Author contributions include statements about experiment not conducted in study I am a graduate student submitting a computational biology paper for peer review. It is intended to be a “methodology paper” for the journal. Our paper uses new methodology to analyze several public datasets and demonstrate the use and benefits of the new methodology. There were originally two authors (my advisor and I). We added a third author (Author C) for having shared one of the datasets (data #3) with us several years ago (and it became public recently). Author C had a few discussions with us about the results of our methodology applied to data #3 and provided a few interpretations. I recently asked Author C for how we should state author contributions and two of the sentences they added were along these lines:

“Author C planned, designed, and conducted the experiment to identify results for data #3. All authors analyzed data #3.”

I was a bit concerned by both sentences.

Data #3 is open/public. I believe Author C planned, designed, and conducted the experiment to generate data #3 for their own earlier paper, where they analyzed it using traditional methods. The current paper simply uses multiple public datasets (including theirs) to demonstrate the benefits of new computational tools. It is not about the collection of data #3. I feel they simply shared data #3 for the current paper and that we analyzed it with our own methods. If we state sentence #1, we may be expected to include a detailed methods section for the wet-lab collection process of data #3, which is really a part of their own previous paper and deflects from the focus of the current “methodology paper” (it would start to feel more like a “research paper”). At that point, it would be strange to not also include method sections for the collections of data #1, 2, 4, etc. (which are also public datasets).

Regarding sentence #2, I did not feel that Author C analyzed data #3 with us in the current paper, but simply provided interpretations based on their previous analyses of the data #3 for their own paper.

I do not plan to mention my concerns with sentence #2 as it is ambiguous, but I plan to propose to Author C that we remove sentence #1 or specify that it was for a previous paper. Is it reasonable for me to ask this? Or, when a wet-lab biologist like Author C generates data, can they add that they planned, designed, and conducted the experiment to generate that data as their contribution on multiple papers, without even including the details in the methods section of the papers themselves? Could this put them (or me as first author) at risk for appearing unethical?

I am mostly hoping to better ascertain what the “norm” and ethics are in this area, and how I can handle this situation respectfully and fairly.

This seems like a totally reasonable statement which is perfectly clear. Unless you took raw bcl files or whichever image file comes direct off the scope the other author analyzed data. Clearly they collected the data. You don't have to do anything other than cite their work.

This is a normal statement and if you complain about it your collaborator will think you're weird.


Cold emailing potential search committee members I recently applied for a tenure-track position with a regional state university. I know of the college but have no contacts there. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw a proportionally large number of presentations at our field's research conference, including some presentations that align with my research. I presented at the same time as this one particular paper I am interested in by professors at this state college.

I would like to reach out to the author(s) to tell them that I would like to learn more. Should I also tell them I applied to their university?

TL;DR: it can't hurt!

It's likely that if you approach them they will at the very least know your name (they have seen your application and references). I would think that showing genuine interest in their work and hinting at a potential collaboration would help your chances of getting invited for an interview. However, directly asking about the status of your application would probably not get you anywhere.

Good luck!


Finding it difficult to keep up with coursework after joining a strong master's program in mathematics. How should I study? I am doing M.Sc. in Mathematics from a reputed college in India. But I have a humble background in mathematics. At my undergraduate college most of my batch mates were not interested in mathematics, and the teacher taught in a way that we could sail through exams. But I tried to learn on my own from online courses like NPTEL and OCW lectures and somehow I got a position for doing master's. At that time I used to study for just an hour and manage to understand, and I didn't solve any problems.
But here, the teachers are extremely good and they take 3-4 hours of lectures (i.e., one hour for each course). But now I am not able to grasp the concepts (develop intuition, visualization, looking at the big picture, etc.). To understand what my teacher/course instructor taught takes me 2-3 days of work and I am left behind. If I include memorization time then almost a week or so.
I am becoming overweight and suffering from lower back problems. If stay late up at night then I don't get sunlight giving vitamin D deficiency.
I don't know but I know I want to do research.
But how should I deal with this, I have 6 (5courses+seminar under professor).
And here we have to write an exam and be in the top 100 percent to get admitted for PhD from a reputed college with proper funding.
Please guide me, help me. How can I maintain my health and study?

It's all about time management my friend.
You need to learn how to adapt and the first step to start adapting is to set your timing schedule. A time schedule for the day with clear tasks, for the week..etc. You need to start working out or at the very least walk/squat for 5 minutes from time to time while you are doing a task for every 30 minutes, it will help your back a lot.
You need to use a good chair and use pillows behind your back to set your spine as vertical as possible. Since you are a mathematician and you'll need to set a lot to solve or prove you must check your pose while sitting despite having Vitamin D deficiency, sitting in the wrong pose will hurt your back, you'll lack focus and you'll have a headache.
You must treat your vitamin D deficiency by prescribed supplements. Depending on your deficiency level you might need high doses.
I hope that helps you.


I slept with my advisor's daughter and she is blackmailing me now. What can I do? I am doing a PhD in the US. I am in my mid-twenties and will graduate next spring. My advisor was very good and nice to me. He invited me to have dinner at his home many times and then I met his daughter. I did not realize at the beginning but she told me she had a crush on me. I have known her for some years now. She is above the age of consent.

I went to a party last week and had an extra couple of beers and I could not resist her. I am here alone and had not been with a woman in two years until then.

Now she wants to start a relationship with me and is threatening to tell her father, who is my PhD advisor, that I seduced her if I do not agree.

This is a very difficult situation for me because I do not want my advisor to think I took advantage of his daughter and the trust he has in me.

Also, I do not have time for a relationship. I just want to finish writing my thesis and then graduate.

Aside from those issues, I would love to date that girl: she is cute and hot. In normal circumstances, for me it is extremely difficult to get a girl. I am like Leonard from the Big Bang Theory TV show.

I do not know what to do. I just want to graduate and go home. But she is threatening me.

What should I do?  What should I tell my advisor? I do not want him to feel betrayed and that I took advantage of his daughter. She is the one that came to me because under normal circumstances I cannot get a girl. But also I do not want her reputation to be damaged.

I tried explaining that to her but she told me I got sex and I want to get away with it. I am afraid and worried.

Some additional information: There is no way I could have seduced her. I am not good with women.

I do not know what happened. As I can remember, I had very few interactions with her. Never shared anything but a few encounters in social meetings. That is all. And then she tells me she has feelings for me. I did nothing to get into that situation. I was invited to a party and then she appeared. I had a couple of extra beers and she offered to take me home and there she jumped over me and kissed me and I could not resist. I had been a very long time without sex.

I am very worried and scared.

First off, you haven’t committed a crime (assuming she was above the age of consent) and you haven’t engaged in academic misconduct (since there is only an indirect academic relationship between you). However, the fact that she is threatening/blackmailing you is very concerning. The fact that she is your advisor’s daughter makes things more complicated, but being threatened or blackmailed by a sexual partner would be deeply concerning in any circumstance.

I do not know the exact nature of the threats or blackmail, but I would not engage in a relationship with someone who is threatening or blackmailing me. Only you know the exact situation, but your choice of words rings alarm bells. My primary concern in your situation would be worrying about whether she will make worse threats — e.g., false rape accusations. That would be much worse than a spat with your advisor.

If I were in your situation, I would try to record my conversations with her so that I have some evidence to protect myself if she does carry out her threats. Save text messages and get a voice recorder app on your phone. (Check the laws on recording conversations in your state first.) The only thing other than “he said, she said” you have to defend yourself is such evidence.

Maybe I'm misreading the situation from your question, but your choice of words "threatening" and "blackmail" is concerning. And there is no harm in trying to protect yourself from possible future accusations. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

This is not a complete answer, but I think you should worry about being threatened/blackmailed before you worry about dealing with your advisor.

In terms of dealing with your advisor, two (conflicting) points: Generally, honesty is the best policy (as Buffy's answer emphasizes), but she is an adult and her father has no automatic "right" to know about her sex life, and there is a good chance both of you would prefer him not to know (as Nicole's answer suggests).

In terms of dealing with her: It sounds like you are still on speaking terms with her and you should absolutely try to talk things through with her. Treat her with respect and acknowledge her feelings. (See Geoffrey’s answer.)


PhD Student, written my first paper. What are my next steps? I have written a first paper for my Finance PhD. It is around 70 pages in length (double-spaced), possibly far to long.

What are my next steps?

How can I start the publication process?

Is there anything else I should do, or move onto the next paper immediately?

First of all, your advisor should judge whether your paper is worth publishing. If the answer is "yes", then go for it and follow the process outlined in the author's guide of the respective journal/conference/etc...

I don't know about the habits in finance, but a 70 pages paper sounds rather long. Maybe you should condense it (if possible / appropriate) before you ask your advisor. But it depends on the habits of your field (which you can learn by reading publications of others).

If your advisor has no answer for this question, go look for another position/advisor.

If they liked your work and ask for new ideas, you are on a good track - write down some proposals and ask for a discussion about the ideas.


