I got an offer from my dream graduate school days after starting grad school somewhere else. What should I do? I have been offered a PhD in a European country which I have accepted and I started attending (my first month). However, just few days after starting here, I got another offer (from a different country) with a subject that interests me more (honestly, it's my dream research topic since UG school).
Internally, deep inside me, I want to leave and pursue my dreams and the things I am more passionate about. However, I feel very bad and selfish to do this. The supervisor at the first institution struggled to get me the funding and to get me rolled in without hustle and this kills me morally.
I accepted the first offer because the second one was still too far and I wasn't given enough time from the first institution to wait for an offer from the second one (the subject is also the closest among all others to my interests).
My engagement with the first institution is still on the trial period, in which case I can cancel and leave without any problem.
I don't really know what to do now. I have good relationships with my current supervisor, and he has faith in me. I also have great relationships with the research team. I just don't have enough courage to tell them such a shocking decision.
I want to get some advice, from a career point of view (should I pursue my dream research topic or not?), is it morally acceptable to do such a thing in my case? And what are the possible implications on my current supervisor and the first institution (impact on funding, impact on his reputation, etc.)? What are the possible problems I could face from a legal and administrative point of view?
In case I am advised to leave, what is the best and the least hurting way to tell the first institution and the supervisor? Should I do it face to face or only by email? How will I return back their material without showing my face?
And the last question, what could be the possible reaction of my supervisor?

To be honest, you will not be spared the moral decision. There will be a number of angry and/or unhappy people if you leave, there is no way around that.
The core question is: do you know the other supervisor? Will you be happy with them? Is the added value of the other topic/institution so much more than your current that this difficult and costly decision is worth it?
Because, yes, you will burn bridges. You have now to evaluate whether it is worth it. Do not look just at the institution, but also at the topic and supervisor. They are your key factors.
Should you find out it's not the right thing for you after all, that first institution is closed to you. I do not expect them to want to take you back; it would be unbelievably magnanimous (and lucky, namely that they would have a position and would re-offer it to you) from them to do it - and risky, too.
That being said, keep in mind that, they may be unhappy, but it is your life and your future at stake here.
In the end, nobody can make this decision for you. May your decision be the right one for you.


Are there widely accepted rules related to union officers being on faculty senate? The faculty senate at my school recently took a position on a professional issue that was highly confrontational toward the administration. After union negotiations resulted in a pay raise, the senate reversed itself on this issue. It was later revealed that the original position had been advocated by the union as a way of applying pressure in contract negotiations. Some but not all members of the faculty senate knew about the union's advocacy of the action. There was no direct or logical connection between the professional matter (the hiring of a vice chancellor) and the contract negotiations. A large number of union officers are also on the senate.

Do other schools have rules or standards of ethical conduct that cover this type of conflict of interest? Is it considered normal for there to be so much overlap between the union leadership and the senate, or for the senate to act so closely in concert with the union as part of labor negotiations?

Many faculty senates agree to be governed by Robert's Rules of Order. Buried in it is this clause:

No member should vote on a question in which he has a direct personal
or pecuniary interest not common to other members of the organization.
For example, if a motion proposes that the organization enter into a
contract with a commercial firm of which a member of the organization
is an officer and from which contract he would derive personal
pecuniary profit, the members should abstain from voting on the
motion.  However, no member can be compelled to refrain from voting in
such circumstances.
Citation: http://www.cityethics.org/content/roberts-rules-has-conflict-interest-rule-local-governments-no-conflict-provisions

Note that it says that members cannot be compelled to abstain and so there was no violation per se. So in your case, I think the best thing to do would either to work within the Senate to all for an inquiry possibly leading to an impeachment or vote of no-confidence in the leadership.
If you want to avoid direct confrontation, you could leak this to the administration which would be happy to do the inquiry for you, but this would be seen as highly uncollegial and quickly make you unpopular.
How about asking the Chronicle of Higher Ed to look into this as a third alternative?
Edits: Clarifications and obfuscations.


Why some papers are retracted and others not? Recently, in Reviews of Modern Physics, I have read an erratum which represents an apology for a copied verbatim text. The text is:

"Large parts of Sec. VI.A, “Inverse magneto-optical excitation of magnetization dynamics: Theory,” consist of text
and equations that are verbatim quotes, or very nearly so, of material in the paper by Gridnev (2008). Although this theory
was developed in close collaboration with Dr. Gridnev and jointly published in Kalashnikova et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 99,
167205 (2007) and Kalashnikova et al., Phys. Rev. B 78, 104301 (2008), we adopted the more compact and rigorous description
given in Gridnev (2008) for this review. We regret that we did not identify these parts of our review as direct quotes, and we
apologize to V. N. Gridnev and the readers of Reviews of Modern Physics for this oversight."  from here.

Although there is a copied text, from what I see, there is not a retraction. The question is: why this paper was not retracted?

In general, an editor will choose to issue a retraction when misbehavior or errors undermine the "core" of a paper (authors may request a retraction, but ultimately it is generally the editor who decides).  An erratum or correction, on the other hand, is for when there is a problem that doesn't change the "core" of the paper.

Different editors will draw the boundary differently, and some things are in a grey area.  In this case, it looks like reuse of background material (a grey area on self-plagiarism) shaded over into plagiarism from another closely related piece.

In most cases plagiarism, even of a background section, would be enough for a paper to be retracted due to the issue of dishonesty, which cases doubt on everything else in the paper.  In this case, however, it appears that given the close relationships between the authors and the papers, the editor judged it less a matter of theft than of sloppiness, and opted for the lesser correction.


Double blind peer review: authorship can be inferred from the manuscript I am considering submitting to a journal that only does double blind peer review.
As I have no experience with this kind of review process I have a question. I removed any direct reference to the author information (name, address, email address, affiliation and so on). However, the paper deals with an extension of a numerical code that I previously developed, so it is overtly clear from the manuscript and from references to my previous works that I am the author. There’s no way to remove these self-citations without making the discussion poorly referenced and extremely vague. And besides citations, the paper is clearly part of the same activity as the previous ones. ‘‘Hiding’’ this would be impossible and is certainly not in the interest of the readers, as the clarity of the paper would inevitably suffer.
I have no particular interest in having a double blind review, I am considering that journal because it fits my work and has an excellent impact factor.
However, I can consider other journals if this may be a problem or ground for rejection. Do you think this may be the case?
EDIT: I know there are similar questions, but this time it is not about some little giveaways. The paper would not survive without putting it into its context, and that's what mainly reveals who the author is.

You know the luggage locks people buy for their suitcases when travelling? They look good, they're reassuring to have, they supposedly deter people from stealing the suitcase because they can't open it. But it shouldn't be surprising that they are ineffective: after all, to open the suitcase in spite of the lock, all one needs to do is cut up the suitcase with a knife. Sure, that ruins the suitcase, but the thief probably only cares about what is inside the suitcase.
Double blind peer review is similar. It looks good, it's reassuring, it supposedly remove bias from the peer review process. But the fact is that if the reviewer really wants to, they can probably deduce your identity regardless of how you diligently you anonymize the paper, especially with the aid of search engines like Google. The journal probably knows this too, in fact I'd bet that one of the reasons double-blind peer review hasn't become the industry standard is because people question the benefits for the amount of work one has to invest.
So I would not worry about it: anonymize the obvious things, remove explicit self-references (such as saying "[neutroshock did this]" as opposed to "we did this"), and submit it.


Is it ethical to withdraw an accepted manuscript for financial reasons? I submitted a manuscript, which has been accepted. Its publication is pending payment of publication fees. I need to withdraw the manuscript due to financial constraints.

Is this ethical?

The fundamental ethical principle is that you shouldn't waste people's time.  This could be applied differently, depending on the circumstances:

If you knew there were mandatory fees you couldn't afford, then it was unethical to submit the paper.  The damage is already done (assuming you really can't pay the fees), and now you should apologize and withdraw the paper.
If the fees were clearly announced but you just weren't paying attention, then you screwed up.  Again you should apologize, and you may have no choice but to withdraw the paper, but it's worth asking whether fee waivers are available.
If you submitted the paper in good faith, believing that you would be able to pay the fees, but your financial circumstances have since changed in a way you couldn't have predicted, then you should explain the situation.  You may need to withdraw the paper if you can't get a fee waiver, but you haven't done anything wrong.
If the fees were not announced ahead of time (for example, on the journal's web site), then the journal is at fault.  In this case, you should complain and withdraw your paper, since you don't want the paper to appear in an unethical journal.  However, you should check very carefully to make sure the fees really weren't disclosed, since it would be humiliating to accuse the journal of fraud when you just weren't reading carefully.


Difference between bursary, scholarship and fellowship What is the difference between bursary, scholarship and fellowship funding?

Is a fellowship more prestigious than a scholarship which in turn is more prestigious than a bursary?

