What rate of faculty turnover is healthy? What is considered a reasonable rate for faculty turnover in a "healthy" department? How much turnover is too much/little? Presumably the rates might depend on seniority. Does departmental turnover tell you anything about your colleagues?

Reasons for faculty turnover are more important than numbers.  For example, in the late 90s, CS professors were leaving their positions to start companies.  I also know of professors who left otherwise ideal positions to solve a two-body problem (move near their spouse).

One important component of faculty turnover is tenure denials.  If you are a serious candidate, you should ask why your opening exists and the outcome of recent tenure cases.

Another component is faculty taking advantage of early retirement offers.  If a school is offering sweet deals for retirement, it may not be at its most financially secure.  (On the other hand, if they're doing a tenure-track search, that's a positive sign.)

If you can contact faculty who have left through your social network (e.g., if one of your committee members knew them socially), you might be able to get the dirt on the department.

It also doesn't hurt to look at the student newspaper, now usually available online.  At one school at which I interviewed, my host stopped me from picking up a copy.  I did so later and read about major problems between the faculty and administration that involved a lawsuit, the AAUP, etc.


Is it better to repeat a caption or reference an identical caption? I am presenting several (11) data sets in a written communication (my dissertation).  I have grouped the data separating it into several figures which fill two and a half pages, one after the other.  Each figure shows the same three subplots, just with the new data set.

Is it better to include the same caption in each set of subfigures (a fifth of the page each time) or to reference the previous caption?

The first option would repeat the something like the following (this is a mock example):

  Fig 6. 2x167 in 10–200 mM KCl: (a) shows the reduced intensity for the varied sample conditions with the inset showing a key region. (b) shows how the scale applied to each data as a function of the concentration. (c) shows the time dependence.

The second option would have subsequent captions that look something like the following:

  Fig 7. 3x167 in 10–200 mM KCl: (a)–(c) as labeled in Fig. 6.

Edit:
I was originally inclined to do the first as I am not short on space, but the fact that they are identical has made me less certain.  Also, with the captions, two of the groups each fill a page, breaking up the overlapping sentence significantly.  This would be somewhat less of a problem if I had more to say about the figure, but I do not need a page of text to explain the differences.  I could put them all in an appendix, and only show an example (or make them smaller, as long as the labels do not get too small).

It depends on several factors:

Can you expect readers to read this part of the caption only once and remember everything important for the rest of the reading? Or do you expect that readers need to constantly consult the caption to understand your figure?
Do you expect figures to be read in order? Or is it likely that a reader will look at a later figure in the series first?
How much information does the caption contain? This is not the same as the first point, as not all of this information needs to be important. Also, this is not exactly about length; a short caption with a lot of numbers is worse than a long caption describing straightforward concepts.
Do you need the space used by the repeated captions?

Positive answers to the respective first questions are in favour of referencing.

But why reference at all, unless you need the space? Because redudancy, in particular in technical aspects is annoying and time-consuming for the reader. If a caption references another caption the reader still remembers, this is the quickest way of communicating it. Otherwise the reader has to read the same (usually boring) text again. Moreover, if there is an unneeded redundancy, I would expect that there is a reason for this, e.g., that you changed some details of what is described in the caption. This would usually make me frantically compare the two caption (and thus flipping back and forth).

If you have the space, I suggest a third way that takes the best of both worlds:

  Fig 7. 2×167 in 10–200 mM KCl: (a)–(c) as labeled in Fig. 6, namely: (a) shows the reduced intensity for the varied sample conditions with the inset showing a key region. (b) shows how the scale applied to each data as a function of the concentration. (c) shows the time dependence.

This way, all the information is available for the reader who does not remember or has never read the earlier figure’s caption. But the reader who did, knows that the rest of the caption is redundant.


Is it normal to feel too rushed to publish as a PhD student? I feel I am in a strange position as a PhD student. On the one hand, I understand that the sciences have become much more fast-paced in terms of publications. I completely understand this.

On the other hand, I am feeling extremely rushed into publishing, not being more than a year into my PhD. The pressure is quite immense, considering that I used the whole first year just to build a foundation of knowledge so that I could stand on my own two feet. But being pushed to publish immediately after that year is up, with threat of termination of my candidature looming so suddenly and without warning - simply: My PhD students need to publish ASAP or leave - has really made me suffer as a student.

As far as I hear from other students in my field, it's common to have no papers published until even the third year. Sooner is better, of course, but the vast majority of other PhD students I've met or spoken to tell me their supervisor is significantly more relaxed. I really feel that this is making me suffer in that I don't have time to build myself as a researcher because my time has so quickly been reallocated to only doing the grunt work for someone else's project for 3/4 papers a year. At times it really feels like this is a bit of a paper mill and I can't become a successful researcher in my own right like this. Maybe in terms of quantity, but not quality.

Is this situation common? If so, how can I do about it? It is causing huge issues in my life and making me sincerely question whether this is in my best interest.

Is this situation common?

I suppose that it is a common situation among PhD students. I am almost in an identical situation with a constraint on that is left to submit my thesis. I have (only) 3 years to work-write-submit papers so that I can stitch them as a thesis. I am in computer science. If I don't publish at least 2 or 3, my university would not even allow me to submit my thesis and my stipend would vanish leaving me screwed up for sometime.

  Is this situation good?

Yes and No. Yes, because it would put some stress on your mental and physical capabilities, but would result in sooner fruitful results. I think that matters. No, because, this is not research I feel. You can't just think of productivity and at the same time think of science. I do understand that the world is fast-paced w.r.t. publishing and stuffs, but, this is contradictory to the properties of research and science isn't it.

  Is this your best interest?

I feel so given the situation is identical. But, I console myself on the fact that "wait boss, just 3 more years and you are done!". Best is to make friends and go out in weekend and talk to new people around and forget work for some time. Go for date, movies. Just, don't think negatively about PhD.

P.S. I belong to Computer Science community, in late second year of my PhD, has submitted an article to a conference.


Benefits of Academic Research I'm in a Ph.D program and feel like I'm trapped inside of a bubble most days.  Attending lectures, daily research seminars, meetings, etc is all very interesting to me and I really like what I do.  However, all the fancy models, theory, and discussions only pertain to those of us in the position to be talking about such ideas and can actually understand the concepts.  To a general audience it seems like a bunch of fancy equations that don't apply to the real world and I have a hard time explaining my side and why it is important.  In turn, I start doubting the importance of academic/non-academic research.  During my first year, I felt like my professors who were theoretical were just creating their own jobs;  of course you can prove that theorem because of those assumptions.

So my question is, what are some tangible (or non-tangible) benefits of academic research?  Why should research exist when most of the papers will only ever be read by academics, while a very select few will be accepted by the general public.

Disclaimer : please don't take this as an elitist post.  I wouldn't be able to understand a carpenters way of thinking.

Edit :

I want to add, what is the incentive to invest so much in research that doesn't go anywhere in hopes that decades down the road one paper will be recognized?  I'm having a hard time understanding the billions of dollars funded in research each year in hopes of a significant achievement.

The reason we do lots of strange and probably useless research is that predicting which bits will turn out to be important is only possible in retrospect.

Consider, for example, the internet on which we are discussing the apparent uselessness of research. It is now driving a significant fraction on the world economy. Twenty years ago, it was just starting to be publicly noticed. Twenty years before that, my company was playing with the prototype versions in experiments you likely would see as largely useless and known only to a small niche audience. Thirty years before that, in 1945, Vannevar Bush laid the basic principles of hyperlinked text, in what was clearly an ivory tower fantasy... and yet here we are.

Almost everything ever done in science is useless... But the parts that aren't make a real difference. Sometimes only a little, sometimes a lot, and sometimes they shift the fate of civilizations. You just have to hold a vision of how it might matter, and chase that dream with all your heart.


Possibility of submitting a paper whose one page has been previously accepted in a poster session? If a topic (only one page) has been accepted previously in poster session of a conference / workshop, is it possible to submit the long version of the same topic (15 pages) to another conference? (particularly in field of computer science)

Only the conference committee can really answer that, but I offer two suggestions. These apply even if the conference committee sees no problem.

There is a concept called self-plagiarism, that I think is a bit stupid, but it exists and many consider it a serious issue. You should, at a minimum cite your own earlier work (the poster) just as you would cite anyone else and quote it appropriately.

The second suggestion is that, while you still cite the poster work, you re-write it, incorporating the important ideas rather than quoting it directly.

But you will run in to trouble with some if you just use it without comment even though it is your own work.

I doubt that the field matters much. My field is also CS, however.


Going elsewhere for an M.S. in Computer Science? I'll be completing a BS in Computer Science at the end of next year and am unsure about graduate school. I study at a fairly lowly ranked school for this field with somewhat mediocre performance and as such I am planning to pursue a Masters degree before applying to PhD programs. I'm in my university's 5 year BS/MS program, but I was curious if I might be better off applying to an MS somewhere more well regarded. The main advantage of the combined degree seems to be convenience as well as a smooth transition to research (I'm aware of the faculty at my school and generally what they work on), but I'm curious about the degree to which my choice of MS might affect PhD admissions.

