Where to put a cited paper: introduction or discussion? I have finished the first draft of my paper. It extends a statistical method and it is applied to an application. I cite many papers in the introduction. As a result, not so many left for the discussion part. If I put them here again, it seems redundant. So my question is: when you see a relevant paper, how do you know that it should be in the introduction or discussion?

Some very general guidelines from my own expertise; kept rather simple to be a starting point for first-timers in article writing:

In the Introduction one mentions/describes the papers most relevant to the research conducted. E.g., if one analyses the volume of wolves' howling, there should appear sentences like "in [1], Smith et al. measured the howling loudness of 12 wolves in the Carpathians, and found they are quite loud"
In the Methods section, one cites papers that are relevant to the methodology of the work/its analysis, e.g. something along the lines "following [2], we set up 18 automatic sound recorders [3] in the Beskids. These recorders were triggered according to the Wolf-Howler criterion [4], i.e..." blah-blah-blah "we performed standard statistical tests [5] to verify..."
In the Analysis/Results section, one usually mostly emphasizes what is new in the presented paper. Some immediate comparisons are very helpful, e.g. "the howling that we recorded is statistically louder than what was presented in [6]; this discrepancy may be due to the fact that most of the wolves that we recorded were males, while 17 out of 24 individuals measured by Hound & Forest in [6] were females"...
The Discussion is the part where one discusses the importance of the presented research. One compares, emphasizing and discussing in more detail, similarities/differences of the newest results with previous findings. If a new method is applied, one discusses its strength and weaknesses in the context of the present and possible future research. Phase like this can also occur: "We showed that the automatic recording of wolves howling is efficient, and so can be applied in the field of raccoon noises [7]...".

I think that in my papers, papers that were not mentioned earlier rarely appear in the Discussion. Although there are exceptions, e.g. when some comment from a paper from a different field seems to be adequate in the light of the discussed results.

Overall, I think that most (and all relevant) papers should be cited as early in the manuscript as possible. There are no general rules of thumb whether it's fine to introduce a paper in the Discussion or not. It's mostly about the gut feeling and personal writing style. I can imagine people justifying that one should absolutely not cite in the Discussion/Conslusion/Summary papers that weren't cited earlier in the text. They may have good arguments, certainly, and if one tends to agree, it's completely fine. There might be exceptions, though, that are subject to personal judgment and one's preferences, so I'll stop here.


What is a good enough putnam score to include in an application to PhD programs? Many people have said that having a good putnam score could improve one's application for PhD programs in Math / Theoretical CS.

I have certain putnam score, and I am wondering whether to include it in my applications.

In other words, what is the cutoff percentile, where you would / would not include the score in an application to a PhD program?

For context, I am applying to programs in CS Theory such as: UIUC, Rutgers, Cornell, Maryland, Princeton and UTAustin.

I think saying you were among the top "N" participants where N is something like 500, 200, 100, or less would be the right way to phrase the accomplishment.

The (anonymized) scores and rank of all participants are published, so you can find your exact rank.  Very roughly, I'd say top 50ish programs in math would view a top 500 rank favorably, top 20ish would like top 200, top 10 would like top 100, and the most elite would only view Putnam fellow or one of the (next "X") categories as noteworthy.  I think CS theory views math contest ability in a similar manner to pure math programs so that this mostly still applies.


How to get interdisciplinary when your program isn't When I was shopping for graduate schools, I was very interested in a particular subdiscipline of mathematical logic. I got into a pretty good state school, but now that I've been here for two years, I am no longer sure that I want to do research in that field anymore.  I still think it's cool- I could fuss with it all day, and I'm sure I could write a thesis on it- but I have lost faith that it is useful. I want to do something that is good for society, and this is decidedly too pure.

We don't have to pick an advisor until the end of this year. I've looked around, but all the professors seem to be working on very narrow problems that don't interest me.  What I would really like to do is integrate computer science into my work, since programming has always been one of my most enjoyed hobbies, and since it plays well with logic in general.  But nobody is doing that here.  Unfortunately, due to family issues, transferring is out of the question.

How does one go about making his research interdisciplinary when he is not in an interdisciplinary program?

Is it a bad idea to just pick an advisor that I get along with, even if his research is not directly applicable to mine, and try to carve my own path? What can I do to make this approach successful?

