I've applied an intership to prepare for grad school, but the acceptance result won't be sent before the deadline. Should I mention it in my SOP? If everything goes smoothly, then before going to the grad school in fall next year, I will have an three-month long internship. The problem is, the admittance result will come after the deadline of the PhD application. What I can only say for now is that I have applied to that internship.

Should I mention it in my SOP and CV? Since I'm switching the field, getting that internship will be a strong proof that I'm capable on this field. And if I should, how to mention it?

Even asserting about the plan of the internship within the SoP would be valuable. Because it certainly depicts your plans for the future, as a succession of the intentions, could which be continued with pursuing the target graduate program, purposefully.
You better to stress on the expected outcomes of that internship within the SoP, would which be along the recent research projects in the target department in order to increase the applied coherency.

On the otherhand, CV is supposed to cover one's preceding accomplishments (and even might consist of current and unfinalized affairs, just like a submitted), but mentioning the uncertain points about the future (may which never happen!) does not fit, reasonably, within its scope.


When should I contact potential supervisors for PhD in the UK? I am in the second year of my masters program and am sure that I want to go straight on to a PhD position when I finish in July of next year. I'm aware that some funding deadlines are as early as January to start in September of the same year, so should I start contacting potential supervisors as early as now (October)? I will be doing some cold emailing to people I have had no prior contact with so it seems good to set up a relationship sooner rather than later, but this may be too soon!

I have a fairly unremarkable CV with no publications to my name, with a possible but not guaranteed one coming in February, which I've heard may be an issue. I am looking to contact researchers who are doing work very close to my thesis topic so hope that this will sway things in my favour.

Funding is a key issue. If you can get external funding then you will be snapped up, otherwise you will enter the competitive application phases for a finite amount of money allocated to whatever PhD projects are being offered by the universities you are interested in. You should spend some time on findaphd.com to see whats out there, in particular with attached funding, but not having funding immediately shouldn't stop you applying. At my institution, supervisors are required to approve applicants on the basis of their suitability - not whether or not they come with funding already in place.

So, contacting potential supervisors early is only to be in your favour. They will be interested in finding the next student to complete the project and your being keen, showing confidence and with some gusto will stand you as a good prospect - all other academic matters considered. Contacting them now before the heavy teaching/assignment/marking loads are underway is definitely the best foot forward.

  no publications to my name, with a possible but not guaranteed one coming in February, which I've heard may be an issue.

Sorry what would be an issue here? You are not even whats called an early career researcher yet, so why would it be expected that you have a publication list? I know some acheive this at Undergrad or Masters level, but publications are not a prerequisite at all. A bonus perhaps - but nothing else. In fact, I know of several PhD students who finish and go on to long post-docs and still don't produce papers until their second year of the post-doc. They do tend to produce several papers at this point though.

Final note on the cold call approach. Just be polite, express interest in any relevant works that the supervisor has been involved in i.e. "I read your paper on XYZ with interest and... it is relevant to my study because... etc.", and make sure you highlight your strengths, skills and experiences that are relevant to the position. Assuming this will be via email, dont forget to include an email signature showing your contact details and ideally send from your academic email account of your current institution.

All considered then, just go for it. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Best of luck.


How likely is it that PhD application is not reviewed by professors if TOEFL minimum isn't met? I am applying to doctoral programs and I have a worry about the application.

Since I found that my TOEFL score does not meet the minimal requirement set by a school that I am applying to, I am wondering if it is likely for me to be screened out before my whole application is reviewed by the professors?

I do not know about US schools, but for my UK university the IELTS requirements are non-negotiable. Most of the time we see this right away. Sometimes we screw up and read and evaluate the entire application before noticing. In all cases the student is not offered a place. Other UK universities, especially ones that struggle to fill their spots, sometimes will argue with the administration that an exception should be made. From my understanding, they almost always lose.


Climbing the ∞ university well - Theoretical Physics I'm an MPhys student who almost finished his undergraduate. I'm doing a masters in theoretical physics next year, probably at Kings College London. I have been rejected by Imperial and Cambridge(Part III).

Keeping in mind that theoretical physics is one of the most competitive academic fields, is there any chance of being accepted in top universities(UK or US) with such a masters degree? How high should my grades be in order to have a fair chance of being accepted at top 10 universities?

I would really like to do my Phd in a top university so that I could maximise my chances of getting a good postdoc position. More than that, I really love theoretical physics and I'd be VERY happy if I could contribute in world leading theoretical research in fundamental physics.

Edit: Especially for people with similar past experience, I would really appreciate your input.

We get this question a lot.

I don't think elite Ph.D. programs look at master's programs as a positive, per se.  For instance, if you aren't as sharp (or diligent or whatever the metric), I don't think they trade that off with your experience.  IOW, they don't trade capability for experience.  If anything on the experience level, they prefer "fresh meat".
All that said, if you think you are of the caliber that you SHOULD have gotten in, but didn't (e.g. because of grades), than fine.  There is a natural breakpoint with the masters.  I have seen one good friend (sharp as heck, but was at a so so Canadian Ph.D. school move to JHU, doing theoretical physics).

It ended up being a win win.  JHU got someone who was towards the top of his grad school class.  But note, this is very different from experience trumping skill.  More like he really should have been at JHU all along and then things got corrected.  So I would look at yourself and how you compare to the average person in the grad school classes at your target universities.  It's probably not all about brains, but really...brains (particularly mathematical aptitude) is a big part of the equation for theoretical physics.

P.s.

(1)  I am trying to be truthful and analytical to help you.  Versus telling you something that makes you feel good, but is not most insightful.

(2)  In general, "elite" programs (Julliard, Harvard physics, Goldman, McKinsey, NFL) tend to value "horsepower" over experience. One can argue if this is rational or not for them (probably it is), but in any case, it is how they behave.  Note that vast portions of the business world actually don't make the tradeoff as strongly or even make it the opposite.  All that said, in academia, really you are better off going to the best brand (people will hate on me for saying it...but it's the dirty insight).  School tends to be much more about head of the class, than the working world is.

(3)  You might also think about other areas of science where your skills could have more relative advantage...not everyone needs to be a theoretical physicist.

(4)  I checked on some of your physics questions.  Very detailed questions and I want to give you an attaboy/gurl for the effort you took into making sense of tensors.  Good drive.


Should a program I have not finished yet be mentioned in the SOP? I have followed a program three months ago, which I haven't get a satisfying outcome. It is in the field I am interested in, but the technology and skills required in it is something related not so relative to my major. Besides, since I am spending time preparing for an entrance exam for a graduate school, I cease doing research in the program.

As I haven't get good outcome and I don't want to do research in the chemical way in the future. What should I say in the SOP? should I mention the experience, as it is the only one experience in academic research during my undergraduate years?

If the experience was positive for you in some way, then sure, you can talk about it.  For example, perhaps it gave you a greater appreciation for what research entails, or the scientific method, or it made you excited to get to school every day, etc. etc.

If you only have one sentence about it, then don't include it in the essay.  You can always mention it briefly somewhere else in the application.


Co-author illegitimately using results? Alice, Bob and Carlos are coauthors on two papers, based at different institutions. They are listed in that order, with Alice the corresponding author. Both papers have been published as preprints, and are at different stages of the review process at journals.

Alice had most of the main ideas for one paper, Bob had most of them for the other. Alice has done the majority of the write ups. Carlos has helped with the write ups, has contributed few of the main ideas, but has significantly streamlined the proofs of the main results.

Because of their relatively high mathematical content, the papers are being targeted for publication in journals outside the "home discipline" of the authors. The intention all along, discussed, but not at much level of detail, between the co-authors, was to publish more accessible versions of the results in the home discipline of the authors.

Carlos has announced in passing that he is about to submit a single authored paper to a journal in the home discipline that presents a fairly obvious application of the results, one that the coauthors had briefly discussed.

Alice and Bob are shocked, and feel that this is unfair use of the results, and contrary to at least the spirit of the collaboration. But they do not know what to do, especially as collaborative work is not the norm in their home discipline.

The questions we have are: (1) Is Carlos's behavior inappropriate? and (2) What action, if any, should Alice and Bob take?

Alice and Bob should not worry about it.  Collaboration with Alice and Bob does not prevent Carlos from working on closely related research independently.  Maybe Carlos will even succeed in bringing additional attention to the collaboration with Alice and Bob.

There are two ways this could become a problem:

Alice and Bob insist on coauthorship of Carlos's paper, even though their only contribution was a brief discussion.  They very probably have not earned it.
Carlos does not attribute results from the coauthored papers correctly in his sole-authored work.  Since Alice and Bob apparently have not seen Carlos's paper, it's not time to think about this yet.


Is asking your PhD supervisor a basic question considered inappropriate? I've done my Master's degree in Computational Mathematics. Then, because of several reasons, I decided to pursue my Ph.D. in the field of Quantum Chemistry.

The problem is, obviously, my lack of knowledge in this area. I'm studying, but even in my second year there are still many things I don't understand or which I understand incorrectly.