Yes, preferably go somewhere else for the M.S. if what you want is the M.S. degree.
The benefits of 'new challenges' (already mentioned) are worth it.

However, if your goal is to be admitted for PhD, then the research experience that you could get ahead of applying for PhD will be more valuable than the M.S. degree. I've seen PhD applicants with stronger research experience and having BS degree only, than other applicants that have a MS.
If you can start having conversations with faculty at your institution with whom you'd like to do research, then you'll be able to make a better decision. Just be clear with them saying that you want learn and do research to have a better chance for PhD admission at other schools two years down the line.


Citing StackExchange vs. Account Privacy? In the answer to this and similar questions it is recommended that you cite an idea or useful answer for your research work on StackExchange.
Now, if you have asked a question requiring a walk-back mathematical process (lets assume its a contribution) using fundamental knowledge to walk-back, if you do cite in this case, how do you keep the privacy of your account name? Since, people would check the answer and could look into the account history of the questioner and the answerer. Also, these StackExchange websites are linked and it seems that not everyone would like that for privacy reasons. So how could this be managed appropriately?
Note: This is a modification of an existing question marked as duplicate.

The post you reference has the solution to your doubt. Just cite when you encounter an original contribution or thank for helpful critics.


Do journal editors check self-citations? Do journal editors check self-citations? If I cite two of my papers, would it be a problem?

You have to expect or assume that journal editors read or at least scan any paper that comes across their desk. So they may also see what's being cited and what is not.
Now, it seems to me that you're worried about citing your own papers. There is, in itself, nothing wrong with citing your own papers: Oftentimes you're building on previous work you reported on previously, and citing your own previous papers allows others to follow your path of exploration. So these citations are ok.
On the other hand, it is problematic if you cite your previous papers because you want to rack up your citation count of H index. This would generally mean that you cite your own papers even though they have nothing to do with the current paper. Don't do that -- it's academically dishonest to do that, generally frowned upon, and may lead to your papers being rejected.
So the question for you to answer is this: If you want to add a citation to one of your previous papers, are you adding it because (1) you think it is a useful reference for your readers, or because (2) you want to increase your citation count? If the honest answer to the question is (1), then you should be on the safe side.


Student not giving mid-project report and not coming to defense Context:

I am a researcher in a Western European university.
As part of a masters courses in my uni, students have a rather long project to do (each student has its own project). This project is divided in two parts: an analysis part (short, they need to understand their project and state how they want to achieve it) and an experimentation part (the main part of the project, they need to achieve as much as they can). Each part is evaluated with a report and a small defence.

In this context, I have a student working on a project I submitted. The first part of the project has now ended and I have the following problems:

the student lied to me on the submission date for the report
they did not submit anything
they did not come to their defence

What I did as an advisor:

during the project: took several hours to explain the project and provided help to prepare the experiments (they are not done right now)
offered my help for writing the report (asked for the student to send drafts regularly and to ask about anything unclear, never received any draft)
I was present at the defence to help them if they could not answer questions

What happened then:

they scored the worst marked for the first part of the project
I did not received any explanation nor excuses
I can decide whether I accept that they continue the project or not

So my question is: what do you advise in such context?

Here I listed a few options:

let them do the rest of the project and help them with the experimentations (note that at this point I do not expect any workable result anymore, but maybe they will work better than on the first part)
forbid the student to finish the project (it is likely that they won't be able to validate the project anyway due to their mark at the first evaluation, and I will have more time for my research, perhaps doing their project by myself)
ask the student to submit the report before deciding (we will loose some time on the rest of the project, but it was explicitly asked to submit this report and I could make sure that they understood what they need to do).

Any help / advice will be greatly appreciated!

Not sure what you expect here, given they have submitted nothing then they will have nothing to experiment on.

So, basically they have failed this assignment and will need to replace it if possible. That will depend on the regulations in force at your institution.


Can anyone use the JEL classification system? Can anyone use the JEL classification system, or is it only reserved for published (scientific) papers? This is the information I got on AEA's site

''JEL Codes are used to classify articles, dissertations, books, book reviews, and working papers''.

I'm working on a university thesis related to finance, and I wanted to use the JEL classification system. Does this fall under the category 'working papers'?

I asked the AEA helpdesk. This is the answer I got:

'Any work related to economics can be classified according to the JEL
taxonomy.   The list in that sentence is not intended to be an
exhaustive enumeration of where JEL Classifications are allowed to be used.'

Therefore it's perfectly fine to use the JEL classification in a master thesis, as long as the work is related to economics.


Citation signals in numbered references I'm reformatting a manuscript from author-date referencing to Nature's (superscript) numbered referencing. How can I include citation signals such as 'e.g.,' or 'see'? For example, how should I reformat the following sentence?

  It was demonstrated that pigs can't fly (e.g., Smith, 1901).

I can omit the citation signal completely:

  It was demonstrated that pigs can't fly1.

but then important information about the non-exhaustiveness of the citation is lost.

Someone suggested this:

  It was demonstrated that pigs can't fly (e.g., 1).

But it looks somewhat strange. Any idea?

I dislike this citation style for just this reason.

You can, however, get around it by turning the parenthetical citation into a phrase:

  A number of studies, including Smith1, have demonstrated that pigs can't fly.

More often, however, I see this being indicated implicitly by using more than one citation:

  A number of studies1-3 have demonstrated that pigs can't fly.


When does a paid research assistant become a co-author? What amount of work should a well compensated research assistant put into a paper before they're included as a co-author? Is there any norm? Suppose this is a field where 1 to 3 authors on any given journal paper is the standard amount (e.g., economics/finance/econometrics).

What if they do 30% of the paper? What if the paper requires (model building, programming, writing), and each component is about 33% of the paper, and the RA does all of one of these and helps a bit with another one of these?

I would think the answer is never, unless it was an unusually large contribution or the professor was feeling nice. I think this because otherwise they would've just gotten an experienced co-author who could bring much more to the table who they also don't have to compensate with any $$.

The decision of whether someone should be a coauthor is completely independent of monetary compensation: authorship depends on what sort of intellectual contribution each person has made, and it would be unethical to treat them differently based on their job (paid assistant, student, colleague, amateur, etc.).

People in different roles may be treated differently based on their contributions.  For example, an assistant who does no creative or insightful work, but instead just carries out explicit instructions in a straightforward way, should generally not be a coauthor.  (Still, the assistant should be thanked by name in the acknowledgments.)  When the assistant's work starts to involve exercising nontrivial skill and judgment, coauthorship may be appropriate.  If the assistant is doing a serious part of the creative intellectual work, then coauthorship is mandatory, even if the supervisor's role is deeper.


Regarding PDF copy of a book downloaded from reputed universities For ethical reasons I try to avoid reading books downloaded from illegal and pirated websites.
I was self studying a topic by reading a certain book. Due to COVID-19 my nearby library is closed. I googled the book's details and I came across the full PDF version of the book on the websites of two reputed universities.
Is it it unethical to read the PDF downloaded from a university website? How the university is able to upload the PDF? Will it be unethical if I read from the PDF downloaded from the websites of these reputed universities?
Please help me in overcoming my confusion.

If a reputed university has uploaded the PDFs online, chances are they are legally allowed to. This could be, for example, if:

The book's copyright has expired.
The copyright allows for distribution (e.g. if the book is open access).
The copyright holder allowed the book to be distributed.
The university paid for the right to distribute the book.

So it should be OK for you to use it. If you're still worried, look at the license statements that come with the download.


Who is the president of a university? Sorry if the question is weird but I have not seen this terminology before. Who is the president of a university?

In my country, a rector is the leader of a university. A dean might run a faculty, possibly containing several departments. A department head is in charge of a single department.

This is just a different word for the most senior executive of a university. There are many names for this position. In the UK alone they may be called (most commonly) the vice-chancellor, the principal or the president. Broadly speaking, countries where universities are operated by the state have more consistent names for positions in the hierarchy, whereas countries where they are independent organisations have more of a diversity of names.


What do I have to do in preparation for applying for a PhD? I'm just about to go into my final year of my computing degree, and I want to continue to a PhD after completion. What preparations do I need to do prior to applying for grants/scholarships/funding?

Get good grades.
Make sure (some of) your lecturers know who you are, so that you can ask for a recommendation letter.
Get involved in some kind of research, either a thesis or something extracurricular.
Work out what topic you want to study; at least have a first idea.
Select relevant coursework based on the previous point.
Don't be afraid of going abroad. Prepare yourself mentally for this now, so when the time comes to actually decide, you'll be ready. Check details such as visa requirements, as these can take 3-4 months to obtain.
Research good universities who do what you want to do. Find out about their application procedure is and their deadline.


Math Paper and Grad School Application I am applying for pure Math Ph.D programs this year.

