Hiding my first GRE scores from university I'm going to start applying to universities from 1st Dec onwards. In my 1st attempt of GRE, I scored 300. I'll planning to give my 2nd attempt on 21st November. I don't want to show my previous attempt score to universities and I'll receive my 2nd attempt scores around 5th December. Is it possible hide my 1st attempt score and pretend I haven't given GRE and fill my application form on 1st Dec. And on 5th Dec, when I get my score card (of 2nd attempt), I'll send it to the university pretending that was my 1st attempt. Is it possible to hide my 1st attempt score and send the GRE score after university deadline?

There's basically no reason to do this unless the first test marks you as having cheated on the exam or something exceptional in that direction.

Reasons to support what I'm saying:
1. At most (all?) institutions, GRE scores compose only one small piece of a large part of your graduate admissions application.

Unlike the LSAT, the standard practice is to just use the highest score rather than average them.
For some institutions, the value of GRE scores is to filter out exceptionally bad applicants (though others don't do this at all). And this is generally done on the basis of just a single score.
For other institutions, it's more about getting you funding from the graduate school at larger than any particular interest of the department.

Since having had previously a lower score is not meaningful in most graduate applications, it's best just to include it. Conversely, engaging in shenanigans to hide your previous scores might draw unwelcome attention to you as someone who is trying to hide something.


What to do to speed up the paper publication process? One month ago, I have submitted a paper in a journal under Taylor and Francis. 3/4 days later after the submission,  the status changed to "under review" and till now the status remained unchanged. I am in a hurry and need to get the final decision as soon as possible. What can I do to speed up the process? Should I send an email to the editor? How long it will be in "under review" stage?

You cannot speed up the process.  Everyone’s in a hurry to get their stuff published so your own situation is repeated with pretty much every submission.
More importantly, what are the odds the manuscript will be accepted as is, with no revisions?  Be ready to quickly make revisions, and be sure to address all concerns of the referees, and this will speed up the process.


What accreditation is most important for cs jobs? what accreditation do most recruiters and hr people look for when interviewing cs grads/candidates for coding jobs?

Edit to clarify: What is the main accreditation for United States computer science programs?

Why am I asking?
When applying to software engineering or full stack dev roles I would like to be as suitable a candidate as possible (I am not looking for advice on portfolio's, or certifications) An example answer may be: "ABET accredited programs are the standard for graduates of computer science looking for software engineering roles"  (Though I have heard that no one actually cares about ABET for cs. If this is the case please tell me what other accreditation I should be looking for in a school).
My background: I am looking to enroll in a computer science program.

I was a hiring manager in the information technology industry before retiring to teach.  I don't think recruiters or hiring managers pay attention to accreditation; they're interested in the reputation of the institution.  As a beginning student, you want the best education available to you.

That being said, you might want to use accreditation as one of the factors you consider in choosing a school.  For a degree, as (possibly) opposed to some certificates, you certainly want a regionally-accredited institution.  The Close Cover Before Striking School of Programming is unlikely to seize the attention of hiring managers.

Program accreditation, as awarded by ABET and others, is an indication that the institution wants to "do things right" and to maintain and enhance its reputation.  I teach in the computing discipline, and it has been my anecdotal experience that program accreditation is one indication of a high quality program.  That is something you should consider.

Disclosure: I visited the nice Federal Express lady last week to send a self-study to ABET's Computing Accreditation Commission.


Do people who work at research institutes consider themselves "academics"? My long-term goal is to work at a research institute.  While discussing my career plans with different mentors, I find that there is some confusion about whether a position at a government-funded research institute is still considered "academic." Although my question is mostly semantic in nature, I imagine there are some implications with how to market myself (i.e., what to include in a CV or how to describe myself on LinkedIn).  Since many people with posts at research institutes either come from universities or go on to become professors, I think this question is relevant for this forum.

I don't have statistics, but I'd guess that if you asked the question of individuals working in such institutes it would depend on exactly how you asked the question. I would think that the quick answer would be no, but a more reflective answer, when provided with some "definition" of academic might be yes, but would depend on that definition.

I'm also going to guess that only a small proportion of members here are from such institutes but not associated with a university.

Of course, if a person moves from an institute to a university they would then likely self-describe as an academic.

But if you just ask "what are you", you'd be more likely to hear "researcher" than "academic".

But, as you say, it is mostly semantic, given that many academics do just about the same sort of thing as institute based researchers.

The situation is complicated a bit, of course, since many such institutes are associated with universities - some very closely. It might be further complicated in situations in which industry researchers have some "training" duties, even serving as committee members for graduate students.


Review paper very similar to mine I have published a review paper a few years ago in an important journal which was recently (last month) cited by a review paper related to the topic (published in another journal).

However, a significant part of that new paper (basically an entire section of a few pages) is extremely similar to my paper. It is not copy/pasta, but very close. There are several sentences that are almost alike and even match my writing style and line of reasoning, which I consider paraphrasing plagiarism. On top of that, there is a table which was copied/pasted exactly as in my paper.

I feel that my work is not acknowledged and I feel that the authors are publishing this information as it was collected and critically analyzed by them. It took me months of reading and cross checking dozens (if not hundreds) of papers to be able to make the review and summary of that information with confidence and with a critical view.
The authors of this new paper do cite my work as a reference here and there, but they present all that information as collected from their own sources.

I just feel that this is not fair and honest, but maybe it's just my feelings and maybe are not doing anything wrong...

Can you tell me if I have reasons to act on this, and how should I proceed to get my work acknowledged properly ?

You could consider contacting the editor of the journal that published your paper. Presumably you transferred the copyright to the journal. They have a vested interest in protecting their copyright. They may be able to request the other journal make a correction on your behalf


When my work is presented by colleague at conference I don't attend, do I include on my CV? My colleague has been presenting our work overseas. I'm primary investigator and first author on the work/papers. Should I or can I be including these presentations on my CV?

My context is that I'm a doctoral student in healthcare discipline and using the CV for grant applications.

Thank you!

Credit for a presentation doesn't go only to the person who gives a talk or presents a poster. Everyone involved in the work should be acknowledged.

The standard practice I've used is credit everybody involved in the research on the poster. So if I give a poster presentation, I include any students, postdocs, or colleagues who collaborated on the research. I also indicate who the presenter was if it wasn't me.


What is the general protocol to name something after somebody (some people)? In mathematics (and other sciences) there are thousands of concepts, theorems, lemmas, etc which are named after some mathematicians (scientists). However, this nominations are not always very straightforward, especially if we are going to assign a new name for new concepts. For example, I can imagine the following scenarios and I would like to know what general protocol we should apply in each case:

A concept may have several origins in different fields and due to several individuals.
A concept is built on another concept which already have a name and this can happen several times. For example "Hecke pairs" is a concept in mathematics, then Bost and Connes make a particular Hecke pair famous, so we have "the Bost-Connes Hecke pairs". Should we name all influential people  in each stage of advancement of a concept?
If an author invents a concept, is it appropriate to name it after him/herself,  or he/she should wait others call it after his/her name?
A concept was invented by some author "X" in long time ago, and then it has evolved to something very modern and somehow different. Should we still call it by the name "X"?

Please do not hesitate to add new items if you can imagine other scenarios too.

Finally, I would like to ask another related question:

Can we use acronyms in stead of the full names, especially if the names of several people are involved?

Good questions.  I will only tackle the last two:

3) In mathematics, it is (virtually?) universally bad form to name something after yourself.  This is high on the list of things that amateurs/newbies do that make the professionals/veterans roll their eyes.

Some people have joked that the best strategy to get something named after yourself is to give your nice new concept such a terrible name (or lack of a name) that the rest of the community converges on naming it after you.

Even after something has been named after you, it is not necessarily completely kosher to speak your own name when referring to the concept.  Rob Kirby famously speaks of "the calculus of framed links" (or, I think ironically, "the calculus") where others speak of "the Kirby calculus".  At one point Armand Borel writes of "the subgroup whose name I have the honor to bear".

It gets a bit ridiculous: when you give a talk and state one of your own theorems, it is most common to write out the names of your coauthors and not write out your own name.  In my student days I saw a lot of first letter then dashes.  Nowadays I mostly see the name dashed out entirely.  Come to think of it, this reminds me of the Jewish practice of leaving letters out of the name "Jehovah", although the theological implications of treating your own name this way are much more profound.

4) I don't know whether we "should", but we often do. In general, it seems to me that mathematics has gotten used to naming things after certain people, and we often name things after people who would never have understood the things that are named after them.  The example Hilbert space (coined by von Neumann in its present generality) is a famous one.  The example Euler system has always struck me as being especially ridiculous (I asked my advisor about this, and he told me that the name comes from Euler products: that's quite a stretch).

