Why do publishers allow distributing preprints? I recently wanted to read one conference paper and one journal article. The conference paper is named Division by invariant integers using multiplication. By clicking on the "All 9 versions" link on Google Scholar, I found the full paper on gmplib.org.

The journal article is named improved division by invariant integers. It is also available at several sources as PDF.

Why do publishers allow such redistribution of papers / preprints? I mean, if everyone is doing the same as I'm doing, the main revenue source of publishers will go away. Is it because publishers obtain their main revenue from university libraries? If I can't find a PDF preprint of an article, the next thing I'm going to do is to try to find the article through my university library.

Although this is speculation since I don't work for a publisher, there are a couple of reasons I can think of:

Due to pressure from funders, who want the research they funded to be publicly available.
To take away the focus from gold open access. Publishing preprints is known as green open access, and means that authors are allowed to post their work elsewhere. Often, however, this is with restrictions: only the non-peer reviewed version is allowed, and only after a certain period. This discourages academic libraries from cancelling their subscriptions, and appeases the funders who might otherwise call for the published version to be publicly available immediately. (Note: I think this was mainly a motivation before the publishers figured out they could heavily charge funders for the latter requirements.)
Because it might be hard to argue in a legal case for publishers to restrict access to research that they haven't been involved with at all (i.e. not yet been peer reviewed, layout done by the researcher themself, etc.). Yes, they often coerce authors in transferring copyrights to the publishers, but they might rather not test the strength of that argument in court.
As a courtesy, to maintain goodwill. It's clear now that it doesn't really threaten their business model (no subscriptions appear to have been cancelled in response to preprints being available), so they can easily do this.


Is there any published research on pedagogy of the semester vs trimester systems at the high school or university levels? I have found some anecdotal evidence, but I only found one systematic study by Bair and Bair

I'm specifically interested in the answers for Mathematics, Physics, and Engineering disciplines.

I do not know about semester vs. trimester, but I have seen research showing that taking 2 semesters to learn Calculus I prepares students more completely, and makes them more resistant to leaving STEM majors:

Nelson, M. (2014, September). Oral Reviews: Retaining STEM Majors. In Innovations in Teaching & Learning Conference Proceedings (Vol. 6).

and
Nelson, M. A. (2010). Oral assessments: Improving retention, grades, and understanding. PRIMUS, 21(1), 47-61.


Re-using text from a grant proposal in a paper (or vice versa) I have a grant proposal that I'm ready to submit, and I would like to re-use a significant amount of the text (on the order of 5-8 pages) in a paper that I intend to submit to a journal for publication.  Is this considered self-plagiarism?

As I suggested in the title, I am also interested in the reverse direction of this.  Is it okay to take significant amounts of text from (e.g.) my own unpublished doctoral dissertation and use it in a grant proposal?

If this were an issue of paper-to-paper copying I know both of these would be clearly off-limits.  The key issue that I am wrestling with is whether the rules are different for unpublished works like dissertations and grant proposals.

Copying proposals to papers: I am sure many have not thought about this but many have copied material to and from proposals. Copying from a proposal to a paper should not be a problem since a proposal is normally not a publication and I have never come across a funding agency that claims copyright on proposal texts sent to them. If anyone knows of exceptions, it would be very interesting to know how they handle proposals. Taking the idea to the (silly) extreme one could argue that copying what you write in a notebook to a computer-written manuscript is self-plagiarism. The key lies in what sources are considered published and which are not.

Copying papers to proposals: Copying from a journal paper to a proposal should normally not be a problem either since the proposal is not a publication and not something that should be distributed. But, the journal text may be subject to copyright so it makes sense to see to what extent one might infringe on those rights by copying text to  a proposal. I doubt any journal would care much (or indeed find out) as long as the proposals are not made public. Since most application processes are very strict and reviewers are not allowed to disclose materials (some actually ask you to physically destroy any printouts) I doubt there is a problem but strictly speaking this may indeed be a grey zone.

EDIT: I will add a definition for self-plagiarism: Copying material you have previously produced and passing it off as a new production from the site plagiarism.org. From this perspective the question becomes, is one trying to pass of the copied material as a new product?


Receiving a reviewer comments of the wrong paper from editor I have received a revesion in which one reviewer comments is related to my paper but the other reviewer comment is not related it is may be mistakenly copy other paper coments.
What can i do now?
Is there any reply template to editor.

Don't overthink this. Write a concise and polite reply. Here is an example that is not perfect but should do it.

  Dear Professor ...,

  we recently received the reviews for our paper ...., which we
  submitted to the journal ...., of which you are a/the editor of.

  While we found the comments by reviewer 1 very helpful, we noticed
  that review number 2 was written for a different paper. We'd like to
  hereby inform you of this likely administrative error. It is our
  understanding that there is a second review for our paper, and hope
  that its content will be equally helpful to improve our paper.

  Thanks,  Author name

If there is a submission number for your paper, include it as well (perhaps also submission date).


How do I impress my prospective grad advisor? (first meeting) I am supposed to meet with a PI to discuss the possibilities of joining his lab as a MSc student.

I have had one meeting with another PI last week, but it went bad. Essentially he was repulsed when I told him about my GPA and mostly, when he asked me specifically what exactly I want to get out of the MSc experience at his lab (e.g. specific instrument that I'm interested in mastering, etc.). He told me that I should know exactly my goals prior to starting a grad program and that an interest in the field isn't
sufficient.

I agree, however, no matter how much literature I read in that field, I will still have that broad answer which is "I want to contribute to your current project" because as a MSc student, very little I can do in terms of research projects. Most graduate students find their passion once they start their program.

He was also repulsed when I told him that I intend to work in the industry, and I was surprised because the majority of students with higher degree decide to go to work in the industry (e.g. GSK, Pfizer, etc.). Perhaps I should have lied? But that shouldn't be the basis of our relationship as a student and a PI. There is no shame in pursuing a research degree because I intend to go to R&D. Why do most PIs make me feel that I should always answer that "I want to become an academic researcher?", because I don't.

If I made mistakes in the previous interview, please highlight them to me so I can avoid making them again for when I speak with the next PI (whose main concerns is funding). Should I not have said that my ultimate goal is to work in the industry? And how exact should I be in terms of my goals as a MSc student?

UPDATES: I met the new PI and it was an instant rapport! I clearly understand now how being genuine about your goals and educational background can serve you well in such situations.

After recently meeting with dozens of potential advisers in multiple institutions and departments over the last year, my advice is to try to get yourself out of the mindset of merely trying to impress them. Sure, you need to put your best foot forward, but there's something about academia that it's important to understand: there is a massive amount of variability between individuals, departments, institutions, and fields, in a huge variety of ways. What is impressive to one person can be off-putting to others, or a sign of a bad match.

One bad meeting isn't enough data to determine anything, but more importantly, this might have actually been a really great meeting, because you found someone who might be very unpleasant to work with because they are not supportive of your goals - short-term and long-term - at all. That's a terrible match, and finding that out is great.

As a personal example, I was talking with one prospective advisor and told them about my long-term vision (10-20 year career goals), and the response was that it's important not to be too ambitious, and basically that most people never do work that has much of an impact so you shouldn't aim so high.

I gave a similar talk and explanation of my long-term career goals to another potential advisor, and their response was that they were extremely surprised I had developed such a clear vision of what I wanted to do and had the maturity to think about the long-term, and they thought it was really great and they were very positive and enthusiastic about talking about how to make it happen. They even gave constructive criticism on how to connect short-term goals to long-term ones, what to do to get started right away, etc.

One plan, two completely different responses. And you know what? That's OK. This is why people say it's so important to be honest about your interests - don't trick your way into a relationship that will be bad for you!

To ask about desire to go to academia vs industry, this is another issue of fit. When I talked with some people about wanting to be an academic, they actually talked at length about how competitive the markets are, how much better the pay in industry is, are you sure you don't just want to get a job, etc. Other people volunteered that "it is not our job to decide where you want go to for you - it is our job to help you make your dreams happen". And yet others were extremely supportive, realistic, but talked about what kind of strategy would be necessary to make it happen, how to prepare, asked to make sure I really understood what I was aiming for, etc.

In my experience, this was partly a factor of department, and partly an individual factor. Some programs and/or advisors place the majority of their people into academia (60-80% is not unheard of), and they are proud of that fact, sometimes even flat out saying on their website that is the goal of their program. Other places place more on the order of <10% into academia - so why on earth would they have an issue with people going into industry, and if you wanted to go into academia shouldn't you prefer a different department?

What To Do Different

I did detect a few things I might suggest you adjust, though. One is how to talk about your goals. "Go into industry" is a common phrase, but it also suggests you don't really have an idea why you want to go to grad school or do after. You might be more specific, such as how you want to contribute your developing expertise within a R&D department to develop drugs with less side-effects, or to fight aging, etc - whatever suits your interests. If you are also open to other ideas, say that too!

