Just realized I may have accidentally plagiarized some of my bachelor's thesis I had been reading a news article recently about some politicians who had been accused of plagiarizing their master's or PhD theses, and I noticed something that really frightened me.

With some of them, what they did was copy, near-verbatim, passages from other articles or books which had citations in them, and they cited those same citations in the footnotes, without citing the secondary source. FWIW, those officials did so in humanities, law, and/or international relations. In contrast, my thesis was in a STEM field.

I was unaware that this is considered plagiarism, and realized that I had done something similar in my bachelor's honors thesis. I had looked at the thesis of a former student in the lab to get an idea of how a thesis was written. His work was closely related to mine, and as I was short on time, I ended up writing an introductory and methods section that were most likely, in some sections, extremely similar in wording and style. For the introduction, I tried to paraphrase what he wrote and cite the same sources he did (I did check to see if the sources were accurate) on background information relevant to both of our projects, but I'm sure that a side-by-side look would spot the similarity, as the sections were mostly definitions and descriptions of things we work with.

For the methods, as I had used some of the exact same protocols and procedures that he did, I just wrote down what I did but the wording most likely ended up being extremely similar to his, enough to notice, with no citation given for that part because the protocol was just given to me orally by the grad student when I was starting out. I thought this wasn't an issue because the methods section is difficult to phrase in different words if the experimental protocol was the same. I passed the defense and the thesis was approved - my PI didn't notice any similarities.

The parts of the thesis where I branched off in a different direction than that student I wrote without the aid of the previous thesis, and I cited sources as appropriate and reported my own work.

My former PI stores hard copies of his students' theses on a shelf in his lab, and there is another hard copy in the university library, but there are no electronic copies available. I don't have the thesis of that former student with me. What I'm terrified of is that a future undergrad in the same lab might use my and that person's thesis as guides to writing their thesis, notice the similarities, report me to my former PI and/or the honor council, and get my degree revoked for plagiarism. It's been a year since graduation and I'm about to head into grad school.

Do you think I am right to worry? If so, what should I do?

This is an appropriate thing to be concerned about and want to rectify; you don't need to fear dire consequences, especially if you take steps to address it. There are different kinds of plagiarism, and also different levels of awareness of what one is doing. Turnitin has an interesting diagram with catchy titles to distinguish them; yours sounds like a mix of "hybrid," "recycle," "aggregator," and "retweet." Probably the hardest overall concept to understand--and one that may not be fully comprehended by many undergraduates--is that when a key source shows you the way to other sources, you need to be careful that your paper isn't entirely dependent on that key source for its content and/or structure. You should also make sure to acknowledge if a quotation in your paper from a third source is there by way of that key source.
I tend to agree with Anonymous Mathematician's answer to a similar-ish question about plagiarism in a doctoral thesis. In particular, identifying the problem and issuing some sort of errata or revision, prior to anyone else coming across it, is likely your best path. Making a mistake as an undergraduate, and recognizing it and working to rectify it, is unlikely to pose problems for you if it later comes to light. (This is largely the tenor of the answers to a question by an undergrad about publishing in a journal, realizing later that the work contained cited but unquoted direct quotations.)
That said, it would be wise to seek counsel from an ombudsperson at your undergraduate school and your graduate school, as well as your undergrad advisor and your new advisor. You don't want anyone to be surprised by anything and jump to the wrong conclusions. Exactly how to handle the process of corrections might be delicate, but it is certainly the right path to take. The worst case scenario would be if you confessed this to your undergraduate institution to address it, and they were required to report this to your graduate school, which only read the words "academic integrity issue" and rescinded your admission. With proper communication and feeling things out with ombudspeople at both institutions (confidential advisors who can help you navigate the system), you should be able to avoid such a misunderstanding.
Minimally, you should probably clearly and concisely acknowledge your reliance on the other thesis, perhaps as an erratum sheet you could send to your undergrad advisor to stick into a copy of your thesis. It might say something like:

Much of the literature review and methods sections rely on the work of Prior Student's thesis, and I would like to properly acknowledge that debt.
I found sources A, B, C... (discussed on literature review pages X-X, Y-Y, and Z-Z, respectively) through Prior Student's work.
Prior student did similar experiments on __, and I relied on their phrasing for much of the content on pages X-X.

In another approach, you could produce a revised version that somehow does not rely on the previous student's work, and mention in a note that you produced the revision because you realized that you had inappropriately relied too closely on the other student's work. (For instance, find several more papers, read them and reread the sources you had before, and write a new literature review.) However, if you expend this effort without any guidance, you might not distinguish your new work enough, and/or you might be moving toward a different resolution than your advisor and undergraduate institution would find acceptable.
Good luck!


Difference between Visiting Lecturer and Lecturer? May you please tell me what is the difference between

  Visiting Lecturer

and

  Lecturer

Can Visiting Lecturer be considered an affiliation or academic staff, for Ph.D holders?

It surely depends on the circumstances.

Perhaps in some cases a "Visiting Lecturer" is someone not normally on the staff, who comes for one term or one year and serves as a Lecturer.  After that, going back to their usual job.

Whereas a "Lecturer" is a regular member of the staff.


Is it worth delving deep outside my field to revise a paper? I have a paper that got lost in the editorial pipeline for about a year due to the second reviewer dropping out and not telling anyone.  During that year, I didn't revisit the paper much; it was a short, cute project that I whipped up quickly and didn't have big connections with my main body of work.

Recently, it got accepted with what the reviewer calls minor revisions.  The revisions do not seem minor to me, however, as they would require in-depth knowledge outside my main field; furthermore, some of the questions the reviewer poses would spawn projects by themselves.

The pre-print has already been cited several times, so I know the core idea has utility and appeal in the larger community.  It has also been relatively well received when presented at conferences.  It is of course in my best interests to get the paper officially published, but is it worth delving deep outside my field to appease this reviewer?

For cultural context, let's say I do numerical methods for nonlinear PDEs, and the revisions would require a dive into machine learning literature.  Also, I'm an early-career researcher.

Do you have a colleague or someone else you can ask who is an expert in the field you need? It is possible that with expertise in the area the reviews are very minor and a one hour talk with the right person will enable you to do whatever the reviewer suggested. Even if some of the reviewers ideas do take a lot of work this should enable you to satisfy some of the reviewers requests and come up with a reason to not do the others. Finally, if some of the questions create new interesting projects this might be worth going into, especially with a new collaborateur.


Where to find details on Bachelor degrees majoring in IT? I have been asked to design a major in IT (Information Technology).
I am not based in US, and I didn't graduate in US. So, I am not familiar with US graduation system. However, I have been asked to use US bachelors as examples.

So, it would help me to have links to pages where I can see detailed descriptions of the IT majors, such as lists of mandatory courses, and syllabi.
So far, I was only able to find general descriptions of the IT majors offered in some US Universities and Colleges.

I am particularly interested in Liberal Arts Colleges.

I don't think you'll find this in one centralized place.  You'll need to:

Identify some specific colleges whose programs interest you.  As a way to get started, there are various publications that create rankings of programs in different subjects.  One prominent source is US News and World Report.  But keep in mind that rankings are inherently subjective and that other people may disagree about which schools should be emulated.
Go to each institution's website and look for their catalog.  This is a large document that lists all the degrees and majors offered by the school, and the specific courses that one has to take for each one.  It will also explain general graduation requirements that may not be specific to a particular major.  (US schools typically have general education requirements, that every student must take a substantial number of courses in a variety of different subjects, which may be unrelated to their major.)

Be warned that the requirements can be rather complex, with many different options, elective courses, etc, and may take you some work to sort through.  There is a standard joke that the most difficult requirement for graduation is to figure out the requirements for graduation.

The catalog will also contain a short course description of the topics studied in each course.
Find syllabi manually; they are not usually available in one centralized place for a given institution.  Usually the instructor of a given course in a given term has the authority to write the syllabus, explaining what assignments and exams will be given, what books or readings will be required, how grades will be determined, etc.  They can also vary the topics from the official course description, within reason.  The syllabus is usually posted on a website for the course, to which students are given the URL, but you may have trouble finding this for a number of reasons:

Course websites may not be organized or centrally indexed in any particular way.
You may not know when the course was last taught, or the name of the instructor who taught it.  In some cases, it can happen that a course appears in the catalog, but is not actually taught anymore, or taught very infrequently.
Course websites may not be accessible by the public.  This is becoming more common as institutions migrate course websites into learning management systems, which are often set by default to require a student login to access.

You could also email the department chair or secretary and ask if they have a collection of recent syllabi that they could send you.  Keep in mind that responding to such a request would be a very low priority task for them.


Is there any anonymous website that authors can rate journal submission experience? Yet again one of my papers is just stuck in limbo at a journal for over 6 months now. One referee has seemingly returned his review and the second referee is playing truant.

