How long does it take for an article to get accepted to the arXiv? I am a math student. I have submitted a draft to the arXiv. But it has been put on hold. How long does it usually take to get accepted ?

Can I do something to accelerate it or do I just sit and wait ?

From the arXiv help, emphasis mine:

  On Hold

  Your submission was identified by arXiv administrators or moderators as needing further attention.

  Submissions may be put on hold for a variety of reasons, ranging from questions about proper classification, pending moderator approval, presentation issues, copyrighted PDF, etc., to editorial concerns. Most of these do not require any further input from the submitter and will be dealt with in due course. arXiv urges submitters to be patient. Due to the large volume of submissions, it may take several days before a resolution is reached.

  Note that oversize submissions are automatically put on hold, and this is one particular circumstance in which submitters should follow up with arXiv administrators.

  Submissions in this status will not expire. Authors must not create a new submission with the same content when a pending submission is on hold.

  Please be sure to include the submission identifier of the form submit/NNNNNNN when contacting arXiv administrators.

In other words: wait a little while. Especially at busy times of year for academics, like now. After a week or so, if nothing changes, you can contact the arXiv administrators following the instructions above.


How should you cite dead urls in a thesis? I am currently writing a thesis. In the related work part I am discussing a paper from a few years ago. The paper presents several web applications which were available back then. Hence, these applications are referenced via footnotes in this paper. Unfortunately, some applications were shutdown, hence, the URL is not working anymore.

How should I proceed, when mentioning these applications in my text? If the URLs would still be online, I would (as in the original paper) add a footnote which shows the URL + the date/time when I accessed the url. But how should I do it knowing that the URL cannot be reached anymore?

I can see two options as of now, but both don't really satisfy me:

Just do nothing, that is, no footnote whatsoever
Use an archived version of the URL from the web archive (web.archive.org) instead of the original URL. If this is a good solution, then I think it would be necessary to state in the footnote something along the lines of "due to the discontinuation of the application the original URL is down and that we provide an archived version of the URL...". If this is a good solution, I would like to know a proper formulation of the statement about why an archived version is provided.

You cite/reference stuff so later readers can check it. A dead URL is mostly useless, cite the archived one if need be (and explain why! perhaps the page went away for a reason that makes your whole point of refering to it moot...).

You mention "web application", presumably the application behind the page went away for good, in which case you don't have much to discuss anymore. Either find some detailed discussion elsewhere that covers what you are interested in, and cite that, or see if the application still exists (under another name elsewhere, a evolved version, ...) and see to cite that.


Why no oral exam for phd in Australia? Oral examination for PhD is common in many countries.

However, most (all?) Australian PhD degrees don't require oral examination. Any particular reason?

Background: In Australia, PhD theses are examined by at least two external examiners; they must be more than an arms length away from the student or supervisors; e.g., no previous collaboration or have worked recently at the same university. Critically, they must be internationally recognized experts in the student's subject matter.  The examiner reports are then deliberated upon by a committee with members drawn from across the university; this means the award of a degree is not done at the school or faculty level.

The examiners serve as independent auditors of the quality of an Australian PhD thesis.  They certify/vouch that an Australian thesis is at an international level.  They do this by presenting a report that justifies that a thesis contains 'significant contributions that extend the state-of-the-art'.

To achieve the said claim for an oral exam, Australian universities will need to either hold video conferences or fly examiners in.  The former is an admin nightmare; e.g., different time zones, getting all involved people to attend/agree, etc.  The latter is too expense.    Now imagine doing the former or latter for hundreds of theses every year.

Having said that, at my university, oral defense is an option that can be requested by an examiner.  This is only for very exceptional cases and rarely granted.


To what extent does the wealth, connections and alumni donation of a parent help their children be accepted into a college in the US? Is there any research/study/survey/dataset that looked at to what extent the wealth, connections and alumni donation of a parent help their children be accepted into a college in the United States?

(E.g., a notorious case: John F. Kennedy's Harvard application)

This is an important question for understanding the system of American higher education. (I do not read it as being an off-topic request for "How do I improve chances of admission to college?" especially since changing a family's wealth is a much more difficult course of action than, say, paying for tutoring.)

There has been some quantitative study of "legacy admissions," with Hurwitz (2011) estimating that the odds of admission are multiplied by 3 for students with a parent who attended the school, after controlling for other factors. (For instance, legacy students in his data tend to have higher SAT scores than non-legacy students.)

He explains that favoring students whose parents attended has benefits similar to favoring those who apply early or sports stars:

  Highly selective colleges face the challenge of maximizing the academic profile of their student bodies, with the understanding that sacrificing some academic talent now will enable the college to preserve or improve its selectivity in the future. In other words, from the college's perspective, an exclusive focus on academics in the admissions process is not sustainable. ... Other tradeoffs might include relaxing admissions standards for early decision applicants to decrease acceptance rates and increase yield rates, and consequently to appear more selective (Jensen & Wu, 2010). Or they might involve admitting academically lackluster star athletes to maintain the successful sports teams that encourage alumni giving (Holmes, 2009; Meer & Rosen, 2009). Relatives of alumni (legacies) offer enthusiasm and familiarity to colleges, and the special treatment awarded to them in the admissions process helps to preserve generational ties that also are intended to motivate financial generosity. (from section 2.1)

His data do not include parents' giving rates, but they compare the same student's admissions across multiple colleges, showing an advantage at a parent's alma mater.

For some historical background, in a legal review of legacy admissions, Lamb (1992) explains how legacy admissions policies came about. Harvard and Yale kept out most public school students with a Latin requirement through the end of the 19th century, and only had to deal with selective admissions upon dropping that requirement. Their (at least somewhat) meritocratic process that followed let in "too many" Jewish and Catholic applicants. Columbia started asking for family information (religious affiliation, father's name and place of birth) in 1919, and other elite schools followed. In 1926, Harvard announced it was taking things like "personality" into account in admissions and started requiring photographs with applications; they used the photos and the discretion to make it harder for Jews, Catholics, and (likely) black students to gain admission, while increasing the proportion of legacy students. (p. 494)

So, the example of John F. Kennedy's 1935 Harvard application is an interesting one. He had famous parentage and family background at Harvard (and by WWII 1/4 of Harvard students were legacies, according to Lamb p. 495). In his case, his Catholicism was probably not held against him.

Lamb also reviews data from a Department of Education Office of Civil Rights inquiry into Harvard admissions. Circa 1992, the Harvard admissions process benefited legacies, and gave additional weight to children of alumni who served on the "Schools and Scholarship Committee" (p. 502), which is apparently a group of alumni interviewers. (My guess would be those who give time are more likely to also give money, but I do not know that donations would change the odds of being accepted as an alumni interviewer.)

In the graduate realm, my guess would be that graduate programs that charge admission (especially for professional training) are much more likely to have legacy preferences than academic programs. However, in subjective processes where a department is hoping to get a good yield of applicants or hire a faculty member who will choose them, I'm sure that there is some benefit in being able to say in an interview, "It's great to be back at this university! My parents met here..."

As a backdrop to this question, there is a longstanding literature that admission into selective colleges, attendance at any college, and graduation rates from college, depend strongly on family socioeconomic status, including level of parent education and family income.

For instance, Duncan, Kalil, and Ziol-Guest (2017) find:

  Across 31 cohorts, we find that increases in the income gap between high- and low-income children account for approximately three-quarters of the increasing gap in completed schooling, one-half of the gap in college attendance, and one-fifth of the gap in college graduation.

Controlling for family structure does not explain much of the difference they find, but some of it is related to maternal age; the "maternal age gap" between higher-income and lower-income families increased over the time period they're looking at. (It is not clear whether maternal age is causal or a marker of other family differences.)

Chetty, Friedman, Saez, Turner, and Yagan (2017) look at intergenerational mobility by parent wealth, finding that children from rich families are much more likely to attend college--and fancier colleges--than their poorer counterparts.

Family connections and legacy admissions will not shape these overall enrollment statistics, because the kind of students whose families have that pull are very unlikely to be on the margin of not attending any college.

Instead, sociologist Annette Lareau's idea of "concerted cultivation" is probably much more relevant. Middle- and upper-class parents know the pathways for success and train their children into the attitudes and behaviors that prepare them for success in this society. The example aeismail gives of volunteering to work in a lab runs along these lines.


Citing a document without year information I have to cite a product manual in a journal paper, but the product manual do not have a year mentioned on it. The content of product manual has not changes over the years. Could this type of documents be cited in a paper or thesis?

If you have not seen a manual like this, then this is an example: https://www.specmeters.com/assets/1/22/6460_SM1002.pdf

First, if this is a student paper, ask your supervisor; if it's a journal article or similar publication, consult the style-sheet.

I've seen 'n.d.' for 'no date'. For online sources, it's a good idea to include the last access date, like so:

  Brown, Alice (n.d.), On the Flubbication of Foobars, Report, Institute for the Study of Things, Boulder, Co., http://thingsistitute/pub/flubbication.pdf (accessed 6 June 2018).