If you say you just want to learn an instrument, that might sound too limited, depending on what you were naming. Going to grad school to learn to use a centrifuge might sound unambitious. Learning how to do advanced gene sequencing and interpret genetic-based drug interaction models - that just sounds a bit more developed, but you again should focus on what you care about.

What if you just honestly don't know? I have found the best result is to say what you have explored. Something like, "Well, I've explored anti-aging treatments, and degenerative diseases, and infectious outbreak analysis, and I've actually really enjoyed it all so I'm having trouble deciding. I'm open to trying a few different approaches and subjects in this field, as I've so enjoyed the work I've had the opportunity to do so far." You can note limited opportunities to explore, etc. This is all honest, just a bit more useful and interesting than "I dunno".

Above all, keep at it! I suggest meeting with over a dozen people, if you can possibly manage it, even outside your immediate field of interest if necessary. Focus on learning from the interactions and having a mutually interesting exchange - and don't jump to conclusions on too few data points.


What do grad schools want to hear about why I'm changing PhD programs? TL;DR: I'm reapplying to schools in the US for Fall 2021 because (1) the research project I'm getting paid to work on isn't in my area(s) of interest, (2) in general, mathematics at this university is heavily applied and computational, so there's little scope for me to do something else I'd like here, (3) I'm making much less than minimum wage (assuming a 40-hour work week for 52 weeks a year), and (4) I don't like living here. These are listed in order of importance to me. The question is, which of these points do I emphasise to an admissions committee?
More context: I'm an international student (for US and Canadian schools). I graduated with a Master's in math from a well-known university in Europe. I was "on-track" to start a PhD in Fall 2020, but due to personal reasons and global events I couldn't go to any schools in the US or Canada. I didn't want to take a year off from math, and I needed to make at least some money, so the best option seemed to be to enroll in a PhD program in Europe.
I plan to reapply to US and Canadian schools (for the reasons listed above). Only, I'm not sure how to explain that despite already being enrolled in a PhD program, I want to "transfer" to a different one. I have a solid academic record otherwise---how will this affect my application? How do I explain this in my statement of purpose?

I'd suggest that, as a guess, 95-99% of your application should be just as it was the first time, focused on your skills and likelihood of success in any new program. I think it would be a mistake to spend valuable words giving a bedsheet of reasons that you are unhappy. Even ignoring the issue altogether might be fine, if a bit risky, especially if you are crossing borders as part of your switch. You are "looking for opportunities not available locally". If it comes up in an interview you might want to raise it.
The one thing you say, however, that might resonate, is that COVID limited your choices last time around and that you picked a less than ideal situation because of it. Also, if you are interested in pure, rather than applied, math, then a quick/short statement that your current institution supports that poorly might be fine.
But keep the focus on the skills and success part, just as you would if this is your first application. People won't choose you because they feel sorry for you but because you seem to be a good fit for their programs and a good bet for success.


Disadvantages to publishing outside field of projected study? As a recent B.S. recipient interested in pursuing a PhD in molecular biology in the future, are there any disadvantages to publishing outside of that field? I have a strong background in computer science and have been approached separately by a public health professor and a linguistics professor who are interested in collaborating on their respective projects and perhaps working towards a paper over the summer.

While I enjoy solving computational problems, I'm not sure whether this is a good idea professionally. Does publishing papers in other fields take away from the research I've already done?  I've so far only contributed to two papers in my "field of expertise".

What are the downsides to collaborating on a paper outside of one's field? Is this frowned upon by the academic community/graduate admission programs?

Related question -- advantages to publishing outside of primary research field

Although I cannot speak directly to the field of computer sciences, I can say that in social sciences any peer reviewed publications would be viewed positively on an applicant's CV. At this stage in your career this shows you're motivated, capable of contributing to academic work, and have some familiarity with the writing process. The fact is that many undergraduates may not have access to opportunities to publish in the field they hope to enter, but instead seek to gain research experience and publication opportunities with faculty who are willing to work with and train them. Many academic skills, such as writing articles, are transferable between disciplines, and working with these professors may provide you with strong reference letters when you do apply to graduate school. So long as this opportunity is not coming at the expense of something more directly related to your major, I think it could be a very valuable experience which could positively impact (or at least will not hurt) your future applications.

As a final note, be sure that you are able to explain the project and your role in the project in future application materials and interviews. If this is outside your field of study, don't be shy about asking the professors questions so that you have a solid grasp of the project's purpose. The only time I have seen undergraduate publications backfire is when the person is unable to explain the work, and it becomes clear they did nothing but data entry.


Would students feel uncomfortable if I include in my lecture a quote which is somewhat sexually suggestive? In my lecture, I am thinking of using a famous quote by Winston S. Churchill:

  A good speech should be like a woman's skirt;
  long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.

I like this quote because it clearly expresses the idea that
while you should go over the important details in your speech,
your speech should not be overly detailed.

However, I don't know if some of the students may feel uncomfortable
if I use this quote in class.

Question:
Should I play safe and avoid using this quote in class,
in case some students are offended?

What I decided to do

Although the Churchill quote is quite memorable,
I agree with the answer which says:

  Whether you actually believe that or not, telling that joke gives students the impression that you do. That perception makes the classroom environment more unpleasant for a female student and less conducive to learning.

I will find another way to express my idea without the quote.

In response to comments

Several commenters have pointed out that:

  My general advice is if you need to ask someone else if it is appropriate, you already know you will get into trouble.

That is good advice.
I had a "gut feeling" that it was not a good idea to use this quote;
partly I asked this question because I wanted to understand
why it was not a good idea.

Avoid, but not for that reason.

Sometimes it is a teacher's duty to do things that may offend members of their class. A biology teacher who avoids the subject of evolution for fear of offending creationists is not doing their job, and there are plenty of other examples. The problem here is not that the joke could offend; it's that it gets in the way of learning.

It treats women as eye candy rather than as thinking beings, implying that a woman's clothing should be chosen for the benefit of male onlookers rather than according to her own priorities.

Whether you actually believe that or not, telling that joke gives students the impression that you do. That perception makes the classroom environment more unpleasant for a female student and less conducive to learning.

Humour has a place in teaching. Used judiciously, it can help hold the audience's interest and keep them engaged. But for your female students, at least, this particular joke is unlikely to serve that purpose. There are plenty of other ways to say it.


More formal way to write "canned algorithm" This question pertains to English writing; although a English Language and Usage SE Community exists, I thought I would post here as I am writing academic literature, and most academics are on this community.

So here's my question. I'd like to say the following:
"A canned algorithm is used to find the closest distance between two locations on Earth given their latitude and longitude coordinates."

However, "canned" sounds rather informal. What are the established ways in literature to refer to a method such as this - an unoriginal, well-known procedure (although there may be several equally good algorithms out there).

A "standard algorithm"? Perhaps a "well-known algorithm"?

I would recommend naming the algorithm and then saying what library or software you obtained the implementation from. That way, the reader has enough information to adequately understand what you have done and compare it. As for an adjective: "frequently used" is sufficient, I think.


What to do when you found something new, but don’t have motive/application to justify it? Last year one of my TAs (a Ph.D. scholar) gave a problem to my undergraduate class, I found the problem very interesting and devoted a lot of time to it. Eventually, I developed a model with my TA along the line of the problem and wrote a paper on it. We believe the model will provide a new dimension to the concerned topic.

Now the paper has been rejected twice by two reputed journals. Along with some minor issues (that can be easily rectified), they’ve pointed out a lack of motive/ applicability in the real world as the major issue. Now I can’t decide what steps I should take; these are some alternatives that I can think of:

Leave that problem statement.
Wait for some solid motive. But till when?
Go with some minor journal or conference.
Other steps that I am not aware of.

The problem statement is in computer science. Apart from this, I am working on another problem statement and due to stillness in this problem, my time and attention are being divided unnecessarily.

What steps can I take?

This is hard to answer without more information about the actual problem, but in general it is all about finding the correct publication venue. It does not necessarily mean a venue with lower impact, but one with another focus.

If you really can not think about any practical application, it might still solve an interesting problem and might find an application in other areas.

For example, it might be the case that you found a new method to formulate process scheduling as a graph problem that you can solve in an interesting way. The resulting schedules might not be better than the state of the art scheduling algorithms, so you get rejected by journals about process scheduling. Still it is an interesting graph problem so it might be better suited for journals with the focus on  graph theory.

But the most important aspect in this context is to tailor the paper to the publication venue. If you now try to submit to the graph theory journal do not write "This paper presents a method to improve process scheduling" but "This paper presents an efficient method to solve the minimum dominating set problem under the constraint .... It has, for example, application in the area of process scheduling".


I want to quit PhD after 4 months. Should I? I am a first year PhD student. I am doing it from an institute in a remote part of the world where the temperature is -10 degrees most time of the year. I took this opportunity after doing my Masters in Europe and I was really happy with the time I spent during my masters thesis research and really liked my research and came up with good results and very good grades. Now, I have taken this scholarship position but I am already in dark. As said, this institute is in a very small town. I can't speak the language of local people. I can't go out for a walk because its too cold.

