Authors' names and links while submitting for a double-blind review I am about to make a submission to a computer science conference which adopts a double-blind policy. The submission is through EasyChair portal. My questions are as follows:

Should I remove all authors' names in the manuscript before submitting?
Since this is a computer science conference, I have some code in Github which shows the proof of my experimentation and reproducibility of my claims. How should I give the link to the code in my Github account in the manuscript without giving away my identity?

Note: I am not talking about camera-ready submissions but about submitting for the reviewing process.

I found the Elsevier Double-Blind Peer Review Guidelines helpful, however, this is somewhat journal/conference specific. Some of the not obvious points from that guideline include:

Besides the obvious need to remove names and affiliations under the title within the manuscript, there are other steps that need to be taken to ensure the manuscript is correctly prepared for double-blind peer review.  To assist with this process the key items that need to be observed are as follows:

Use the third person to refer to work the Authors have previously undertaken, e.g. replace any phrases like “as we have shown before” with “… has been shown before [Anonymous, 2007]” .

Make sure figures do not contain any affiliation related identifier

Do not eliminate essential self-references or other references but limit self-references only to papers that are relevant for those reviewing the submitted paper.

Cite papers published by the Author in the text as follows:  ‘[Anonymous, 2007]’.

For blinding in the reference list:  ‘[Anonymous 2007] Details omitted for double-blind reviewing.’

Remove references to funding sources

Do not include acknowledgments

Remove any identifying information, including author names, from file names and ensure document properties are also anonymized.

You might consider attaching a static copy of your code as an anonymous appendix directly to your submission.


Is it ever advisable for graduate students to go on sabbatical for several months? Undergraduates have several-month long "sabbaticals" every years. While graduate students shouldn't expect to have the same thing, could it maybe be justifiable for them to take a several-month long sabbatical in the middle of graduate school? These things can be really helpful for things like evaluating whether or not you're trying too hard to reach a dead end.

We encourage our graduate students to take internships for 3 months during summer (at Microsoft Redmond and MSR Cambridge). This is a bit like a sabbatical. In our experience, these are extremely valuable for the students and for fostering research collaborations. Usually one publication results for the student, but the experience and the contacts they gain cannot be measure in the regular units.

We do not allow our students to go on such 'sabbaticals' if they are not already performing well. The lucky students who do get to go need to act as ambassadors for our university. We do not use internships as a way of kick-stacking the research of a student-gone-astray.

Unless by sabbatical, you mean vacation, in which case, I've answered the wrong question. Students are entitled to 6 weeks vacation per year (not including Christmas). They may take it in one chunk if they wish. Whether we allow it depends on what project deadlines need to be met and so forth. Generally, we encourage them to split up their vacation into smaller chunks (1 week here, 2 weeks there).


Is it ethical to use a data-set made as a research assistant? Two years ago I was a research assistant during my undergraduate and my sole duty was the aggregation of many economic surveys, a very tedious task. This data-set, to my knowledge is one of a kind.

Now in graduate school, I had come up with a research idea, and this data-set that I made would be perfect for my research. My research idea is not related to my previous professors, though as of yet, he has no present publication for the research he was doing when I was working for him.

My question is, would it be ethical for me to use this data-set for my own research when I had made it while being employed for my previous professor. The obvious response would be to ask him but sadly we had a falling-out just before I graduated.

As with any situation, there are many levels to any answer… Mainly, the question is: was the data-set published? If so, who owns the copyright? Probably not your professor, but the university. If it wasn't published, then it isn't ethical to use the records you kept of it for another purpose, without authorization from your employer.

However, there might be a solution, regardless of your fall-out before graduation. [1] Just get your current advisor to ask him! One staff researcher to another, the situation is not the same as you dealing with your formed professor.

[1] I am amazed at how many times I have read this situation (I cannot speak to my adviser/professor/…) raised in questions on this site! Every time, I think: before or around the time of graduation, aren't you a bit young to make “enemies”? I can sure name many people I thought fools or who annoyed me during my studies and early career, but I always tried as hard as I could to get things done in a manner that no bridge was burnt…


Can my school fire me on the grounds that I have applied to another school? I'm in the middle of a 4-year Ph.D. program on a full scholarship, in a foreign country. Due to expertise issues, lack of community, and other reasons I have decided that this program is not suitable for me, and have applied and been admitted to another program in another country. I haven't informed my current school/supervisor, as I was supposed to leave here for the new institution by the July of this year (so I thought "why would I even endanger my position by informing them?"), but due to the pandemic and some complications related to my visa application I couldn't, so I deferred my studies for a whole year (to late 2022). Now I'm sitting here and wondering what would happen if my current school finds out that all the money they've been spending on me has been on nothing; worse for them, they'll still be paying me due to the scholarship commitments. (Very likely they will find out, soon or late.)
Are there any grounds that they can fire me? Like, is what I have done one such ground? What do you suggest, in general, I should do if they find out about my new school application? I was thinking to suggest to them that I can donate a portion of the scholarships that I've awarded back to them upon leaving here, but not sure if that's a good idea. (I have no legal commitment whatsoever in returning my scholarships under any circumstances; I just thought of my idea as a deal or something.)

Update (April 6): The Office of Graduate Studies confirmed that unless due to unsatisfactory progress (such as falling candidacy exams, etc.), my funding as well as registration status as a student in the current school is bound by my initial contract and cannot be cancelled on any other grounds.

Not a direct answer since I can’t presume to know what someone else would do, but you have several misconceptions about how university departments think and act, and maybe understanding them would help guide your thinking. Departments are quite used to spending money on “nothing” — your derogatory but totally inaccurate term for students who leave without completing their degree. From the department’s point of view that’s a completely normal and predictable part of the cost of running their operations, and nothing to get worked up about.
Second, a student who leaves without a degree is in no sense a waste of time or money. Such a student came, gained some useful knowledge, learned some things about themselves that made them a wiser person who is better able to fulfill their potential in the future, and left to go somewhere else. Degree or no degree, the resources spent on such a student are entirely consistent with the mission of a university.
Third, donations are to be given because you have a genuine desire to give money rather than out of a sense of duty, coercion, or a fear of retaliation. If those are your motives, then it’s not donation, it’s extortion.


Competitiveness for masters program I will be graduating this Fall with my undergrad (GPA: 3.66) and am planning to go to grad school in math.  Given my early history of poor grades (2 Ds, 1 F), I am planning on only applying to the masters programs.  Ideally, I would like to get admitted to my current university's masters program (top 15 US school in math).  To help boost my application, I have taken some first-year grad math courses. Additionally, I have been doing research under fairly famous applied math professor (h-index above 50.  Though I have heard that h-index is not an objective factor).  While I have read that in some grad courses they hand out all A's, is there a way to prove to the admission's committee that I actually deserved the A's?  Lastly, what do masters admission's committees look for in applicants?

Masters programs would be easier to get into, since they often don’t burden the department with a graduate stipend, that means you’ll be responsible for tuition most likely.

I would apply to PhD programs if I were in your position. If you performed well on your upper division courses and have a gpa over 3.5, then you’d have a good shot of getting in. In this case, you are more likely to get a stipend and a tuition waver. That means you’d get paid to go to school and if you feel that the PhD is too much, you can also leave with a masters degree.

Edit: didn’t have time for a fuller answer earlier.

Don’t worry about the “free grade” in the graduate courses you took. Truly, all that is important there is that you have demonstrated experience and success in a graduate course, and indeed, at an apparently good Institution. No one is going to look at your grade and say “whatever, it’s just a grad course.”

Most grad schools look to your upper division courses as a measure of how you’ll perform in graduate school. I did terrible in my first couple of years in undergrad; I also failed a class or two, but I did well enough in the latter half to end with a 3.5. I was admitted into a good graduate school (in 2008).

As to your peofessor’s h index, that’s actually rather good. It means that he has at least 50 publications with 50 citations. While there is no objective measure of the quality of research, this means that he is well known in his community, his work is frequently cited, and his recommendation will carry with it some weight.

Grad schools look at several things. You need a good GRE score to get past general admissions, but no one cares past that. Your GPA matters, and yours seems good enough (better than mine was). After that they want to know how you did in upper division courses like Analysis, Algebra, etc, since you’ll be taking more intense versions of these classes, and they want you prepared.

Also having experience with graduate courses is a plus, I took a grad number theory course that helped me, and almost as importantly as the rest, they look at your recommendations. You will be part of the school’s community for the next five or more years as a PhD student, and they want to make sure that you can work with someone on research topics.