Now I'm stuck on one, probably pretty basic, concept, where I'm not able to find the proper explanation either on the Internet or in my books and my friends seem to be also quite confused by it (they seem to have just some general idea, as they have, probably, never needed to use it).

Now I'm not sure if I should ask my Ph.D. supervisor about it. Is it considered appropriate to ask your advisor about (probably) basic concepts in Ph.D. program? I'm afraid he'll think that I'm not willing to study the topic myself and that I'm wasting his time.

If your colleagues in the department—presumably also PhD students—don't understand the concept, either, it doesn't strike me that the question is truly "basic." That said, if your advisor is aware of your background, then he should know that there will be some things that might not be "obvious" to you.

Now, in this case, you have already "done your homework": you've searched for an answer on your own but couldn't find one. Mention this to your advisor when you ask the question. A good advisor will recognize that you have done what you're supposed to and provide some guidance to help you. He may not provide you all the answers but should at least be able to point you in the right direction.


A large part of my master's thesis (~25%) is essentially a summary of one book. How to cite correctly and in a tastefull manner? one of the two tasks of my master's thesis, is to look into existing knowledge that deals with the overarching topic, summarize the knowlegde and discuss whether that knowledge can be applied to solve the specific problem. The specific problem is solved primarily with a numerical approach, this is the main task of my thesis. A comparison of the theoretical knowledge and numerical solution will be the outcome.

As it turned out, there exists a great book that covers about 80% of the general knowledge on the theoretical part. Knowledge that i haven't had before, as nothing specific about this topic was covered in any lectures i have visited. So 80% of what i have learned, is out of that book. The author is well regarded in this field, the book is one of the most recent publications on this subject and is therefore up to date. Hence, the book is my main reference for the theoretical part.

About a quarter of my thesis is just a summary of the relevant parts of said book.
I thought about secondary references, but as I'm using the IEEE citation style, secondary references are not allowed. I managed to get hold on a few publications mentioned in the book, but most of them are just outdated and their shortcommings are well discussed in the book.

Is it ok to have one main reference that covers such a big part? I'm using other references to complement where needed, but there are only a few.
How can i go about citing it without placing the same reference number after every few sentences? Or is it ok to place the reference number that often?
I thought about stating at the beginning of a section, that the presented knowledge is from Author's book [1] and that it is given as a condensed version in the following. In the following text, i would then write e.g.: "As Author states...." or "As presented by Author" without placing the reference number. Is this a good approach?

Maybe i'm overthinking the whole thing, but i'm just not sure on how to approach this.

Thank you! BR

Overriding answer: ask your advisor.

In expository work like this, what I've usually seen done is that you start the section with a note saying something like "The material in this section is primarily drawn from  Handbook of Reticulated Splines by P. Smith [47]."  After that, you don't bother to decorate every sentence with "[47]" or "as  Smith states", except where you feel it is particularly important for clarity or the reader's convenience (e.g. you want to quote Smith's exact words, or point the reader to something on a specific page of the book, or you want to discuss Smith's approach in contrast to someone else's).

But again, ask your advisor in case they have some other ideas as to how you should handle it.


Advice on grading assignments and exams during Covid Pandemic I am TAing for an undergraduate course: "Data Structure and Algorithms". The course is attended by around 200 students consisting of second to fourth-year students of multiple disciplines.
Midway through the semester, our country got hit by a covid wave. Around 20% of the students are there who themselves are sick or their family members are sick. These students are requesting relaxation in course policies like decreasing the number of assignments, decreasing the passing criteria of the course, avoid surprise quizzes, etc. The students who are close to their graduation are more afraid of failing and loosing their jobs.
However, a small fraction of students are not realizing the plight of other students and they are against any such relaxations. These students are mostly those who are performing well in the course. They want to attempt all the assignments and exams and want grades for them. They are not realizing the plight of the students who are unable to perform well under these tough times.
According to me, a few relaxations might be beneficial for all the students and that can be implemented. For example: not conducting surprise quizzes in the class, etc. However, the relaxations like decreasing the number of assignments or decreasing the passing criteria of the course is not a good approach since the students will pass the exam without sufficient knowledge and learning. It would further affect badly their future job prospects. Moreover, it would be unjust for the students who worked hard and secured good grades to survive in this competitive world.
I know that this is a debatable and subjective question, and there is no perfect answer to this. However, I will like to know the inputs and advice from you guys since somebody might have faced a similar situation in recent times. What action should be taken under these conditions that will benefit the most number of students, taking into account the plight of the students who are suffering due to covid?

This is not a policy for a TA to change. The faculty is responsible for the course evaluation policy. TAs just help carry it out. This is especially true if there are many TAs since grading needs to be consistent over all the students in a course.
If you think a change is warranted, discuss it with faculty. But you certainly can do so.
But, the basis of this question is unfortunately too focused on grading rather than learning. It is learning that has become more difficult. It is also true that the methods we use to evaluate students (exams, say) has been affected and cheating has been made easier and harder to catch. If you want to make a positive change, focus on those things.
Personally I think standards of learning should not be lowered. But better ways to construct courses and evaluate students are required now.
Note that employers also are going through the same things that students are, so it is unlikely that they will ignore the difficulties that students face in hiring and in graduate school admissions.


Are students allowed to read recommendation letters written for them? As a relatively new assistant professor,
I'm beginning to write recommendation letters for a few students.
Recently, a student asked me to write a recommendation letter for him.
The web link which was sent to me contains text which reads:

  Please note that, under the provision of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance of Hong Kong, information contained in your reference report will be shown to the applicant upon request.

This was extremely surprising to me,
because it was my impression that in the US,
all recommendation letters are private
(i.e., the student is not able to read them).
Even though I am employed in Hong Kong, not in the US,
I had expected that this practice would be the same in my current country.

Questions:

Am I correct in my understanding that typically students are not allowed to read their recommendation letters?
If it is the case that the student would be able to read the letter,
should that affect what I write in the letter?

Legally, in the USA, students are entitled to access their educational records.  (I assume that there are similar regulations in some other countries.)  This poses an obvious problem with letters of recommendation, the contents of which may ideally be unknown to their subjects; this makes it possible for the recommender to give completely honest evaluations and discourages students from "shopping" for the most positive references.

The solution is that students normally waive their right to view the recommendation letter.  Most colleges now have online recommendation systems for references to use, and there is always a prominent notice that the student has waived access to the letter.  I have never had to write a letter when this waiver was not in place.  I know a couple colleagues, however, who have gotten recommendation requests that did not include the waiver; their solution was to write a polite e-mail to the student, reminding the student to waive access.  (That the faculty involved would not be willing to write the letter without the waiver may or may not have been made explicit.)


In what order are graduate application materials reviewed? Graduate applications consist of a number of components, such as a statement of purpose, a transcript, letters of recommendation, etc. In what order are these components reviewed? Of course I don't expect all institutions to follow the same order. Those that have GPA or test score cutoffs, whether they are official or unofficial, will obviously first go through the GPA and test scores of the applications.

I think many people would like to know the answer to this general question, though the reason I am asking this is because when writing my statement of purpose (SOP), I don't know if it would be best to assume that all of my other application material has been reviewed. If all of my other application components have been reviewed, then I could save time in my SOP by just referencing those other parts.

If it helps, the specific field I'm interested in is theoretical nuclear physics.

EDIT: I see that this question has already been voted to be closed twice. I suspect this is because some people think it's obvious that there is no specific order. If this is so, I urge those people to post an answer outlining their specific knowledge of the/a graduate admissions process. It is clearly not obvious to me that there is no specific order that the bulk of universities follow.

"I don't know if it would be best to assume that all of my other application material has been reviewed."

You should not assume any parts of your application have been read before the statement of purpose.  At many institutions, the order in which the documents are examined is at the discretion of the person doing the reading.


Publishing: Is working at home perceived as unprofessional? I've done research work entirely at home, it is completely unrelated to my thesis. I am going to publish it in some journal.

Although I am aware that I should not use my affiliation, and it is possible to publish without it, I am unsure about if it would turn into a disadvantage in the following sense: 1) Chances to be accepted for publishing (In real world!). 2) Perceived value of the work (for example, for future opportunities to obtain a post-doc position).

Also, the work could not be done in the same way, if someone close to me has not lent me his personal computer  (which is far more powerful than mine, but a regular PC) for few days. Does it look unprofessional to add acknowledgement to "Mr. X" (instead an institution) for providing the computational resources? Considering that, no unusual computational resources are needed (an ~400/500 USD PC in US), in a field where most first world research groups have very high computational power.

I know how it should be in theory, but I am looking for sincere answers about how  (in real world) the worldwide scientific community perceive about it, for both, chances of publication and future jobs. Any interesting consideration that I did not notice is welcome.

Edit:
Currently I am doing my PhD in a research institute which depends on one of the more recognized universities of my country. I have already published using this affiliation and using it wouldn't be a problem.