You need to pick an advisor who will support your interest in going outside of the area of his own work.  More likely than not, that means somebody who you both get along with well and who is tenured, so that they are not feeling pressure to "get work out of you" towards their own career goals.  Be up front about wanting to expand your area of interests.  You may, in fact, find a professor who is interested in supporting you in this, because they are interested in expanding their own interests, and the best way for two professor to begin collaborating is often to be co-advising a student who stands between them.

Which brings me to my next point: you are likely going to need to start connecting with professors in the other department where you are interested in working as well.  Start sitting in on seminars, get to know people, and see where you can find a connection.  You might or might not end up needing formal co-advising, but you will certainly need to have at least informal mentors who you can go to for advice in the other discipline.

What is certain, however, is that you need to be very proactive about searching out your interests and taking on risky projects that will let you "get your feet wet" and figure out how you relate to the other field.  You are also likely to take longer to graduate.  Interdisciplinary research is a much harder path, but also potentially a much more rewarding one.


Is using an answer I posted online on Math.SE considered plagiarism? To expand on the question, I recently (as in yesterday) posted a question on Math.SE and also wrote my answer in the post, claiming that my answer was wrong. One answerer pointed out that I was correct, but simply needed to do a quick deduction step, after which I edited that question with that deduction step.

So if I use this answer now in my assignment, will it be considered an academic offense? None of my university's resources are helpful at all in this regard. I'm a student in the sciences, and all the 'resources' of the university are towards arts students. I'd like a clear cut answer because informing my instructor that I posted my own interpretation of a question on an assignment is really out of the question, since I don't know if consequences exist for that.

I'm already looking for an alternative answer, but I'd like to know if using my current answer would be an academic offense. Thanks.

I'd like to know if using my current answer would be an academic offense.

It's impossible to determine this without more information about your university and course policies.  If you're honest about what happened, then I doubt you could get in a lot of trouble for this, but of course I don't know the policies and potential consequences in your case.  At my university different courses can have different policies on collaboration (regarding what's allowed and what sort of acknowledgment must be given), but they should be explained at the beginning of the semester.

If I were teaching the course, it wouldn't bother me that you got advice on this problem, since it looks like you did most of the work yourself and learned something from the feedback you received.  However, I would be unhappy that you posted the homework problem and a complete solution online, thereby making it easy for other students in the class to copy your solution if they know about math.SE.  If the grader detects several solutions with nearly the same wording as the one you submit, then you may all be accused of cheating.

If you can't find a clear statement of the relevant policies on your course or department website, then I strongly recommend asking your instructor how to handle this.  In theory that could end badly, but I don't expect it to.  Bringing it up yourself is almost certainly better than letting the instructor discover it, and it would mean you could stop worrying.


Tips on finding experts on a specific topic Ladies and gentlemen, hello.
Attracted by one research topic, I am facing a challenge of finding the most relevant sources, more precisely, of identifying the reputed and most qualified authors.
My question is not about a general sources search. Not about asking myself a question, thinking up proper key words and looking them up in academic data bases. Once I set myself a goal, including the one of searching for literature, I may go as far as it is physically possible. But apart from spending much time, my main concern is that in the end I will most certainly miss out on all or many experts in my subject.
Thus, I am looking to understand is there a way for to know which are the most important researchers who already wrote on a certain quite narrow subject? Maybe someone can recommend sites specialised in such kind of search?
Obviously, I already looked this question up on internet search engines but they do not return any meaningful results. Furthermore, I also saw this post which is too narrow and does not provide a general solution. Finally, asking senior researchers is not an option either because I am not affiliated to any institution.

What you are looking for might better be identified using a bibliometric search rather than a typical literature review. Bibliometrics search and analyze metadata related to scholarly publications more than the actual contents of the studies. In your case, the metadata that you are interested in is identifying the leading authors in certain topics of interest.
A colleague of mine published an article that shows how to identify the most relevant literature using free bibliometric tools such as VOSviewer. That is, by beginning with a topic search on a citation database (e.g. Scopus or Web of Science), you can identify the most relevant body of literature, authors, schools of thought, etc. based on cocitations and other bibliometrics:

Walsh, I., & Renaud, A. (2017). Reviewing the literature in the IS field: Two bibliometric techniques to guide readings and help the interpretation of the literature. Systèmes d’Information et Management. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316560668_Reviewing_the_literature_in_the_IS_field_Two_bibliometric_techniques_to_guide_readings_and_help_the_interpretation_of_the_literature

You can get the article by following the link. It should set you on the right track.


