Can master's thesis be simply a description of an original algorithm? I'm in a situation where I've probably bitten off more than I can chew. I decided to do my master's thesis on an original (as in, invented by me) machine learning algorithm, which I believe (and my advisor agrees) is interesting and might have something to contribute to the academia.

As a part of the thesis I wanted to implement the algorithm. However, implementing it is turning out to be a major pain. I've been working on the implementation for several months and the end is still nowhere in sight. Due to this, I'd like to change my thesis to be simply a description about the algorithm and comparison of it to existing, similar algorithms.

So my question is, is it feasible to have an original, unproven and untested idea as the main focus of your thesis? This feels iffy to me: master's thesis is supposed to be a sign of academic maturity, but nothing seems more unacademic to me than publishing an untested and unproven idea in the form of thesis, and not even having a working implementation of it.

I'd really appreciate advise, dragging this thesis is really getting the better of me. Thanks.

Write a chapter of your thesis in the shape of a review paper, which is good enough to submit for publication. Submit it. Write another chapter which builds on the review and uses that as an argument for the derivation of a new algorithm. Present the algorithm. In the discussion, highlight the steps needed to implement the algorithm and point out the problems encountered when you tried implementing it yourself. That's a MSc for me.


My master's thesis is extremely similar to an article that had already been published. Is that okay? My thesis is related to hispanic literature and culture. After doing a fair bit of research I formed my thesis and now as I am in the process of writing my literature review, I am realizing that my thesis is very similar to an article that I have read. The papers differ in that their theory is only applied to the events that happened in one country and I am applying a very similar theory to about 10 different countries throughout Latin America. I cite their work throughout my paper and plan on including it in my literature review. Is this allowed? Or is my thesis no longer valid/ acceptable because someone else had the same ideas applied on a much smaller scale? I do not intend to publish my work in a journal or other publication, I just need the paper to graduate.

I had this same question when I began writing my concept paper for my dissertation. I was alarmed when I found similar articles related to my dissertation topic and I almost changed topics in a panic. My advisors told me that finding related research was to be expected, but that I had to prove that my research would add value that was missing or limited within the findings of the prior studies. To provide proof, I created a matrix of all of the related material from my literature review to show how the others sources were similar or different to each other and how my research would fill the gaps.

I think it is very important to show that you are aware of the related research and that you have a clear understanding of what you are adding. One place to get a clue of this is to look at the Recommendations for Future Research that will be in the closing of the related research.

Good luck with your thesis.


Is the following a form of dishonesty on the part of the school? This distance-learning school claims to be a member of a certain international academic organization . But after checking with the said organization, I found out that the school's membership have expired years ago. Just last week, the organization informed me that they have requested the school to remove the questioned information from its website. To date, however, the school has not yet acted on this request.

Can the school's action or inaction qualify as a form of dishonesty or should we give the school the benefit of the doubt?

(By the way, the school is government-recognized/accredited.)

Does no really matter if the school is government recognized or not. Two things here.

Accreditation / Membership -  usually costs a lot of money each time you need to "refresh" it, so the school may have chosen not to do so. That does not necessarily mean, the school is not up to the standard. It may even be that school has decided not to participate as a member to this organization because of reasons unknown to you.

Next to that, these companies makes its name by doing proper evaluations. Those are always based on certain time period, and the conditions in the school at that time. Within 4 year period, a school can change half of its staff, have a new director, and a completely different set of standards, guidelines, and internal quality assessments. This is why schools must comply with the accreditation or membership standards continuously in order to keep their accreditation. And that is why these companies have a right to ask the school to remove it from their website / media.

It is not possible to determine from your writing, if we can attribute the school with dishonesty (requires knowledge of wrongdoing) or if this is part of the school policies working too slow, but in any case, if the company has contacted them, and instructed them to remove the false media materials, and they do not do so in a reasonable time, I would consider it at least a breach of trust, and most likely also contract.

Please note, that for a school that most likely advertises every start of the academic year, it will most likely make financial and moral sense to change these materials shortly before that start of the new academic year, which is a long time. If this bothers you, always feel free to write a letter to your school explaining your viewpoint. You can also write anonymously.


How to get list of journals in a discipline within a specified range of impact factors? I am looking for journals about A with impact factor between X and Y. Is there any way to find that on IEEE web site?

Web of Science Journal Citation Reports provides lists of journals on a topic along with a range of citation-based metrics, including impact factor. It's straight forward to sort such lists by impact factor and then extract journals within a range.

Many universities have subscriptions to Web of Science Journal Citation Reports. So check out your university library.


How should I talk to professor if I have been absent from project for weeks due to mental health issues? I am an undergraduate student. Four weeks earlier my professor asked me to work with him on a literature survey project. He asked me to update him every week about the status of the project. The project I am talking about basically marks the gender gap in an interdisciplinary field and I have to go through research papers and separate males and females, contact people rather than doing any research work. I worked on it for the first week showed him the excel sheet I made, but he didn't express any thoughts on that rather told me few other sources where I can get more data and answered the question I asked. I knew I was not very motivated to work since all I have to do was copy-paste data from sites to excel.
Then, my family members got sick(with most symptoms of COVID), I have to involve myself in that and it really brought my motivation down to zero. I couldn't bring myself up to manage time, I suffered from anxiety and depression in the second week, this disrupted my thinking I guess as I didn't inform my professor about the project. And in the third week as well I made no contacts with him and no progress in project.
But now when I think I am a little better, I see this as being irresponsible from point of professor and that unknowingly I have done a harm to my reputation since he is one of the best professors in my department and he has always been supportive to students.
I still haven't prepared enough data, what should I do now, how should I talk this out to my professor? Would an apology be enough? Should I ask him if I am still allowed to work on that project?

Update your professor about why progress has not been made and what your next steps are. If you need more time to focus on your mental health, then let your professor know.
One other important thing we should make clear: you are doing this work on your own time, as opposed to being paid. Research mentors or professors with unpaid research assistants should be grateful for any time you can devote to the project assuming you do not take their time for granted. It appears thus far that your professor has not invested a lot of time into the project with you, so you are fine. We should also note that you have no contractual obligation to do the work.


What is the best way to keep your students from getting out of control? I am new to teaching. Recently I was given the opportunity to teach at my own university (I am currently doing an MPhil from my university).
If a teacher fails to control his students once, he wouldn't be able to control them until the end of semester.

This is my first time in teaching and I am afraid that my students would get out of my control. They wouldn't listen to me, would misbehave and wouldn't let me give my lecture without interruption.

Please advise me the best way to keep my cool and prevent my students from getting out of control.

EDIT: I have not started teaching yet. I'll be starting my classes from next week.

EDIT2: The students are Bachelors students. I don't actually want to control them. I just want to maintain discipline in my class. I want to prevent misbehavior in my class. I have seen students not listening to new teachers and just pass the whole lecture passing comments.

First, realize that the main reason they might misbehave is the same as every one else, whether they are 4, 14, 24 or 94 years old: they will be distracted if they are not interested, bored. Conjectural factors surely also play a role (if it's nap time, for example), but if you get them interested you increase dramatically your chances of having a well-behaved audience.

Now, with regards to exercising your authority on a crow, the principles are again pretty much the same for 4 years old and 20 years old:

Immediately assume a position of authority. You have to be convinced that you naturally assume this authority before you go to the class. It derives from two factors:

    a. By naming you a lecturer, your university gave you authority over the lecture room. Be ready, but not overly eager, to exercise it.

    b. This authority also derives from your skills and knowledge: you are an authority on the topic you are lecturing. To maintain this, you have to be prepared to teach your topic.
Be consistent. Lay out a set of rules, explain them, and enforce them. They have to appear justified and reasonable to the students, so that you can enforce them if need be. Always put things back in perspective: why are we here, and how this justifies what I do.

To give an example: I always start by explaining that “I will not shout, because my voice doesn't allow me to go through the whole lecture shouting. Thus, if the noise level meets the point where I would need to shout, I will simply stop lecturing.” Standing there, silent, is a very effective way to lead the group to self-discipline (“hey, guys, shush!”). If necessary, I will remind them that even if I cover less material, the exam still covers the whole planned curriculum…
Be pragmatic. If things are going bad for some external circumstances, be prepared to make a justified exception to the rules, for the benefit of everyone. For example, if it's Friday afternoon and all students are exhausted from a week of exams, giving them 10 minutes off in the middle of a two-hour lecture might lead to overall improved productivity.

But most importantly, realize that while first impression is important, it is not “do or die”. Even as an experienced teacher, sometime you will underperform a given day (because you're tired, because you're not committed enough to this specific topic, because …), but there is nothing you cannot correct later.


Being in "reviewer invited" state for a long time before changing to "under review" : Is this a bad sign My paper was in "Reviewer invited" state for close to 7 months and recently changed to the status "Under Review". Why did it took 7 months for a reviewer/reviewers to accept to review, or find one who accepted? Is this generally a bad sign? and how much time it may on the "under review" state? Is it recommended to wait further for the review process to complete? Its an inter disciplinary math journal, to which both engineers and mathematicians contribute.

