How to enter a completely new research area as a 3rd-year Ph.D. candidate? Based on your personal experience, how may someone enter a completely new research area as a 3rd-year Ph.D. candidate? Is it better to start with reading journal papers? Or maybe taking some courses? Or watching YouTube videos? Or what?! I am basically looking for the most efficient/fastest way of doing this!

And if you want to know my story, I am a Ph.D. candidate in structural engineering with a focus on deterministic earthquake modeling, but for some reasons now my advisor wants me to start working on probabilistic modeling of hurricanes and floods using machine learning methods, and I am a little paranoid because I have no idea about any of these! So what are your suggestions?!

I hope you find the following beneficial.

Firstly, you need to gain some familiarity with the new area and gain
confidence on the general problems in the area. Survey papers,
classic materials (e.g textbook chapters), youtube videos etc at this stage. Say 1 week.
E.g, say a hypothetic paper is titled: "Statistical Modeling of Natural Disasters: A survey". However don't
be too distracted by reading too much general papers as PhD is highly
focused. Also, yotube videos should not distract and take too much
time!
Secondly, get a little deeper e.g say a hypothetic paper is titled "Survey of probabilistic modeling of
hurricanes and floods", "Birth and Death Processes for natural disaster
modeling" etc. Say this takes another week: Here you look for
something interesting to have an idea of potential technical papers.
Thirdly, you should already have a wide and narrow scope now, so you
could pick say 2 journal papers. One classic reference (relevant, rich, clearly expressed, highly influential and perhaps well cited) say 2005
and one recent paper, say 2017-2018.
Fourthly, briefly look and get an idea of the basic concepts in the
first reference (2005) to get familiar with the technical basics, basic relationships and
professional technical terms. Then, I suggest you re-write the second
(2017-2018) journal paper with your own hands etc. to keep yourself
"on it" systematically. During this process, you could get some
things and not get others. It is still fine at this stage. Also, at this stage it has been implicitly assumed that you have basic ideas of the statistical knowledge and tools to understand these materials.
Fifthly, you could summarize your handwritten note into a personal
tutorial, note the open areas, assumptions, problem solved, intuitive
questions etc. for future extension etc.. (It has also been assumed here that you are comfortable with the research tool e.g simulation approach etc.) Then begin to think about how to implement these (practicable and realistic) ideas, formulate a problem and hypothesis etc.

I hope others may continue from here. However, I hope this will get one on his feet, then everything coming after that may be more flexible. Note that I have not included survey paper writing as it may take more time.

Disclaimer: Thus is a suggestion and may not work explicitly for everyone at everytime


Does mathematical sophistication play a role during paper review? I am currently in the process of writing a paper for an international conference in image-processing area. One thing that bothers me somewhat is that the mathematical formulation I use is simple(specifically, I quantify a measure as a simple ratio). I happen to have just 2 equations in my paper. The formulation is sound,though, and is a natural outcome of the framework I have developed.

Ideally, simplicity or sophistication of equations occurring in a paper are not a measure of its worth, but I wonder openly -- what role does "density" and sophistication of mathematics used in the paper play in impressing the reviewers ?
Just for clarification, I am not saying it should or should not. I would like to get a candid view of reviewer experiences and inclinations.

Mathematical sophistication and mathematical density are often confused for one another, and this confusion often extends to reviewers and the "customs" of scientific communities.  To my mind, the best mathematical presentation is the most lucid and simple, and it is certainly the case that important consequences often come from rather simple equations.  The simpler your equations, however, the more that the contribution of the paper will depend on your exploration of those consequences (theoretically or empirically), rather than the mathematics per se.

It can be very tempting to "puff up" the perceived complexity of your mathematics by adding notational complexity or other baroquery.  It may even work well when dealing with some communities (I know of some rather cynical and unfortunately successful experiments performed by certain colleagues of mine).  I would strongly advise, however, against doing so.  Write the paper as clearly and simply as possible, given the true nature of the mathematics within.  Doing so may incur negative judgement from those who confuse "simple" and "trivial," but to do otherwise is scientifically dishonest. Moreover, if your work has value, it will show in the consequences of the mathematics rather than its nature, and writing it more accessibly is likely, in the long run, to increase its impact.

Finally, note that this dictum goes the other way as well: when you are presenting a complex mathematical result to an audience that does not appreciate mathematical complexity, do not attempt to pretend the mathematics is not complex.  In this case, however, appendices and supplementary information is the way to go: keep only as much of key elements in the main text as is appropriate for the audience, and put the rest where those who are interested can readily find it without interrupting the flow of the main text.


Top authors in a field I'd like to write down a list of the top authors in my field in order to keep up to date with literature. Can anybody suggest any systematic approach to build such a list?

Disclaimer: I am definitely no expert in research, but let me just share with you how I do it.

I do it largely by the help of Google Scholar (Hoo-ray for Google!). In order to make it sound "systematic", I phrase my way in two steps and an extra optional step.

Step 1: Obtain the name list of the top authors in the field of interest from Google Scholar. Since many researchers, especially in the filed of EECS, use Google Scholar, and they usually list their "research interests" in the form of tags (e.g., machine learning), we can view the authors conveniently by research interest. For example, see the results here for the top authors in the field of machine learning. You will notice that the list is automatically sorted in descending order in terms of citations.
Step 2: Stay tuned for new papers by these authors with the help of Google Email Alerts. Once you have browsed through the top author list, you should have shortlisted several most interested authors. To receive an email notification when they have new papers available online, simple click Follow on the right side of their names. Voila! You will receive an email every time they have new research published from now on!

Optional Step: Another thing I also do every year on top of the previous two points is to skim through this year's proceedings of the famous conference/journals in the field. This way, you may get a sense of what is hot these days.


How to react to a student who provides very critical comments about your teaching in a student evaluation survey? I am a teacher in an institute and I teach English as a foreign language to students in an 8_week session. At the end of each session, the students are required to give their opinion about the class and the teacher.

One of my students who attended all the classes and I corrected at least 20 writings for her has written something horrible and of course has ruined my rating by saying: "What we learn depends on the teacher. I recommend teacher X, but I absolutely and strongly reject this teacher who does not know anything about teaching (meaning me)." She has also written her name on top of the paper.

She never, ever, complained about my teaching method during the time we had class together and this sudden unfair comparison has gone on my nerve. I have taken a photo of what she has written about me and it is in my mind to email it to her and ask for her explanation.

I have signed no contract with that institute and I have received no teacher training courses. I have teaching experiences somewhere else and that was why they invited me to teach. But their unfair system of evaluation at the end of each session will definitely have effects on my payment and if it continues like this, I will no longer be able to continue teaching there.

I am REALLy thinking so deeply about what I could have done wrong. My last session assessment was 20% higher than an old teacher who is teaching there for 3 years. Another serious problem I have with this issue is the "comparison". I teach Reading and Writing and my colleague teaches Listening and Speaking. Of course, I have never met the other teacher. But, he has read this bad comment about me. Why should I lose my face in front of a colleague, because of an "unfair" judgement?

Is it good to react like this, or I should keep silent about her unfair judgement?

You said,

  this sudden unfair comparison has gone on my nerve

It sounds like this negative feedback has provoked some strong emotion in you, and understandably so.

But asking for an explanation is not likely to be helpful at this point. This isn't a constructive comment that can potentially lead you to improve your teaching - it's just an insult. Students take out all kinds of frustration in their teaching evaluations. If you ask a frustrated student to explain a comment they made (most likely) out of frustration, you are unlikely to gain anything constructive. The most likely outcome is that she'll unload more frustration on you.

The best reaction to this kind of feedback (assuming it's an isolated incident, and the rest of your feedback was reasonable) is to re-read the positive feedback you've received, remind yourself that you're a dedicated teacher who works hard to help your students, and put the non-constructive feedback out of your mind.

If this is an isolated incident, I wouldn't worry about its effect on your ranking within your institution. All instructors will occasionally receive some negative reviews, no matter how good they are at teaching.


How bad is it to take another year for my undergraduate degree? Complex analysis (or more particularly contour integrals) is kicking me downhill (again), and I may need to drop it (again). If I do, I would only have to take a single course in my 5th undergraduate math degree, another 3rd year math course like complex analysis (3rd times a charm???). If I don't drop it, I risk getting a low enough GPA to not get into graduate school. I already applied. So how bad is taking another year?
Did anyone else do this? How many of you were able to get into graduate school even after taking another year? Is there a bias? What are the pros versus the cons?
People have mentioned this to me before in the past, like it was inevitable, but I never really considered it until now. When I ask others if they would do it, they act like it's unthinkable for them. Like they are inherently better than me so course they wouldn't need to do this.

If you have a really good relationship with one (or more) of your math profs then you could make  a fifth year work to your advantage. Ask them what research opportunities you have with them, perhaps as an independent study. If you could put together a nice, but do-able, project to fill up the rest of the time for the additional year, then it could work out to be a plus.
But this assumes, for purposes of graduate study, that your GPA is good enough and you have some insight into one or more math subfields. You don't need (nor is it possible to have) universal insight, but something with which you can be clearly predicted to be a success by letter writers.
You are in a difficult place, I think, but is may still be possible to recover through hard work and faculty contacts.