These three terms essentially mean the same thing. Bursary is the term for scholarship used in the UK. Normally, a bursary is given based on need which is not always the case with fellowships/scholarships.  In my personal experience in America, the term bursary is rarely used. Instead, we often use the term "grant", which is a synonym for bursary.

Fellowship is also another term for bursary/scholarship. However, fellowships are usually awarded at the graduate level whereas a scholarship can be awarded at either grad or undergrad level. In addition, fellowships are often considered a highly prestigious award.

As you can see, there are minor differences in these three terms. Determining which to use will mainly depend on the context of the situation


Reviewer assignment and response for reject-and-resubmitted paper? I recently received a 'reject but resubmission allowed' decision on my paper submitted to IEEE Wireless Communications Letters (binary decision; no revision decision exists)

I wonder how a resubmission process is like.

How will the editor consider a resubmitted paper?

Will it be considered as a new submission?
Will the editor assign the paper to the same reviewers?

Should I attach a response document for reviewers' comments?

I found no exact place for a response document in the submission system. The closest entries I found are cover letter and supporting document.

(1) Will it be considered as a new submission?

Generally, yes

(2) Will the editor assign the paper to the same reviewers?

Possibly to likely (the reviewers are still experts, they already know the paper (reduce work load). However, the editor can change the reviewers, in case one gave a bad review (in terms of quality).

(3) Should I attach a response document for reviewers' comments? I found no exact place for a response document in the submission system. The closest entries I found are cover letter and supporting document.

If possible, attach a point-to-point reply to reviewers. But independent of that possibility, describe the main changes (those that you think will fix whatever caused rejection) in the cover letter.


How can one reference the unnumbered page of a book or thesis before page 1? I am reading a thesis that was printed from a microfilm copy. It is arranged like this:

Abstract...........................(3 pages with no page number)
Acknowledgements...................pages i-ii.
Table of contents and figures......pages iii-xvii.
Chapter 1..........................pages 1-18.

I want to cite inline in the ([LASTNAME] 1972:[PAGE]) format something from the abstract pages that is not said as well and explicitly elsewhere in the thesis.

This is quite unusual, is there a standard way of citing a page appearing before page i?

What are you currently writing? If this is a master's thesis you could ask your professor. He/she can give you a definitive answer.

Please note: When you are citing, the highest priority is that the reader can easily find the cited information. From that point of view there is nothing with corey979's idea of using ([LASTNAME] 1972:Abstract). Any reader can easily decode the meaning.

However, the reason you give for citing the abstract raises some questions: There may be something wrong with this thesis if the abstract contains information that is not included in the thesis itself. You should either try to find the information in the thesis or find another (=better) source for the cited information.


Is there a correlation between being a good teacher and being a good researcher? I have been told that there is a correlation between being a good teacher and being a good researcher (like this paper, in page 15, point 3.6), but i have not found any references or studies about it.

Does any know if there is really such correlation, or have studies to confirm or deny it?

It seems likely that there's some nonzero correlation.  Certainly, there are factors that should lead to positive correlation; for example, some personality traits (like conscientiousness) should lead to both better research and better teaching.  There are also factors that should lead to negative correlation; for example, teaching and research are activities that are competing for a limited amount of time.  It would be strange if all these factors nearly cancelled each other out, so we should expect some net correlation.  Here's an argument for positive:

Let's distinguish between two aspects of teaching, namely exposition and psychology.  Exposition means finding simple explanations, coming up with illuminating examples and analogies, mapping out the most important topics and the relationships between them, etc.  Psychology means understanding where students are coming from and what they do or don't understand, empathizing and bonding with them, arousing their interest and inspiring them to achieve great things, etc.  Both of these are important factors in good teaching, although neither is absolutely essential.  A master of exposition without a good understanding of psychology may be clear but dull, and someone who understands psychology but isn't good at exposition may have to follow a textbook closely, but either one will be much better than some teachers.

Expository ability is almost certainly correlated with research ability, since they both rely on a deep, creative understanding of the subject matter.  In mathematics, the standard example is Jean-Pierre Serre, who is both a brilliant mathematician and the author of several amazing graduate textbooks, and one can see similar characteristics in his research papers and textbooks.

However, the psychology side of teaching is probably not closely connected with research ability.  There may be some correlation, just because smart people tend to be better than average at all kinds of thinking, but I'd bet the correlation is small.  Certainly, there are wonderful researchers who have a terrible understanding of psychology, and vice versa, in a far more dramatic way than for exposition.

I see this split as perhaps explaining why there's so much debate about whether good research and good teaching are correlated, with some people saying obviously yes and others obviously no.  The answer depends on which aspects of teaching you view as most important.


Is there any time limit for writing comments on research article? I am from mathematics background, recently I came across an article published in 2009 in which certain classification problem is incomplete and inappropriately addressed, can I write comments on that research article after 7 years ?

Yes, you can publish comments both informally (e.g. on a blog) and formally (by writing a paper that references the 2009 article) irrespective of when the original work was published. Much older articles get referenced and followed up upon.

The only issues to be aware of are:

The authors are somewhat less likely to notice and react to the comments.
Research on the topic may have gone on and your comments may be "old news", or already superseded of their own.


My name was added to manuscript as co-author without my consent; how to get it removed? My name has been included in a paper submitted to a peer-reviewed journal without my consent, however I did not contributed anything to it. The corresponding author, a former colleague of mine, ignores my request to be removed off of the author list. According to the trace of the communications I have received, the paper is under review now. Thus, how can I professionally deal with this case to get my name removed?

Yes, it is definitely unprofessional and unethical to include someone as an author when they do not agree to be one.

If you have contacted the corresponding author and asked to have your name removed, and they refuse or ignore the request, all you have left to do is contact the editor.

Simply say that you have come to understand that your name was included as an author on a paper submitted by (corresponding author), that you did not participate in the work, and that you would not like your name associated with the publication.

That's it. No need to make further accusations or statements, that should be enough information for the editor to act. If it's a reputable journal, they'll realize how wrong this all is.


What can we do after entire class failed/barely passed? Completed an essay worth 30% of our grade over the Xmas period and were given incredibly strict instructions (no sources other than the 10 pages given, 1200 word count, marked 50% language and grammar [german] and 50% content). Got my grade back and got 32% which is my first ever fail of my life. Was slightly discouraged until I learned that nearly the entire group failed or got 42/43/44?

The essay was also given to another branch of the course (politics and computer science) and they all passed with quite high marks (60% upwards). I completed a similar essay for another subject and got 57% and another where I got 65%.

We all feel that we have been unfairly marked, but despite being in the best university in our country, we are too scared to ask anyone in the department. All the colleagues stick together and would definitely take the side of the markers and imply we're all stupid.

My essay wasn't amazing but I definitely don't believe I deserved to fail and others don't either...

So my question is: is there anything we can do to change this?

Talk to your student's union.

They should know whether or not there can be anything done and if yes, what. They should also know if a situation where everyone fails is common (in some universities there are some courses, mostly freshman-courses, where it's common that 90% of students fail) in your country/university.

But prepare yourself for the possibility that nothing happens. In my experience, the situation that two groups/individuals are graded obviously differently, is very common in the university level. In my university, for example, there is no quality control of the courses whatsoever - a course is taught well/ is fair if and only if the instructor wants to teach it well and wants to be fair (and is capable of teaching well and being fair). Fortunately, many academics are "good people" wanting to be a good teacher (without being rewarded) but some don't care at all (which can also makes sense, since they need to focus on publications to survive).

But what can you learn from this situation? You can take some steps to prepare.

1) It's always a good idea to find out what the exact rules are for taking courses in your university. Can you switch the order of the courses? Can you choose instructors? Can you do exams with instructors who held the course some years ago (but you took the course with someone else)?

2) If you can choose instructors, then try to find out something on them. Who teaches well? Who is motivated? Who treats students fair? Who helds female and male students to the same standards? (Unfortunately, not everyone.) What about foreign students? Who grades fairly? To find things like that out, ask your student's union, socialize with other students, read things in facebook groups, maybe become active yourself as a student's representative.. These things will help you a lot.
If lists are avaiable on who will teach courses in the future, try to adjust your courses (if possible) such that you get the good instructors. Remember that, of course, your goal should not be to just get the easy-grading instructors, but the ones where you learn much. (But nobody is helped if you learn much but fail the exam because the instructor belongs into the (unfortunately, non-empty) category of people who let everyone but women with very revailing clothes fail).

However, be advised, that unlike popular belief, there are many harsh graders where you don't learn much and their are many easy graders where you learn a lot.


What is the appropriate salutation for non-technical university staff in India? There are issues in my living quarters provided by my university and I need to write a letter to the responding authority. The authority is a non-teaching staff.
As a research scholar, how should I salute them while sending an email or a letter.
I am confused between "Respected sir" and "Hello sir". Which one is appropriate among the both and is there any appropriate one other than these?