No one will know that you are unaffiliated since you are free to put your research institute as an affiliation. Your institute might even be upset if you don't since you did this work while in their employment even if your contract doesn't give them rights to it if done on your own time at home using equipment that does not belong to them. If you put them as your affiliation, someone will eventually notice and may come asking questions. As such, it would probably be best to show this work to your employer through your current line manager/PhD supervisor and ask for their advice. It's likely that with some help you and your advisor will be able to publish this article together. This is how it works in the "real" world.

My favorite publication of my own was mostly done at home and in notebooks I bought myself while a student. I eventually passed it by my PhD advisor, he made some edits and suggested some changes, helped rewrite the introduction and conclusions, checked the math, and we eventually published a paper together. It was a very satisfying way to bring my side-project to a close. The material never even appeared in my dissertation (as I didn't do a so-called stapler thesis).


How to ask my professor to write recommendation letter for me? Now I'm in a community college and I am trying to gathering recommendation letter to apply to graduate school.(I have already got my bachelor degree). I performed well in calculus and got an A in that course. After i got my grade, I wrote a thankful email to my professor and he replied me that I am the top student in his course. I thought he is nice. Therefore I asked him whether he can write me a recommendation letter to me by e-mail but there is no-reply. I considered if he didn't see my email, so I went to his office and wanted to see him in his office hour. His office hour was posted on the wall and on the schedule he said if anyone want to see him please notice him ahead of time. So I e-mail him again to ask for an appointment. Here is the content:

Dear Prof XXX:
It's XXX, a student who finished your calculus 1 last semester. I went to you office yesterday and record your office hour on the wall. Would it be possible to meet with you next Monday 11 am (office hour) about whether you can help me write an recommendation letter?
Regards

He didn't reply me. I almost lost my confidence. I don't know whether I need to go to his office directly. I am afraid it's impolite or disrespect. And I don't know  if he don't want to do it, why he praise me in the first thankful note?
Hope anyone can help me.

Your e-mail looks okay as an appointment mail. There are a few possibilities. The professor may be busy with some important things he has to do. He may be on vacation, not available. Please don't lose your confidence yet. You probably should wait a few more days for him to reply.

It is also possible that he didn't think an A in Calculus I is good enough for him to write a recommendation letter for you. He may want to wait until you get another A for Calculus II and then write a good recommendation letter.

However, depending on which field you are going to study in graduate school, the professor who taught you Calculus I may not be a good candidate to write you recommendation letters.

You already have Bachelors degree. I think the recommendation letters written by the professors in the university where you graduated from, who had more working experience with you would be more helpful for your graduate school application.


When editor does not respond to the request for withdrawal I submitted a manuscript to a journal, but due to some issue with that I asked the Editor-in-Chief and Associate Editor to withdraw the manuscript from further consideration.
Despite several emails, they are not still responding me nor ended the process.

Now, what should I do? Can I submit the manuscript to another journal?

what should I do?

Send another email stating that you will consider the article retracted if you do not receive a response within one week.

  Can I submit the manuscript to another journal?

Yes, after one week.

Responses to comments:

  I would likely do this but I am not convinced that it precludes troubles. Imagine the same referee getting it twice. It would be confusing at least. Just to mention one case.

Referees regularly receive manuscripts twice, for instance, when a manuscript is rejected. Admittedly, this situation is different, since the reviewer may not have been notified of rejection. However, such a reviewer will likely assume that the paper has been rejected. Even if they don't, they will likely contact the editor, who will be able to promptly deal with the situation. This could even be pre-empted, for example, an unacknowledged retraction could be explained in a covering letter.

  [this] does not avoid...issues such as when the first journal and second journal both publish it...For all you know, the author may ALREADY have assigned copyright to the first journal.

From the question I assume copyright hasn't been assigned nor is the manuscript camera-ready.


What to do when you are suspicious about numerical results in a submitted manuscript that you are reviewing? I am currently reviewing a paper and feel suspicious about their numerical results. I feel their results have been slightly modified to exhibit their superiority compare to other comparative methods.

I cannot give an exact mathematical reason why I think their numerical results have been manipulated, but it is so odd that in all 15 scenarios they have been better. Actually, I am pretty sure that their method is better than his benchmarks but not always. Maybe they modified some scenarios.

As I don't have a mathematical reason why I think some of their numbers are altered, should I ask for their computer code and run them myself?

You say that you don't have a mathematical reason to be suspicious. But have some reason. You should formulate this as a reason in your report as well as you can.

Moreover, I think that it is totally reasonable to ask for code and data to reproduce the results. Probably the journal has some policy about reproducible research and you could refer to that.


Is there a way to save a webpage page with Mendeley Webimporter? We can save references from the page, but it will be great to save the entire page. As it may happen to the page is not accessible anymore later.

When you click on the Mendeley plug-in icon in the browser while you are on the webpage you want to save, it gives you the option to save the webpage too

This example is from Google Chrome with Mendeley Web Importer.


Options to publish a paper "as is" without being able to produce "more results" I had worked on a computer vision problem three years ago, drafted a journal paper and submitted it to a top-tier journal. My rebuttal to the reviewers answered most of their concerns except "more results required" comment, so got rejected. By then I had changed jobs, but wanted to get this paper published, so quickly made some changes and submitted to another journal, after two rounds of to-fro with the reviewers, the editor rejected it saying, "come back with more results". I don't have access to data as I have changed jobs, so "more results" is out of question.

I am now toying with the idea of getting this paper published in an open-access journal (where I believe, my chances of getting it published is high) or Arvix.org.

Should I go for a low-quality open-access journal or arXiv.org? I want my work to be out there. It may not be award-winning work but it's research and I want it out there.

How does publishing in a low-quality open-access journal (or arXiv) affect a candidate's chances when applying for a job? I know some people who hire use a point system i.e. A-grade journal = 5 points, etc. Do they have a "negative point system" for low-quality open-access journals?

First: Put your paper on the arxiv. It's a preprint server. Then the work is "out there" and you are still free to submit it to any reasonable journal (as noted in the comments, not every journal takes papers that are already on a preprint server, so check that in advance). So my short answer is: do both.


Journal requires to cite Arxiv pre-print of the same work – where and how do I cite? I am submitting my paper to a journal that requires to cite Arxiv pre-prints within the content of the submitted article (presenting the same work) to avoid self-plagiarism. How would I practically perform such a citation:

In which section of my manuscript should I cite the Arxiv reference?
What would be an adequate explanation for this citation?

Add something like this to your "Introduction" section:

  This paper has been published as an arxiv pre-print<cite pre-print here>

This is the approach I used when I published part of the research I had done for my thesis. It conveys the necessary information without cluttering the paper with verbiage that a majority of readers will find irrelevant.


Salary chart interpretation: "M.A" vs "60 Units includes MA" vs "M.A. plus 35 Grad Units" For the record, I'm a college dropout myself... ;-)

During the late 90's, my wife completed both a B.A and M.A.  in Psychology in the Cal State system.   She also completed during the Master program two years of interning to concurrently obtain her required Certificate as an Educational Psychology.   She then essentially worked for the same employer for about 18 years.   However, she is ready to move on.

While assembling a comparison chart of salaries across districts, I was stumbling on one of them.  It features three separate charts, with the following labels which I am putting here verbatim:

I: "M.A."

II: "B.A. + 75 Graduate Units Includes M.A  -OR- M.A. + 35 Graduate Units"

III: "60 Semester Graduate Units Includes M.A."

These have different significantly pay scales, with I: the lowest and III: the highest.

(There is an seperate addenum noting an additional stipend for a earned doctorate).

I guess I'm not clear on why so many charts?  What is meant by "60 Semester Graduate Units Includes M.A".    Why would this merit a higher salary?  Surely this doesn't mean 60 units AFTER completing an M.A.?  And why "B.A + 75 Includes M.A:?"   Clearly, I am not understanding the terminology.  (Again, dropout here).

This is just an academic exercise (groan, bad pun), since this is not a district she is likely to apply to, but we are trying to put together a comparison chart to see where each stands based on her years of service.

Are these public school districts?

 Interpreting Salary Tables

School districts often have different pay schedules, which is what you are seeing.  Although I'm not from California, I've seen quite a few of these in my own state.

"60 semester graduate units Includes M.A." likely means that she can count her M.A. credits as part of the 60 hour requirement. If her M.A. required 36 hours, she could qualify with an additional 24 hours.

I is the lowest pay scale because it requires the least number of credits. Think of it as MA+0 credits.  II is MA+35 credits; III is MA+60 credits.  Pay increases with additional coursework.

 The Rationale Behind These Tables

Primary and secondary teachers (and other staff, like counselors or behavioral specialists) often start their careers with a Bachelor's degree, which is required in most states for a teaching license.

Additional education is desirable for teachers. It allows them to stay up to date on teaching techniques, expand their subject-matter expertise, earn additional endorsements or licenses, or earn higher degrees (which might include any of the previous reasons).  For example, a physics teacher who wants to expand into teaching biology might be required (by state law) to have a biology endorsement, which might take 12 credits to earn.