Some people in mathematics are somehow especially good at getting things named after them.  In my field, perhaps the outstanding example is John Tate: he has curves, algebras, half of the Shafarevich-Tate group, half of Hodge-Tate weights, half of Lubin-Tate formal groups, a pairing...As a graduate student, I was struck by the fact that I was giving a talk on Galois cohomology of products of Tate curves, analyzed via Tate local duality.  The title of the talk, "Tate-Tate-Tate Stuff" was a riff on the title of the previous speaker's talk ("Hodge-Tate Stuff") and this Tate-ish ubiquity.  When Tate showed up for the talk, I got very nervous...but he was cool with it.

Needless to say, John Tate is a true luminary.  The fact that so many things bear his name is only possible because of the immense amount of fundamental work that he did.  But the converse does not hold: e.g. Barry Mazur is a mathematician with a similar impact on the field, but he has...what?  A manifold and a swindle?  (Both of these come from his work in topology at the beginning of his career.)   Instead we have the Eisenstein ideal.  These things are strange.


Is an Additional degree required to qualify myself for post doc/industry position outside my area of expertise? Can someone with a Ph.D in field X get a job in academia or industry in field Y, even if the  job posting says "PhD in field Y required?". If not how will going back to get a second post graduate degree be looked upon by academic and industry employers in field Y?

Background:

I am finishing my PhD in Mathematics and am currently on the job market.   Ideally, I would land a math post-doc position, however, I have also been looking at industry jobs (as some of these would be more satisfactory than say a 4/4 teaching load or 3/3 or whatever it would be), but most of these seem to indicate that I would need a M.S. or PhD in Computer Science.I have a background in math as well as in C.S. (B.S. in C.S., B.A. in Math).

If I don't get a post doc offer, I am considering attending a school for a master's in C.S. in machine learning or a related field.  Considering I have all the math background, I believe I would be a good candidate for a M.S. or PhD in C.S.  And there are a lot of interesting problems where the two areas overlap.

Is it reasonable to return for a second degree if I don't get my dream post-doc offers, especially to make myself more marketable to industry?  I am seriously considering this option.

Is it reasonable (your original question), yes. Is it necessary to get the job you want, probably not!

"Requirements" for a job are often just loose guidelines, and in some cases are used to scare unqualified, untalented, or under-confident people away from applying. Good employers will usually loosen these requirements (or sometimes even outright ignore all of them) for the right candidate. Someone with a B.S. in computer science and a Ph.D. in math is exactly the type of person who could potentially qualify for a position that asks for a Ph.D. in CS. Requiring a Ph.D. in CS might be used to scare away all the coding ninjas who might otherwise apply. It is all about the story you are able to tell in your resume and interviews. Make the skills you have learned while completing your math Ph.D. appear as transferable as possible. Talk to math grads who are now in industry and peck their brains. Your degree is lucrative if you know how to sell it. I wouldn't recommend getting a second Ph.D just to go out into industry. At the very least apply to a bunch of jobs and see if you get some interviews before you go off and spend 4-6 more years in school.

I know of several people who have Ph.Ds in math and applied math without a B.S. in CS who went into industry. Many of the jobs they took said Ph.D. in CS required. Some companies just want really smart mathy people in these positions.


CV with photo for postdoc application I am preparing an updated CV for application for postdoc positions. Is it necessary to put a photo on a CV for postdoc positions?

CV formats vary widely between countries. In the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands* and Sweden CVs should not include photos, as these could reveal personal information (on race, age, perhaps religion) that employers are not allowed to use under local laws (source).

In many European countries, except those mentioned above, it used to be or still is expected to include a photo on your CV. However, in internationalized areas like academia, norms are converging toward the Anglo-American/Nordic model. German universities, for example, no longer expect photos on CVs, but it's not wrong to have them. I didn't put a photo on my application and got a postdoc in Austria.

I'm not sure about China and Japan.

*Another source specifically on the Netherlands is less strict: Employers are reported as being indifferent, unless it's a high-ranking (e.g. international?) position, in which case including a photo is seen as "bad form".


How do people changing fields after PhD overcome competition with "locals"? There are a number of questions here about changing-fields.  Those are mostly about how common it is, how it affects future career, or whether a move from X to Y is feasible (example 1, 2, 3).  At any rate, it does happen — I have come across people with background in particle physics, astrophysics, or space science, who were all in postdocs in atmospheric science.  A frequent motivation may be to resolve the two body problem.  And some fields have a higher ratio of jobs to PhD graduates than others.

But if someone with a PhD in particle physics, astrophysics, or space science, applies for a post-doc in atmospheric science, how do they overcome the competition with candidates who do have PhDs specialising in (the right subfield of) atmospheric science?  Wouldn't a potential host quickly dismiss candidates who show neither experience nor interest in the relevant field, even if they have spoken the person, when other applicants are pre-trained "locals"?

Some of my best hires have had virtually no direct or recent experience in HPC, but have demonstrated a number of other extremely desirable features including:

A passion for learning and doing
A clear track record of success in their related area (including publishing, mentoring, grant-writing, etc.).
An strong awareness of their own limitations in the field and a plan for dealing with them
A strong understanding of our needs based on researching our mission, goals, website, etc. and a plan for how they fit into that.

Based on this, I've taken a flyer on a researcher or two who wasn't a perfect fit but was too passionate, engaging, and obviously successful to pass up. A ridiculously strong reference is also helpful.


Is there anything special to the CV format for PhD applicants in Germany? I want to pursue my PhD program in Germany. Is there any special format for academic CV to for applying there?

No, there is no special format for an academic CV in Germany. In general, CVs in Germany differ somewhat of Angloamerican CVs (see for example this newspaper article by The Local). It might be the case, that German professors and selection committees expect a more German CV. However, that should not be a boundary, as academia in Germany is internationally oriented. The Career Center of the RWTH Aachen offers an  English information sheet about German CVs that might be helpful. In addition, you could use the European CV from the  European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training as an orientation.


Is it normal that my adviser remove my information, pictures, everything from the lab homepage after I suspend my school? First of all, I studied in Japan. After I complete all graduate courses. There will be 3 years to submit my thesis. During this time, I drop school and work in a company. So my professor removed all my information from the lab (%100) like I was not there, even Alumni name list. I would like to ask is it common for other schools.

Consider your relationship with the professor at the time that you left. There are at least two cases I can think of where a professor may remove your information from the lab page.

You didn't finish, and you are no longer part of the lab (not quite alumni). It's not clear if you will finish. A lot of unfinished students can make a bad reputation for the prof.
The professor does not want you to represent the lab.

As you probably know, Asian culture is a lot about 'saving face'. The professor may feel disrespected by you taking a job before finishing the thesis. Or possibly even taking the 'wrong' job.

One place that the professor is very, very unlikely to remove your name is the lab publications list. Work on publication, and use that as your work reference rather than the lab webpage.

If possible, try to discuss your research with the professor.


One of my student researchers is likely falsifying some results/data. What are the consequences? Relevant info and background:

I'm an engineering Post Doc at an American university.  One of my roles is to basically function as a 'project manager' for a couple projects that have a number of Graduate-level RAs working on them.   I have a good relationship with all the RAs and all are hard-working.

I'm convinced that one of the graduate RAs is falsifying computational results/data (also called "rigging data" by many) in some cases.  Note that the individual appears to be doing this for only some cases, not all.  I have many reasons to believe this, but here is a few: (1) inability to replicate various results, (2) finishing the work at a pace I think is not feasible, (3) finishing his work at home where he surely does not have the software environment to actually complete the work.  There are also other reasons I believe this to be the case, but you get the point.  I'm also convinced this has occurred for over 1 semester, so I probably need to report this since I am responsible for overseeing all the work.  However, the student in general is a good person and hard worker. He has passed the preliminary exams and is finished with all classes - I'd hate to see him expelled from the university since he's this far into the program.

I have some questions:

What do you think could be the maximum punishment for this grad student/researcher?  I'd feel terrible if it resulted in expulsion.  I would think that you would have to receive at least one warning from the university before an expulsion, except in very extreme cases.  I'd be fine if this resulted in suspension, and even losing funding, but for anything more I'd feel bad.  What is the standard maximum punishment for these cases?  Also, what is the most likely punishment?
What is the punishment for me if I don't  report this problem?  For instance, say I just pretended ignorance.  It is extremely unlikely I would do this, but it's worth asking.
How common is this?  I would think this happens once in a while - a grad student decides to be lazy and fabricate a small portion of the overall results to avoid working the weekend or something.  An experienced professional would know this is seriously wrong, but not necessarily a mid-level PhD student.

Any advice from people with experience in this, professors, grad students, principle investigators, etc would be great

You have suspicions, but the evidence, as you sketch it here, is circumstantial. You need hard proof. Then you can (and must) act.

Falsifying data is a capital crime in academia. It wastes time, possibly years of other people's work. Don't let it get through. This person, if they indeed falsified data and would come through with this, will taint anybody and anything they had to do with - you, your group, your department, your university. Their results will be worthless, and so will be the degree you bestow on them.

You would feel sorry for that person if expulsed; but how sorry would you feel for a person who for 2 years will try to reproduce this grad student's results and fail for no fault of their own? How about their life and career? An honest mistake is one thing, but faking data? You are feeling sorry for the wrong person here; you'll spare the guilty and will let the innocent being impaled? A grad student is sufficiently mature to know better than to produce "synthetic" data.

