Open book tests and e-books Open book exams are exams that are taken in a classroom, with a limited amount of time, but where the student can consult notes, textbooks, and any kind of written material. They are usually meant to test problem-solving abilities and the capacity to apply the existing theory rather than memorization.

It seems natural to allow the use of e-books in these tests as well as their dead-tree equivalents, since a student should be able to use their preferred medium to study and may have bought the e-book version rather than the paper one. Also, ecology and save the forests.

However, many modern e-book readers have 3G or Wi-Fi networking, and this would make it easy to cheat by getting external help (which is, of course, not allowed). It is not simple to make sure that this connectivity stays off during the exam: you can't just remove the SIM card and everything is ok.

  Is there a solution other than "live with the cheating" and "forbid e-book readers overall"?

I'm of the opinion that internet access should be absolutely forbidden or impossible during exams. It's a can of worms that is best left tightly sealed.

Every modern tablet computer, and most e-readers, have Wi-Fi capability – therefore internet access. Really, it only makes sense to allow these if it is non-trivial to access the internet and if you have sufficient deterrents in place for the more determined cheaters.

If the exams are held in a lecture block that is isolated from any offices or research labs, it should be feasible to request that the Wi-Fi network is turned off for the duration of the exam.
Some tablets and e-readers have cellular network capabilities. For an exam with many students, this might be difficult to police. But if you check the model of each tablet or e-reader on entry to the exam and remove the SIM cards, that will remove their internet access. Unless the student puts a fake, inactive one in the device and keeps their active card in their pocket, that is.
The Kindle 3G e-ink readers (perhaps others, too) do not have user-accessible SIM cards. Sure, web browsing on them is a pain and limited to 50MB / month – but you can still have email or webchat conversations with a friend on their computer at home who is telling you the answers. You cannot reasonably ban Kindle 3G readers but allow iPads.
Anything with Wi-Fi capability can connect to an ad-hoc Wi-Fi network that someone created with their cellphone hidden in their bag that they left at the front of the room. This is absurdly easy to set up, though it is also possible to detect hidden SSIDs which would alert you to a possible cheater.

As the years pass, although it does seem increasingly unreasonable to disallow e-readers into an open book exam, allowing networked devices owned and controlled by the students will make cheating easier. All we can do is make it hard enough to deter casual offending. A determined cheater will always find a way.

Other than locking everyone inside a Faraday cage, you simply cannot stop people who have their own devices from accessing the internet. You do your best to find them, though!

Other mitigation strategies might be:

Increased presence of invigilators. If the exam is held either in a room with individual desks, or in a lecture hall with every second row empty, it is easier for the invigilators to see up close what everyone is doing. If there were 6 to 10 invigilators in an exam hall of 100 students, as opposed to the usual 2, that might be a sufficient deterrent.
Use electronic surveillance / prevention, such as a PocketHound.
Ban all electronic devices, but have enough copies of the course textbook in the library so that anyone who does not have one can borrow a copy. This might get expensive for a large class!
Hand out university-provided e-readers to everyone without a paper copy. If the network capabilities are locked down under a password, this should be safe. Again, not a cheap or easy option.
Only allow one or several pages of handwritten notes into the exam. In most subjects, spending too much time flipping through a textbook during the exam is a waste of time and an indication of a lack of study. The time spent in carefully curating a "cheat sheet" is usually worth far more in the exam than the cheat sheet itself. Is a full open book policy really necessary? If every question needs the student to refer to a textbook, perhaps the exam isn't asking the right sort of questions.


Are political/ideological reasons for career moves acceptable in academia? Suppose one is happy at one's institution until something happens that makes it impossible to stay given one's strong ideological beliefs. Is it a good idea to mention these beliefs if they are the main reason for wanting to move?

For example:

"Why do you want to study at this university?" Because this university is in Russia and I approve of Putin's actions as President.
"You've worked at this institution for 10 years. Why do you want to leave now?" Because it's in the UK and after the Brexit referendum, I no longer feel welcome here.

Nothing special about these examples; one could equally have "I want to leave Russia because I disapprove of Putin's actions as President" etc.

I tag this with "academic life" because it could apply to any decision to move.

A political or ideological answer, albeit honest, is usually a missed opportunity to make a point about the move being a good academic fit.

Your goal as the candidate in this kind of exchange is not just to answer the questions accurately; it's to answer the questions accurately while also trying to convince the committee that you are the right person for the position. Virtually any question can be used to make a point about how excited you are about the institution you'd like to move to, how much you can contribute given your past experience, etc. A political answer doesn't usually help you "sell" yourself.

For example:

Why do you want to study at this university? "Because I'm really interested in the work Professor Twist is doing on basket weaving in extreme underwater conditions."
Why do you want to leave your current institution? "Because I am looking to gain expertise in the hot new field of basket weaving in extreme underwater conditions, and your faculty are the best in the world in that area, while my current institution  doesn't have anyone working in this field." Or "Because I am really interested in working with Professor Twist, I think that with my background in freshwater basket weaving I could contribute to her research in an exciting way."

So even a completely non-controversial political or ideological reason is not necessarily the best reason to use in answer to this kind of question.


Does the page number matter? Does the page number of scientific publication mean something? For example, are papers of an issue highlighted by placing them in the first pages?

Or they are the page number just randomly assigned?

tl;dr-  Page numbers are a hold-over from when journals used to be magazines.  The exact number chosen probably doesn't have much practical significance, but it may relate to when an article was ready for publication (camera-ready date) or however the editor might choose to lay out the issue (e.g., with related articles closer to each other).

Once-upon-a-time, scientific journals were basically magazines that collected articles interesting to a specific scholarly community.  Today, libraries still retain some in reference sections and I think that some publishers still actually print them out, but they're mostly funny novelties or historical artifacts.
Anyway, these old-fashion journal volumes would have a table-of-contents that'd refer to page numbers.  Then when the internet came around, they basically stayed the same, except they put copies of articles online, too.  And so, the online copies retain page numbers as a vestigial artifact: they're not really useful to most folks today, but they're still there anyway for historical reasons.
Speculation on what page numbers may've implied
Since page numbers basically reflected order within a printed edition, it'd seem that they likely correlated with how the editors chose to lay out the printed editions.  This may've varied from journal-to-journal.
Possibilities:

Article content.  Articles may've been laid out such that closely related articles would be consecutive.  In such cases, page numbers would correlate with an article's topic.

Camera-ready date.  @user2768 suggested that articles may've been laid out in the order that their content was ready to be amended to the current edition's proof, i.e. the articles' camera-ready date.


After PhD, no support from PhD supervisor I am writing here to get good advice for my career. I completed my PhD in Mathematics last year. I was quite happy after my PhD that I have gained a PhD degree, but I don't have any idea what I could do with this degree. Normally people apply for postdocs after doing PhD to become more independent and gain more exposure to research in their field. However, what can they do if their supervisor does not support them to apply for postdoc positions? What if their supervisor says "you are not an independent researcher, so I don't think you could really sell yourself as an independent researcher?"

I am stuck in my career after having lots of negative feedback from my PhD supervisor, who always says not to apply anywhere, and just stay here (my country) and integrate yourself with your colleagues. How could someone stop you or discourage you to apply anywhere else in the world?

One of the biggest and toughest situations for me is the field I had chosen for doing PhD has no funding all around the world and I can hardly find postdocs in my field. And even if I find an advertisement of a post relevant to my field, my supervisor discourages me from applying by saying that that is not exactly relevant to the field (topic) in which you had done your PhD. It's so weird to me that is it necessary to have the same topic for a postdoc to apply in which a person had his PhD? Can't we slightly change our research topic relevant to the field (same background).

The main problem is to apply for any postdoc we need a strong reference letter from our PhD supervisor. What can people do if they doesn't know what their supervisor writes about them in the reference letter? I spent four years in my PhD and not once did I did realise that my PhD supervisor is unhappy with my work. But now when I am back in my country on completion of my PhD my PhD supervisor has negative thoughts about me that I can't sell myself as an independent researcher, I will need guidance and direction.

And he is probably true, because most of my work in my PhD was done by him. And he never let me be independent throughout my PhD. I don't even know how people find topic of research/problem to work on and how do they find techniques to attach on the problem. I had been given a problem with my supervisor and direction as well. I had done all the coding by myself advised by my supervisor and later analysing results and proving those results was done by him. In the end of my PhD when I was writing my research paper I put his name on it where he said no to me and writing paper solely with my name only.

Currently, I am a lecturer in my country. However, to survive in an academia I have to publish papers and supervise master's students. However, I am not feeling myself independent in research, due to the reason I am applying for some postdoc positions, where I have no support from my PhD supervisor. What should I do at this point? Should I leave academia? Should I go to industry? To join an industry what skills I do need to have? How can I make myself a perfect candidate?

I am really stuck in my career without having any support from my PhD supervisor after PhD. I am looking for some really good suggestions for my career. I shall really be grateful.