Since salary advancement is tied to having higher degrees and more college credit, it is not uncommon to see a teacher with an MA plus an additional 30-40 credits - if they are a career teacher.  These credits would have been accumulated over time, perhaps 1-2 courses a year, rather than the traditional college schedule of 4-5 courses at once. These credits may or may not be part of a degree program.  A Ph.D is less common, but does happen occasionally.


Do media interviews enhance or potentially spoil academic reputations During my research, asides from getting papers published, I have been interviewed for the radio and newspapers. My question is, are too many media 'appearances' a potential hindrance to someone early in their academic career?  Or is it also a case of 'all publicity is good'?

My main concern is being misquoted, which thankfully has not happened, though they exaggerated one (minor) point a tad.

The simple answer is that it depends on in what context the appearance occurs.

If you become visible as an expert in your field your appearances will build your reputation among the public as an expert. As such you will gain a positive (trustworthy) reputation which I am sure will be seen as positive in many respects. The university will gain credit by having employees appear as experts In my country all faculty also are mandated to convey science to the general public and appearances in media is one way to do this. So my guess is that the department and the university as well s your own discipline will see this as beneficial.

Obviously, if you appear with politically incorrect views it will all be negative. Another problem that I am sure will appear is jealousy from colleagues who do not appear in media. In the end your success depends on how you get portrayed in the media. My university runs media training to ensure that faculty represent the university in an appropriate way.

In the end positive media visibility is not likely to strongly affect your research career in terms increased funding, the systems should not really be influenced by it but we all al human. Media visibility will mainly affect the way you, your discipline, the university etc. is perceived by the public. It may, for example, influence the way politicians distribute research funding.

So, media interviews can potentially both enhance or spoil a career depending on the context in which you appear. I believe it is important to know how media works and universities often have programs (and sometimes also rules) to help in such contacts. Depending on the type of question to which you are requested to respond you need to be able to assess how answers will be used or perceived. If the interviews are on non-controversial topics, it is probably not problematic but if you are approached on a burning issue, be aware and be savy


Should one avoid erudite vocabulary in statement of purpose? I am not a psychology major.

I came across this paper
that shows that using erudite vocabulary will not do one good.

What makes me want to ask here is a case study in the paper. Long story short, a bunch of admission officers, unaware of being tested, reviewed the application documents such as statements of purpose and were asked to rate them. It turned out that those documents using big, learned words instead got somewhat lower rating than those using simple, direct words.

Though this research seems convincing, my concern is: Is this phenomenon general enough to suggest one should avoid using erudite vocabulary if one does not use the erudite words in an affected way?

If you are experienced admission reviewers, would you please throw some light or insights on this issue?

Erudition and eloquence are useful tools for academics to possess.

However, excessively erudite writing can become opaque. That's not what you want to achieve in scholarly writing. Scholarly writing should be lucid, informative, and as direct as possible. Thus, using "five-dollar" vocabulary when "fifty-cent" words will do probably distracts from your writing overall. On the other hand, if that five-dollar word is exactly the word you need in a given situation, don't be afraid to use it. It's better, in my opinion, to moderately challenge the reader in a concisely written text than to be long-winded.


What to do when visa application requires disclosure of the titles of articles I have reviewed? I am applying for some kind of Visa. Part of the application is to prove my contributions to the research community and one of these contributions is the list of papers I reviewed. Not just the number of articles but the titles, emails from editors inviting me, screenshots from editorial management websites, etc. I feel uncomfortable doing so where these reviews were intended to be anonymous. Is it unethical to do so? Is it a bad thing to do? Should I refuse to do so and just include the number of articles I reviewed per journal/conference?

Update: I have consulted a lawyer and she said that "there should not be any privacy issues with that, at least to what I am aware of".

I believe that this sort of disclosure can be ethical, especially to a neutral third party, and when only discussing papers that have already been accepted and/or published elsewhere. (Papers still in the process somewhere else might be different.). Anonymity of referees isn't a deep ethical good in its own right - it has very clear and specific reasons, and this doesn't seem like a relevant violation.

Consider the reasons why referees are often given anonymity: 1) to allow referees to give honest feedback without fear of (real or imagined) retaliation, 2) to encourage authors to engage with the referee's arguments, not their personality or status, 3) to avoid the appearance/possibility of quid pro quo reviews, and 4) to ensure that broader perceptions of the article are not influenced by knowledge of its referees.

None of these problems would occur by giving the names of articles to a (I'm going to assume) completely uninterested immigration clerk. If you want to be very conscientious, google your contact to make sure they aren't doing immigration processing to make ends meet while an adjunct professor :)


My grad department isn't offering courses listed in the catalog. What do I do? I am a graduate student of Industrial Engineering at a US university. The IE grad department has about 11 graduate level courses listed in their catalog. However, insofar they have offered only 2 of those courses. One in fall, and one for the upcoming spring semester.

I spoke with students who are graduating this year learned that they have been in the same situation. The department has been offering the same two courses repeatedly for the past couple of years. Courses with which my interests align aren't being offered at all. With no choice, I am having to take up undergrad courses (one level lower) to keep up with credit requirements. I wanted to know whom I could approach in such situations. Who should I contact?

My options are limited since I am an international student. Moreover, my tuition fees are higher, and for that cost, I feel my educational needs aren't being met justly.

How can I approach this problem? What are the possible solutions?

In most science-technology-mathematics-engineering departments in the U.S., there are many more courses in the catalog than are offered in any year. There are typically pressures (from above, or from faculty) to offer fewer, rather than more, courses, so things may default to reduced graduate course offerings. Nevertheless, if many grad students explicitly request (to the department) a given course, this greatly increases the chances it'll be offered. Certainly if you don't ask, things will probably continue to be the same.


How to respond to journal suggestion we get a native-speaker editor when writing seems reasonable and one author is a native English speaker? I've seen this question on suggesting someone get a native speaker to edit and check. But my situation is rather different.

Several colleagues and I wrote an article for a special volume of a journal. The initial review was R&R with some pretty severe changes requested. We've made those changes. After that we received an odd e-mail from the editor for the special volume (via her assistant -- but via subsequent e-mail confirmed to be under her direction):

  We have carefully read it over, and in order to move forward, we highly recommend that you kindly consider seeking out academic editorial services in order to meet ... standards.

Then later in the message:

  We recommend that authors have their manuscripts checked by an English language native speaker before final approval of their submission; this will ensure that submissions are judged at peer review exclusively on academic merit.

The publisher and journal are not known for being predatory.

As a native English speaker, I was rather surprised that the journal said this. So I reread the article and there aren't any gaping grammatical or structural issues (I actually edit papers for others who are non-native speakers in addition to my own publishing, so I'm rather accustomed to the sorts of mistakes they make).

What is a good way to respond to this request?

Edit to make clearer, I absolutely agree that part of what one should do when told find an editor is to find and get some objective checks done on the writing itself (non-author parties and other forms of third parties competent to check). My question is assuming you've cleared that hurdle and have received this sort of comment.

While one should avoid antagonizing editors where possible, I think it would be reasonable for you and your coauthors to respond with a matter-of-fact email that includes the following points:

(1) one of the authors, namely yourself, is a native English speaker;

(2) said author has re-read the revised manuscript, and did not find obvious defects in the grammar or idiom;

(3) it would be greatly appreciated if the editors or the referees could point out the exact places in the revised manuscript, where it is felt that further correction is needed to meet the desired standards.

If they are being picky in good faith, point (3) should not cause a problem. If they stall or ignore point (3), then at this point it might be worth asking other people in your field or related ones if they have had similar experiences with this journal or its editors.


What do supervisors have to gain from a success or failure of a PhD student? I'm finishing a really messed up dissertation. Maybe decent in some sense, but all the PhD has been done without following any of the supposed methodology and criteria. Since I'm in a sort of arm wrestling with the supervisor from years and since I didn't miss the chance of exposing some soft versions of my PhD nightmare, I think that my supervisor might act in the following ways:

Helping to actually finish successfully the PhD so that all the issues will be silenced and hidden under a carpet. This might imply inviting examiners that are under his influence and pretending that everything is alright.
Otherwise, he might bring me to the viva knowing that the research cannot be accepted and exposing all its shortcomings.

This last one would open to two possibilities:

Asking the changes that he expected from the beginning of my research (independently from their actual value)
Making me failed so that I can take all the blame without having any chance to expose his responsibilities and delegitimize any possible retaliation I can do

I have the feeling that the only thing he wants to avoid is that I leave the PhD, because in that case he is powerless over me and I can actually expose the problems that occurred and ruin his reputation.

For this reason I'm trying to understand what is on the stake for the supervisor if I succeed, if I fail or if I abandon. I would like to know how this might affect his reputation and/or his role in the institution, or if any of these options would not change much (in positive or negative) for him.

I'm asking this, also for another reason: in any case and at any moment, I never perceived that my supervisor expected or had any interest in having me doing a great job. I have the feeling that this doesn't really matter to him. The only thing that matters is the utility that this research can have for his personal, social, institutional purposes.