The status “reviewer invited” implies that your manuscript has cleared the initial screening and your paper will be sent for peer review. Finding reviewers usually takes some time as reviewers are busy researchers themselves.
Also, potential reviewers may decline the invitation, in which case the editor will have to begin looking for more reviewers. The reasons for declining may simply be too much workload or others, not simply disliking the paper.

Once the requisite number of reviewers has been assigned, the status will change to “under review.” You can wait for some more time to see if the status changes. I'm not too sure, but the number of reviewers probably varied, so you may simply have needed a lot of reviewers.

The time frame for review is around 3 weeks or so based on what i've seen based on some looking around. Then you might have a decision made, which might be a short round of reviews.

It may simply have been a month timelag in updating the listing, and simply difficulty in finding people in quantity (and probably expertise imo) to review the paper. I doubt it is an inherently bad sign, but do write to the editor, after all 7 months is a long wait. Best of luck with getting it published.

I would also check here and here.


As a non-researcher, how to tell new knowledge that the speaker might not know? A talk was closely relevant to a problem which had no breakthrough for a long time, but the speaker didn't seem to know a recently new method which is proved be able to solve it yet. What should I do?

I was not a researcher, relative young comparing to the large amount of attendees, and this was the first time I attend an international conference all by myself. Whether the audience interacted with me or not, they could always notice me as I was the smallest person sitting in the front row (for note taking, the rest of rows didn't have table) in between old, big/tall Western professors. Not to mention my broken English.

I had asked the speaker if he knew any new method to solve the problem or not, and he said no. I think he and the audience did have an interest to hear it (I could even mention some leading names working on it), and I know that most of them didn't really care what I mention above at all, but still with that much pressure I didn't have enough confidence to say. Since the new method comes from a completely different field, it might take a couple minutes to explain it. The longer I talked the more embarrassed and tongue-tied I was. In the end I thanked him and asked no more question.

I know that everyone has their first time, but what is your advice in this exact situation? What would you do to feel relief yourself? The impact of the newfound knowledge is big, and yet I'm a non-researcher. That pressure is not an easy thing for an inexperienced person to handle.

It's perfectly fine to use the question period to alert the speaker to other related work.  As with any question, try to keep it brief: one or two sentences.  I agree that a "couple minutes" is too long.  Here are some sample phrasings.

There is a recent paper by Jones and Smith on reticulated splines, in which they propose a method to solve the trolley problem.  Would this help to resolve the issue you mentioned in your talk?
Are you aware of the recent paper by Jones and Smith which gives a solution to the trolley problem?  This seems like it might helpful in answering your question of whether splines can be reticulated.
You mentioned that you need a solution to the trolley problem.  There is a recent paper by Jones and Smith which solves this problem using the method of reticulated splines.  Does that seem likely to be workable in this case?

It is a good idea to mention the names of the authors - partly to give them credit, and partly so that the speaker or other audience members can look up the work later.
Try to resist the urge to explain the related work in detail; the question period is not the time for that.  If there are significant aspects of the paper that are very relevant (special techniques, limitations, etc), you can mention them briefly (again, one or two sentences).  Otherwise, you can certainly approach the speaker after the talk is over, during a coffee break, etc, for further discussion.


Just received a great recommendation letter with one incident of a different student name In reviewing graduate school applications, I have a letter of recommendation that consists of two paragraphs. The first one is very detailed and personalised. The second one I think is standard and used for all students. The problem is that on the second paragraph, another name is used. I guess the professor copied and pasted it from another letter of recommendation and forgot to correct the name.

How do I ask the professor, politely, to change that name?

No need to be anything but simple, polite, and direct:

  Dear Professor Careless:

  Pardon me, but the second paragraph of your letter has the name of a different student, which I assume to be a mistake.  Would you care to provide a corrected version of your letter?


Will flat earth society membership affect my graduate school application? Just to be clear: no, I don't believe in the flat earth theory.

However, a few years ago, I thought that the flat earth society forum is a good place to practice my debating skills and to have fun. Therefore, I joined it and made an online id that's close to my real name to debate on the forum. It just made me feel accomplished when I see people having trouble disproving my obviously faulty "theory". I posted a lot there in the past year.

I plan to apply to a master program in physics and I worry that people will find out my membership, think that I believe in pseudoscience, and reject my applications. Is this an issue I should address on SOP?

No, I do not think an admissions committee would check for this type of information.  Nor would they assume the poster with the same name is the applicant.


Applying for a PhD program after withdrawing from another one I started a physics PhD program in 2014 in a very prestigious university in my field (in US) but after going through depression and heart problems, which resulted in bad grades, I decided to withdraw from the program after taking one year leave of absence in 2016. I'll be starting a one year masters program outside US which I'm pretty sure I'll get perfect grades in and I've already published a paper during this one year LOA. I'm intending to apply for another PhD program this year and my question is whether I need to submit a transcript from my previous PhD program? How severely would my bad grades in that PhD program affect my application if both my undergrad and masters GPA are 4.0 ?

my question is whether I need to submit a transcript from my previous PhD program?

There are two ways for you to proceed.

The wrong way:

Don't submit your transcript from the failed PhD attempt. Once you get accepted somewhere, look over your shoulders for the rest of your career wondering whether you will be found out and face undesirable consequences.

The right way:

Submit all transcripts and explain in your statement of purpose or similar, very briefly, that you had some unfortunate health problems during your previous PhD attempt that are now under control, highlighting that you have moved on and since have successfully completed your current graduate studies. Never, ever worry about that past experience coming back to haunt you.

I hope it is obvious that the right way is the best way forward.

For your second question

  How severely would my bad grades in that PhD program affect my application if both my undergrad and masters GPA are 4.0 ?

I'll refer you to the following related question: How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?


Will lack of teaching experience be a major hindrance for a faculty position? I'm currently a post doc (in theoretical computer science) and the only teaching experience I had so far was to teach some tutorial classes for undergraduate courses and giving some "guest lectures" in some graduate classes. It seems that most positions for assistant professor require you to show some teaching experience, i.e. at least co-teaching some courses. The problem is, my current department is quite inflexible giving such assignments to postdocs.

On the positive side, I got some pretty good student evaluations for the tutorials I've been teaching, whether that is considered helpful without teaching a "real" course, is of course a different matter.

Overall, my research record (several tier-1 publications) beats my teaching record (by far).

Will my lack of teaching experience be a showstopper when applying for follow up positions?

I'm surprised to hear you say that "most positions for assistant professor require you to show some teaching experience, i.e., at least co-teaching some courses."  If you are applying to positions in the U.S. where research will be your primary duty, your prior tutorial and guest lecture experience should be sufficient to get you past whatever minimum you need, especially if you have evaluations to back this up.  Of the five colleagues of mine who received tenure-track offers at Reasearch I universities, only one of them had co-taught a class, and the others had one semester of TA experience which was, primarily, grading.

That said, there are other ideas for getting teaching experience:

Creating your own course or seminar to teach in the summer or during a January term.  If you pitch it as a non-credit course, it might be easier to convince your department to let you teach it.
Look for adjunct work at a local community college.  You'll probably be limited to introductory courses, but this gets you experience.  You may need the buy-in from your faculty boss at your current school.
Talking to individual professors about helping with their course -- I find it hard to believe that everyone has all the help they might like already, and you may have more luck getting your foot into a classroom without trying to be officially assigned to it.


Mendeley: how to add document from bibliography entry? I'm starting to write my bachelor thesis. It's my first time ever using citation software to manage the citations in the document and to generate the bibliography at the end of the document. So bear with me if my question is totally wrong.
Basically I added an image to my thesis. I found the image in paper A which in turn referenced the image from another paper B. Now I need to reference this original paper B.
This is the image on paper A
Bibliography entry on paper A
Now I need that exact bibliography entry in my thesis. I'm using Mendeley. I could manually enter the author names, the title etc.
But I'm wondering if there is a way to submit the entire entry and automatically add the document to Mendeley. After all the entry has all the necessary information to add the document and it is well separated by periods that identify each part of the citation.
So do I need to manually enter the document or can Mendeley automatically add it from the entry (second image above)?

If you go to Add --> Add Entry Manually you can populate the fields for the PMID or DOI of the paper you want to add to the library and Mendeley will populate all the other fields accordingly. You simply need to find the correct entry for the paper in a search engine (e.g., PubMed, GoogleScholar, Journal Webpage, ...).


First time being asked to review a conference paper I am a first year PhD student, and my adviser from undergrad asked me if I would like to review a paper for a conference. I was quite taken aback, as I have no publications, and feel somewhat unqualified. Granted, the topic of the paper is on something I have studied with this adviser in the past.

Is this something I can put on my CV? Given the anonymity of the reviewing process, will there even be a record of me having done this?
Isn't it strange for an unpublished student to review a paper?
What could I possibly gain from this? I suppose reading a paper critically is good experience, but I am already anxious about not having any publications yet, and it feels strange to be a reviewer without having any publications myself. I suppose this would put me in my old adviser's good graces, as I am interested in working with him again.