Supervisor lack of knowledge I am a doctoral student in the engineering area in Europe, Belgium. I applied for the project in which I am in April and was accepted. I also had other offers from England.
I liked the subject and refused the other offers, also because of the higher salary and the beautiful city where the university is located.
I started in early September. I have always been a very dedicated student and a passionate and curious person, but now I go to work only because I have to and sometimes I feel very depressed and nervous, and these are the reasons why:

The supervisor is a good person. He looks good, is very calm, but has shown a lack of knowledge in the field where I am. She is a strong researcher, but in the field in which she graduated (which is also the field of my degree)
It is a small department with a very small laboratory. Everyone is on the paper of others and I don't think it's because they have made a great contribution to the work. I'm like a family and even if I enjoy the relaxed atmosphere, I don't feel "proud" of where I am;
When I applied, they told me that I had to do some tests in a very interesting laboratory abroad. These tests are important for having very precise data (experimental data should be compared with numerical work) and they also told me that I had to integrate a technique into a production process. I discovered the first week that people using the machine are in a very early stage, they have to learn to use the machine and this was not emphasized during my interview. Furthermore, the test will probably not be performed abroad. This has negatively affected the way I perceive them. I feel that they have selled the position without being totally honest with me;
I come from another field. I'm not really understanding most of the things they say and I doubt I am the right candidate for this position. I'm starting to think I just hired "because" I have a strong resume. To be more precise, I am a civil engineer and the field of my doctorate is more on material / mechanical engineering.
I can't change my topic: my project is part of a bigger one. This is another important reason why I wanted to go to this university. I liked not being alone on an island, but I liked the spirit of collaboration and the link with the industries. But I can't really follow them when they talk, they speak another language for me.

What do you think of this situation? I have been alone for two months.
My feelings are very bad and I don't know how to talk to my supervisor. I often think to quit and to find onother position, but I feel that is very hard in my position now. I know that i am unhappy and if I had another possibility, I would quit.

Consider forming a small study group with a few of the other students with whom you feel at least a bit of comfort. It may well be that others feel as you do, and a group in which to discuss issues, both technical and otherwise, can be good fro all of you. Three or four people is enough. If it is too big it will be less useful. It can also become a long term collaborative relationship.

Some students thrive under minimal supervision, being able to develop their own ideas. But others, most I think, require some guidance from their advisor or or other, senior, members of the lab or the faculty. Many require a lot of guidance, especially at the start. In the US, a doctoral degree normally starts with a lot of coursework, giving you the opportunity to meet faculty and build relationships. But, I think that anywhere, it is a lot to expect that a graduate student is already so well formed that no guidance or other specialized instruction is needed.

I don't think that you are in a hopeless situation, but you will need a plan for focusing your knowledge on the task at hand and acquiring skills and knowledge that you will need for success. Your lab-mates may be able to help you with this or at least give advice about the kinds of things that it would be helpful for you to know. Ideally your advisor should supply this, but not all are willing to do that, being more focused on the task at hand than on the students making it possible.

Again, I suggest that you treat this partly as a social question. "How do I get more connected to those in my lab for mutual benefit?" There is more to it than that, of course, since you come from a different field, but it might make it easier in the long run. A senior member of the lab, a student close to finishing, might be an especially valuable resource - especially if a co-advisor is not possible.


Is it plagiarism if someone else came up with something before you did? Say you come up with an idea, but X already has written about it before, even though you don't know about this.

Is it plagiarism to then publish the idea, even if during publishing you still are not aware that X came up with this idea first?

That is, can you accidentally commit plagiarism in this way?

If you publish an idea that turns out to have been previously known, but you were unaware of the prior work before you published it, then it's not plagiarism.  Depending on the circumstances, it could be considered poor scholarship, or even negligence if you really should have found the reference.  However, it's not a form of academic dishonesty if you truly didn't know.

If you come up with an idea on your own, learn that it was previously known, and subsequently publish it as original work without disclosing the prior source, then it's definitely academic dishonesty.  I wouldn't use the word "plagiarism" if you came up with the idea independently, but it's still misconduct to act like you're unaware of the idea's history.

The trickiest case is if you may have been aware of the idea in the past, but forgotten about it.  That's a horrible mess, since the rest of the world has no way of knowing whether you genuinely forgot or are being dishonest.  (You really don't want to have to argue that you aren't a thief, but rather massively screwed up.)  This is the only case in which I think accidental plagiarism is really plausible.

This is not at all common, but it can happen more easily than you might hope, so it's best to be careful to keep track of what you've heard about.  The worrisome scenario is the following: you hear Smith give a talk, but you don't really understand it or care very much, so you basically forget about it.  Some years later, you are faced with a similar problem and come up with more or less the same idea to solve it.  You don't realize how similar it is to Smith's talk, but you may have been influenced by subconscious memories, so you haven't really discovered it independently.  When you publish your idea, Smith writes to you to say "How dare you use my idea without giving me any credit!  I know you were at my talk, since we chatted afterwards, and your colleague X confirms that he remembers you there as well.  Did you really think you could get away with this?"


Submitting a paper to a peer-reviewd journal after putting it on medRxiv Most COVID-19 related papers(about 2/3) go as pre-prints on arXiv/medRxiv, and so I decided to do the same. Is it still possible to submit the same preprint to a peer-reviewed journal? In such case, are there some rules for bypassing the double-blind review? After submitting, I got an automatic reply from JMIR suggesting a submission to one of their journals. So it seems to be possible, at least.

Most journals allow this, probably pretty much all of them. If you look at a journal's Guidelines for Authors, they should normally state that this is fine (occasionally it is probably elsewhere but this information should be given on the journal's website). For example, "Statistics in Medicine"'s guidelines say "Statistics in Medicine will consider for review articles previously available as preprints. Authors may also post the submitted version of a manuscript to a preprint server at any time. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article."
I'm not aware of specific rules for peer review though - I do realise that "double blind" doesn't really mean "double blind" in this case, but what can they do? (Some journals got rid of double blind peer review because authors could be identified in too many cases too easily anyway, this being one of the reasons.)


Use paper as master’s thesis or sign up to a “direct” PhD program (and use the paper for this)? I’m currently a computer science (and mathematics) B.Sc and M.Sc student in my third year (since I started my B.Sc).

At the second year of my B.Sc studies, I have started to work on research (in computer science) and I have two (amazing) advisors, I have written (i.e, submitted) a couple of papers so far and currently working on a few more.

One of the papers I have already submitted was quite big and accepted to one of the top conferences in my field, so my advisors suggested it will be my master’s thesis.

As I’m still finishing the B.Sc courses (and the M.Sc courses at the same time) I have two options after finishing the courses:

Submit the thesis, get the B.Sc and M.Sc and sign up as a PhD student (signing up will be more of a technicality as I’m [obviously] staying with the same advisors and our current work will be a part of the PhD anyway).
Not submitting the thesis and signing up to a “direct PhD” program, which I don’t know much about, but it should basically mean doing the same as an M.Sc and a PhD minus submitting the master’s thesis.

My question is, is there any reason for me to choose the second option? Are there any benefits to having or not having a masters degree? (My thought of this right now is: Maybe the direct program will be faster if it is not allowed to include the masters thesis in the PhD thesis and then going in the direct program will allow me to include that paper in the thesis?)

Given how hot the computer science field is and will remain, I think you should get the M.Sc. Let's say something happens to you and you can't complete the PhD, at least you'll have the M.Sc. It seems to me that a lucrative job will be waiting for you even if getting the PhD via this route takes a little longer. It sounds to me like financial success is easily in your future with or without the PhD or the time it took to get the PhD.


Release software before the accompanying publication gets reviewed or accepted? Is common practice to release an academic software before the publication of the accompanying paper in a scientific journal?

What are the pros and cons of a prior release?

Edit: I am not concerned about patents, software will have an open source license.

My experience in computer science has been that papers are rarely about software per se, but rather about the science that is either enabled by or instantiated in the software.  Computer science also typically seems to have a fairly open culture where people don't worry much about being scooped.  As such, research software is often available on open repositories like GitHub or Bitbucket long before it is published---it's just that nobody notices or pays attention to it before there is a significant paper to motivate them to do so.

So, to finish answering the question:

Pros: demonstrate commitment to openness, people might use it before publication
Cons: you can't do this with something you want to patent


How to evaluate students? Resources on educational assessment for higher education Most academics are involved to some level in teaching classes and evaluating students. I never got a proper education in teaching, unlike what we had for research, and neither did any of the lecturers and professors in my community: we learnt on the job, and for the most part reproduce what we have seen others do.

There is one area where I feel this is not enough, and I could be better: evaluations. We mostly do two sorts of evaluations: written exams (exercises with series of questions) and short bibliographic or research projects (ending with a short oral defense). In addition, many high school teacher friends tell me that research on the evaluation of knowledge acquisition (or student assessment) has made huge progresses in the last 20 or 30 years, that have completely changed the way they teach and evaluate students. Yet, I don't think things has changed so much in higher education, and I don't find around me any tools (lectures, seminars, tutorials, what-ever) to learn of this topic.