Do references, notes, and tables count towards journal word count restrictions? I'm preparing a manuscript to be submitted to a journal, but I'm struggling with the language used regarding the word count for this specific journal:

  The ___________is a peer-reviewed publication. Articles
  between 4000-7000 words (double spaced pages) including tables, notes
  and references, are accepted for review. The Editors reserve the right
  to return papers to authors where they exceed this word limit.

My confusion is, does this mean that references/notes/tables contribute to the word count of the manuscript for this particular journal?

Yes, the references/notes/tables are to be included in the word count.


What percentage of papers submitted to a conference or journal have been previously rejected in the same or another venue? Is there any research/study/survey that looked at what percentage of papers submitted to a conference or journal have been previously rejected in the same or another venue?

I am mostly interested in the computer science field (machine learning) and English-speaking venues, but I am curious about other fields and languages as well.

I haven't found anything in computer science, but this has been well-studied in other fields.

For example, one study1 surveyed authors from 923 scientific journals from the biological sciences in 2006-2008 and found that

  about 75% of published articles were submitted first to the journal that would publish them

(implying that 25% of published articles were rejected by another venue before finding their ultimate home).

A more common approach found in the literature is to follow up on the fate of rejected manuscripts from a particular journal (as opposed to the original target venue of published manuscripts).

For example, a study of manuscripts rejected by the British Journal of Surgery2 found:

  From the 926 manuscripts rejected by BJS, 609 (65.8 per cent) were published in 198 different journals with a mean(s.d.) time lapse of 13.8(6.5) months. Some 165 manuscripts (27.1 per cent) were published in general surgical journals, 250 (41.1 per cent) in subspecialty surgical journals and 194 (31.9 per cent) in non-surgical journals. The mean(s.d.) impact factor of the journals was 2.0(1.1). Only 14 manuscripts (2.3 per cent) were published in journals with a higher impact factor than that of BJS.

This trend is not especially new. Studies from decades ago also show large numbers of rejected papers being accepted somewhere, eventually. For example:

A study of 350 manuscripts rejected by the Annals of Internal Medicine, a general medical journal, during 1993 and 1994,3 found:

  Of 350 rejected manuscripts, 240 (69%, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 64% to 73%) were eventually published after a mean of 552 days (95% CI: 479 to 544 days, range 121 to 1,792 days).

A study of papers submitted to the American Journal of Roentgenology in 19864 found:

  At least 82% of the major papers and 70% of the case reports that are submitted to AJR are eventually published, either in AJR or elsewhere

An interesting study I came across measured the reverse phenomenon: published articles that are subsequently rejected5.

  As test materials we selected 12 already published research articles by investigators from prestigious and highly productive American psychology departments, one article from each of 12 highly regarded and widely read American psychology journals with high rejection rates (80%) and nonblind refereeing practices.

  With fictitious names and institutions substituted for the original ones (e.g., Tri-Valley Center for Human Potential), the altered manuscripts were formally resubmitted to the journals that had originally refereed and published them 18 to 32 months earlier. Of the sample of 38 editors and reviewers, only three (8%) detected the resubmissions. This result allowed nine of the 12 articles to continue through the review process to receive an actual evaluation: eight of the nine were rejected.

1 Calcagno, V., E. Demoinet, K. Gollner, L. Guidi, D. Ruths, and C. De Mazancourt. "Flows of research manuscripts among scientific journals reveal hidden submission patterns." Science 338, no. 6110 (2012): 1065-1069. DOI: 10.1126/science.1227833

2 Wijnhoven, B. P. L., and C. H. C. Dejong. "Fate of manuscripts declined by the British Journal of Surgery." British Journal of Surgery 97, no. 3 (2010): 450-454. DOI: 10.1002/bjs.6880

3 Ray, Joel, Michael Berkwits, and Frank Davidoff. "The fate of manuscripts rejected by a general medical journal." The American journal of medicine 109, no. 2 (2000): 131-135. DOI: 10.1016/S0002-9343(00)00450-2

4 Chew, Felix S. "Fate of manuscripts rejected for publication in the AJR." AJR. American journal of roentgenology 156, no. 3 (1991): 627-632. DOI: 10.2214/ajr.156.3.1899764

5 Peters, Douglas P., and Stephen J. Ceci. "Peer-review practices of psychological journals: The fate of published articles, submitted again." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 5, no. 02 (1982): 187-195. DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X00011183


Is it self-plagiarism if I upload a paper in error, delete it, and then upload a modified version again somewhere else? Last week, I did a paper, and posted it on my school's online blackboard.  Not even five minutes later, I realized I had misread the directions and took it down.  Some of my points were still relevant, so I used them exactly as i had written them before.  Is this self-plagiarism?

It's not self-plagiarism. Self-plagiarism involves trying to get double credit for the same work -- mostly in academic publishing, where the same author publishes old ideas as new ideas (without citing). In your case, you accidentally uploaded the paper somewhere and then deleted it -- this does not even come close to meeting the bar for "claiming a publication."

There is a possible concern that you might be wrongly accused of cheating -- either because your professor saw you post the work to blackboard and assumed you were trying to share it with someone else, or because blackboard automatically indexed the paper when you uploaded it, and will now flag it as a duplicate when you submit it. You didn't do anything wrong, so you should be fine - but if you are concerned, you could send a brief e-mail to the professor explaining what happened.


Grading strategies for oral exams Several recent questions on oral examinations have caused me to reflect on whether or not this particular examination tactic would be worth further investigation for my courses.

From a practical standpoint, I am stumped as to how one would go about grading an oral exam. For example, one of the key benefits of an oral exam from the student's perspective seems to be that the exam can be optimized in real time according to the student's performance; however, a well-prepared student may end up getting a relatively more challenging exam, while the ill-prepared student may receive a relatively easier exam.

All of this has me wondering:

  How would one go about grading an oral exam in a manner which is both fair and accurate?

In all kinds of assessments, but especially oral exams, carefully prepared rubrics can help increase consistency and decrease subjectivity. From "A short guide to oral assessment":

  One of the advantages of oral assessment is that it can often be
  marked quickly on the spot. To support this, the use of a marking
  guide or rubric of some sort is usually essential. The use of rubrics
  in oral assessment has many benefits:

  It provides assessors with a common reference point for their
  judgments
  It reduces the likelihood that judgments will be based on
  extraneous factors
  Providing students with the marking guide in advance helps them
  understand the nature of good work and helps them to evaluate
  the quality of their own work in the assessment
  It provides a basis for peer evaluation/feedback
  It makes marking more efficient
  It provides a useful framework for feedback to students.

Further details depend on the format of the exam, and on whether you want to include things like presentation skills in the grade or not.

In [1], there is a predetermined set of questions that are graded as follows:

  Students are told that they will be asked a series of questions
  that are designed to evaluate their understanding of the
  material. Students are instructed to “think aloud” in order
  that their thought process can be observed (9). The grading
  system is explained and they are shown a scoring sheet. Four
  scores are possible for each answer: 3, 2, 1, or 0. Students
  answering a question correctly and without prompting earn
  3 points. Each prompt a student receives results in a deduction
  of 1 point. Mistakes made along the way have no consequence
  on the grade if they are self-corrected. Following
  the questions in the order they appear on the scoring sheet
  allows for consistency in the administration of the examination.

In [2], the content of the exam varied with each student. Therefore,

  Developing a rigid rubric for an oral
  examination was not feasible when each student individually
  determined the content. This required the evaluation criteria to
  remain roughly defined to facilitate evaluation of all students,
  no matter which reaction they chose. The rubric shown in
  Table 2 was used to guide the evaluators when grading.
  Presentation skills included oral and nonverbal communication
  (such as writing a reaction mechanism) and delivering
  information in an organized manner. Student knowledge
  about their chosen subject was evaluated partly through
  reviewing the content they had prepared for the session and
  whether they presented the required information. The ability of
  each student to answer questions was used to assess depth of
  knowledge and the extent of the research undertaken and to
  gauge how capably a student could synthesize information
  quickly, problem-solve, and think critically. For example, one
  student mentioned a recent innovation of their selected
  reaction being undertaken via solid-phase synthesis. Their
  knowledge regarding solid-phase techniques was subsequently
  assessed through further questioning to determine the depth of
  their understanding.

  To limit inconsistencies and subjectivity, which are reported
  problems in oral testing, two of the course instructional
  staff were present for each examination

In the "poster exam" format described in [3],

  The grading of the poster exam occurs in two parts. First
  students are graded on the content, organization, and design
  of the poster itself, the oral presentation of the poster, and
  their ability to answer questions on the poster. The students
  receive a group grade, which we chose to score as 60% of
  the exam. The detailed breakdown of the poster evaluation
  is shown in Figure 1.

  ...

