with marks are done in office hours outside class. You never really know how this might work until you put this to practice. But it does give the impression to the students that you seem to be a more open and trustworthy evaluator (IMO).


Accepting admission offer from more than one institute in United States I'm an international applicant and I'm not very familiar with the routines of admissions in United States. I was wondering if I get admitted from a university and accepting their offer and while trying to get F-1 visa for it, I get another admission from another university, would I be eligible to accept the admission offer of the latter university or not?

You are only allowed to accept admission at one university.  As soon as you do so, you should contact all other universities to which you applied, and tell them you have chosen another school and are withdrawing your application.

If you accept admission at University X, then withdraw it and accept admission at University Y instead in the same year, it's considered unethical behavior, and Y might rescind your admission if they find out.

Most US universities use coordinated acceptance deadlines, so you should know exactly which schools have admitted you before you have to choose one.


Peer review: Is this "citation tower" a bad practice? I am peer-reviewing an article "A" and I found something interesting. The authors use a mathematical lemma (which is just an inequality) for which they cite article "B". I have used this inequality before for many years, but noticed that "B" is an article from 2019, so evidently this inequality wasn't discovered/derived for the first time in "B".  I was curious so I managed to obtain this article "B" and noticed that they use the same inequality by citing article "C". A similar thing happens in "C" by citing "D", and so on until we get to "F". Notice that in this whole "citation tower" no new information is added: the mathematical lemma remained essentially the same.
Moreover, some of the same authors appear in some of the works A,B,...,F but not in all and not consecutively. However, an author of "A" is also an author of "F". Finally, in "F" (which is an article from 2011) the authors provide the mathematical lemma, and provide a proof for it. However, I have seen other works in the literature which uses this result even before 2011, and actually I can track it all the way until I reach a famous (but OLD) book "Z" which provides the same inequality but not necessarily using the same notation.
Do you think this "citation tower" (is there another name for this practice?) is a bad enough practice to point it out in my review? Up to now I am considering the following things to do with my review (regarding this issue only):

Do nothing. The authors are using a result from the literature by appropriately citing it.

Just suggest them to cite "F" instead of "B".

Suggest them to cite "Z" instead of "B".

However, since an author of "A" is also an author of "F", under the assumption that this citation tower is indeed a bad practice, and that the result was given in "F" as if it was discovered there even when this result was known many years before, there is a fourth option:

Point them out this issue describing it as a bad practice in order to help preventing it in the future. Moreover, I was thinking in asking the reviewers to cite "F" and adding a note in the final manuscript saying that the result was shown in "F" using modern notation, but it was known to be true since "Z".

EDIT AFTER SUBMITTING MY REVIEW: It is very hard to chose a correct answer, since I don't believe there is a single one. There are very nice answers here, but I will mark as correct the one that mostly resembles what I did at the end.

I think this requires some nuance. You seem to suggest that citing the earliest usage is preferable, and it might be. But it might also be the case that each subsequent usage adds something to the context. That is to say that the citation appears in the chain for some particular use and the reader of the current paper might find it useful to explore that history. Each of those citations is surrounded by context that can be useful.
If you always cite only the earliest usage, then the reader has no hints about the overall usage context of that thing cited. And the current author might be inviting the exploration.
Of course, it might also be that the author(s) considers the lemma to be a minor point and has used the citation they found without chasing the chain back themself, not seeing any need for it in the current context.
Overdone, in mathematics, we just always cite Euclid.
So, I don't think citing a later, rather than an earlier paper is a bad practice necessarily, but could be in a particular instance.
You can always note the other citations in your review and point to the earliest one without making any specific recommendation.


What is work-life balance like in academia in Japan? I am a current PhD student, still a couple years off from graduation. I'm still keeping my options open, but I've started to idly consider interesting places to do a postdoc.

Fit with a mentor and relevance of research is of course the most important thing, but the postdoc period is also a chance to live in cool places for a few years at a time. Work-life balance is also pretty important to me, though, and I have heard some crazy stories about work-life balance in general in Japan.

How is it in Japanese academia as a postdoc from the west? Does it depend on who you work for/what university you are in, or where you're from?

For reference, I did a bachelors in the US and a masters and (currently) PhD in Finland, where home life is highly respected and you're basically not expected to work on weekends/evenings unless you want to.

Edit: If it's relevant, my field of study is genetics, but I mostly work on the computer and don't expect to have much to do with wet lab experiments in the future.

My personal experience is positive -- at least, in our institution, I don't really feel pressure from colleagues or management. However, I suspect it depends on a particular place. There are certain situations that I consider unavoidable, and thus I don't think people disrespect one's life-work balance, but unpleasant things happen.

For example, we might have grant deadlines or other paperwork in the middle of vacation, and of course, we are expected to get things done. Certain events like open campus, student competitons or entrance exams typically happen on weekends, and someone has to take care.

So, at least for me, most pressure comes from objective reality rather than someone's direct requests. When I have to work on a conference paper day and night to meet the deadline, that's for my own good, and I won't do myself a favor by missing it. The situation is more complicated in case of joint work when I can let down my colleagues, but perhaps Japan isn't special in such matters.

From the perspective of regulations, labor laws of course protect employees, and our administration actually asks us to take more vacation days to improve their stats, and they even offer additional vacations on top of what we have during the summer break. Your mileage may vary, but most professors around me don't push their students/postdocs too hard. I believe it might depend on the source of funding as well.


Term for the opposite of salami publishing Question

Salami publishing refers to the practice of splitting scientific work into overly small pieces (least publishable units) and publishing a separate paper about each.

I am looking for a term for the opposite practice, i.e., lumping together a lot of or too much scientific work into one paper.

I prefer terms that can be understood (by a suitable audience) without further explanation. Essentially, I want something less cumbersome than opposite of salami publishing.
I have no strong preference regarding the tone of the term. E.g., it can be derogatory (but doesn’t need to be).
I am open to neologisms, but please consider the first point.

