Should a post doc recruit and supervise final year undergrad students when PI is getting older and wants to reduce involvement? I'm a postdoctoral researcher in a small research group in Europe. My PI is advancing in age, and taken a step back from running the group personally. We have an admin assistant who deals with day-to-day things like signing purchase orders and booking rooms/coffee, and the lab itself is run by me and another post-doc.

The PI who I work for recently "asked" if I'd be willing to supervise a final year undergraduate student for the upcoming academic year (I'm fine with this, its a good opportunity to get an extra pair of hands to try some interesting experiments). This is common in the department I work for. What is less common is that she (the PI) refuses to meet/interview these students herself, and instead insists that I do this myself.

In some ways, this makes sense– she doesn't have much to do with the lab on a day-to-day basis, and almost certainly won't take an interest in the undergraduates process. This does leave two issues, however:

All of the other PI's meet students personally. This means when I do meet these undergraduates, they already feel like they've been passed off to 'some random post-doc', but also raises concerns for them that she isn't really going to be very supportive during their projects.
In previous years, after this process of a post-doc meeting all of these students, she has basically ignored their recommendations as to whom to hire, and just chosen based upon how they perform on paper (i.e. taking the one who's had some experience in a lab of someone she's a fan of, or taking the one who aced her course in the previous year etc.)

Since last week, she has been forwarding about 5 emails a day from interested students, requesting that I meet them, go over their CV's/research experience, and quiz them on some general physics to make sure that we're not taking anyone incompetent.

Whilst I obviously should meet the students, I feel like its a complete waste of my time. Interviewing 5 students is taking at least 3 hours since they also have questions, and my PI insists that we meet every student that applies, despite already having personal dealings with some of them/knowing they're truly not cut out for lab work. The time isn't a huge issue, but generally due to the small size of our lab and my teaching commitments, it is meaning that I;m basically not at my bench for most of the week.

Questions

What would be the best course of action?
Agree to do all of this, on the condition that she doesn't then overrule my opinion when it comes to actually choosing?
Or insist that since she's going to make the final decision anyway she should just suck it up and meet these students herself?

There are two basic problems here.

The interviewing process is too time-consuming.
You are being given a responsibility without the corresponding authority, i.e. the grunt work is being delegated to you, without the decision-making authority being delegated to you along with that.

If you "ran the zoo" (I'm quoting the children's author Dr Seuss), in other words, if this were your project entirely, I think you would organize the application process in a more streamlined way, that would take up much less time.  For example, you might develop a list of questions each applicant should answer, and you might send the questions to the applicants via a google form, so you can easily compare the responses in a spreadsheet.

It could seem to you like a waste of your time to find out interesting things about the applicants in the in-person interviews, for the PI to just ignore all that anyway when making the selection.

You might want to assert yourself politely with your PI:

  Explain to the PI that you want to support her decision to step back from the day to day running of the lab. Let her know that you find this assignment intriguing and helpful for you in your own career growth.  Explain that if you take this assignment on, you would like to have her blessing to handle the whole assignment autonomously, from beginning to end.  Ask if she would like you to submit a final report on the decision(s) you came to.

Project confidence.  (No complaining about how much time it will take you.)

It will look good on your CV.


How do I sign a letter of recommendation, if I've left academia? I recently left academia. A former student of mine asked for a letter of recommendation for graduate school applications. I've typically seen references sign with their title, to provide context. Should I sign mine as follows?

My Name
Former Thisorthat Postdoctoral Fellow
Former Institution Name

In your case, write on personal letterhead.  As Alexander Woo has said, the first paragraph should be something like this: "I'm writing in support of the application of Bob Brown to your doctor of divinity program.  Bob was my student when I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Close Cover Before Striking University."  Then you go on to explain briefly your qualifications to make the recommendation and in more detail why Bob would make an excellent and successful DD student.


A manuscript I refereed gave me an idea for a paper, not sure how to proceed So, last week I refereed a paper for a journal. The paper in question is a reply to a previous paper by a different author: it points out a serious problem in the original paper and then proposes a solution. The evaluation I sent back to the editors is that, while the problem is real (to the extent that a different researcher has independently identified it), there are a number of reasons why the proposed solution is not going to work.

Over the weekend, I started thinking about the paper in question again and suddenly realized that I know how to solve the problem (in a nutshell: you need to use a technique originally developed to solve a mildly related class of problems, but which nobody had yet thought of applying to this particular domain). Right now, I have a bunch of handwritten notebook pages with everything I need to write a paper, and all I have left to do is to find a couple of hours to sit in front of my computer and type it up properly.

The question is, how should I proceed now? On the one hand, given that I've developed my own solution, I'm not plagiarizing the paper I refereed (in fact, I intend to give it proper credit for discovering the problem). On the other hand, if I hadn't been asked to referee this paper, I wouldn't have put enough thought into it to come up with my own solution. More generally, to what extent is it acceptable to write a paper that directly builds on a paper you've been asked to referee?

I think there are two questions that need to be answered first.

Is it important to you (e.g. for career reasons) to publish solo, or would you consider publishing with the other author?  Keep in mind that publishing jointly may have extra benefits: the two of you together might come up with an even better solution, or it may lead to future collaborations on other projects.  Or do you perhaps not care about getting credit at all?
Is the manuscript public?  Has it been posted as a preprint on arXiv or a similar server, or on the author's website, etc?

Depending on the answers, there are a few cases:

You don't care about getting credit. Write your report on the paper: "The approach to agrobaric frobotzim via PDQ analysis is unworkable because of foo, bar and baz.  However, this could be fixed by using QPM analysis instead.  [Sketch your idea here.]  Pending this fix [and any other suggested revisions], I recommend the paper for publication."  Expect that when the paper is published, there will be an acknowledgement: "We thank the anonymous referee for suggesting the approach used in Section 5."
You want to publish jointly. Contact the editor: "The author's approach to agrobaric frobotzim via PDQ analysis is unworkable, and as such I cannot recommend the paper for publication as it stands.  However, I have some ideas about how to resolve the problem, and I would be interested in collaborating with the author to work them out.  Would you be willing to put me in touch with her?"

The editor says yes. Great!
The editor says no, and the manuscript is public. Submit your report pointing out the flaws and recommending rejection.  After a decent interval contact the author: "I saw your preprint, and had an idea to improve the results using QPM analysis.  Would you be interested in working together on this?"  Opinions vary on whether you should reveal that you were the referee; it is possible the author will guess anyway.
The editor says no, and the manuscript is not public, but you know who the author is. Submit your report pointing out the flaws and recommending rejection.  The next step is a bit controversial.  Some would say you should wait until it is public, so as not to break the anonymity of the reviewing process.  Others think it is fine to reveal yourself and contact the author directly to suggest collaboration.  I am not sure what to say here.
The editor says no, and the manuscript is not public, and you do not know who the author is (double-blind reviewing). You have no choice but to wait until the manuscript is made public (maybe until it is published somewhere else), since that's the only way to find the author and suggest collaboration.  If you think you should give up on finding the author and publish solo instead, see below.

You want to publish solo.  Write and submit your report.  Now, is the manuscript public?

The manuscript is public. You may write your paper, citing the other author's preprint and giving her due credit for noticing the problem.  This is ethical, but if you meet the author at a conference, don't expect her to buy you a beer: she was hoping to solve this problem but you beat her to it.
The manuscript is not public. You may not proceed.  As a reviewer, you received the manuscript in confidence, and to write a solo paper based on it would be to take unfair advantage of that access.  You must wait until the preprint appears publicly.  (This might be when it is published in another journal, or maybe never.)  It's possible that in the meantime, the author will discover your solution independently; those are the breaks.  This would be a great time to reconsider seeking joint authorship.

In case 2, if your field has a notion of "first authorship", that would be something you'd need to negotiate with the other author, based on your field's norms.  (Mine uses alphabetical ordering almost exclusively, so this issue wouldn't arise.)


Asking for a recommendation from a professor who I did bad in his courses I am applying for a PhD and I am asked for 3 recommendation letters. I have 2 which I think are good letters. I am looking for someone to provide the third. I had 4 courses with a certain professor in my undergrad. I scored B+ (3.25/4) in two courses and an A (3.75/4) in the other two. Long story short, I know and the professor knows that I deserve a much higher grade in the two courses which I scored B+ in. I am thinking of asking him for his reference letter as I think they might help in making the effect of these two B+s less sever. I think I have gained a lot of respect from him in last year or two which made me think that his recommendation might be positive, but I am not sure about what he will write.

Is it logical to ask him or should I ask someone else ? I don't have many other option; The other professors only taught me one or two courses and I am not sure if I can get good recommendations from them. Additionally, that professor was at the committee for my final project presentation in my undergrad. I scored very high in that too.

I am little confused on which is better, a recommendation from this professor, or from a professor who taught me one course and I scored an A+, or from a professional referee since my other two referees are academics.