I did some independent research in centralizer of matrices, and I developed an algorithm to generate the explicit k-basis for the space of centralizers. I guess this problem is not solved since I cannot find any papers on this topic, and a similar question asked on Math Stack Overflow has no complete solutions.

I asked my professor (one of my recommendation letter writer) to take a look, but this is irrelevant to his fields of studies and he said that he might have no time to read this.

I want this research experience to strengthen my application. So, how should I deal with my paper? Shall I just mention it in my resume and personal statement or should I post the paper on arXiv? I am not sure what is appropriate.

If your goal is to have a way to include this in your graduate applications, you can certainly talk about this project in a statement of interest.  Search this site for "statement of interest" and you will see many have no idea what to put there.  You have something concrete to talk about!  Did this experience make you want to study more algebra, or are you ready to switch to analysis?  Do you want to look at applications, or more theory, of matrices over finite fields?

It is a slight disappointment that you did not do this as an independent study, which is what someone my age would have done.  On the other hand, you did get feedback on MathOverflow.  Graduate admissions committees can take into account interactions like this.  I would say this shows independence and a willingness to learn by whatever means available.  You cannot say that in a statement of interest, but you can talk about how you enjoy having Denis Serre answer a question of yours.  (Name-dropping is best done shamelessly.)


Is there a ranking of mathematics positions at a given university? What is the difference between, say, a postdoc and a lecturer? A senior lecturer and an associate professor?

More generally, is there a ranking of mathematics positions at a given university?

An assistant professor (in the US, anyway) has a continuing position subject to achieving tenure. An Associate Professor has achieved tenure and has a long term commitment from the university. Postdocs normally have a term limited position that may be renewed a small number of times, if at all. A lecturer normally doesn't have a long term commitment. It is probably subject to annual renewal. A Senior lecturer is a bit more trusted and earns more, but is still just a lecturer.

In some places the first couple of years of the undergraduate education are mostly taught by either lecturers or a special category of professors of the practice. The latter have regular appointments and are expected to know more about pedagogy and possibly less about technical research. Some quite fine institutions have such a system (Duke, CMU, Stanford, at least). This relieves the senior faculty from teaching low level (possibly large) courses and still gets a quality education for undergraduates. It is also a stable career path for those who would rather teach than do research, whereas "lecturer" can be quite risky.

Note that in the US, there is no national system or nationally recognized definitions and rules. In other countries titles such as these may be regulated by law.


Why do PhD admission committees focus on your bachelor's degree grades when you have better master's degree grades? I've heard various occasions where students with mediocre bachelor's degree grades, but superb master's degree grades, get rejected by PhD programs due to their poor bachelor's degree grades.
What could be the rationale behind focusing on the now likely outdated bachelor's degree grades when more recent and up-to-date master's degree grades are available?
(Note I am not guessing they were rejected due to their bachelor's degree grades, the professor who interviewed and wanted to take the student in, explicitly stated that he/she could not due to the student's poor bachelor's degree grades)

In the U.S. and in math, at least in my experience, graduate grades tend to be less reliable measures than undergraduate grades for how one did in a class. Graduate grades tend to be A -- "good" to "excellent", B -- "total-incompetence-but-attended-class" to "acceptable", C -- essentially you failed (for some programs, you're gone if you accumulate 3 C's).
Universities and departments range from "B's are rarely given and C's are almost never given" to "A's tend to be given for work consistent with passing the Ph.D. qualifying exam in the subject", B's tend to be "not horrible" to "good-but-not-exhibiting-future-Ph.D.-potential-performance", and perhaps a few C's are given for especially bad work.
Nonetheless, I would think nearly all A's and well above average recommendations in a Masters program would undo all but the very worst of undergraduate grades, and maybe even those. But a 3.3 Masters average and typical-good-sounding recommendations are not going to undo a 2.8 undergraduate average in one's major.


How to cite an Amazon page product? We are supposed to cite product's pages on Amazon (to cite the price).

Which informations are we supposed to put in the bibliography?

Do it like you would any other web reference with both a link and a date on which the link was accessed by you. This guards against changes that can always occur in any web resource. You can take the title from the page title.

The date is essential.


The unfortunate case of a paper with extremely slow review process One of the first papers I ever wrote has a rather unfortunate history. Mistakes were made, especially by me, and after around 3+ years the paper remains unpublished. Below is a rough timeline of how things progressed (or rather failed to progress). Any advice on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.

04/2015: The paper is first sent to the journal. At the time, I'm in the second year of my PhD.

06/2015: The paper gets sent back to me because the bibliography is missing (basically: I accidentally run latex one too few times before sending). I promptly return the corrected version.

10/2016: I write to the Editor to ask about the status of the paper and receive no reply.

01/2017: I consult my Supervisor about the situation and he writes an email to the Editor.

02/2017: I receive an email from the Editor explaining that they had trouble finding reviewers and giving me suggestions about how to improve the paper. The gist was that the result is interesting but the exposition is inadequate, and I wholeheartedly agree with the second part (the 2015 version of me was a terrible writer).

06/2017: I finally receive the review, which is mostly positive but also points to problems with exposition. The email also mentions that the paper is "tentatively accepted for publication (...) subject to revision".

Now, what I should have done at this point is to correct the paper and send in the revised manuscript. Unfortunately, two issues came in the way. First, my thesis defence was approaching and I honestly could not find time nor energy for much else. The thesis ended up being rather unrelated to the unfortunate paper (the paper answers a question that somebody asked and I realised I could answer, it's in my field but not quite my subfield) so these two tasks were not related. Second, I came to realise that to make it a decent paper, the technical sections would need an almost complete overhaul, which made the task very unappealing (not only would it be very time consuming but also it would be a constant reminder of the poor quality of my previous writting). (The material was formally correct, but extremely inelegant.) In the end, weeks and then months went by, and there was always something that required more urgent attention (at least in my mind). Finally, I reworked the paper this summer and so:

08/2018: I send the revised manuscript to the Editor, with apologies for the highly inappropriate delay. I receive no answer.

09/2018: I send another email with apologies, politely asking if they could tell me what the status of the paper is (are they still willing to consider it for publication, etc.). Still no answer.

Now I'm at a loss of what to do, and unsure about what will happen. Should I keep badgering the Editor hoping for an answer? Should I take any other steps, or should I just wait for their reply? Is it likely that the paper eventually gets published?

I suggest just sending another email to the editor, and also send an email to a different editor just in case the first editor is on some kind of weird long sabbatical (it happens). With regard to the paper, your revisions didn't take that much time. After all, it took even longer for them to review it. If you still don't get a response in a month, I'd consider sending an email to this journal to cancel the submission process and then just submit it elsewhere.


Sources of academic salary information? What are some useful sources for investigating common salary ranges for academics? This would be especially useful if it can be broken down by region, school type, position, and/ or institution.

This information is invaluable for going into an interview or negotiation process being (at least somewhat) informed.

I know some websites across the internet that attempt to generally provide this information, but many do not cover academic jobs effectively (or typically at all).

See here for a discussion of this topic for UK schools.

And here or here are two of many SE questions discussing How to handle salary negotiations.

The broadest survey that I'm aware of across many disciplines in the US is the CUPA-HR (College and University Professional Association for Human Resources) survey.  Some summary data is available for free from their web site.  However, you'd have to pay for access to the full survey results.  Colleges frequently make use of this survey in setting salary targets.

The Chronicle of Higher Education also hosts a database that has salary data for faculty at many individual institutions in the US- I'm not sure of the sources of this data.

Many individual disciplines have salary surveys that are done by professional societies.  For example, in mathematics, the American Mathematical Society has an annual survey of salaries of mathematics faculty in the US with extensive results that is freely available on the web.  The survey breaks down positions by type of institution (bachelor's granting, master's granting, and three classes of PhD granting institutions.)  It also has data for new assistant professors, all assistant professors, associate professors, and full professors.

At many public institutions in the US the salaries of faculty are a matter of public record and can be obtained by doing a simple web search.  In negotiating an offer you might find this data useful.  However, it's quite common under these circumstances that the institution simply won't negotiate much with respect to salary to avoid upsetting the faculty that already work in a department- they're generally aware of what their coworkers make.

At private universities in the US, the salaries of individual faculty are generally kept secret, except in cases where faculty members are among the most highly paid employees of the institution whose salaries must be reported as part of the annual report to the IRS (typically the five highest salaries go to football and basketball coaches and top administrators, but you sometime find medical school profs listed in these reports.)


Professor wrote me a letter of recommendation, but sent it to both me and the institute So after all these crazy days of trying to finish my application and encouraging professors to finish the letters of recommendations (LORs) for me, there is the next thing - my professor sent the letter of recommendation (which he had to send just to the institution) also to me. I think he did it unknowingly, but now I am stressed again, because I should not know the content of the letter of course. I didn't open it, but this situation is quite crazy. If I can see that he sent it to two recipients, it stands to reason that the another recipient can see it too.

Uhh. Does someone know what should I do now?