You can use Dear Sir.
I know students and research scholars use Respected Sir in case they address professors but Dear Sir will work in all cases.
Using Hello or Hi in a formal letter is frowned upon in an Indian university.


How early to apply for PhD's? (Europe) In Europe it is somewhat common to apply directly to professors for a PhD project at any time of the year. Specially in chemical engineering, bioprocessing, process engineering, material science and similar areas.

Assuming you are currently writing your master thesis (usually takes 1 semester), how early should you start applying for PhD's?

I found this related question Apply for PhD before finishing my Master's degree , however it deals with applying to US PhDs while doing a EU Master.

My doubt is about applying to EU PhDs while finishing a EU master.

In Europe it is somewhat common to apply directly to professors for a PhD project

I cannot speak for the whole of Europe (and I think you'd get better answers if you'd narrow down your question) but at least in Austria it is usually required that you apply directly to professors; you can only enroll at the university for the PhD program if a professor is willing to advise you (there are other ways, e.g., if you enroll in a graduate school type program; but they aren't all that common).

I know that in several (central) European countries, at least in Computer Science, it is very common to approach the potential future advisor before applying formally. A formal application is nonetheless necessary, since you will usually be employed by the university. In some cases, open positions are only announced once the professor has found a suitable candidate - so there might be (and there usually are) opportunities even if there are no listed open positions. If the professor already knows you (from courses or a thesis project) it shouldn't be a problem to talk about PhD opportunities. If the professor doesn't know you, it shouldn't be a problem either; but you should be able to show real interest in the subject.


Do professors from different universities (but in the same field) contact each other about the students who applied to their programs? It is common for professors to have cordial relationships with their colleagues who work in different institutions (obviously), and I was wondering if it is also common for them to exchange info about their PhD applicants during the application review season. For example, if a promising candidate has applied to the chemistry programs at University X and University Y, would the people in the admissions committees of these two chemistry programs potentially contact each other to discuss the prospects of this student?

People might discuss the pool of applicants generally—what percent is international, what was the admit rate, etc.—but never an individual candidate's application.

The only time I could imagine an admission committee member discussing a candidate's application is if someone on the committee (or in the department, if it's more decentralized) knows one of the people who wrote the candidate's letters of reference and wants to get more direct information than what's written in the letter.


How many math PhD spots are offered each year by the top 50 US programs? I'm trying to estimate how many math PhD offers are awarded each year in the United States, say at the top 50 schools, if that constraint helps. (I'm interested in departments called "math," not "applied math.") For the top 50 schools, is it on the order of 500? More than that? I know programs vary greatly in size, so I'm looking only for a rough estimate of the total.

I know that the AMS releases data on the number of PhD's awarded each year, as well as the average completion rate for PhD students. But is there data showing how many PhD offers are extended each year, or at least how many students matriculate?

One reason I'm interested in this question is that I know that between 4000 and 5000 people take the GRE math subject test each year. I'm curious to what extent the top 500 scorers on this exam fill the spots at the top 50 schools, but that is a harder question to answer, because so few schools release data on their admitted students.

If all you're interested is a ballpark number, then here is one way to estimate: At Texas A&M, the math department hires 20-25 graduate students every year. (We make about twice as many offers.) If this was representative, then the top 50 schools would hire 1000-1250 students each year.

Now, A&M is a big department (~85 tenure track faculty). Most departments will be smaller, but in the top 50, most will be at least half the size. So my best guess is that the top 50 programs together will hire ~750 students each year, plus or minus maybe 250.

(And, for comparison: Practically all of our hires have a Quantitative GRE score above 163. This coincides with about the 85th percentile.)


My mentor got laid off from a private research lab. Is there anything I can do to help him find a new job? I am a grad student and I wanted to know if there was anything I could realistically do.  I think he's the best supervisor I've ever had, and working with him was very fun, and made me grow a lot as a researcher.  He's done a lot for my career and I think the world would be grossly unfair if he didn't get another research job.

I would love to serve as a reference but I don't think universities or industrial research labs listen to random grad students.

Your mentor most likely has his own list of references and if it comes to the point where he needs to have references from his grad students, then he is doing a very poor job of taking care of himself.

Offer to assist him in any way you can. If he needs a pair of extra hands to complete a side project that will get him hired where he wants to be hired, volunteer to be that extra pair of hands. Who knows, you might learn more from that experience.

Offer to be his eyes and ears for positions on your campus and have him say in the cover letter that he is applying on your recommendation.

If you want to offer help someone, talk to them and discuss what their need for help is and in what ways you can help meet that need. While you are assisting, leave them the lead in taking care of themselves. It is more economical of your time and energy and leads to a better outcome to help in the ways that you can help than to obsess about helping in ways that you can't - you are not in a position to give recommendations, so don't bang your head against the wall about giving one. Go for something doable instead.


Is it okay to list a PhD student as corresponding author? A colleague and I are both PhD students. We have conducted a project together that is unrelated to our respective theses. The project involved a bioinformatics analysis of public datasets, so we are not presenting any new experimental data (i.e., there was no overhead associated with the experiments). However, we have generated some very interesting results that we believe are suitable for publication.

A question that has arisen while preparing the manuscript is who to list as corresponding author. Our supervisors were not involved in the project. I designed the majority of the experiments, but my colleague and I are both concerned that listing myself as corresponding author despite the fact that I am a PhD student would be (a) improper or unethical, (b) likely to draw the ire of the university for listing it as our affiliation, as we do not have faculty appointments, and/or (c) likely to cause reviewers to dismiss the work. What is the appropriate course of action?

At least in my field (theoretical computer science), the corresponding author is often (but not necessarily) the person who did most of the work and prepared the final version of the paper. It is therefore completely normal to have PhD students as corresponding authors.


Difficulty with advisor's specialty I'm a PhD student, nearing the first half of my PhD.

The domain my advisor works in is not really something I love, and I'm more interested in different subjects.
I see now that I didn't invest enough time studying what she does, and it's starting to bite me back.
I didn't study her subject that much because I sort of tried to stay close to stuff I'm more comfortable with, and this results in me not doing much advanced stuff, and not getting results.
But I often regret that what I'm doing with her is not my cup of tea, and try to find ways, or dream of finding ways, to do stuff that's closer to my heart.

I think the situation I'm in right now is kind of a "worse of both worlds", since I think I don't have the full gains of being right in the domain of my advisor, she can't help as much, and we can't really collaborate as much as if I were doing exactly what she does.

My main fear is that I will spend my time doing stuff that I don't really care for, while losing sight from what I would hope to do.

I'm essentially asking the following question:

  Should I bite the bullet and invest myself fully in doing what my advisor does, or try to reduce damage by trying to change direction somehow?

The pros and cons that I see are the following:

Pros:

There is hope that were I to really invest myself in her discipline, I might come to enjoy it (I have the fuzzy idea that everything can become fun if you go far enough).
Also, maybe I could still direct it in directions closer to my heart (same problems, but approach it the way I like).
Even though I might not like it, maybe once I got a result or two, I could feel OK-er about trying to change subjects, have more liberty.
It might be that the subjects I fancy from my position would actually be too hard, or boring once I started working on them.

Cons:

Big time investment, with risks that it doesn't pay off in terms of results, and enjoyment.
I'm not that good of a researcher, so it might be that I spend my PhD doing that, and find no time later to work on stuff I enjoy more.

edit: My position so far is quite strongly on the "bite the bullet" side since it seems that's the option that would be least regrettable, and I have a pretty good relation with my advisor.

You seem to have answered it yourself, and I'm pretty sure I agree, though it is just opinion. But I'd suggest that you evaluate your options in terms of what will get you out the door fast and successfully rather than "liking" what you are doing right now. You will have the freedom to follow other paths if and when you successfully finish.

You like your advisor, she seems to be good for you. Too many students don't have those advantages. Working without an advisors advice works for some, but not everyone.

It might be worth having a chat with her, expressing your difficulties and asking for advice on how to quickly gain insight into what she does. Not everyone knows how to provide that, but if she does, it could help situate you quickly.


Does the choice of programming language affect paper acceptance in mechanical engineering? I have published papers in the field of mechanical engineering, combustion, engines, etc. Previously I relied on MATLAB for most of my data processing, and C++/Fortran for computations. I duly cite languages used.

Recently I switched to Python for its great comprehensive library, plotting capabilities, support and above all I don't have to struggle with the licensing issues. Now I am worried if citing Python would affect paper acceptance, since it is based on an unconventional approach.

Will using an unconventional programming language increase my chances of rejection?

The short answer is, no.  I've never experienced or heard of a reviewer caring about what language was used for code in a science or engineering paper.

