Is it possible to do a PhD in Environmental Policy and Economics if I do not have an academic background in Economics? Is it possible to do a PhD in Environmental Policy and Economics if I do not have an academic background in Economics (except for two papers in my graduate prog. one on Environmental economics and the other on Resource Economics which, I feel were very watered down)? I have an Graduate degree in Environmental Studies and undergraduate degrees in Biotechnology and Law. I am very interested in pursing a PhD involving Environmental Policy; and Economics I feel is an integral part of the discourse.
What can I do to overcome my lack of a degree/ course on Economics in my academics career so far? Will writing papers that uses Economic theories and concepts help me in getting accepted for a PhD position?
Will I have to pursue another graduate degree in Economics?
I am from India, where education is very compartmentalized and not generally interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary (with few exceptions).

Sure you can. However make sure your supervisor(s) know the economics better (e.g., by looking at his/her current publications) than you. This is because if the supervisor doesn't know the area very well, he/she doesn't know if your work is in fact a contribution because he is not an experienced yet; and therefore it will create a very unpleasant situation in which you work hard; without knowing you are on the right track.


Is this possible to drop an author from authors' list of a paper after revision? Recently, based on my collaboration with someone else in our department, we submitted a paper to a highly reputed journal (IF ~ 8) and we received a minor revision a couple of weeks ago. My name in this article is the second author. The first author is a PhD student, who would be graduated next month, the third author is a professor from a national laboratory, and the last one is the PhD adviser of the first author.

From beginning of this project that lead to the submission of this article, I was involved in modeling and its details, input data preparation and output information interpretation, as well as reviewing the draft paper before submission. There was no problem at all before receiving the revision and the first author and his PhD adviser acknowledged and my contributions.

Today, I was informed by the first author that my PhD adviser that has nothing to do with paper at all, accused me that I didn't have any contribution to this paper and I don't deserve to be on the authors' list despite the fact that I had contribution in developing the model, gathering the input data and interpret and discuss the outputs as well as reviewing and revising the draft paper before submission. Even, the initial idea of the whole project was mine and I proposed it to the first author due to the fact that first author's area of expertise is not modeling or computational science.

I'm so angry (again!) and I don't know how to respond... The first author and his PhD adviser are in my side and they want to prepare a summary of contributions for all authors including me to close this case, but still I'm going to lose my mind. So my question: Is this possible to drop an author from authors' list of a paper after revision? What are my options at the worst scenario? Is it normal (of course it's not!) that somebody that has nothing to do with a paper question the contribution of a paper that is not published yet even?

Is this possible to drop an author from authors' list of a paper after revision?

Perhaps, but very very unusual. This should really never happen - the only case I can see reasonable is if someone was included as an author but either found their own contributions to be insufficient or disagreed with the publication and requested that they be removed from the list. It should definitely never happen when that person has a legitimate claim to authorship.

  What are my options at the worst scenario?

I don't think it makes much sense to consider the "worst" scenario. The best scenario probably involves you finding a new advisor.

  Is it normal (of course it's not!) that somebody that has nothing to do with a paper question the contribution of a paper that is not published yet even?

No, it is not normal for someone with no involvement in a paper to concern themselves with authorship issues for that paper, at any stage.

I don't see any reason to bother convincing your advisor. You cannot reason with someone to change a position that is not based on reason in the first place.

Given the pattern of issues you have had in the past (for example: Is this violation of academic integrity if I ask a question on Github public repository and post it as an issue? How to deal with an adviser that wants to force you to get his desired results?), your next steps should involve getting out of this situation in whatever way you can. This advisor is an advisor in name only, I cannot see a positive outcome if you stay with them.


Dealing with rejection anxiety as a reviewer I am not very experienced as a reviewer, and I often find myself stressing over recommending rejection, even for the articles which I think are clearly low-quality and unsuitable for publication in a strong journal. I imagine how the authors might feel (especially if I suspect they are PhD students/postdocs/early career researchers who have a lot at stake in the publication), and I second-guess my judgement and wonder if it would align with others’ opinions. I also always worry that I might come across as unnecessarily harsh and critical in my reviewer report, especially as English is not my native language, so I have limited ability to express myself clearly and succinctly.
This usually leads to me writing too verbose and too detailed review reports (I think). More critically, it caused me a few times to recommend major revisions in the first review round when I thought that the manuscript should really be rejected but didn’t have the guts to suggest it. So inevitably, there comes the second round, the manuscript is not much improved, and I am left stressing again over recommending rejection. I think in such instances it would have been better to just suggest rejection initially, and more importantly it would probably have been fairer to the authors and would not waste their, my or the editor’s time.
Basically, I am asking how to overcome this anxiety about suggesting rejection and the fear of coming across as the “bad reviewer.” Are my concerns valid?

The role of the reviewer is not so much gate-keeper, but rather your role is to help the authors get the paper to a position where it is publishable. So I very rarely recommend outright rejection at the first round.
Once you have written things down what it would take for the paper to be publishable, it maybe the case that this is clearly unachievable and that this author will never get this paper to that level – but that is for the editor and authors to decide.
Reviewers are normally asked to judge two things:

Is the paper sufficiently novel and exciting to be interesting to a large enough fraction of the readership of the journal.

Is the paper sufficiently rigorous to demonstrate the claims it makes.

If the paper is not sufficiently novel or exciting I say:

To make this paper publishable, the authors must explain the additional advances made compared to Smith et al. and Jones et al. and why their work would be of interest to a reader of the Journal of Things, beyond those connected with the sub field of very small things.

Methodological or interpretive flaws I will simply point out and say they must be fixed.
So for example, I recently had to review a paper for a software tool. It unlikely to get published, but instead of saying “reject” I said:

The tool does not appear to implement any new functionality compared to  Jones et al and indeed is missing several of the functions in that tool. The authors should explain why their tool is an advance in comparison, and provide benchmarking data comparing the performance.

The tool was not installable on my system, the authors should ensure that there is a robust installation routine and that it functions on representative range of systems. {goes on to list the problems with the installation}

The tool has several bugs and conceptual errors in it that must be fixed before it was published. {goes on to list them}

In conclusion, the tool has several usability and functional shortcomings that must be fixed. Even if these were fixed, the authors must explain why their tool is superior, or even equal in performance or features to Jones et al.

Now I was 80% sure that this wasn’t going to happen – the amount of work required to bring the paper up to a publishable standard was probably more than had been put into the project up until that point – but if they wanted to do it, I’d be happy to recommend publication. I never saw another revision of the paper – I don’t know if the editor decided to reject it, or the authors decided it wasn’t worth it –, but I fulfilled my role: to say what it was that was necessary to bring it up to standard.
If the authors do decide to try for a resubmission, without fixing the problems I identified, I will just say that:

The authors have not addressed points A, B and C, and I cannot recommend publication until they have done so.

There are several "Peer Reviewer's Oaths" out there. The one I like is from here:
http://www.opiniomics.org/the-reviewers-oath/

I, the reviewer, promise:

to not hide behind a screen of anonymity
to be open and honest with you (the authors) at all times
to be constructive in my criticism
within the rules given to me by the journal, to assist you in every way
I ethically can to get your manuscript published, by providing
criticism and praise that is valid and relevant


Should I apply for a position which I previously applied and had an initial interview? I am on the job market again, in Mathematics.  I see a few job postings for positions which I applied for last year, and I had an initial interview for, but no second or campus interview.  These were either temporary or postdoc positions.

Should I apply for these again, since I am still interested?  Or is it a waste of my time, and I should take the lack of a second interview as my cue that they are not interested in me.

Yes. The cost of an application is essentially free -- these days you don't even have to pay postage. Unless you were specifically told that you were categorically unsuitable (e.g., you had a felony conviction and the job required contact with minors) then there's no reason not to reapply.

It's more curious why the same job popped up again. Either the search failed or the candidate bailed after being hired. You might want to delicately inquire as to what happened.

You clarified that this is for a post-doc or other temporary position. In that case, there's all the more reason to reapply. While applying should just take you about an hour of your time to brush up the CV and letter since you did everything last year -- As aparente001 notes, you may want to invest just a bit more time to figure out what the committee is looking for and hone your application a bit more.


Are there any online platforms where I can discuss my research idea with experts? I have several research ideas (oncology and virology) that I want to discuss with professors/experts, so I am looking for an online platform where the ideas can be shared and discussed. However, other than Researchgate (which I cannot use, because I don't have an institutional email), I can't seem to find any other suitable places on the web. Biology Stack Exchange didn't work well for me, because the mods there say that my question is mainly based on "opinion."

So......in short,any good forums or platforms where I can discuss my ideas with the experts?

You can use Quora to ask your questions and also discuss with experts on your interested field.

This site needs registration with your email (institution based is not required).