Pros and cons of writing a book review? I am a postdoc in a biology department. I am friends with a professor in the philosophy department who is the editor of a Nature journal which publishes book reviews. A 150-page popular science book on biology has just come out and he has asked me to write a 3-page review for it. I would have 6 months to read the book and write the review.

What are the pros and cons of doing this?

An obvious con is that it takes away time from me doing research. There are no obvious pros to me, although it does not seem like much work and it might be 'fun'.

(Wasn't sure what tags to use, if someone has suggestions then please edit.)

There are several benefits of writing book reviews for publication:

Develop an understanding of the publications that are out there. Just like how reading academic papers affords you the benefit of being abreast with the latest research, writing book reviews allows you the opportunity to learn more about a field.
Develop a relationship with a journal. Journals need people to write book reviews. It can never hurt to build a relationship with a journal and its editors.
Develop a profile in the academic community. Book reviews are in no way akin to writing an academic article on a research subject. But they can put your name out there and allow you opportunities to become better known to you academic community.

All told book reviews allow your voice to be heard on a subject.


In PhD admissions, if a correspondence is opened with a prospective student, is it common for a professor to just stop replying? If a prospective student contacts a professor about his/her work or group and the professor engages (asking for more info, acknowledging the student's existence ;-), etc), is it common for the replies to just stop? I would think courtesy at least calls for the standard easy let down, e.g "Perhaps we should talk after the admissions process," but on the other hand I understand how busy professors are and how spammy prospective students can be.

So I ask those of you "in the know," if you've engaged a student, do you feel inclined to at least let them know you will not be responding anymore? Or do you ultimately just find it easier to not respond (for example if the info you asked for isn't up to snuff)?

(I'm specifically asking about CS/ENG people, but any discipline is free to respond)

As a faculty member, I try to respond to all prospective students but many times the questions are too vague, tautological, or impossible to answer:

Will I get in? Impossible to answer.
Will you work with me if I get in?
Tautological. If you are in my field of study and you get in, it's likely because I want to work with you. But I don't want to say yes because that may be misread as saying that we will accept you.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of your program? Not easily answerable, self-serving if I deem my own area strong and likely to insult faculty in the areas I deemed week.
Tell me more about your research. Too open ended. My CV is online.

I don't mean to sound harsh but questions that can be easily answered are the most likely to get responses.

Faculty do welcome e-mails from prospective students, especially those in our fields. When you get 150+ applications, it might be easy to miss someone in your specific area, so a personal message saying that you are applying is always welcome (especially early in the semester --- Sept or Oct -- before things get crazy).  Questions that aren't answerable on our website are also welcome (for example, not all department websites list which students are associated with which faculty; asking about our team members in those cases is welcome).

If you pique our interest (and we have the time), we may ask for further info from you -- for example, a paper you wrote or other writing sample. While I try to send a simple "thanks" ack message to these responses, I may be asking for something in November that I won't look at seriously until February with the other application material. So don't take the lack or brevity of acknowledgement to mean anything significant.

Note that we may not want to send an e-mail prematurely closing down discussion as we may feel that this is rude to an applicant who may have more questions. So we are in essentially a typical asynchronous communication hang condition.

That being said, I do often wish that I could respond in http status codes:

100 continue
200 ok
303 see other
307 temporary redirect
402 payment required
404 resource not found
406 not acceptable
412 precondition failed
417 expectation failed
503 service unavailable


How to get students to connect the pre-lab to the lab? This is a very frustrating issue we are seeing with our students.  Students get access to the prelab one week in advance of the lab.  In the prelab, the students often have to use theory to predict a result in the lab.  Almost all students get the prelab correct, and they know that they are correct because it is an online quiz type thing, so they get immediate feedback*.

When they get to the lab, they are asked a question like "what is your expected voltage, and how does it compare to the measured voltage?"  A very large number of students, I'd say around 40%, will invariably ask "how do I know what my expected voltage is?"  However, this would come from the stuff they did in the prelab.

So, how do I get the students to recognize that the prelab isn't just an assignment, but is actually a vital part of the lab?

*OK, so realistically it's possible that the students are all just taking one person's answers and therefore aren't really thinking about it, but my experience with this class is that would be the exception, not the rule.

Don't do the pre-lab.

Divide the lab experience in two or more sessions, where they have to do the calculations first and the measurements soon thereafter.

And avoid online quiz with feedback: the answer is plausible if it's compatible with the measurements, not because the computer says so.

For long calculations, I sometimes use an intermediate solution in which they have to perform the calculations as homework, but they read what they have to do in the lab instruction manual, so that the two things appear connected. For example:

In this way, they are forced to read the whole lab manual first. And of course I tell them and write them that the calculations are part of the lab.


Is it normal for master's students to be sidelined, compared to PhD students? I'm a MS student who just finished his second semester. The lab that I'm in is fairly large (around 30 people) and there are a variety of students working on different topics.
Here in my country (Korea), people usually enroll as MS/PhD integrated students (i.e., enlist with a bachelor's and exit with a PhD, with an option to exit after getting a master's). I had signed up for this integrated program, but recently decided to exit once I get my master's.
The problem is that since I've decided to leave after  getting my master's, I find myself being ignored. One senior lab member questioned whether I "wanted to be part of the group" (I thought I already was). Further, no one even approaches me about research anymore unless they need help with something (e.g., English writing - I'm the only English native speaker there).
I feel like this is a toxic environment. I mean, I enrolled as a graduate student to study more and learn how to be a researcher, and I still want to do that. But maybe I'm being naive. So, is this kind of behavior
normal? Is it a known issue in my country? What's the best way to proceed?

No idea about anything specific to Korea, and haven't personally experienced this, but yeah, it seems pretty normal to me. In my field in the US it is similarly most common for people to be admitted only to PhD programs, with a masters degree as an option for people who fail to/decide not to continue.
From the perspective of your coworkers, you've decided to quit the lab. You don't mention why, and it definitely might be the right decision for you, but for people around you it might look like you don't value the kind of work the lab is doing, you're just going through the motions to get the master's degree and move on. You also might be perceived as a bit of a burden: you're opting to skip the years in which you would be likely to be most productive and most helpful to others as a senior graduate student in the lab, and only staying for your first steps into research. Ordinarily, if your goal is to "study more and learn how to be a researcher", the best way to do that would be to complete a PhD program, not to quit with a master's.
I think it's unlikely you'll change this attitude much, so I think you probably have to just embrace your decision, put your head down and get through it. I don't think that's really fair, by any means, and is especially unfair if you're working just as hard as everyone else while you are there, but I can also understand why your coworkers might not feel like you're a full contributor.


What would happen if I don't have a published research paper during my education? I am a 3rd year Ph.D. student. My field is computer science. I've worked on my topic for a long time, but finally, I found out that there are a lot of parameters correlated with publishing a paper. So I don't have hope for publishing a paper, since I should do it all on my own. What should I do now?

Apply to lower level journals (not conferences, avoids the issue of travel).  Just do some solid basic work to get your confidence up.  Not "home runs" or "triples" but singles or bunts.  Anything other than a strikeout.

Story:  I had a girlfriend who was hired to sell huge enterprise level deals for a packaging company (not software, the boxes, but also box systems, services, etc.)  She was hating life because she hadn't sold anything and didn't feel she was getting support to sell these huge deals and all the other salesmen would drop a price list and make little sales (not systems).  I advised her to (counterintiutively) go ahead and sell some simple stuff like the Cro Magnon salesmen had advised her.  The problem was that she basically had ZERO for a score and hadn't even learned how to use the systems (order entry to cash, credit checks for new customers, etc.)  And her confidence was in the dumpster.  She took my advice, felt WAY better after making a little sale and eventually got one enterprise deal done.

You need to get your confidence up.  Just go to some decent journal.  Not a fly by night predatory thing.  But second tier decent, looking for datapoint papers.  And don't try to claim you've invented hydrogen. Simple, simple, simple.  And short ("least publishable unit").

P.s. When asking questions here, it helps if you tell us the field.  There are huge differences by field.  It's good if we/you can generalize as well (not requiring answers to be field specific), but if you give us the field as well, you will get some targeted answers from practitioners.  I'm assuming it is computer science based on "stack exchange" and the comment about conferences, and I am not as familiar with that field, but many others here are.


How to tell my research advisor I'd like to drop a class? I'm currently in my first semester pursuing a PhD in Computer Science.

Dear Supervisor,

  I am taking the AI course.  I need X hours/week to do well in this
  course.  My other courses only take Y hours/week.  I am considering
  dropping this elective course so that I can devote X more hours/week
  to my research.  Do you think this is a good idea?

  Thanks for your advice,

  Student

Note:  Most likely your advisor will support you if you want to spend time on research.  But they may know something you did not tell us on Stack Exchange.  If your advisor says no, you can still tell them you have decided to drop the course.


I have PhD degree in Mathematics. Can I get a research supervisor for another PhD? I'm from Ethiopia, and I completed my PhD degree in mathematics three months ago. Now I'm working in one of Ethiopian universities as a mathematics teacher. Unfortunately, I'm not satisfied with my current position and did not enjoy the work that I did in my PhD study. So I'm looking for another PhD (in Mathematics) in Europe or Canada. Is it possible to apply for a second PhD? How can I convince a professor to get his consent?

