What's the point in appending your CV to your Master's thesis? Several Master theses in my department contain a CV of their author. I don't really see the point in doing that - anyone you're sending your thesis to that would need your CV, you'll probably be sending your CV already anyways. So why do people do that?

(I've edited this question so it's less of a 'does your university do that' kind of thing - sorry to the guys who already answered.)

At the University of Vienna, it has been forbidden to add a CV to master's or PhD theses since 2016 (see e. g. here: http://web.archive.org/web/20170415151405/https://ssc-lebenswissenschaften.univie.ac.at/formulare-und-infoblaetter-download/diplom-und-masterstudium/).

Internationally, I have seen this practice very often, though I cannot see a clear advantage of it (I think most people would prefer not to look through a long thesis to find a CV, but would rather look for it on your homepage).


Writing thesis with corrected data after being published Lack of a systematic strict supervision has lead to inaccuracies in data evaluation. This data was published. While writing thesis I realize that and I don't know what to do. Should I write my "reanalysis" of published data in PhD chapters and explain, what was done incorrect and limitations of the interpretation? Or should I issue errata on the published materials (which is a red flag for thesis and following defense)?

I have learned my lesson for future and will be more accurate and precise. I do realize that it is the main stone of a good scientific practice. But now I just failed.
I feel that I need an advice of what to do with an actual situation to reach defense and be able to complete PhD studies?

Talk to your advisor.
write the thesis with the most up-to-date data. Analyse the data as a progression if necessary ie including the historical data if applicable - see 1...
contact the journal / editor (may or may not be the same editor you used when publishing originally and decide whether a follow-up paper or an erratum should be the way forward.


How does the testing method and possibility of cheating in an entirely online degree affect the value of the degree? Although my question can't be answered absolutely, I'll try to state it in a way that's as close as possible.

I'm considering earning an entirely online Software Engineering bachelors degree from a school which also has an on-campus equivalent. But, most importantly: my exams will be all closed book.

It's very easy to cheat with closed book tests, I expect; even if they try to prevent it, just use a second PC or a virtual machine.

Because of how easy it is to cheat with this method of testing, is it a strong indicator that potential employers will place little value on my degree?

Being online and thus open to cheating on tests certainly reduces the value of the degree, as you suggest in your question.


Preparing a very short presentation for a PhD interview I have an interview for a PhD position for which I have to create a presentation. They say:

  In this first stage interview you will be asked to give a four minute presentation on a project you have recently been involved and your suitability for this Ph.D. This will be followed by around 10-15 minutes of general questions from the panel.

My English is not very well and the interview is in English.
Does anyone know how I should create a presentation? What topic I have to mention it?

What are their possible questions?

It sound like you need to give an elevator pitch with slides. Short presentations are tough! You need to follow their instructions exactly and describe both a project and your fit to the program. You need to have this in mind: this is a sales pitch, so be short and to the point.

The objective is to sell yourself, so details on the project matter less than how you contributed in a way that’s relevant to the PhD program you’re applying to. So if your program is on graphic design focus on how your designs were used in the project, if it’s programming, focus on your code contribution etc.

In the part about you, try to show that you’ll be an amazing fit to the program: high-level plans, your agenda, your vision etc. you need to convince the committee that you’ll be a valuable asset to the program.

You must practice your talk several times till it’s perfect, and ask your friends to listen to it!

While conference talks are different, I highly recommend Simon Peyton Jones’ advice on how to give great talks, here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/give-great-research-talk/

Good luck!


How do grad schools look upon students with chronic illnesses? The chronic medical illness has affected my ability to take the most rigorous schedule and led me to withdraw from one class and also take a year break in my undergraduate education.  I'm wondering how this will affect my grad school chances. I have excellent LOR and GRES, good GPA.  Should the illness be discussed in SOP or elsewhere?

Do any of your letter writers know about your illness and can speak to your strength in spite of it? If your application on its face is strong (ignoring the withdrawn course and year gap), a mention of your illness and overcoming it in your personal statement (not your statement of purpose!) might be a good thing to do. I do not think they will look down upon you for this, quite the opposite. From what I have read, they cannot discriminate against you simply based upon your illness so that shouldn't be a problem (see ADA). If it's clear that you're dedicated, I think you'll be okay.


Would creating an online flash card deck for GRE study help overcome a weak TOEFL score? My TOEFL score is 85, but the minimum requirement of the school I'm applying to is 90. My GRE verbal score is also not very good. However, I have dedicated a month to contribute to the community of people studying for the GRE (more specifically, I have built a well-designed and information-rich Anki deck). Here is what I can sell in the SOP (they are the last two paragraphs of the What are you working on now? part):

Once complete I posted it on my website, and the result is incredible. Every month there are approximately a hundred visitors visit my site to download it, and within a couple months this popularity has pushed my site to the front page of Google*. Another good news for me is that I haven't forgotten a single word since.
Although my TOEFL or GRE score might not be high yet, the scores themselves don't reflect everything. After all, English should be a medium to communicate, not the opposite. I plan to upgrade the deck to make the it more consistent in the future.

But I'm worried that my application will be screened out before the SOP is read. Even if it is read, after all I built it to learning GRE vocabulary, not to training speaking or listening (my speaking score is only 18). I can take another TOEFL exam, but I want to make sure that my English has improved enough so that the money spent to retake it will not be wasted. It should technically not be a problem, if the deadlines are not coming.
My questions are:

In schools that care about the scores, is there a way to make the committee read the SOP first? Like the professor I'm following sending an email to them to rescue me?
After that, do my scores still matter?
I also have created a deck just for the speaking test, but haven't published yet because I still can improve it. And if I explain that I have generate a feasible, scientific plan to improve my English, with studies back up in psychology and/or neurosciences, would this helps? The only thing it needs is time.

* Just google gre anki
Related questions:
• Do admissions care how close a TOEFL score is to the minimum?
• Why do universities place a weight on GRE/TOEFL scores?

This may not be a direct answer to the question, but I think the fact that the question is asked reflects some basic misunderstanding of TOEFL and GRE.

I want to point out the TOEFL and GRE are two completely different tests designed to assess different aspects of your language skill. TOEFL is a test for people whom English is not the first language, and thus the emphasis of TOEFL is whether the test taker has sufficient mastery of English to survive the day-to-day interaction with other students and professors on a English-speaking campus. GRE, on the other hand, is concerned with your ability to express, analyze, and comprehend at a level demanded in graduate studies. Thus what you have done for GRE probably does little to rescue your low TOEFL score, given that the two tests have fairly different objectives. Moreover, mastering the vocabulary is only the first (albeit necessary) step to ace these exams. Even if you have mastered GRE vocabulary through your contribution, there is still a long way to go before you can use English to express yourself fluently.

As someone who have been studying in the US as an international student, I want to also point out, from my personal experience, that TOEFL is really an easy test. Of course when you first encounter the test as a non-native speaker, the level of English demanded may seem unreasonably high. But don't complain yet, because actually living in an English-speaking environment demands even more. There is really no excuse for a low TOEFL score if you really want to study in the US, no matter how many Anki cards you've made.


Two distinct papers solving same problem to same conference, allow update post-acceptance? Authors A and B both submitted different full papers solving the same Computer Science problem X to a prestigious conference and were accepted. They each have clearly distinct approaches, studies, and novel contributions. The conference camera-ready deadline has passed, but the conference has not happened yet.

Is there any known precedent to deal (or not deal with) situations like this? Should special provisions be provided to allow the authors to update related works to reference each other?

Sounds like a pretty straight-forward case of simultaneous invention.

There's nothing wrong with these papers being published without reference to one another, just as though they had been submitted to different venues.  At the same time, if the conference wants to arrange for the authors to add citations to one another (as would likely happen if they were to be published in the same issue of an journal), then that would be a neat and elegant refinement that would probably benefit both sets of authors.  Moreover, the associated society publisher (e.g., IEEE, ACM), is likely to be able to handle arrangements without much trouble as long as they aren't too far into production of the proceedings.  Don't do it if only one set of authors can update, however: an asymmetric arrangement would inappropriately benefit one side over the other.

Thus, I would recommend making the extra effort if it's within reasonable bounds, but not going to heroic lengths if it will badly complicate things.


How to reply to students' emails that show anger about their mark? I always find myself in a difficult situation on the rage of students who are upset about their marks they just received. I feel it is kind of difficult to reply to students' emails that sound very angry. Especially when they first receive their marks.

Why did I get this MARK!
How could I get this mark, when my colleague got higher!
I will provide my mark to the dean! (some already done so!)

I know that this is not uncommon, but I feel we have the duty to know how to deal psychologically with this behaviour.
How do you deal with this situation?
Some say, do not reply to this email before at least a week so that the student acknowledges and time for them to relax.
The issue is that I will have to deal with these same students in a module next term and I am worried about how they will portray me.

