Should I ask for a submitted recommendation letter to be retracted in order to submit another, stronger recommendation? I am currently applying for a Ph.D. in Physics in the US. One of my recommenders has already submitted a letter to the schools I'm applying to, but I was advised by another faculty member that I should have gotten a letter from a different professor I worked with since the submitted one wouldn't be as strong. The latter professor would most likely write a stronger recommendation.

All of the programs I'm applying for require three letters, and most allow for four; would simply adding the extra recommender be sufficient or should I contact the school to remove the weaker letter entirely if possible? In other words, would having it there bring down my application if there is a stronger one I could replace it with or would it reasonable to assume that reviewers would consider all four and think of the weaker one as extraneous (since I cannot define a ranked order)?

You can't "retract" a letter.  This isn't done, and I think it would look weird and somewhat suspicious.  The committee might be inclined to read that letter more closely in case it contains something damaging that you were trying to conceal.  At the very least, it seems distasteful to be "gaming" your professors' supposedly well-considered evaluations in this way.

You certainly can have this other professor submit their letter in addition to the others.  For those schools that specify three letters, it will be up to the committee whether they read all four, or choose three in some arbitrary way.  I suspect that if three letters suggest you're a viable candidate, the committee will be willing to look at the fourth.


Should referencing critical comments on papers that have been referenced be obligatory? Say a paper submitted for publication in a journal by Prof. Bertie Wooster references a paper by Dr Augustus Fink-Nottle, but that paper was the subject of a critical peer-reviewed comment by Prof. Roderick Spode.  Should I insist as a reviewer that Prof. Spode's paper should also be referenced and the criticism at least mentioned, even if I personally do not agree with Prof. Spode's point of view?

My intuition is that the reader of a paper should reasonably expect to be made aware of any element on which Prof. Woosters work is based that has been seriously called into question, so that he is able to form an opinion on the matter.  Am I being unreasonable in this expectation?

This depends on why you reference the paper. If you reference it because of the details that were later commented on, there is definitely reason to also mention the disagreement. I would consider that a basic aspect of any referencing of relevant literature. If, on the other hand the comments by Spode have later been shown to be wrong (Jeeves, 2008) or irrelevant the "historic" discussion has little relevance.

So I think your sense is correct. But, the necessity to reference both depends on the reason for referencing. The two are not eternally linked for every aspect of the original paper, only the parts where opinions differ and from which the discussion has arisen.


How should I thank my advisors at the end of my program? I've finished all of the requirements for my master's degree and am going to graduate this summer. As I finish up, I want to thank my advisors for investing in me so much over the last few years.

What are some appropriate ways for me to thank my advisors? (One of my advisors moved out-of-state after I started working with her, so unfortunately, I won't be able to thank her in person.)

Write a nice thank you letter
Keep in touch; send an email every couple of years to let them know about your recent successes
Pay it forward by investing your own time and energy into mentoring others, as time and opportunity permits

My "gratitude role model" is a high school summer research student I had a few years ago.

First, she gave me a card with a nice message at the end of the program.
A year later, she emailed me to let me know that her time in my lab had really meant a lot to her, that she was still pursuing her interest in computer science, and that she was participating in another CS program that summer.
From her next email, a year later, I found out that she had accepted an offer of admission (for undergraduate studies) from a top-20 computer science department.
A couple of months ago, I got an email from my school's K-12 outreach program (which had organized her summer in my lab), informing me that this student had reached out to them to ask if she could volunteer in their programs this summer, while she's back in town.

Working with students can be a thankless task; but the students like the one I described above really keep me going, and make me feel like it is time well spent. I cannot imagine a better way to be thanked.


Thanking administrators for bulk information email I have recently started to communicate with scholars and administrators at an American institution (I myself am based in Europe) as part of a fellowship program. I have since then received several emails with general information which were addressed to me but likely sent in bulk to all participants. The director of the programme (herself a professor) and another administrator are also copied in the messages.
Should I reply to those emails with a "thank you" email? If so, should I include the professor and the other administrator in the reply?

No. You probably don't need to reply.
You should reply if:

You have reason to believe that it will help your administrator to know that you've received the email.
The email is unusually important/helpful to you.
The email is unclear and you want clarification.
The administrator is going "above and beyond". For example, because they are sending everyone general information following your suggestion or a discussion they had with you.

If there is a small number of participants, it could also be helpful say thanks if you do not usually receive emails from this administrator or group of administrators. For example, to give them feedback about including you in their mailing list.
To be sure, I suggest you briefly discuss this with a friend or line manager. Customs vary between research groups, so it is possible that customary thanks are expected.
This answer is based on etiquette in the UK, which I expect to be similar to the US.


What are some general good principles for creating a poster for a poster session? Should one create slides similar to those that one uses in a good powerpoint presentation? Or are there things that a poster should include that a powerpoint should not include? (and vice versa)

The title is your bait, the first paragraph is your hook. Make the bait big and tasty, make the first paragraph catchy.
A poster is primarily an advert for you. Secondarily, it's an advert for your research. Thirdly, it's an advert for your department. And it will succeed at those things best, if it gives the casual reader an easily accessible introduction into what's novel about your research.
Know the flow: it should be clear to anyone reading, what they should read first, then second, and so on.
Make it clear that it's your work. Get your name and affiliation in big letters, with a photo of you. Include your contact details, and make sure you can be reached on them during the conference.
Don't use powerpoint. A poster is graphic design, so use a graphic design package such as InDesign. If you don't have an eye for graphic design, design the poster with someone who does. Most departments have at least one natural talent. It's often the person who keeps winning the "best poster at conference" prize. It's orthogonal to (i.e. independent of) quality of research.
Use a big, clear typeface. Not everyone you need to reach has the healthy, clear vision that most students have.
Briefly state the problem, the method, the results, and the implications.
Pretty pictures are crucial. The words are there just to supplement the explanation of your work given in the pictures.
Test, test, test. Print it out life-size (tiled sheets & sticky tape are your friend), show it to a couple of colleagues (one hot on your area of research, and one hot on design), watch the order in which they read things, ask for feedback. Implement any advice on content that comes from the one who is hot in your area of work. Implement any advice on design that comes from the one hot on design.


Are non-degree courses a viable option to offset a low master's GPA? I am planning on applying to Ph.D. programs in the US in Computer Science and I have a bad GPA of 3.33/4 in my MS(Computer Science) degree.
Would taking non-degree courses in CS in my target school and getting really good grades, help me increase my chances of getting a Ph.D. Admit there? Also, since I am paying for those courses and taking them, would it be ok if I approach the professor and ask to work on a research project with them? Would they be able to write me a letter of recommendation in the future when I consider applying to a Ph.D. program in that same department?

This wouldn't hurt, but whether it helps depends on the admission process at that university and how competitive it is generally.
Another possible benefit is that the faculty (at least a few of them) will become familiar with your work. It also shows some seriousness of purpose.
The letter of recommendation may be possible.
But, have you explored the option of just applying. You may be making assumptions about how important your GPA is in the process. Many things are considered, including letters you might already be able to get and how strong your background is generally, and even undergraduate work.
If you can discuss your current situation with someone at the university, do so before you make decision.


Would a legitimate journal send unsolicited email to an author offering to feature an article in their own publication, for a fee? I have received an email from a journal in the field of engineering saying that they found an article of mine and want to feature it in their own publications for a fee.  I cannot tell if this is something legit or something they send to everyone they can find.  I have Googled, but there is not much information on them.  How can I tell?

Absolutely not.

While open-source journals can charge authors to help recoup the publishing costs in the absence of paid subscriptions, it is completely dishonest for a journal to "republish" a work that has already appeared in print. It is even more dishonest for them to charge you to do it. At best this is just an advertising service; at worst it's a scam.

I wouldn't even dignify the email with a response. Send that email into your junk folder.


Will it be a problem if I take a letter of recommendation from a lecturer in my department? I have a pretty well connection with him academically(taught several courses and was one of the teachers of my final year major) and personally. But I am confused if the designation is going to be a problem.

I have requested and managed two from my thesis supervisor and another assistant professor.
I am planning to apply for graduate studies in the USA.

While a professor would be better, a lecturer should be fine, especially if they hold a doctorate. You want letters from people who know you well enough to make a prediction about your future success, and so a lecturer with whom you have interacted may be a good choice.

The letters need to speak both about your past accomplishments and about your potential for success. Choose the best people for that.

I would worry a bit if the person doesn't have a doctorate, however, unless they are also currently in a doctoral program. They need some experience in the situation you are applying for. But a lecturer - current doctoral student probably will work nearly as well. Note that I have a few misgivings about the last statement. Think hard about it if this is the actual case.


Should I share the prize money from a paper award for my graduate work with my former PhD advisor? I am a postdoc, and with my former Ph.D. adviser have won a paper award which includes a sizable prize (10k+). I am the first author on the paper, and he is the second. The work is entirely mine, but he has been an excellent second author and mentor throughout this project and paper providing active feedback and many excellent suggestions along the way.  Both of us will travel to the conference related to the award, and both of us already have our travel paid for by grants. At the conference, we will give a presentation talking about the background of the paper in which I will be the principal speaker. The question is this: how do we split the award, or do we split it at all?