EDIT: It was a letter related to the grant application

I have, on many occasions, received references/letters of recommendation from academics with their student copied in.

Some do it as a matter of course for transparency so that students know what's being said about them or to confirm that they have actually done it (profs are notoriously bad at getting refs in on time!).  And some do it in error.

In the cases I have experienced, this hasn't been an issue at all.  What is at stake, at least immediately, is the quality of the reference, not whether or not the student knows its content.

Unless there are some very stringent rules in place at the receiving institution, I think that this is a non-issue.

It would also be worth bearing in mind that, depending upon your jurisdiction, the content of references (ie personal data) may actually be admissible upon request.  See the University of Reading guidance on this in the UK.  So references aren't necessarily private anyway.

The only real issue I can foresee is if the content of the reference isn't great and your place to be declined.  Although this one is up to you how you respond.

In answer to your question, if you are really concerned, I would suggest you send your professor an email to thank them for the reference and casually/politely to ask whether it is normal practice to cc the student in to these kinds of letters.  The prof will then hopefully give you their view.

I would advise against contacting the receiving institution as you might risk sounding a bit silly/panicky (sorry!).


Prof disagrees with assigned textbook regarding an exam question This actually happened to my wife, but for the sake of simplicity I'll talk about it as if it happened to me.

I wrote a final exam for a university course last week, and a couple days ago I got my marks and the correct answers back. I disagreed with one of the questions I answered wrong, so I pulled out the textbook that was assigned to this course and found that it supports my answer. I sent an email to my prof with the page number and the exact quote from the textbook that supports my answer. His reply was (with slightly changed wording):

  In class I said that correct exam answer... This is an issue with any text and shows why class is so vital: Texts rapidly go out of date or (such as the broad text used for this course)  demonstrate a lack of depth. Lectures are usually much more up to date.

Keep in mind that this is an Archaeology class, which in my unprofessional opinion really doesn't "go out of date" all that quickly. The textbook is the assigned textbook for this course by the university. The online lecture notes posted by the prof make no mention of the disagreement. I was not present at the lecture.

Do professors have an obligation to recognize the assigned textbook as an authority in the context of the course? In my experience, when confronted with such a problem they typically go "Ok, fair enough, I'll give you the mark", but are they just being nice or are they supposed to do this? He's not a senior prof (not even PhD yet), so do you think going to his superior would help?

If I get this one extra mark it will bump me up 0.4 GPA for the course because I'm right at the cut-off.

Edit:
Since several people asked, the question was something like "Which Aztec god is the god of war and is associated with water". The book said one god, Huitzilopochtli, was the god of war, while Tlaloc was the god of fertility and rain. When studying for the exam, Huitzilopochtli stuck in my head as the god of war, so I picked him. The prof said that in class he mentioned that Tlaloc also had militaristic aspects.
Note that I'm not saying the prof is wrong objectively, only that our book makes no mention of Tlaloc being war-like and instead makes emphasis on fertility and life, being a beneficial god, which seemed totally opposite to war. When I sent my email I explained that I picked Huitzilopochtli because the book lists only him as the war god, but that I recognize my answer is only half-right due to the water reference, and that I feel that Tlaloc is also only half-right since he's not a war god.  Also, the prof agreed with me that the book was misleading, but said that I should've come to the lecture. Hence my question here focusing on whether the book should have any authority without getting into the details of the question itself.

Do professors have an obligation to recognize the assigned textbook as an authority in the context of the course?

No, there is no such obligation.  It's a bad educational practice to choose a textbook that's seriously unreliable, but even good textbooks slowly go out of date, and they sometimes have a lack of detail or even outright errors as well.  It's important for professors to try to be clear about any deficiencies the textbook has, for example by highlighting them in class.  I provide a written list of any typos or other issues I am aware of (although I note that of course there may be others as well).  However, there is no obligation to accept the textbook's version as a correct answer, and there are no specific rules about how things must be brought to the students' attention.  It's entirely up to the lecturer's discretion.

I would expect that many professors would be more flexible or accommodating than what happened in this instance, but not all of them.  At least in the sort of universities I'm familiar with (in the U.S.), there's no way an administrator will change the grade under these circumstances if the faculty member who assigned it is unwilling to do so.

On the other hand, it's not clear to me from what you say whether this person is a regular faculty member (due to the lack of a Ph.D.).  If you are dealing with a teaching assistant, it could be worth asking the professor in charge of the whole course.  This will probably upset the TA, but it might work (since the professor will want to maintain common policies among all the TAs assigning grades).  Other than that, I don't see any recourse.

Added in light of Pete Clark's answer: I'm assuming your answer is definitely wrong.  I.e., either the textbook had an error in it or it's out of date regarding a clear scholarly consensus.  On the other hand, if you can make a case that your answer is actually correct or accepted by serious researchers (not just that the textbook says it, but that authoritative and up to date scholarly sources agree), then you've got more of a basis for disputing the grade.


Is it beneficial to publish papers from previous labs during grad school? I am a second year PhD student currently working on three papers mostly unrelated to my field from previous research appointments (2 from rotations and one from undergrad). I'm finding myself very unmotivated to complete these simply because I'm not sure how beneficial it will be for me to publish them. I don't currently have any publications, but I'm currently working on a project in my lab that will hopefully get me a pub within the next year. Should I drop responsibility/authorship from these publications entirely, decrease my responsibility on the paper (currently first or co-author on all of them), or stick it out and publish them? I'm most worried about if it will hurt my reputation later to have a bunch of pubs during my grad school years that are completely unrelated to my thesis.

I struggle to see how having papers outside of your PhD field could be a negative - demonstrating you have knowledge, interest and expertise in a range of subjects can be a bonus. But as mentioned above, they must be of a standard you are happy to publish. Your PhD thesis (plus papers published along the way) will show your expertise in your main field, so why not show off your other skills too?

Plus, I imagine a lot of time and money has been invested into your previous work. I think you should use that for the benefit of your co-authors as well as yourself. But if you find the extra work is having a negative impact on your current studies, prioritise what is right for you.


How are international graduate applicants perceived by universities in the US? I've always wondered how professors and admission committees in the US think about international applicants for doctoral programs in the US.

Skills:
Why are international applicants selected over (I believe sufficient) domestic applicants at all? Are there some skill differences?

Funding:
Isn't it more expensive and risky to provide >5 years funding to an international student than a domestic one? When do they think an international applicant trustworthy and appropriate for funding their studies?

I am wondering specifically about PhD programs (not Master etc) because some programs offer funding before even knowing the student in person which seems risky because if I were an advisor it would be difficult to evaluate a student's value for my lab before having actually worked with her.

To answer your specific questions, schools are generally trying to admit the best applicants (who will choose to come), not just a group of people of the right size over a certain threshold.  So if an international student appears to be a stronger candidate (evaluated the same way any other applicant would be), the international applicant is likely to be preferred.

Graduate students are generally funded based on packages that don't take into account where the student's from, so it's not generally more expensive.  (International students may be less likely to accept because the funding is less likely to enough, but that's no reason not to admit them.)

Finally, why would international applicants be any less trustworthy or appropriate than domestic ones?


How can I make self-studied course in undergraduate official when applying to graduate school? I'm a second year Physics and Mathematics student.

Although I haven't attended many different professor's lectures, from what I have experienced, and what I know about the professors in both of my departments, I generally don't like the style that the lecturers uses in both departments. What I mean by this is that, for example, in physics courses, generally lecturers tend to justify their claim by doing "sloppy mathematics" and generally without clearly stating their assumptions, and they don't explicitly state what is an experimental result and what is a mathematical result, so this generally confuses me.Of course this is just one of the examples only in physics department.Therefore, mostly I studied the subject by myself, and ask the questions either to the T.A, or the professor's itself depending on situation.

I should also note that, in both departments, there are some professors whose way of explains things coincides with how I think, so if I cannot understand a subject that I'm self-studying, I generally go to those professors and ask them.

So, for this reason, I'm going to ended up studying lots of subject by myself, and for that reason I will not take course on those subject because why should I waste time by taking the lectures on subjects that I have already know.Instead I can take different course that I really benefit from.

However, the only problem in this way is that I will not have an official account on those subjects that I will have beed studied when I apply to graduate school.

So my question is that how can I make these studies official ? I mean, for example, I will study point-set topology in the next spring break and I will not take this course from the department, but how can I prove that I know this subject when I apply to graduate school.

I'm hoping that I'm able to clearly express what I'm asking.If not, please say it what is not clear.

Note that, I have seen this question, but even though I don't exactly know the content of GRE tests, I don't think it will be a valid method in my case.

I don't know much about Turkey, but in most systems there isn't really any way to get credit for a course you didn't take.

You may be allowed to enrol on a course, skip all the lectures, and just turn up to the exam, depending on how strict your department is about attendance, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Courses are taught in a certain way for a number of important reasons. University is not just about imparting knowledge, but also familiarising students with the norms of a field. Concepts may be introduced or explained in a way that seems silly to you for the sake of demonstrating some property or relating disparate concepts (like electromagnetism and gravity).