Background

This term would be useful for me to talk about the publishing culture in biology (or certain subfields thereof), where new relevant methods often do not get papers on their own, but are only published as the appendix to some paper that is primarily about findings achieved with that method.

I call it "kitchen sink publishing."  I apply the term to papers which contain redundant methods for determining the result.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/everything_but_the_kitchen_sink


Esci vs scopus ? Which one to follow Which are considered as trustworthy good quality  journals , the ones indexed in esci by web of science or are the ones indexed in scopus ? There are some journals which us indexed in esci and not in scopus and vice versa. Any lead points on this ?

Not an expert on this, but my understanding of the two are:

ESCI aka. Emerging Sources Citation Index is a "lower-ranked" index. Journals listed here are being considered for the more prestigious indices SCIE, SSCI, and AHCI (note this doesn't include SCI, which is the most prestigious index). In other words, ESCI is a "feeder" index to the SCIE/SSCI/AHCI, which in turn feed into SCI. If you search the ESCI, you'll find that the most prestigious journals such as Physical Review Letters aren't actually indexed here.

Scopus is fundamentally different and is built more on inclusiveness than quality. If you look at the inclusion criteria, Scopus mostly demands regular publication, peer review, diversity in authors & editors, and online availability. It does require that the journal's articles also be cited by other journals in Scopus, but not more than that. Scopus has many, many more journals than ESCI.

So which is good? Hard to say, and depends on what you mean by 'good'. Good journals will be in Scopus, but being in Scopus doesn't mean a journal is good. Being in ESCI is a different matter, since the really good journals won't be in it, but the really bad ones won't be in it either. It's your judgment call to make.


Asking my Professor to create a Google Account to submit a Letter of Recommendation for me I requested a recommendation letter to a professor and he agreed to write one for me. However, the application  (a Google form) to which he needed to upload the letter required a Google account to sign in. He didn't have an account, so he emailed me what he should do, so I kindly told him that he needed to create one, detailing the steps he needed to take. This is when my professor emailed me back rather harshly, asking why he couldn't just submit using just his faculty email. I had to then email the program, and I was told to ask my professor to send the letter directly to the correspondent.

I understand that this is not that big of an issue, but I would like to know whether it was wrongful of me to have asked my professor to create the Google account. How can I be more careful in the future so as to prevent negative responses?

My best guess, and just a guess, is that he was frustrated with the system that was required, rather than with you. It is probably a mistake for any admissions system to require an email address from a particular provider (unless it was for a job at Google, I suppose).

I don't think you made an error, but if you want to ease the waters, go see him and apologize for the hassle of it all. It would probably be a mistake to just forget about it, but also a mistake to obsess over it.

Such systems infuriate me, also. Such extra accounts are always a security/privacy issue.


Submitting a paper to a conference whose scientific committee includes an academic from a grad school you want to enroll I am planning to submit my paper to an international conference. The level of the conference might be high considering my paper and for my academic background at the moment. My paper can fit in one of the poster sessions though.

However, the scientific committee includes one academics who belongs to one of the top graduate schools in my field, which I want to apply in a few years. In case of a rejection of my paper to that conference, I do have some concerns if that academic person remembers my name, my institution etc. and hold some negative bias during my graduate application (one MPhil programme)?

Should this possibility of rejection of my paper discourage me and should not I submit my paper due to this fear?

The chance that a rejection would have this impact on your graduate school application is extremely low.

First, check how many members the program committee has, and realize that only 1 - 3 of them will look at your paper at all during review. Second, even if the paper is rejected, there is a chance that the person handling the paper will have forgotten about the details after a year or more. Third, even if they remember, they may not hold it against you, especially if the conference is very competitive, but rather look at the positive things you show in your application.

On the other hand, think about how acceptance of your paper would later on increase your chances of getting admitted to this graduate school! This would be something that you put in your application anyway, so there's no problem with it being forgotten, and it will make a positive impression even if that particular committee member was not the one to handle your paper. It is definitely a "risk" worth taking!


What counts the most for admission to a MSc : Erasmus programme or summer school / research programme? I'm doing my bachelor degree in Physics in Italy and I'm strongly considering to continue my studies abroad (in Europe) after the degree.

I don't know whether I should spend a period studying in a university abroad (precisely participating in what is called an "Erasmus programme") or apply for a summer school / summer research programme abroad during the years of my bachelor.

Which of these two is more likely to be a parameter of valuation taken in consideration for a future admission to a master of science in a university abroad?

The Erasmus programme is considered to be a very good experience but I don't know if it is evaluated in an admission process, in the end it is "simply" a period of study, but in a different country. I mean, usually it doesn't add something to the formation of the student in terms of knowledge in the subject, which is something that a summer school or a research programme could do.

Does anyone have suggestions?

Thanks a lot for your help

Erasmus program is evaluated in sense that you are capable of living and working in new surrounding and that you can integrate easily and adapt faster to school system of given country ( host university). This mean that your advantage in overcoming so called "cultural shock" and that you will not spent you MSc with loosing your time and nerves in adapting.
but EP  is not crucial and never been, many students that I know, enrolled in MSc without Erasmus experience,
If you want to pursue research oriented program ( which I highly doubt it exist in EU as a part of international MSc program, excluding UK) then Summer research program is desirable. I need to warn you, that quality of that research program and advisor on host institution needs to be appropriate.

As someone who been on both, erasmus and sumer research, I benefited more from summer research program, but I can thank to my advisor on that institution, also there are many examples where students found out that erasmus were more valuable experience than SRP, they felt like lab technicians during SRP. This you should avoid. Contact and inform well before going to that institution. I guess it is individual experience and each department or university that are in programs are not valued the same.


Some possible ways to respond to a student complaining about not having enough time on exam A student emailed me after a recent exam, complaining about not having enough time to finish the exam. Out of all the students, most managed to finish within 2/3 of the provided time. I wonder what might be some possible ways to respond to this kind of complaint. (This is my first time teaching a class of my own -- I only TA'd before, so I've never had to deal with this type of issue in the past).