If they were genuinely bad grades, I would advise against using this professor. But a B+ is not "really" a bad grade, even though you might have done better.

Some professors are stricter than average, and a B+ from them is the equivalent of an A- or even an A from most others. This could well be the case here. One of my friends was told that he was in the "top 5" of his class. But there were only two A's, which explains his B+. If this is the case with you, this professor is in the best position to vouch for the quality of your work, and the fact that it would be worth an A elsewhere.

In your shoes, I would schedule a meeting with the professor to find out how he feels about your work, and about recommending you.  It could be that you were one of his best students that he'd recommend above most others (one student on another post reported being the "best student" in a class where he got the highest grade, 90%). On the other hand, he may think that you are "nothing special" in which case you should go another way.

Up to now, everything I've written is "speculation," so you need to find out what the "facts" are before making a decision.


How to ask for reference from a non-academic acquaintance? I have a non-academic acquaintance who is at a senior position in the telecom industry. He might have good links in academia. I am thinking to ask him for suggesting or referring me to his contacts in academia for a post-doctoral position. I do not want any favor based on nepotism or anything like that, just a chance of getting my CV noticed.

I am confused about it being ethical or not. Maybe I am being too eager.

How can I approach my acquaintance about this without giving 'him' the feeling that I want his favor or that I want to use his name?

PS. It is about North American institutes.

How can I approach my acquaintance about this without giving 'him' the feeling that I want his favor or that I want to use his name?

You do want his favor and name, but that's fine: If he helps, then he is doing so because he wants to.


Non-English content in English paper I want to include an image in my lecture-note paper written in English. The image elements are fully made with non-English language. Below I show a part of the image:

.

I use this image because a reviewer commented:

  The authors could have given fig 1 with the actual example of the
  contest data.

And the contest data is Persian, however I want to publish it in prestigious proceedings.

I want to know if it is wrong to exactly use the data or I shall use the translated format?

I suspect the translated format will be more useful to the broader readership of the journal, but you could let the editor make the final decision. I don't know the context of your figure, but it's possible if the symbols don't really have a language meaning that the original version is fine as well (i.e., if they are equivalent to labels like "A, B, C, D" rather than having some phonetic or linguistic meaning). If there is some phonetic meaning that is hard or impossible to translate, that might be even more reason to use the original, and include an explanation of the characters for English-readers.

Provide one version with your revised manuscript, and provide the editor a copy of the other version as well, explain your choice, and see what their opinion is. They might decide the translated version is sufficient (with a note that it is translated from the original), or they might want you to include the untranslated in a supplementary figure, or vice-versa.

Another standard to think about for whether to translate or not is "does this content have the same meaning when translated?" For example, if you had a questionnaire asking basic biographical information, you would expect English and Persian participants to read and participate in the same way and the translation is fine. However, if your content is in reference to phonemes or some other language construct, there might not be any direct equivalent, and information would be lost in the translation.


MD-Phd (MSTP): What are the benefits? I have BS in Biotech, an MS in Neuroscience and applying MD-Phd next June. I have always wanted to go into academia and eventually establish my own lab. However, I have been receiving a lot of critical feedback about MD-Phd programs. Suggesting that to be a good Physician, you don't need a PhD, and good PhDs don't need the MD. That most MSTP graduates end up utilizing only one degree. I was under the impression to do good translation research--an MD-PhD would be the best option. What are the befits/disadvantages of applying MD-PhD?

I know the faculty I would like to work with, already. Would contacting them improve my chances during the application process?

Doing good translational research is hard because it requires a good understanding of clinical issues (both from the patient and carer sides) and a strong research background. In order to obtain those skills you need to spend time in the clinic and time in the lab. An MD-PhD program guarantees that you will have the opportunity to spend time in both environments. It is worth noting that having that opportunity doesn't mean you will capitalize on it. Further, you don't need to do an MD-PhD to have that opportunity.

Another advantage of some MD-PhD programs is that you can get funding for the MD side. If it is what you want to do, saving 100k USD isn't a bad thing. If it isn't what you want, trading a few years of an MD salary for 100k is a bad investment.


How free are you to take mathematics courses as a computer science graduate student? Does anyone know the restrictions one might face if they are a graduate student in a computer science program (let's say doing theory) and they become interested in taking a course from the mathematics department or become interested in working on mathematics problems? Is this something where you need to full on change departments or is it generally more acceptable?

This is frequently very easy: the boundary between mathematics and computer science is pretty blurry, especially for the more theoretical side of computer science.  In many universities, you will even find classes that are shared between math and computer science departments.

I suppose that If you are a masters' student, you might run into problems fitting in the classes that you want to take if there are a lot of other program requirements.  For Ph.D. students, however, there are typically less constraints.


How to attract good teachers to a young university? I won't go into much detail, but I work at a young private university at a non-managerial position.

The uni has a strong need for better teachers and more adequate students. In my opinion, a viable strategy for quickly increasing the education quality level would be to focus on only 1 faculty/ department/ specialty first, because:

It would be cheaper to focus on one department (i.e. program creation, teachers acquisition and salary, advertizing to students).
Even if a lot of students drop out due to suddenly intensifying the program, students from other departments would continue to financially support the university.
Being great at one thing while temporarily neglecting others is better than being below mediocre at everything.

Focusing on one department would mean:

Intensifying the program.
Attracting good teachers.
Attracting better students (more willing to learn, with better background) (with the help of 1. and 2.).

I believe intensifying the program and attracting good teachers for one department (probably for CS) before attracting better students is the way to go.

I have a CS background and can help with creating the program (classes).

If I manage to convince the people in charge, how should we go about attracting good teachers (probably from other universities)? Adequate salaries would probably not be enough.

Thanks for the answers!

Adequate salaries would probably not be enough

That's true.

Superior salaries

Superior salaries are needed to attract superior staff. There are many examples of companies that pay (significantly) above-average salaries so they can attract the best. This is true in retail (The Container Store), tech (Google), and other industries. I see no reason why it would be different in academia. While salary is not the only thing that matters it does matter a great deal. Countless research on motivation (Herzberg, Ariely, Pink) shows that what is important is to pay enough that people stop thinking about money. If people are just "getting by" then they will be thinking about money rather than thinking about how to be the best in their field.

Freedom

Once you get the money right, you need to give freedom (as written in the comment by Sverre). Hire the best and get out of their way. Yes, support them but do not "tie their hands" and make them do things because "it has always been that way." This is one point which it should be both easy for your university to do as well as to convince candidates that it is true. Your school is young and so has not been doing things the same way for 50 years. Let the candidates know they will have freedom to do as they see fit.

Support

Giving freedom does not mean abandoning them. If your teachers want start producing videos, acquire the tools they will need. If they want to experiment and they need help, help them. If they are not from the area, help them transition. Be open and supportive.


Do authors have to be politically correct in article-writing? My colleagues and I have recently submitted an article in a biology-oriented journal about a new technological system. While describing the interaction between the different modules of the system, we used the terms "master" and "slave", as it describes the communication protocol in a very comprehensive manner.

One reviewer raised an issue that these terms were not suitable for publication in an academic journal, without proposing an alternative wording.

We understand that writing a text aimed at being read by a broad community of people imposes a high degree of decency, and that's of course what we always tried to do. Given the context it is extremely clear that these terms are used to describe an interaction between to electronical devices, and are in no way a reference to slavery. We are Europeans, and have never heard of any controversy on this. Also, the "master/slave" terms have been and are still widely used in engineering lingo.

So we have two questions regarding this situation:

Is there an alternative wording that we could use, still expressing clearly the same idea?
More generally, do authors have to write politically-correct articles, even though this not a very well-defined notion and can significantly vary from one region of the world to another?

We don't really want to enter into a long discussion with the reviewer on this particular point, so the latter question is more something of general interest about what one should have in mind when writing an article.

Edit

Thanks for the numerous answers and comments, this is really helpful. Since I can choose only one answer as the good one, it's the one that proposes a useful  alternative. We believe that the most problematic word in this case is "slave" and not "master", so we'll propose the terms "master/worker" as a replacement for our article.

In addition, a thought I had in the meantime is that using these terms as adjectives instead of nouns may help a little bit. A "slave device" may be a slightly softened wording than simply a "slave" (though not resolving the issue). More importantly, I feel that "master device" and "worker device" are expressing the general relationship between the modules in a clearer way than simply "master" and "worker".

For the more general question about PC, it seems to be still an open question. As suggested in one answer, this certainly desserves some changes in our writing practices now and then.

In the absence of a compelling reason to not use politically correct language, authors should make reasonable attempts to minimize offending readers. Given the information you provided, there does not seem to be any reason not to use master/slave. The words, and even the context, do not seem inherently offensive and have an established usage in many fields. I suggest including in your response letter a statement that you do not see the established use of master/slave to describe communication systems as being offensive, but if the editor requires a change, you will be happy to comply (assuming you are).