Please note that this is similar to the following thread, but the roles have been changed somewhat: Share prize money from conference presentation award with co-authors?

Edit: thank you everyone for your excellent advice. I have sent an offer to split the prize, as you suggest.

I suggest splitting the prize money 50-50 with your advisor, or at least offering (with honest intent) to do so. It is the magnanimous and appropriate thing to do, especially considering that his mentorship and assistance to you in turning the project into a finished, polished paper are likely to have been instrumental in getting the award. And there is always the chance that he will be even more magnanimous and refuse to claim his share... By contrast, trying to come up with a formula for quantifying each author's contributions seems petty and ultimately futile. After all, the work may have been "entirely yours", but the paper carries both of your names, and from your description it sounds like the award is for the paper. Logically, I'd say the adviser definitely deserves at least a share, and very probably deserves an equal share.

Finally, even from a purely utilitarian (some would say cynical) point of view, by making such an offer you are likely to impress your adviser (and others who will hear about this -- word gets around!) as a sensible and pleasant-to-work-with person, which would be good for your reputation and could end up benefiting your career trajectory in all sorts of unexpected ways.

Congratulations on the award!


How long can you give job talks on your thesis-book project? I'm two years out of my PhD in the humanities and have given a couple of job talks since, all on material from my dissertation.  Not only have I spent months trying to make the talks themselves as good as possible, they're based on ideas and material I've had the entirety of my PhD to feel confident about presenting.  My question is: at what point on the market do universities expect you to present new material that's not part of your dissertation research?  I'm at the very early stages of developing my "second book project," but my research / argument aren't nearly as developed!

I’m in a vastly different field, but if your work is progressing at approximately the same rate as your community’s then I wouldn’t worry about it.

Perhaps you can talk about your ongoing work as well just to signal that you’re not stagnant. The point of the job talk is to assure the department that you’re going to do good work while there!


Grad school, biology, funding? I am a student of biology at a State school in New York (SUNY), and my school is very liberal arts focused, I am also a racial minority.

I also have a poor GPA, 2.7ish currently, due to failings of a previous major(in computer science i received F's for 2 classes, and a D for one).

I am trying to do undergrad research, but only have 2 potential presentable results up and coming.

Do grad schools typically fund students like me to get their tuition totally waived and a possible small stipend? What can I do to better my odds at securing such a position? It is the only way I could even consider grad school.

Most decent PhD programs in biology will guarantee 5 years of funding (tuition plus stipend on the order of 22K-30K / year) , with the provision that you may have to work as a teaching assistant 20 hours/week for some or all of that time.

The challenge will be getting into one of these programs with a 2.7 GPA. Many graduate schools require a minimum GPA, often around 3.0, for admission. Departments can and do petition to admit students with lower GPAs, but it certainly makes things harder. Being an underrepresented minority can be helpful if there are other strong aspects to your application that compensate in part for the low GPA.

As you've indicated, doing research is one possibility. Publishing a result would be great; simply being a lab for an extended period of time working alongside a PI is already a good thing. Why? It shows that you know what research is about, and it enables you to get a letter of recommendation from someone who knows you well in a research capacity.

What else can you do? Letters of recommendation are very important; do you know faculty from who you could get strong letters? If not, start making those connections now. A good GRE score will go a long way toward compensating for poor grades. It's worth preparing thoroughly for the GRE before you take it. Contacting possible advisors at the schools to which you are applying is extremely important. You can find lots of advice about how to go about doing that here on this site.

Good luck. While you're not in an optimal position, we've taken students with GPAs in your range at our top-20 PhD program, so certainly there is hope.


Why do we write a "threat to validity" section? I don’t understand this section in research papers. What is its purpose?
I am working on a paper. I see some potential limitations and think that my method may or may not work well on some other platforms. Should I put this in my threat to validity section?

As usual, the true (but not very useful) answer is: it depends. I typically come across that section when the article describes an experiment. Experiments typically involve quite an abstraction from the real world, which is why they can keep so much under control. However, this also means that one could question whether what one found in the abstract environment in the lab also applies to the real world. This is called external validity. This is what is discussed in such a section.


What open access journal can I submit with almost no money We are about to finish the development of a bioinformatic tool (plant genomic study) and we want to publish it in an open access journal. The thing is that our institution in Argentina provides no funding for publishing. I've already written to Scientific Reports asking for a APC waiver and they grant us with 20% discount because they have knowledge about our situation. Although a nice bonus, we do not count with the money for paying the remaining (about 1360 USD). We've also written to other journals like frontiers of plant science but still did not receive an answer.

What journal do you think that we could apply in our situation?

Do you know any institutions that can fund open research for third parties?

I recently published a conference paper (fee was around $500). The paper received good feedback and was well regarded in it's field. After a few weeks, I received an invitation to extent the work for a journal publication published by the same organisation. As I was invited, there'll be no publication fees for the journal.

It's a bit of a long shot, but if you target a small conference with a specific interest and an associated journal, it might be worth a try.

Disclaimer: I didn't publish at the conference for the journal and the outcome will depend on many factors, such as your research and how it is received.

Wish you lots of luck in these hard times.


Are spelling and/or grammar mistakes a cause for submitting Errata? During my studies I've read a number of published articles where spelling mistakes have somehow squeaked through the review process. For example, I have found a paper with a section entitled Turbulance Model when the title should be Turbulence Model. I would love to be able to submit an errata if I knew it was going to be a one or two line email, but I don't know of anyone else who does this. Will editors be annoyed with little corrections like this? Surely there isn't a need to bother the corresponding Author with such a matter, is there?

To be clear, I am only thinking of cases like the example I've given; a clear spelling mistake or a missing word. I wouldn't start arguing with an author/editor over wording issues or other gray areas.

Let’s be utilitaristic and do a rough, optimistic calculation:

First, how much time does correcting a spelling mistake cost?

First of all, it costs you some time to find a way to contact somebody from the journal. I ran an experiment with a random journal and it took me three minutes to find a way to contact the chief editor and to ensure that there is no easy way to contact somebody closer to actual typesetting.
It costs you about one minute to write the mail.
It costs the chief editor (in our example) at least one minute to read the mail and redirect it to typesetting.
It costs the head of typesetting at least one minute to delegate the work.
Whoever is actually doing the work, has to find the source of the paper, correct the mistake, check whether the whole paper is still neatly arranged (even if the correction did not alter the number of lines in the paragraph, the linebreaking algorithm or the font might have slightly changed) and every sentence is still on the same page (in fields, where references to pages happen). Again, I ran an experiment on one of my own papers and it took me two minutes (as the correction had no major effects) – and I operate my computer mainly via keyboard and consider myself a fast typer and well organized, not to forget that I do not have so many papers. Additionally, let’s consider one minute for uploading or similar.

So, all in all, mankind has spent nine minutes on correcting the mistake.

Now, At the end of the day, the reason why we bother with spelling is that it speeds up reading texts, i.e., saves the reader some time. Let’s say a small spelling mistake (like turbulance) costs every reader a second. Thus to break even with our nine minutes, the respective word has to be read about 500 times. I do not have any direct numbers on this, but as papers are mainly read by the same people who write papers, this would mean that I have to read (every word of) 500 papers for every paper I write – which is very far from reality.

Thus even under the above optimistic conditions you are likely wasting more time than you are saving.

Also, from another point of view and my own experience: The involved people do not care. I can tell a story of how much trouble it was to make a typesetter change the way one of my tables was formatted such that it was any readable even if that would make it deviate from the journal guidelines – and that was a severe issue.

Finally, it’s likely that you only need to read a few papers to spot a terminus technicus with confusingly wrong hyphenation. My favorite example is »generalized onset seizure«, which denotes seizures with a generalised onset and not onset seizures, which are generalised.


Professor stopped replying about internship I emailed a professor about a research internship to which he replied saying that I could work under him,  but without any payment. He had earlier mentioned that he would be more interested if I was doing a PhD program instead of an internship. I then sent him two mails in which I conveyed that I wanted to do the internship and would fund it myself,  and enquire if it would be possible to obtain accommodation on campus itself. He hasnt replied to those mails and it's been ten days. Should I mail him again or is it a no? I'm confused,  and if I have to reply to him, what should I say?

It's summer (in the northern hemisphere), and many people take vacations or travel to conferences in summer, during which it may not be possible to answer emails.  So don't assume the professor is intentionally ignoring you.  If you haven't heard anything in another week or two, you could try again.


Should I tell the interviewer that I solely rely on scholarship to finance my MBA? I am preparing for my first MBA admission interview that will take place in a couple of days. I wonder how should I respond if I ever get asked about my plan if I do not get the scholarship I have been aiming for.

A little background: I can only take an MBA if I get a full scholarship. Without a full scholarship, I simply cannot afford the whole tuition and living costs. Even if I do, I doubt the ROI will be good, given that I'm already 35 years old and MBA salary in my country (Indonesia) is not high enough to justify the total costs (retirement age in my country is 55).

