Usage of a TV show transcript in my Thesis is under fair use exception? Can I use the data of Friends TV show transcript in my thesis for analysis and publish my paper/findings. Does the usage of TV show transcript data for analysis and construction of new script based on the original script come under fair use of exception in US copyright law ? Can you please advise me on how to proceed further.

The description of your activities that you have provided, using a 'script' from a popular TV show for research purposes in a machine learning algorithm is allowed within the 'fair use' description of copyright. It is my understanding that the following descriptions place the usage described within 'fair use':

  Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.

Since you are using the script to train a machine algorithm, and not the video, audio, nor are you reproducing it for your audience, it seems to be well within fair use.

  Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Using a script to train a machine algorithm, it seems, would have virtually no effect on the 'potential market or value of copyrighted work'.

Highlighted portions from "More Information on Fair Use by Copyright.gov"

Another possible solution you could consider is to train your machine learning algorithm on a different humorous show whose copyright has expired and is therefore in the Public Domain. Here is a list of humorous televeision shows whose copyright has expired, including "The Beverly Hillbillies".


Can I ask a professor to do work for him/her during the summer as a form of an internship? I am a newly transferred undergraduate Earth Science major and because of this I haven't had any internship experience in my field, even though I will be going into my senior year this fall (I also might have to take an extra semester to make up for time lost).

In my previous major, I remember my advisor saying he had a student who just filed data for him all summer for free, and at the end he gave her a letter of recommendation and she put it on her resume. It seemed like a kind of informal internship, and since I'll be taking a summer class, the casualness of it seems preferable as a way of getting some experience, as compared to a rigorous 9 to 5 internship that will take up all of my time. So my question is, could I simply email professors at different universities close to my hometown and ask if they need any help with their research this summer? I would prefer to ask my professors at my University, but because I'm taking  a summer class in my hometown (about an hour away from my University) I wouldn't be able to drive everyday.

I feel like professors who do their own research would want all the help they can get, like someone to do grunt work, which I would be fine with as long as I can get something to put on a resume and/or a letter of recommendation for a better internship/job down the line.

You can certainly send emails to faculty offering your unpaid services over the summer. This is common practice.

When you do, keep in mind that professors often receive numerous such offers and that, depending on the nature of the lab, the cost of getting a volunteer or intern up and going may exceed the benefit of having the volunteer around.  Moreover in some areas, particularly more mathematical and theoretical disciplines, an intern would need considerable background in math, programming, or similar to be of much service.

Therefore it is strongly in your interest to make your offer stand out from the others. One way to do this is to convey a decent understanding of the work being done in the lab to which you are applying, and to convey your interest and enthusiasm in being part of that work. When I receive internship requests where the writer has expressed no interest in my work and has simply pasted my name into a form letter, I invariably decline. (Even worse the ones that paste text directly from my web page into the part of the letter describing their research interests -- it happens more often than you'd think!).

Another important way to improve your chances is to use your understanding of what goes on in that lab to very explicitly describe some ways that you be might be able to provide valuable service to the lab. If they sound like they need programmers and you are a good coder, for example, make this very clear.


How to study for the GRE exam? (e.g.memorizing 3500 words, Math problems, AWA) I am so worried about the GRE exam! I have not any experience about it, but need to take it in order to do my PhD in the USA. So far I prepared a vocabulary notebook and wrote the definitions of 3500 words. Now, I am thinking of how to memorize those words in a short time. Moreover, I need to study for the Math and analytical writing sections.

I highly recommend Magoosh. I used their vocabulary app while I was walking around campus for a couple months and by the time the exam came I was thoroughly prepared. They also have a pay-for-service learning course which is good to review the material you've forgotten since high school. I am a fairly math oriented person going into the life sciences so I did not do too much of the math portion of Magoosh but the writing section was fairly useful and the english section was great. Knock 'em Dead!


Choosing a right career pathway? I am in a very confused situation as to how to decide my career pathway. First of all, a brief intro of myself.

My Background
I have completed my BEng in Software Engineering with an ordinary degree. Apart from my Bachelors degree, I do not have any other educational qualifications. Though I have a degree in software engineering, I do not find it interesting to work as a software developer, neither Back-end nor Front-end. I was working for a Software development company but resigned within 1 month.

Now I have decided to change my track completely drifting away from Software Engineering. I have thought of starting a Psychology degree and proceed with it. Meanwhile, am following an on line course in edX, Animal Behavior, since it is from one of my passion. I like to be with environment, nature and studying the behaviors of every animal. I also have a deep interest in documenting and researching about lifestyle of people from various culture and religious backgrounds.

Since my family doesn't know any of these, they think that I am just working as a software engineer and should continue it. I haven't told them about my resignation as well.

I love reading books, doing researches (I tried searching for research projects which I could be a part of it), reading and watching documentaries on various subjects, observing animals and going hiking and trekking to involve with the nature and sometimes cooking. I want to be an entrepreneur, which I have started my business very recently to generate my income for these fun activities.

I need some advices and recommendations from people around me, or people who share my common interests and those think alike. It would be a great help, thanks in advance.

Your question is not really about Academia, it is more of "figuring out what to do with your professional life".

Academia can certainly help you in the following ways:

you might take several courses from different areas like Psychology, Animal Behaviour, and many others to find what you are leaning towards.
those things might inspire you to get a certain graduate degree. However, going into a graduate school is a big decision, and will require time/money investments, so have to be chosen wisely and not instantaneously.
it can try to accommodate interdisciplinarily (software engineering + something else) research if you decide on going to a grad school.

But you certainly have to take the following things into consideration:

not every hobby can/should be a profession. While it is awesome to do what you love and follow your passion, you have to really understand how different are the professional and amateur ways. That can be achieved by getting experience in those areas, both from the academic and professional directions.
advice/support from your family and friends will be important. Though they might not immediately support you in your immediate decisions (which depends on their personalities), you will need their opinions and wisdom.
you seem to have a very scattered vision of yourself, combining psychology, animal behavior, entrepreneurship, software engineering, etc. You might want to explore those things one-by-one but in a quality way.
getting rid of software engineering completely doesn't sound very good. You may want to incorporate your knowledge in this area to some other (like psychology) and take advantage of interdisciplinary research.
changing career path comes at a cost of suffering from the shortage of money. You will need to think of backup options to support yourself, especially if your family is not totally aware of your plans.


Removed as Co-Author for Resubmission I was part of a university project team, and at the end of the semester we decided to submit a review paper related to the topic of our project. Our advisers gave us feedback and made suggestions on our draft. We submitted our draft to a journal and many months later, one of my team members got a notification that our paper needed to be edited to respond to reviewer comments and resubmitted. However, he did not contact us until a few months later, when he said he thought we should not submit because the necessary edits were too demanding. However, when he went to talk to our advisers, some of them decided to continue working and resubmit. The other student did not let any of the other team members know, and told the adviser no one wanted to help him without consulting us.
 A month later, we were all notified that they were resubmitting that week and they needed our consent to remove us as co-authors. They have made very significant additions to our paper, adding more sources and detail to our claims and rewording the majority of it. However, the overall idea of the paper is quite similar and there are aspects of the paper that resemble portions we wrote. I feel it is quite ungenerous of them to cut us all out from being co-authors, when we wrote the majority of the initial submission, even if the final draft is quite different. Did they do the right thing?
EDITS
To clarify some points -
The main issue is that they have to resubmit in a few days, so any changes in authorship need to be approved by everyone very soon. I agree that our adviser should be changed to first author, but there's no time to get everyone's consent for that, unless he can get an extension.
The adviser has not been hostile in any way and I don't want to make things too awkward, but I don't quite feel comfortable signing off on cutting us all out.
I guess my real question is should I insist they include us? How much of the initial draft must be modified before you can just remove co-authors.

It is not ethical to remove you as co-author from a resubmission, if you contributed to the first submission and your contribution is still relevant in the resubmission. In that case, there seems to be a portion of the text in the resubmission that is a revised version of text that you wrote, so your contribution is indeed still relevant to the resubmission.
Do not agree to being removed from the author list. Don't let yourself be pressured to agree by an impending deadline. In most cases it is no problem to get an extension, even up to multiple weeks, on manuscript resubmission deadlines. Moreover, it should have been the lead author's responsibility to plan everything so that the deadline can be met.
If the importance of individual contributions has changed by the revision, it may indeed be appropriate to change the author order. That has to be agreed upon by all authors. The editor might also want to have approval from all authors for that change.
Start collecting evidence to support your claims. In the text from the first submission, mark which portions of the text or data have been contributed by whom. Collect earlier drafts and emails or other communication that further evidence these contributions. If you have the revised version, mark which portions in that are based on contributions you made earlier.
If the lead author does not resubmit to the same journal with you as co-author, try to keep an eye on other journals in the same area. They may just try to go to another journal with the revised version, where the editor will not be aware that the manuscript may still contain contributions of someone who's not listed as an author. If you see a publication with text based on your earlier contributions, but not listing you as an author, contact the editor with a complaint, and provide the evidence you collected.