You may be unsatisfied with the mathematical rigour of your physics course, but this is deliberate and necessary. Most of the equations you will learn as an undergraduate are empirically derived (or derived under certain assumptions), and will probably prove to be inaccurate or incomplete later on. But they are useful, and teaching them "properly" would require bogging down first-year courses with complex and mostly-irrelevant mathematics. Imagine if, instead of stating Newton's third law, your lecturer had diverged for several lectures to discuss conservation of momentum, introduce Lagrangian mechanics, and prove Noether's theorem.

You are, of course, encouraged to dig deeper. There is nothing better a student can do. But university courses are (usually) carefully designed to teach you important concepts and the "language" of the field in the simplest and most efficient way.

And, uh, the lectures are what the exam will be based on.

To get the grade on your transcript, you must enrol on the course and pass the exam. That probably means attending the lectures. It may not seem like it, but your lecturers know more about teaching their subject than you do.


Is experience teaching college statistics sufficient to apply for a non-research stats professor jobs? I am a mathematics professor with a PhD and 12 years of math teaching experience, including 6 years post-PhD.

For the last two years, I have taught statistics every semester. It was a big change from math at first, but now I feel much more confident.

I know several people on this site have served on hiring committees. At a university with low research expectations hiring for a stats position, would an application such as mine be competitive with newly-graduated statistics PhDs?

To generalize, when applying for teaching positions in areas adjacent to your PhD, what evidence can you provide that you are able to competently teach in this area?

As long as you are still at the assistant professor level, I think your application should be competitive at many schools, provided you have evidence of good teaching.  Many mathematicians have gone over to statistics, and at a school that is primarily teaching oriented, what they typically look for is someone who teach well, provide good service and be a good colleague.  They probably won't care much about your actual area of research, just that you can cover well the courses they have in mind for that position.  If you've taught several similar courses, and have good letters about them, then this is sufficient evidence of teaching capability to me.

In fact, your position would be viewed as advantageous by many, as you should have more experience in both teaching---in fact, possibly more experience teaching statistics---and service than a fresh statistics PhD.  Also, presumably you've shown that you can sustain your research on your own.


Is it common to express interest in post-doc positions well before you are qualified to apply? I'm very early in my PhD (just past 6 months) and out of interest I was looking at some post-doc positions that I could aim towards.

I found a recently advertised position that is in the exact field I am aiming for. Essentially it sounds like I'd be a perfect match... in three years time.

I was thinking of sending one of the Chief Investigators an email introducing myself and expressing interest in positions like this one for the future (obviously not applying though) so he would be aware of my name and perhaps keep me in mind so I could apply if a similar position came available at a more appropriate time.

Is this a common thing to do? Would it be positively or negatively received?

For reference, the field is mathematical biology.

One semester into your PhD is probably a little too early to start contacting potential post doc advisors and future employers—the crystal ball is way too fuzzy, and their plans almost certainly aren’t known. (They may not even be doing the same area four or five years from now!)

You could certainly contact them about your interest in your research and introduce yourself, but I would wait until you’re slightly further along to start discussing future jobs; I’d say serious discussions about that are appropriate when you’re about two years out from graduation.


Which scientific discipline studies topics? In my understanding, the common understanding of the word "topic" is as defined in the Wiktionary:

  Subject; theme; a category or general area of interest.

Now which discipline deals with this and related effects, for example how to determine topicality of a message in a given context?

First, I thought it could be linguistics, but this discipline has got their own notion of topic, either they work on a single-sentence level:

  In linguistics, the topic, or theme, of a sentence is what is being
  talked about.

Sociology could be one consideration. The word “topic” has the ability to shift, what could be considered a “theme” is dynamic, and evolves with societies definition of what it means. Philosophy could also be a major player because you’re concerned with the question of what it means to be a topic, and that sounds like the realm of philosophical thought. To me it sounds more like a question best suited for the social sciences as opposed to the hard sciences.


Is it insulting to call a full professor Dr. Firstname Lastname in a non-academic event program? I'm in charge of putting together an event program, for a non-academic (business) event. We have several academics presenting, from mainland Europe and the UK.

In the agenda is it appropriate to write, for example,

Topic Title - Dr. Firstname Lastname, Professor of xyz at XYZ
University
Topic Title - Prof. Firstname Lastname, Professor of xyz
at XYZ University
Topic Title - Prof. Dr. Firstname Lastname, Professor of xyz at XYZ University
Topic Title - Whatever is in their linkedin profile...

(as seems to be typical on the continent)

I ask because I would like to use appropriate titles without sounding too academic and without insulting anyone. All are full professors, one emeritus. I'd like to use the same for all if possible, for consistency.

And, I am assuming that I should use at minimum a Dr. before the name even though the job title will be listed after the name, even though speakers with MBAs etc. will not have their titles listed, and will just be Firstname Lastname... not Ms. Firstname Lastname, MBA.

For most people, insult and offense comes more from lack of care and respect than from mistakes.  I would thus recommend the following procedure:

Prepare a draft, making your best guess for each speaker based on their web presence.
Send out the draft agenda to all speakers, saying that this is the draft and you'd like corrections in case you have made mistakes in how anybody is listed.  (You probably want to run the schedule by them anyway for other purposes as well.)
Make any corrections requested by the speakers.

This way, if you get anything wrong, you're doing it in private, acknowledging possible errors, and giving them a chance to correct you in private as well.  It will be a rarely sensitive person or an unusually significant mistake that will cause offense in this way.


Is it allowed to include graphs in a thesis without explicit permission? In a thesis, is it allowed to include graphs from other papers without an explicit permission from the publisher? (assuming citation is provided)

Depends on your university policies, but probably yes. There is probably a "thesis FAQ" at your graduate division that will clarify this!

I had to request permission for many separate aspects of my thesis, including sections of my own papers that were re-used, and (I think) figures from other peoples' papers.

Usually you can do this through the journal's "Request permissions" link, which takes you through Rightslink or something similar, and the cost was always zero for me. Other journals (PLOS) have explicit copyright policies which you can reference.

The risk here is that when you file your thesis, someone in the graduate division will say, "wait, this isn't from your work, do you have rights to do this?" and slow your graduation down! The only people who can tell you whether this will happen are at your university. For instance, this is a policy page for copyright at Michigan Tech: http://www.mtu.edu/gradschool/administration/academics/thesis-dissertation/copyright/use/


Appropriate salutation for female German full professor I'm buying a desk nameplate for a full professor (in USA) who is female and of German origin. I'd like to have this nameplate follow the conventional salutation someone would use in Germany for a female at the highest academic rank.

Please note it is not important if using desk nameplates in Germany is customary or not. But if you're in Germany and have seen these in academia, I'd be interested in knowing how they're formatted. This answer is helpful but does not directly address how I should print this on a nameplate.

Assume the individual is called Joan A. Smith, Ph.D.

Prof. J. A. Smith, Ph.D.
Professor Smith
Joan A. Smith, Ph.D. (with "professor" written underneath)
etc?

What would be the most appropriate (German) way of engraving this item?

The closest to the picture you are showing is

"Professorin Dr. Johanna Schmidt"

where the "Dr." needs to be replaced by the correct specification, e.g. Dr.-Ing., Dr. rer nat, ...

If you are having less space, you can use "Prof." instead of "Professorin" (note that "Professorin" is the female form of "Professor")

If the real title is a PhD and not a "Dr.", you should write

"Professorin Johanna Schmidt, PhD"

In all cases, the first name might be abbreviated. In Germany it is relatively uncommon to use the second name - you should check how she uses it and follow the style she prefers.

I would not write "Professorin" underneath the name - it looks strange to me.


Is there any source where to find samples of Research Proposals? I am going to apply to Statistics PhD but I am not deeply aware of the opportunities of research because of my different background. Is there any source of past research proposals or mock ones (maybe already provided by other programs) to get an idea of what it should be like? It would be nice to understand clearly how to structure it and how deep into the research it should actually go.

Awarded NSF proposals in the US can be requested from NSF via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). They give the authors a chance to redact non-public information like salaries or corporate secrets, but NSF gets a chance to edit it back in. Salaries are weird because lots of us work for state universities and our salaries are public already. The requestor’s name is not anonymous. My organization has been subject to many of these, every time we win a new big computer. Other agencies are subject to similar rules but may have different responses based on their missions (DARPA, NNSA, etc). Doing such a request is tedious and exacting, and you’re probably better off asking colleagues you’re not likely to compete against to look at one of their successful proposals.


How should I include a list of links in my thesis? In my thesis, I would like to refer to a set of links. These are tools/calculators/etc. related to my subject, included to show that there is an interest in society at large in this topic.

I'm wondering what the best way would be to include them. Options include:

all (15+) in the running text is cumbersome;
a table with only one column looks just plain weird;
as references [1,3-5,76] breaks the flow of reading, and mixes them up with formal, cited literature sources. I would not suggest that these links are quality sources of anything, their simple existence is the point;
as an appendix diminishes their impact.