How about the person abetting such a fabrication? Frankly, if caught, depending on the power structure that person may get away with a milder penalty "for not knowing what was going on", but in principle they should get the same, if not a harsher penalty, because they certainly cannot claim they didn't know that this is wrong; and they know the repercussions.

How common is it? Hard to say, but there were a number of large scandals (Jan Hendrik Schoen comes to mind), there is probably a halo of minor such attempts. From my own anecdotal stock: I once heard the conspiracy theory that spectroscopists would intentionally introduce "innocent" wrong factors into published formulas that could be interpreted as honest mistakes to prevent competitors from progressing. I didn't believe it, however, once I had to use such a formula from a paper, and to be satisfied I rederived it and some of its "brothers" myself in a tortuous process taking several weeks; lo and behold: I found that one of them had an integer factor wrong. It goes without saying that I have no real reason to assume it was intentional, but the conspiracy theory still lodges in the back of the mind.

Bottom line: if he really fakes data, letting this happen is not an option; but the evidence must be carefully and (important for fairness to the accused) confidentially vetted to establish whether this is indeed the case.


When should I tell a collaborator about a mistake in their work? In a few days' time, a collaborator is going to be giving a talk to our research group. He has sent me the slides in advance (just to check that it all runs OK on our system). Having looked over the slides, I have noticed a mistake in his methods (a major assumption that is not just unsupported, but definitely incorrect) that unfortunately invalidates his entire analysis. This mistake is potentially fixable, but only by going back to square one, and the new analysis could (and I suspect probably will) yield different results.

Obviously, I need to raise this with him, but when is the most tactful time to do this? My concern is that if I raise the problem immediately, it leaves him with too little time to redo the analysis before his presentation, and leaves him stewing over it knowing that his prepared work is invalid. Also, I wasn't specifically asked to give feedback at this stage. On the other hand, if I leave it until the talk, it means that I have to bring it up in front of the rest of the research group, and he has no time to prepare a response.

I feel like both situations leave me looking cruel. Which option is preferable, or is there an alternative approach that I've not thought of?

[And to anticipate the comments, I am 99% sure that there is an important mistake and that it's not just my misinterpretation]

On the other hand, if I leave it until the talk, it means that I have to bring it up in front of the rest of the research group, and he has no time to prepare a response.

Not necessarily.  You have the option of bringing it up with your collaborator privately, after the talk.  In general, a talk is not the ideal time to figure out whether the work presented is correct: that makes things stressful for the presenter, and unless the group is small and well-chosen, likely there will be some people there who are not invested enough / do not have enough background to want or be able to follow such a discussion.

If you talk to your collaborator afterwards, then this is less awkward in case you are mistaken or there is some kind of misunderstanding.  (In my experience, a lot of perceived mistakes in other people's work turns out to be some kind of misunderstanding.)  If you are right, you can still offer him help to fix the problem, in a way which might not work in the context of a talk.  In particular, in order to recognize and correct the error your collaborator will likely have to stop and think for more than a minute or two, which is the one thing that is almost impossible in a talk.

Maybe you feel bad having a talk in your research group that you strongly suspect is wrong.  Well, certainly if it turns out to be wrong that information will be conveyed to the group: your collaborator can send out new slides, a new paper, and so forth.  Moreover, just because the results are flawed doesn't necessarily mean the talk itself isn't worthwhile: it still may be.

It could be that you feel strongly that the material is so flawed that it is not worth subjecting your research group to a talk about it.  That's a tough situation.  Fortunately you've collaborated with your collaborator, so you may have some insight into how he would behave if he learned a few days before his talk that you think his results are seriously flawed.  If you've given this kind of negative feedback to him before and he's reacted well, I would risk it and let him know ASAP what you think is wrong.  If he agrees, maybe offer him the opportunity to reschedule.

For what it's worth, here's one data point: if someone that I worked with found what they thought was a flaw in my work, I would like them to tell me immediately. I would much rather cancel a talk then give a talk that I later found out was wrong, and if given a few days' notice I would probably just switch to something else.


When should I ask questions about a paper? Short intro: I am a masters student, and doing my master thesis in physics.
Currently I am working on a numerical physics project, and for calculating a formula I want to use an algorithm proposed in a recent paper. Unfortunately I am not able to fully understand and reproduce the algorithm, either because I am lacking some information, and I am also not sure if my implementation is correct at all (I am working with a numerical approximation method, they wrote, that their error changed while calculating (and therefore they had to implement a intelligent error algorithm), but my error never changes.
I am currently the person with the biggest knowledge both in numerical computation and in solving the GNLSE at my chair, so my supervisor can't help me, either.
So, when should I write the responsible author a mail and ask him about the missing parts in the paper? I don't want to annoy him with stuff like "oh look, I forgot a bracket", or similar things which I never saw. Is there a line to draw? How do I check if my questions are "clever" enough to ask?

I think a good general rule of thumb, when you don't know the authors in question, is when you've convinced yourself you can understand some piece of the paper (or resolve an apparent contradiction) with your current resources.  Once this is the case, try to craft a simple, brief and direct email which addresses the primary issue(s). Then sleep on it before sending it, as often things will be more clear the next day.

In your particular case, it seems reasonable to ask about details of the algorithm, but I would not ask about your implementation.  However, they may be willing to share their code with you if it is non-proprietary and not a complete mess (like most of my code!), which you can then use to understand the details of their algorithm and check your implementation.  (Have you already checked their websites to see if they made the code available?)


First conference: choosing which session to apply to talk at Context: I'm an early PhD student (physics) applying for a talk at a conference (APS).  I have never been to a conference before. My topic does not fit neatly into any of the session titles. There are a few focus sessions and a few standard sessions that are more specific, and only borderline relevant (if at all, some do not have detailed descriptions, so I could be misjudging), and one standard session which is very broad and definitely includes my topic in its scope. For my abstract submission, I need to choose one of the sessions to submit to.

My goals:

Have my abstract selected. I want to have the practice of giving a talk at a large conference.
Get feedback/questions on my work. Ideally this would be from someone who knows about my topic, is familiar with the literature etc. However, I would also welcome feedback on my general theoretical framework, which is general enough that a large fraction of theorists in the field will be able to understand after a decent introduction to the particular system that my work looks at.

Questions:

How do I pick a session which maximizes the chance of achieving Goal 2. while minimizing the damage to Goal 1.? I.e. if my talk falls outside of the scope of the session I applied for (but not the conference), will it increase my chance of being rejected? Or will my submission just be altered by conference organizers and moved to a different session?
Am I more likely to be accepted at a standard session than focus session?
Does APS allow for indication of interest in more than one session?

The APS March meeting is indeed a large conference, with around 50-60 sessions running concurrently. This scale means that they find a time slot (10 minutes + 2 minutes for questions) for most (close to all, it seems) submitted abstracts. If your work is at least of reasonable quality, you'll likely get that practice in. (Even if it is of dubious quality there is a chance. Google APS March meeting crackpot session if you want some entertainment.)

This scale also has the downside that it might be hard to get a lot of quality feedback on your talk - the right people might be elsewhere, and two minutes for audience feedback is not a lot. If you have specific questions, it's worth identifying experts ahead of time, and either try to schedule a meeting with them or just strike up a conversation in the corridors.

How do I pick a session which maximizes the chance of achieving Goal 2. while minimizing the damage to Goal 1.? I.e. if my talk falls outside of the scope of the session I applied for (but not the conference), will it increase my chance of being rejected? Or will my submission just be altered by conference organizers and moved to a different session?

You should just pick the category that's the best and most specific fit. Ask your advisor or colleagues for advice on which one that might be. Sometimes the descriptions are a little vague, and you can get a better idea by looking up the organizers' research interests.

If there are several reasonable fits, I'd tend to pick a focus session over a standard one, because it has a higher possibility of a) attracting people working on similar things, and b) having other talks I'd be interested in. However, keep in mind that a) is far from guaranteed, and there is a high variance that's out of your control. For example, if there is a relevant invited session at the same time, it will likely be more popular. (Protip: these tend to be the best sessions, along with ones specific to your interests.)

I have no numbers, but I doubt that there is a big effect on your acceptance chances overall for not guessing what the ideal session is. Also note that the list you see is one of sorting categories, not a final list of sessions. The organizers certainly can move your talk to another session - maybe even one not announced yet - as well as split and combine sessions. Maybe have a look at last year's program to see what it tends to be like.

Am I more likely to be accepted at a standard session than focus session?

To be clear, I don't think it matters for getting accepted to the conference in the first place. Whether your talk is scheduled in a focus or standard session is going to depend on your topic.

Does APS allow for indication of interest in more than one session?

I don't quite remember, but I don't think so. In any case, you'll find out yourself when you submit your abstract. (Maybe I'll update the answer next week after submitting mine.)