There are some places that would forbid this and others probably permit it. But there are better options, such as a post-doc or even a paid faculty position somewhere. Earning another degree won't do anything for you that further study won't. But you can get that study while working, even in your current position.

What you really need is a relationship with one or more other professors in your field with whom you can work and extend your knowledge. You want colleagues, not supervisors. International cooperation is even possible these days if travel is difficult.

But two PhDs in the same field seems to me, at least, to be spinning your wheels.


Getting an extra advisor late in my PhD TLDR: what's the smoothest way of getting a professor as a third advisor in the penultimate year of my PhD without offending my current advisors?
(Note: I know I am lucky and this is not a big problem, I just want to know the best way to proceed.)
I'm a penultimate year PhD working in field A in a top US university of that field. Since my masters, I've had two advisors that work in fields A&B. The relationship is great, they leave me great flexibility and they don't seem to care nor need recognition. My research started being close to another professor who was interested in my research. Last year I started meeting this professor weekly, separately from my weekly meetings with my regular advisors, and going to his lab meetings (and I told my advisors and they were fine with it). I've also now co-authored a paper with all three professors in it.
This Fall I will be on the job market. My current advisors are extremely well-known in field B, and one of them is also well-known in my field A, but this third professor is just extremely popular in field A. He also has a very good history of having students going to top places after graduation. Finally, our research interests align very well and his insights have been very helpful. I think it would be beneficial for me (and possibly for the third professor) to have him as an adivosr. I also know this is possible since a friend of mine has this same triplet of professors as advisors.
I really like my PIs and don't want to offend them. Is it offensive/unfair to my current PIs if I try to get this third professor as an advisor so late in my PhD (without dropping either of them)?
If so, who should I ask first? And, is it better to do it via email to give them freedom to think about it or in one of my face-to-face meetings?

The only way this can offend your existing advisors is if you choose the third one without telling the first two in advance.


Why would master student spend more than the normal duration to complete master degree? I am looking at a particular research group for graduate studies. The research group is in STEM.

From talking to the professors, they have repeatedly told me that a master degree merely takes two years. First year you take courses, second year you complete your thesis. Sounds about right.

But when I look at the CVs of the students, a lot of the students seems to be graduating way past this two year limit. One student was doing his masters from 2011 all the way till 2014. Another recent student is still completing her master that was started from 2013. I have only sampled a few students, they might not be representative of the entire research group.

Still the question remains, what could be the reason that a master student is taking so much longer to complete his degree given that the research group has explicitly told everyone that it only takes two years.

Here is one more possible reason: the students may be working so much "on the side" that they need more semesters to complete all of the necessary courses.

Not at all universities are students supervised thoroughly or progress is checked regularly, so that working part time and studying part time is possible even when not explicitly studying for a part-time degree.

It is not difficult to imagine that when working 50% of your time and studying 50% of the time, it takes twice as long to complete the course of study.

Obviously, it depends on the rules and regulations of the university and/or course of study whether this is a possible explanation. As an example, my undergrad course allowed this, and the average duration of study was 85% above the normal duration of study, mainly because so many students studied while working. It was a STEM course. I know of on case where the student actually spent 2/3 of the time working and 1/3 of the time studying.


Is choosing a journal editor in submitting a paper an important step? I just submitted a paper. The journal asked me to choose an editor to handle the paper. I chose the first editor and didn't think much about it.

Is this step of the submission process important?

Editors could be specialized.

For instance, I work in forecasting, and in an editorial board of a general forecasting journal, some editors may be specialized in sales forecasting, others in macroeconomic forecasting, others in judgmental modifications to forecasts, others in demographics or crime forecasting and so forth. I certainly make an effort to steer my papers towards an editor that is most familiar with my specific topic.

If the editor you picked is not a specialist in your particular topic, he will likely route your submission to an expert colleague on the editorial board, so just picking one should not be too important apart from causing a minuscule amount of additional work. Unless, that is, your abstract does not sound promising to the not-absolute-expert, or the editor you picked is busy, in which case the re-routing could cause a small delay.


How important is GRE in Econ Phd Applications? Does GRE play as a cut-off point in one's Economics Phd application even though s/he has a strong profile including 4.0 GPA, strong recommendation letters, good SOP, and relevant research and teaching experience?

Yes, it does, at a large number of, although certainly not all, top economics departments in the United States. Indeed, they have a lot of applications to read from perfect applicants (at least on paper). Why should they give any exceptions?

But they do give exceptions. I don't know entirely your circumstances, and certainly mathematics isn't economics. But from my own experiences, having 1. written letters for people with bad mathematics subject test GRE scores and 2. being swayed when I've been on committee to admit people with bad mathematics subject test GRE scores, I would encourage at least one of your letter writers to contact someone at each of the schools you applied to to keep a lookout for your application/not throw it out immediately presuming a GRE cutoff, especially if other parts of your application are quite competitive for the schools you are applying/have applied to.


How to write a Literature Review when I'm not researching anything I am doing a degree in Computer Science. I am not in my final year, however my lecturer has asked me to do a dissertation over the whole of this year as a sort of dry run. This is so when I go to do my actual dissertation next year - the whole process won't be foreign to me.

My project (which I have had signed and approved) is to write a piece of software which converts SVG images into front end application code (converting a button design into an actual coded button which can be used in c# applications).

My problem is that I'm struggling to find areas to research for my literature review. My project isn't innately about any topic of research, it's just creating a piece of software.

Methods and results of what I've tried:

From what I've read, this part of the essay should include literature for/against (or opposing thoughts) of the topic at hand. The only way I can break this down to fit my project is - Should/Shouldn't User Interfaces be created from deigns. Could this possibly lead to less accurate representations of what was needed? Will the controls created be as efficient as a control created by a person based off of the designs
What is known or already understood about this topic. I've not yet found anything suitable that another person has done with regards to converting SVG's to code.

Figuring out what to put in a literature review usually involves taking a giant step back and thinking about (1) what someone needs to know in order to understand your work, and (2) how your work fits into the overall body of research. For example, you might want to address the following:

What are vector graphics (like SVG) and how do they differ from bitmap graphics (e.g. PNG).
Why is there an interest in automatically generating code?
What other attempts have been made to automatically generate code (not just from UI designs, but also from other types of designs like UML diagrams)?
How successful were these attempts?
What problems have been encountered?
What is the state of the art in automatic code generation today?
Why isn't automatic code generation more widely used?
What benefits and drawbacks are there for automatically generating code from a graphic, as opposed to from a drag-and-drop approach as is typically used in Visual Studio.


Why do researchers in areas requiring minimal resources apply for grants? I heard that many researchers spend a lot of their time (maybe even a half) writing the grants. I understand the researchers that need to purchase some equipment or fund their PhD students, although does not the department fund PhD students anyway?

But what about pure mathematicians and researchers who need a pencil and paper, a personal computer. Do these apply for grants, what for?

I am a theoretical computer scientists in a top-10 US computer science department.  To first order approximation, the only reason I apply for grants is to fund PhD students.

My research does not require PhD students, but it's part of my job as a university professor to advise them, I enjoy working with them, and I am considerably more productive when I work with them.
Students in my department that are not funded by research grants or fellowships are funded instead by teaching assistantships.  Being a TA requires a significant time investment, decreasing the time that these students can devote to research.  Being a TA can be incredibly valuable experience, especially for prospective academics, but the first-order criterion for judging the success of PhDs in computer science is the quality of their research output.
My department competes with peer departments — and I compete with researchers in those departments — to attract strong PhD students.  If we/I want to attract strong students, we have to make credible promises of future funding to do research, because that's what our peer departments do.  Prospective PhD students understand the previous point.
I work in a public university in a state with rather significant budget problems.  TAs are paid from state money, which is limited.  Thus, my department can only support a limited number of TAs.  So if I want the department to admit more than a small number of students into my research area, I have to demonstrate that we can fund a majority of those students through grants.
Students need funding to travel to conferences to present their research results, because they need to build a reputation in the research community.  I could pay for my own travel out of pocket if I really had to, but most PhD students don't have that luxury.

There are a few second-order concerns as well.

The day-to-day functioning of my department requires a steady stream of incoming research grants.  Grant overhead pays for a lot of basic infrastructure in my department, including the salaries of all the staff our business office, half of the salaries of most other administrative staff, support for non-instructional non-research computing resources like our graduate admissions database.  Grant overhead is also the source of startup packages for new faculty (for which we are again competing with our peers).
The only equipment I need is "pencil and paper"—or more accurately, a laptop with a stable LaTeX distribution and a drawing program, and basic internet access.  NSF no longer allows research funds to be used for general-purpose computing equipment, so I can't include that in my grant budgets anyway.  But my university returns a small fraction of overhead directly to PIs, and I can use that to buy new laptops, to pay for additional travel (by me, my students, or visitors), or even to help fund RAships.
Tenure and promotion decisions, and to a smaller extent raises, do depend in part on professors' proven ability to attract funding, especially in a department (and college) like mine where most faculty are extremely successful.
Oh right, I almost forgot.  I can pay myself an extra month or two of salary over the summer from my grants.  The university pays me for only 9 months of each year (although that pay is spread over 12 months), so each month of summer salary is actually more than 10% of my annual pay.