What should I do with a master student's online report that made my work look like his? I have a published a conference paper (in 2014) that has been used recently by a master student (whom I do not know) to write a paper for a master's class discussing a paper. In his work he cites my work and the title he put on researchgate.net is: Analysis Report on [my work].

Issues:

In the work itself the title does not contain Analysis report on.
He copied images of my work without referring to the original source.
The report is written (although it might not be on purpose) as if he did the work.

Since this work is for a master project I do not mind these issues that much, however it is published on ResearchGate and not clear that it is a report explaining a conference paper.

Should I ignore it our should I contact the student asking to remove the work?

Ignore it. There are lots of bad papers out there that will never be noticed and/or cited -- and given the title, everyone who happens to come across it will realize that the original source is your paper.

Spare your worries for the important questions in life, for example on writing the follow-up paper that clearly explains why the original paper you wrote is so important!


Using second person in cover letter for a publication I'm writing a cover letter for a study discussing a particular cognitive phenomenon. I'd like to begin with directly inviting the editor to consider this phenomenon in his own daily experience.

My adviser believes that this is an unacceptable deviation from academic style.

Fresh writing or faux pas?

There's no need to sell the paper to the editor.  Write the letter, asking that the paper be considered for publication, and telling the editor anything else he or she needs to know to get the paper to appropriate referees.  Anything else would be odd.


"Cold-calling" for a post-doc position in a group that cites you I know that "cold-calling" for positions is considered very poor etiquette in the academic community. But is this the case if one "cold-calls" a group which is familiar with your work? By familiar I mean the group cited (one or more of) your paper(s), but you don't know anyone in the group personally?

If this practice is somewhat acceptable in the academic community what would be the best option for inquiring about a post-doc position?

If the group is already positively citing your first-author works, then I would say that it's not really a cold call.  You may not have met, but when you get in contact, they will have some reason to distinguish you from the constant barrage of random people who email them asking for postdocs.

I would thus recommend getting in touch by noting your shared interests directly, including the fact that you've noticed their citations of your work, and being very straight-forward about your interest: you're going on the postdoc market, you've noticed the shared interests, and want to get in touch to see if there are good opportunities---either for postdoc or otherwise.  This way, it's primarily about the professional relationship, not the job application, which is what's best for you as well.  If they really do like your work and have funding available, they may jump to hire you.  If not, it is likely to still help build future collaborations and other opportunities.

If they are negatively citing you or if you're Nth author on the works they cite, however, then it's effectively just a cold call, and you should follow the conventions of your field there.


How do you find the contact info of a professor in a foreign country? I'd like to read the paper "New Fragments of the Ishvarapratyabhijna-vivriti"  by Yohei Kawajiri.  I can't seem to find it online, so I thought I'd contact the author and ask him for a copy.  But I can't seem to find his contact information; he's affiliated with Chikushi Jogakuen University, but most of their website is in Japanese, and can't be usefully navigated even with Google Translate.

So my question is, how does one find the contact information of a professor in a foreign country whose websites are in a foreign language?  I assume that it is possible, since academics collaborate across countries all the time.  But I'm not sure how.

Some options:

Use a general contact for the university, either phone or email, and try to get specific contact information for the person.  I would expect most universities that deal with international students to be able to respond in English.  Try an international student office if you don't have luck with the main number (it doesn't matter too much that you reach the "right person"; as long as they are relatively helpful, they can probably easily access an internal directory for you).
See if the author has a profile on a professional networking site such as LinkedIn or ResearchGate.
Try to contact co-authors if there are any.
Use Google site search.  e.g. site:www.chikushi.ac.jp Yohei Kawajiri. If there was something in English, but hard to navigate to, this would probably find it.  Also should work for non-English sites that use Latin characters.  It didn't work in this case, though.


PhD in the US compared to Europe I start my master studies this fall in quantitative finance/economics in Europe. Since this will just take 3-4 semesters I want to take a look ahead and obviously PhD is one option to do.

So I am wondering if it makes sense to go to the US for PhD, since I will have already a master's degree in two years. I read a lot about the US PhD's which can be started after bachelor and therefore are somehow like a European master & PhD combined.

I saw some PhD programmes from well-known US universities and their curriculum contained almost just courses I will already have in my master. Wouldn't that be a waste of time to repeat them? Specially compared to my country (Switzerland) where a PhD duration is between 3-4 years.

Every input/personal experience will be appreciated.

I think in the end it will be a personal choice based on what you want in your career on where you may do your PhD. Based on some of the queries you had in the comparison between a US PhD or a European one, hopefully the following will be of help.

This link is a good page that shows the difference between the system in Europe and the US for PhD. The main reasons from it why a US PhD would be longer is;

  The main difference between doing a PhD in the US and most other countries is the coursework component. In the US, there is usually a requirement that PhD student complete at least 2 years of coursework before they start their independent research. This means that a PhD in the US will take longer to complete.

So yes there is a chance that you will be repeating coursework that you have done in your masters, but there is also the possibility that you may be able to get a wavier for coursework already completed.

I know (in Ireland at least, my home country) there is now a move in some universities towards a structured PhD that will include some coursework in year 1.

As per Piotr's comment it is typical that a PhD in Europe is pursed after Master's, while in US it contains Master's. In some cases in Europe it may be possible to go straight from a bachelor degree to a PhD. I know in my own case when starting out my advisor wondered if I would like to apply to complete a PhD instead of a Masters (in History). My sister also went straight from her bachelor to her PhD program (in mircobiology). Both these cases were in Ireland where you normally would have to have a first in your bachelor degree to be able to pursue a PhD directly afterward.

The page also details some other differences, such as how the committees are slightly different in both systems.

The Coimbra Group, an association of long-established European multidisciplinary universities have produced a Survey on PhD Programme Structures and Administration in Europe and North America that has some insightful information as well.


In a computing/software paper, is it acceptable to talk about alternative tools in a literature review? I have to write a short literature review for a practical, technical white paper relating to computer security.

Googling around, I find that most literature reviews focus only on previous papers or books ("purely" literature).

I was wondering if it was acceptable to talk about both literature and tools that are similar to what I'm developing? Or should the focus be exclusively on previous literature?

If your work should be compared to a software tool, then you should compare it to that software tool.  Actually comparing, however, can be tricky for a couple of reasons:

Closed commercial software often hides its workings, such that it is difficult to tell how it actually operates.
Live software projects are a moving target, and features today may be gone tomorrow.

Thus, for example, if you were comparing a contextual text search to the methods used by Google, it would be very difficult to do that just in a "related works" section because their methods are hidden and constantly changing.  Instead, you'd need to take experimental data on its behavior in some period (or cite somebody else who had).

For this reason, whenever possible it is generally preferable to reference a paper about the software rather than the software per se.  Most significant academic software will have an associated website with a section on "how to cite this" or a list of associated papers (e.g., this "further reading" section for TinyDB), which will give you appropriate sources to cite in your discussion.

If there is no such citation available, however, or if the existing citations are not appropriate, then you can cite the tool directly: there are established conventions for citing software tools.  I also sometimes cite both a key paper and the live tool, when the tool has expanded well beyond the associated literature.


Student asking too many questions without trying themself I work at a bootcamp where I teach programming. I have a student in my class who would ask 1 question every minute. This student would ask about every single thing like where to add this code and how I should do X and Y without even trying.

How do you deal with a student who asks 100's of questions a day?

Establish clear learning goals that include problem solving and finding the answers as part of the task.

This essentially falls under the "teach someone to fish" adage. The most important skill to learn in a programming boot camp isn't going to be a repertoire of functions or a mastery of a certain language's syntax, but rather a piece of the programming process itself, which includes problem solving and the associated skills.

It sounds like you're getting broken down by complaints and feeling like you have to provide an answer to help with a given line of code, but I think if you instead frame it in your own mind (and make clear to the students as well) that you are teaching the entire process, it will be easier to refuse to answer those questions and refocus on ways that the student can find their own answer.


How can I replicate a search strategy described in a publication? I found a Cochrane Review from 2012. I would like to perform a new search with the same search strategy to see if there are an updates in this topic.
The search strategy is given at the bottom of this post.

Now my questions: Where can I input those keywords? Did they perform every line a whole new search, or are those keywords linked together via one search.

I have access to OVID and read/watched some tutorials but they didn't show me something similar.

The search strategy:

  Appendix 1. MEDLINE via OVID search strategy

  Molar, Third/
  (“third molar*” or “wisdom tooth” or “wisdom teeth” or “3rd molar*” or third-molar).mp.
  T ooth, impacted/
  ((tooth adj5 impact$) or (teeth adj5 impact$)).mp.
  T ooth, unerupted/
  unerupt$.mp.
  1 or 2
  3 or 4 or 5 or 6
  7 and 8
  T ooth extraction/
  (extract$ or remov$).mp.
  asymptom$.mp.
  (symptomless or symptom-free or “symptom free”).mp.
  (trouble-free or “trouble free”).mp.
  or/10-14
  9 and 15

  The above subject search was linked to the Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategy (CHSSS) for identifying randomised
  trials in MEDLINE: sensitivity maximising version (2008 revision) as
  referenced in Chapter 6.4.11.1 and detailed in box 6.4.c of the
  Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions version
  5.1.0 (updated March 2011).

  randomized controlled trial.pt.
  controlled clinical trial.pt.
  randomized.ab.
  placebo.ab.
  drug therapy.fs.
  randomly.ab.
  trial.ab.
  groups.ab.
  or/1-8
  exp animals/ not humans.sh.
  9 not 10

You should probably take a look at the Cochrane Handbook. What you have are two searches. The first is a search for papers about 3rd molars. The 2nd is the CHSSS and is used to find the RCT studies from the search of the 3rd molars. You need to enter the search items exactly as the history shows since some steps refer to previous steps (e.g., step 9 of the first search refers to steps 7 and 8).