How can I protect my loose leaf textbooks? One book I ordered this semester is a loose leaf book (3-hole punched) that I'm currently keeping in a binder. Problem is, the pages are quite thin, and tear very easily near the hole punches. What can I do to help prevent this?

You could take the book to a copy shop, and have it binded properly (e.g., hot glue, hardback, etc.). Here in the Netherlands, that costs about 3 euros for a simple but effective glued back.


Making one of two Google Scholar accounts default with given email address I had a Google Scholar account with my full name with only 3 citations. Later I created another account with abbreviated name but same email address. Email was verified and most of my citations are here. Today I got an email to verify email of the old account and I did it. After that the old account has become my default with my email address. I want to make my other account with most citations default. Can anyone suggest me how to do it?

I assume that "Email was verified" refers to the verified academic email address and not the GMail address associated with your account, since that is the only extra verification step asked by Google Scholar that I know of. Then, the following should likely work:

Log in to the old account, and click on the pencil icon near your profile photo to edit your profile. There, remove the email address from the "Email for verification" field and save.
Log out and log in to the new account, add the email in the same field by editing your profile, and save. This would probably send you a verification email again, which you would need to confirm.

Further, if you wish to (imperfectly) combine both accounts, it should be possible to delete the old account in the settings, and add those articles to your new account using the "Add articles" option, but I am not entirely sure if the citations will get handled correctly.


Dealing with a huge block of similar definitions between two papers I want to write a private research paper, which aims to have an academic level. I'm not yet a participant of academia, that's why the paper is "private", in case you wondered. Anyways, since I have chosen an authors suggestions for further research as main topic, I'm going to use their definitions. So not same text, but same math symbols. (a bit more formal, though) Nevertheless, there is very much to define and it feels just wrong to "copy", even thought you can't really define it in another reasonable way.
How do you deal with somewhat equal introductions? Should I care if I use almost all predefined terms of another paper? Should I write the possibly huge boilerplate or just reference the paper X?

Overall it's just one question: What's the proper way of writing a following paper?

Just tell up front that the terminology/notation used comes from the source you used (probably they do have a book or summarizing paper which explains it clearly). Nothing wrong with that.


Is there any system that enables online office hours? Can anyone comment on their own implementation of online office hours, ideally with the following characteristics:

Free.  (I'm happy to install software on my own server if needed)
Allows for live text conversations, but, ideally, some sort of white-board as well.
Suitable for around 20 students (although a solution allowing 100 would be better).

Is there any system that enables online office hours?

Yes there are multiple systems; for instance blackboard collaborate (previously Elluminate), which would require your institution to have a license. Blackboard Collaborate is a Web conference tool (video, speech, text, white board, screen sharing etc) which is can be integrated with the Blackboard Learning System. However, it is not necessarily bound to it, and you can get a licences, and use it, without the Blackboard Learning System. You can even get a 30-day trial; http://try.bbcollaborate.com/trial/register.go

More off these systems exists, often bounded to or provided by sellers of Learning Management Systems (LMS), also known as e-Learning Systems. However there are also systems which are either used without LMS (as also is the case with Blacboard Collaborate) and systems which can be used with, for instance, Microsoft Sharepoint (such as Adobe Connect, which can also be used stand alone).

It would be helpful if OP could answer which Learning System (and possible other products) his/her institution uses. As this could indicate what is available. If OP would answer this question this answer will be edited if this would lead to new information.


Is it a must to write a paper in passive third person, for all types of papers in all journals? As I read in some papers, most verbs in a paper are written in the passive third person. For example: "This method was experimented; satisfying results were achieved..."

My question is, is this a must and all types of papers in all journals should be this way? For example, if I write "I experimented with the method", is this wrong and editors could reject the paper? If the answer is yes, what is the reason that the author has to write the paper that way?

Have a look at the style guide of the journal you're targeting. It has the only authoritative answer to your question.

Having said that, passive voice is not a "must" in the sense that active voice were unheard of in academic writing. Here is a paper written in active voice, first person singular.

Common preferences for either active or passive voice differ between disciplines. (I've heard that in mathematics the first person plural is fairly common, i.e. "we".)

Preferences also differ between authors. I find the first person singular active voice most authentic, simple, and lively. It is often emphasized, however, that passive voice sounds more neutral and objective.

When deciding which voice to use, consider the style guide first, then your discipline's customs (ask your peers!), and your personal preference last.


Practical strategies for increasing one's passion and excitement about research? I am a second year PhD student in computer science. I see other students craving to find new problems, read papers and it's like they are enjoying it and when they find a problem, they spend endless hours trying to come up with a publishable results about it.

I talked to some people and they said, many times you get to like what you do, it's not that you always end up doing what you like - implying that this kind of excitement and motivation is something that can develop in time.

Can you give me some practical strategies that help towards gaining and maintaining a high level of excitement and motivation about research? What keeps researchers like those I described constantly interested and excited to do research?

I find that a good way (for me) to get excited about my research is to work with some inexperienced research students - high school and undergraduate students.

Mentoring these students reminds me of the things that excited me about research when I first started: mainly, that we can come up with some problem that we think is interesting, that hasn't previously been solved, and then go ahead and solve it. I still think that is so cool, and seeing that reaction in my students reminds me all over again :) Also, I get to feel like an expert in this scenario, which helps makes me more excited about my work.

Generally, I find that spending time with others who are passionate and excited  encourages those feelings in me, too.


Is it tacky to note awards on a conference poster? I'm scheduled to present a poster at a conference whose material is from my recently published paper.

The paper has been recognized in a few interesting ways that would be nice to note somehow on the poster. Specifically, Science Magazine selected it as Editor's Choice, and the paper has also gotten press coverage in major national outlets. My reason for wanting to list these things is to entice passersby toward the poster.

Would it be tacky to list either or both of these forms of recognition? If not, what would be a good way to do this: perhaps a few icons in the top corner?

If the goal is to have an engaging poster, do you want to engage those who are also researching your topic/field or engage anyone who would be interested in a paper that received accolades, regardless of the topic? The latter does not necessarily result in more exchange in ideas that could further the state of knowledge on your topic, which is what poster presentations are designed to do.

My advice is to design a poster that is engaging through its use of design and content, rather than adding blurbs about its praise. You will engage the right audience, giving you opportunity to talk about the paper with people who might actually read it and use it for their work. A boring poster won't engage a wide audience, even if you include information about it's accolades.


Could I submit a paper that I'm not sure about its proof? We (including my teacher) designed a new algorithm in computer science and my teacher proved that it is good enough about its time complexity, but I'm not sure about that and worry that the proof be wrong.

Could I submit it to a journal?

It is your responsibility, not the referees', to make sure that a published proof is correct.

The reviewers should make sure that the results have some merit; some check proofs line-by-line, and some merely check that the result is plausible and that the proof methodology looks sound. Sometimes errors slip by. Nevertheless, if the result later turns out wrong, your reputation is at stake, not the one of the reviewers.

So speak with your advisor and make sure that your proof is correct before you submit. It might be the case that the proof is correct and you just haven't grasped all the details because you have less experience. Or it might be the case that there is a flaw to address and correct, in which case you should act before submission.

It is not a good research mentality to think "We only have to fool convince one or two referees", in my opinion.


Is it possible to start a PhD at 36 without taking a huge hit financially? I'm currently working as a Senior Engineer (Mechanical) for a large company. However, I am increasingly finding the work to be dull and lacking in challenge. I don't think I can bear to spend the next 20-30 years like this - I feel that I am not making use of my true abilities and I yearn to be doing something more novel and breaking new ground.

I live in the US (Boston area) and I have been looking around at what other opportunities are available; however, it seems that many of the more interesting-looking positions (which are more research-based) require a PhD. I majored in fluid dynamics and have some experience in CFD, so I am looking at positions that lean towards that area.

So, I am considering whether I should do a PhD, which seems to be a logical choice if I want to be doing more intellectually-challenging work. However, right now I am earning a good salary; I have a big mortgage to pay and a 3 year old kid to support. Doing a PhD seems like it would be a very difficult path to take, from a financial standpoint: not only would I have to give up my healthy salary, but I would also most likely have to pay a lot in tuition fees, in which case I would go from earning ++$ to -$, which would be very difficult to manage.

So, my question is: is it possible to do a PhD at my stage in life, whilst also paying the mortgage and supporting my family? What is the best way to balance this?

I should probably also mention that I have a Masters Degree in Aerospace Engineering from a top UK university (I moved to the US from the UK a few years ago).

I did my PhD in computer science in the Boston area. Through an RA and a bit of TA, I had my tuition, health insurance, and conference travel expenses covered, plus a stipend which has since risen to $36,800 before tax per year. (With a bit of googling you can look up what financial support various PhD programs offer, as well as health insurance costs for dependents -- for a large family, this might be $10,000.) That was enough for a modest but comfortable single person's lifestyle in expensive Boston, but I would struggle to support a child or mortgage with that. PhD stipends will vary by field (i.e., how much funding professors have) and by university (i.e., local cost of living).