First, to answer the question directly, supervisors have much more to gain from successful students than unsuccessful ones. Among other things, success brings them new students and future collaborators. Most of us are very proud of our successful students and, we hope, they have good feelings toward us, as well. The failures just disappear.

Moreover, I doubt that he would want to keep you "under his thumb" rather than letting you go, whether from passing or failing. I think that it is very unlikely that any student, no matter how badly treated, can "ruin the reputation" of their advisor unless there is a pattern of abuse over many years and many students. I'm sure it happens, but is so unlikely that it would be an extreme event if he considered it to be a possibility.

But, it is also possible that he just wants you gone, however it happens, because he sees you as a thorn in his side and he is tired of dealing with it. It is possible that, while failing you is a poor alternative, he sees it as the only way. That doesn't imply that he is correct, though he may be, and that you are wrong. But it might just be more peaceful without you. Your statement "all the PhD has been done without following any of the supposed methodology and criteria" is a bit of a red flag.

I worry, however, that you may be fighting him just for the sake of fighting. He seems to have "expected" some changes. It seems you have resisted. I can't judge the case, of course, but it is a poor strategy to fight with your supervisor rather than seeking some accommodation.

I don't know what options are open to you, but most seem dire unless you find a way to make peace. Abandoning years of work is difficult, but may be necessary if it hasn't been productive. Even established researchers have to do that on occasion.


What does a "major revision" mean? I recently received the reviews/comments for an article submitted few months back to a journal. All the reviewers overall appreciated the content and the usefulness, but also suggested corrections (varying from minor to major) : typos, better title and abstract, reorganizing the material, better exposition at certain places, adding more benchmarks; that need to be addressed before publications. All the reviewers recommended the paper for publication if the reviews were addressed satisfactorily.

The editor, looking at the reviews, mailed stating a major revision of the paper is needed before re-submitting the paper.

My question is, what does this mean, in terms of the chances that my article is accepted, when I re-submit it after making the corrections suggested by the reviewers?

In general, I would like to know what goes in the editor's mind when he suggests minor revision/ major revision etc. If an article needs major revision, will it be reviewed again? How do these translate into chances of the article being accepted?

In my field (chemistry), the practice is: for those journals that make a clear distinction between minor and major revision requests, “major revision” means that the paper will have to undergo further review after revision, usually by the same referees, while “minor revision” means that while changes should be made, no further reviewing is needed.

Not all journals make this distinction, however: for some, the need for further reviewing will be decided by the editor upon reading your response to the reviewers’ comments.

For example, here are screenshots of the web interface facing the reviewer of ACS and RSC journals when he has to fill in his review. You can see that the categories are different for different journals.

Example 1:

Example 2:


Loss of motivation to do either academia or industry. Wasting days and feeling lost. Any advice? I have submitted my STEM PhD thesis to the committee. If everything goes well, my defense will be done by the end of the year. I published 2 papers during my 5 years of PhD, few more to be submitted.

I had applied to few industrial positions a while back, got rejections.
I am feeling unmotivated and lost now. I don't feel like searching for postdoc or industrial positions. I am 31 years old.

I have few pending projects that I should be doing, but I am feeling hopeless and dumb. I am taking this time to study and revise the theoretical concepts from my masters and undergraduate. I should be honing my programming skills. But the more I study, more I am feeling incompetent and lost.

I am literally wasting my time. It's already been over a month since I have not worked. I have just edited my manuscripts, watched some MOOCs. I watch movies or just sleep most of the day. I feel uncertain and uncomfortable about my future. Any advice for me?

Sounds like burn out. Take a vacation. Do something fun and not work.

These sorts of feelings are pretty common for someone completing an advanced degree. But in most cases the feeling doesn't last unless you continue to add stress.

In many cases it is worth seeing a counselor.

But your current activities are probably too related to work to allow for stress reduction.


How do I handle inaccessible DOIs when citing papers? When writing a paper, it's not that seldom, that I want to cite papers where a DOI is given but cannot be accessed (anymore). Quite frequently, the corresponding DOI is also presented within the PDF document of the paper that I want to cite, which is also not accessible (anymore).
The intention of DOIs was to guarantee permanent access to documents and unify it, but in reality, some are broken over time. Furthermore, not every DOI lookup website does have a complete list of all DOIs.
My primary question is: Is there some common practice how to handle this situation? Should I provide the DOI as well in my references, even though it is not accessible anymore? (Maybe it could still be accessible with some other DOI lookup website?)
What is the best DOI lookup tool? Is there something better than https://doi.org?

I'm from Crossref. The DOI should always resolve to some location, even if the content has moved location on the web or has changed publisher. Can you share the example so we can get it reported? It's possible it's not a Crossref DOI of course (there are several other DOI agencies) but I can find out from the DOI. The prefix does often denote a particular publisher but journals change hands frequently as societies negotiate different publishing agreements so that's not necessarily a failsafe way to solve the problem (which I agree should not be your problem!). Happy to help if you share the example(s) :-)


How to write a reference request for a candidate that I see unfit for the application? This question is a bit different from this question: What to do if asked to write a letter of recommendation for a weak candidate?

Instead of not knowing the student well enough, I know the student too well that I think he is not a suitable candidate. I have a good relationship with the student, it is just that I know I cannot comment highly on this application as he lack one skill that is particularly important for that post... I have suggested to him to try something else but he seems to be very keen in applying for the post. I cannot turn down his request because he said he could not find anyone else (He need 3 references) I never read a poor reference before; how honest usually are people in writing them?

(He is not a bad student, and I have written him a good reference on another application before, so I do not want to write him a poor reference...)

Here's how it typically works (at least in the U.S.).  First, you should warn him that you don't feel you can write a strong enough recommendation for him to get this job, and that you're convinced he'd be better off with another recommender.  You should try to explain why, so he can learn why you think this position is not a good fit for him.

If he insists that he wants to apply and has no other options for a recommendation, then you should try to write a supportive but honest letter, typically by taking your previous letter and strategically modifying it to fit this particular job.  By "supportive but honest", I mean making the best case you reasonably can under the circumstances, but being honest about any weaknesses and not endorsing him in any way you'd regret.  Often, instead of saying "I don't recommend hiring him" you can instead say something with enough qualifications that anyone can read between the lines.

For example, suppose an excellent teacher is applying for a job he simply doesn't have the research accomplishments for.  You can send a letter that comments in detail about his teaching and concludes by saying "Although Bob does not yet have any peer-reviewed publications, I'm confident that his work in progress will lead to a publishable paper.  When combined with his excellent and enthusiastic teaching, this makes him a good candidate for a faculty position that prioritizes teaching over research."  If you send this to a faculty search at a research university, they will read it as an automatic rejection, without your having to say so explicitly.  (Note that if Bob actually applies to an appropriate teaching position, then you should not send this text, but rather a more enthusiastic version with fewer qualifications.)

Of course you may not want to set up an automatic rejection, but rather just to make sure the hiring committee is aware of your concerns.  Another possibility is to conclude by saying "Bob is in many ways a strong candidate for this position.  My one reservation is..."  If the hiring committee agrees with you that this is a concern, then they will reject him, but at least you gave him a chance to find out whether this issue worries the committee.


Do European PhD programs offer the opportunity to take on teaching assistantship duties? I know that, in North America, the opportunity is given (and often mandated) to take on teaching assistantships while in a PhD program.

I knew that, often, European PhD programs pay you to do RA from day one. But, in European PhD contracts/programs, are there countries, or universities even, that set conditions under which you have to TA? Or can you even TA in the first place?

But, in European PhD contracts/programs, are there countries, or universities even, that set conditions under which you have to TA? Or can you even TA in the first place?

The European universities I am well aware of generally don't distinguish that strongly between TAs and RAs. In reality, in my current university in Switzerland, the "formal" job title of each employed PhD student (which is to say, practically all of them) is German for "Teaching And Research Assistant". Everybody is expected to teach a little, and (clearly) everybody needs to conduct research, so this job title seems appropriate.

What courses each student is responsible for, and what they are expected to do, is typically assigned by the professor / lab head (sometimes after extensive negotiations / arguments within the group leading up to the start of the semester).

Typically, PhD students are expected to only "assist" in the running of a course done primarily by a designated lecturer ("Dozent") or professor. However, in practice, often a large part of the actual work is done by TAs. in my old university, it was also possible to essentially become a lecturer already during your PhD, and from then on do courses officially on your own, without involvement of a professor.

It is not possible to "take on" additional TA jobs to improve one's monetary situation (but then again, standard salary is already around 60.000 Swiss francs for a first-year student - other universities outside of Switzerland pay less, but still substantially more than the stipends that are common in other places of the world).


How does publication month and number of citations to a paper correlate? I am assuming that there is a correlation between a paper's publication month and the number of citations it attracts, based on the following premises (that may or may not be wrong, that's also open for discussion):

When people do literature research they tend to focus more on papers that have already attracted many citations, rather than uncited papers.
As a corollary of 1., people will be more willing to read and cite an uncited paper if it has been recently published (compared to an uncited older paper), assuming that it may have attracted few (or no) citations because there has not been enough time to do so since publication.
When looking at how recently a paper has been published -and therefore establishing its "age"-, people only look at the year, rather than the month, of publication.