Personally, I am in favour of adding them as references in the bibliography section.

With that said, I am from a CS subfield that is very close to the "real world" in a way that related work is almost always a motley mixture of peer-reviewed publications, books, newspaper articles, technical standard documents (such as those by W3C), and actual innovative software or websites (whose concepts were never formally published in a scientific venue), i.e. sources with a continuously varying degree of reliability. Consequently, trying to find a well-defined rule about what to add as a footnote and what to add as a bibliography reference is certain to give you headaches (and uncertain to lead to a useful and consistent result).

However, I can see a few (maybe a bit subjective) general advantages of using bibliography items rather than footnotes for links (in no particular order):

Bibliography items tend to more or less have a fixed format. Frequently, meta-information such as year of publication or author can be provided for web resources just as it can for anything else. When using a footnote, authors may be tempted to just provide the link and skip the meta-information that would be naturally included in a bibliography item, thereby foregoing both any due attribution and any information required to possibly locate the resource again, should the link die.
I have seen styleguides that generally forbid the use of footnotes (e.g. "Please do not use footnotes at all!"), but I have yet to see a styleguide that generally forbids the use of a bibliography. By not using any footnotes, your manuscript is one step closer to being agnostic of the final formatting used (and thus matches with the ideal of separating content from layout).
If the same web resource is mentioned twice throughout your document, there is absolutely no problem if the link is provided in a bibliography item, which is simply referenced twice in your text, if appropriate (e.g. if the two mentions are sufficiently far apart). If the link is in a footnote, on the other hand, things are not so clear:

The footnote can be added several times in the document. However, this means a waste of space, and it may also confuse readers who expect some new information when reading a new footnote for the first time, or who might wonder whether they are looking at a copy-and-paste error where a previously unmentioned link should be provided. Personally, I consider this "solution" downright bad style.
The same footnote can be pointed to several times. While this may be slightly cumbersome in some typesetting software, it is definitely feasible. However, it significantly increases the effort for finding the footnote (it might be on any page in the document), and the need to switch to another page than the one the reader is currently on kind of defeats the purpose of footnotes, anyway.

As a reader, I find keeping track of references, figure numbers, and table numbers that I still want to look into after finishing or while reading the current paragraph or section hard enough. There is no reason to add yet another independent list for footnote numbers.
Also as a reader, I have a certain expectation what amount of information I will find when following a pointer to additional information. For bibliography references, it is clear that the pointer points to an entire external document. For footnotes, I conversely prefer it to be clear that the pointer points to no more than one or two sentences worth of additional information (for which I do not need to search for and/or open another document).


Change of rules & regulations after accepting faculty contract offer I have recently accepted a new academic position in the Netherlands. Netherlands has a generous so-called 30% rule for high skilled expats:

you are paying taxes only for the 70% of your income and the rest 30%
is given to you as a tax-free allowance. This, in practice, means
about 20% higher net salary.

I easily got this rule 2 years ago for another academic position again in NL. The duration for the 30% rule is 8 years so I should have it for the next 6 years and nobody from HR mentioned any plans from the government of reducing it. Unfortunately, yesterday I read in the news that Dutch government completed a draft proposal which reduces the 30% rule from 8 to 5 years.  What is worth noting is that, in case the draft becomes a law (which most probably will, since this is the final proposal) will have a retroactive effect :

Concreet betekent dit dat het kabinet in het pakket Belastingplan 2019
zal voorstellen de maximale looptijd van de 30%-regeling met ingang
van 1 januari 2019 voor zowel nieuwe als bestaande gevallen met drie
jaar te verkorten.

One of the factors that made me accepted the new offer was the 30% rule for the remaining 6 years (I planned to buy house immediately). Now I see that this might not very well be true. What is even worse is that I turned down a great Research position (in a high tech company) offering about 60% more salary. I thought the 30% rule would partly compensate about it, but probably it will not.
I will not ask about the legal aspects of the draft law nor about the ethical dimension of this although you can see here what the relevant tax authorities say about shortening the period of 8 years.

Is it too late to turn down the academic offer? I have accepted it on e-mail but I haven't signed anything yet and haven't even seen the contract. If yes, what is the best way to do this?
Is anything similar happening to any other country and how do academics people deal with it?

Apparently, a lot of expats taking advantage of this rule get frustrated and set up an e-vote against the draft.

This is an unfortunate situation were nobody really is to blame. You can't expect the university to warn you about a law that wasn't even in place yet, and the university cannot objectively be mad at you for reneging when your contractual situation significantly changed, even if it is due to outside factors. Of course the important word in the above statement is "objectively" - nobody can ensure you that the people that wanted to hire you will also see it like that, and that you won't burn any bridges.

  Is it too late to turn down the academic offer? I have accepted it on e-mail but I haven't signed anything yet and haven't even seen the contract. If yes, what is the best way to do this?

As long as you have not signed anything you are always in the right to back out. The best way to do it would be to warn them that this new development significantly changes your view on their offer, even if they are of course not to blame. I would stay clear of any accusations that they failed to inform you in advance. Note that this also gives them the option to up their offer, which would presumably change your mind back again.

You should do it in the same form as you tentatively accepted the offer before - if you communicated that you would take the offer via email, send them a brief follow-up that you changed your mind, and why.

  Is anything similar happening to any other country and how do academics people deal with it?

I am not aware of any concrete cases, but presumably when Brexit broke there had to be cases of academics changing their mind about moving to the UK.


Is it illegal or unethical to use plotting and graphics styles that mimic those from newspapers and websites? I am a researcher and publish my findings in academic journals, websites/blogs, and social media. The results often involve plots and other graphics, and I try to make them as attractive as possible.

Publications such as NYT, FT, The Economist, ... have characteristic (and pretty imo) styles for plots that many people like and try to mimic. One particular example is fivethirtyeight, with their style being even integrated as a style in matplotlib.

I wonder what is the stance about this topic in the data science community and academia. Is it okay to get inspired by someone's design of graphics and follow it?

I am not sure whether a plotting style can be protected and patented (and can you get sued for re-using it), but if not: is it unethical to mimic plot styles from others?

Another thing that may complicate things further is that when one publishes in academic journals, often the copyright of the content is transferred to the publisher.

It's fine to base your graphical style on that of other publications that you think are doing a good job.  There are no ethical issues with this, provided you are not actually reusing images—or parts of images—from other sources.  (For example, you cannot copy parts directly from other figures without either proper attribution or permission; what precisely you need depends on the context and the use you are going to make of the images.  You might also run into issues if you directly copied The Economist's proprietary house font, which was specifically designed for that publication.)


Editors resigning because they published a low quality paper Very recently the chief editors of the journal
'EMS SURVEYS IN MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES'
resigned because they published a paper (whose "methodology does not contradict Cantor’s and non-standard analysis views and is based on the
Euclid’s Common Notion no. 5 “The whole is greater than the part” " - from the abstract) which turned out to be of questionable quality.

Apparently the editors were "unaware of what was happening" (statement of the editorial board). This seems very peculiar to me; of course it happens here and there that an accepted article contains a minor error, sometimes even a major error. But usually the editors do not resign simply because they accepted a paper with flaws. Does anyone know of similar cases? In this particular case the paper will apparently not be retracted, even though apparently none of the editors was aware that this will be published. Why would editors choose to publish it nevertheless?

Officially (according to the publisher, as quoted here) "it seems that there is not enough grounds for a formal retraction." And yet the statement suggests that the editorial board is thoroughly unhappy.

Remark: I am particularly interested in mathematics journals (hence the tag). However, I am also interested in other fields.

It's decently common. I Googled for "peer review failure editor resign" and some examples are: 1, 2, 3, 4.

You ask "Why would editors choose to publish [the paper] nevertheless?" There're many possible reasons as to why editors may choose to publish a flawed paper:

Some members of the editorial board approved of the paper and still do, while others didn't (and the ones that didn't are the ones resigning). Journals typically do not get every member of the editorial board to approve a paper before it's accepted.
They made a mistake, but now that the paper is already published, they don't consider the errors critical enough to retract it (or they don't consider it fair to the author).
They realized the paper is dubious but decided to err on the side of acceptance. People who subscribe to this idea think, "referees only give opinions; the real peer review happens after a paper is published".
The journal is currently lacking papers, so they're inclining towards accepting more papers to fill their issues.
Difficulty communicating with the author, e.g. if the author isn't very responsive, then editors might choose to accept "as is" rather than wait several months for an author response (especially if the author isn't likely to make major changes to the manuscript). I also remember reading about a flawed paper that was accepted because the author was from the Soviet Union, and getting the author to correct it through the Soviet censors takes too much time.