Is it ok if I haven't decided my research topic when I first meet with a potential phd advisor? I'm currently in my last semester as a master student and planning to apply for phd degree. I'm going to have a first meeting with my potential phd adviser in a few days and I'm really nervous. All I know is I'm confident about what I've studied and I'm prepared to do the phd study both mentally and physically.
I'm wondering what is the expectation for a professor to accept phd student in general? I've read several research paper of his. However, I only have a general idea about my future research but not a specific topic. Is that ok? What is a decent way to respond when the professor asks about that?

update:
The field I'm studying is applied math and I'll doing my phd study in the US.

In most fields in the US, coming to a potential advisor with a proposal isn't necessary. But with an MS, you should have the area you want to study narrowed quite a bit. I don't know specifically about how it works in applied math, but in theoretical math, you generally work out the project details with your advisor given some common interest.

The advisor, if interested in what you are doing can then be more than just someone who looks over you shoulder as you carry on by yourself and can become something of a collaborator. If you are too tightly focused when you first meet, you might hear: "Interesting, but not to me."

But if you want to work at the intersection of, say, analysis and health science, but without anything more specific, then you have a chance to find some common ground with an advisor. The field should be something that you already know about (since you have an MS) and that the potential advisor has previously worked in or has expressed interest in.

If you were a BS graduate instead, very little is actually required (in the US) and you have time to work together with potential advisors in a more general way to develop some common ground for a research problem.

For specifics, just say where you are (intellectually), and what your general interests are. Be prepared to answer about what you have done, and what you have considered.

For completeness, outside the US the answer might be quite different.


How to share credit for an award given to my advisor? My advisor recently received a pretty major award in our field for a set of four papers that he wrote, and I was a co-author on one of these.  He and I both agree that I should receive some sort of credit for this award because my contribution was significant (the nomination for this award was done by someone else, so there is no wrongdoing on his part).  What would be the right way, if any, for me to include this on a CV?  What should I tell people?  I was thinking of saying, "Paper so-and-so that we wrote together received the such-and-such prize"

I would just write it down exactly as it is: "I co-authored one paper in the series of four papers for which my adviser got PRIZE_NAME prize". Then I would read it aloud and wouldn't find it impressive enough, so I would abstain from putting it in the CV at all, though you are welcome to make your own judgement here.

In short: Nothing that doesn't sound good in plain, crude English will fly with people who have brains (and most hiring committee members are no fools). The very first thing I do when I evaluate a CV is to translate every sentence into plain language and cross out all buzz words. The second thing is to verify all easily verifiable statements. So, either say it plainly, clearly, and precisely, or don't say it at all.


Should I list the journals/conferences that I have reviewed for in my personal website? I have been thinking about this question for a while now. I could see some advice in a.SE1 and a.SE2 that answers for the inclusion of such activities in a CV.

However, is it a good idea to list such details on my personal website?

My present webpage does not contain my CV -- It just lists list of publications, projects, and some stuff like academics backgrounds. And, I don't want to put my CV later either.

In general, People's websites tend to be less formal and more detailed, so I say go for it, especially because it shows some more well-roundedness and "giving back."


Tips for transition to online classrooms given university shutdowns in response to COVID-19 Given the recent shutdowns of many universities across the world, there's an increased interest in online education techniques.

In my case, I am a TA for a quantum chemistry class, and I'm finding it daunting to transition to online teaching. At first, I got really excited because I thought of taking advantage of this situation to run a flipped discussion section: I'd record lectures in advance, and then have virtual office hours where students could Zoom/Skype/Google hangout with me and we discuss in the same chatroom (so everyone hears the conversation).

However, in what I suspect to be an attempt to distance themselves from something nice and free/far cheaper (like edX) which has been doing this online routine for a long time, my university has required that we livestream our lectures/discussion sections. This is purportedly to be in the aim to make their online experience as college-like as possible, but it's problematic for multiple reasons. First, lectures are at 9AM EST... Do we expect students to tune in at 10 PM in Japan? Or 3 AM in Hawaii?

Second, we should use the silver linings present in this university shutdown: video lectures = students get to go back and re-listen to a part that confused them! From my perspective, this university requirement goes against an attempt to maintain normalcy: normalcy should not be defined as continuation of the same daily routine (impossible for many), but rather a continuation of helpful instruction.

I intend to find out whom to email about this, but in the meantime, what resources/advice would you suggest for an instructor who suddenly has to transition to the digital classroom?