Yes. I don't know for conference paper, but with journal, they usually end the year with a thank you to all reviewers. This "thank you" is available online and is a proof you indeed reviewed. But I doubt that anyone will ever verify this.
I think it might be unusual, but it is a good thing. First, it means your undergraduate advisor think that you can do it (abilities but also he/she thinks you know this subject). Second, lots of people are talking about reviewer overload. Using qualified PhD student can reduce that overload.
Experience, increased self-confidence and yes, recognition from you ex-advisor...

I suggest you consult this great article to help you start:

Seals, D. R., & Tanaka, H. (2000). Manuscript peer review: A helpful checklist for students and novice referees. Adv Physiol Educ, 22, 52-58.

In my experience, doing my first review, I was a bit stressed but mostly excited. I wanted so much to do everything well. Thus, the authors got an honest and very complete review. If you try to be as thorough as you would like your own work to be revise, all should go well. Good luck.


Citing 'several' studies in one statement... cite all of them or use 'for example'? Let's assume that 10 empirical studies have been done for topic x. If I want to mention the following: Several studies have been conducted to deal with topic x (study 1; study 2; study 3).

My question: when I mention the word 'several', am I obligated to cite ALL the 10 empirical studies in the citation? Can I just cite a few? Should I use 'for example' to tell the reader that I am citing only 3 related studies, however others studies do exist?

If you doubt that a study should be included in the bibliography, then probably you don't consider it worth citing. Make a selection and then include every one of them in the bibliography. In the body you could say something like, "An exhaustive body of empirical studies exists on this topic [see: Study 1, Study 2,... Study N]. In particular, [Study X, Study Y] are most relevant to our work...".

Not including cited work in bibliography will be considered at best a sign of laziness and at worst an indication of unethical behaviour.


Students admit illicit behavior in private communication: how should I proceed? I am an adjunct professor at a University for a course where the students have to use a certain software "X" during the course. The software is distributed under a proprietary license; our University has bought a number of licenses, which have been made available for the students. Due to COVID restrictions, I am delivering the course online.
Recently, I have received a couple of... questionable emails from students who apparently have had issues in installing the (legally distributed) student version of X.

One said that he is following the course together with a colleague, visiting his home and using together the same PC. I am quite sure this is not allowed under the current COVID restrictions in my country.
Another one has admitted that he is using a pirated version of the software on his personal PC.

Note that, in both cases, I did not inquire about these issues: they simply mentioned them matter-of-factly.
On the one hand, I realize it is not my job to investigate this kind of behavior; I am not sure I should report it, as I do not even have solid proof. On the other hand, not mentioning at all the legal ramifications in my email replies to the students can be seen as "letting it slide" or even condoning such behavior.
How should I proceed? I am inclined towards reprimanding admonishing the students (privately).
Note: This is not a question about the ethics of software piracy or of flouting social distancing regulations, but about the proper response to illicit behavior (which I have not personally witnessed) that happens off-campus. I am not completely sure that the students' conduct in this case is illicit, though I believe it is questionable at best.

I think it's reasonable for you not to support these circumstances, but also no need for you to report/escalate the situation to compel some change in behavior.
In your place I'd advise your students A) that you cannot help with installation of non-standard copies, and B) you can't be responsible if the non-standard software they use prevents them from completing assignments on time (you can choose to be more forgiving if and when these circumstances actually occur).
However, if students are in fact having trouble installing software provided to them by the university (rather than side stepping some additional fees) then I think it's your responsibility to address that root cause first. If you can't get support through the vendor, then this is the issue I'd escalate instead. Your university bought licenses and should either provide support for these sorts of technical issues or expect support from the vendor. Your university can complain to the company they purchased licenses from if that company isn't providing sufficient technical support, or make sure they provide sufficient support themselves.
If there is some additional fee, then you should consider whether that fee is really appropriate and whether there are alternatives.
Lastly, on the Covid-19 issue... I think it's important to be wary of judging others who may need to bend the rules a bit for extenuating circumstances. Breaking restrictions to party is one thing, doing so to access school resources sounds like the most non-issue circumstance you're going to encounter as an educator. Maybe he's really visiting the colleague because they have no sufficient internet access at home, or doesn't have a computer or the funds to buy one. Needing to visit someone else to work on coursework sounds incredibly inconvenient - I doubt anyone is doing such a thing without a reason beyond "I felt like it". Maybe it's not your business to ask, maybe it's something you can ask compassionately about in case there is something you can do to help, but this is not the situation to consider escalating towards some sort of "consequences".


Is a letter of recommendation from an employer useful, when the company has shut down? I worked for a while with a company developing software, at which I also used mathematics (my field of undergraduate study) often. I was close with my employer until the company shut down, but we still keep in contact every so often.

When applying to master's programs, alongside the normal letters from my undergrad professors and research advisor, would a letter of recommendation from this employer hold any weight? I know he could write a very positive one, but it would be more concerned with work-effort, attitude, etc than anything academic.

There are quite a few issues to be careful about when considering a recommendation letter from an employer. Some examples:

Make sure they understand the culture of academic recommendation letters. In industry, lots of the time recommendations are more-or-less a token statement that someone worked for you and didn't cause any issues. Academic recommendation letters are very different, so make sure they have an idea of what kind of letter to write.
What exactly is the background of your letter writer? This is a bigger issue with PhD (or research-based masters) recommendations, but if your recommender doesn't have the background or credentials to understand what it takes to become a successful researcher or academic, then it's unlikely that they will be able to speak intelligently about whether you have those traits.
How common are industry to graduate school moves in your field? In a field like mathematics or physics, my guess is that most candidates do not have significant work experience and any work experience is usually far removed from the subject material. In a field like that, the people evaluating your profile are more likely to discount an industry recommendation, especially if it comes from a non-PhD, non-researcher. On the other hand, fields like business or engineering have many more applicants from industry and are probably used to seeing those recommendation letters, so it is unlikely to put you at a significant disadvantage.
How well are your other bases covered and what are your alternatives? If you have recommendation letters that already focus on your undergraduate classes and research, then it may be more valuable to have a letter describing traits you exhibited in the workplace than another "he got an A in my class" letter.

In general, an employer's letter is never going to be as good as a great letter from an active researcher that you worked closely with. But most applicants don't have three of those on hand. Can a letter from an employer be useful? Definitely. Given the alternatives, is it the optimal decision for you? It's possible, but that depends on a lot of factors that you should probably spend some time thinking about.


Anonymous submission on arXiv I have to submit a paper in NIPS 2017 which is an extension of a paper submitted to ICDAR 2017. As this paper is still under review, I want to put on arXiv using an anonymous submission for double blind review for NIPS. Here are my questions.

Can I submit an anonymous submission on arXiv
If yes, can I refer to the paper on arXiv

Can I submit an anonymous submission on arXiv

No, you can't submit to arXiv anonymously.

See https://arxiv.org/help/submit and https://arxiv.org/help/registerhelp where they say:

  It is a violation of our policies to misrepresent your identity or institutional affiliation.


The lecturer supposed to grade my presentation fell asleep while I held it. Should I complain? TLDR:
I am attenting a seminar where the grade is based entirely on a talk I hold. The responsible lecturer fell asleep during the talk multiple times, and I am worried about my grade, feel insulted and am unsure how to communicate these issues.

For a seminar, I was required to hold a 45 minute-talk about current department research in front of the course. The corresponding researcher attends this talk as well.

Together with the lecturer (the instructor for this seminar), they grade my talk, which amounts for the entire seminar grade. The researcher can make comments about how accurate the presentation was, but the ultimate choice of grading is with the lecturer.

During my talk (actually not too far in), the lecturer fell asleep for a bit for the first time, for only a brief period. Now this happened on multiple occasions during my presentation, and it has happened during someone elses' past talk on an earlier date as well.

I find this highly insulting, since I have spent a lot of time reading up on the topic and practicing to hold the talk.

Since the lecturer did not hear or see my entire talk, I am worried that grading may be affected in addition.

The lecturer is notoriously busy (which I assume to be quite common) and stressed, but both issues should not affect me or my grade in my opinion.
Also, he may have had stress-related health problems in the past, which could be a reason for him to pass on caffeine consumption. I see that this may be a reason for his tiredness, but again I cannot possibly account for it and I should not be graded differently because of it.

I want to communicate the following two issues, how can I approach this situation?

I feel insulted by the lecturer falling asleep through my graded talk
I am worried about him falling asleep could influence my grade

On a side note, I really like the lecturer otherwise, but I am afraid that making a comment like "please reconsider your sleep schedule" whould be considered highly inappropriate (and rightly so). Recommendations on this matter will be appreciated as well.

Update: Grades are out as of today, and I am not satisfied with the grade. I don't have any pointers on what I could have done better or how to improve future talks. I will probably not pursue this any further.

I don't know if I wrote this in a comment already, but in another seminar I attended, a similar thing occured for another student.

The first thing to note here is that sleeping in such situations is often not a voluntary action, but a physiologically unavoidable response to the situation the body is in - many people die every year after falling asleep at the wheel of a car. I don't think you'd describe the results of that on other people in the car as "rude". In general, if you are in this state of involuntary somnulence, then no amount of caffeine will change anything.