I knew this after a polite email to the administrative secretary 3 months after submission. She promised to send an email to nudge the late referee.

Now, after 6 months, I write to the editor in chief to get to know what is going on and he has not bothered to reply for over 2 weeks now.

When I review for this same journal, all of my reviews are returned in time. I setup a google calender reminder 2 weeks prior to my the deadline that I accept and then push everything aside for those 2 weeks to turn in a high quality report. I am going to politely decline any more invitations to review from this journal. The journal is prestigious but there are other less prestigious journals that offer faster review times. At some point in time, the prestige of the journal has to make way for faster dissemination of important results.

I also suspect that the journal is clubby. I have seen rotten articles written by folks in "elite" universities while I have had rejections from that journal even though I proved more theoretical results on a problem (I am an operations researcher) that was published in the same journal. I suspect the journal worries about the authors' zipcode. I published this article in a different journal eventually.

Is there any website where one can anonymously record such experiences for various journals? Once the website gains sufficient traffic, the editorial board of the journals would hopefully be forced to take notice and set right some of the rotten processes.

Frustrated_researcher.

SciRev comes to mind – is this the sort of thing you're looking for?


Defining book co-author Must a co-author of a book have written literally half? Or can her role refer to significant contributions that actually made the book publishable, such as extensive rewriting and editing, knowledge about publishing, navigating manuscript through the publishing process, writing queries, etc., etc. The book, though very steeped in science, is written for the general public. I am the author of many books and the author approached me to navigate her through this process. She is now exploring whether I shouldn't be co-author because of my contributions. I know this is common in scientific journals, but can't find answer re books. Thank you!

A co-author is

  An author who collaborates with another to write something.

There is nothing in the definition that states that each author must have written literally half of the book. Obviously, if there are more than two co-authors (perhaps more common for articles, your question seems to indicate that you realize this), they cannot all have written exactly half of the book, and it is rather unlikely that each will have written exactly one-third or one-fourth or...

In your situation, if the original/first author offers you co-authorship, accepting is a judgment call on your part. You have authored many books; is this one worthy of being added to your list? On the other hand, if you are not offered co-authorship, but will be acknowledged otherwise for your contribution, it is probably best to accept this with good grace. Next time--assuming that you might collaborate again--be sure to clarify potential authorship roles before beginning the actual work.


How can a master thesis in STEM approach the level of a doctoral thesis? Can someone shed some light on the subtle difference between a master thesis and a doctoral thesis so that a master student can arrange his or her research strategy geared to produce work at near the level doctoral thesis assuming that time is not a factor.

Note: I come from an engineering background so research encompasses both theoretical work (derivation of equations, modeling) and experiments (software analysis, characterization of physical devices)

Please also feel free to comment on the feasibility of actually producing PhD level dissertation at the master level

Requirements vary widely from program to program and from institution to institution.

Some programs require a doctoral candidate to publish in a peer-reviewed journal (probably most programs would take issue if you didn't publish or present anything). Most programs (or committees) wouldn't let you graduate with a PhD unless you published at least once, and would expect at least twice.

My general hunch is that a doctoral dissertation (rarely called a "doctoral thesis") is generally several times longer. While a masters thesis might be 20-50 pages, dissertations are routinely 80-150 pages...and sometimes way more (this varies widely by discipline, by the academic culture of your institution, and by your committee). Some programs allow the doctoral candidate to use three publications, combined into a single manuscript, as his or her dissertation.

Lastly, the doctoral degree is intended to show that the recipient can perform original research. Masters degrees have a wide variety of understandings or intents, from "the recipient passed our comprehensive exams", to "the recipient performed an original research project and published it".

Whatever you've done for your masters thesis, focus on research for your PhD. Learn what interesting questions are in your field and choose one to focus on. Read the background literature to learn how others have approached the problem. Work with your advisor and committee to figure out how you can contribute something new and useful to the field, and then do it. Publish your findings in a journal; present your results and network with peers at conferences. Finally, write it all up in your dissertation, defend it, and graduate. That sums up getting a PhD. The rest are details.

You may find this page useful.


How to build relationships with colleagues as new faculty member? I have just started a new job
as an assistant professor in a tenure-track position.

What are the most important things that I can do
to build good working and social relationships with my colleagues?
Related to the above question,
what are the tasks that require faculty members to work together,
and how do I work well as a member of a team in such settings?

Background
I felt that I did not do a good job
in developing relationships with other students during my PhD years.
I observed that other students seemed to go for lunch/coffee,
hang out together, go out to a bar or for a movie,
but somehow I did not participate in such social activities.
I hope that I do not make the same mistakes
as I start my new job as a new faculty member.

Clarification
in response to the question
How do we have to imagine that you did not participate in such social activities?

I did take part in some department social events,
e.g. a student retreat, student BBQs,
the intermural soccer team, open houses for prospective PhD students, etc.
I didn't join people for coffee
because it is not a habit for me to drink coffee.
Perhaps I should have joined not for the coffee but for the company.
As the stress oh PhD piled up I became more insular
because it takes energy for me to socialize with others
and I wanted to conserve energy.
Now that I look back,
I feel that if I had spent a little more time with other people,
I could find a happy medium where I am neither
too exhausted being with other people (too much social interaction)
nor feeling lonely (too little social interaction).

Solve the social things by being proactive. Go to your colleagues individually, after committee meetings, or during their office hours, introduce yourself as the new guy, and offer to buy them lunch or a coffee. If colleagues go to lunch after departmental meetings, politely see if you can tag along. The "somehow" in your question is indicative of someone who did not look for such opportunities or dodged invitations. Lunch is probably the easiest time for colleagues in a work setting to begin their socialization. Everyone eats and almost everyone like some company.

As best as I can tell, there are only a handful of things that bring faculty members together for forced work, e.g. departmental committee meetings. That being said, departments have social and semi-social functions. Attend as many as you can. Volunteer to help with student move-in at the dorms. Volunteer to be a marshal and graduation ceremonies with other faculty. Find a hobby and check out the university club (exercise oriented ones like cycling, rowing, and running tend to be popular).

Solve this problem like it was your PhD. Set goals and be deliberate. Also, be friendly.


Do PIs ever get outside help when writing grant applications? PIs can have students assist with grant applications, but do they ever hire outside help?

I have heard of freelance grantwriters who work for non-profits outside of academia, does this ever happen inside academia? Do any types of universities or departments do this more often than others?

My interest is in biology research, but answers that extend into other fields may be helpful for other people who come across this question.

(A similar question)

The research company where I work is organized much like a soft-money university, in that we are largely organized around PIs who fund themselves and the others working on their research by writing proposals to external funding agencies.

One of the ways in which things are different, however, is that the PIs have a lot of help to draw on in writing proposals.  It's not "freelancers," because we're generally drawing on others at the company, but it's still help from outside the research group and can be extremely valuable.  In particular:

Our library staff can prepare templates and proposal checklists to make it easy to comply with formatting requirements and to ensure that the proposal writers address all of the points needed for the proposal.
We run proposals through two stages of review by people not involved in the proposal: the first is early at the "story-board" stage to make sure the narrative is coherent, the second is a week or two before submission to make sure the final proposal is really good.
Some of the company publicity folks can also be drawn upon to make nice proposal art
We used to have a professional copyeditor on staff, though I don't believe that we do any more.

These sorts of things can help a lot in producing a nice proposal, and I wish my university collaborators did this sort of thing more often themselves.  When collaborating, we often offer to organize the review stages, for example, because they really help; many university PIs, however, do "last minute" scheduling that makes it difficult to use these processes.

There is nothing to prevent a university researcher from using these sorts of resources, whether internal or external---at many universities, for example, there is a Writing Center that would likely be quite happy to help with copy-editing and the non-technical aspects of review.  Likewise, I have known professors who would review one another's proposals before they sent them out, in a less formal version of our review process.

It just takes some organization and pre-planning to do these sorts of things... and for many of us, that is lacking without an external framework that helps to chivvy us towards remembering.


Former supervisor authorship I used available data from my PhD study database in a new independent post doc study.
In this study, except for the raw data available, every other aspects are new (study design, hypotheses, analyses, and discussion). In sum, the source of data (sample and instruments) for this study was the same database I created during my PhD. The two studies are different, but because I used data from the PhD database, should I give authorship of this new study to my former thesis supervisor? Would this be a ghost/gift authorship, or a necessary action?

I don't think this case warrants authorship. Your advisor did nothing to contribute to the new work, helping you with a prior paper says nothing about future papers.

You should absolutely cite your thesis (or whatever paper used this dataset) in your new work, and make sure that the dataset is not protected in some way (say, if it's a clinical dataset that is restricted in use via an IRB you might not be able to use it).