I don't think that the project is difficult. In fact it is easier for me. But my daily life is not perfect because to read a research paper or write an article I need a fresh and happy mind, which in this city and cold temperature is not possible. I have money just for food and living and no more for even traveling to another city.

Can someone please tell me if I should leave this program?

It's impossible to advise you what to do. But I would consider to give it more time, e.g., a year, before quitting. You may still be effected psychologically by the change of place, weather, geography and location; you are still not adjusted to the new place. So you feel anxious and perhaps panic. But it may not be a good strategy to haphazardly decide on quitting the PhD while in this position. So I would advise you to wait more time and see if you adjust to your place and perhaps start enjoying your project.

(Also, PhD is never easy, and so mild depression while completing a phd is quite common.)


Is it appropriate to cite a paper in a language I don't understand? Some months back I got into a situation where a paper with information that I considered important to prove a point was in a language I cannot understand. Since it was important but not crucial, I ended up not using the paper. Except for its abstract, which was in English, the entire paper was in this other language. It had graphs and images that I could understand without knowing the language.

At the time, I was tempted to use Google Translate in order to get the general idea of the paper  (in more detail than what is given in the abstract), while not necessarily trusting on the specific information that the translation gave me (it can give faulty results at times). Since this would still leave me with some measure of uncertainty — there was no way for me to be sure exactly what it was saying — I thought it better to just let the paper go.

But say that in a future situation I find a crucial paper in a language I don't understand: if I use Google Translate, using the paper in a situation that does not require specific information but only it's general gist, would citing it be ethically acceptable?

(It's almost the same situation as this question, but I'm not concerned with translating the entire paper, for this would take time/resources that I simply don't have access to.)

I think the fact that the paper is in a language you don't understand is somewhat of a red herring. Sure, it will affect the specific steps you'd take to try to understand the paper, but the ethics of "to cite, or not to cite" it is no different from a paper you don't understand written in a language you speak. You're generally supposed to provide a good-faith overview of the literature, with citations as appropriate. The fact that one paper is significantly harder to understand doesn't really change that.

My view is that it behooves you to, as far as possible*, and regardless of language, at least understand at a high level what the full papers you cite contain, and the parts of papers you use on a detailed level. Google Translate will be good enough in some cases, but for other cases it's better used as a starting point. If you find yourself doubting the machine translation it's certainly best to use it as a starting point. You might want to try to clarify uncertain points with the authors, ask a colleague (who might speak the language) for help, get a professional translation of parts of the paper, or use a secondary citation.

*In some fields they even study ancient languages to understand original texts. That might be overkill...


What is the benefit of 'voluntary page charges'? There are quite a few journals which ask for voluntary page charges. Some may do for the whole journal and most for the first couple of pages.

Take IEEE Transactions on Forensics and Security for example.

  Voluntary Page Charges. Upon acceptance of a manuscript for
  publication, the author(s) or his/her/their company or institution
  will be asked to pay a charge of $110 per page to cover part of the
  cost of publication of the first ten pages that comprise the standard
  length (two pages, in the case of Correspondences).

  Mandatory Page Charges. The author(s) or his/her/their company or
  institution will be billed $220 per each page in excess of the first
  ten published pages for regular papers. [...]

Surely $110/page is not a charitable amount for an average author. What is the benefit the author/institution receive for agreeing to pay these voluntary charges?

The benefits of "voluntary" page charges are much the same as for "mandatory" page charges - you are paying them in order to support publication of the paper. The only difference is that, technically, you don't have to, and you can avoid it if you wish.

Why do we have such a weird situation?

There is a long and complicated history here; what follows is mostly a precis of this paper, which is an interesting read.

This particular journal seems to be using an unusual holdover from an old-fashioned way of handling page charges.

Page charges date back to the 1930s. (You may want to remember this the next time you see someone saying that paying publishers is a shocking modern development.) The majority of journal subscribers at this time were individual members of scholarly societies, rather than libraries, and so there was a fairly low limit to how much you could reasonably charge for a subscription.

However, particularly in physics, the amount of stuff people wanted to publish was growing dramatically - Physical Review doubled in size during the 1920s, and even then still had a growing backlog. Printing and mailing larger issues more often obviously costs more, but subscribers would balk at rapid subscription increases, and the societies were already (mostly) losing money publishing the journals to begin with. The solution by the American Physical Society (followed by many others) was to shift part of the cost onto the authors, allowing the cost charged to subscribers to stay the same even if they now got more pages in their journals, or if the amount of papers dramatically fluctuated in a given year.

But not everyone had the money to pay the charges. For the first couple of years, a generous benefactor paid for everyone who couldn't; after that, unpaid charges mounted up. Some institutions and funders were asked for donations to help cover the gaps, but, critically, authors were not penalised for failure to pay, nor were they chased for the money. The sense that these were "optional" charges became quite well entrenched, and while most authors paid, many avoided doing so without complaints. The US government gave tacit support to the emerging model in the fifties, when it was decided that federal agencies could pay page charges as long as they were the same assessed on non-federal authors, and they were voluntary. (You have to love the logic of "we'll pay if voluntary, but not if mandatory")

By the 1970s, page charges were well established in the scholarly landscape, and almost 40% of US-published articles were in page-charge journals - higher than 80% in some fields. (It was much lower outside the US.)

In the 1970s, the US Postal Service got involved. They took the position that a page charge was essentially a fee to distribute advertising about your research, which would mean that the journals got hit by much higher postage charges than if they were simply distributing public-good information. The IRS made a similar argument about payments being commercial and threatened to increase taxation. The negotiated solution was to very clearly emphasise that page charges were a voluntary contribution, rather than a mandatory one, neatly evading some of the legal issues.

Page charges mostly died out after this. American society journals were always the major users of page charges, but during the 1980s, most of them were absorbed by commercial publishers (who almost without exception stopped levying page charges). Many of the remainder, presumably, found that they could shift away from page charges by taking advantage of the very dramatic increases in subscription charges during the 1980s and 1990s (the famous "serials crisis").

But you'll still find a few today - eg PNAS, or the AGU titles. Most of these now structure page charges as mandatory - I suppose the complex financial issues from the 1970s have now been solved in other ways, or else the fact that you can ask for a fee waiver means they still technically qualify as "voluntary". Not quite sure how this circle got squared... but, regardless, that's where we originally got the "voluntary" text.


Is it reasonable for an institution to ask for families total income in application form? The online application form for a post graduation course of an engineering institute in India asks for students to compulsorily enter the total annual income of their entire family. I had a chat online with their representative who offered no explanation about it other than "Sir it is compulsory to fill the details".

I assume they need these details either to figure out whether a student deserves scholarship or not, but in that case the question could have been asked in a different way.

Is it reasonable for them to ask such a question and is it sensible for me to fill in the actual annual income of my family? What if I fill in a random amount or enter zero?

I don't have any direct experience with educational systems in India, so this is a very general answer.

In response to a question, you said that you view the practice as being potentially unreasonable

  Because income is a private matter and not related to admission.

But if they are using this information to figure out whether you deserve a scholarship it does seem to be related to admissions.  According to their website, all students are considered for fellowships, so this could be it.  Admittedly there are less reasonable, um, reasons they might want to have this information: e.g. they may want to give preferential treatment towards or against students with high family incomes.

  [I]n that case the question could have been asked in a different way.

I think you're probably right about this.  And the online representative does not seem to have been at all helpful (we can all sympathize with that!).  It seems you have the following options:

Make a more concerted effort to speak to someone in the admissions department -- either by email, phone or in person -- to find out the reasons behind this request.  If appropriate, you could also make clear that you are not seeking any sort of financial aid and see if that changes the situation.
You can feel that the practice is a bit unreasonable and invasive but decide that it is in your best interest to comply with it anyway.
You can decide not to apply because of this, in which case I think it would be a good idea to contact someone (higher up than an online representative) in the admissions department.

  What if I fill in a random amount or enter zero?

That is a bad idea.  Many institutions (academic and otherwise) view lying during the application process as grounds for termination of your position into the indefinite future.  Saying that you have zero family income in particular is liable to get you in trouble: they may wonder how you are going to pay for the program, or they may come back with a financial aid / fellowship offer that it would be very unethical for you to accept.


What tools do you use to manage writing co-authored papers? What tools do you use to manage co-authored papers? This is similar to questions active 4 years ago and 5 years ago. I assume tech has changed since then.

Co-authored projects I have been on have used Dropbox to share files or shared files through many emails. This does not seem particularly efficient.

Update: In my field, almost everyone uses MS Word.

I use Trello for solo-authored work. It has the option of inviting collaborators but I have not tried it. I am also interested in reproducible workflow and have some of my code on Github. I am exploring the Open Science framework, too, but have not used it to manage an entire co-authored project.