This is marked for community ownership so constructive edits will be welcomed. It is, however, more directed at those who can design a course, rather than a TA who has limited control.
Background
Many of the teaching techniques we use are not optimal for learning. They have been designed for economic efficiency since they scale. Some of them have been a bit obsolete since the creation of the internet. But face to face classes in real time are no longer necessary. Lecture is efficient (one teacher, many students, synchronous), but again, not optimal. Testing is a poor way to guarantee competence. This current emergency can be considered to be an opportunity to rethink everything we do toward finding better ways to educate people. We are forced to act and the old ways don't work in a new environment. We should be looking for new ways.
The essentials of teaching are Delivery, Practice, Feedback, Assessment. All of these require Two Way Communication. They don't require synchronicity or exams. The first job is to teach people, not to grade them. If you get that part backwards then you are only "teaching" people who don't need to be taught.
Every student is different. Nearly every student learns differently from the way their instructor does. The instructor has been proven to stand out in a particular system in which others have failed. As an instructor you have an obligation to every student willing to put in the effort, not just to the ones naturally predisposed to "win" in some system. Not every student starts at the same place with the same understandings. The same words don't necessarily have the same meanings to different people.
Some people have handicaps that prevent certain kinds of interactions. Hearing impairment and vision impairment are obvious ones, but there are others.
Learning is individual, but the process need not require isolation. It can be a communal process with learners helping each other. Denying students the option of working together is sub-optimal. A course can be a communal activity, not a hierarchical one.
Some students will succeed no matter the system. They don't really need you for anything more than pointing to important sources/ideas. But most actually require your assistance since insight into a topic can be hard to come by. Many students actually need to be taught how to learn. If you change the system of learning they may need to be retaught how to internalize ideas and turn them into competencies. It isn't automatic or obvious.
Learning isn't "consuming" material. It requires active participation. It requires a change in the brain (The Art of Changing the Brain by James E Zull)
All of these things have long been taken into account in designing educational systems, but the current practice is a compromise that values economic (scale) values over educational ones. Not everywhere, of course, but the exceptions seem few to me.
Let's assume that everything is on the table, except that students and instructors can no longer meet face to face in groups. Meetings of any kind need to be small and optional with alternatives provided. Computer communication of some kind is needed, but costs are an issue as is the privacy of all participants.
What to do, what to do.
Ideas for Delivery
There are a lot of ways for students to have access to the material of a course. Books are traditional. Lecture has replaced most other methods. But lectures are longer than they need to be. Some research I read suggests that lectures of 10 to 15 minutes are more efficient than hour or longer lectures (https://spokenimpact.com/what-is-the-ideal-length-for-a-presentation/). Those contemplating video should take note of that. Video also needs to be accompanied with a transcript to aid those with impairments.
Moreover, students need to be able to review material. Video is difficult in this regard since it is hard to quickly return to a small part that needs review without watching longer sections, which leads to boredom. Transcripts can mark the time that important ideas are introduced.
There is a fine line between having good and poor production values in video. If they are too good, a video talk becomes just entertainment with poor learning, unless other means are used to encourage/enforce engagement. If they are too bad, then students will get lost and frustrated. Video professionals are good at this sort of thing, but it is hard to bootstrap immediately at scale.
Delivery alone is just media. Students need to incorporate what they see in a lecture, long or short, into their long term memory and into their effective competencies. More is involved than the eyes and ears. Students often think that the will automatically "learn" what is presented to them in a lecture, talk, demonstration, etc. but it is anything but automatic.
Caveats: Any "solution" that requires real-time synchronous presence on the internet will probably fail. And it will fail invisibly for some. Connections are dropped, servers overload, etc. It is hard enough to keep students off their phone when in a class. It is probably impossible to do in a real-time internet lecture. Other distractions will intrude. Moreover, unless you have an exceptional communication system, students won't be able to interrupt you when you make a mistake, as you will. No questions are likely to be asked in real time. It is also difficult for a presenter to give a lively talk with no audience feedback at all. Especially if you are trying to do this under emergency conditions without training and experience.
But if you absolutely must use synchronous delivery you need to do two additional things. The first is that you need to record and post your lectures so that those who must miss the original don't lose access.
The second, just as vital, is that you provide a real time feedback to yourself (or to an assistant sitting by your side) so that questions can be asked as you lecture and so that students have a way to mention/note errors you make.
And make sure that students know what to do in the case that you lose the server and the ability to broadcast. Avoid chaos and uncertainty as much as possible.
Ideas for Practice
Student practice exercises and tasks may not need to change much. Students, depending on the field, need to write, solve problems, and other things as appropriate. For the most part this can probably proceed largely unchanged. Instructors have access to many such student exercises. If the students have a text book they probably have a bank of suitable exercises and questions.
And note that practice and reinforcement is probably the most important element in a delivered education. The "content" that a student needs is, for the most part, available to them. There are exceptions for very advanced work, but the world's knowledge is pretty much available. Instructors help students choose the important things and avoid the garbage, of course, but it is up to the students themselves to learn by reinforcement (combined with feedback). Whatever the topic, competence comes from repetition and reinforcement. The only thing I teach nowadays is Tai Chi. We have a saying that you need to repeat a movement ten thousand times to learn it. Somewhere in those ten thousand tries, insight will start to develop. The same is true in things like mathematics and writing poetry.
So, remember that the things that you make the students do to learn are much more important than the things you say. Good course design focuses on the student tasks, not the lectures.
I caution, however, that copyright considerations may apply if an instructor tries to utilize exercises from copyrighted material. They are, in a sense, publishing things they send to students in an online course. Caution and legal advice is useful.
Ideas for Feedback
Feedback is two way. You need feedback from the students on your presentations and assignments. Students need feedback on their own work. A number or letter grade on a paper isn't feedback. It gives no basis for understanding how to improve.
If the materials presented are well vetted, such as textbooks, the need for feedback to the instructor is a bit lessened. But videos, especially those prepared in the moment are likely to contain errors. Shorter videos are easier to fix than longer ones. But, unlike face to face classes, the instructor isn't likely to be interrupted when there is a misstatement or an omission. Moreover, you need some indication that the students have actually understood what you have been saying and presenting. Again, in fact to face classes you can look at expressions on their faces for some important feedback.
Lets assume for the moment that you have already taught your students the importance of taking notes during presentations. At the end of a lecture you can ask individual students, perhaps volunteers, to tell you an important idea from the talk. You can do this two or three times and give them feedback on their replies. This can be transferred to online learning. If readings or video presentations are short (and, I assume asynchronous) you can ask students to send you a summary of the lesson. Restrict them to one or two sentences. Another possible request is to ask them to send you a possible exam question on that material. At some point, all student replies, perhaps anonymized, can be made available to everyone. By glancing through the replies you learn whether they are getting the main points and they are also getting the reinforcement they need.
Giving feedback to students on their work is critical to learning. This involves answering questions that they have, but also showing them where they are making mistakes, and why, in their own work. The previous section talked about repetition and reinforcement. It is possible for students to learn and reinforce the wrong message. If you get an incorrect idea deeply ingrained in your mind it can be difficult to dislodge. All student work needs to be commented on, not just graded. Publishing solutions to exercises after the fact can help, but it isn't the same thing.
This idea of individual feedback is one of the most difficult things to arrange in the modern educational system, simply because of scale. My university teaching (and student life) mostly involved classes of fewer than 30 students. At that scale, I could easily give good individual feedback on weekly assignments. At 40 students I found I needed help. Massive courses have a problem here that requires tools - probably better tools than are now available. I'll note that Harvard's CS50 course is delivered to about 800 students at a time. But the staff for the course is about 40 individuals, so the ratio is about 20:1. Some of the staff are graders who comment on student work. Others are TAs who hold individual "recitation" sections of 20-30 students so that questions can be answered and misconceptions dispelled. I worry that moving such recitation online might not work as well at scale unless there are communication tools that let people learn from the questions of others. Many students are reluctant to ask questions. The brave students willing to do so actually contribute to the education of their peers. But, answering a question for a single student, say in an office, is much less productive than answering it in public, so that all can share the response. Tools are needed for this, though they can be pretty simple. University managed email lists subscribed to by students and staff are pretty effective.
But if students produce "papers" of any kind, those need to be annotated and returned. More than a numeric or letter grade is needed. Something as simple as pointing a student to a place they need to review is helpful. But the goal is to foster insight. PDF files can be annotated and returned, but the process is awkward at best. And, again, there is the scale problem. It takes time to review and time to annotate. Then, the student will likely have questions that need to be addressed based on the annotations. The increase in awkwardness using current tools may require more staffing to make things work effectively. Even a simple email to a student takes more time than jotting a comment on a paper and then returning it at the next face session.
Ideas for Assessment
In my view, evaluation and assessment are the most difficult issues we face in moving to an internet model. However, they also, again in my view, have the most potential for long term improvements in student learning, provided that we take the opportunity to learn how to do a better job of it.
The first principle of assessment ought to be that any sort of evaluation have an actual educational purpose, not just a "sorting" purpose. I think that many of us aren't doing a stellar job of this, having opted for easy solutions that scale, rather than solutions that aid student learning. Multiple choice tests are overused and while it is possible to design good ones, it is devilishly difficult. Things that rely on machine grading in general are too likely to also rely on only shallow learning and memorization, rather than deep learning and mastery. If the students can be held in a room and closely monitored this sort of thing tells you something about them, but it can likely be better. Move them outside your purview and it becomes nearly impossible. And it even fails at scale.
While you can do some technological things to lock up a student's personal computer they are intrusive but also ineffective. You can enlist a vast army of TAs to monitor student webcams (intrusive, again) but even there, what happens slightly off screen is invisible. Without such intrusive measures students have access to helpers both human and electronic. Closed-book, closed notes exams are probably a mistake in any case, but online they are difficult to impossible to monitor. There are too many inducements for students to break the rules to really assure validity. Honor codes, such as those of Dartmouth College do have a positive effect, but part of that effect is that the codes have been in place for half a century.
I have some personal suggestions about alternatives to examinations and, especially, high stakes examinations such as finals that account for a large fraction of a students grade. I don't claim these are the only solutions, but am more interested in sparking thoughts about how we can do a better - more learning focused - job of evaluation and assessment. I implemented these more and more as my career progressed and I learned more about students and about learning.
The first idea is to reduce the overall effect of any given exam or test. If you have forty small items you can get at least as good a picture of a student's progress as if you have only one or two large ones. Moreover, high stakes testing too often leads to poor student studying habits, such as cramming for exams and cheating.
One technique I used toward the end was "cumulative grading". A course had 1000 points assigned to it and different student activities were "worth" a certain amount of points. A project might be 100 points. The result was evaluated (and commented on) and a certain number of points was awarded, perhaps 80. I also published the minimum number of points necessary for each letter grade, say 800 for a B. When a student accumulates enough points to "earn" the grade they desire they no longer need to do more. There was no risk. Another feature of it was that if the student wasn't satisfied with the points earned they could re-do the work and possibly earn additional points. Some limits were put in place, but they were generous. The philosophy behind it is "You aren't in this course to prove to me that you don't need to be here." But note that I could do this since the ratio of staff to students was good. This is hard to scale without help.
The second main technique I used and can recommend is to make almost all assessment and evaluation based on student writings and projects, not examinations. And, if the nature of the course permits, use group projects primarily. For my courses the group size was usually between two and five. These groups can meet in cyberspace or, if location and other factors permit, they can meet face to face. The projects might be large or small. They can be graded once or often. Points can accumulate. It is the project that is graded, not the individuals, so everyone earns the same grade unless that is impossible. Peer evaluation is used to award bonus points or to solve issues of non-participation, etc.
If there are a number of group projects students can move between groups if needed. But students also need to be taught how to run an effective group project. In the courses I taught, dividing up the work "equally" was always discouraged and if done, usually leads to poor outcomes. Students need to form teams, not just amalgamations of individuals. In CS this skill will be valued later in their careers.
Also, peer evaluation has to be properly managed. Students don't "grade" one another. They comment on the contributions of a few or all of their team mates. "Who was the most helpful team member? (or three top members) Why? What did they contribute? What was your own chief contribution?"
At a certain scale or with sufficient help you can easily determine who falls into which important grading groups. Who is excellent in all respects? Who shows promise? Who is getting by? Who is deficient? Who has failed? Elaborate point systems in which an 85 is somehow significantly different from an 87 have little real meaning in my opinion.
To emphasize a point above. In many fields, even very technical ones, writing is an important skill. Writing essays on a given topic is good professional preparation for a budding mathematician. Exams can be replaced with such essays, lessening the needs for security and such. They seem to me to be much more value long term than skill at exams. But you can probably expect that students will hate it initially.
The above, of course, are just ideas. But I found them to be more aligned with the teaching mission than the more traditional lecture and test.
Ideas for Communication
To handle all of the above with online courses the main need is for effective communication between faculty and students and, I found, between students themselves. One goal is that what any student sees can be seen by any other student.
Communication tools need not be complex or comprehensive. But they should permit asynchronous communication and should permit many-way communication. Threaded email lists are very useful and don't require extensive facilities. They can be private lists, managed by the university alleviating some privacy issues, open to only class members and staff. Documents can be distributed. Questions can be asked. Questions can be answered at any time of the day or night - even by other students. Someone needs to monitor these to make sure that misinformation is quickly corrected and that any rules about posting or not posting certain content are maintained.
If project groups are long lived, then each group can have its own mailing list and can also use other tools they find for communication.
Another useful tool is a group chatroom. Group chats can be held periodically, though the email lists were more useful for discussing course material. These are necessarily synchronous and so not every student might be able to "attend". But it is easy to capture the complete conversation as a text file and send it to everyone or post it on a course web site.