Let me answer the following question out of many:

  What if their supervisor says "you are not an independent researcher, so I don't think you could really sell yourself as an independent researcher?"

Based on the evidence you gave, your supervisor is right. You typically need 3 to 5 recommendation letters and some evidence for being able to acquire funding to get to the next level. If you get no support from your supervisor, these 3 to 5 letters have to come from someone else, and you gave no evidence from whom. As soon as you get a "yes" that these letters can be written, you can get them uploaded to a dossier service and reuse them for your next 100+ applications, but, the way things are described by you, you don't have 3 to 5 "yes", so, you cannot declare yourself independent enough. In short, you are not independent enough from the goodwill of your supervisor, and, since you probably don't have this goodwill, you might probably have more chances for positions that do not require this goodwill, i.e. (unless your internationally shine in your area) no assistant professorhsip positions this time, perhaps even not grants or scholarships.  Maybe later, maybe not at all, but not now.

Otherwise you might simply lose months on writing 100+ applications and get zero outcome. If you sell yourself as independent while you are not, you simply spend time and money on letting others know how immature you currently are.

I would love it if you prove me wrong. I'm sorry for being that negative - I'm speaking from experience.


How similar does a potential supervisors research have to be to mine? The proposal I’m shopping around revolves around three broad topics and I’m coming across a lot of academics who are experts in one or two of these areas and I have only been able to find one who hits all three, but working with him is not going to happen for various reasons. I have not been able to find a university that has, even multiple academics who can collaboratively meet all my specialties.

My question is, is it advisable to do your PhD under academics, who together aren’t experts in all the main topics you’re researching.

Also, if you’ve gone through a potential supervisor’s research and they have only ever used the quantitative method and your proposed study will be using the qualitative method, can they still adequately supervise you?

In a PhD, you are supposed to show that you can do independent research. Thus, in a perfect case, the supervisor would only advise you academically (e.g. "how to write good papers" or "how to find the right conferences to attend") and not with regard to contents.

If you want a supervisor that already knows the answers to all your problems and only lets you do the thesis for fun(ding), you might want to rethink your plan.

This is, of course, only about your research project itself. A PhD oftentimes contains other parts, like for example working for the advisor, either in their research group or as a TA, or not only working on your PhD project but also on other, publishable, projects together with your advisor. These need consideration from both sides. Can you find a supervisor where you can do valuable (both in knowledge and money) work and can the supervisor find a student who is capable of doing the tasks? But it is possible to work on one thing and write your PhD on another one. While it is helpful if both are related in some way, it is not always necessary; for example you could be a TA for first year classes to get your expenses covered while working on something that is not first year material.

Overall, I think as long as your supervisor has a vague idea of your topic and comes from a related field, it should be possible to work something out. Of course it is always easier if your supervisor hand feeds you all solutions as they are the number one expert on your field, but if you have the skills and motivation, you should also be able to manage without. It might even be positive, as you will have to reach out to different academics and build connections, instead of only sitting together with your advisor for multiple years.

What might help you is just discuss with your potential supervisors. They should have the experience to properly assess the situation and whether or not you will be able to work together.


How to respond to someone plagiarizing my work? I have recently come across a paper that copy-pasted entire paragraphs of one of my papers which is already published in an international journal.  This paper appeared in a journal which is not very popular, and I did not get a courtesy citation.

How should I proceed with this?  I was thinking of reporting the issue to the editor of the journal where the paper appeared but then I thought that it may not even worth the effort. On the other hand, I still have this in my mind since this is clearly unethical behaviour.

What would you suggest?

I would definitely contact the chief editor of the journal and place the evidence before him/her/them. Plagiarism should not be taken lightly. There is a tendency to be lenient when it comes to self-plagiarism of non-critical parts of the text, for example, parts of methods sections (in experimental work). Regardless where one draws the line, copying sections of text verbatim from others is a clear breach to me.

Anyway, it will be the editor's job to pursue the matter after you made the point. If the journal belongs to a publishing house they may receive legal help to deal with the author. If the editor does not react and there is a clear publisher behind the journal it may be relevant to bring it up a level. If you have someone in your university working on copyright issues, perhaps at the library, then you could also talk to them. They may be able to provide further assistance and help evaluate the case.


What will happen if I do not follow publisher(IEEE/Springer) format for one page? One conference has accepted my paper, but I'm unable to follow publisher format for one page, I have to change some margins for this page.

Actually I've to insert a table and table is slightly bigger in size so I have to change margins and I've tried almost all the possible ways to fit it in that page and I've only one page I can't use more space/page.

If I do this, will they reject my final submitted copy of paper? What will be the effect of this in the printed copy?

It's likely that the typesetter will fix the margins, etc. when it's published. Otherwise, could you slightly reduce the font to make the overall table smaller?


Requesting LORs from the same recommenders for a different field I might be in a rather unique situation. I earned my bachelor’s degree from my university in May 2014. Since my junior year of university, I was convinced that I wanted to take the LSAT and apply to law school. I had originally planned to apply to law school in the first semester of my senior year and start attending in fall 2015. However, after taking my first LSAT in October 2013, I decided to focus on my senior-year GPA instead of spending the entire fall semester studying for the LSAT. I retook the LSAT after graduating and applied to a few different law schools. I always knew that law school was expensive, and I heard that it is useless to go to law school these days unless it is a prestigious school. After getting accepted to a law school, I made the ultimate decision to not pursue a legal education mainly due to financial reasons and job prospects. The school only offered to give me loans and gave me only two weeks for an enrollment decision after emailing me the acceptance letter.
I changed my career path and will apply to a few different master’s programs in the field I would now like to study.

Currently, I am working at a part-time job, while making preparations to apply to graduate school this fall. When I was applying to law school last fall, I had requested recommendation letters from two different professors. I am just wondering, but would it be possible to ask these same professors again for recommendation letters? Would they think that I look like an undecided, wavering person and thus, be reluctant to write another letter for me? Also, would I just candidly explain my one-year gap after my graduation in my statement of purpose?

Would it be possible to ask these same professors again for recommendation letters?

Yes, it is possible.

  Would they think that I look like an undecided, wavering person and thus, be reluctant to write another letter for me?

If they don't want to write another letter, they can decline.  You can briefly explain what you've been up to and should explain briefly why you decided to pursue the new field of study.  It's possible your recommenders might see you as having stronger skills for the new field than for law, in which case your letter might actually be stronger than before.  Much of what they wrote might be general enough that they won't have to change much from the prior letter if they do choose to write you a new one.

  Also, would I just candidly explain my one-year gap after my graduation in my statement of purpose?

In your statement of purpose, while not trying to hide or paper over your one-year gap, focus on why you want to move forward in the direction you're applying for.  If you had experiences or learned things in that one year that helped inspire, drive, or prepare you for that field, it may be helpful to mention them.  Help your reader understand why you want to work in the field you're applying for, and think about what those reasons are (esp. if you have reasons that go beyond just job prospects).


Top app to run the University course classes remotely during a medical epidemic emergency As our University closed most of one week which estimated more than one month, we need to be in contact with each other like the classrooms, so I have spoken by one of our master who was recently in USA in last two months and said there we used the:

 1. Google class

 2. classroom  app.

So I ask here which one is more professional for running the classes and better for this condition, and if you know more proper method or app to run the courses class in this kind with ability like :

 - User friendly and simple usage

 -  Have options like using low bandwidth internet and with low-speed internet

 - Have ability to ask questions during the live streaming

If you are in China, you can use https://www.ulearning.cn/

We are using it for our university. However, I do not know much about the technical aspect of it because I am just using it as a lecturer.


What is the benefit of review a scientific paper as a referee? I got an invitation to review a scientific paper from a journal. I accepted the offer to review but was wondering what benefits I might get if I review a paper? Can I write it in my CV as I will be applying for a Ph.D. position soon?
Someone told me if I write it in my CV that I reviewed an article, no professor is gonna hire me thinking she already knows so many things and it will be hard to control her during the whole Ph.D.! Still, I accepted the offer out of excitement.
Also, if my review is not up to the mark, is it like the editors will never give me anything to review again?

As mentioned in the other answer, reviewing is an important service to the community.
However, you will also profit yourself from reviewing: You will learn about a new topic. You will learn about how a review process works. You get to see the other side, which will most likely helpful for your own future paper writing: Since you know how reviewing a paper feels from the perspective of the reviewer, you can better understand how to make a paper accessible to reviewers and readers, and how to best respond to reviewer comments.
And, in addition to these benefits, you can indeed list in your CV that you review for journal X, Y, and Z - this does not only show that you are willing to help the community (which will recflect positively on an application), but it also shows that the editors of the journal consider you competent to review their papers.


How common is it for tenured professors to retire? It seems like some professors choose to retire, while others love their job so much they don't stop doing it until they die (or have health issues that make them unable to work).  Which situation is more common?  How common is it for tenured professors to fall into each category?