The best option is Github I believe. But it pretty much depends on what do you use for writing papers? Do you use LaTeX or other typing softwares like Microsoft Word or LibreOffice which is the free and open source cousin of Microsoft Word. If you use LaTeX, which I recommend it personally and probably many other people here too, you could create a repository in Github and put your tex files as well as bibliography files and then simply you could share that repository among your collaborators. The reason why I like LaTeX instead of using Microsoft Word is that tex files by themselves are human readable files in comparison to binary .doc files. As a result, you could track and maintain your version control for your paper like a code. Otherwise it's not easy and trivial to track binary files (e.g. .doc files) by Github or other version control softwares (e.g. Data Version Control (DVC)) Also, it is possible to link that repository to OverLeaf and that makes sharing/writing much easier. But for more accurate solution in order to fulfill your needs you need to mention what is your main writing software for preparing papers.


What is the notation for inserting algorithms in scientific papers I have some papers which describe some computer algorithms.
My algorithms have some input, output, static (global) variables, comments ...
something like the following algorithm, however I borrowed it from a book about artificial intelligence and I am not sure that is the style for a paper

function SIMPLE-REFLEX-AGENT(percept) returns an action
    static: rules, a set of condition-action rules
    state← INTERPRET-INPUT(percept)
    rule← RULE-MATCH(state, rules)
    action← RULE-ACTION[rule]
return action

What is the standard notation to insert such algorithms into a paper?

To the best of my knowledge, there is no standard notation for algorithms across computer science fields. However, looking through previous editions of the venue you plan to send your paper to should give you a good impression for how algorithms are typically denoted.

That being said, most papers I know just use a very simple procedural notation, basically pseudo-code in a simplified structural programming language. The reason is likely that such a notation has the least "hidden assumptions" in contrast to what your average computer scientist will know and expect. Contrary, your example seems ripe with symbols and expressions that are certainly not globally understood outside of AI. Using a "compact, expressive" notation loses much of its appeal if you then need to spend half a page to formally define your notation.


If I think I have a publishable idea on a certain problem, how do I publish and proceed? I'm new to research.  I'm working on a certain problem that has sort of been abandoned by all researchers (as far as publications go).  Anyway, I like it for its simplicity and easiness to grasp.  However, it's a new algorithm for a problem and a new way of possibly answering theoretical questions about the problem.

There is so little research out there on the certain problem, that it would literally take you a day or less to view it all and ascertain that indeed the idea hasn't been looked at yet.  I'm applying the well-studied field of integer programming / linear algebra to model each instance of the problem.

Anyhow, regardless of whether I answer a major open problem, I think the approach is valuable in itself, if for no other reason that it makes answering basic questions about the problem a lot more easy, sort of like how algebraic geometry answers questions about geometric objects using algebra.

How do I proceed?  Do I just spend a month perfecting the paper on my own and put it on arXiv?  Is that all?

You are on the cusp between math and CS, actually. The better way to "publish" your work is to write it up formally, with references/citations and everything and submit it to either a journal or a conference. Choose one that matches the content of your paper.

But also make sure it is a reputable journal and not one that just publishes anything for the money you pay them.

However, you also have to be prepared, with journals, for publication fees, even with reputable ones. Sometimes they may waive the fees, but you may need to find a way to pay them. And, for conferences, make sure you have some way of attending if your paper is accepted for presentation. In CS, conferences are usually preferred. In math, usually journals.


Is it a good idea to do Masters in multiple subjects rather than doing a PhD? Suppose, someone already has a Masters in CS/EE. Say, he wants to work with Robotics.

Is it a good idea to do a 2nd/3rd Masters-by-research in Robotics rather than doing a PhD in CS/EE (concentration Robotics)?

Why or why not?

This depends on your goals, so doesn't have a definite answer. For industrial work, another masters might work, as would some actual work experience. In fact, for some jobs a doctorate might be viewed as a negative: "We want do-ers here, not just think-era".

But if you want a successful career in academia, then you really need to get a doctorate. You would be very limited there without it. Hard to get a job, hard to advance.

Examine your goals and then find a path to achieve them. In fact, many paths might be followed to the same goal.


Festschrift articles: is the peer-review as strict as for other papers? Many journals sometimes publish Festschriften, i.e. special issues in honor of a distinguished (but still alive) researcher in their field. Articles for such issues are typically invited articles by other groups in the same field, and current and former collaborators of the researcher honored.

A colleague told me that such articles are peer-reviewed, much in the same way regular papers are. I somewhat suspect that this might not be entirely true, and that the standards used by the editor (and even reviewers, if they are aware of the context) are lower for these special issue invited papers.

A quote on Wikipedia (from one Endel Tulving) seems to agree with me:

  a Festschrift frequently enough also serves as a convenient place in which those who are invited to contribute find a permanent resting place for their otherwise unpublishable or at least difficult-to-publish papers

So, my questions are: in your experience, are reviewers given a hint by the editor that the paper they review is intended for a special issue? and is the review process and editorial decisions typically as strict as they would be for a regular paper?

In my experience in mathematics, papers submitted to a Festschrift are held to the same standard as any other papers as far as correctness and novelty go, but there is definitely some flexibility regarding importance.  The Festschrift is often considered a good place for articles that would be of particular interest to the person being honored, because they build on this person's work or involve topics close to their heart, even if the papers are not particularly important in absolute terms.  Referees know the paper is submitted to the Festschrift, and I think this vision of which papers are appropriate is broadly shared among authors, editors, and referees.  An embarrassing or inappropriate paper would be rejected, but for example a minor observation related to the honoree's work could be accepted.

It's hard to say how this compares with typical journals, since there's a range from low-end journals that will publish anything arguably new and correct to high-end journals that regularly reject excellent papers because they aren't quite wonderful enough.  A Festschrift will never match the very most prestigious journals (there simply aren't enough thematically-appropriate papers at that level to fill it up), but it can be comparable to a middle-of-the-road journal or occasionally better.

As in Stephan Kolassa's comment, a large majority of the Festschrifts I've seen are monographs, rather than journal issues.  When they are special issues of a journal, it's generally not a particularly prestigious journal.  (However, it can happen: the Duke Mathematical Journal published a Festschrift for Nash.)  My interpretation is that prestigious journals generally don't want to publish Festschrifts because they know the papers won't all meet the highest standards of importance.


Can I bring up past work in the discussion? Consider the following scenario.
Experiments yield a somewhat peripheral finding. Not what I set out to find, but still interesting.
When I encountered this finding, I looked up some past work, and found that it was corroborated in past studies.

Now: do I mention these past studies in the background, or in the discussion? Logically, it seems to make most sense to bring it up in the discussion. "I found this, which suggests this. And this is supported by a review of the literature". However, this might be against the "rules".

Meanwhile, bringing it up in the background seems strange, out of place, and like "leading the witness". This wasn't what I set out to discover, so it seems weird to discuss it.

Thoughts? Thanks!

I recently went through this for a paper of mine where we had a lot of different findings that we wanted to relate to many different prior results. It helped me to think of the paper in linear order (i.e., our Background section came before our Results so we didn't bring them up there)

We setup the Background to discuss relevant ideas that we bring up later but don't mention our results at all. We then present the results, as-is. Then in the Discussion, we tie our findings back to the literature.


Why isn't there a doctoral degree that does not involve a major project? I am trying to find a doctoral program without a capstone, project, or a dissertation, because I do not find a value in doing a project.

But why isn't there a doctoral degree that does not involve a major project?

The doctoral degree indicates that you are ready to "do research" yourself. A Ph.D. (or similar doctoral degrees) is essentially your qualification to join the academic community as a fully fledged researcher. Until this time, your research, e.g., for a Master's thesis, was conducted under close supervision by your professor.

The community believes that the best way to find out whether you can conduct a research project yourself is, in fact, to have you conduct a research project yourself. This is what the dissertation is all about. (Of course still under supervision - after all, you are still learning the ropes.)

No amount of classes or coursework will prepare you adequately for the realities of research, just as you can't get a driver's license through a written test only, without demonstrating that you can indeed drive a vehicle.

I strongly recommend that you reexamine the value you may see in a doctoral project.


Why is my supervisor ignoring me? I am an undergraduate student with major aspirations to go to graduate school. I am in my final year. I am currently working on a research project with 2 supervisors (1 of them marks my work and the other just signs off on it). I have meetings with one of them every couple weeks and he always tells me "send me a message whenever you have a question, there are no restrictions". So I had a question last Thursday, yet never received a response. In addition, I have a presentation tomorrow and need his approval before printing out the presentation (it's a poster) to ensure that no private data is shown. He told me to send him my presentation on Monday so I did. However, I have not heard back from him and my presentation is tomorrow. I am not sure if this is a common situation with supervisors? I know the simple solution would be to send him a reminder. However, I really don't want to make anyone angry. I will honestly "kiss up" to anyone to get into my graduate program. So I am treading carefully. If I do send him an email, how should I phrase it?

Busy Backson Syndrome (as coined by Winnie and Hof https://universityoflies.wordpress.com/2013/07/11/what-to-do-when-your-phd-adviser-ignores-you/)- My adviser suffered from this.  These people are Too Damn Busy flying around the world, giving lectures anywhere other than their home university, being on TV, and frolicking through the lavender fields of Provence and buying age-inappropriate accessories with Johnny Depp.