When dealing with angry students, your number one priority should be to de-escalate the situation and bring it back to a more factual ground. That means you want to:

Stay calm. Even if you are getting agitated yourself, you should never let it show through in your answer (easier via email than personally, but the same principle applies independently of the medium). I tend to opt for a more formal tone than what I usually use, mostly because I have found more formal phrasing harder to be misunderstood as dismissive (your milage may vary).
Provide short, to the point, answers. Answer the student's query or complaint politely, but don't get pre-emptively defensive and don't overly detailedly explain your reasoning. The more you write or say, the more an unhappy student will find to be upset about. There is a time and place to give a student detailed feedback, but when they are currently raging isn't it.
Stay with the facts. Scrub all subjectivity from your own answer. You want to bring the conversation to a place where you are talking about specific assessment results (exam questions, assignment tasks, etc.) rather than "I felt I did better", and the more you are using subjective statements in your own answer the more the student will feel validated that his own subjective understanding of the situation is as valid as yours.
Require the student to provide concrete, factual arguments. Once you bring the discussion to a more factual level, you should ask the student why, specifically, they disagree with their grade. Are there specific assessment results they feel were wrongly graded? Are they unhappy with how you aggregated the assessments? Once you are discussing on this level, it becomes easier to both, convince a student that their grade is correct according to the framework, and see cases where your framework is indeed unfair (or can at least be perceived as such).
Answer, but don't answer too quickly. Especially when receiving complaints via email: avoid the temptation to immediately answer questions by upset students. Give it a day, this will allow both you and the student a chance to calm down. A little delay in your interaction will also motivate the student to think more carefully about what they are actually writing, since a non-question like "How could I get this mark, when my colleague got higher" just means longer delay for them.
Remember that student's don't have to agree with their grade. At the end of the day, not all students will be happy with their grade, and even after you have explained your reasoning not all students will be convinced. That's ok. You and the student don't have to agree on the final grade. There is a process in place what, if anything, students can do to further escalate a grade dispute (I don't know if that includes sending a mail to the dean at your department, in mine emailing the dean about a grade dispute would mostly result in a confused dean).


How to motivate students to debug their work independently For the last few semesters, I have taught a graduate-level course (mixture of Master's and PhD students) that has a very substantial data analysis component in which every assignment involves analyzing data based on what was covered in the prior 1-2 week's worth of lectures. The prerequisite is my university's introductory statistics course, which teaches students basic statistics (t-tests, z-tests, linear regression, etc). We recommend a particular statistical language to use and provide coding suggestions in that language, but students are also free to use whatever they feel most comfortable using.

Increasingly, I am finding that students in the course rely on me to solve every coding error or problem they encounter, and in many cases, the top hit of a Google search for the error/problem suggests more or less what I would have as well. Some students are "repeat offenders" in that even when I show them how to use Google to look for debugging help, they still come to me with Google-able questions.

I want to be sympathetic to students who may not have much statistical computing experience beyond the introductory statistics course we teach, but at the same time, I feel that graduate-level students need to be able to solve these sorts of questions on their own. In my field, you cannot survive without knowing how to write code to analyze data, and part of that is knowing how to debug your code when inevitable errors/bugs arise.

Has anyone run into this sort of issue before, and what, if anything, helped?

One way that could work is to open a forum or a place for the students do help each other. This would prevent posting incomplete or not clear questions (because no one would like to look dumb) and would help you to debug once for class (maybe you could also collect them and provide it for the next courses). You could then also grade the activity on the forum (at least that helped me to post in a forum for a lecture :).

As tonysdg suggest you could let them know the rules of the forum like in Stack Overflow. Or say that if they (or other students) can't solve their problems in a week (or two) you will step in.

The most important part is let them know how and what do you expect from them before coming to you.


I am a 2nd year undergraduate student. What should I do now to prepare for my PhD? I am a 2nd year undergraduate student in Aerospace Engineering, in India. I am really willing to go into Academia as a researcher. I am specifically interested in Aerospace Controls. Some points to consider :

1) I love the fast internet access in university, so that I can research and learn all I want.

2) I have read up a few research papers regarding error reduction in GPS measurements, when I was doing a Supervised Project under a professor. Reading research papers are gruelling, but after 2-3 days of bending your mind over them and finally understanding what the author intended to say, I feel elated.
In this specific case, I read up a few algorithms and got excited on the prospect of developing my own algorithms for error reductions.

3) I have a fair academic standing with a cumulative grade point of greater than 9 out of 10

So I would like a few pointers on what I can do now, as an undergraduate student to prepare for my PhD.

As an undergraduate student, the best thing you can do to help your admissions case is to get involved in research. This will allow you to demonstrate that you have the capability to do good research, which is one of the biggest things admissions committees and individual professors are looking for when choosing among applicants. Maintaining a solid academic record is also useful, and having an understanding of the literature in the field you're interested in is also good. However, direct experience will let you see if academia really is what you want to do or not.


Are there differences between SM, MS, MSc, MSci degrees? I have a Master of Science degree from the EECS department at MIT. From the website it is pretty clear they call it an SM degree. I think many US universities refer to a Master of Science degree as an MS degree. My UK department has offered for a long time a program that leads to a Master of Science degree that we call the MSc program, but next year we are introducing an MSci degree. Do the different abbreviations officially mean something? Is it dishonest to refer to my SM as an MSc in the UK? If not, is it helpful?

There is no difference: M.S., M.Sc., and S.M. all mean Master of Science.  The difference for S.M. is that it is in Latin: scientiae magister.

I have no idea whether it will actually help anybody's confusion to translate back to MS, but there is certainly no question of honesty.  For anybody with a Ph.D., however, I expect it will not make the least shred of difference, as a Ph.D. supersedes it quite effectively.


Is there a database of every scientist with their scientific interests? Is there an open database of every scientist with their scientific interests? For example, I want to find a list of all scientists with their contact details based in the UK, whose scientific interests include, say, databases. I have an idea and I would like to approach some of them with it.

Edit: such database does exist, I used it almost 10 years ago for different reasons, cannot remember its website anymore :(

I don't think this database exists, but you might try searching the literature archives. Databases like Web of Science might help you.


Publish a thesis that summarizes papers on arxiv - copyright issues? Suppose one has written a master's thesis that summarizes several articles, and works out their details, on a complicated topic. It would be of general interest to have this thesis (in polished form) available for the general public.

Under what circumstances would it be acceptable to publish that thesis on arxiv.org? All sources are cited appropiately, down to each lemma, but I wonder whether rephrasing could actually lead to getting sued for copyright infringement.

All sources are cited appropiately, down to each lemma, but I wonder whether rephrasing could actually lead to getting sued for copyright infringement.

It depends on what you mean by "rephrasing."  If you are genuinely writing in your own words and citing everything appropriately, then there is no problem at all.  Copyright does not protect ideas, just how they are expressed, so writing your own version is not copyright infringement.  Academic norms require citation, but it is certainly OK to write expository papers on other people's research.  Your thesis sounds like a valuable contribution that should be made available to the community, and arxiv.org would be a fine place to do so.

On the other hand, if by "rephrasing" you mean starting with their text and editing it (rearranging a little, changing some wording, making additions, but keeping the underlying framework), then your paper would be considered a derivative work under copyright law.  I've never heard of anyone actually being sued for this in an academic context, but you might be asked to take down your paper, depending on how closely you followed the original papers.  You might also offend the authors if you copy too much from them, even if there's no legal trouble.

The basic question I'd ask is whether you had the other papers (or near-verbatim notes on them) open in front of you while you were writing yours.  If not, then you should be fine, because everything you wrote came from you.  If you wrote your paper while actively studying theirs, then there's more risk: the fact that you needed to constantly look at their writing suggests you hadn't fully internalized their work.  In that case, you should look through your paper and make sure you didn't accidentally paraphrase too closely.


Commercial company wants me to list all prior "inventions", give up everything not listed I'm a post-doctoral researcher in computer science, but my next position will be in industry.  I've been negotiating a contract with this commercial company to do R&D work (not while I'm employed at a university). It's been a negative experience overall, because - like many companies - they did not write their draft contract themselves, nor gave it serious thought, but had some lawyer draw it up (without seriously reading it afterwards).

Not going into all the horrors of what the IP part looked like - here's a bit of it:

  "Invention" shall include but not be limited to improvements, designs, discoveries, developments and works of authorship or artistry (including without limitation software, integrated circuit, printed circuit board or computer design, and documentation).

  ... (etc. etc.)

  I have attached hereto, as Schedule 1, a complete list of all Inventions to which I claim ownership and desire to remove from the scope of this Agreement, and acknowledge that such list is complete ("Prior Inventions")

and basically they get to own everything else.

This may (?) be just fine for people who move from employment in one commercial company to another and never feel the need to publish anything or have rights to develop anything independently - each company makes you essentially say "you own everything" and then they can dish it out amongst themselves. But - it obviously won't fly if you're involved in continuing research - earlier, in an academic institute and now independently, outside the scope of your commercial employment, and/or if you're writing free software. I've had lots of ideas, notes, open ends of other work, talks with people, etc. which may be developed further - in addition to things you've actually published or registered in any way. I can't just recite all of them - nor do I want to tell the company all about them.