I have applied for a full, government-sponsored scholarship and will know the result in mid December. That one scholarship is the only full scholarship I know that will cover MBA in my chosen university. If I don't get it, no back up plan, my whole MBA plan ends.

If I tell the interviewer that I will not be able to proceed if I don't get the scholarship, will it hurt my candidacy? How will the admission see this problem? Do you have any suggestions on what to say?

I recommend being forthright with your interviewer: Answer if asked, but don't volunteer excessive information such as an explanation of why a scholarship is your only option. Aim for factual and try to avoid appearing as if you are seeking pity or extra consideration for your circumstances.


Are there any legal issues with publishing part of an unpublished thesis in a journal? I have recently graduated and I was wondering whether, after submitting my thesis, there are any issues (legal or otherwise) if I publish parts of my thesis as a paper in a journal.

My thesis was not published as book, as was the case in this related question.

Ask your thesis advisor!  In most cases, the answer will be, "No.  Go for it!"

Schools love for their graduates to have publications.

In some institutions, including the one at which I teach, the institution claims ownership in the intellectual property of student work, but even then, a derivative work that results in a publication is likely to be welcome.


On the definition of Guinea pigs When I watched a YouTube video endorsed by a researcher from  Microsoft Research, Cambridge, he often said the word "guinea pigs." The video title is something like "How to write a great research paper."  I wonder what it does it mean. In other words,  I'm asking about the definition of the guinea pig. I guess that it's a kind of advice from a person who read the manuscript. Thank you in advance for your advice.

The strict meaning of "guinea pig" is a certain rather cute rodent; see Guinea pig at Wikipedia. The metaphorical meaning in the context of research is an animal or person on which or whom experiments are performed.


Is there an API to obtain article information via DOI? Is there any API that allow to get article information (in JSON or BIBREF format) using article DOI? I need: article title, authors, journal name, year of publication, volume (number), page numbers.

Is there a script written in PHP?

You are looking for https://doi2bib.org . It shouldn't be very hard to extract the actual bibtex entry from the html you get from that page.

If you want to see how it works under the hood, take a look at the sources here: https://github.com/davidagraf/doi2bib2/ .


Is it appropriate to mention one's religion in an academic CV? I recently moved to a Nordic country in an academic position. For my first grant application, I collaborated with other researchers at the university. As I was submitting the proposal along with the CVs, I noticed that two of the researchers had mentioned their religion. I have never seen this in academia, at least in South-east Asia where I spent majority of my work life.

Here are other details that I think are relevant:

Our research domain is engineering, not humanities or social sciences.
Both researchers are Muslim.
The funding agency is a private one that favors industrial collaborations.

My questions:

Is it appropriate to mention one's religion in an academic CV?
Does mentioning one's religion help in grant proposals or academic positions? I think in a fair world it shouldn't.
Do western countries, especially European, favor candidates who are Muslim?

There are some situations where religion could limit someone's ability to do their job. For example, a Muslim professor may require prayer breaks, which could limit the times at which they can give lectures.

Religion should be mentioned only on a "need to know" basis, unless it's common practice to include it in the country you're applying to. Similarly to if you have a disability, you shouldn't mention it on your CV. It is more appropriate to explain such caveats in the cover letter, during a job interview, or prior to accepting the interview.

We should be judging people on their ability to do the job, not their personal beliefs. Such beliefs are only relevant if they interfere with their work. Unfortunately, particularly as a result of increases in extremism,  Muslim candidates in Western Europe are more likely to be at an unfair disadvantage, rather than being favoured for a position.


Unpublished paper with published followup gathers citations: should it be published? A few years ago I wrote a paper with three collaborators, where we introduced a model to describe a specific phenomenon. In the end we were not fully happy with the result, so we wrote it up, put it on the arXiv without submitting to a journal, and agreed to revisit the subject after a small break.

Approximately a year later we gathered again, re-started almost from scratch, and came up with a better model, which resulted in a paper that we quickly submitted, and had accepted in a good journal.

A bit more than a year later, I now see that even though the second paper gets cited, the first still rakes up some amount of citations. We ourselves think that the second one is better, but obviously there are people who disagree.

What to do with the first paper? Should it be submitted to a journal to undergo peer review? And would it not be strange to try and submit the first paper to a journal, pretending that the second paper never happened?

I see no reason that you really need to do anything with the first paper. In arXiv it is a stable, citable resource, people are finding it useful, and the citations are accruing credit to your work.

If you are concerned that people who are reading the first paper are unaware that it is obsolete, then you can add update its entry to add a pointer to the second paper. People will still likely continue to cite the first paper, however, either because they have reason to prefer it or because it's already in their reference collection and they don't revisit and see your update.

Other than providing a pointer to the second paper, though, I see no reason not to just let well enough alone, be grateful the people are appreciating your work, and move forward onto other things.


Can a professor make your final pass or fail? I current have an 85% in his class but my final is pass or fail. I’m horrible at math and have really tried my hardest to get that b but my professors math final is either you pass it or if you fail it, you fail the course! Is allowed? I also asked around and it seems he’s the only professor that is doing this.

Why wouldn't it be allowed?

Legally? You didn't say what country you are in, but I'm not aware of any country that regulates courses at this level.
Your university's rules? You didn't say what university you are in, so it's impossible to say for sure. In general, though, the "instructor of record" has the authority to make decisions about how a course will be graded.

Broadly speaking, this does not seem like a bizarre policy that some wacko professor implemented; I've actually seen this in other math departments. I guess the philosophy is that most entry-level math courses are about skills: they do not want to pass you onto more advanced courses unless you know these foundational skills well enough to do them in a measurable way. (I realize that you may not personally plan to take more advanced courses, but the principle is the same).

Anyway: yes, unless your university has a policy that forbids it (e.g., a policy saying that all professors of a given course have to grade the same way), this policy is almost certainly allowed.


Looking for a postdoc: How to approach professors in a conference I'm in the last year of my PhD and I'd like to get a postdoc after my program is done. In a few days, I'm going to present a poster about one of my projects  (manuscript to be submitted soon) in a conference and I want to know how to approach professors.

I have a pretty good idea about the professors that will be present and the ones I'd like to join but how to approach them is something new for me. I don't think it's appropriate to focus on my current work when approaching them since I'll not work on the same subject in a postdoc. Moreover, I feel that some subjects are more delicate to discuss such as funding, flexibility and independence in the group.

How should I proceed in this matter ?

I've found the answers and comments in this question very informative but they work for the specific case of a talk:  "Looking for a postdoc" ad inside a conference talk?.

Your current work shows what you managed to accomplish so far - which is a first estimate on how you might perform in the future. Therefore, talking about your current work is not bad.

If the interesting people are visiting your poster, everything is easy: Just ask them how they like your work and tell them you are looking for a postdoc position. Either they catch the ball or they don't ;-). If they are interested, just ask whatever you are interested in, or, if they are short in time, ask them when you could talk (perferably at the conference). Maybe you can meet for lunch / dinner / at the conference social event, coffee break, ... depending on the social interaction options at the conference (don't ask for dinner / lunch if it is not part of the official conference program).

If they don't come to your poster: Try to use the social interaction options mentioned above to approach those professors. Tell them why you would like to talk to them (why this group, what are your itnerests, ...). Invite them to visit your poster so you can show them what you did so far.


I cannot graduate from high school because the school is closed. Can I still start college or university? I was recently accepted by a college or university.  I was planning on graduating from high school soon and then enrolling in college.  My high school has just announced that it will be closed for a reason such as the COVID-19/coronavirus pandemic.  Will I still be able to start college?

(Question limited to students who are already admitted.)

Ask them.
You mentioned that they accepted you already. Only they can tell you whether the admission process is affected by the recent events and whether they're willing to accomodate last minute changes to your academic schedule.


Citing newspaper articles (primary vs secondary? no references) I have come across a few infamous newspaper articles and I'd like to cite them to support some of my ideas and to take a few thoughts from them. However, I cannot seem to distinguish whether such articles are primary or secondary. What worsens things further is the fact that the authors do not cite their words and, usually, reference lists do not exist.

Do I treat a newspaper article like a primary source and cite it as such? If not, how can I track back the information given the fact that there are no references?

Whether a newspaper article is good to cite or not depends on the purpose for which you are citing it.

If you are writing about a factual topic, then newspaper articles are highly unreliable secondary sources, with a well-known tendency to be blatantly incorrect.
If you are writing about newspaper articles, however, then the newspaper is a primary source and can be cited directly.

So what should you do if you find a really juicy fact in a newspaper article with no reference?  The same thing that you do if you hear something with no reference anywhere else: spend some quality time searching the literature and other sources to see if you can track down an actually reliable reference.  And if you can't find one?  Then you should reluctantly conclude that this "fact" is probably made up, whether intenationally or by accident.


When to take military service when applying for graduate school? I'm an undergraduate student with two regular semesters left before graduating. I am required to serve in the Military and have two options regarding the timing of my service.