So: How can one learn to better evaluate student’s skills and knowledge acquisition? What are good (and modern) resources out there on educational assessment as applied to higher education?

A good place to start to fill gaps due to lack of teacher training is with a general book or two on the topic. I was surprised when I read these at how different current attitudes and approaches are compared to when I was a student.  Consider:

John Biggs and Catherine Tangs' Teaching for Quality Learning at University: What the Student does
Paul Ramsden's Learning to Teach in Higher Education.

One of the key issues these books talk about regarding assessment is the notion of constructive alignment, which is ensuring that the assessment aligns appropriately with the learning outcomes of the course. In these books (and others) plenty of advice is given to help you better align your assessment.

Another important issue is that assessment guides the approach to learning. If students know that they only need to learn a whole bunch of facts, perhaps based on their examination of past exams, then they will adopt a shallow approach to learning and not really understand the material. Trying to encourage students to adopt a deep approach to learning is extremely important and is strongly influenced by the approach taken to assessment. These books also focus on this issue.

After reading those,
I recommend the following books, which both focus on assessment. They have given me plenty of ideas:

Assessment Matters in Higher Education: Choosing and Using Diverse Approaches edited by Sally Brown and Angela Glasner, Open University Press, 1999.
Developing Assessment in Higher Education: A Practical Guide
Sue Bloxham (Author), Pete Boyd, Open University Press, 2007.

They both written in the context of British universities, but I'm sure the ideas are fairly universally applicable.

There are also plenty of journals of higher education, if you want to get access to cutting edge research in higher education. Some are devoted to assessment, and others are more general:

Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education
Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability
Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation
The Journal of Higher Education
The Review of Higher Education
The Journal of General Education
The Journal of Excellence in College Teaching

I'm pretty sure that this only scrapes the surface.

Finally, the Google returned some resources, which lead to more detailed resources:

http://www.aacu.org/resources/assessment/index.cfm
http://www2.acs.ncsu.edu/upa/assmt/resource.htm


IS the IJSER.org journal fake? I have submitted my research paper inot a journal IJSER.org . But I don't know whether they are fake or not. Have any idea about this Journal?

It calls itself the International Journal of Scientific and Engineering Research (emphasis mine), and it published the following paper:

Nishad, T. M.  "Origin."  International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 8, Issue 7, July-2017, p. 1163.  PDF.

I quote here the abstract and an excerpt:

  Abstract— In this paper the application of Soul Sets in Theology is introduced. Based on reference of various Holy Scriptures, a link among
  some religions is derived.Using that relation, the generalized concept of God is discovered.

  Theorem 1: Origin O intersects with A.

  Proof: To prove that Origin intersects with A, It is
  enough to show that there exist a soul object
  x € O ∩ A.Consider a name of God “wadud”, The
  stem of meaning of which is Love (say x) having
  full judgment. Then x € A.It is obvious that Love
  is a soul object. Since it has full judgment,
  x € O.Hence x € O∩A .

  APPLICATION IN THEOLOGY

  Theorem 1 helps a Devotee to identify the soul
  objects in A and try to implement in life.
  [...]

I rest my case.


What should you do if you cannot reproduce published results? I am trying to reproduce published results in a paper. Those results come from numerical simulations. The original authors and I do not use the same software, and theirs is proprietary (I don't have access to it). I have tried to reproduce their results, and it works qualitatively but not quantitatively: the differences between their results and mine on typical quantities of interest are between 2 and 5 times the expected accuracy of the method.

So far, I have communicated with the original authors, trying to clear out all possible sources of error I could think of (checked that I got the tricky parts of the algorithms right, checked that the “usual” parameters that were missing from their paper had the “usual” values, everything I could think of). They are forthcoming enough, and reply to my questions quickly, but it's clear they don't want to invest time in doing any serious follow-up on their side. And without access to their software, it appears I'm stuck.

Now, my question is on how to proceed. The “ideal case” for unreproducible results is to make a detailed analysis of how and why they cannot be reproduced, and possibly find out a source of failure (or at least plausible issues). This advances the field, and is probably publishable (not in a very high-profile journal). Here, this is not possible.

I have, however, nice results that I have obtained (extending their work far beyond what was already published), and if I didn't have these differences with their paper, it would make a very attractive paper. What can I do with those? Is it possible to publish them, merely noting the different with their paper without more comment? Or are my results simply unpublishable? I welcome any comment, especially from people who have found themselves in such an uncomfortable situation!

Just publish. Publish your attempts to replicate the findings, documenting the discrepancies, together with the nice results you've obtained by extending their work. Consider sending a draft to the original authors for their comments.


What is the usual role of a faculty senate? Does it typically have any real power, or is it a rubber-stamp for the administrators? Although the presence of a senate suggests that universities nominally are governed somewhat by their faculty, it is frequently stated that there has been a trend towards greater managerialism, which has perhaps undermined the powers of faculty regarding university governance.

What current powers does a faculty senate typically have, or is it mostly a rubber-stamp for the administrators?

This question seems a bit wide to answer.  Are you interested in public or private schools?  Junior college or peer 1 research level?  US or elsewhere?  Let me answer from the prospective of a 4-year US state institution.  Generally senates seem to be what the faculty make of them, they can choose to become a rubber stamp, or choose to act...

A. The senate functions as a voice of the faculty

By filtering and focusing the concerns of the faculty, the senate functions as a key voice of the faculty.  A voice selected or elected by departments across the campus. The senate can conduct dialog with the administration, offer press releases, lobby with legislators, join in with other institutions to tackle larger issues... Whether or not they are listened to, faculty member should speak together often about the central issues at the institution.

B. Determination of General Educational Policy

Traditionally the senate allows the different disciplines to discuss joint concerns, such as the general education policy, starting new programs, ...  They are rarely the final voice (or even the key voice) in these issues, but they are an important one.  Anytime an educational goal has been set, it is the faculty who should determine the curriculum, these decisions usually pass through a senate body.

C. Maintaining the Faculty "handbook"

This may be given different names at different institutions, but the subset of policies and procedures related to tenure, promotion, post tenure review, usually fall under faculty review. Core parts are usually decided by the institutions board, but many of the details of faculty evaluations, ... are often decided by the faculty.  Even when they are not, the Senate provides a united voice to address these issues.

D. Protect the Faculty's Interests

For example, the Senate should (to the best of their ability) be involved in suggestion priorities for budgeting (whether listened to or not); in suggesting standards for academic freedom (and explaining to its member what it is, and what it is not); when necessary, the Senate should be ready to stand up for individual faculty when the institutions polices have been incorrectly applied;  ...


How do I write the methodology part of a paper if I use commercial software? I research the aerodynamics of an air vehicle. I use commercial fluid-dynamics software (we have a commercial license). However, I noticed that most papers dealing similar research use homemade software and write about it in the methods section of their papers.

Should I describe how I operate the commercial software in the methods section of my paper? If not, how should I organize this part of my paper? What aspects should I cover in my paper?

Since my background is also CFD, maybe I can help.
It is really important to mention what type of scheme you are using and what is the commercial software. Is it based on the finite volume method or finite element method? Is it a cell-centered or vertex-centered scheme? What is the order of convergence of the method you are using, are they first, second or third order in space? Which transient time-stepping scheme are you using? What is the order of convergence of that scheme? Is it implicit, explicit? Etc.

In the end, the commercial software is just the implementation of a numerical scheme that you are using to solve the Navier-Stokes equation. It is important that you highlight the equations you are solving, the type of turbulence modeling you might be using and also the properties and details of the underlying numerical scheme. Then, even if you are using a commercial software package, people will have sufficient details to understand the context of your numerical resolution.

Also, please do not forget to carry out grid-independence studies!


Paper status changed to “Decision in Process” rapidly after initial submission I submitted a paper to one of Elsevier’s journals. After a couple of days, its status changed to “with editor”. But now after about ten days from the submission date, it changed to “Decision in Process”. Is there any hope that it will not be rejected?

If there is a decision before it was sent to reviewers, it usually means a desk-rejection.  This is not necessarily a bad outcome! It means you won't waste time on a review process that is not likely to be favorable and you can move straight ahead to another journal.

Other more rare outcomes are possible, though: they could issue a "reject and resubmit" if they think the paper would be a good candidate for review after some major changes were made.  They could also be inviting you to a special issue etc.

But most likely outcome is desk rejection.


What level of sponsor ownership is normal for an industry-sponsored research project? As a graduate student, I'm involved in an industry-sponsored project in which they provide us with a large dataset (the only source of data that we have) and money, but no guidance, as they have no clue about our work. In the draft of the agreement between our university and the company they wanted full ownership of any code, algorithm, methodology or design produced as a part of this project. In addition, they wanted the right to review, edit and approve any publication based on this project or any subsequent activities performed during this project.

I just wonder whether this is a normal practice or whether they want too much!

I would consider this to be generally a rather extreme (and perhaps inappropriate) contract for a university to sign, particularly if graduate students are going to be asked to work on the project.