How to search for journals that accept shared first authorship? My group member and I have equally contributed on a paper that's ready to submit to a materials science and/or surface engineering journal. However, I don't know how to search for a journal that supports co-first authorship.
I contacted surface and coatings technology journal, they said that the corresponding author is the co-first author, which is unusual. As I have seen papers in other fields where there are two co-first authors and a separate corresponding author.
My supervisor will be the corresponding author in this work. Any suggestions?

In my experience, journals do not care much about co-first authors (and similar). And why should they? As long as there are no authorship disputes or gift authorships, this simply does not affect their process. The only exception is that they have to insert another footnote on the authors or a sentence in the author contributions in typesetting. I have not seen a journal that explicitly forbids marking authors as co-first and I cannot imagine a reasonable journal rejecting a paper on the grounds that it does not want to accommodate co-first authorship.
As for corresponding authorship, its meaning strongly depends on the journal and field; so it makes sense to first find out what it means for this journal. However, if this is something you can assign, I assume that here the corresponding author is the author who can respond to inquiries on the paper after publication.
I would assume that the journal you contacted simply misunderstood what you wanted or the person who handled your request was clueless. Therefore, I would simply submit the paper as regular and if the submission system does not allow for it, include a note on how you want authorship to be assigned. If they refuse, briefly explain this. If they still refuse, face-palm, and go to the next journal.
Or to answer your titular question: Unless your field is very weird in this respect, it should be rare that a journal refuses co-first authors. If it does not explicitly state this on its website, I would not worry and simply submit your paper with a short note about how authorship should be.


Having students scribe lectures When I'm teaching an advanced graduate class where the source material is drawn primarily from current research papers, there isn't a canonical text per se, and a typical lecture, while loosely structured, also involves discussion that might help clarify the papers.

In such a setting, asking students to scribe lectures serves a useful purpose. Students hopefully remember the material better after writing it down, and are forced to be more precise. And classroom discussion can be captured for posterity.

But I don't think I've found a way to implement this effectively. My current mechanics include:

students are assigned as scribes between a week in advance, and on the day of the lecture
I provide a latex style file, and also an example or two of prior scribe notes.
students are expected to produce a first draft within a few days of the lecture (lectures are once a week), and the hope is that a good version of the notes is on the website a week after the lecture.
these are "seminar" classes: they are 1-credit, and the only work the student needs to do to earn a grade is one or more scribes and (sometimes) one lecture.

What happens is that the initial draft is usually abysmal, and it either takes me a really long time to wrestle the document into shape with the student, or I give up and do it myself, which also takes a lot of time.

Are there useful practices that can improve this workflow ? Is my timeline unrealistic ?

  p.s To avoid confusion, when I say scribe (which is common
  parlance in my area) I don't mean a literal recording of minutes but a
  synthesis of material that if well done becomes something resembling
  lecture notes.

You have the following goals:

(I) Every student will transcribe at least one lecture.

(II) The transcribed lecture notes will be of a sufficient quality to be useful to the other students, and ideally to be posted somewhere for others to access.

(III) You don't want to spend an unreasonable time writing or correcting the notes yourself.

In my opinion these are three worthy goals and any one of them is attainable, but as a set they are probably incompatible with each other.  So you may want to choose (not necessarily once and for all, but depending on the course) which of these worthy goals is the worthiest and prepare to sacrifice one or both of the others.  In more detail:

If you prioritize (I), then the emphasis is placed on creating a learning experience for the students.  If you do this you will find that the variation in the quality of the note-taking will be amazing.  I have seen this in students' written notes over the years.  Yesterday a student left his notebook in my office.  I flipped through it today to try to figure out who it was.  It is one step above chicken scratch: for instance, he is writing on lined paper but his mathematical expressions and equations only stay within the lines about half the time: he can have a "written slope" which is only slightly larger than -1.  (This helped me identify the student, who does not have his name written down anywhere.  I noticed his characteristic negative slope when he was writing on the board in my office yesterday.)  On the other hand, in my graduate course I have glanced at several students' handwritten notes at the end of the lecture and marvelled at how much better they look than my own handwritten pre-lecture notes and what is on the blackboard at the end of the leecture.  At one point years ago I gave in a borderline undergrad/graduate level class what I thought was one of my best lectures of all time and at the end realized that I hadn't prepared any lecture notes and sadly reflected on the fact that it would be lost forever.  Then I remembered that I had one student in the course who took great lecture notes, and I asked her for her lecture notes for this purpose.  I think that what she gave me was an improvement on my delivered lecture, and using her notes I got my favorite part of what amounts to a textbook on number theory: you can see the lecture notes here.  (Yes, I touched it up a bit afterwards, but not by that much.)  You can also see that I thanked this student at the end of my notes.

All of the students mentioned above are "A students".  I personally do feel that the gender difference between the students is playing a role here.  This is not a scientific observation and I certainly mean no offense to anyone, but in my experience the difference in note-taking care between male and female students is, on average, dramatic.

Anyway, if you prioritize (I) and (III) you're going to get such uneven samples as to make it a pretty jarring experience for anyone to try to follow the entire course by reading the notes.  Having the notes be texed adds other levels and brings other skills into play.  Some people will naturally go back and spend time prettying up their tex files; others won't.  (I started out as the latter and very slowly over the course of thousands of pages of notes am heading towards the former.  But for someone who has thousands of pages of texed mathematics on his webpage, my texing skills are distressingly middling.)

Thus if you prioritize (II), then I think you need to seek out the students who will do the best job.  This works against (I), and you need to look for extra compensation.  I agree with the other answers that providing good latexed notes is something that may be worth paying for.

If you really prioritize (II) then at a certain point you will decide to type the lecture notes yourself.  This is what I do in most classes I teach.  At this point I have a bit of a reputation as a guy who has lots of typed lecture notes.  When I begin a graduate course now, I often tell students explicitly that I will not be typing lecture notes as the course progresses, because that is very time-consuming.  But then, at some point in the semester I usually break down and reveal to the students where my heretofore secret lecture notes can be found.  I actually just did that yesterday in my graduate class this semester....with less than one week of class left.

Typing your own notes totally destroys (III): to get something that looks good you have to work significantly harder during the semester than you otherwise would need to do in order to deliver exactly the same lecture and you need to put more time into it after the semester is over.  On the other hand, I have found this practice to be extremely valuable to both my learning and my career: I have gotten a lot of wonderful professional interactions out of it.  Thus I would say that the real drawback is that it defeats (I).

To summarize a very long answer: I think you need to decide whether the point of this is the process or the end result.  You either provide a learning experience for all the students or you provide decent-to-high quality lecture notes, or you provide both but don't get it done until after the end of the course.  I don't see how to do everything at once.


Should I put the name of proof reader in scientific manuscripts? Should I acknowledge the person who has proof read my scientific paper and have contributed in the improvement of quality of manuscripts.

You should acknowledge all who made your paper possible. If that is too many to list, then you can be generic and write something along the lines of "I would like to acknowledge and thank all those who helped and contributed to my paper."


Should I mention at my PhD interview that I already got an offer from a first university? I have received a PhD offer from University A, but I'm also considering other programmes (say C and D), for which I will interview soon.

I was wondering: should I mention during my interviews with C and D that I received an offer from A? What effect would this information have on my interview? Positive ("university A accepted him, so he should be a strong candidate"), or negative?

And let's say the answer is that I should not mention it, what if they directly ask me which other programmes I am applying to?

If A is your first choice, accept the offer and withdraw your other applications. If You would prefer to attend C, tell them (C) you have an offer from A but that you would rather attend C.


Why are honorary degrees awarded to celebrities? Chiranjeevi was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Andhra University. He is an actor, so how did he earn an honorary degree if he has not contributed anything to education?

The "degree" part of "honorary degree" is largely irrelevant.  Honorary degrees are simply honors bestowed by a university, and they are considered degrees just because degrees are what universities hand out: a degree is the one distinction not available elsewhere in society.  Honorary degrees do not necessarily have anything to do with study or recognize any scholarly accomplishments, even in the loosest sense.  (This is true both historically and today.  There has never been any strong connection between honorary degrees and scholarship.)  Scholars can be awarded honorary degrees, but so can anyone else.

In particular, politicians, donors, and celebrities are sometimes honored by universities for entirely non-academic reasons.  For example, in the United States a university typically awards an honorary degree to the primary speaker at its graduation ceremony, who is chosen for fame and speaking skills.  The speaker might be a distinguished scholar or might have no scholarly credentials whatsoever, but an honorary degree will be awarded either way.

There's nothing wrong with this, and there's no reason why universities should restrict their honors to scholars.  The only strange part is calling the honor a degree, but in practice people who care about such things know it's not a real degree.  Honorary degree recipients occasionally take the degree part too seriously (by bragging about it or insisting on being called "doctor"), but that just serves to make them look foolish.


When I should submit previous published version(s)? I'm going to send manuscript for publication in IEEE Transactions. Some parts of this manuscript were published earlier in little-known journals (in Russian). But in general manuscript is significantly different from previous papers. Should I upload previous papers as a ‘Previous Published Version(s)’, and upload summary of differences?