In any case, I don't think Python is "unconventional" in 2015.  Here are some well-known and widely used codes that can be used for CFD with Python front-ends:

http://pyfr.org
http://fenicsproject.org
http://github.com/clawpack/pyclaw

Note that all of these use Python in combination with lower-level languages for performance.

I'll also mention the educational course CFD Python.


How can we check if a book is a sequel edition of an older one with different names? How do you check if  a book is a new edition of an older book, but they have different titles, without accessing the books? Are there websites which maintain such records?

For example, is this book

Fundamentals of data structures in C / Ellis Horowitz, Sartaj Sahni, Susan Anderson-Freed.
Edition 2nd ed.
Published/Created   Summit, NJ : Silicon Press, 2008.

a newer edition to this one

Fundamentals of data structures / Ellis Horowitz, Sartaj Sahni.
Published/Created: Computer Science Press, c1976.

Does the second one have later editions?

I don't know if there's an easy way to track this. The Library of Congress catalog, for instance, shows no trace that the second book was an earlier edition of the first. However, if the edition numbers are consecutive, there's usually no "intervening" edition.


Is it possible to do a state of the art paper with less accuracy than previous paper with 100 accuracy?| I working on a research paper in Machine Learning, the paper is regarding a classification problem of which I have achieved 98% accuracy. However some other paper working on the same dataset claims to have achieved 100% accuracy. Is it still possible to use my results as state of the art results and publish my paper or should I just search for another dataset? If yes then do I mention the previous results paper which got 100% accuracy as previous work, or should I just disregard it?

Since you are aware of the other work you should report it. But you should probably also try to verify its claims.

Whether your own work is worth publishing or not depends on some things. To be valuable, it needs to advance the state of the art on some dimension and accuracy is only one. If you can achieve "really good" results in half the effort/time/cost, you probably have something worthwhile. It might make the difference between something that is feasible or something that is not.

But it would be a serious breach to ignore the other work.


Postdoc opportunities in mathematics I am expected to finish my Ph.D in mathematics (if relevant, more specifically - in commutative/homological algebra) by the end of this academic year. I am studying in a somewhat minor university, although my supervisor is a well know figure in his field.

Following my supervisor's advice, I submitted applications for postdoctoral positions in about 20 top level universities in the US. As most of these universities already finished hiring for this year, I suspect I made the mistake aiming too high, and would probably get negative answers from all the different employers.

Assuming this is the case, I am now wondering what should be the next step in my academic career. One option is to stay at my current university for another year (but with a much lower salary, as my scholarship will come to an end). I should mention that my supervisor highly discourages this option, as he thinks that I should get more involved in the research community of my field, and my current university is a poor place to do so.

Alternatively, I am wondering if there are any other opportunities for postdocs in Europe or the US for the 2013 academic year, in my relevant field, of which the deadline still did not pass.

Any advice or idea for my situation would be helpful.

Thank you

There are several major websites on which jobs in mathematics, including postdocs, tend to be posted.  Most importantly (in the US) mathjobs.org, but also the AMS's service and others.  (See this mathoverflow question for many more.)  Postdoc positions can take a while to sort out, since many of them are filled (or even created) in response to what happened earlier in the hiring season, so there may still be opportunities, especially if you're willing to look outside the US.


Soliciting pre-submission manuscript comments from people who could later be peer reviewers Before submitting a manuscript to a journal, it is fairly common at least in my field (psychology) to circulate the manuscript in a limited way to a small number of people who are experts in the area and/or who would be willing and able to provide useful comments, for the purpose of soliciting their feedback and suggestions for improving the manuscript before submitting it for formal peer review.

However it seems that this could lead to a tricky situation if the editor of the journal ends up asking some of those same people who provided feedback to serve as reviewers for the paper, since they will have already read the paper and in a sense "reviewed" it one time already.

So I have two questions about this:

From the perspective of a person who has been asked by the authors to provide comments, and then later asked by a journal editor to review that same paper for publication: what is your policy, or your perception of the common policy, for what do to here? Do you decline to review the paper because you've already seen it? Do you agree to review the paper, but perhaps provide many of the same comments verbatim as before (at least for the parts of the paper that were not changed), and perhaps let the editor know that you've read it before? Or do you see your prior reading of the paper as totally irrelevant and just approach the review fresh and as normal?
From the strategic perspective of the authors of the paper, is it better to ask for comments from people who you know are likely to be asked later to review the paper? Or is it better to avoid sending the paper to these people, and instead send it to people who are not as likely to be asked to review the paper but could still provide useful feedback?

I see no problem with refereeing a paper after I've commented on it to the author. I would tell the author what (if anything) I think would improve the paper, and I would tell the editor whether I think it's appropriate for the particular journal and if so then what (if anything) would improve the paper.  There have been cases where an editor asked me to referee a paper and wrote, in his cover message, that he knew (because of acknowledgements) that I'd already read the paper, so it should be easy for me to referee.


Is it acceptable to email the authors of a paper for the slides they used while presenting it in the conference? I've noticed that while there's no alternative to going through the actual paper in detail, it often helps if I've gone through the presentation based on the paper, which the authors had used while publishing their papers. (Mostly because, the few presentations on TCS papers that I've seen have good geometric examples/illustrations which may have been instrumental in getting the intuition in the first place, but the brevity required by CS conferences mean very few of them make it to the published paper!)

While a few authors graciously maintain the links of such slides on their web-pages, most do not - and I haven't even seen a single CS conference maintaining such documents on their web-page!

So, I've the following questions:

Since I'm ultimately interested in understanding their work (and extending it if possible), is it considered OK to email the authors for the slides (if they still have it)?
If it is, do I have to justify/explain why I want the slides, or would just a polite request do (with minimal explanations on my part to keep the mail short!)?
Would making such a request more than once make the author feel offended, and/or make them think that someone who can't read papers at the highest level without "assistance" isn't exactly someone worth helping out?
If there are 2 authors listed, without any implications about who is the corresponding author, should I mail both of them at the same time (which may lead to both of thinking the other would be responding), or separately (which may lead to duplication of efforts!)?

I'm not sure what to tag this query with - feel free to re-tag/add more tags as you see fit!

It's never a problem to ask. In particular if you are interested in extending their work, they should be interested in providing you with more information. Perhaps the extension will happen in collaboration with them, but at the very least you're going to cite their paper. In my experience, views on sharing slides vary, but the objections I've heard related to unpublished material; I understand that in your situation, the material is already published.
I would explain why. It's polite to do so. But do keep the mail short. You could write that if they're interested, you can provide more details on your ideas; like that, you don't swamp them with unrequired information, yet you're open from your side in stating your ideas. Such an offer shows that you trust them, and as they need some trust in you if they share their slides, that is probably a good idea.
I don't think they would feel offended.
Depends on the field. If there is no clear first or corresponding author, I would contact either one of them. They would probably either reply or forward the e-mail to the other author.


Citing a paper published multiple times This question is a special case of this one, which has no satisfying answer in my opinion.

I often encounter papers that have been published twice (or more), without any modification. An example is this one. First presented at the DLS'12 conference, and published in the proceedings. Then, the proceedings have been published in an issue of the ACM SIGPLAN. Notice that the paper is the same, same DOI, etc. However, there are two bibtex entries (one @inproceedings, one @article) which are similar, but not identical.

My question : in such cases, how should the paper be cited ? Using the @inproceedings entry or the @article ?

(Side question : Why is it the case that a single paper is published twice ?)

This may be a special feature of CS or not. We depend a lot on conferences for publishing work. The conferences usually publish proceedings. The first version is distributed at the conference to attendees and may have a limited run. It typically has the conference name on the cover. In the case cited, SIGPLAN, as is typical, will put a separate cover on the proceedings, turn it into a (regular) issue of the Notices and distribute that to all members whether they attend or not. It is really a service to the community, since not everyone can attend an important conference. It is possible that corrections are made between the two versions, but I don't think that is common.

If they are identical, you can cite either one with confidence that readers needing to follow the citation will find the paper.


What determines how many master/PhD students a given professor can take (STEM)? It never really crossed my mind if there was an upper limit as to the number of students a given professor can take on. This is because some professor have dozens of students, while other have only a handful. I know a professor who has 2 PhD students and that's it. This seems to be a department dependent variable.

However, a rumor got out that one of the professor in my department (not my own) was attempting to take on a student but since the student did not have external scholarship, therefore the professor was not able to take him on.

It is unusual because students do not need external funding to get into the graduate program at my school. I hypothesized that the professor's funding cap was all used up by his current students, therefore he could not take on anymore students without additional funding. However, I am not sure how this funding cap mechanism work.

Is there an upper limit to the number of students a professor can take on? If so, what determines it? An insider's perspective on this would be greatly appreciated.