Grant fraud, should I bust my PhD advisor? tl;dr: Should I report this large grant fraud, and what consequences could it have for me?

For obvious reasons, I will try to maintain some anonymity here.

So I defended my thesis. Which was funded through a government grant.

In order to obtain this type of grant, a professor needs to cooperate with several other research organizations and privately-owned industries. Then it is required for some people to exchange between these places for extended periods of time. Relocate to a different place, live and work there.

So my industrious professor submitted all the required paperwork and received enough money to support multiple PhD students, post-docs and senior professors. However, almost none of them actually did any exchange. Instead, everyone just stayed at their home institutions.

Of course, I had no idea that the grant money was being mishandled until a monitoring meeting with the grant authorities that took place a long time after I started. All the other PhD students had no idea what was going on as well. We ended up making ridiculous statements about our accommodation, work hours, health insurance as the senior professors convinced us to lie about fictitious exchanges taking place.

The whole scheme is based on deliberate misinformation about people working at places they have never seen in their lives. I suspect a ton of papers and documents had been forged and submitted as evidence. The government thinks it's a research project with cooperation among multiple institutions. The only time we see each other is at set-up (pretended) conferences.

Naturally, all the documentation is kept secret, but a quick Google search would reveal that one can't simultaneously work at place x, and give lectures at place y, while x and y are hours of travel away. But again the people who control the grant money only check the paperwork they are provided. Is there a bogus employment contract in my name? I don't know but I have reasons to believe so.

Should I report this as a fraud?

There is an anti-fraud unit which should deal with it. This could, however, backfire in so many unimaginable ways. Forgery is rather a serious offense: a few PhD students and post-docs could end up being deported. More money is being awarded each year which could go to other researchers that are at least honest about what they spend it on. A funded PhD position is still available at my university, so more unsuspecting students will be involved.

I don't even know how I should approach this problem myself. It is an ethical dilemma as to whether I should support my supervisors. The procedure is definitely illegal, but the consequences could vary from not receiving future funding from the same source, to grant recovery (many millions of an unspecified currency) or even criminal charges. I can only speculate on what documents have been forged in the process, employment contracts, visa documents etc. A large number of involved researchers don't even live on the same continent, and that is where most of the money might go to. It is also very personal. Apart from being fooled with many false promises into writing a PhD, I did not sign up for, nor intended to, lie about living in a place I have never been to.

TLDR: You need a lawyer.

I think, ethically, speaking out is the right thing. Falsifying grants is despicable and has a very negative impact on science in general. It has happened to me multiple times that when I say in a pub that I am in science and that I got a grant people say things like "All those grants are just frauds to get money from the government/EU". I don't think I need to explain why this kind of perception hurts on both personal and systemic level.

Regarding your own well being, things are much more difficult. The fact is that you have willingly participated in a non-trivial fraud for a prolonged period of time. Speaking out will not erase this neither ethically nor legally.

You need to consult a lawyer (not an Internet law advice, a real lawyer). As pointed out in the comments - you may easily be considered a part of the fraud. You may want to check your country's whistleblower/cooperating defendant protection laws, but those (if existent) usually do not provide any strict protection - court will have to decide whether you will face charges. OTOH, if the scheme is revealed later without your involvement, you will be in much worse situation than if you had spoken.
You may also claim to have acted in good faith or under serious threat (losing employment). Once again, a lawyer should be able to tell you to what extent this may protect you under the relevant jurisdiction, given the specific circumstances (there is no simple general rule).

Be aware, that you are in trouble. I don't think there are so many grants of this kind and much fewer of them are being cheated like the one you speak about. There is a non-negligible chance that someone overseeing the project reads this post and may consider checking whether this isn't "his" project. Some other participant of the grant may read this as well and consider speaking out himself to get into a better situation. And as this sounds like a big and ongoing fraud, it may easily burst on its own - once people get too much used to bending rules they usually do not know when to stop.

This is not a "we used a questionable accounting trick to be able to buy a new device we really needed for research" kind of problem, there is no good intent, neither was the money used in the spirit of the grant.

EDIT: One more bad scenario in response to some of the comments. Let's suppose the fraud is exposed. Even if the funding agency does not initiate a criminal investigation and even if they cannot directly claim money from you (as your contract is probably with the uni) you still have trouble. Since the uni will likely have to return a large sum of money, they can file civil suit against the people involved in the fraud seeking financial compensation for the loss. As you have made false statements about accommodation and other stuff, this can easily include you.

EDIT 2: I would like to highlight a good point made in AndrejaKo's answer: If the corruption is sufficiently deep in the system, it might not be actually possible to bust your advisor (read the answer for detailed reasoning).


Anonymous reviewer disclosed his identity. Should I thank him by name? A "friendly" reviewer purposely disclosed his identity to me (the author) during a previous round of reviews of a paper that was not published back then. However, he helped me to make the article better. If I publish the paper now, should I thank him by name or as an anonymous reviewer?

You can thank him by name for making helpful suggestions for improvement. You don't need to say that the comments were during a formal review.

Alternatively, he should be thanked as an anonymous reviewer.

I would, personally, prefer the first alternative. The publisher might also prefer it if you are using the name.


Receiving gift from student before grading MSc thesis. Is it ethical? As a follow up on this question I am wondering whether it is ethical to receive gifts from students before grading their MSc thesis (or any other project where students feel like they need to thank you for).

Lately I have encountered this situation where a student gave me a present before I was able to fully grade his work. The student had to go abroad and wouldn't be able to drop by after grading. The gift was rather small, just a few bottles of good quality beers which are not that expensive where I'm from. He also said: "you can drink this when grading my work, ha ha". We got along quite well, so at that time I didn't feel like it was some sort of bribe (which I still don't feel like it was).

Generally, I don't have any problem in accepting gifts as they tend to be rather small. However, a month after receiving this gift and finishing my grading for his work I was starting to think whether I have made the right decision by accepting his gift.

In my opinion you are asking yourself the wrong question. The important problem is not if it feels like a bribe to you, but if it could look like a bribe to others.

Let's say you have another student whose thesis you are grading at the same time and he ends up with a worse grade. This might have been an objective decision, but still, if this other student now hears about the gift you got, he will start to wonder if maybe giving you a nice gift would have gotten him the same grade.

Since the gift is quite small, you are most likely legally in the clear, however in my opinion, ethically it wasn't the right thing to do. It is probably to late to return the gift right now, but for similar future situations, it is probably better to decline gifts until the grade is set in stone. Not only from an ethical point of view but also since it will give you an aura of fairness and incorruptibility at the low cost of a few cheap beers.


Research Fellow on Paper They Did Not Contribute- Solicited my Mentor I am in a situation where I do not know how to tell my mentor I am not comfortable with a research fellow on our paper as an author. I came across a "call to submission" for a paper, in essence, there is a special edition of a journal over a specific topic. I wrote the complete manuscript thinking it was presumptively thesis material but it felt short of novel methods warranted by my academic committee. However, my department eagerly anticipates it is good-quality publication material due to its findings. Anywho, I wrote this paper independently and included a colleague who edited parts of the data analyses as an author. He, unbeknownst to me, sent it off to a research fellow at our institution for his comments as a co-author. The comments are toxic, gaudy, and do not display an adequate understanding of the topic. Worse, however, is that the research fellow is cordial with my mentor, and e-mailed him his comments, selling the manuscript off as his. He has a moderate amount of paper at the institution, and I want to interview there for further training opportunities and do not want to compromise my bottom line. His comments include:

Asking me why hadn't I spelled out multiple abbreviations that are literally spelled out and defined in the sentence or paragraph before.
Putting an asterisk by his name and mine saying we share first co-authorship.
Requesting multiple self-citations over introductory statements known to all, the self-citations are very low-quality non-indexed review articles in openly predatory journals.
Crossed out my name as corresponding author and put his contact information, as he was "invited" by the journal (our whole department got the same call to submissions paper).
When I quote other previous experiments in a similar domain, he has written: "stop changing your hypothesis".
Says my graphics quality "if submitted to a conference, would automatically result in denial of the manuscript regardless of the content"
Is literally editing multiple metrics out and is replacing them with metrics that I have not used and are in fact, the wrong analysis for this experimental design.

Am I overreacting? I feel as if I am in a bad spot. What is the best course of action to remove this individual from the paper without trying to get my mentor involved? I need to ask my mentor for a letter of recommendation in a few months, too. I am a lower ranking than the fellow as well...

Putting an asterisk by his name and mine saying we share first co-authorship.