What can a student do if a professor makes special allowances for one student in a course? In one of my software engineering courses, the syllabus includes two exams (midterm + final), daily quizzes + participation mark, spot quizzes and a group project.

A lot of us asked the professor to drop the midterm and add more weight to the project because we all wanted to build a beautiful project, so eventually we can also add it to our resume. The response was that it would not be possible to drop the midterm but the weight might be reduced, but would have to think about it. (Fair enough).

However, a week later we found out that one of the students in class got exemption from writing midterms, daily quizzes and spot quizzes. That student only has to worry about the project. We asked how this is possible and we learned of a special deal with the professor. So basically when the group projects begin that student will in charge of holding group meetings with different groups and providing feedback to the professor on their progress. So since they have a lot of "workload" they won't be writing quizzes and exams. This option was never mentioned by the professor when the class as a whole asked her to drop the midterm.

So I am wondering, is this legal or even possible? There are a lot of international students in the class too that are simply scared to speak up. I feel it is not fair that one student is exempt from doing all the work.

What should I do? Just keep quiet and mind my own business?

This is a Graduate Computer Science Program.

Additional Details

In the first two weeks the other student wrote quizzes like everyone else and the professor was not happy with the grades of quizzes of some people (everyone except this one person had good marks), so it will be worth a little less. Eventually a week later the student stopped writing quizzes after making this special deal.

I have great relation with the Department Chair and I am also working on a project with them, I am not sure if I should bring this up in our conversation.

The arrangements that the professor makes with any other student are absolutely none of your business. I don't see any indication that your grade is threatened. If you are learning what the course aims to teach, it is not your place to second-guess the way that your professor chooses to run her class.

Faculty are often asked to make accommodations for individual students for any number of reasons, and these reasons are not to be made public. In fact, I'm required by law both to offer alternative forms of evaluation where appropriate, and not to explain why I am offering the student an alternative form of evaluation.

For a US perspective, read up on the ADA and FERPA and you'll see an interesting intersection of required accommodations and required privacy on behalf of students with special needs.

[Comments converted to answer by request.]


I have noticed GPA calculation "bug" in our University, what should I do? University X offers course Y with Z credits. The course is mandatory, and very important. It lasts for more than one semester with heavy workload. The University awards Z credits for the course Y, but it only includes Z/2 credits in the GPA calculation.

This is where the story gets a bit personal. I assume the University includes only Z/2 credits in GPA calculation because the majority of the students do very bad in this course. But, that is not the case for me. If I have the Z amount of credits calculated for my GPA, it is increased for 0,3, which I believe can make the difference at some point.

I asked the officials at the examination regulation department about this situation, they said: "that was the case from the day when the program you study was established". Not convinced at all.

What should I do? Should I complain somewhere, should I ask for a specific GPA calculation for myself. In the end of the day it should be in the interest of the University to have students with good GPAs, hence I believe they do all this calculation "trick". And I believe I would not be asking for something "illegal".

What is the clever thing to do when one finds such regulations in own University which can be used on one's own good?!?

In case of need GPA calculation is done as follows:

(sum over all (number of credits for the given course x grade)) / number of credits used in calculation

example:

((course with 4 credits x grade) + (course with 6 credits x grade) + (course with 12 credits x grade)) / 22 (4 + 6 + 12 this case)

Note: From the comments it seems as my intention is to get in a battle of changing regulations at my University. That is not the case at all. I am just trying to find a nice way of using this situation on my benefit, by having some convincing discussions with the officials.

Additional Note: After digging through some documentation, I found an examinations regulations document which states clearly how the GPA is calculated, but does not give a reason for this type of calculation. I am also surprised to learn that minor subjects are not included in the GPA calculation. I also learned that the Final Thesis awards M credits, but in GPA calculations is weights ~2M credits. What bugs me at the moment is, why the University officials hide this information in all the other publicly available presentations. And their answers are not convincing to me.

What is the clever thing to do when one finds such regulations in own University which can be used on one's own good?!?

I'm so glad you asked.  The clever thing would be to realize that the best way to raise your GPA is to do excellent work in all your courses.  Aside from being the optimal strategy GPA-wise, this has the fringe benefit that it is the only strategy with inherent rewards beyond the GPA game.