I can go into army before graduating. After serving for two year I would return for one semester, graduate, and then apply for graduate school.
I can graduate first and then go into the army.

The differences between two choices above are:

Applying as a undergrad student or not.
If I choose the latter one, I can audit graduate classes at my university.

And now I have to decide. Is there any difference between applying as an undergraduate and with bachelor's degree if there's some gap year?

I come from a country with compulsory service, and I saw a few cases like this when serving. The recruitment officers would try to match your skills with your service -- so if you had a higher engineering degree you would be set to tutor army engineering officer students etc. Without a degree, you would more likely serve as an infantryman or sailor. I would say it depends on what you want out of your service. If you want the experience of a common soldier, enter now, if you want to do something more relevant to your education, enter after you graduate. You will likely be able to use your skills, and it will not be a wasted gap of two years, especially if you work with your recruitment officers to find a suitable service. If you decide to enter now, you might also benefit from extra credit when applying for a university program later.


My research paper filed as a patent in China by my Chinese supervisor without me as inventor I completed my PhD 3 years ago from a university in the UK. Today I was looking for some papers in google scholar. I found a patent in China. The patent was written in Chinese however, all diagrams/figures and equations were exactly same as one of my PhD research papers, which was also part of my PhD thesis.

I translated Chinese text to English I found that work is exactly....same as my PhD thesis and research paper. My research paper was published 1 year before the patent was filed. When I translated the inventors name. I found one of the inventors is my PhD supervisor, who is Chinese but works in a UK university. I couldn't believe it. This patent was filed by a power company in China with my PhD supervisor as one of the inventors.

I am fully aware that the research paper is an open source idea anybody can use it. However, this is the case of copyright infringement. I have full right on text, diagrams, figure and tables in my research paper and my PhD thesis. They have copy-pasted diagrams as well. These diagrams are scientific diagrams nobody can reproduce them without the data.

Now, I am not sure, where should I complain?

should I first confront my supervisor directly as he is one of the inventors? or
complain to the university, because if this paper is a patent then only the university has first right over it before a power company in China. I never gave any consent to sell my research work or file a patent of my work without me being the inventor.
Another issue is that I did research at a UK university. This patent is filed in China. What actions I can take?

This sounds like a clear-cut case of a violation of academic ethics to me - if he’s willing to steal work from you, how could anyone trust anything he’s ever published? I’d strongly consider going to talk with the head of your faculty, school, or department, depending on how your university’s hierarchy is structured, so that the university can begin academic integrity proceedings against him, and I’d also consider talking to the university’s lawyers about what your legal options to dispute the patent are, and if you would be able to file one in the UK.


Is "cum laude with honors" meaningful or a tautology in the US? In the following video, an expert witness is relating her academic background and, at one point she states that she graduated "cum laude with honours".  Having looked at various sources I can see that different countries give somewhat different emphases to these terms.

Skylar Richardson Trial Day 3 Dr Susan Brown - Forensic Pathologist
Part 2 & Dr Christa Latham
video

Question
As a US citizen, is the doctor:
(a) making a valid distinction between the two terms "cum laude"
and "with honours;"
(b) explaining/translating cum laude to the jury;
(c) making her qualification(s) sound grander than they are; or
(d) something else?
EDIT - See comment by @Dan Romik pointing out that (b) and (c) appear to be asking for mind-reading on the part of anyone who answers. I accept this criticism but won't change the question at this point.

There is no doubt in my mind the person in question earned two different distinctions, and used them correctly. Here are some examples at how they might be used throughout the US.

At my undergraduate institution, "Latin honors" (cum laude) were solely a function of your overall GPA. The minimum to earn each distinction was a percentile determined from the previous year's distribution. (so the 90th percentile in 2020 becomes the minimum for cum laude in 2021). At that school, it was by college, not department, e.g. College of Arts and Sciences or College of Engineering.

cum laude was the 90th percentile, or a GPA >= 3.79 (Arts and Sciences)
magna cum laude was the 97th percentile, or a GPA >= 3.89.
summa cum laude was the 99.5th percentile, or a GPA >= 3.97.

At my graduate institution, you have to complete an extra thesis to be eligible. At Aliden's, you had to be enrolled in the honors program to earn Latin Honors at all.

My undergrad had various "Honors." I graduated "cum laude with College Honors," it says so on my diploma. I was just about 0.01 GPA point shy of magna, sigh.

"with Honors" was a distinction earned by taking classwork in the Honors College, which you had to be admitted into.

"with Departmental Honors" was earned based on departmental requirements, often a thesis, where one wasn't required.

"with College Honors" was completing both college and departmental programs.

Finally, there is also "with (high) distinction," which is also often based on GPA.

Likely the person in your question completed some sort of honors curriculum or thesis (hard to tell what) as well as had a high GPA.


Letter of recommendation for postdoc position I am now applying for postdoc (mathematics) and starting to search for jobs in mathjobs. In quite a lot of situation, the job description ask for three letter of recommendation. My question are:

When they ask for three letter, for example here, can I have 4 or 5 letters sent to that university? (I planned to have 3-4 letter for research and 1 for teaching).
If I can only send three letter, is it preferable to have 3 letters all focusing on research aspects, or 2 on research and 1 on teaching (assuming that that postdoc job requires one to teach)?

When a job posting asks for X research letters plus Y teaching letters, mathjobs still allows you to submit more than X + Y letters.  (If mathjobs has an upper bound on the number of letters you can submit, I don't know it.  I have seen files with at least ten letters, even though we ask for 3 + 1.)

In general, I think it is almost certainly okay to submit either the number of letters asked for or one more than that.  For each additional letter that you want to submit, I would advise you to think about why you are doing it.  Here are some things to remember:

It is not guaranteed that the hiring committee will read your entire application.  If you submit, say, twice as many letters as asked for, there is a good chance that some of them will be read only very cursorily.  This may not be what you want, since:
Virtually all letters I have ever read are "positive," i.e., they say good things about the candidate.  But the impression created by sending Z letters is not the sum of the Z impressions created by sending each of the letters.  Rather, unless each letter writer has qualitatively different very strong things to say about you, the total impression is some kind of weighted average of the letters, with the worst letters getting a higher weight than the best letters.  Thus I think that for all but the most senior candidates it is probably a bad idea to submit more than four research letters: any more than that and it is very likely that the average impression would be raised by removing one of the letters.  (Of course you still have the task of figuring out which are your best letters.  But you should try to figure that out, not just admit defeat and submit way too many of them.)

In your case, it sounds like that they really are asking for 3+1 letters, and you want to send 4+1.  That should be fine...but now is not too soon to try to figure out which of those four letters are the strongest and which are the weakest.


What is the purpose of the weekly research meetings that advisers often have with their research group? Does it usually happen even if all of the adviser's students have very different research interests?

These meetings can serve a variety of purposes, but many of them fall into the broad category of keeping the adviser and all the group members updated on what everyone in the group is doing.  Below are some of the secondary benefits of a group meeting:

saves the adviser time (compared to meeting with students individually)
motivates the students to keep doing work, so they have something to report at the meeting
fosters a sense of community with the group
provides the students experience giving informal presentations
often leads to the more senior students mentoring the junior students

To answer your follow-up question in the description, no, some faculty meet with each student individually; in fact these separate meetings are common, for example, in mathematics.


Around what percentage of universities require(d) Ancient Greek and Latin for admissions? I limit this question to universities in Canada, UK, and the US.
 In general:

Please see the titled question, and provide dates if known.

2 Examples: p. 10 of 17 of this PDF states Oxford University's admissions requirement of Ancient Greek until 1920 and Latin until 1960.
This Quora answer quotes this book:

  In 1883, the last year in which the classical languages were compulsory for Harvard freshman, all studied Latin and Greek.

I don't think any "major" or "top tier" universities in the USA have any language requirements other than English. Even then, you don't really have to speak English as much as be able to manage HW's and exams in English.

St. Johns would certainly appreciate it but most courses won't read classics in their native language.

My friend is finishing a PhD in classical history at an Ivy League program and he was unique in his knowledge of Latin from high school. I'm pretty sure 0 colleges require Latin or Greek.


Software for recommending papers -- does this exist? I spend a lot of time on google scholar making sure I haven't missed relevant literature. Usually this means scrolling through the "cited by" list one by one for at least 5-10 major papers on the topic.
It occurs to me that this could be done better and faster by a computer. Has anyone made software that does something like the following?
Input: A collection of papers
Output: Some papers similar to the input papers, based on citations or semantic analysis
I have in mind something like the "related papers" link on google scholar, but accepting more than one paper as input.

You may want to have a look at https://www.meta.org/ - you can create research interests and the search engine then suggests relevant articles for you (or tries to), based on machine learning.


What are the things one should consider when invited to contribute a book chapter? What are the things one should consider, as a postdoc, before accepting or rejecting an invitation to contribute a book chapter? The proposed book is a handbook in a developing field of engineering.

It almost certainly won't earn you any money.

It probably won't be read by many people. It will be cited by even fewer.

The collaboration may lead to future projects together.

It may involve a lot of work.