My question is about how to deal with this situation, or perhaps - how indignant I should be about it. Some options:

Just strike out that section of the contract and explain to them it's an unreasonable request.
Try to tweak the wording so that the list isn't wholly definitive ( <- A bad idea IMHO)
Write a list, but add items which are general and vague to represent half-baked (or unbaked) stuff, sort of catch-all "inventions" you could later claim cover actual things you pick up on.
Give in, write down some sort of a list and hope they don't go after you.

Suggestions with concrete examples are especially helpful.

Notes:

It isn't just this one company, I've seen similar contract drafts in several places already. It's not like this everywhere, but I don't want to have to rule out workplaces just because they are careless about their contracts (that is, assuming they don't actually want to suck you dry of your independent contributions).
I have no problems rewording this part of the contract whichever way I like, so I'm not asking for help with reading or writing "legalese" here.
I'm not in the US (and I don't want to make this question country-specific).

I work at an R&D company that has a pretty similar clause in its contract, and in fact most R&D companies will.

The core reason is that things change quickly in R&D, so an area that the company has no interest in today may be a big part of their in business in 5-10 years.  Moreover, employees like you are likely to be the ones who create new business areas like that, and if they don't put in a very broad clause, there's nothing to stop you from taking work you've done at the company to a competitor or spinning off your own company (see, for example the fights going on over self-driving tech).

So, what should you do?  Well, it really depends on the reason for your objection.

If you've got moral objections to IP being controlled by companies, don't work in commercial R&D.
If you want to keep contributing to existing free and open software projects, put that down as a general reservation in the "prior inventions" section. Most reasonable R&D organizations will accept that in some form (though it may take a bit of back and forth on the wording), since for most companies that's never going to be their competition.
If you want to be able to pursue new side projects: embrace the clause! Don't think of it as "the company wants to steal my ideas" but instead as "the company might want to pay me to do my side projects".  In a healthy R&D organization, what you do with a potentially commercially interesting side project is essentially give them "right of first refusal" -- and if they don't want to support it, then it's yours.

Now, unhealthy organizations are a whole different story, of course, but there's lots of better reasons you wouldn't want to work for one of them in any case.

Adding in a clarifying note based on the comments:

While we can't know for sure without seeing the full statement, what has been shared, however, doesn't actually say the company is claiming all prior works. Instead, it appears to follow the usual practice of clarifying which IP the company agrees cannot be claimed, due to their origins in prior works. Prior works not listed, if they come into dispute, just have to have their origin established in other ways (e.g., scientific publication, date-stamps in metadata).


Why are UK universities "disproportionately successful at winning EU-awarded research grants"? I read on Wikipedia:

  UK universities rely on the EU for around 16% of their total research funding, and are disproportionately successful at winning EU-awarded research grants.

Why are UK universities "disproportionately successful at winning EU-awarded research grants"?

Universities in the UK (and universities in Northern Europe in general) are just better on average, with better infrastructure, better English skills, the means to hire better people, attract better students and in the end to write better grants (that might or might not be written by professional grant-writers). These are Framework programme grants for which there is Europe-wide competition.

This isn't entirely fair, that's why universities/research projects in poorer European regions are funded by the EU using more localized grants, as part of the European Structure funds. Usually these grants are not open to Europe-wide competition, and the UK can't win them all.

Another comment on how "disproportionally successful" could be counted. If they just counted #grants-with-UK-participants / #grants the UK would come out ahead because of its large population (the same for Germany). Almost all grants will have UK / German groups involved, as it's hard to get 10 research groups & companies together without taking one from the UK (or Germany).


Authorship of code published in Zenodo for non-contributing authors of main paper We are working on a paper that is heavy in both theory and numeric. The numerical code was exclusively developed by a subset of the authors (i.e. some of the authors have no made a single contribution to the implementation of such code).
The code will be published in Github and in Zenodo to get an associated DOI of it for citation. When doing so, one has to declare the authors of said code. Should all authors of the paper be included or just those that exclusively contributed to the code?

Arguments I see in favor: The code came from the developed theory and would have never been written without extensive discussions among the authors of the paper.

Arguments I see against: These authors do not even have a Github username and are not listed as contributors in the repository. Even if they join Github, the repository history explicitly shows who contributed to it.

It is an interesting situation. Clearly the 'authors of the code' have the copyright (and the repository shows who actually contributed). But the purpose of the code was to address a question broadly, as demonstrated by the broader group on the paper. For the purposes of a DOI (which does not indicate IP ownership on the code) I think having the same author list as the paper is acceptable, but not necessary.
As something else to think about, would the code have been developed outside the context of the project leading to the paper? Did the non-code-writing collaborators have no intellectual input to the code?
As an aside, if the repository URL disappears, then  the DOI link will die as well.


Is it too late to contact prospective PI's at grad schools I applied to? I applied to several grad schools and have heard back from two - rejected (somewhat expected) and waitlisted. I had other things going on and (stupidly) did not contact prospective PI's at the other two schools (well I contacted one and received a form response and thought maybe I should just wait to hear back from schools before talking to more prospective PI's).

Is it too late to contact prospective PI's? Most admissions committees have already started going though applicants and setting up interviews so at this point I'm not even sure what I'd say. If I had emailed when I should have (before applying), I would have said I was thinking about applying to that university and was interested in their work then asked what projects a new graduate student might work on.

I think contacting Profs is only helpful if you are genuinely interested in their works and have good questions to ask. If you are contacting Professor because you think they can help your application get accepted, it might not help at all. Profs are smart, they can easily recognize that.


Math Adjunct Professor positions and salary in a big city From searching online, I see that the salaries for math adjunct professors are about 36k. That's insanely low for New York City standards. An undergraduate business school student that graduates from a decent program will make 3x more money in his first year of work than a Math Phd Adjunct Prof. My question is: What else do these adjunct professors do to make ends meet? Do they typically take on another job?  A summer job?  Work night shifts at a bar?

30% of households in Manhattan have an income lower than 36k, according to census data; 36k is actually above the average income for an African-American or Hispanic household in Manhattan.  You're right that it's hard to get by on that amount of money, but plenty of people manage it.

EDIT: A good point in the comment below:  typically graduate stipends are well below this number (31k is the highest I have ever heard for a graduate stipend in math; I'm sure the CUNY stipends are much lower). Of course, most people don't want to live like a grad student forever, but it's not as though it's impossible to survive.


Graduate school admission with a degree in a different field Can I be admitted to graduate school in a different field from my degree?  Specific cases include:

If I've taken plenty of advanced courses in field X in the process of completing a degree in another field, can I apply to graduate school in X?
What if I haven't taken many courses in X, but I have acquired a good grasp of X through self-study or working in a related field?
What if I've never studied X, but I have done very well in an unrelated field?  Could I be admitted to graduate school in X on the basis of general intellectual promise, and then make up the missing background after enrollment?

Note that this question is an attempt to provide a comprehensive answer, to avoid the need for a profusion of field-specific questions on this topic (see the associated meta question). Please feel free to edit the question or answer to improve them.

Graduate programs care far more about your background and preparation than about which field is listed on your degree.  Even if the application requirements list a degree in X as a prerequisite, the department will very likely make an exception if you have a degree in another field but can demonstrate that your background is equivalent.  How likely this is depends on which of the three cases listed above you are in:

Extensive formal study of X puts you in good shape.  You should discuss this issue in your statement of purpose and make sure your letters of recommendation address it.  Letters from people in field X who say your background is appropriate would be more convincing than letters from those in other fields.
The overall strategy is the same as in the previous case, but you'll have to work harder to make a compelling argument for admission.  It's certainly possible to get admitted, but the rest of your application will have to be convincing enough to make up for not having courses in X on your transcript.  When you request letters of recommendation from faculty in field X, you should specifically ask whether they are prepared to endorse your background as sufficient for admission (to avoid getting letters along the lines of "this applicant is smart and hard working, but I don't know much about their background and preparation"), and you should strategize with them about how you can present your background in the best possible light.
It's unlikely that you can be admitted at this point, for two reasons.  One is that many people think they would like to study a field that's new to them, only to discover that it's more difficult or less interesting than they had expected.  The other reason is that time in graduate school is a limited resource, and it's inefficient to use it to study prerequisites.  You would generally be allowed to fill in a few gaps in your background, but not to begin studying the field from scratch.  Instead, if you want to change fields you can begin by taking individual courses at a local university.  It's also sometimes possible to enroll in post-baccalaureate programs aimed at helping people change fields (but the availability of such programs varies, depending on the field and location).

There is a notable exception to #3, and that is the handful of fields where there is no meaningful pre-graduate coursework in those fields. For example, there are vanishingly few undergraduate programs in epidemiology, and as such there is very little expectation that you have taken specific coursework, and nearly the entire admitted graduate class will be "switchers" of some form or another. In these cases, what is likely most helpful is to be able to articulate how your present program and course of study has led you to be interested in, and prepared for, further coursework in that field.


Is it okay to break a contract for a teaching position to get a job outside of academia? I have another year in my contract as a visiting assistant professor. However, it is possible that I might be recruited for a non-academic position before the end of the next academic year.

