Mimeo, Technical report, Manuscript: what kind of creatures are they? (I consider this question to be an extension and complement of this one).

My field is Economics. It is not uncommon for a published research paper to reference a (third-party) "technical report", or a "mimeo" or a "manuscript", usually accompanied by the name of a University only (apart of course from author and a year as date). I know the meaning of these words, and that they represent something different from a "working paper" - the latter is almost always part of an instituted series of publications by a research or academic institution.

My question asks help in clarifying how such documents come about as part of the activity of a professional academic, and why they are "left" at that "status" and not, say, "advance" to at least "working paper" status. After all, they are referenced because they contain research results.

I can imagine some situations: for example a "Technical Report" could be the very detailed presentation of a large-scale econometric or simulation study, that was then condensed to a working paper and then maybe to a published one. Or some very specialized theoretical/mathematical result which has value but it is too narrow to even be published as a "note" (and perhaps belongs to some future monograph or textbook). Or even, these are works that have been submitted and rejected, but their author thinks they nevertheless have value, and it so happens that he stops trying to publish them and decides to keep them public in his university and/or personal website, as proof that he is fulfilling his obligation to do research.

Am I off the mark? How publicly accessible and referenced scientific works (even from recent years) come to settle in a "manuscript/mimeo/Technical Report" status?

Most often I find that these are works in progress, unfinished or otherwise unsuitable for regular academic publication. I've written technical reports as an undergrad as part of an internal project for a non-research entity that simply described the progress we made on a project. There was little context for publication outside the organization itself, and not enough novelty to try to pull some context together. However, these documents were referred to internally to justify further work in the area due to the feasibility that we showed for the project. Sometimes, when they're not too proprietary, some organizations will put these kinds of reports up on their website to show the kinds of things they are working on. Maybe several will be combined at a later point as the foundational parts of a proposal or a "real" paper.

I haven't seen "mimeo" used ever in my life except in the context of the output of a Mimeograph machine which was an early way to duplicate documents. It's possible that mimeos of technical reports in the scientific report context used to get passed around the big national and industrial labs so that people could find out what was going on internally well before there'd be an internal website or wiki to browse for like-minded researchers. Otherwise, that's not really a common term that I encounter.


Is it reasonable to start a PhD during the Master's dissertation semester? I would like to start my doctorate in the same university during the last semester of my Master's. Do you think it is wise to do this?

Think that I will have to start writing my Master's dissertation, meanwhile taking PhD courses (both starting 2016's fall and finishing by mid 2017's spring) and right next to start my PhD thesis (2017's fall).

So, what is your advice?

I think it's an extremely attractive proposition, but not necessarily realistic. For a start, your master's degree/dissertation result most likely won't have come in by the time the PhD term starts (and your master's dissertation will give your institution a good idea of what your PhD performance will be). For my own institution, I submitted my dissertation mid Sept and my mark came in early December. There's no way I could have started a PhD a week after submitting my dissertation! But your deadlines may well be different.

Secondly, how you would have time to do a well-thought out PhD proposal while you are doing your master's dissertation is beyond me. Don't do too many things at once. Bear in mind that when your master's dissertation finishes it's a good idea to start thinking about your PhD topic pretty soon afterwards anyway. Work through the proposal carefully and thoughtfully during the Autumn and submit before Xmas/Jan - especially if you are going for funding. Then you will have to work on your supporting statement.

Thirdly, it may be a good idea to collect yourself and have a year between master's and PhD. I'm currently at that point and while I do miss academic responsibilities, I do have a couple of things to involve myself with in my field. Join your library, do some reading. You may also appreciate a year [well, it's less than a year] to have a little time out before your full-on PhD.

Summary: while it's extremely attractive as an idea to do PhD straight after master's I don't think it's practical. You need mental and physical space to do things well and to commit to both properly. Don't push yourself too hard and don't be scared of your year in between the two. As you must know from your time in master's, it's better to pace yourself rather than to rush things.


Why is there still so much academic gibberish? I was checking a paper that was posted on Twitter where everyone seemed to be so enthusiastic about, so I had a short check on it. Here is the first line:

Post-Cartesian frameworks, including developments within the embodied
and enactive cognitive sciences, complex systems science, and
dialogical approaches to cognition, strongly emphasize the inherently
indeterminable nature of the person and the inextricably entangled
relationship between person, other, and technology.

And it goes on with:

Automation, on the one hand, is something that is achieved once a
given process is complete, that is, it is understood, and discrete
such that it can be implemented from a set beginning to a set finish
reliably. People and social systems, on the other hand, are
partially-open, always becoming, and inherently unfinalizable
(Bakhtin, 1984). Automation as complete understanding, therefore,
stands at odds with human behaviour, which is inherently incomplete,
making machine classification and prediction futile.

Is it me, or is this paper obscurely written? And why didn't anyone seemingly notice it, given that it was both peer-reviewed and published? Why were people so enthusiastic about it, instead of admitting they just didn't have a clue of what it is about (or at least to understand the arguments presented in the paper)?
Why is there still so much academic gibberish?
Related link: http://www.skeptophilia.com/2014/02/academic-gibberish.html
Edit:
My mistake! It might not be peer reviewed. But I'm still wondering if this is very common in academia, or if it is dependent from field to field?

There's one of my papers, much of which is couched in seriously obfuscated language: in places, even worse than the example linked by OP. (I won't say which paper, in case I embarrass my co-authors.)  In my case, I think the reasons were:

More than a decade elapsed between production of the first complete draft of the paper and its submission to the journal where it was eventually published.  During that period, we changed our minds several times about some of the core conclusions; but each time, some bits of explanatory text got left in the paper that were only really apposite in the context of now-obsolete conclusions.
During that period, my co-authors and I were not in very frequent contact, and we ended up using edits to the text of the paper to communicate with each other about the science in the paper; this produced text that was sub-optimal for communicating with readers.
Despite the long total drafting period, the submitted version was finalized in a tearing hurry to meet a deadline for a thematic issue of the journal, so there was no time for a thorough pass through the text for clarity and concision.
Perhaps most significantly of all: the referees let us get away with it.


During one's career in academia, in the STEM fields of research at U.S. universities, what are typical examples of academic politics? What are some typical examples of "academic politics" that professors face in academia?

Does academic politics mainly affect younger professors?

I've seen the term "academic politics" come up in some past questions on this site, but I realize that I don't actually know what it means - I just know that it is something that can cause students to quit PhD programs and professors to leave academia.

(I kept the question specific to STEM fields of research at U.S. universities, just in case my question would be too broad without it.)

Almost every aspect of the job has politics invovled. Who teaches which classes, on what days and in which rooms. The distribution of TA support. What committees you serve on and what roles you play on those committees. Which lab space and office space you get. Rotation of sabbatical and research leaves. If there is any departmental funding, how it is spent. The hiring of new faculty and the admission of PhD students. I have even seen fights over what types of pens are kept in the supply closet.

Generally as a new faculty, there are certain thing in your contract and other thing agreed to verbally and in emails. In toxic environments, and even in some good environments, these things will come under attack. Even things in you contract will come under attack from colleagues who want to take advantage of you.

That is not to say it is all bad and not all colleagues will be out to get you. In good departments there will be more people looking out for you and only a handful of bad apples.


Creating a collaborative project for a group of 10 graduate neuroscience students from various backgrounds I am taking part in a seminar-course given to graduate neuroscience students.
The students come from various backgrounds; mainly - Computer science, physics and life science (biology).

In the current course format, each student chooses an interesting neurobiology subject and gives a short (1 hour) literature overview of it.

This format works well, but I feel the course does not fulfill its full potential.

I am trying to think of a new, better format for this course - suggestions would be warmly appreciated.

An example vision is of a medium sized project that could be divided into a few sub projects, each would be assigned to one or a small group of the students. Ideally :

The project would have some impact on \ helpful to the science community.
Each sub-project would allow its student to shine by using his unique background.
The sum of all the mini-projects would be greater of its parts.

An example of such a project would be to create a new or expand an existing (wiki-like) open knowledge-base of a specific subject.

Your ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Sometimes the hardest part is figuring out what the project should be.

I use a large-group project for one of my classes, and I've started soliciting faculty in certain departments with an email a few months before class gets underway.  Essentially, this email states:

My class will be working on a semester-long project soon.
I would rather the students work on something real-world, as opposed to a toy project.
Because these are students, there are no guarantees you'll get a useful result when they are done. However, you won't pay anything, either, and you might get lucky.
If you have something that might be a suitable idea, contact me.

The result has been a big success. Students tend to work harder when they feel like something useful and tangible may come from their efforts. Moreover, this set-up requires the students to work with real "customers", which is sometimes one of the most valuable parts of the learning process.


Does grant funded equipment result in authorship? Just a quick question regarding authorship. Recently, a PI won a grant, which was used to buy some computer equipment (~$1000 piece of computation equipment along with some other equipment not relevant to the post).

I am a student that has been using the piece of equipment, as it was not being used by their students.