(My question is mainly with respect to engineering and STEM major within North American context)

At American universities, each department is allowed to accept a certain number of PhD students each year.  This number is determined annually by a dean or provost's office, primarily based on funding and student retention.  It could also be limited by the supervisory capacity of the faculty, but funding is usually more important.  Each department has its own procedure for matching students with supervisors.  Often the procedure is for students to go and ask faculty to supervise them.  In principal, there is nothing stopping a single faculty member from taking all the graduate students.  This probably happens from time to time in small departments.

In the case of the rumour you mention, we can guess that this professor does not have access to additional TA/RA funding at this time, and is currently only taking students with external funding.  Typically TA funding is linked to the department, while RA funding is linked to a particular faculty member's grant.


How much should a supervisor expect from students who have graduated? I have recently completed my PhD and taken up a faculty position at another institution. My new job is busy and I regularly get emails from my PhD supervisor asking me to write protocols or for information which would take only a small amount of effort for her to find (e.g. where things are in the lab; where to order things from; which product was used for a specific experiment). I left my lab books; wrote up detailed methods in my thesis and papers and showed a lot of this stuff to her new employee before leaving. She is quite aggressive about getting this information back quickly,but is slow (weeks-months) responding to my sending her revisions on submitted papers from my thesis.

What is the etiquette after leaving a lab? For example, would it be unreasonable to remind her where the methods are written up, rather than writing out protocols with all the dilutions etc worked out? I am not looking to continue to work with my PhD lab but I would prefer to maintain a cordial relationship.

She might be panicking. Normally, it's good practice (though not strictly required) to hand-over such lab information in a well-documented process. It is a good idea to make a hand-over closing date (even with friendly people) to make clear that/when the process is finished (of course, you could help for isolated questions, but this should be the conclusion of the main process).

My suggestion is: create an overview of what you need to document and with which your task can be considered essentially complete. She cannot expect you to document everything - unfortunately, that transition would have had to happen earlier, with a newer research student. When a research student leaves, it is normal that know-how leaves with them, sadly.

The fact that you write papers together lets this boundary blur, so you may have to pay a higher "tribute" cost to her if you want to maintain relations. However, I think, with friendly pointers to the precise locations where it's written and trying to promoting a habit of actually looking it up there, you may get somewhere. Some people have a hard time to follow rules of search for other people's work, and your task is to try to break that habit gently.


What are some concerns professors at a research institutions might have when graduate students begin to form a union? I'm curious to ways professors might support or resist efforts by gradate students to unionize. The only reason I can think of, is the concern that grant money could hire less students if they were paid more. Is this a valid concern?

What if the reasons for unionization aren't about pay? Are there any other reasons professors might not want a union forming? Are there any reasons why professors might prefer to work with a unionized student body?

There is a study on the effects of graduate unions on faculty-student relationships:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001979391306600208

As they state in their abstract, "Unionization does not have the presumed negative effect on student outcomes, and in some cases has a positive effect....These findings suggest that potential harm to faculty-student relationships and academic freedom should not continue to serve as bases for the denial of collective bargaining rights to graduate student employees."

One explanation for how a graduate union can improve faculty-grad student relations is because a union allows graduate students to offload certain bureaucratic issues that may typically be dumped on their advisor.  Suppose, for instance, a graduate student has a labor-related issue of some kind (e.g. being assigned an unreasonably high number of students).  In the case where the department or undergrad chair is unsympathetic, the grad student would typically ask their advisor to fight the issue on their behalf.  In an ideal world, this isn't the sort of thing that advisors should have to deal with, but often advisors become a sort of catch-all advocate for their students in various respects.  Were there a dedicated body such as a union for dealing with labor-related issues, the advisor's relationship with their graduate students becomes more solely academically focused.


Does the NSA hire mathematics professors often for projects / contractual work / full-time work? How often do math professors / math PhDs / postdocs, whose research directions are in abstract algebra and number theory, get hired by the NSA to do some work - either on a short-term contract or longer-term / full-time work?  Or is the NSA highly selective and just because one has a PhD in Algebra and / or Number Theory does not mean that one can just "sign up" to work for the NSA, like signing up to join the military but with math skill sets to contribute.

I've read about some high-profile mathematicians who have done some contractual work for the NSA, while keeping their professorships, so my question is mainly on whether this also happens for lesser-known PhDs / profs / postdocs. I asked my own prof this question and he said that the NSA is highly selective - something that he is not sure he could even get, if he applied.  Yet, another (more senior in rank) professor that I spoke with says the NSA is one of the largest employers of algebraists and number theorists.  So I seem to have two conflicting ideas.

I asked my own prof this question and he said that the NSA is highly selective - something that he is not sure he could even get, if he applied. Yet, another (more senior in rank) professor that I spoke with says the NSA is one of the largest employers of algebraists and number theorists. So I seem to have two conflicting ideas.

Note that these don't necessarily conflict: there aren't many large-scale employers of algebraists and number theorists, so they don't need to have low standards to be the largest.

I have no direct experience with NSA hiring or any classified work, but I'll give an answer since I doubt any NSA employees will volunteer first-hand accounts on this site.  My answer is just based on my observations of people who have applied to or been hired by NSA or contractors.

My impression is that full-time hiring at NSA is fairly selective, but not extraordinarily so.  You have to be a good mathematician, but it doesn't look nearly as difficult as, say, getting a tenure-track job in a top ten department.  You don't have to be particularly well-known in the mathematics community, but you'll need to beat out other good applicants for the job.

It's hard to make precise comparisons between NSA and academic hiring, because of a lack of information.  When a young mathematician is hired by NSA, the outside world typically never finds out how successful they became.  If a promising student is hired, we don't find out whether their promise was fulfilled; if a seemingly less promising student is hired, we never learn whether NSA identified real talents that weren't obvious in academia.  The net result is that I don't believe anyone without a security clearance can do more than roughly approximate how selective NSA is.

There's also a fair amount of part-time and full-time consulting done through private companies.  Some of these organizations are extremely selective, so you should not assume this is an easier way to do classified work.  (In particular, my impression is that the companies that hire mathematicians are among the most selective.)

  Or is the NSA highly selective and just because one has a PhD in Algebra and / or Number Theory does not mean that one can just "sign up" to work for the NSA, like signing up to join the military but with math skill sets to contribute.

Definitely not, it's not remotely like that.  Just having a Ph.D. in a relevant field in no way ensures you'll be hired.


About legality on self-plagiarism when publishing an article I found out that a collegue published about 5 years ago a paper in the proceedings of a conference about education in engineering (proceedings has ISBN, but publication has no DOI, in case that matters for this question). Then reworded the whole paper but kept literally the same references, same research questions, same arguments all over the paper and published in another conference (IEEE, this time with a DOI). So I imagine he purposely reworded and made up two papers with "the same" content, though he obviously rewords paragraph by paragraph (changes sentence order, synonyms, etc.). I thought this practice was not allowed but does anyone know the legality of publishing the same paper (though reworded) in two conferences?

I don't know of any legal regimen in which self plagiarism is an issue. It is scientific misconduct, but not illegal, to use your own words and ideas without citing them. This is a case in which the legal and the ethical aren't the same.

It isn't "stealing" ideas when you self plagiarize. It is just sloppy scholarship that makes it harder for readers and other scholars to find the complete context of the ideas expressed.

Of course, if you have given up copyright to some words, then using those words again may violate the copyright that you once held, but no longer do. A publisher that holds the copyright might make a legal claim against you, but it isn't because of self-plagiarism, but copyright violation.


When developing a course, how to determine number of credits? I am a graduate student helping with the development of a course and will be teaching at least part of it.  However, I found out recently that the program wants to offer it as a 1-2 credit course.

It's being sold as a "journal club" format, but requires a lot more outside work than the typical journal club because it's being developed as a sort of flipped classroom style course.

Is the amount of in-class work used to determine credits?  Overall work?  Something else entirely?  I don't want to bring this up to them if it I'm not even understanding it properly.

So, how do you determine how many credits a course is "worth"?

Your institution almost certainly has guidelines for what constitutes a "credit" - you will have to rely on those guidelines.

For example: http://archive.catalog.arizona.edu/2015-16/policies/credit_definitions.htm

At US universities that I am familiar with, the common definition is that 1 credit = 1 weekly 'hour' of class time, and ~2 weekly hours of effort outside of class, giving a total of 36-45 hours a week for a full-time load of 12-15 credits. Of course for some types of classes, these numbers get shifted around, and they are totally different in courses not over a full semester (though the effort is the same, the time is much less).


Differences in the capitalization of my name In my passport, my name is "SABBIR HASAN" because there was no option to write  in smaller letters.
I registered on the GRE with my name as "Sabbir Hasan", and I am also writing it this way on the online graduate application form.

Will the difference create any problem?

This should not cause any problems.  People working on graduate admissions typically quite well understand that different systems mess with names in different ways.  Certain types of permutation might cause difficulty, but ALL CAPITALS versus Standard Capitalization is so routine as to likely go entirely unnoticed.