UPD:
I found the following in ScholarOne Manuscripts (IEEE Transactions manuscript submission site): "Has any portion of your paper been published elsewhere? If yes, please include your original paper and a brief summary of your changes. New material must be added before submitting the manuscript to this journal.". So, I should upload previous published versions?

While I'm not too familiar with the IEEE publication process, in particular, the common sense tells me the following. Since your manuscript in its present form is "significantly different" from the previous versions, it very well makes sense to simply submit the current version as an original publication. However, it would be nice (and right - in order to prevent self-plagiarism accusations) to mention somewhere in the paper (preferably, in the introduction section) that the present paper is based on previous work by such authors, which has been published in such journals / outlets.

The "previous published version(s)" option that you have mentioned seems to be directed toward more closely related versions of the same paper, which seems to be not the case in your situation.


Is it possible to access referee reports for investigating scientific history? Do most journals keep archives of referee reports and would historians of science be able to access them? Perhaps after some delay?

All reputable journals today use web-based manuscript management systems that keep information about each manuscript, its various revisions, who was asked to review and what their reviews were, as well as editor decisions. So yes, this information exists in these systems at least as far back as the introduction of these systems (at least ten years ago). As the editor-in-chief of a journal, I can look at all of this data for every article in my journal.

But I suspect that it will be exceptionally difficult to get at this kind of information if you're not the editor-in-chief yourself. To do research on this means that you're doing research on human subjects, with all that implies: You'll have to have IRB [1] approval for your study protocol, you might have to anonymize the data (which I suspect would be exceptionally difficult in itself), and/or you might have to receive informed consent from the reviewers, authors, and editors (all of which are involved in the decision making process).

I have a suspicion that few publishers are interested in going to this level of trouble. On the other hand, I have no doubt that such studies have been done, so I would expect that it is possible to get at the kind of data you're looking for -- it's just very difficult to do this kind of research.

[1] In the US, IRBs (Institutional Review Boards) are the bodies tasked with overseeing research that involves human subject research. All human subject research has to be approved by an IRB before the data so gained can be used for publications.


Do publishers care if a book manuscript was freely posted online before submission to the publisher? Do publishers care if a book manuscript was freely posted online (e.g., made open-access with a CC license) before submission to the publisher?

Data point: within the last two years, Cambridge University Press made a deal with me, without fuss, that will allow me to put a PDF of a forthcoming monograph on-line without any waiting period ("embargo"?). The deal was that I forego "e-book" sales. The general philosophy was explained to me by the acquisitions editor as "we're not for profit, but we try to not lose money".

Another enterprise whose implications I've not thought about too much, is the Amer. Math. Soc.'s relatively recent program to have lightly-vetted PDF "books" on their site, to invite comments and so on... most likely toward eventual publication... but without any apparent obligation from authors. I was solicited to put some of my notes into that machine, and, even when I commented that many of these would never become any sort of physical book (mostly because of all that entails, but also because of the paywall/editorial-corruption, ...) the acquisitions editor said it didn't matter. Yes, that is what I would have said, too, if I were an acquisitions editor trying to engage established writers-of-notes, but, still, ...

As usual, these situations can be evaluated by the "value added" criterion, where "value" of course includes, status, money, etc, and the relative value of those things to the parties involved. The value added of a physical book is ever harder to understand, but to many it is still considerable. Indeed, having committed to CUP to make a physical book (beyond on-line PDFs), I did feel compelled to put a great deal extra effort into minimizing flaws... which are essentially uncorrectible in a physical object, but are endlessly correctible in an on-line document.

I think that, unsurprisingly, we're still in a crazy transition period while publishers figure out how to cope with the internet, and academics figure out that literal "publication" is no longer bottle-necked through "publishers". That is, acquisition of "status" points enough to get tenure or get grants once was only possible through conventional publishers (and whatever procedures they hit upon), but now there are choices. In many peoples' minds, "publication" has inherited the archaic sense of "published through conventional publisher, with whatever vetting (in some peer-review sense) procedure they declare, as opposed literal publication. Perhaps unimaginably, once-upon-a-time, there was really no such thing as publication other than that now-archaic one. The habits and conventions of it permeate academe, along with self-perpetuating mythologies and traditions.

Happily, some publishers (maybe not the ones panicking at loss of traditional high profit margins) have caught on to the fact that the internet "is a thing", and that many modestly technically savvy people can create PDFs that are as good as anything their own "typesetters" can create. Rather than pretending otherwise, they're adapting.


How to cite a paragraph in project report? I am writing a project report for my master degree in STEM (U.S.). I have to cite a large paragraph of others' work. This paragraph describes some basic stuff (For example, a duck has two eyes and two legs). I did not change a word in that paragraph.

I have already cited this paper at the end of my report. Is there anything else I can do to avoid plagiarism?

When you use someone else's words verbatim, you must either

put it in quotation marks, or
indent the paragraph (make it a block quote)

to indicate that those words are not your own. (Most style guides recommend block quotes for long quotations.)

You must also indicate somewhere near the paragraph (e.g. in a footnote, parenthetical reference, or other kind of inline citation depending on what citation style you use) which source in your reference list it comes from. (You must do this - indicate what source it comes from - any time you use someone else's ideas or material you found in a reference, even if you summarize or paraphrase it in your own words.)

In general, a rule of thumb for avoiding plagiarism:

For any idea or information that isn't your own work, clearly indicate where it comes from. (Excluding facts that are "common knowledge".)
Additionally, make it clear any time you use words or images that you didn't write/create yourself. (For example, with quotation marks, block quote formatting, or image credits in the caption.)


Can we study University level subjects without getting admitted into a university? I am currently a senior high school, and next year I will enroll for my undergraduate studies but I am afraid that my grades would not be good enough  to be admitted in good universities like MIT, Princeton etc.
So can I study advanced topics like general relativity, quantum mechanics etc., like at university but without getting into it?

This is a response that takes various comments of the OP into account rather than an explicit answer to the question asked - but it is too long for a comment, and I really think that the OP should be made aware of the following points.
@OP:
I do not intend to be rude, but I would strongly advise you to recalibrate your expectations and your perception of how research and academia work. For instance,

you say that you never managed to get good grades in highschool, but your question focusses on "advanced topics like general relativity, quantum mechanics";

you are worried (in some of your comments) that you won't be admitted by any university, but your question focusses on places like MIT;

in another question you mention research of yours (which I find a bit odd, anyway, since you write you're a highschool student) and don't seem to be particularly convinced of its quality, but in a comment here you claim that you wish to "interact with greatest minds of this world".

Now, it is important to note that none of your goals is completely unreasonable in itself: there are, of course, a lot of potential reasons why a smart student might have poor grades in highschool, and might anyway master theoretical physics later on; it is, as mentioned by others, also absolutely possible to do your undergraduate studies at a respected but not-at-all famous university, and then do your graduate studies at a very well-known place; it is also possible to start out with not particularly good research and to improve quickly and considerably, so that the "greatest minds of this world" would like to discuss your research with you.
However, the only way to achieve any of this is to keep a realistic perspective and to move forward in small and down-to-earth steps.
Currently, your contributions here merely focus on extremes ("bad grades in highschool vs. studying advanced topics in theoretical physics"; "not admitted to any university vs. admitted to MIT"; "research of low quality, produced as a highschool student, vs. interacting with the greatest minds of this world.")
Here are a few suggestions of a more realistic approach:

If you had difficulties to earn good grades in highschool, make a thorough (and honest) analysis of the reasons, and try to figure out what you can do to improve this situation when you attend a university. In order to get any degree you will have to pass exams, too, and if you want to have any chance of your dreams coming true, you will have to do very well in most of them.
If you had poor grades in highschool, this might also indicate (though it is not sure, of course) that you don't know well some of the material from highschool. No matter whether this might not be your fault or what the precise reasons are - it might still pose a problem when you want to study topics in physics at university level. So please try to find out whether you have, for instance, serious gaps in your highschool knowledge of mathematics or physics (and maybe also some other subjects that could be relevant), and if you find some, try to close these gaps before you're heading towards more advanced topics.
(Please note that much more basic physical topics than general relativity and quantum mechanics - for instance, classical Newtonian mechanics - require mathematical knowledge which goes far beyond the mathematics taught in highschool.)

If you intend to become, in a few years, a graduate student in one of these "top-tier" universities, try to make choices right now which can help you get admitted then. For instance, make an effort to find out which kind of undergraduate experience (for instance, research experience, but also other things) are considered advantageous for the admission decision, and then try to choose a university for your undergraduate degree where you have good chances of acquiring this experience.

Getting involved with research early is certainly a good idea of you have ambitious plans - but the most reasonable way to do this is within the setting of a college or university and in collaboration with other people who already have experience in doing research.