Under US law, since 1993, there is no mandatory retirement age for college faculty.  They can keep working as long as they are physically able to work, and many faculty are choosing to work into their 70's and 80's.  See this recent article from Inside Higher Education that gives some statistics:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/02/new-study-shows-difficulty-encouraging-professors-retire


Is it bad for one's future career prospects if the PhD thesis topic is broad? As a graduate student in the PhD program (I will be graduating in about 2 months), my research has covered a wide range of topics rather than nailing down one specific topic (super-specialized). In fact, my thesis is broad enough that my current working title is something along the lines of "Toward the Application of Electronic Structure Theory to Solve Relevant Chemical Problems." (Can it get any more general?) There is nothing informative from that title as it completely leaves out details. The problem is, each paper I've published is its own research focus without any connection to the next outside of the fact that computational chemistry was used for each.

I've read in other places that a thesis topic is critical because it is the basis on which you launch your career. Is it bad to look like a 'jack-of-all-trades' person? There must be a better way to handle this.

Coming from a somewhat different field (mathematics), I have seen some theses that were essentially bundles of not-strongly-related papers, each good enough to get published, and considered (by the advisor and the department) good enough to earn a PhD. Ok.

But this is indeed different from "getting a job". From what I have seen, job applicants don't succeed so much with "broad appeal" alone, but also must have strong appeal to a particular research group/interest. Thus, a too-diffuse body of work, especially if described in a fashion that makes it appear diffuse _and_unfocused_, will not get up to the thresh-hold of having a good chance at job opportunities.

To my mind, the point is how one portrays such work. If (in contrast to the situation of the question) the papers really are completely disjoint and unrelated, it is not easy to describe them as fitting together into a coherent research program. If, indeed, as apparently is the case in the questioner's situation, there is a coherence to the body of work, it is very important to re-describe things to emphasized that. "Novel computational methods whose potential is illustrated by making progress in several important problems"? That sort of thing?

After all, presumably/often the author of several papers does have some underlying theme/principle/concept/whatever that is merely manifest in various way ... that may superficially appear very different.

So, in summary, the description of the body of work would best emphasize the common thread(s) underlying the several instances. Although often labels are simplistic, hiring committees do use them, so figuring out how to position oneself among those labels is probably smart. (In effect denying the relevance of admittedly simplistic labels and categorizations is most likely just self-sabotage.)

One's advisor's approval of the body of work as meriting the PhD is a different issue from getting the advisor's recommendations about an appealing coherent description of the whole of the work.


Is it weird to give your new PhD supervisor a "thank you" gift for supporting your application? There is a similar question here as well as elsewhere.

However my situation is somewhat different, so please read for marking it as duplicate. The questions I've seen asked  has been about giving a gift to a supervisor after completing your PhD, and whether that would be innapropriate before/after defending your thesis.

In my case, I had a lot of difficulty finding someone willing to support my application (as I'm doing it in a completely foreign country). I'm very grateful to my supervisor for being willing to take me on and supporting my application.

I was thinking of bringing him some chocolate from my country (which is very popular here and abroad) as a small thank you gift.

Would this be weird/inappropriate?

I guess this matter is related to the nationality of your supervisor and to the country you are going to work in.

In Europe, especially France where I'm doing my PhD it's somehow weird to give gifts to your supervisor, since they consider the help they are offering is a part of their job. Yet they understand that the people coming to work in Europe are of different cultural backgrounds.

An important note to add, the people like the cultural exchange, so if you are giving him a part of your culture it will be appreciated, I got used to getting  them sweets from my home country and everyone like it.

My advice if you want to do that, try to give it to him when you are alone, doing that in front of others is weird.

And as we Lebanese say the act of kindness need no questioning.


How to have several subjects when submitting an article to arXiv? I would like to submit an article to arXiv and I have chosen a primary category so that the article is listed in that category. But I also would like to have another category in the list "subjects" when the paper appears on arXiv. For example, a paper is published on arXiv with "Subjects: Analysis of PDEs (math.AP); bla bla bla". I am wondering how to add "bla bla bla". Should it be done while doing cross-list? If so, does the paper also appear in the second category mentioned? I do not wish to have the paper in several categories.

I would like to submit an article to arXiv and I have chosen a primary category so that the article is listed in that category. But I also would like to have another category in the list "subjects" when the paper appears on arXiv. For example, a paper is published on arXiv with "Subjects: Analysis of PDEs (math.AP); bla bla bla". I am wondering how to add "bla bla bla". Should it be done while doing cross-list?

Yes, the additional categories you see for an arXiv paper comes from specifying them in the cross-list. This can be done while submitting the paper. This help page provides further details.

If so, does the paper also appear in the second category mentioned? I do not wish to have the paper in several categories.

The paper will be announced to all the categories it is listed in, i.e., the primary category as well as the cross-listed categories. This is mentioned in the arXiv moderation page (emphasis mine):

arXiv moderation may result in the reclassification or removal of a submission. Reclassification by our moderators helps make sure that submissions are posted to the most appropriate archive. Cross-lists may be added to other related archives, or they may be removed by moderators when the classification is deemed inappropriate. A submission that is cross-listed to a category will still be announced in the mailings to that category.

However, it is possible to distinguish between primary and cross-listed categories when looking for a paper. In "Advanced Search", it is possible to specify if papers cross-listed in the category being searched should be included in the results.
Image for reference:


Corrigendum submitted by my PhD supervisor 1.5 years after I left? During my PhD studies, I published a journal article (1 of total 4) in a prestigious journal of my field. My PhD advisor wants to commercialize my PhD work and wanted me to help him without willing to credit me for my efforts.
I found his emails harassing, malicious and blackmailing and have stopped responding him by directing his emails to spam folder. I have long left his lab after getting PhD and am currently working in industry. Suddenly, I received an email from the Journal that a corrigendum to my paper is submitted with me included as an author.
I think there are some new experimental results that my advisor want to publish. Should I write to the journal and request to withdraw my authorship from the corrigendum?

I concur with the comment. This would be a highly unusual way to add new experimental results. Surely if the person was interested in applying or extending your work and had new experimental results they would publish on their own!

I would email them and ask what the contents of the changes are. Ethically, it's up to you if you think that you shouldn't be listed as an author on the corrigendum. There has been discussion about corrigendum authorship in the past, see here. The answer at that link agrees with what I've seen in practice: corrigendum authorship is identical to the original paper authorship even if not everyone worked on it.


Conflict of interest: My research reflects badly on my PhD supervisor Post Q2 2016

I am in the final stages of writing-up my thesis. Unfortunately, my findings don't seem to reflect well on my supervisor. I have just had a key chapter returned with many comments like "rubbish", "full of mistakes", etc. I don't think they are justified.

I am reporting on the quality control of a trial for which she was PI. There is clear evidence of QC problems and it seems to me that there is a conflict of interest which is preventing objectivity in the feedback I'm getting. I feel that I'm being pressurized into coming to conclusions in my thesis that I don't agree with - i.e. the trial didn't have any significant QC problems.

My relationship with my supervisor was amicable enough before I sent her this chapter. In order to complete my conclusion I need to reach some sort of agreement, but after her recent outburst I feel this will be difficult.

My University doesn't seem to have any policy about this type of conflict of interest, yet it must be common enough. What should I do?

UPDATE (June 2017):

The good news is that I submitted my thesis and it was accepted with minor changes at my viva. My examiners were kind and described it as a 'tour-de-force', though after five hours of argument I suspect they just wanted me to go home ;-) Therefore I have my PhD.

The bad news is that the papers derived from two of my PhD chapters which detail the quality failings in the trial have yet to be published. This is despite significant support from my examiners who both felt it was very important for the information to be published. At present there is a big row going-on at the highest levels of the University with good scholarship being pitted against the medical school's desire to avoid reputational damage and potential loss of future grant income.

I sincerely hope that no other PhD student is going through this sort of debacle, but just in case I give the following advice:

Don't give-up. Just keep on writing the best thesis you can. Let the pages become chapters and the chapters become a finished thesis. Save worrying about your viva until after its been submitted.
Don't keep quiet about problems with your supervisor. Stand-up for yourself and keep in the light. In my case I made sure senior management knew was going on and also that I was documenting everything. This wasn't something that they could easily sweep under the carpet. In the end it became very much in everyone's interests that I got my PhD.
Try to maintain a relationship with your supervisor and keep the arguments on a professional than a personal level. You want your supervisor to congratulate you on getting your PhD and write-off the arguments over your thesis as healthy academic disagreement.

I must thank the >1,000 people who have viewed my original posting. Good luck to all PhD students and remember that careers are built on results not methods ;-)

UPDATE (March 2018):

My main paper was accepted by the key journal in the field in August 2017 and finally appeared in print, March 2018. I'm still working on getting the second paper accepted.

I had interesting situations during the final stages of my PhD career, and I found that my dissertation committee was an incredible resource. If you are in the final stages of writing your thesis, that means you have a dissertation committee (or have otherwise established a collegiate network of professional academics that support your PhD training). Now is the time to use this resource. Ask to speak to them in person about the problem. Specifically, you should approach your committee chair (who should be different than your supervisor). If your chair is your supervisor, then just speak to the most senior person in your committee.