My own expertise in this comes from helping to design and deliver a graduate program in which students met face to face only once a month for half a day per course. All work was done in groups (of about 5). Face time was only used for things that could not be done on line. We used simple tools for communication. All student-professor communication (other than personal things) was open to all students. Students could ask questions at any time and other students were encouraged to answer from their own expertise. The course was always live, every hour, every day. Questions got answered quickly, if not always perfectly. Students didn't get stuck. The goal was to build a learning community. That community has persisted past graduation.

Minor updates only anticipated.

An interesting alternative view can be found here:  https://anygoodthing.com/2020/03/12/please-do-a-bad-job-of-putting-your-courses-online/. Thanks to user curious for pointing this out.


Correct verb for professor "writing" student exams? On their CV, how should an associate professor go about making a bullet point accomplishment that they "designed / wrote / created / produced" student exams? that is, devised several pages of questions (and corresponding answers) meant to test students' knowledge about the subject or sub-field.
How does this verb change for an assistant professor who serves a higher rank professor, but who was given lee-way or freedom to similarly also create/write exams from scratch as they see fit?

All that I really can say is what will not describe "creation of exams".
In some versions of English, "writing an exam" would mean "taking the exam" in other English. That is, being an examinee, rather than an examiner.
"Setting an exam" in some contexts is understood as "creating the exam", but seldom in the U.S.
It is not typical, but I'd think would be relatively clear in most versions of English, currently, to say "created exams" or "composed exams".
(Nevertheless, people looking at the CV would think, "hm, what? Of course. Why is this person mentioning this?")


How do I go about making a program suggestion to my department chair as a graduate student? For context, I am a graduate student in my academic department — agricultural economics. I wanted to bring up the idea to the Department Chair that introducing some applications like JupyterLab, GitHub, and R to our future graduate students could be a great move to not only support the move to online learning, but allow students in our department to get additional skills that are widely used in industry and currently not offered by our courses, but for which I know a number of our professors use routinely.

As a graduate student, I don't have the authority to suggest how the department should conduct itself and I do not want to come across this way either. So I am curious how I could go about offering this idea as a suggestion while still being respectful of my place within the hierarchy of my department. I have a good personal relationship with the department chair as well, but I still want to be cautious of how I approach this.

I should also say that i'm done my course work, so it does not impact me at all if the Department chooses to follow through or not on the suggestion. I am however thinking about the development of future students which is the only reason I am actually considering making the suggestion.

As a graduate student, I don't have the authority to suggest how the department should conduct itself

That’s incorrect. You absolutely have the authority to suggest improvements to the program curriculum, and in all but the most incompetently run of departments, your suggestions would be welcomed, and given at least fleeting consideration; in a really well-run department they may in fact be considered quite seriously. Whether they would be adopted or not in a separate question, but if they are not adopted, it’s not because anyone thinks you don’t have the authority to suggest them. Regardless, no one would think you’re overstepping your role as a graduate student by making a suggestion (as opposed to making a demand or coming across as someone who thinks they’re entitled to run the place).

  I wanted to bring up the idea to the Department Chair that introducing some applications like JupyterLab, GitHub, and R to our future graduate students could be a great move to not only support the move to online learning, but allow students in our department to get additional skills that are widely used in industry and currently not offered by our courses, but for which I know a number of our professors use routinely.

It sounds like these professors you mention already see the value in what you want to propose. Why not try to enlist them as allies and supporters of your idea, while offering to do the grunt work of promoting it? For example,  you could send them an email where you outline your proposal, say you are contacting them because of their interest in these software applications and that you intend to present it to the department administration (not necessarily the chair - see below), and ask whether they are willing to be included in the correspondence and to be mentioned as possible endorsers of the idea. Stress the fact that they wouldn’t need to get involved in the effort in any more substantial way than that if they didn’t want/have time to.

  I have a good personal relationship with the department chair as well, but I still want to be cautious of how I approach this.

That’s good, and the department chair may be a good place to start. But it’s worth keeping in mind that the department chair is usually an extremely busy person who is stretched thin between managing a whole bunch of completely different aspects of the department. In particular, at all departments I’m familiar with (including the one I was chair of for several years), the chair would not get directly involved in detailed thinking about the graduate program curriculum - that’s simply too “micro” for the level of detail the chair is able to handle. Usually there will be other people below the chair — a graduate vice chair (sometimes called the graduate program chair or graduate chair), graduate program committee etc — who make those sorts of decisions (maybe with the department chair ultimately being asked to sign off on any major decisions).

I suggest that before you officially propose the idea, do a bit of l asking around informally to find out who are the person or people who are in charge of thinking about these sorts of issues within the department. This way you won’t waste people’s time and your own time getting bounced around from one person/committee to another, with the attendant risk of the communication being misdirected or misinterpreted at each step along the way.

Good luck!


How to improve scientific writing skills? What do you do to write better proposals, grants, and papers?

Do you think reading books about how to write scientific content is a good way to improve it?

The way to learn to write is, simply, to write.

But then get feedback on your writing and re-write in light of the feedback.

The Software Patterns community has a process called Writer's Workshops that are quite detailed. When you submit a paper to a patterns conference you are assigned a Shepherd who is an experienced pattern writer, usually with knowledge of your field. The shepherd works with you (the "sheep") to improve the paper over three or four iterations of feedback-rewrite.

After shepherding your paper may be accepted to the conference, though not for presentation in the traditional sense. The conference consists of a set of writer's workshops in which a few (8-10) authors each have their papers discussed by the other participants while they listen and take notes. The author has a very small part in the workshop other than to think about what others suggest about how the paper can be improved.

After the workshop the author can ask questions, but never gets to "defend" the work. The idea is that if others misunderstand you then it is your job, not theirs, to fix it.

The paper is then revised one more time and it is this version that makes it in to the proceedings. The whole idea is to improve the print version, not present a version prepared without help.

The patterns community is pretty close knit because of this working together to improve one-another's work.

This process was brought to the software development community by Richard P Gabriel who is both a geek (Lisp et al.) and a poet. The same process is used by poets, in fact and is quite old. RPG has written a book on the process: Writers' Workshops & the Work of Making Things

If you don't have the patterns community behind you, or if you aren't writing patterns, it is relatively easy to set up a local writers workshop and follow the process. You can do this for any sort of writing as long as you have some people with domain knowledge and some writing experience.


How to ask my former PhD supervisor to stay away from me and do not contact my prospective new PhD supervisor? There are a long list of stories about the issues with my PhD supervisor here in Academia.SE (see it here but these are not the only ones). So, I'm not going to repeat why I'm leaving my current research group. Last week, I decided to change my research group after almost 5 years. Despite its painful nature to switch after 5 years of work, I'm really hopeful that I can find a new PhD advisor who help me to finish my thesis and get my degree.
I was in the same situation of switching to a new research group in Fall 2019, but at that time, still I was not 100% confident that I will not be able to get my PhD degree with my current advisor. In fact, in Fall 2019, I left my current research group for a couple of months and searched for a new PhD advisor. The problem was that every time I reached to a professor, even in other departments, my current advisor sent an email to them and recommended them to not accept me as their student. At the end, when I realized that nobody wants to take me as his/her student, my current advisor requested to have a meeting with me and he said that we are in a really good shape in terms of research progress and I will be able to get graduated soon, which didn't happen at all.
Long story short, I reached the end of my capability to work with my current PhD advisor and even I don't want to see him or hear his voice again. I talked to our graduate coordinator in the department and he also said that I should change my research group and he supports my decision.
Tomorrow, I'm going to have a meeting with my current advisor as well as the chair of the department and graduate coordinator. Based on my discussion to our graduate coordinator, this meeting is going to be a formal briefing about what would happen when I switch to another research group. For example, who owns the data and intellectual property that are created during these 5 years, which I don't have any claim and I want to just accept their requests and do whatever they want me to do and just move on. My current concern is that my current advisor wants to repeat the same strategy to prevent other professors to take me as their student and after that again try to force me to back to his group, which even I prefer to switch to master degree but do not continue my PhD with him. I want to ask him politely tomorrow in front of chair of the department and graduate coordinator to stop sending email to prospective advisors that I would contact in the future, but I don't know how to do that. I really appreciate any help or suggestion.