I am now going to be submitting a manuscript, which used the equipment as mentioned above. Does this entail the PI who won the funds to pay for it authorship? Or, as I believe, just acknowledgment (for both the grant and the PI who won it)?

EDIT 1: I should note, my research has nothing to do whatsoever with the PI's grant or their research.

EDIT 2: I found this interesting paper on the subject.

Authorship, no, not if the only contribution was a piece of equipment. Authorship at a minimum requires an intellectual contribution to the project.

Acknowledgment, perhaps. $1000 sounds like a fairly minimal investment for an acknowledgment even, but the standards for what is worthy of acknowledging are much more up to the authors of a given paper. If the work truly would not have been possible without the equipment, then it may certainly be appropriate. If you were just borrowing someone's unused computer, that doesn't sound acknowledgment-worthy to me.

On a brief note in the other direction: some people come here and ask authorship questions where they feel someone (usually an advisor) doesn't deserve authorship, but in reality they made a substantial intellectual contribution to the project. Norms for this vary by field, but make sure when you are assessing answers you get here that you are describing this PI's complete contribution accurately.


Can I do a PhD after being out of academia for 5-10 years? I'm from Europe, for context.

Very soon I will graduate with a Computer Science Master's degree. I have a paper as a first author at one not-so-famous conference, but I also have a paper at a NeurlIPS conference as the last author.

After my master's degree, I would like to go into the industry for 5-10 years and then later on pursue a PhD. Assume that I won't publish anything in the period of 5-10 years when I will be in the industry.

We thus get to my question: Can I do a PhD after being out of academia for 5-10 years?

I know that I most likely won't be accepted to a prestigious university like Berkley or Harvard, but, that doesn't seem to matter that much, if I will produce quality work.

What do you think?

Why would you want to do the PhD?

I don't ask this question to be nasty, but you really do need to know why you want to do it. I am currently working for a PhD in subjects that I have not studied or practised for 50 years (yes! 5-oh).

I could not have afforded to interrupt my reasonably successful professional career to take on academic research that would not have enhanced my subsequent career, but, in my case, having ended my professional career I was free to pursue my academic interests.

I know why I am doing it, and am very happy with that choice, but the crucial thing is to be really clear with yourself about your motives.


Bibliography entry for website found via Google Cache I am writing a paper and wish to include a website as a reference. However, the website died a few months ago and is no longer viewable. Interestingly, I've never seen the live website myself, but have only ever seen it via Google Cache.

So, how do I add this source to my bibliography? Do I do everything with the data from the original article (including the original URL) with the date that Google cached the website? Or do I put the Google Cache URL and today's date? If the latter, should I modify any of the other terms of the bibliographic item?

As you've never seen the original website, you can't reference that. You don't know how accurate the cache is. For instance, I've seen Google Cache rearrange the formatting and strip out images from websites.

Based on that, the only place you could sensible reference is the cache file.

But, the cache file is likely to disappear very soon. It could only be live for a matter of days. I would save a copy as quickly as possible and grab images. Depending on the nature of how you want to refer to this, there can even be cases where it's appropriate to include a screenshot.

If readers will need to refer back to the information on the original site, I'd suggest archiving this somewhere online yourself (it could be on a blog). In that case, on your archive, provide the background to how this was obtained. In the paper, reference your archive.

You will also need to note somewhere in the paper that the original site was closed (and ideally a date).

I've come across this problem several times in my contract cheating research, where the sites we collected data from were closed, went offline, merged with another site, completely changed their format, or reset all their data. All it was really possible to do was to write a commentary around the changes.

You might also want to do a search for the quote you want, just to see if there's an alternative source you can reference. In some cases, it might really just be easier to not mention the website at all, unless this is absolutely crucial to the success of your paper.


Inquiry about reference of dropout of grad school I studied briefly for a master's degree in economics at Boise State University, USA. After 4 weeks of first semester, I decided to drop all of my enrolled course because this program is not right for me at all. Consequently, I would like to ask you folks whether I should refer this incident in CV or SOP when I apply for master's degree in another university in the future, 3-4 years from now? For example applying MBA program in UK.

It is possible that Boise State hasn't kept a record of your attendance if it was so short. Request a transcript from them before you make any decisions. If they have no record then you need not mention it in future. But if there is a record then it might depend on what the record says. If there is a grade assigned (incomplete or whatever), then it might be necessary to state it somewhere, though I doubt that the CV is the correct place. If the incident was brief and inconsequential, then your mention of it should also be brief.

If the time period represents a gap in your education/work life it might be more necessary to mention it. However, I doubt that anyone would hold a brief mistake made in the past against you in any way.


Is this a tired phrase? -- journal article titles that start with "Towards a theory of..." Many journal articles start with the phrase:  "Towards a theory of...", as in these real examples from diverse fields:

"Towards a theory of innovation in services" (Management)
"Towards a theory of soft terms for the supersymmetric Standard Model" (Physics)
"Towards a theory of communicative competence" (Sociology, Linguistics)
"Towards a theory of parallel programming" (Computer Science)

My literal interpretation is that a full theory is not being presented; instead, the article presents useful elements or steps.
But I wonder if this phrase is overused and tired. It seems like it could be a mask or even false modesty, perhaps to deflect criticism. My inclination is to avoid it if my article actually presents a theory, or most elements of a theory.  I would be inclined to use it only if the article was presenting a primarily a directional argument, i.e. "go this way, and not that way" to make progress on this theory.
Based on this data from Google Ngram Viewer, English books, it seem like it is declining in popularity:

Question: Do you think this phrase is tired, and therefore should be avoided when possible?  Or do you think it is valid and should not be avoided?
I'm looking for answers that are based on experience, conventions, and norms in particular fields and institutions.

I think this phrase should be avoided when possible: not because it's tired, but because it is hesitant and unspecific.

A title like Towards a theory of branch sprockets tells me that the author wanted to present a theory of of branch sprockets, but they didn't quite manage and they ran out of time. That's not a bad thing in itself, but it's a weak pitch for a paper. The best way to structure your paper is to think of what what you're presenting and put that in the title. Here, you're thinking of what you wanted to present, but can't.

I would prefer a title like A partial theory of branch sprockets or A fast, approximate algorithm for branch sprockets optimization. The point of a title is to let me know whether I should read this paper instead of the other 50 papers I could be reading. These titles tell me what the return will be on the investment of reading. With the Towards a theory... approach, the authors are only telling me what their long term goals are, not which step they took towards this theory, towards which theory in particular they hope to be moving, what steps still remain, and so on.


Can I publish a paper in a good journal without having an academic position? This community is introduced by a friend of mine about a week ago and I hope I can write my questions clearly (English is not my first language and I normally have poor communication skills...)

My story: I started my BSc in mathematics about 22 years ago (when I was age 9) and I decided (had to) quit after one painful semester that I still remember it. I studied on my own and a few years later I decided to solve the notorious impenetrable problem the Hodge conjecture. I have not achieved that goal yet but (I think) I have more than enough that people get a fields medal for that. And with my past experiences I believe that I am most probably not wrong in the technicalities (peer review need to be done though)... Nonetheless I can't continue working hard on the problem as I used to because of spending a lot more time on making money (from teaching to laboring jobs) so better to publish whatever I have to possibly get a research job than living a fading life and every-day-increasing severe-depression. But there are many obstacles I believe:

1- Can I publish an article without having an academic position and even without a university degree, at all?

2- I never care about fame and I absolutely don't care if solving some unsolved problem is attached to a particular name (=person) but handing over 18 years of my research to someone who have authority to easily publish it has a high risk of his/her plagiarism temptation thus ruining a possible would-be good life of mine. How can I trust someone?

3- Evaluation of my results is a necessity before I have any claim of that but if it turns out to be valuable enough can I get an academic position without having a physical degree and not going through all many years of official undergraduate and graduate programs in mathematics?

By the way, I hold an Iranian passport which means that I cannot travel Europe/US/Canada/... to present my research with just an invitation for a conference. (Visa-on-arrival is available for Iranian citizens in Mozambique or Samoa airports but I don't think that be helpful; no offense).

PS Please feel free to edit my post if my English is not clear. Thank you all in advance. :)

Variants of this question have been asked many times.

No, you do not need to have an academic position or be enrolled in a university to publish in journals.
You can prevent plagiarism (or at least make it easily detectable) by posting a preprint of your paper on arXiv. This establishes that you are the first person to come up with the idea.
It's doable, but rare.


Is it a breach of protocol to contact people higher in the academic hierarchy for social reasons? I met two people at a past conference and we had a nice conversation there, but no further contact. Recently, I've seen their names on the list of accepted papers of an upcoming conference I'm attending. Since I'll stay at the conference location for an additional day afterwards and don't know anyone else there, I planned to write them an email and ask whether they had any plans for that day.

However, during looking for email addresses, I noticed that they are both full professors, which I wasn't aware of before. I'm a PhD student. Would it be a breach of etiquette to contact them? While conferences are often used for networking, I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable.