How do new faculty members in the UK start their career without startup grants? I'm starting a lecturer position in Computer Science in the UK, which is roughly equivalent to a tenure-track assistant professor position. However, the department head told me that, while they do provide some support for conference travel, they do not offer any kind of startup package and we are expected to acquire our own grant funding to hire postdocs etc.

Is it the norm that new faculty members do not receive any kind of startup support in the UK?
If yes, how do new faculty members start building up their career? (I would love to continue devoting all of my time to research, but I will have some teaching obligations which will certainly lower my individual research output.)

I'm still a PostDoc in Canada for a few months and my supervisor is as puzzled as I am about this information.

Background: The UK university is part of the Russell Group, which is a self-selected collection of UK universities that are (supposedly) the most research-active.

Edit (Regarding Teaching Load): I have a 1+1 teaching load (reduced to 1+0 in the first year) but I was told that, in the UK workload model, one also has other obligations such as tutorial classes, taking on several project students, and master thesis supervisions. These students are being assigned to me and their projects are not necessarily related to my research.

Research grants for new academic staff are offered competitively by the various research councils, depending on your subject area.

You can learn about the various research councils and what grants they operate through the web site for Research Councils UK.

For Computer Science you should be eligible for an EPSRC New Investigator Award, however the competition is fierce, so you should be sure to seek the advice and support of the research office of your University who can assist you in writing a successful grant proposal.

Some Universities, as noted, do offer their own support for new academics, but irrespective of funding available locally there is national funding, and also perhaps one might also look at European Funding for new researchers whilsts the window of opportunity remains open.

For an ambitious and promising researcher the position is not necessarily as pessimistic as you might feel.


Best practices when allowing exam cheat sheets Context: I am an assistant professor of mathematics at a small liberal-arts college in the US.

I am currently teaching an applied mathematics course for about thirty students with business-related majors, and I want to give them the opportunity to use a sheet of notes (a.k.a cheat sheet) on their first exam.  I am concerned about the implementation of this policy; specifically, I want to ensure the following:

This policy is as beneficial to student learning as possible.
I close any loopholes that could lead to unfairness or some other unforeseen problem on test day.

Some things I have already anticipated:

I will give the students some starter material that they should include on their note sheet—important formulas, critical concepts, examples they should definitely be prepared to see, etc.
Rules regarding the size of the notes are precise: Students may have a single sheet of 8.5" × 11" paper (or smaller), and they may write on either side of it.
The notes must be handwritten as this requires the students to process the material. (See this question for more discussion on why I believe that ultimately helps my students.)
I will not give a student their exam until they have removed everything from their desk except their note sheet and calculator. (I do not want them searching in their bag/book/folders once they have begun the exam.)

That leaves me with the following questions:

Should I require students to turn in their notes to me before the exam?  After the exam?  Is their anything to be gained by me reviewing their notes?
Would it be better for me to simply give them a formula sheet that I’ve prepared?  I know that this will help the students who are too lazy to bring a notes sheet, but I feel like that’s on them.
Are there other problems I should be prepared to confront?  I want to do everything possible to avoid difficulties on the day of the exam.
Is there research that supports/discourages the allowance cheat sheets?  Am I actually doing something that’s ultimately beneficial to my students?

There is no way to cover every eventuality, but what helps is to have a clear paradigm as to what cheat sheets are supposed to achieve.
Then view every decision you make regarding your exam in this respect.
My paradigm (which may align with yours) is:

  I do not want to gauge the students’ ability to blindly memorise stuff and recall it in a stress situation because it is not relevant to their lives and not what my course is about.
  The cheat sheet thus replaces the procedure of blindly memorising certain stuff.
  Moreover, what they write on a cheat sheet is a good emulation of what they have available through Internet searches, reference books, and similar in their non-exam future. (After all, they may just keep the cheat sheet.)

Applying this, I would add to your points and answer your questions and concerns raised in the comments:

Memorising is your benchmark for fairness.
You cannot avoid slight unfairness to some students (see below for some examples), but as long as your process is more fair than relying on memory, you have won.
Communicate your paradigm to the students.
This way, you avoid that students use the cheat sheet in misguided way that is detrimental to them.
Moreover, by teaching them the spirit of the rule, you reduce the chance and strengthen your position in case of any rule disputes and allow the students to answer certain questions about the rules themselves (do not rely on any of this though).

  Would it be better for me to simply give them a formula sheet that I’ve prepared?

The most important part of memorising before a classical exam is structuring and reiterating the relevant knowledge as this strengthens the actual understanding of concepts (which is what your exam should be about).
Making the cheat sheet handwritten replaces this.¹
Provided cheat sheets are not good for this.
The same applies to machinally created cheat sheets, as they can simply be created by copying and pasting.
In a perfect world, restricting the cheat sheet in size would not be necessary – you cannot prevent students from blindly learning the entire textbook either.

However, it does prevent students from wasting their time – before and during the exam – with an overly extensive cheat sheet.
Moreover, it may increase the perceived fairness of the process.
Finally, there will always be some idiot who manages to blindly copy the solution to every exam task ever given for the subject.

On the other hand, make sure that whatever size limit you give suffices for the content the students should need, so you do not inadvertently reward those with a smaller handwriting, better eyesight, finer pen, etc.
Giving them slightly more space than they need is not a problem; giving them much more space is.
You cannot avoid that some student just fills the cheat sheet with solutions to exercises or previous exam tasks.
However, such a behaviour should not be rewarded:
Make sure that the pool of possible tasks is sufficiently large.
If you cannot do this (e.g., certain parts of theoretical physics have a notoriously low number of exam-suitable tasks), your exam may not be suited for handwritten cheat sheets – but then it is not suited for eliminating the advantages of memorising either.
Handwritten cheat sheets will pose problems to some handicapped students. (Just like memorising is bad for people who have issues with memorising or anxiety.)
Ensure beforehand that every student can voice such problems so that a reasonable alternative can be found for them.

  Should I require students to turn in their notes to me before the exam? After the exam? Is their anything to be gained by me reviewing their notes?

This does not agree with the above paradigm:
You cannot control what students memorised for the exam either.
It may be helpful to verify and helpful to evaluate your approach to cheat sheeting by collecting the cheat sheets anonymously, but this deprives the students of re-using their cheat sheets².

¹ In fact, my own memorising process for exams (that required me to do this) was to write a cheat sheet for everything I had not memorised yet, check my memory with this cheat sheet a few times, write a new cheat sheet with the remainder of what I had not memorised, and so on.
² My cheat sheets¹ are probably the most useful written thing I kept from my own studies, but then I have not revisited them yet.


How are research papers typeset? I just noticed that most of the research papers published (in the engineering faculty) are formatted such that each page contains two columns worth of information, side by side, for example:

If I were to write a research paper, then each page would only contain one column of material.

Furthermore, some material (such as the abstract) can occupy both sides at the same time. This is impossible to do using Word document.

Can someone enlighten me as to what type of formatting is used to produce this effect? Is there a standard template?

The examples that you show look like quite similar to either typical IEEE paper formats or ACM paper formats.  Engineering conferences and journals tend to use this type of extremely dense format, and often provide templates (like those linked above) in both LaTeX and Word.

Yes, you can do these things in Word, especially following a provided template, but you probably should not: LaTeX is very widely used in the scientific world because it is much better at precisely typesetting scientific papers, especially mathematical equations.  LaTeX is also much easier to do collaborative writing with, since its textual format is well-suited for diffs and merges with version control software. If you contemplate a career in engineering or mathematical research, you are well advised to invest a little bit of time in learning LaTeX, as it will make many things in your life much easier.  Life sciences, on the other hand, tend to leave all of the formatting to the journal and submit everything in arbitrarily formatted Word.


When citing a foreign-language article, do I need to translate the journal name? Internet sources seem to agree that, in the list of references,  the title of an article written in a non-Latin script should be transliterated and also translated. Similarly, the title of the journal should be transliterated if necessary. My question is: should non-English journal names should also be translated in the references?

I'm just guessing here, but have the following suggestion. If the journal, itself, provides a translation then use that. But otherwise, use the formal name that the journal uses no matter the script or language. The name is likely trademarked and also likely known worldwide by its official name. So use that name.

A journal regularly publishing in several languages, of course, might, theoretically at least, have official translations of its name. But otherwise, use the same form that they use.


What to do after I was named as co-author on a paper, without my consent? A few years ago, I found a conference paper, of which I was a co-author, being re-published as an article in a (not highly ranked) journal. It was a textbook example of plagiarism, copy-pasting whole sections and using figures from our paper, which the author did not even cite. The author came from a foreign country and was an associate professor.