That alone, on a draft shared for comments, would have been enough to anger anyone. In my opinion this RF is trying to carve a space in the paper by discrediting the quality of your work, which is unprofessional. The quote is also irrespective of any actual problems with your work - assuming the RFs suggestions have some merit - and any self-respecting academic would flat out refuse, unless it comes with an extensive research plan.

The behaviour you describe is so crude that actually improves your position. However, the personality of your mentor and your relationship with the mentor does weigh in. If you have a good working relationship with him, the issue can be resolved with a polite, honest and most importantly calm chat. The fact that he shared the draft without you knowing is not problematic, in my opinion, as academics do so very often. The liberties taken by the RF, however, may hide something more than a request for feedback - they go beyond a bad report. You cannot know, and you should not jump to conclusions, but you should be cautious, suspicious even.

Some arguments that are generally valid, but for them to work you would need to stand as a professional academic, not a student:

1) Adding a co-author dilutes everyone's, but particularly your, contribution. Both you and the data-editing colleague can argue that you are not willing to add a 4th co-author (field specific), and for an entry-level academic first authorhip is very important and you are not willing to share.

2) The paper is mostly finalised and the suggestions are not substantial enough to warrant co-authorship, plus a debate on the most factually wrong comments (irrelevant self-citations etc). There is not enough work left and you are not willing to consider a change in direction due to time constraints and the distraction it will cause you.

3) Brush off presentation comments by saying that they will be corrected in the finalised version and insist that polishing up does not warrant a co-authorship, especially first authorship (similar to (2))

4) (very context dependent) Express some surprise on the nature of some comments and point out to their relevance. If you want to be cheeky, ask why the RF would be interested in participating in a paper he himself criticised so harshly.

It is important for you to be the one that frames any discussion as discussing feedback on a draft and you have not even considered co-authorship. If you are presented with the idea, e.g. in an off-hand comment, just say "no". If pressed further, politely yet firmly keep refusing. This is where your mentor must take a position and either drop the issue or force you to accept a co-author. If the latter happens, I see two options.

The first is to withdraw your participation in the draft. You are perfectly entitled to do so and maintain agency of your work, but I understand this is difficult from someone in your position and may cause further frictions and issues. The second is to accept (grudgingly), but by stating very clearly and in a non-negotiable manner that the RF will be responsible for any additional work and you will not be adding anything more to the paper, especially results/ experiments. Even if you receive some drafts or emails, you can politely repeat your stance. This is confrontational and also not desirable, but at least you will not be exploited.


Can a paper accepted as an extended abstract be submitted to other conferences? Recently, I have a paper only accepted as an extended abstract by a AI conference. Is it still possible to submit this paper to other conferences like KR (International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning)?

I would guess not, unless you take some steps. First, contact the conference organization of the AI conference and pose your question there. And make sure that the organizers of any conference you want to submit to in future know about the abstract. Make it transparent.
Second is that if all of your "innovative" results are present in the extended abstract, then the other conference probably won't be interested, even if they consider it a "separate" work, which they might not.
But if the full paper is sufficiently innovative as an extension of the extended abstract, then you should be fine.
It will take some finesse, quoting and citing the abstract as necessary in the "new" paper.


How to submit a paper without being backed up by my employer By day I am employed (as a research engineer) at CEA, LIST in France (near Paris) working (in 2020) on Bismon (funded by CHARIOT, about cybersecurity). My work contract is under French law (legally some contrat de travail à durée indeterminée) and I am a French citizen.
On my spare time, at home only and with my personal computer equipment, I am developing with others the RefPerSys open source artificial intelligence system.
We would like to submit some paper about it to ICAAINN 2021 (a conference in Paris, France).
The conference submission website requires mentioning some institution.
I don't want to mention my employer for something I am not paid for doing.
If the paper was accepted I have both enough money and enough vacation to go presenting it.
What institution should I put in the web form for something done at home (and improving my old PhD ideas)?

"Independent Scholar" or "Independent Researcher" is the way to go (as also mentioned by Arno in the comments).
According to LENS, the affiliation "Independent Scholar" seems to be slightly more prevalent than "Independent Researcher", with 3.085 versus 2.426 occurrences between 2015 and the end of Nov. 2020.
(Just for the record, the term "Independent Scientist" was used only 31 times in the same date range; and the earlier centuries' label "Gentleman Scientist" seems to be completely outdated by now.)
Here at Academia StackExchange, there is also an independent-researcher tag (here).


Can I get inspired from Patented Algorithm? I read an algorithm that is patented, I was inspired in one part of it and applied something similar (not exact) to my algorithm (e.g one step they applied out of their 10 steps algorithm I used in my algorithm not exactly identical but similar notion). Will there be any issue?

Can I simply say, this step was inspired from [ ]

If your question is whether you can cite the patent in a research paper, then yes, absolutely: patents are fully citable sources, and patents don't protect publication of related ideas.

If, on the other hand, you want to use your related algorithm commercially, you'd better get legal advice on that...


Does the term “science” encompass humanities and the social sciences? I’m not a native English speaker and want to get a better grip on the nuances of the term science.

In my native tongue, the word I’d use for science also refers to humanities and the social sciences. However, I’ve lately been getting the feeling that some people use the term only to refer to the natural sciences (case in point: the S in STEM). With scientist referring to academics working in the natural sciences, and scholar more to academics in the humanities and social sciences.

Is my intuition correct? If so, is there an umbrella term describe everything from social science over STEM to law and what not?

The term "science" in English definitely does not include the humanities.  There are ambiguous cases, where it is unclear how to draw the line between humanities and social sciences, but for example literature is never considered a science.  If you wish to include the humanities, then you must use a broader term.

Social sciences are a little trickier.  At one level, they are obviously sciences: it's even part of their name!  On the other hand, people sometimes use the term "science" as shorthand for the hard sciences, without meaning to include the social sciences.  This means you are welcome to use the term inclusively, but you shouldn't expect that it always includes the social sciences when you hear other people using it.  If this distinction matters, then you'll need to discuss it explicitly.

It's worth noting that there are a lot of other things that don't fall under "science" in English, besides the humanities.  For example, engineering has some overlap with science, but engineering fields are usually not classified by universities under the sciences, and references to science will not be understood to include engineering.  (This is one reason the term STEM is popular: it's the shortest way to refer to both science and engineering in English.)

  If so, is there an umbrella term describe everything from social science over STEM to law and what not?

Unfortunately, I don't think there is.  (Maybe there are obscure terms out there, but there certainly isn't one that is widely used and understood.)  You could use broad phrases like "all academic disciplines" if you really want to include everyone, but there is not a specific term like "science" for this.


How many recommendation letters are enough? If I apply to a job, and it asks for 4 recommendation letters, is it good if I submit 5 or more letters? Why and why not?

In the US in math my understanding is:

For the NSF fellowship follows the rules to a T.
For other postdocs there's probably no harm in submitting an extra letter, but there's also rarely a compelling reason to do so.
For tenure track positions it is common, and not frowned upon, to submit 4 or 5 research letters instead of the requested 3 research letters.  If you have a compelling reason to submit more (for example, you work between two adjacent fields) then go ahead, but if you don't have a compelling reason you're also not going to be penalized for sticking with 3 research letters.  It's better to have all the letters be great than to have more letters.

There's a lot of discussion about this in the comments on this thread.


Is it bad to teach high school science for a few years before attending graduate school? I've just graduated with my BS. I have been offered a job to teach biology at a christian university prep academy. I desperately need the money, and I was raised religiously, so I expect that I will be able to do the job fairly well. However, once I get a stable financial foundation, I want to get a PhD in cell and molecular biology. Will teaching at a Christian high school basically be "career suicide" for me? Will I forget all the complex things I've already learned?

Teaching experience is a good thing.  If you want to teach again after completing your PhD, the teaching experience will help you get a job.

However, I have doubts about your financial strategy.  In most STEM fields, you can expect to get paid more if you have a PhD.  The sooner you complete your PhD, the sooner you get the extra pay, and the more years you will keep the extra pay for.  I am not knowledgeable about teacher pay, but I suspect that the best American PhD programs pay students only slightly less than typical entry level high school teaching jobs in America.


Reporting results that are significant even with correction, without losing my unadjusted ones? I have a study in which I have several promising variables, all concurring with previous literature and significant at alpha=0.05.

However, I have this one variable that is of special interest and this variable is significant even with the conservative bonferroni correction.

How do I go by slipping in my manuscript like "Hey by the way look at this guy, this guy is definitely not a coincidence"? Because I don't want to set a new alpha and lose all the other good and informative variables.

First of all, I'd say this question is off-topic here, because it relates more to statistics than academia as a whole.

In any case the answer by Janosch is accurate, when doing a statistical test, an observation is either significant or not.

Sometimes people use stars to annotate the level of significance a particular result would be able to clear, for example:

* for p < 0.05
** for p < 0.01
*** for p < 0.001

Here's another example from an R tutorial article:


At which point in your PhD should you feel like you're in the edge of human knowledge/ know exactly what is your contribution? I am a first semester PhD student. The standard time for finishing a PhD is 3 to 5 years in the part of the world I'm in. I have to defend a thesis proposal or project by the end of the second year. I have changed my area of research since my master's, so I only have conference papers in my current field.