  Individual knowledge of the broad subject matter is
  probed in the second half of the test with an individual oral
  examination administered to each student in the poster group.
  Questions are drawn from a database constructed by the
  course designers and instructors, and labeled according to
  degree of difficulty. After each poster exam the database is
  refined and enlarged. The examiners are asked to draw questions
  randomly from the database and score the answers on a
  three-point scale of outstanding, acceptable, or unacceptable.
  Each student’s response is scored and entered on an answer
  sheet, which the students do not see, and returned to a folder
  that remains with the group. The next examiner then has access
  to the folder and does not repeat the prior questions asked.
  In this way each student receives at least two different oral
  exams, and most are given three. Examiners tend to conduct
  this aspect of the poster exam in one of two ways: some ask
  each student a different question, while others give the same
  question to all students.

[1] Roecker, L., 2007. Using Oral Examination as a technique to assess
student understanding and teaching effectiveness. J. Chem. Educ, 84(10), p.1663.

[2] Dicks, A.P., Lautens, M., Koroluk, K.J. and Skonieczny, S., 2012. Undergraduate oral examinations in a university organic chemistry curriculum. Journal of Chemical Education, 89(12), pp.1506-1510.

[3] Marino, R., Clarkson, S., Mills, P.A., Sweeney, W.V. and DeMeo, S., 2000. Using poster sessions as an alternative to written examination—the poster exam. J. Chem. Educ, 77(9), p.1158.


How to check international academic credentials/degrees? What is the most efficient way of checking the academic degrees of an international pool of job-seekers? The tough thing is that many graduated from institution of non-English speaking countries.

There are a number of checks that can be done.

You can ask for a copy of their degrees but for added comfort you can ensure that they get a third party to certify them. For example I know in Ireland you can get a lawyer to view the original of a document, they photocopy it and certify that it is a true copy.
You could ask the graduation department of their university to confirm that they graduated with their degree.
In cases where the certificates are in a foreign language you could have a pre-approved translation service that the applicants have to use to translate any documents. Again for example (in a different field) when my brother and his wife emigrated to a country in the UAE the immigration office would only accept their official documents if they had being translated by a certain translation service provider.


Which is the better scheme for a poster: “tell a story” or “important first”? In an attempt to make a poster of my work, I search for tips on the internet and books and I meet two opinions that conflict with each other:

Tell a story:

Why do we choose this (Objective)
How do we do? (Experiment, simulation, etc)
What do we find? (Result/Conclusion)
What can we do more? (Future work)
Reference

Important first:

Result/Conclusion
Objective
Experiment, simulation, etc
Future work
Reference

In my opinion, I will choose tell a story if the audience is not in my field, and important first if the audience has a good knowledge on what I do. But I am still confused if this is right. And should I apply this to my paper work?

This may be field dependent, but anyway, I'll tell you my (hopefully educated) opinion.

The conclusion should be at the end. It's sometimes criticized that some research starts with a conclusion and then start doing some p-fishing and other unethical practices to support that conclusion. You may present the question that you are trying to answer and as a "spoiler" the answer to that question, as it is not infrequent in the abstract, but that doesn't eliminate the need to present the conclusion in the end, explaining how do you get to that conclusion from everything else, in a very (straight)forward way.

In short, wrt to your question, you may (or may not) introduce the results at the beginning, but the conclusion should be at the end in any case, explaining how do you get to it.

Additionally to your question, it's nice (not required, but definitively good) to explain why the objective set in the first place is important. This may not be needed in some cases, e.g. curing cancer, obviously everybody thinks finding a cure for cancer is important. However, if your objective is deciding whether plastic bottles should be taller or wider then maybe you should explain the impact that a shape change could imply in terms of sustainability, before explaining what are you trying to do (e.g. reduce the amount of plastic needed).


What is the best way to tell a professor that my research interests are not limited to a specific topic? I want to write to a professor and tell him about my research interests. What is the best way to say that my research interests include, but are not limited to X?
Is the following sentence a good choice?
"My main research area is X, but I am open to other subjects as well. "

I guess the answer depends on what kind of information you want to convey, and for what reason you want to make it clear that your interests are not limited to X area. "My research interests include X" is already non-exclusive - just because you say that you are interested in X doesn't mean that you aren't also interested in Y and Z, and most professors realize that students (and all their colleagues) have more than one small narrow area of interest. So you can just say that and be fine.

Basically, my point is that it's absolutely fine to tell a professor that you are interested in one specific area, as long as that area is sufficiently broad in your field. The goal is to find a professor whose interests match or are complementary to yours, so when you say "I am interested in X" he thinks "Ah, I have always wanted a student who would study X!" or at least "Hmmm, it might be good to have a student in my lab/group who studies X."

However, I would not say "My main research area is X, but I am open to other subjects as well." That makes it sound like you would be willing to change your area of interest if the right PI came along or to get into a specific program, and you don't want to convey that, as counterintuitive as that may seem. It makes you sound wishy-washy. You want to be regarded as a serious scholar with a deep interest in a particular area.


Possible pitfalls of taking a year off to travel following a PhD instead of immediately starting with a post-doc position? If a student, soon to complete a PhD, is not ready to enter academia is a year of travel a good option?  Assuming that academic route is still interesting after the year will post-doc positions (leading to tenure-track) still be a viable option?

Although I envy a PhD graduate who has the funds left after obtaining a doctorate to pursue a year of travel, I don't think this is a good idea (unless your degree is in anthropology, in which case it's probably a great idea!) Some thoughts:

You are at a tenuous position in your career -- you've reached a peak (not necessarily the top-most peak), and you are very prepared for academia (although possibly not mentally, as you allude). Your degree has a half-life of sorts -- others will continue to do research in your field while you jet-set the world, and your own work will start to get stale. Now is the best chance you're going to have to convince people who may want to hire you that you're a candidate at the tip of the spear, so to speak.
While a year is not too long, your letter-writers aren't going to have as fresh a picture of you from which to paint their glowing recommendations. You can mitigate this by asking for letters now, but you'll want them to review the letters a year from now (and change the date!) when they do submit them for applications.
Academia can be a fierce environment, as you've probably learned during your candidate years, and possibly why you don't feel you're ready. But, removing yourself from the process for a year doesn't help your case in academia, except to possibly calm your spirits in order to be reinvigorated in a year. Although not universal, the people working the hardest get the best jobs.

All of that said: do what you feel is best for you. If you're not ready for academia, by all means remove yourself from the process for as much time as you need. Better to have a harder time getting a post-doc in a year than to spend a year burning out on something you're not prepared to do.


How do I determine if my contribution to an area of research merits publication? I am a new worker in real functions with little experience and few published papers but not in top journals.

I together with my two colleagues found a new characterization of a well-known class of functions (first Baire class). I am pretty sure this is new. However, we cannot decide the extent of its significance because we are unable to find a good application. But suffice it to say there are some old results in the area that admit a very straightforward proof using our characterization. For instance, functions with countable discontinuities can be shown to be of first Baire class using our characterization with a very easy proof.

My question, is this enough for publication? I am afraid to submit it and got a snobbish review. By the way, I am from a third-world country.

If you don't submit a paper, you're never going to find out it's publishable—unless someone beats you to it. Basically, if you and your colleagues believe you have a publishable advance, then write it up and submit it.

On a related note: have you solicited feedback from colleagues in the field? Has it been presented at a conference somewhere? What have you heard and done to "talk the work up" with colleagues? Has anyone told you it is (or is not) publishable?


Right time to go for poster presentation and talks I have multiple questions regarding talks and poster presentations. I am in my second year of PhD (computational biology) and have not yet published any paper. Keeping my background in mind do answer my question if possible:
My question is: Is it okay to give poster/talk of your unpublished work? Is there any risk of leakage of research idea via this?
(Leakage in the sense that I do a work and someone probably was thinking in the same line, now gets the idea from my work and works fast enough to publish it before me)

If you show a poster or give a talk on unpublished work, there is always a risk of your ideas being poached. There is also the possible benefit of someone contributing questions/ideas that can enhance your research.

To mitigate the risk, if your research is ready to be shown in a paper/talk, maybe you should be able to post a preprint so that your authorship is established. Your supervisor should be able to clarify what the ethos of your research area is about this.

There is still some risk, though. I know a mathematician who posted very good results on the arxiv. At the same time, he submitted the article to a good journal. The article took about a year to referee, and came with a rejection (not because of anything wrong but because of the high standards of the journal). Meanwhile, during that year, a pair of mathematicians read his preprint, improved on his results, and got this generalization published (acknowledging the original contribution from the arxiv). So this guy ends up with his best paper unpublished and unpublishable. Needless to say that after this experience, he was very wary of preprints. But this is an exception, and most mathematicians post in the arxiv all the time without major issues.


When should you stop asking your PhD advisor to do advisor like things? After you have finished a PhD when does it become inappropriate to ask your advisor for advice, read over a manuscript, or do any other "advisor things"? Presumably if every student an advisor ever had continued to act as if the former advisor was still his/her advisor, the professor wouldn't get anything else done. Basically how should one interact with the former advisor once the PhD is finished?