How much money can an electrical engineering professor earn from grants in the US? For US universities, I believe electrical engineering professors earn money in two ways:

salary from the university, normally $70k to start
grants from researching projects involving different companies or other

How much money can an electrical engineering professor earn from grants normally?

Professors typically do not supplement their salary with grants with one very large exception. The grant money can allow them to trade some number of required courses for research time.

The big exception to this is that the typical appointment for a university professor in the US is for 9 months. If the professor wants to teach some summer courses, they can earn 3 more months of their salary for doing that, or they can get grants to fill in that time. The National Science Foundation limits US researchers who are professors to 2 months of summer time funding, though, so to get 12 full months of compensation, a professor will need income from some other source (summer teaching, another agency's grants, industrial grants, consulting, etc).

So, that being said, typically professors cannot increase their salary rate. They can only use it to fill in the months that the university does not usually pay them for. Finally, most universities give the option for their professors to take the 9 months of salary over 12 months of payments, so filling in those 3 months may look like a monthly raise from the perspective of their bank statements.


Roadmap and possible pitfalls for a first-time software author to publish a paper on a Python package? I'm not a software developer by trade but I am in the process of writing a Python package which models an experimental apparatus and physical process and generates simulated data. Results can be used to compare to measure data and extract physical parameters, or to predict how an apparatus will perform in order to modify or optimize it.

I'm aware of Github and Python Package Index and will make the software available through Github and hopefully PyPI though the latter may be a challenge for a first time package author.

I will then want to submit a paper for publication in an appropriate journal explaining the details (math and physics) of how the calculation works and demonstrate its agreement with measured data which would then refer to the software's source page(s).

Question: What kind of roadmap should I prepare for myself in order to do this smoothly and efficiently, and what are some likely pitfalls someone publishing software-papers for the first time may face?

I should note that there are one or two legacy packages that perform a somewhat similar set of functions, but they are roughly a decade old or more and available as compiled .exe files rather than open-source packages. I'm not using these or reverse-engineering them, but there will none-the-less be some overlapping in function.

I published a paper on a Python package myself.

Finding a journal

My main recommendation is to start looking for a journal now, even before you start writing.
Unless journals in your particular subfield of choice is very open to software papers, there are likely only a few journals you can choose from and those may have special requirements.
These requirements may not be obvious and if you do not fulfil them on your first submission, you may not get a second chance, which in turn is particularly bad if alternative journals are scarce.
Depending on the requirements, you may need to write your paper completely differently.

I would proceed as follows:

Find a journal whose target audience are potential users of your software.
Does the journal clearly state that it accepts software papers?
If yes, do they clearly state the requirements for acceptance?
Are there any precedents of software papers in the journal?
If yes, is any of them comparable to what you are going to do?
Comparable here less refers to what the software does, but on how it is “sold” and what the paper does beyond software.
For example, it could be that a software paper only got accepted through featuring new algorithms and yours may be rejected because it doesn’t.
When in doubt, contact the journal briefly outlining what your paper would contain and ask them whether they would consider publishing a paper of this kind.

In my case, the journal had a clearly stated policy for software papers and there was an existing paper for a competing software.
Still, I encountered problems with one of the reviewers recommending to reject the paper on account of being a technical manual.

Consult field experts

Going by your question, you may not belong to the typical target audience of your software.
If that is the case, try to solicit assistance from somebody in the target audience (if you do not have one at hand anyway), as to what they consider important in your kind of software or what they think about features of your software.
You do not want to focus on a part of your software that the majority of your target audience doesn’t care about.

Also, by all means let somebody from the field who has not used your software review your manuscript before you submit.
(There is even less need to worry about plagiarism here since you probably already published your software it this point.)

Writing process

Getting inspiration

There are many variants of software papers.
I have seen some without any code (despite the software being a code library) and those with a lot.
If the previous did not yield any clear recommendation in this respect, look for well-received software papers and let them inspire you.
(Beware that a crappy software paper may be well cited because the software is popular despite the paper.)

Examples

Whether with code or not, you are likely to feature some examples.
These usually only belong in one of the following categories:

Didactic examples that demonstrate how your software works.
I found it very helpful to choose these with extreme care.

For example, for me it was pretty clear that I needed five didactic examples that could not possibly be combined, but each of which could be chosen from a wide selection of use cases.
I optimised some of these cases to be as simple as possible.
I chose the remaining ones to exemplify other things as a side effect, so I would not need separate examples for these.
(On the other hand, you do not want to leave the impression that everything is a special case requiring tricks.)

Do not blindly take the examples from your documentation, because these are aiming at readers who are familiar with Python, have your software installed, and can directly test things.
Also, your target audience in the journal is different.
For example, it also includes professors who have last programmed twenty years ago in Fortran, but who may make some supervisee use your software.
Importantly, the reviewers belong in this category.
For instance, in my paper I took care not to use any advanced, non self-explaining features of Python in my examples, unless absolutely necessary (and Python is rather benign in this respect).
Impressing examples that demonstrate that your software is capable of handling particularly difficult cases, e.g., ones that no software before could handle or that are considerably better in your software.
It may also be cases that show that your software can actually further science by doing facilitating novel results.
It strongly depends on your software and the journal whether you need this, to what extent, and what to optimise for.
Either way, again this example should be carefully chosen.
If you show code in your paper, you also want to make sure that the example is not overly long.

Selling your software

Make it very clear why people should use your software as opposed to an existing one or doing everything by hand.
Do not forget that usability may be a relevant feature.

This is also crucial for the review process: You have to convince the reviewers and journal that your software is something the readers have to read about.
If the journal does not require a significance statement upon submission, consider to volunteer one anyway.


Cite a book in general and then a chapter in particular The question is in the context of a paper and a thesis in the area of computational science, computer science and chemistry. I manage my references with Mendeley, and import them into a LaTeX file using Bibtex.

In the introduction, I cite a book about the general approach used in that research project. Later on, in a section about methods and computer implementation, I'd like to refer to the specific chapter in that book from where some algorithms were taken. (Twice for two different chapters actually.)

What's the correct way to cite that book in general and then the chapter in particular?

(I also asked this question here, but it was recommended that I better ask in this community.)

As Najib Idrissi commented, I have also similar approach in my field of Computer Science.

In one of my paper, I had to cite the book twice in the following way.

"The application domains have expanded in various horizons considering the applicability of the this approach and has led the community to look for problems in .... \cite{FullBook}. One of the prinicipal advantage of using such an approach lies in its computational complexity which has been found to be O(n^2).\cite[Chapter 2, Proof:3.2]{Book}"


Is there a standard ethical codex for publishing of research? I am asking about some kind of standard well known and complete ethical codex with versions of strictness (a list of rules comparable to the creative commons licenses in the field of software/art publishing).
It seems to me that every journal has its own ethical codex stated, although all of the codexes seem to be almost the same (with minor differences). It seems a little bit silly to me.
I would like to know about something usable like:

to tell my team: "all publishing should be done according to the ethical codex XY v1.x", or
I would like to state in my hypothetical journal: "the journal complies with the ethical codex XY v2.x"

What am I missing? Where I can find it? Does some open ethical codex standard exist?  If not, why not?

The Committee on Publication Ethics (https://publicationethics.org/) "is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to define best practice in the ethics of scholarly publishing and to assist editors, publishers, etc. to achieve this."
They have many documents; you can probably start with their core practices.  These cover:

Allegations of misconduct
Authorship and contributorship
Complaints and appeals
Conflicts of interest / Competing interests
Data and reproducibility
Ethical oversight
Intellectual property
Journal management
Peer review processes
Post-publication discussions and corrections

(Note that this focuses on publication ethics.  If you want research ethics then that would be a separate question.)


How to fill a review form I am preparing to send a review report for the International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing, I wrote all the comments about the paper in Word Document when I log in to my account to attach the file, In the review form there is a called comments to the author, should I rewrite the comments located in the Word Document or what?

is the file attached will be visible to the authors?

The review submission page is more or less similar for many different platforms such as EditorialManager, EES (EVISE), ManuscriptCentral etc.

You would find at least the following three sections after you log into the page:

Rating of the manuscript
Comments to the authors
Comments to the editor

1. Rating of the manuscript

In this section, you will find pointwise portions of the assessment of the manuscript in terms of novelty, originality, writing style etc. which are related to the research work. You may probably asked to enter the rating on a scale of 1-5 or 1-10 (based on how the interface has been designed)

2. Comments to the authors

This is the comment section where you are either allowed to attach a file or enter your comments in the text area provided there. You must not be offensive in your comments. It is better to be slightly descriptive and positive in review comments which would help the authors to improve their research or the manuscript.

3. Comments to the editor

This section is confidential (mostly). Here, if you want to share something privately with the editor only, then you can. For example, if you think that the research is plagiarized or something like that. Or, sometimes, you can also praise a paper, if it worth it. This section would make the editor's task easy at least to some extent.