I feel like my research proposal was a little open, a bit too general. I have an idea of where the current state of the art is in my field (let's say I read a few tens of articles in my field to write my proposal). However, i don't think I "am" at the state of the art. My coursework, experiment planning and helping the research group in other tasks are taking a lot of time, and I haven't evolved much on this for the first 3 months.

How far in the PhD should I be when (in parentheses when I think I can manage to accomplish these phases):

I am able to understand to a very detailed degree state of the art work (15 months)?
I am able to reproduce state of the art results with my models (18 months)?
I publish in a journal something related to my work (21 months)?
I know very well where I intend to "push" the boundary of knowledge in my field and the methods I will use for that (24 months)?

You may never "feel" it. But you might be there. You might "feel" it always, but not be even close. Results will tell you that you were there. Especially if others (reviewers) find your results and methods to be "interesting".

Human knowledge is sometimes viewed as a vast sphere with researchers chipping away at the "edge of the known" to make advances and push out the boundaries. That is probably more or less accurate. But imagine, instead, that human knowledge is fractal instead. With the boundary everywhere about us. The edge isn't smooth. You can be at the edge no matter where you are.

But you have to be able to look beyond the edge, into the unknown. You have to be able to formulate questions about the unknown for which you don't have the answer. In some fields (math, physics) there may not even be an answer to some questions. But to be "at the edge" you need to also have ideas about how to go about answering those questions or showing that the answers are impossible.

Note, for example, that few would question whether Einstein was at the edge. But note also that he was very tentative about some things. And he backtracked a few times. He posed big questions, interesting questions. He sought ways to answer them. He proposed ways to answer them that were beyond the state of knowledge and technology at the time.

But if you want to get a good sense of whether you are there or not get feedback on your ideas. Two good ways are to submit papers and get reviewer feedback and to form a circle of collaborators with whom you can propose questions and evaluate them. In most fields, unless they are very new, it isn't possible to know everything about the field. In mathematics that was last possible about a hundred years ago. But a collaborative group will have a better overall grasp of what is known and what is not and what is an "interesting" direction in which to push.

But the unknown is unknown. At least until you make part of it known.

Personal note: I guess I learned I was there in about the fifth year of a graduate program. But only in a couple of very narrow (fractal, again) areas.


I got a paper to review from a journal that had rejected my earlier works, how to respond? Recently, I got a paper to review for a journal (Elsevier) which is very reputed. The fact is that this journal had rejected two of my earlier works after keeping it under review for more than a year approximately.

I understand that in science, it is good to forget the past; however, it still keeps me haunted when I think that my works became obsolete because of unnecessary delay in the review process that resulted in no satisfactory comment on rejection.

Is it weird that the journal is now thinking that I am capable of reviewing a manuscript?

Anyway, past apart, how should I respond? Should I accept the review invitation? Or, should I just say that I can't do the review, which will be like Tit-For-Tat. I don't know, I am confused.

These two issues are separate: if they reject your paper without comments, that's where you have to complain. They did not do a good job, reputable or not, and you are entitled to an explanatory review, especially since they wasted your time.

But you should not link the issues. If you think the journal is not as good as it used to be, you can decide not to review. If you think it is good, then, depending on how much time you have, you can offer to do the review. And if you do, do it with as much goodwill as you would for a journal that gave your astounding reviews.

But you should not link your rejection and your review - it is tempting to do so, but it is not a professional attitude. And you want to be just that: a professional.


Contact Prof for Course-Based Master Admission? I am interested in applying course-based master program in electrical engineering. Most of them are self-funded, 1~1.5 years in length, and don't require a thesis .

I learnt that it is (usually) advantageous to contact the Prof of your interest in Phd application. Is this still true for application to course-based master degree？ Should I also try to contact Prof in order to "increase" my chance of admission? Is there any disadvantage of doing that?

As an undergrad, I think I have good research experience. (work in 3 different research lab, and produce 1 first-authored publication). Given that I have such experience, do you think it is advantageous for me to contact the Prof of my interested?

I think it will depend on the structure of the Master's program. I'm assuming you'll still have to do some kind of comprehensive "project" which will require some kind of advisor. In which case, I think it would be helpful to get a willing professor beforehand to strengthen your application. It shows that you already have a direction you're interesting in pursuing (which would be aligned with the professor's research interests).


Were any Russian diploma mills once prestigious universities? Like many countries, the Russian Federation seems to have a lot of diploma mills that grant academic degrees to anyone who will pay the enrolment fees (and possibly fulfill some nominal academic requirements, such submitting a dissertation that doesn't undergo meaningful peer review).  I understand that these diploma mills tend to be newer, private institutions established in the past quarter-century, and that the government has recently taken steps to crack down on them.
From what I've read here on the Academia Stack Exchange and elsewhere, Russian universities were once quite good, at least in STEM subjects, but overall their quality started to slip in the years following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.  This leads me to the following question.

Among those Russian institutions which could currently be regarded as diploma mills, were any of them once highly respected, bona fide universities in Soviet times?

It's not hard for me to imagine that some once-great scientific institutions may have fallen upon hard times and, drained of funding and professorial talent, resorted to selling prestigious-sounding degrees for cash.  But I don't know if that ever really happened, or if so, how often.

If a prospective new student or employee presents themselves to me with a recent degree from a university I know to have been highly regarded in the USSR, how safe is it to assume that they didn't just buy it?

First, we should have some criteria on what to call a diploma mill.

This article cites the Ministry of Education claiming:

  Indeed, the number of universities that worked like diploma conveyor line was growing in Russia, comments the Ministry of Science and Education. The Ministry and Federal Education Supervision Service are regularly doing checkups to identify the so-called diploma mills, with hundreds of students per one instructor or a tremendous ratio of extramural to intramural students -- these are one of the first hallmarks. Since 2015, the state accreditation has been renounced for 34 universities and branches. This mainly concerns Humanities, including Law, Economics and Management.

Original text

  "Действительно, в России росло количество вузов, деятельность которых напоминала конвейер по выдаче дипломов,— прокомментировали эту историю в Минобрнауки.— Министерство совместно с Рособрнадзором регулярно проводит проверки, которые позволяют увидеть и так называемые конторы по продаже дипломов, когда на одного педагогического работника приходится одновременно несколько сотен студентов или же количество заочников в сотни раз превышает студентов очного отделения,— это одни из первых признаков. С начала 2015 года в результате проверок было приостановлено действие государственной аккредитации в 34 вузах и филиалах. В основном это касается укрупненных групп специальностей "Гуманитарные науки", в которую входят образовательные программы в области юриспруденции, и "Экономика и управление"".

An small sample of universities that get their accreditation renounced in early 2016 is mentioned by Federal Education Supervision Service:

  For poor quality and content of education, the state accreditation is void for the following universities:
  1. Kabardino-Balkariya business institute (founded 1998)
  2. International Slavic institute (founded 1994)
  3. Moscow Legal studies institute (founded 2000)
  4. Moscow Institute of Banking (founded 1996)
  5. Vladimir business institute (founded 1997)
  6. Institute for Advocacy, Notariate and International Relations (founded 2003)

Original text

  За неустранение несоответствий содержания и качества подготовки обучающихся полностью лишены государственной аккредитации:
  1.  НОУ ВПО «Кабардино-Балкарский институт бизнеса»;
  2.  ОАНО ВО «Международный славянский институт»;
  3.  НОУ ВПО «Московский институт юриспруденции»;
  4.  НОУ ВПО «Московский институт банковского дела»;
  5.  АНО ВПО «Владимирский институт бизнеса»;
  6.  НОУ ВПО «Институт адвокатуры, нотариата и международных отношений».

I think we're safe to assume these ones definitely were diploma mills. If you dig a bit more cases (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), you see the trend. Diploma mills in Russia are either Moscow-based Humanities universities with very general names (I think they can teach you everything if they are called International Slavic Institute) or some distant region (North Caucasus, for instance) universities with very obscure names (I particularly liked the Institute for Psychology and Acmeology, whatever they could mean).

Now, these universities weren't there in the Soviet times. An overwhelming majority of them popped up in the 1990s (I had given the foundation dates for the six universities I listed above).

Back to your questions, the universities that were highly respected in the Soviet times continue to be legit universities. I should remark that the quality of education, from my insider point of view, seems to deteriorate, in the sense that students try to slack as much as they can, including giving bribes to instructors. However, no prominent university has turned to a diploma mill as in 'never come to the classes, pay and have your diploma'. The ones that are diploma mills are the newly emerging, mayfly universities.

Further reading

If you want to learn more about diploma mills in Russia, consider reading about Dissernet. While the state-based Federal Education Supervision Service is doing a good job fighting diploma mills that give bachelor and master's diplomas, Dissernet is a non-profit volunteer organization that studies plagiarism in PhD thesis works and busts PhD diploma mills.


Where can i study academic english in an English-speaking country? I am an electrical engineering PhD student, from an African country and the official language here is French, but since most of journals and revues are in English, I always struggle to write my papers and most of them are reject because of the language. I tried to study English in local schools but the result is not so good.