My co-author wrote an email to the author who committed plagiarism and asked him for an explanation. After a while, he admitted his misconduct (a soft version of it); his explanation was that he forgot to cite our paper. As a settlement, he suggested a new article to be written together with us. Without consent, he wrote a new article (in his language) and published it in another lowly ranked journal, putting himself as first author. I was listed as a co-author without being able to comment on the idea of writing this paper and without approving its content before publication. For me, it looked pretty much like a (self-)plagiarism---a translation of the original English paper. But, at that time, we did not want to further complicate this weird situation.

My question is how to deal now with this article I co-authored and could even be treated as a kind of self-plagiarism. May/should/must I exclude it from my CV?

PS. The publication of the journal we are talking about stopped five years ago. So, it is not possible to contact the editor any more.

Given that the publisher shut the journal down five years ago, there's not much more you can do at this point to have it removed or retracted at the source.

Instead, I would disown/disavow the paper by not including it in your CV and by making sure it is de-listed from your Google Scholar, Web of Sciences, SCOPUS, and other author citation index listing services.

This is easy in Google Scholar by deleting the article from your page in your author-view. For SCOPUS you have to send a correction request:

http://help.scopus.com/Content/h_authorfeedback.htm

The same for Web of Science

http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/techsupport/datachange/

For both Scopus and WoS, I would list the correction that you are not the same person as the author listed as the author of the paper. It would help communications with both services if you know your author identifier (Scopus Author Identifier, etc.). Something like the following should work:

  Dear SCOPUS -

  My author identifier is _________. One of the articles listed in my
  author record (____________ in the journal ________; DOI _________)
  was not written by me. Please delist it from my author record.

  John Doe (Author identifier ________).

p.s. This is actually not an uncommon problem. Adding Famous Authors® to subpar articles is a form of authorial pagerank-jacking.


What is a "personal tutor"? On Workplace Stack Exchange, one answer to the question
https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/124329/bullying-group-work
says "Speak to your personal tutor. Immediately."
I remember to have seen the word "personal tutor" also here on Academia Stack Exchange. (As I do not remember having seen a country mentioned (also not on the linked Workplace Stack Exchange question), I believe this is a US-concept.)
So: What is a "personal tutor"? Who is this (undergraduate student, graduate student, administrative personell, post-doc, professor, somebody not related to one's university) and when do you as a student get such a tutor? What are their roles?

Thank you!

In the UK, a personal tutor is assigned to you when you start your degree and the same person will generally maintain that role for the whole of your course. They are usually a lecturer or more senior-- never a student, PhD or otherwise. There are often a mandated number of meetings that a student must have with their tutor: once a term is common.

The role of a personal tutor is mostly non-academic. While you could discuss academic problems with them, they are really there to help with pastoral matters, such as wellbeing, or helping you to decide what courses to take or how best to manage your time. Personal tutors are a common choice of reference letter writers for their students' applications for postgraduate degrees, as they likely know the student and their grades very well.


Applying for Post Doc position with already one in hand I have finished my PhD in Germany recently and am applying for post doc positions here. I have an offer from one branch of a reputed research organization among the other institutes of the same organization that I applied to.

The people at the institute have initiated the process of processing the contract. Although I like the work that they are doing, I am looking for replies from other institutes since they are in a location that is preferred by me.

I am now in a fix that if they have already initiated the process, would I be able to attend interviews by the other institutes of this organization or does the hiring process reflect in the database and would I not be called for any more interviews at all.

If it helps, the organization is of the likes of Fraunhofer, MPI, Leibniz institutes.

Typically different institutes, even within the same organization (e.g. the Max-Planck or Fraunhofer group), don't formally exchange information on applicants to their positions, so you don't need to be afraid that they won't consider your application just because you're in the process of getting hired somewhere else. However, you shouldn't underestimate informal information exchange - if you're in a small field, the PIs who want to employ you may well talk with others about that post-doc they are going to hire soon.

Moreover, if you've already explicitly agreed to an offer at one place, and they are preparing the contract, it perceived as very impolite to back out of that. Legally, it's still possible to do, and if it makes a really big difference for you, then you should probably do it, but be prepared that it will annoy the person you agreed to working for.


How should a student defend his 1st authorship in front of his advisor politely and effectively? Inspired this good question, I think posting this question will surely benefit the next generations of students, albeit this does not happen to myself.

The research students will publish several papers along the research road under someone's supervision. When it comes to the issue of the author order, the student and the advisor may not always reach an agreement. i.e. Sometimes the student thinks he or she deserves the 1st author, but the advisor doesn't.

In such cases, the students are usually very worried and upset. Having been working on that topic for such a long time, the student feels very disappointed to be listed as the non-first author. Being the weak party, the student may not even dare to argue with his advisor. After all, the advisor is kind of "in control of" his remaining PhD life.

Simply put:

How should a student defend his or her 1st authorship in front of the advisor politely and effectively?

In addition to Peter's answer, one should also keep in mind the accepted practices in one's field of study. For instance, in some fields, such as economics and parts of mathematics, alphabetical order is the default; in other areas, such as organic chemistry, the principal investigator of the lab—not the primary author of the paper—has traditionally been given the first spot in the list.

If you are in a field where the order is somewhat preordained, it's going to be very difficult to change that tradition, for many reasons. In such cases, you should optimize your placement within the "available" options.


How does one go about finding out who the good instructors are? I am an incoming freshman. I'd like the first set of courses I pick to be with great professors. By great I mean someone that's encouraging, honest, and patient, and that makes the subject interesting.

My question is: How should I go about finding who these professors are?

At most US institutions (and perhaps in other countries as well), the first week or two of classes are what's known as an "add/drop" period, in which you can switch from one class to another before you're "locked in" to the classes you're going to take for the semester.  This means that if there's a professor you're not sure about, you can attend a class or two with them and get a feel for whether their classroom style and their personality are compatible with your preferences.

A lot of professors don't particularly care for this approach from their students—a student who comes into the class a week late will be substantially behind, and may require special attention to get them caught up.  But it may reassure you to know that you have this option in your back pocket should you discover that one of your professors is truly awful.


Which level of sloppiness is forgivable at PhD thesis completion The question can be really irritating for most of the people and I am sorry for that. Surely, the right answer should be "no inaccuracies, everything should be right!". However, let's take a look at real situation...

...when you realize that you were sloppy PhD student and carrried some experiments in inaccurate way, but there is no time to repeat them again.
You try to explain it in your thesis that the observed effects are still there, just the exact quantification is not clear because of raised issues.

Is it possible still "defend" thesis? You learned from your mistakes how you should not do it in the future and PhD thesis is a qualification work, so...are mistakes forgivable at this position of PhD student?
How to formulate an answer for the defense, which reflects that you understood it was not right what you did and you will do better next time?

As you describe it, I'd say that it isn't "forgivable" at all.

But, it may be that you sneak through the process and get the degree.

Doctoral research is about extending knowledge, just as is all research. The difference in doctoral research is that you get a certain kind of help and guidance in it and a certain kind of evaluation of your results. Your results don't need to be earth-shattering, but they need to be correct and to extend knowledge in some way.

But in mathematics, if you can't prove the main result, you really don't have anything. I chemistry, if your technique is so sloppy that your results aren't valid, you don't have anything. In biology, if you make certain kinds of sloppy errors but your results are believed, you can kill people.

I question your example, in fact. If your experiments were inaccurate and they show "the observed effect" how do you know it isn't just experimental noise? Every experiment results in something, of course.

But experiments can fail in a lot of ways, just as can mathematical proofs. Sometimes, it is possible that one learns something unexpected from carrying out an experiment and the result gives knowledge that points in some new and valuable direction. The same is true of a failed proof in math. It may give insight into some other ideas that are valuable on their own. But that is very unlikely to result from sloppiness, as the sloppiness itself makes analysis very difficult.

I would guess that trying to finesse it with a committee is likely to fail. Someone will probably object if you just "promise to do better in the future". There is no evidence of that in your past. Passing you would reflect badly on them and on the university. Only luck and the carelessness of the committee will save you in such a situation.

But I'm pretty sure it happens. Rarely, I hope.


Is it okay to reference theorem in the secondary source If I don't know where the theorem begins? I would like to cite a theorem in my paper.
It's not famous, but it is used by many people.
So, I don't know who first proves the theorem.
Is it okay to reference the theorem in the source that might not be the first paper to prove it?

Is it okay to reference the theorem in the source that might not be the first paper to prove it?

It’s not only “okay”, but you must cite at least one source you are aware of, and preferably the chronologically earliest one. If you can’t trace the exact provenance of the theorem, then do the next best thing, which is to describe the earliest possible source, and explain that you were unable to determine if that represents the original source or a later source.
Of course, saying this carries with it the assumption that you made reasonable efforts to determine the source, for example by asking your adviser, colleagues, or emailing the author of the paper where you found the theorem if they are still around and easily reachable. If you didn’t make such efforts, then that’s what you should do first of all. But if you did make an effort, then sure, proceeding as I described above is “okay” and is the standard way to proceed.