How to overcome the need to know everything about a topic? I seek advice from mathematicians.

Sometimes I come across a topic I partially understand in my research, but I understand enough to get my work done. Yet I want to know everything about the topic, even if it isn't beneficial to my work. I can not get rid of universalism. For example, I think I do not know a lot of about my research field without reading all the grad texts.

But at the time of doctoral education teachers always advise you to look at the research and stop reading too many books.

How is it possible to get rid of universalism?

I propose that your behavior is not caused by flawed methodology but stems from certain acquired beliefs about your self worth, that you should try to address to solve this "problem".
Reason for Behaviour
The need to

read everything stems from the need
know everything which stems from the need to
not miss anything important/useful which in turn stems from the need to
submit the perfect paper or thesis which stems stems from the need to
get appraisal from your advisor or peers which is a
source of happiness

Thus, unconsciously you are afraid that, if you miss some information your work will be less than perfect and you will not get the approval that you are used to get. People will be disappointed, saying something like "This is not the quality of work we are used to get from you".
Recommendation
It is usually hard to change these core beliefs about ourselves, but you could

realize that even with a non perfect paper you will be much better than other researchers (if the need to be the best is not something you can change)
realize that your advisor values it more, if you finish your research in time than making the best work possible ("Better done than perfect"). Therefore you will get more appraisal for finishing quickly.
look for other sources of happiness and validation in life that will make imperfections in your work seem less important

friends that value your company
spouse that loves and values you as a person
children
teaching, where the amount of knowledge you need to acquire is much lower and the reward (admiration from students) is easier to achieve

(Disclaimer: I am not a mathematician)


How to avoid plagiarism when reciting a list of technical terms word-for-word from another article? I'm working on a term paper that will directly lead into my Master's thesis, so I'm concerned about whether I'm committing plagiarism here. There are two issues: (1) Reproducing a list of technical terms, and (2) reproducing an equation with explanations of the different terms.
(1) I want to include a list of technical terms that were already enumerated in a research article. Here is how that article is written:

However, at the very beginning of the manure life
cycle, the fresh animal waste can be characterized with
its primary components, the feces and urine. Fecal
material contains a wide spectrum of organic compounds such as undigested litter, living microorganisms, carbohydrates, proteins, fatty acids, celluloses,
hemicelluloses and lignin (Clark et al. 2005; ASAE
American Society of Agricultural Engineers 2003).

Source: Li, C., Salas, W., Zhang, R., Krauter, C., Rotz, A., & Mitloehner, F. (2012). Manure-DNDC: A biogeochemical process model for quantifying greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions from livestock manure systems. Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems, 93(2), 163–200. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10705-012-9507-z

To what extent do I need to paraphrase this list in order to include it in my thesis? Would changing the order of the list items be enough to constitute a paraphrase?
(2) I want to include an equation from another source, which also explained each of the terms in that equation. Here is how that article is written:

dC/dt = CNR * μ * (S * kl + (1-S) * kr) * [C]        [Eq. 3]

Where [C] is organic C content (kg C/ha), t is time (day), S is labile fraction of organic
C compounds in the pool, (1-S) is resistant fraction of organic C compounds, kl is
specific decomposition rate (SDR) of labile fraction (1/day), kr is SDR of the resistant
fraction (1/day), μ is temperature and moisture factor, CNR is C/N ratio reduction
factor, SDR is 0.074, 0.074, 0.02, 0.33, 0.04, 0.16 and 0.006 (1/day) for very labile
litter, labile litter, resistant litter, labile microbes, resistant microbes, labile humads,
and resistant humads, respectively.

Source: Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space. (2017). DNDC Scientific Basis and Processes (Version 9.5). University of New Hampshire.

How should I go about paraphrasing the equation and "Where..." statements?
The reason I am confused about this is because MIT's anti-plagiarism resource does not seem to cover these topics:
MIT Academic Integrity Handbook: Paraphrasing

If you enclose the text in quotation marks and cite the original source, it is not plagiarism.  If it is a list, a quotation makes more sense than paraphrasing.


Who is the publisher of the SpringerOpen journals? This question is closely related to this one and is also about the (at least for me) confusing aggregation of publishers around the term "Springer". In particular, I am asking about the journals published under the brand SpringerOpen, such as the "EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking".

What is the name and address of the associated publisher?

At least the following terms come to my mind:

Springer Nature
SpringerOpen
BioMed Central
Springer
Springer Verlag
Springer Science+Business Media

Possible addresses include:

Luxemburg
Berlin
Heidelberg
London

SpringerOpen is just a brand of the company Springer Nature. You can find some info here. It's also the name of the website where you can access the articles. It allows them to cram the word "Springer" in more places if they brand every single one of their open access journals. It's like how McDonald's chicken nuggets aren't just nuggets, they're mcnuggets. Springer's open access journals aren't just open access, they're "SpringerOpen".
Citations of journal articles do not typically include the publisher. The journal's name is sufficient. In fact, if you go to to your journal's website, they explicitly say:

Citing articles in EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking
[...] Article citations follow this format:
Authors: Title. EURASIP J Wirel Commun Netw [year], [volume number]:[article number].

Since journals can (and do) change publishers, there is no point in listing the publisher. In fact, this could be actively harmful if the journal changes hand at some point in the future. People will wonder if they're looking at the correct thing.
If you look, you will also see that the copyright holder is "BioMed Central Ltd", which is owned by Springer Nature. So if you are really intent on listing something, I would list that. The company's HQ is in London.


do American engineering students build projects at the end of their bachelors degree In my country Nigeria, Engineering students make projects along with their thesis in order to graduate.... is this the same for Americans ?

This is dependent on a school, however yes, generally undergraduate students complete a capstone (or thesis) that requires them to complete a project demonstrating what they have learned over the program.


How can I tell my advisor that I'm not going to work for free? I am an undergraduate student of Physics in Spain. This year I have to prepare my bachelor thesis and I also applied for a fellowship with the same advisor to do further research on the same topic.

I wasn't awarded the fellowship and I told my advisor about it but he wrote me an email a few days back telling me to try to finish the thesis early to be able to start with the collaboration.

Given that I wasn't awarded the fellowship I just want to finish my thesis and I don't want to do further work (which was discussed under the hypothesis of me getting the fellowship) for free. I thought that this was clear to my advisor when I told him that I didn't get the fellowship but it seems that it is not the case

I don't want to sound rude when telling him this because I still have to finish my thesis with him and I wouldn't like any kind of problem between us. How could I tell him that I'm not willing to work for free?

I would suggest that you repeat that you did not win the fellowship and ask if he has other funding available, "because I am still very interested in the work, but will need to find paid work instead if I can't get a stipend for this collaboration."


How to correctly reference a supervisor who in the meantime got a doctorate I completed one of my theses under the co-supervision of a (back then) PhD student. Said person has since completed his degree and is now officially "Dr. supervisor".

Since I want to reference his supervision in my CV, I was wondering whether I use the formal title that he holds now, or whether I reference him without a PhD, which was his status during the supervision?

I am pretty sure that this is more a non-issue for my specific case, but I can see this being a more common problem elsewhere, especially when listing references online.

FYI: I did not reference the name of my supervisor advisor at all in my industry-targeting resume.  I do realize this may be different in CV-land.
I personally wouldn't use any honorifics in the CV.  (Next you'll be asking about assistant versus full professor!)  Just convey the information, the name.  I would opt for FI, LN.  I.e. Advisor: D. Linger.  Keep it tight, man.


Can I update my MSc thesis after submission Due to events beyond my control I couldn't finish the writing as planned. Most of the thesis were rather ready and not to bad (if I might say) but I didn't finish all chapters well, there are some logical gaps and moreover some of the rather central diagrams were not clear at all. In normal circumstances this could be fixed in a few days, but in this case there were no way to do it.

I couldn't postpone to submit the MSc thesis (due to maximum time allowed) so I just quickly wrapped it up (removing comments in text and tried to cover some logic steps in sloppy sentences etc).

Now, the thesis are to be archived and moreover, some colleagues from other universities want to read it. It's a rather big interest, but I'm embarrassed about the missing parts and even some typos. Would it be immoral to correct the errors and fix the missing parts to create a better, more readable study, if I clearly state that it is an updated version? Could I call it a report based on my thesis or something like that?

What would be the best way to deal with it? I'd love to produce a well written document at the end, but shouldn't hide the problems of the original, submitted thesis. I have no intention of hiding the original thesis, but the results would be much clearer with n update.

There is nothing immoral about correcting mistakes in your earlier work. Passing off your amended version as that which you submitted to your institution would be rather questionable, though.

I do not think that any library would replace your original submission with an amended version unless that amended version was created through an official process at your institution. I don't think that such an amendment process is available in most cases for an MSc thesis.

So your problem of trying to drive readers towards your updated, amended and corrected work, remains.