It is great that you are thinking about networking as a PhD student.

My advice would be escalate the relationship by one step. Going from a "nice" conversation at a previous conference (where no email or contract info was exchanged) to a social activity outside of a conference is a bit like asking someone you had a coffee with once to go on a trip with you. It escalates the relationship very quickly and could get awkward. Furthermore, many people don't stay extra days at conference locations so it is likely to be unsuccessful.

Less intense ways to connect:

Send them an email saying that you noticed they were presenting at the conference, and you are looking forward to seeing their work and chatting again
Run into them at the conference (as Ian_Fin suggested) and ask what they are doing for dinner or lunch on a conference day


What should one do when the professor uses condensed terse notes in a graduate class? I am in a graduate course of functional analysis (in the abstract setting of topological vector spaces) in which the professor uses his own notes. The notes are very condensed and terse and there is no reference. Classes consist of student presentations in turn and the professor does not lecture.

I struggle with the materials in the notes and try to read related books (e.g., Functional Analysis by Rudin, Topological Vector Spaces by Schaefer, Topological Vector Spaces by Narici and  Beckenstein) as much as I can, so that I can somehow understand it. I find this ridiculously time-consuming and painful. The worst thing is that approaches in the notes are usually quite different from the standard references I can find and I am not even familiar with those references.

Is such situation common in the graduate schools in US (especially for math majors)? What shall I do to deal with such difficulties and (maybe) benefit from a class like this?

To directly respond to your first question: yes, "density" is quite common in middle-to-top tier grad programs in math in the U.S., once one gets beyond the "required/core" courses. There is a lot of backstory for almost all subjects, and faculty want to catch up to somewhere close to current events. It is also common that one's conception of an incisive, efficient, insightful course is not mirrored accurately in existing textbooks, so one writes notes to match. (This is better than "in the old days", pre-TeX, when most often there were no published notes of any kind, not even hand-written, so note-taking in class was critical.)

About "abstract" functional analysis in particular, yes, I think it is fair to say that the style of many of the standard texts (and of practitioners) has drifted in a certain direction, including a sort of "density". The hilarious and not-really-helpful opposite, from an older time, was the Dunford-Schwartz 3-volume extravaganza, which treated nearly every bit of mathematics as though readers would not have heard of it. Determinants, polynomials, etc. Naturally, this low-density high-volume approach created its own problems, not the least of which was locating the key examples that were not part of "general" mathematics, but specific to the functional-analytic ideas.

The subsequent decades' monographs or texts on "topological vector spaces" have always struck me as peculiarly unhelpful in making connections to other parts of mathematics, though "maybe it's just me". I cannot keep all the possible adjectives straight, and I do not see the point of many of them, nor are examples clear to me. Again, maybe it's just my own limited interest, since I care about "functional analysis" for "applications" (to automorphic forms and related matters) rather than to itself, or to "applications outside mathematics".

A point that was not clear to me for a long time is that the "more exotic" types of topological vector spaces (and families thereof, as in Sobolev-space theory) are not merely "handy", but essential in making many innocent-seeming discussions legitimate. So, not merely Frechet spaces, but LF-spaces (strict inductive limits of Frechet) already appearing as the correct topology on $C^o_c(\mathbb R)$, for example. The notion of quasi-completeness really is necessary, since LF-spaces are never "complete" (unless they're secretly Frechet), but are always quasi-complete. And quasi-completeness is enough for many essential things to still work, like the Gelfand-Pettis (or Bochner) ideas about vector-valued integrals, and Grothendieck's results about holomorphic vector-valued functions, and the strong operator topology (weaker than the Banach-space uniform norm topology on operators on a Hilbert space). Holomorphic distribution-valued functions, and so on. (My on-line functional analysis notes certainly go in such directions.)

In short, examples are critical, both to illustrate adjectives and theorems, and to see the necessity of introducing various seemingly-exotic types of topological vector spaces.

At the same time, I think building up a resistance to random counter-example demands is good, much as with point-set topology. Some counter-examples are significant, others aren't. Much time can be killed, not terribly profitably, by trying to illustrate every possible logical distinction. Don't do it.


What will be implications of not publishing officially? I am not a professional academic; I am an amateur mathematician.
I have developed an entirely new mathematical theory.
I have written a book about my theory and put it online at my web site.

I am considering whether to put it at an online Git hosting (such as GitHub.com) under a copyleft license instead of publishing in an official academic way. What could be the consequences of me violating the normal academic way?

I doubt whether professional mathematicians will refer to my work that is not published officially.
Since two objects cannot occupy the same place, I prevent others from publishing their own research duplicating my content.

This could have both negative and positive consequences:

The negative is that I may stall research in an entire part of mathematics, so that nobody could publish their own research on this topic.

The positive is that my little nail would be a nail in the coffin of continuing the existing way of disseminating scientific knowledge, as nobody would be able to step over my sharp nail. As an unbreakable obstacle on the way to do scientific research in the old way in an entire field of mathematics, this could crash the entire existing system (which is probably good).

My question: Please help me predict the implications of me disseminating my research in this rude way instead of publishing articles in math journals as most mathematicians do. Who would win in this struggle to integrate my research into the academic system: I or the rest of the world?

I want also to note that publishing with Git will greatly help in hunting possible errors in my book. It will also much ease publishing new revisions of the book.

It's difficult to answer this question effectively because it is premised on some incorrect assumptions.  Let me begin by correcting them:

There is no such thing as an "official" scientific publication.  There is no Board Of Serious Scientists who determines which publications are legitimate and which are not.  Science is a marketplace of ideas, and many things that have never gone through a typical peer-review process have gained high citations.  For example, the Agile Manifesto has hundreds of citations and vast scientific impact, but has never existed as anything other than a page on various websites.  Thus, you are not "violating" anything, you are just choosing an unusual and often less effective route for getting people to notice the significance of your work.
If you publish work, it doesn't prevent somebody else from publishing the same ideas if they don't know about you.  Parallel invention of concepts happens all of the time in science.  You cannot magically exclude people from working in an area by "getting there first."  If nobody has noticed the significance of your work, it's as though your work doesn't exist.  If they do notice you, then that doesn't stop them either: they'll just build on your work and cite your informal publication.

So, what are the actual advantages and disadvantages of publishing in this informal way?

Advantages: You don't need to convince any other researchers that your work has value, you can just publish it.
Disadvantages: Your work may simply lie unnoticed and disregarded.  Putting the source for an informal publication on GitHub isn't much different than sticking a PDF on your website.

Let me also answer the question that you haven't asked: how do you get your work to have a scientific impact?  For this, you need to figure out how to engage with the scientific community.  Go to conferences and listen to other people's talks in related areas.  Figure out what questions can be answered by your work that cannot be answered by prior methods.  Above all, learn the language that other researcher use so that you can speak to them in a way that will not set off "crackpot alarms." You may well have created a fabulous new work of mathematical theory, but using words like "entirely new mathematical theory" sets off crackpot alarms, because they are frequently used by crackpots and rarely by researchers who actually have something to contribute.


How to create an editorial board for a new journal I want to start a new scientific journal. After doing all he initial work about setting up a journal now I want to know how will I be able to create an editorial board?

Recruiting a strong initial editorial board for a new journal is not easy.  There are several important criteria:

You need editors with strong reputations, to attract attention to the journal and inspire confidence that it will be well run.
You need to assemble a group that is diverse enough to cover the full range of submissions within the journal's area of coverage.
You need editors who have enough time and energy to do a good job.  Keep in mind that most of the good candidates are already overcommitted.
You need editors who are committed to the success of the journal and who are eager to inform the community about it and solicit submissions.

Ideally, you have a great idea for a journal that fills a troubling gap in the publishing landscape, and prominent people you mention it to say "What a wonderful idea!  How can I help?"  If that's the case, then you will still have to make wise choices and put in a lot of hard work, but your chances of success are reasonable.  On the other hand, if you have to convince people to join the board, or to restrict your attention to people who are eager to join any editorial board that will take them, then you'll have a much more difficult time.

If you don't yet have enough connections in this field to identify and recruit the right people to join the board, then founding a journal is a bad idea (and it would be wise to wait for a point in your career at which you'll be better positioned for success).  I don't mean to be harsh, but your question does not inspire confidence.  If you do a poor job of setting up a new journal, it will be a negative for the academic community, and it's not easy to do a good job.

  After doing all he initial work about setting up a journal now I want to know how will I be able to create an editorial board?

Maybe I'm reading too much into this sentence, but it comes across as suggesting you view the initial work as the hard part.  From my perspective, anything that comes before assembling the editorial board is easy compared with the scholarly and management decisions that will follow.  The formalities of setting up a journal are easy (which is why there are so many low-quality journals); the hard part is building a high-quality journal that that achieves all your academic goals and operates stably and successfully for many years to come.