You do not know the circumstances in which this lecturer is in: casual lecturers or adjuncts may be working several other jobs, or may have insufficient income to afford rent and therefore a proper place to sleep. Permanent folks may have so much work that they literally don't have time to sleep and complete everything they are required to do. Or they might have a young child or as you say, mental health problems. My point is these things may not be voluntary choices for the person concerned.

If i had a dollar for every student that fell asleep in a lecture that I had spent days preparing...

But....

None of this is your problem. You deserve not just to get the correct mark for your work, but also the feedback that will help you improve - after all, you are there to learn, not to get grades. As others have said, wait and see what the feedback is (and really you want proper feedback, not just a grade). If it's fine, then I'd wait and see, but even if it is - if this becomes a pattern then it might be in everyone's interest, including the faculty member's (depending on how understanding the Chair is), for people to know what is going on.


Getting a Research Grant for Carrying out Research as Independent Researcher in my home country I took a mid career break to complete my doctoral research in management of intellectual property rights.
Currently, I don't have an institutional affiliation though I have a comprehensive experience in research and publications.
How and where can I look for funding to take up a project for a short term?

What he / he meant maybe formal direct affiliation [like employment or permanent affiliation in an institution] Many wanting to do research but funding agencies asked for formal institutional affiliation where the funds can be monitored. Quite difficult to secure funding with this criteria from funding agencies. The best is to look for agencies which provide or support individual research project.


Should a research statement for a faculty job have references in it? If you are applying for a faculty job in computer science in a US university, should your research statement have references to research papers in it?

Yes. Definitely. This gives the reader an indication of how your work fits into the larger body of research in the  field.
Without references, it may appear that you are working in an area that is so obscure that nobody cares about it.


As a prospective PhD student, is it bad that I have interests in multiple areas of my field? I'm planning on applying to PhD programs in November of this year. I originally was purely looking for Cog-Neuro labs studying PTSD, as it became my main interest during some of my graduate-level courses in undergrad.

During my research into different programs however, I've come across several labs (with different focuses) in very good programs that also interest me.

Generally, these other labs that interest me study things such as language and perception. My undergraduate thesis work focused on similar topics.

I've been feeling "guilty" that I don't have this laser-focus on a specific topic that other prospective PhD students seem to have.

Is this more common than it  seems?

5th-year phd student, soon to be postdoc here.

The perception that anyone in academia has a laser-tight focus is not correct. In my experience, most of the people have rough idea of the field, and then stumble or got assigned a project that interest them well enough. Never feel guilty for not knowing exactly (or not having) specific interest, nobody does.

As a phd student you will have to learn a lot of new stuff, so having different interests is a plus as most of the work is interdisciplinary anyways.

That being said, when you join department, you will be expected to rotate in several labs (usually) in order to find best fit. In that process you might find out that best fitting lab is neither PTSD nor language-processing one, and that's entirely OK. Remember: you will be signing up for 5-7 years of work with a specific PI, not a topic.


Is it better having a bad PhD done or having no PhD? I'm close to the end of a troubled PhD experience. However this closeness might be extended to the infinite if I would get to the point of having something that is good enough.
I might be too self-critical (maybe considering the standard of my institution) but at the moment the best scenario is ending with something that I wouldn't use after and I would prefer to not show it around.

Also I'm not very interested in the subject itself, so if my PhD has to be a visit card for my further steps in academia, it might be better to don't have it. I don't want to be framed in this "expertise".

My unique motivation is putting an end to this story, get the credit and the title, continuing in academia saying I have a PhD, but without showing it around as a good trophy.

I'm basically facing this dilemma:

On one hand I must consider that "it's just a PhD" so I'm not going to change the world with it. It's enough doing something proper and giving my small contribution to the research... in other words, it doesn't have to be perfect.
On the other hand, if this has to be something that is going to specialize my academic career and in which I should build my reputation and be recognized as an expert of this, I prefer to disappear from the scene.

There are few aspects to consider:

Even if I might be too self-critical, there are objective problems in my work (which are not my responsibility in larger part)

It can be possible that with some tricks the institution and supervisor might close an eye on this, since they have their slice of responsibilities and support my finalization.

Shortly, all the PhD has been done without following any of the supposed methodology and criteria. I had to put a bunch of material together, even if unrelated to the actual research, just because they are of a direct and personal interest of the supervisor. Thus, it should be my responsibility to make sense out of them and create questions, answers and a dissertation out of it... whatever it is. You can imagine what the result can be.

Will this PhD affect my future steps in the academia?

You can change topics/fields after you graduate. Use what you've learned to find a job (or postdoc or whatever) that fits you better in something you're more interested in.

For the record, nobody who isn't on your committee will read your dissertation. Done is better then good.


Is there a way to search for papers such that the data used are also published on google scholar? I am trying to search for papers such that the data used in that paper are also published. This is because sometimes I really enjoy replicating a paper and it is somehow hard to ask the author to give you the data especially if he surveyed this data. I mainly use it to see if I may able to replicate and get better in my coding skills. It is also better to know if the data are available upon request.

Not through Google Scholar. Instead, see repositories of open data, including Google Dataset Search, Open Science Framework, and others specific to your discipline.


Is it a red flag for a PhD program if their graduating students cannot find postdoc? I got accepted to one of my top choice schools for a math Ph.D.
However the graduate students there said in the past few years, the Ph.D.s before them (both pure and applied math) had quite a bit of trouble finding postdoc positions after graduating. But they are able to find nice jobs in industries.

Would this be a red flag? I know that finding a postdoc or a tenure track position in math is especially hard in the recent years, so this might not be a complete measure about their Ph.D. program.

I have also gotten accepted into another public university and the graduate students there said they didn't have much trouble finding postdocs. This one is not as prestige as the one above in term of general ranking.

I have professors that I would like to study with in both universities, and I am  leaning toward the second one.

Could you give me some advice?

I'd recommend trying to gather some objective data on outcomes.  For example, in the mathematics genealogy project you can search by "name of school" and "year of degree" to find a list of people who graduated in 2014 or 2015.  It's not guaranteed to be complete, and it sometimes mixes together people who were in different departments at the same university, but it's usually pretty good (and sometimes easier than finding this information on math department websites).

Then you can start googling people, with "math" appended if necessary, to see what you can find.  If you can't find any indication that someone is working in academia, then they probably aren't.  If they are, then you can gauge how pleased you would be with such a job.

This should give more reliable data than self-reported difficulty of finding postdocs, because it avoid filtering through the departmental culture.  Some cohorts of grad students are optimistic and enthusiastic, while others are more apprehensive, and it's not clear to me that this correlates particularly well with actual success on the job market.

It's also worth keeping in mind that the relevant issue is job opportunities, not actual outcomes.  If one person complains about the difficulty of finding a job and another doesn't, you can't conclude anything without knowing where they were applying.  (Sometimes students at more prestigious universities apply mainly to fancier postdocs, because they wouldn't be happy with less prestigious jobs.)  Unfortunately, this is more difficult to gather objective data on, but I think it's a second-order effect.


My transcript has the wrong course names. How to fix this in PhD applications? I took courses named A, B, and C during my master. They are all strongly related to the field I want to apply in, and I got top grades in them.
Due to administrative reasons, my transcript shows course names D, E, and F instead. They are all either slightly or not at all related to my field.
Names D, E, F are the names of courses that were replaced by A, B, C that year. I don't really understand why they were not changed in the official transcript, and I may not be able to get a transcript with the correct names.
How can I make sure that this does not hurt my chances when I apply to PhD programs in the field of A, B, C?
I am thinking of sending a version with the correct names, and attaching the official one, with a note that explains the issue. But I don't know how that will be seen by admission committees (they may wonder why I didn't just get a fixed version from my school).
Edit: I want to apply to machine learning programs. The A, B, C courses are about machine learning, deep learning and artificial intelligence. D, E, F are “3D engineering”, “image processing” and “image analysis”, which seem irrelevant in comparison. This seems to me like a blow to my applications.

If at all possible you should get the issuing university to correct your transcript. Failing that, you should get a letter, signed by an authority, that explains the situation. The letter should come from some official. In the US, the person would normally be called the Registrar, but I doubt that is universal. Whoever is responsible for transcripts.
The answer of Nicole Hamilton is correct in that you shouldn't try to alter any official document.


Discussing avoidable flaws in my work in a master's thesis I am in the final stages of M.Sc. in bioinformatics and am currently writing my thesis. While I was writing I noticed that one of the datasets I used for a major part of my project is quite problematic and may have somewhat biased the results (if it matters, the data was obtained from a published paper. A postdoc working with me on the project had reviewed the paper and suggested that it would be appropriate for our work). I do not think this is very major bias, and I can give a concrete explanation as to the source of this bias, but still there is a bias.

I am considering of referring to all of this in my thesis as part of a broader discussion of the limitations of my work.