Would it be okay for example to accept a job if it meant having to leave before the end of the contract? Obviously I couldn't just leave in the middle of a semester, so at worst I'd be skipping out on a year's work or just the spring semester.

Additionally, the potential job(s) are in the same relative location, so I can't cite moving as a reason. (I know people have broken contracts for spouses relocating for work for example). Does anyone have experience with this? Especially considering that the question revolves around leaving academia, I'd be interested to get any feedback.

Just to clarify, the standard terminology for the action you are considering taking is “resigning”, “quitting”, “handing in your resignation” etc., NOT “breaking a contract”. I’m not just being pedantic here: “breaking a contract” suggests that your contract (together with the applicable labor laws that govern your employment and may override anything the contract you signed says) does not allow any permissible way for you to stop your employment prior to the end date of the contract. Well, I haven’t read your contract and don’t know where in the world you are, but I am extremely skeptical that a normal academia job for a visiting assistant professor would have such draconian restrictions that forbid the normal act of resignation over a multi-year period.

With that said, let’s rephrase your question to say what I think you actually meant, which is: is it okay to resign your visiting assistant professor position to take an industry job? The answer to that is simply: yes. That is what people all over the world in all industries do when they find a professional opportunity that better suits their skills, ambitions and needs. You don’t need to make up excuses about moving or otherwise explain yourself. There is nothing to explain: you simply wish to change jobs, that’s all there is to it.

Hand in your notice, finish the semester or academic year, and go be happy in your new industry career.

One final thought: if your current job includes long-term responsibilities such as advising students, it would be courteous of you to help your current employer by offering to keep some of those responsibilities on an informal basis after leaving. Especially where students are considered, it will likely be frowned upon if you simply abandon them. Or if you are in charge of a lab, you could offer to help train your replacement even if that requires coming in a few times after you’ve already switched jobs, etc. But those are the only caveats I can think of to the general principle I discussed above.

Good luck!


Publishing a book based on long journal article Recently my article has been accepted for future issue in a prestigious journal published by Jhon Wiley and sons. After accceptance of article I received an email from an other publisher based in Germany that they are interested to publish my work in a form of a chapter of a book. They also offer to get roylity money once the book start selling.  The copy right statement of the journal, where my article is going to appear, states that  the author can publish a pre-print version on public libraries and can self archive on own website. Moreover, it has a 12 months of emborgo period.In given circumstances can I publish my work as a chapter of book as well?

I am not a lawyer, but John Wiley owns the copyright of your current article, and if you just copy larger parts of it into the book chapter, the german publisher will need to obtain permission from John Wiley (that would already be the case for individual figures) and this can well involve transfer of money. That they allow you to publish a pre-print or put it on your personal website is a concession made to you as a person, but not to other (commercial) publishers.

To avoid any of that you would need to re-write (and ideally expand) the article significantly.


How would someone go about creating something like the Pew Research Center? I live in India. I've found that analyzing any sociopolitical issue objectively is almost impossible given the lack of data. If I wanted to close this knowledge gap by starting something like the Pew Research Center, what would it take? I am currently a Statistics undergrad in my final year. Would I require a PhD?

Thanks in advance for the replies.

If you wanted to create something like the Pew Research Center, you could just take a look at their history (that's their own, or you could check Wikipedia) and see how it was done in the first place (founded in 1990). The short version: a newspaper company wanted survey data to be able to report on, and so they created a center to do just that. It was then spun off into a charitable trust supported by various and sundry donation sources.

So if you wanted to take a lesson from their founding director, check out Andrew Kohut's history according to Pew or according to Wikipedia. Note that the Pew Research Center was a late-career project for him, and he served many smaller positions inbetween.

You could similarly check out the history of the Gallup organization (founded 1935), though a more recent example might be The Gapminder Foundation, founded by the late great Hans Rosling (he talks about his own personal life-long journey in this last book, Factfulness - a great book, IMHO).

In general, most organizations with this sort of large impact were founded by a combination of people with a business/financial interest (charitable or otherwise), as well as people with an expertise often driven by years of working directly in the field. Kohut did it serving years for survey/polling companies and had a graduate degree in sociology, Rosling did it after many years serving as a medical doctor and specialist in public health, etc.

A research-focused graduate degree would probably be hard to do without if you wanted to be a subject-matter specialist, while a graduate degree focused on professional preparation around business/fundraising/etc. would tend  to be most helpful if you are not already independently wealthy and highly connected and wanted to be involved on that side of it.

Another path, rather than starting from scratch, is to seek out organizations that are already operating in your country with a similar mission, or to look for organizations operating in other countries that already have or might be interested in expanding their operations to another country. Find what sort of positions they have, and then look to see what requirements they look for, so you could obtain direct experience without needing to start from scratch. If you wanted to start their own, chances are you would be competing with them directly or indirectly anyway, in terms of funding, public attention, etc. You should be able to find potential opportunities for volunteering, internships, etc., where you could be involved before you've finished your education, which would help you ensure this is what you want to do and give you a big leg up in getting started.


How to balance lecture participation and not being considered a show-off? I am a student in a rather small (20-40 students) lecture. This lecture is mandatory for the students of this subject in this semester. In the course of the lecture the professor regularly asks students questions or encourages them to theorize about possible solutions to a problem before revealing the proper solution. Usually only about five of the students raise their hands and give answers. I am one of them and maybe the one who participates the most. I partly studied this subject before so I have a little more knowledge than the others but I am also genuinely interested in the subject while most of the others seem to find it boring and are only there to be able to pass the exam.

I often hesitate raising my hand or don't do it at all because I feel like I answer most of the questions and almost get into a dialog with the professor while all the others sit around me, bored and maybe a little annoyed (I didn't notice any negative reactions). I also usually wait a bit after a question was asked and only raise my hand if nobody else did in order to give the others a chance to participate.

I feel like I am constantly restraining myself from showing to much enthusiasm in fear of appearing as a geek or a show-off. What can I do?

Possible duplicate: How not to come off as boasting or arrogant, if you are one of the few active students in a class?
(only found this after posting)

A key question is - why restrain your enthusiasm?

Importantly, it does not really matter what the other classmates think of you - you are there for the interest in the subject, not for their approval. As you stated, you have not noticed any negative reaction - it could be a case that a few others in the class are benefiting from your contributions - and more than likely, the instructor appreciates your participation as well.

It sounds like you are polite, holding back and waiting for anyone else to contribute - that is a positive.

If you are still concerned, speak with the instructor, ask them if there are other ways you can help get the class engaged and of course, ask if he/she thinks you are contributing 'too much'.

What to do? Don't change, you have enthusiasm, you politely wait for others to answer before you contribute. (But as suggested before, talk with your instructor about your contributions).

Just to clarify, I am speaking as a practicing teacher


Are admissions offers sent after the April 15 deadline? Do Universities in the US send admission offers after 15th April? If so, how many offers do they make?

Yes, sometimes.

(I am the Graduate Coordinator of the UGA math department, i.e., the faculty member who is most directly in charge of graduate admissions here.)  April 15th is "the singularity" for sure: we make offers months before, many of which are held until the weeks, days or hours before April 15th.  As the deadline approaches, we try to check back in with people and try to hear sooner rather than later if they will decline.

While we try our best to get everything resolved by April 15th, it is likely that we will not entirely succeed.  E.g. for us this year we made an offer that was received (just) after April 15th.  Things tend to move very quickly after April 15th as well: we can really burn through a waiting list when it turns out that a lot of people on it took something by the April 15th deadline.

If you are still interested in a department and haven't been rejected yet by them, I would say that today is a great today to write back and let them know you're still interested.  At this time of year, knowing that an offer is likely to be accepted is worth something to us.

Good luck.


How to go about "record of teaching excellence" as part of an application for an academic position when you don't have teaching experience? I am currently a post-doc and I would like to apply for a tenure-track position in a health-related discipline. As part of the application, the search committee requests a record of teaching excellence. My experience with teaching so far has been as a TA but never had a chance to teach a course or even part of a course. Just wondering what should I include in this section of the application? Do I submit a teaching philosophy with a brief summary of my TA experience? (they did not request a teaching philosophy)
I am looking forward to hearing from present and former research committees members (and for sure from anyone else would like to participate).

Include what teaching you have done as a TA. Space permitting, I would also include some details of what your teaching comprised, e.g. setting and marking coursework, small group tutoring, class tutorials etc.

As the application calls for a record of teaching excellence, try to identify aspects of what teaching you have done that meets some reasonable definition of "excellence". Do you have evidence of positive student reviews? Any lecturer/tutor assessments?

Do not include a statement of teaching philosophy if it is not called for.


Is It Okay to Continuously Use One's Private Email Address? I would have a question: Is it okay to use one's private email address to reply to all the university-related emails after having set up a forwarding to one's private email address - be it as a Professor, PostDoc, PhD-, graduate or undergraduate student, and use one's university/work email only for the most important emails that one wants to send?