It’s superbly clear: You are being manipulated by a person who possibly has wasted years of your life. At this point, everything they do must be presumed malicious and intentional. Don’t take any other explanations, that’ll be gaslighting. You have to treat your former advisor like a public enemy #1, and his every action must be from now on interpreted as being on a vendetta against you. Look at the last few years. Has that person ever done anything that actually helped you achieve your goals? Don’t think of positive things they said: have they actually been helpful, in the truest sense of the word? Has their helpfulness been of the genuine kind that helps you make progress in the project, or it was only of a kind to put your mind at ease and dismiss the previous horrible things that person has done? My guess: it’s solid NO, they never helped in the last couple of years, and you’re clearly dealing with a manipulator who has no qualms about anything they did so far.
Don’t ever believe any excuses they may offer to recast their abhorrent behavior in a good light. Remember how you felt through this whole ordeal and what a mess it was because of that person. There is no excuse for their behavior. None whatsoever. They are a lost cause in every sense of the word.
Some of the answers to your other related questions seemed to have been slightly equivocal or giving the whole matter some benefit of the doubt. Having had the dubious pleasure of dealing with people like the one you describe early in my life, all your recollections are stereotypical and there's no doubt in my mind that you have been taken advantage of and have been subject of gross mistreatment. The person you speak of is playing a game that takes cards from the same decks that many other such people use. The game they play is so typical and so highly stylized that it may as well be called chess. You see it once and you can't unsee it, pretty much.


Length and details of a personal statement in postdoc positions? I am trying to apply for postdoc position in the UK. During the application process, I found that the personal statement is a required file and cv is an additional document. So, the personal statement is really important and I've never wrote one. There are those who say a personal statement shouldn't be longer than a paragraph with a few lines, and some people say it can longer if it's for a job in university.
When I applied to other positions, I wrote research statements and supporting statements but I think the structure of this one is different. So, how long is a personal statement and what questions should my personal statement answer? For instance, can I talk about my past research? research issues in the project I will be working on?
PS: I am looking for information that are related to postdoc positions. I believe the blogs I read talk about general jobs, grants, etc. But I didn't find a lot of information about research positions.

If they only ask for personal statement and CV then you need to find a way to squeeze in the personal statement basically everything. I would start by introducing what your studies were so far and what kind of results you got. Highlight the significance of your research and what are the next steps. Then write about collaborations you had and how you expanded your scientific network. Conclude by saying what your future plans in terms of career are. It is not an easy thing to write so I would start just writing down everything you can think of and then you start ordering things. With this kind of stuff the easiest way to tackle it is to just start writing. Ultimately it is a personal statement so you need to add some personal touch. Let people that knows you well read it and ask them their opinion even if they are not scientist. Good luck with your application!


Will mentioning that I'm considering a PhD to start a company hurt my chances? I would like to do a PhD in pharmaceutical sciences. I love doing research but I'm not sure that I want to become a professor and stay in academia. I would, however, like to commercialize the research I would do and start a company. I think that a PhD would provide crucial research experience, networking opportunities with smart and talented people and a platform to develop a good product. Although many universities encourage entrepreneurship these days, I'm unsure whether they expect this from graduate students as well. I was wondering whether writing this in my Statement of Purpose would hurt my chances to get into a good PhD program.

One thing you should really consider first, is what are your rights to take the research and start a company: in most universities, whatever discovery is made there legally belongs to them. You might be named on a patent but you may not be the legal owner of any of it, or you may need to license the intellectual property from the university.

Now, in some places, they actually encourage this kind of ventures, but it's framed within the university bound; that means they may even help you start a company, but they'll want royalties or something in return.

In the end, I'd recommend you look at where your career goals will be best received, in your field of choice, rather than apply all over and interview to discover they don't encourage this type of outcome. That'd probably save you some precious time.


Should I name a system or software I described in a paper? I have implemented software (system, method) to solve a problem and I am writing a paper about it. In the related works I see some similar works which have a name (e.g Lixto, TSIMMIS, Florid, etc.)

Should I also use a name for my system? Are there any conventions or guidelines for it or for the names?

What are the advantage or disadvantage of it?

Should I also use a name for my system?
What are the advantage or disadvantage of it?

In the following, I will assume the author name "Mary Miller" and the system name "MSOAP" ("Miller's solution of all problems"), as well as the additional author name "Oswald Otherman" for the sake of explanation.
Advantages:

It will be easier for other authors to refer to your work. Rather than a convoluted expression such as "the system proposed by Miller", they can simply write "MSOAP".
Work by other authors that directly extends the original system can continue using the same name. Rather than "Otherman's extension of the system proposed by Miller", it is "Otherman's MSOAP variant", or (if the overall system structure remains the same) even still "MSOAP" (just with the reference to Otherman's work rather than Miller's, if it's the aspects introduced by Otherman that are actually talked about).
If the system was not created by one sole author (even if the scientific contribution focused in the first paper that mentions the system is by Miller), it is even much fairer to refer to the system with a name rather than linking it to a single author.
The system name is more specific for a certain work than the author's name. Even if the system might be expanded in several iterations, it is still probably centered around one core topic or approach. Hence, searching for "MSOAP" will always yield results related to the desired topic. At the same time, Mary Miller might create several different systems throughout her career that focus on wildly different things, so the same cannot be said about searching for "Mary Miller".

Disadvantages:

The name of the system's creator is not quite as apparent any more, as it does not directly pop up in each sentence referring to the system. However, the author name is by no means concealed; the system name "MSOAP" still provides a very good starting point for finding more information about the project (including attribution), and the reference to thus-related papers in the bibliography contains the author information, as well. Therefore, whoever wants to know who contributed to MSOAP will face no real obstacles finding out.

Neutral:

Finding unique system names is increasingly difficult. "MSOAP" might refer to a number of unrelated projects. On the other hand, the same can be said about an author's name, as "Miller" is not in any way less ambiguous.
Another issue with a self-chosen system name, as suggested by jakebeal, could be that you pick a name that you do not like any more at a later point in time. On the other hand, you might also dislike your personal name. If you do not pick a name for your system, there is even a slight chance that people citing your work end up associating it with a name that you do not like. Your mileage may vary on which one of these is least desirable or most likely.

Therefore, my conclusion is: By all means, do whoever wants to refer to your work a favour and provide a name for your system.

Are there any conventions or guidelines for it or for the names?

No, and there are various factors that influence why there is no general answer to this question:

First of all, this is very field-specific. Some communities might enjoy reading fancy names that contain some kind of slight jokes or at least convey something in a witty acronym (like this one: Schürr, A.: PROGRES, A Visual Language and Environment
for PROgramming with Graph REwriting Systems. Technical Report, RWTH Aachen, Germany, 1994.), whereas others might have a strong preference towards more descriptive names.
For systems developed as a part of a larger project, it can be a nice touch to pick a uniform naming scheme. (As a fictional example, there could be "MSOAP", "MSOAP-W" for weather-related solutions, "MSOAP-L" for literature-related solutions, and so on.)
Maybe you even want to develop a certain recognizeable style as an author and therefore try to establish a uniform method of naming your systems over the years.

As a clarification, system names need by no means always be acronyms. A system name such as "Ultimate Solution" is totally fine. Just provide something that can be used as a (composite) noun.


How to identify predatory publishers/journals What are the best strategies for assessing if a journal is a "vanity" or "predatory" journal that should be avoided (both for publishing in and reviewing for)? For example, how would one go about determining if a journal/publisher belongs on Beall’s List of Predatory Open-Access Publishers?

First, you should probably publish in the same venues that you read and cite.  Presumably those are reputable.

Now to describe low-quality vanity publishers.  Two essential characteristics are:

The publication of very low quality material.  This is usually immediately recognizable to any expert.  Sometimes it's obvious to anyone; for example, read this abstract.
A business model in which the author (rather than the reader) pays the publisher.  Of course, this by itself isn't necessarily indicative of a low-quality publisher (think PLoS).   But low-quality publishers can't make money off of subscriptions, since they provide no content of value.

Additional common characteristics of such publishers are:

Mass e-mails (spam) to academics, especially when the recipients include researchers in unrelated fields.  These e-mails may request submission of conference presentations, papers, or book manuscripts, or may contain invitations to journal editorial boards.
A high number of prominent typographical errors in text attributable to the publisher.  For instance, at the beginning of this article "abstract" is mistakenly spelled "abstarct".


Administrative recognition of frequently-cited unpublished manuscripts This is not a question about academia per se, but about the academia-administration interface.

When I was a postdoc, I wrote a paper that started to be cited quite often (by the standards of my particular subfield) as soon as I uploaded it to the usual public repository. These were largely good citations, along the lines of "this is a really neat idea" rather than "this author doesn't know what he's talking about". Eventually, I decided against submitting it to a journal, mostly because the unpublished manuscript had already become relatively popular and it wasn't really worth going through the extra work of the journal publication process for essentially no additional benefits re: the visibility of the paper or my reputation in the field. I've been listing it in my CV as a "frequently-cited unpublished manuscript" and everybody has been happy about it.