In the case of this particular paper, the editorial board claims no knowledge of what was happening. At this point, it's speculation to try to figure out what actually happened. However, I would guess (based on my experience in publishing) that after the journal received the paper the desk editor attempted to find a member of the board to handle it, but everyone contacted either declined to handle it or simply did not respond to emails. In that case the desk editor can hardly let the paper sit there collecting dust, so (s)he did the next best thing which was to DIY, with less than ideal consequences. I've seen this happen and even done it myself quite a bit. I've never actually ended up in the news for doing this, which shows that usually DIY-ing doesn't lead to problems. But if it does, that's when we look at one another and sigh.


Are Researchers at Private Companies Allowed to Publish Papers? I'm an academic researcher with a very good publication track record in computer science.

I'm considering the possibility of applying for a research position at a well known telecommunications company with a large research department. But I still would like to have the possibility of publishing theoretical work.

1) Are researchers in private companies usually allowed to publish theoretical work produced in cooperation with researchers outside the company?

2) Are researchers in private companies usually allowed to publish theoretical work produced inside the company?

Speaking as a researcher at a private for-profit company, who also publishes frequently, it all depends on the nature of the business model and the position.

Most people at companies do not publish, either because the company has no interest in publishing or because their particular job doesn't involve much of scientific interest. For companies that are involved in cutting edge work, however, scientific publishing can gain credibility and visibility for the organization just like it does for people at universities. This is the case for the company I work for, particularly given that many of our projects are federally funded research where the government is paying us in part to disseminate knowledge.

Nor is there any necessary conflict between protecting intellectual property and publishing. The three main strategies for protecting IP are copyright, patent, and trade secret. Of those, only trade secret is incompatible with publishing, and it is generally the most fragile and least used in any case.

The biggest obstacle to publishing in private industry is simply priority and time. Writing a manuscript is a lot of work, and if management doesn't see much benefit, they will likely want you to use those hours for things more directly connected to the bottom line. You might be able to publish out of hours, but that can be a more complex negotiation.

Bottom line: it really depends on the particular circumstances. The best way to know if you will be able to publish is to look at whether others in the group you are joining publish. If so, you probably can. If not, there are likely major obstacles, whether formal or merely pragmatic.


Apple or Thinkpads, buying for department I'm asking this anonymously. Our department of computer science just received a donation to buy laptops for students. Major activity will be programming and languages used will be C/C++/Python/Perl/Java/R. We will be instituting a lending scheme for students who can't afford them.

As a committee, we now need to decide whether we should be buying Apple Macbook Pro(13") or Thinkpad (T420) both with more or less similar specifications and price. The Apple will run it's OS and Thinkpad will run Debian Linux.

My question is : We are training the students for research and we wish to provide them with an environment close to how it is in the real world. Should we choosing one over the other considering all students have an inclination for research/academia?

This is not meant to be a flame war but rather a question of whether Academia has hidden liking towards Apple and if yes, why?

I think that in most conferences/project meetings I attend, there isn't an overwhelming preference on one side or the other (I'm working in computer science, in case that matters). In other words, there are many academics happily working with linux, and many academics happily working with mac (some are even working with both), so in your case, there is no real wrong choice.

From what I've experienced, in some places, there could be a preference for apple computers because of the way some universities order their hardware: if you ask for a PC, you might not be able to choose which one exactly, and you might end up with a low quality, cheap product, whereas if you ask for a mac, the quality is better (at least, that was true a while ago). But  I don't think it can explain why the proportion of apple laptops in the academic world is higher than that of the general population.

In any case, I don't think that working within on environment will prevent the students to switch to another one later one if they need to.


Can a professor from totally different research field be invited to thesis defense? In a very reputed private university, there is a rule for sending thesis to internal(national) and external(international) examiner for evaluation. After a report from two reviewers, a viva is conducted. For the last few years, I am noticing that some departments are inviting local professors to thesis defense who have virtually no research relationships with the thesis. They are being invited just because of financial constraints or quid pro quo relationship between professors who just do this to please their friendly peers in academia. By inviting local professors, the university is saving up money from travel and lodging expenses.

Is this process legal?

I'm not familiar with UGC policy. However, in the UK university I'm in, this would be considered a serious breach of protocol and may be grounds for invalidating the viva and its result.

The attendees at the viva are limited to four people:

An internal examiner
An external examiner
An independent observer
The PhD candidate

The qualifications of the first three have to be vetted by the Department, Faculty and Graduate School. The independent observer is a senior professor of my university who is not necessarily in the cognate discipline. His or her role is to ensure that the processes being followed meet university standards.

The proceedings are held in one of three special rooms we've designed for the purpose of the viva. The proceedings are not audio- or video-recorded. (We do allow the taking of photos of the attendees at the end of the proceedings.)

I can understand the idea of nominating local experts to reduce costs. However, the vetting process specifically seeks information about (1) conflicts of interest between or among examiners, supervisors and students and (2) the qualifications of the internal and external examiners to hold those positions.

I hope this helps.


As a department head, what to do if a professor leaves without giving out grades? I am department head. An adjunct professor teaching two courses in my department left without notice. He did not deliver the grades to me.

We have no staff in that field to give the final exam again. Even so, I wouldn't know how to convince the students to take the exam again, and I do not know what to do with the class activity, which should be part of the final grade.

The registrar is forcing me to deliver the grades, but I have no idea what to do.

Does anyone have any experience to share? What do department heads normally do in this situation?

I assume you've already tried to convince/pressure the instructor to provide enough information to assign grades.  Assuming he's not dreadfully ill, it would be incredibly unprofessional for him to refuse, but sometimes people are unprofessional.  If you don't know him well, is there someone else in the department who could try to talk some sense into him?  Was anyone else involved in the course, such as a TA or grader?

Once you've convinced yourself that you just can't get the grades, you need to take this up with the administration.  It's a really awkward situation, and you shouldn't be improvising a solution.  Whatever you do should be discussed with and approved in advance by the dean (or whoever has a similar level of responsibility in your university).  Presumably this issue has arisen before, and the previous decisions will serve as a precedent.  If this is the very first time, then you'll be setting a precedent.  Either way, you don't need to take sole responsibility for figuring out what to do, and you shouldn't.


How to improve my academic vocabulary I'm an international student and would like to prepare myself for a PhD which I will possibly be starting in 8 months' time. I need to improve my academic vocabulary and don't know what the roadmap is for that.

I am not quite sure what you mean by "academic vocabulary". If you mean words which appear in your field, read papers in your field or, if their level is too specialized, books for students.

On the other hand, if you mean words like "paper", "rejection", "withdrawal", "paywalled journal" etc., you may want to start at Academia Stack Exchange: reading many questions and answers here gives you a good feeling what academia is about, what certain words mean (and how academics think).


Preprint services other than arXiv (for other fields) While arXiv is great, it covers only topics in physics, mathematics and computer science.

Are there any good preprint storage places for other scientific disciplines?

The OSF provides a general open preprint infrastructure that is connected to a range of preprint services. Importantly, it is not owned by a commercial publisher.  It supports a number of discipline-specific preprint services many of which use the ArXiv name under licence.

The list of preprint services is growing over time.
For further information go to: https://osf.io/preprints

In general, no matter what the discipline you can post to:

OSF preprints https://osf.io/preprints/

However, the OSF supports the following discipline-specific preprint services. Presumably, if your preprint aligns with any of these disciplines, then you would be better off posting to them.

Psychological Sciences.  PsyArXiv https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/
Social Sciences. SocARXIV https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv
Engineering. engrXiV https://osf.io/preprints/engrxiv
Agriculture and Allied Sciences. AgriXiv https://osf.io/preprints/agrixiv

More discipline-specific preprint services using the OSF framework are being added on a regular basis: https://cos.io/blog/public-goods-infrastructure-preprints-and-innovation-scholarly-communication/

Useful features of OSF-based preprint services

Strategy for long term archiving
Integration with Google Scholar
Integration with OSF projects which allows you to link other materials such as data, code, and materials
OSF is a not for profit entity run by academic researchers (contrast this with SSRN, Figshare, ResearchGate; i.e., no ads and goals aligned with academic community)
The functionality of OSF preprints is improving on a regular basis. See features road map
You can choose a licence
You can link to the doi of the subsequently published manuscript.


Should I thank the editor for accepting my paper? My paper has been accepted after several rounds of revisions. The editor him-/herself gave quite detailed comments some of which were quite important. Should I thank him/her personally for the acceptance of the paper and/or his effort(s) (the latter I have done before in my replies to reviews).

I don't see anyone reason why you shouldn't. Although, don't thank them for accepting the paper. A good editor will accept an article by someone they dislike or they wholeheartedly disagree with but which makes a good argument. It's their job. It's not a favor to you personally.

In addition, you can mention it where you acknowledge everybody else who contributed with their comments. It's not uncommon to see papers whose authors thank editors or (anonymous) reviewers for their comments if they went beyond what is ordinarily expected of them.  This seems to be the case here.