My advisor, at two different points in my academic career, said:

"I am your advisor for life. You can always count on me."
"I think it's time for my old students to start finding new people to comment on their work."

I took away from this that your advisor should always be available at some level, it's part of the point of taking on students. You are part of their scientific (or otherwise scholarly) contribution. At the same time, post-PhD you have to develop your own network of support, which is part of your growth as a scholar.

But how do you know when to do this? I think the best answer is simply to ask your advisor (see, they're always there to answer the hard questions). Hopefully they'll give you an honest opinion - either to keep asking them for help or that they think you're ready to fly on your own. Either, if you don't feel confident that you have enough peers to count on, it's probably a sign that you both can still ask your advisor for help and that it's time to put some more energy into expanding your professional network.


What is meant by rewarding No-Grades when one's adviser remained satisfied towards one's research? Being a PhD student (in U.S), if one's adviser looked satisfied (if remarked "good" in satisfied mood) towards one's research during all the semester but at the end of semester rewards you "NO Grades" in your research-credits, what does it mean? And how to put one's surprise before him? (note that the same adviser awarded 'Progress' Grades in research in other semesters)

Secondly is it normal that PhD advisers do that while looking satisfied towards them?

Before jumping to conclusions, first review your university's grading policy. There may have been changes to the classification system.

If, after reviewing it, you find that the grade is indeed "negative," then you need to have a conversation with your advisor. Do not come with an accusatory tone, as that will end badly for everyone. I would ask something like:

  "I'm a little confused about my thesis grade. I thought I was making satisfactory progress this semester. Could you explain what I need to do to improve?"

This will give your advisor an "out" if there was just an administrative mixup (for example, if it's a bubble form that was improperly filled out) or some other problem. On the other hand, if there's something serious, then you'll know. But usually a good advisor will level with you if there's serious issues in your work.


Effective open-ended student evaluation questions As we reach the end of the semester, the students in my class are being asked to do their evaluation of my teaching, as is common at most universities. As with most evaluations that I know of, I have been given an opportunity to provide open-ended prompts for the students to respond to.

I would like to craft open-ended questions for the students that will help me to improve my class/teaching style. This class was a large (~100 students) lecture, so I would like to focus the questions on how to improve myself in teaching large classes. Has any research been published showing which questions (or which types of questions) generate answers that are most effective at helping teachers to improve at teaching large lectures? If no research, is there any anecdotal evidence of "most helpful" questions?

Actually, based on my experience, it is better to ask the questions to the students at the end of the next semester.

During the semester, an average student usually concentrates on passing the course, rather than thinking about the outcomes of the course.
I think one realizes what the course gave him/her after about one semester.
And this is the time that they use their knowledge of your course to understand or pass another course.

Of course, the questions are highly dependent on what you want to improve.
However, it is always more clear what to improve when the students have a chance to use the course outcomes without any expectation of the grade.
If a student says "I wish you underlined the importance of Unit 6. Thus I could understand XX201 better", this is a good feedback, whereas
"This course is sooooo hard." is not.

As for the questions, this is what I ask to my students after one semester. Not like a questionnaire, but face-to-face:

Do you use what I've taught you for this semester?
Are there any redundant topics that I've covered?
How would you study if you were to take the course this semester?


Is it correct for a PhD holder to sign as "Dr. J. Doe, PhD"? I have seen some of the PhD holders sign as "Dr. [First Name] [Surname], PhD".

Is it academically correct to write "Dr. Frank Amoani Arthur, PhD"?

There are two important points to note about name markers that refer to academic titles:

You can have more than one of these markers in your name: Kay Doe, PhD, MD indicates a person who is both a doctor of philosophy and a doctor of medicine.
The marker Dr. can very often be used as a variant of the post-positioned markers. If both of them are equivalent markers in your country, you can choose either marker to refer to your academic title.

These two observations make the suggested name form Dr. Kay Doe, PhD rather ambiguous.

Does it refer to a person with two doctor titles because there are two markers? Or do both markers refer to just one doctor title? But if so, why is that doctor referred to twice in one name? This may even lead to suspicion: Does the name bearer use two markers which refer to the same  title with the intention to sound more impressive than their academic distinction actually warrants?

This ambiguity is avoided if you use only one title marker per title.


Re-applying PhD after already starting one I would like to re-apply for PhD at top US schools, after already (1 month in) starting PhD at a good (non-US) school. The program starts with a preparatory year, so theoretically I am not committed to a specific supervisor yet.

The school I am in is quite good in several aspects, it is an 'up-and-coming' young university, with good pay for grad students, a nice atmosphere and well connected professors. However, I think that it does not have the same name recognition of US universities or professors that are exactly specialized in my area of interest.

I had previously applied to Caltech and UC Berkeley, along with the one I got accepted in as a safety school. I got an online interview for Caltech, I and I was told the reason I did not get in was 'it is a small school, and my background made it difficult to find a professor for me to work with'.

Part of the reason I would like to re-apply is that I do not want to feel like a failure down the road, which is admittedly not the greatest reason.

Regardless, I would like to know if (1) it is worth it to re-apply or should I just stick with where I am, and if so,(2) how do I ask for recommendation letters again without my professors feeling that I am wasting their time. (3)Is there a cost to re-applying again? (4) What should I change this time?

Part of the reason I would like to re-apply is that I do not want to feel like a failure down the road, which is admittedly not the greatest reason.

"Feeling like a failure" when you got admitted into a good PhD program is absurd. Look at it from a broad perspective: only around 2% of the population in the US have a PhD, it's clearly not rational to consider yourself a failure when you're in the top 2%. This feeling indicates that you are a perfectionist person, which is common and a great quality in academia... unless it's excessive and leads you to being constantly unsatisfied with yourself, undermining your motivation and eventually the quality of your work. It's good that you're aware that this feeling is not a good reason to re-apply, before any decision make sure that you completely get rid of this feeling: it's irrational and has nothing to do with where you do your PhD, because what matters in a PhD is the quality of your research. Don't let this kind of feeling grow, because a PhD is already challenging enough for one's sanity.

  However, I think that it does not have the same name recognition of US universities or professors that are exactly specialized in my area of interest.

There are lots of unknowns when one starts a PhD, and it's human to try to find certainty in objective facts such as the recognition of the institution. Unfortunately it doesn't work this way: the recognition you will get after the PhD has very little to do with your institution, it will depend almost only on the quality of your own work. A major factor for this is the compatibility between you, your topic and your supervisor. It's true that top institutions tend to have good academics, but this compatibility is not automatic: many PhD students in a top institution underperform, and many PhD students in non-top institutions succeed. At the end of the day, the recognition of the institution plays very little role in your own success. However your area of interest is important: if there are no potential supervisors in your institution who are specialized in it, then it's reasonable to consider moving to a "more compatible" institution.

So my humble advice is:

  (1) it is worth it to re-apply or should I just stick with where I am, and if so,

Not worth for the reputation of the institution; you should consider it only if you think you're not going to be able to work on your topic of interest with a good supervisor in your current institution.

  (2) how do I ask for recommendation letters again without my professors feeling that I am wasting their time.

If you decide to do it, you can ask them if you can re-use their recent letters of recommendation.

  (3)Is there a cost to re-applying again?

No idea but it should be easy to find out.

  (4) What should I change this time?

If you decide to do it, you should probably explain that you now have a precise idea of the topic you plan to do and demonstrate why it makes sense for you to work on this topic at this institution, i.e. make it interesting for a supervisor to accept you.


Pedagogical reasons for time-limited exams Reading the various questions about open-book and closed-book examinations got me wondering:

  Is there any sound pedagogical reason for a time-limited examination (closed  or open) at the undergraduate/advanced UG level ?

I understand that there are many good logistical reasons, including:

classroom management in a big group
a desire to prevent cheating

and at (say) the elementary school level, I understand that timed tests (say of multiplication tables) create a certain level of felicity with manipulating numbers that helps with more complex tasks later on.

But at the UG/advanced UG level, it seems to me that deep understanding is usually more important.

Note: This question on the unreasonableness of the prescribed time limits is related, but not exactly the same (i.e it takes as given the existence of time limits and merely questions the actual time span set)

Is there any sound pedagogical reason for a time-limited examination (closed or open) at the undergraduate/advanced UG level ?

For many subjects, yes. For others, no.

I had an exam for a subject in school called "technical graphics". It involved drawing parabolas and projections and so forth on a big sheet of A3 paper with pencils and protractors and compasses. It was widely-regarded to be a subject of skill more than knowledge: the exam was timed and you had to accurately and quickly and carefully draw up four or five questions. A small inaccuracy becomes compounded through the rest of the drawing. Given unlimited time and some basic knowledge, nearly anyone could ace the exam since acquiring the necessary knowledge was easy; but acquiring the skill to do the timed exam was hard. And it was the skill we practised in class. Was this skill useful? Was it a learning outcome to draw quickly? I would say yes, of course; if I were to become a draughtsman (leaving aside CAD et al. for the purposes of the analogy), learning to draw quickly and accurately would be important to my livelihood. And it was the tightly-timed test that put emphasis on this learning outcome.