The way that I understand the power dynamics / vested interests of the whole PhD situation is that your supervisor has inherent conflicts of interest - they want you to do research that supports them. Thus, they 1) are better off keeping you as long as possible (but not too long) and 2) want your research to support their research. Your committee chair, on the other hand, wants to see you graduate. Your department chair also wants to see you graduate. Your supervisor wants to see you graduate, sure, but as I mentioned, they have other motives.

Ultimately the goal is to keep everyone happy, and especially your supervisor. Having your PhD supervisor on your side is key to a successful career in Academia (or at least makes getting recommendation letters are lot easier).

Use this situation as a learning experience (one of the many tangential learning experiences associated with a PhD) for how to navigate the people problem of science. So in conclusion-

1.) Give your supervisor the benefit of the doubt. Try to understand their points and try to actually discuss it with them - IN PERSON. Abandon email for this interaction - you need the full spectrum of our human communication abilities.

2.) If #1 fails, engage your dissertation committee. This exact situation is a fine example of why dissertation committees exist.

3.) If #2 fails (or you're in a program that doesn't have dissertation committees), engage another trusted senior investigator if you've created relationships with other investigators.

4.) If you get to here, go to the department.


How to refer to the empirical study involved in the thesis? Should I always refer to it as "the empirical study of/ involved in this thesis"? I found it too lengthy when I need to refer to it frequently in the thesis. Is there another shorter term to refer to it?

If there is no ambiguity, "The Study" should do after the first instance. You could even say, at the first usage

  ...the empirical study of this thesis (The Study)...

This would make it a sort of keyword for the remainder of the thesis.

If there might be ambiguity, then The Present Study would probably be enough to clarify.


Hiring Committee preference of academic CV structure I am interested in applying for US math postdoctoral positions.The positions involve mainly research with light teaching duties. These applications will be assessed at departmental level by a hiring committee.

Consider the following headings:

Research Interests
Publications
Education
Awards and Honours
Teaching experience
Talks

After presenting contact information, in what order do members of a hiring committee typically prefer to view such information, and why? For instance, is the order (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) preferred over, say, (1, 3, 4, 2, 5, 6)?

I have never seen an academic CV in the US that has anything other than Education at the very top. The rest of your order seems correct. I would also consider adding Service (journal reviews, committee service, etc.), Skills (technical skills, coding languages, etc.) and Professional Membership, but this may differ by field.


Do peer reviewers receive any salary? Do academic peer reviewers receive any salary?
If yes, what is the annual average?

The vast majority not a cent, of whatever currency (see this answer for exceptions).

Peer reviewers are asked to volunteer, and they volunteer because they know that someone else would have to review their papers too (as Dilworth points out in a comment there can be other motivations too).

Said differently, peer reviewing is a mutual exchange, necessary for science to work (though the peer review system has been sometimes criticized).


Is rejection the default decision for international applicants to PhD programs in the US? I am applying to PhD programs in the US.

I am wondering if there is a default decision imposed on international applicants. This question may sound ridiculous, but, I still ask here because I have seen someone (a claimed PhD student who has been involved in graduate admission, for now I cannot recall clearly the website) on the internet said that every international applicant is assumed rejected.

What goes on in the admission committee members' heads? Specifically, is it true for international applicants that the committee member picks up an application, and says "Unless I find something good in this application I'll reject it"? (This paragraph is quoted and adapted from Willie Wong's comment below.)

It is a tremendous generalization to speak of all programs having the same default decision, or all members of an admissions committee in a program having the same default decision, or even to assume the existence of a default decision at all.

In reality, a more likely consideration an admissions committee member might use is, "Does this candidate have similar credentials and experience to successful PhD students we have admitted in the past?" (i.e., no "default" decision.)

However, if we're going to generalize and assume the existence of a default decision:

For programs in which there are a large number of applicants for relatively few positions, the default decision for any applicant is "reject, unless the applicant is extremely strong."
For programs in which there are relatively few applicants for a large number of positions, the default decision is "accept, unless there is some evidence this student is unsuitable for the program."

Programs at top-ranked departments, in fields where PhDs are in high demand, and where PhD students are generally fully funded, are more likely to fall in the first category.

Programs at lower-ranked departments, in fields where PhDs are not in high demand, and where students usually fund themselves, are more likely to fall in the second category.

The nationality of the applicant is not generally relevant in the "default" decision, barring exceptional circumstances (e.g., admissions committees in nuclear engineering at U.S. universities may reject Iranian students by default since 2012 because they will be ineligible for visas.)


Is it possible for a conference not to be published? I was quoting a paper from the ICLR 13 and noticed that I could not find any information about the publishing of the conference. So far I have only seen proceedings which published the papers of the conference in a book entitled 'proceedings of the xth international conference ...'

Q: Is it possible for a conference not to be published, i.e. the papers can only be found online (or via a database, e.g. arXiv). Is this a common thing? Why?

The important distinction that you want to pay attention to here is whether the proceedings are archival or not.  Fewer and fewer publications (conference or journal) are actually put onto dead trees: it's expensive and heavy and takes up lots of space in your office.

An archival publication is one whose proceedings are in the custody of an institution that guarantees their long-term preservation and availability.  This can be anything from a traditional journal to a large society like IEEE or ACS to a database like arXiv or even a memo collection like the IETF RFCs.  If it's archival, it's a "real" publication because it will be there if somebody goes looking for it in 20 years.  Prestige of the venue is a completely orthogonal question...

Anything that is not archival is transient, and might vanish at any moment.  This happens often with communities that don't have peer reviewed conferences (e.g., many biology communities).  This is fine if the point of what you wrote was to have a ticket to give a presentation or to have a discussion.  If it's not archived somewhere, though, it's not really a publication, because there is no persistent reference that can be followed.


Organizing time in a flipped classroom course Suppose, to fix ideas, that I have a course that runs for 11-12 weeks with two 2-hour classes per week. There is no further time allocated in the timetable for recitations or TAs; both lectures and exercise sessions are expected to take part in these hours with the same instructor.

Suppose I wish to run this course in a flipped classroom style next year: the students watch lecture videos, then there is extensive in-class discussion of these videos in which the students are expected to interact very actively.

How many hours of videos should I prepare to cover the same amount of content?
How much in-class discussion time should I allocate?
How is it best to use my 4-hour-per-week allocation? Should I include time for the students to watch videos inside these hours, or should I tell them to watch the videos beforehand in their free time? What if they complain that they do not have time to watch the videos?
Should I ask the university to allocate more (or less) time for my course in the timetable, if it is run in flipped-classroom style?