Is there any unwritten rule against hiring already unemployed PhDs? I have seen several articles in internet about a general bias against hiring long term unemployed people in non-necessarily academic jobs, see for example here and here. I was wondering if there is such an unwritten rule in academia as well?

I am sure someone might say it is not the case and according to the rules X and Y, it is considered a discrimination and it is forbidden by law and so on. I am not asking what the written laws say. I would like to know if there is such a bias in hiring committees or not? And if there is such a thing how can a long term unemployed academic do to overcome this obstacle?

I don't think there is an unwritten rule, precisely, but I think once you are not employed in academia (even if you have a job somewhere else), your chances of getting a position in academia decrease extremely rapidly.  Competition for positions is so massive, and there are so many well qualified applicants that I think someone who is not currently in an academic or research position is unlikely to be taken seriously.  Not to mention that you typically aren't doing the kind of research and networking you need to get a position if you are unemployed (not always, but often).  I think some fields where it's very hard to get work are a bit more forgiving (though, of course there there is even more competition), but this is part of what keeps people in adjunct positions, since it is a way of staying "in the game."


Article citation tracking I am trying to find the origin of an idea based on journal articles.

To elaborate more:

Let's say object A affects object B in a certain manner and this was originally discovered by Researcher A a long time ago, say in the 1960s.

Subsequently, until now, there are many variations of studies around the idea that object A affects object B. Many journal articles revolving around this central idea have been published.

My dilemma is:

I do not know who (i.e. Researcher A) or which was the original paper published regarding this idea.  Is there any facility/journal resources that allow me to track the origin of this particular idea? Does Scopus have such a citation tracking ability?

There are no such online databases that could track down origins of ideas. To understand why a citation is used you have to read the paper. To get to the bottom of an idea you might have to follow several pathes of citations.


Would this situation be considered plagiarism? - humanities assignment Here is what happened.
In one of my humanities class, I had to do a project that involved creating exam questions from the reading material and explain why they a relevant in today’s society. In my rough drafts, I would write key points from the readings as a reference for writing my questions. One of the questions I chose was a true and false format for the definition of culture. I made it a false statement by switching the the word culture with civilization. I wrote the definition of culture from my professor’s presentation and underneath I wrote my own definition. Later in the day after I got home from work, I wrote the question into my final draft. I don’t know why this occurred maybe I was tired but when I was writing it into my final draft, I misread and included the professor’s definition rather than my own. I did not include in text citations; however, in the study guide we had to create, I included my professor’s name, the name of the presentation, and where I got the information. I sent an email to my professor, but it has been four days and he still hasn’t contacted me.

It is hard for me to see plagiarism here, since you say you used the professor's definition, which is clearly known to both of you.
Of course, it is up to the professor to judge and if the rules are ver strict then perhaps you will be called to account for it.
But you did the right thing in informing the professor of the issue. I'll just have to guess that you are safe.


Should I publish as sole author and do everything or invite coauthors so that I mostly just do the programming and benchmarking? Consider the concept of opportunity cost.

There are two possible situations:

I program everything, do the evaluation with a benchmark, tell nobody, write everything and publish alone.
I program everything, do the evaluation with a benchmark, write something and publish with four other authors, that mostly write the paper.

What should I do?

To answer your possible questions:

They are not going to program, no matter what, so that doesn't help to save any time.
Publishing without telling them anything may be perceived in a suspicious way, specially by external reviewers and considering there may be past papers in which I wasn't alone.
It may also be perceived as if I'm not a good team player, which worries me, as finding a new job may be harder due to this.
The order of the authors is alphabetical, and I'm not lucky in that sense.
They are more reputed than me.

PD: the original idea for the paper either comes from me or it comes from someone else. The implementation is always my task. At this very moment I could refine one of those ideas and improve it (the previous version is submitted but not reviewed). I'm very confused about how to proceed.

PD: I am a postdoc now but I am a PhD in a different institution (I haven't defended my thesis, it's nearly finished).

I had discussion with several well-known professors with experience (30+ years in research) about this sort of thing, how did they list authorship in their early papers where they were the less well known authors. I started publishing only several years ago, so I will give their opinion (which I agree with I should add). Their response was the same across the board: the person who did most of the work they ought simply list themselves as first author when writing the paper and if the coauthors ask them about it, then they just discuss their concern with their coauthors honestly. If your coauthors are real scientists (regardless of whether they are more well known than you), and if your claim is true, they will agree with you.

If your coauthors are administrators mostly, and it's convention in your field and location, that they are added to your paper and listed ahead of you, consider working elsewhere, otherwise the problem cannot be solved in that environment.

There is another option: publish with them according to whatever convention is appropriate, and if you did not get listed as first author when you did actually most of the work, then at the same time also extend the work (>40% different material) on your own and publish a second paper in another journal as single author, covering both new and old material. (This is how you also find out who the major contributing author was on a particular work, where there are both team and individual papers at once.)

The first solution minimizes opportunity cost; the last solution requires more time and hassle for you, but you don't forgo anything academically, only some time writing a second paper and doing a bit more work.


Is it appropriate to ask the editor which changes he/she thinks is critical to the review? After months of waiting, I finally received the reviews for a letter I submitted to a IEEE journal. It’s a 3 page letter, and the first reviewer just had some clarifications regarding a figure and said the paper needed minor revisions. The second reviewer also bought up the figure that the first reviewer mention, but also said he wants us to "do more experiments" without saying what experiments we should be doing, or more "direct simulation results" without stating what he means by "direct simulation results". I did provide "direct simulation results" (atleast as per my understanding of what he would mean by direct simulation results") in the paper which I am going to highlight in my comments to the editor.

When I go to the main website, the status of the paper reads as "needs minor revision", which I am guessing is the interpretation of the editor-in-charge. It would be almost impossible to do further experiments at this point, especially since we got a 2 week submission deadline 1 week back. The original letter from the editor-in-charge also mentions that I can ask for a extension, if I cant submit within 2 weeks.

All the other points that reviewer 1/reviewer 2 bought up can be handled, and I will address them individually. However I am not sure whether the editor-in-charge even considers the 2nd reviewers concerns about "needing major revisions" seriously, since the main website mentions that the paper needs "minor revisions".

Is it appropriate to clarify with the editor regarding what he thinks about the experimental section, and whether I need to address it, by informal email?

Or should I just address all points as is typically done in replying to a review (and provide justifications for why we are not providing additional experimental validation), and hope for the best?

I am not in your discipline (I'm in the health and social sciences). I have always learned that it's best to try (somehow) to address all of the reviewers' concerns. That being said, reviewers are not always clear (as in your case), do not make reasonable suggestions, or their suggestions conflict with other reviewers' suggestions.

My suggestion is to revise how you describe the experiment and results. See how you can make your description of these things more clear. Then, when you write your response to reviewers' comments, you could say, "To address concerns by reviewer #2, we have revised and clarified the sections regarding our experiment and results. The time frame provided for the revision does not allow for additional experiments. However, if the editor feels that such work is necessary, we are open to further suggestions on improving the manuscript."

This way you do not look like you are disregarding the feedback from the reviewer and demonstrate your willingness to try and address his or her concerns. Good luck!


Why do most talented children still enter college after the age of 18? Considering how the complexity of science is growing with each passing year, it would make sense for people to start working on their degree as soon as possible. However the academic system in place in most countries doesn't seem to accommodate for that, as even the talented children still graduate after the age of 18.

Why isn't there a push to lower the age of people entering college and is it a rational decision on behalf of the government?

I don't think there is a need for this. Realistically, you can perhaps push the entrance age by one to three years: that compared with the expected working life of 44 years (from ages 23 to 67) is tiny. So, in the large scheme of things, having a small fraction of people (you suggest around 5%) increasing their work life in a 4% has a negligible impact.

What are the risks? You will be putting a lot of pressure on immature kids. Some can take it well and become successful; others will drop out soon enough; and others will end up burnt and fail catastrophically. Accelerated programs require a careful assessment of the participants, and following up to make sure they are keeping up (NOTE: no idea if they actually do it). Scaling this to a 5% of the population is a difficult undertaking, and you are up for a massive increase in drop outs, among the best students, no less.

And lastly, part of the whole educational experience is growing in both knowledge and maturity. Short cutting courses can speed up the first, but not the second.

There is a much more gentler road, and it is exposing the good students to advanced materials, done through advanced classes in high school, or taking a few university level courses, as Bill Barth mentions. This allows them to learn more, but also keeps the risks low. It also helps keeping them engaged, as they can choose to take early the subjects that they like, and later in life will take the ones that also need.


How best to split up a comprehensive literature review I've written (with a co-author) a comprehensive literature review on a particular subject. Here's the preprint (it needs some editing).
We're very happy with the way it turned out, but the problem we are running into is that it's too long: 49 pages, 23000 words if you include the references and a big summary chart at the end. It's "only" 33 pages and 16000 words if you remove those. We've been rejected from two journals already just because of the word count; most journals in this field max out at 8000 words. So, we're looking to split this up into 2-3 smaller parts and submit them separately.