What is the definition of guest lecturer? Is it worth putting on CV? I'm a couple years out of undergrad, have my Master's and work at a research org. A former professor from undergrad invited me to come teach a class with him next month--I told him I'd be in town for a day, just thinking we'd get coffee, but he invited me to come teach and talk about some of the relevant research I'm currently doing.

Is this "legit" enough to mark down on my CV as being a guest lecturer? If so, is it actually worth putting on my CV, will it hold any weight whatsoever when I apply to PhD programs in a couple years?

The short answers are: (1) yes, this fulfills my definition of a "guest lecture" (that being you were invited by the module or subject leader and that you delivered a lecture) and (2) yes, you should include this in your CV.

Let me explain. I've chaired departments and academic units before and have been involved in hiring decisions. Academic jobs outside of a research fellowship often require responsibilities in three broad areas: (1) research, (2) teaching and (3) administration/service. It is often the case that quite a lot of emphasis is placed on research skills and with good reason. However, teaching is also a skill. Having been a guest lecturer signifies to me that you've garnered some experience in the delivery and assessment of a topic of instruction.

You might even find that you've got the knack to teach. Perhaps students respond to you, or you might have the ability to explain difficult concepts in a way that is easy to understand, or you might simply enjoy the experience. Guest lecturing is the start. You can expand this by co-teaching a subject or module, leading a module yourself, then leading an entire degree program. This is the typical expectation of PhD students, Assistant Lecturers, Lecturers and Senior Lecturers in a number of universities in which I've worked.

If you have the opportunity, I would encourage you to expand your involvement in teaching and administration. Not only will it round out your skills as an academic, it will give you a taste of duties that you will be expected to fulfill should you choose academia as a career.

Good luck to you.


How often can the reviewers correctly guess the identity of the authors when the review is double-blind? Is there any research/study/survey/dataset that looked at how often the reviewers correctly guess the identity of the authors when the review is double-blind?

I am aware that the answer is likely field-dependent, or even publication venue dependent. I am mostly interested in computer science, machine learning and natural language processing, but curious about other fields as well.

Conferences in programming languages are moving toward double-blind reviewing, and since the idea is debated, people are collecting some evidence, including actual peer-reviewed papers.

In particular, even when reviewers believe they guessed the authors, it turns out they are sometimes/often incorrect, as profmartinez’s answer suggests. In the citations you’ll find actual numbers; I won’t attempt a literature review myself.

Links

A short FAQ
This points to this literature review (done as an editorial in SIGMOD, a database venue):
This in turn cites Fisher et al. (1994), published in the Journal of the American Medical Association — hence, a peer-reviewed publication where reviewers understand statistics well:
There are also reports from program chairs evaluating statistically double-blind reviewing, by (for instance) surveying PC members for correctness of their guesses.


Is it better to prove a generalization of a theorem before presenting specific cases? In (mostly) mathematical publications, when proving a theorem that can be generalized to a wider range of parameters, is it generally considered better practice to:

Present a special case of a theorem first, and then prove it in a general context, or
Prove the general case and then move on to present one (or more) special cases?

The first approach makes understanding the theorem easier, and makes the paper quicker to read. The second one looks more "rigorous", but is much more difficult to understand for more complex theorems and formulae.

What is generally considered the better practice?

There is no "general" answer here. It always depends on circumstances:

Is the general proof really hard and difficult to understand?
Is the general proof of interest, or does only the special case have applications (yet)?
Can the general proof be done in the same way as the special case, just with uglier notation, more indices, etc.?
Is the generalization natural or does it require work to actually show that the special case does indeed follow from the general one?
Is the special case the only application of the general theorem, or are there other corollaries of interest?
...

This is just a small part of the questions to consider, depending on what the theorem and the proof looks like. In some cases, it might be good to use the special case to motivate the generalization, especially if this is a new idea and you are the first to look at this general case.

On the other hand, people want to see the benefits of the generalized version, so it would be best to get results from it that go beyond just showing a special case.

I would suggest leaving the choice of which proof to read to the reader. So if you have a really easy proof for the special (and most interesting) case and the general proof is really hard, you should give the special case first and let the reader decide if he wants to skip the general one or not. I sometimes see phrases like "readers only interested in the case ... can safely skip to  section X". Of course this has to be properly organized, such that section X is still readable even if the general proof got skipped. In this way, it is easy to see and understand the basic concepts of your paper and how you showed the special case, and there is always the opportunity to come back later to study the general one (or to give it to a student for a bachelor thesis...). Note, however, that this is only my personal opinion and approach, this is not a general consensus.


Can I claim to have completed my degree on my résumé, prior to convocating and receiving the physical diploma? I just received my (passing) grades for my last remaining courses for my BSc. I’ve completed all my requirements, but the next convocation ceremonies don’t take place until Summer 2018. Likewise, I don’t think I will receive my diploma (the physical, official certificate) until then. Usually when a résumé says “degree expected in ____”, it reads along the lines of: “I’m not done yet, but if things pan out, I’ll hopefully be done by then“.

This is not my case, so in my résumé, how can I communicate across that I expect to receive my diploma in Summer 2018 as a matter of certainty?

Am I justified to use the term graduated? If so, should I say I graduated December 2017 (when I finished my requirements) or Summer 2018 (when convocation occurs)?

You can use the formulation

  Degree to be conferred MM/YYYY

to indicate that you have passed all degree requirements, but are waiting for the degree to be officially awarded. This occurs fairly frequently, particularly for PhD students, who may finish at any time of the year, especially if their university only confers degrees once per year.


Should I integrate the notations of different papers in the prior works section of my thesis? I am writing the "Prior Works" section of my M.Sc. thesis. In different papers I saw that there are  different notations for fairly similar concepts. Should I describe each prior work with its original notation which helps people to refer to the original works without confusion or is it better to unify the notation across all of the prior works to make the thesis easier to read.

In my PhD thesis I had a largeish section in the "state of the art" chapter discussing the wildly different conventions, definitions, and notation of previous work in the area, and setting up a common language for comparing them (and later for the main work).

In the resulting papers I just defined the terms, and paraphrased earlier work in them as required.

So, it really depends. In your thesis you do have the space available to make it absolutely clear, in papers/conferences space is at a premium.


Is a professor who's never had to write a grant application disadvantaged in the job market? As I understand it, today's professors spend a large amount of time writing grant applications, many of which fail. As a result, I'm thinking of endowing a professorship someday with enough funds to remove this part of the job description - effectively funding the professor for as long as they hold the professorship.
One thing I'm concerned about is that this would also be removing a critical part of the job. For example this job advertisement for a senior lecturer/associate professor explicitly asks for "A proven record of attracting external funding for research". In that case, the professor would never pass this requirement since they would have no experience at writing grant applications, let alone actually getting the funding.
Question: is this a legitimate concern? If so, are there any obvious solutions? This should only matter if the professor leaves the professorship, and presumably that is not likely to happen, but I'd still rather the professorship not become a position which one can enter but not leave because it makes one uncompetitive on the market.

No, this is not a concern.

Typically individuals who receive endowed professorships already have a long record of applying for grants.  You could, as the donor, attempt to negotiate some other situation if you wished.
Typically endowed professors only leave their job due to retirement or death.  If you have really endowed the professorship with enough money, there will be no desire to leave for another endowed professorship, if one could be found.  An endowed professorship does not make the holder uncompetitive on the job market.  It makes employers uncompetative to hire the professor.
Most endowed professors do apply for grants.

Assuming you really have that much money to give, my advice would be: Require the holder of the professorship to refrain from applying for grants.  This will free up a lot of their time to do something more productive.
If you want to make a positive impact on academia, you can achieve more for your dollar by endowing (or just spending all the money immediately on) scholarships at institutions that charge low tuition, like community colleges.


How much money do universities pay to access datasets? Is there any research/study/survey that tried to quantify how much money universities / academic research labs pay to access data sets?

For example, in the United States, many hospitals as well as health insurance companies charge universities to access patient data.

Another example: in natural language processing, many datasets (including some very commonly used datasets) are sold by the Linguistic Data Consortium.

I am mostly interested in the United States and the field of computer science.

I can not offer you research, but I can tell you that when I was touring the library at SFSU, the librarian said that they pay something over $200,000. for access to their complete list of journals and databases. I imagine it varies considerably from one to the other university.


Is it necessary/useful to include the publishers in the list of editorial board memberships? When listing the journals in which you are a member of its editorial board, is it necessary or useful (maybe overdoing) to include the publisher, impact factor or any further information?

We had a debate among colleagues and there were two opposite opinions:

Any further information is superfluous, as the audience should know the journals, as the publishers are not mentioned in the list of publications too.
Because of numerous new journals, the audience may not understand the journal's reputation if not mentioning some further information.

WHat do you think? What is the most professional/standard/acceptable approach?

Unless you work in exactly the same area as someone else, you likely have no idea how good a journal is. For example, I know that the SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis is good -- but is the Journal of Number Theory good? the Journal of Mathematical Sciences? But if I know that one of these is published by a professional society located in the US or Western Europe, then I can infer that it is likely a good journal; whereas if the journal is published by a company I've never heard of and that is located in Egypt or India, then I may have my doubts.