Now that decision is coming back to bite me in the ass. I am applying to a tenured job and I have to submit copies of representative publications. However, I can't submit a copy of this paper specifically because it has never been published in a journal. I have enough quality publications that this is not a problem, but it annoys me because I'm quite proud of this particular paper, which is as representative of the quality of my work as any of my papers in top journals.

So the question is, those of you who have similarly popular unpublished manuscripts, how do you convince administrators that a paper doesn't have to have a journal DOI attached to it to count as a representative piece of work?

how do you convince administrators that ...

You don't and you can't, and I endorse Alexandros's suggestion.

The department to which you have applied, if they want to hire you, will try to convince the administrators of exactly this. The admins don't know you and don't trust you, but they might listen to such complaints coming from someone they trust.

In the meantime, in addition to any other benefits, submitting your paper to a peer-reviewed journal will signal to the hiring committee that you are doing your best to make their lives easy.


Who to cite if the original source of a citation does not contain the content that was cited? As you're supposed to do, I looked up the original source of a citation that I wanted to work with. Only the original paper never mentions what I was hoping to find!

Do I cite the first paper then, since it must be something that the first author came up with?

Also, what do you call this phenomenon? Anti-plagiarism or something in that direction?

One honest way to deal with it is to write something like that it is "attributed by X to Y", where X is the author who made the unclear citation and Y is the cited paper that does not seem to you to contain this information.  That casts some doubt on the attribution, since you are not endorsing it yourself, while giving the reader all the information you have.

One possibility is that the information really is there, but it takes some digging to extract it.  In that case, flatly saying that it's not there would be awkward.  On the other hand, you don't want to perpetuate a mistaken or dishonest citation without any warning for the reader.  (Of course, you could simply replace it with a correct citation if you have the relevant expertise to do that, but then you wouldn't be asking this question.)

If X is still active, you could write and ask whether he/she accidentally cited the wrong paper, or whether you are missing something.  That's the best way to find out what's behind this citation, since nobody else can really say for sure.  If you can't contact the author, you can try asking other researchers you know.

Sometimes it's a random error, and sometimes it comes from copying incorrect citations from elsewhere.  Occasionally there's a defensible historical reason for a confusing citation.  For example, maybe the original author had an idea and but didn't explain it clearly at all, and later authors expressed it more clearly but cited the original paper (since it contained the key idea).


To what extent do academic promotions share similarities with promotions in industry? My question is quite simple. In Industry, you get your job, be productive, get an MBA (in many cases), get into management, etc., etc.,

In academia, you are productive, get your research published, etc, etc.

To what extent are the promotional and "climbing the ladder" procedures similar? How can academics learn from this to get promoted faster?

They are really not very similar at all.

(This answer describes common structures at US universities.)

There are a number of very significant differences between "promotion" in academia and in industry.

The vast majority of faculty members will be promoted at most twice in their entire career.  Once from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor, and once from Associate Professor to Professor.
Promotions cannot be granted unilaterally by a single manager.  Either of the two promotions mentioned above typically requires something like: a majority (or supermajority) vote of the faculty in the department, the recommendation of the department chair, the approval of a dean and a provost (and maybe a Promotions Committee), and often the university president and the board of trustees.  All of these are required for the promotion to take place.
Promotions cannot be sped up.  University policies usually require a fixed minimum (and sometimes maximum) number of years of service at one rank before being eligible for promotion.  In some cases a candidate may be able to negotiate to adjust these timelines at  the time of hiring, but usually not afterward.
Entering management isn't the "normal" path.  The Professor ranks described above are not really management positions, and the duties of each rank are roughly the same: teach, do research, engage in institutional service.  The most common "management" position for a professor would be department chair, and in many cases this is a fixed-term position, after which the professor resumes their previous duties.  A professor could also try to become a dean; but since this typically means the effective end of their research and teaching career (or at least a drastic reduction or long hiatus), it's not something they do lightly.
Management structures in academia are relatively flat.  A department chair may supervise up to 40-50 tenure-line faculty members or more, and perhaps a larger number of non-tenure-line faculty, postdocs, etc.  A dean may supervise a similar number of departments.  At my medium-sized university, there are only three levels of "middle management" between an ordinary assistant professor and the university president.  As a result, there are relatively few "management" positions available, compared to the number of "rank-and-file" professors.
Universities are to some extent run from the bottom rather than the top.  Significant decisions are often made (or recommended) by vote of the rank-and-file faculty, rather than by an executive; this concept is called "shared governance".  As such, management has less power than they would in a company, and professors don't need to move into management to have some influence on the overall direction of the institution.

As such, the sort of things that are commonly recommended when seeking promotion in business (showing value to the organization, currying favor with management, demonstrating ability to supervise others, etc) are not nearly as effective for advancement within academia.


Difference between private and public universities as a faculty member? As a grad student I was, for the most part, shielded from issues like high-level bureaucracy, departmental duties and politics, and long-term career advancement.  Obviously these things become more important when you're looking for a faculty job.

Question: As a faculty member in the U.S., what are the most tangible differences between being at a public vs. private university?

I.e., how does it affect your day-to-day life, or alternatively, key events like promotion, student recruiting, etc.?  Obviously the question depends a great deal on the particular department and perhaps its ranking; I am interested mostly in departments "near the top" [ed: of some fairly arbitrary ranking systems...], but broad answers are also useful.

Thanks!

A few anecdotal observations. It must be said that these are trends, and exceptions to everything I say are plentiful.

As just-learning said, private universities tend to pay a little better. Also, they seem to have less faculty turnover (perhaps for this reason).
Public universities often have more BS committee work. For example, my university periodically mandates a lengthy process of "post-tenure review". Negative or positive reviews have no consequences, and therefore the process is a complete waste of time, but we have no choice.
At least among top-notch research universities, public schools are usually large, and many private schools are small. Large schools typically have advantages (big seminars, lots of courses that can be offered to students, etc.) and disadvantages (lots of grading, people can feel lost in the crowd, etc.)
A corollary to the above: public universities often influence their towns more, simply because there are more people working and studying at the university. For example UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke are excellent universities (public and private respectively) which are ten miles apart, and it is Chapel Hill that has the really outstanding K-12 school system.
Especially at public universities, there might be many clubs which are largely student organizations, but faculty members and others also participate in. Especially if you are not yet inclined to "settle down", this could be a huge positive.
The campuses tend to be different. Many private universities are surrounded by lush greenery, where at public universities it is more common that you can walk across the street and get something good to eat.
Sports culture is more prevalent at public universities (although it is also very big at many private universities). I am a bit of a curmudgeon, annoyed at the overwhelming football culture at my school. But those more laid back than me simply enjoy the games.
Student attitudes tend to be different. At wealthy private universities many of the students will be more optimistic, and more ambitious goals and dreams seem to be more common. The downside (from what I have heard) is that entitlement and grade-grubbing are also more common.
Public universities serve the public. My university enrolls a number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, many of whom are the first in their families to attend college. I attended a graduation ceremony, and when many names were called there was a palpable and obvious joy on the part of large crowds in the audience supporting them. Witnessing this was a deeply moving experience.


What can academia do with the flood of bad or subpar paper currently online? I am currently researching some STEM-related topic on X, and I have been bombarded with a flood of bad papers on Google or academic databases.

Of course, bad is subjective. But I am talking about papers that don't even have proper font or typesetting, virtually no equations/equations that don't make any sense, poor examples, and papers that are literally less than three pages long (standard are 10 pages): introduction, some made-up equations, one experiment that those equations does well on, conclusion - we have solved the problem.

In addition, many of these papers are published in low-tier journals and conferences (with very legit sounding titles, mind you, such as "International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics") and it is taking a while for me to dig through them to find quality content.

On top of it, there seems to be a flood of student projects on these topics that are otherwise properly formatted in conference style templates. I am guessing a lot of undergraduate courses are making their students learn how to write a paper as their project, and the students, in turn, publish them somewhere. Unfortunately, almost all of these papers are poor quality and totally not peer-reviewed. They show up in search anyways.

Is there anything academia can do to solve this problem? I can only see it get worse and worse over time until it is totally impossible to properly cite previous work.

I strongly suspect that along with the papers being poorly formatted, they also have minimal usefulness content-wise.  I think the way to solve your problem is just to use a filter of only looking at papers in peer-reviewed, properly formatted journals.  And the better ones, at that.

Yes, there is a possibility you miss something, but so what?  Euclidean perfection is not expected.  If you are doing original work, you only have limited time to spend on literature and you need to use that most efficiently.  Even if your sole task is to review the literature, you have limited time to do that.

If there is some work that was self published or poorly written but still important, than it should have been recognized (via citations) by papers in good journals.  (Then, recognizing the importance, you can spend the time to decipher the poor exposition...but again, this will be a tiny fraction.  Often zero.)