Are programmers usually included as co-authors in psychology? I work as a programmer supporting a psychology lab.

Most of my work is translating some paper-based or physical assessment into a computer-based equivalent or I create programs for novel assessments along with associated databases and support programs for data retrieval and basic cleaning.

Recently, a colleague included me as a co-author on a paper.

Are they are being overly nice or should I be a co-author on other papers?

In general, only researchers are included as authors. In some cases, the person doing the programming makes a critical intellectual contribution and becomes a researcher. In Psychology, specialist help is often brought in for programming, statistics, modelling, animal care, data acquisition, drug administration, and subject treatment. These support staff are often just turning a "crank". The crank is not necessarily easy to turn and the project would not be completed without it being turned, but turning the crank is not research.

Support staff tend to be mentioned in the acknowledgements. Programmers tend to get the short end of the stick in that they get acknowledge only the first time the software is used while other support staff get mention on every paper they are involved with. Support staff only become authors if they do something novel (for example, develop novel testing software). In these cases, they would be an author on the paper (often a methods paper) describing that novel contribution.


Do EPSRC-like Centres for Doctoral Training exist outside the UK? I'm looking into starting a doctorate next Autumn and am currently exploring my options. I really like the program style of EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training which started sprouting around British Universities a couple of years ago. I'm wondering if any other places in Europe (or outside) have programmes which a similar in structure.

Here's some key qualities of such a Centre:

the course is a four-year studentship
first year consists of taught electives and small project. It gives one the time to find their footing in an institution and the field and decide on the subject of their further research that would suit them the most.
years 2-4 are when the actual research + thesis writing happens
all throughout, the course is complemented by courses in general transferable skills (business, management, entrepreneurship, communication, public speaking etc.)

I know American Universities tend to have their grad programmes start with a bunch of requirements in taught courses followed by the actual research. Do I have any alternatives?

If it helps at all the field I'm interested in is robotics and their applications in environmental sciences / preservation.

That's very country and scientific domain specific and based on policy of government which may change every election cycle.

e.g. in UK the established UKRI encapsulates research councils STFC,EPSRC,MRC, ... and fulfils UK specific policy.
AFAIK in Germany there are 4 major non-university institutions doing research and PhD training - Max Planck Institute, Leibnitz Institute, Fraunhofer Institute, Helmholtz centres and many others - some of them multidisciplinary.
As I'm currently in Czechia (Czech Rep.) there is Academy of Sciences and it's centres some of them connected to relevant universities with doctoral training program. But most are based on individual labs and mostly individual training with courses available in multiple institutions.

Based on my personal experience in UK, in Czechia and little in Germany I cannot generalize. Thus you should do your own research in your domain of interest, find rather individual lab which may fit your scientific domain in a country you'd like to study.


Should I contact potential recommendation letter writers if I only have vague plans about applying for a PhD? I might, or might not, need letters of recommendation for a PhD application in the future. My plans are vague, I am just finishing my master's and planning to work for a while before deciding.

There are just a few people who could write a letter about me that doesn't just say "they did well in class". I would like to keep the option of asking them for one, even after being out of academia for a year or two (still doing research as part of my job).

I would also like to know how strongly they would be willing to recommend me. I worked with them on only one project. Even though they gave me very good feedback, I imagine they might not remember me well enough to write a good letter if I ask them after a long time. We work in somewhat related, but very different, sub-fields of computer science.

Should I contact them now, without having a clear plan in mind, and ask if they would be willing to recommend me in the future? Is it just a waste of their time if I don't yet have anything concrete to ask for, or any precise plans or institutions to mention?

This is easier if you can have a face to face meeting. Tell them you are considering it and ask for their advice, and especially about your likely success. If they seem supportive, you can say that you aren't quite ready but would probably want a letter from them in the future.

For a supportive prof they would possibly make a few notes to themselves about what to say before they forget your face and accomplishments. Professors see a lot of people and some things start to run together after a while. But after the heads-up they are, perhaps, more prepared to write a supportive letter.

But it is much less effective if you have to do this by email or such.

And if they seem discouraging, then there is probably no need to ask, thought they may still have valuable advice about how to prepare yourself.

I've had to ask students, looking for recommendations, to remind me of a few of our previous interactions if it has been a few years since we last spoke.


Should I Wait for a Journal's Decision Before Revising Authorship? I have submitted a paper to one of Elseveir Journal, My senior asked me to put him as a corresponding author but I put myself as a corresponding author assuming it is possible to change corresponding author. However, she asked me to request to journal editor immediately. I have sent a request as my senior suggested, I got response from editor like this...

"There is a 90% chance your paper will be rejected, i which case it doesn't matter, and a 10% chance you will be invited to submit a revision".

The journal impact factor 4.034 and their acceptance rate is 7%.

This is my first experience on submitting paper to any journal so I am afraid and wondering whether it is worth withdrawing paper and proceed for another journal.

You have been given the answer by the editor: That it doesn't matter yet.

Tell the other author of the paper that you asked, and the editor said to deal with it if/when you're asked to revise the paper.

Then move along with your life and work and wait for a reply. You absolutely shouldn't withdraw the paper for something like that when you've already been told how to handle it by the editor.


Potential PhD supervisor replied short but expressed interest, what to do next? I wrote a relatively long email to a potential supervisor and they answered quite short, saying that they are delighted to hear of my interest in the program and they would be happy to work with me. I do not know how generic this answer is, but can you tell me what would be the good next step? Should I ask them for a skype meeting?
Thanks!

Word of caution: my answer below is based on my experience in Canadian Universities and may not apply to other countries.
The way I interpret this response is: your profile is interesting and you are encouraged to list this professor as one of the potential advisors on your application.
If you want further information regarding the lab's research, it seems you will have to initiate this. Just keep in mind that at this point, the professor is likely getting a lot of enquiries. This is the likely reason for the short reply. Some professors may (at this stage) decline extended conversations and refer you to their lab web page, while others will gladly take the time to talk to you. I would send an email thanking this person for their reply, letting them know that you intend to list them as a potential supervisor (if that is indeed your intention), and asking them if they think it is appropriate at this stage to discuss your remaining questions over mail or via skype.


Wireless microphone system for giving lectures I'm asking this here as opposed to a more technical stack exchange as I'm looking for a ... well... less technical type of answer.

I'm fed up with being passed from pillar to post by my institution's A/V department when the microphone equipment in a lab breaks, and a fix that takes weeks to complete will affect my lectures (as it has done in the past). I'm consequently looking for a more permanent solution for this type of situation, one where I can take charge of my own lecturing environment and and provide some sort of recourse that doesn't involve shouting at the top of my lungs for a number of weeks.

Most of the traditional microphone systems are a complicated array of boxes and receivers. This strikes me as something straight out of the 80s and really antiquated (when we go around with small computers in our pockets, and bluetooth is a thing). It's also deeply impractical to set up, on the fly, multiple boxes that need careful calibration and separate power sources.

When I look up "bluetooth microhones" I get a whole heap of karaoke type devices. I don't know if these would work (it would be odd to receive a lecture on astrophysics that turned out to be autotuned), but even the karaoke mics that aren't covered in glitter don't look great for an academic environment.

What sort of route should I be going down? I'm in no way a technophobe, but I feel all at sea with talk about 3-Pin TQG connectors, bandwidths, stereo lines, SPL , etc.

I had the same problem.  To make me quit complaining, the department chair bought a RevoLabs USB wireless microphone.  I kept it in my office, plugged in to a USB charger wall wart, and took it to classes with me.

I'm still teaching a bit, even though I've retired, but the RevoLabs mic somehow "became lost" after I turned it in.  A new one is too pricey for me to buy at over $200, so I bought a "Fifine" USB wireless mic from Amazon.  It's neither as high quality nor as unobtrusive as the RevoLabs mic, but it's also $40 and works fine.

My use case is recording my lectures with PowerPoint; I then post a "narrated slides" video for students who missed the lecture.


For what reasons (if any) would a journal refuse to inform the reviewers about the final accept/reject decision? I have reviewed several papers for a particular journal in the field of computer science. This journal has the practice of not informing reviewers about the final decision. As an example, I previously suggested a major revision and after a couple of weeks I received the revised paper, then I suggested a minor revision and had radio silence since then (6-7 months ago), so I have no idea whether the paper was accepted, rejected or withdrawn.
To me, it seems like both the decision and the non-blinded, non-private parts of the correspondence should be shared. This seems reasonable given the effort I expended; further, it would be helpful for my future reviews to know whether my review was on par with the others (in terms of both the decision, and the comments). It seems like there is already software that would automate this process (this journal uses Open Journal System as its editorial management system).
Are there disadvantages I am overlooking? What are the arguments for not sharing this information with the reviewers?