Perhaps one solution would be to correct your original work and have a version of this available online, with some appropriate title which indicates it is an updated version of your earlier work, as you suggest. I suggest that you make it very clear where your corrections were made in your updated version -- going so far as to quote the original work and indicate what you changed and why.

You can then point your colleagues towards this updated work.

You original work will remain on record, and any failings in it will be reflected in the grade you receive for it.


I am able to self-fund a PhD, how can I use this when applying? Some candidates have the personal or family resources to self-fund their graduate studies, or already know that they are willing to take on debt for them (disregard whether this is a good idea, which has been addressed before). They still, however, need to actually be admitted to a graduate school, and having funding doesn't guarantee admission.

The ability to self-fund obviously makes it possible to take unfunded offers, but are there any other ways to actively leverage this funding situation during the application process? Should the applicant inform schools that they would take an unfunded offer, and, if so, when should they (e.g. when applying, after being put on a waitlist)? Are there specific strategies that a candidate might be able to use when choosing schools to apply to?

I suspect that answers to this question might be field-specific, so I won't necessarily specify a field. Answers discussing the differences between fields might also be interesting.

Note that I am not in this situation, so I won't really be able to answer those kinds of clarifying questions. I just thought it was an interesting question that was inspired by but not directly addressed in this question.

I may have an unusual perspective on this, since many mathematics Ph.D. programs in the U.S. fund all their students (at least through teaching).  In this context, I'd recommend against even mentioning the possibility of self-funding:

It sounds unconfident, like you don't expect to receive funding, and this is not a positive impression to convey.  You don't want to give the impression that you feel your own application is subpar, and that you're bargaining to try to turn a rejection into an unfunded acceptance.  This might be a reasonable approach at the end of the process, if you're stuck on a waiting list, but it's a problematic way to begin.
Letting Ph.D. students go into debt feels exploitative, especially in a program in which most or all of the other students are funded, and letting wealthy people buy their way into graduate school is also troubling.
There will be worries about how sustainable your self-funding is.  In a year or two, your money or willingness to go into debt may run out, and the department would have to choose whether to come up with money for you or kick you out.  That's an unpleasant choice, and the admissions committee may even worry that you are deliberately aiming for this situation (in the hope that they won't be willing to kick you out once you've joined the department).

In the sort of programs I'm familiar with, announcing in advance that you would be willing to self-fund a Ph.D. won't increase your chances of admission.  I've only seen this come up very rarely, and the admissions committee has simply ignored the offer of self-funding and made a decision of acceptance with funding or rejection.  I can easily imagine that it could decrease the chances of admission a little, although I haven't seen a clear-cut case of that.

By contrast, if you are awarded a prestigious fellowship with guaranteed funding for a certain number of years, you should certainly make sure admissions committees know about it.  That doesn't have any of these disadvantages.  However, it's not in your best interests to offer to pay your own way unless that's a common and respected approach in your field.


How to ‘fill the gap’ between the end of one’s grant and handing in one’s thesis I am a Ph.D. student in Germany. For the past three years I have been paid by a scholarship grant. (The source of this grant and the subject I’m in is not of relevance. Consider it natural sciences.) This grant is now terminating after three years however I still have to write and hand in my thesis. The relevant university requires Ph.D. students to be properly enrolled, thus I qualify as a student.

I need to fill the gap between the end of the grant and having handed in my thesis in some way — I need food and to pay my flat’s rent. I am not entitled to Arbeitslosengeld I (unemployment benefits) because a grant is not considered an employment contract. And today I also heard that apparantly I am not entitled to Arbeitslosengeld II (social welfare benefits) either, because I am still enrolled as a student.

Is that piece of information correct? If that is the case, are there any social welfare benefits I can apply for? Or do I really need to rely on ‘rich parents’/savings?

Side notes:

Technically, my grant can be extended; however, I am unsure whether it will be or not. There is no way I can finish my thesis by the time the original grant ends and my supervisor does not have any spare money to finance me for the remaining time e.g. as a wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft (scientific helper).

I’m still checking with my university whether I actually must remain enrolled or not; please assume compulsory enrolment in your answers/comments.

So far in my life I have never paid into the unemployed insurance. Any student jobs I had gave too little salary.

In case it matters, I am a German national.

This is very normal to happen, you have three choices, which I would recommend the last two:

Extend and Hope The Supervisor Comes Through: Obviously you are extending your stay at the university, you can stay still and hope that your supervisor can find a funding somewhere, which is laying around, and then give it to you.
Find a Job and Write Your Thesis: Second choice is to go and find a job (postdoc or industry), since you are a German national, the world is your oyster. You do not need to waste time and energy for visa applications.

2.1 Benefit: You stack your experience, start earning based on years of education.

2.2. Drawback: You need to balance it out between your future job and writing your thesis.

A Big Fat Alert: The second option is the tricky one, not everyone can balance it out between a job and writing a thesis; and I know people who did fail their submission because they were too busy earning their living.

Combination of the first two: You can find a job at your university and then write the thesis at the same time.

Main Benefit: You can still discuss issues with your supervisor and be at the same environment until your submission.

Conclusion: You need to sit down and think about this very carefully, and then choose your option. Not the best scenario but it happens to many at the end of their third year period.


Would language difficulties be considered a valid excuse for a poor masters performance when applying for a PhD? I recently completed an M2 (second year of masters) in mathematics in a Paris university. I come from the UK, had never studied French until the summer directly before, and foolishly thought that taking courses in a different language would be an interesting challenge. I was admitted to the course without needing to take any language competency exams. All lectures and learning material were in French, but we were allowed to write exams in English (which I did).
I absolutely bombed the first semester, achieving a 10.5/20 (~50th percentile), which is not great, and I felt that it was at least partially due to the language barrier (though I did lack some mathematical maturity compared to French ENS students in the course). I managed to get 18.5/20 in my second semester, which is considerably better. So I finished with a 14.5/20 (or grade bien), which was respectable (in the top 15% of my course) but I don't know if it will be good enough for the competitive PhD programs that I was hoping to apply to next year. It is perhaps worth noting that I maintained excellent grades during my UK undergraduate years.
My question is; would those PhD programs be willing to view my second semester grades (which include my thesis) as more reflective of my potential than those of the first semester? In other words, are (self-inflicted) language difficulties considered to be mitigating circumstances?

The good news is that you have a clear positive trajectory, and I'm assuming your undergraduate scores are quite good to get you accepted to the French MS program to begin with. In this case you have a high undergraduate GPA, and poor 1st semester MS GPA, and a good 2nd semester MS GPA.
This is something you should put into your cover letter. Straightforwardly acknowledge your difficulties as succinctly as you can, but phrase your 2nd semester "comeback" as overcoming a difficulty through hard work and perseverance.
A script might be: "I underestimated how difficult it would be to receive instruction in a language I didn't have a fluent grasp of, and my grades suffered in my first semester. However, through diligent effort to improve my French, as well as late nights studying my courses, I was able to gain good marks in my second semester. Therefore, while my GPA is not as high as I would like, I believe what I have learned in time management and self-study during the past year will help me overcome future difficulties that challenge any PhD student."
As to how potential admissions officers would react to such a statement is out of your control. If it were me and I was not in a top top program where I can afford to throw away 99% of the applications, I might keep you in the pile for further review.


Publisher has changed many terms in section/subsection titles to acronyms I have an accepted paper which is now in the proof stage. Throughout the paper we define various acronyms, since we use these terms lots of times. For example:
These two acronyms are introduced in the first section:

A Bayesian network (BN) is a well known machine learning technique for (...) The conditional probability distribution (CPT) requires the specification (...)

Afterwards we generally used these acronyms, but not always. For example, at the start of a new section. We felt it is better to start the section with

Bayesian networks were introduced by (...)

than with

BNs were introduced by (...)

I think it is much easier to read the first way. Afterwards we do use the previously defined acronyms.
They have even changed these in the section titles. For example, a section is called

Estimating the Conditional Probability Tables of a Bayesian Network.

They have changed this to

Estimating the CPTs of a BN.

To me this does not look right. The reader who just wants to quickly grasp the contents of the paper will likely be confused.
Is there any convention about this? Do you think I am right to suggest the complete titles?

You should not assume that all changes introduced by the typesetters are the result of enforcing some house style. You should also not assume that these people are particularly competent. If they modify your text in some nonsensical way, you have two choices:

Page 7, line 15: Replace "Estimating the CPTs of a BN" by "Estimating the Conditional Probability Tables of a Bayesian Network".

Page 7, line 15: Please replace "Estimating the CPTs of a BN" by "Estimating the Conditional Probability Tables of a Bayesian Network".

Personally, I'd choose the first variant. This is not a request, this is an order. If they don't comply, escalate to their supervisor.