-You are too late. If I have presentation tomorrow, I will make sure everything is prepared and checked by my supervisor 2 weeks before.

what now you can do since your presentation is tomorrow is:

1. Again, Write him an Email with high priority indication:

2. Meet with the department chair faculty if any available: and ask if it possible to check it with you.

3. If it all fails: print your poster and be prepared to the presentation and make sure your impress the audience


Is it bad to apply for a job immediately after it was posted? I am applying for jobs on mathjobs.org, and I regularly refresh the new postings page.

Sometimes I see jobs that I want to apply for right away, but I am not sure if it looks bad.  I am worried about coming across as desperate or I am trying for the shotgun effect.

Does it look bad to apply for a job soon after it was posted?

What I mean by "soon" is the day it was posted or a few days after.

I don't know how mathjob distributes candidates' applications to schools, but I doubt anyone cares. I put all applications I get for my job postings into a folder in no particular order and never look at the order of application. Someone has to be first. Go ahead! Apply away!


Can publications in which I am not the first author be used for tenure-track faculty applications? I am applying for tenure track position. In application form, we are asked to upload several publications. Some of my works are with experimentalists (I am more in theory side myself) and have been published in very prestigious journals. But I am 2nd author in some of them. Can I use them or I should be 1st author? What about papers which I am 2nd name but with same contribution?

You absolutely can. In your research statement you should devote some space to explaining your contribution and degree of involvement. I would imagine that, being part of a multi-disciplinary team, you may well have played some critical role. If you and your adviser find the story compelling, chances are they will, too.


I feel like my teacher is disrespectful towards me in the most subtle, Japanese way possible. What should I do? It's hard to pin down, but every time I ask a question in Japanese class, my teacher tends to do this long pause. Sometimes she'll look around the class as if to say "What does anyone else think?" and sometimes she'll say that explicitly, and get someone else to answer it. Other times she'll answer the question, but in a flat short tone that gives me the impression I was stupid for asking it. There was one time when she asked the class "Does anyone have a question?" and I slowly put my hand up, she said "Of course you do." That made me feel humiliated and awful, and I've been reluctant to participate or ask questions since, but of course, I need to understand the lessons.

It may seem petty, but anyone else who asks a question gets a different response; she always responds straight away, or considers the question openly; she doesn't defer the question, pause, or give any sort of flat response. It all makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong. I don't know if I'm asking too many questions, or stupid questions, or if I'm being impolite somehow, if I've missed some term of address (I always address her as 先生 or say すみません.) Despite all that I've said, when I talk to her in person, in her office, she's personable, empathetic, kind and helpful. I don't know why she's so deferential, apparently just to me, in class.

I don't know what I can do about this. Would it be inappropriate to raise this issue with her in person? I don't like the impression of me it would communicate to her ("I feel like you're not being nice to me in class" comes off the wrong way,) but at the same time, I really don't like participating in class because of the way she acts every time I try, and I don't know what to do to fix that.

EDIT: I'm British and from a British university, and my teacher is Japanese.

She says: "Of course you do." - Respond with a small nod and: "Of course I do:" followed by the question. Also, when you feel humiliated when she waits - you can turn this around. When she waits, look at her in a polite, indulgent manner, with an understanding smile (think: you - the OP - are the adult here!). Obviously (so you can think to yourself), she is unable to answer you more quickly, as you have a difficult question, she needs to reflect first on it.

(Completely independent from that, check - just for yourself - whether you really ask too many questions or whether there is something wrong with them; perhaps they are unnecessary or easily answerable or superfluous? But no reason to feel bad, just inspect your question asking style and check whether it may have something you might be able to improve). In my opinion, there is no need to discuss things with her, as the likelihood is that she will downplay or outright deny it.


Whether to change supervisor in UK Masters degree when supervisor is not providing much feedback and says I can change supervisor if I want? I am pursuing a taught Master's degree in UK, and my field is social science. I was assigned to a dissertation supervisor by department. My supervisor is a very nice person with good personality, he is also tenured and respected in department.

The problem is that I can not get much feedback from him. I did two classes with him, and during these classes I talked with him about my class projects. I got an impression that he does not care much about what we do in our assignments or dissertation. The results from my assignments under him, did not make me happy, compared to the results I achieved from other classes.

The main problem is, I observe a similar trend for my dissertation work. He does not seem very interested in, probably he is too busy with his own research and other duties. But, at the end of the day, this affects the quality of the work done, and I am totally lost.

I talked with him about this issue and my concerns about the dissertation. He said that he believes I will do good work, but, also he pointed that I am free to apply for an advisor change (though, viability of this is unknown).

I am not sure if he is politely telling me that he wants me to leave or stay. What kind of path should I follow ?

Just try to talk to your department chair/graduate program coordinator and see what they say. If they have no problems with you changing advisors, then just go ahead and talk to other faculty members.


In the U.S educational system, would a GPA below 3.25 really disadvantage a student? I am taking a TOEFL lesson and encountered a lesson in which a student is (almost) complaining he had got B- because he would like to maintain 3.25 GPA average.

To me (outside of US) it sounds very "average and O.K" to me.

But would that grade point be so disappointing for the student to come to a professor's room to consult about this? Or is this just an example for my TOEFL that is not meant to be realistic? Just curious.

Given that the US system for undergraduates implies a broad education with a bit of specialization (the major), it is possible to achieve such a GPA in a large number of ways. Students "majoring" in, say, mathematics in the US have less than half of their coursework in maths. The rest will invariably include literature, history, the social and physical sciences, etc.

If you want to do graduate study in mathematics, coming from such a curriculum, it might matter a lot where you got B's and lower. If you do well in "major" courses it is easier to make the case for math than if your lower grades are concentrated in your major.

But, in general, 3.25 isn't horrible, but it isn't great. But graduate schools look at more than a number (any number) when choosing students. They look for indications of success as expressed in the coursework, but also in letters of recommendation and statements by the candidate. Some students, however, are "grade driven" and will do nearly anything to achieve a high GPA, even if they have to sacrifice learning to get there.


Is consistency in citation style important? I have a habit of using two styles of in-text citation: with and without author name(s). The two examples below describe what I mean: (# here represents a bibliography index)

"...which is in agreement with simulations presented in Lastname et al. [#]."

and just

"...the X method [#] was here used to model..."

(in the latter case, reference # might contain an in-depth description of the X method).

I mix these styles freely, depending on what I deem to be appropriate in each individual case. Am I correct to do this or would you consider it to be bad style?

To your title question

Is consistency in citation style important?

Yes!
On first reading this, it sounded as though you were planning to mix two citation styles such as APA and Chicago. Obviously, this would be unacceptable.
However, in your example, you are using two entirely compatible forms for your in-text citations, which is perfectly acceptable. I would strongly prefer this over the awkward and boring alternative of using exactly the same form for every citation. Continue to use the form that is most appropriate for the situation. Variety is acceptable, even commendable, as long as you are not violating the standards for your documentation style.
Edit: To clarify the point above; mixing the in-text citation style Lastname et al. [#] and [#] is OK! What is not OK is using two separate documentation styles, for example, also using the in-text citation (Last name, year, page), which is proper is APA documentation style, but not in Chicago documentation style!


Additional data for anonymous submission I've recently submitted a paper to a conference requiring anonymous submission, meaning that the name of the authors should not be included, and no obvious self-reference should be made. The problem is that I add additional information relevant to the submission, such as some proofs and some code working on an example, calculating some numerical data (that could be found on the paper, but requiring some effort).

For a non anonymous submission, I would have published a technical report with all the proofs, cited the report in the submission, hosted the code on my website, and put a link to it. However, since the technical report would not have been anonymous and since my website is obviously linking to me, it was not possible.

Concerning the proofs, I managed to put them in the appendix, explaining that they were only intended for the reviewing process, but I could not find any solution for the code. The conference submission site (easychair) did not provide any way to input additional data. What's the best way to deal with this kind of situations?

There are three criteria: the solution must obscure your identity, it must not allow you to learn anything about the reviewers, and the second criterion must be common knowledge.

Any attempt to distribute files yourself through the web will fail to satisfy these conditions.  For example, if you use a website you own (under a pseudonym, say), then you can inspect the logs.  Even if you have arranged to use a service that will not provide any logs or allow you to tag pages or link to outside services, the reviewers may not notice that you have done so, and they may not even be willing to believe that you are not doing something tricky.

So this is a problem you cannot solve yourself.  You should get in touch with the program committee chair and ask whether the committee could make this data available to the reviewers.  As long as it goes through them, it doesn't matter how they provide it.


How to politely negotiate PhD funding offer? I have been fortunate enough to get accepted with 5 years guaranteed funding to my 2nd choice graduate school. While the guarantee is great, the funding is only for 9/months out of the year. Would it be rude to ask them to guarantee summer funding to me for the first year until I can write a grant to get on a RAship? I know I should be more appreciative, since not everyone gets funding, but just an increase of about ~3k a year would make living there so much better and I do not want to accept an offer at a lesser institution just because of money.