You will know your financial situation and it's up to you to judge whether you can cut your expenses and/or dip into your savings to make that work. PhDs are getting longer, so keep in mind that you probably need to do this for about six years.

There are a few other options to make it better financially:

Ideally you can work something out with an employer where they will pay you while you do your PhD, probably in exchange for some part time work or a promise that you will continue working for them afterwards. Such an arrangement is more common for shorter programs like an MBA.

It's also possible to spend some time during the PhD working in a company that is somehow related to your studies. For example, a lot of computer science PhD students will do internships at companies like Google or Microsoft. A 10-week summer internship could give your annual income a >$10k boost.

If it all gets too much financially, you can take a year or two off your PhD to work and then come back to finish. That's not ideal, because it interrupts your work. However, it's better than needing to drop out entirely.

Overall, however, I think it's unavoidable that a PhD will entail a financial hit. A PhD is almost never a good financial decision, but if you are passionate about research it's definitely worth it.


Publishing on Scholarpedia: Experiences & feasibility (early career) Some months ago, I ran across a peer-reviewed open access encyclopedia Scholarpedia and became rather excited about the idea and the implementation. So far I haven't had a chance to publish any materials there or, even, initiate that process (obviously, I'm talking about rather small and focused articles due to my limited research experience). However, I am curious about people's perceptions about the site (from both perspectives of an independent publishing outlet and an addition to traditional journal publishing) as well as your experiences, if any, with the publication process there and interactions with the site's editorial team. Also, what do you think about the feasibility and career value of publishing on Scholarpedia for a beginner researcher and scholar?

Also, what do you think about the feasibility and career value of publishing on Scholarpedia for a beginner researcher and scholar?

It sounds feasible enough, but the career value depends on your job and goals.  If you are aiming for a job in a research university, then research publications are far more important than survey/review/expository articles, and Scholarpedia would fall into the latter category.  Occasional high-value survey articles could help your career, and a Scholarpedia article might fall into that category if it got a lot of citations (but it wouldn't have the benefit of appearing in a prestigious venue, so you'd need some argument like citations to get hiring or tenure committees to take it seriously).  Writing lots of Scholarpedia articles would actually look bad, by giving the impression that you are taking time away from research to do that.

On the other hand, if the job you have/want is more concerned with active scholarly engagement than original research, then Scholarpedia might be just fine.

If you devote a lot of time to Scholarpedia, then you'll probably have to deal with questions like "What is Scholarpedia, and is it any good?" in your job applications or tenure case.  It's worth trying out this discussion with colleagues or mentors, as a test case for gauging how hard it might be to convince other people later.


Is it safe to send official GREs almost on deadline (e.g., the day before)? I know I should send emails to the specific institutions rather than ask here. But the problem is it's faster here and I have not much time left, and it's a weekend now.

My GREs and TOEFL are already reported to me. Specifically, I'm asking about Cornell and Yale (physics) departments. They both have a deadline on 15 December. They require the scores by the deadline, but even if I order a score report to them now, ETS needs few business days to send them. So they'll arrive after 15 December, most likely.

Do you think my application will be automatically considered incomplete and dismissed?

I am in the same predicament. I asked Princeton Admissions about this and they said:

We continue to match scores to applications as we receive them, even after the deadline.  If we already have your scores on file when you submit your application, it can take up to seven business days for the scores to match.  If you recently took an exam or recently made a request to the test administrator to send the scores to Princeton, it can take up to three weeks from the test date for us to receive your official score report and electronically match your scores to your submitted application. You will be able to monitor your submitted application checklist and will see the test date once the scores have matched.  You will not see the test scores.


IEEE-format author line when one author is "Senior Member" and another is unaffiliated with IEEE I will shortly be submitting a paper to an IEEE-formatted journal. I am not affiliated with the IEEE, while my co-author is.

Currently, the author line reads like (made-up author names)

  Fred Boggs, Bob Fredds, Senior Member, IEEE

One of the reviewers expresses concern that "it is unclear if the first author is IEEE-affiliated" (no, I am not). How should I format this? I have been unable to find references in standard IEEE template files. Should I sign up for IEEE just to have something to write next to my name?

I would suggest asking the journal editor.  This seems more like a question of journal style than actual content, and the editor should be able to help with that.

I assume there is a tradition or convention that IEEE members are identified as such.  Otherwise, I don't know why you would include this information at all; I don't see why a reader would care.


Transferring to another university due to discrimination/policies/healthcare availability? I've read some threads on transferring to another university based on many factors, but mine are focused around my ability to live comfortably with workplace protections, opportunities, and medical care (among other things).

I'm fairly certain that if I laid out my concerns with my department, they would understand and be supportive (although I have no plans to do this as of yet). My question is essentially whether another university would be willing to accept my transfer for these reasons, especially this late in the game (year 2, recently finished qualifiers).

Would personal safety and access to resources be considered a respectable choice? I just don't want to shoot myself in the foot in terms of having a future, I suppose.

(Apologies if this has been posted before in some respect, also please let me know if this breaks any rules, this is my first question on this Stack!)

I'm pretty sure that in most places a transfer would be based entirely on you academic qualifications and record. While individuals may be sympathetic to your problems, most systems are too bureaucratic to include such factors in decision making. If you have a good record and have a promising future you can probably move.

In an interview, however, you could raise some issues, especially better health care opportunities, but I'd be a bit cautious about claiming a discriminatory environment unless there is already public discussion of some incidents. It isn't that such things are unlikely to exist, but that they are hard to judge and probably wouldn't overcome academic deficiencies if there are any. Just be cautious.

But you might explore your current situation with a trusted faculty member or with an office dedicated to student support before you make firm decisions.


On-campus interview: Faculty exit interview I am going to do an on-campus interview and one of the items (the last one on my last day) is "Exit interview" for one hour with 4 faculty members (search committee chair, co-chair, ...). I was wondering what this interview is?

Sounds like a panel.  Probably pretty important.  If you looked good during the day, they will want to confirm.  If questionable, gives them a chance to probe specifics.  If meeting is cancelled or senior members don't show, you can guess it's a ding.


Professor not responding to my mails after earlier discussions I have applied to a professor from another university - and from another country, in case that is relevant - about doing my undergraduate thesis under him.

He said he liked my profile and asked me for some documents (transcripts, recommendation letters, etc). After I sent him these documents, he stopped responding.

Before this I used to keep him updated about the process (when I will get my transcripts, when my recommenders will send him the letters, etc) and during this time he would always acknowledge the receipt of my mails. After my recommenders sent him their letters, he stopped responding. I know how this might look, but I have no reason to suspect that my recommenders might have anything bad to say about me. I have used their recommendations to get a scholarship previously.

This hiatus in communication took place in December last year, so this might very well be because he was on leave during this period. I verified that his university began its semester last week and mailed him, again to no response.

How do I interpret his silence? There is of course no certain answer to this. So the more important question is, should I keep politely following up - say, dropping him a mail every week or so asking if he's made a decision yet?

Note: This question on Academia.SE has a comment which says that "treat a non-response as the (reasonably expected) negative response" about emailing a professor at a foreign university. However, I don't think that applies in my case as the professor had initially expressed his interest in hiring me, so I thought he would let me know if he had later changed his mind.

This happens a lot to the super busy profs. They are too famous and receiving too many emails in their mailbox. They could easily forget about them especially if they are old. Sometimes when the email is hard to response (in your case, the decision is really hard to make), things will be getting worse. They will think about it for a moment, then something else comes up like a telephone call, and then they totally forget about your email.

Two things you could try:

Ask him exactly what you need, like an appointment
Ask his assistant about appointment
Do not over estimate yourself. When talking face-to-face, many profs are always saying positive things about you just because they are polite.


What happens to a professor if too many students drops out of his or her class? I am taking a course this semester for an upper year undergraduate course in mathematics.

The course instructor had some experience of teaching lower year courses, and her performance in those courses has been noted as very good. This is her first time teaching an upper year course, her teaching style is minimalistic, instead leaving most of the questions (even the conceptually fundamental ones) to be solved by the students.

In this semester, she had made this course too difficult. There are many reasons, most of which I think surrounded the fact that she never reinforced any of the material she taught during the lectures and never had any checks in place to assess the class's over all understanding. The homeworks where injected with some tangential, open research type problems, and there were two very difficult midterms that were a bit detached from what she taught during the lecture.

The course started with 120 students and now we are at about 30 students. We just had the final, which was very lengthy and probably will be harshly graded. We are probably expecting around 25 students to pass, based on class averages from the previous midterms.

This course does have a steep drop rate from the previous years. But by looking at the course report gathered by some student union from previous years, the course would always start with 120 and drops to something like 70. The lowest was 5 years ago when the course dropped to 50s.

What are the possible consequences for the professor in this case? She is an assistant professor.

All aspects of university teaching vary so widely across the academic world that it seems impossible to predict how a particular department will respond to a particular teaching issue without much more identifying information.  In this case even the country was not specified.  Usually I can get a pretty good sense of "inside the US" versus "outside the US" but this time I am not even sure of that.