My key reasons for concern are:

Graduate students need to be able to publish their work openly in order to advance their careers.  An open-ended clause like this could readily become a "gag order" that prevents any publication.  Restrictions, particularly regarding the use of confidential data, may be reasonable in an academia contract.  Such restrictions, however, should have a precise and clearly delineated boundary, and it sounds like this one does not.
A contract that says "the sponsor gets all the IP" is rare even for companies doing contract research.  More typically, at least some of the IP will be reserved to the inventors, while the sponsor will be given some sort of expansive license to the IP.

This sounds like a company that doesn't want to pay the cost of contract R&D and that is instead trying to inappropriately exploit graduate students as cheap labor.  I would strongly suggest pushing back to ensure appropriate education of graduate students and to more equitably divide IP.


How open should I be with my PhD supervisor about the problems in my personal life? My marriage has been going through some problems in the last year which has affected my PhD. My supervisor has been very understanding and was keen for me not to interrupt and granted me a two month extension on my upgrade paper.

Last week my wife walked out. She came back but this totally put me off my studies. I was supposed to hand in a paper - an optional paper since this was for a journal submission - but I haven't even drafted it and the draft was due tomorrow.

My supervisor knows I have been having marriage problems but she doesn't know any details. Also she doesn't talk about her personal life much and I don't know if she's the kind of person who would be receptive to such details, so I have so far withheld them. Should I tell her my wife walked out? At the moment I have just said there was an incident. She also knows that I have been diagnosed with symptoms of moderate/severe depression, but I thought it best that she knew this since it could affect my work.

Should I carry on being vague or should I test the water and treat her like an intelligent adult and give her more context and details of my issues? Or should I just keep the personal stuff as separate as possible?

I think your vagueness is entirely appropriate and urge you to continue it. As long as your supervisor knows that there are difficulties that cause you to miss deadlines occasionally and as long as you feel she is supportive, there is no reason to say more. It would be a burden for her to know some of these things and yet, she isn't in a position to help you, other than to be understanding and supportive of your studies.

But you should seek some sort of professional help elsewhere, perhaps at the university if it has a counseling office open to you for this, perhaps elsewhere.

Also, sharing too much of the problem can start to sound whiney and like you are making excuses for things.

Keep it light. Keep your relationship to your supervisor professional. Seek personal counseling elsewhere. And good luck.


Recommendation letter submitted by applicant in application Problem

In one of the research internship programs I am applying for in Japan, the institution requires me to directly upload recommendation and, otherwise the application will not be reviewed. However, I think this is not quite appropriate since generally applicants should not know the contents of the recommendation. I contacted the admission administrators to discuss other options but they said it was that institution's policy.

Now I am wondering if I could ask for the professor's recommendation. Even though I think he will understand the situation and there are examples that the professor voluntarily send students a copy of recommendation (i.e. the students receive the letter passively), I feel actively asking for the copy truly unprofessional and may make myself look bad in professor's eyes. This matters since he will provide recommendations to other institutions, where they follow the convention and accept recommendation through direct email with the professor.

Do anyone else have similar experiences and how do you do with that? Thank you in advance.

Instead of asking the professor to give you the letter, tell him about your predicament. Mention that you checked with the internship program and were refused any alternative, and ask for advice. Be clear that you completely understand if the professor is not comfortable sharing the letter with you, and consequently would be unable to help you with this particular application.

If the professor is fine with you seeing the letter, he may offer it anyway. Even if he is not, it should not look bad on you, since you were left with no choice and were just trying to work around the program's requirement.


Is staring into the cover sheet of the exam paper and looking at the second page considered cheating? Whenever I receive an exam paper, I usually stare at the cover page. I use the word "stare" instead of just "see" because the cover page is translucent and I could faintly see the page behind if my eyes focused on the paper. I am able to read part of the questions by doing so, although most of the words are still obscured by the text on the cover page.

The thing is, I'm not sure if this counts as cheating. By "staring", I obtain some knowledge of the questions before the paper begins (albeit only partially), which may be counted as unfair. However, this is done merely by looking at the question paper which all candidates do before the exam begins. It seems virtually impossible to detect and in some cases is unavoidable. I have seen no academic policies regarding this; most papers I receive only instruct candidates not to open the paper before the exam begins.

I don't know if I'm simply overthinking this or if it is a genuine ethical issue. I abide by all examination regulations, and never thought of this as "cheating" or disallowed until recently. I would definitely appreciate it if someone could help me out here - I've been fretting over this for days. Thanks in advance!

I don't know if I'm simply overthinking this or if it is a genuine ethical issue.

You're overthinking this. You are complying with all instructions, and I presume are not even intentionally exploiting any loopholes. To the extent that simply looking at the cover page allows you to guess the subject of the first question, that is a defect (if it can even be called that) of the exam.

A good exercise to test for ethics is to consider what the reaction be if you were publicly known to have "stared at" the cover sheet. Can you imagine anyone at a disciplinary board doing anything other than laughing at the triviality of the "offense"?

Whether you should attempt to avoid seeing through the cover sheet or whether it is "fair game" is perhaps a more complex question -- however, I suggest you find more significant matters to spend your mental energies on.


Should I repeat experiment affected by external factors until achieving consistent result I am doing an experiment assumed to be performed in ideal environment although it is not, e.g. resource is fully allocated from a resource pool shared between different organisations. As my experiment is affected by external factors (e.g. a shared pool may not fully allocate all requested resource) the result sometime is different from what I expect. However, since my model is proven to work in an ideal environment, I am sure that if I keep repeating the experiment, I will get a result which is consistent with my calculation, e.g. when a shared pool have enough resource to allocate to my request.

Notably, when I run an experiment, I do it few times to get the average result. Moreover, I'm aware that an environment is not ideal and planning to address it in my future research.

So, is it acceptable to keep repeating the experiment until I get the (average) result which is consistent with my calculation? Furthermore, should I mention in my paper how many times I perform my experiment to get the presented result or just mention briefly about the imperfect environment and a plan to handle it in future research?

Update: my research aims to use shared or volunteer resources to perform computation. It is in the early state when I calculate the required resource for a job prior to its execution. In other words, during an execution, I assume that there are enough resources for me, which doesn't always happen. As I said, I'm planning to investigate dynamic calculation in the future.

No, you shouldn't do the experiment until you get the desired result.  This is poor science and borderline unethical.  (I'm sure you had no ill intent and that you are trying to deal with real-world complications.)

An experiment is flawed if it is run n times but only the results from n - 1 are used and reported. (Or anything less than n).  See Peter Norvig's page under the section "Warning Sign I2: Ignoring Publication Bias".

Beyond this, I believe that your experimental design is flawed.  You shouldn't run an experiment assuming an ideal environment when in fact the experimental environment is not ideal.  Only in theoretical models do you have the liberty to idealize your environment.  In laboratory experiments, you control the environment so you can idealize as much as possible. What you have is an experiment with confounding factors, which is not uncommon in real-world settings.

The best thing to do is to estimate the effects of the confounding factors through analysis of a theoretical model or a simulation.  In your case, which sounds like a queuing theory problem, a statistical simulation should be relatively easy.

With this estimate, you should be able to restate your hypotheses, essentially reducing the expected effects by the "loss" associated with "the shared pool not fully allocating resources when requested".


How to write a cover letter for a PhD position while involved in another PhD? Disclaimer: I am asking on behalf of my friend, so I can not give many specific information. Still, I hope the information provided will be enough to give advice.

Let's say that a person got a position as a PhD candidate in a ok lab in Europe a bit less than a year ago. After a few months, the person realized that the current PhD project is not a good match for her (language barriers, communication problems, different work approach and pace from majority of the lab...).

After considering the situation, the person decided to apply for a few a different PhD projects in North and South America where the topics are a better fit, and where it is less likely to have language problems (the person found some open applications and researched them on her own time, while still working normally for her current position).

While finishing writing the applications and cover letters, a dilemma emerged about at which point should the person mention (if at all) the current involvement in a position as a PhD candidate? Fully aware that lying is not an option, the basic dilemma is weather to mention it in the cover letter or the first interview (if it comes to that). (The CV format required for most applications is such that the current PhD position is not readily apparent).

Basically, the questions would be:

whether to mention the current position as a PhD candidate in the cover letter / application, or at some later point in the process?
when mentioning the current position as a PhD candidate, how much detail about the current position (and reasons for looking for a new one in order to leave the current one) is the right amount of detail?

Just be forthcoming about the reasons why you're switching.  If you have evidence that you have a track record of success (grades, publications, etc.) in your former PhD program, there is little reason to believe that mentioning this information will count against you.  Even if you don't have a particularly "good" track record, it's important to be forthcoming about your experience nonetheless.

The key to a successful transfer into a different PhD program is how you justify changing programs.  This falls more into the category of your personal statement, rather than your CV.  If it is because you realized that you have stronger research interests in another field and wish to pursue research with a top professor in that field, then I don't think any institution would frown upon this regardless of your track record.