When I was a TA for a large artificial intelligence class, we frequently had this complaint from students.  The reason was that, due to the nature of the class, many of the problems could be worked out eventually from first principles (or from the book or notes, since these were often open book as well) by somebody who didn't understand the material, but could only be worked out efficiently by a person who knew the material.  We thus tended to end up with most students finishing well before allotted time, but a noticeably minority who did very bad work right up to the end, and felt "if they'd just had another hour or two" they could have done everything right.

Our response was to explain that the test was looking not just for the ability to solve the problems, but for facility with the problem-solving techniques.  Thus, speed really did count!  This was also borne out by the distributions: it really wasn't a problem for the stronger students.

I would thus recommend first looking at the distribution of the grades: if the strong students mostly finished early, then you probably have a weak student who was trying to work things out from first principles, hazy recollection, or source material (if you're open book).  You can then explain something similar, that you are testing not just the ability to solve problems, but facility with the concepts, and if they are weak with the concepts, it is likely to show up in slow test-taking time.

Now, it is also possible that the student has a medical impairment, such as dyslexia, that genuinely means they cannot work quickly.  If this is the case, then most universities have services that can help to evaluate them and plan appropriate accommodation, which can be communicated to you for application to future exams by the responsible personnel.  Don't just take a Doctor's note, because an M.D. can only detect the existence of a condition, not calibrate an appropriate educational adjustment for it.


What are the pedagogical and institutional implications of implementing a Lecture Capture system? My university is about to roll-out a Lecture Capture system (Panopto in this case), and I am in the business of promoting and supporting it.  In case it makes a difference, I am in the UK.  I suppose there might be some degree of cultural specificity here, but my suspicion at this point is that the technical environment is a more significant factor.

In principle (being something of a hardened technophile by nature) I have no problem with championing this kind of system, but I want to be able to anticipate both the opportunities AND the challenges that it represents.

Therefore I am interested in people's direct experience and/or theoretical observations concerning the real-world consequences of adopting such a system, AND in the real enthusiasms and anxieties (even if they are ill-founded) that such an adoption tends to raise.  Those will be real and must be managed positively, whether or not they are initially well-informed.

For example, I am pretty sure that such systems can be used poorly, just consuming effort without observable benefit.  I can imagine them generating perceived requirements that achieve little, imposed for political reasons by administrators who neither use nor understand them.  (I am not at all prejudiced against university administrators as a group:  I am a long-time administrator, and only more recently an active teaching academic as well.)  In turn this might conceivably increase the pressure of fee-paying student demand ('I want you to do it like this...') perhaps without really benefiting anyone at all.

On the other hand, I can also easily imagine the possibility of enhanced and enriched educational delivery, presumably with a suitably tuned sort of preparation.

Most broadly, my immediate instinct is that use of this kind of system will necessitate at least some extra considerations (and presumably effort) in preparation... but that a well-planned implementation could pay off in terms like scaleability of provision and replicability of material.

Then again, that also seems automatically to raise the idea of maintenance.  In a way it's rather lovely to think that a 'captured' lecture could just be presented over and over again... but in practice both the subject matter and the institutional context (course structure, audience, whatever) will change over time.  Surely there will be conflicting pressures to create material that will last through many presentations, but also to update it dynamically from one presentation to another.  Even if we have the time and resources to do that, how do we do it with credibility, when (for example) I might go grey from one year to the next (that happened), or might simply no longer possess that jacket?

So...  As a long-time technogeek (I have built all of my own PCs, for 25 years) I am vividly aware that simply adopting a potentially clever system does not intrinsically produce cleverness, and might in fact produce nothing but headaches.  At best, it seems inevitable that niggles like my guesses above will arise.  At worst, decommitting from a poorly-conceived implementation and its associated expectations can be costly and even catastrophic.

Pretty much the whole point of asking this group this question is that I am bound to have missed loads of issues or possibilities; and the ones that I have thought of so far might not be the most important ones at all.

Any observations specific to Panopto would be splendid, of course, but I am also interested in the cultural effect (and/or comparisons) of any analogous systems.  I will welcome both idealistic and suspicious assessments, anything from hymns of praise to bitter war-stories.  In the end, the well-being of thousands of students will depend on us getting this right, so we need to get it right for staff from the beginning as well.

I was involved in the installation of lecture capture systems in many of the classrooms on our campus with funding from a grant from the US Department of Education.  Overall, this has been a very positive addition, and both students and faculty seem to be happy that we've introduced the technology.  However, there were and are some concerns.

Student concerns.  The lecture capture system records in-class discussion.  Some students have been concerned about their privacy, but a policy that the lecture capture recordings will only be used for the current system and be made available only to students in the class takes care of most of this concern.  A related privacy issue is that instructors should be careful not to have sensitive discussions with students (e.g. about grades, absences from class, etc.) while the system is turned on- this could easily lead to FERPA violations.

Faculty concerns.  Some faculty were concerned that students would stop attending class if recordings were available.  Our experience has been that having lecture capture recordings available to students has little or no effect on attendance.  Faculty have also been concerned that the recordings would be used in ways that they didn't approve of (e.g. for administrative evaluation of teaching or to offer the course to other students without paying the faculty member to teach the course.)  You should have clear policies in place to address these concerns.

A major faculty concern had to do with how they present written content in the lecture.  For practical reasons, video recordings of material written on a blackboard (with chalk) or a whiteboard (with dry erase markers) simply don't work well with lecture capture systems.  Some faculty simply use prepared slides for their lectures.  An alternative (the one that I use) is to write the lecture material on a tablet or digitizing display.  Some folks use a document camera and write notes on pieces of paper that are displayed by the document camera.

Distance ed concerns.  Instructors and students can use lecture capture recordings as an informal way to have distance education courses without official permission.  This might not be acceptable to your administration or your accrediting body (or the US DoED- such a course would count as a "correspondence course" because of the lack of two regularly scheduled two way interaction with the student) but there's no good technical way to prevent it from happening.