I will speak from my own experience: namely at research universities in the US.  At such a university, being an assistant professor -- which means tenure track faculty unless otherwise qualified, so I will assume this here -- is a long-term proposition.  Although the contract is technically year-to-year, in all of my experience tenure-track faculty members who are not grossly, egregiously misperforming their duties are all but guaranteed to be retained through to the next review period.  Reviews take place roughly every 2-3 years; most commonly there is one such review before the candidate goes up for tenure.

Because of the above, it is very unlikely that any one teaching experience is going to be the cause for drastic action taken against the faculty member.  For that to occur, the "teaching mistake" would have to be something like deciding not to show up for class for the last month.  Moreover, most assistant professors have a lot to learn about university teaching: even if they have teaching experiences under their belt elsewhere, these will in some ways prepare them for teaching at their present university and in some ways lead them into locally ineffective practices.  In my field (mathematics), it is also pretty standard that most faculty members did their junior teaching at institutions with stronger undergraduate students than their tenure-track institution.  If the crowd is sympathetic, a poor teaching performance early on can actually work out quite well, because the faculty member will be able to show significant improvement in their teaching over the years they spend as an assistant professor: a trajectory which starts out a little shaky and corrects to average could be viewed as more encouraging by many than a flatly average trajectory.  (If the crowd is unsympathetic, you'll be nervous no matter what you do.)

All of this is assuming that the teaching performance in this one class was somewhat poor.  From your description it is reasonable, but not guaranteed, that the professor's performance will be viewed in that way.  The number of students who drop a class varies considerably from year to year -- for me, even teaching the same freshman calculus class at the same institution in different semesters I have had more than 30% attrition (which left me with very good evaluations from the remaining students, so there is something of a tradeoff here) and also less than 10% attrition.  However if one instructor's pass rate is half or less than another's, then that will probably be noticed.  The reaction may not be a punitive one, but the department may work to push this faculty member back to the mean.  (I don't even necessarily agree that this will make the faculty member less likely to teach the same course again.  That really depends on a lot of factors.)

Finally, one small point: you claim that the professor was very successful in teaching lower level courses, is teaching an upper level course for the first time, and has an overly "minimalistic" teaching style, not providing enough help and context to her students while demanding (you say) too much from them. That seems slightly odd to me: in my experience, it would be virtually impossible to be very successful teaching a lower level math class with the style described in the previous sentence.  Maybe the professor thought she had to encourage the more advanced students to be more independent and overcompensated in that direction...but in my experience, that's relatively unlikely.  So I have a little trouble picturing the situation.  Oh, well.


Is it important who submits the paper to the journal? I'm a PhD student in computer engineering and I have recently finished writing and editing a paper under the supervision of my professor. Now it is ready to be submitted to a journal. We have chosen an Elsevier journal. Since my professor seems to be busy, I've decided to submit the paper myself. Now my question is that:

  Is there any difference between submitting the paper myself or my
  professor? I mean if my professor submits the paper, is it better and
  may have a better influence on reviewer?

The paper contains the names of both of us (my professor and I), I just want to know if it is important who submits the paper (ant does the submission related tasks).

If it is not important, I don't want to waste the time and I want to submit the paper ASAP. Otherwise, I should wait until my professor find the enough time to submit the paper.

It doesn't really matter who submits it, since it's just an administrative procedure.

What matters is that the authors and co-authors are properly listed in both the manuscript and the submission system.

In every submission system I ever used, you have to define who is the main author and who are the co-authors, and there's usually an option to register their contact/email address so they can receive updates on the status of the procedure.


What does "Peer review in process" mean in ScholarOne submission? I have submitted my manuscript to a journal that uses ScholarOne system. After 20 days, the status is still "Peer review in process". I don't know this means the Reviewers are reviewing my manuscript, or it is still on "Editor's desk"?

The phrase "peer review in process" is vague and could mean anything: for example, the manuscript could be with reviewers, or it could be on the editor's desk, or it could even be that the reviews are complete and it's just waiting for a decision from the editor. There's no way to tell without more info, e.g. what the other statuses of the journal you submitted to are.

Either way there's nothing to do except wait. If you're impatient, write to the journal office and ask.


Tips for a successful PhD in Artifical Intelligence I recently began my Ph.D. program in AI. Coming from a different major, I would like to obtain tips that'll enable me to leave my program with a strong background in my field.

It’s not very different from other fields, really, except for the hype.

AI is super hot right now, and far too many works follow the line of: I found a dataset, trained a neural network on it, here’s the paper! (Preferably followed by a tweet/thoughtful Facebook post humblebragging about it)

It’s tiring, often unscientific, and most importantly- boring.

Focus on your fundamentals instead: be really good in math, theoretical foundations of CS, statistics, learning theory, optimization etc.

This’ll buy you a toolkit that you can use long after the current AI hype dies down.

Programming skills are good to have but should not be the focus. You can have undergraduate students do the coding (they’ll be happy to and at least in my case, they’d do a better job than me). All of the top AI people I know are not coders but theoreticians at heart.

The field is hyper competitive which means you’ll need to be ambitious and learn fast to shine.

Soft skills matter. You need to learn how to present your work clearly, both in writing and orally.


I am a secondary school student and I think I have proven an open result, how do I get it out? I am pretty firmly convinced that I have proven the non-existence of odd perfect numbers and now I am wanting to write it up (Qi: What is the best way or writing maths on a computers?). I also desire to know the general standards of publishing small results such as this so being pointed in the direction of any of the literature to give me idea what I need to write up would be much appreciated. Finally, I need to know where I can submit the result for review and (hopefully) publication. thanks in advance!

Well, as I always say, the academia is a circle with its own established convention to follow. In terms of paper publication, you have to learn how to describe things using the terminology and way of expression accepted by the academia. Normally you need several years of regular university education to master these.

But in your particular case, I think it would be easier if you could find a mentor in the university (e.g. a professor or a research) who really understands and recognize your research result and has your trust. He could teach you what is a logic and sound research and how to speak in the language used in the academic community.

Another solution is just publish your result on your personal blog (I mean a well-known blog system like google+ or wordpress, so that the timestamp of your post will tell the world you're the original holder of the idea) and try to make your result get noticed by the academic people.

If you really want to challenge people's stereotype about academic paper author, you could also try to publish paper yourself. But it is definitely extremely hard.


Does simple paper take less time for publishing? Suppose a simple to understand paper is submitted to a peer-review journal and the length of paper is also small. Suppose it takes at most 10 hours for an expert to review the paper.

Then, is it true that the paper decision will come very quickly or are there any rules regarding minimum time for decision based on journal?

In general, no. Most of the time you wait for your paper to be accepted or rejected is waiting time and process time, not review time.

First, it sits in the editor's queue until they can review it. Then, they have to find and solicit reviewers and wait for their responses.

Then they send it out to the reviewers. Then it sits in their email or on their desk until they get around to it.

Finally, they review your paper! Then type up notes and send it back. A long or a short paper or quick or hard to understand will only change this time chunk here.

Then their response sits in the editor's inbox until they read it, make a decision based on it, and pass it on to you.

(Plus repeat for any additional rounds of revision.)

As you can see, most of the time is wait time, not affected by the length or the complexity of the paper.

I've had papers wait months on a reviewers' desk.


What is the fair way to grade in this pandemic? I am a second-year student at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research.
There's been a lot of discussions among students and faculty in my institute regarding the grading system to be employed due to the coronavirus pandemic. As only the midterms could be taken, and as the number of cases has been rising daily, there aren't any plans to open the institute anytime soon to take the end semester exams.
What is the most appropriate thing to do in this situation?
Is it fair to use the midterms to decide the final grade?
Edit :
My institute follows the conventional A/B/C/D/F grades for grading, there are some suggestions by the institute and I am listing them below:

The institute wants to award grades on the basis of midterms but if you aren't satisfied with your performance, you can give an end sem exam for any particular course whenever the institute resumes (which no one has any idea), but the grade boundaries do not change.
The students have to inform two weeks after the grades are assigned that they want to take the end sem exam or not.

It depends, of course, on what you mean by "fair". If you mean correctly distinguishing top performers (high marks) from average or low performers, I don't think it is really possible without assessment. Certainly depending on a mid term exam is not fair.
But if, by "fair", you mean "not disadvantaging any student" then something like a universal "pass" for everyone is fair. This would come with a note on any transcript that grading was cancelled for this term.
One university in the US has decided that there will be three possible grades for the term just ended: Pass, Fail, and Incomplete. But even there, it depends on some sort of assessment to make the distinctions.
Even cancelling the term and returning everyone's money isn't fair.
The bigger problem, of course, is that we (myself, at least) no longer trust that this situation is temporary and we may need a fundamental re-thinking of both course delivery and student assessment. But, in the short term, some sort of bridge to whatever will follow is necessary.
Chaos requires extraordinary action.
One thing that can be done, I think, is an informal, personal, assessment to each student making suggestions about what they have missed and where they need improvement to continue. This doesn't scale well, of course. But even an ungraded "exam" will give the student some feedback that they can use, if they choose, to advance their education. But making "grading" decisions on such things is difficult to do as, then, cheating is difficult to control.