As a consequence of 1., 2. and 3., a paper that has been published towards the end of the year becomes "old" (and less likely to attract citations, c.f. 2.) faster than a paper that has been published towards the beginning of the year. For instance, consider a paper published in December 2014, which becomes "one year old" (according to 3.) already in January 2015, after one month of existence. A paper published in January 2014 will stay "newborn" until January 2015, therefore it enjoys 11 extra months of "freshness" compared to the other paper, and will therefore be more affective at attracting citations.

My questions are: is my argumentation above flawed (and how)? And, if not, is there any data supporting a correlation between publication month and number of citations attracted by a paper?

Note that an effective data analysis would likely need to exclude very highly cited papers that might introduce a bias.

It doesn't appear to be a major factor. On the subject of citation behavior, I recommend reading this very rich article:

Lutz Bornmann and Hans-Dieter Daniel What do citation counts measure? A review of studies on citing behavior Journal of Documentation Vol. 64 No. 1, 2008 pp. 45-80

Generally, it confirms your point 1. Previous citation count is a good predictor of future citation.

It seems to contradict your point 2. There are more citation to recent article mainly because there are much more recent articles, not because they are preferably cited over older articles.

I can only address your question and point 3 by default: the month of publication is not listed among the potential factors influencing citation in this study nor in several other quantitative studies (1) (2) (3), although it was not formally excluded.

  Note that an effective data analysis would likely need to exclude very
  highly cited papers that might introduce a bias.

Yes, most likely the effect of the publication month, if there is one, will be masked by a variety of other stronger factors.


How to publish an extended version of a Springer journal article on arXiv? Our team successfully participated in a challenge. We are now in the process of describing our approach in a paper. Initially, each team was supposed to write a separate article which would have appeared in a special issue of a journal. Unfortunately, the editor of the issue changed his mind and there aren't enough pages in the issue to cover each team separately. Instead, the organizers are writing an overview paper where each team is allowed to append 3 pages describing their approach. This will result in one paper with ~15 authors.

We sort of anticipated to write more than 3 pages. Therefore, we are thinking about writing a more in-depth article that sort of extends our part in the joint article and publishing it on arXiv.

For the sake of not confusing anyone, let's

call the joint article A. A will be published in a Springer journal
call and the extended version intended for arXiv B

Both articles are written in English and are about the same content. We basically want the content (examples, figures, screenshots, and text if possible) from A to also appear in B.

What do you think is the best option?

Create the B first and refer to it in A? There shouldn't be any problem with blind submissions, only copyright issues
Submit the A first and publish B later.
Refuse to participate in A since we only have control over 3 of the 14 pages and cannot control what the other teams are contributing to the paper. Instead, only publish B.

For A, I think the introduction should make it clear that each team contributed to a particular part of the document, moreover, each team should have the opportunity to review/comment/improve sections by other teams, this should help address concerns regarding 3, thus, lead us to favour options 1 & 2.

Option 1 appears to be the easiest option, because problems might emerge during option 2: B might have copyright issues (because A was published first and is subject to copyright), and addressing these issues (e.g., perhaps by attributing content in B to A) is likely to be time-consuming.

On this basis, I recommend option 1.


I think I have discovered an interesting result as an independent researcher in mathematics, can I use this to gain admission to a PhD program? I am an independent math researcher and I think I have discovered an interesting result in a particular field (in math). I would like to present my result in front of a committee of PhD admission.

My question:  Is there a possibility that i can prove my research skills and the result in such a way that some committee will decide to integrate me into its doctoral (or graduate ) program ?

N.B. Do I need to publish the result (Do you think that all maths journals and referees can be absolutely trusted?) in order that it will appear credible, or at least to capture the attention of the members or any one who can recommend me to a PhD or graduate school?

There are some problematical implicit assumptions in the question. First, PhD admission committees do not conduct interviews of the sort you imagine. They might look at a manuscript accompanying an application, but there's much more substance to an application for graduate-program admission than showing one item. (For that matter, professional mathematicians' perception of your work may be different than your own, so it might be unwise to put so much stock in the anticipated saving grace of your research work.)

You'll want letters of recommendation attesting to your future potential, based on your current and past performance, whether in literal math classes or in informal situations. If you've done a nice piece of work, this would contribute a bit, but it's by no means enough on its own.

Although it's of dubious serious value, the GRE Math Subject Test is something you'd want to sign up for and take it the Autumn before applying to grad schools (which needs to be done by early December for entrance the following Fall).

Publication is nice, but is an enterprise in itself, and not strictly necessary. For one thing, conventional peer-reviewed publication takes about a year or more in the best of times, so it wouldn't help you in the immediate future.

As in @PerAlexandersson's answer, you'd definitely want to type up your work in LaTeX or TeX, and make it conform to the general style of papers you can see, for example, on http://arxiv.org/archive/math  There is nothing truly sacred about the formatting and such, but for someone trying to enter, it is often best to be generally conforming in superficial regards, to avoid too loudly announcing that you're an outsider.

Not all "publishers" are serious or honest, no. One way to form a list of plausible submission venues is to look at papers on arXiv, submitted by people with .edu emails, and see what journals their bibliographic entries have appeared in. Some of these will be very-high-status, so possibly inappropriate, but if you sift through you will have a good inclusive list of the most legitimate journals. Still, no compulsion to try to publish in this sense before applying to grad school. If anything, it'd be more important to simply have your result typed up in LaTeX and to create a fairly conformist appearance (for example, matching the arXiv papers). You can even get TeX templates from those papers, to see how the effects are achieved, since the TeX source is available at arXiv.

The traditional journals' editors and referees can generally be trusted, because they have much to lose by bad behavior. Still, there are no guarantees, so pre-publication [sic] on arXiv would establish your priority.

But, in any case, there are more parts to grad school application than just one or two or... pieces of work. Most math depts' graduate programs have web pages that elaborate on what documentation is required.


Ethics: How to deal with a professor who will not accept their inaccurarcy in judging my work? First, I am a mathematics major who is doing an REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) in mathematics at my school. Initially, I wanted to do an REU outside of my school because I have had this professor before, and being in his class is difficult, but not unbearable. Right now, it is unbearable. For the first project, he has asked me to prove a proposition in category theory, and his criticism is not helpful nor is it actually advice. He has went as far as to say "this is your project, not mine", even though my proof is actually correct for the problem at hand; I have seen other verified proofs and had mine verified by mathematicians. It just makes me feel stupid, and I feel depressed and stressed coming to school everyday. What are my options in this situation and what is the most ethical?

Your professor is not being "unethical".  It's possible he's a difficult person but ethics is not a part of this.

There's a pretty good chance that if your professor says your proof is not correct, that it really isn't.  And he may not be as unhelpful as you think.  Students sometimes think an instructor is unhelpful if they don't give them the answer any time they're stuck.  But simply giving you the answer won't make you a better mathematician.  Forcing you to keep plugging at it until you find the answer on your own will make you a better mathematician.

My advice:  Consider the possibility that he's right, you're not and that he wants you to keep working at it until you solve it on your own and go from there.


Asking professor for recommendation after rejecting his PhD offer I did my undergraduate thesis with a professor A in a foreign country X. It went well and he offered me a direct PhD in his department afterwards [1]. I was not too keen on accepting the offer due to a variety of reasons, and to avoid saying an unequivocal no (lest he feel bad), I ended up saying (untruthfully) that I could not join the PhD program as I did not want to settle in a foreign country. Having matured much more since then, I now realize in hindsight that this was perhaps not the best way to handle that situation. At the time, I instead asked him to recommend me for a different research job in my home country (I am currently at this position).

Presently, I am being considered for a research job in a foreign country Y, and it checks a lot of the boxes of the ideal job that I have in mind. It provides great opportunities for my future career as well. The recruiter for this new job has asked me to provide references. Professor A is a really good reference for this as the work that I did with him is similar to what I will be doing at this new job, and he was impressed by my work too.

The question is, would it be reasonable to ask professor A to recommend me for a job in a foreign country, when I had declined his offer to apply for his PhD program stating that I don't want to settle/work in a foreign country. If he were to ask me why I am applying to a foreign country, what could I possibly say to him as a reasonable explanation for this seemingly contradictory behavior? I have considered coming clean about it, but it seems that he would just be even more upset that I wasn't honest with him at the outset.

[1] Well, he not so much "offered" it as "suggested" it - he told me that they had a program to take PhD students directly after their bachelors if the students were deserving, and he said he liked my work and felt that I was deserving enough to clear the bar of this program to be selected.

I don't see any issue at all. Just ask and be honest. What was true in the past may not be true now. You don't need to go into all of the reasons that you refused in the past, but changing your mind about going abroad is not an issue.