Finding a journal for specialised, interdisciplinary research Assuming I decided what specific thing I want to research, how I can find journals suitable for my research?

For example, I am interested in query by humming in computer science. Will a signal-processing journal accept such a paper? Will a pattern-recognition one do, assuming I actually use pattern recognition algorithms?

Seems like there are very few (2–3) computer-science–music journals available. Can I only publish in these?

In which journals are the papers you are citing published? Which journals do these papers, in turn, cite? Which conferences and workshops have been around on your topic and where were the contributions to them published? These are all potential venues for your paper.

Also make sure to ask around among colleagues who work in the field and ask your supervisor.

You can always informally inquire with the editor of a potential journal outlet whether your paper falls within the scope of that journal. They might perhaps even be so kind as to suggest alternatives, in case they don't deem your paper pertinent.


Should the postdoc interview focus on my research findings or transferrable skills that could be value of the research team that I am applying? I will have a postdoc interview soon. I previously ask our community about whether I should prepare a PowerPoint. I got some great advice about preparing a deck of slides that would help me to clarify my thinking about what to say.

I would like to ask your opinion about the content. Should I talk about my research findings at all and instead focus on what research skills I could bring to the lab? Of course, scholars are excited about hearing cool research findings but I have a sense that, pragmatically speaking, they would want to hear more about my skills. Given time restrictions, what would be the best strategy to optimize my interview time to promote myself?

I appreciate your advice and insights.

Actually it doesn't need to be either-or. Make it both. But don't do it in two parts. Weave it together if at all possible.

But another reason this is happening is that they want to know something about you as a person and as a potential colleague. How do you present yourself. Are you formal? Pedantic? Friendly? Lots of things. Along with that, they want some idea about how you go about handling such public talks. How do you present ideas whatever they are. If you seem natural it will probably help. Unfortunately that normally comes with a lot of practice over time. But they probably understand that.


What is the history of teaching assistants (TAs) in France? I know that in France, as late as the early 20th century, although I'm not sure if this is true now, a university student (undergrad or grad?) would take a nationwide concours exam to receive the aggrégation "to be aggregated" in the French school system and be able to teach at lycées ("high schools"?), académies (universities), and grandes écoles.

Was one with an aggrégation essentially a TA?

The answer depends both on the time period you want to consider and on the fields. Let me try to give a partial answer.

Generally speaking, agrégation is indeed a nationwide competitive exam designed to recruit high school and classes préparatoires teachers. For a long time students began preparing for it after 4 years of university study, as it required a maîtrise. Nowadays, presenting the agrégation requires a master's degree, but for most students the master would in fact coincide with the competitive exam preparation.

The majority of successful candidates will end up being teachers in high school, junior high or (for a few) classes préparatoires. In first approximation, the answer to your question is therefore "no": the agrégation is not primarily designed to select "TA".

However, having the agrégation is not neutral for "TA" positions. Nowadays, for PhD students, it is much easier to obtain a teaching job if you passed the agrégation, as you will be given priority over students who did not. Additionnally, in some fields (mostly humanities) it is a requirement to have agrégation before even beginning a PhD (I am pretty sure there is no official rule to that effect, but an extremely generalized practice). So in a way, yes, having the agrégation helps become a TA.

Some decades ago  (since your question is about history), there was a faculty position called maître assistant, which seems to correspond pretty well to "TA" (the maître assistant was apparently in charge of making students work in small groups) and was indeed accessible with agrégation. This position no longer exists: it was merged within the "corps des maîtres de conférence", to enter which you need a PhD.

Finally, note that in law, political science, economics and management agrégation can play a role very different from what I describe above. As I understand, they are designed to recruit university professors, but I really do not know much about it.


Non-profit organization, IRB Approval, and publishing? I'm working with a non-profit organization at the moment and we're planning to conduct a survey on ~93,000 to find certain attitudes and the correlation associated with them.
We're hoping on having our results being published in a reputable journal if possible, because we've done a lot of research and background reading to have a pretty solid study design written down.
Is it necessary for us to have IRB approval to publish in a reputable Psychology/Educational academic journal?
Additionally, even if it's not explicitly stated in the manuscript guidelines, are there "unspoken" rules about stating IRB approval before submission?

Most reputable journals in fields that involve human subjects research require that authors state (often in the article itself) that the study received approval from an IRB or the national equivalent in some other country.

As researchers that aren't affiliated with an organization that has its own IRB, you're in a bit of a bind.  There are independent Review Boards that can be contracted to provide oversight of research conducted outside of a normal institutional setting.  These are used for example in some drug company sponsored clinical trials.  You would have to contract with such an IRB to have your project reviewed and supervised.


Expectation of perfection vs. the never ending list of 'to do's' I am wondering if anyone has experienced conflicting feelings of failure associated with their work? Essentially, I am struggling to continue my students and maintain a proactive attitude while continually facing an ever growing list of tasks.

I find myself struggling to even start the list in the morning, and when I do I either fixate on one particular task or rush it (which I later chastise myself for). Throughout my undergraduate degree I worked hard and made great progress, however upon reflection I find that unless I am sure my work is ‘perfect’ I am very reluctant to submit it, and will later feel guilty about it.

I guess most of these behaviors are associated with the fear of failure and/or self belief, or something such like. But I wonder if anyone else has experienced them in their work and if you have discovered any strategies/advice you think would be beneficial.

I don't know if this is the best approach or if it works for everyone, but here is what I did in the past when I was paralyzed by just looking at the never ending list of things to do.

I simply broke down every task into more manageable pieces. Now I have an even longer list, but the good thing is non of the items on the list looks scary. After making tasks manageable, I set deadlines for every task. Deadlines forced me to stop working on a simple task just because it didn't look "perfect". At the end of the day if there is still time and I have energy, I can easily start working on the items that didn't look "perfect" to me without delaying any other task(But at the time I was burning out, and I realized that. So I stopped working on the things that didn't look "perfect" to me. Instead I took a break to clear my mind.).