Until a friend of mine suggested that i should try to studying English in an English-speaking country (Preferably the US or the UK), because the interaction with people will also count as practice, So i am looking for a school or training which is specialized in teaching PhD student how to write a scientific paper ? Does a such thing exists in the USA/UK, if yes please point me to them.

I am also non-native English speaker. I also did my Ph.D on social sciences and need to publish articles in English. I first recommend anyone to get online "academic writing" courses. If you search carefully you are going to find that there are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) designed specifically for that purpose, i.e. academic English and writing. Price to benefit ratio for such a course will be very high too. If you pay, you will also get a certificate too.
Writing an article in another language and seeing your mistake in every aspect requires a lot of attention and some time too. You can learn general purpose English, lets say, in a year but improving your writing to a level where even minor mistakes are rare is something not easy to reach.
Working with editors whose native languages are English can help you to see your mistakes too.
"Interactions with people" may help you to communicate and perhaps to present your article in a conference though it will not help you to write an article without or with little mistakes. You have to spend a lot of time hanging around, chatting with people just to capture a few "academic words" in a daily life.


Is it well-received to thank the assignment author at the end of a course? Institutional Background
I'm currently taking a programming course as part of my computer science studies at a rather small German university.
The course is done by the professor, who's holding the lecture, and three assistants who do the lab with us, prepare / correct the assignments and update and maintain the sample code base / documentation.
Actual question background
Now I've liked the assignments a lot and even posted them on CodeGolf.SE (after the assignments expired) after having obtained permission from my professor. They have done quite well over there (usually a lot of answers, upvotes and views). To be clear: The assignments were not "good" in the sense that they were trivial or easy, they just required an appropriate understanding of the materials and were quite enjoyable to do.
Because I and apparently others have enjoyed these assignments, or the ideas behind them, so much, I'd link to thank the author of the assignments in a nice email with links to the relevant CodeGolf posts.
As an inexperienced student I don't know whether it would be awkward for him to get such a "thanks" for "just getting his job done".
Is it generally considered appropriate / acceptable to thank members of the team besides the primary instructor for a good and enjoyable course experience, like good assignments)?
As for the relation between the assignment author and me: We had near to no interaction except him pushing the new assignments into everybody's SVN folders and then correcting all solutions, usually without many comments, after the students have pushed them back into the repository.
To distinguish this question from "Is it appropriate to send an email to a professor at the end of the semester thanking them for their teaching?": To my knowledge, the assignment author has no authority whatsoever about my grade and I already have my qualification for the exam and I've never met / seen him in person.

Yes, I think it would be fine. Everybody likes to know their work is appreciated. Teaching assistants are often not appreciated enough  by their students (and sometimes not enough by their professors!).

Just a short concise form of thanks would be enough:

  Thanks for those exercises you set for course xyz. They were really interesting, and I enjoyed solving them. I hope you liked creating them as much as I appreciated their contents.

Something along those lines perhaps. If you make it too long it might sound obsequious or sycophantic.


What to do when you have accidentally submitted an article to a predatory journal I'm an inexperienced researcher and I made the stupid mistake of submitting my article to a predatory journal. I realised the journal was fake when they failed to provide the reviewers comments.

I then requested that the article be withdrawn. I received an email back from the 'editor' saying that the article had been withdrawn and guaranteeing that they wouldn't publish the article without my permission. I didn't sign the transfer of copyright, pay any money and the article hasn't appeared on their website.

My question is whether my article is now a write off? Can I resubmit it elsewhere or just write off as a bad learning experience? I would really like to salvage if if possible.

You can now submit it elsewhere. It has not been published and it is not under consideration anywhere, so you are free to resubmit it.
The fact that the first journal was predatory is only relevant because that was the reason you withdrew the paper.


ECTS credits for US teaching credentials In the southern United States, one of the general requirements for teaching a given course is to have 18 semester hours at the graduate level.

I currently have 12 graduate hours in two separate fields. Though it's unlikely I'd ever be asked to teach a course in either, I am curious.  If one were to take courses in Europe, how would the ETCS credits be likely interpreted for such a requirement?  Would the common 2 ECTS = 1 American semester hour conversion be used?

depending what country in EU ( Usually it is few differences in hours ) 60 points ( credits by US systems ) is equivalent to 25-30 hours per credit ( point )
It would be helpful if you can clarify what is 12 graduate hours.

The rough equivalent of 5 ECTS credits is 2.5 American credits,
Therefore we advise to transfer credits along this 2:1 ratio.
Students from universities with an American credits system should verify their school's credit-granting process.
Transfer of credits is at the discretion of the home institution.

This is something that is usually mentioned across internet.
However according to this source `A standard full-time study load is usually 30 credit hours per year. Typically, in order to graduate with a degree, universities expect students to complete:

120-130 credit hours for a Bachelor’s degree

so 1.67 ECTS = 1.00 US College Credit Hours

`


Gift to a supportive professor? As you might have seen from my history I had a very bad advisor who deliberately underpaid me, stole my research work and undermined my career at multiple phases.

Now I am done with my university and leaving next month. A professor in my department had been very supportive of me during these times, giving me advice on how to handle this situation, gave me recommendation letters to apply for PhD programs at other universities and also got me a internship. I just want to thank her for her help. I usually would have got a champagne or something but I know she doesn't drink alcohol. Any advice?

It's nice that you want to do this for your professor. Thinking over what I would like (and have received in the past), the following comes to mind:

a note (email, letter, whatever you prefer) saying essentially a longer version of what you said above. A heartfelt note of this kind is the best kind of thanks.
if you'd like to get something more tangible for the professor, a little token that they can place on their desk (like what Pete L. Clark mentions) is always nice. It doesn't even have to cost lots of money. I have students who made paper models for me (I teach geometry) and I have them all over my desk :).


Do I need to cite someone repeatedly? I am using a quotation in my text which I am citing appropriately the first time. Do I need to cite again when using some text or, a concept, or even a word of the quotation later in the text?

For example:

  Smith (2015, p.15) states that: ‘the weather is going the be good today’.
  […]
  We do not need an umbrella today as the weather is going to be ‘good today’, so rain is not expected.

As you see, I am using punctuation, but I am not citing again. Is that appropriate?

You must cite every time you use the words or ideas of another.


Good ways to multitask While multitasking is not a desired trait unique to academia, it's something that seems particularly important for graduate students and new faculty. I've had many students ask me how to multitask effectively, and I'm curious to know what the collective wisdom of this forum would be.

  what are good practices to manage multiple distinct academic
  activities effectively ?

To make this more focused and relevant, I'll limit academic activities to

Taking (or teaching) classes
Working on multiple research projects
Writing grant proposals (or applying for fellowships)
service responsibilities
a healthy lifestyle with outside hobbies

I have three answers to this question; I'll put them all here for you.

Don't.

Multi-tasking is a necessity when there are many tasks that demand your attention all at once. The people who most need these skills are either managers, whose work demands that they divide their attention among their subordinates as necessary, and those working in a highly collaborative environment, where interaction with colleagues happens regularly.

As a graduate student, this will almost never happen. Your responsibilities will typically include coursework, teaching assistantships, and research duties, and writing. Even your collaborations will happen at a slow pace. You'll rarely be in a situation where you need to get in touch with someone within the hour; almost all your issues will be able to wait a day. Considering that almost all research shows that multitasking decreases productivity, consider yourself lucky.

To that end, if you can train yourself to focus on a single task at a time, your work will benefit from it.
Pomodoro technique

I recently (~6 mos) read about this technique online, and I've found it very useful for certain tasks. The concept is ridiculously simple. Before you start working, write down the task you're about to start on a piece of paper. Start a 25 minute timer and work until it runs out. Take a 5 min stretch, put a tic next to the task on the piece of paper, and then repeat until you're done. If you need to switch to something else, write it down on the paper as well, and switch every 25 minutes. This way, you always have at least 25 minutes to do each task, and you can set up your multitasking in 25 minute chunks. (As an added benefit, you're taking stretch breaks every 5 minutes, which is good for your health.)
Getting Things Done

There's an answer below that mentions this, but doesn't do it justice. I've been using this for years and it's a wonderful way of keeping track of what you need to do. At it's simplest, the technique just advocates that you make a to-do list of everything you need to do. The useful part of this technique is how he separates tasks; he puts them into "contexts", which you can think of as "environments". Some tasks will be done at home, some at work, some wherever you have email access, etc. By breaking up tasks like this, you can easily see what you need to do at any given time by simply consulting the correct list.

This technique has gained immense popularity, and because of that many to-do lists online feature "GTD compatibility". This basically means that they let you make lists of your to-dos.

This method comes with a catch; if you don't do it rigorously, you may as well not do it at all. As soon as some tasks aren't on your lists, then you'll stop checking the lists, and then the whole thing goes to pot. However, if you keep the lists current, then it's an immensely helpful technique. For forgetful people like me, the to-do concept is a veritable necessity, and the context idea is a good way of segmenting what you need to do.