Given the traditional ACM copyright license, is it legal to publish the paper on ResearchGate? The ACM license states

  (iii) Post the Accepted Version of the Work on (1) the Author's home
  page, (2) the Owner's institutional repository, (3) any repository
  legally mandated by an agency funding the research on which the Work
  is based, and (4) any non-commercial repository or aggregation that
  does not duplicate ACM tables of contents, i.e., whose patterns of
  links do not substantially duplicate an ACM-copyrighted volume or
  issue. Non-commercial repositories are here understood as repositories
  owned by non-profit organizations that do not charge a fee for
  accessing deposited articles and that do not sell advertising or
  otherwise profit from serving articles.

Does this (somehow) include ResearchGate?

No. Researchgate is a for-profit organization that makes money from ads and job adverts. See for instance http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/12/a-social-networking-site-is-not-an-open-access-repository/.

Also, if you share your paper there, the Researchgate TOS state that you, not them, have to cover all the legal costs in case they get sued (Article 3, comma 5).


How to determine if a topic warrants a research paper? I'm a professional game developer looking to write a few research papers on various topics.  They mostly involve graphics techniques so I was planning on starting with the Journal of
Computer Graphics Techniques when I’m ready to start submitting the paper to publications.

These topics vary in complexity though, and while I haven’t heard of peers using these techniques, and I haven’t found reference to them on the Internet. There are some for which I’m not sure whether they are paper-worthy or not because the write-up would literally be one to two pages probably.

Is there any sort of metric to gauge topics in this way?

You've chosen a journal that looks like it is well suited to your background and topics.

By itself, the length of your paper is not related to whether it is important or publishable.

There are three things you can do to test whether your potential topics/papers are worth writing and submitting.  First, read many articles in this journal,  similar journals, and also conferences.  You aren't just looking for articles on the same topic or technique as yours.  Instead, you are learning about what constitutes a good research paper in your field.  Based on your reading, write a detailed outline of your proposed paper(s), and also an abstract.

The second thing you can do is to write a version of your paper(s) as a "Working Paper" and then circulate them to peers or colleagues for feedback.  You can post this to Arxiv and post links on social media or mailing lists to get broader feedback.  This approach has two advantages.  You sometimes only know the value of a research paper after you finish writing it.  And you'll get the most useful feedback from people when they have a finished paper in their hands, as opposed to reacting to a concept.

The third thing you can do, building on the previous, is to submit a paper or two (each revised based on earlier feedback) to a journal or conference, and then learn from reviewer comments if they reject you.


Why are oral tests and exams not common in American educational systems? My family originates from Russia but I only have experience with American academia. My parents constantly describe oral exams whereupon a student is required to choose one of many cards that have a certain amount of questions on them and then after some time preparing be able to answer the question verbally to the professor, who can then ask follow up questions.

In my mind, this offers numerous benefits; it's much harder to cheat this system as you have to verbalise your answer so copying is not an option, verbalisation is shown to help with memory's retention, because you don't know what topic the teacher/professor will follow up with you have to more deeply to impress the professor, and many more.

The drawbacks seem limited to me; more people standing around waiting to do the exam isn't great, nor is the fact that this will be a bit more subjective to the teacher/professor.

Is there some specific reason as to why this isn't done?

An oral exam takes me about 30 minutes (including preparation and discussion afterwards). I have about 110 students in my class. Doing an oral exam for that class would take me about 55 hours. This is not the only class I teach. I teach about 5 classes per semester. In order to avoid some of the subjectivity my department requires that an additional staff member is present. So implementing this for my courses would take about 55*5*2=550 person hours. That is just not practical (not to mention that my colleagues won't thank me for the additional work I give them as they have to sit in for these exams).

I know how long an oral exam takes because I do use it sometimes, but for practical reasons I can only do that for a small number of courses and I have to justify why this is necessary to my colleagues.


Going Back to Grad School I am seriously considering going back to graduate school for the PhD and I have two schools in mind. The problems I am facing are: age and I have no letters of recommendation. I do have a MS in Math and have been adjuncting since graduating in 1998. My question, what would be a good strategy for re-inserting myself into graduate school and be able to get funded. TIA.

One idea that could work is to try and do another masters in math somewhere that has a thesis requirement.  You can use this thesis to study a research problem that is currently being worked on by faculty at the schools that you want to get into.

If you can't do a second masters, how about an independent study somewhere with a prof. that could agree to supervise you for a semester or two?


As a teaching assistant, how important are student evaluations? I have seen a number of résumés of doctoral students, but only a few of them listed their evaluation scores when presenting their teaching experience.

How important are these scores in evaluating the teaching capabilities of a student?
How does one ensure that the students are sincere in their evaluations?

In case a professor does a slipshod work of a course, not teaching in depth or cramming a lot of syllabus in a short time, there is only so much a TA could do to salvage the course for the students.

How does the TA make the best of a bad job in such a situation?
Apart from holding weekly office hours and lenient grading(!), what is the maximum a TA can do, after all?

This is an excellent question, for faculty as well as students!

How important are these points in evaluating the teaching capabilities of a student?

Obviously this varies significantly in different departments and institutions, but in my experience, the scores themselves are not that important.

My department does pay attention to these numbers when allocating future TAships, but definitely not in isolation.  Narrative reviews from the instructors carry significant weight.  The people doing the assignments also know which courses are unpopular, and which instructors are irresponsible, and adjust the evaluation accordingly, at least in principle.  In practice, there are only three evaluations: (1) truly outstanding TAs, who are considered for teaching awards; (2) truly abysmal TAs, who are not rehired, at least without retraining (and since we have a TAship requirement, this has teeth); and (3) everyone else.

When we evaluate tenure-track faculty candidates, teaching ability is usually a second-order concern, but it is a concern.  Poor evaluations on an applicant's CV are a red flag—why didn't they just omit them?  Good evaluations are mostly a signal to look further.  Teaching awards carry more weight.  Recommendation letters that directly praise the applicant's teaching ability — with concrete and credible details — are even better.  Similar issues arise when evaluating faculty for tenure, with one big difference: omitting the teaching scores is not an option.

How does one ensure that the students are sincere in their evaluation?

You can't.  Sorry.

However, I believe you can increase the fraction of sincere (and positive) responses by consistently treating your students with respect.  Make your expectations clear from day one, and enforce them consistently.  Invite feedback throughout the semester, and respond to it quickly and appropriately.  Apologize quickly for mistakes, thank students publicly for useful suggestions, but do not buckle on high standards.  Give timely, consistent, and useful feedback on coursework.  Above all, do not waste your students' time; the correlation between hard work and low evaluations is much higher if the students don't see any benefit to doing the work.

<Insert standard confirmation bias warning here.>

How does the TA make the best of a bad job [if the instructor is irresponsible]?

First, do your own job as best as you can.

Second, raise your concerns with the instructor; be respectful but brutally honest.  If the instructor is unresponsive, raise your concerns with your instructor's boss; be respectful but brutally honest.  (Note: Disagreement is not the same as being unresponsive.)  If your instructor's boss is also unresponsive, your department doesn't really care about poor teaching; they're likely to ignore your evaluations, even if they are low.

Apart from holding weekly office hours and lenient grading(!), what is the maximum a TA can do, after all?

There are many more things that TAs can do.  At a minimum, hold office hours that the students actually find useful; don't just show up.  Distribute practice problems, and offer feedback on the students' solutions.  Hold weekly review/discussion/problem-solving sessions.  As aeismail suggests, write review notes.  If the instructor covered too much, distill down their main points; if the instructor didn't cover enough, expand on the key ideas they missed.  Offer to give a few guest lectures, and then give fantastic guest lectures.

More self-servingly: Make sure the students see you working to overcome your instructor's shortcomings.  If the students don't see you fighting on their behalf (even if you are), they'll write you off as yet another useless academic, like your instructor.  But if you can make them believe you're on their side, they'll reward you.  I think this is why students often reward "lenient grading"; if the students think the coursework is a waste of time, they'll see lenient graders as their allies.

Obviously this all takes time.  As aeismail says, TAs usually have many other responsibilities, especially to their own classes, projects, research, families, and sanity.  It is frighteningly easy for committed and caring TAs to find themselves being abused by less committed instructors (or even departments).  Set limits.


If a grad student is working as a TA, can they also be asked to work as their adviser's lab manager for free? I have been my adviser's chemistry lab manager for the past 2 years, mostly working as a TA to pay the bills while I try to get research done.  My adviser has no funding so I've been running the lab for free, which includes training, advising, and processing samples for people (we're a service center too).  Someone told me this was illegal but the department head knows that I'm doing this.  The department sporadically supports me on an RA but I feel that they do this to keep me from seeking legal recourse; they've had a history of legal issues with former employees.  I was curious if anyone had any input on this.