There might be internal regulations about e-mail use at your institution; if there are none, then I would say: It is your own personal choice.
Even in academia, many people do use their non-institutional accounts because - to cite some reasons from this source - they provide more functionalities, are sometimes more reliable, enable greater storage space, support larger attachments, last longer over career trajectories, and may have a less rigorous spam filter.
There are some interesting studies in this regard:

The provision of public e-mail accounts (e.g. gmail) for correspondence in published research articles will not affect a publication's impact (in terms of citation counts). See here.

Within the research community, there is an increasing trend towards using public e-mail accounts rather than institutional ones. See here.

Someone who conducted one of the studies cited above nevertheless recommends the use of institutional e-mail addresses. See the last paragraph here.


What are the "acceptance rate" for journals in computer science? While conferences seem to be the norm in the field, I am interested in the fraction of papers that are accepted to CS journals.

It seems (to me) that due to the fact that unlike conferences journals can accept a much more flexible number of articles, it is easier to get a paper accepted to a journal (comparing top-tier conferences to top-tier journals, second-tier to second-tier, etc.).

  Are there any published numbers on the fraction of papers accepted at different journals?

While I do not have the numbers, there are generally three types of submissions to CS journals.

Invited papers: these are conference papers that were fast-tracked to appear in the journal, usually via some deal between the conference organizers and the journal. The idea is to give the authors of good conference papers an incentive to publish a complete set of results to the journal, and to improve the community. These papers almost always get accepted, unless something dramatic happens (e.g. an unfixable bug in a proof).
Full versions of accepted conference papers: these also usually get accepted, but at a lower rate. If the original paper was sufficiently extended upon, and the journal the authors aim at is not too far away from the original conference (e.g. IJCAI/AAAI submissions -> JAIR/AIJ journals is a common route) then one could reasonably expect the paper to accepted after minor/major revisions.
Direct journal submissions: these are less common, and face a much higher rejection rate. Some editors outright discourage such submissions (this is personal knowledge, not official policy). The reason is that it is often the case that these are papers that were either rejected repeatedly from conferences, or that they are submissions from someone outside the community.

Thus, it is generally not easier to get your paper accepted to a journal before a conference. Also remember that journals' turnover rate tends to be very slow, as compared to conferences.

EDIT: I was curious and asked around. Turns out that overall acceptance rates are about 30% in AI journals. This is over a very bimodal distribution though: papers of type (1) are rare, but type (2) have a high acceptance rate. Type (3) contain a lot of random spam submissions hence the low acceptance rate. Bottom line: if you have a paper you’re proud of, get it accepted to a conference. If you have some interesting extensions or not all got into the conference version, submit to a journal.


In North America, why Medicine not an undergrad degree high schoolers can apply to directly? My kid showed me this New York Times article. Why don't Canada and US offer medicine as undergrad?

Australia does.

  If you want to go to medical school in Australia, you need to sit the UCAT in your final year of high school.

UK does.

  In the UK, it can take either 5 or 6 years for the undergraduate degree, then enrol on a 2 year foundation programme, during which they must complete work placements according to their specialisation, before applying to Medical Specialty Training. In total, then, medical studies in the UK can take up to 8 years.

  In Canada, medical study is only available at graduate level, so you must take 4 years of a pre-med undergraduate degree (although some institutions will accept only 2 years of this or offer a fast-track option), with the graduate medical studies taking another 4 years. After this, you must complete a residency training programme, which can take between 3 and 8 years, depending on your specialisation. Medical studies in Canada, then, take a minimum of 11 years.

  This is because the UK undergraduate qualification is equivalent to the combination of undergraduate and graduate degrees in Canada.

In Canada medicine is offered as an undergraduate degree, but graduates cannot practice until they have completed additional requirements (usually a residency, that can last between 2 to 6 years).  There is no BSc or HBSc in medicine that I know of.

Although it is often touted as a doctoral degree and the graduates can use the title Doctor, the full title is Doctor of Medicine or MD and it is not a doctoral degree in the sense of a PhD (or similar) in other disciplines.  Several other health-related professions can also use the title of Doctor (optometrists, veterinarians), although again they do not necessarily hold PhDs (some do).

In Canada education is a provincial jurisdiction so requirements for admissions vary from one province to the next.  The common factor to all programs is the huge demand: there is often 10 or more applicants for every admission slot.

In Quebec you can apply straight out of usual 2-year pre-university (CEGEP) studies required for admission to most university undergraduate programs.   In Ontario your odds of getting in are next to none unless you have completed 3 full years of an undergraduate university degree, often in a cognate field: this is a simple way of cutting down on the number of applications.  It may well be that some schools require an undergraduate degree for application but that would only be for weeding purposes.

These days, given the extremely high demand in some provinces, an increasing number  of candidates are accepted after an advanced MSc degree: even an outstanding full undergraduate degree is no longer a guarantee of getting in.


What are the pros and cons of including graphics/figures in teaching and research statements for academic job applications? I was wondering what the prevailing opinion in the community is, with regards to the pros and cons of using images or graphics in teaching and research statements for academic job applications. I sometimes feel that schematics, or graphics can help explain information better - and hence am often tempted to use them. However, most statements have a page/word limit on them - hence creating possible formatting and content issues.

Looking forward to some perspectives here, and I believe the discussions help prospective job applicants (like me).

Thanks a lot.

The foundation of this decision really mirrors the one we have to make when writing a scientific article; the overarching question is: does the visual do more than words given the same amount of area on the paper? If it does, it's usually a good sign to at least try inserting the work into the text and then perhaps circulate the piece among peers as a litmus test.

As a member in a hiring committee, I seldom see visuals, but we did hire a person two years ago who used a bar graph to indicate her course evaluation scores, which was quite impressive. Looking back, I think I'd probably lay out my evaluation as follows:

Does the candidate make that visual? Among many possible visuals, I'd probably prefer those made by (or designed/inspired by) the candidate. Say, if the author has developed a new health promotion theory that was published, it'd be great to see that expressed in a graph (which is common in health promotion theory.) On the contrary, if the candidate has been working on designing promotion based on a pre-existing theory proposed by someone else, then I'd perhaps not recommend plugging that graph into the research strategy (in that case I would think a citation or mentioning of the original author's name would do the work just fine), unless the said concept is extremely new or novel.

Does the context call for a visual? Some research interests are heavily related to data visualization. For example, if the candidate has extensive experience in applying geographic information system (GIS) to solve research questions, then perhaps attaching a map that published by the candidate is a reasonable demonstration. Another example is field work photos. If you have extensive field research experience, it may also be nice to plug in a representative picture. (Be very explicit about having photo release or permission in the image caption, especially if your picture shows faces of your study participants or minors.)

Is the visual well designed? Now this is what I consider a much more severe risk than going over page limit. By attaching a visual you're also presenting another array of techniques and experiences for evaluation. Yet, criticisms targeting at visuals are, in my opinion, a lot more varying (and something conflicting), compared to those received by written words; this is probably due to acceptably clear grammatical rules for words do exist, but not for visuals. This is not to discourage you from adding a visual even the situation calls for, but to remind all of us to be cautious about the design and adherence to the principles of graphical excellence.

Volumes and volumes were written on graphical excellence, but I would suggest at the very least thumb through William Cleveland's Visualizing Data and Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and try to pick and adopt whatever applicable to your work.

More obscure things to pay attention to include: i) Does the image have enough resolution to be printed out nicely? ii) Is the resolution of the image so high that the document's size has become gigantic (e.g. more than 10 Mb)? iii) Would the image be eligible if the committee member prints out the document in black and white?

Closing remarks I don't think I can give a definite yes or no. Adding visuals can be a high risk, high return decision and the chance of success is highly contextual. As someone who is passionate about data visualization, I'd perhaps suggest to stay true to yourself and feel free to experiment a little. If you feel that the visuals really represent your idea and work much better than words, by all means plug in one or two; break the rule a little bit while having some fun expressing yourself. Solicit feedback from peers and advisers to make sure they generally get your ideas.


Paper accepted at a probably predatory conference, how shall I proceed? I'm a college student attending a very prestigious university. I did an independent research during this summer, and I recently submitted my conference paper to an international conference. The acceptance letter was very fast (2-3 days), and after doing much research, I realized that the organization is in Beall's list. The DOI number of the conference paper already came out and it seems that my paper is going to be published in a conference proceeding (it's going to be on google scholar as well). I don't want to hurt my career by going to a predatory conference, but at the same time, I think it's going to be a valuable experience for me to attend a non-undergraduate conference, as it is the first time for me. Does anyone have any suggestions about what I should do?

Don't go.

You write that it's a valuable experience to attend a non-undergraduate conference, and it would indeed be the case, but you won't be attending anything like a non-undergraduate conference. Example story, and that actually reads like one of the "better" predatory conferences, since I've read about other predatory conferences where keynote speakers don't show up and attendees talk about completely unrelated stuff (e.g. a number theory talk at a food science conference).

This kind of event won't help your CV either, because if someone checks the conference out they'll discover that there's no quality control, meaning the quality of whatever you presented is now suspect.