This may take several iterations to get complete and correct.
There are two aspects: What happens when you are face to face with students. What happens when students study/learn on their own.
What happens when you are face to face with students.
First, I suggest that when you have students together with you (and staff) that you do only those things that can't be done otherwise. Even some discussion can be done otherwise if you use a chatroom or similar tool.
The typical flipped classroom uses the Face Time (FT) for student practice under observation. One way is to hand out worksheets at the start and have students work on them as you (and staff) wander around looking for blocked students. In CS you can have programming exercises, in mathematics you can have a variety of problems of differing difficulty. In a writing class you can give a writing exercise, in a history class some online research problems (caveat: not my field).
One effective way to manage such a "learning lab" is to have students work in pairs (and rotate the pairs). This results in fewer blockages. If students work alone then when they get blocked they stay blocked until someone on staff gets released from another conversation to help them. Pairs can help one another since two students seldom get blocked at the same point. You can even permit a pair to turn to an adjacent pair for help if no staff is available at that moment.
But I wouldn't "waste" such time on lecture - broadcasting. An exception might be made for a short "hints" lecture if a lot of students are seemingly blocked. Nearly everything you want to say (and write on a whiteboard) during a lecture is available from other sources except in very advanced or specialized courses. Students need practice and feedback. The FT is used to provide both of these.
It is possible, though sometimes difficult to arrange, to encourage the stronger students to serve as tutors for their weaker classmates in a pair. This works well enough as small scale when you know the students, including something of their skills and personalities, but becomes riskier at large scale. Watching someone work isn't the same as working, of course and it is useful for students to struggle with hard problems, perhaps especially in math. This is one reason to rotate pairs. And you have to observe interactions and possibly intervene. But at least you have the opportunity for this when they work under your view rather than when they work alone or in groups you aren't aware of.
What happens when students study/learn on their own.
The other aspect of learning is the delivery of the material for the course. In a flipped classroom much/most/all of this is done when the instructor isn't co-located with the students. There are a variety of ways to provide this and I strongly suggest that you use many of them, not just video. Textbooks are still useful, even if you also use lecture or video or whatever.
But the purpose of this "between FT sessions" work is to prepare them to be effective later during FT.
You can expand and refine your lecture notes and give them to students directly. You will get feedback from them on the quality when they ask questions. You will eventually have your own textbook for the course if you do this consistently and intelligently, avoiding plagiarizing the works of others. You can provide simple exercises that will be expanded on and deepened later during FT.
You can provide lists of internet resources for many courses. In math and CS, for example, wikipedia is very reliable nearly always. The errors that appear there tend to disappear quickly, especially for non-controversial subjects.
If you make videos, I suggest that you make a lot of very short ones. They should be about 10 minutes (ideal) but not more than 15. The should be subtitled if at all possible and should come with a transcript. The latter is easy as you need the transcript (notes) to create it in the first place. A longer topic is covered by a series of short videos. Make an index available.
Short videos have two advantages. For the student, they are less likely to become disinterested or lose their train of thought. You can also provide a few solidifying exercises with each such video segment to firm up the main idea. Students should still be encouraged (required) to take their own notes as this is an important element of active learning. The advantage for the instructor is that a poor segment or one with errors is easier to replace than part of a longer one.
The transcript of a video can be annotated with time marks for important points so that students can "rewind" to something important easily. It can also be annotated with "links" to text or online resources that expand on the current idea.
Scheduling
Traditionally a course is a certain mixture of time spent with an instructor (presentation) and time spent elsewhere but working effectively. In the US the tradition has been a 1:2 ratio. If a course meets for an hour then the student is expected to work an additional two hours. The ratio and the total don't need to change, though you have a bit more flexibility in a flipped classroom.
Say you have an hour for FT. You can then require two hours outside. About an hour of that can be things like video or book/notes study and about another hour can be spent on traditional homework. The ratio of presentation to study needn't change, not the ratio of in class to out of class time.
But it is probably a mistake to try to compress too much presentation into too short a time, even with 10 minute videos. The course is spread out over many weeks traditionally for an educational reason. Presentation needs to be interspersed with practice and feedback. It is just that you are personally present for part of the practice and less (or none) of the presentation.
Making it work.
You ask for ideas about guaranteeing that the students do the non FT work required. One way (they will hate this) is to require them to keep a notebook and to bring it to class. The notebook is subject to inspection by staff. Since you observe the students, and assuming the scale isn't impossible, you get a sense of who is learning and who isn't. For the latter group, a look at their notebook might tell you a lot, not only about their dedication, but also about their misconceptions as they occur. The notebook is the "ticket" to the FT session.
In a traditional classroom lecture, looking over your shoulder makes it easy to see who is taking notes and who isn't. But in that scenario you also don't know if they are putting required time in outside class, so you require things to be handed in. In a flipped classroom that is also flipped. It is easy to see them getting the exercise but hard to observe them following the material. So you need procedures to check on what you can't observe - hence a notebook open to inspection or some similar thing.
Another check on students doing the out of class work is a very short "pop" quiz at the beginning of each FT session.
And it is also useful to have students hand in index cards at the start and/or the end of such a session that contain questions for you.
Beyond the flipped classroom
It is possible to make learning continuous without breaks. Every day, any time of day. One way to do this is with a simple two way asynchronous communication tool. Students can ask questions whenever they arise. You, the staff, and every student see the questions. Anyone, including students can answer the questions. You will find this reduces staff time somewhat, though you have to read the whole stream. You only need to reply when no one else does or someone replies incorrectly.
You need some rules for this of course. No personal questions (grades,...) are asked on such a list and in some classes you don't want to permit solutions to be posted other than by staff.


Would it look bad if I don't have a letter of recommendation from my advisor (out of personal choice)? I've done some reading about recommendation letters and graduate admissions, but I had a question of my own.

I'm currently a master's student who's looking to apply for PhD programs soon, and have been wondering who would be the best person(s) to write letters for me. The "obvious" choice would usually be one's advisor, but I actually don't feel comfortable asking him.

The lab that I'm currently at is very large (around 30-40 people) and my professor doesn't do research, but is rather a business person. He rarely has time for meeting with his students because he's always attending meetings or giving an "invited talk" somewhere. So students including myself usually rely on seniors or PhD's at the lab for guidance. I've been blessed to meet many talented people who have helped me until now.

That being said, I don't feel comfortable asking my advisor for a letter because I feel he doesn't know me well enough as a researcher. Whenever I submit papers he doesn't even read them and just gives me the grant number to add in before submission.

Would it look bad on my part if none of the letters I submit are from my advisor? There are a few other professors who I could ask who I've actually done research with. I can ask my advisor and he'd happily ask me to write the letter so he can modify it and sign it off but I was wondering if it's better I just ask others.

P.S. I've thought about changing advisors but I stayed at this lab because I can't afford to pay tuition on my own and there aren't other professors at school whose labs are doing research similar to mine and offer funding. I'm in Korea in case anyone's wondering.

Would it look bad on my part if none of the letters I submit are from my advisor?

Yes, assuming someone reads your letters.

Your advisor should ask people who worked closely with you to help your advisor write the letter so it can include sufficient detail.


Do senior PhD students form a part of the admission commitee? Recently, I was having a chat with a few senior PhD students (almost done with their thesis) and they pointed out that the professors would, at times, solicit their opinion regarding the admission of a particular student. This was especially true when the prospective student belongs to the same country as that of the senior PhD student.

Does this happen in all institutes?

If it does happen, is it official or discussed-over-coffee unofficial?

Not a particularity helpful answer, but ...

No, it does not happen at all institutes, but it does happen at many. In some cases it is official and in other cases it is unofficial.

As an applicant you should assume that the entire time you are on campus is part of the interview including any drinks/meals.


Can bad students be good scientists? I recently moved from an undeveloped country to Europe, and I am currently a PhD student.

In my hometown, the education system is very bad, and almost everyone with some patience can get any degree. However, things do not work like this in Europe.

I have always been a bad student, and I suck at exams (both written and oral). Although I am capable of presenting my own work in an understandable fashion, when it comes to study on some topic -- that is not very related to my field of study, and learn that topic thoroughly, I fail.

Unlike the education system in my country, here, the tolerance for mediocre mistakes is close to zero. And I do make mistakes very often given limited time to evaluate my own statements/claims/proofs. My exam paper is always a mess compared to my technical reports. Because I get to write the report over on over again with an access to every term, definition, and counterexample.

Back in my country, I was the one-eyed king in the land of blind. Extraordinary researcher, and very good student. Here, everyone has both eyes with eagle vision. My research skills obviously do not shine, and if you consider my studentship, I am just a dead duck.

I do love to conduct research, and not only looking at its butt when it walks by. However, I am pretty doubtful if I can be a good scientist given my current achievements in the courses I take.

Should I go with the philosophy

  a fault confessed is half

or should I go with

  finish what you have started

based on your experiences?

I think most would probably agree that there are cases where someone is a poor student but has the potential to be a good scientists -- because what defines a good/poor student is mostly the ability to be effective in exams (i.e., most importantly to be able to learn and reproduce known material) whereas the skills necessary to be a good scientist are different.

That said, it is clearly the case that the two skill sets are highly correlated. There is a perception in the public eye that the best scientists are mavericks who are able to think outside the box and swim against the scientific consensus to find the things that nobody else sees. But in reality, that is probably a glorification and even those rare insights like quantum theory or the theory of relativity can only be found by those with profound and deep understanding of the existing knowledge, and the ability to synthesize knowledge into something new that those who have not paid the same level of attention to the details of the field can not.

As a consequence, what I read from your description in the question is that you may have the skills to be a good scientist, but that you lack the knowledge and maybe diligence to compete with your peers. That's not your fault, of course, but it's an insight that you may want to keep in mind when thinking about your future. Knowledge is, after all, something that you can catch up with if, for example,you are willing to take some time off from other responsibilities and focus on learning the basics at a more profound level than you had the opportunity to do in the past.


Which domain should I choose for my personal website? I have decided to create an academic personal website, but I am unsure whether I should choose a .com or a .org domain.
I have read that .com is mainly used by commercial organizations, whereas .org is intended for nonprofit use. Hence from this viewpoint I should go for .org, as my website will be nonprofit. On the other hand, many suggest to opt for .com anyway (see e.g. here),
To complicate things further, I have verified that the domain namesurname.org is available, whereas namesurname.com is not.

Apparently, .com conveys a sense of credibility so that it would be the best option, regardless of whether you pursue things commercially or not.
It seems to me that .org doesn't suit a private homepage.
But for a private homepage, you can generally be creative and look for any other options that suit your biography (e.g. citizenship) or name (e.g. if your surname is Li, why not choose .li?) or interest (e.g. if you do research on marine life, then you could use .fish).
And for research-related purposes, there are also top-level domains such as:

.science
.engineering
.academy


What's my PhD status after I passed my oral defense (UK)? I'm applying for a postdoc. I passed my PhD viva in the UK, and was given minor corrections which I've submitted. What is my status? Can I say PhD (pass)? Or something better?