So, yes, I think it is useful to add the publisher.


What undergraduate work stays on a CV once you start graduate school? I'm about to graduate with my BS and I'm trying to decide whether it's worth it to submit a paper for publication in an undergraduate journal, given that I've already applied to and picked a PhD program and I start on the fall.

What sorts of papers, presentations, and awards that I received as an undergrad are still worth mentioning on a CV even after I graduate? Do my accomplishments restart like they did after graduating high school?

If you are considering writing and publishing something in an undergraduate publication -- don't do it for the sheen it might add to your CV.  If you do it, do it because you find the subject matter interesting and you think you can write an article others would enjoy reading.

Note, the more you write, the better you get at writing.

(Separately, after publication, you could ask for guidance about what to include and what to exclude from your CV, if the existing Q&As here have left this an open question.)


How to merge mendeley contiguous citations in body text? I am writing a paper by using Mendeley and I want to cite many paper at the end of a sentence such as [1-5]. But when I have inserted the citations contiguosly, it seems like [1],[2],[3],[4],[5]. How do I change the appearance of citations from plural to single square bracket?

With Mendeley Citations Plugin, you should be able to highlight all of the citations that you wish to merge (as long as they appear next to each other) and then select the 'Merge Citations' option from the menu, next to 'Insert or Edit Citation', to bring them into a single citation/square bracket.


GDPR and PLOS One Data Sharing A fair number of PLOS One articles have statements like the following:

Data Availability: Data cannot be made publicly available as the dataset contains sensitive and identifying information. The authors confirm that the data will be made available upon request. Requests may be sent to the corresponding author.

My question is, what effect does the EU General Data Protection Regulation
 (GDPR) that recently came into effect have on such statements?  Does it render such statements void (i.e., the authors cannot share the data any longer), or does it not apply to this situation (but perhaps some authors will blindly cite GDPR so as to not share their data)?

This is a very broad topic, and specific guidance should come from lawyers and the requisite PIs, but in general terms:

there are a lot of reasons a given data set may be too sensitive to share, and containing PII- the domain of GDPR- is only one of them, but when PII is involved, it absolutely applies, and academic research is one of the many domains specifically identified in GDPR language, and is granted more privilege than other domains
when it comes to PII, GDPR does not prevent the storage, sharing or processing of data for legitimate purposes, it just prescribes lifecycle protocols that those who participate in storage, sharing or processing have to follow
those lifecycle protocols are intended to allow for the enforcement of the rights provided by GDPR to the humans whose data is legitimately shared, stored, and processed- to have their data removed, to have processing explained to them, etc.
those who participate in the sharing, storage or processing of data are either "controllers" or "processors" and different responsibilities are attributed to each. Controllers generally are responsible for the acts of their processors, and processors have to do their work in accordance with their controllers
a data sharing agreement has to define those roles and responsibilities for the parties involved, and ensure the sharing protocol fulfills the requirements of GDPR

A granular review of the issue in the context of research is here:

https://iapp.org/news/a/how-gdpr-changes-the-rules-for-research/


How to refer to a page number in a pdf? Many times, the page number in pdf is different than the printed page number. How to make sure the other person doesn't get confused when we say "it's on Nth page".

If you're talking about the PDF of a paper published in an academic journal, then the answer is unambiguously: refer to the journal page numbers, i.e. the numbers at the bottom of each page. Those are the ones features in (almost all) citation styles.

Otherwise, if the document is a random PDF found on the web (not coming from a journal), just avoid referring to pages. If you absolutely must, refer to the page numbers printed on the paper, as it is the only thing that makes sense to someone who would print the document.


What does it mean if a professor suggests to contact in future? I am a final year Computer Science student from South Asia and expected to graduate by August 2017. I thought of starting to contact professors for masters program from now. Today I received a reply from the professor I mailed first. He said,

  Thank you for your interest. I would suggest you to contact me once you have graduated.

What can I infer from this kind of reply? And another question: Is it too early to start to apply?

You can infer from this type of reply that you should contact him once you have graduated.

There are many reasons for this:

If you're genuinely interested, you'll follow up when the time comes.
The last year of a program can be hugely impactful in either good or bad ways on a student's preparation.
You may be outside the application window for his program, which puts talking to new students low on the priority list. Similarly, if its a competitive process for admitting people into his lab, he'll be wanting to compare you to other interested students.
Funding is a time-variable thing. Whether or not he has room for a student in his lab, can pay for them, etc. might be very different now and when you'd actually arrive.

Among others. It's not necessarily too early to start applying places, but sometimes you may get answers like that.


Ph.D. studies in Management field after Masters of science in Mechatronics from German university I am a student of masters mechatronics and during my course, I attended many elective management classes. I am even allowed to write my thesis in strategic management and I'm interested to continue my career somewhere in teaching in this field. Am I allowed to pursue Ph.D. studies in Strategic Management after completing my bachelor in Mechanical Engineering and Masters in Mechatronics from German university?

Yes, you are. In Germany, it doesn't really matter what exactly your masters degree was, as long as it's close enough to give you a good background for your PhD studies. Basically, your masters degree should enable you to self study whatever you need to work on your PhD thesis with very little help from your professor. If it does that, then it is close enough.

Now the difficulty is finding a professor who will take you on as a PhD student. With your masters thesis already in the field of your choice, this should be doable despite the different degree subject.


Does a reply to comment count as a publication? Years ago, I published a paper with some collaborators, and recently a comment to the paper has been submitted. Together with the other authors, we published a reply to comment, which has been published on the journal.

Is it reasonable to list the reply as a publication in my CV, in addition to the original paper?

Yes, but you would probably want to make separate lists of refereed and non-refereed publications. By putting the comment in the latter list, you do show that you engage with academic discussion, but you do not overclaim it as yet another refereed publication.


Should I review for a new journal whose publisher is unjustifiably listed in Beall's list of predatory publishers? I received a review request from an open access journal, which is brand new. It has published about 10 articles so far. The articles seem to be of mediocre quality but do not seem to plagiarize other articles. The journal has all important sections and features in place (review/editorial process, ethics, editorial board, wave waiver policies, working DOIs and article metrics, etc.). However, the publisher of such journal is in Beall's list of predatory open access publishers. As it is the case of many publishers listed there, the publisher is unjustifiably included in the list. There are no posts (as far as I know) explaining why it ended there. Most of Beall's criteria for determining predatory open access publishers do not seem to apply in this case.

I cannot see the article text nor the author names before accepting the review request. However, by judging the name of the journal, the aims and scopes, and the abstract of the article, it seems that the review request per se is legit.

I looked at related questions, e.g., Should I accept review requests from dubious journals?, Is it a good idea to cite paper from publisher listed in Beall’s list, and How to identify predatory publishers/journals. The present question seems novel enough to me – it looks different from the one in the first link. Even though I am quite sure about what to do, I am asking this question with the hope that it (and the answers) will be beneficial for the visitors.

You need to ask yourself a few key questions:

What is the purpose of your reviewing any article? If it is to be listed in the annual acknowledgement of reviewers for Big, Prestigious Journal X, then don't review this article.  If it is to contribute to the scholarly process (and to pay-it-forward for the next article you submit somewhere) - then proceed.
What is your impression of the journal/publisher? They can't be entirely/purely dishonest, since they have, in fact, sent the article for peer review. (The truly bad actors don't bother!)

Form your own opinion of their offering, and do consider that it can take longer to review a poor manuscript than a good one.  Then, invest your time in what you value.


Unpleasant situation with a collaborator made worse by supervisor. Am I overreacting? I've been involved in a collaboration project for the past year or so (the collaborator was the one who approached me and they were leading the project), the problem is that the progress from the collaborator side was slow and sometimes clumsy (they would often call for meetings without all things figured out, they would be late in meetings, talk on the phone during meetings and would act as if I had to do part of the project for them [this specific part is already published, so I offered to train the collaborator instead of repeating my whole project, but they refused to learn and said that I should be the one running the experiments since it was my expertise]).

Since I'm at the end of my studies and am managing 2 completely different projects at the same time, my supervisor thought it was best to call off this collaboration. I wasn't too keen on doing so because I knew it would look bad on me, but my supervisor thought it was for the best and also said that they would sort things out with the collaborator.

Turns out that my supervisor corresponded to the collaborator saying that I did not want to continue on the project because I was too busy at the moment (which is true, but not a great way of parting ways). Needless to say, I was embarrassed beyond words, and am feeling like this is going to taint my reputation with the other group that I was working with.

How bad is this situation gonna look for me, professionally? Is it normal in academia to pull out contributions from projects that one feels that is most likely going nowhere? Was my judgement in regards to the attitudes of the collaborator unfair?

I think that how it plays out in the future depends on you and on your relationship with your advisor, so protect that relationship carefully.