Please try to inform yourself about some details of the academic system. For instance, you write in one comment that you are considering self-studying, then to write a few good research papers and to get a PhD in Cosmology. As mentioned by other users, this is a very unrealistic plan:
First, being admitted for graduate studies seems to be very unlikely if you do not have an undergraduate degree. So if you want to do a PhD, there is most likely no way around getting admitted for undergraduate studies first.
Second, producing good research and getting it published in reputable journals is very, very difficult if you do not have any formal education (= education at a university) in your subject and no senior colleagues that support and advise you. Producing really excellent research and getting it published in top journals (which would fit your, in some respects extremely ambitious, goals) is literally impossible without the aforementioned prerequesits.

Now, all these suggestions certainly come across as much less glorious and prestigious than getting admitted to MIT, or studying general relativity as soon as possible, or interacting with great minds. However, please be aware that even the greatest minds spend a considerable amount of their time with completely non-glorious, down-to-earth routine tasks (like advising students, marking exams, writing grant proposals, and so on).
Also, even if someone is born as a genius, a degree from a top university, a solid understanding of theoretical physics and the possibility to work with great people do not simply come to them out of the blue - even the smartest people have to work long and very hard for this, and they do it by taking many - maybe amibitious, but most often still small and realistic - steps. So precisely this is my advice for you.


Responsibilities of PI to PhD student post PhD submission, but pre-viva I have recently submitted my PhD. However, my project requires about 5 months more work to be publishable. The standard time between submission and the viva defence in my lab is about 5-6 months. I had hoped to do this work, defend and finish the paper over the next 5 months. I am not being paid as officially my PhD is over, but I want to see the project out to the end, both because I have worked on it for 4 years and I need a paper for career progression.

However, my PI and I have never worked well together, and now a post-doc who was originally asked to help out with my project seems to be preparing to take over. I have a meeting soon to clarify everything, and I'm determined to fight for this project and paper but am unsure if I may be asking/expecting too much. I'd really appreciate some help.

Does my PI have any obligations to help me in the period post-PhD submission but pre-viva? My contract is officially over, so can they refuse to let me enter the lab to do wrapping-up experiments, even one that would really help me pass my viva?
Can my PI take the project off me and give it to someone else if I don't finish it within the dates of my PhD? This would effectively end my academic career. (Everyone else graduating from our lab was given short-term postdoc extensions to finish up, so no-one in my lab has ever finished a paper in the time of their PhDs)

This answer is a bit blind as some information needed to give a more complete answer is missing. I'll try to give some guidance, but it is probably incomplete.

You say that you haven't gotten along well with your advisor. You don't say why. There could be a lot of reasons, but if you have, through your own actions, given the advisor reason to question your commitment or ability to finish, then you may not get very far here. It is impossible to say what is "owed" in such a situation.

You say you want to "fight for this project...", but I'd suggest that you change that approach a bit and stress why and how you are the best person to complete the work and how you guarantee that you can and will do it. Funding is a separate issue and, again, it is impossible to say what is "owed" here.

Depending on the nature of the work, it may be completely reasonable for the professor to pass it on to someone else since you are no longer involved. In a lab situation, students very seldom "own" the research thread and that thread may be so important to complete that personalities matter less than the work itself - childhood cancer, say.

Technically, your advisor owes you what was in the contract. Morally it may be more, but there isn't really enough information to judge it externally.

On the other hand, an attempt to deny you your degree or prevent you from publishing your results or impeding your career would be unjust.

If you want to stay with the project, however, convince your advisor that you can and will be the best person to do it. Any other approach is likely to fail.


Are concerns about studying in Russia reasonable? I'm sorry if this is not the right place to ask this sort of question, but I really need an answer.
I'm from the middle-east and wants to apply for a master's degree in Russia, but lately people are discouraging me about the idea, for the following reasons:

A Russian degree is not perceived as "very good" in other parts of Europe (western countries) & USA
difficult to get a job while (or even after) studying, since you are a foreigner
even if you get a job, incomes are LOW
there have been several racism-related crimes against Black and Hispanic (etc) people, and all-in-all it's a dangerous country.

Don't get me wrong, I love Russia and Russian culture, but I'm paying a big amount of money, so I'd love to get things in return.
My question is: are my concerns reasonable, or are they just the product of American (Hollywood) propaganda? Would you advise me to study abroad in Russia or drop the idea and find somewhere else?
I mean: is it worth the time/money/effort or not?

I try not to think of myself as a person influenced by the US propaganda (I am more acquainted with Soviet and late Russian propaganda, more likely). However, I can not really advise you to go for degrees in Russia.

First of all, the STEM subjects were traditionally strong in the Soviet time due to the nuclear project. Unfortunately, the professorial level degraded significantly in the post-Soviet 90s, and did not fully recover yet.

Second, you are probably aware that most of the universities in Russia teach courses in Russian. Unless your Russian is already fluent (or at least basic), be ready to spend a year or so mastering it before you will really address your subjects. Unless you plan to work in Russia afterwards, the knowledge of Russian (as opposed to English) is not something that increase your career progress dramatically.

Lastly, having summa cum laude BS and MS degrees, as well as a PhD (or Cand Sci as we call it) from strong Moscow Universities myself, I probably can confirm that many HR departments prefer to see something easily recognizable on your CV, e.g. the University of Oxford as a trademark impacts your progress much better than the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology that sounds almost like Inshallah Salam Alaikum University for someone who never heard of it.

On the bright side, studying in Russia you most definitely will experience interesting adventures, befriend the best guys and hang around the most gorgeous young ladies. Also, if you can solve problems you face in Russia, you arguably are ready to solve them in any other place.


Is "Assistant Professor Position (Tenure Track) for a female Researcher" illegal in Austria? Not so long ago an Austrian institution posted a job ad titled "Assistant Professor Position (Tenure Track) for a female Researcher". The description says further

  As part of a special measure towards increasing female employment in scientific positions and promoting young researchers, the Faculty of [censored department] at the [censored institution name] invites applications for an Assistant Professor position (tenure track) for women expected to begin on May 2, 2018.

My understanding is that it is unlawful to ask for a particular gender in a job ad unless the gender is strictly necessary to perform the job duties. For academic tasks, the gender of the researcher is irrelevant. Does the institution run into legal issues with this ad? Could someone legally generate profit from such an ad by suing the institution (or the goverment behind it) for discrimination? Have such attempts been already undertaken in academia? (Outside academia, we see successful lawsuits at least in Germany.)

An aside: Hey, we all agree that in some fields there is a widespread opinion that they would profit from hiring people of the underrepresented gender; we also agree that gender issues exist before hiring, during hiring, and after hiring: they are way too numerous to discuss here. (An example: I see women underrepresented both in my research field and as sewer machine drivers. Why on earth is the politics caring about the first category but not about the second; after all, in an average town, there are way more sewer cars than academic research positions. Another example: my prior boss was an excellent first-class female researcher, but she never ever hired women herself. I could continue with the list ...) So, let us cut short and speak only about the legal and financial part of the particular situation rather than anything else. Let us not discuss whether the job ad and the institution should be condemned or praised or anything of the kind.

In brief,  the job ad in question seems perfectly in line with an official document of the institution, the Career Advancement Plan for Women (see below). If there is any issue it would have to be with this plan, not just the particular job ad, which seems more unlikely.

According to Austrian law it can be legal to put measures into place with the intent of reducing existing inequalities, even when in isolation they would be discrimination. In that sense the understanding of the general principles expressed in the question is correct, except that there is an explicit exception to them if the intent is to reduce existing inequalities.
The most relevant law here is the Bundesgesetz über die Gleichbehandlung [something like 'Federal law for equal treatment'].
It mostly details the understanding recounted in the question, but it also has a paragraph that allows for exceptions of the form mentioned above.

Positive Maßnahmen
§ 8. Die in Gesetzen, in Verordnungen, in Instrumenten der kollektiven Rechtsgestaltung oder in generellen mehrere Arbeitnehmer/innen umfassende Verfügungen des/der Arbeitgebers/Arbeitgeberin getroffenen Maßnahmen zur Förderung der Gleichstellung von Frauen und Männern, insbesondere durch Beseitigung tatsächlich bestehender Ungleichheiten im Sinne des Art. 7 Abs. 2 B-VG, gelten nicht als Diskriminierungen im Sinne dieses Gesetzes. Dies gilt auch für Maßnahmen zur Förderung der Gleichstellung von Frauen und Männern in den in § 4 genannten Bereichen. Der Bund kann für besondere Aufwendungen, die Arbeitgeber/inne/n bei der Durchführung solcher Maßnahmen entstehen, Förderungen gewähren.

Somewhat improved Google Translate's translation:

Positive action
§ 8. The measures taken in laws, regulations, collective legal instruments or in general multi-employee dispositions of the employer to promote equality between women and men, in particular by eliminating existing inequalities within the meaning of Art Art. 7 para. 2 B-VG are not considered to be discrimination within the meaning of this Act. This also applies to measures to promote equality between women and men in the areas mentioned in § 4. The Federal Government may grant subsidies for special expenses that employers incur in carrying out such measures.