You might enjoy the process. Or hate it.

It may or may not help your career progression, depending on your field, your career to date, and the posts you apply to. If it's a book that will become a standard for one or more taught courses, your contribution may be crucial for your future teaching career.

In this particular case, when the putative author is a rising young authority in an engineering field, it's a rapidly-developing field that's attracting significant international interest, and many universities are introducing new courses in the area, then, (depending on the publisher, the other authors, and the other chapters) there's potential for the book to have quite a significant audience, so contributing to the book chapter would be attractive.


How to write recipients address in electronic cover letter for PhD program I am going to send my cover letter for a PhD program, but I don't know who should I address exactly (I have written Dear Professors). Now the problem is for postal address what should I write. I don't know who exactly will receive the application.

Thank you

This may vary by culture, but the common procedure for this case (letter that looks like a traditional letter, but is only sent electronically), the common procedure in Germany is to write something into the place where the recipient's address would normally go - but not necessarily an address: Something generic such as

  University of ...
  Admission Board

should do.


Is it okay to ask your research paper co-author (first place) to write a letter of recommendation for your PhD admission? I finished my school almost 10 years ago. Now, I have planned to go back to academics to pursue my Ph.D. Graduate schools usually ask Ph.D. candidates to get the recommendation letter from either your teacher or someone who supervised you in any past research project. In my case, I have no contact with any of my past professors. Also, my last highest degree (MS) was based on coursework (not research based) which means I never worked under any supervisor before. However, I have published some peer-reviewed research papers (as co-author) in collaboration with other researchers (working at different institutions). I would like to know if it is a good idea to ask one of my co-authors (first author) to write a letter of recommendation to support my Ph.D. application. Please suggest!

Yes, this is completely ok, even recommendable. You want your letter writers to know how you function in a research context. It does not matter if this was as part of a university research project (such as a thesis) or some other project that you worked in for some reason.

The main reason why most applicants use their former research advisors is because this is the primary way how undergrads get in touch with professors in a research (as opposed to a classroom) context.


What is the etiquette for asking a professor to waive the prerequisite for a course? Should I mail the professor? Should I meet him in person? I am a MS student in CS who wishes to take a graduate level course in Statistics department. The course is Machine Learning and I did cover most of the prerequisite course's content in multiple undergraduate courses so I want him to waive the requirement. I have budget for only 10 courses and wish to complete this degree in 2 years. Taking these prerequisite course would mean that I cannot take other courses that interest me.

The other reason I wish to have the requirement waived is because the prerequisite course itself is a statistics department course which also has prerequisite statistic courses and my college only allows me to take 2 courses outside of our department.

Go in person. Tell him what you told us. Be prepared for a few quiz questions about your stats knowledge. Answer them correctly. You might not get any questions, but you should be able to describe, at the very least, what your prior classes were about.


What to do if asked to write a letter of recommendation for a weak candidate? How should a professor proceed when a student or colleague asks for a letter of recommendation and the professor does not have a high opinion of that person?

Although it may be quite awkward, it is certainly acceptable to tell the student/colleague that you do not feel you can write a strong LoR for them, and to suggest that they ask someone else. This may seem rude or even unkind, but it's much better for the student/colleague in the long run than a lukewarm or poor letter.


Teaching mathematics at the college level, Can I teach a college level math course at a community college with secondary mathematics certification.

It is my understanding that secondary mathematics certification and community college teaching are "disjoint sets," such that having the certification is neither required nor directly helpful to teach at a community college.  I am confident that having such a certification will not disadvantage you in any way, but that's probably not what you're asking.  If you mean "Can I teach a college level math course at a community college with a secondary mathematics certification instead of [something else]?" then the answer is: maybe not, but if you are interested you should probably ask.

I have only indirect knowledge of the community college teaching community, and my understanding is that the parameters of the job vary heavily by region and institution.  For instance, in some parts of the country most community college faculty have terminal degrees (generally a PhD), whereas in others this is rare.  The requirements to teach one course may well be different from those of full-time faculty.  I would expect that having a master's degree in a related field would be sufficient for you to teach college-level math courses at many community colleges.  If you only have a bachelor's degree, then that might not be enough...or then again it might.

At my large state research university (UGA), we often find ourselves wanting to run a few more sections of precalculus and calculus and having to hire temporary (or "adjunct") faculty very close to the last minute.  It is my understanding that the necessity of covering classes can result in a flexibility in terms of hiring.  So I think that there is a good shot that someone who looks competent to teach course X will eventually get to teach course X at some community college if they are sufficiently persistent.


How to prepare and what is discussed with professors at a PhD interview session? US application I was told that at an interview session for PhD admission I will be meeting each professor I am interested in for about half hour. I was wondering what generally is been discussed. I imagine it would be mostly how my interests are related to the professor's research and why I am interested in his work.

What would be the best way to prepare for these interviews? Should I read two or three publications for each professor?

On what am I being judged?

Typically, the point of the interview is two-fold: to help the professor to judge whether you are smart and have potential (two separate things), and to help you judge whether you want to spend the next 4+ years working with this guy as your boss. To that extent, you're being judged on your potential, which means you need to show excitement about his research (in that you've read about it and are familiar with it, see below), and lots of enthusiasm. Knowing your stuff is also helpful so you don't look like an idiot.

In most cases, you'll discuss your undergrad work, you'll be asked about your familiarity with the professor's research (basic familiarity goes a long way here), and you'll be told about his current research work. Different professors have wildly different interview styles, so it can be anything from conversational to almost exam-like.

The best way to prepare would be exactly as you suggest; read two or three papers from that professor. I would recommend choosing one with a recent publication date (i.e., within the past 12 months) and the one he has with the most citations. Different search tools allow you to find that for different fields; for example, hubmed allows that for biology/medicine fields.


How to cite self-created images or pictures in thesis When we put some images in a thesis, we provide a reference to its source where it’s located. If I have created my own images or pictures, how do I make it clear that they are my images and I did not copy and paste them from somewhere?.
So here is the scenario. I am comparing my application architecture with the existing architecture. Since it was a literature study, my architecture is quite different except for one or two components that share the idea with the other one.  I am showing both architectures. I explicitly mention the source of the other. But what about my own?
Is there a need to cite self-created images? If yes then how to cite them?

There is no need to cite self-created, previously-unpublished images any more than you need to cite self-written, previously unpublished words.  By absence of a citation you are claiming the work as your own.
Since this is for a thesis, you should probably check with your advisor / supervisor to be absolutely certain they share that view.


What does it meant " assignment of paper with decision in prosess " in the same time? I have submitted the paper to JFA journal after the stage "submitted to the journal" (14 days ) ,I have received the message that paper is assigned with current stage " Decision in process " in the same time , Is this can say anything about acceptenece or reject of my paper ?

It means that the editorial board is in the process of making the final decision about your paper.


How can I convince graduate students in China to not copy/paste from the Internet into their research papers? I'm posting from an anonymous account, for reasons that will be obvious.

I'm an associate professor in China at one of the top 10 universities in China, and have been working in China for a number of years. Most research in our lab is respectable and unproblematic.  We get some papers in top journals and conferences.

As a native English speaker, I help on papers from graduate students.
Some of these papers are conference papers, and some are journal papers.  The conference papers I work on are international.

However, probably between 30% to 50% of the Chinese graduate students I work with copy and paste from the Internet into their research papers (from Wikipedia, from other papers, from software documentation, and so on).  The amount ranges from a sentence here and there, to whole sections.
It's usually easy for me to notice copy/pasted material (it's where they suddenly write like a native English speaker with 10+ years of research experience).  Yesterday, I encountered the worst instance of copy/paste I've ever seen, and I flatly refused to be listed as a co-author.

What's become clear:

The students generally think it's acceptable to copy/paste; they're unconcerned even if it's published.
Part of the motivation behind copy/pasting is that English is their second language.
The Chinese professors (i.e., their supervisors) mostly do not read their students' papers; they might take a quick check before submission.
The Chinese professors push the students into rushing to meet conference submission deadlines, and I feel this has a negative impact on both their research and paper-writing quality.
The university doesn't outright condone plagiarism, but they don't seem to think of it as a negative.  I get the impression that it's considered efficient use of time.  The focus is on getting it published, while significance, errors, and plagiarism are less important.
Many of the students do not intend to have careers in academia.  The paper will not have much significance, but it's either required for their degree, or their supervisor is pushing them into writing it.  They don't care much.

I've explained how serious a matter this is, over and over.  And honestly, I'm fed up repeating myself – it makes me feel like the university (and research in China) is a joke.  It makes me feel ashamed to work here.

I've tried repeatedly explaining this to everyone, but the seriousness is not getting through.  They just think I'm overreacting.

Q: How can I convince graduate students in China to not copy/paste from the Internet into their research papers?

I'm looking for an answer along the lines of "the negative consequences of copy/pasting from the Internet in publications are blah".  I have no intention to pack up and leave; I just want to get the message across and convince them that plagiarism matters.  So I'm thinking about writing a document entitled e.g. "why we shouldn't plagiarize" and sending it around.