You seem to be frustrated and speaking from that frustration only. This isn't, generally, a path to success.

It also reads as if your advisor "blamed" you for ending the collaboration just as a way to save face. This is a sign of weakness, of course, but not necessarily ill intent.

Find your own path, but make sure that your advisor supports what you do and is happy to support your next steps with recommendations, etc.

After you finish the degree it is unlikely that anyone will remember what is happening here for very long, unless you act in a way that makes it memorable. I recommend against that.


Why would the review system status go from "awaiting recommendation" back to "awaiting referee assignment"? I recently submitted my first  paper to a philosophy journal. After about a month,
the status switched from "Awaiting Reviewer Scores" to "Awaiting recommendation". Then a few days later it switched back to "Awaiting referee assignment" again. Thus, seemingly, the review process ended only for a second one to be initiated by the EA just days later.

Why would the system change back to "Awaiting referee assignment"?
Does this mean that EA has sent the manuscript out for a second review?
Why would the EA send the manuscript out for a second review?
Is the EA unsatisfied with the referees' report, so he wants to get an additional review?

What could also have happened is that the initially assigned reviewer first accepted to review the paper, only to then forget to do so. At the end of the time that he/she had for the review, the journal editor might have sent a reminder only to then receive an apologetic note stating that the reviewer does not have the time to do so - then the editor would have to find a different reviewer. All these things have happened. If you want to make sure what is going on, you can always send a friendly note to the journal editor and ask about it. They are human after all.


Is it ethical to withdraw a paper after acceptance in order to resubmit to a better journal? I think the title asks the question, but once again in more words:

Suppose you submit a paper to a journal and it is accepted by the journal.  By this I mean that the journal tells you that they have decided to publish your paper but you have not submitted or examined final proofs and -- especially -- not signed any paperwork allowing the journal to publish the paper.

I wonder how people feel about the ethics of deciding not to go through with the publication because you now feel that the paper could be published in a better journal?  This could happen either because of outside feedback you received in the meantime or because of feedback from the referees/editors of the journal itself.  (Added: In case this was not clear, I am assuming that upon submission one was seeking to publish in that journal conditional on not learning that one has "shot way too low".)

As far as I can see, it is absolutely legal to do this, so I am not interested in the legality of it, but rather its ethics and ramifications as an academic practice.  I also think I will get better answers if I do not telegraph my own feelings about this; I will be happy to document them later on.  Let me just say (i) this is a hypothetical question, but (ii) based on my own experience it is not ridiculous that it might be in the interest of the author to engage in this practice, if it happened to be kosher to all parties involved.

Note: I had previously asked a related question, at the time wondering whether it would be better asked separately.  Based on the way things have gone thus far, I now think it is better to post this followup question separately (not necessarily right away).

It is not ethical to withdraw a paper that has been accepted. Journals, editors, and reviewers invest time in the publication process. To withdraw a paper after it has entered this process is a waste of their time. While the legal ramifications of is behaviour are probably limited, it will result in bad feelings.

As for not having the money to publish. Assuming the journal fees are available prior to submission, and reputable journals make their fees known, then if you don't have the money, then you don't get to submit. If they have a paid expedited service and you are worried about the back log, then ask up front. The only case that it might be acceptable is if he review process drags on for so long that your funding ends.


Is it more difficult to score a Tenure Track position in the US when applying from outside? I am currently located in central Europe. When I was hunting for an assistant professor position some months ago, I was also planning to apply to some US institutions for Tenure Track positions. However, one senior professor with some experience working in the US told me pretty much straight-up that this will be a waste of time, as "US universities do not hire people from outside the US/Canada on Tenure Tracks". Relativizing somewhat, stated that "of course exceptions exist, especially if they personally know the applicant, but generally you will get onto the reject pile immediately as they don't know your school well enough.". I was counselled to apply for a postdoc at an US institution first, if I really wanted to get into an US school.

Looking over the CVs of some existing assistant professors in good schools the statement could  be accurate (almost nobody with the job title Assistant Professor seems to come directly from outside the US - many graduated somewhere else, but the last position before was almost always an US institution).

In your experience, is this sentiment correct? Does it even make sense to apply for a TT position in the US from outside (under the assumption that your CV is reasonable for a TT in the first place, of course)? Computer Science is most relevant to me, but any information from any STEM fields would be interesting as well.

While the "I don't know your university" element can have an influence on whether your application gets summarily dismissed to the reject pile, it's less of an issue than one might think. We all travel to Europe and Asia for conferences now, and meet colleagues who come from different countries. I can probably name the top few universities in my field in many European countries, as well as personally know people in each of them.

But there's a more mundane logistical reason for potentially avoiding applicants from other countries: expenses. There's always a risk in getting someone to come for an on-site interview, but with a foreign candidate the expense and logistical work (visa processing, payment methods and so on) are more onerous. We always want to find strong candidates, but when there's a large pool of highly qualified candidates in the US, it can be convenient to focus on those that we expect have a chance of actually making it through the interview process and coming.

There's also the question of whether someone from Europe (as opposed to someone working there) really does want to come to the US, or is just casting a wide net. But that can be addressed in candidate statements or even conversations.

None of this means that foreign candidates are disqualified. Far from it. But it creates a moment of doubt.


How to handle the fact that the advisor is disappointed? I am a first year master student and I am working as a student research assistant with one of my professors. He is nice and very competent. Moreover, I am supervised by a Post-Doc. A few months ago they asked me to do some things related to my work since what I had done was not completely correct. I was upset but went over it since it was the very beginning and what I am doing is completely new to me. Today I had another meeting with them and it seems to me that I disappointed them again since I have to start over again (more or less) and the professor asked the Post-Doc to supervise me more during this phase of the project.

Have you ever been in such a situation? Being wrong in more than one occasion even if the advisor asked you to do something (somehow guided you)?

This is part of the process. You will continue to make mistakes. It's likely that all your supervisors made similar mistakes when they were first learning and they likely will continue to make mistakes. Starting over from the beginning isn't ideal in terms of completing research or publishing papers, but it's often necessary, especially if you wish to learn from your mistakes instead of continuing to make the same errors.

I think I spent the entire duration of my master's studies making mistakes. Some of these were errors in estimating how much time an approach would take. Others were misjudgments of expected results. Most of my mistakes, however, were about what people expected from my research. I thought I needed to single-handedly provide enough solid results for a Nature paper. I was clearly incorrect.

I would encourage you, then, to discuss with your advisor what their expectations of your research are. You both should expect to make mistakes along the way.


Is it ethical for an author to cite their own work with themselves as first author when they are not first author? I was reading through a journal article by an author. Let's call him Author X. The author while referring to some of his own journal articles cite them as Author X et al., even though Author X is not the first author in the cited article. Is this allowed or should it be treated as academic dishonesty?

The only reason I would use a formulation such as this is if the work being "cited" were multiple works performed by a changing group of members with a "constant" member who was probably the group leader. And, even in that case, I would use the formulation "X and coworkers," rather than "X et al.," to indicate that the it's not a "direct" citation, but a matter of convenience. The reason for this is that it's quite distracting to have to write:

  as discussed in A et al. [cite], B et al. [cite], C et al. [cite], A et al. #2 [cite], . . .

when there's a bunch of different references that are all part of the same research effort.


Tools for writing referee reports When refereeing a paper, I usually receive a pdf version of a paper and then write my report separately in latex or a text file editor. When it comes to specific comments to the text, I like to include a page number and line number to specify the relevant position in the text, although counting the line numbers is pretty boring for long papers. I was wondering if there were any tips on how to speed up this process?

  Ideally, I would like to edit comments directly in the pdf file of the paper, and then
  export the comments, along with the page numbers/line numbers, to a
  text file.

I guess this would only work in some cases, when it is possible to extract line numbers for the pdf. Is anyone aware of ways of doing something like this?

Thanks in advance!

I've just taken to returning two documents when reviewing papers:

One is my annotated PDF (created on a tablet) where I can use both margin notes if I want to comment on things, and handwritten notes if I want to draw into a figure or mark up typos. The notes in this document are the smaller comments specific to individual places in the document.
A text file in which I collect the more general, less location-specific comments such as when I discuss the paper's overall structure, how it fits into the existing literature, etc.

This has worked pretty well for me because it allows me to annotate the manuscript right away, and getting back to the bigger items when I've read it all. The only tricky part is that your PDF reader may leave your name in the PDF for all annotations (depending on whether or not you've set it up that way). If you care about your anonymity, you can always edit it out: My PDF reader puts my name in clear text in the .pdf document, and I can just search-replace it by some other string.


Discussing conditions of an offer I have been made an offer to study for a masters at a top university in London.
The offer I have been made is quite specific with requirements in individual components of the course. I have accepted the offer.

There is a strong possibility that I may miss the conditions of the offer but only by an extremely small margin and this is obviously causing me much anxiety.