If you can prioritize the tasks and break them down to more manageable pieces it is great. If you can't, may be you can ask a friend to help you.
After completing a task without over thinking about it and without missing a deadline, what I felt was success and that is what kept me going.

This way I kept my sanity and started to regain self respect, instead of punishing myself for not committing to work and spending the day paralyzed.


Writing sample for Economics PhD: empirical or literature review I am applying for an Economics PhD and I need to submit a writing sample of 2,000 words. I am planning to take an extract from an article I published, but I am unsure about whether I should take the literature review or the empirical results + conclusion.

The upside of the literature review is that the language has more coherence. The empirical results section consists mostly of descriptive sentences, graphs and tables. On the other hand, I can imagine it would be good to demonstrate my capacity for statistical analysis and reasoning. Any advice on this? I'd really appreciate it.

Since this is published research, I would certainly expect to see the whole paper submitted with your application in any case. It follows that using part of the paper also as a "writing sample" is useless.

I would contact the committee and ask whether, since you have published research, it can stand in for the "writing sample" they ask for. If they nevertheless want both the whole paper and a "writing sample", or if you don't get an answer on time, you should prepare a "writing sample", which should then be in the spirit of a "Introduction and motivation" of a research paper, down to describing the subsequent sections of this yet-to-be-written paper.  This section will show command of language and of concepts, ability to defend the value of a research topic, and also how comprehensively you plan to explore the topic.


Balanced number of sections in paper? Longer monographs should have an odd number of chapters [the
  Internet,1700-xxxx].

Does this rule also apply for papers? I've got a paper with four chapters and I'm wondering if I should make it five. I could split up the outlook & conclusion part, but that would result in two really short sections.

What does the style police suggest?

I don't think that any style guide or policy (besides maybe some journal about aesthetics in writing) will force you to an odd or even number of sections or chapters. A scientific text should get the number of chapters it needs and not a number that fits aesthetic principles–basically you write it to tell the scientific community about your findings and not to please them.

If you manage to write a scientific paper in Haiku form, this will be nice but it may also make some referee think you don't take your research serious enough. More or less the same holds for odd or even chapters. If you force the text to fit a certain number of chapters by dividing a chapter into two pieces, the reviewers might also consider that bad style.


How does the family background mentioned in the statement of purpose affect a PhD application for admission in U.S.? Suppose there are two students applying for math PhD programs in U.S
Student A mentioned in his  statement of purpose that he was born in a well-educated middle class family with both parents scientists/mathematicians. He chooses to pursue math because he grew up in  excellent family circumstance and his parents told him that "mathematics is the best field because it has an amazing internal consistency and a level of rigor and certainty unmatched by any other intellectual endeavor..."(quoted from Dr. Pete L. Clark)
Student B, however, mentioned in his statement of purpose that he was born in a poor family with bad-tempered, quarrelsome parents who had never gone to colleges. His motivation for pursuing math is that he believes that knowledge changes fate, doing math can help him find peace while his parents are fighting and math research doesn't cost much money.
Given that A and B have similar GPAs, test scores,LoRs, undergraduate institutes, etc., does

A has an advantage over B in graduate admission because he grew up in a well-educated family so that the committee believe that A is more likely to be successful as a research mathematician than B(for instance, A's parents have strong social networks which can help A to be successful in the future) OR
B has an advantage over A in graduate admission because the graduate committee believe that it is much more difficult for B to achieve what he has achieved today so that he has more potential to be successful in math?

A further question is that if an applicant's family background is so unusual(good or bad, like A or B) that it affects one's motivation for pursuing math, is it better to mention it(to increase one's chance of admittance) or not to mention it(just for safe)?

How a statement of purpose is read varies from department to department, and from person to person.  That said, I think for most people reading your statement, it wouldn't matter much.  Yes, many people are for socio-economic diversity in admissions, so scenario B could be slightly helpful, but really this might only make a difference in very borderline cases.  (Of course, you should be truthful, and not claim to be Pete Clark's offspring if you're not.)

What's important about the statement is that we get some sense of your motivation and goals, and possibly mathematical maturity.  It's also good if your expectations about grad school sound realistic.  By the time you are applying for PhD programs, between your academic history and your letters of recommendation and a statement about your motivation/goals, we should have a good sense of your likelihood of success in our program without any information about how you grew up.  We care more about where you are now rather than how you got there, so to speak.

My advice is, if you feel it's useful to explain where you came from to explain your motivation/goals, then by all means feel free to.  If not, there's no need to bring it up.


Use of future tense to refer to following sections While writing papers (computer science, on the border with digital humanities), I find it quite natural to write

  In the following section we will present some examples of such and such.

or

  To illustrate these point we will use a few examples of increasing complexity.

Many style guides forbid the use of the future tense and suggest the following formulations, that I personally find too stiff.

  The following section presents some examples of such and such

and

  Examples of increasing complexity illustrate these points.

(The last sentence is plain ugly.)

I do understand the will to use a language that keeps papers as much factual as possible, but should this dry style be used also for the more narrative parts of a paper?

I think that this is pretty field dependent. The first two sentences don't strike me as odd, though J-Kun strongly disagrees in the comments. In particular, I would say that the phrase "in this paper we will show" is common in the papers I read. I have first hand experience that the future tense used in this way is common in mathematics, computer science, and philosophy.
I also have very strong opinions about the fact that papers should not be dry. The fact that some researchers praise dry writing is fundamentally misguided in my mind. Papers are written by humans to be read by humans, and should be enjoyable to read. In my field (theoretical computer science), historical anecdotes, philosophical interludes, jokes, and amusing names are commonplace in academic writing. I strongly discourage you from aiming for dryness in any portion of your paper.
Given the field-dependent nature of stylistic issues like this, consulting the editorial guidelines of the journal or journals you hope to publish this paper in / have published in in the past would likely be your best option. Even if they don’t have specific style guidelines, you can usually in for what is preferred by reading other papers published by these journals.
EDIT: In your edit, you specify that you're in computer science. In my experience, computer science writing is far more conversational, and computer science culture is far more casual, than most other fields. I doubt anyone would bat an eye at either of the first two phrases. In fact, the paper I currently have open on the Arthur-Merlin Protocols says:

In Section 3 we will also use the representation of Boolean functions by polynomials with real polynomials (p. 5)
We will show that this
protocol needs communication at least Ω(√na), which implies the theorem. (p6)

and has similar constructions in at least four other places. IIRC, Babai's original paper introducing the A-M protocols had the first four pages entirely in the form of a faux mythological story about King Arthur.