Likewise if I were doing a cookery lesson, cooking quickly would be important. If I were doing a programming lesson, programming quickly would not be as important, but it would still be important. And so we get into the usual varying shades of grey.

Generalising, we can define different types of learning based on the two main types of memory targeted: procedural memory (residing below the level of conscious awareness) and declarative memory (facts and/or knowledge that can be consciously recalled or inferred from other such facts/knowledge). Some subjects – like technical graphics or cookery or programming – put a strong focus on development of procedural memory alongside declarative memory. Other subjects – like biology or history – emphasise declarative memory far far more than procedural memory.

As such, I would say that the importance of a time-limited exam for a subject is correlated with the emphasis on procedural learning for that subject. A teacher may then wish to consider whether or not procedural learning is important for their subject or not.


Is researchgate still useful? It seems that researchgate is gaining some popularity in recent years. However, there is some criticism on their habit of sending requests and unsolicited spam emails?. What is your experience of using researchgate? Does it help promote your research and get some readership?

Depends on your purpose.

If your aim is to track the publications of a given academic then I would recommend these in the following order of preference. Some of these may surprise you:

Google Scholar;

Google Scholar seems to capture more publication outputs any other source. This is partly due to the scope they have for including different publication types, such as  reports and discussion papers that many other platforms exclude. They also have greater capacity to show citations to those publications. This will often lead to a higher H Index on Google Scholar than on other platforms;

Microsoft Academic (Microsoft's weird equivalent to Google Scholar);

Microsoft Academic is the almost unheard-of equivalent to Google Scholar. It has a different look and feel but does more or less the same thing, but less well. It does not seem to capture as many publications as Google Scholar and seems to require more intervention on the part of the academic to keep their record up to date, and is therefore less reliable;

Twitter;

Whaaat? Twitter? Yes. Twitter. Many younger academics send a tweet whenever a new publication of theirs becomes available. It's as close to a real-time notification of new publications as you can get with those that do this consistently. Not very good for reviewing previous publications but great if you are following the latest from a particular academic;

Academia.edu;

Academia.edu is hanging in there as a platform despite being behind a paywall for many of their features. Many academics still maintain a record of their publications on this platform because it offers reasonably good analytics. But they have to keep it up to date themselves, which can often mean an inconsistent record of publications and often a significant time lag in publications being added;

ResearchGate;

As with Academia.edu above, only their analytics aren't as good, so there is less incentive for academics to keep this up to date.

Linked In;

Many academics use Linked In for their professional networks. They typically want people in their network to see what they are up to so they often keep a selective record of their publications there as well;

Their own departmental web page;

Updating their own department's web page is normally the last thing on the list for most academics. It's often a pain for them to update because they typically don't have access to this record themselves and are therefore reliant on the lazy-ass staff at their own institution to (reluctantly) update it for them - or worse - rely on the deeply flawed system their institution uses to track and report their research outputs. These often deliberately exclude publications which do not count for 'points' in whatever research incentive scheme they use. Don't get me started!

Finally, there are a host of platforms claiming to offer a definitive list of publications attributed to each author (including Orcid, Publons, etc). Orcid really exists as a means of attributing a unique identifier to each author so that publications might more reliably be attributed to the correct author. These have a role to play but they are not really designed as a means for making an author's publication catalogue accessible (and these platforms are simply awful to use, so many academics don't bother with them at all once they have their author ID number).

The main differences between these pertain to how much information is included and how they are updated.

Platforms like Google Scholar are more reliable as they do not rely on the academics themselves to keep their records up to date. Academia.edu and ResearchGate can still be useful, particularly where academics make the full text of their publications available through those platforms. Twitter and the others are useful for keeping up with the latest and getting a sense of what they think is important.

Try them out and see :-)


Why do academic journals usually have continuous page numbering? In a normal magazines, page numbers restart counting from 1 at every issue.

Most academic journals, however, count continuously, perhaps per year or per quarter, leading to articles covering pages 13199–13255 or similar folly.

Why is this so?  When citing year and issue, there is no ambiguity when starting to count at 1 at every issue.  So why not paginate by issue like everybody else?

One of the reasons, if not the only one, is that each year journal issues are typically collected by libraries in bound volumes, which, in this way, have a continuous numbering. At the end of the year, journals would also publish indexes for relatively quick reference.

Or, at least, that is what is used to be.

Below, there is an example of bound volumes (picture source).


Conference/Journal publication author's name (surname)? I am just wondering if I can legally use a nickname or not to use my official name (Passport name) as the author's name of a conference or a journal publication?

My official name is quite long and I am planning to change it in the future. Is it possible to put the name that I am going to call myself in the future as the author's name?

There is no requirement to use your full, legal name when publishing a paper. Many people who get married continue to use the same name they used before marriage, even if they change their surname to match their partner's, to ensure all their publications can be found easily. It actually would be quite unusual for authors to use their full name when publishing. English "middle names" are usually omitted or shortened to just an initial.


Google Scholar has indexed the arXiv version and publisher version of my paper - but lists arXiv over the publisher. How to fix this? I published a paper in Nature. (Not really, but just an example.) I put the preprint of the article up on arXiv. Now on Google Scholar it shows:

A definitive proof that P=NP when N=1
R Dodecahedron
arXiv preprint arXiv:3141.59265 12  2017

When I click the article, it says "Cited by 20    Related articles    All 6 versions". When I click All 6 versions, the Nature bibliographic information is listed there. How do I get that to be listed as default, instead of the preprint version, on my Scholar profile? As the article was published two years ago, I do not think the problem will fix itself at this point.

I'm not 100% sure this will work (since I don't really have a way to test it), but I think you can try this. On your Google Scholar page (signed in):

Click on the link to the article in question --> this should pop up a window with more details.
Click on the "edit" symbol (pencil).
At the bottom, select "Unmerge this article and add it to my profile as a separate entry." --> close the window.
Select the two (or more) versions of the article and select merge.
This should pop up a window asking you to "Select the best version of the article." --> choose the Nature version.

The answers to these related questions may also be helpful: merging, linking


Is having five letters of recommendation for STEM PhD programs (math, specifically) ok? I know the minimum number of reference letters required at many U.S. PhD programs in the STEM fields is three -- and that it is also not uncommon for someone to submit a fourth letter.

What about a fifth letter?  Would a fifth letter of recommendation be perceived as "too many"?

This can depend on the specific university department. Some may welcome it as supplemental material to your application whereas some may discourage excess letters and tell you to choose the ones that will best showcase your abilities as a student. Don't add things to your application that the department doesn't welcome.

I've generally heard and been told that an additional good recommendation letter will boost your chances of admission,
but an additional generic recommendation letter that does not add anything unique to the other (assuming) 4 letters will only hurt it.

So for a general answer, make sure each recommendation letter is able to showcase different areas of skill rather than them overlapping with each other. Also, make sure to contact each department to make sure that they are okay with having more than 3 recommendation letters.

Hope this helps, good luck!


What is the ethical way of writing co-author names? I want to know how much a contribution a person should have to be the co-author, ethically in computer science and engineering field.

If a person help you to collect some amount of data (not all), either giving you permission or  participated himself to help you in data collection
Proofread the paper once or twice
Supervised you or co-supervised you but did not work in paper writing nor reviewing because of time constraints
The head of departments or labs
The one who supports you financially.

So I want to know, whom you will consider the co-author and whom not in the above list. What should the order of authorship in above scenario?

You might have to check with your journal guidelines. Here are some examples:
Elsevier

Four criteria must all be met to be credited
as an author:

Substantial contribution to the study
conception and design, data acquisition,
analysis, and interpretation.
Drafting or revising the article for
intellectual content.
Approval of the final version.
Agreement to be accountable for all
aspects of the work related to the
accuracy or integrity of any part of
the work.

[...]
Three types of authorship are considered
unacceptable:

‘Ghost’ authors, who contribute
substantially but are not acknowledged
(often paid by commercial sponsors);
‘Guest’ authors, who make no
discernible contributions, but are
listed to help increase the chances of
publication;
‘Gift’ authors, whose contribution is
based solely on a tenuous affiliation with
a study.

Springer
Has nearly the same principles.
Your university
Likely your university has a document where they spell out the guidelines. The ethics department, if it exists, shall answer all of your questions.
Your specific questions (my opinion)

If a person help you to collect some amount of data (not all), either giving you permission or participated himself to help you in data collection - Yes (although I'm not sure what you mean by the "giving you permission" part)
Proofread the paper once or twice - I'd say no. Correcting typos is not a major scientific contribution.
Supervised you or co-supervised you but did not work in paper writing nor reviewing because of time constraints - If supervised means giving guidance and participating in discussions, yes. If supervised means just overlooking the progress of the paper without substantial input, then no.
The head of departments or labs - Just being the head of lab does not suffice. The authors contribute to the project directly.
The one[s] who support you financially. - These are typically credited in the acknowledgment section, not by giving them authorship.