The title is "positive measures" and then it roughly says that measures whose intent it is to level existing inequalities are not consider as discrimination and federal government might even fund them.
Now, this does not simply authorize everybody to do whatever they think might be appropriate. But, it admits the general principle, and further laws and regulations can build on it.
Let me now jump from the general to the concrete.
The job ad in question seems to be in line, and likely even motivated, by an official document of the institution in question (or if it is not the institution in question than it is a comparable one). Thus, if something should not be legal it would be this plan. The above mentioned §8 should be applicable to this document.
This document, called Frauenförderungsplan [Career Advancement Plan for Women] contains among other things §6(3) (quoting the English version):

To increase the proportion of women among professors and among young scientists, special measures
shall be taken, for example establishing tenure-track positions and professorships for women.

That the institution has such a Career Advancement Plan for Women is motivated by, indeed prescribed by, the Austrian law that governs the organization of universities [Universitätsgesetz 2002 – UG], specifically §20b.
Also of relevance §41:

§ 41. Alle Organe der Universität haben darauf hinzuwirken, dass in allen universitären Arbeitsbereichen ein ausgewogenes Zahlenverhältnis zwischen den an der Universität tätigen Frauen und Männern erreicht wird. Die Erreichung dieses Ziels ist durch geeignete Maßnahmen, insbesondere durch die Erlassung und Umsetzung eines Frauenförderungsplans, anzustreben.

Saying roughly (my translation) "All parts of the university must work towards achieving equal numbers of women and man employed, for all types of employment. This goal shall be achieved by putting appropriate measures into place, in particular by adopting and implementing a career advancement plan for women.
The respective plans for this and other Austrian universities can also be found on a site of the Austrian government.
Maybe noteworthy, I did not find that explicit suggestions in some others which I looked at though; I did not look at all and not very carefully either.
Another relevant law would be the Bundes-Gleichbehandlungsgesetz – B-GlBG, especially §11. Specifically § 11b.(1) not only authorizes but prescribes the practice described in the answer of rexkogitans for areas in which women are underrepresented. (While universities, I think, are not directly in any case not completely covered by this law, since it is about employment by the Austrian state, which is not anymore the way people are employed at Austrian universities, except for some existing old contracts, explicit reference is made to this regulation in the above mention document as some king of inspiration.)
Further legal explications can be found in the Career Advancement Plan for Women quoted above.
To sum up, the job ad in question seems perfectly in line with an official document of the institution, the Career Advancement Plan for Women. If there is any issue it would have to be with this plan, not the particular job ad.
Yet this plan makes detailed reference to various laws and alike (roughly and clumsily recounted above); certainly people with legal expertise were involved in the creation of that document.
Now, in principle, it is still possible that there is some legal problem with this plan or opposing legal opinions of what is or is not legal, but if there is one it should be rather subtle.
Indeed, there are earlier precedence for this practice. In 2010 an Austrian newspaper reported about some assistant professor positions advertised for women only at another Austrian university. A representative of the university is quoted:

Das stelle auch keine unzulässige Diskriminierung dar, sagt Manfred Rathmoser, Sprecher der Uni Linz. So seien laut EU-Recht „spezifische Vergünstigungen für ein Geschlecht zulässig“, wenn diese zum Ausgleich von Benachteiligungen dienen. Und Frauen seien in der Wissenschaft unterrepräsentiert.

My rough translation:

This is no inadmissible discrimination, says Manfred Rathmoser, speaker of the University of Linz. For, according to EU law "specific advantages for one gender are admissible" if those serve to even out existing disadvantages. And women in research are underrepresented.

However it continues:

So einfach sei die Sache nicht, betont jedoch Bernd-Christian Funk, Experte für öffentliches Recht an der Uni Wien. Funk studierte für die „Presse“ die Stellenausschreibung genau. Sein Schluss: „Ich halte sie gelinde gesagt für rechtlich problematisch“, so Funk.

My translation:

The situation is not so simple, emphasizes Bernd-Christian Funk, expert for public law the the University of Vienna. Funk studied the job advertisement for "Presse" [the name of the newspaper]. His conclusion: "I consider them, put mildly, as legally problematic," said Funk.

It then continues to say that while things like preferential treatment in cases of equal qualification are alright this goes to far and is against European and Austrian legal norms. The advice to men that feel discriminated was to apply and to then go to court.
If you or somebody else wants to pursue this matter seriously it may be an option to contact him (Funk) and inquirer what he thinks about this now, and  the relevant paragraph of the "Frauenförderungsplan" of the TU Wien. It seems he is still active, though at a different institution, and his contact details are easy to find. You could also contact the relevant institution.
Conclusion: The job ad seems to be covered by official documents and policies of the university, which in some detail argue how they tie in with Austrian law. This notwithstanding there appear to be opposing legal opinions, too.


How do I convince my professor to keep me as his student? This is a continuation of my previous question, I believe my advisor doesn't think I am smart. How should I deal with this?

It just so happens that when I asked my prof for feedback, he decided to just drop me. Obviously I had asked for feedback when I saw some signs recently which indicated that he wasn't very happy.

Now what do I do?

I really liked talking to this prof. I was enjoying the discussions. I thought things were well. But he seems to think that I get stuck with simple things! He probably also thinks that I am overambitious (in the few instances that I have tried discussing some other topics with him).

I wrote to my prof asking him to reconsider his decision and reflecting on what could be the issues of his disappointment and what I could do to improve. Obviously he didn't reply.

I met the grad coordinator.
He has schedule another between with all three of us.

I wonder whether I should be optimistic about that meeting!

It's possible that you really aren't capable of doing the work, and that your advisor thought about this for a long time and decided that the kindest thing to do would be to drop you now, before you waste more time.

It's also possible that you weren't really applying your advisor's criticism - for example, you weren't taking him seriously when he told you not to get distracted by new ideas, but to focus on making progress on your original research. Your advisor felt that he was wasting his time because you weren't listening to his advice.

You should really talk to this professor's other students, and find out how they experience him as an advisor. If the other students get along just fine with him, and only you have this problem, then it's possible he just can't work with you.

However, in that case, he should really have spoken to you about the possibility of dropping you before he did it.  (Not just making comments about your work, but explicitly telling you, "I can't keep working with you if this continues; this is what you need to do to show me you are making enough progress to continue.")

In any event, I'm going to answer this question as if you are a capable student, and your advisor is just unwilling to let you learn and work at a reasonable pace. (Obviously, I don't know you, so I don't know if this is true.)

In that case,

If your advisor isn't prepared to deal with a student who is capable, and clearly eager to learn and improve, then you should really reconsider wanting to work with him.

There is a professor like this in my department - brilliant, great to talk to, and there is a lot one can learn from him. But he is under a lot of pressure to produce results (he's new, like your advisor). He is constantly making "threats" to get his students to produce work (e.g., telling them their funding the next semester depends on whether their next conference paper is accepted - although he doesn't follow through on these threats). He isn't willing to let students grow and develop as researchers - he expects them to work up to his standards, immediately.

This professor's students are leaving him in droves. They are either leaving school with an M.S. (instead of sticking it out for the PhD), or switching to another advisor. As a result, he's only published one paper in the last two years (which is far, far below standard in his field).

So, you should think about whether you really want to work with this professor, and consider asking the grad coordinator for another advisor. If this advisor is not a capable advisor, you will not be successful with him, no matter how brilliant he is.

If you decide you really want to work with this professor, do not approach this meeting as a student who is begging an advisor to keep them on.

Rather, come as a student who is willing to stay with this advisor, but understands that both of you need to change for this to work. He will have to give you a reasonable chance to learn from, and apply, his constructive criticism. In return, you will agree to take his advice seriously, work hard, and do your best to improve and succeed.

Talk about how highly you value this professor's experience, and how much you want to learn from him. Explain that you take his concerns (about getting stuck with simple things and getting distracted with new ideas) seriously, and want to work on fixing those things - but that growth takes some time.

And of course, if you are able to work things out, and you continue with this advisor, make sure to talk to him often about what he expects from you, and how you are living up to his expectations. Work hard to apply his advice and improve your research skills, and make him aware of these efforts so that he doesn't think you are ignoring his advice.


Include article in bibliography I didn't cite Say I gained knowledge from a review article. However, I don't cite that review article. I do cite articles cited by that review article, but not the review itself.

Should I still include that review in my bibliography?

I have handled similar situations by adding a sentence citing the article, such as

  Smith (2003) provides a useful summary of this topic.

My reasoning is that since I found the review article very helpful, people reading my article may be interested as well. I know I appreciate references like this.


How involved should your PhD adviser be in your project? I just completed my first year at a PhD program at a University in the United States. It's been a semester since I joined a lab and I'm slightly confused about my decision at the moment. I feel like my academic advisers are not as involved in my project as they should be.

I'm working on a joint project between two professors in a field that is new to them, besides their expertise on instrumentation. Both my advisers are well accomplished in their respective fields but their experience in the area that my project is concerned with is (at least on paper) substantially less (only one publication from the lab so far). Besides, there is only one other graduate student involved on this project while all other group members work in a different area, making it difficult for me to get any help from members in the lab. On top of this, I meet my advisers only once every 2-3 weeks and although they are extremely patient with regards to my queries, their feedback hasn't been very useful yet.