I'm going to skip the legal question, because legal questions are always location specific (and you don't mention location), and I am not a lawyer (nor will you find many, if any, here). Instead, the question is whether you should put up with these circumstances.

Training/advising are probably worthwhile things to learn, and one could argue that those activities contribute to your education even as you teach others; upon graduation you can advertise your mentorship experience. Even better if you can train/advise others while they work on projects within or related to your own research interests. I don't consider these to be "lab manager" activities, though if it is taking up all your time that is of course a problem. As in all things, balance is important.

However: processing samples for others? With your lab as 'service center'? Unless this is a collaboration where you are getting authorship, this is a rare case where someone posts here thinking they are being abused that I think you actually are. Don't walk, RUN, away from this arrangement (note: this is a quote from regular Academia.SE contributor @JeffE as advice to students in bad situations and comes with important caveats).

Except probably first talk to your advisor and try to see if they can be reasonable. If your lab is providing a service, your lab should be compensated by those using the service. If you are doing the work of providing the service, that compensation should include you in some way.

To reiterate: there may be legal issues here, but you should start by having a conversation with your advisor about how to continue in a way that is mutually beneficial. If your lab has no funding, your advisor may not have many other choices and this may be the penalty you (both) pay for staying in their lab; they probably aren't happy about this either. If, on the other hand, they are using your availability to keep themselves afloat, that puts you in a strong negotiating position and you should use that position to come to an agreement that keeps your research moving forward.


Submission of two papers in one conference? I wanted to know whether it is allowed and also plausible to submit two papers at the same conference? Does the acceptance or rejection of one affect the acceptance or rejection of the other paper?

There is nothing wrong or unusual in submitting two papers on a single conference. For specific detail you should refer to the conference author guide. In my experience, there exists an upper bound of papers (about 3-4), but I have never encountered a conference where only a single paper was permitted.

The acceptance or rejection is individual, every paper is peer-reviewed on its own account.

You should keep in mind that the conference will charge every paper separately. You should also watch the presentation schedule for any conflicts (though, they are very unlikely)


Is there any difference between PhD and D.Tech? Just out of curiosity, I will like to know if there is any difference (if any) in academic environment, between Ph.D issued by most Universities and D.Tech issued by University of Technology.

According to Wikipedia, the nature of a D.Tech depends on where it is issued, and who by.  In some cases, it is equivalent to a Ph.D., in other cases it is definitely lesser.  It is certainly not a commonly issued or recognized degree, but that does not mean it has less value if it is from a strong institution.


I am about to fail a required course due to difficulties caused by mental health issues. How can I save my degree? So I expect to finish my master degree next August, and I was supposed to pass one undergraduate course to fulfill my degree requirements. I took this course last year and I failed it, so I had to retake it one more time.
I have been struggling with severe depression and anxiety for the last two years, and adding to it the uncertainty of the pandemic, my mental health got worse and I literally felt broken all the time, and therefore I didn't do well in the course (yes for the second time!). In order to pass the course, I need 65/100, and it seems my final grade will be something between 58 and 62 (all assignments have been completed).
The thing is that failing this course means I will have to leave the program, which will be so painful after all that I went through. Therefore, I was thinking of reaching out to my professor by email and explaining to him all what I was going through and asking him if it is possible that he gives me some work to do or something to pass the course. I feel like a failure for asking such thing and it is really pathetic, but I honestly have nothing in my hands. I just spend all day crying and self loathing.
Do you think professors in general can offer this kind of help? Is there a good way to approach the professor? Is there another way to save the situation? It is just that it was beyond me.

First, the most important thing is to improve your mental health. Without taking the time to recover from this illness, these sorts of professional problems are likely to recur, even if you overcome this current situation. So, two suggestions:

Begin (or continue) working with a mental health professional. In addition to the obvious medical benefits, this will give you some firm documentation of the problem, which could be helpful academically.
Talk to your someone within your program -- either the graduate director or another trusted professor or someone in the school's counseling center. They can help you assess your academic options -- for example, the option of taking a leave of absence while you recover.

Therefore, I was thinking of reaching out to my professor by email and explaining to him all what I was going through and asking him if it is possible that he gives me some work to do or something to pass the course.

I do not recommend this. I received these sort of requests at the end of every class I taught, and my response was always along the lines of "Too late, the course is over. It wouldn't be fair to the other students if I changed the grading scheme at this late time." While some instructors might be less hard-hearted than me, I think very few would be willing to give extra points for no reason, or to allow "extra credit" for one student only.
That said, there is still some hope -- if a student missed a passing mark by just a few percent, I would occasionally "round up" and award the passing grade. I would do this for every class, regardless of whether the students had e-mailed me with supplications.

Is there another way to save the situation?

I would approach this from the other side -- see my second bullet above. The graduate director, or your school's mental health office, might be able to arrange for an exception, or a leave of absence, or some other work around.


Can my co-author remove my name from our paper because I am leaving my current institution My professor and I have an accepted paper in a journal. The journal will publish it online very soon. However, I have decided to leave my current school and continue my education somewhere else. My question: is there any possibility that journal editors will remove my name if my professor asks them to do so?

Thank you

It's unlikely that the editors would do that on their own (how would they even know that you're leaving your current institution?)

If your professor asks the editors to remove your name, that would/should at least trigger some checks by the editors about whether you agree with the removal.

Additionally, some journals have policies against modifying the authors' list at various stages: some immediately after submission, some after acceptance.

Such a move by your professor should probably be considered unethical, but it is not what you asked.


How to clarify that supervisor writing a reference is not related to me even though we have the same last name? By chance, I have the same last name as one of the supervisors of a project I worked on. If I ask him to write me a recommendation letter, will the admission committee misconstrue that we are related and how do I provide proof that we are not? By the way, I am Chinese, so there is perhaps more overlap in last names.

There is a very easy solution. Your supervisor can simply write something like

  To whom it may concern,

  It is a pleasure to write in recommendation of John Smith (no relation). John is...etc., etc.

  Sincerely,
  Professor Tom Smith


Why is the deadline given for refereeing manuscripts so much shorter than the typical time between submission and acceptance? On a few occasions, I was asked to review manuscripts (for well-known, mainstream journals) with a 2-3 month deadline.

I found this to be a short period given that the papers published in these journals showed about a one year difference between the dates when the papers were submitted and the dates when the papers were accepted. So I was wondering - why is there this discrepancy?

Do reviewers usually request for an extension of the deadline? Or is it common for reviewers to not take the deadline seriously (i.e. to ignore the deadline and submit the referee report after several months when it is done, and perhaps the editor needs to take the initiative to remind the reviewer to submit the report)?

I assume this one year difference is mainly due to the referee's delay rather than the authors having to make revisions (at least with my own papers, it often took several months before I received any referee reports).

While I have met the deadlines in the past, I wonder if I am perhaps allowing myself to be pushed around a bit in the sense that maybe I shouldn't drop my other work just to finish the review on time. I have reviewed only a few manuscripts so far, so I am new to this. I'm not sure how bad I would come across (relative to the norm, that is) if I don't take the deadlines seriously.

As an editor, I can say that it is very common for reviewers to submit reviews late, or to ignore invitations without responding so that it takes a while to give up on them and find suitable alternative reviewers.

This doesn't mean that editors and authors don't notice and grumble about late reviews or notice and appreciate reviewers who submit their reviews on time or early! Please keep submitting your reviews on time if you can and ask for an extension rather than ignoring deadlines if you can't!

In my field, a 2-3 month deadline for reviews is longer than usual (my journal normally asks for a 21-day turn-around, and this seems typical of journals for which I am asked to review). But papers still frequently take a year from submission to publication due to delays in review, revisions, and final publication after acceptance.

However, I would also say that most papers are sent back for revisions if they are not rejected outright, and revisions typically also take months.


Research supervisor is easily distracted in meetings with me I don't think my research professor takes me seriously. I have noticed that in several of my meetings with my PI, he gets distracted very easily.

Now I know of people my age who get distracted (in their 20s), but he insists it's something natural... and he's way older. For example at our last meeting, he was advising me on what I should do for the next part of my project, I was writing all that stuff down, and then he spaced off. I was looking through my notes to see if I understood everything correctly, and he stared up at the ceiling. Next, he asked me if I knew what the ceiling material consisted of. When I said I had no idea (I was trying to brush off the question because there are more important tasks at hand), he made me look it up on the spot. At the moment I thought he might have become bored, maybe there was an awkward silence, but now that I've been thinking about it more, this is not the first instance where this has occurred. He does this in front of my other classmates as well.

Is he just joking around? Trying to lighten up the mood? Am I awkward? Am I not important? How do I address this to him?