Acknowledgments, on the other hand, are less strict. So even minor contributions, conversations or comments on the draft might be sufficient for putting someone in the acknowledgments.

Note: In this answer I'm not saying anything about the order of the authors because it's field dependent and I have no experience about it (my field being one that adopts alphabetical order).


Someone asks me to cite their paper. Should I cite? I submitted the preprint to arXiv and the manuscript to a Physical Review journal, and someone asked me to cite their article after seeing it from arXiv.
Their paper is a review. After reading that paper, I find that it has only a weak connection with our work.
My supervisor asks me to cite it. Should I refuse to cite?

I can think of a number of reasons to cite a source:

to acknowledge the work of others that you are building on (avoiding plagiarism)
to give credit to the author of a particular phrase that you quote (avoiding plagiarism)
to point readers to relevant previous literature
to signal that your work is at the cutting edge of the field, and
to situate your contribution in the context of related research
to provide evidence for a claim

"Being asked" is not among them.
Unless you retrospectively find that one of the reasons above applies (esp. 3-5), politely decline to cite the paper in question. In particular, you should refuse to add a citation as a favor.

Addendum: I just saw your update to the question, stating that your supervisor asks you to cite the apparently irrelevant paper. This complicates the issue. I would ask them to explain why and where to add the citation. Perhaps they want you to slightly revise your paper, incorporating information from the new source, which would justify the citation. If not, it depends on your relationship whether you are in a position to push back.


How can I assist other graduate students who may feel increasingly "unwelcome" due to their countries of origin? I work in a research group with a large number of international graduate students. Recent news in my country (the United States) has been deeply unsettling for some of these students, especially the ones who hail from "unwelcome" countries (see here).

As a U.S. citizen, I (personally) feel guilty and embarrassed over the current goings-on (nor do I agree with them), though I certainly do not expect other Americans to necessarily feel that way too. Many of these students in my lab know my personal feelings on the matter. But at the end of the day, there isn't much I can do right now to affect national policy, so I'm trying to think more locally.

What, if anything, can I do here in my lab/department/university to help my fellow students/peers/friends?

The best thing you can do in my opinion is to be the change you wish to see in the world. Namely, be as friendly and welcoming to the international students as you can be. This will show them that negative views towards people who hail from the countries they come from are not shared by the entire US population, but are simply the opinions of certain people who happen to hold political office these days. It will also make you a role model for other Americans in your lab and department who may be inspired by your positive example to act in similar ways.


It is possible to obtain two PhD degrees (various fields) on the basis of one interdisciplinary PhD dissertation? It is possible to obtain two PhD degrees (various fields) on the basis of one interdisciplinary PhD dissertation? Is this something feasible (in Europe)?

Or maybe there must be two different 'physical' doctoral dissertations?

No, at least the regulations that I am aware of require that the dissertation be a novel contribution to the respective field and that it has not been submitted before.

If you write a dissertation at the crossroads of different fields, you have to decide for a field in which you want to formally graduate and obtain a degree. It may be advisable to look for supervisors from different fields or with an interdisciplinary background.


Accepted post-doc and have subsequently received offers for full time faculty position - quandary After my PhD (Mechanical engineering) in 2013, I have been employed as a "visiting assistant professor-TERM" for 2013-2014 at the same university (in the USA). In this time I have been applying for several post-doc and faculty positions all around the world. The following fortuitous situation has now developed:

I was interviewed for a post doc position at a famed lab in Europe and received a job offer. This job offer is contingent on me getting security clearance for this lab and getting a long term visa. One of the ground rules laid out was I would not accept other post-doc positions.
Prior to this post-doc interview, I had interviewed for faculty position at US universities. Fortuitously a few weeks after this post-doc job offer, I have been offered full time faculty position at two other universities in the USA.
Now the reason I did apply for post-doc jobs is that they would help me build my network, publish more and help with an eventual faculty position!
I am in some moral quandary now: I know that I have given the post-doc PI my word and I will not renege on it. However, the faculty positions are definitely more lucrative and long term.
I accepted the post-doc job because I was asked to make a decision soon and since I am a foreigner, timing is everything for me and a "job in hand is worth two in the bush" Groans at quotation.

The options (likely and unlikely) that present themselves to me are:

Unlikely: Postpone the faculty positions to Fall of 2015. I don't think these universities would want to do that.
Likely: Angle for better pay/better title at the post-doc jobs.

I am hoping that given the experience in this forum, people could throw some light on this situation.

Edit: Advantages and disadvantages of these positions

Advantages and Disadv. of Postdoc:

(+) Great change of work, reputable lab, exposure to different work culture, deadlines, work pressure, expanding professional network on both sides of atlantic
(-)1-2 years only, relatively poor pay

Adv. and Disadv. of faculty position

(+) Faculty position nuf' said. Much Better pay, "long" term
(-) Will miss out on once in a lifetime post doc at great lab

Maybe I shouldn't start the answer with the judgey part, but if you don't feel like you can accept the faculty positions because of your previous commitment, why the hell didn't you pull your name from consideration the moment you accepted the European job?  On my personal list of academic job hunting sins, not withdrawing your name from a position you've decided you can't accept is much worse than declining a postdoc offer for a TT.  So, there's really no ethical choice at this point, so you may as well do what's best for you long term.

That said, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the possibility of starting the TT job with a delay.  This is very common in mathematics (my field); I've done it, and I know dozens of other people who have as well.  I can imagine reasons it would be harder in mechanical engineering, but it's worth a shot.  An important thing to remember as a job candidate is that once you have the offer, the tables are reversed.  They've shown their hand, they've made a time, financial and psychic investment in you, and their other candidates are slowly slipping away as they wait for your answer.  They really want you to say yes, so a concession like letting you take an initial leave is a small one.  After all, they don't even need to pay for it!  Universities are very flexible about letting you do things if they don't have to pay for them.

I mean, really they should want you to do this, since you'll come to them better trained, with more fresh ideas, and a wider perspective.  So sell it on those grounds, and I bet you'll succeed.


Why are there some really young professors and other much older lecturers without professor status? I was just wondering how this is possible, there are some 50+ year old people who are 'Dr. X Y', and others who are maybe "only" 40 years old , but they are 'Professor Dr. X Y'.

Academia, like any other organized human profession, has a system of ranks and advancement on which those particularly talented or ambitious tend to rise quickly, while others may rise much more slowly or eventually stop.


Answering "How many months of work experience do you have?" on grad school applications I am applying to a MS in a STEM degree (Business Analytics or Data Science) at some pretty competitive US universities (domestic applicant).

I have done a lot of different types of work during and after my bachelors program (coursework completed in 3/17), in a large variety of projects and teams on many different time tables and employment statuses. I'll have a separate question I'll be asking in relation to my freelance work after the period in the image below, but I wanted to see what from my usually listed items on my resume I should consider factoring these into the question "How many months of work experience do you have?"

There are mainly 3 questions here,

How should I tabulate months of experience based on the man-hours I've through put on these projects?
Which of these projects would be considered something I should not count towards a question like that on my graduate applications?
Is there an implication that I should be focusing on post-graduate work experience for a question like this or any other conventions I should be cognizant of?

As you are aware, this is hard to answer. Hours worked don't translate well to months, since you often think about things and are engaged when you aren't officially "on the clock".

Of course the answer also depends on how complete you are allowed to be in reporting. If it is an open ended question, I'd suggest that you just list each activity with both (a) how many months you were engaged and (b) and estimate of how many hours per week (or whatever) you spent over that time.

But if you can create that list you can probably also reduce it to a range of months, something like "8-12 covering different activities at different times". You could use that if you need to give a short description.

If you need to give a single numeric answer without caveats and some precision is required, just give your best guess based on the above, but be prepared to discuss it in any interview you might have.


What should be done when the theory behind a PhD thesis turns out to be wrong? I have a friend who has been working on a PhD dissertation for over 3 years and he is supposed to be wrapping it up. Unfortunately, his thesis involves a complex model and populating the model with hard-to-obtain data. After having finally gathered all the data and plugged it into the model, he is finding that the theory is more or less non-predictive and does not work. In other words, he had an interesting theory, having been tested against the data it turns out the theory is wrong.

So, in this situation what would you do? Just write a dissertation that says, "well four years of research shows that this theory is wrong"?

Why was the theory wrong? "It didn't work" is not the end -- the end is knowing why it didn't work. There are at least two possible answers:

There is some fundamental, obvious mistake at the core of the model that should have been caught a long time ago. In this case, it may be a matter of starting over. It's difficult to produce a paper/thesis if the story is "I made a stupid model and it didn't work."
There is some previously-unknown reason why the model didn't work despite smart people thinking it would. This is likely an interesting, publishable result. In fact, it could be even more interesting than a paper that just says "we used a model and it worked as expected."

It sounds like the data is valuable as well. Even if it is a matter of starting over again, this dataset sounds like it could lead to a publication or be an ingredient in the new thesis.


Stranded in a taught MSc CS Program. What should I do? I am an international student pursuing my masters degree in computer science at a mid-low tier U.S. university. This is my second year and still I couldn't get in a research group and here usually profs. consider PhD students for research.