Since you gain nothing by going, is there still worth going? Possibly, but any reason for going would be much less tied to the conference than to other things, e.g. perhaps you know someone who lives near the conference venue and have been looking for a reason to visit. If you don't have these reasons, you might as well save on the cost of travel.


Should formulas include units? I recently submitted a paper that includes formulas related to building physics, such as

Q = K (t_b - t)

where Q is the daily heating load, K is the building's heat loss coefficient, and so on. All the quantities should be familiar to the reader.

A reviewer asks that I provide units for the quantities in this (and other) formulas. But this formula will remain true no matter which system of units I use.

Should formulas include units? If not, how can I tactfully rebut the reviewer's request?

There are two possible issues. If the reviewer simply thinks that units should be provided for stylistic purposes, then you should look through a couple of past articles and see if they provide units. If they do, follow the model. If they don't you can respond with it appears that units are not typically included in << The Journal Name >>, but if there has been a change in style the units can be included.

The bigger issue is if the reviewer is confused (or believes the reader will be confused) and that providing units will clarify the confusion. If this is the case, then not providing units is a big deal. In this case I would provide units in terms of fundamental dimensions (e.g., length instead of meter and time instead of second).


Is it generally acceptable if reference letters for postdoc or faculty jobs are submitted after the application deadline? I am currently applying for post-doctoral and asst. professorship positions. One of my letter writer is most likely to submit the letter a week late. Some of the positions I am applying to clearly state that "applications submitted after the deadline cannot be considered". Couple of people (my fellow grad students/post docs) whom I talked to, seemed to indicate that the reference letters can reach late. However, I would appreciate if someone (preferably one who has been part of the search committee and/or has reviewed applications for such positions before) can throw some light on this.

Unless the search committee is swamped and is looking for reasons to reject a candidate, a late letter will not tank the application. But here's what can happen: letter requests are sent out for candidate A and B. B's letters are delayed. In the meantime, A's letters come back and they are quite good. The committee starts going ahead with interviews for A. Then, for other reasons, the committee feels that A might suffice to cover the area that A and B both overlap in, and they might move on to other candidates.

This would only happen if the letter is REALLY late (multiple weeks). And if candidate B has any level of interest, there's always someone who'll chase down the letter writer.

So overall I'd say not to worry greatly, but make sure the letter isn't more than a week or so late. Also it wouldn't hurt to check with the committee on the "hardness" of the deadline.


Are the number of citations and number of published articles the most important criteria for a tenure promotion? Recently I had a conversation with a very well known scientist in my working field about the most important indicators to get a tenured academic position. This person is 80 years old and has been a member of selection committees several times during his career. During our conversation I told to him my opinion that I think that the ''research quality'' must be the most important indicator on being selected for a tenure position. After I told him my opinion he commented like this: ''yes I agree with you that it should be like that but at the end the committee mostly looks at the number of papers and the number of citations''.

The response of this scientist surprised me a lot since when I read similar topics on internet about these issues it is always concluded that the research quality is the most important factor. I also had a similar conversation with another scientist and she confirmed to me the same as the person which initially spoke with. Based on these two my experiences I have the following question:

Is the commonly said statement that ''quality is the most important factor on being selected for a tenured academic position'' only superficial?

I've chaired numerous tenure review panels in my department. (These are the panels that evaluate candidates for promotion to tenure and make recommendations to the department executive committee and to the department's tenured faculty.) I don't recall citation counts ever being seriously considered in these panels' discussions. The number of a candidate's publications may come up if it's unusually high or unusually low; the journals in which the papers are published is likely to matter more than the number. But more important than any of these things are experts' opinions of the candidate's work. The experts here can include people in our own department but will also include external reviewers, i.e, researchers at other universities (or occasionally in industry) whom we consider highly qualified to evaluate the candidate's work.


Academic salaries at European universities Is there a good source to compare academic salaries at European universities? For example, what are the salaries of full professors in different countries?

I would particularly welcome a possible source, a link pointing to a page where this information is available.

http://www.glassdoor.com/ works by getting anonymous information from users and sharing it. It is really vast and accurate as far as I am aware.

Examples:
TA: Brigham Young University $10.41/hour
Professor: University of Warwick: £103/year-£112/year

You must only Select Salaries on the dropdown menu, add a description or phrase of the position and/or location.


How to exchange email with potential professors I sent an informal query to a professor in UK and she replied me with her strong interest in my research works and considering me as a potential postdoc. She mentioned that she wants to apply for research grant this year and will inform me when she gets that. But she did not provide some details on the approximate time which she probably get the grant. In the meanwhile, I am a postdoc in another country and my contract will be finished within 4 months. As I need to make some plan about renewing my contract, is it appropriate to ask her to let me know about the approximate time of approving her application for grant?
As a note, one of her postdocs has resigned but the remaining time of the current project is rather short. Can I make a request to join her team for recent project as well and wait to confirm her new grant in the meanwhile?

Don't be intimidated that she is a professor. It is certainly appropriate to continue your "conversation". Let her know of your interest in joining her team (possibly subject to funding) and give any constraints you might have. You don't need to say a lot, but thank her for her interest and express yours.

Ask her for any advice about what you can do at the current time if it seems like there is a possibility to work together.

In other words, write as if you are a colleague, not a subordinate.


Supervisor not satisfied and only willing to see me every two weeks, what should I do? My research supervisor is a quite strict person who constantly criticizes me for my faults (such as slow progress, or always asking others for help on programming issues).

I don't blame him being a bit too strict with me, because anyway supervisor is here to supervise and give constructive suggestion. I really learn from his lessons for me. In fact, I am very grateful for him being willing to teach me some lessons. His comments are always very helpful.

During the last meeting, he seemed not very satisfied and happy with my progress. I have previously told him about my plan of submitting a paper in November. It seems that he thought this kind of slow progress would fail the aim in the end.

At the end of meeting, after criticizing me for asking others for help too much instead of solving the problems myself, he decided to schedule the originally weekly meeting to two weeks later.

Obviously, I am quite worried as the submission deadline is just in November. Given my poor performance, I have no right to suggest getting the meeting every week.

It seems that my research indeed gets stuck here. I kinda need the supervisors' advice to move on. What may I do to save this situation?

"Once every two weeks" is actually "quite frequently" for an individual research project. Your supervisor, probably, just noticed that more often than not you could not tell him much after just one week of work (very few students can, actually) and decided to listen to your "progress report" once in two weeks. If you are really doing your work and aren't just dragged by him through it, this shouldn't slow you down in any way and I bet 10 against 1 that if you get something interesting to tell him tomorrow, he will listen to you the day after tomorrow no matter how far the scheduled meeting date is.

The idea of operating from a "submission deadline" in an unfinished research project looks totally ridiculous to me. The whole difference between a research project and house cleaning is that you never know how much time you'll need for the former and whether you'll be able to pull it through at all. In my own work, the failure to success ratio is 9 to 1 and that is generally considered quite good. You have to learn that things take time and that you may fail completely when doing research. It is normal and there is no reason to freak out about that. Even in the case when you see the general way to do things and are certain that it must work, the "little details" may take forever.

You can request direct help now and then but the request should be not in the form "I just don't know what to do next..." but in the form "I've done this. Now, for the next step I would need something like this. Unfortunately there is this particular obstacle in the approach I am currently pursuing. Do you have an idea of how I can overcome it or I should try a different route altogether?". You supervisor may share the "bird's view" of the road with you (and it is sort of his duty) but to go around trees, to jump over brooks and to climb hills is your job unless you really face an impenetrable thicket, a fast deep river, or a steep mountain on your way). Telling you how to do every little thing every time is no fun for him and takes the most important part of the research experience away from you. Passing the routine work (like programming of a known algorithm) to others is a no-no at your current level. You may "outsource" your own work only when you can do it faster and better yourself, but there is yet another task at hand that nobody else can do at all. You may (and should) seek general information, but not ready solutions to your particular problems even if the latter are as trite as "Why does this stupid while loop stop one step earlier than it should?".

So, my general advice is to relax, to forget about all deadlines, and to proceed on your own and at your own pace however slow it may seem to you. Just don't stop altogether and give up unless you are ready to declare an official failure and quit completely.


How do top graduate school in Mathematics view BS (Mathematics) from a top engineering school? One of top engineering institution in my country offer Bachelor of Sciences in Mathematics. They start actual mathematics (Real analysis, Abstract Algebra etc) from sophomore year. By the senior they offer graduate level classes and I am sure I won't run out of it. However this school is primarily known for CS undergraduate program. Every year one or two graduating CS majors go to the best graduate programs (CMU, MIT, Stanford etc). As I want to major in pure mathematics I am pretty skeptical how top graduate programs (Princeton, MIT, Harvard) will view my application as they will be unsure of the rigor of Math degree at my institution?

If you're doing proof-based real analysis and algebra by your sophomore year, you're doing superbly. Many well-regarded schools don't introduce such coursework until the third year, opting to spend four full semesters on calculus. Sometimes the ultimate or penultimate semester is replaced by an intro to proofs, discrete mathematics, or linear algebra course, but the effect is the same. One of the major draws for me going to my undergraduate institution was that the norm was for mathematics majors to do real analysis their second year, with exceptional students starting little Rudin on day 1.