One possible rationale would be a belief that the acceptance decision ought to be a confidential matter between the journal and the author, and the reviewers simply don't have a "need to know".
The argument "it is important feedback for the reviewer" isn't very strong, in my view.  Knowing the fate of the paper doesn't really give you much information about whether your review was helpful in reaching that decision, and certainly doesn't tell how you could have made it better.  Conversely, if the editor wants to give you feedback on your review, they can certainly do so without revealing the final decision.
By analogy, consider what happens when you write recommendation letters for people.  When they apply to a school or employer, the school doesn't tell you whether the applicant was accepted or not, because they consider it to be nobody's business except the applicants's (and privacy laws may back this up).  Of course this is a different situation in many ways, but I think the underlying principle is the same - having been part of a process doesn't, in and of itself, entitle you to information about the result which would otherwise be confidential.


Search for certain keywords in all articles which cite a given article I would like to search for certain keywords in all articles which cite a given article. Is this possible? For example using google scholar somehow?

I am new here. Please forgive me if this question does not fit to the site.

Yes, Google Scholar has the functionality that you are looking for.

First, find the article that you want other papers to cite on Google Scholar, then click on the Cited by link.

Now, click on the Search within citing articles box, and either type your keywords into the search field (you may need to enclose your keywords in "quotes") or do an Advanced Scholar search and type your keywords in the appropriate field(s) there.


Tool to generate feedback based on test results My mom is a tutor and she was hoping for some software to help her speed up her grading process. Currently, she has her students take a test and she needs to generate something for the student with what they need to work on.

For instance, the student takes a test and they get questions 3 and 4 wrong. Question 3 is on long division and question 4 is on exponents. Ideally, she would be able to put in what questions the student got wrong and get something in a presentable format she can email to the student and their parents:

  Areas to work on:

  Multiplying exponents
  Long division with numbers greater than 3 digits

Is there any software out there that can do something like this?

Thanks,

Eric

A possibility is to use a vlookup() in an Excel sheet.

Have a list with the q numbers and areas - every q number entered will return the area to a pre-set reporting area.

Put this together just for fun - you can edit and play as you wish:

Just enter the question numbers in cells E3:E12, leave un-needed ones blank and it sorts it out.


Difference between slides and poster presentation I am wondering that how explaining your work with a talk with slides differs from a poster presentation. Since I do not have any idea, I always explain my poster to the viewer just same way as I would have give a talk: starting from intro, methods, etc. Doing this it takes more time and I lack the time to explain it to more viewers.

So I want to know that whether the work shown on a poster and on slides should be same? And are there any good ideas to present your poster to more viewers?

In the biology-related fields I'm familiar with, poster presentations are generally to one or a few people who are expected to interact with you, while slide shows are for larger numbers who are expected to be relatively passive.  That means the biggest difference between a poster and slide presentation is that the former should be customized to the person you're talking to.  Some people may be new to the field, and for them you may just explain what the question you're asking is, and the overall big-picture answer you found.  The next person may be the person who defined the field, and for her you may simply point out that you used this particular variation of her technique rather than the original one she published in 1972.

The point being that it's typically a conversation, not a one-way speech.  You have to feel out what the person does and doesn't understand, and try to focus on those, while not wasting time on the parts they know.

You might open with "Would you like me to explain, or did you want to read the poster yourself?". Often that leads to something (a detailed technical question, or a general question about the topic) that will tell you what kind of level to begin with.  The key is to treat it like a dialog and to make sure you're responsive to the audience, even if it's body language rather than specific questions.


Can an article published in a non-peer reviewed venue later undergo peer review? As we all know, once a paper has been published in some form (whether or not in a peer-reviewed format), most journals will balk at the idea of publishing it again. Does this apply solely to publishing a work, or does this also apply to the entire idea of peer review?

If someone has already published a finding in a non-peer reviewed venue (e.g. popular magazine, trade paperback, newspaper, radio broadcast, etc.), and then later realizes that the findings would have been significant enough for a scientific publication, is there a process by which they can "go back" and get the peer review that they realize they should have gotten? E.g. a person could then claim:

  I published this in 2015 as an article in The New York Times, but in 2018 I paid Science $10,000 to peer review it and they gave me a piece of paper saying that it is 100% Genuine Science (TM) and would have been published by them had it not already been published elsewhere. For this reason, my article can be cited as a peer-reviewed paper (or "equivalency") and should count toward qualifying for faculty positions, even if Science did not actually physically publish it. Please cite me as "Columbia, R. (2015 Jan 12), Radical Deconstruction of Spline Reticulation in Eightspace with reference to Post-Modern Patriarchy, New York Times, Peer Reviewed Science Aug 6, 2018."

Is there a general procedure for handling such cases? Will a journal do this if you pay them a reasonable amount of money to cover expenses and profit? Are there non-publishing academic institutions that specialize in the service of peer reviewing existing publications and giving them their Stamp of Good Science Approval? Is this technically possible but extremely rare or nearly unheard-of?

I found this question : Can non-peer-reviewed work be recognized by the community? , but it seems to more be asking about getting non-peer reviewed results de-facto accepted by the scientific community over time rather than about how to get a formal one-and-done post-publication peer review.

In summary, I'm not asking whether or not a paper already published in a non-peer reviewed venue can later be published in a peer-reviewed journal. I'm asking whether or not a paper already published in a non-peer reviewed venue can later receive peer review and be "upgraded" in status to a "real" academic publication without needing to be republished. Whether or not any particular non-peer reviewed publication meets, or even has a remote chance of meeting, the standards of peer review is out of scope.

I haven't heard of this happening, but I suspect what would happen in your example is that the author would write an "extended" version of the article, perhaps including a few additional results or more details.  They could submit it to Science or wherever, which would review it like any other paper.  It's not duplicate publication because it's a different paper, and Science would likely still consider it "novel" because it hasn't been published in an academic journal.

They should certainly inform Science of the previous publication, but I don't think it'd be a barrier to republication if the paper really was good, and if the additional content was substantial.

In practice, it'd be necessary to rewrite the paper anyway, because the audiences and the expectations of the outlets would be completely different.  The New York Times wouldn't want a paper full of technical details, and Science would insist on having the technical details.

If there were copyright issues (e.g. the Times held the copyright and wouldn't give permission to publish an adapted version in Science), then the author could rewrite the text of the paper.  This makes it a different work for copyright purposes even if they both describe the same results.

I've never heard of any system of "certifying" a previously published article as peer reviewed, like you suggest.  However, there is the somewhat related concept of an overlay journal, in which the journal effectively "certifies" a preprint.  The journal provides the peer review, while arXiv provides the hosting.


Why aren't there submission fees for submitting papers to conferences? Current scenario (A):

Submit a paper for free. No matter the quality of the paper, submit anyway. What have you to lose?
If your work is accepted, pay to actually confirm the acceptance of your work, and present it to the world.

Proposed scenario (B):

Submission fees: Anyone who wants to submit to a conference pays a certain amount. $200, say. Hefty enough to discourage 'spam' submissions.
If your work is accepted, you present without having to pay any extra registration fees.

I don't understand why (B) isn't obvious, from a quality control point of view, as well as a more obvious way of funding conferences. Only work that an author knows (thinks, really) is worthy of acceptance need submit, please.

There is already a strong incentive not to submit a paper that you know has very little chance of acceptance. While a paper is under review for one conference, it may not be submitted to another (according to the standard policies in fields where conference papers are "real" publications). If you submit a paper that is nowhere near ready, you hurt yourself: you block yourself from submitting a more complete version of it, that has a good chance of getting accepted somewhere else, for the entire review period.

Furthermore, many conferences end up rejecting lots of very good papers, due to limited space. What is the rationale for collecting fees from those authors? Authors would absolutely take their papers elsewhere, rather than risk paying hundreds of dollars to get a reasonably good paper rejected.

Finally: authors from less wealthy countries are already "priced out" of conferences to some degree (and have to publish mainly in journals), because of the cost of conference attendance (travel, registration fees). This would certainly make the disparity worse.


Device for writing a lecture with a stylus for video lecture recording I would like to start recording mathematics lectures for students to watch on their own time.
I need to find a device that allows me to write out the lecture with a stylus and import it to a computer.
I suppose I could buy an iPad or something close to it.  But, that would be a bit of money.  I am looking at a Wacom Bamboo Splash.  The problem here is that the writing area seems very small (the class is a math class).

What is a good device for writing out lectures to a computer?
Is there a device that makes this work best and is not hundreds of dollars?

If your department has a document camera, especially a newer model, then you could use that. I currently use a document camera for my regular lectures. I write on the paper under the camera, the camera sends it to the computer and the computer sends it to a projector, where it gets projected onto the big screen in the lecture hall. This way I can look at my class the class the entire time and I do not have to worry about whether students in the back can read the writing on the whiteboard in front.