Can't shake doubts about quality of research, but want to continue I'm late in my PhD career, and I recently switched advisors. I'm having major doubts about my work and my choices seem to be: stay on this project or drop out. I'm looking for advice from people who were in similar situations. Sorry for the long posts, PhD complaint posts are probably always long. :-)

I was given a project: read paper "A" and followup paper "B" and figure out how to follow up with "C". While Paper A initially caught my eye as interesting and promising, I now seem inevitably led to the conclusion its logic is basically bogus. It was a real emotional hit when I began to see that -- if Paper A were plausible, my life would be a lot easier right now.

I have mentioned my skepticism to others who have familiarity with Paper A. They say that I am right to have doubts, that the paper is not great and there are flaws, but they still think the general idea is true. I feel like I am not being heard -- if they understood me, they would see that I am saying that the general idea is probably not true.

A relevant fact I should mention here is this: all the people I've talked to so far who have read Paper A participated in publishing Paper B. I am not so naive, and I suspect perhaps cognitive dissonance is at play here.

My SO suggested I briefly write down my doubts and the reasons for them, plus potential other directions for research, and bringing them to my committee. I think this is a good idea.

I will just leave these things here:

My doubts aren't being heard. My advisor said, "You can do this project, or you can find another advisor." I mentioned this to a member on my committee, ready to quit. They said, "Don't worry about that, it's not true and it's just a misguided way of trying to motivate you."
My advisor's techniques seem really outdated. I am trying to show him recent papers which have amazing results we could build on. He both hasn't read them and doubts their methods. How both can be true I'm not sure.

This list was going to be longer but it is painful to write. I am hoping someone can tell me: "look, man, there is a way to solve this", but I think I know what kind of answers I'm going to get.

What sucks is this: I feel like I was made to do good research. I see myself as methodical, precise, skeptical, and a highly motivated problem solver. I have good relationships with my peers, and I'm pretty respectful of others. And I keep ending up with advisors who seem like they don't really give a damn about anything except publishing. Help please.

If I have understood your question correctly, you are doubting that the methods used in Paper A (and followed in Paper B) are "correct." The question of whether or not Paper A's methods are "good enough" to get the "right" answer to this problem is an empirical one you can investigate.

You should consider proposing and writing a paper where you look at a similar problem as Paper A with two methodologies and see if there are different results. You could do what your advisor wants and also solve the problem a different way and compare. This would be a valuable contribution and would make your point for you (or not).

You could do this while also starting Paper C to make your advisor happy. You may also consider publishing Paper C with a simple method as a "first pass" and including caveats about the method and how it may be affecting the results. Then when you get the results to the comparison paper it will become obvious if Paper C also needs to use the new method, and you could publish a follow-up paper (or add to Paper C if it is not yet submitted).


Will my chances of obtaining a student visa in Canada be reduced if I mention I applied for permanent residency? I have been accepted into one of the top 10 engineering universities in Canada. I am starting to fill in the forms for a student visa, but my permanent residency application is still in the pipeline. If I mention this in the form, will my chance of getting a student visa be reduced?

The same form also requires me to mention only one post-secondary degree. Can I mention my bachelor degree instead of Master's? My current program offers me a Master's degree but in completely different field, which is my actual motivation to join the course in Canada.

The real question here is whether you are required to mention your permanent residency on your student visa application. If it is not required, I would refrain from mentioning this issue both in the application and during the interview as temporary residentship (e.g student visa) expects you to plan on returning after the agreed upon period. However, If you are required to provide such information in the form or are asked about in the interview, I would STRONGLY encourage you to provide the honest answer. Being dishonest in your application or interview can easily lead to your Visa being rejected. Bear in mind that your residency application is an officially submitted document and can easily be recovered if the Visa administration office seeks to look for it.


Adding square brackets when quoting I come upon a lot of quotes in academic papers where the following is written:

  Thus “[l]andscape is always being used as a medium for architectural ideas“ (Gilles 1986)

Why is l in square brackets? Does that mean that the author that cited this line, modified it to suit their point in the process?

Square brackets in quotes are usually used to indicate that a minor alteration has been made in order to make it more readable (e.g. to fit into the context that the quote is placed in) but that does not alter the intended meaning of the quote.

In your example, it probably means that the original quote had a capital letter, but has been re-written to fit its place in the middle of a sentence.

Another example would be if I wanted to quote your question. I could write

  "[BirdMars] come[s] upon a lot of quotes in academic papers [...]"

to maintain the spirit of your quote while clarifying who the pronoun "I" refers to. The ellipsis in square brackets indicates that this is not the full quote.


In this time of crisis, would the journals Nature and Science prioritize papers about COVID-19? Would Nature, Science or other leading academic journals prioritize publishing work on COVID-19, the novel coronavirus that has caused more than 3k deaths so far?  If so, has this happened before in the past, during another crisis?

Absolutely. Journals are ways of disseminating scientific information, and they do take into account what is of current interest.

More specifically, however: Both Science and Nature do not just publish scientific articles, but also commentary and news stories. For example, in Science they are in the "News" and "Perspectives" parts of the magazine, and they definitely cover current events. As, if I may add, they should.


Does marrying your PhD supervisor put doubts on your PhD? I have a professor in my university. He has married his PhD supervisor, and students are now making fun out of it as he didn't work on his PhD.  Instead they were in relationship and this and that.

I was wondering how this decision affects his academic life.  Do people doubt his degree as being softly defended or can people trust the expert knowledge of such a person?

Especially if a student wants him as a supervisor and when the student knows about this, what can be the effects of such a relationship on the student's decision?

Let us call the professor A, his advisor B. Let T be A's thesis.

If T was finished before the relationship, and the examination rules of the university were complied with, then there is neither a legal nor a moral issue. Don't worry, A writing T and then sleeping having a relationship with B is a non-issue. It's none of our business.

If the examination rules were complied with, but T was not finished at the time point the relationship started, then T lost some of its credibility, and all lost some of their reputation (to an extent which is difficult to quantify without knowing the details): A, B, and the university department.  One has a perfect right to doubt the credibility of T, the reputations of A and B, and the status of the university department. Prospective fresh students are right to raise such doubts. However, if nothing else has happened or will happen, the doubts must remain doubts and one should presume innocence.
To restore the reputation of A, of B and of the department and the credibility of T and remove the doubts, the department should evaluate T independently.
To evaluate the qualification of A, a prospective student should evaluate the quality (perhaps also the quantity) of the work of A outside A's collaboration with B.

If the examination rules regarding T were not complied with (e.g., B had a conflict of interest in a sense defined by the rules), one should insist on starting the standard procedure prescribed by the rules of the department.


Is it appropriate for an advisor to add a student's name (who has no contribution) to a paper because of his nationality I'm a PhD student working in the USA. My advisor has funding from a foreign (say Country X) agency. I worked on a problem that was proposed by the agency. However, I am not using their data. I am about to publish my findings. However, my advisor wants to add another one of his student's name to the co-authors, despite him having absolutely no contribution. This student is a native of Country X. My advisor's argument is that he does not want to upset the agency, hence wants to add this student to the author list.
Is it possible that such a discriminatory clause would exist as terms of funding. One piece of information the makes me super suspicious is that earlier, another PhD student (not from Country X) worked on the same problem and my advisor did not raise such a concern.
I also strongly suspect that my advisor is quite partial to students from Country X, due to prior instances where he tries to involve them in everyone else's projects and looks for avenues to add their name to those projects.
What makes it even more strange is that my advisor is not from Country X, although I am not sure if he has other personal ties.

No, it isn't appropriate and is a form of academic misconduct. Those listed as authors need to have made some significant contribution to the ideas in a paper.
But this stuff happens. Too frequently.
Your advisor's motives don't matter. It is misconduct. However, your relationship to your advisor does matter and if opposing this will poison the relationship you need to act cautiously so as not to jeopardize your own career.


Why do US universities have strict formatting requirements for dissertations? Recently, I got a mildly panicked email from a friend/collaborator who was preparing the final manuscript of his thesis. He had just noticed that page numbers were a fraction of an inch closer to the page edge than the regulations of his university specify, and he was concerned that the lady in charge of filing dissertations would notice and reject the manuscript. This concern wasn't unjustified: I personally know a couple of people who had to reprint their dissertations at the last minute because they had the type of formatting errors that you need a ruler to notice.

In the end, I was able to tell my friend how to modify his TeX markup to avoid disaster, but I was left wondering: why are (some) US universities so obsessed about aspects of a dissertation that nobody will ever care about, or even notice? I did my PhD in Europe (Netherlands), and nobody there cares much about the formatting of your dissertation, so long as it doesn't look silly.

I think this is a historical issue more than anything else. Until quite recently, dissertations were usually sent for microfilming, microfiching, or both, for later reproduction and distribution. As a result of this, they needed to be carefully formatted so that they would reproduce correctly when photographed. Thus the requirements for font size, margins, line thickness in graphics, positioning of page numbers, and so on.

In recent years, this has not been so important, but that doesn't mean universities have completely relaxed the rules regarding formatting. There is definitely an interest in having a consistent "look and feel" for theses from the same institution.