Did the Emperor of Japan really write a paper? I just ask this question out of curiosity.

I would like to hear opinions from researchers in Japan about this paper:
Speciation of two gobioid species, Pterogobius elapoides and Pterogobius zonoleucus revealed by multi-locus nuclear and mitochondrial DNA analyses

The first author is Akihito, unless there is another person with that single unique name at that unique address.

Did he really contribute anything to that paper? Note that he doesn't have any degree, and he was 82 years old when that paper was published.

Updated:

I'm asking this question because the author is an emperor, i.e. somebody with immense power.

An author with similar level of power was Elena Ceausescu. She only finished primary school. However, during the communist period, thanks to her dictator husband, she had a PhD, countless of papers and awards etc etc.

That's why I'm asking people in Japan. I do know how to use Google.

According to the Indian embassy of Japan he did author a similarily titled paper in 2008: link (titled Evolution of Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Japan populations of the
gobiid species, Pterogobius elapoides
and Pterogobius zonoleucus, based on
molecular and morphological analysis), so it is a safe bet that the paper you are asking about is authored by His Majesty as well.

The Internet also confirms he specializes in ichtyological research.


How many times is OK to register for a PhD program? I started a PhD program few years ago. My first PhD supervisor decided he wanted to quit university and stopped supervising PhDs (he was 70 years old). I lost about a year trying to convince this supervisor to continue, and another year trying to find another supervisor when he quit (he pretty much left all his PhD students in the air).

I transferred to another university, but nobody counts the missing years and I should finish in few months. The condition put by my new supervisor in order to be allowed to present my thesis was to come up with at least 2 new contributions in addition to my previous contributions (I have published some papers with some contributions, but many of them were group research and this supervisor said that only 2 or 3 of them really count as mine).

Now the problem is that during the last year I have worked a lot both at the university and at the PhD, but only during last weeks I started to have some ideas about what these new potential contributions could be. Considering the lack of time, there is a high chance that I won't finish on time (due to the regulations from this country you have to finish in 5 years, nobody takes into account the fact that you lost several years with other problems like replacing your PhD supervisor).

I'm not a lazy person, but first time I really had no luck, and with the second supervisor it took me a lot of time to play in the league he wanted ... Basically all articles discussed with him about Machine Learning were from MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, etc. Essentially I had to spend about a year and a half to get my knowledge to the level where I can design new algorithms or create new things that would get accepted to top journals reviewed by people from these institutions.

Of course, I can register again for the PhD, take the exams again, and present my contributions in a new thesis. The problem is when I will add all these years it will result a large interval for Europe: 7-8 years, instead of 4-5 years. My question is this: how will a potential future employer from both Academia or Private Company look at this time interval? Is it ok to try 2-3 times to finish your PhD? Will the fact that it took to long finish the PhD affect my career?

The fundamental issue here is that your first advisor left academia altogether—by retiring before his students were done. This is an awful thing to do to the people one is supervising—leaving them completely in the lurch in such a manner is unacceptable behavior. The advisor should not have taken on new students if he was planning on retiring.

As a result of this, it is obvious that some allowances for this will need to be made. The way to signal this is through your CV: list both advisors, including the dates for which you worked with them. If your first advisor is well-known enough, then this will automatically clue in others about what happened.

Overall, though, so long as the time required isn't too unreasonable for your discipline, an extended stay in graduate school isn't problematic. However, if you have mitigating circumstances such as these, it makes such problems a lot easier to overlook.


Who can peer-review articles? I was unable to find any information online about this. I asked a colleague who told me that there are no restrictions on who may review an article, although he thought it was very unlikely that an un-published person may be asked to review. I would like a general answer to this question; nevertheless, the specific context is in the following paragraph.

I am submitting an engineering research paper in the near future and the submission process requires that I suggest at least three reviewers. One of the reviewers I would like to suggest has not yet completed their PhD, although they have three publications that are closely related to mine. I know that it will be up to the editor to decide whether to contact this person, but it made me wonder if there are any specific criteria that reviewers have to meet.

Who can peer-review articles?

Anyone competent enough to be asked in the first place.

For conferences (e.g., in engineering or computer science), peer-review is conducted by a Programme Committee. To be invited to be part of a Programme Committee (typically done by Chairs or Senior Programme Committee in larger conferences), you need to have a reasonable track record of research and a solid reputation in the area in question. I have seen PCs of reputable conferences in CS with many senior PhDs (I was in PCs myself as a PhD student).

For journals, you are invited to review by a member of the Editorial Board. They would weigh your experience and track-record accordingly. Again, you may get asked to review journal papers as a PhD student (I was also asked to review various journal papers as a PhD student).

Last but not least, you may be delegated a peer-review by someone who was asked to do a review (where that person was asked by the EB of a journal or as part of a PC for a conference). In that case, however, the responsibility for the quality of the review lies squarely with the delegator. In this case, a junior PhD student might be given a peer-review but with the idea that the delegator will check over it and discuss before submitting. (This is a good way to learn the process of peer-reviewing.)

  I was unable to find any information online about this. I asked a colleague who told me that there are no restrictions on who may review an article, although he thought it was very unlikely that an un-published person may be asked to review.