While I was aware of this situation before deciding to join the lab, I went ahead with the project for its future prospects and overlap of required skill set with mine. It also offered the opportunity to build up a lab almost from scratch with very experienced advisers, which I thought, was great. While I don't hate working on my project, I'm concerned since I haven't made much progress and am not sure if what's happening is normal. Both my advisers are experts in instrumentation, which is a major hurdle in the project (and hasn't been tackled by any other group yet), but aren't aware of the current scientific problems in the field.

Finally boiling down to my questions:

(i) I often find myself worrying that the problem I end up working on for the next few years as a graduate student might turn out to be insignificant or turned down as trivial by experts in the field. Am I thinking too much?

(ii) I often hesitate digging deeper into articles in my field (not directly related to my project) wondering if it's useful at all, considering that I'd be all by myself if I pursue it and would thus stand no chance against other research groups that are actively involved in the field. Is that reasonable?

(iii) Would it be rude to confront my advisers with these concerns?

(iv) Would it suffice for me to get help from another faculty on campus and continue with my project?

1) Email your advisors short (few sentences) progress reports every week or less. This forces you to move at a quicker rate than 2-3 weeks, and keeps them more invested in your progress.

2) As a junior student I suggest that for now you trust your advisors and peers and grind through this project. Researchers tend to always be critical of their own work, no matter how good it is.

3) It would be ideal to work side by side with a more experienced graduate student or advisor.

4) Part of a PhD is intellectual independence. You should not be afraid about pursuing an area if no one else is pursuing it, so long as you can see its merits. Why work on something that everyone else is working on?


Second undergraduate versus masters with qualifying year I was a bit unsure whether this question belonged here, but after finding many questions requesting advice with respect to mathematics studies I decided to go ahead.

Over the last year I have developed a strong interest in mathematics and would like to pursue it at the university level. The long-term goal is graduate studies.

My original intent was to first pursue a B.Sc in mathematics. I had met with the undergraduate coordinator at a university I would like to enrol in and he recommended that based upon my background that I may be better off pursuing a masters degree with a qualifying year comprised of advanced undergraduate courses.

My background is:

Degrees: B.Comm (Economics), M.A. (Economics)
Mathematical Courses: Business Calculus, Mathematics for Economists (includes calculus, linear algebra, set theory, optimization, topology), Introductory Statistics, Econometrics
Research Experience: Four RAships, two upcoming publications (not in mathematics)
Self-study: Calculus (Stewart), Linear Algebra (Strang), Currently working on: A Course of Pure Mathematics (Hardy)

I would like to ask that given an individual with a background in a quantitative field, what are the pros and cons with pursuing either of these options.

If possible, avoid the 2nd undergrad. To see if possible, pick an online copy of a typical textbook, level advanced undergraduate/graduate, and browse it for fun, and do some of the early exercises. Examples: Artin: Algebra; Munkres: Topology; Spivak: Calculus on Manifolds (or more advanced; Guillemin & Pollack;: Differential Topology); or better yet, browse whatever the curriculum of your chosen university indicated for this fall semester as text books. It doesn't have to appear easy, as you are supposed to learn it; and learning math is hard, no matter what your future classmates will falsely claim: most of them struggle too. But it shouldn't terrify you either.


Royalties and advances from academic publishers: what should I look out for? I am an early-career academic in a humanities subject and have been offered my first book contract. The offer is from a reputable international commercial publisher, which has published several recent and important works in my field.

The publisher has offered an advance payment of c.$700/£500 on publication, but does not offer royalties. This is on the basis that most institutions are purchasing digital subscriptions as opposed to physical books or ebooks.

Having no prior experience of book contracts, I would like to gauge if this is a good deal in terms of payment, and what constitutes the norm for royalties for academic books.

For academic books, there may often be no royalties.  And only a small number of copies sold.  Maybe if your first book has unexpectedly large sales, you could negotiate something more on future books.

Typically, though, academics publish books not to make money from the book, but to build their academic reputation.  And that may lead to promotions, tenure, hiring at more important universities, etc.


How to refer to a method from a workshop in a conference paper? I had a paper accepted in a workshop that only publishes its proceedings on its website; one of these workshops that tell you that submitting to the workshop does not prevent you from submitting elsewhere. The paper proposed a new method A, and applied it to problems B and C.

Now, I want to write a conference version of the paper. The conference version will present method A, apply it to problems B and C with extended experiments, and additionally to problem D.

How do I refer/cite the method A in the conference paper? Does the workshop count at all? In my field (CS), I have been told that the workshops do not count. Yet, it feels wrong to call it a novel method. Is the method A contribution of the conference paper or not?

I think you are mixing up a few different definitions of "count" here.

Workshop papers typically "count" very little on your CV. That is, having a few workshop papers will not make you graduate much sooner, and they are pretty much useless when you start looking for e.g., a tenure track position.
Workshop papers, but only those with no formal proceedings, don't "count" as publications. That is, you can hand in the same material again at a conference or journal without being accused of self-plagiarism. The workshop paper on the website of the workshop is basically a preprint. Hence, formally, the work is still unpublished and you can submit it wherever you want.
Workshop papers, no matter if they appeared in formal proceedings or not, can and should be cited. Clearly, if you use this citation to, e.g., support the validity of a statement, this carries less weight if the cited source is a workshop paper than if it is a well-known journal. However, if you want to apply method A, which you have already presented in a workshop, it seems correct to cite the workshop paper. Note that you will still need to describe the method, as you cannot assume the reader of your conference paper to go back and read the workshop paper first.


Is reapplying to the same PhD program looked down upon by admissions? Do committees look down on a candidate reapplying to a PhD program one year after being denied? My field is social science, if that impacts anything. I currently work at a research org and am wondering if it's worth it to apply this year, although I know my CV will be stronger the following year (theoretically given my current position the CV will keep getting stronger every year, though). While I feel very ready from a personal standpoint and want to go now, I'm debating if it's worth applying now, with the potential ramification of re-applying should I not get in anywhere.

There are generally three types of candidates for admissions:

Clear-cut admits
Clear-cut rejects
Borderline cases

If you're in the first group, you'll get in and don't need to worry about reapplying. If you're in the second group, not much time will be spent on your application, which means that you're not likely to be "remembered" in future cycles, and your application will be re-evaluated the following year.

The main issue is if you're a borderline case—that's generally where much of the discussion time by an admissions committee is spent. If you're going to reapply, it's likely that someone will remember that you've applied before, and they will want to see what's changed. So it may help you in getting in the following year if they thought you were close but came up "just short."


Is it legal for a university to post a copy of a copyrighted (pay for access) journal article? Extensively using Google Scholar, I've realized that most of the articles belonging to  publishers that limit access to material (i.e. ACM, IEEE, Elsevier) also have PDF versions available for free, and these files usually are hosted by universities or other aggregators like ResearchGate.

Is it legal for the university/organization to host a copy of an article, if this has been published on a conference or journal with paid access? Does it matter if the authors of the article belong to that university/organization?

To answer the (original version of the) question in the title:

  Are scientific articles of public domain?

the answer is absolutely not, unless the relevant copyright holders declared it so or that its copyright has expired. Note that public domain is emphatically different from open access.

To answer the question in the body:

  Is it legal for the university/organization to host a copy of an article, if this has been published on a conference or journal with paid access? Does it matter if the authors of the article belong to that university/organization?

the answer is it depends.

What does it depend on? Very simply, the publication agreement or the copyright transfer agreement or the licensing agreement signed by the author when the article has been accepted for publishing. For example:

Here's the version for Science
Here's the one for IEEE
Elsevier compiled a handy table for their journals.

As David Ketcheson points out below, a great resource for checking the self-archiving and open access policies of is Sherpa/Romeo.


Combining 2 sections according to the reviewer’s comment I get review comments for my manuscript. Reviewer suggested combine G section with B section as one section. So I combined as he/she suggested. Now I am preparing REPLY to reviewer’s comments. My question is that should I put my whole combined section to REPLY file and highlight the combined G section’s texts? Or Is this okay if I reply like this “According to your suggestion, we combined G section with B section as one section”?

"The material from sections B and G of the previous version have been incorporated into the new Section H of this version".
That should be plenty. Just point to the place where the material now sits as suggested above.


Resources for English speaking students with poor command of grammar and writing style I sometimes read student assignments  where the grammar and writing style is poor. Paragraphs don't really flow. Sentences go on for ever. The ordering of words is awkward. Instead of concisely introducing the subject of the sentence, it goes on forever.

I'd like to be able to recommend resources to such students. Ideally, such a resources would be available online so I could just give them a link or two to some writing style and grammar materials with exercises.

What is a good resource (preferably online) for teaching English speaking university students how to improve their writing style?

I know that this can be the source of great frustration for teachers, especially when they do not teach writing. However, writing is one of those things, like other communication skills, that I think we all need to teach (at least a little bit) if for no other reason that our students will fail if they cannot compose a well-reasoned essay, even if they understand the material from our subject quite well.

There are plenty of universities which provide very good source material for this. Here is one from the US. Here is one from the UK. I have used materials from both (and many others) but I do not find that I can simply point the students to these sites and expect everything to work out.

As educators, sometimes we need to teach things which are more fundamental in nature. Unless your school has a 'writing center' so you can direct students there for help (my school does not). I find I need to spend 1-2 hours per semester to cover core writing issues.