Knowing my thesis supervisor I suspect that his reaction will be something along the lines of "why did you use this dataset in the first place? You should have looked at the data before using it." In retrospect I wouldn't have used this dataset and yes, I should have looked at the data more carefully. However, at the time I was doing this I had no prior experience with this type of analysis, and therefore did not know what types of problems to watch out for (I was also put under continuous pressure from supervisor to produce results, which did not give me much time to ensure the quality of the data, but this is a different problem).

From my perspective, learning to identify and avoid such problems is a valuable part of my learning process, and I therefore consider it important to demonstrate this learning process in my thesis, but I don't think my supervisor will be appreciative of this, and I really fear backlash from his. To make things more complicated, we are currently writing a paper based on these results and I fear my supervisor will blame me for undermining the paper by using this dataset.

My questions therefore are:

Is it at all appropriate to use a master's thesis to demonstrate my learning process in such a way?
How do I balance between my desire to be honest and show what I have learned and between the harsh response I am likely to get?

"if it matters, the data was obtained from a published paper" -- I would say that it matters a great deal. Talk about the issue, but spin it as a strength of your research (it uncovered a bias in the existing literature -- which is one of the things that subsequent research is supposed to do) instead of a weakness that you need to be apologetic about. If anyone should feel apologetic, it should be the authors of that paper and the referees who didn't notice the problem. You should feel proud about that aspect of your work. I don't know your advisor, but I wouldn't be surprised if he is impressed by this rather than critical of it.


Teaching two different subjects? I am a 2nd year Math Major, and I am aiming to recieve a PhD in Mathematics. I love mathematics, but I also have a longing for African American studies. I want to be a college professor, so I was wondering is there any feasible way I would be able to teach both subjects? If so, would it involve me double majoring now or am I allowed to start two PhD tracks in different fields. Thank you.

Joint appointments across different departments at a university are not that unusual, and at many schools are in fact quite common. However, such cross-appointments tend to be within "branches": a scientist might be cross-appointed in multiple science and engineering departments, but not likely in both a science department and a humanities department.

So it's unlikely that you'd get an appointment in both mathematics and African-American studies.

However, that doesn't mean that you wouldn't be able to teach both those subjects. You might be able to convince a university to let you offer an elective seminar course in addition to your "primary" teaching in mathematics. However, this is by no means guaranteed.


Bouncing between two PhD supervisors I'm a PhD student in engineering. I work in a small group with two professors and 5 PhD students (no postdocs).

Both the professors "follow" my thesis as supervisor. However, they don't get along with, and they are continuously trying to pull me to their side and change my research subjects.

It's not that my project is not going well (I have 12 publications: 4 journal papers and 8 conference papers). However my two professors don't want to collaborate together and every time assign me random extra work to do for them, on various subjects, uncorrelated one with the others, and in which I'm not even expert.

All the other PhD's in my group are in the same situation. If we raise a concern about our thesis, their answer is just "now do what I ask you, we'll think to put together a thesis at the end of your PhD".
It even happened that I sent a full paper to one of them, ready to be submitted, just to be told "If you want to publish this, you have to do this other (uncorrelated, ndr) work before".

The worst part is that professors and researchers from other divisions know the situation and come to our group every time they need cheap work. So, one day, one of the supervisor comes to your office and says: from now you'll collaborate with professor A of dept. B on this topic. Another day, the other supervisor has lunch with some professor, comes and tells you: I need you to work with prof. X of division Y on this other topic.

Most of the time, these extra assignments are running tons of calculations and collect results, code debugging, or even external consulting for private companies. Needless to say, this is a major slow down to my research activity because I spend more than half of my time on other topics in which I'm not competent. Most of these random activities ends up without publications. I'm only publishing from my main research project.

My only luck is that I have contact in other universities and I have postdoc offers there, and that I've always had clear ideas on my thesis. So I still managed to publish my papers. Other students are not so lucky and they are at the second or even third year of their PhD without having publications nor having a clear direction for their research project.

I'll finish in less that one year and, as I mentioned, I have offers in other places. However, I'm starting to ask myself a question: Is this normal in academy? I wonder if this is the standard, and I'll find exactly the same situation in other universities or if it was just an unlucky combination of bad bosses.

I love my research activity, but if these are the working conditions, I'm starting wondering if it is worth to go on..

This seems like a mixed blessing/curse to me. It seems to be hard and frustrating, of course, but on the other hand you have two professors who, while not agreeing on much, seem to love your work. You get a lot of finalized work (publications) out of the deal. I suspect you are building a strong academic career for yourself.

But I suggest you look for the end of the tunnel. Get the main work done somehow and find a good position without alienating either of your "patrons." I suspect that you are in a strong position in the long run and quitting would be giving up too much.

I suspect that you are pretty good already at putting the two off at least a bit to make some room for yourself. If you can continue that, then just start to plan your exit. You won't be juggling their needs forever, I think.


Is it hard to get a scholarship for graduate school in Mathematics? I am currently majoring in Physics but I am thinking about changing my major to Mathematics because feel more attracted to it as a subject. However, I have been told that in Physics, one almost always gets a full scholarship to attend graduate school. Is it hard to obtain a scholarship to go to grad school in Mathematics here in the U.S.?

At most US universities, Ph.D. students in mathematics usually receive full financial support that covers tuition as well as a modest stipend (i.e. money paid to you directly for your living expenses, usually between $15,000-25,000 per year).  This is normally some combination of:

Teaching assistantship: requires that you teach.  Often this starts with discussion sections for calculus and other introductory courses, and can progress to more specialized courses.
Research assistantship: requires that working on research (usually your own thesis research, but sometimes a different project).  This often comes from your advisor's grant funds.
Fellowship: doesn't require you to do any extra work, just your usual coursework or research.

In my experience, the word "scholarship" is not usually used when talking about funding for graduate study.

Note that the above only applies to Ph.D. programs.  Masters students generally have to pay their own tuition and living expenses (perhaps via loans), though sometimes a limited number of teaching assistantships, etc, are available.


All positions require multiple code development and machine learning proficiency. How do I address the knowledge gap? I am worried about my future My mechanical engineering PhD is very applied. I used Abaqus software to model additive manufacturing process. I wrote two trivial user subroutines (VUHARD) to implement material models in Fortran and published 4 publications in Surface engineering journals. An example paper is this paper. I am defending next month and I am worried.
However, now I am searching for postdoc positions and the posts require proficient knowledge in C++, Fortran, Python, code development in Finite element analysis, development of machine learning algorithms, molecular dynamics simulations, phase field simulations among others.
I am seriously under qualified. I have not done extensive code development, neither I have knowledge of machine learning algorithms.
I feel I wasted my PhD. I should have done it on a different topic. Computational materials science is too hard for me and I should have gone with experimental projects.
Is it the end of the road for me? Can I address the knowledge gap after PhD? Due to lockdowns and covid restrictions, I am planning to join my PhD supervisor at the moment as an interim postdoc. The contract would end next September. I am seriously worried about my future. Please advise.

None of the missing skills you mention strike me as "seriously underqualified". Those are tools that you can learn reasonably quickly. You can learn C++ and Python, and you can learn machine learning algorithms and try them out. This will not take you longer than a couple of months. The important thing is that you are an expert in your field: that is what requires years of study.

the posts require proficient knowledge in C++, Fortran, Python, code development in Finite element analysis, development of machine learning algorithms, molecular dynamics simulations, phase field simulations among others.

How many candidates do you think that will be experts in the postdoc topic and also experts in all those other things, in the sense of having year-long experience with all of them? Probably none.

I have not done extensive code development.

I do not know what you call "extensive code development", but I suspect that what you have in mind is not what most academics have ever done. Academics write code for themselves, to quickly try out approaches to a problem. Many (most?) of them do not write tidy, modular libraries that can easily be understood and maintained.
Also, not everyone is an expert in machine learning. Many researchers try it out as a tool, and for that you do not need so much time. I have seen many students in my department finish their PhDs and get hired for jobs that involve machine learning, even though some of them had never touched machine learning before. For a postdoc position it will be even easier, as the real bottleneck is "being an expert in the research topic", not "being able to code a neural network".
So I suspect you will be just fine. You can familiarize yourself with C++, Python and/or machine learning to increase your chances if that appears often in position descriptions. But I do not think you are "seriously underqualified".


Business cards for graduate students It's come up in our lab that we should probably have business cards for when we attend conferences, however, we've been given very little guidance for what is appropriate for a graduate student.

Some questions that have come up:

Should we be trying to standardize the cards to look like the official university's cards? (e.g., with the university logo, etc)?
Related to the first question, should we be going for standardized or for something that will make us stand out?
Should we be putting our current status on the card?  It seems like if we haven't hit ABD yet then it might be counterproductive because then we'd have to buy new ones each time we made progress.
Should we be adding our research interests directly on the card?  What about advisor?
Any other information (other than contact/website) that we should be including or tips on this?

I would standardize them and simply put the most relevant information on them. My (dated) business card looks like this:

Now I think it has a little bit more information than needed; fax is almost certainly not needed, but there might be circumstances where it's handy to have the mailing address. But important are:

University + department
Academic homepage
E-mail address
Perhaps phone number
The fact that you're a PhD student.