So, instead of worrying about academia (not a monolithic entity) somehow cleaning up the Augean stables for you (how would they even do that...take control of the Internet?), just change your own work habits to stay out of the muck or be very limited and targeted in your plunges into it.


Will retracting a paper from biorxiv hurt our future publication chances I am an undergraduate student. My friends and I  found interesting results while applying game theory to biology. However, we have used only one datset and being undergrads can't get access to do experiments to get our own data. should we preprint anyway .Will retracting a paper from biorxiv hurt our future publication chances?

No, many submit and have to rewrite or withdraw for many reasons. Do you really need to withdraw - this may be an interesting result for people to see even if it was on limited data...


Is it customary to include a dedication in an honours thesis? I am compiling my thesis, and have noticed that the LaTeX template that I am using provides space for a dedication.

Whilst I do have an individual whom I want to credit with being a source of inspiration for my research and career motivation, I'm curious as to if honours theses normally include a dedication, and if I would be better to wait until I write my doctorate.

Dedication generally comes in your front matter section in your thesis. It will depend on your university rules and guidelines. Generally "dedication" is not mandatory in most of universities. However it is advisable to check with your academic office.

Quoting from Harvard guidelines for thesis writing,

  Front matter may include: acknowledgments of help or encouragement from individuals or institutions; a dedication; a list of illustrations or  of tables; a glossary of terms; one or more epigraphs—pertinent quotations at the beginning of a dissertation or a chapter

My personal opinion is that dedication gives emotional touch. It is good to have dedication page in your work.


Is it normal for universities to limit the number of PhD students a professor can supervise? It came to my attention that one university limits the number of PhD students each professor can supervise simultaneously.  The policy makes a vague reference to "legislative and regulatory requirements".
Is this an accepted and widespread practice in academia, or is it a weird quirk?

I checked the regulations at the places where I've worked.
Two out of three (UCL and The University of Plymouth) have limits of the type discussed; one (The University of Cambridge) doesn't.  That makes me lean towards "yes" as the answer to "is it accepted and widespread".


Where do researchers get the money to replicate others' work? I'd like to follow up on my previous question. If scientists have to replicate and validate/refute their peers' research, where do the "provers" find funding?

In my 2 years as an undergrad at a public American university, I've heard of a lot of professors researching new things and/or trying to find funding to research new things, but I've never heard of a professor dedicating resources to replicate his/her peer's work.

As I explore existing literature for my research project, I see that I could have used existing literature to guide the experiments I did for my project. Along the way, I could have replicated + validated* the existing "new" methods before trying my new method. Is this how researchers usually review their peers?

That is, professor X gets a grant to explore field A. Professor Y comes up with model 1 for field A. Using his own funding, Professor X designs and conducts an experiment to replicate model 1 before testing his own model, model 2.

Note: I assume my question depends on the field of study since a computer scientist can more easily verify a model + experiment than a chemist.

*Is there a better verb or phrase for replicate + validate/refute? Or does validation imply replication?

In my field (cognitive science), your supposition that replication is primarily pursued by investigators prior to extension is true. For example, I have an idea while reading a paper on learning targeted movements, I first implement the paradigm as described (either an exact replication or a conceptual replication) and then I extend it to test my idea. Thus, the money for this comes from the same places that the money for all research comes from: largely from government allocations and grants, partly from NGOs and industry.

However, there has a been a recent trend--again, in my field, but as part of a larger movement in the social sciences--to improve replicability of results. This has included fostering availability of code for software projects and pursuing independent replications purely for their own merit. Last semester I attended a talk on a set of these replications, which, along with similar attempts from other labs, were pushing to overturn the original result. In these cases, the money to pursue the replication is probably somewhat independent from other projects of the researcher. This means funding agencies would be unlikely to provide a grant entirely for this work, so it is probably going to be supported as a passenger on previously funded work or on University funds (e.g. start up and salaries).


Can I put my accepted-but-not-yet-on-IEEEXplore paper online? I am currently hunting for research internships and going to apply for several positions. To make the admission officers accessible to my stories and experiences in further detail, I have created a personal Google Site showing those details and added the link into my CV.

Now it comes to my research part. I have one paper that is just informed to be accepted by a conference. However, since the conference is not held yet, the paper isn't available online.

I wish to make the paper accessible to the admission committee. How should I do that without harming my and my co-authors' interest?

Can I upload it to arXiv? Can I upload it to my own Google Site? Should I inform my co-authors of this? Does it really matter to them?

As the comment from  Nate Eldredge said: read your copyright agreement and ask co-authors.

You can definitely list the paper in your publications if you mark it as "accepted for...". If the admission committee is interested in reading it (often it is just interested in the title, unless this is the summary of your previous work), they can ask for it.


A student in my course does well on exams, but doesn't do the homework: Go easy on them, or make them "pay the price?" I have a student in my course that does well on the exams, and his answers to the exam questions show a deep understanding of the material. However, this student has not been handing in the assigned homeworks and has a missed a few lab assignments, as well. I've been told by other faculty that he has a job which keeps him up late, and have noticed that he struggles to stay awake at times during the class.

Depending on how he fares on a project worth a large portion of his grade, and the final exam, the missed homeworks/labs could cause his grade to be below a C, which is the required grade that a student must receive if they are to advance to the second, more advanced course [and, a C grade is also needed to get credit for the course; otherwise, the student will need to retake it again on the next offering, which isn't until two semesters from now]. Further, this student is a senior, so a D grade would be a major setback for him.

For those of you who have been in this situation before as an instructor, my question:

  Have you ever passed/failed a student like the one described above? If so, do you regret your decision? Why or why not?

As an instructor, when I find myself in this situation, I invite the student to make an appointment to speak with me privately in my office.

During that private meeting, I will discuss his/her current performance in the class, and point out the likely consequences if he/she does not submit the required work.  I will advise the student as to what he/she must do to achieve the grade he/she needs.

Then it's up to the student to earn the grade he/she wants - or to fail. You can't live their lives for them.


Should I get a CS PhD if I'm only interested in industry research? I'm currently working on a masters in CS and working at a university as research faculty (my title is 'research engineer'). I'm in the branch that does mostly contract work with the government or private industry, so not academic research.

My employer offers an attractive proposition for getting a PhD. I would keep my current position and salary in exchange for doing a project relevant to the division. They also provide a year of PTO to work full-time on the dissertation and time during the day to go to class. My work is mainly robotics software so I think it would be feasible to find a sufficiently related topic of research. As a university employee I get an indefinite tuition waiver so I would not need to do any teaching or research outside of my normal work.

My goal for the PhD would be to work in industry research, along the lines of Waymo, OpenAI, along with lower-tier companies. My impression is that there are many more of these jobs than academic positions, so I have I more reasonable chance of success.

Given the appealing financial circumstances, is getting a PhD an obvious choice? Should I just finish with the MS and try to get industry research jobs right away? Is my impression of the state of industry research correct?

Having a PhD or other Research Doctorate will definitely help you with many large companies. At some companies there is a fairly large gap between what someone with a degree can do and earn and someone without. "Senior Scientist" may only be open to PhD holders for example.

Moreover, some companies really need people on the cutting edge of research. Think Alphabet/Google here and similar data and algorithm driven places.

But I'm speaking of large and established companies. IBM, Bell Labs, and such. It may not be quite as valuable with newer companies and probably not at all with startups. But, large companies can support large scale research that may take a while to mature. They can offer a stability of employment similar to that available in an academic position.


Are best-paper awards for conferences rigged/pre-decided? Recently I had an acceptance from a very good conference in our field. Three out of four reviewers gave excellent comments, while one gave a poor comment.
I was telling my friend that if I had had one more good/excellent review, I could be considered for the best-paper award.

He told me that usually best-paper awards are already fixed and given to the person of the organizer's choice i.e. if the organizers want to invite a distinguished professor, they award their paper etc. etc. So even if I had  had an excellent review from the 4th reviewer, there was no chance of getting the award.

What is the backdoor working of best-paper awards - how are they selected?

I would find it very unusual and very disturbing if that happened.

In my experience (Computer Science and related fields), conference committees work hard with submissions to select the best paper. And they debate it, as different committee members will typically "champion" a paper that they think is worthy. Often this happens because the committee member is a specialist and recognizes that some paper makes a really significant contribution to some aspect within their speciality.

But I've never seen anything such as you suggest, nor any personal favoritism.

If this sort of thing really exists within a field, I think that it would be a good idea to raise the idea as an ethical issue with that community generally.