I am thinking of emailing the university and asking them hypothetically what would happen if someone missed the offer by an extremely small margin just so I can start to make preparations.
I was thinking more of emailing the program head to understand what they would usually do in this situation.

My question is, is it a good idea or not?
Could it effect me in a negative way?

For minimum GPA, there isn't much utility in letting them know ahead of time.

They either have an absolute GPA cutoff or they have some flexibility. If there's an absolute cutoff, then there's not much you can do.

If there's flexibility, then you can try to argue mitigating variables at the point when you have to tell them your final grades. There's not much advantage in starting the argument before you present your grades, and in some ways this may hurt your chances because they might think you should be using your energies right now to try to improve your grades.

In all likelihood, you were accepted with awareness that your grades were weak. In that case, they may want you to go on academic probation or you might have to forgo some scholarships/funding until your grades improve. Not the end of the world.


Why is peer-review for journals free of charge but not for other academic documents? Peer-review is an important part of decision-making in academia. Journal reviewers do not get paid.

BUT funding agencies pay for the same peer-review (of research proposals). OR universities pay the external referees for reviewing PhD dissertations.

My question is: if peer-review is voluntary and a professional duty, why isn't it the case in other reviewing processes?

BUT funding agencies pay for the same peer-review (of research
  proposals).

Not necessarily.

  OR universities pay the external referees for reviewing PhD
  dissertations.

Not necessarily.

  My question is: if peer-review is voluntary and a professional duty,
  why isn't it the case in other reviewing processes?

Because compared to a journal article, those are much more intensive. It may require travel, and almost certainly involves several days of work. Therefor those types of activities are disadvantaged in my considering of "Do I have time for this?"

The way to address that? Incentives. Including monetary ones.


Is it okay to change the research area of interest that I specified in my statement of intent after submitting an application for a PhD program? I had submitted my application to the PhD program in Statistics, and in my statement of intent I specified that I would like to do a PhD research in Computational Biostatistics. I am in a Master's program right now and in this my last term I am taking a course in Statistical Learning. The problem here is that, I really like the materials covered in my Statistical Learning course, and now I want to do my PhD research in Statistical Learning / Data Mining, rather than doing Computational Biostatistics.

I already have exchanged few emails with a Biostatistics Professor at the university that I applied to, but no official contract was made between me and this Professor for me to do my PhD under this Professor's supervision. Also, the policy of this university is that new PhD students are initially not assigned a supervisor, but each new student will be choosing their supervisor towards the end of their first year, after taking the mandatory PhD reading course with a faculty member(s) that the student is interested in working with.

Is it okay for me to change the research area of interest that I specified in my statement of intent after submitting an application for a PhD program?

Thank you,

Under the conditions you state it is perfectly ok for you to change areas. I doubt that it is even necessary to state it prior to a decision being made on your application, since they don't assign supervisors early on. It might be different if you needed to pick a supervisor prior to acceptance.

In fact, you would be wise to look carefully at potential supervisors now and after you arrive to be sure you have someone compatible who does work you are interested in.

However, just as an option, you might want to correspond with the professor mentioning your "broadened" interests and asking for advice. I wouldn't claim you have made a firm decision, but are just exploring your opportunities and would like advice. However, I don't guarantee this is the right approach since I don't know either of you or your past correspondence. You have to judge it.


What is a tutor in Australia (UniMelb)? Is it like a TA? What are the responsibilities? I will be starting my PhD at University of Melbourne this October and I have questions about the tutor position. Is this like a teaching assistant (TA) position in other university systems? What does the role of tutor entail? How are these jobs awarded, is it difficult to get one, and how much does it pay?

In Australia, a tutor is typically a casual academic staff member who runs "tutorial" sessions for classes of undergraduate students (typically 20-30 per one-hour class). Tutorial sessions form part of undergraduate coursework, however attendance may or may not be mandatory depending on the course and institution.

Tutorial sessions are normally used to review concepts covered in lectures, go through practice questions, or sometimes students use these classes as a place to collaborate on assignments.

Graduate students can apply to be a tutor for a particular course subject to availability (number of existing tutors, number of students enrolled, etc.). The best way to enquire would be to email course coordinators well in advance of the start of semester to enquire as to whether positions are available.

The pay rate for tutors varies widely, but it would normally be in the ball park of $40 - $100 per hour. The high section of the pay range (e.g. being paid $100 for a one hour session) normally assumes you are also spending time preparing material for the sessions.

Contact your PhD supervisor as they may be able to provide advice and contacts to get your foot in the door.

Side note: In addition to "tutors" in Australia we also have "laboratory demonstrators" who guide groups of 10-20 students through hands-on laboratories. If you are a STEM major you may be able to get a position as a laboratory demonstrator as well. These positions pay less than a tutor, however are more widely available.


Can one professor hold more than one endowed chair? Are there examples of one person holding more than one endowed chair at the same university?

I had personally never heard of anyone occupying two endowed chairs at the same time at the same university. Even if a person had two appointments in separate departments at the same university (for example, History of Science and Psychology), they were usually listed as the:

Dunning-Kruger Professor of Psychology and History of Science

or alternately, if the endowed line (the DK-Professorship) had been bequeathed specifically to Psychology for example:

Dunning-Kruger Professor of Psychology, Professor of History of Science

So the short answer is: no.

But that being said, there are always exceptions. A little digging around at universities that have separate sub-units revealed that, at Harvard there is a person in History who holds two endowed chairs and one regular position:

Annette Gordon-Reed

Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School
Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute
[Harvard U. FAS] Professor of History

I personally think that this exception proves the rule since the three professorships are at nominally separate entities (HLS, Radcliffe I, and Harvard U FAS) that are under the singular Harvard conglomerate umbrella.


Redoing my bachelor’s degree for general specialisation and better GPA I completed my Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree, in Computing Information Systems (IS) and in Information Technology (IT), respectively, at a university in Australia four years ago. Both degrees are from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

In back home, computer science jobs are widely demanding. Even before arriving back home, l applied to many jobs in the public and private sectors but my applications were rejected mainly for the following reasons:

I have a low GPA in my bachelor’s.
IS is unbelievably misperceived as Management Information Systems.
IS is not computer science (very narrow specialisation to the point that it is not computer science anymore).

I know already some may wonder why the description of the program or courses are not reviewed. Unfortunately, this is how many organisations from all backgrounds including technical and research/Academic bases bluntly processing the applications. They pretty much match the words from the degree title to the job description. Yes, this is how irrational! Your academic achievement is based on what your undergraduate degree consists of, summaried by the title (mostly general specialisation) and GPA. In many cases, whatever builds up on that will be ignored if you are not satisfying with your first degree.

However, I am not saying that I cannot find a job that is related to my academic backgrounds. Currently, I have been working as a web developer for the past three years. But my point is that I cannot get a high-salary job because of the degree title as well as my low GPA.

Now I am seriously thinking to do a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at the same university, hoping that I receive more than two years of credit exemptions of a three years undergraduate degree. This is because I covered almost all core subjects required in the Computer Science program in my previous studies.

My questions: (1) As in the policy of Australian universities, Is there a way to get higher GPA other than doing another degree? I am asking for Australian universities because I did my two degrees in an Australian University. Also I am assuming that I would get more credit if I go back to the same university.
(2) Since the units of my both degrees cover almost all units of the undergraduate program of Computer Science, can I argue that my degrees are equivalent to the new degree without further study?

[My inner voice says this is worth it if I receive that degree with better GPA. If you were living in the same circumstances, what would you do? I would appreciate sharing your opinions and thoughts about my plan].

If you were living in the same circumstances, what would you do?

If I were you, I would do a part-time Master's degree in Computer Science while working on a not-so-high salary job.

You will waste your money and time by doing another Bachelor's degree in Computer Science. You won't gain too much. The courses are about the same except a few theory courses (depending on the program and school). At the end you still only have a Bachelor's degree.

If you do a Master's degree in Computer Science, the school will teach you more theories, more skills and you get a Master's degree at the end which can earn you more respect that you need when you look for a high-salary job.


Is there a list of research funding agencies worldwide, ordered by money spent? I have found a Wikipedia page ranking countries based on amount of funding and GDP.  Is there a list that breaks this down further by funding agencies?

For example, the wiki list says US funding, but I imagine it's not so simple or clear where it comes from.  For example, it's not clear how much comes from NSF, NIH, and DARPA.

How can I find out the largest funding agnecies in the world?

I have not found a worlwide list, but I would suggest you to ask for a Demo in these websites:

Research Professional
Pivot

I found the links here.


List of all the Universities/Colleges in USA I am looking for list of all the universities/colleges in the USA. I read somewhere that there are around 6000 universities/colleges in US. Also, I want a list of the engineering colleges in the USA

At  http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation you can download a list of all accredited US colleges, universities, and similar educational programs. I counted 9746 unique institutions.