If s/he supported you in the past, they are probably a good person to support you now. Don't let this hesitation work against taking advantage of an opportunity.


How to find a gap in knowledge, for my PhD? I just started my PhD and this is my fourth week. I understand that as a PhD student, my main aim is to find a gap in the knowledge and then trace this gap by using scientific approaches that I might choose later.

My question is: How can I find this gap?

I can think of two options:

Reading, which is the ideal option and we all know that. However, it might be frustrating to read a lot because maybe you
will get lost in the final stage due to information overload.
Just jump to the conclusion of any paper in your field and see if they provide any recommendations about a potential gap and choose it as your hypothesis or the starting point for formulating your question.

Ask the advisor.
If he/she is helpful, follow their advice.
If he/she is not helpful, either

change the advisor (which is preferred) or else
find an interesting and open problem in your field (in some areas such as mathematics, searching for "open problem" or similar in recent publications, including literature reviews, might help). The problem should be such that that you should be able to solve it within the time allocated for your PhD studies, including writing your dissertation. Then, ask the advisor again whether the problem is suitable for your thesis. How to proceed from there would be a different question.


What is the standard way to include introduction and references parts to a masters thesis? I have seen that students have two ways to write their thesis,

They have a separate chapter to write an introduction to their thesis. This chapter usually consists of a literature review of their research topic.
They have an introduction section at the beginning of each chapter and they write a separate introduction to each chapter and they don't have any introduction chapter for literature review.

Also, I have seen such behaviour in references part;

some prefer that each chapter having its own references part;
some other prefer all the references come at the end of the thesis report.

Could you please help me know which of these are standard and if any official guide to each exists, I will be happy to know and read them.

EDIT:

Thanks to the answers to this question of mine, I read the writing guide for masters thesis at my university and consulted my question with my advisor, and looked at the previously submitted theses, I wrote the introduction and literature review of my thesis in the very first chapter exactly after printing the abstract of my thesis and brought all the references at the very end just before the final page of my thesis.

You mix up two things: Thesis introduction and Chapter introduction.

From what I observe, every thesis has to have an introduction. It makes sense after all: You need to introduce the topic of the thesis etc. You can't simply start a math thesis by Theorem. For all X ... -- you need to start somewhere, and that's the thesis introduction.

The chapter introduction is a nice thing to do, and there are more options. It can be a short text before the first section, a separate section, some people even provide short (3-or-so-sentence) abstracts to each chapter. However, this is mostly part of your writing style, and it can't be so much enforced (well, it can, but that is IMHO ridiculous).

As for references, there should be guidelines for them. If there's no, then I advise to include full list of references at the very end, since that's what people expect by default, but it's only an advice, not a rule.


Should I hide the fact that I did a group assignment completely by myself? Three students and I were assigned a small (~14 hours of work) group project. Because there was no effort on their side to meet and work, my e-mails regarding their progress remained unanswered and from previous experience I know that their quality of work is much lower than mine, I decided to do it myself and already spend around 10 hours doing ~2/3 of the work. The reaction of the others was something along the lines of "Wow, thanks man. This looks great. You're the man!"

Later I asked them to help me out with the rest because I had another assignment due and thus my time was limited but the contributed work was much less in quantity than what I asked for and also of very low quality, hinting that they did not bother reading the assignment thoroughly or did not really spend time actually thinking of something substantial to contribute. As it stands now I will have to do the remaining 1/3 by myself as well.

Because I had a question for the lecturer I was writing him an e-mail and one of the sentences was

  I already did most of the work but we need to...

then I thought whether it would be better to write

  We already did most of the work but we need to...

The reason I even mention it, is that it is very close to the submission deadline and I do not want him to think that I/we only started now. My intent was not to slip by this information and blame the others.

Is there any reason to be "diplomatic" and actively hide the fact that I did everything myself?

I am mostly interested in the impression I will leave on the lecturer. On the one hand I do not feel like I owe the others anything, on the other hand I also want to avoid the lecturer seeing my behavior as tactless or arrogant.

Personally I would dodge the issue using

  Most of the work is done, but we need to...

I don't think it will really matter which option you go with, but that way you don't have to worry about it.

Anyone setting a group project knows that it is fairly likely someone will end up doing all the work. If they don't take any action to avoid that (and it sound's like they haven't in this case), then presumably they don't really care.

I understand that you want to get the credit for doing the work. But I agree it might come across as tactless to point out the situation in your email. It might be more productive to separately have a conversation with the lecturer about why they haven't taken steps to avoid the situation occurring.


Teaching Special Adult Populations: How Much is Too Much? I teach in a social services environment, where adult dropouts are working toward a GED and perhaps furthering their education.  I embrace a transformative education model (Mezirow, 1991) and strive to instill confidence in my students.  Most of the learners are female with multiple lifestyle challenges, such as addiction, domestic violence, and so on; when they enter the class, they face an uphill battle.  Some give up; others stay, but constantly complain about the time commitment or workload.

I am considering some kind of point system or reward to motivate the students who complete assignments on time and are prompt with meeting deadlines. I wonder if this incentive idea is going too far with adults?  Should it not be enough to pull themselves up out of their situation and move forward? Unlike young learners, where candy and snacks are shamelessly used to motivate, I wonder if this too much?

Well, the only way to be sure is to try.  However, I would never encourage anyone to use candy in an incentive system, for children or adults.

For anyone interested in using an incentive system, I would suggest that the first step would be to brainstorm lots and lots of possibilities.  Here are a few ideas and considerations to get you started.

In my piano lessons at age five, the teacher would put a sticky star on the page once I had "finished" a piece.  There were three colors.  Gold was the best, of course.
Sometimes it is helpful to let the student self-evaluate.  (As an example, you could offer the three-bin box of stars and ask if she wants to choose one.  She could then fish one out herself, or point or tell you a color.)
One of the most effective incentive systems I ever saw for my son, who was 10 at the time, was the following: his art teacher kept the kids motivated to stay on task by reminding them from time to time that the reward for productive work was a popcorn party at the end of the month.
My dentist has a basket of inexpensive toys for the patient to choose from at the end of the visit.  I'm thinking, if a large number of your students are mothers, they might enjoy picking something out to take home to their child (not every day of course).  You can get some real bargains at thrift stores.  Also try the party favor aisle at a big box store.  Children may like a strip of animal stickers, a tiny box or a strip of fake tattoos, a fancy pencil, silly putty, Groucho glasses, etc., etc.

That's just to get you started.  This list can be expanded.

But I wanted to bring up another aspect of this.  You mentioned they "complain about the time commitment or workload" and you mentioned also the challenge to "complete assignments on time and are prompt with meeting deadlines."  This makes me wonder what the homework load is.  I remember in college the rule of thumb was to expect to put in 2 hours on my own for every 1 hour in class.  Of course this is quite variable but that was a general rule of thumb I heard at some point.  What is the ratio you are anticipating to be needed by your students, on average?

A homework to classwork ratio that is difficult for your students to carry out might be part of the root of the problem.

If so, it might be helpful to design into your program some required or strongly encouraged "lab" hours.  The "lab" could be staffed by a minimum wage person (as opposed to you, who hopefully have a substantially higher pay rate).  The "lab" could be the place where the homework assignments are done.


To ask for a PostDoc position in the university X, is better to do it by myself or to ask to my supervisor? I am a PhD student in artificial intelligence from an European university. This year I am going to finish my PhD program, so I am looking around to search for a suitable Postdoc position.

I would like to apply to an important American university, named X.
In my research group here I have important professors that follow my work. One is my supervisor, an expert of artificial intellingence, and follows my work. The other is an expert of operating systems (i.e. different field from artificial intelligence).

This operating system professor in the 90s spent some years working at the preminent university X, and he still has a lot of contact and collaborations in that field.

Should I take advantage of this and ask him to contact my potential Postdoc advisor at the university to which I want to apply, even if he is from a different field?
Would it be worth?

His mail would be something like "Some decades ago I worked at your university in the operating systems field, and now I would like to recommed this candidate from artificial intelligence..."
Would this have sense?
Would this be useful?

Or would it be better that I contacted personally by myself this professor for the Postdoc position?

Put yourself in the shoes of the professor: what would they like best in a candidate? Contacting them yourself demonstrates more commitment than having your advisor do it for you. There may be cases where an introduction by a third party is best, but it seems to me it's better to use that only if really needed: guy is a superstar, your introductee knows him very well, or you are just trying to strategically probe whether a candidature would be well-received without actually getting involved yourself.

Also, you can get your advisor to follow up if you don't receive an answer, or just to help you when/if they are contacted as a reference.


Why can it take more than a month to find a reviewer? In the mainstream publishing model, it can take more than a month from the time a manuscript is submitted to the time reviewers are assigned to review it. I feel this is a bit unfair as editors from these publishers generally require reviewers to submit their recommendation within a month from the time they agree to review. I believe the effort required to review a manuscript is much greater than the effort to find a reviewer.

My question is: Why can it take so long to find a reviewer?