But this is turning out to be tricky because it's a literature review, which means that while we do summarize research literature on four separate topics, we are also synthesizing what the whole of the research says and looking for broad trends. So it's very hard to disentangle the parts of the paper and repackage them without losing context or repeating ourselves.

The paper is currently structured as follows.

Overview
Methods -- including our methods for finding the research, databases we searched and queries we used, our inclusion criteria, and overall characteristics of the research literature we found
Findings on specific research questions (there are four of these; in the preprint we have each question as a separate section but we've since combined them all into one big section)
Discussion -- Primary themes over all the research literature, limitations of the studies, current holes in the research literature
Conclusion

It would be easy enough to write up just the findings for the different research questions, since our first and second questions are closely related and the other two could be lumped together, making two papers. But what's the best way to deal with the methods and discussion?

If I were to split this up into two papers, should I include all of our methods in the first part and then just refer to those methods in the second part? Or summarize the methods from part 1 when we write part 2? Or something else?
Should the discussion be split up so that the discussion section in part 1 only deals with the findings for part 1, and similarly for part 2? Or, should I save all discussion for just part 2? Or something else?

I worry that if we put all the methods in part 1 and all the discussion in part 2 (or part 3, if there is one) that people reading part 2 won't have the info they need for part 1 and vice versa. But if we split up the methods and discussion, I worry that we'll lose the sense of the big picture, which I think we did a good job capturing in the Too Large version.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

I would try to do 4* topic papers (one on on each subtopic within section 3).  Then do a wrapup.  I.e. 5 LPUs.

In the four topic papers you can be a skimpier on the methods (or perhaps go full bore on methods in first one and skimpy on others, but "referring" to the discussion in first one.)  The wrapup will "review" the previous 4 and make some general observations (cross-correlations, etc.).  I would be brief on definitions (less than currently in there) for the 4 topic papers.  Just basics with some footnotes (skip history entirely).  You can go more in depth on history in the wrapup self review paper.

*If a couple naturally combine, fine, do 2 or 3.  But 4 is fine too:

P.s.  I'm not an expert in your topic and I really just glanced at it.  But what I saw looked solid.

P.s.s.  Chopping into LPUs is not sleazy.  It's actually in some ways more efficient to process (at least for a reviewer!)


I'm admitted to a PhD program in mathematics, but only achieved a pass (no distinction) in masters. Will this affect my reputation in the PhD program? I'm a maths student who did his BSc at a top 10 university in England and got solid first.
After this, I decided to go to Cambridge to do Part III of the Mathematical tripos (a Masters). This was a HUGE step up for me and I felt like a fish out of water. It didn't help that I had personal problems going on in my life around the time of exams, and this ended up having an effect on my results: I got a pass grade.

The next step for me is a PhD and I have already been admitted to a program. My worry is that I don't feel I am good enough to do this. Yes, I got the place but it seems that everyone else I know who's doing a PhD ended up getting a distinction in their masters.

My question is this: how much does the Masters grade matter for fellow PhD students and supervisors? Are students with 'only' a pass looked down upon?

I am a former 'pass' Part III student. I am going to be blunt here, as I feel emotionally attached to your case and I know why you may feel frustrated (it may be due to the typical atmosphere that part III students are supplied). Part III is just a course that people want to show-off in their CVs (only one final exam at the end of the year, busy professors, for no particular reason unhealthily competitive students). Nobody has ever asked me what my grades were in Part III. Never. I am a Ph.D., did postdocs and am finalizing a good academic job.

All that matters is your hard work in your research. Forget about the scores in Part III. If research is what you want to do in the coming years, just do it without thinking about part III results. You may end up proving that the Part III degree doesn't make any difference in anyone's life for better or worse!


Why is personal information (DOB, marital status) listed on CVs in Europe and can it be omitted? I find it irrelevant to specify personal information on my CV, and frankly I do not see why they should be listed in academic applications. What is the advantage for the hiring committing to know if I am 18 or I have 17 children, aside from creating a chance to bias the hiring process with personal beliefs. Is it because they want to know that I am a prodigy child who got his/her PhD at 18 years old, or because if I am a 28 years old female married without children I will want children soon and so I will have to take maternity leave? Is this just an influence of the age/status discrimination in Europe where I see at times that  job offers are only open to certain categories of people (i.e.,younger than 30 years old) ?

If I omit this information will my CV be frowned upon? Or will they think I am hiding something? I do not know what I would be hiding because age can probably be guessed from the CV anyway.

Marital status is completely irrelevant: leave it out. Discrimination based on "Oh, I think you're about to have kids and take a bunch of maternity leave" is illegal.

In practice, date of birth can be inferred from the dates at which you got your degrees and what jobs you've had.  OK, you might be a prodigy who got their BA at 14 and their PhD at 17, but the overwhelming majority of people aren't. Or you might be a total bum who was unemployed until the age of 40 and then got a BA at 43 and a PhD at 48 but, again, the overwhelming majority of people aren't that, either. So including your date of birth doesn't really say anything that the recruiter couldn't guess.

Age discrimination is illegal in the UK, and I'd assumed it would be EU-wide. The usual form would be to require somebody to be within so many years of their PhD, though even that's not-really-so-indirect age discrimination.


Toxic colleague talks about me to Professors I am a PhD student with a very difficult colleague - someone I thought was just socially inept, and rude. I was always friendly, giving her the benefit of the doubt, even though she offended me and others on a constant basis with her privileged, superiority complex. On paper, she looks brilliant - she has had many educational opportunities that my parents couldn't afford - something that has made her unbelievably unaware of experiences not her own.

After many derogatory and humiliating comments, I eventually started ignoring her quite a bit - she would never respond to my hellos, would interrupt me in class, laugh when I didn't know a scholar she brought up, etc. It was taking energy to be kind and outgoing to her. Her demeaning behavior was obvious to many, but because she is my classmate, I see her the most. After seeking guidance from mental health professionals, I decided to no longer be upset by her, but also not entertain her behavior. I blocked her out as much as I could, while trying to maintain professionalism.

Granted, there may have been a few times when I questioned her in class - asking for clarification or further explanations into her method of thinking. As PhD students, I am under the impression that we should be able to defend our research, and my professors never said anything to me about the questions I asked.

However, very recently a few professors approached me about "tension" between us. They informed me that this girl has complained about me to them. She apparently has discussed me often, even going as far to say that I "trigger" her. I am shocked. I have never said anything to my professors about her, even though she has offended me several times. I am friends with almost everyone in the program, while she has isolated herself.

I now am feeling extremely insecure, and painted in a very negative light. Professors are suggesting that I meet with her, and show her my "softer" side - I'm from the East coast, we can get a bit...intense. They are encouraging me to reach out to her and comfort her. However, I have been kind to her from the beginning, only recently trying to ignore her toxic attitude. I'm not sure what to do, or how to go about this.

Suggestions?

A campus is a complex social environment that not everyone can adapt to, which is why most campuses have a free, confidential consultation office regarding harassment and personal issues. I'd recommend discussing this with that office before trying to engage with this troublesome student directly.

It sounds like you have gone out of your way to avoid confronting this student, and you don't want professors to know about your negative feelings towards her. When you consult a third party, there is no need to cover up such details. Let the campus staff specifically know that

This person was making you feel uncomfortable.
You tried your best to avoid conflict by disengaging with her.
She is now complaining about you to professors, even though you are no longer communicating with her.

The professors apparently don't understand the full story with this student. It is wrong for them to ask you to confront her directly.


How to deal with "too descriptive" comment in dissertation proposal feedback? I am writing a University Dissertation proposal on Big Data. I have recently received my feedback and while there are good, constructive points one of the main issues in the marking is it is "too descriptive". I do not understand what this means really, when we are talking about a literature review how can it not be descriptive - you are talking about what has already been found.

The exact feedback is:

  Your literature review is overwhelmingly descriptive in character and its needs more of a critical edge, evaluating the main contributions to the literature. Having a critical edge is essential, if you want to achieve a high mark in the final dissertation.

So the question is: What is descriptive writing and what is critical writing, preferably with examples?

The difference between descriptive writing and critical writing is much like the difference between a newspaper report and an opinion column.

Descriptive writing is the act of reporting on what's in the literature:

  Smith found that when X occurred Y and Z also happened.

Critical writing analyzes what has been done, and takes note of trends, as well as possibly offering feedback on the overall quality of the research:

  Smith found X occurred in the presence of Y and Z, as did Jones. However, Doe has demonstrated that Y and Z normally occur in conjunction with one another, so it is not clear if X actually influences Y and Z, or if it is an independent effect.

What you can see from the above is that critical writing does require some descriptive writing, but it goes well beyond it in terms of the depth of analysis.