Look, I don't know where you're enrolled, but your university has taken a step down a dark road by playing with weighting GPA's differently than the number of credits or course hours (which is the weighting which corresponds to the actual instructional time and, ideally, to the workload of the course).  You're contemplating a further step down this dark road by trying to play games with their game.  It is up to them how they compute the GPA.  I disapprove of their strange weighting system, but do you know what's even worse than a globally enforced strange weighting system?  A student who asks for "a specific GPA calculation for myself".

Just rise above.  See if you can recapture the quaint idea that your goal is to learn the course material rather than attain a certain number at the end.  Or, if you feel that the world has moved on and that number that you get at the end is too important to your future to so naively dismiss, then respond by GETTING BETTER GRADES.  Merciful Minerva, we live in strange days.


Publishing as an undergraduate student: can/should I list my university affiliation? I have done some research during the past year on one of the topics I am studying. Now I have got some nice results which I think I should publish. I think I can write a conference paper based on my results; a journal one might be too difficult at this point.

I have conducted the research alone, and have not received any help from any faculty members. Now, when I'm writing the paper, I came to consider for the first time am I allowed to publish under the institution I am studying in? I mean, I can list my university as my affiliation, even though I'm just an undergrad student, right? .. I could not find anything on this from the university rules, so I guess its "quiet information".

Ask one of your professors or the administration about what the best course of action is.

Most likely, you should publish as affiliated to the university as the work was conducted while you were at university. In any case, you have nothing to lose by doing so.


Should I use "I" or "We" in Peer-Review Journal Submissions? I am the single author for a journal article which focuses on the measurement and validation of two scale instruments. This is a purely quantitative report for submission in a top-tier educational psychology journal. Where appropriate, I have used the plural first-person "we" in the article, as "I" sounds very peculiar to me. I also feel as though it is disadvantageous to write singular first-person when submitting for blind peer-review. At the same time, I don't want readers thinking I have multiple personality disorder as more than one person. ;)

In your opinion, should I be using "I" or "We?"

FYI I'd rather not use passive voice. It's madness for this article.

Thanks for your thoughts in advance.

Follow the conventions in your field. I suspect that in most fields papers use 'we' since most papers are authored by more than one person. I would personally use 'we'.


Losing my TA-ship, need advice I am a third year student in a U.S. university and for the past two years I was funded by dept. TA-ship.

The new semester is coming but I have not got the TA-ship. I contacted my advisor for help and he sent a note to a professor who is taking charge of all TA stuff and he also told me to hope for the best(My advisor and dept. secretary told me there would be a second round assignment).

Here is my question: How many chances do I have to get a TA offer? And I also want to ask my dept. why this thing is going to happen (because my GPA is over 3.5 and meet all requirements). I feel very frustrated and eager to know why. Would you please give me any advise?

Most graduate programs try to be more transparent and forthright about TA funding than seems to be the case for you. That is, at the outset there would be promises made about number of years of funding, conditional on reasonably good performance in coursework and teaching. Departments are very well aware that grad students will have difficulty surviving (much less paying tuition) without financial support, so do not usually cut support without considerable prior warning, explanation, explanation of terms for reinstatement, or explanation of economic conditions and prognosis for future funding. To do otherwise is irresponsible.

I do have to wonder whether you were paying attention to disclaimers about fragility of funding, though, too. For that matter, do you have a copy of the TA offer letter? It really should spell out what you can expect in terms of funding. For that matter, no one's advisor should be "the last to hear" that their student(s) didn't get TA funding renewed.

Of course, it might be that the central administration at your university "pulled the rug out from under" your department, and the budget changed abruptly and somewhat catastrophically. But, still, I'd think you would hear something about this, an explanation, rather than just a passive non-support situation arising.


I have some (possibly) original results and advisor cannot help, how should I proceed? I am a master student in mathematics. I developed a new notion and did calculations for some examples. I believe it is original because I can't find it in literature. Now I want to publish my results, but I don't know if they are publishable or not. I have already asked my advisor but he said he doesn't have the ability to supervise me in that field. Should I just find an expert to talk with? The question is I don't have relations between any experts and me. Because of pandemic, it is also not a good idea to find them personally, so the only remaining idea will be cold email them. But it does not seems a good idea as well, so what should I do?

Cold emails are very common in this situation, and not at all a bad idea. Indeed, I know of many cold emails that have turned into coauthored papers.