I wouldn't add too much information on them. Business cards are for core info, nothing more; they might get crowded otherwise.

My own business card is outdated: a university reform means I'm no longer at the Department of Space Science, but at the Department of Computer Science, Electrical and Space Engineering, Division of Space Technology. But I don't care, because the e-mail address is still correct, and the new department/division wouldn't even fit on a business card ;)


On the qualification for teacher-researcher/enseignant-chercheur (MCF) positions in France and its recent abolition - what exactly does the law say? My question is about the necessity of the qualification for teacher-researcher/enseignant-chercheur (maître de conférence- abbreviated as MCF below) positions in France and its recent abolition in 2020. I'm unable to conclude if a PhD who doesn't already have a relevant position of teacher-researcher, can apply for the same in France without the qualification? (N.B. please note that the qualification is a process or at least used to be a process, which every applicant has/had to go through, it's a technical term, not a generic English word in my post.)
I did some research and asked people already in the French academia, and from there, I'm getting two seemingly contradictory information:
Information 1: from December 2020, one is no longer required to have qualification to apply for the MCF (= enseignant-chercheur) positions, see link1, link2,
Information 2: On the other hand though, when I wrote to the people of Galaxie, they replied:
"Pour information, si vous n’êtes pas maître de conférences titulaire (ou assimilé) vous devez disposer d’une qualification délivrée par le CNU en cours de validité. La loi de programmation pour la recherche supprime l’inscription par le CNU sur une liste de qualification aux fonctions de professeur des universités pour tous les candidats qui ont la qualité de maître de conférences titulaire (ou assimilé) et non pas pour ceux qui souhaitent devenir maître de conférence."
The above essentially says that the qualification step is no longer mandatory for the post of university professors only and not for MCF. As you see, the two above pieces of information seem contradictory/confusing, as I don't have the link to the exact law that was passed. Hence my question to the academic people in France - can a foreigner apply to the MCF positions now without having the qualification?

Since there seems to be some uncertainty in the other answer / comment thread, I will offer my point of view. (I'm a MCF in a French university.) If you just want the answer, skip to the section that starts by It depends below.
You are misreading the information available. Qualification was removed for PR jobs. It remains mandatory in most cases to be a candidate for MCF jobs. The reply by Galaxie (which you should take as authoritative: Galaxie is managed by the HR department of the ministry of higher education and research, and they are the ones who are going to process your application) is pretty clear about that: if you are not already a titular MCF, then you need the qualification to be a candidate for MCF positions. This is also what is written in your links. I will provide translations in case you are not a French speaker:

(link1) Toujours est-il que la qualification aux fonctions de professeur des Universités est supprimée. => Nevertheless, the qualification for the assignment of professor was removed.

(link2) L’article 5 de la LPR supprime la qualification par le CNU pour les maîtres de conférences (MCF) qui veulent accéder au corps de professeur des universités (PR). => Article 5 of the LPR [Law of (budgetary) Programmation of Research] removes qualification by the CNU for MCFs who want to reach the ranks of professors.

And since nothing beats actually looking at the actual law, here it is on the French Republic's official legal website: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jorf/article_jo/JORFARTI000042738037

Article 5
Le code de l'éducation est ainsi modifié :
1° Au premier alinéa de l'article L. 952-6, après le mot : « particuliers », sont insérés les mots : «, et sauf lorsque le candidat est maître de conférences titulaire » ;

In short, persons who are already titular MCFs are not required to pass the qualification anymore. Moreover, if you read the rest of the article of law, some universities may ask to receive the permission to hire persons for any job (MCF or PR) without the qualification. But every university will have its own policy on this.
So to answer your question:

can a foreigner apply to the MCF positions now without having the qualification?

It depends:

If you are already a titular MCF, then yes;
If you are applying to a job in a university that has asked and has received the authorization to hire MCFs that have not received the qualification, then yes;
In other cases, that would be a no.

The nationality of the applicant is in principle irrelevant. French nationals and foreigners alike are bound by the same laws for French academic jobs.
Note that to my knowledge, since the law is very recent, no university has yet asked for an exemption from the qualification procedure (since this is a hot topic, I would have heard about it, at least if it were for jobs in my field).
Given the possible discrepancies that will appear between the universities' policies regarding the exemption, your best bet is to get the qualification. Note that the procedure starts very early, in October of the year preceding job applications, so be proactive about it! Don't wait at the last minute, if you miss the deadline you have to wait a whole year.
Finally, note that the law about the exemption (case 2 above) is marked as experimental and the experiment will end in 2025. At that time, there will again be a vote on the law and it will either be maintained or rescinded.
Welcome to French academia, where the rules change all the time, no one's really sure of what's forbidden or allowed, and an error can easily cost you opportunities. Enjoy your stay :)


How to become a reviewer for an engineering journal? I am a PG graduate working in an engineering college as an assistant professor. Currently I have got one and half year of experience in teaching.

How to become a reviewer for an engineering journal? Do I need to pay money for that? Or by publishing paper in that journal can I become a reviewer?

The short answer for formatting a cv is that you should do it like others applying for similar jobs (or already in those jobs), but make it easier to scan if possible.  So find home pages of people who have jobs like the one you want, and read their cv's to see how they format them.

Now for your second question:
Most editors are often (constantly?) looking for new reviewers.  To get a chance to review a paper, you should

let the editor know you'd like to review and
give him or her some reason to trust that you'll do a good job.

Accomplishing (1) is easy: simply send an email or tell the editor in person (for example if you meet him at a conference or visit his university).  Now (2) takes a little more work, but isn't hard.  Trusting you to review a paper is typically a low-risk gamble for an editor.  If you don't violate confidentiality (talk about the paper with others in more detail than you should), then about the worst outcome for the editor is that you fail to write a report, or write a lousy report.  That's less than ideal, but if it happens, they'll just ask someone else to review the paper.  All that is to say, you don't have to work too hard to convince an editor to let you review a paper.  So how do you do it?

As you suggested, one good way is to publish in that journal.  Others are publish in another related journal;  give clear intelligent talks on research in an area related to the journal; get a recommendation to the editor to use you to review, from a friend of yours who is more established in your field.

Once you do get an opportunity to review a paper, make sure you do a good job.  Mainly this involves: submitting your report on time, making a clear recommendation to accept or reject, and supporting your assessment with the strengths and weaknesses of the paper.  If you'd like more detail, that's another question by itself.


Prepared exam essay matches published example My son (3rd yr zoology in the UK) has an exam tomorrow, in which the task is to write an essay on the history of a(ny) branch of science. The idea is that the students can research and prepare their essay in advance and in the exam write it down from memory.

Now, my son has prepared his essay (on a subject obvious given his degree) only to find out less than 48h before the exam (tomorrow morning) that his topic is identical to that of an example essay published by the department online (but of which he was unaware) and which is quite similar to his. Obviously, if now writing his essay as intended, it will come across as plagiarised.

Q1: So what can he do?
Q2: What should the lecture do (a) if informed/asked by the student or (b) if not informed by the student, but finding the coincidence upon marking?
Q3: Can the marker simply assume plagiarism or do they have to prove it?

I assume from your question that he didn't only see the published essay but also read it. Then it will be nearly impossible to write his own essay, because he will always (even if unintentionally) adjust his work to not look like plagiarism. That will, of course, only strengthen the impression that he is plagiarizing.
Thus, I would take what he has up to now, the prepared essay that he wrote before finding the published one online, not change it in any way (even if the urge to avoid plagiarism might be strong) and talk to the one responsible about it right now; showing the current essay to try to prove his story.
What happens then depends on the regulations in that class. But there should be a possibility to rewrite the exam, e.g. for sick students or for students that failed the first try; maybe he can get in there with a new topic.
I would not try to get a new topic done today, that would only result in a really bad grade.


Is it legal to upload a paper to arXiv when it is under double blind review for one of the IEEE journals? Is it legal to upload a paper to arXiv when it is under double blind review for one of the IEEE journals? I am suspicious that it may violate the double blind review requirements and I couldn't find any thing in the journal's homepage specific to this issue. In general IEEE allows preprint versions to be uploaded to arXiv.

I have just received an email from the editor and I am writing it here

Dear Dr. * * *,

We cannot prevent an author to upload her/his paper to Arxiv. However, because of the double-blind process applied in Communication Letters, we don’t encourage it.
There is only one restriction: Your paper should stand alone without any supplementary material and/or reference to an ArXiv post.

Sincerely,


Academia vs. Industry for Machine Learning For PhD students in machine learning, academia vs. industry is an increasingly strange choice. Getting a faculty job at a good university is still quite hard, but the pay is hugely lower than in industry (~ 120k for an assistant professor job at a top 10 school, vs. ~ 500k for a research scientist position at Google/FB/Amazon for a similar candidate).
What is the allure of academia? It comes with grant pressure, teaching huge classes, and huge opportunity cost in salary.

Other engineering disciplines can have a vaguely similar pay gap, especially when comparing with a top industry job as you describe (and doubly so when comparing living in SF to a college town)
A common argument is for the freedom offered in an academic job. Another is that industry jobs are often more boring. I think there is also something to be said for being able to potentially "leave your mark" in academia in a way that isn't necessarily possible working an industry job. Lastly, I'll point out that some cultures think very highly of professors, in the same way US culture tends to think most highly of doctors.