How can a masters student arrange to do a thesis in collaboration with industry? I have started a MS program in Computer Engineering. This is my first year and it is a 2 year program. I want to do a master thesis about Machine Learning (I have an artificial intelligence and genetic algorithms background from my MS but I can work on different topics within Machine Learning).

I am interested in doing a thesis in collaboration with a company in industry. I'm hoping that working through a MS with them will increase the chance they consider me for a job after the end of the program.

Do companies ever publicize masters thesis proposals for students to work on with them?

From my experience, there do exist occasional Masters and PhD projects which are funded through industry grants; I personally interviewed for (but did not accept) a postdoctoral position based in a hospital funded by a medical device company. However, the position was not advertised as such, and the medical device company did not list this grant publicly. I suspect that any other similar positions (i.e., funded by industry) would not include this information in the advertisements.

I would suggest that you try a different tack. A number of companies will sponsor and pay for a masters degree once you've been working with them long enough. You may want to try talking to people in industry and finding whether you can take a job and then work towards your degree at a later point in time.


What does "scientific merits" in a job application mean? In a job application I should add a description of my "tieteellisistä ansioista", which translates to "scientific merits". (The application is only available in Finnish, in which I am fluent.)

The application also asks for information concerning my research and research interests; all of this is to be provided in the same document.

What, exactly, does "scientific merits" mean and cover in this context?

It seems the use of "scientific merits" (and obviously especially the Finnish version of it) in a CV or application is specific to Finnish academic culture.

"Scientific merits" can be applied to a study, but the meaning of it there is hard to apply to a person.

I found its use in a Finnish application, where it is used as a title for "publications, teaching and student supervision and awards". So basically it could also be called "accomplishments" or "proven experience".

The linked example was the only actual use in a CV I could find (quickly). Of course, it is a single example, so I could be very wrong about my assumption this makes it part of "Finnish academic culture" more than general use.


Should I (as a reviewer) ask an author to cite my work where I proposed a core hypothesis, when they have already referenced other points? In a paper from two years ago I explored a general line of inquiry and identified an explicit and specific hypothesis for future research.

I'm currently reviewing a paper where the authors explore precisely that question, and find the hypothesis is strongly supported by their data. They cite me multiple times in the literature review, methodology, and conclusions, so they're giving me plenty of credit. But they don't cite me for proposing that core hypothesis.

Should I point out to the authors that they should cite that idea? Or can I not claim it as I only hypothesized it and did not explore it myself (and I have no future plans to do so, so it's not like they're planting a flag on my turf). Or should I just be happy that people are reading my stuff? Or should I let the editor know and let him make the call?

Think about what would be appropriate if you weren't the author? I think the fact that you are both reviewer and author of the original idea is in some sense a distraction from the main issue. I.e., that whether the author should cite a specific work or not should not be affected by who is reviewing the work. Of course, in reality, authors are intimately familiar with their own work and also have incentives to obtain credit and more citations. Some reviewers are also concerned about the conflict of interest and the power imbalance, or even in maintaining blind review. But ultimately, if you can answer the question of whether the citation was needed had you not been the author, then you probably have the answer to your question.

So, does an author need to cite a reference where a hypothesis was proposed where the author's study pursues that hypothesis?

In general, this would depend on the circumstances.

Novelty of the hypothesis. If you were the first person to propose the idea, then this suggests a greater degree of novelty. Alternatively, if many papers touch on the idea, then there's less need to cite.
Intellectual insight to identify the hypothesis. If the hypothesis required a degree of insight, then it is more appropriate to cite. For example, suggesting that X may be related to Y or that more longitudinal research is needed are generally ideas that don't need a citation.
Were the authors actually influenced by the idea. If the idea is a fairly natural extension of the literature, then the authors may have independently come up with the idea. this also speaks to the point that the idea may have required less insight and novelty.
Degree of alignment between idea and their implementation. In most cases, research involves many choices. The expression of an idea can also involve a degree of creativity. Thus, the more the idea is aligned with how you expressed it, the more it is worthy of a citation.
Do the authors claim that no one has proposed the hypothesis before? If so, then this is clearly wrong, and needs to be changed by either removing such a bold claim or adding a citation.

Overall, whether a previously proposed hypothesis needs a citation depends on the details of your case and your field.

Speaking from a behavioural sciences perspective, I tend to think that many hypotheses do not need specific citations to references where a similar hypothesis was put forward. Discussion sections often are typically not the core contribution of a paper. The empirical study and their results is typically the main component. Discussion sections often include proposals for future research that put forward various ideas that could be tested in the future. Many ideas are relatively trivial to put down on paper (e.g., mediating and moderating variables; suggesting particular studies using particular methodologies). In many cases, the contribution of a study is less in proposing the hypothesis, and more in the collection of data to examine a research question, and the rigorous assessment of what that data means.


What to do if the Editor is not responding to my repeated e-mails? This is in reference to my previous question:
How to mail the editor asking to withdraw my submission?

I wrote to the editor regarding my problem for 2 consecutive days.
I sent 4 mails to him regarding the withdrawal of my manuscript.

But I have not received a single reply from him.

How long should I wait? I know he is busy too but I need to do it fast as my Masters (Research) course will end in 2 months and I need to have it at least communicated if not published within this duration.

Otherwise I won't get my degree.
But why is the Editor not replying to my e-mails?

I need to resubmit it fast to either this journal or another journal.

Please help me, I don't understand what should I do.

Giving someone 2 days to respond to an email, especially about a submission, is no where near long enough. I wouldn't expect a response that fast for virtually anything. 4 emails is definitely excessive.

For a journal, I would expect 2 weeks to be a reasonable amount of time on this. Generally, anything of this nature is not urgent. You can certainly go ahead and begin preparing to submit the paper elsewhere (e.g., find a journal, correct your paper's mistake, and reformat the paper), but don't submit it yet.


Map (tree) of citations/references I was wondering if there already exists a software/service that allows to build a tree of references/citing articles starting from a selected paper X. For example paper X has a list of references, call it bibliography[X]. This list of references is usually presented in the journal's webpage and, in fortunate cases, the list is also accessible by cross-reference. The idea is then to go to all the papers Y in bibliography[X] and repeat the process for the papers in each bibliography[Y] up to some depth.

On the other hand, we could also look at the citing articles of X, which is also displayed in the journal's webpage as well as in other resources, e.g. Google Scholar.

In this way the tree of references/citing articles of X up to some depth can be obtained and plotted in a nice graphical framework and perhaps display relevant information of the vertices of the tree like title, doi, etc. In my opinion this would be a very nice and efficient way of discovering new papers related to some paper, e.g. a seminal paper (citing articles tree) or to look into the history of a subject (references tree).

I have been looking for something like that for some time but so far nothing. I think Microsoft Academic Search would have the potential to do this by using the same framework they use for the Co-author path. Also there is this project for JabRef but it is not what I'm looking for.

Edit:
Something like this would be perfect but unfortunately it is not available to the public.

If you're serious about such a project, I think what you need to do is recognize that this task naturally separates into two parts. It will be very easy to find a good, general purpose and freely available program that suits your taste for visualizing/analyzing/discovering networks in general. I think cytoscape is pretty good, although I've only played around with it a little and many others exist.

Now, the second (well, first) part is to fetch and prepare the input data for the citation relationships of interest to you. You need to be very specific about exactly where you want to get this from and for what subset of articles, since it may not be possible (due to license restrictions) or technically feasible (as noted, the size of the network grows exponentially).


Is it standard to ask for an "equal contribution" footnote in a 60%-40% scenario? I'm working on research that should be sent to publishing in the next couple of weeks.
The research is done by me and a friend of mine; we are both under the same professor. This started as an attempt to improve on another paper which I'm the third writer on, but it quickly turned into a new idea which we will try to publish as a separate paper; because of this weird sequence of events, we didn't talk about who takes the lead.  I'm taking tasks on almost every field of the research (building taxonomy, writing code, running experiments, writing the paper itself, etc.).
I'm also considering the amount of ideas and implementations that wouldn't be done if not for me.
I would say that overall my contribution is around 40%.

In my field, it's common to have an "equal contribution" footnote if two or more authors contributed equally. What is the common standard to ask for an "equal contribution" footnote?

I don't think there's a common standard for how to settle this after the fact, at least not one spanning all fields where author order matters. But my rule of thumb would be this:
If your estimation of your coauthor's contribution exceeds your estimation of your own contribution by more than the (likely also estimated) margin of error of your estimates, then you probably shouldn't ask for equal contribution. If the balance is too close to call, or the contributions are too difficult to compare (which is often the case in a theorist/experimentalist collaboration, for example) then sure, having a discussion about it is appropriate. (Just be open to updating your estimates based on the discussion.)

You could also consider including an "author contributions" statement in the paper to clarify who did what.