Most people can concentrate better when they are still fresh, so my suggestion is try to schedule a meeting with him early in the morning, or as early as possible. Like the other answer has suggested, try to keep the meeting as compact as possible. Also, you might also have to try to keep him occupied on you so that he don't have any time to start thinking of something else. This can be done by keeping the discussion on. You have to learn to write while thinking and talking at the same time.


I could not apply for a scholarship that I cleared the cutoff for. Can I mention that I was eligible in my graduate applications? I am a physics undergrad in India thinking of applying for a Ph.D. in the US sometime later in my life. I got 96.6% in my class XII, due to which I was eligible for a scholarship in our country, given to top 1% of the students in pure sciences for research.
The problem is that I did not know much about the scholarship (it wasn't particularly popular in my college when I started it) and got to know the full information about it on the very last day of the form submission. So, me along with 5 of my friends, went to the college and and requested the principal to sign it for us. But she shooed us away saying that she would not sign it in any case saying that

we were a disgrace to the punctuality expected from us

and ended up not signing it at all.
Now, I know that it was my mistake too to be notified properly, but that is not the point of my question. The cutoffs came some months later and they were 95.2%.
Now, the main question- Is it possible at all for me in the future to somehow mention that I was eligible for this research scholarship. Because I don't honestly think it was 100% my fault. Perhaps the teacher was being a bit too hard on us.

It doesn't much matter whether you've been eligible for a scholarship. You didn't get it, so by definition you didn't earn it. There are some cases where you may be declared an official "runner-up" and for a sufficiently prestigious award it may be worth reporting, but this does not describe your situation. I know some people might report a scholarship they ultimately turned down - that is, it was offered to them but they chose not to take it for some reason - but even this seems to me like a bit of a reach outside extraordinary circumstances and again does not apply to your situation.
If I'm understanding correctly, your potential eligibility is solely based on some percentile rank you've achieved. You can certainly report your percentile rank and advertise that, but I wouldn't advertise that despite this rank you were unable to obtain an endorsement for this scholarship. "It's not my fault and the teacher was too hard on me" isn't an argument that is likely to play well. Stick to positive things about yourself, not negative treatment by others.


Ugly master's thesis but one great proof I wrote an ugly master's thesis in mathematics. There were errors and I think it is not worth publishing. However, I managed to prove one theorem in a simple way that I have never seen before. I have seen another proof of the theorem and, in my opinion, it is more complicated than my proof.

What would be a suitable way to get other mathematicians to know the proof?
Is it fine if I post a question to Mathematics Stack Exchange and answer my own question?

What would be a suitable way to get other mathematicians to know the proof?

Publish it!  Write the proof by itself in a short, self-contained paper, and submit it to a journal.

There are lots of papers in the literature giving "A new proof of ...".  You may not be able to publish it in a very top journal, but if it's really new and significantly simpler than existing proofs, some reasonable journal should accept it.

Additionally, you can post it on https://arxiv.org, so that it's permanently available to the community, whether or not it eventually gets published.


What could be the affiliation if an author is currently not working anywhere? I would like to submit a manuscript which has 5 co-authors. But one of the co-author is presently not working anywhere. So what could be the affiliation of this author? Is it Okay, if I provide the author's last affiliation address?

Check and see if the author's last affiliation consents to being cited as affiliated; if so, I don't see why it would be a problem.

If not, then simply list the author as "Independent Researcher" and provide home address. Or leave field blank. There's no requirement for an affiliation for academic papers.


Postdoctoral grants for writing review papers I am a PhD student in Bioinformatics at a big university in Canada working in the area of molecular biology and computational models. Due to the nature of medical research, we often approach very tiny problems and often lose the big picture of the real world problem that should be addressed in practice. What I have in mind to do after the PhD is to spend a year or so to study all research aspects of a specific disease (e.g. Multiple Sclerosis) to gain a big picture of everything that is happening within the field and then extend it to some industrial applications. I am wondering if it is common or at least possible to receive a grant for a series of review studies on a field with deliverables like review papers?

In Canadian grant parlance, I believe the kind of grant you are talking about is called "knowledge synthesis". The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has some information that describes this kind of grant. However, although such a thing exists, it might not be so readily available:

The page I linked is rather old (probably at least 5 years old), so I don't know if CIHR still funds this kind of research.
I'm not sure how CIHR operates, but I know that SSHRC (for social sciences and humanities) sends out very specific calls from time to time for knowledge synthesis grants specifically for literature reviews (here is a recent example). So, in that case, it is the funding agency that picks the topic, not the researcher.
In general, I don't think the major Canadian funding agencies offer this kind of grant directly to post-docs. Normally, it is for faculty members. Post-doc grants are separate, and I'm not sure if they would be fund literature reviews.

Ultimately, as far as CIHR is concerned, it is best to directly ask the scientific director of the specific institute that covers your area of research. They might be able to answer your questions


Review a paper with recent coauthors I got a request to review a paper from a journal. I know the topic area well, but I've had some recent collaborations with some of the authors. Should I decline the request because of this? What is the common practice here?

It's potentially a conflict of interest, but some fields are small and have few competent reviewers. Tell the editors, and let them decide. They can offset a bias in their final decision in an informed way, or take you off the review if they believe this poses a problem.


Fiancée has a position lined up, but none of the universities in the area are hiring. What else can I do to get an academic position in the area? I find myself in an unfortunate two-body problem situation. My fiancée got two offers earlier this year, one a post doc and the other a tenure track position. She deferred the tenure track for a year and is currently halfway through her post doc. The university she got the tenure track position from was happy to do this for her so she could broaden her teaching and research skills.

I am a PhD student who is finishing up in May, but I find myself not having many good options for employment. The area in which she got the tenure track position is very small and there are not many options for people with a math PhD outside of working for one of the universities. Obviously I knew this already. However, none of them are hiring for this coming year.

The two body problem in academia is a classic problem and it's not one that is easily remedied. I'd really hate to be a lecturer because that's a really rough lifestyle and I have a lot of research I want to do. I have at least three or four papers lined up for the next year or so in addition to one I have published, two that I have submitted, and another I'm submitting in the next week or two. I'm starting to feel a lot of dread about this. What should I do (or even my fiancée do) to get an academic position for the fall (ideally in the area she will be in)?

You (or rather, your fiancee) should talk to the department where she will be taking the tenure-track position.  Many universities try to support the employment of faculty members' spouses/partners, as part of their family friendly policies.  This support can take a number of forms.

The simplest form that the support can take is for the university to hire you in an academic position.  You don't mention whether your fiancee is also in mathematics, which may be relevant.  It's often easier to get the school to hire a partner in the same department.  The reason is that the hiring has to be done with the approval of the department that is going to be employing the spouse, and that may be easier to get if the department has already made a commitment to one member of the couple.  Sometimes (and ideally, I would say), the trailing spouse can be hired in another tenure-track positions.

Other times, the trailing spouse may be hired in a non-tenure track position, but one which can nonetheless be effectively permanent.  You say you do not want to work as a teaching-oriented lecturer.  Unfortunately, you are unlikely to get a permanent, non-tenure-track position in math as anything else; academic positions in math almost invariably involve teaching.  The situation can be somewhat different in the laboratory sciences, where people can be hired as research scientists with little or no teaching component to their duties.  At my institution, I know of a case where a professor was hired in the physics department, then his partner was hired as a research professor in biology.

The third possibility is that, even if they cannot offer you a suitable academic position, your fiancee's university may be able to help you locate some other kind of employment.  Some schools have official policies that offer this kind of support; but some do not.  However, even if there is no official policy supporting this, you may still find people (especially in your fiancee's department) willing to assist you.  The help could come through personal connections, or making some of the resources of the university's career office available to you.  After she finished graduate school, my own wife got some help from my institution finding job leads, which were extremely helpful.


Citations - when should you add the initial? It is common practice - at least in mathematics - to refer to people one cites in the paper simply by a surname. Hence, one could see sentences like "This awesome theorem is due to Smith.".

However, occasionally the initial is added, and so the above might turn into "This awesome theorem is due to J. Smith". The obvious reason might be that there is also a A. Smith who could be mixed up with J. Smith, but the phenomenon also occurs for people with unique surnames (within the field). Why? (In particular: When should I add the initial, if ever?)

I've recently come to think that one should always add an initial or two, just to reduce potential confusion. Also, doing so consistently is some push-back against the pop mythology that some people are in the special category that everyone knows who they are, and are referred-to in a different, more heroic style. (The simplistic, so-called "Great Man" theory of history of science and everything-else makes it harder to understand what actually happened and happens...)


Altering a thesis after acceptance? I am told that any changes in content beyond correction of small mistakes, like obvious wrong use of a term or typographics is not allowed. This makes sense to me.

Is this a common opinion or are there institutes somewhere where no chances at all are allowed?

Of course one can ask, why the alterations after acceptance of a thesis. But let's assume perfectionist reasons and in case one wants to show it to potential employers where some mistake might be embarrassing.