There are several factors that can play into this:

Some journals have a strong editorial hurdle, i.e., a high desk-rejection rate, and the editor is expected to actually spend some time on the paper to judge its suitability for the journal. Thus editorial handling includes more than just finding a reviewer.
Some editorial systems only indicate that a paper is “under review” (or similar) when a reviewer actually agreed to review the paper, while others already do this as soon as the first requests have been sent to reviewers.
In some fields, it is common that reviewers blatantly exceed the allotted review time, so that the journal requiring their reviewers to submit their reviews within a month may still result in an average review time of two months or even higher.
Depending on the availability of potential reviewers for a given paper in the field, some journals follow a strategy of requiring reviewers to submit a review quickly, but take into account that many reviewers reject the request and they spend a considerable time finding reviewers.
Both, editorial handling and peer review do not take much work time in comparison to the allotted time (a day’s work or less in most disciplines). The main delay arises from the editor or reviewer having to find time for this given their other academic duties. Thus, if for example, the editor is on a conference for a week, they have to catch up with their regular work and the editorial work afterwards, which may amount to a significant increase of the editorial handling time.
Some editors are just slow.


Is there academic research that supports individual over group work for better learning? I'm in an undegraduate program in the US where group work is a major focus in most classes. Faculty often cite the important benefits of knowing how to collaborate in teams, claiming how educational research findings strongly support collaborative learning.

I'm also a TA in a course in the department, and in our learning course, we had sections in which we strongly focused on the pitfalls of group work and how to improve the learning process (e.g. strategies to divide work, how to moderate conflict, with people who don't pull their weight, etc.). We were assigned a few papers on research about collaborative work (some even written by faculty in the department).

In all these papers, there always seem to be a behavioral assumption that makes the situation utopic. For instance, among the good strategies in papers were things such as: "Divide work early into task groups" or "Create a time estimate for the semester for every task." This is good advice, but not all students follow or care about these strategies. Otherwise, everybody would be getting As, no? Thus, despite my qualms about how the research was conducted, it seems that theoretically group work would be ideal, but in practice it is more often than not negative.

Is there any research that has found that group work has more often been negative in academic settings? Or, perhaps, given the constraints (i.e. group is assigned, members don't know each other) or types of behavior (i.e. member who doesn't care about grade as long it's above C, member who just drops class) that exist in university classrooms, is positive group work unrealistic?

Additional related questions:

If there exists research that supports individual learning. Why is group work still insisted on? From the point of view of the professor, wouldn't it be preferable to assign a project (and if individual/group work is not a concern), let students organically generate their groups if they desire to do so, or work individually if they are willing to undertake the task alone?
If there isn't research that supports individual learning. What are some of the most important papers which have established group work as the desired learning strategy? Are there any popular experiments in the field of education related to this topic (e.g. famous/popular such as Zimbardo's experiments in Psychology)?

I found this study, which is a pretty interesting read: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jbryson/CBRReport.pdf
In the end it is proved that group work isn't beneficial. Most of the students who worked by them selves scored higher than the groups, by showing and explaining there work, but a bunch of others got the question wrong. The groups were scattered in the middle scores, meaning that they got more answers right than the individuals, but the individuals had a better understanding on how to solve the problem. When students work in groups, they get more questions right, but they don't understand what they are learning. This proves that it is better to work as individuals, since more students will understand what they are doing, although more will get lower scores. Also, the groups, probably only got more correct, since the students are collaborating and helping each other, which doesn't show that they understand what they are doing.


How do we know that regression results are real and not the result of bias? Edit: this question was originally about political science alone but applies to any field that relies heavily on regressions.
I am an undergrad pursuing a double major in physics and political science. The combination gives me a really interesting view of how different fields do things. Physicists tend to view political scientists as "not real scientists", so I was surprised to find that most of my entry-level political science classes go into the details of the scientific method (what makes a good theory, how to do research, etc.) quite a lot more than my physics classes.
But then I took a political science statistics class and now I'm filled with enormous doubt about the entire field. It seems like regressions are really easy to manipulate - even unconsciously - not just because of the never-ending problem of omitted variable bias, but also because of the huge number of different combinations of variables that can go into those regressions. You can easily get sixty different results using the same data.
So my question is, how do we know political scientists aren't just confirming their own biases? For example, this article on FiveThirtyEight shows how scientists in a bunch of studies looking at who got red cards in football games arrived at the same general conclusion despite having slightly different results. (They concluded that referees were more likely to give a red card to dark-skinned players than light-skinned ones.) I don't really doubt that result because I know about racism in general, and it makes sense that referees would be unintentionally racist with red cards. But how do we know that the scientists weren't just all finding a conclusion that lines up with what they thought the result should be? How do we know which studies were right in finding a relationship (vs. the ones that found no significant relationship)?

First, any statistical measure provides only evidence of the truth of something, not proof that it is true. Only a population study can provide proof and in many cases, especially with human studies, it is impossible to nail down a population (since the data changes over time as people grow, change, and die).
One can certainly design a "study" to come to a preconceived result. This is why experimental design is all important and must be disclosed in any research. Then, with all the details of what was done, a reader has the opportunity to replicate the study or to question it. But, assuming the "researcher" isn't just cheating, it is the research design (hypotheses and methodology) that one questions.
While you don't arrive at truth in statistics, you can approach it by replicating studies and also by researching the same hypotheses with different research designs. If they agree, then you have additional evidence.
In some studies, such as those involving racial bias, part of the design might need to be making the data blind in some way to the researchers.
Good papers provide complete design information including reasons for the decisions that were made about data (collection, analysis, possible alternative designs...).


Can i ask for help from a college prof? A few weeks ago I told my college professor that im depressed. She said I can go to her at anytime if i need help.

Then my psychologist kicked me out, because I didnt want to tell her the details of sexual abuse.

Can I ask my prof to help me find a therapist? Or it would be awkward/it would be a burden for her?
I really like her, it felt really good, when she offered her help. I just dont know if she truly meant that i can ask her for help, or just said it...

As long as you recognize that the prof isn't a mental health professional and don't expect her to go beyond her expertise, it would be fine to ask her for help. Especially if what you want is help in finding a proper therapist.

Professors (many, at least) try to be helpful and supportive in such situations, even though solutions are beyond them.

But it is probably a mistake to overload your relationship with her with personal issues. Separating the personal from the professional is normally the right course.

However, your university may also have an office that provides personal support and might also be helpful in finding a compatible advisor.

Finally, if sexual abuse is an issue, then you should think about other avenues so that it stops. Again, the university may be able to help if it is related to actions taken there.


Do I need an explicit permission to publish someone else’s table in another paper after citing it? Can one cite a comparison table in a relevant work in his own paper without asking the jounal or authors permission if the source has been explicitly stated (e.g. A comparson of X and Y in Z conditions [32])? For those writing survey papers sometimes they cite tables, diagrams and algorithms from different papers do they explicit permission from every one of them?

Edit: I have included dummy illustrations of original table and referenced for more clarity (Note that in the papers there are six columns. I reduced it to five. Thanks in advance

Unless the paper you are citing it from has been licensed under something like a creative commons license, you most likely need permission.* The good news is, if you're citing from a reputable publisher and publishing with a reputable publisher, this should be easy and free. Below is a screenshot of, as an example, a recently published article from JACS, note the highlighted "Rights and Permissions" link.

Clicking this link will take you to the Copyright Clearance Centre. Follow the on-screen instructions to register your request and receive your license. Most of the major journal publishers and learned societies have a reciprocal agreement that allows content to be reproduced between their journals free of charge.

If an open access article has been licensed under a Creative Commons (or similar) license, you do not need to follow this process, you can just use it under the terms of that license (typically this means that you'd need to include the reference it was taken from and "copyright [year] by [publisher or authors], used under cc-[type]" in the figure caption).

Do be careful with non-commercial use though - if you work in a university, you count as non-commercial, but the publisher probably counts as commercial. So you can't usually rely on a non-commercial permission for republishing in a journal.

*Data itself isn't copyrightable, but the table is. Exactly where the line is drawn (e.g. if you re-typeset a basically identical table) I don't know. But getting permission, in most cases, should be trivial. So there's no reason not to do it.


Would it be appropriate to send your CV to a researcher who gave you their business card a few years ago? When I was presenting a paper at a conference ~3years ago, a researcher (who also happens to be a professor) gave me her business card after discussing with her after my presentation.

Now that I’m almost done with my PhD, I’d like to approach her to see if there could be a possible job opportunity at the research institute mentioned in her business card.

I was wondering if it would be appropriate to send her my CV along the email? Or if it would be seen as if I am “forcing” her to read it, especially that it has been almost 3 years since we met?

Would it be better to start with an introductory email first, and then send her the CV only if she asks me to?

I also thought about including a link to my LinkedIn account in my email signature, so that she can check my profile (if she wants to), without me explicitly sending my CV in the email.

Why not just a simple email asking if she has any opportunities and reminding her that you met at that conference.

Include the cv as an attachment and she can open it, or not, as she wishes.