Can I submit the paper to arxiv and the conference at the same time? I think the conference where the paper is submitted will have 10 days to start submitting the abstract. There are 23 days before the papers start to be handed in. But my thesis will be completed within a week. The review of the paper takes nearly two months. May I be worried that other people will publish papers with the same idea during the review period.
Can I upload the paper to arxiv now? Then submit it to the conference normally after 20 days?
There is a sentence in the conference request:

The only exceptions to the above rules are for the authors’ own papers
in (1) workshops without archived proceedings such as in the ACM/IEEE
digital library (or where the authors chose not to have their paper
appear in the archived proceed- ings), or (2) venues such as IEEE CAL
or arXiv where there is an explicit policy that such publication does
not preclude longer conference submissions. In all such cases, the
submit- ted manuscript may ignore the above work to preserve author
anonymity. This information must, however, be provided on the
submission form – the program chairs will make this information
available to reviewers if it becomes necessary to ensure a fair
review. As always, if you are in doubt, it is best to contact the
program chairs.

Worrying about other people publishing your paper isn't something you should do. One, it's not in your control, that'll happen if it has to happen. Two, even if it does, there are always other parameters which can differentiate the paper.
This conference says you can post it to Arxiv, so go ahead! But I don't really think it'll stop someone else from publishing their material else where. Especially when the pre-print upload date is so close to the conference many might not even realize that their is a paper with the same domain!


How to cope with regret and shame about not fully utilizing opportunities during PhD? I am currently writing my PhD thesis and I was feeling guilty about the things and skills I could have attained during this period but I didn't. I have worked hard towards my research and have simultaneously worked on my hobby of painting and drumming during my PhD. Not that I joined a club or a band, I just studied art books, YouTube videos and practiced in solitude.

A bit information about me. I am not a brilliant student. Being average, I have struggled a lot during my PhD research as compared to my colleagues. This has led to spending a longer time on my research than my colleagues. It will take me a little over 5 years to defend. My colleagues and friends have taken somewhere between 4-5 years for their PhD.

At the moment, my only skillsets are doing research (owing to my PhD), make somewhat okayish paintings,  drum somewhat, still love my hobbies and am a bit confident about presenting and public speaking owing to the conferences I have been to.

But, looking back, I feel like I should have invested my free time in meeting new people, learning more about public speaking, should have taken leadership positions and should have invested my time in doing things that would have improved my CV. In short, doing things outside my comfort zone.

How can I cope up with the regret about my failure of doing things that would have helped me academically and in industry? I am 30 years of age (fyi).

While sometimes it seems that spending more time working is equivalent to accomplishing more (especially in academia, where there's always that one colleague), this is not true in general. In particular for demanding intellectual work (as required in an academic environment) it is important to take breaks, vacations, and spend time doing other things to refresh ones creativity (see, e.g. Clark & Sousa, How to be a happy academic, or any of the numerous articles online).

I personally like to look at CVs / personal websites of successful academics, and it is quite common that they have some hobby which has nothing to do with their work which they spend much time on, like sports, chess, music, etc. So you don't need to feel guilty at all. It's very common that people struggle during their PhD studies, everyone has to figure out for themselves how to "make it work". If for you that meant spending time in solitude, that's fine.

  This has led to spending a longer time on my research than my
  colleagues. It will take me a little over 5 years to defend. My
  colleagues and friends have taken somewhere between 4-5 years for
  their PhD.

So it seems you didn't actually take that much longer. Another reason not to feel guilty.

  I should have invested my free time (...) doing things outside my comfort zone.

  (...) I am 30 years of age (fyi).

Why not start now? At 30, most of your life still lies ahead of you.


How is the faculty recruitment process in the UK? I have been invited for the interview for a Lecturer position in the UK. I want to prepare all the necessary documents in advance. How is the HR process? What documents should I give to the HR department for signing the contract?

For example, is the original copy of my PhD is enough or I must get a certified copy (as some countries need). Any official letter from my previous employer is required?

The recruitment process is essentially 3 stages: pre-interview, interview, hiring. The HR department is almost exclusively concerned about your legal right to work in the UK. I have never heard of a case where HR overruled a school/department about a candidate meeting specific eligibility requirements. With that in mind, at the pre-interview stage, HR takes your word on your ability to legally work in the UK. At the interview stage, HR (or a representative of HR) will collect whatever documentation is required to establish your eligibility (e.g., passport or visa). They do this because legally they must see the original documentation. At the hiring point, they might ask for copies of your credentials. As there is no legal requirement for them to see originals they can do this however they want.

I am a US citizen and when I was hired in the UK, they took a photocopy of my passport during my interview. There was some emailing of copies of my credentials after the offer was made but before the contract was offered. As I mentioned in this answer I do not have a copy of my diploma. On my first day of work, they asked for a copy of my diploma. I told them it was on a container ship and would be here in 8-12 weeks, but I could show them my transcript. They were fine with that.


What to do when two months after submitting a major revision, its status is still "Editor Assigned"? I have submitted a paper to a journal, and received the editors decision (Major Revision). One reviewer suggested minor corrections and one reviewer suggested major corrections. I then resubmitted the paper a month later.

However, two months after submitting the revisions, the status of the submission is still "Editor Assigned".
I sent two emails to the "handling editor" asking if there is any problem with my paper but no reply.

What does it mean for a submitted revision to have a status "Editor Assigned"?
What should you do if that status has not changed two months after submitting a revision?

It's impossible to know what "Editor Assigned" means without knowing the particulars of the journal's system.  I'll presume this is different than what you saw during the prior round of review, however, and it would in fact be unusual for a paper to be stuck with an editor for two months without going out for review.

If you've emailed the handling editor a couple of times at reasonable intervals and gotten not response, then the next step would be to send a polite query to the next level up, which would typically be the chief editors of the journal.  If you get no response there as well, then you've basically got two choices: wait it out some more, or withdraw and submit elsewhere.


Student put my name in the acknowledgement section despite the fact I have never talked to him A high school fresh graduate was applying to undergraduate schools in the united states. He is a friend of a family acquaintance. Despite the fact that I did not even know his name, I was surprised when the family acquaintance asked me to write a letter of recommendation for him and for his friend. I do not know them at the slightest level. It seems that they were working on a research project, which looks completely silly to me (paranormal research related to the secrets of the pyramids, I did not bother to look carefully). I refused the requests to write the letter of recommendation. In the letter that the student sent me for me to submit, he says I worked with him on various things and I think that he is a genius. This was completely dishonest.
Now, I discovered that the student posted the said project on pyramid secrets (I think it is related to non-sensical theories on generating power from triangular structures) on a website, called academia.edu. In the acknowledgement section, he repeated the same claims that I worked with him on the project. I actually have never talked with him before. Now, I am a graduate student in science. This has been incredibly annoying to me. I wonder what is the best way to proceed. I have sent that person a message on academia.edu but he did not respond. I do not know how to contact him. I tried looking for a way to contact academia.edu to report this dishonest behaviour, but I do not know if there is a way to contact them. Any suggestions will be helpful.

Move on. There is little you can do about it: People can claim whatever they like on the internet and if they say that you worked with them, that's a nuisance but there is little you can do about it (in most jurisdictions) as long as they do so on websites that do not have strong ethics. academia.edu is not one of those websites with strong ethics.
Continue to do good work and build a reputation for yourself through your own publications. That's what you should focus on. The likelihood that anyone will find the pyramids publication is pretty small, and in the worst case if someone asks you about it, you can always explain the story (or just say that that must be someone else with the same name as you).


How to make a great faculty interview presentation? I have a faculty job interview coming up in a few months.
I am trying to prepare the presentation that includes my past (PhD and postdoc) research and future research. I am looking for some sample presentations or guides and tips online , so far could not find any. I would be grateful if anybody could point to me some good faculty interview presentations and guides or tips that could help me crack the interview.

Another question is: I have been a postdoc only for five months, therefore my postdoc research is very limited and major focus is on PhD research, will this affect the interview negatively?

You might find this guide useful: https://tomprof.stanford.edu/posting/1085

The key organizing questions are as follows:
• What problem have I worked on?
• Why would anyone work on this problem?
• What is significant about what I have done?
• How has my work made progress on the problem?

Here's a sample structure for a 45-minute research job talk:

Content * Time * Target Audience * Detail Level / Purpose

Background * 15 * Everyone present * Your parents would understand it

Your approach * 10 * People in related fields * Show you know the field

Your results * 10 * People who work in your field * Show that you are the world expert on something

Summary * 10 * Everyone in the room * Relate your results to the big picture

I found this structure particularly useful because it's easy to lose sight of how specialized one's work is. You need to make the talk relatable, and to speak to a broader audience than, for example, a conference presentation or a journal article. Even though these faculty might be in the same discipline and have phds, there is every chance they don't follow your subfield. Only part of your talk needs to demonstrate the cutting edge aspects of your research. Most of it should be broader.

Of course, your mileage may vary, but I found this advice convincing (and it worked for me!)