I'm not familiar with your track record, and I don't want to make any assumptions about you one way or another.  Thus, I want to address one more key issue:  If you are changing programs because to avoid "impending failure" at your previous PhD program, this will most likely be interpreted as "jumping ship" and institutions will not look highly upon this.  If you happen to be failing in your PhD program, you need to do some introspection and ask yourself some tough questions.  If a PhD is what I really want, why am I failing?  The more open and forthcoming you are about these questions in your personal statement, the more strongly you can justify your reasons for pursuing a PhD in another institution.


Going back to do a Postdoc at 35? I have been offered a postdoc position at Cambridge University. That's great, because two years ago I wanted to go back to academia and went to see my PhD supervisor (I finished my PhD in engineering in 2007) to ask if he might have  or know of a postdoc position I'd be suitable for. The answer was no, so a few months later I got a job as a structural engineer in Tokyo and wrote the whole thing off.

Last year I quit the Tokyo gig and moved back to Europe, because I couldn't keep up with the working hours in Japan anymore. I was looking for a job again, when out of the blue, my PhD supervisor contacted me, saying that he now had a postdoc position. I applied, and I got an offer, although I don't know yet how much I will be paid.

Of course, as things always seem to go, I also got an offer to work as a programmer for an airline company, right here where I live. The pay is similar, and the training will be very good.

In my heart of hearts I would like to take the Postdoc, but I am very worried about what will happen after the three years are over.

I am 35, nearly 36 now, have worked as a structural engineer and programmer in the past. I have a family (two small kids) and need to be able to look after them all. Fortunately I have enough savings to be able to take a (small) hit on the salary whilst doing my postdoc, but... what I don't want is ending up doing the postdoc, and then being stuck.

The plan was to do the postdoc, then get a lecturing position. But I have read many articles lamenting how difficult it is for the majority of postdocs to find a long-term position. I could have done that in my twenties, maybe, but approaching forty that is pretty scary.
From a material point of view, I am already significantly behind my peers who went to work straight after they finished their masters degree and don't really want to fall so far behind that I'll never catch up.

My question is, how true are the reports of PostDocs being forced to move from PostDoc to PostDoc (especially in the UK)? Does anybody know of somebody who did something similar to what I am planning to do (and did it successfully)?

I am currently a postdoc in the UK. My situation is similar to yours: in my thirties, have a family and little children. This is my first postdoc, which I took in my thirties. I also wish to pursue a career in academia. But unlike yours, I have no industrial experience and I am not from the EU. Cost wise, if you and your family are non-EU nationals, you will need to pay a lot more so that your family can stay in the UK with you. Still, regardless of your nationality, it can be a bit hard to support the family if you are the sole breadwinner, but it is not impossible.

Do you intend to continue living in the UK, or are you open to moving to another country at the end of your postdoc? Your experience of living in different countries plus your industrial experience are an advantage should you find that there are no suitable academic opportunities in the UK after your postdoc.

What I would think is more important is to have an understanding and support from your wife. As a postdoc, you might have more freedom and flexibility over how you manage your time at work, but the pressure to publish may be high. It is important to know your limitations now that you have a family. It is likewise important for your wife to know what to expect. Having said this, considering you experienced Japanese working culture, what I have just said might not be a problem for you.

All in all, it looks to me that there is nothing for you to worry about going back to do a postdoc in the UK at 35, at least not from the technical aspects above. The deciding factors could be something more practical or personal, but it could be that I have said this from my own limited perspective.


Can a PhD thesis be confidential? A colleague of mine had an excellent PhD project and she published good papers during her PhD. When I asked her to give me her PhD thesis, she told me she can't because her PhD project was confidential (commercial, military, ...).

I wonder if a PhD thesis can be confidential? Isn't it available in her university library?

Can a funding organization set this limitation for the data included in a PhD thesis?

Anyway, what if her future employer asks for her PhD thesis?

There are two ways that a PhD can have restricted access.

First, many people will pay to keep access to their thesis restricted so that they can try to publish it. The policies vary depending on the company the university uses to publish the theses. Usually, however, the time is 3 years or less.

Second, the government can classify the thesis in part or in whole. This happens when something discovered or revealed in the thesis is considered to be a matter of national security. Even though the information may not have originally been classified, and your friend may not even have access to classified material, in many countries—and certainly the U.S.—the government retains the right to restrict information through the classification process ex post of any information that it deems threatening to national security. The level of classification depends upon the level of threat, and your friend could be subject to legal repercussions from sharing that information with you.


When writing a peer review is it better protocol to quote parts of the orginal work or paraphrase? I am writing a peer review exercise and I am not sure when referring to specific parts of the paper whether it is better to quote or paraphrase them. What is the correct protocol on such this?

The review decides whether the paper gets published in a small magazine, whether that makes any difference to these things, I am not sure.

For a review it doesn't matter that much, but it's safer to quote, so that there's no chance of misinterpretation.


Why is Google Scholar popular in some fields but not in others? In disciplines such as computer science and engineering, Google Scholar is a fundamental tool in not only searching for recent work of a researcher but is also frequently used as a metric for the proficiency of the researcher.

I've noticed in many other fields, e.g. political science, or even math, Google Scholar is not nearly as popular.

Does anyone have any insight into why this is the case? Do these other fields have other tools they use to follow researchers or measure their output? Perhaps these factors are not as important in these other fields?

Math already has an excellent tool, MathSciNet.  And, more importantly, MathSciNet is much more accurate than Google Scholar.

If you are a mathematician, look up yourself in both places and compare!


I reported several students for cheating, will anything ever be done by the math dept? There was an elaborate scheme to cheat on an in-class final exam a couple of semesters ago.  Students in the back of the room set up an exam-swapping strategy: circle a problem that you didn't know how to do, and pass it along to someone who may be able to solve / prove it for you, and hand it back over to you.

I sat in the first row, so I had no clue about this until the end of the (very tricky and very long) exam.  The very old professor, charming, still very sharp, and very great at teaching, was busy grading algebra final exams from his other section of class that he taught that semester.  He was probably completely oblivious to the activity around the back of the classroom.

So, these students bragged with lots of chuckles and smiles, and I had told one person that he must report this; his answer was simply, "no, I can't, because I was in on it, too."

I met with the professor, whom I have a good relationship with, and he simply said thank you and that he'll report it to the Department.

He focused a bit more on his belief that "those students eventually won't be able to deliver the goods" and to "believe in karma, they will get theirs."

Is there any way the Department could have looked into this and done something about it?  I am at peace with what has happened, and I have moved on, but I am also curious about the internal workings of a respected math department, and how it deals with elaborate cheating schemes.

If you're curious how your department dealt with your report, here are some things you can do:

Ask this elderly professor what was done.  Ask him how many proctors he now brings with him to exams.
Observe exams given by this elderly professor at the end of this semester, to see if anything has changed.
Ask your department what they do to prevent cheating.  But first, familiarize yourself with your university's academic integrity policy.

Note that it is not too late to report your observation directly to your department.  Ask them to use a larger room, spread the students out, and bring proctors to the exam, to prevent problems.


Applying for postdoc fellowship vs applying for lectureship I finished my PhD 2.5 years ago (Computer Science), and have since been working as a post-doc at a top university. I've decided that I want to pursue an academic career, and I'm trying to decide what step to take next. I'm at the stage where I could start applying for lectureships (assistant professor), and there's a decent chance that I would be successful -- at some university at least, even if not the very top ones.

However, the other option, which I have been recommended to go for, is to apply for a post-doctoral research fellowship. These prestigious fellowships are sponsored by independent funding bodies, for people with up to 3 years experience since their PhD, and seem to be designed for the very best academics. (If you are familiar with the UK, then I have the Royal Academy and EPSRC fellowships in mind.) However, my worry is that because these last for up to 5 years, then by completion, I will then have had around 8 years of post-doctoral experience. This seems a very long time before I apply for my first lectureship -- and if I started applying for lectureships now, I could have risen to senior lecturer (associate professor) by then.

So, my question is, if I apply for one of these fellowships and am successful, why would it actually be a positive career move for me? It would give me time to focus on my research which is great, but for my long-term career, wouldn't the delay in taking up my first lectureship position ultimately have a negative impact?

Thank for any advice!

It is never too early to apply for permanent positions in academia. I would simultaneously apply for both the fellowships and lecturer positions. Once you get a 5 years fellowships (and I assume you are talking about the 5 years advanced postdoc fellowships), you can negotiate a permanent lecturer position. From the university's side, they get a person who has already been successful in obtaining a prestigious fellowship without any significant financial burden for the first 5 years (because the fellowship would pay most of your salary)! From the candidate's side, he\she gets a permanent position without having to do significant teaching or administrators duties in the first 5 years. I have seen many of my colleagues successfully going this route. These may or may not apply to Oxford-Cambridge for whom such a fellowship is not enough to offer a permanent position. But I also know people who got their fellowships hosted by Oxford-Cambridge, and then negotiated a permanent position with another university in the mid-way during their fellowship, i.e., porting their fellowships to another institution which offered them permanent positions.
In fact, I view this as a great way to transition from a postdoc to permanent position.