I agree with your colleague. The delegation of peer-review is left to the judgement of the EB/PC/Chairs. They will take into account seniority and research track record in their judgement. Formal restrictions would only serve to rule out qualified reviewers from an often already too narrow field.

  I am submitting an engineering research paper in the near future and the submission process requires that I suggest at least three reviewers. One of the reviewers I would like to suggest has not yet completed their PhD, although they have three publications that are closely related to mine. I know that it will be up to the editor to decide whether to contact this person, but it made me wonder if there are any specific criteria that reviewers have to meet.

I suggest submitting the name of the supervisor of the PhD student you think would be a good reviewer. The supervisor offers the editor a more senior name, should be knowledgeable in the area and if not, can solicit the advice of the PhD student in question or delegate the review entirely if appropriate.

As per my comment (and as a side note since it is not directly asked about) I find the practice of suggesting reviewers for your own paper a little strange (though I have seen it before on occasion). First there's the obvious possibility of selecting one's friends or of prior deal-making (assuming the suggestions were taken into account ... otherwise why would they ask?). Aside from that, if I'm submitting to a journal in my area, I expect the editorial board to have some members that would be sufficiently knowledgeable about my topic to get the paper in good hands. Having to suggest reviewers calls into question (slightly) the competence of the EB and/or the relevance of the journal. In any case, if the journal is otherwise reputable, this should not hold you back from submitting.


Did it become easier to land an academic job in the UK after the Brexit referendum? This is a companion question to Why is Brexit bad for British science? Judging from the responses to that question, a significant number of academics are unhappy with Brexit and are not intending to stay in the country for the long term. The implication is that it's become easier to get a British academic position, since there are fewer people interested. Is this borne out in actual data? I'm particularly interested in whether the number of applicants for faculty positions / postdocs dropped, and if so by how much.

The closest thing I've seen to this is Royal Society president Venkatraman Ramakrishnan saying they have anecdotal evidence of people not wanting to come / wanting to leave, but no statistical evidence. It seems to me it should be possible to get that statistical evidence, e.g. universities probably keep a record of applicants for each position, so if there's a change in number after 2016 it should be noticeable. There was no drop in international student applications, but it's not obvious if that also applies to faculty positions.

Fro the anecdotal evidence referred to by Venkatraman Ramakrishnan it appears that there are people who do not want to come to the UK post-Brexit. In your question you are implying a conjecture that the number of applications will fall and there will be easier to get an academic job in the UK.

The conjecture seems wrong to me. You seem to ignore the fact that the number of jobs in academia is not constant. Many jobs are funded by research councils in the UK but also EU councils like ERC. If this funding is going to reduce, so will the pool of available jobs.

Teaching-focused academic staff are funded by the Universities directly and this funding depends on student recruitment numbers. There is a certain rise in the numbers currently following the cap lifting in 2014 but it won't last forever and can't compensate for the expected reduction in EU student numbers.

Even if Universities disclose their records of application numbers for the academic posts (which is not likely), this information has to be compared also with the number of posts being advertised. Bear in mind also that with pound weakening, UK jobs are becoming less attractive for overseas applicants even on purely financial grounds.

To summarise, it is possible that the application numbers reduce and it becomes harder to secure an academic job post-Brexit.


How good is an LoR based on a correspondence on one's paper? I am applying for Fall 2018 for Ph.D. Programs in Physics. I came across a paper in my late sophomore year which I found extremely interesting so I wrote a mail to the author expressing my thoughts about his paper which included a slightly new interpretation of one key constant appearing in his paper. He was very glad to read my mail and responded quite enthusiastically--further suggesting that I should send my note to a Journal. I didn't send it to any Journal because I thought it was too unimportant to be separately published.

Then, coincidentally, I met with the guy when he visited my University to deliver a guest-talk, in my early final year. Since I knew he was coming, I had been playing around with the calculations and arguments related to his paper and I found a newer way to derive what he had derived in his paper using fewer axioms. So, I met with the guy and told him about my results. This time also he was very enthusiastic and glad to meet me. He again strongly suggested communicating my results to a Journal.  We then had many discussions over email regarding my new calculations and his suggestions. We recently found an even more simpler proof of the same results and I am in the process of submitting a paper on the same to a Journal. I have also been in contact with the guy regarding several versions of the draft for this paper.

Thus, I thought it would be nice if he writes me a reference letter indicating what he liked about my thinking and arguments, and how important he thinks are my results. Moreover, it would show that I like to explore papers out of my interest and work on them without any academic obligations. But when I wrote to him about it, he told me that he would write me a reference letter if I want him to but he would not be able to write anything quantitatively (to quote, "for example, you were in top 10% of my class or something like that") and thus, he doubts whether the LoR would be really helpful. I think that even a qualitative LoR will do good, thus, I am thinking of asking him to write an LoR anyway.

So, before I do that, I would like to know whether such an LoR would do any good or not? And worse, can it somehow backfire? Also, I would like the answer to consider both the scenario -- this being my fourth LoR and this being one of my three LoRs.

From your description, it sounds like this individual has effectively functioned as your research mentor for this project.  A letter he writes for you could certainly be quite valuable as part of your application.  Graduate schools are looking, more than anything else, for the potential to do cutting-edge research as a Ph.D. student and after.

So I would recommend definitely using his letter.  However, keep in mind that this letter will not be able to cover much beyond the quality of your research output.  Your contacts with him have been much more limited than would be typical if you were working with an on-site research supervisor.  Most letters of recommendation submitted through online application management systems require the recommender to give quantitative evaluations of students' skills, relative to some other population of undergraduates.  This professor is saying that he is going to have to select the "don't know" option in multiple categories when he submits his recommendation.

That is not a big deal, but it's not nothing either.  Moreover, this professor is not going to have any way to comment on your classroom performance.  So if you do get a letter about him that points to the high quality of your research, you should make sure that you have at least one other strongly complementary letter that addresses the matters which the first letter cannot.