OK, it's getting weird now. I thought this would be much less common in top 10s.

There's a simple path here: tell them plagiarized papers are not going to get published, or will be retracted in the future, and this will hinder their graduation & will create trouble for their advisor (+ advisor would lose face) if they insist on submitting such papers.

When your students (and everyone else) care only about the "pragmatic", give them "pragmatic" reasons! Chinese people generally do not like creating trouble/making others lose face, so that's a good path.

Convincing them that plagiarism is morally incorrect and not right would be harder, and students would likely not buy into that. But the pragmatic path gets the job done :-)

From the situation you described, I infer two things about your situation. Correct me if I am wrong:

The university you're at is likely not top-tier. I would be surprised if even the researchers at Tsinghua or Jiaoda (Shanghai Jiaotong University) engage in academically dishonest conduct frequently. I suppose you're likely at a local (provincial) university.
Your colleagues/students are mainly targeting domestic conferences/journals (and likely not the top ones). Otherwise they will surely know that academically dishonest practices will get their papers rejected.

If both are true, I'm afraid little could be done. You could try very hard to at least make your students not plagiarize, but this will probably have a very negative impact on future recruitment, and even your students are not going to 100% listen to you. The best option at hand is trying to move to another university (preferably in another country) if this bothers you (it would bother me for sure).

The ranty part: I decided to delete this, but just keep two key points.

Plagiarism is not dealt with seriously enough and people let it happen. Awareness of what constitutes plagiarism is low, but for reasonably experienced researchers this should be obvious. So, as you see, the problem is not that people don't know it is plagiarism; they likely do know, but they have no reason to care.
The quality of most domestic journals & conferences are questionable, so the problem is even more serious at this level (because not even the editors care).


Withdrawing from PhD with or without a Master Degree I have taken a leave of absence from my PhD program due to health reasons and since my health has improved dramatically over the past year, I am seriously considering never coming back.

I have completed 3 years worth of classes but only completed one qualifying exam out of two, so I am currently not eligible for a Masters Degree from my program.

I already have a Masters Degree from a slightly less ranked school but in pretty much the same subject.

Would it benefit me to spend all summer to study for the other half of a qualifying exam to get the second MS?

From your experience, would employers look at me more negatively if I had dropped out without any diplomas from the degree or would it be worse to have two MS degrees in the same discipline?

It's quite common for people to leave a Ph.D. program. In my experience, employers don't really see that as a negative; people leave for many reasons, and they'll likely rather focus on whether or not you learned anything while you were there that will help you do the job they're interviewing you for.

It sounds like you have a time-investment vs. reward tradeoff to consider here. A summer is not that long, but you may have to make some sacrifices in order to free up that time. A second MS in the same discipline is not going to help you very much at all, especially in industry jobs, unless there's something significant about it that makes it stand out (is it a thesis-based MS vs. a class-hours based MS, or perhaps it's slightly different but the difference in topic is something employers will respond to).

If you can delay a job search for the summer to get the second MS, and you'd like to cash out the "sweat equity" you've accumulated in your current program by getting a degree for it, then I don't think there's a big problem with doing that. If you didn't already have an MS, I'd say definitely get this one, but that's not your case. Just keep in mind that getting the additional MS is unlikely to open doors any wider for you, and not getting it is unlikely to close them.


Slightly revised version of submitted paper two days afterwards: will the editor be annoyed? so, I submitted a paper to a reasonably good journal, last week. The journal requires that the paper is formatted in a specific way (.tex class style provided by them). I did this, and saved the file in a different folder, to differentiate it from the version that I uploaded to my website.

However, when I sent the file to the editor (there is no submission system, just e-mail the editor), I sent the wrong version. That is, I sent the unformatted version. That wouldn't be too bad though. The thing is that the formatted version contains some slight improvements to exposition (and a slight title change..). So I decided to e-mail the editor with the new version, right after he acknowledged receipt of my previous manuscript.

I then realized that sending this to him would probably annoy the hell out of him, who is a recognized busy guy. Is this really a problem? I am really freaked out that this will create a problem with my submission.. I don't know whether acknowledging receipt means that he actually sent it to a referee already.

The more you wait the harder it gets to do that, there could be a pipeline that is already in progress. I suggest you send a nice email asking if there is a possibility to do this, and show that you would appreciate if he/she accepts the slightly updated attached version as the final version.

Do not worry about making the editor mad, he/she took responsibility for taking care of this and should be prepared for and expect to deal with such situations. If you want to maintain a good relationship with this editor (in case you know him/her personally), then maybe you should weight the values of: your relationship with the editor vs the quality of the final version. Personally I would go for the latter, but this is your call.


Are there tenure track academic jobs where teaching and research are given equal importance? I have asked my advisers this question recently (since in a year or so, I expect to go on the job market) and received a variety of answers, specific to the USA. Very generally, as I understand, with reference to the US, there seem to be jobs which are either primarily research based (R1 universities) or primary teaching based (liberal arts colleges).

I understand that in either case, you are expected to do some amount of teaching and some amount of research but the focus varies depending on the university. In my university, research is generally seen to have more importance than teaching.

I was wondering, specifically with reference to the whole world, whether there are academic jobs where teaching and research are both given equal importance.

I am very interested in discipline and country variations in this.

Thanks.

As a TT at a small liberal arts college let me just say that to gain tenure I have to do both. In my field this amounts to having five or six new articles or a book before tenure. There is a very large spectrum of liberal arts colleges and the top end (figure top 100) all claim that research active professors are better able to teach up to date content in their field and to better demonstrate to their students why the field is exciting and worth studying. (By `all' I mean I do not know of a counter example.)

At the very top end of the liberal arts spectrum you have schools that give their professors R1 teaching loads and more funding. The only thing they would lack are the graduate students. Sure at the lower end of the spectrum are places that only expect teaching. Then there are the community colleges which openly admit they are teaching only institutions but they acknowledge that their mission is distinct.

Another section of schools I'd suggest you could take a look at are the second tier state schools, places like CSU Pamona, or University of Central Florida. These are not flagships and focus more on teaching than R1s but you still have to be research active to get tenure.

Next time you go to a conference, chat up those folks who seem to be pre-tenure and ask them what their institutions demand. The US is a country with other 4000 colleges and universities. They do not form a linear order from liberal arts colleges to R1 universities. So as always, the situation is more complex than you might think at first.


How should I thank mentors that I connect with via the Internet? I am an incoming undergraduate student, and I have reached out to people who are currently pursuing/once pursued the field that I'm interested in (it's physics if it matters), via the Internet. Most of them are willing to help me and have given me a lot of good advice. Thus, I really want to thank them for doing that while potentially improving their impressions of me. However, since I have never met most of them in person (even if we did, most of our communications still happen online), I have a hard time thinking of a way to express my gratitude. Here are some details of my situation:

I know very little about them as a person (their hobbies, preferences etc.). The conversations we had focused almost exclusively on their chosen fields - most of the time, they answer my questions and provide guidance.
People who have helped me are in various stages in their study/career right now. Specifically, undergraduate, Master's, PhD and postdoc. Thus, I think that they may prefer different types of gifts.
I've heard of people writing thank you letters to their mentors. However, I feel that doesn't apply to my situation since my relationship with my mentors doesn't have an explicit end. For example, the length of our relationship isn't defined by the length of a course or a program. Thus, I feel that writing them a letter that talks about our past interactions would be perceived as a signal that I no longer want to continue our relationships.
I tried to treat those who invited me to talk in person with drinks or meals (if they let me). I would like to hear your thoughts on whether or not it is a good way to express gratitude as food doesn't last very long. Should I keep doing that or even go out of my way to invite them when I travel to places where they live?
Alternatively, I am thinking of mailing them tangible gifts. But again, I am unsure about what to purchase yet.

A simple email is really all you need. Thank them for their help and update them on your recent progress, say by mentioning that you have been accepted to ...
Don't bother with gifts as they will embarrass many people and might be considered improper. The one exception I can think of is the situation in which you are from a different country or culture. Then a token tourist level souvenir from your country might be fine. Something like this if you are from Sweden (not the world's biggest, though). I find it harder to come up with anything appropriate if you are from the same culture/country, though. The gift should have personal value, rather than tangible value.
Later, when you finish a doctorate, say, and get a great job, you might think of something more elaborate.
But for people you have met and who have helped you, say a teacher, it is a good thing to go back after several years and thank them personally for their mentorship. Just a meeting in a hallway with the statement of thanks for their help and guidance is a deeply satisfying thing to do and to receive.


Who benefits from the anonymity of the peer review process? I was reading an answer to another question, which says on the topic of a reviewer potentially contacting an author under a special set of circumstances

  Some would say you should wait until it is public, so as not to break the anonymity of the reviewing process. Others think it is fine to reveal yourself and contact the author directly

My first thought was "The anonymity is there to protect the reviewer, so of course he can give up the protection and initiate contact". But then I realized that maybe there are other people whose interests might be hurt if this happens.

So, let's assume that the anonymous person (the reviewer, and in some cases also the author), always benefits from his own anonymity. Is there somebody else who is interested in the reviewer remaining anonymous?