This program has a thesis option but it is not compulsory and it seems like professors and department is abusing this to get rid of spending time for MS students. The program is actually a taught MS, but it is disguised as a MS CS program. Some schools clearly mention that their program is not designed for research or thesis work. And still my schools web page talks about thesis work but I don't see a single student in my batch doing a thesis. Also the courses they offer are mostly advanced undergrad classes. I didn't come here to take the same classes which I did in my undergrad or I can learn from MIT OCW.

While choosing this program over others, their research focus was important for me and I was interested in doing a MS thesis. But now, I only have minor class projects which are far away from research. Probably, if I apply for a PhD my recommendation letters will not be strong as a result of this. My GPA is good, I am not a bad student but still whoever I talk with says "give some time". And time is passing.

I want to get involved with some research, what can I do outside this school ? Can I transfer to other program ? I am thinking of taking permission from school and not paying this semesters fees and applying for a transfer to a school where students really do a thesis work. If a get a masters degree from here can I find a research internship position  as an international on student visa ?

Be proactive. Identify the professor(s) that could be your thesis adviser and keep  asking for advice on how you can participate in his or her research and how he/she can officially become your adviser. You could also talk to the department chair.

In the mean time you could look into participating in some open source project, which could score some bonus points for you when applying for PhD or internship.

Another option for bonus points and priming your skills is participating in (programming) competitions that require more than just coding skills but analytical and creative thinking as well.

If all else fails, consider applying for a different school, although this may mean time lost. On the other hand, I did retake several classes while in a grad school although I already had a MSc, which was well worth the time spent, offering deeper and more research oriented perspective on the subjects.


Would my paper get rejected if the related work section takes up too many pages, and what would the optimal maximum length for this section be? I have recently submitted my paper to the journal of IEEE Access. They wanted me to only expand the related work section, so I have additionally included dozens of papers, most of which were suggested by them, into this section and will resubmit the paper in the following weeks. However, that section takes up three and a half pages now.

Would my paper get rejected because the related work section takes up too much space? Or, at least would it make a bad impression on reviewers and, if accepted and published, on prospective readers? If you suggest that I shorten this section, what would be the optimal maximum length for the literature survey section for a prestigious journal?

I ask this, because the related work section of most of the papers I've come across in this journal takes up one page at most in general. As I said, when the reviewers asked me to include all the papers they recommended, the related work section had to be much longer.

FYI, this journal has a specific policy such that you can resubmit your paper only once after the original submission. That is, if they reject your paper one more time, no more resubmissions will be allowed under the name of revision.

If the papers were suggested by the reviewers, there are high chances that those papers were from "reviewers" and they wanted to increase their cite count.

In my experience (non IEEE Access), I cited those papers and the paper got accepted. No need to cite additional papers (OTHER THAN THOSE OFFERED BY THE REVIEWERS). I think because the contribution you made was based on your prior study of literature and it should suffice.

If you think that few papers SUGGESTED BY THE REVIEWERS are not under the scope of your research, simply explain politely that "We found paper XYZ to be out-of-scope of our current research and could not fit into our paper. However, paper XYZ-2 did shared some interesting ideas. We have included a detailed discussion on this in Section ABC"... and


How much non-thesis work should a GRA do, and how to let PI know if I think it's too much? I am a PhD student, and am being asked to do increasing amounts of non-thesis work. Some of this is general lab paperwork and small extra projects, which I'm happy to do and expect to lead to opportunities to present or publications. However, one project is run on clinical samples as patients present to the hospital, so is very unpredictable and time consuming (about a day's work per sample, split over 2 days). When originally asked to take part, I was told I would have to run samples only when my PI or the main student on the project was unavailable. I am now running almost all the samples, and frequently being phoned or emailed late at night to help with the project, as well as being told to come in to run samples at weekends. This project will be presented by a resident who recruits cases (but I actually collect and process most of the samples) and it is unclear if I will be on the paper.

How can I gently point out to my PI that this is interfering with my thesis work and my family life, without risking endangering her future reference?

Are you being paid as a GRA? Usually your contract should specify how many hours you are being paid for. This is  10 hours a week for some fields (20 for others, as seen in comments), but it can vary. You need to find out what your GRA limit is.

Note that your letter of acceptance -- if it included a GRA package -- may also specify your contractual obligations. If not, check your graduate handbook.

If you have concerns, you should bring it up with your advisor, your Director of Graduate Studies in your department, or your department head (in that order of ascension).


When to withdraw/is this professor being reasonable? I am currently in a difficult science class that is important for my major.  I have a current GPA of 3.5 that I am very focused on keeping. This semester I had a vacation out of the country that I had been planning for years. I spoke to all my professors about it and only one had any problem with my being unable to make two classes. This professor said that I would be unable to make up any of the class work and would receive a zero in all assignments given during the time I was gone, nor will I be allowed any extra credit to make up for the missed class work. As a result I worked extremely hard at keeping the highest grade possible in the class and when I left on vacation my grade was 97%. After I got back I found out I was pregnant. Sadly there were complications and I was hospitalized and had a miscarriage barely a week later. This caused me to miss an additional class. Though I spoke with the difficult professor about what was going on and offered to provide any documentation required my grade has been dropped to 77%. If my GPA drops too much I will lose my scholarship money and internship opportunities.  I have time to withdraw but I really don't want to waste the time and money. I have never had a professor treat me like this before, is this normal? I would like to hear some educated opinions.

In the US, it is up to the professor on how he/she wants to handle a student missing class without a valid excuse. Vacations are not valid excuses (doesn't matter how long you've been planning it, and why would it?).

However, medical issues are a valid excuse and the university usually has a policy on how to handle it, which professors have to adhere to. I would recommend talking to your advisor or the chair of the department about this.

As @ChrisPhan mentioned, this particular situations looks to be protected by Title IX in the US. Most universities have staff known as Title IX Coordinators that you can contact. I imagine that they will take this very seriously.


Is it a good idea to get the recommendation letter from the head of a professional organization? For master's admission, the letter of recommendation is essential. It also makes impact on admission decision. Usually, the recommendation letters are obtained from academic professors.

Is it a good idea to get the recommendation letter from the head of a professional organization, who is not the head of my programs?

Generally speaking, the letter of recommendation should present you, as a candidate, to your potential employer. As such, it should be from someone who:

Knows you in a professional capacity.
Knows you in the capacity which is (at least partly) relevant to the position you apply for.

To successfully learn on the master program, the candidate shall have a certain set of skills (e.g. knowledge of a particular subject), but also soft skills (commitment, dedication, self-motivation, teamwork, responsibility, ability to work independently, leadership, etc.). If the head of your professional organisation can emphasise these attributes in their letter, and justify them using examples and evidence, it is a (very) good idea to have the recommendation letter from them.


Application Letter for European Universities I'm applying for a research fellowship at a European University, and one of the requirements is an application letter that outlines which project proposals (created by professors at the university) I'd be the most interested in. Is anyone familiar with this process? What is the format of this kind of letter?

Speaking as someone who has chaired selection committees, I would say that it is expected that you make a succinct argument for choosing you; if it were just a choice of projects then a check box would have sufficed. Also, the professors will usually be asked for an opinion and a ranking of candidates, so contact professors whose projects interest you.

In France this would be a lettre de motiviation, a kind of cover letter where you present your arguments for being the right person to hire. Typically one page or a page and a half. Generally you would want at least to explain

What you have done before: education and experience relevant to the position
What your ambitions are, scientifically of course and personally if appropriate
Why the institution and project would be great places to realize those ambitions
What you hope to contribute to the institution and project

For example, as a graduate of the University of Souther North Dakota's department of bike shedding, you have been trained to design bike sheds, and your time as a summer intern in Unité Velocipède of the Clermont Ferrand police department gave you insight into the role of bike shed ergonomics for special needs users. Your ambition is introduce bike shedding thinking at all levels of the outdoor shelter design process, and feel that your application to the prestigious Slough Institute of Canine Environmental Protection provides a unique opportunity to place your experience and abilities at the service of innovative projects. In particular you would be thrilled to contribute your expertise in chromatic selection to the development of height-appropriate shelters for injured Great Danes using wheeled carts.


Should a very competitive person pursue a career in academia after getting a PhD? I am getting my phd degree (in a STEM field) at a Top 20 department in a year or two, and I truly love my field, but I’m not sure if I should try for jobs at academia.

The thing is, I feel that I am way too competitive. I know this isn't a healthy attitude, but I cannot stop comparing myself with smarter people consistently and feeling stupid and inferior later, and I always care about people’s opinions on me too much. Back when I was an undergraduate, I felt terrible even if I got fewer scores on homework assignments than my peers/friends. I don't have hostility against people who are smarter than me; I really don't. But I admit that I feel really uncomfortable while being surrounded by people who are much better than me.

Having said that, I still do not want to give up working on my field, but I still cannot concentrate my mind completely on my research in order to ignore how I rank among others. Is my issue solvable? I really appreciate your advice, not to mention this is a really hard topic to discuss with others in real life.