How to know a community of researchers in order to be more successful in research and getting papers accepted? Knowledge is what lies between heads of people in a community; This is an idea, I recently learned from a video tutorial on writing research papers in a youtube video. In this video, a professor presents such a model of knowledge which is different from what I already thought.

This suggests a measure of success in research is the amount of change she's able to effect in the space between heads. This video talks about community and people in power in that community. So we must know the community, its structure, who the people in power in the community are, and what knowledge is already in the space between heads.

The ideas proposed in this video seem tantalizing but I feel I haven't completely understood his thesis.  I will try to lay out what's hanging me up about this:

I want to understand what a "journal's community" is? since this professor says that will affect the acceptance of a submission.
In short, please help me understand the outlined aspects of this model of knowledge?
Note from question editor: if you have some ideas about how to improve this post further, with the goal of getting it reopened, please grab your red pen and help out.  Thanks.

We usually want to know something from a perspective. Here we want to know a community such that we as researchers can better understand how to communicate with the community through Papers. All of the aforementioned sub-questions are around this single thread.

1) Communities usually revolve around research topics, rather than journals. There are smaller and broader communities. The smallest ones are about a very specialized topic that only three research groups in the world are knowledgable about. The broadest ones are about an entire overarching research field. Of course, there also are overlaps between communities.

2+3) In my field, the only correct answer would be: Go to meetings and conferences. This is the place where people go to exchange ideas, in talks and informal conversations.

4) This is a very broad question. There can be all kinds of relations between communities, personal ones (overlaps) and emotional ones (respect, envy, disregard).


Postdoc delayed decision! Possible reasons? I have been interview 2 weeks ago for a postdoc. The panel said that they will reply early next week and its already two weeks passed since the interview. I am wondering if i should wait more or should send an email?
Interview was conducted two times because one of the committee member was busy in first day and was not able to join. The first interview was actually very good and the second interview with with this professor was not that good as the first was. Is he holding back the decision?
I have also noticed that one of my reference letter is not yet delivered, so I asked this professor and he said he will forward in 1-2 days. Could this be a reason of delay? Or 2 reference are enough to establish decision?

Thanks

If the delay could possibly cause you to miss another opportunity elsewhere, then it would be a good idea to follow up. However, if that is not the case, then patience is suggested. It hasn't been very long and people often miss deadlines even when they don't mean to. It is a busy time of year for most academics.

The question about the number of references is too local to comment on here. There may be a local rule, but certainly not a global one.


What can be done if a former supervisor is giving a bad review? If one suspects that their former grad studies supervisor is giving them a bad review for prospective employers or research opportunities, is there anything that can be done about it? In a country where negative recommendation letters are not legal (though they can refuse to give one).

Most job applications ask you to provide references or recommendation letters. Usually, you can choose which names you put on that list (and exclude former supervisors if you don't trust their reference).


When is it acceptable to report classmates who cheat on an exam? So for one of my computer science classes, we have a WhatsApp chat among all students in the class to network and help each other out with questions regarding homework, or if we have any confusion on assignments. It's a given that we can get help on these types of assignments.

But exams are proctored online, and getting help on them is strictly forbidden. However, some students in the chat have posted to the WhatsApp chat during their proctored exams, posting photos of the exams, the questions, and receiving help from others during their exams.

Why would I care about this? So normally, when a student cheats on an exam, it would have no effect on another student because the two overall students' grades are unrelated. However, the exams are curved. So these students that cheated on the exams **not only have an unfair advantage, ** but they also put other students at a disadvantage. Them doing exceptionally better than they would have has the potentiality to reduce other students grades by up to 10-15% of what it would be. So if Student A would normally get a 65 because they don't know the content, they now get a 89, thus, throwing off the entire curve. However, student B who actually DID try his hardest and studied got an 74. Their grade would have been higher with the curve, but student A cheating disrupted the curve. As a result, student B gets an 79, where they would've had an 84 without the several cheaters with almost perfect exam scores at the top.

Personally, I hate to be 'that girl' that reports someone else like a snitch... But I worked so hard in this class. I studied for 6 hours every day before this exam, and got an 83... and these people admit in chat that they would probably fail if they didn't use WhatsApp (have it screenshotted-saying that exactly). So I worked so hard and got an 83. They cheated and got a solid 90, doing no studying, no hard work on their own part. They work full time, so they complain they don't have time. But how is that my fault, or the fault of the other students that the cheater makes different life choices, or chooses to put less time into school, and we as a result should suffer? That's my rationale for wanting to report them. I play fair, so why should we suffer because they don't?

The answer to the title question is:

Always

(barring some sort of really bizarre circumstances that I am not able to think of right now).
The specifics of the situations does not make me change my answer in this case.


Do academics get paid when they give interview (or other form of appearance) in the media? Which factors determine whether academics get paid when they give interviews in the media (or other kind of media appearances, e.g. debates)?

I am mostly interested in the field of computer science, and English-speaking venues.

I am also interested any statistics giving some insights on how frequently academics get paid for media appearances, and how much.

Generally speaking, academics do not get paid to be interviewed by the mainstream media. The interview is often regarded as a chance to promote one's research, expertise and increase one's reputation and fame. Also ego may play a role (which might be exploited by the media).

Things might be different when one already has received a fair amount of exposure in the mainstream media, and is regarded and recognized as an expert on a certain matter. In those cases you might even be in the rolodex of the media agencies and journalists (which leads them to you when anything pops up in your domain). Also it makes sense to have an agent represent you when you have reached this status, because the agent can negotiate the payments and relief you from the communication overhead.
But for the vast majority of the academics that is not the case.


What is the minimum one should expect from the day-to-day supervisor? What minimal responsibilities can a student expect from their day-to-day supervisor?

In my institute, we usually have the head of the institute as the formal supervisor, followed by another day-to-day supervisor.  In fact, the head of the institute does nothing, and the day-to-day supervisor is the one who is supposed to do the PhD supervision.

A few institutions do codify the responsibilities of advisors and supervisors.  See, for example, the "Code of Practice for Supervisors, Advisors and Research Degree Candidates" from the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, and the "Policies and Guidelines on Graduate Student Advising and Supervision" from McGill University in Canada.  Are these guidelines universal?

I think it is reasonable to expect two things from a day-to-day PhD advisor. The first is a willingness to meet in a timely manner and discuss expectations and the second is a willingness to deliver on agreements in a timely manner. If there is something you need/want from your day-to-day PhD advisor, then ask him/her about it. If you are concerned that your request is unreasonable, then ask colleagues or here.

The problem with answering the question in general is summed up in the
UTS link you provided:

  At the outset it is important to acknowledge that the nature of the
  student-supervisor relationship cannot be mandated, largely because it
  needs to be flexible and take into account the particular
  circumstances of the research project, the student and the supervisor.

As far as the universality of formal guidelines about expected behavior in regards to advising students, all universities provide a faculty handbook that has some minimal guidelines, but generally it is not as long or formal as the links you provided.


Is there a term for the fact that research is done only with the means available? It could also be placed on https://english.stackexchange.com/, but I feel it is more suitable here. So: Is there a term for the (trivial) fact that research is done only with the means available?

For example a mineralogist won't study stones from the Moon if s/he doesn't have one. More specifically to my case: I am looking for a term that describes the problem of researchers who want to do something, but cannot do it by hand and not even by computers due to lack of suitable software/hardware (e.g. inverting very large matrices); and as a consequence they don't do it. (And in a verly last step, I want to find out whether there is research done about the consequences on science due to lacking software/hardware.) Is it simply called "lack of technology" or something similar?

In my university, people often call limitations as 'constraints'.

I have heard them saying:

"resource constraints" - availability of computers and machines, people

"financial constraints" - Money

"space constraints" - Physical space (room), lab etc.


Culture clashes in authorship norms I'm an American professor in a branch of theoretical science at a US institution. There is a Japanese postdoc in our group who has nearly finished writing a paper with one of the American postdocs. We're having a bit of a conflict over authorship: the Japanese postdoc wants my name to be on the publication, and I don't think it's appropriate. I chatted about the project with them while it was in progress and made a few suggestions, but fundamentally all the ideas and computations originated with the two postdocs. I think that they should take full credit for the work and I that I should take none, and this seems consistent with US authorship norms to me. However, the postdoc from Japan seems very unhappy that I don't want to sign my name on the paper. He said that if I don't, then he won't feel like he can discuss his future work-in-progress with me because he will think I am disavowing the work or that I have no time for him. I've insisted that I'm happy to discuss his work, I just think that he deserves his share of credit for it and that if my name is attached it might be perceived by others as more my work than his.