I wrote the whole paper, but did only a very small part of the research. PhD student wants to be first author, but didn't write. Is this okay? I'm an undergraduate who recently was involved in writing a paper where I did most, if not all, of the work writing the manuscript. The PhD student basically "dumped" his project into my lap after a year of sitting on the results, and asked me to write it. I wasn't really involved in the project, except for a few small things in the beginning.

I'm currently listed as third author on the paper; the second author is completely out of the picture, and has not contributed at all to the paper (the PhD student has at least provided some edits). Should I argue that because I wrote the paper, despite not doing all of the research that the second author did, that I should be listed as second author?

As the deadline grew nearer, I found myself picking up more and more of the responsibility of the paper. I was initially happy to be third author, but when I found myself writing the entire paper, I think that my contributions are a lot greater than I had initially anticipated.

However, I've never been involved in writing a paper before, so I don't know what the etiquette is for these types of scenarios. Should the second author be listed on the paper at all, or should we swap places in authorship? I don't think that the second author will even read the paper before it's published anyways. Should I talk to the PhD student that I think I should get more recognition for the work I've done on this paper, because I feel like I honestly should be first author considering that if I didn't write this paper, it never would have been written, or should I just be happy where I am?

I'm not really sure what to do! Any advice would be immensely helpful.

Unfortunately, the time to decide these kinds of issues is well in advance of publication, and preferably in advance of doing the work and writing the paper!

The answer to your question is "it depends". Authorship on academic papers isn't so much about writing text, but about scholarship. Writing text is a part of that, but scholarship is much bigger than simply writing up results. In the guidelines I link below, scholarship is defined as:

Scholarship: Contributes significantly to the conception, design, execution, and/or analysis and interpretation of data.

If your primary contribution is mainly writing the paper, then I would tend to think that you would not be the primary author. If you have substantial contributions above and beyond writing the text of the paper, for example if you were primarily responsible for designing the investigation, or primarily responsible executing the investigation, these put you on much stronger ground to claim primary authorship.

Beyond that, there are special considerations for lead authorship. Though all authors are responsible for verifying the accuracy and integrity of the work, the lead author is the person who is primarily responsible for this. They are the one responsible for obtaining publication approval from all co-authors for publication, and then responsible for certifying the accuracy and integrity to the publisher / journal / conference / etc. Practically, the lead author is the corresponding author who interacts with journal / conference editors and reviewers. They are also typically the person who is responsible for defending the work publicly if it is to be presented at a conference.

The person primarily responsible for conducting investigations and experiments is typically the lead author for these reasons. They are the person who is most able to certify the accuracy and integrity of the work. They're also the person most familiar with the actual investigation that is being written up, and most able to discuss the details.

I have a few practical suggestions for you:

1) Most schools have specific authorship guidelines that can help with these kinds of decisions, for example:

http://research.wustl.edu/PoliciesGuidelines/Pages/AuthorshipPolicy.aspx

2) Relevant publishers, professional organizations, journals, conferences, etc. may have their own authorship policies.

Again, if your primary contribution has been writing the paper, that would not seem to indicate to me that you would be the lead author. Unfortunately, in your situation, it sounds like this graduate student has been somewhat exploitative. It makes sense to involve undergraduates in the writing process for many reasons, but it's unreasonable for you to write the entire thing. The primary scholar on a project (the lead author) should be the one responsible for drafting most of the text.


What are the chances of getting into a PhD program in math after other pursuits in life? I have a very unusual profile for a PhD program applicant. I worked a few years in business after college and have recently completed a J.D. I did not have much research experience in college except my honors thesis. My grades in math are solid but I did not take any grad level classes. After the "distractions", I have decided that I would like to study math and do math research. I do love math and was quite good at it. I'm concerned that the admissions committee might view my trajectory as unfocused.

I would appreciate any feedback and suggestion as to how I can best remedy my situation.

Thank you so much for your help.

I don't know where you are, but at least in the US, research experience is not expected before enrolling in a PhD program.  It is also not expected that you have take graduate-level classes, unless you are trying to get into a top program.  However, it is true that admissions committees want to see that you are sufficiently motivated and committed.

My suggestion is that you apply to several masters programs and maybe a few PhD programs you are interested in.  You may or may not get into the PhD programs, but it's easier to get into a master's program first.  Having done a master's in math should be sufficient evidence that you're serious about doing a PhD (if indeed you still are), and this will make it easier to get into a better PhD program.

As you will need letters of recommendation anyway, I also suggest you contact some of your math professors from undergrad and let them know of your intentions.  Then you can also ask about letters of recommendation and see if they have any suggestions for which kind of schools you should apply to.  (By looking at your CV and transcripts, they should have a reasonable sense at what kind of schools you have a good shot at.)

By the way, as a bit of encouragment, many excellent mathematicians have started off in other careers, and your situation of wanting to do a math PhD after trying something else is not uncommon.


How do you prepare for a meeting with a potential masters thesis advisor? I want to do a thesis masters with a specific teacher in the field of Antennas. I am supposed to meet with him to discuss about this in 2 weeks. I am undergraduate in electrical engineering graduating this May.

How can I prepare for this meeting?What to expect?

I guess I should bring my CV and transcript. Maybe personal projects.

When I meet with potential students, I am trying to find out whether we have mutual interests and compatible working habits. Sometimes I have a specific project in mind that I'd like to staff, and I am looking for a student with specific skills or background. Hopefully, the student is trying to find out whether he/she wants to work with me. There are a few things you can think about in advance to have a more productive meeting.

Look at some of his recent publications, and recent publications of students he is supervising. You don't have to read every word, but you should get a sense of what the advisor works on. If you happen to think of an intelligent question or potential extension to his work, great, you may bring it up in the meeting if it seems appropriate, but if nothing comes to you, don't force it.
Expect that he may ask questions to find out more about your interests, strengths, and goals, so be prepared to talk about these. I often ask potential students questions like,

What kind of work do you like to do?
What specific areas of research are most interesting to you?
Are there any classes that you especially enjoyed?
What do you want to do next (e.g. after the MS)?

Think about what questions you might want to ask him. For example, depending on your own working habits and goals you might want to know:

Where do his students end up? Do most go on to industry jobs, or PhD programs?
How does his group operate? Does he have regular one-on-one meetings and/or group meetings with students he supervises? Is his group very collaborative or do most students work individually? Does he have specific expectations about when his students will be their offices, or is he OK with students who work unusual hours or from other locations?

If you have specific technical skills that you believe will be helpful in your MS research, be prepared to bring them to his attention. (For example, if you have taken a course with a lab component that involves techniques relevant to your research interests.)

And yes, it might be helpful for you to bring your CV and transcripts to the meeting, and also email them to him a day or two before. I usually like to look at these before a meeting so that I can see if there's anything specific in them that I want to ask more about. ("I see you're taking [some course] this semester, how are you finding it? ")


What's the point of a MSc if I can just enroll in a PhD program? I am thinking about doing a PhD as I am quite interested in research, I really enjoy trying to figure problems out myself and having to find and understand the necessary information I need for my next report or project myself. This is great.

I am currently enrolled on BSc Computer Science and I am in my last year. Its going nicely so far. So long as I do well (at least a 2.1) then I will consider perusing a PhD.

The problem I have is that I don't know whether or not I should go for a MSc first before getting a PhD. I mean whats the point if I can just enroll on a PhD immediately?

I have talked to some other students who have done MSc/PhDs in their respective degrees and a lot of them tell me that I shouldn't waste a year of my life on an MSc, they say if your going to do a PhD, then an MSc is pretty pointless.

Is there truth to this?

If you know you're going to continue on to a PhD, then there is no need to pick up a MSc, unless a specific program you're interested in requires you to acquire the MSc before continuing on to a PhD.

Some people want to have the flexibility that comes with acquiring a MSc, but this is a matter of personal interest, rather than a requirement. The danger is, of course, that if you decide to stop your PhD studies, then you run the risk of having worked for several years without any degree at all.


Any tips for getting a PhD position? I would like to pursue a PhD in CS (in Europe). I have ended my master's degree like two years ago (also in Europe) and I have 4 publications in the area. Actually I am working in the industry so I have left the academic world. The question that I have is how to address a potential supervisor (which in most cases I have not known in person):

Should I sent him/her my CV straightforward and ask for possible open research topics in which he/she needs PhD students?
Should I ask him/her some assignment or task to prove that I have the enough background to fit into his research group?

I am actually very worried about how to manage this situation, it is not so easy in this time to get PhD positions in some countries.

Any advice?

While answer to your question needs more detail, but in general the answer looks like this:

Starting PhD in different universities is different. In many universities , faculty member receive application from the PhD applicant and evaluate individually. However, in other universities mostly in US, the application is evaluated by the committee.

In the first case, certainly, the best way to start is to initiate a communication with potential PhD supervisors by sending an Email -as you said- along with your CV, academic history, SoP, and research proposal (proposal is not needed in US, but should not be a problem if you send). However, I think it may not really work if you ask them for assignment (maybe it works in some universities that I don't know).