The document camera I use can also be set up to display the images it captures on the computer. Then, with video capture software, (CamStudio is an example of one with a free option), you could record a video as you write.

If your department does not have a document camera, you can set up something similar with a webcam, which would be cheaper to buy but produces lower video quality. Set it to look down on the paper. You write your lecture, and the computer records it. Alternatively, your institution may have an instructional technology office that could loan you a document camera (or may even have a more advanced set up).


Ethics of not including a contributor as coauthor? Someone (call him Peter) contributed to part of a paper I've written.
 This occurred over the course of numerous emails (we've never met in person). I am including those results in the paper, and Peter is aware of this.  I asked Peter multiple times to be coauthor but he never responded to that request. I'm ready to submit the paper now.

(1) Can I submit the paper? I should be able to add Peter as coauthor if he   responds while the paper is being reviewed.

(2) Do I have to submit the paper with Peter's name, or can I submit with a a simple acknowledgement?

The contributor has not meet all the requirements of ICJME (cf. This question of mine) since they have not presumably been part of the writing process. As you have given them the opportunity  (assuming your emails went through) to participate, you have met your ethical requirements. That said, I would pick up the phone and call them and get a verbal confirmation.


Why does arXiv not allow numbered lines in submissions? I just tried submitting my first paper to arXiv. To be honest, this hasn't been an unqualifiedly fun experience.

One reason for rejection was that my paper contained line numbers. I am a bit confused as to why arXiv would reject papers for containing line numbers. One reason for me to submit to the arXiv was to potentially get comments on the paper - and it's a lot easier to comment on a paper that has line numbers. It's easier to discuss "lines 95-105" than "the third paragraph on page 5, not counting the table and its caption". I really like line numberings in papers I'm supposed to review.

Can anyone tell me why arXiv does not allow numbered lines in submissions?

(A quick internet search didn't turn up anything useful. )

In my experience, it is much more useful to give some context (a few words, name of the theorem, ...) to any editorial suggestions than line numbers. My documents exist as LaTeX source, so line numbers in some printed version don't correlate at all with line numbers in the text I currently work on. A few words of context are easy to search for in a text editor, line numbers would require referring to the printout to find same first. Besides, text changes (paragraphs get rewritten, shuffled around, new chapters are added, a new example appears, ...).


How much will connections with the department chair help with grad school acceptance? As an undergraduate (not studying computer science) I was fortunate enough to work in the lab of the CS department chair at my university for an extended period of time. This work resulted in me being added as a coauthor to one of her most recent papers. She also knows me well - I took an intro CS course with her, and during my time in the lab we would be in contact practically every day. I definitely plan on asking her for a recommendation letter when I apply for graduate school in computer science next year.

Although I know that going to the same university for undergraduate and graduate school is sometimes discouraged, I would quite honestly be very happy to return there, as I very much enjoyed working under her, she is well-known in her field, and some of her research interests are very close to mine. In any event, it would be nice to have a "safety net" of sorts while exploring other options.

I know that every university has different policies about admissions decisions, so no one can speak to my particular case. But in general, how much would you say that having the backing of the department chair helps in graduate school admissions?

You're right, it's sometimes discouraged to get a graduate degree from your alma mater, but it's not as highly discouraged as getting a Ph.D. from the same place you got your master's degree. It really depends a lot on the culture of the department. When faculty are going over your letters of recommendation, test scores, and statement of intent, they're trying to mainly assess:

How likely you are to succeed in the program
How closely your interests align with faculty (i.e Can they help you? Can you help them?)

People can seem amazing on paper and turn out to be a disaster as a graduate student, and vice versa, and faculty will tell you they're taking somewhat of a gamble each year when they admit new students based on application materials alone.

If you've got someone on faculty who can vouch for your intellectual abilities and your fit factor in the department (and you clearly do), then I would say you're very likely to be in a favorable position over other applicants in that department. My department accepted a master's student who had just graduated with their bachelor's from the same department two years in a row.

As far as other programs go, it's extremely beneficial that you have co-authored a published article and would have a letter of rec from a department head. Not a guarantee, of course, but a massive help in any case.


How should I state 'MS dropout' in my resume when applying for data scientist positions? I've read a couple threads on how to state a PhD dropout in a CV, but wanted to query opinion on the case where the degree in question is a Master's instead. Additionally, my situation is a bit different from others in that I'm mostly done. I plan to complete 33 units by the end of this semester but need 36 to graduate with the degree. I'd rather not stay an extra semester for 3 units.

My M.S. program in Statistics (top 3 program) ended up being mostly theoretical, similar to the Ph.D program here, and the theoretical courses were largely uninteresting to me after my first year. I found that I'm more interested in the programming aspect of things, as well as machine learning. My program specializes in a specific branch of statistical thought, rather than machine learning.

I am now looking for a data scientist position in industry. The question is, How should I state a 'MS dropout' in my resume?

First, some advice. I agree with @gnometorule, but I would state it stronger: IMHO and based on limited information you've shared, it would be a mistake to drop out so close to graduation. Even though the current culture within startup ecosystem and, overall, tech industry largely ignores education credentials in favor of "being a hustler", "being a doer", "being street smart", etc., the data science subset of the both areas actually seem to have more respect and pay more attention to people's education. This is quite understandable, considering the relative complexity of data science and, especially, its machine learning and artificial intelligence fields of study and practice.

I would strongly suggest you to consider things in perspective and do your best to successfully finish the program. Not only it will give you some advantages when competing in the job market, but also might be useful to you, should you decide in the future to go for a Ph.D., teach at some educational institution or pursue other opportunities (i.e., scientific research or consulting).

In regard to your specific question - should you decide to ignore my advice - I think that it would be better to formulate in your resume the phrase "MS dropout" not as such or, even, not as

  "University XYZ, MS program, Statistics, Years Range, Incomplete",

but rather as a positive fact / achievement:

  "University XYZ, MS program, Statistics, Years Range, Completed 90% of curriculum".

Having said that, again, I strongly suggest you to consider finishing your Master's program.


Is it possible for a scientific article to lose citations? I have just noticed something very weird, some months ago, I was looking in google scholar an article of Irving Langmuir called "The Vapor Pressure of Metallic Tungsten", it had 761 citations, some time passed
and I searched the same article again and now it has 744 citations. I don't know if maybe I didn't see the correct number of citations the first time, but that make me question myself, is it even possible for a scientific article to lose cites? does that make sense?

Google Scholar's citation counts are based on the number of citations found by Google's web-crawler. They tend to fluctuate up and down a little. This is usually either because documents such as internal reports or theses disappear from their authors' websites, or because Google's algorithms identify certain documents as duplicates of one another and 'merges' them.


What is the procedure for hiring a professor? When a department head needs a faculty member, how is the process of hiring one started and conducted (at least in US and UK universities)?

Of particular interest is the following;

Finance: Department head should ask the Dean for financing the salary? Who is the final decision maker?
Selection: Is the department head responsible for forming the search committee? and is he responsible for approving the qualifications? Can higher officials (e.g. Dean) interfere in the selection?
After the selection, how are the official matters handled? Who signs the contract? and who can terminate it (if not tenured)?
What is the role of human resources in this process?

EDIT: Added dates to give a sense of the timeline.

Here's how the process works at my university (US).

The department votes (March or April 2014) to request a new hire or not. Usually at this point they will also specify--is this a hire in some particular field, or do we just want to try to get the best person in the field, regardless of speciality. This request is passed to the provost and dean.
If the request is approved (May or June), the department forms a search committee which writes and circulates the job ad (Sept or Oct).
Once all the applications for the job are in (Nov), the search committee reads the applications and selects between 15-25 people to interview at our big disciplinary meeting (January 2015). This is a first round interview that will usually discuss scholarship and maybe a little bit about teaching.
Of that field of 15-25, the committee will select three finalists to bring to a second, on campus interview. (February) The on campus interview is much more strenuous, usually lasting a day or two. At our institution it always includes a public job talk, which presents some facet of the candidates current research before the full faculty and graduate students. Some places it also includes a teaching demo. Invariably there is also a dinner after the talk at which the candidate still needs to be pleasant, conversational, and collegial.
After all the on-campus interviews have been conducted, the department meets and discusses who they want to pick. (Late Feb, Early March) Usually this involves a vote. At some places the faculty's vote is binding, at some places the faculty vote is simply advisory and the committee makes the official recommendation. But, at every school I've heard of it is the Dean or Provost who actually makes the final decision.
So, let's say the department has recommended candidate X to the Dean and the dean has no objection. Now the dean will call candidate X and offer him or her the job.
Usually some rounds of negotiation will follow. If the candidate has other offers, then usually the dean will have to improve the offer. Once a verbal agreement is made, the dean sends a contract to the candidate to sign and return.
Once the dean signs the returned contract, then, presto the candidate is officially a tenure track faculty member. (April or May 2015)


Is it considered academic misconduct as a tutor to help your student with homework that is for marks? I am a private tutor and some of my students are in university with homework assignments that count for marks. Is it academic misconduct to help them with homework that they will be submitting even if I am using Socratic questioning and making sure that what they produce is mostly of their own thought process?
I was also a teaching assistant for a 100 level physics course and we would hold homework help sessions and directly help students with graded problems, but somehow because it's not part of a course I'm just not sure if it's still kosher.