Strategy for submission of articles to highly ranked journals I am working on a research project that all total will probably end up lasting about two years.  As the research progresses, I am writing articles about each new discovery/study, with each article becoming more relevant to current interesting trends (for lack of a better description).

What I mean by this is that in the plan for publications my group has, the first article discusses just the structure, dynamics, etc. of some new interesting carbon/silicon/etc. system.  The second article will elaborate on this for an even more novel, more developed structure than the first.  Then the last article will (hopefully) provide a deep new insight into how this structure can be used for energy storage/transport/etc.

As I'm sure you can tell, each article gets more interesting, and thus I think each article has a better chance than the previous one of making it into a more highly ranked journal.  Our current strategy is to submit the article to a succession of less prestigious journals (each getting rejected) until it eventually gets into one.  This way, it ends up getting into the journal it probably deserves to be in, and not something lower,  and there's always the chance it is accepted into a highly ranked journal as well.

However, I am curious if this is a bad idea in the long run.  Will editors remember "Oh, they already submitted articles to us twice and got rejected; what are they doing it for again?"  Will they be quicker to dismiss the next article they receive even though it is higher-quality/deeper research than the previous one?

Or do the editors give each new submission a fair chance for acceptance, with no memory of previous submissions?

I know some of you all are journal editors, so any insight you can reveal to me about your thought process would be quite appreciated.

I am not an editor so I don't think I can definitely say how editors treat this, but I suspect that if you keep sending manuscripts that are not appropriate to the journal, it won't be helpful in promoting your next submission and won't gain you respect. Consider the fact that you have to convince the editor why your manuscript is important in the cover letter - you don't want to keep sending a paper every week saying it is the most important paper of the decade. Even as a reviewer I can tell you it is annoying to review a paper that is clearly not suited for the journal (although maybe it is the editor's fault that it passed to review in the first place).

If you think your manuscript fits a high-impact journal, it is fine to try a few journals to increase your chances. But try to be sincere with yourself - many papers belong to specialized journals, and that is fine.

Another fact you might want to consider is that high-impact journals tend to get recognized experts in the field as reviewers. You probably don't want to gain a bad reputation in those circles. Second, the pool of experts can be pretty small which could mean that when you resubmit to a different high-impact journal, you will get the same reviewer or someone who already heard about the paper and is biased (yes, sometimes reviewers mention papers they review to colleagues).

So the bottom line is: it is ok to resubmit a few times, but be careful not to overdo it.


Are there benefits to taking a year off before entering academia after completion of the PhD? I am submitting my PhD for assessment in the next fortnight, by the end of the year, it will be complete.  Currently, while studying (and to pay the bills), I am a high school teacher.  Getting into a postdoc or lecturing tenure is quite difficult in Australia (particularly in my field - Physics).  So, what is likely to happen is that I'll be high school teaching next year as well.

However, while teaching, I intend writing more papers (3 already published, 4th submitted) - my current supervisor (=advisor) has indicated that he is more than happy to collaborate on these ongoing projects, post-PhD (but is not in a position to offer a postdoc position).

So, generally speaking, beyond writing more papers and building up the research profile, what other benefits are there to stalling entering academia by a year?

In my case, it would be almost like an academic-gap-year except, I will need to be still full time employed.

I would say that this is one time when taking a year off is not recommended. You are at your peak right now in a number of ways:

You have very recent publications and just received your degree. Both have a discernible half-life when it comes to being hired in academia (particularly for the first time).
You know the most people in your field, including your advisor and other professors who can write you up-to-date recommendation letters.
You have the most current knowledge of your field, and although it sounds like you're going to continue to publish, you won't be as able to actively learn (then again, I know from your previous posts that you were full-time employed during your PhD, so that may not be an issue).

I'm assuming that the timing is different in Australia, but in the U.S. there are generally key times of the year that academic hiring happens -- you put together applications in Nov-Jan and hope to land interviews and talks in the Feb-April time frame. If there is a similar time-frame in Australia, I would make sure you have the time available to put together applications and go on interviews, whether it is this year or after another year.

I assume you'll still be allowed to publish under your previous school's affiliation post-PhD defense, but if that isn't the case, I would urge you to figure out a way to work that out.

Finally (and I'm not really in a position to comment directly on this) is the question about how your job applications will be received with a year gap from academia. My feeling is that an extra paper will help you but that the time away won't help you (even though it isn't technically away it will be noticeable that you got your PhD a year prior), and it may be a wash. You'll have to consider this when you write your cover letters and research statement. I would think about how (if at all) you justify the extra year of high school teaching post-PhD in a cover letter. You've already got plenty of teaching experience under your belt to prove your teaching credentials, so an extra year in the classroom won't be beneficial from that standpoint.


How to handle non-published thesis work from previous co-workers in a publication? Im doing a MSc thesis and I need to write an article, and eventually submit it by the summer.

My work is actually based on two theses that were written past years by other students.  However, they did not publish, neither them nor my supervisor.

Then comes the question: if I want to include the work that is referenced in one of these theses, how should I deal with it ? Should I gladly propose the previous students to be second authors, should I just cite their theses in the bibliographic part...?

Thanks !

Even if not "published" in some sense, prior work can/should/must be cited. E.g., cited literally as "... Ph.D. thesis 20xx, University of X, (unpublished)."

Unless they literally help you significantly change what they'd already done, they should not be authors on your work.


Is it appropriate to ask a Professor to write a recommendation letter for applying to another university? I am currently studying at an university in Europe (undergraduate, first year)and would like to transfer (next year or in two years) to an university in UK. UCAS requires a reference to accompany your application.

I have a very successful academic career, I have taken all exams of my year and also some of my next years, and have obtained the highest mark ("cum laude") in almost all of them. The reason for transferring, therefore, is to get into a more challenging university.

Is it appropriate to ask a professor of my current university for a reference letter, given that it will be used as part of an application to another university?

Yes!

In fact, it would be inappropriate not to ask at least one professor at your current university for a reference letter, as direct evidence of your success.


What should I do, as my submitted paper is still under review after 1 year? I'd just submitted a manuscript to Robotics & Autonomous Systems Journal on Mar. 1st, 2015. Right after 1 month, its status changed to Under Review. I just waited up to Jan. 2016 and send a letter to editor-in-chief to clear the status of the paper and any potential problem due to this delay. He did say this after that 10 months!:

  you are right with your criticism. However your paper deals with
  research topics, where only a few of roboticist are familiar with.
  Hopefully we can get now the final required review. Sorry for the
  inconvenience.

Now, 2 extra months are passed, yet the paper's status is still Under Review.

They should have considered responsibility regarding the case. They could easily announce us about their inability to find any interested reviewer for the manuscript, and we would find the other journal. I'm frustrated a little bit. As a matter of fact, I am reluctant to withdraw the submission as they have wasted my time, NOTICEABLY, over the last year. I wonder if they have completely neglected it.

Is there any way to handle this case, and ask them POLITELY and REASONABLY, leading to the finalization of this manuscript's situation?

Thanks

Edit: After 2 weeks from sending an email to the editor about the manuscript, he has not still replied.

I'm in a different field, but had a similar situation. I got a paper published in a journal in a matter of 6 months (submission to publication), then followed with another paper a month later. That paper was in review without notice for 6 months. After two unanswered emails, I politely asked for a decision on publication such that I might submit elsewhere if publication wasn't likely. This prompted them to respond that they were having trouble locating reviewers and asked for a list of potential reviewers. I received my reviews for the paper about 2 months later. It seems that if you suggest you might pull the paper and submit elsewhere, it may open a more honest conversation!


Doctorant (PhD student) vs doctorant contractuel (contractual PhD Student) In the French education system, what is the difference between doctorant ("PhD student") and doctorant contractuel ("contractual PhD Student")?

In France (like other countries), there are several ways to fund a PhD student.

A doctorant contractuel is a legal designation used to refer to someone who has signed a specific job contract called a contrat doctoral. This contracts allows universities to hire PhD students and describes the working conditions of the PhD student as an employee of said university.

Note that, in addition to this contract, a decree (2009-464 in the Wiki link) can also modify the working conditions by stating that a PhD student funded with such a contract must spend 100% of his/her time on research activities. As a result, an additional clause must be signed to be allowed to do teaching activities. From what I know, this is the one crucial point to be aware of when proposing or signing such a contract.

A doctorant is a just a term used to designate a PhD student, without any distinction regarding the nature and source of the funding.


Add author to existing arXiv paper? I had a student write an excellent Master's thesis which is not publishable as novel research but which I think would serve as a great introduction to the topic. Although the student is happy to have it posted to the arXiv, more needs to be done to connect the thesis to the existing literature. The student has graduated and is busy, I'd like to make the necessary adjustments myself, but I don't want to take credit for the bulk of the thesis which is the student's work.