Does repeated retakes of a test with average score of all attempts allow manipulation? I am working with a computerized Course Management System which provides many options for scoring a test or activity - one of them is "Average of All Attempts". I thought that was: 1) a bad idea, 2) would not be able to be manipulated. But I just saw a student repeatedly get just one question wrong (whether intentionally or not) before finally getting all correct, and it migrated the average upward from the first poor attempt. So, students can "adjust" their own results with this method. Not sure if they know it or not, but I would bet they are smarter than I am! (Or less naive.)

Has anyone else seen this? I think it would be mitigated by allowing only two attempts. Why would a Course Management System allow unlimited (or many) repeat attempts and an Average Score grading method? Maybe students should be designing the CMS, it would be more fair - perhaps more ruthless!

I have never encountered a computerized exam in which you have an unlimited number of consecutive attempts on the same questions and for which your final score is the average of all attempts.  This does seem to be gameable as you describe as well as perhaps in other ways: depending on the format of the answers, I could imagine many tests in which one could eventually deduce all the correct answers with little or no knowledge of the material being tested.

This does not seem to be a very meaningful or rigorous way to run an examination.  I have never given an online examination but am rather familiar with online homework: there we often allow unlimited multiple attempts (except if the question is true / false or multiple choice, but most are not) and simply record the best score.  But the goal there is not to assess the students as much as to get them to do their homework.  Anyway, all such systems I know of certainly feature an easily "togglable" maximum number of attempts.  My feeling is that an instructor who sets up an exam as you describe is either unusually naive or -- more likely -- knows what they are doing and has reasons to want or live with an exam which can be gamed in this way.

Nowadays I and many other academics have to periodically take little computerized exams in which we show ourselves to be familiar with current university policies (ethics, security...) Many of my colleagues are indeed trying to get through them as quickly as possible and trying to minimize the amount of time they have to spend reading background material (or worse, watching in-house informational videos).  Even these exams are not gameable to the extent that you describe.


Should I always expect to receive proceedings at conferences? I attended a conference in computer science recently, where we were not given any proceedings at the registration desk.
They said the papers are available online on the website of the conference inside the program detail.

However I know that the publisher (ACM) is not open access, and for example I have to buy the papers from the last conference if I like to read them.

So, there is a chance that the papers might be removed from the conference website 1-2 months after the conference.

I was wondering if giving proceedings to the attendees is a tradition only to make sure they have access to the contents during the conference?

No, obviously you shouldn't expect to always get printed proceedings. Your recent experience proves it.

Yes, giving out proceedings to participants is a tradition to make sure they have access to the papers during the conferences. Nowadays, everyone attending a scientific conference has access to the internet, and everyone as a whole is becoming aware that wasting resources (paper, electricity to run the printer, etc) is harmful to the environment. (Of course, it doesn't prevent attendees from flying around the world to attend the conference, but "one step at a time I guess".) They have put the proceedings online, so you have access to them.

And honestly, if downloading the papers one at a time is such a hassle, maybe it's a sign that you weren't even going to read them all anyway. Finding one paper is a stack of dozens is also a hassle! And if we are not talking about dozens of papers, then the argument that downloading them one at a time is annoying does not really hold much water. You can report this minor inconvenience to the conference organizers, but be prepared to the fact that it will be dealt with like all other minor inconveniences.


Can my paper be published in a conference's special issue against my will? I am thinking on sending a paper to a conference. However, the conference CfP says:

  The Journal XX will publish a special issue with a selection of papers presented at the conference. The selection of the papers will be made by the Scientific Committee of the Conference.

Now, if I get accepted into the conference, and my paper is selected to be published in the journal, can I oppose it, or am I forced to accept it by the sole fact of participating in the conference? In other words, if I do not want my paper published in Journal XX, is it fine for me to apply to the conference?

In my experience, there are typically two classes of conference special issue, and the answer to your question will depend on which one this conference is using.

Some conferences simply have their entire proceedings published as-is, "converting" them into indexed journal articles for the benefit of people in departments or fields where conference articles do not count.
"Selected papers," on the other hand, typically refers to inviting the best papers of a conference to be upgraded into better articles for final publication, presumably on the basis of continued work and feedback received at the conference, and typically with an expedited peer review process.

The statement that you quote is unclear, since it says only selected papers, but doesn't mention invitations, extended versions, expedited review, or any of the other words typically involved with the second model.  Moreover, if the conference is not very good, it may be that they simply don't care.

I would thus recommend writing to the organizers for clarifications --- and make sure it's a conference that you really want to be at.


What to do if you have a troubled relation with your postdoc supervisor? It seems my relation with my postdoc supervisor has hit troubled waters after an amazing start. Things started to turn towards the worse since our first publication together, particularly after I took a parental leave. I'm not sure, if I could do my second paper, as my post-doctoral fellowship is coming to an end by the end of this month.

I'm worried about my career, as his reference would play a big role. Any ideas on how to deal with a bad reference?
(In the time remaining, I hope to fix our relation as much as possible...)

From your comments it sounds like a Setup-to-fail syndrome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setting_up_to_fail

The Wiki article is a bit iffy, but it basically means that he somewhat has low expectations of your performance after some incident. Thereby, when something happens he assumes is your fault because he has low expectations nevertheless.

Is usually a toxic relationship because is self fulfilling (you'll end up making mistakes, because he wants to) and self reinforcing (the mistake you just did helps him reinforce the idea that you'll make more).

Is a vicious circle that has to be addressed by both you and your boss (PI, manager, etc). But is usually a good idea to have some other people on your side.

Ultimately, if he is unwilling to change, it is better for you to leave for a less toxic environment.


How should I approach my advisors about switching research topics, when they're counting on my results for a grant proposal? I'm a second year PhD student in Computer Science in the United States. I started on a research topic in my first year of PhD. There are two advisors jointly involved in it and I don't get along with one of them at all. On the other hand, the other one has been extremely helpful as my mentor.

I want to switch research areas because I'm not excited about the work and I'm starting to dread my meetings with the PI. But my advisors are counting on preliminary results for applying for a grant. How should I approach this without burning bridges?

(I apologize for the poor grammar, English isn't my first language)

This is a really complex problem, especially since you're in your 2nd year of PhD, meaning it left you more than 1 year, right ?

Why are you not getting along with one of the advisor ? Is it not one of the main issue, which gives you the feeling you don't like your research area ?

Breaking plans of your advisors is really not a good idea, there is always gap in motivation when you are in PhD, and I think you should think about what gives you the feeling you want to go somewhere else. That will hurt both your carrier and your relationship with everyone in the lab.

There is no good answer to your question, either way, you will end up with a problem (for yourself and for your advisors). The best way is to speak with them about your feelings, after having a self-reflexion.

EDIT: Since it is clear you don't want to stay in this lab, the earlier the better. Tell them about what are in your mind, and they will certainly understand, if they are not short-minded (which hopefully is not the case for a scientist !)


What are some proven methods for keeping track of research and programming in a lab notebook format? Are there any proven methods for keeping a computer science lab notebook? What sort of stuff goes into a CS lab notebook, and what notation is used? Are there any reliable ELN methods, preferably integrating with Git?

I want to keep a lab notebook that helps me keep a running narrative of my research as well as my programming, in the same way you would keep a natural science lab notebook. It would be handy to be able to write down what I'm doing as I'm programming, then when a bug mysteriously appears in the software, I can see the last time the software was working, see where the bug started, then read the running narrative in between to help figure out what is causing it.

I don't do CS specifically, but I do research in computational/mathematical Epidemiology, which similarly lacks a clear format for a "lab notebook" and where the electronic tools designed for something like chemistry and biology doesn't necessarily suit.

Honestly, I've tried a number of systems. A private Wiki, a variety of other electronic systems, etc. And when it came down to it, I went back to a traditional paper notebook.

I've ended up with a bound paper notebook where I keep notes about experiments and simulations being run, thoughts on direction for the project, and the occasional printout of results taped inside. This has, for me, worked far better than electronic systems.


How do I recommend a student requiring extended deadlines? Some of my students get extended deadlines on assignments due to a disability. They are not required to tell me the nature of their disability (which may be physical, intellectual, or psychological), but some choose to do so. (United States faculty are legally required to grant accommodations to such students, who are certified by a college office that knows the details of their situation.)

My question is what to say when a student asks for a recommendation for an industry position (typically as a software engineer). I legally cannot reveal that they have a disability, but their ability to complete assignments correctly and on time is relevant to their qualifications for a job.

Update

To clarify, I don't consider it relevant to an employer if a student uses assistive technology or if the student takes extra time on exams, since the latter is an artificial situation irrelevant outside of school. (All of the exams I give are untimed anyway.) My concern is about students who are unable to complete assignments in the normal amount of time, which is always at least a week, even given any needed accommodations. The ability to complete work at the normal rate seems like it might be a bona fide occupational qualification.  Of course, it is not the employer's business whether the need for extra time is due to a disability.

You were already required to evaluate this student's work under the assumption that they performed under the same circumstances as everyone else, so why suddenly stop doing so at a recommendation letter?

That said, this quickly becomes a legal matter, and we have few true legal experts (for any jurisdiction) on this site.  I'm certainly not one of them, but here's my opinion and understanding...