I don't see the problem. You are hardly alone in having the qualities you described -- academia is full of very competitive people, and competitiveness is also the reason why many of those people are highly driven to work hard and excel at what they do, and therefore to some extent the reason why it is such a fun and interesting place.

I understand that you are worried that being overly competitive will make you perpetually frustrated and unhappy, since no matter howsuccessful you become there will always be people who are yet more successful than you. To the extent that that's true, it will also be true outside of academia in any environment you are likely to end up in as a talented and highly educated person, unless your alternative plan is to give up all ambitions and pursue a lackluster life managing a bagel store or something similar. And honestly, given your description of yourself, I really don't see you doing that. So you're stuck with your ambitions, like it or not, and academia is as good a place as any to be a person with such traits.


Whom to ask for letter of recommendation while I have worked only with my advisor in PhD I am a 4th year PhD student in Computer Science. For my PhD thesis I have worked on problems in Stochastic systems. Currently, I have a publication (accepted) in a Tier 1 Applied Math. journal and another  under review in another Tier 1 Applied Math. journal. Also, one work is in progress. Now, I have started thinking about applying for Postdocs. I heard that 3 letter of recommendation is needed. For my PhD thesis I have worked only with my advisor (I am the lead author in all my papers). Hence I am confused about whom to ask for letter of recommendation other than my advisor. One option is my course instructors (I got good grades in all my courses). Could anybody give me any suggestion?

For getting PhD one's PhD thesis is going to be scientifically evaluated and reviewed. It depends on specific regulations but usually such PhD reviewers are people outside of your department/university. So, together with your PhD advisor these reviewers are the best folks to deliver recommendations (as they are truly capable of evaluating your PhD work & you). The other guys who can be great references for you are those who reviewed your published works (though not explicitly disclosed it might be not hard to figure out that; your advisor might actually know them ;) or those who are familiar with your research by other means (e.g. cited it, referred to it in their talsk/seminars/etc). Lastly, please do challenge your PhD advisor with this issue: in fact, it is one of his/her responsibilities towards his/her PhD students; particularly, it is a PhD advisor who 'orchestrates' a PhD defence process, including e.g. finding thesis reviewers, etc.

p.s. At PhD-->postdoc stage, a course instructor is, in general, not a great person to provide a letter of recommendation. The reason is simple: your potential postdoc bosses would primarily like to know about your research work, capabilities, potential, etc. Your coursework performance is rather irrelevant. Of course, not all course instructors are bad: the one behind a so called PhD-level research-oriented seminar course might be a great reference or it might be more or less 'regular' course but taught by a well-known guy in the area of your postdoc research interests.


Affiliation during unpaid leave? If I take an unpaid leave from my institute to work for another institution, is it ok to put my original institution as a second affiliation on publications produced during the leave? That is regardless of the research funding source.

If you are "on leave," meaning that you still have an appointment at your primary institution that you can expect to return to, then yes, you may use both affiliations.  Sometimes it is explicitly noted that you are on leave from this appointment, but that depends on journal policies.


How to write tedious algebraic manipulations In some of my papers, some of the results require tedious but straightforward algebraic manipulations. I am not sure what is the best way to present these manipulations:

I can write them at the paper body, then they might disturb the continuous reading of the text and distract the reader from the main results.
I can put them in an appendix, but then they will appear out-of-context and will be difficult to verify by the few readers who will want to.

One solution I thought of is to present them in their place in the paper body, but surround them in a gray box and in a smaller font. Then, most readers will be able to skip them easily, but the few interested readers will be able to read and verify them in context. Is this a good practice?

For this sort of thing, I always fall back on the advice of one of my professors from my PhD coursework.  He said you first write out all the algebra in the paper, then you move it to the appendix because it's too long, then you delete it from the appendix because that's too long, and stick it on your website.  Finally, you delete it from the website because no one looks at it.

Of course this depends entirely on how crucial the computation is to your paper, and it might be good to look at what's done in other papers in your specific field.  But generally speaking, I think you can frequently trust your reader's ability to do tedious algebra if they so desire.

One bit of middle ground that I see a lot is to describe what you do without showing it.  For example, if you present three equations and two of them are to be substituted into the first at some point, you can write something like "We first solve equation 1 for lambda, then substitute in equations 2 and 3 for alpha and beta.  This gives us equation 4..." That way in one simple sentence you've told the reader exactly how to get to the end result without showing anything more messy than your starting equations and ending equation.

May be unrelated to your field, but in economics I was always fond of Alfred Marshall's advice from 1906:

  (1) Use mathematics as a shorthand language, rather than an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them till you have done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life. (5) Burn the mathematics. (6) If you can't succeed in (4), burn (3). This last I did often.

Not really indicative of modern economics, but I like the principle regardless.


In addition to the grammerly software, are there other better tools in English writing? For non-English speakers, are there other useful tools besides grammerly software in English writing? Mainly check whether the sentence is authentic.

Your best bet is to get someone to look over it for you. While leaps and bounds have been made in CS related to looking over papers (or just sentences), not one catches everything.

Your university may have a "homework help" department that students(usually undergrads) can use to get their material looked over (mine had services to help with writing and mathematics specifically). While I think it would be a little out of the ordinary I think it would be worth a shot to see if they would check over your paper for comprehension.


If I drop from my architecture studies in ETHZ Zurich, can I restart in Manchester? I think about studying architecture in ETHZ Zurich (Switzerland), but due relatively high student dropout I have certain concerns if I would manage to go through.

Assuming I fail the necessary exams enough times to be asked to abandon studies, would it be possible then to try exactly the same (or closely related) subject in another leading university like Manchester University (United Kingdom)?

If the details are important, the details are Europe, ETHZ, Manchester University. If the answer can be generalized somehow, this would be obviously great.

I am aware that if I drop from ETHZ I cannot restart studies any relative discipline there. I am not sure however is it just an ETHZ specific internal rule or some unwritten rule with potentially much wider coverage.

The question can only be answered by an admissions committee at Manchester. But, like any other application, you need to show them that you are a good candidate to succeed in the program and afterwards. There is competition for any available slot and they want to make the best choices.

A series of failures isn't a great endorsement. If you want to move, do so before the situation looks hopeless.

However, there is an exception to the above. If you fail the exams for some odd reasons other than lack of preparation and diligence, then you might be able to have some professor speak highly enough of you that an admissions committee will make an exception. This is especially true if the professor has some personal or professional relationship with people on the receiving end.

But an anonymous student with a poor record isn't likely to be an obvious choice for acceptance.


Reviewers had questions about why my supervisor wasn't on manuscript I completed my MS by research under a supervisor. There was considerable delay in completing because my supervisor suddenly lost interest in research midway through my program. I had sent him a research paper for his comments but even after several reminders, he did not show interest in looking at the paper. After graduating from the program, I decided to send it to a journal myself. I sought permission from my supervisor and he was ok with it. Since he had not reviewed it, he said he could send it without including his name as one of the authors. So, I had acknowledged his guidance in the paper in the acknowledgement section. I had sent the paper and now, in the reviewer comments, one of the reviewers has asked about not adding the supervisor's name in the author list (it was listed under minor comments). I'm not sure how to respond to this question. Right now, I'm not exactly on speaking terms with my supervisor. Can anyone please help me?

Just reply with the facts: Explain that your supervisor was offered coauthorship, but has chosen not to be a coauthor of the paper.  (If you feel you want to elabore why - e.g. since he felt he did not contribute sufficiently to the paper, or the like - feel free to do so.)
Especially if this is listed under minor comments, take it as such.
In any case, it is generally not up to the referee to judge who should be a coauthor of a paper. What can be demanded is that you offer coauthorships to anyone who made a significant enough contribution to the paper. As long as you did that, you are fine.


Editor wants to change Full Article to Short Communication I received a review from a journal (life sciences) for an invited manuscript. The reviewer has requested minor revision and edits. However, the editor of the journal requested me to change my paper from 'Full Article' to 'Short Communication', but I believe my paper doesn't fit for 'Short Communication' since I presented numerous findings. In addition, my paper exceeded the word limits (up to 50%) for short communication. Any advice on how should I respond?

Handle this the same way you handle any other dispute: you tell the editor you think the article should be a "Full Article" instead of "Short Communication", giving your reasons. If the editor agrees, problem solved. If editor doesn't agree, it's up to you how much you care how your paper is classified. If you really, really want it to be a full article, you can dig in your heels and withdraw the manuscript if the editor still doesn't agree.

I wouldn't worry about exceeding the word limit for short communications. After all, if the editor didn't ask you to shorten the manuscript, presumably he's going to break the rules in this instance.


Acknowledge receipt of email or answer it? My professor sent me an email. At the end of the email he asked for receipt acknowledgement.

Please should I send the receipt acknowledgement separately and then answer the email or just answer the email, giving that I will do it instantly?

Probably best to acknowledge first anyway, since there is inevitably some risk that "instantly" becomes less instant...