What would be the most polite way of doing this?

I want to make it clear that I am not trying to get more money for the sake of getting more money, moreover that I am just not comfortable with so little money and such a high living cost in that area.

Thank you for your time.

You can always ask, and the polite way to do it is simply to ask politely, while indicating that you have a strong interest in enrolling in the program.  The best circumstance is that you have a financially superior offer from another program which is of equal or slightly better quality.  Then the graduate program in question may see a small amount of additional funding as a reasonable expense to ensure your enrollment.  (If the other program is more than a little bit better, then everyone will be expecting you to go to the better program...unless you have personal reasons to want to go to the less good program, in which case you do not need a financial incentive.)

user45756 "guaranteed" that such a request would not lead to summer funding.  Of course no one person could possibly make such a guarantee, and I have very occasionally seen additional funding given to graduate students to help attract them to a program or keep them in a program.  But user45756's answer is still accurate in spirit: in the overwhelming majority of cases you get what you get.

However the expression The squeaky wheel gets the grease is very applicable to academia: people who ask for a little bit more* tend to get a little bit more.  Your request for summer funding is unlikely to magically result in a higher starting salary, but it may well result in your being placed higher on lists for various summer funding opportunities.  I think it is a good idea to say something like "I understand that additional funding may not be possible, and I very much appreciate your offer.  However, I am sincerely concerned about quality-of-life issues while enrolled as a graduate student, and I would very much appreciate being told of any other funding, scholarship or teaching opportunities that are or may become available."

*: It is true though that people who don't know the culture well enough sometimes ask for a lot more when they think they are asking for a little bit more, and that often causes them to be taken less seriously or ends negotiations.  (Imagine if you had an assistant professor job interview at a public American university and, after shaking hands with the department chair, told them that you were holding firm at a $100K starting salary.  It is more than likely that you've just talked yourself out of any possibility of a job offer.)  There is a real art to asking for something in a way which makes clear that you will be grateful for any response that you get, not that you feel absolutely entitled to getting your precise demands.  A graduate student asking for extra funding should make extra clear that they are "just asking" and will be grateful for any response they will get.  I remember one long-ago friend who was hoping that the MIT mathematics department would "get into a bidding war" with some other department of comparable quality.  Of course that didn't happen, and though he did start a PhD program somewhere quite good, I could tell from this behavior (I was a first year graduate student at the time) that he didn't quite get the academic culture.  I believe he dropped out within a year.  (And then I lost touch with him, but I am willing to guess that he now makes much more money than I do...)


PhD opportunities when lacking publications This question in some sense, complements  this question. Suppose a good student completes his master's degree in a less-than-top-ranked university. He has excellent academic grades both in his bachelor's and master's, but unfortunately has not experienced the best research 'atmosphere' in his post-grad and so does not have any publications thus far in his career.

It is a hugely relevant practical issue: low-ranked universities woo good students by providing them full funding plus scholarships for their master's, so there are many cases where students prefer them to top colleges where funding is not assured. After completion of graduation, these students desire to go for a PhD in top universities. So the question is this:

How does a bright student with excellent grades but lacking in publications secure an admit in a top school?

One obvious answer is to formulate an excellent research problem and to convince professors of his research ideas pertaining to the problem. Any other useful suggestions?

You have to make the case that your research potential outweighs your lack of research output.

The only places to make that case are your research statement and your letters.  Both your statement and your letters should make it clear that you are an active researcher, even though you are not yet published.  Your statement should describe the specific research problem(s) that you are pursuing, promising and specific partial results, and a specific and well-informed plan of attack.

Similarly, letters from faculty at your MS department should describe your independence, stubbornness, intellectual maturity, and so on, in specific and credible detail.  When you ask for letters, ask your references specifically if they can write a strong letter about your research potential.  Ideally, your references should admit that their department doesn't provide you with the environment that you need to thrive as a researcher.  And it really hurts to write “[Bravo] can do better than us,” so it better be true.

Admissions committees (at least the ones I've been on) do take applicants' previous institutions into account when judging research records.  We know that  applicants from most 4-year liberal arts colleges don't have as many opportunities for computer science research as applicants from (say) MIT, so our expectations for MIT applicants are higher.  So your lack of publications may not hurt you as much if your MS department is known to have a weak research atmosphere.

However: Do not suggest in your application that your lack of publications is your MS department's fault.  You may believe it's their fault, and you might even be right.  But if you actually write that it's their fault, you'll come across as someone eager to blame others for your weaknesses.  No matter how good you are at research, nobody will admit you if they think you're a jerk.


When should I publish in interdisciplinary versus subject-specific scientific journals? Most science research is published in subject-specific journals, of which there are many. However, there are a relatively small number of interdisciplinary journals, some of which are the most highly cited of all journals (Nature, Science); others have impact factors comparable to subject-specific journals (e.g., PLOS ONE, J. R. Soc. Interface, etc.).

If we discount arguments around open science and similar business model arguments (which could favor journals like PLOS ONE), and assume that the purpose of publishing is simply to get your research read (and cited) by the largest "relevant audience", when should one publish in an interdisciplinary journal versus a subject-specific journal (assuming they have comparable impact factors)? (Are there any papers out there that compare the fate of publications [or their authors!] in the two different types of journal?)

Thanks in advance.

My opinion on this is as follows. If your research advances the state of the art of field X, either by adding new knowledge specifically to X or improving existing methods/knowledge in X, you should submit to an X-specific journal. If your paper improves knowledge in field Y using methods from field X, I would either publish in a journal specific to Y, or in an Y,X interdisciplinary journal.


How can I prepare well for a MSc in the UK? I am going to study this course in 3 months: MSc Advanced Manufacturing Technology and Systems Management. It is offered by The University of Manchester.

I am a bit nervous and I want to prepare for it to overcome my nervousness.

Are there any good resources or online courses which makes me ready for this MSc?

Thank you very much.

Here are a few tips if you want to be proactive:

Find out what topics will be covered in the course, and start reading some of the topics which interest you.  See if there are any websites on the university that list the topics offered, and if you can access any of the learning materials.
Reach out to some the professors and start talking to them.  (This will also be helpful later when you select a thesis)
Reach out to previous students; ask for previous years' books and materials.  (Tip: There will probably a facebook group for everybody that does the course for a given year, ask someone to add you to the previous year's group)

But remember, as I mentioned in the comments, in the UK the independent 1-year master's degrees are set up primarily for foreign students as an income stream.  I saw this first hand when I did a master's degree in Oxford.  It is not good for business for them to fail students, so there will be a lot of support available.  So while there is no need to become complacent, I wouldn't worry too much.


Courses beyond the second year Would it be a poor decision to take additional courses (one each in the 5th and 6th semesters) in physics? Should I try to limit myself to taking only courses that are strictly necessary, or is there value in enrolling if it is related to my research?

If your advisor has no objections to you doing so, and you believe the courses will be beneficial to your development, you should do so. Note that the courses need not be directly relevant to your current work—they may be somewhat outside the scope of your research, but might represent an area you'd like to explore in the future. However, don't take courses you don't want to just to pad your transcript: it really won't matter much to future employers (except a few non-academic employers who might care what your graduate GPA is!).


How valuable is a conference paper in Avionics and Aerospace Engineering? I am a student doing my undergrad in Electronics and Communication engineering and wish to pursue a career in Avionics. My paper was selected for presentation at 54th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting, AIAA Science and Technology Forum and Exposition 2016 (SciTech 2016). I have another paper which was selected for presentation at IEEE Aerospace Conference 2016. According to my understanding, these are reputed conferences. I was wondering how valuable these papers are for my admission at a grad school and my professional career. I have to spend a lot of money to attend these conferences. Is it worth it?

There is 2 parts to this question:

(1) How valuable are conference papers to grad school admission?

The answer to that is field-dependent. In some fields, the value of conferences as means of publishing scientific content is perceived small. In others, primarily Computer Science, conferences are of major importance, hence papers in good conferences are perceived as very valuable for admission.

However, arguably, even in fields were conference papers count less, having published in and attending good conferences may make you stand out of the crowd in grad school admissions. Primarily, in these fields (e.g., physics), undergrads that have good journal papers to their name are very rare, so having been to a conference as an undergrad is already pretty good, even if it does not count for all that much in the grand scheme of things in the research field.

(2) Is it worth it given that conferences are very expensive?

I am of course generalising here, but as a rule of thumb, you should not have to pay for your own conference travels, as long as you have an accepted paper as an enrolled student. Most universities have stipends and travel grants that you can apply for, you can act as a student volunteer, or, most importantly, your university department covers your travel expenses.

Assuming that it is indeed not feasible for you to have your costs covered, you will need to take the decision yourself. Whether it's "worth it" depends not only on the value of a conference to the admission process, but also on how much >1000 USD are to you, personally. Clearly, the story is different if you are a foreign student living of a small stipend than if you come from an upper middle-class family in the US.