The companies are not allowed to discriminate based on disabilities, and are required to make "reasonable accommodations" for them.  As such you can reasonably assume that whatever job is being applied for will already have this in effect, and that the disability is therefore irrelevant.

If, for some reason, the student is hiding their disability from potential employers—or, worse, had been faking it with the University—, then that is their responsibility, and the responsibilities of whatever (medical) professionals were involved in the evaluation, not yours.

If you remain in doubt—it would not be unreasonable to be confused on whether certain things you know about the student fall under "protected disability concerns" versus "legitimate, non-protected concerns"—, contact the very office that handles these disability arrangements, and possibly arrange to have a meeting where you can discuss these matters at length.  They should be able to provide you with guidance on how to faithfully execute your duties vis a vis recommendations while remaining in compliance.  You can even contact a lawyer for yourself, though you will likely have to pay for this.  The disabilities office will be inclined to advise you to act in whatever is most convenient for them and the university, which may be more strict than is legally required and enforceable, but in a case like this I would suggest you follow that because of:

The golden rule of writing a recommendation letter is: if you feel you cannot write a good recommendation letter for the student then reject their request to write one, and if you feel you cannot write a strong one then tell them so, so that they can decide if that is acceptable or not.

If you feel that these will automatically apply to you with respect to students with disabilities, you may want to (preemptively) arrange to speak with someone in the disabilities office, or a personal lawyer (this may be more strongly advisable in this situation), about writing letters for students with disabilities.  This would be to head off any potential concerns about you acting discriminatingly towards such students.


Review claims reference was omitted, but it was not In a review to a manuscript I wrote one of the reviewers claimed in strong words that two important references were omitted. In fact, both references were cited in the text. I suspect the reviewer is among the authors of these references, since I recommended one of them as a reviewer during submission. The manuscript was rejected and I do not plan to resubmit, still I am contemplating if I should respond to this presumptive mistake by the reviewer. The reason is that the perceived omission likely affects the reviewers opinion of me as an author in a negative way. I think that there is a non-negligible chance that the same reviewer may also review future work. Should I accept this and move on or should I ask the editor to forward to the reviewer a statement that the references were not omitted?

The manuscript was rejected and I do not plan to resubmit

Then do not respond.

Should I accept this and move on

Yes.  Reviewers make mistakes.  That's normal.
Most people who think they know who the reviewer was are wrong.


I submitted a paper five months ago. Should I wait a little bit more for a response? I submitted a paper to a journal five months ago. The status of the paper was 'With Editor' for the first three months. After three months from my submission, I sent the journal a polite enquiry about my submission. I did not receive any reply, however, the status of the paper changed from 'With Editor' to 'Under Review' less than 24 hours after I sent my enquiry.

It has been two more months now, and I still have not received anything back. What should I do? I am assuming that the editor has forgotten about my paper, then when he or she received the reminder, sent it to a few people for review. In which case, I was going to wait another month, then enquire about my paper again. Is this too conservative? I would love to get a reply, as this paper is part of my forthcoming PhD thesis which I'm about to submit soon.

It differs case by case, but journals take a while before acceptance and publishing. Once I waited a year for a high ranking journal! You can always contact the editor and ask about the status of your journal.

Advice On Your Thesis and Submitted Material: You can definitely cite the submitted material within your thesis. Don't forget to add the (Submitted to X) at the end of the citation.


At what point is it OK to claim that you review for a journal in a job application? I have just been invited to review a paper submitted to a very good journal in my field, and I accepted the request.

However, I will also submit my last PhD application within the next couple of days. Naturally, I will not be able to submit the review this soon.

I am wondering whether I should include in my CV that I am a reviewer for this specific journal. I am not sure how this would be considered in a PhD application, but I think it would strengthen my profile, given that this will be the second most prestigious journal to which I will have provided a review.

Perhaps the question can be better worded as: at which point it is OK to disclose that you review for a journal, particularly in a job application? Is it as soon as you receive the invitation? As soon as you accept the invitation? As soon as you submit the review? As soon as the review process ends? Or after a significant amount of time has passed?

I am not sure how this would be considered in a PhD application, but I think it would strengthen my profile, given that this will be the second most prestigious journal to which I will have provided a review.

While it doesn't influence the when, I am not sure your premise is correct. There is something important about an editor asking you to review for a journal since it demonstrates that someone (specifically a respected someone) thinks you have a thorough understanding of a field and are capable of independent critical thought. The act of reviewing is not really worth much.

As for when you can disclose it, I think this is a little messy. I would probably wait until the editor sends a decision letter to the author. At that point, you have clearly reviewed for a journal. Prior to that, I might mention that I have agreed to review for Editor X at Journal Y.


ADM: Not Assigned Under Review I recently submitted a paper to the international journal of adaptive control and signal processing Wiley. The statute of the paper is:

STATUTE:

ADM: Not Assigned

Under Review

Can someone tell me what exactly this means?

Depending on the particulars of how the journal operates and how much of the review process it makes visible, this is likely to mean one of two things with respect to the standard journal workflow:

Most likely, the journal simply reports "under review" for all manuscript that have not yet received a decision.  In this case, it probably means that your manuscript is still undergoing initial processing and hasn't yet been assigned to a handling editor.
If the journal gives finer-grained status information about the workflow (e.g., "assigning reviewers", "under review", "waiting for decision"), then it would likely mean that the paper is with reviewers, but that something has happened to require a change of handling editors, which is now ongoing.

The first is much more likely than the second, particularly if the paper is recently submitted.


Reply ‘no position’ while the job posting is still there (‘HiWi’ position in Germany) I am third year undergraduate and I am not studying in Europe.
I plan to apply for a master at a German institute by the end of this year which is the time for application.

This institute advertised a ‘Hiwi’ (student assistant) position on their website.
They link to a PDF file which provides more detail, and in this file they refer to the job as ‘student assistant position’.

I wrote them an email asking about this position. But the group leader replied to me: ‘I could not offer you a position at this point’. This makes me a little confused. I know group leaders face many quite complex situations, but I don’t know how to interpret this. Is it just because he think I am not good enough at the first read of my email and make a polite refusal?

I did not mention that I intend to apply at this university and also that my main motivation is to get research experience (i.e., I am okay with not being paid). Should I mention these two points?

Student assistant positions in Germany are usually open only to students enrolled at a local university (often where the position is offered, but always in Germany). This is for reasons of social insurance and labour regulation.

You are not enrolled at a local university. In fact, you are studying outside Europe.


How can I "time-stamp" my data without publishing it? If I have a DB or set of data, and want to grant access to it to a limited group of experts in a field (not general access), and don't want others using it for their own publications, nor seeing the information being offered for free on the Internet.

What is the best approach to deposit the information somewhere to make sure, in a hypothetical future, that I can claim copyright over it?

Basically, I want to protect myself upfront against My research work stolen and published as his own by the co-author without my consent

Basically, I want to protect myself upfront against My research work stolen and published as his own by the co-author without my consent

What you need is to convince the research community that this is your work, so that if anyone tries to steal it, then it will be considered professional misconduct, they won't be able to publish their theft, etc.  I'm not convinced copyright law is the right tool for this.  Sure, being able to sue someone for copyright violation could be useful in certain circumstances, but often it won't actually settle the academic issues.  For example, collaboration.  I might claim to have collaborated with you on the research contained in the database, in which case I would be entitled to be a coauthor on academic publications, and you would be considered to be acting unethically if you denied me coauthorship.  There's no way to defend against this using copyright registration, cryptographic time-stamping, etc.  You might be able to prove that you already had a copy of the database in the past, but it's much harder to prove that I didn't somehow contribute to it, except in extreme cases such as having had a copy before I first studied this field.

In practice, people often deal with this difficulty by telling more people.  If you tell just one person about your work, then they can steal it, and it's your word against theirs.  If you tell ten people, then it's much harder for a thief to get away with it, since there are nine other witnesses.  If you tell a hundred, then it becomes really difficult to steal your work.  Unless someone immediately tries hard to steal it, it will become impossible: the community will react by saying "Wait, Quora Feans told all of us about this database last year.  If it was your work, why didn't you say anything back then?"

Whether more publicity is a viable solution depends on your circumstances, but there's a fundamental trade-off here.  Ultimately, academia cares about credit for the ideas and research, not just who owns the copyright.  (If I write a paper about your work, then I own the copyright to my words, but I don't deserve credit for the ideas.)  The more you keep your work secret, the harder it is to prove anything about who deserves the intellectual credit.


How can I overcome the fact that I attend a weak undergraduate institution? I am currently a traditional sophomore math major at a large university in the southern USA. I'm interested in attending graduate school once I graduate, but my university has a weak math program, and I am afraid it will severely effect me in the future.

For example, the department only routinely offers the most basic undergraduate courses, such as a two semester sequence of real analysis, one complex analysis class, basic topology, and algebra. Starting my junior year, I will be running out of math classes to take, and it will be hard to construct a schedule that makes me a full time student. By my senior year, directed studies will be my only option for classes.