Will a good GRE Computer Science subject test score overcome a "weak" academic record? Disclaimer: The GRE Program discontinued the Computer Science Test

I'm from an unknown school in Georgia. I want to apply for grad school in U.S, but I don't have a good GPA although I am at the top %15 of the class. Here we have some strange grading system - we use 4.0 system but grading is not similar to the western world. I am confident on my knowledge and I believe that I can do well on GRE CS Subject exam.

So do you care about or value GRE Subject test results ?
If so, what score do you expect from a candidate ?
Is it possible to get some funding at top 40-70 range schools?
Regarding research, I don't have possibility of doing any research and it is not a top priority here, so we aren't provided opportunities for research.

Regarding research, I don't have possibility of doing any research and it is not a top priority here, so we aren't provided opportunities for research.

For purposes of graduate school admissions, any self-directed intellectual activity counts as research.  Have you contributed to any open-source projects?  Have you written any Android or iPhone apps?  Did you solve all the double-starred problems in Hopcroft and Ullman?  Did you write a confluently persistent graph data structure library?  Did you participate in (or better yet, coach for) the International Olympiad in Informatics?  What about Google Summer of Code?  Do you contribute regularly to a StackExchange site?  Have you rebuilt a pinball machine?  These are all real examples.

Research opportunities are not something you're provided; they're something you hunt down and kill.


Show examples of public dataset in master thesis So I'm currently in the final phase of my master thesis and started writing a few days ago. My thesis bases its work on a public dataset (the authors published it on GitHub an state in their paper that it is "available to the public", couldn't find anything about a license or whatever).

Now I don't think that it is a problem that I based my work on that dataset, but I would also like to show some examples in my thesis (the dataset consist of annotated pictures basically). Is this a problem? I will of course cite the authors.

In principle it depends on the permissions given to you by the owners of the data. Any open source licence would give you permission to share elements of the dataset with attribution (though I am not a lawyer). If it's listed on GitHub there's usually a licence shown on the repository's main page (see screenshot). If not, you can contact the authors to ask them to be 100% above board.

A screenshot of a GitHub repository header

Copying a figure from a paper might be somewhat shakier, as the publisher may own the rights to images as published in the final version. Your country may have "fair use" or "fair dealing" exemptions from copyright requirements for educational uses of certain materials, but it could be complicated to ensure you are following these rules. A university librarian may be able to help you further.

In practice, I think it's very unlikely that there would be a problem with what you're planning to do.


Conference and Journal Ranking Websites I had a hard time deciphering conference and journal rankings in order to find good places to publish. [Disclaimer - I am a computing PhD and this post is intended to have a strong focus in CS]

I think it would be beneficial to have a list of websites which rank conferences and journals (deffo. for my self and maybe others too). My question is, could you all help me build this list?

Conferences:

Conference Ranks
Core Conference Portal
Computer Science Conference Rankings

Journals:

Scimago
Core Journal Portal

Other posts readers might be interested in:

How to find reputed conference and journal?
Impact factor vs journal ranking
Rankings of Computer Science conferences and journals
Difference between conference paper and journal paper

Other conference ranking include:

CORE Conference Portal

Also useful reading here, a Research Gate post


Should I agree to review a paper that I do not fully understand? I recently received a request to subreview a paper for a top computer science conference. While it is related to my field of research, it is extremely long (the conference does not have a page limit) and complicated (it is an algorithm made of more than ten sub-algorithms, each of which is itself worth a conference paper). I find it very difficult to verify that it is correct. I mean, theoretically I may be able to understand it if I spend several whole weeks on reading every sub-algorithm, crafting small examples to myself, writing comupter simulations etc., but then I will have to stop doing anything else. What should I do?

Decline the request, hoping that the paper will be given to a smarter reviewer that will be more capable of verifying its correctness? Or -
Agree to the request, but tell the PC member in advance that I am going to review only a part of the paper which I can understand?

NOTE: The problem is not with the authors' presentation. In fact, their explanations seem good and clear. Just the algorithms themselves are highly complex.

I would go with 2, or at least contact the editor saying you would do 2, and asking if they'd prefer 1. There tends to be a shortage of referees, at least in my field, so I'd expect 2 to be preferred. I've been sent a paper to look at one aspect where someone else had apparently already checked a different aspect.