When I submitted my MSc thesis, I thought my thesis was perfect (English/vocab/grammar). Now, every time I go back and read a section or chapter, I find some mistakes/things I will never use if I'm to write it now! I'm sure this will always be the case since your writing style/opinion will evolve and change. The point is to try to be better in your current work (thesis, papers etc). I wouldn't bother going back to FIX stuff but rather to see how much I have become better!


Should I tell my recommendation writers about my self-studying since graduating? Should I also mention my illness and depression? I completed my masters in mathematics in my home country in June 2020. I didn't had success in 4th semester of my masters with PhD Applications. So, I thought I would try next year in both my home country and abroad (Europe). I didn't apply earlier to any of my home country's universities.
So, I started studying  for the qualifying exam in my home country while side by side studying some more mathematics to apply for PhD programmes abroad. But I fell in depression and wasted 1 month and 1 week in stomach infection till now.
The depression problem: I took the exam for PhD admission in my home country in December and received the result in early January. The result was lower than I had hoped for, although I don't yet know if I've been accepted.
My father is using this to make cruel comments to me, hurting my mental health. This contributed to me being depressed and missing several application deadlines for European universities. I completed only one application on time. Since then I have received medical help for my mental health problems and for 1 week I could not study due to pretty bad stomachache.
Question 1: Should I email the professors which will be sending letter of recommendation, and tell them what I have been doing since I completed my masters in June 2020? It would be only list of topics I have studied till now.
Question 2: If so, should I also include episodes of depression along with stomach infection?
Question 3: If so, should I also describe the reason behind the depression?

First, I agree completely with Arno's answer here. The logic from that answer applies to these questions as well. Specifically...

Should I email the professors which will be sending letter of recommendation [and tell them] what I have been doing since I completed my masters in June 2020? (It would only list topics I have studied till now)?

Those reviewing your application may be interested to know what you have been up to during the past year. The answer appears to be "studying." So, it may be worth listing this briefly in your application somewhere. Just one bullet on your CV, or one sentence in one of your essays.
To your question: I see no harm in also providing this information to your letter writers. For the most part, their letters will focus on what they know about you directly, not what you say you did after graduating. But, it's definitely a good idea to stay in touch with your letter writers, and mentioning your recent activities is a natural thing to say in this context.

[Should I] include episodes of depression along with stomach infection?

No. It's usually better to declare victory rather than make excuses. In your case, there is no need for excuses; it is quite straightforward to say "since graduating, I've been studying topics X, Y, and Z." This sounds much better than "I've been trying to study, but between depression and illness I haven't made much progress." Why volunteer these extra details?

[Should I include] the reason behind the depression [issues with my father]?

Definitely not. This is very much oversharing. It is understandable that you want to discuss your difficult circumstances and are seeking forgiveness, validation, and/or reassurance. But you should have this discussion with your family, friends, or therapist, not with your professional references.


Is it possible for reviewers to ignore papers? Sometimes, when I get the comments of the reviewers of a submitted paper (mine or some else paper), I feel like the reviewers just ignore the paper. More precisely, I feel that reviewers did not read the whole paper. Even more, I feel like they do not even complete reading the abstract (it is a conclusion from their comments of course).

Is it possible that reviewers ignore papers? Maybe because the authors are not known or maybe they did not write the paper well?

My only argument is that authors believe that their paper is a breakthrough paper and it has a very good contribution. Imagine reviewers start reading a paper in a high journal rank and they found (just examples, do not take them as serious ones): "This paper shows that 1+1=3" or "This paper demonstrates that if the determinant of a matrix is 0, the matrix still has an inverse."

Although, I do not think that in a high quality journals, reviewers can do some kind of ignorance. How can one be sure that their paper is well treated? How to write papers that make the reviewers do not throw the paper away.

Let me expand a bit on Thomas comment.

By its very nature, peer review is a guaranteed item of discussion in all academic discussions. Every author has stories to tell about unfair reviews, reviewers that missed the entire point of the article, reviewers that rejected a paper only to publish something similar themselves, and so on. What is much rarer talked about is that the vast, vast majority of rejected papers are simply not good enough! Indeed, this surely also includes a large percentage of those papers that the authors are sure were handled unfairly.

An important point is the following:

  My only argument is that authors believe that their paper is a breakthrough paper and it has a very good contribution.

Clearly, all (ethical) authors believe their paper has merit. Otherwise, one would likely not submit it. It has to be said that the author's own opinion is not a good indicator of the actual qualities of a paper.

  Is it possible that reviewers ignore papers? Maybe because the authors are not known or maybe they did not write the paper well?

Somewhere on this site, I have previously listed reasons why a paper can get rejected, but to be honest I think "the authors are not well-known enough" is very low on this list. The second reason ("the paper is not well-written") is more common, but it should be noted that rejecting a badly-written paper is not unfair. It is the responsibility of the authors to make sure that their paper is graspable. However, again, I suspect the majority of papers are well-understood by the reviewers, and just rejected because the reviewers were of the opinion that the contribution was not substantial enough.

So why do papers sometimes get very short, high-level reviews, even if the reviewers read and understood the papers? One possible explanation is that many reviewers follow the golden rule "spend your time on manuscripts that deserve your attention". In practice, a reviewer has finite time to invest into reviews. When receiving (say) 5 papers for review, two being borderline and three being clear-cut rejects, it is an understandable decision to spend more time scrutinising the papers that still have a chance, and only provide high-level feedback on the ones that the reviewer sees as clearly too weak.

Now on to your questions:

  How can one be sure that their paper is well treated?

The philosophy I try to communicate to my students is to stop worrying about optimizing manuscripts for peer review and start doing the best research they can. I am convinced that the best way to ensure that your papers are treated well is to write good research papers.

  How to write papers that make the reviewers do not throw the paper away.

Make sure that your papers (1) have a clear contribution, which is evident from the abstract and the introduction, (2) are written as clearly as you can, (3) are correct in terms of grammar and spelling (try to have a native-speaker spell-check your manuscripts), and (4) have a compelling and relevant contribution. If Your paper is technically sound but boring as watching grass grow, you are not entitled to complaining that the reviewers did not read the manuscript carefully.


How to deal with cheating when university policy is ineffective? I am co-teaching a relatively large class with two other colleagues in a big university. Each semester, most students are amazing, trustworthy, and well-behaved and it is a pleasure to work with my students. But there is a very small group of students each semester who cheat and I don't know how to deal with them.

The university has a detailed, strict, and elaborate policy for dealing with cheating. We send students suspected of cheating to a special committee where they decide if the student actually did anything wrong. The committee demands a copious amount of evidence before it convicts any student, yet at the same time, the university policy is so restrictive that we cannot collect evidence. For example, we are not allowed to do anything that indicates or suggest a student may have cheated. We are not allowed to mark their papers, move them during exams, or even talk to them. This means that most students get away with cheating if they are sent to the committee. Students who have copied identical answers from a neighbor over and over in quizzes got away with it in the committee. This process is so pointless that the course coordinator does not report most of the cases to the committee anymore.

I don't mind that a few students get away with cheating but the universities' restrictive policy shuts all the doors to any further discussion with the students. I am not looking for ways to punish my students. I want them to understand why cheating is unfair to other students and, hence, unacceptable. I want them to understand integrity and honesty are far more valuable traits than getting good grades in college.

Any suggestion on how I can communicate these ideas and their importance to my students?

Edit:

I am sorry for not being clear. My question is not about how to prevent cheating.  It is bout how to have a conversation with cheaters.

We do what we can to prevent cheating. We randomly seat students, make two copies of the exams, assign a good portion the final grade to labs, and use various other techniques. This question is about reaching to the cheaters and having a discussion with them.

Since you speak of "a small group who cheat," it sounds like most of the students do understand the policies and importance of honesty.  That remaining small group who cheats?  Nothing that you do or say is going to convince them not to cheat.

Likewise, university policies often make it hard to actually punish cheaters, because they begin with the presumption of innocence, which is generally a good idea.

A better way to approach the problem is to adopt a "layered defense" strategy of a number of small actions that reduce the cost/benefit ratio available from cheating.  Some of the sorts of strategies that I have seen include:

Increasing the separation between desks
Randomized assigned seating, which is likely to break up cheating conspiracies
Printing less questions per page, with lots of white-space for working the problems, so that an answer will not be visible for as long a period of time
Problems that are based on "showing your work" rather than obtaining the right answer.
Problems with many possible solutions, that convert copying into plagiarism.
Putting more credit into projects and labs, rather than exams.

None of these alone will solve the problem, but the more of them you can enact, the harder it is for cheaters to prosper.  Some of them may even help the non-cheating students, by forcing them to engage more deeply with the material.  The balance, of course, is that it all takes time and effort from the instructors and TAs, so you need to make your own cost/benefit analysis as well.