Is it possible to upload an initial version (the original) to the arXiv with just the student's name, followed later by an updated version with me added as 2nd author? Will the arXiv correctly show that the first version was just the work of the student?

Also, are there are ethical issues I should be aware of? Assume that the student has been given the opportunity to make the changes themself, has declined, and endorses the above plan.

I have just checked that changing authors when replacing a paper is technically enabled. I am pretty sure I have seen this happen: those with more searching savvy than I will surely turn up with actual examples.  And yes, the arxiv maintains all previous postings and their authorship.

I don't see any ethical problems with what you propose.  But I'm not sure I understand the message that you're seeking to convey: are you saying that you attach some meaning to an initial posting by your student only followed by a replacement jointly authored with you?  To me that does not have a clear meaning (and by the way, some people will look at the first posting and many won't).  If anything, that would look to me like you realized that what your student uploaded was not satisfactory, so you stepped in to salvage the situation.  If that's not what you're going for, maybe don't do this.  Why not just upload a jointly authored posting the first time around?


How to find a reviewer/editor for my paper? I wrote a paper, which I would like to submit to a convention. I've never written a paper before. I'd like it to be thoroughly reviewed, not to say edited, before I submit it. I'm willing to pay for a reviewer. Where can I find a reviewer? The orientation is mathematics related to computer science (specifically formal methods).

Your best bet is offering a graduate student a lot of money.  In most cases this is going to be an unpleasant job.  In most cases, the paper will be some combination of incorrect, incoherent, and uninteresting, but the author will usually be very resistant to hearing that.  (I don’t know you, hopefully this doesn’t describe you or your paper, but whoever you hire also isn’t going to know you or your paper.)  So you’re going to have to offer a lot of money to compensate and offer it to someone who doesn’t have a large salary.  Something like $100-$150/hour with the first two hours paid up front would probably be enough for a graduate student to overlook that it’s likely to be an unpleasant job.


Are (computer science) workshops less prestigious than conferences in general? I am a PhD student in computer science and I have noticed that my advisor tries to avoid having me submit to workshops in my field when I bring workshops to his attention that we could submit to. He, instead, prefers to publish in a conference, journal, or IEEE/ACM magazine instead. I almost feel like he treats workshops as not prestigious enough.

The workshops I bring to his attention are all good workshops in my opinion. These workshops are IEEE and ACM workshops demanding original research papers that are about 6 pages long (conference papers in my field are usually 8 to 10 pages long). The program committees for these workshop are known people in my field and previous year's workshop papers have a 5 or 6 citations (for example), so they do get attention (but I don't know how this compares to the attention that this same paper could have gotten if it was published at a conference).

My questions are: are workshops viewed as less prestigious in general than conferences? Is there an unspoken understanding that only new, inexperienced students present their papers at workshops? Would having workshop papers in my resume somehow lower the credibility of my work?

(Apologies if the questions sound naive. I have always been unable to understand the 'prestige' of a 'co-located' workshop when juxtaposed against the conference.)

Workshops are usually for new topics, and I do rank them lower than conferences. Moreover, workshops usually publish/accept papers rejected from their co-located main conference; often than not, they are used to prop up the number of registrations or to cover the cost of the main conference.  Also, because they are new, it is usually very easy to get a paper accepted as the standard is not there yet.  However, if the topics of interest grow and attract experienced researchers, then a workshop can be quite hard to get into, and hence, its prestige grows.


Do we cite authors or papers when using author/year citations? Numbered citations

In my field, we usually use only numbered citations, e.g.

  As shown in [1], the sky is blue.

This means that we obviously refer to a certain the paper (which can be found under [1] in the reference list). Saying something like

  As shown by [1], the sky is blue.

doesn't make too much sense, whereas

  As shown by Tyndall [1], the sky is blue.

works.

Author / year citations

Do we again cite papers when using author / year citations? Is "Tyndall, 1869" our name for a certain paper? Or are we refering to the authors?

In particular, which of this is correct:

  As shown in Tyndall (1869), the sky is blue.

  As shown by Tyndall (1869), the sky is blue.

  As shown by Tyndall (Tyndall, 1869), the sky is blue.

  As shown in (Tyndall, 1869), the sky is blue.

Sorry if this is a duplicate. This question and the answers don't really help.

In general, the final arbiter of this is the style guide the editor is using for the book, journal or collection. If you have no external editor or style sheet then the choice is yours, but the most common usage for inline citations would be not to repeat the name, while leaving the sentence readable with the parenthetical part left out, i.e.

  As shown in Tyndall (1869), the sky is blue.

This is specifically when the name is reused, so it would still be

  As shown in another paper (Tyndall, 1869), the sky is blue.


Does the related work section need to be strictly about other's work only? I would like to clarify a writing style issue concerning separating related work from my own work:

Does the related work section need to be strictly about other work only? Or may you also explicitly explain the relevance of the related work to the text at hand?

That is, should you avoid explaining why a given related paper is related to your work and just report on the paper itself, or is it okay to also explain, WHY that paper is relevant while you talk about it? For example

Related work

[...]
Someone et al. (2010) report that "X -> Y". Someoneelse (2011) however found evidence for "not X -> Y". It is not entirely obvious where this difference in findings results from. That is why I study "X" in regard to its influence on "Y" in more detail in this thesis.
[...]

A version of this statement would also find itself in the introduction and possible the abstract, but imagine there to be more surrounding explanation in the related work section.

Is that permissible writing style? Or is the That is why I study "X" in regard to its influence on "Y" in more detail in this thesis. part out-of-place in the related work section?

The objective of related works is to, well, show how other work is related to yours. It’s not only reasonable, but also expected that you say how other works are positioned with respect to yours. When I read the related work section I also want to understand exactly that “why” of relatedness. Doing so explicitly would really help your readers.


Etiquette for declining a tenure track job offer I have a good idea of what things to say in my correspondence regarding this matter; here I'm mainly asking how to deliver the news: by phone or by letter/email.

I have received conflicting advice about this. In many jobs (academic or not) the most common advice seems to be to make a phone call, followed up with a confirmatory email or letter. Specifically in an academic setting, I have heard at least two chairs/deans say something along the lines of "Call me with good news. Email me with bad news". Others have said "use the same medium the school used to contact you"-- in most cases I've heard of, the school often uses a mix of written and telephone correspondence.

In my particular case, declining the offer by phone would require scheduling a phone call through an intermediary, because all previous correspondences have gone through the Dean's secretary (sending contracts, scheduling previous phone calls). Based on the non-instantaneous scheduling of our other chats, I suspect this would delay things by a few days (so, it wouldn't be like I could just call his office number for a quick chat). Regardless, it seems rather awkward to go through this process of scheduling a phone call just to say "No Thanks".

Any advice on the general question and/or my specific situation is appreciated.

I would say that the most appropriate medium would be to send a written communication, either as an email or as a letter. This carries much more weight than a phone call, as you actually have something resembling a paper trail that you can provide.

Although there is a certain wisdom in the advice "contact them as they contacted you," this is an exceptional enough situation that deviating from that rule seems more appropriate.

The route that I would use is to write a formal, signed letter, then scan it in and send a copy of the scanned letter as a PDF to the intended recipient. The scan will reach them more quickly, and you'll still have the formal communication sent by regular mail.


How to acknowledge copyright for figure reproduced from arXiv preprint? I am coauthor of a review article, in which we reuse a figure from another article that is, so far, available only on the arXiv. In such a case, one would usually obtain the copyright from the publisher and acknowledge the copyright holder with a statement similar to

  Reproduced with permission [reference]. Copyright [year], [publisher].

What is an appropriate analogous phrase for an article published on the arXiv?

From what I understand of arXiv's help on licenses, the default option only grants arXiv the right to distribute the article, while the copyright remains with the authors.
However, including all authors of an article in the copyright statement can make the statement very long. Perhaps one should restrict it to the author that submitted the article to the arXiv?

  Reproduced with permission [reference]. Copyright [year], [submitting author].

P.S. In this particular case, the arXiv article was authored within our group as well, i.e. we are free to choose the copyright statement. In general I assume it would be up to the authors to choose how they would like to be acknowledged.

The crucial points to remember here are that you have an

ethical duty to cite your source, and a
legal duty to comply with the terms of the license under which the article was uploaded to arXiv.

Those are your obligations, nothing less or (in my opinion) more. Considering this, after looking at the arXiv license information you linked to, it seems to me that the following language would be appropriate for at least one of the license options (I didn't look at all the options, the answer may vary slightly for the others):

  Figure 1. This is a very interesting figure. (Image source: [ABC15]; use permitted under the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0.)

where "Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0" is hyperlinked to this page, and where [ABC15] refers to the bibliographic entry for the article in the references section of your paper.

Note that (as far as I'm aware) there is no need in this case to refer specifically to copyright. I also disagree with your assertion that "In general I assume it would be up to the authors to choose how they would like to be acknowledged." As I said, you have a duty to acknowledge the source of the work and its authors, and satisfy whatever legal requirements may exist pertaining to copyright or other licensing restrictions, but no other obligations that I'm aware of to use specific language that the authors or anyone else wants you to use. See here for a somewhat related discussion.