I wish such an option was possible in the USA. In the USA, such 4-5 years 'fellowships'(CAREER awards) can be applied only after you secure a tenure-track position at a university.


How can I post my own version of a published SPIE paper on arXiv? SPIE policy for web posting of papers states the following:

SPIE grants to authors (and their employers) of papers, posters, and presentation recordings published in SPIE Proceedings or SPIE Journals on the SPIE Digital Library (hereinafter "publications") the right to post an author-prepared version or an official version (preferred version) of the publication on an internal or external server controlled exclusively by the author/employer, provided that (a) such posting is noncommercial in nature and the publication is made available to users without charge; (b) an appropriate copyright notice and citation appear with the publication; and (c) a link to SPIE's official online version of the publication is provided using the item's DOI.
This authorization does not extend to third-party web sites not owned and maintained by the author/employer such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, YouTube, etc.
SPIE content published under a Creative Commons CC-BY license is exempt from the above requirements.

Emphasis in the above text is mine.
So if I understand correctly, once the paper is accepted in SPIE (journal or proceedings) for publication, then I cannot post it on arXiv (since the arXiv server is neither exclusively controlled by me/my employer). I am talking about my own version, not the published one.
I tried to submit my own version on arXiv and they understandably rejected it saying that they cannot accept anything that has a journal copyright. So is there a way around it for me to submit my article to arXiv?
If not, I think I can surely post it on my own website, right? I will post the copyright and the DOI in that version.

So is there a way around it for me to submit my article to arXiv?

It's reasonable for you to ask SPIE for permission to post the paper to the arXiv (under conditions (a), (b), and (c)).  They might not grant permission, but it can't hurt to ask.  Even if they deny permission, at least you've given them feedback about what authors like you want.

One possibility is that they actively object to posting on the arXiv.  In that case, you are probably stuck.  Another possibility is that they don't specifically object to the arXiv, but don't want to authorize arbitrary websites they are unfamiliar with or other websites they object to.  In that case, they might grant you permission.  If they do, then that should suffice for the arXiv administrators.

  If not, I think I can surely post it on my own website, right?

Yes, assuming it is controlled exclusively by you or your employer.  (That's true for most people's websites, but it could fail in unusual cases, for example if you are treating a social network page as your home page.)


What is a 'classic paper', and when do we refer to a work as a 'classic work'? I have come across a few times in research papers or in books, where the authors refer a past (mostly an old) research paper as classic paper. For example, in a book Bratko refers the following:

  The procedural meaning of Prolog is based on the resolution principle for mechanical theorem proving introduced by Robinson in his classic paper (1965).
  [1]

In another example, the author mention such a statement in the abstract itself,

  Notes that the stimulation from a classic paper in the heuristics and biases tradition does not come only from the insights provided into processes of judgment and decision making; ... [2]

What is a classic work? Can we say a work as 'classic work', if it cited more number of times? Or, it is a breakthrough work? Then, how do we define a breakthrough work?

[1] Bratko, Ivan. Prolog programming for artificial intelligence. Pearson education, 2001.

[2] Sloman, S. A. (2002). Two systems of reasoning. In T. Gilovich, D. Griffin, & D. Kahneman (Eds.), Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment (pp. 379-396).

This isn't something that is decided based on objective measures - it's a statement of the author's opinion that history has shown the paper to be very important.

If you, in your professional opinion, believe that the paper has had a major influence on an area of research, for a considerable period of time, then you could call it "classic".  If you don't believe that, or you're not sure, or you don't think you have enough experience to judge, then don't use the word.


Is taking ideas from an art critic plagiarism? A student submitted a paper in an art history class that contained some ideas from art critics she read about, and whose ideas she agreed with. The student didn't cite the critics as source, but claimed it wasn't plagiarism because their ideas were merely their own subjective judgments, or opinions, not facts or findings; furthermore, they were opinions she agreed with.

Yes, it's plagiarism if she learned novel or interesting ideas from an art critic and then used them in her own paper without crediting the source.  It doesn't matter whether the ideas are facts or opinions.

For commonplace opinions with nothing novel or interesting about them, there's no need for a citation.  However, that's presumably not the case here, since one couldn't attribute such opinions to a specific critic.


How do departments evaluate and update their course requirements? To begin with the main question: how do academic departments evaluate their course requirements?  By that I mean, how do departments decide if they are requiring too many classes, not enough classes, not the right classes, etc.?  The question also could be generalized to "how do departments decide what classes to offer"?  I'm especially interested in evaluation of what courses should be required, but I'm also interested in how that interacts with the overall course offerings of the department (e.g., what might lead departments to reorganize classes to reduce overlap).

I anticipate that the answer will vary quite a bit depending on the size of the department, the field, the type of school, etc.  I welcome that variety.  What interests me most is whether there are established decision-making processes for this.  (For instance, is it something that is specifically looked at when a department undergoes external review, and if so, how exactly does the external review committee evaluate it?)  I'm interested particularly in coursework requirements for grad programs, but would be interested in relevant comparisons with undergrad programs as well.

The background: I graduated from a PhD program about a year ago and have a number of friends who are still in the program.  Over the last few years (beginning in my last two or three years and continuing to the present), there have been some shifts in the department in terms of the size of incoming cohorts and the funding decisions for the new students as well as ongoing funding for more senior students.  This has created an environment of worry and uncertainty among some grad students who fear that there is an increasing disconnect between the assumptions of the department funding process and the reality of student progress.  (Simply put, people worry that most students will run out of funding before they finish, because the funding is for X years but nearly everyone takes more than X years to finish the program.)  There is a perception among some of the students that one contributor to this problem is the heavy coursework load, both because it delays students from starting on their own research, and because logistical hurdles (e.g., not having the right classes offered when you need to take them) make it difficult to complete the requirements in the supposedly "normal" time.

I did a bit of informal research and found that the coursework requirements for my department, compared to those of many other departments at the school (some related to my department, some not). are substantially greater (in terms of number of units required) and less flexible (i.e., much more "you must take course X" and less "you must take one of these three courses").  The department's requirements are also somewhat heavier than those of departments in the same field at other comparable schools.

So what I'm curious about is, is this a reasonable approach to evaluating coursework requirements?  I don't mean to suggest that this alone would mandate changes; no doubt many kinds of information would be considered together.  But is it the sort of thing that departments (or external review committees) would do to get a sense of how reasonable the curriculum is?  Is it the sort of thing that, if known, would be expected to arouse concern among the faculty?  If not, what sort of thing would?  How do departments assess their course requirements, and what would make them think they should be changed?

Departments ought to be concerned about their graduation rates. If the rates are low, it is a good idea to find out why and make changes. This could be changes to the curriculum, it could be changes to the admissions policy, or any number of other things.

Benchmarking is certainly a reasonable approach to review the current rules, although niche marketing often gives incentives to introduce distinguishing features that are consciously pitched against the prevailing practices.

I presume your department has a curriculum committee. Request a meeting and see where that leads.


How to respond to “philosophical” questions that aim to undermine a position or derail a discussion? A colleague of mine enjoys using philosophical questions to undermine ideas that are different to his own and to derail discussions that are not in his favour. At first I thought he was offering genuine perspectives, but overtime I realised he was just being defensive and finding enjoyment out of disrupting discussions.

To give you some examples, here are some of his frequent techniques:

The you-can’t-know-for-sure:

  The evidence may seem to be true but it could be wrong, and we can never know that for sure. You can only believe in evidence. Therefore, making claims about anything, with or without evidence, is meaningless.

  The human senses and the human mind are limited and fallible, and to say that an idea is more correct than another is just your opinion based on a fallible experience.

Disagrees with the definition, or shifts to a different definition, or question the meaningfulness of definitions and language in general:

  I define X as something different to how you defined X, and according to what I think of X, I am right. You can think of X how you want but it doesn’t matter to me.

  “X” only means X because humans defined “X” to be X. But “X” is just a subjective idea that doesn’t exist in reality. Therefore, anything you say about X, your ideas are on based on something non-objective and arguable.

All things are just perspectives:

  To say that I’m inconsistent with my argument or to say that I’m wrong is just a perspective. There are many perspectives and just because from one perspective I’m a certain way, doesn’t mean I really am.

I usually enjoy genuine philosophical perspectives in all discussions, but this colleague never offers his philosophical ideas at the beginning of talks and never mentions them when we agree with him, but only throws them out selectively against ideas during the middle of discussions. The worst is that he speaks them with a triumphant and condescending tone of voice over everyone else as if he is so clever.

Question: When he uses these types of philosophical questions as a way to undermine someone’s idea or to derail a discussion, what is an appropriate way to interfere with his remark in a way that doesn’t confront him, protects the other person from appearing to have being undermined or devalued, and restores the direction discussion to what it was before?

Is this colleague really an academic? How on earth did he get a job in academia? How does he manage to retain it? He sounds like a teenage boy from your description of his style of arguing.

He's a troll, so best ignored. He also sounds like he's realised he's way out of his depth, and this is bluster to cover it up.