This is always a tricky time period. Trying to make such a complicated situation clear in a single line on your CV is impossible. Write something on your CV that suggests that you have not completed your PhD yet (you do not want to mislead people), but that you are very far along (submitted, defended, passed with minor corrections, etc). Then in your cover letter use a sentence or two to explain the the situation. For example:

  My thesis on Under Water Basket Weaving was approved by my examining committee and my PhD will be awarded in May 2016. I have already published 6 articles from the thesis and based on discussions during my viva voce, I am currently revising portions of the dissertation for 2 further publications.


How to write an aside in a journal article? So the question is simple: What is the common way of saying something in parentheses in a journal paper like engineering or mathematics.

Assume you are talking about a mathematical approach, but in the middle you want to point out to something else, or mention an special case. I give an example:

  ...our approach is based on the following linear equations....

  Eq.(1).....

  (now here I want to make a big parenthesis or a break to discuss about something regarding the approach which is not too long to be considered as an Appendix, maybe only one paragraph )

  One can think of the other approach such as .....

So the question is it, how this feature is normally handled in papers, and what is the latex function to do so.

There are sometimes "remark" blocks that some authors use for discussing aspects that are of substantial interest to some readers but do not strictly belong to the core of the story that you are telling. If you are preparing your document with LaTeX, then such text blocks are called "environments".

An example is given in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science guide for preparing papers, page 4 at the bottom.


What are universities asking for when they demand a "financial resource statement"? I am applying for a Master program and one of the documents that I have to attach to my application is a "financial resource sworn statement". What is exactly meant by this?

Is it usually enough if I upload a document stating that I have the necessary funds to support myself during the duration of the program (explaining where those funds come from) or should I attach some kind of official document from my bank?

The purpose of the financial resource statement is to determine if/how much aid you will need to complete the program. Most of the time, the most important things will be:

Any grants/scholarships/fellowships you will use to pay for your education.
How much in student loans you will use, and if they have already been approved (not common, but may happen).
Personal resources—including family support—you will use to support yourself.

Usually, a list is all that is needed, to show that you realize the costs of attending the program, have accounted for them, or are requesting appropriate assistance from the school. You don't necessarily have to show that you have the entire cost covered, either, especially if you are requesting aid from the University, as long as you show that you know the correct amount you need. Whether it hurts you or not in the application depends very much on the policy of the school.

If a school requires something formal, they will usually have a form you have to fill out. I would not provide any banking data, unless absolutely required. You don't know who works in the administration office.


Should I make my research students' pay contingent on completion of tasks (such as reading/summarizing papers)? I received a fund that I can use explicitly for paying graduate (master's and doctoral) students for research. These students already receive a stipend from the university, but most advisors who can afford it pay them a supplement. My colleagues just pay a fixed amount per month. However, I am inexperienced in advising students, and I fear I might end up wasting the money on students who do not do their job.
So I thought of making the payment contingent on some research-related task. I do not want to make it contingent on actual research results, since the "flow" of results (particularly in my field - theoretical computer science) is not constant, and the students need a reliable source of income. Instead, I thought of paying the students for reading and summarizing papers and books related to their research topic (up to the maximum amount I can pay per month). There are several reasons:

Reading is an important part of research.
Most fresh graduate students do not read enough - they prefer to program. They need an incentive to start reading.
Reading is a relatively "stable" activity: by putting a sufficient amount of effort, the student can guarantee a fixed income for themselves.
Summarizing research papers will help the students once they start writing their own papers.
The summaries can also be useful for me during teaching, as supplementary material for the students.

Is it reasonable to pay research students based on reading & summarizing papers, or for other activities?
Clarifications:

The basic income (before the supplement) may or may not be enough to live on. For students who come straight for undergrad, many are young and still live with their parents. During undergraduate studies they had to pay tuition, so the very fact that they now study for free (even before receiving any money) is a substantial upgrade for them. Other students are older and have children; for them, the basic income paid by the university may be insufficient.

Do not do this. At best, you will appear merely stingy; at worst, perhaps financially abusive. (I also suspect your university would not even allow it, but I think that's not as important because it should not be done anyways)
I strongly, strongly advise you to reconsider how you think about students. It seems you are thinking about them like employees you want to squeeze some work out of, with some sort of benefit that you deserve for providing funds. This thinking is wrong, and leads to many of the student horror stories here about abusive advisors.
A student should never be under threat that their financial security is subject to the whims of their supervisor on a regular basis. Any process that leads to a student getting paid less than their full salary* should be a structured process with warning and opportunity for improvement. You write that "students need a reliable source of income" - exactly, so don't make it unreliable.
Students in research are not mere employees, they are future researchers for whom you are taking on a responsibility as an advisor. You pay students so that they can focus on their research and education. You pay students who you think have good potential as researchers that are worthy of your time investment. You are not paying them to do a job, you are paying them to learn.
If you think you need to add incentive for students to focus on things like reading, do that incentivizing outside of the regular compensation structure. One option is to have regular meetings where students present papers or literature reviews of a subset of papers. Students are typically quite motivated in that setting to look good in front of their superiors and peers and they will put in the effort. You could also use a bit of peer pressure to offer some sort of group reward, like buying lunch for the whole group when a student wants to schedule a presentation over lunch to summarize what they have read (harder to do now during pandemic times, but hopefully that won't be permanent).
I'm glad you've asked about this here before implementing it, because I cannot stress enough how bad this would be.
*Exceptions: for someone who is a part-time employee, like an undergraduate student, there is nothing wrong with hourly compensation, but it should not be based on production but rather on time worked. You can decide at the end of a semester if it's worth taking that student for another semester. There could be graduate students in special circumstances that work and study part-time; they should be paid a salary relative to their part-time level of commitment.


Missing out on a position due to false HR advice. What should I do? Following up on my previous question (Academic Progression via Promotion vs via Recruitment), where I wanted to apply for an assistant professor position at a university where I am currently a postdoc. The HR advice then was that I cannot do that as an external applicant and that I need to apply for promotion next year. For more background please see my original question.

Last week I discovered that a couple of the potential candidates for this position are actually postdocs in a similar situation as mine, and already work for the same university. They are going to give presentations to the staff next week (This is how I knew). This implies that the HR advice to me was not accurate or something odd has happened.  I contacted HR for explanation but didn't receive back.

I missed out on this opportunity due to false advice from HR which is not fair. What are my options?

This, and your earlier question, seem to be very localized. I think that you need to handle it locally. Go back to HR with your new evidence and seek new advice. Challenge it if necessary. Go to whomever is responsible for the new position with whatever advice you get from HR along with your new evidence and ask for advice there. If it is at all unfavorable, ask for an exception.

It is possible that there is nothing more than a lack of communication or a misinterpretation of rules. But you won't get out of your trap without bringing it to everyone's attention.

Perhaps you will just learn how the other cases are not the same as yours. But perhaps you can get the gears unstuck with a bit of jiggling.


A free papers search engine Someone told me that there is a search engine that gets you most of research papers I may need for free.
He told me that this search engine is working based on using other members access to researches and make it available for all.
I tried searching for this search engine, but I could not find it.
Which search engine is it?

Your friend is probably thinking of Sci-Hub. Warning: it's likely illegal, including to use the service (as opposed to uploading stuff onto it), in most jurisdictions. If it's not already illegal in your jurisdiction, the trend is towards illegality (i.e. lawsuit after lawsuit has been ruled on, and they are usually in favor of the copyright holder).
If you want to do things legally, try something like Unpaywall, or ask your local librarian. Librarians are incredibly good at finding papers, and they can often access something for free even if you can't.


On a Paper, Change the Methodology or Report in Results Section? I'm currently working on the final phase of my MSc dissertation, but I've been having technical issues regarding my initial approach set out in the methodology. I've made what I consider a temporary change to prove the concept but I also intend to discuss why the initial method would be better suited if the technical issues were not around.
Do I...

Change the current methodology to reflect what is going on now, discussing what was the initial method in the latter sections? or..
Leave the current methodology but discuss the "Temporary Fix" in the latter sections and how it's partial success relates to the initial method, and proves it's potential to be successful in practice?

Thanks

This should be worked out with your advisor. If it were me (as advisor), I'd suggest that you explain the original methodology and show how your work implies that it fails. That is a valid research outcome. Then, show how a modification of it would work and why. How is it that the "technical details" make a difference.
But if you change the methodology and just pretend that it didn't happen, you are losing an opportunity to extend knowledge. A proof or demonstration of why something doesn't work can be just as valuable as one that it does. Perhaps even more so in a case like this. If your thesis gives insight into a problem, or better, a class of problems, you have done well, no matter the outcome.


Can a Peer-Reviewed Article Claim Novelty in Something Introduced in a Preceding Phd Thesis? My PhD thesis has been available online on the university website for 3 years, and also listed in my Google Scholar profile. Although I have plans to publish multiple papers from my thesis, I have not done so yet!
The question is: can someone else publish a peer-reviewed article claiming novelty in something introduced in my PhD thesis since it is not "published" ?