Does APA style satisfy AEA style requirements? I see the AEA templates as well as APA guidelines. I'm in the process of assessing the question myself, but I'm wondering if anyone has a quick answer: If I format my paper according to APA guidelines will this also satisfy AEA style requirements?

To add context to a paper I'm working on: I do have tables and equations, but I do not have second or third level headings. Only first-level headings.

I'm interested in contributing this work PubCSS and I'm wondering if I will need two distinct style sheets, or if I can get away with a single one. It would be even better if I can get away with 0 new style sheets! PubCSS already supports ACM and IEEE style, so if anyone is familiar with those then I would be curious what differences, if any, exist between those, APA, and AEA.

No, AEA uses a modified Chicago style. APA formatting will not meet this criteria. PubCSS is currently some distance from being able to implement an AEA paper in CSS. At the moment, I recommend sticking with the AEA-provided LaTeX template.


How to compile an index for a book efficiently, if at all possible? My book manuscript of ca 250 pages was accepted by a publisher. The book contract obliges me to either prepare an index myself or to delegate the task to the publisher, who in turn would hire a freelancer at my expense, which the publisher estimated at GBP 300 (Eur. 340, USD 400).

I have never compiled an index before. Now I am wondering if it is worth it to compile the index myself or if I should rather have it made for me. Of course, this is quite subjective. But those with pertinent experience may know:

How much time and effort does it usually take to prepare an index?
Are there any tools or methods to (partly) automate the task and that still yield an acceptable outcome?

Several text formatters, notably LaTeX (e.g. the texlive suite) and Lout, have good tools to make or compile an index. See this explanation about adding index to a LaTeX formatted document. And many word processors have indexing capacities.

Of course, you need to do the real indexing work: knowing what words are important in your book (and, if the word is common, knowing which occurrences of that word are important), and adding \index markup in the LaTeX source (that work is needed whatever technical solution you use to write your book, e.g. with other text processors like LibreOffice or Microsoft Word, which also has indexing capabilities). With other word processors, you also need to do some action to add a word occurrence to the index. Specialized indexing software also exist.

Obviously, some utilities could be helpful in that (e.g. Unix grep with LaTeX, the find menu of LibreOffice or Word text processors, etc..) - to find every occurrence of some word (but you still need to decide if that occurrence should go to the index and act accordingly).

  I am wondering if it is worth it to compile the index myself

Yes, because you already know quite well your book. And that could take one or a few days of your time. Someone else has first to read it carefully, so would spend a lot more time than you.


Adding additional member to a funded project This is not what happens to me, just something I think about and wonder if it ever happens in academia.

Suppose that there is a funded project which is planned to have 3 people working in it for a certain amount of time. At one point of time, a new member, who can be a PhD student or a post-doc, is added into a project. I can think of few reasons to add a new member to a project: to help her gain some experience, or just because there is some additional work to be done but is not initially planned.

However, as it is initially planned that there are only 3 people working in it, which means the funding only covers salary paid to 3, does it mean a new member has to work without being paid?

However, as it is initially planned that there are only 3 people working in it, which means the funding only covers salary paid to 3, does it mean a new member has to work without being paid?

In good labs, PhD students are not supposed to work for free (although it may happen on occasion). Usually, people added to such a project fall into three categories:

They are funded by the faculty. For instance, the added person could be another professor, for which the faculty pays the salary. Additionally, and maybe more commonly, there are also PhD students which are not paid by external grants. For instance, in Austria / Germany, professors generally have a limited number of "assistants" (not to be confused with Assistant Professors), which are basically PhD students paid y the faculty to assist the professor in teaching, administration and research. Those can be assigned to projects freely. Another possibility of PhD students independent of grants are PhD student positions that a professor has negotiated as part of her/his startup package.
They are funded by another grant, but simply have free resources (time). Clearly, while there are projects that need more resources, there are also projects that are actually overstaffed. In such cases, students will often help out with troubled projects.
They are funded by "soft" money that is not bound to a concrete project. For instance, in my country, many large labs have significant funds saved up from the overheads of previous projects. Occasionally, a strong candidate wants to start a PhD, but no suitable grant is currently open. In that case, the professor will (at least temporarily) pay the student from this saved-up funds. Clearly, this candidate is then not bound to a specific project, and can join whatever project needs her/him most, or whatever project suits her/his interests most.

(I use the term "assigned" very freely above - in reality, students and postdocs are in most labs not so much assigned as asked whether they would be interested to help out in project XY and get a paper or two out of it)


How can I invite open comments or reviews of my published papers? I would like to attract more discussion, comments or reviews of my papers and so would like to add the ability for comments or reviews to be made by the public in relation to my papers. Ideally I would like a comments section similar to those found in blogging software which allows comments to be moderated. I would like to provide this ability in an easy to maintain way but also maintain mediation control. I would rather not use blogging software.

What would be the best way of allowing open comments/reviews on my work? What are the pros and cons of allowing open, but moderated comments like this?

Okay, this is totally not an answer to your specific question, but I think it is an interesting answer to the broader question of getting comments and feedback on your published papers…

Go to conferences, present your work (either at oral or poster presentations), and make sure you stick around and are welcoming enough so people will ask questions, give you feedback, engage in discussion about your methods and results, etc. I have received tons of insightful comments on my own work in conferences, and still find them an extraordinary tool to gather feedback on your published work.

Also, do not hesitate to engage with other researchers with research interests close to yours, and after you get to know them, ask them clearly what they think about it. I mean, if you discuss with top-notch people in the same area, they will have read your paper (unless it's really very recent); I have started very insightful conversations with lines like:

  Hello, professor Smith, it's nice to meet you. Since the 2011 conference, when we last met, I saw your nice paper on X in Flagship journal of your field. It was really an improvement over existing methods. Actually, there was a question I wanted to ask: you may have seen that we published a different approach with the same goal last year in International journal of our field, and we are getting slightly different convergence properties. I haven't had yet the opportunity of asking you what you thought of our approach and the way it may prevent the issue of Y…

Just remember, that's not a conversation everyone is willing to have. So, if it looks like they are trying to bail out, help them get out easily! Manners, always :)


How to ensure a research idea has not been explored previously I am admittedly an undergraduate so I do not have very much experience yet in finding resources.

When I have an idea of something I would consider worthwhile to research (in my case for a proposal to a supervisor about an undergraduate research opportunity), assuming I do extensive research online to see what has been found out about the subject and end up concluding that what I want to look into has not been investigated yet.

How can I ensure that it actually hasn't, and it isn't just a case of me not finding the information that is already available somewhere?

This is of course always hard to protect oneself from. However, I would say the best way to ensure that your research proposal hasn't been investigated before is to get in contact with an expert in the field and ask him or her this.

Of course, you should investigate the topic thoroughly before approaching the expert. One tip to do this is by using a citation index. This enables you to track how a certain paper has been cited, meaning you can follow the trail and more effectevly find out what has been done. For example, if you have located an old seminal paper in your field, finding out which papers have referenced this one should give you a fair chanse of finding what you're looking for.


Saving handwritten notes for future reference I have more than one hundred pages of handwritten notes.

I made these notes while writing different chapters of my PhD dissertation. The notes include summaries of journal articles, my thoughts, suggestions by others and anything that I thought could be potentially useful for my research.

I am wondering what is the best way to organise and store them. Converting them into pdf is one way of doing it but I want to organised them in some way e.g. by chapter, or date or key words.

Is there any program or software that can be useful in this regard?

It's not an answer, but it's too long for a comment…

I have one word for you in the future: Moleskine. Good quality notebooks, organized either thematically or chronologically, is a great way to store that sort of information. For notes, long term conservation is a big issue, and you have little guarantee that bells-and-whistles software X will still be working on your computer in 10 to 20 years. Simple solutions (both electronic and not) are the best for that purpose.

Finally, I have managed my notes electronically for some time (I tried many combinations, including iPad/Evernote/Dropbox, text files, LaTeX), but wasn't satisfied for the reasons above. I went back to dead wood storage (aka paper) with delight!


Query regarding the academic journal submission Asking on behalf of my friend.
He had worked on some problems in the summer of 2018 when he was a student at some X university. After a year, he again started working on the same problem and will be going to publish it in some journal. But now he joined university Y.
He has this query: what author's address and mail he needs to mention on the paper? Or what else he needs to do?
PS: The funding for the summer internship was given by university X.
Thanks

You want to provide maximal useful information. That should include funding sources and a current address.
Your friend should provide the journal with all that information. They will decide how to use it. A paper I wrote years ago needed three affiliations. It started with

The footnote read

That was in the days before email. Now there would be a current email address.


How do I "briefly but clearly comment my choice of research area(s) of interest"? I am filling McGill's Area of Research and Applicant Profile Form for admission to the Electrical Engineering M.Eng. program. I'm not sure how I should answer this (the 2nd field):

"For the specified research area(s) of interest, briefly but clearly comment on your choice. Further, if you have specified a supervisor(s), state why he or she would be your preferred mentor."

I have described my areas of interest and how I developed those interests and relevant experiences, in the previous space provided. I'm not sure what exactly should "comment" on. Do they expect me to write about, say, what Intelligent Systems is?