Formulate a single sentence that lets him know he's been heard, but that it was irrelevant, and that you've already moved on. Use it. Vary it, but keep it short, and always end with an invitation to the interrupted speaker to carry on where they left off. The troll should get the message that he's been sidelined, and troll elsewhere.

"I don't think we need to surrender to nihilism just yet, do we? [turn back to the interrupted speaker] Now, as you were saying ..."

Then just exclude him from discussions in the future. Take your fellow discussants to another room, away from the troll, if you have to.


Why do some universities not allow dissertations to be publicly available? After reading a comment (now deleted) saying

  My university's policies does not allow me to share my thesis PDF file completely.

I was wondering why some universities do not allow dissertations to be publicly available over the web? (by any means - free or through subscription)

This seems a fundamental right to the students (to share their dissertations) and to the community in general.

Thus, I thought I may get some inputs/examples, from different academic cultures, for possible reasons to not to have dissertations over the web (i.e. top secret?).

Update: The user whose comment prompted this discussion mentioned in a comment on this thread:

  I consulted one of the professors at my university and he told me there is no prohibition on sharing my thesis's PDF file. It was my own mis-understanding of the copyright statement on the copyright page.

As the one whose comment triggered this question, I figure I ought to answer: one of the foundational principles of science is that it should be freely and publicly available.

At the same time, there are a lot of human interests that push in the opposite direction.  Some examples:

A nation may want to restrict high-technology in order to promote its own interests.  For historical examples, consider the British empire's secrecy around timekeeping for navigation, or Bavarian secrecy on methods for making high quality optical glass.
Information may be considered dangerous to release to the general public, such as regarding atomic weapons or the DNA sequences of deadly pathogens.
Commercial companies invest in technology in order to gain advantage over their competitors.
A scientist may want to avoid publishing patentable research until after the patent is filed.

A lot of science that is done is thus never openly published, or openly published only long after it has been completed.  The question then is, how should universities relate to this, particularly regarding dissertations?

To the best of my knowledge, in all of the high-ranked U.S. universities, a Ph.D. dissertation is required to be entirely public, as a matter of scientific principle and integrity.  This wasn't always the case, particularly during the convergence of scientific research and military funding around World War II.  As the country became more uncomfortable with that association, however, the elite universities began to remove classified research from their campuses and require that theses be publishable.  In many cases, classified research still goes on in association, but through a separate entity, such as Lincoln Lab for MIT, SRI for Stanford, and LBNL for Berkeley.  Likewise, sensitivities have developed around commercial research.

The general principle that is followed then, at least for elite U.S. universities, is that the research leading to a dissertation may involve unpublished or restricted information.  The dissertation, however, must be public and substantial enough to stand on its own without depending on other non-public research that may have been done in association.


Should I compare my proposed work with my implementation of the previous related papers or the reported result? In computer science, I need to compare the accuracy of my proposed method to the previous ones. There are two possible options:

Implement the methods described in related papers on my own machine
Use the claimed results of the authors

Sometimes, when I implement the other papers, the results are different from the claimed ones, because of a lack of details, parameters and hyperparameters. What is the correct decision? Should I compare my work with the implemented one?
In addition, sometimes the reports of the previous works are on a different dataset and I have to implement the code. Is it the correct way?

I'd say, as a rule you just rely on the results provided by the authors of the papers you cite. You aren't really supposed to reimplement their algorithm just to confirm their results.

Let's dive a bit deeper, especially from a reviewer's point of view. When a reviewer sees that your method in a certain way superior to a previously published work, this is exactly what is expected, so everyone is happy. If you can't prove that your method is better because you use a different dataset, it's quite a problem (for both you and the reviewer), and in general case it would be very advisable to get the same data. Perhaps, this is the first step to take.

If you can't get the same dataset and try to reimplement the algorithm, of course it opens the whole can of worms, since the reviewer might rightfully presume that your implementation is somehow different (due to different parameters or possible bugs) and thus incomparable. I'd say that a common valid scenario for such a venture is when you doubt the original paper's conclusions and want to confirm or disprove them.

As a side note, I think one should decide on the evaluation strategy before designing and implementing own methods. If you want to advance the state of the art, it's reasonable to check the existing papers first and make sure that you can get the same dataset as their authors to show that your method is more accurate on the same data.


Not able to find peers to publish with. Will publishing alone affect the credibility of the paper? I am a Master's student, and I'm nearly done with my first paper draft. Although the paper I am currently working on will be published with my advisor, I want to work in research areas that my advisor is not interested in. I can publish on my own but most papers I have reviewed have multiple authors. Will submission of a paper with only my name on it affect the chances of the paper being accepted? How can I go about finding like-minded people to work with?

Will submission of a paper with only my name on it affect the chances of the paper being accepted?

No.  Reputable journals do not intentionally make publication decisions based on who the author(s) are.

That said, getting feedback from colleagues can help you improve your work before you submit it.


I published a review article in a journal that is not well known. Can I include it in my CV? A few months ago I published a review in this journal . Given that the journal is in Italian (although the review is available in both Italian and English) and that it is handled by a local university, I am not sure I could include this publication in my CV. What do you think?

A publication is work that you have published. You may include anything you want. The fact that many readers of your CV might not recognize the journal is irrelevant. Even for English-language journals, many readers might not recognize some journals.
If your CV is targeted to English readers, if your review were only in Italian, then it would be a good idea to include both the original Italian title an English translation. But if, as your question seems to indicate, the original article is available both in Italian and in English, then for an English CV, you should probably list only the English title.


How to sort search results from SCOPUS or Web of Knowledge by number of citation in a specific field? I use SCOPUS or Web of Knowledge to search papers.
What I need to do is to sort the result in a descending order of number of citations.
SCOPUS and W_of_K both provide this feature.

But I further need to confine those citations only in a specific field.
For example, statistics paper can be cited in another statistics paper or in a medicine paper. What I'm interested in is how many times this paper is cited in another statistics paper.

Using scopus and Web of science, I can see all the papers that cited this paper and then confine to a specific field. But I have to do this for all papers one by one.
Thus I wonder if there is any search engine that can to this automatically.

There is no automatic solution to this - it is an extremely time-consuming labour, sometimes performed by bibliometricians - and often only by those with access to full editions of either database (not the web-interfaces, with strict limitations to download sizes).

It is also a tricky subject, as the defionition of e.g. a statistics paper may differ from what you are actually looking at: journal categories. Papers on any topic are also published in journals not directly related hereto, there are plenty of translational and multi-disciplinary journals as well - in other words, what may appear to be a trivial task is actually very complex.


Is use of unconventional design elements or layout something frowned upon in academic context? I quite enjoy paying attention to how I design my documents and presentations. I usually spend hours thinking over and designing my slides for a workshop or presentation, so that they are aesthetically pleasing and as intuitive as possible. Likewise I recently started revising my CV I figured and I wanted to make it stand out a bit more. (Just to make it clear I don't mean making a clown of a document but just better use of colors, contrast and design elements.)

I have long wondered whether or not this is something that can backfire, since most documents in academic context are extremely plain, at least in my experience. It's very common to see the default Powerpoint slides (white bg, black arial text) or something as hideous as that.

My question is as follows: is putting time and effort into design of academic documents something that can backfire? Will I risk being prejudged with first impressions such as "well he put much effort in the presentation his documents, perhaps because the content is sub-par"?

I realize that the question might be somewhat subjective from person to person but I encourage everyone to consider it in terms of this SE blog entry: Good subjective vs Bad subjective.

Good design is invisible.  The goal of design is to increase understanding/clarity. If your design is truly good then it will go unnoticed but your content will be better understood.  If your design is noticed and distracts, then it is bad.  I feel these principles are universal.

So to answer your question, yes, good design is worth it (it increases the amount that your content is understood), but just adding "design" elements without a good understanding of the audience and their expectations will not likely result in good design.


Contacting professor for PhD in different research area than past experience: do I need to prepare a research proposal before first contact? I've done my masters in CS/Artificial Intelligence. My thesis work is related to Human-Robot interaction, that involves robotics and psychological theories.

I did that project because it seemed to me as more interesting, I'm still interested but during my masters studies I have realized that I am more interested in machine learning, deep learning and its applications in so many domains. Which is why I'm highly motivated to pursue my PhD in machine learning, specifically deep learning.

I do have theoretical concepts about machine learning, image processing and good knowledge about research process (working as research assistant currently). I'm quick learner and have good CGPA as well, few conference in different research area. What I don't have is any research project or publication in this area and hence I don't have any proposal prepared so far.

Now I want to contact professor showing my interest in Deep learning. My question is since I don't have a prepared proposal, how do I approach him? Do all professor expect the proposal attached at first email or Can I prepare proposal while being in touch with him with little bit of his guidance.

Should I spend like a month and prepare proposal or would it be better if I just contact professor and with his guidance I can be more focused and save my time?

the answer depends a bit on the culture of your country and even on the individual professor you are adressing. If you would contact me, sending an e-mail containing more or less the question posted would be sufficient to get an invitation to talk about potential research topics and about how to proceed.