One thing I noticed when I was searching for my PhD is that many supervisor write some notes on their pages and provide some instruction for potential students to follow. If you don't simply follow them you won't be able to get position from them. Try to read their pages as carefully as you can.

I admit that there are tension in getting PhD position. But it is all right and should be okay. Some guidelines may help you figure it our.

In general, to successfully secure a PhD position, you need certain qualifications and certificates listed as following:

Bachelor degree in relevant course with high GPA/CGPA (this is must)
Master degree in relevant course with high GPA/CPGA (This is not really a MUST-have requirement, since many universities offer PhD without having Master).
English Proficiency certificate (for English speaking countries) if you English is not your native language.
2/3 reference letters in your favor (no wonder).
GRE for US-based universities.
Money to pay tuition fee (supervisors consider this as well. If you need financial assistance you should be really good compare to others).

Thats all REQUIREMENTS. But, they are not sufficient to convince a potential academician to offer you position, especially paid positions which are very competitive. If you want to enhance your chance, I think in CS you need the following qualifications:

Good quality publication(s) in good publishing venues (top ranked conference and journals)
Research experience (It may be true that Master by research graduates have better chance here).
Working experience in relevant areas
Teaching experience
Professional certificates from well-known organizations like Microsoft, and Oracle.
Volunteer jobs in the society (I heard a lot about it)
Academic or professional Awards like best student, best thesis, and best paper award.
GRE and SAT certificates
Intellectual properties (patents)

But, I think the most important thing is the first impression that you make using your first Email, CV, SoP, statement of research and so on. If they look professional and neat, it attracts potential supervisor's attention and will evaluate your application optimistically.

Don't give up. You have to find the RIGHT supervisor, in the RIGHT university, at the RIGHT time, using the RIGHT channel. Keep trying and you will succeed.


As a teaching-assistant, how can I avoid repetitive teaching? As a teacher assistant, I am always thinking about preparing my students with up-to-dated teaching materials and examples; however, I can see many TAs in my department who teach the content they used to teach in the past semesters and now it is obvious that because the students have access to the previous year's pamphlets and handouts, they are not encouraged to attend these TAs classes. Even some of these students just copy and paste the problems and assignments from the past homeworks.

  As a teacher assistant, how can I avoid being stuck in repetitive
  teaching?

However, changing the problems each semester seems really a hard work and is almost impossible because the TA has to revise more than a hundred question or even find such quantity of new problems.

  What are the techniques you use to keep your teaching material up-to-dated and
  alluring to the interested student; also to avoid lazy student to copy
  the paste semester materials?

As asked in one of the comments,

The courses I do teaching assistantship is engineering mathematics for masters students consisting solution of partial differential equations and also ordinary differential equations for bachelors students of engineering or one or two other subjects related to my major; (each semester I may have only one of these classes, I don't take simultaneous teaching assistantship classes).

I have regular classes each week for instance having two hours a week teaching assistant class.

I usually prepare some problems and after a brief review on the methods, formulas and concept; I solve those problems for students. I usually photocopy my problems for my students. Also, at the end of each topic, I assign them some problems to solve and ask their questions if they have any. Also, I give them two exams, one at the middle of the term and one at the end of each term.

An answer looking at the bigger picture:

Stop teaching the same class all the time!

If you've taught the same class so often that you can reuse your material without thinking about it much, then it's time to branch out next semester and teach something else.  Teaching a variety of classes is more fun and rewarding (as they say, the best way to learn a subject is to teach it, so this way you learn more subjects).  It is valuable experience for an academic or teaching career, and showing a breadth of teaching experience can be helpful in a job search.

Maybe your department just keeps assigning you this course and you assume you have no choice.  Try just asking to be assigned something else - contact whoever is in charge of those assignments and ask what else might be available.  Of course you might not get what you want, since making teaching assignments is always complicated and requires many constraints to be satisfied, but there's a good chance of having your preferences at least taken into account.  If you don't get what you want this semester, you might have a better chance in a future semester as they try to make it up to you.


What is the closest alternative journal to journal X? Does anyone know of a website or resource that identifies the nearest journal neighbours to journal X (any specific journal) in terms of content (perhaps defined by some distance metric defined on article keywords?). In other words, if I am rejected by journal X, which journals might consider the same paper?

Indeed, there are tools that create maps of journals in a given area. Most of them are based on citation data, i.e. they consider that citations between articles of journal A and journal B are a good indicator of proximity of the two journals (and it seems like a good definition of “proximity”). If you are interested in the topic of how such maps are created, and how they can be analyzed, you can read on the topic. For example, see “Seed journal citation network maps: A method based on network theory” and related papers.

Now, regarding online tools available, a search lead me to VOSViewer (paper), which looks like it contains exactly what you want:

A final note: while such journal maps can be useful in discovering new journals in a field you don't know well, I will add that each journal is unique, and you have to learn about the journals in your field in order to increase your chances of success at publishing articles. It may, for example, tell you that two journals are very close in scope when they actually have very different editorial policies. Read the editorial guidelines for the journals of your field and, at least as importantly, read papers of each journal to get a feeling of what the actual policy in place are.


Project may be benefitting a professor's personal company I'm currently taking an elective course on renewable energy that is open to undergraduate seniors and graduate students. Our class project is to design a solar power system for a community in a developing country (including simulations with HOMER and HelioScope) and write a final report targeted for government officials in the country.
A professor from another university has been advising us on this project over Zoom (at the invitation of the course professor), providing us with background information on the community we're designing the system. My group believes the advising professor has a vested interest in the success of this project after we found a recent contract awarded by the government in the developing country to a consulting company to build a solar power system similar to the one we're designing.
There is no direct link between the advising professor and the company since there is very little publicly available information about it, but:

The company is called _____ Technologies, where the blank is the nickname used by the advising professor.
The company has two offices listed on their website, one within ~15 miles from the university the professor teaches at and the other in the developing country we're designing the system for.
The system we're designing has the same capacity and is intended for the same location as the system specified by the contract awarded to the company.

Throughout the entire semester we have been reminded that our final reports for this project may be selected to be read by government officials in the developing country. There hasn't been any disclosure regarding a personal stake by the advising professor, and the course professor introduced him a subject matter expert who is helping out by providing advice regarding the project.
How should we approach this? The advising professor is a friend of our course professor, and we don't know if our course professor is aware of the contract.

Assuming the professor's intentions are indeed as presumed, I think this is a problem for two reasons:

The students did not consent to being used as workforce.
Regardless of the extent of their contribution to the final product, the forced use of any uncompensated workforce means somebody who is qualified to get hired and do the job  will not be getting hired, removing jobs from the market.

From a legal point of view, the professor may have every right to do what he is doing. If not, that is a problem on its own, and has been addressed in @Spark's answer. Otherwise, all the secrecy surrounding the matter was not necessary, and had he been more transparent, I highly doubt that any of the students would refuse to do the assignment.
For reasons of my own, this reminds me of the consent crisis surrounding pelvic exams performed by medical trainees on women under anesthesia. Perhaps since decades, it was considered ok for medical students and trainees to do such pelvic examinations. However, when the recipients found out about it, they felt exploited. Same here. There is a very fine line here: most women actually tend do provide consent to such practices if discussed prior to the procedure, but when found out about it afterwards, most find it shocking. The professor could have been more transparent, which would have had the additional benefit of helping the students feel not violated.
As an example supporting my latter point: in the United States, most universities typically have policies to limit the voluntary presence and participation of visiting scholars from other countries in research activities. This is because there are plenty of talented individuals from other countries who are ready to pay out of pocket to come to the US to progress their careers. It is easy for a primary investigator to run their lab relying on this freely acquired talent and preserve their grant money for other things. However, this prevents everybody (US citizens and foreigners alike) from actually getting paid research positions in labs. Policies as such aim to prevent this from happening and is for the benefit of everyone.
As far as you are concerned, some of you who graduate from your class may be potential employees for the professor in question, and if he keeps getting things done with free talent like yourselves, well, he will be needing you less. Future employment may be a very valid concern to approach your professors with.


PhD - How dependent are public universities on funding from the US Government? I had a conversation with a potential PI regarding the funding situation from a public university and he left me with the following - "There is a threat of funding cuts for science (due to Donald Trump's policies) but the department will fight to ensure that this doesn't affect students"

That sounds good but in the end, is there now a strong reason to opt for private universities to avoid issues with funding? I'm an international student picking between a very strong (top 10) public program and a top 25 ish private program. Most other decision factors are roughly similar for the two.

As Nate explained, these cuts aren't relevant to whether a school is public or private; the factors are much more complicated than that.  Public schools in many states have gotten serious funding cuts in recent years, but that's not a decision that's made by the president, but by the governor and legislature of those states.  You can research whether they've been doing so at the public institution you're looking at, but of course, the situation could easily change after the next election.  I think this is just too complicated to really try to game out how things will be impacted; I think probably the best source of information is talking to other students at the institutions and the precise financial details in your offer.