I've never encountered this situation before. At times I've been in the opposite situation, when I was a postdoc, feeling that professors were claiming undue credit for my work, so actively wanting a professor who did none of the actual work to claim authorship is difficult for me to understand. But I assume this is a difference in cultural norms; I know professors from certain countries in our field who have such a large number of publications that it's clear they're claiming authorship over this sort of project that they had very little involvement in. (I don't necessarily mean that as a criticism of them; I think that within their local academic culture, this is expected and ethical behavior.)

How should I negotiate this cultural clash?

(Also, to forestall one possible set of comments, I'm in a field where alphabetical author order is conventional, so that isn't an issue here.)

I feel like the right answer must be to continue the conversation with the Japanese postdoc and ultimately give him the responsibility to understand and accept your position.

I understand that at first he interpreted your lack of desire for coauthorship in a certain way.  And then you explained your position, as you have written here.  How did he react to that?  If someone insists on interpreting your behavior in a way different from how you are explicitly identifying it as being meant to be interpreted, what can you really do other than ensure that your future actions are consistent with the interpretation of your present behavior that you have conveyed?

I don't see any insurmountable "cultural differences" here.  In my field (mathematics, which sounds like it is equal or close to yours) there are plenty of singly authored papers by Japanese people, so obviously the practice of supervisory coauthorship is not a fundamental tenet of Japanese culture or anything like that.  Even if it were: if the postdoc is in the US working in your group, then he has volunteered in a very strong sense to participate in your local brand of Western academic culture.  If he cannot understand that actions can have different meanings in your neck of the woods than what he was used to earlier in his career (whether by virtue of his being Japanese or for some other reason), then he's headed for big trouble.

I would say: clearly explain the situation as best you can, in several sittings if necessary.  Don't put your name on a paper that you don't feel you contributed to just because that makes the postdoc uncomfortable.  In the near future, try to go a little out of your way to show that you still want to do business with the postdoc (assuming you still do, which sounds reasonable).


What are the profit margins of academic publishers? With an eye to finding the reasons behind high journal subscription costs: do journals / publishers make outrageous margins, or are prices truly justified by the costs to run journals? In other words, how does their budget look like?

tl;dr: it is a distorted market. Open-access models involve cross-subsidy. Subscription models offer inflated profit margins to large publishers (and some small, very specialist publishers).
Those market distortions mean that suppliers' budgets will conceal as much as they reveal.
You'll find a little sympathy for the devil, here. Things are rarely pure, never simple, sometimes ugly.
Market prices?
As with most questions of the form "why does this thing have this price?" the answer is: supply and demand. It's that price because that's the price at which buyers and sellers agree on a quantity of supply.
But is it a fair market?
Is there an oligopoly?
There are very low barriers to entry: pretty much anyone with a computer and web connection can start a journal and get an ISSN for it.
Some profit margins at the big publishers (Elsevier, Taylor & Francis), do suggest oligopolistic pricing - 25-35% margins look suspicious. While any sensible profit margin analysis would also look at returns on capital employed, none of the critiques of the large publishers that I've seen have done so. There are claims is that Elsevier and Taylor & Francis, and possibly others, have used bundling (selling large numbers of titles as a group subscription) to inflate their margins. Some universities tackle this by subscribing journal-by-journal.
So yes, there are indications of oligopolistic practices that inflate prices and margins.
Is there a monopsony or oligopsony?
Well, those high margins would suggest not, and indeed, there are many many hundreds of competing universities each paying publishers on their own behalf, so the demand-side looks competitive. No, there is no oligopsony

Business models
There are three primary models of publishing business.
The first model is the open-access charity model, where everything is begged, borrowed or donated. So the costs are still there - and it's typically academics and universities paying - but the costs are concealed: effectively, the donators of resources are cross-subsidising the publishing, perhaps as an investment in reputation and/or impact. This model is very rare, because it's practically impossible to build a reputation from zero without any investment. Journals that I'm aware of that use this model, inherit reputation from predecessors that used one of the other two business models.
A second model - open access, author pays - is also along the lines of academia pays, readers from industry and commerce get the research for free, just like the open-access charity model. A large number of low-quality predatory journals are able to use this model, because of the pressure on many academics to "publish or perish".
The third model, the traditional journal subscription model, is that only organisations and institutions who access the papers, pay. This is the only model where academia does not have to subsidise industrial and commercial access to research. Some low-quality predatory journals use this model, though less sucessfully than the open access-author pays model, because the subscription model has much less demand-side pressure. But this model is also how large-scale scientific publishing got established, and it's how reputations of most academics, editorial boards, weighty titles, and many conferences got established. This is the least fashionable and most successful model.


When summarizing my sources methodology for my literature review, must I add a citation? My professor told me to critically summarize and evaluate each work (for its premise, methodology, and conclusion) I am including in my Literature Review. I understand that I should provide in-text citations when mentioning the source; however, I'm not sure that I should write an in-text citation for every sentence describing how the study was conducted.

Ex: A study by Lina Aldén and Mats Hammarstedt examined cohorts of refugees who migrated to Sweden between the years 2005 and 2007, tracking them longitudinally up until 2012. Data used in the study was obtained from the LISA database at Statistics Sweden, which included information about refugees national origin, age, gender, educational attainment, number of children, employment status, and taxable income, all of which are influential in determining migrants economic contribution. The results from their analyses reveal that the average refugee had public sector net costs of SEK 142,250 (13,714€) during the first year of residency (Citation). After seven years, this cost was halved (Citation).

I added citations to the last two sentences where I mention the results of the study, but I am confused as to whether I need to add citations following each sentence describing the study. This will be in MLA if that's relevant to the question.

The answer to the question in the title is "yes, always". In your example text I would simplify to

  Aldén and Hammarstedt (2008) examined ...

This only works in the author-year notation though, not the numerical or footnote-style. In those cases (I have no experience writing in those) I would probably say

  A study by Lina Aldén and Mats Hammarstedt (Citation) examined ...

and then use a full paragraph to set off this part from the rest of the text. This implies that there is a connecting topic in the paragraph and the early citation makes it clear what the topic is.


Transforming an MA thesis for publication I am attempting to transform the content of my MA thesis into a piece of academic writing which can be published. This is the first time I have done this, and I am concerned that some of my main arguments will become lost in the process.

How can I successfully condense my writing but still present my points, when I have 6–8,000 words to work with, rather than the original 20–30,000, on the basis that many of my arguments are theoretical and need careful explanation?

Rather than thinking in terms of condensing your writing, begin with an empty document in a suitable format for publication. For purpose of writing the paper, treat your thesis as though it were your notes from a period of research.

Remember the two documents have different objectives. The MA thesis was about convincing your department that you should get the degree. The paper you are now writing is about informing the world of some research results that you think are interesting and important.

First decide on the key points that will make the paper worth publishing. Write, in the new document, the background, lines of reasoning etc. that are essential to those specific points.


Quitting undergraduate research internship I am an undergraduate in theoretical chemistry, and I am currently having a summer research internship at one of the top institutions in the world. I was dreaming about this experience for a long time, but now I think that I can't handle it.

I started to feel drained of energy six months ago when my family had serious problems in their relationships, finances and health. Now, it's two weeks into my 8-week-long internship and I am unable to focus on anything at all. The only hope I have is that intermittently I have bursts of energy, when the idea of leaving seems preposterous, but they only last 1-2 days max. I also have troubles sleeping.

I have always been a diligent student coming in top 1-5 in all examinations I sat. My internship last year also went quite well and my results from it resulted in a publication. I have never felt as I do now, and even though I'm trying really hard to pull myself together, I'm failing.

I wonder how much quitting would affect my reputation, especially if I'm being honest that the issue is about my mental health. On the other hand, if I stay but am utterly unproductive, would it be worse?

I think it would be a mistake to discuss your mental health. But you can more safely discuss the issues that might have led to it. It is natural to feel drained when family/relationship issues take so much mental and emotional effort.

The best thing, assuming you cannot continue, is to discuss the underlying issues with someone involved in the program. They might have some solutions for you that you don't see now, such as deferring your participation. Be sure to stress your interest in the program and your abilities, so that you have some positive things to say beyond any obstacles in your way.

If I were the person you talked to, I would try to find a way to make it possible. Your background suggests you would be the sort of person the PI would want to accommodate.

The comment of user scrappedcola also seems wise.


How to get postdoc funding without a mentor I see that many people say the easiest way to get a postdoc position (in US) is to come with your own funding. Some postdoc "openings" are only contingent on self-funding. But all the postdoc fellowships I see require a mentor to design a project with, so I'm confused about the process here. Where can you acquire postdoc funding without having a position already?

Generally you would select a few professors whose work you admire and write to them to say you are excited by their work, explain how you would fit in and ask if they would be willing to discuss the possibility of applying for a postdoctoral fellowship with them as the mentor. When you do this it will definately be in your interests if you were to mention specific fellowships you are thinking of applying for. It has been known for well funded professors in the US to offer to fund an exceptional candidate for the first year while they apply for funding, but I wouldn't assume this.

If the professors were positive you would then generally have a discussion about projects that would fit both of your interests. I would guess you would then write the application with their help, and cross your fingers while you waited for a response.