First person plural or singular pronouns for thesis presentation I am going to do an oral presentation for my thesis.
Normally, when presenting a paper, as the paper is a collaboration work, I always use the pronoun "we".
The thesis is written based on the papers. However, when presenting (for example, when talking about the contributions of the thesis), I feel using "we" a bit odd.
Should I use "we" or "I"?
Many thanks.

Use "we" when referring to something you did as a team, and use "I" when referring to something that you did by yourself. That is what these words are for.
Using "we" and "I" consistently in this way helps to make clear what your contributions were, and this is often exactly what the jury wants to find out during your presentation.  If you choose to not go with the above option you should make it clear in some other way what you did and what others did.
Of course, if there is a clear preference in the culture where you are presenting it is best to follow that preference, but you would probably not be asking the question if that were the case.


Online courses in standard university curriculums Does anyone know examples where online courses (or other similar eLearning methods) are currently used effectively in the curriculum of a university?

There are several types of online learning. Some practical considerations you seem to be wondering about are meeting times, delivery methods, and best practices in online learning.

The time of meeting could be described as synchronous, asynchronous, or a combination of both. Synchronous refers to the practice of the students and instructor meeting online on specific days at specific times. Asynchronous means that the students and instructor do not have to "meet" or connect online on specific days and times. Most online courses are asynchronous.

The delivery methods of online course content is as varied as the universities, majors, and faculty involved. Nearly all of them will use an LMS, or Learning Management System, to deliver course content to students. Some of the most popular are Blackboard, Brightspace by D2L, and Canvas. The content itself may be text-based, video-based or audio based and may include interactive elements, whether simply utilizing the discussion and quiz tools in the LMS or more complex learning interactions such as simulations or gamification.

You can get started in finding some of the best practices for online instruction can be found by searching academic research using keywords such as: elearning, distance learning, online, best practices in online learning (or elearning, or distance learning), and postsecondary (higher ed) educational technology. Another research topic that might be of interest to you is instructional design models. Many of the best practices in online teaching and learning have much in common with F2F best practices. The delivery method is simply the means, not the end.

Additionally, there are universities offering bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in instructional technology, instructional design, or educational technology where one can make a study and subsequently, a career, in online learning. There are also many national and international organizations devoted to the continual improvement of distance/online learning/elearning in both K-12 and higher ed.


Applying to work at an acquaintence's school Background: I'm a mathematics student in the US who plans to finish my PhD this year, and I'm currently applying for jobs at small liberal arts colleges throughout the country.  I already have some acquaintances throughout the math world, either from grad school, REUs, conferences, etc, and some of these people are at schools to which I'm applying.  They would definitely remember me, but I would be surprised if they knew/remembered anything about my work.

There seems to be relative agreement that knowing someone at a school to which one is applying for a job is a good thing, but I have a few questions related to that situation.

How do you go about telling such an acquaintance that I am planning to or have already applied?  Is it acceptable for me to simply drop them an email?  Is there anything specific I should tell them?
Most schools list a designated contact person within the department.  Would it then be inappropriate for me to ask my acquaintance questions about the school or position?
One of these acquaintances works at a school that is far from the region I would like to end up living someday, and I believe that they are aware of this.  How will this impact my chances at that school?  Would it still be beneficial to make them aware of my application?

I am aware that a similar question already exists, but I was hoping to get more general information than what was discussed there. Any advice or insight is most appreciated.

How do you go about telling such an acquaintance that I am planning to or have already applied? Is it acceptable for me to simply drop them an email? Is there anything specific I should tell them?

Yes, you should just send them a short email (don't make it too long, or write it in a way so that the recipient is pressured to answer it). I would email them after all of your application materials are in, and tell them that you have applied to their school. If it is among your top choices, I would mention that in the email too.

  Most schools list a designated contact person within the department.
  Would it then be inappropriate for me to ask my acquaintance questions
  about the school or position?

The contact person is most likely the secretary of the department, or the head of the hiring committee. However, every member of the department has some say in the hiring process, and it is generally better to establish contact with your acquaintance. However, I would hold off on asking questions about the school or department until you receive an interview, unless the answer to the question that you are asking decides whether you will apply to the school or not. If there is no chance that you will be hired, then you don't want to annoy your contact and waste both of your time.

  One of these acquaintances works at a school that is far from the
  region I would like to end up living someday, and I believe that they
  are aware of this. How will this impact my chances at that school?
  Would it still be beneficial to make them aware of my application?

This seems like a tricky question. If you are a superstar, they might still try to interview you and convince you that their school is fantastic. However, if they are deciding among several candidates of similar calibers, and if one of the candidates rank the school as their first, that could tip the balance in their favor. Nonetheless, it wouldn't hurt to alert them of your application. However, do not lie and say things like their school is your top choice. In a small world like academia, you do not want to burn any bridges if you can help it.

Finally, I'd like to add one thing out of paranoia. Do not apply to positions that you would not accept. This is especially important at tenure-track level, where there is a lot of work that people have to put in before an offer can be made. At the tenure-track level, once you receive at least one offer, it is expected that you accept one of them, otherwise you may not be taken as seriously when you re-enter the tenure-track market in a later year. These kinds of things get talked about, and as the job market is a sensitive issue for most mathematicians, people tend to have very long memories about these sorts of things.


Should I put my marked assignments online? I am working my way through an Masters and as assignments are completed and results have come back, I would like to put them online as a way of contributing back to the community.

However generally I do not see people doing this. Is there an etiquette or other implications that I am not considering?

In my alma mater, this is indeed common. The student representatives actually maintain a repository of exam answers and assignment solutions for all large classes. Contributing to such a repository seems better than putting it online on your own web page or GitHub, because you need to think about how the students coming after you actually find your material.

As for other implications: the only thing that I can think of is that lecturers are sometimes not all that happy about this practice, as it makes re-using assignments from previous years more difficult. However, that's not actually that big of a deal, as most lecturers will assume that the solutions to re-used assignments are somewhere out there anyway, and adapt grading respectively.