At least in my position, the answer is more dependent on whether I have an idea on how to finance your position - so if you have ideas about this (grants, ...), you should include such information.


What typically limits how many fellowships a PhD student can receive? I'm not asking this question with a personal purpose (I don't have any fellowships and I wouldn't be greedy/unreasonable enough to abuse the system in this way), but I was still wondering out of plain curiosity:

Consider a graduate student who excels in the field and otherwise has many "favorable" attributes. In other words, if the student applies for any given fellowship, the chance that he/she will get it is very high. Given the cooperation of three professors being willing to write as many recommendation letters as the student wants, is there typically any restriction from the university or fellowship organization that would prevent the student from gaining an absurd amount of fellowships?

Generally the organizations offering the fellowships have some rules regarding accepting other sources of funding concurrently.

For example, the Ford Foundation fellowship:

  A Ford Foundation Fellow may not accept remuneration from another major fellowship or similar external awards while on Ford Foundation Fellowship tenure; however, limited supplementation from institutional funds, educational benefits from the Veterans Administration, or educational incentive funds may be received concurrently with Ford Foundation support. Fellows receiving support from multiple sources are urged to discuss and negotiate the terms of the funding with all funding agencies and their university.

Universities also typically have policies regarding concurrent fellowships. For example, at the University of a Illinois:

  Fellows are prohibited from holding two major awards concurrently (fellowship, traineeship, grant, tuition payment award or comparable support from any government agency, state, federal or foreign, or from any foundation, corporation or similar organization). Any award offer should be reported immediately to the Graduate College Fellowship Office, where the determination will be made whether the two awards may be held concurrently.


Contacting potential advisers before deadlines I am applying to PhD programs in physics in US. Majority of the deadlines are in one week from now. My question is, does that help at all at this time to contact potential advisers and let them know that I am applying and am interested in their research? (At least one place requires me to indicate potential advisers in the online application form).

If contacting can help my application at this point, what should I do if there are more than one potential advisers whose interests match my experience and interests in a given department? (For example in one case I am even asked for naming three potential advisers in the application form)

It is definitely helpful to contact potential advisers for many reasons.  In my experience, one important reason is that a professor for whom you would like to work may not have space or funding for you.  Sometimes those things can be overcome, and sometimes they can't.  If there is only one professor whose research interests you in a given department, and that professor isn't taking students for some reason, that could make your decision for you.  It's not a pleasant situation, but I have seen it happen several times.

You might also find that, after talking to a potential adviser, the focus in their research isn't quite what you thought it was.  Of course you can find that out by reading the recent publications, but a conversation can also be enlightening.  They might tell you about one or two specific projects you would likely be working on, and if those projects don't interest you, you might want to move on.

If things look like they could work out, it is still an excellent idea to stay in touch.  If someone on the admissions committee gets to know you somehow, that will really set your application apart.  The chair of the graduate admissions committee at my undergraduate institution even told me that, more than once, he has admitted a student simply because he or she was calling or emailing and expressing real interest and desire to become a student in the department.  Don't be annoying, but a couple of emails and/or a phone call or two never hurt anyone.

If there are several potential advisers in one department, that is great.  It likely means that department focuses on research that interests you.  Don't be afraid of getting in touch with more than one professor.  The more people that recognize your name, the better.  Just be sure to be polite and respectful and leave a good impression.

Good luck!


Can I put the editor in the Acknowledgements? I am currently having an exceptionally good and fair editorial process with a paper.

One of the two reviewers suggested a rejection (still providing many suggestions for improving the manuscript).

The editor was able to understand that many issues raised by the reviewer were because of how the paper was written instead of the actual research design and the results of the study. Additionally, the editor was also able to understand that the study is multidisciplinary and that some issues were born on the side of the non-familiar discipline for us (both the editor and the reviewers are expert in this discipline). These issues were not severe but quite a few.

Instead of rejecting the article, the editor requested major revisions and actually provided substantial suggestions for improving the manuscript. Exactly how the reviewers did.

I revised the manuscript and acknowledged the "help of two anonymous reviewers". However, this time I truly feel that I should thank the editor, as well. I have never seen this in a paper. Is there a reason for that? Can I acknowledge the editor in my paper?

There is nothing wrong with acknowledging an editor that goes beyond what can be expected. It is of course not customary to provide such acknowledgement in most cases. Editors do not expect it and it may simply appear as inappropriate attempts at flattery. It is difficult to draw the line where acknowledgements are appropriate but, I have probably acknowledged editors in a couple of percent of my own papers. I have also been acknowledged a couple of times in my capacity as editor (out of editing hundreds of papers), all in cases where I have felt my assistance would save a paper that could otherwise be buried undeservedly. In any case, your description seems to fit a case where the acknowledgement is appropriate, although no editor would probably expect it.


Submit abstract to conference with no results yet I am planning to go to a geoscience conference next year and therefore I would like to submit 1-2 abstracts.

Abstracts' submission has a deadline (of course) and I am not sure if I will have good results by then.

Is it acceptable to submit an abstract to a conference without having results yet?

Surely, the abstract will be very general and broad without 'making up' anything about my research's results.

Thanks

This depends very much on the conference in question. There are several conferences I submit to where it is fairly routine to outline broad strokes results, with the expectation that they will change in between the submission and the conference. There are others that expressly do not allow this, and want final-form, precise results and prohibit things like "...will be discussed."

So check the conference, and ask your advisor about the norms in your field.


Difference between criterion validity and reliability equivalence In the book Doing research in the real world by David E. Gray, there is a section on experiment design. When discussing validity and reliability, the author defines “criterion validity” as

  This is where we compare how people have answered a new measure of a concept, with existing, widely accepted measures of a concept.

and a little later, in the “Reliability” part, there is a subheading “Equivalence”, which says

  Another way of testing the reliability of an instrument is by comparing the
  responses of a set of subjects with responses made by the same set of subjects on another instrument (preferably on the same day).

So if I got this right, we are both times measuring if there is a difference between the answer on our new instrument and another, existing instrument.

Is there a practical difference between the two concepts, or only a philosophical one? And whether practical or philosophical, what is the actual difference?

Update The author discusses validity and reliability in general, then lists 7 different aspects of validity and 5 different aspects of reliability. "Criterion validity" and "reliability equivalence" are only one type of each, respectively. Please consider in your answer that this question is not about validity vs. reliability in general, but only about these two specific aspects.

Criterion validity concerns with measuring the right thing. For instance, GPA is likely to have criterion validity to measure a student's academic understanding. While the change in weight in the last semester has much less criterion validity to measure the same trait. Basically, if the measurement you use and the trait you want to measure has a high correlation, then there is likely criterion validity.

Reliability concerns mostly with measuring the thing right. For instance, if GPA can measure a student's academic understanding, and percent attendance can also measure a student's academic understanding, then GPA and percent attendance should correlate, aka, they are reliable. Before subjected to reliability assessment, the tests are usually checked if they are criterion-valid. However, it's possible to have two tests that are highly correlated (reliable) but invalid. Such as using dietary fat intake and serum lipid to predict a college graduate's earning potential.

Notice that there a few different types of reliabilities, the one you cited is more about alternate forms reliability, there are also test-retest reliability and inter-rater reliability, etc.

Practically, they are not interchangeable. Validity happens between the true trait (or behavior) and the measurements. Reliability happens between two measurements (or modes/instances of measurement.)


it it possible to use the same alogorithm in two different publication? Currently, I am conducting a social media analysis research and have implemented a training algorithm where it combines various features of set to show that specific classifier works better than others.

The question is, can I use this algorithm in further work? Is it possible to use the proposed algorithm in other research ideas (I am using it now at twitter dataset)-if I apply it to FB dataset will it be considered new contribution?

Generally, yes.

It would be expected that there is some novel aspect in the second article, but the novel aspect does not need to be the algorithm.

It can be a different type of data (e.g., "bla algorithm applied to detect liver tumors" and "bla algorithm applied to detect stroke"), or a substantially larger dataset (e.g., "preliminary results of bla on 9 patients" and "results of bla on 500 patients"), etc.


Start-up based on PhD: inside or outside the university? I am currently in the half of my PhD in computer science, and I would like to build a start-up from the algorithms I developed.
I have doubts whether is the case to involve my advisor in this:

If I do it, we could make a university spin-off. In this case my fear is to lose the ownership of the project (I would like to lead the company), and the independence of the company itself from the university (we should in some way be linked with it, I think).
If I try to do it independently, I lose the precious logistic help that the univesity can offer; also with university help, I guess it might be easier to find partners or persons who want to collaborate.

So, I am confused on which might be the best way to proceed..

any advice/experience to share?

First things first, you need to find out whether you even have the option to do it independently of the university.  Since you have done your work at the university, the university likely owns at least part or possibly all of the rights to commercialization of your work.

Most universities have somethings like a "Technology Transfer Office" whose goal is to help turn university research into startups and/or licenses to existing companies.  These folks are often quite happy to work with you to help clarify the intellectual property situation and to help make connections that can support you in building a spin-out.