How to start research in a field with high standards? I'd like to do research on the field Natural Language Processing. However, the current state-of-the-art (BERT) has raised the standards and for me it feels discouraging to start in this field. Should I avoid doing research NLP since it will cost me a lot of time and there is a risk of not improving upon the current standard? Or should I focus my research on the limitations of the current state-of-the-art? Or should I broaden the topic and focus on a different related topic? What would you advice in this situation?

And besides that, do you start with an research question or would you do an initial literature search first?

Best,
CamelCase

For simplicity sake assume that there is a dichotomy of research topics: those where a lot of active research happens and those where that is not the case.

In areas where a lot of research is happening most (all) the "low hanging fruits" will have been taken and you will have a hard time making really big contributions. On the other hand there is an active comunity of researchers that cares about this topic, and also cares about your (smaller) contributions.

In areas where not a lot of research happens, you are more likely to find low hanging fruits, and you are more likely to make big contributions. However, there is a reason why not a lot of research is happening in that area: few people care about what is going on.

Real research areas are much more complex than this, e.g. some areas where not a lot of research is happening now were very active in the past, and there is not a lot of low hanging fruits left. Moreover, it is not so much a dichotomy but a gradient. But you get the idea of the trade-off between making small contributions that many researchers care about (and are thus easier to get published) and making big contributions that fewer researchers care about. You can also see that both are viable strategies.


Can I upload my open access publications on researchgate.net or academia.edu? Maybe my question is naive, but:

If my paper was publish as open access (for example in Springer - http://www.springer.com/gp/open-access), could I upload the paper in researchgate.net and similar sites?

Maybe. But not necessarily. It depends on the exact terms and conditions of the open access paper: there are many different variants (Springer use more than one, as do many other publishers). It also depends on the exact terms and conditions of the site you intend to upload to.

So there is no general answer, beyond this:

Read and understand the licence on the paper.
Read and understand the terms and conditions of the site you want to upload to.
Work out whether they're mutually consistent, and whether you want to accept the T&Cs of the site you want to upload to.


Dropping "acknowledgement section" in thesis I've finished my Bachelor thesis, and it's been a fairly independent work since it was a very niche topic that I didn't really have anybody to talk with about other than my advisor. I also don't want to thank any friends or family for "support", it seems a bit silly and melodramatic.

Almost all of the theses that I have read have acknowledgement sections with several people being thanked. Is it a requirement? Should I include it, and just write a sentence or two about my advisor? Is there another appropiate way to thank just him without dedicating a section to it? Should I not thank him at all? Does anybody read this stuff, or is it just skipped? Will not acknowledging anyone give the reader a bad impression of me, in the sense that I am an arrogant jerk, or of my work, in the sense that since I am not thanking anybody, I must not have used all of the ressourcess or given it a lot of effort?

You would of course need to check with your university/department specifically, but I can't imagine anyone requiring it.

That said, consider what part of your thesis people will actually bother to read.  Bachelor theses (and even masters theses) will rarely, if ever, be read for their content except by your advisors.  Maybe someone will glance at your conclusions or use your bibliography as a jumping off point.

If your family or friends were to take a look at it, they're going to see your Vita (they probably know that already) and your Acknowledgements.  And they are far more likely to glance at your thesis than anyone else (just being honest).

I've on occasion, though, found the acknowledgments section very useful.  It will often point out scholars who have helped out, libraries that have manuscripts, funding sources etc. and while technically that's probably mentioned somewhere in the paper and/or bibliography, but frankly seeing something like this

  Much thanks to the Mr. I, the rare book collections specialist at J Library for having given me such wide access and assistance in research, and to the J Fund for Study which so graciously enabled me to spend the summer at K Library, and to Prof. L from M university, whom I met during that time, for her constant insights to N things.

can, in one paragraph, give more information that can help a young scholar interested in a similar field than the entirety of the thesis.


Should references part of CV only include names of the people who wrote recommendation letter to where the CV is going to be sent? Can one list all the people who have written letters of recommendations for him in his reference part of his CV regardless to where those recommendations are written? Or he should specially prepare his CV for the company/university including only the reference people who have written letters of recommendation for him to that company not all of the people from whom he has recommendations?

Edited for clarity, since the question in the title is somewhat opposite to that in the body: do not list all your references on your CV. Only the ones who have written or will write to that particular potential employer. To list everyone might give several unfortunate impressions. First, that the potential employer can contact any one of those references directly. Second, if the prospective employer has received letters from some, but not all, they may think something's wrong... and one form of this is to consider your application "incomplete", but not inform you, and you miss the opportunity.


Query regarding possible status of submitted paper I have submitted my paper in June, 2016 in an Elsevier math journal. Around first week of June, 2017, replying to my personal query, the handling editor informed me that he has sent the reviewer's decision to the editorial board. The current status of the paper (for almost three weeks now) is "decision in process". Now I am quite confused regarding the possible outcomes. In my experience, after reviewer's report, author gets the information within a week. Therefore it would be really helpful if somebody could help me in the above matter.

PS1: After my submission, the journal has not asked for any revision and the status went directly from "under review" to "decision in process".

PS2: I am quite aware of the typical workflow of a journal. But my question is not regarding the process.

I doubt that you are quite aware of the workflow of that particular journal. The related wisdom found on Academia SE appears incorrect too. AFAIK (from personal experience as handling editor for an elsevier journal), the editorial system here is a two-tier system: there is the editorial board and there are specialist/handling editors.

The handling editor deals with the reviewing and submits their decision to the editorial board (or the editor in charge), who in turn base the final decision (as communicated to the author in the decision letter) on the handling editor's suggestion. So, in your case

the handling editor has obtained the reviews and submitted their decision to the editor/editorial board; what this decision may be, you cannot know: it can be 'reject', 'accept without change', or 'revise' (most likely);
the editor(ial board member) in charge has not yet processed this case.

This is mostly likely because they are away on vacation or conference/work related leave. If you don't get a decision within a few weeks, you may inquire with the editor in chief or the clerk.

Note also that with this process the status always changes from 'under review' to 'decision in process', regardless of whether you will be asked to make revisions.


What do I do if somebody asks me to join his accusation of my colleague of academic misconduct? One of my colleagues at my institution, Prof. A, is the editor of a journal, Journal X, (and I am not involved in the journal in any way). I received an email by a professor, Prof. B, who had submitted two articles to Journal X and accuses Prof. A. of intentionally delaying the publication of these articles by not handling them properly. Prof. B claims that Prof. A did not answer his queries per email and that another editor of Journal X also did not answer his emails. The email I got from Prof. B was openly targeted to several other colleagues at my institution and also to a number of other people I do not know and also to Prof A. At the end of his email, Prof. B asks me (and the others - more or less verbatim) "Is this attitude of Prof. A normal or are there any unethical elements [...]?" and to "join in this story".

I found it disturbing that Prof. B wrote such an email to such an audience and I would say that his way of addressing the situation was not ok. However, I wonder what my reaction should be. Normally, I would just stop by at Prof. A's office, but I am on sabbatical leave so this is not an option. I do not know more details about the issue of the publication, but I think that these do not really matter in this case, as I only want to ask about what I should do:

Should I answer Prof. B that this way of addressing the issue was not ok?
Should I inform Prof. A that I found this email inappropriate?
Should I just act as if I haven't read this email?

I would especially appreciate answers from people with experience on an editorial board, but other guiding comments are also helpful.

Delete the email (or move it to one of your folders where you keep old ones).

From what you describe, you have no business joining the complaint since you have no complaint again colleague A. It is, in other words, not something that actually affects you: someone has beef with colleague A, and that is their business, nor yours. Worse, if you did get involved -- even if just by writing back to B --, there is nothing for you to gain, just collegiality to lose. It's neither worth your time nor your reputation to act any further than reading, then ignoring the email.

If anyone ever asks you whether you got the email, just tersely say "Yes, I got it; it was none of my business, so I ignored it."


For what sorts of reasons would a university deny an application to a graduate program in the U.S. after the department recommends it for admission? I'm in the process of applying to Ph.D. programs right now, and professors from two schools have let me know that I've been recommended for admission and that the graduate studies department still had to approve the recommendation. In both cases, I was assured that there was no way the approval would be denied.

I don't have any red flags in my application, so this is a question out of pure curiosity. How often does it happen that the graduate school at large goes against the recommendation of the departmental committee, and for what sorts of reasons would this happen?

In both the private and public R1s that I've been in (in the USA), the departments run admissions. They read through the applications and then send the graduate school their ranked list of admits, a rolldown list, and the list of rejects.

However, technically the department does not admit students, the graduate school does. So the department list are only "recommendations."

I would say that 99% of the time, the graduate school acts on those recommendations. They'd be fools not to, since the disciplinary expertise is in the department.