Of course, they can claim novelty -- and of course, this would be not true. It would also not be true if you published e.g., in a blog. (And of course, if they are aware of the thesis, they are not behaving ethically.)
However, if your PhD thesis is not very visible (most thesis are not), it could be that they are not aware of the thesis and the referee is also not. Most likely, you cannot do much then afterwards to change the claim in the paper -- if you are very lucky, the writer posts some kind of erratum on their homepage.
Many peer-reviewed papers were forgotten and ideas rediscovered afterwards. Of course, this could also happen with a PhD thesis.
Wouldn't it be a strange world if it was okay to take theorems out of a PhD thesis and claim them to be one own's theorems?


How Can I Specialize In Two Different -but related- Areas I am a freshman math major. I am very excited to be in university because I want to be a scientist, researcher. I have interest in different areas like sociology, economics, artifical intelligence, neuroscience etc.. I used to think that I can specialize in just one area then I have heard about a professor named Richard Bagozzi and I loved his career because he publishes papers in different areas such as economics, sociology and psychology. What should I do in my college life to be able to make research in more than one area? I am waiting for your advices, thank you.

It is too early for you to commit to a final field of study. It is good that you have a lot of interests and the opportunity to learn some things about many of them. Studying math at a liberal arts college, as I did, or at place that otherwise permits a broad education is a good way to build up a body of interests, any of which you might later decide to focus intently on. But you don't need extreme focus yet.
Your interests are likely to change, at least a bit, in the coming few years. Wait until you have more knowledge and experience before committing too deeply to any one area.
A note on math. A professor of English once told me that studying math gave me an almost perfect education, since the university also required those other subjects you mention, and more. Had I studied, say, sociology, instead, then my education would have missed something (logical, mathematical, computational thinking) that I wouldn't get otherwise. He was, of course, measuring against an Medieval notion of an "educated person." An educated person has a lot of opportunities. Strive for that.


Follow up email in 2 weeks - PhD application - a good idea? I had written to a well know professor in my field of study regarding a possible PhD position. He responded and asked for references. I was dumb enough to respond to this mail after 4 days. It has been two weeks since the last email and I never heard from the professor.

Is it a good idea to send a follow up email?
Do you think the delay in responding to his mail would have spoiled my chances?

No, the delay didn't spoil your chances, and no, don't write a followup.

The prof wasn't waiting for your reply, and didn't expect it to come the next day. If he is "well known", he may get dozens of applications every week, plus hundreds of other emails. He likely didn't notice the delay, but just processed the daily flood of messages.

Even if he did remember when your first mail came, he knows that compiling a good application with references takes time. You usually have to write a reference yourself and find a professor who knows you at least by sight to sign it. You could have been out of town for a job interview, ill, etc., there are a million very legitimate reasons why you didn't have it ready by the next day.

If he actually has an open position in which you might've fit, he has surely checked your references, and didn't like them. If not, there is little you, or he, could do.


Why was I offered an associate professorship after applying for an assistant professorship position? How will this be perceived? I have applied for an assistant professorship at a top-tier Chinese university. After interviewing with them, they are now offering me a position: an associate professorship!
I find this very surprising. It’s not that I don’t think I deserve it: I have been a postdoc for seven years, and my publication record is significantly better than that of the average Chinese associate professor in my field. But I have never heard of anyone completely skipping the assistant professor level.
I have two questions:
(1) What do you make of this?
(2) How will this unusual feature of my future CV be perceived by universities in the west, if I later try to get back?

UK perspective

(1) What do you make of this?

They think you are good enough to be recruited directly to the higher-ranking grade. It sounds reasonable in light of your seven years' postdoc experience plus having publications commensurate with the grade. They obviously think you are an outstanding candidate, and may be offering you the higher-ranking grade to make the prospect of international relocation as enticing as possible. Congratulations!

(2) How will this unusual feature of my future CV be perceived by universities in the west, if I later try to get back?

To be honest, I can never remember the difference between "associate professor" and "assistant professor" -- most UK universities do not use these terms and the whole concept of "tenure track" does not really exist in the UK (although some UK universities have very long probation periods for more junior staff dressed up as fancy schemes -- here is an example that involves up to 8 years' probation). A UK academic reading your CV would, once he/she has familiarised itself with the relative seniority of the grades, be impressed that you skipped straight to the more senior grade. In the UK, an academic who reaches the equivalent of "associate professor" level (probably "senior lecturer") within seven years of getting a PhD will have done very well, but it is not extraordinarily unusual. Definitely, it would work to your advantage.


Can MS be done with full scholarship? Although graduating from a low ranked college I was able to become research associate at a well known research institution. My work there provided me with three research papers.

Is there any possibility of getting a full scholarship for a MS program?

I did an MS in math.  My tuition was waived and I received a stipend that was enough for me to live on (albeit very cheaply).  In return for this I taught one class of either business math or college algebra every semester I was there.  I think everyone that was there with me at the same time was on the same deal.

It shouldn't be hard to get this information from the school or schools of your choice.  If they have a program like this they probably recruit for it.

This might be different from what you are asking, since it more or less involves working for the money, but for anyone that needs a way to pay for a Master's degree, this is definitely a way to explore.  I can't say how common an arrangement like this would be outside of mathematics, however.

You should contact the school(s) you are considering attending and find out what kind of arrangements are made there.


To what extent is Linux prevalent in University maths departments? To what extent is Linux prevelant in University maths departments? I understand that distributions such as Scientific Linux and Fedora are quite popular, but I don't know whether this means 5% or 50% uptake. Is Linux the most common operating system in the world of maths academia, or is it still a minority player? If you were to estimate a percentage of maths academics who use Linux, what number would you suggest?

In Germany, Linux is pretty common as end user operating system in maths departments. I worked at three different universities in Germany and they all used it.

On the other hand, many people use their private laptops for work (when they are at home or travel), and I guess (but don't know) that Linux is not so dominant there.


Should I mention my reference's university role (administrative) when listing? I have a list of references in my CV. One of them happens to be the Dean of the graduate school and the other a Vice Chancellor. Both of these roles are administrative and their primary position is that of a Professor. Would listing these referees as

John H. Doeberg
Professor and Dean of the Graduate School
University of Foo

Jane Q. Publicowski
Professor and Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs
University of Bar

be better (give more credence/weight) than simply listing them as a Professor. I know that ultimately what they write in those letters is what matters, but for the purposes of this question, it can be safely assumed that both letters are going to be stellar recommendations.

The thing to remember here is that your reference letter writers will be providing official letters, and therefore will be including their full titles (presumably the letterhead will list this). In such a case, it doesn't really seem to make much sense to "hide" the status of the person writing the letter. Moreover, if the position is one which will include some administrative duties, a letter of reference from someone doing university administration might even be a plus.


Why do conferences and other academic events still mostly happen offline? Despite the fact that most of the world is now connected with high-speed fiber and even phones can record 4k video, it seems to me that there is a large focus on offline events. Universities invite guest speakers, hold seminars, organize conferences, etc, and most of the content is not even posted online afterwards. Often the events themselves don't include anything more than the speakers doing their presentations, answering a few simple questions and leaving shortly afterwards - all of which could be done on Skype or a myriad of other platforms.

So why is there still such a strong focus on physical presence?

Conferences are not organised for the talks alone. They are more like the academic equivalent of a pool party or a weekend football league. Although on the face of it the purpose might look like spending time in the pool or playing football, people really go there to meet other people.

As a PhD student it took me a while to realise this. Most people attend conferences to get face to face time with other people in thier field, and often the talks act as adverts for collaboration. You'll notice that there are often conference dinners and mixers designed precisely for meeting others.

Every time I've heard someone talk in earnest about what they liked about a conference, it's always that they managed to catch up with a colleague or similar.


How to address a professor in an office setting I will be working at a private company as an engineer (but in a heavily research oriented team), and I just learned the contact information of my manager. I will be sending an email to introduce myself, but I am not sure how to address him.

Just by searching his name online, I learnt that he works as a professor at a university (but is on a leave of absence, at least his page says so) but his current title in the company is engineer. So, in this case, should I address him as "Professor surname" or "Dr _surname" in the email or just by his first name (which is the preffered way at this company)?

If you're here in the US, I'd go with Dr. You're addressing him as your supervisor at a workplace, not at an academic institution.  He's not a professor there.  His title there is probably something like "Director of Research" which is definitely not how you'd address him. But he is a Dr. and, in my experience in 40+ years in industry, that is how he'd be addressed.

But also, at most universities here in the US, lots of instructors who do not have PhDs and are not on tenure track are still called professor.  Like me.  I don't have a PhD and my official title is lecturer, but students and others commonly address me as professor nonetheless.  (And yes, it makes me a little uneasy because, to me, there is a difference and calling anyone a professor regardless of whether they really are seems to cheapen the title for those who've actually earned it, which I have not.)


Is it legal to make submitted research paper public I have submitted a research paper to IEEE.

Now my research supervisor is saying to make it public by writing a blog on Medium and giving a link to the paper. He also shared research paper on some channels without my consent.