It is unethical to do their work for them. It is certainly ethical to teach them how to do their work. But somewhere in between those is a dividing line so it takes some finesse.
Ideally, as a professor, when a student asks for help on an assignment, I'll try to determine why they have a block that is holding them back and then try to clear that block with some minimal hint that lets them have an insight. Of course, this requires a back and forth conversation to discover what they have tried and why they have taken the approach they have done. It also assumes that they have made some initial effort before you start.
For a tutor, especially one who could be in contact with the professor, it is actually easier than for the professor or a TA, since the scale is 1-1, rather than many-1. A professor may not have time to follow through with each needy student according to the ideal.
But, as long as you stay focused on the learning and unblocking then you should be fine.


How should I answer a question about my "personal goals" when being considered for a graduate position? I'm applying for a graduate position. One professor answered my email and asked me some questions. Two of them are listed below:

What are your short- and long-term academic/professional goals?
What are your short- and long-term personal goals?

I can talk about my professional goals in the first question, but I don't know how to answer the second question. To what extent should my goals be personal?

I agree that the question could be interpreted as inappropriate. But, while it's impossible to know the professor's intention (were they trying to screen out applicants who want to start families, etc.?), I think it's safe to answer the question ASSUMING that they are interested in your academic goals that may not be directly career related.

For example you might answer the first question with a straightforward goal for your career path (I want to be a tenured faculty, I want to work in research, I want to get a sales job with a technical company, I want to start my own company, etc. etc.).

The second question then would be more open ended discussion of what you personally want to get out of your graduate degree (I want to learn to become more independent, I want to learn how to teach myself anything, I want to satisfy my curiosity about how ants communicate [or whatever]). These are personal goals that are related to your graduate training, but aren't necessarily about your future career per se.

It's personal preference, but I would probably steer clear of goals or ambitions clearly unrelated to your relationship to the professor (I want to earn a blackbelt, I want to be an Olympic ping-pong player, etc.). I suggest this because it's unlikely that the professor cares about these goals, and the wrong answer has a possibility to seriously hurt your chances of being selected.

For example, it's hard to imagine a professor thinking to themselves: 'well their theoretical biophysics training is a bit weak, but we need a good ping pong player for the departmental retreats...'; it's easy to imagine a professor - EVEN INADVERTENTLY - thinking 'wow that olympic training is really going to cut into their hours in the lab...'


Is it possible to get a master's in speech language pathology online or part-time? I am currently looking into a possible career change as a speech language pathologist. Is it possible to get a masters in SLP online? Or are there any part time programs that would allow me time for work?

There's at least one program at the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire. It's designed as a part-time, online master's. You're required to attend 3 one-week sessions on-campus each summer over three years.

If you don't have an undergraduate degree in communication sciences and disorders, there are 30-40 credit hours of required courses - PDF before you can start the master's.


Do many academic institutions let students deposit their publications in the institutional repository? I'm a doctoral student and I've published several academic papers. My institution maintains a digital institutional repository, but it doesn't look like I can put copies of my work in it. When I finish my dissertation, a copy of that would go in the IR. It seems strange that the institution doesn't seem to have practices in place to take in other published work of students. Are there other academic institutions that allow this? If so, it would be great to have links to their policies.

Most university institutional repositories will allow students to submit their work, as the aim of an institutional repository is, generally, to capture the scholarly, research and creative output of a university. This would include work being created by faculty, of course, but also staff and students.

What differs between universities is the emphasis they place on different creators. At a large research university, increasing citation counts of faculty members will be a key consideration that may make the acquisition of faculty works a higher priority than student works. Liberal arts colleges will, based on their institutional missions as teaching centres, will be able to focus on undergraduate research on a level that many research universities would be unable to do.

I have recently become the Digital Repository Coordinator at a research university, and one of the challenges I face is trying to balance acquiring faculty and staff work vs. student work. Many of the faculty I have talked to, however, are excited by the potential of using the institutional repository as a way to showcase their students' work.

As a doctoral student, especially, I would assume that you would be able to submit work to your university's institutional repository. Looking at your profile, I believe that your university's repository does allow students to submit work (See http://digilib.gmu.edu/dspace/handle/1920/2883, for example). If it's not clear how to do so, contact your university's repository coordinator to make it happen! They'd more than likely be thrilled a student (1) knows what an institutional repository is, and (2) is interested in depositing their work.


PhD with a supervisor who has not published anymore since 2014 I'm finishing my master's degree in physics and I'm searching for a PhD position. A potential professor for PhD is almost 60 years old and he has not published any paper since 2014!

What do you think about this?

You are concerned that this professor does not publish because she/he ran out of ideas and motivation. Although this could be the case, there are other possibilities, which I want to point to you:

They are working on a very large and important textbook and don't have time to publish.
They have a lot of PhD students and allow them to publish as a single author (a bit unusual these days, but still happens)
They don't cope well with modern technology (computers, word processors, simulation tools, etc), and rely on their students to help them put their ideas into  final publication.

I suggest talking to professor and asking these questions face-to-face.


Publish research with few details to promote company I've seen cases of startups publishing research with so few implementation details that it's quite difficult to recreate the results. They seem to be doing it to for the publicity and to show proof of the effectiveness of their methods without making it too easy for others to create a similar business. Now that I am considering starting a company based on my research I am curious as to how this actually works. I have the following list of questions, but feel free to answer using a single answer instead of one for each item.

Is it in general frowned upon in academia to publish this kind of research that is used for "marketing" your company?
To what degree do higher quality journals/conferences require implementation details?
How good credentials must the author have to be able to publish this kind of paper?

There are two basic directions that you can go in using scientific publications to promote a company:

You can publish in the same sort of conferences and journals as university scientists, thereby proving your technical depth and strength.  If you take this path, you will be expected to conform to the same standards of quality and depth of information as a university researcher: there is no "peer review lite" unless you go to a junk publication, which won't help your goals.
Many conferences explicitly have an "industrial track" or "demo session" that is explicitly designed for showing off capabilities without necessarily having to explain details, in order to better promote engagement between the academic and commercial sides of research.  These often have some sort of "extended abstracts" published in association with them, which may be what you have seen in the past.

Neither approach has any particular requirement of credentials: you just need to submit material that is of interest to the community and up to its standards of quality.


Should I report my GPA on applications for an MA if it is not required? I am applying to a Master's program using an online application where I must report my prior university education. The field to report my undergraduate GPA is not required and would anyways be verified by using my transcripts before admission. It would, however, be more convenient for the application committee to get a feel for my undergraduate record if I were to report it voluntarily since they would not have to immediately match my application with my transcript. It should be noted that other materials (like a statement of purpose) are separate documents.

How will reporting or not reporting affect my chances of admission? Are they more likely to reject an application where they can immediately see a lower GPA, or one where they are unsure of what it is at first? I feel that my GPA may be a potential weakness in my application and would prefer not to have it advertised.

If you think it is better than average, volunteer it (if there is a convenient free text field).  If average or worse than average, don't volunteer it.


How do we keep ourselves humble as researchers and intellectuals? I recently sat down with a trusted confidant and went over my statement of purpose and personal statement. Although the overall message and commentary was positive, what I realized was that I needed to metaphorically pull myself from the sky and back to earth. In other words, a head-shrinking was in order. My topics were far too lofty to be accomplished in half a decade.

As I continue to procrastinate from writing by asking this question, I wonder how can one ground themselves as they move forward in their graduate education and post-graduate career.

In times past, I've came across a blog post by a computer scientist who has made great work into the field of medicine and bioinformatics despite not having a medical background, all in effort of finding a diagnosis and cure for his child's disease. But I cannot find it.

Found it, thanks Nat!

But what the post doesn't address is a means of pointing out the flaws of a given bias, in the day to day events of life.

How do we keep ourselves humble as researchers and intellectuals?

Least amount of knowledge to do unpaid research in the field of drug development against "harmless" viruses like the common cold?
Allowing Questions that warranted a Deletion, but has an answer that addresses the question

Staying down to Earth is different from being humble. Having concrete, non-lofty goals is different from being humble.

The current academic environment does not encourage people to be humble, quite to the contrary. I am seeing many people whose career is built on preposterous grandeur.