You should call them and ask about the distinction - it would be a far better answer as opposed to third party information on the forum. That’s honestly the best way you can resolve the confusion.


How can I be a good reviewer? Someday, as strange as it feels to me right now, I might be asked to review an article for publication. A while ago my advisor and I were talking about this, and it hit me that I don't really know how to be a good reviewer, beyond the basics:

Respond timely to things,
Make your report clear and detailed,
Have actually read the paper,
Etc.

Beyond this, though, I'm completely in the dark. So I'd like to ask:

  What's some good advice for a first-time reviewer?

My field is math, but I'm really interested in general advice (although advice specific to math, or another field, would also be interesting and useful).

I'd like to make this question "community wiki" or analogous, but I can't seem to figure out how - if someone can do so, please do, and then I will delete this paragraph.

This is mostly just a whole bunch of comments strung together.

First, I think you should look for advice specific to refereeing math papers, as refereeing in math is quite different than most other fields.  (Though it's perfectly valid to ask for general advice now, at some point you should want to know about refereeing specifically in math.)

Second, here are some places with advice:

Attributes of an ideal referee, Notices of the AMS
Refereeing a paper, from MathOverflow
How do I referee a paper, from TCS SE

One thing I would disagree with in the first article is the statement that "The referee is expected primarily to check the correctness of the paper."  I would say the primary job is to assess the importance of the paper, which includes correctness, though it is not always expected that the referee check every detail.

Anyway, since your question is rather broad, I suggest you read this and other Q&A's here and on MO, and then if you have more specific questions you can ask them separately.


PhD online interview I am invited to an online interview for a PhD position.
Actually, it is my first time.
What are the contents of the interview?
What issues are usually discussed in these interviews?
Am I supposed to represent a proposal in the context of research, at that time?
Which parameters can increase the acceptance chance?

I work in a program for computational science, and we do online interviews with all of the qualified candidates for both our dual-degree (master's-PhD) and doctoral programs.

Because we are a rather broad program, we tend not to favor "quizzes" that test knowledge. Instead, we are looking for things like:

Ability to communicate in English
Enthusiasm for computational science (many people think we're a computer science program, instead of a computational science program!)
Match for the research interests of one or more of our institute members (particularly for dual-degree candidates)
Previous experience in computational science
Evidence of teamwork and ability to fit our program

There's no real way to "game" the system, at least in my interview, unless you want to invent an entirely new personality for yourself. That's because most of my questions are free-form after the first few, and will try to explore the answers you've given in greater depth. For instance, if a candidate expresses an interest in fluid mechanics, I'll ask what they've done, what makes it interesting, what they'd like to do in the future. If someone happens to express interest in my area (computational materials), things will go in yet another direction altogether.

The best advice is be yourself. If you try to come off as someone you're not, that will likely show up during the interview.


Classmate shops my unpublished ideas around and contacts my advisors, I'm about a year into some exciting research, with some early results that many professors are interested in following the progress of.  I have two advisors.
I recently learned that my graduate classmate, from a different lab, has been shopping my ideas around, interviewing with other labs at other universities, apparently to try to do something similar, gain a collaborator, etc.  He told he did this, which made me uncomfortable.
He's also contacted one of my advisors, he says.  I believe there is no stopping him at this point.  He will likely contact my second, more renowned advisor too, with the goal of working with them, and knowing about all of my recent progress in research, since him and I are very close friends.
I feel he's behaving like a leech and acting like a desperate leap-frogger.  And I regret talking so much about my progress, which he now uses and shops around, perhaps misrepresenting the ideas and techniques as his own.
How should I deal with these feelings?
On the one hand, I feel he has complete freedom to contact whomever he wants, and shop whatever unpublished ideas he wants, to build his own career.  On the other hand, I feel like I am just supplying and enabling a plagiarist.
Should I cut contact with him, or be proud that he is excited about my work and wants to emulate me?
I don't contact his advisors or shop his ideas around, for example.

What you describe sounds very odd. It's hard to know exactly without being party to the conversations (and you don't know exactly what this person is saying to others about your work), but my initial impression is that this is more likely to hurt your friend than you. I also wonder if they're in a good space - it sounds less like someone trying to build a career and more like someone who might be a bit lost and confused about their own directions.
That said, it would absolutely be appropriate for you to ask that they stop talking about your work to third parties. It's one thing if it happens to come up in related conversation centered on their own work, it's another thing to shop it around actively, whether giving you credit or not. There are definitely kinder ways to phrase this and harsher ways. I'd probably start with kindness just because they are more likely to react positively. You can thank them for being excited about your research, but share that you'd like to spread your own work and ask that they not discuss it with people besides you.
You can also simply stop sharing such detail with them, without cutting them off completely unless you also choose to do that. If they are upset, I think it's reasonable to remind them that when you told them more they told other people, and that you'd rather talk about (any other topic). If they react aggressively, it may then make sense to get other people involved at your institution.
I'd also suggest having a conversation with your advisor(s). It doesn't need to be in any depth, and you don't need to set aside a separate meeting. Just mention that you've been talking about your research with a friend and you were surprised that they then conveyed it to third parties, and ask whether they think you should do anything about it. You don't have to accuse them or provide proof of plagiarism - you can just say what has happened and let others judge for themselves. They probably won't suggest there is much you can do, but now they'll be aware in the future.
Otherwise, keep moving forward and push towards publishing the things you have, like you would be doing anyways. If you have near-publishable work, consider discussing with your advisor whether it could be released as a pre-print. Whatever you have told this person about your progress so far, you have a huge head start on them, it's your research. Unless you think they'll actually be able to somehow beat you to publishing through their machinations, which doesn't seem likely from your description, they aren't too much of a threat.


Applying for research funding as an independent researcher? I am a Masters degree holder in Computer Science. Where I live, the most popular way of receiving research grants is from the government. There are two problems with that.

First, You have to be enrolled in a Masters or doctorate degree program at the time of applying for funding.

Secondly, the researcher only gets a small amount of pay from the grant(Like about 2 or 3 percent). About 10 to 15 percent is for research supervisor. And remaining is equipment and other costs.

So is there any way of applying for research funding as an independent researcher?
I am currently enrolled in a Masters program and am very close to getting a grant for my research. But I would like to continue work as a researcher after completing my Masters and would like to apply for funding independently.

Having only a MSc (and not doing a PhD) it might be hard to get an official research funding (although, there are many different programs and maybe there is one for someone with your status; especially if in some way you are still affiliated with an university of institute).

Sadly, (as Paul Hiemstra pointed out) there no such thing as a scientific freelancer. Science market is very far from an unregulated, free market (and the supply is higher than demands, so it is not a place for freelancer jobs).

However, there are two options which may make sense to you:

doing a part-time PhD, or some PhD where you are not expected to be at the univ. all the time; effectively, it may work for you (though, then it will need to be rather at a low-rank univ.; most likely the most important thing is to find a univ. with no to low teaching load + an advisor who does not care (sic!) or one who understands your situation and is willing to participate in such relationship),
considering crowdfunding - i.e. describing you project on a website and gathering from all interested people (like on Kickstarter); here is a list of sites for crowdfunding in science (then it is not from government).


GED instead of finishing school Are there any drawbacks to dropping out of school and completing a GED instead of finishing and getting a diploma?

I am in the midwest United States and am currently unemployed. I would eventually like to have a job focused on computing and was wondering if getting a GED would let me start college early.

In general, the high school diploma is viewed better for getting jobs than the GED.  Also by colleges.  GED is (probably properly) viewed as a bit of a degraded HS diploma.

That said, a GED is still far better than nothing.  And of course, you can go on to many great things in life without a HS diploma.  Know a guy retiring as an O-6 in the Navy, who ran away from home, entered the fleet, ended up at USNA (i.e. college) and then had a professional job.

It's kind of unclear what sort of scenario you are describing.  If you're in high school, get it done in school.  No advantage to dropping out for a GED, if the plan is eventual college and a professional job.  Different scenario if you want to work a trade, but even then I would still urge to get the HS diploma.  Our society is overvaluing college...people here will disagree because they are employees of "Big College", but there's no reason for baristas to have college degrees.

Of course, if you're a couple years out of school (to draw a line, let's say older than 19), just get the GED, easiest fastest and move on.

As far as the computer career counseling (especially your comment on being unemployed), I would urge you to get a job, any job (assuming you're over 19).  Even if it's not in computers, just get something, so you're working. It's good to be productive and will help your self esteem and respect from others.

Also, there are still many technician types of jobs/training in the broadly defined IT industry that are available sans college, sometimes with some training.  If you go that route, do something where the training is at night (so you can work in the day).  Maybe you eventually do some night school college work also, but don't make that an immediate objective.  Also look carefully over the different training options.  There are some that are snaky (expensive, not very useful) and others that are high bang for the buck and high bang for the time.You need to research them.

One practical note, if you're just 16-19, having family disputes and considering dropping out and moving on because of that, don't.  Suck it up and get the HS diploma.  It's pretty common for there to be friction (especially young man with old bull) at that stage in life.  The military used to harvest huge amounts of talented people from this dynamic who entered sans HS diploma.  It is still possible to some extent but even there, getting more restrictive.