I want to know

Is it legal to write a blog on Medium regarding research paper that is not published?
Is it affects my research paper acceptance?
Can anyone copy it and publish it in a journal or write it on a website with his/her name?

In which concerns publishability, it depends upon the journal policies regarding pre-prints and media coverage. However, this is not a legal issue - there is nothing illegal about the situation you have described.
In the case of IEEE you can see here that they allow authors to share their work anywhere.

Prior to submission to an IEEE publication
Authors may post their article anywhere at any time, including on preprint servers such as arXiv.org. This does not count as a prior publication.

Caveat: please read the whole content of the link to be aware of the full policy. They ask you to use a disclaimer that the work was submitted to IEEE:

The following text should be included on the first page of the submitted article when it first is posted in any of the above outlets: “This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessible.”


Is a GPA of 3+/ 3.3+ but below 3.5 considered good for scholarships in Europe and the U.S? I am an undergraduate Physics student at a well-reputed university in my country. My aim is to get a Master's scholarship in Europe (preferably in Germany) or the U.S. Although I have a 3+ GPA and I have heard that it is good but I am really worried and fear that I might not be able to earn a scholarship.
I have two questions:

Is a GPA of 3+/ 3.3+ but below 3.5 considered good when applying for scholarships?

What other factors besides GPA matter?

In the US it is probably sufficient for admission, but admission to graduate programs here depends on much more than just GPA. Some depends a bit on which courses you got full marks and which not. But even more will be the statements made in letters of recommendation, research you might have (not essential, but helpful), standardized exams (some places) and your Statement of Purpose.
Admissions are handled by people who want to be able to predict your future success. If the many pieces of an application point to that then you have a chance for admission.
However, the more competitive an institution is, the harder it is to "measure up". So applying to a wide range of graduate institutions is advised if you want to maximize your chances.
Getting a scholarship, however, is a much more difficult proposition. There are few of them (in the US) and may depend on the grant funding of the faculty. Most support for grad students goes to doctoral candidates. But it is possible, here, to apply for a doctoral position with only a bachelors, so you might consider that. It would likely come with support.


Regarding a PhD advisor rejecting student due to health problems I have a colleague (call them "Joe") in my PhD math program who told me that they approached a certain professor (call them "Dr. X") to ask them to be their advisor. Joe seemed very interested and capable to do research with Dr. X. However, Dr. X told Joe that they didn't want to do research with them because they had health issues. Namely, Joe delayed taking the qualifying exams because of a kidney stone surgery (a laser lithotripsy). Despite this, Joe took the qualifying exams and did very well. Dr. X still had a bias against Joe and did not want them in their research group because of their health problems.
Yes, this is an actual story that happened to a friend of mine.
Is there any basis in the professor not wanting to take Joe as their student? Or, are there legality issues? I know an employer cannot discriminate with regards to disabilities or health condition, but does this apply to prospective PhD supervisors?

In most cases, discrimination on the basis of disability or illness is wrong and in many places it is also illegal.  This applies in places where PhD students are considered employees and in places where they are not.
However, there are certain exceptions.  If the disability makes it impossible or unreasonably costly for the student to conduct their duties, discrimination might be permitted.  If the student has a health problem that makes the research unsafe, then discrimination might be mandatory.


Is it necessary that lawyers receive a solid training in subjects that are related to their chosen field of concentration? Should a criminal lawyer, for example, have a solid background in biological sciences and ballistics? Or is it enough that he or she understands criminal law?

No one can be an expert in everything. Try and you'll likely end up mediocre at many things.

Like a general practicioner in medicine, lawyers need to know their field, have a working knowledge of the germane aspects of other fields, and to know when to call in an expert. It is my understanding that criminal lawyers routinely call in expert (subject) witnesses, both to inform the court and to provide a more objective opinion than the counsel of either side could.

Understanding criminal law is no mean feat, especially if we use understanding in the sense of "have it in my mind and can readily apply the relevant statutes to this case".

Tellingly, there is no prerequisite coursework for law school. If a layer had to master a body of knowledge outside the law to practice, then that other body of knowledge would be required for admission to law school or taught during law school. The exception which demonstrates this heuristic is patent law.


Can we cite from viXra? Today I just found this website viXra.org

the paper I looked at has author name but no other info about the author such as university or work.

in addition there was no references at all?

Can I still cite this paper in my PhD thesis?

You can, without doubt, but it might not be a good idea.

The first question is, of course, if the content of the paper is good.

The second question is, if you can find a more reliable source. Given the reputation of Vixra, almost any other source is more reliable, generally speaking.

I would suspect that, most of the time, when something is posted on viXra, either the content is not of high quality or you can find comparable material elsewhere.

But if you do happen to find a gem on viXra, certainly cite it. Just be very, very certain of the quality.


Acknowledgement: non-academic persons In my industry-sponsored dissertation, I want to thank my industry contact and some non-academic persons in the acknowledgement section of my dissertation. How should I refer to them:

John Smith
J.   Smith
Mr. John Smith

Considering the slightly informal nature of the acknowledgement section, yet keeping in mind that these are industry folks who wouldn't mind a bit of respect.

Acknowledgments usually skip formal titles, i.e. no Prof., Dr., Mr. or Ms. Some journals even insist on it in their authors guidelines (here for J. Chem. Ed.):

  Acknowledgment
  Include acknowledgment of grant and other financial support, technical assistance, colleagues’ advice, and so on. Do not use professional titles or honorifics in this section.

If your journal has guidelines on the topic, follow them.

Otherwise, just refer to the person as you would if you were giving his name to a colleague, i.e. omit the titles and honorifics unless you barely know them. But if you think they will like it, use their titles, it doesn't hurt!

To give a few examples from Nobel-prize winning papers:


Where to get second opinions on independent research? Advisor mentorship, department peers, passing extended abstracts around at conferences etc. all come to mind for an affiliated researcher. None of those options except the last one apply to someone without an affiliation and the last one is cost prohibitive most of the time. What are the options for someone without access to traditional options like these?

Assuming the research is at an advanced enough stage, the best option is certainly to submit a paper to a peer-reviewed journal: free independent expert opinions, provided with advice on how to improve it!

[edit] If the research is at an early stage, there are often venues which welcome submissions of prospective ideas and "works in progress": it's often the case for small-scale specialized workshops, but there might also be journals which fit this profile as well (this probably depends on the field).

Of course it's always possible to contact academics to propose a collaboration with them. Some might be interested, but if you're asking them for guidance and mentoring then why not do a PhD with them? That's the standard way to get adequate research training.


Should I put the raw data in the appendix of an investigation if it is available in the GitHub repository? I am currently doing an investigation (IB Extended Essay if it is helpful) of how different architectural approaches affect website performance. To do so, I have written a program that repeatedly runs a series of tests on each of the three researched websites. I now have 3 tables (as CSV files) with 7 columns and over 100 rows (the tests were run 100 times) stored in a GitHub repo.
In the investigation itself, I am taking the average of these columns and go from there. What I am asking is, should I put the raw data in the appendix? On the one hand, it seems like a good practice to show the data, as it demonstrates where did the averages come from. On the other hand, those tables are massive, AND they can still be accessed in the repository. Should I put it or not?

There is no need to put the data into the paper itself if it is accessible and you point to its location. For a printed paper it is mostly useless, of course, and if it is online, then it is only a click or two away. No one is likely to complain about the minimal added effort.
But, like any other web resources, your reference to it should include a date (last referenced). Then if it is later changed for any reason, the reader will have a better sense of what is going on.


Phd Thesis vs 5 years publications documentation I am doing my PhD in data mining and I want to start writing my thesis. Is there any acceptable percentage of similarities between the final thesis and the used published research to create the final thesis?
For example, one of my research papers is published by IEEE as full research paper and at the same time I extended that paper and got published with a journal. Now, I plan to include them in my thesis and I almost ran out of phrases and words to describe the work without having duplication from the two works.

You should check with your university. Some universities allow an "alternate thesis format", in which some or all chapters are just reprints of published papers.


Do reviewers of research proposals for a fellowship read the whole application, or only the scientific part? If you are applying for some fellowships, there are many fields which you have to fill in. For example, what will be benefits for a host country, what will be the benefit for your home country, what will be the benefit for you or for your host supervisor, what will you learn, what have you learned yet, etc. There can be a scientific abstract, lay abstract or questions like what will be the impact of a fellowship on your future.

Who will read your whole application?

Scientific reviewers of your project will get only your research proposal, or is it their role to read all this fields?  Are these field kept just for cases, when there are two similar candidates to get support, and than these fields can be critical?

From my experience, reviewers get the whole proposal and also read the whole proposal. Reviewers try to get a complete picture of the applicant and skim the proposal for all relevant information in this regard. This means, that probably no reviewer will read every word of the proposal, but potentially, every word will be read by some reviewer. The reviewers base their review on the whole picture they get, but usually their feedback is only for the part for which they are specialists (e.g. the scientific strength of the applicant and so on…).