The extra year of advanced mathematics courses will be a huge boost to your application. You can increase this effect by demonstrating breadth and depth that other students won't be able to match. If you spend your first three years accomplishing the theoretical coursework that most students do, and then spend your fourth year taking, e.g., the graduate sequence in algebra, graduate courses in discrete mathematics and algorithms, and advanced undergraduate courses in functional analysis and algebraic topology then you've effectively demonstrated your ability to succeed in graduate level coursework. You'll also have a far deeper understanding of algebra and it's applications to computer science than the vast majority of applicants, and taking more advanced courses in analysis and topology lets you show that your advanced status isn't shallow or restricted to one area. And just in terms of a numbers game, you'll have ~12 advanced mathematics courses to other people's six (please correct these numbers if they don't make sense; I've only attended quarter systems schools and am not 100% on what numbers are normal).

Breadth and depth of coursework is a commonly used proxy for future mathematics success, and if you're able to take these fourth year graduate courses with professors you had already, then in their letters of recommendation they'll be able to talk about how you excelled in their previous courses and that they're excited to have you doing graduate work and that they expect you to succeed. Comments like that can go a long ways.

I don't think that you should be too caught up about the reputation of your university. In my experience talking to people who have served on admissions committees (note: I have never done so personally) is that, if they explicitly think about the reputation of a university at all, it is in very broad strokes that encompass dozens if not more universities per tier.

If this is an issue that concerns you particularly, you might find better success asking people at your institution who are more familiar with where you go to school than I am. One thing you should definitely ask is about what graduate schools other students like you have attended recently. This last bit is very important as, especially at a larger school, your outcomes and those of the average student are likely to be far apart.

In addition to talking to members of the mathematics faculty, you should also consider talking to any CS Theory faculty that you have. If you suppositions are correct, they're probably as likely or more likely to have written letters of recommendation for students who went on to top mathematics PhD programs. A sizable chunk, if not most, CS Theory people have mathematics PhDs rather than CS PhDs.


What is the equivalent degree of MPhil in the American education system? I am applying to some universities for a Ph.D. degree, and I have to list all the degrees I have earned or am expected to earn. One of such degrees is Mphil. However, it is not listed in the drop-down menu of options.

There are three options that I think could fit--'Other Doctoral(not Phd)', 'Other Doctorate', and 'Other Master'. Which one would be the correct option? 'Other Master'? Since Mphil stands for master of philosophy?

Masters in the USA are (traditionally) taught.  The concept of a master in research/Mphil is an alien concept.  There might be some programmes but I'm not aware of any.

For your application purposes just say Other Master and explain in your application letter that it was a research degree.


Criteria for acceptable integrative research Conventional research almost always involves the research of only one aspect, problem. But sometimes, I feel, there is need for integrative, holistic, synergistic research projects. Let's consider artificial intelligence and neural networks. Almost always the individual research is around the specific problems - e.g. about implementation of one specific logic in neural networks, implementation of specific language model in neural networks, implementation of visual recognition in neural networks and so on. But the practice invites use to consider the whole system, cognitive architecture, e.g. that can use the synergy of common language/visual/auditory/tactile semantics to complete multiple tasks. Such synergy can lead to improved results and hence - it is welcome from the Science as well. There is indeed the research about cognitive architectures but it is far, far less in amount and gaining far less support than the research of specific themes.

My question is - what considerations should be taken into account when one chooses the integrative projects as the theme for his/her master or PhD thesis. What can go bad? I have heard about specific requirements, advice for the doing the systems research, maybe more warning and more suggestions can be made about the acceptable and good integrative research.

I guess, such integrative research of end-to-end systems is actual not only in the cognitive architectures, but also in systems biology where one is eager to consider multi-scale models of full organisms of even full ecosystems. Maybe such research should be done in late career only? But what about the cases when internal drive, interests and perception of topicality make one to choose such theme for master of PhD thesis and nothing less is enough for keeping the momentum of drive and flow.

p.s. with the advent of the category theory there seems to be the right toolbox for such integrative research and so, maybe today, where so much facts and ideas are gathered, maybe today is the right time for doing good integrative research.

You need to make sure your project can be finished within the time limit available. The main problem beginning researchers seem to have is delimit their project such that it is possible for them to get it done.

The other challenge will be to find a structure for your text that would make it readable. If everything depends on everything, then where do you start?


What is the difference between research and a thesis at the B.S./M.S. level? I will be a freshman majoring in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign next fall, and I'm interested in their B.S.-M.S. 5-year program. I ultimately want to get a Ph.D. in Computer Science so I can teach at a university. On the webpage documenting the B.S.-M.S. program it says:

  Students are strongly advised to seek faculty counsel about the 5-yr program to be sure they understand the pros and cons of pursuing a Masters degree via the 5-yr program. If their intention is to ultimately pursue a Ph.D., then it may be preferable to avoid the rapid pace of the 5-year program and instead invest time in research as an undergraduate. For admission to competitive Ph.D. programs, the expectation of publications and extensive research experience is higher for M.S. graduates. Therefore, as an alternative to the 5-year program, many top students may prefer to conduct research, possibly leading to a B.S. thesis, as a way to improve their admissions chances into top Ph.D. programs.

This paragraph left me confused, because the M.S. program requires a thesis to graduate. I was always under the impression that thesis ≈ research. Wouldn't it be better preparation to acquire experience in graduate coursework and produce a Master's thesis than to simply get a B.S. thesis? It seems to me that according to this paragraph, the only reason to get a B.S. thesis instead of an M.S. thesis is to increase admissions chances to Ph.D. programs, because more is expected of M.S. students.

So, my main question is, how is a thesis different than research experience? Why is it worse to obtain an M.S. thesis (through a 5-year program) rather than a B.S. thesis, given I will apply to Ph.D. programs?

A thesis is always research, but not all research is theses.

In a five-year Masters program, one would definitely do a thesis, but these programs often have very stiff course requirements, which leave little time for research except the thesis.  Given this, it is often the case that the only research that a student does is the thesis, and that only to the level of sufficiency to obtain the degree.  Many 5-year Masters Theses are thus no better than 4-year Bachelor's theses, but will indeed be held to a higher standard (e.g., as though one had gone through a separate 2-years Masters program).

Last-minute and "merely sufficient" research work of this sort will also be much less effective at building trust and relationships with a faculty member than a longer time working on research as an undergraduate, even at a "lower" level.  This significantly impacts one's ability to get a good letter of recommendation, which is another key for PhD admission.

I suspect this is why they recommend as they do, and think it's a good thing that they do so.


Tax write-off for research-related expenses in the US? I am wondering if any research-related expenses can be applied toward a personal tax write-off (in the U.S.).  For example, assume I traveled to a conference or meeting to present my research, and all the expenses were paid out-of-pocket.  Or, assume that I purchase some equipment or supplies that is used for my research.  Does a provision in the tax code exist that would allow the expenses to be considered a tax write off?  If so, a link to the IRS rule would be greatly appreciated!

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal/tax advice.

I believe you can deduct these as unreimbursed employee expenses.  For 2013, this was Line 21 of Form 1040 Schedule A.  Details can be found in IRS Pub. 529.  It lists a number of examples of expenses that would be deductible on this line, including:

Research expenses of a college professor
Travel related to your work
Tools and supplies used in your work
Subscriptions to professional journals
Dues to professional societies

There are a couple of major caveats:

Roughly, you can only deduct the amount that exceeds 2% of your adjusted gross income (AGI).  More specifically, you take the amount of your unreimbursed employee expenses, add the rest of your miscellaneous itemized deductions if any (see Pub. 529 for the list), and subtract 2% of your AGI; you can deduct the difference.  So this may only apply if your research expenses are fairly substantial, or you have other significant miscellaneous itemized deductions.  (Note that miscellaneous itemized deductions do not include the big itemized deductions like charitable donations, state taxes, or mortgage interest.)
You have to itemize deductions to do this.  If you don't have many other itemized deductions, you may be better off just taking the standard deduction.
Of course, you cannot deduct expenses that were reimbursed.

Note that you might also get good answers on http://money.stackexchange.com.


Does mentoring a summer student during a postdoc help get tenure-track position? I am interested in a tenure-track position at a university with 9 months hard money and 3 months soft money during the summer (by this I mean something between a liberal arts college and an R1 research institution). However, I'm concerned about my lack of teaching experience. I was a TA for some lab courses in grad school but that's about it. Now as a postdoc, would mentoring a summer undergraduate student help my application in the "teaching" qualifications that hiring committees look for?

If this is all you've got that go ahead and put it in your applications.  However, you'll still look very inexperienced in teaching in comparison with applicants who've actually taught classes.

The question is about teaching experience and positions in the US at institutions that are somewhere between liberal arts colleges and R1 universities.  The question doesn't mention the discipline, and this could be important.