What is different from being humble and a selling point is having a plan on how to make progress. If you have got lofty goals, fine, but then you better have a thought-through plan on how to make concrete progress in achieving your lofty goal.

Knowing what you are talking about will set you apart from the crowd that just emits shedloads of buzzwords.


How to respond to a possible supervisor asking for a CV I don't have I'm a second-year graduate student in a large and well-known American physics department. For a variety of reasons, I've decided to "jump" sub-fields -- into biophysics, though I hadn't really started a project in the field I was initially interested in due to covid -- and am reaching out to faculty in the biology and biological engineering departments at my institution. One of these professors has asked me for a CV before we meet over Zoom.
This caught me off guard, because that question isn't usually posed in my department -- our presence here, and the mere fact of our inquiry, is taken to provide a presumption of competence and interest. We graduate students are encouraged to experiment in different groups if we are not yet sure about what we want to study. That, and the fact that I haven't done research in an academic setting for more than eight years now, when I was in high school, means that I haven't written a CV, and have very little to actually put on it.
I'm not asking about how to make one. There's plenty of pertinent advice both here and elsewhere on the internet. This professor has a relatively tight window of availability, though -- just today and tomorrow -- and I wonder whether I would make myself look ridiculous to admit that I don't have one prepared, and to ask to speak with him anyway.

The professor probably doesn't want to see your CV in order to determine your competence, but to see your previous research experience, to provide some structure for your conversation.
I'm a bit surprised you don't have a CV from your application to grad school, but regardless, it shouldn't take you more than a few hours to make one, and you'll probably need it in future anyway.


Can a student seek redress for the administration neglecting their paperwork? (Breakdown of a larger issue - full story here)

Following the (delayed) approval of my thesis paperwork by my professor, the review staff of my small (~20 grad students?) department took weeks to give me each round of revisions. After the second revision, having already had my thesis for nearly the entire semester, the reviewer admitted to "forgetting" about my paperwork for over a month. She followed that up by telling me she was shelving my paperwork to "focus on other students who still have a chance of graduation this semester." Even though I should have graduated the semester previous, and had been waiting months for her to finish the review so I could get my thesis bound (required by the graduation process).

The reviewer was fired shortly after the end of that semester, the new reviewer and I got it finished up in just over a week, and the dean of the college wrote a letter to the graduate school requesting my graduation be back-dated. This was refused with only blanket statements about 'policy'. Obviously I should have escalated the issue much sooner, but I wasn't world-weary enough to realize that "the people in charge" were being so negligent and unprofessional, or to realize that I could do anything about it. I think students in general are often too intimidated by the people in the 'ivory tower' to speak out and ask for better treatment.

How can students know when they are being treated unfairly? How can they get their complaints taken seriously and appropriately escalate issues through their department/college without being ignored? Is there any recourse for them - a way to get the school to correct the issue?

You're not at the end of the line yet.  Getting the date changed may be not be an option, but there are still steps you can take before going full Edmond Dantes.  First, I'll try to answer the more general questions.

  How can students know when they are being treated unfairly?

You usually know at a base level when you're being wronged.  You clearly were on multiple occasions.

  How can they get their complaints taken seriously and appropriately escalate issues through their department/college without being ignored?

Being respectful and professional is key.  The second you "rage," you will no longer be taken seriously.  Avoid personal attacks at all costs and always check yourself before you go forward.  Assume that people are reasonable and willing to help, even when they seem otherwise.  Communication is about the message that's received, not the one that's sent.

Carefully measured accusations of impropriety can sometimes help, but be cautious, they will also burn bridges.  I had a strong disagreement with a professor where at one point he refused to discuss the topic further. In turn, I summarized our interaction and accused him of being unprofessional. When he defended himself, he included a restating of his understanding of my goal. At that point, it became clear he mistook my request for my objective. What seemed like arrogance and dismissiveness were really misunderstanding. We were able to resolve the matter and are now on good terms.

Judicious use of carbon-copying.  CCing the wrong person at the wrong point will actively work against you on the points of both respect and professionalism.  That said, there is a role for it when transitioning between administrative levels. When you CC someone in on an ongoing conversation, they can see the back and forth history.

If you are:

Clearly conducting yourself properly and respectfully
Being treated unfairly
Have a concrete goal they can do something about (simply complaining won't cut it)

then you can attempt to escalate the matter to the person's direct superior by CCing them instead of generating a new e-mail chain.  You should be immediately switching the direction of your conversation to the new person at the same time, referencing the fact that your are doing this because you are out of options, and be in the right. You will be very, very heavily implying misconduct on behalf of the previous person in this case, but will want them to come to that conclusion on their own.  One could make an exception on this in extreme cases regarding ethics, safety, etc.

I think you are past the point where you can begin to CC someone's superior before taking it to them directly, as that requires some degree of personal familiarity. That does remain a potential, if very risky, option in other situations.

  Is there any recourse for them - a way to get the school to correct the issue?

There are three further levels you can take this.

The President of the College. The individual College Deans still have to report to someone.  You do not want to telegraph your moves anymore at this stage. I don't have a good suggestion for the best way to frame your request for an appointment, but you can't afford them asking the Graduate College Dean for details prior to the meeting if they've already been compromised. Here are some more important tips for this:

You will also have some serious convincing to do that you're an adult. Be wearing a suit/dress and be immaculately groomed.
Have your greeting and synopsis rehearsed.
Lead with the impact this has had on you, not the history; your career and licensing is also their primary method of exposure to the working world.
Have every single piece of documentation you can scan or print, and have it ordered chronologically and separable by party at fault, if possible. Chronology is more important, as it shows your body of support and could reveal any collusion against you.
The copy of documentation you bring with you needs to be something they can keep then and there.

The Accrediting Agency.  This is no longer about degrees at this point, and it will do nothing for you directly.  I'm not even sure the issues at hand are relevant to them.  But they do vouch for the integrity of the school.  You will really just be filing an official report against the college at best, but if your degree dates remain changeable by College policy and they refuse to do so, it could be considered a form of academic misconduct.
Legal Recourse. (Disclaimer: I Am Not A Lawyer) You could go the legal route, as suggested.  They are damaging your ability to earn income in an easily quantifiable way.  Legal fees, lost wages, and maybe some psychiatric care may be able to be recouped, but you will certainly be paying up front for this. This will probably cost you more money overall, not to mention the time and stress dealing with the court proceedings.

As you take this matter to increasing levels of aggressiveness, you will find your support waning.  People don't like to get involved with other people's problems, especially when it ceases to benefit them.  I personally recommend stopping after the President regardless of the outcome.  Your health and happiness are the most important things you have, and this is already taking a sizeable toll.  You really have to ask yourself, in twenty years, will you be happier that justice was exacted or that the whole thing is a distant memory?

Finally, find a good therapist.  If nothing else, it's a place you can vent where the negativity won't linger.  Your home should be where your soul can heal and rest, not where you dump the wastewater from washing the wound.  I hope something in here is helpful, and wish you the best of luck.


Is it acceptable to ask how a professor would like to be addressed through email? I am an undergraduate student working for a professor this summer. Up to this point, I have referred to the professor as Dr. LastName. I have met his research group; his graduate and PhD students refer to him by his first name. Moreover, he signs his emails to me with his first name.

Is it acceptable to ask, through email, how he would like to be addressed? Or is it proper etiquette to wait for him to correct me? I would prefer to ask him in person, but I will not be seeing him for several weeks.

For example, in an email: "I have noticed that you sign your emails as 'FirstName'. Would you prefer that I address you as 'FirstName'?"

In contrast to other answers voiced here, to me, signing a mail with {Firstname} is a clear indication that one can address the sender by {Firstname}. It would be unreasonable for the prof signing with {Firstname} to expect otherwise. I don't agree with the "always better to play safe"-advice, as I strongly believe in that an academic discussion should be based on arguments, not on status. If I expected my students to call me in a formal way, then I would have to address them in a more formal way as well (at least, that's what I feel). When I indicate that I as prof feel comfortable with the informal route (which I do by signing my mails in this way), there is no reason not to accept that offer.
Having said that, it is of course highly dependent on culture and language.


What date should I use for graduation? When graduating from a university in the UK you are often conferred with an award before the graduation ceremony.  I am therefore seeking clarification as to what date should be written on documents such as job application forms.

For an bachelor's degree, do I use the ceremony date or the award date?
For a PhD, do I use the date of the viva voce or the ceremony date?

You should use the date conferred. Universities will have an official date where all degrees for the term are conferred on everyone. This is usually not the same date as the graduation ceremony as there can be multiple graduation ceremonies across multiple days, but trying to keep track of all of them would be confusing. It's much simpler to just pick one day after all the ceremonies and say all degrees are official as of that date.

That being said, I've never heard of an employer (or anyone) who really cares about the particular date as long as it's clear that you've already met all of the requirements of graduation.