What is a good method to assign topics to students? I will be conducting a course with 10 students and will provide about 12 topics. Each student shall work on one topic. I will meet with the students and present the topics to them.

What is a good method to assign the topics to the students?

I would like to give them the option to choose their own topic, but I foresee problems when some topics are very wanted and others are not...

I have seen instructors/advisors assign the topics by random chance, followed by a brief 'trading session'. Students pick the topic out of a hat, but they then have the option to trade with other students. Of course, some students may be stuck with a topic that they didn't really want, but they should also have the option to work with you to tweak the assignment into something that they can be passionate about. Since you say that you will have more topics than students, you could also have the option to put their draw back into the hat and try again (after everyone else has drawn at least once). This method seems most likely to avoid the problem of a student feeling as though they were forced to take a 'very much not wanted' topic.


Getting no responses from professor I decided to pursue a PhD degree after a few years in industry, so I contacted a professor from the university where I had received my Diploma a few years back. We had some conversations, she was rather positive as I had good grades and I used to attend her lectures.  I could not apply officially yet, since the PhD applications start during summer. As coronavirus came, we all stopped going to the lab.
I emailed the professor about 10 days ago about how to proceed. However, I did not get any answer. Is it possible that she changed her mind about having me work in the team as a PhD candidate, since we had no communication for around 1 month?

This is an unprecedented time in academia, and your best course of action is probably to just wait awhile for your professor to catch up on his emails.

As a professor myself, I have several emails left over from the just-ended spring term that I need to respond to.  My college announced that there will be cuts to staff, which haven't been finalized yet, so it's possible I won't even be employed here next term.  My kids' school and daycare are closed, so on top of childcare I might have a couple of  hours each day to do work-related things.  And I don't run skype anymore since discovering other, better options, so if anyone in my old skype contact list is contacting me, I wouldn't know about it.

In other words, if your professor's work-life situation is anything like mine (and many, many of my colleagues at other institutions, judging by their social media posts), he just hasn't gotten around to your email yet.  It doesn't have any bearing whatsoever on his thoughts about your graduate application.  You've got until July for applications, so give him another week and then try emailing him again with a polite "just in case you missed this" nudge--that usually does the trick.


Where to find official publication ethics guidelines and best practices? I am quite confused by publication ethics issues in academics, related to:

redundancy of data using the same data set in different publications
redundancy of description using the same figures or part of text to describe instruments, data set or samples
redundancy of results using results in more than one publications for highlighting different aspect of the results

I have tried to find some guidelines, I found Int J Clin Pract Suppl. 2007 Jan; 61 (Suppl 152): 1–26., but I was wondering if there was a white paper or something more official.

I would, however, appreciate any guidelines or advice to solve these doubts.

I would suggest to follow the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidelines to get enough idea on your mentioned issues. You could also find the some exemplary cases (here) and how are then being handled by journals or the COPE boards.
Briefly, it says:
"COPE is a forum for editors and publishers of peer reviewed journals to discuss all aspects of publication ethics. It also advises editors on how to handle cases of research and publication misconduct." (Source: COPE Homepage)
Further, you could also find publisher-wise publication ethics guidelines, though they follow more or less the same practice:

Elsevier Publishing Ethics Resource
Springer Publication Ethics for Journals
IEEE Publication Ethics
Wiley Publication Ethics Guidelines for Authors
ACS Code of Ethics

A brief browsing through the above would give you a lot of information on such stuff, which one must know before entering into the research world.


PhDs in the UK: should you know supervisor beforehand? (context: undergrad/integrated masters student in a math-related field, planning on a PhD in a CS-related field)
In Asia (at least in India and Singapore), students are generally expected to personally know (and ideally have worked with) their to-be supervisors before starting their PhD.
So it's common for undergrads to try to contact professors for summer projects -- and professors generally like it, because they get free work done and get a good feel of who may be a good graduate student for them to take later.
In the end of my second year at a UK university, I emailed a couple of professors (in other UK universities) asking for a summer project with some semi-generic topic ideas, but quickly realized this was a major faux-pas since:

I didn't receive a reply, positive or negative, suggesting that it was regarded as spam.
I found that some other professors -- though not the ones I had emailed -- had put notices on their website expressing their dislike of summer internship requests.
I saw a question here that seemed to suggest that such requests are considered spam, although that may only be for generic formats for mass-emailing professors (which is not what I did).

So I realize that I don't really know how "getting into a PhD programme" works in the UK. Are you not expected to know a supervisor beforehand? Or do students generally look for other (perhaps less time-consuming for professors) ways to network with potential supervisors, like emailing them about their work?

It is not necessary to know a professor before applying for a PhD in the UK. I have so far supervised 8 PhD students, only one of whom I knew before they started their PhD.
There are two routes to a PhD in the UK. First is to apply for an advertised position or program. This is how the majority of PhDs are recruited, but it is also usually only open to home students. The second is to find the funding yourself (either through a non-UK government scheme, an NGO or a wealthy benefactor) and to write to the supervisor laying out your experience, your desire to do a PhD (and why with them), and what your source of funding is.
I don't take unpaid interns as I feel it unfairly advantages those that can afford to do an unpaid internship at the expense of those that can't. My university runs several schemes that fund summer internships and my professional society also has a summer studentship fund. Unfortunately, I only have the capacity to take one, or at a push, two summer students a year, and I would normally recruit these from our own undergraduate body. While I try to reply to all requests for internships, I get several a day during some parts of the year, and sometimes they slip through the cracks.


How do I reference a publication in my CV where I am alphabetically listed as an author but the citation lists the organization? I recently was part of a large writing group that produced a publication. Authorship, including myself, is listed alphabetically in the acknowledgements however the group leadership chose to list the organization as the author in the citation/reference rather than acknowledge contribution for authors. I previously brought this up as a problem when there was a proposed order of authors and sent the group leadership standard criteria for authorship listing.

How can I list the publication in my CV?

You should definitely keep the original reference format but could easily add a simple footnote/inline note to elaborate your involvement. I would do something along the lines of:

  [P7] Organisation name**. Awesome paper written in large writing group. Published in the Journal of Awesome Research [3.14], pp.200-222. 2017

  ** Note: Published under organisation name, I am listed as nth author and contributed x.


How bad do your teaching evaluation scores have to be before you should leave them off your resume? I got a 4.0 out of 5.0 on my teaching evaluations.  The average grade in my department is a 4.5.  Should I put this on my CV/resume?

For reference, I am a PhD student and this is the first class I've taught.

In my experience, people don't generally put teaching evaluation scores on a CV at all, regardless of what they are.


What to do when PhD approval takes so long? I am a PhD student in mathematics in Israel. I still have a couple of years until I graduate, so I am asking this question mostly out of curiosity.

I've recently learned that at least in my university, and at least in mathematics, there is no thesis defense for PhD students. The approval process for a PhD dissertation is very different than the process in the US: Once your advisor decides the thesis is complete, you submit it to the university. A committee (which does NOT include your advisor) then chooses two non-Israeli reviewers, send them the written manuscript and ask them to review it (anonymously). The reviewers send their reports, and then the committee decides whether to approve the thesis. Finally, the university senate should vote to approve the committee's decision, but this is basically a formality.

The main point is that this process is a long one. Once the advisor approves the thesis and it is submitted, the student is no longer considered a PhD student and stops receiving a fellowship. For this reason, most students submit their work in August, near the end of the academic year. However, it can easily take 6 more months for the PhD to be formally approved - the reviewers can pretty much take as long as they like to review the work, and it also takes time for the two committees to convene.

I was wondering if such a process exists in other countries as well. In particular, are American universities aware of the fact that sometimes a PhD graduate will not actually hold a PhD for many months after beginning his postdoc? Does this cause any problems?

Since many Israeli students graduate every year, and many of them find a postdoc in elite American universities, I assume there is no real problem. But I am curious as to how this process works in practice. Will universities in the US let you teach classes and hold the title "Professor" without a formal approval of your PhD?

While the details of the assessment/examination process vary around the world, everywhere (that I'm aware of) has the same issue that there is a time lag between handing in your thesis and receiving a decision. That time lag is a few weeks as a minimum, often several months.

This does not generally cause major issues with job applications. Employers who are accustomed to hiring postdoctoral researchers will be very familiar with the delay, and are generally happy to offer a job and have you start working (and being paid) pending the award of the PhD. It will be clear to them, from the reference/recommendation letter from your advisor, whether or not you are likely to pass the PhD. If there is a chance that you might fail completely, it's unlikely that you would even be applying for postdoc jobs, let alone being offered them. I think that technically the employer would have the option of reconsidering your contract were you to unexpectedly fail the PhD, but I have never heard of that actually occurring in practice.