The 1% that I've personally experienced was with a graduate student who had horrible GRE scores but other stellar qualifications. Despite our university annually sending us guidance saying that GREs are not correlated with graduate school performance, very low scores could be cause for concern in their office (likely because of national rankings, but I have no insight there).

The dean of the graduate school wrote to us about that student and held up their admission. We had to write a response as to why we felt other aspects of their application overrode their poor GRE scores, and the student was admitted. But the experience did make it clear that the graduate school does look over admits, and might step in for extreme cases -- and why we have to be careful in our communications with students that we're only recommending admission.

Another scenario that might apply is that the graduate school changes its calculation midcycle in terms  of how many slots a department might have, or how much funding is available to students (cutting, for example, some fellowship slots). I haven't heard of this happening, but I would imagine the grad school reserves the right to pull such a maneuver, especially as we are asked to submit ranked lists and so it is possible that the 13th student in a 13 member list might be sent off the island in some scenarios.


Professor is upset about student comments about her lectures. What should I do? One of my former supervisors is upset about student feedback for her lectures. There are two problems:

If she provides complete slides with information, students complain that she reads from the slides.
If she doesn't provide complete slides with information, students complain that her slides are incomplete.

And

If she provides webcasts of her lectures, students don't turn up to lectures.
If she doesn't provide webcasts of her lectures, students complain she's a bad lecturer.

I know she's upset + it's directly impacting her medium-term happiness based on what she wrote on social media. However I have not talked to her about it. Should I? If so, what can I say? Both problems look generic enough that other lecturers must've dealt with them before. How?

EDIT: Thanks for the advice. Since there's little I can do, I liked her post and left it at that.

What should I do?

Honestly? I suggest that you sympathize courteously, but do nothing else:

She's a grown woman and an experienced academic, she doesn't need you to handle frustrations from student feedback.
You (likely) no longer work at the same university as her.
You're not a close personal friend of hers.
You don't have a good idea of what actually goes on in her classes these days, nor what the student body is like overall.
It is generally the case that students don't complain repeatedly and en masse about a course just for the sake of complaining and regardless of anything else. There's probably something that's wrong with the course (perhaps not even with her behavior) that you just don't know about.

An alternative to doing nothing would be: Suggest that she ask a relevant question here on  academia.stackexchange.com. We could obtain more information which you don't have rather than help her via a third party.


How to account for big gap between scores of course work of the first two years and scores of the comprehensive exams ? My comprehensive exams failed recently because of  lower scores "D" in the written examinations of three fields( one major field and two minor fields).

When Graduate Chair conveyed the result to me at the meeting, I asked her why scores of course work in the first years are good, GPA 3.5, whereas scores of the comprehensive exams are so low despites the fact that the course work and the comprehensive exams are the same professors and the same requirements whereas I had been diligent and complied with instructions of faculty, reading, writing papers, step by step moved towards the coming of the comprehensive exams.
 Graduate Chair replied that the standards between the two are different, is it reasonable?

In my experience, it's not uncommon to have qualifying exams that are more difficult than passing graduate level courses in the same subjects.

My advice to students is that we fully expect students to know more to pass the qualifying exam than to get an A or a B in the course.  For example, multiple textbooks are included in the qualifying exam syllabus, and students are expected to be familiar with the material in all of those books rather than just the one textbook that was used in the course.

In the exams that I'm involved in, as a rule of thumb, I tell students who got an A in the course that they'll need to put in a substantial effort (a couple of months) to prepare for the qualifying exam.  For students who didn't earn a solid A in the course, even more preparation will be required.

How common this is at other universities really doesn't matter, since you need to pass the exams as they are given at your institution.


Manuscript in prep in PhD thesis Can I use my manuscripts in prep in my PhD thesis and then publish them later?  I will need to defense my PhD first for an upcoming post doc appointment and plan to publish them later as a post doc.

A Ph.D. dissertation would often be considered as a final report for the invented methodology and the proved accomplishments.

One of the most common acceptable and routine criteria to assess the denouements of a dissertation would be consideration of the published papers, are which constructed the dissertation's motif. If you present no sign of publication corresponding to your work, the assessment committee may not be convinced, considerably, about the validity of your work, because related peer-reviewed papers, consisting of the research, are expected to be analyzed in a careful way and authentication of dissertation's accomplishments could be, intrinsically and roughly, taken into acocunt with due attention to such papers.

As the Ph.D. studies are long, it is inevitable that one or two papers (corresponding to the last phases of the research) will not be published, up to the defense. So, one could assert that their referencing as "Submitted" would be ok.


Scientific poster about ongoing work I'm attending a summer school for graduate students, where I'm required to prepare a scientific poster about the research I'm conducting. However, the project is far from being finished, I only have some preliminary results.

How should I indicate on the poster that it's an ongoing work, and the presented results are not final yet?

How should I indicate on the poster that it's an ongoing work, and the
  presented results are not final yet?

As @buffy mentioned, this is certainly not an uncommon thing to do. I actually really enjoy presenting work in progress via poster, because, as opposed to already-published research, the poster viewers may be more inclined to give feedback on the methodology and/or research questions/hypotheses.

It's not necessarily vital that you specify the research is ongoing on the poster, but if it makes you feel better you can say this is a pilot result or preliminary result.

An aside, but important, I suggest first figuring out why you are presenting the poster--that is, what do you want to get out of this experience? For example, are you at all interested in method feedback? Do you hope to refine your research questions? Are you going for networking only?

Cater your poster and your discussion topics to your needs while designing a poster which helps you achieve your aims while effectively conveying your ideas to the audience.

Also an aside -- don't stress. Posters are pretty fun, especially if you know why you're there.

Another aside -- if you know the conference attendees and there is anyone you want to meet or get feedback from, email them. Tell them you would love if they could visit your poster on Day X at time Y.


Should grad students also serve as lab managers? I'm a 3rd year PhD student in a robotics lab. My advisor recently moved universities, so our new lab space doesn't have a large stockpile of supplies and equipment. As the person who does the most hardware-based stuff in the lab, I've been slowly acquiring necessary equipment and supplies for electronics work, mechanical assembly, etc, with the support of my advisor.

There most senior student in the lab is now trying to convince me to take on the role of lab manager. He indicated that in his past labs there have been graduate students who also are given the (extra, unpaid) role of lab manager. He keeps joking (?) that he will volunteer me for the position to our advisor.

It takes a lot of time to spec equipment, make purchase orders, organize tools efficiently, etc, and all the other students in the lab come to me when they need help with anything from university logistics to help using equipment. The equipment is necessary for my work, and I'm  happy to help fellow students, but it's starting to take way too much time away from my work, and I certainly don't want a formal position that necessitates this responsibility. I'm giving a conference talk next week and will miss our regular lab meeting, and I'm worried that this other student will volunteer me for this position when I'm not there.

Is a PhD student also serving as an (unpaid, but official) lab manager a typical arrangement? I've never seen it in any of the labs I've worked with or observed. Research is my absolute top priority and I don't think it's useful for a PhD student to do the work of a lab manager because we're there to do research. If I do get volunteered for the "position" without my consent, will my advisor think I am an unmotivated student if I politely decline?

A couple thoughts, on someone who has been now a grad student, a lab manager, and a PI:

Someone has to deal with those things, and the PI is often not the best person for that particular role. And it tends to be helpful if there's a single point of contact for things like "Have we ordered more X?". I find that "It's everyone's problem" turns into it being no one's problem.
A lab that will volunteer you for something while you're not there, the PI can't gauge your workload, etc. is not a lab I'd be enthusiastic about working in long term.
Working as a lab manager is a helpful entry on your CV, especially if you don't necessarily want to be a PI. There are often questions on this site about research careers that aren't TT faculty positions. Lab managers are one of those positions, and having experience with it etc. is a good thing.
It's also a good thing if you are interested in being a PI. Because from experience, when your lab is N = 1 people and you're just setting things up, knowing how all of that works is handy.
"...we're there to do research." And how will you do that without the equipment necessary for your work?

That being said, in an ideal world I wouldn't want a graduate student as my lab manager, because graduate students are inherently transient, and one of the values of a lab manager is as an inter-generational knowledge base. But maintaining a full-time, permanent position for essentially a staff scientist is often out of reach of even fairly well-funded labs.


coauthor removed other author's name after reviews I have discovered that a co-author has submitted a book chapter to a major publisher omitting my name of co-author list without me knowing. I was included in the first submissions, but corresponding author made an executive decision to not include me, based on unknown grounds. I have substantially and creatively contributed to the work, in design, datacollection and analysis. What are my options now to get credit where credit is due? technically it is plagiarism, I think.

It may or may not technically be plagiarism, but it’s definitely fraud if it was done without your consent. Papers and book chapters can be retracted for such infractions.

If this has indeed happened, then your next step—assuming you've reached an impasse with your co-authors—should be to contact the editor and publisher of the book, laying out your case with the appropriate documentary evidence included in its entirety. Make sure they have enough information that they’re not going on a “fishing expedition.” There should be clear correspondence—emails showing the work and production of the article with your participation, and so on.