The readers and the editors can benefit.

I know this is a contended issue, and there are many different views.

But as you've asked specifically whether there's somebody else who is interested in the reviewer remaining anonymous, let's just look at that.

As a reader, I want the peer review to have been fair and thorough.

If the reviewer is able to review freely, without fear of comeback, then they can be much more frank. They can shoot down a bad paper, even if one of the authors or one of their colleagues could hold some kind of power over the reviewer, whether it be funding, future job applications, peer reviews with the roles switched, whatever. Anonymity may enable reviewers to be more frank, more honest, and more direct in their reviews. And that directness can be of benefit to the editors, too.

I'm not saying this is the way. I'm not saying this has to be the way. I'm discussing possibilities here.

It would be great to have some solid evidence on the pros and cons of anonymity. At the moment, there seems to be a great deal of discussion, but I don't see much science on the subject.


Proving authorship when name in publications does not match name in passport My full name on passport is Amir Hisham Ahmed Al-Attraqchi (first three names + surname). In my publication, I only used the first and the surname (i.e. Amir Al-Attraqchi). Is it going to be a problem proving the publications to be mine?

I'm worried about proving this when applying for new universities, promotions or fellowships

Arguably, you did the right thing.

In my experience, too many names tend to confuse people. I have 2+2 and I saw my name being cited in lots of different ways, without any consistency.

One thing that really helps to prove that you are the same person is to set up an ORCID and use it in the publications.


Should I contact accomplished researchers listed as editors of shady journal? I recently got an unsolicited email advertising a questionable-looking mathematics journal.  Upon investigation, it looks pretty shady: page charges, manuscripts to be submitted in Microsoft Word (legitimate math journals always use LaTeX), overbroad scope, and a promise for peer review within two months (unreasonably short for mathematics).

In its three years of operation, one particular author has been published in it three times, including an “elementary” proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, and another paper that appears to be a proof of a statement for which an explicit numerical counterexample is known.  (Interestingly, it appears the same author has also published a proof of the Goldbach conjecture in a journal with a nearly identical name from another publisher indexed in MathSciNet, and has also apparently settled the Twin Primes and Collatz conjectures!)

(Since the preceding paragraph may not make any sense to non-mathematicians, let me say: this is roughly the equivalent of a physics journal publishing a paper that claims to have achieved time travel with household materials.  I should note that the journal has a subscription fee (which I have no intention of paying), so I can't actually read the articles in question; but their abstracts are pretty damning.)

However, the journal’s editorial board includes some names from reputable institutions; people with many publications in high-quality journals.  (There are many other names from institutions I know nothing about.)  Giving them the benefit of the doubt, it’s entirely possible that they are not paying attention to what the journal is doing, or they agreed to be editors without checking on the journal, or even that they have been listed without their knowledge (this has been known to happen).

Is it appropriate to try to inform these editors what’s happening in their names?  If so, how can I do it tactfully?

On the one hand, if someone was using my name on a shady journal, I’d want to know.  On the other hand, I don’t want to offend or embarrass them by just sending an email saying: “this journal you edit is crap”.  It’s even possible that they somehow approve of the journal (e.g. they have a philosophy that the world generally needs more journals and fewer barriers to publication), in which case, I fear no good can come of me criticizing it to them.

I wouldn't worry too much about tact.  There's enough information in your question to identify the journal, and it looks impressively bad, even by the dismal standards of junk journals.  It's so terrible that I'd consider it unethical to be actively involved as an editor, and humiliating to be passively involved.  Bringing this to the editors' attention would be doing them a favor: if their names are being used without their knowledge, then they'll find out, if they haven't been paying close enough attention, then they'll get a valuable wake-up call, and if they are already well aware of how terrible the journal is, then at least they'll learn that someone has noticed their involvement and disapproves.  Of course it would be quite an awkward e-mail.  Perhaps the easiest solution is an anonymous e-mail: it won't make things less painful for the editors, but at least it won't affect your relationship with them.


Should I take delay " a few days" as a polite decline or literal? What does “a few days” mean in the following context?  In response to me sending a short paper to a professor for review, he said:

  Sorry, I'll look ..but might take me a few days".

Is this a polite decline or is there a real good chance he will look at it?

Of course it’s impossible to be sure, but if the professor didn’t intend to do anything about your paper, I consider it likely that he would not have answered at all or that he would have answered that he lacks time. The latter would have been the polite decline – there is nothing polite about saying that you will do something without ever intending to do it.

What is uncertain is whether and when the professor actually does as he intended. Many professors are notoriously busy and underestimating when they will find time to do something. Moreover, they may be disorganised and just forget about it. Depending on how urgent and important this paper is to you and whether you delay anything waiting on the professor’s response, I suggest to write a polite and short e-mail stating when you would need the response and that you understand if he would reply that he is not able to respond to your request up to that point.


Priority of application materials for admission decision As I've already saw, many people here are related to admission process. And I want to ask their opinion on what is priority of all stuff from application: what is the most important (letters of recommendation or personal statement, GPA or maybe test scores), what is less important for admission and what is the least important? Would admission committee prefer applicant with good scores, high GPA, but with not outstanding personal statement and without letters from famous or well-known professors (for example, my scientific advisor in undergraduate school get his PhD only a couple years ago), or student with less GPA, test scores, but with letter from university's prof?

Some graduate schools require General GRE (Graduate Record Examinations). Would it better to send GRE scores (general or subject or both) even if it's not required (in case of relatively good result), or them wouldn't be considered at all?

As aeismail says, what we are looking for is concrete evidence of research potential.  So, in decreasing order of importance:

Decent grades and (if required) test scores; otherwise, no one will read your application at all.  Here, "decent grades" means three-point-something from a good undergraduate program.
Research publications, if you have any.
Recommendation letters.  You must have at least one (and preferably three) strong recommendation letter from a faculty member who praises your research potential in specific and credible detail.  Letters that draw specific comparisons to other successful PhD students are best.  Letters from junior faculty are perfectly fine; they can draw comparisons to their recent graduate school peers.  Letters that say only "He got an A+ in my class" are useless; we can read your transcript.
Research statement.  Your statement must discuss your research experience and interests in specific and credible detail.  A statement that only describes your sources of inspiration ("Ever since man walked on the moon...") and/or brags about coursework is useless.
Other concrete evidence of independent research/scholarship/creativity.
No red flags.  Potential red flags include low grades in classes central to your proposed research area, missing key classes entirely, abysmal test scores, negative (or overly delicate) recommendation letters, recommendation letters obviously written by the applicant, spelling and grammar mistakes in the research statement, any evidence of immaturity or personality issues, and any evidence that the applicant is not prepared/informed/serious about research.

Notice what's not listed.


Scholarships and SOP Should I mention that my work is providing me with a full scholarship to study my masters in my Statment of purpose?

It's probably worthwhile to mention it:

Pros:

If you work in a related field, this could be used to demonstrate
that you are a good candidate since someone is prepared to pay for you
because they think you are a good catch.
It is also more generally not bad to show that you are a competitive
applicant who has attracted awards for past performance.
Finally, it suggests that you are serious about pursuing your Masters (have secured your own funding or at least will not be deterred by financial issues). That could also be helpful to the admissions people if they are concerned with acceptance rates into the program.

Cons:

If the program has its own scholarship/funding you might take yourself out of the running for that and be committed to returning to work for your company after you graduate because you have used their scholarship.


Plagiarism of reference? I'm currently writing my master thesis. I'm a bit conflicted with what I do... Reference stealing.

So let's say article A talk about something that was reported from X, something else from Y and Z.
I talk about article A and I find that X, Y and Z are actually really good too so I end up referencing them too.
Is this considered plagiarism?

Also, let's say I'm really inspired by the introduction of a paper on the subject of my thesis. Is it considered plagiarism to take the reference of an article and use them to introduce the subject in a similar fashion, e.g., this field allowed to do that? I don't copy what is said but I use (some) of the references.

Is there such thing as reference plagiarism? From a google search, it seems that references are indeed checked (% matching) but it's mostly at the discretion of publisher/not something thoroughly enforced. Tbh I feel that it'd be difficult to enforce that even if I think it's bad. Sometimes you find sources from an article that are impossible to ignore.

I'm wondering what people do with that. Part of the research is finding an article that concern you and then you continue your search from the references so you naturally "steal" references...

Put simply, plagiarism is fraud: it happens if you present material as if you had discovered it, when, in fact, you had not.

If you cite A, then you are certainly not committing plagiarism, because you are saying, in effect, "I did not discover this: A did." But what if it is not true that A discovered it? A might just have been quoting X, Y, and Z.

If you cite a paper by A, then you are claiming to have read it. If A's paper said, in effect, "X, Y, and Z report that ...", then you have a choice. You could read the papers by X, Y, and Z, and cite them, or you could legitimately cite "A, citing X, Y and Z".