I've chaired several tenure track search committees in mathematics over the last few years at such an institution (my institution is a "School of Mines".)  We get hundreds of applications for every tenure track position and everyone we've hired recently has had significant teaching experience, typically including working as a TA during graduate school and then doing additional teaching of classes as part of postdoc or visiting assistant professor positions for one or more years.

In my experience, new tenure-track hires in other science and engineering disciplines tend to have somewhat less teaching experience than in mathematics.  However, I'd say that most new hires at my institution have at least one or more semesters of experience teaching classes.


I think my PhD thesis has been plagiarised. What are the professional steps to take? Background: I completed my PhD last Christmas and received it later on in the year.

My supervisor was very absent (there in person, but not at all a mentor)/not very supportive during my PhD. Early on during my PhD I wrote a paper with one of my fields world leading professors, who was a friend of my supervisor.

My supervisor regularly discussed my work with this individual and suggested that I send my unpublished manuscripts and thesis to them to get feed back. The professor also visited the group, where they read my draft thesis. They did give goodfeed back and I considered this professor a friend and a mentor.

During last year it came to my attention that one of this professors PhD students has produced a near identical thesis to my own. They do reference my first paper however, and then go on to tackle the same problem using the same method (devised in my paper). At that time, I spoke to my supervisor, who had a conversation with this professor. They claimed that there was no plagiarism and that it was simply a coincidence. My supervisor was happy with that explanation and said it should be dropped. I'm convinced that it is more than that (even the chapter topics are the same), and I have email proof of sending works to this professor. But have not proof that it made it to their PhD student.

My PhD department was terrible with lots of shady stuff going on (I complained, but it all fell on deaf ears). After landing a job I just decided to put it down as a bad experience and thanked my luckly stars that I was done.

However I've been recently thinking about this, what is to stop this person of turning this situation around and trying to accuse me of plagiarising them? How do I protect myself?
Should I bring this up with somebody else at the university? If so, who? Would emails (forwarded on to an auxiliary gmail account) be sufficient
evidence? At no point did this professor state that their student was working on something similar. (nor did I know of this students existence)
Would they wonder why I hadn't brought this up sooner? (its been several months) It annoyed the hell out of me, but I was just glad be done and focus on my future career. I had complained about other stuff going on in the department, but no one was interested and so I figured that this too would be ignored.

I'm so glad to be away from this toxic group, but am now worried that this could be completely turned around and add insult to injury.

Allow me to clarify: I took the method that I devised in my first paper (with which the professor was a co-author) and applied it to a very specific problem. I then wrote this up and sent it to the professor and asked him to review it (as it is/was quite an important contribution to the field and as stated above, over the years they we happy to review my work. I had also hoped that they would be a co-author again, as it extended our first paper in a significant way). I then completed my thesis (said professor read my draft) and the aim was to apply this method to other specific problems, however it turned out not to be possible (as I proved/discussed with said professor) and so this manuscript (and first paper) became the cornerstone of my PhD. I planned on publishing the second manuscript after my PhD submission was out the way. It turns out that this work is also the basis of his PhD students thesis, which was submitted only a few months after my own. They do however reference my first paper (as, obviously, do I) but then go on to do the work in my second manuscript. When you compare the thesis, it is the same chapter lay out as my own: first paper broken into several topics each forming a chapter. Manuscript broken into several topics each forming a chapter. Each of there chapters covers the same topic (in the same order and very similar chapter structure) as my own. This is what I mean by "near identical".

The best course of action would be if you can somehow elevate this to the journal/conference paper level. Was your newer research (the one they have plagiarized) published in a journal or at least at a conference? Is perhaps their (plagiarized) research published in a journal, not only in PhD thesis?

Monitor the student in question and his publications for a while. If he tries to publish that stuff that he lifted from you in a journal, then it is the time to start the action, and simply notify the editor of the journal or a conference about the suspected plagiarism. This way, it will be handled by people not connected to your previous lab and indeed plagiarism in paper is considered to be really bad stuff for one's reputation (often PhD theses are not publicly accessible, papers are).


Where Self-plagiarism Begins and Where it Ends Academics sometimes publish popular books based on their own research, but not always cite properly themselves, even when book references other authors properly. Moreover, sometimes I can see that one author publishes very similar (but not same) papers on the same topic, without self-referencing, even though it can be seen that the author recycles some of hers/his ideas. Even respectable people in the profession do it.

Given this where is the line beyond which we are talking about self-plagiarism?

On one hand it feels bit wrong to do this even in a small amount. On the other hand I can imagine that it can be impractical, and cumbersome to piously self-reference yourself, and I also worry that that might seem egocentric to the reader.

It is no brainier that copying part of your old article, and submitting it as new is clearly wrong. On the other hand it does not seems to be wrong using the main ideas, quotes (or chapter titles), or paraphrasing minor ideas of your earlier papers to publish a book without using the same referencing standards for yourself as you use for other authors.

Any opinion on this? Should I always reference myself as well as I do others, or is it ok to be more lenient on yourself as long as it is not more excessive then it is usual in the field? Do you think that this depends mostly on the context?

Let us set aside debate about whether the word "self-plagiarism" makes logical sense. The concept is fairly generally acknowledged, and rests on a simple ethical principle: it is wrong to give the impression that a work is novel when it is not.

We can further distinguish two distinct forms of self-plagiarism:

Literal self-plagiarism, in which words are directly reused.
Conceptual self-plagiarism, in which the words are different but the content is (largely) the same.

From this definition, we can elaborate several key points of evaluating whether a reuse counts as self-plagiarism:

Is there an expectation of novelty (e.g., a journal article, conference paper, or book)?  In some cases, such as one-paragraph conference abstracts in some fields, there may not be an expectation of novelty, in which case there is no "impression of novelty" to be considered and self-plagiarism is not at issue (the reviewers may still decide they are uninterested if the work is insufficiently novel).
Is more than a trivial amount of material being directly reused?  If so, then they must either be in a quotation, or else the publication must be clear that portions have previously been published, and a citation to the prior publication must be included.  Otherwise, it is self-plagiarism. (Note that this may not apply to "non-creative" words, such as a tersely written methods section).
If concepts are shared with prior publication, then there must be clear attribution of the significant antecedents.  There is a lot of flexibility that enters with "significant," and different communities interpret this in different ways, so you need to know your community expectations.  Here, one basically treats one's own results just like those of any other scientist, with the exception that one cannot claim ignorance of one's own prior publications.


Difference between "faculty member" and "faculty person" I've occasionally heard the phrase "faculty person" used, apparently as an alternative to "faculty member".
Are these exactly equivalent, or are there any subtle differences in meaning, connotation, or usage?  Is there any reason to prefer one to the other in any particular setting?

"Faculty member" is idiomatic.  "Faculty person" is not.  Otherwise there is no difference.


Is publishing as an undergraduate a thing that really happens? Sometimes, there are questions on here about undergraduate students publishing research (see here, here, and here). The answers don't seem particularly surprised that this is happening or try to dissuade the asker, they treat it like a normal question.

In my entire life, I've never heard of undergraduates publishing results apart from a handful of examples from famous science prodigies.

Furthermore, my experience of undergraduate was not conducive at all to publishing. I graduated from a mediocre UK university, and there was no original research done at all. Undergraduate is for getting you up to speed on the foundations of a field, preparing you for postgraduate where you study one sub-field, then a PhD where you push the boundaries of a sub-sub-field.

The questions linked above give advice like, "Discuss it with your supervisor". But as far as I'm aware undergraduates don't have supervisors.

Is this really as common as it would seem from questions on here? Is it a regional thing? Something that happens only at top universities?

Most undergraduates do not publish, but it's quite normal for undergraduates who get involved in research to end up publishing.

Reasons why few undergraduates publish include:

They aren't interested in research, or are more interested in all the myriad other awesome things you can spend your time on as a newly (semi)independent adult in college.
They are interested in research, but don't manage to find a good mentor (typically a professor) to work with.  Nearly all undergraduate institutions have professors doing research, but some institutions or departments within an institution have a lot more going on than others.
They get connected to a research project, but their work isn't publishable.  Undergraduates are typically unreliable (see first point), and so often are given high-risk or boring work (a friend of mine got a "research" job one summer crushing rocks into fine powder with a mortar and pestle).
They do publishable research, but it doesn't come out until they are no longer an undergraduate.  Even the fastest project rarely takes less than six months from start to publication, and many take multiple years. If a student starts researching in their junior or senior year, even a great project may not result in publications during undergraduate.

That said, none of these are particularly insurmountable obstacles, and with the right combination of interest, a good environment, and a bit of luck, it's quite reasonable to have work published as an undergraduate.

Some undergraduates even become quite well-published, simply by virtue of having the right combination of skill, luck, and circumstances.  For example, this week a colleague of mine mentioned to me that one of his undergraduate students now had approximately a dozen journal publications. Until they said it, I hadn't realized this student's numbers had accumulated quite so much, but it didn't surprise me, since this student is a good contributor to a complex many-person project that publishes frequently.

In short: undergraduate publication is statistically infrequent, but entirely normal.