Some solutions I've thought of

Apply to math summer programs and other enrichment programs like REUs
Transfer to a different school
Get a relevant minor or double major

The problem with transferring is that my upper division math classes are not transferable to other schools in the state. I would have to retake every math class I've taken other than calculus, and it would take me at least 3 additional years at another school.

The only constructive advice I've received from faculty at my school is to graduate in three years. I do not like the idea of graduating early because I've simply exhausted the departments offerings. I also do not think a PhD admission committee would look favorably upon that.

What other courses of action should I look into?

It sounds like you have a good start on the most important thing: take advantage of every opportunity at your current program and excel at all of them. Even from a weak undergraduate program, if you can come out with multiple letters saying that you are the strongest student they've seen in X years and have the credentials to back that up, you'll have a good chance at solid graduate programs.

Your situation means that standardized tests are also even more important. Math is nice because there actually exists a test (math subject GRE) that most schools put significant weight on, so make sure to take it very seriously. Doing well on the math GRE takes away a lot of the uncertainty that admissions committees will have about your application due to the institution.

Assuming that you don't transfer, some other options:

Get to know faculty and spend that extra time doing research. Proven research experience can make up for a lot of coursework, and you'll hopefully get a much stronger recommendation letter as well. This is important to do no matter what kind of institution you're at, but is probably extra important at weaker programs where your application can't rely on reputation and coursework.
Consider graduating early and getting a Master's degree at a strong program. This isn't always financially feasible, but if it is then it's an option to strengthen your coursework and resume. Availability of strong master's programs can depend on the field, but it's worth looking into.
Graduate early and get a job doing research. Again, availability may depend on field (I hear that these aren't common in math), but if you can get the right job it can be a great boon to a resume and help generate another good recommendation. Bonus points if you can find a job near a good university and take a couple classes on the side.


PhD Mathematics Admission Advice Some background on me:
I graduated in 2020 with my BS in Accounting with a minor in Mathematical Sciences from a non-special public university. I decided I wanted to make an educational career change with only 1.5 years of undergrad schooling left. Mathematics courses I took in that time were calc 2, calc 3 (taught myself calc 1), differential equations, linear algebra, and real analysis. I got A's in all of them. I was lucky enough to be admitted into an MS in applied math program in my state at a relatively well known private school in the tristate area knowing I didn't have a serious shot at being admitted to a PhD program. This first semester I am taking topology, numerical linear algebra for big data, and probability theory. I am concentrating in data science but still taking more pure mathematics courses as electives.
I plan on sending out PhD applications for the Fall 2022 cycle during the fall semester of 2021. At that time I would be enrolled in foundations of algebra 1 (which is just abstract algebra), functional analysis 1, and numerical analysis. I am hoping to do a research project with a professor this upcoming summer. With that said, I know some of the very important things for the application are the letter writers (of which 1 professor at my school is pretty well known). Other than that, I plan on retaking the standard GRE which i did not do well on the first time, and potentially taking the subject GRE. What would this community say my chances are at being admitted to a top 50 university with funding? I know it's kind of a hard question to answer but if theres any other info I can provide please tell me. I would also accept any advice you could give me. I will most likely just be looking to apply to pure math phd programs while planning to do my research in a more applied area.
Thanks.

Although some people might reasonably think that "pure math" courses are irrelevant to your larger goals, I would claim that the popular distinction between "pure" and "applied" math is both scientifically meaningless, and potentially hazardous to people trying to get started.
Having fluency with basic ideas of abstract mathematics ("algebra", "topology", and such) is inestimably useful. Illiteracy in these things makes it impossible to really know what the substance of many "applied" conversations may be.
The ideas in "pure/abstract" math are not at all disjoint from "the real world". They were all motivated by the desire to understand things. Yes, some self-styled "applied math" people pretend that all they need is computer time, and some self-styled "pure math" people pretend that whatever they do is disconnected from reality, and is practically useless. This is all silly, in my opinion.
In particular, having a basic grounding in "abstract" math will make you a far better candidate for any reasonable math program, whether eventually aiming at something "applied" or "not".


What does the term "highest qualification" mean? What does the term "highest qualification earned" or "highest degree earned" on applications mean? For example, if I am a current undergraduate student, does that mean my highest qualification is "undergraduate degree" or should it be my "high school diploma"?

Highest qualification means the most advanced (i.e., highest) academic award (e.g., high school, bachelor's degree, master's degree) that you've been granted (i.e., completed).

So,

  if I am a current undergraduate student, does that mean my highest qualification is "undergraduate degree" or should it be my high school (12th grade)?

A current undergraduate student has not yet been granted that undergraduate degree, so the student's highest degree is from high school (assuming no other relevant qualifications).


When submitting a research paper as an independent researcher, is it advisable to have a professor look at it first? Is it advisable to have a professor from a university look at your paper before you submit it to a journal, since they might want partial credit? and would it take the journal a longer time to referee your research paper if you have no affiliation?

I'll try to answer you two specific questions:

“Is it advisable to have a professor from a university look at your paper before you submit it?” — Yes, if you have no previous experience of publishing papers (as a principal author). Academic publication is a game with a set of written rules and some non-written expectations. You can find the rules indicated on the publisher's webpage (guidelines to authors, editorial policy, etc.). If you have read a good number of papers, including many papers from the specific journal (or conference, or …) you are submitting to, then you may have inferred some of the non-written expectations. But otherwise, having someone to help you with the more formal part of academic writing will enhance your paper's chances.
“Is it advisable to have a professor from a university look at your paper before you submit it?” — Yes again, if you do not have a very good understanding of the field, its advances and its directions. To be somewhat brutally honest (and in line with paul’s comment): from experience, newcomers to research, or to a specific field, have a natural tendency to reïnvent the wheel or overestimate the impact and novelty of their work. It's okay, judging these correctly involves a very good grasp of the overall field, both in-breadth and in-depth.
“Would it take the journal a longer time to referee your research paper if you have no affiliation?” — No. For two articles of the same quality, with an unknown author, I don't think the presence of an affiliation would impact review time.

Edit to answer question in comment: “Would a professor who reviews the paper want credit?” — It depends on the amount of work required and the ethics of the person you ask. If reviewing the paper requires significant amount of time, especially because there are many faults with the paper that need to be fixed, you could see that there must be incentive for the professor to invest in it. In all cases, discuss this issue upfront!


Spot a possible improvement when reviewing a paper In reviewing a paper I notice that the result presented there can be improved. However, the improvement may not be significant enough to appear in a good journal. Therefore, to me the best situation would be to have the authors' permission and to join the paper under review.
I would like to be advised of what I may do. I think I may write to the editor, and I would especially like to know how to ask politely. Would anyone have similar experience?
Edit: First of all thanks a lot for all suggestions! I just forgot to mention that my report was already sent one month ago. Would there be something extra I should take care of?
Edit 2: Again, many thanks to you guys! Actually contacting the authors is never an option in my mind. My options are only: (i) tell the editor (not recommending myself as a coauthor); (ii) write my own note.
Here note means a short paper, since my new short proof may be of ten lines (the original proof is three pages), that's the reason I would like to consult you guys, and to see if there is a third option.
At the moment, I prefer to do the first option, and I am thinking of whether in the email to editor I should include my new proof, or just say "I may further provide the details". How do you guys think?

Contacting the authors directly is a terrible idea. Don't go there. Contacting the editor with a question or request is fine. If you contact the authors directly and they interpret it as a form of poaching and complain to the editor, you may lose the opportunity to review in the future.
But the "best" option isn't to join the paper. It is to give your best review, pointing out what you think has been missed and asking for major revisions if that is what it would take.
Tell the editor that you would be willing to work with them on the improvement with permission and await what happens. You may not get a co-authorship (I doubt you will) and your advice might even be attributed to the anonymous reviewer, but that is pretty natural.
You will have contributed to the advancement of the art.


Why should I format a citation manually without bibliographic software? During a lecture (and a separate presentation) my instructor told us about bibliographic software, how it composes references automatically and is able to correctly cite articles in many formats. The software is freely available to everyone.

However, many others did not use it and were penalized on incorrect formatting when the assignment was due. Why would one not use software to compose references and citations? Is there advantage in learning how to cite articles manually?

All bibliographic software has a learning curve.  You have to invest time and energy up front to learn the system and set up your database, and only reap the benefits later in the decreased amortized cost of maintaining correct citations.

If somebody doesn't think the tradeoff will be worth it (e.g., thinks they "aren't good with computers" or doesn't think they'll write many papers that the software would be useful for or is in a rush and isn't thinking about the long term), then they may manage a bibliography by hand.

For example, I'm a devout LaTeX/BibTeX user and would never consider doing something by hand---except that I have done so on a few occasions when forced to use an incompatible format where it wasn't worth setting up a new toolchain (e.g., putting a few citations at the end of a PowerPoint deck).