In my opinion, if you have not even seen the papers by X, Y, and Z, you cannot legitimately cite them, but you can cite A's citation of them. You have to decide whether to rely on A's summary of the work of X, Y, and Z. If it is either tangential to your work, or so well known in your field that, in a sense, everyone knows it, then you do not need to trace the theory back to its origins. For example, if you are writing about the theory of gravity, it is not essential to cite Newton, I (1666), or whatever, but if your work seeks to overturn X's theory of blah, then you have to cite X's original work - and, dare I say, actually read it.

By way of a footnote: 'self-plagiarism' is something else entirely. It is recycling but in a bad way.

A further footnote: you cannot necessarily trust other authors' summaries of earlier work. I once found it necessary to translate a paper from its original French to make sure that it did say what other authors who cited it claimed it said: it did not!


How much material can be changed between an accepted manuscript and "camera ready?" After a paper has been accepted, other than the reviewers' suggestions, how much content can be changed before the camera-ready version is resubmitted?  Is there a general guideline? Thanks!

In my (very limited) experience in CS, a lot (if its a conference), but only if you are somehow improving the paper - you can't obviously publish after removing key results that caused the acceptance in the first place!

Anecdote: My first publication happened after I was able to solve one of the 3 open problems posed at the end of an accepted paper by my advisor - this caused the entire paper to be re-written in terms of the more generalized result, and it did not go through any further reviews (only an informal mail from my advisor to the editors outlining what we did!)


Understanding an abnormal grade distribution I have three years of experience teaching as part of a team (many teachers, some with more experience, agreeing on a syllabus and preparing the tests together), but this year is the first time I am fully in charge of some courses.

After grading the mid-term exam for one of my class, I noticed I had a weird grade distribution:

(If this is useful, there are 24 grades, the set of grades is { 1.2, 1.4, 1.4, 1.9, 2.0, 2.3, 2.6, 2.6, 3.4, 4.2, 4.2, 4.3, 4.6, 4.6, 4.8, 4.8, 4.9, 5.3, 6.0, 6.2, 6.4, 7.1, 7.8, 7.8 }, the average is 4.25 and the standard deviation is 2.01.)

I have looked carefully at all my previous tests, and I can confirm I have never seen a curve like this before.

In my short experience, I have heard, read of reflected that a distribution with two curves would probably either mean that a) a large subgroup of students cheated or b) as a teacher I am mostly addressing the best students and letting the others down.

But this looks like there are actually three curves, and I am wondering which characteristic of my teaching or my students could explain that.

Besides, if someone is aware of any scholarly work on this subject, that would be lovely. I couldn't find anything myself.

I agree with the other answers that this may be an artifact of the histogram. May I humbly offer a few alternative ways to plot these grades?

All of these essentially show that your effects are likely due to small n and possibly an essentially discrete underlying data generating process.

R code:

require(hdrcde)
require(Hmisc)
require(denstrip)
require(beanplot)
require(beeswarm)

grades <- c(1.2, 1.4, 1.4, 1.9, 2.0, 2.3, 2.6, 2.6, 3.4, 4.2, 4.2, 4.3, 4.6, 4.6, 4.8, 4.8, 4.9, 5.3, 6.0, 6.2, 6.4, 7.1, 7.8, 7.8)

opar <- par(mfrow=c(1,6), mar=c(3,2,4,1))
    boxplot(grades, col="gray90", main="Standard\nboxplot",yaxt="n")
    hdr.boxplot(grades, main="HDR\nboxplot",yaxt="n")
    bpplot(grades,xlab="",name=FALSE,main="Box-Percentile\nPlot")
    beanplot(grades,col="grey",yaxt="n",main="Bean plot/\nViolin plot",border="black")
    plot(c(0,2),range(grades),type="n",xaxt="n",yaxt="n",xlab="",ylab="",
        main="Density\nplot")
    denstrip(grades, horiz=FALSE, at=1, width=1)
    beeswarm(grades,pch=19,main="Beeswarm\nplot")
par(opar)

EDIT: (sorry, I'm a statistician, I can't help it...) I went and took Jack's kernel density estimate and resampled 24 "students" from it a couple of times. In each case, I plotted a histogram. The result is below. We see that even an innocuous unimodal curve can lead to pretty bumpy histograms, because of the discretization and the small sample size.

R code:

dens <- density(grades)

opar <- par(mfrow=c(2,4))
for ( ii in 1:8 ) {
    samp <- rnorm(length(grades), sample(grades, size = length(grades), replace = TRUE), dens$bw)
    hist(pmin(10,pmax(0,samp)),breaks=0:10,xlab="",ylab="",main="",col="gray")
}
par(opar)


Masters as a stepping stone to PHD So I attend a small(top 20 ranked) liberal arts college. I want to pursue graduate school in Mathematics. I am currently a junior, so by the time I would be submitting my graduate applications next year, I would have completed only 1 course in real analysis, 1 course in abstract algebra, and 1 course in Complex Analysis. I am unable to take topology due to the very small number of math classes which my school offers Everything I hear suggests that this is not enough preparation for grad school.

Also, I will not have had any applied math courses beyond ODE at that point. In addition, looking at the sample GRE subject tests-I fear that it would be difficult for me to get a decent score if there are some questions about field theory, topology, etc. which I won't have the background to answer(although I understand the test is very difficult anyway). I also am unsure of which are of math I might most want to pursue at this point.

Anyway, would it be a good idea for me to start in master's program first? In that case, I would probably have to go somewhere in state. I live in New York, so that would might mean going to SUNY Albany, SUNY binghamton, etc., which are ranked in the 80s by US News. In a masters program, I would be able to obtain the desired preparation for grad school, explore applied math, and study for the GRE more, and try to go into grad school with more of an Idea of what I wanted to focus on. My other options for masters programs would be going to something at a Place Like Miami Ohio, North Dakota, University of Alaska Fairbanks which have funded terminal masters programs for people interested in strengthening their mathematics for graduate study.

There are also a few schools which offer post baccs in math, and I know Canadian universities do fund masters students, although their system is different in that they rarely admit students directly to PHD programs. Are these(and if any, which ones) masters programs a viable idea for trying to get into a better PHD program? Or would I need to get a masters program from a school which is ranked more highly?

I'm in chemistry, and I also went to a small, top-20 liberal arts school that did not offer much additional, higher-level coursework.

I experienced two main challenges:

Transitioning into graduate-level courses. This was difficult, because of not having experienced similar class-work before. However, the fundamentals you learn at liberal arts colleges are solid, and you've learned how to learn.
Transitioning to the difference in teaching quality. At most graduate programs, the course instructors are research faculty and their priority is research. It can take some time to adjust to how to learn in a class that was not well-constructed for learning.

That said, unless the masters programs are very different than the phd programs in mathematics,I think you'll encounter the same challenges in either the masters or the doctoral program. In chemistry and physics, masters students take the same coursework. Additionally, usually you have to write a thesis for a masters, so during your coursework there is more pressure to do successful research, since you only have ~2 years (instead of ~5-6, as in a PhD program). Also in my experience graduate schools only rarely grant course exemptions for masters work.

You have several options:

Apply directly to PhD program. If you do this, I highly recommend studying some of the advanced coursework over the summer before you start. MIT Open Courseware has some great materials for this.
Apply to a masters program at a less selective school, then apply to more selective PhD programs. In a less-selective school, the classes might start at a lower level, there might be more support for students, and you might be able to take advanced undergraduate coursework not offered at your undergraduate institution, if you need it.
Get a job or internship and take a few courses. You could take a gap-year in which you get a job or internship in your field. You'll grow your skills and content knowledge via that position, and you may also have time to take ~1 class at a time at a local university, online (through a university or a free service like coursera), or via independent study (like MIT OCW). This way you'll also earn money, if that's a concern. (Masters students may or may not be stipended.)


Postdoctoral Catch-22 I graduated with my PhD in January. In my field (biophysics) and country (US), we only have a 1 year time window to apply for fellowships.
However, my advisor is sitting on the paper from my dissertation and refuses to submit it (he keeps asking for more and more tiny tweaks) even thought it’s perfectly ready for submission. There is no end in sight here and I have tried politely arguing to no avail.
Since it takes many months from submission to publication and since I can’t apply for fellowships without a paper published in a high-ranking journal, I’m stuck in a sort of Catch-22.
My time is running out for the fellowships which I need to get competitive professorships, my career is at risk because of my graduate advisor.
What are my options here?

This advisor's "negligence" is an act of academic bullying. There is a few things one can do to counter academic bullying, but one has to think them thoroughly well in advance. I'm not writing them here, by now, since some advisors could read them to neutralize counter-bullying.
Maybe you can get some advice from a union representative or someone from your faculty to monitor the situation as an outsider.
Do you have a paper agreement?
Can you write another paper on your own?
If the above does not work, discreetly tell your advisor that you have some work duties from a certain date and that you will not be able to work more on the paper.
After some weeks/days tell your advisor that she is ruining the expectations that this paper is going to be submitted. If she doesn't consider this paper submittable then you can stop wasting the time on it, but you are not giving up coauthorship.
After some weeks/days tell your advisor that you are not going to tolerate any kind of academic bullying or power abuse.