While I hate to say it, I believe in maths it would not really be expected that every tiny detail of a similar paper would be checked. I used to think it worked like that, but the time issues you mention are true for others too, so I guess 'certain enough' has to replace 'absolutely certain'.


Is it possible to contribute to academic research after retirement from the industry? Currently, I have a master’s of science in mathematics and a potential plan to couple my qualifications with a masters of science in analytics. I am actually nowhere close to being retired in the industry. But thinking way beyond the scope of the near future, I am curious if there is any possibility for someone who officially is retired from the industry to contribute to academic research? If so, how should a recent graduate prepare himself to make this a possibility.

Ideally, I would like to contribute to research in machine learning after completing a rewarding career as a data scientist. I have been continually expanding my knowledge by reading mathematical references on the train ride to work each day.

A non-negligible amount of people start a PhD after retirement from industry. Depending on where you are in the world, if there are coursework requirements, having a master's may exempt you, so this can give you a fairly unrestrictive but very beneficial environment to do research in. If furthermore you have a comfortable retirement package and don't need funding you will be a very attractive candidate.


What is the optimal number of times one should meet one's PhD. advisor? I see sad students who meet may be once in a month and they complaint of not having enough progress. I have seen systems where the prof meets almost every few hours on weekdays and the prof is basically continuously working with the students. I see students who meet every 2-3 days or every week.

So what is the "right" frequency if at all?
What is the good frequency?

Once the weekly(instant) gratification of getting full scores on the course homework is removed it is quite a challenge to keep a gauge of whether one has made any progress during the week. How does one measure progress during the week during one's PhD?

To expand on Peter's great answer, I'd also like to throw out the idea that the "ideal" frequency varies not only case-by-case, but also may change during the course of one's graduate education.

A beginning graduate student will very likely need much more supervision than a student in the middle of her program. Similarly, the student who is finishing up may need more frequent contact, but only because changes are probably happening at a very rapid pace, and it's important to make sure deadlines are completed on time.

From my own experience, I started out meeting weekly with my advisors; after about a year or so, the meetings became every two weeks, but then toward the end became weekly again (for the last two or so months before the defense).

Within my current group, I use a similar scheme: new students have weekly meetings, while older students (and the postdocs) meet every other week, or as needed. (Some of my students get along quite fine meeting with me only once every three to four weeks, and I'm fine with that, because they are independent enough not to need more "face-to-face" time.)

The important thing, I think, is that the PhD student should know that the time is available, if she needs it. However, it's also been my belief that it's when the student doesn't want to meet that it's actually most important to do so. This usually means that something's not quite right—and that's when intervention can make the most difference!


Choosing between two good reference letters providers I am in the process of applying to tenure-track assistant-professorships positions in my home country.

Some institutions request no more then 3 reference letters.

Two letters I will have from my former PhD supervisor and my current post-doc supervisor in my current institute (I am doing my post-doc at a different institute, way more prestigious then my PhD inst. and in a different country).

I have all the reasons to believe these will be very good letters.

In the past I had a third letter from a professor who knows me well from the time I did my PhD (same dept. in my home country, close topics, some collaborations over several years and very good personal relationship).

However, It was 3 years ago. He wrote me very good letters before (so I've been told and believe, I also eventually got few fellowships and had one tenure-track job interview when providing his letters).

I also have the option to ask a current collaborator from my current dept. who knows me for about a year. He is very senior and respected scientist, published hundreds of papers and was the dept. chair for many years.
My work for his groups is very valuable (no one in his groups knows anything about the methods and analytical tools I use for this project of him), and we have a good personal connection.

My question is: From which one of these 2 prof. should I ask a reference letter ?
In more general terms: is it better to ask someone who knows you longer and from your home country (where I also apply), or a more current collaborator from my post-doc institute who is also a "bigger name" and knows what you are working on these days?

I will be mostly happy to read answers from ones who had been in selection committees or the like, but also much value answers from others as well.

Thanks

Edit: I can't simply ask from both and use alternatively, the recommendation letter should be submitted directly from them to the committee, so only one of them can be asked to submit.

You should ask for them both, and then send them selectively based on the characteristics of the job. For instance, you could send the one from your home country to job postings in the country. It does sound from your description that the newer reference would have a better sense of what you are working on now as well as better name recognition. This would probably be better for most applications. But the point remains that getting them both and sending selectively is the strategy I have used in the past; it has served me well.


Request for startup package details at interview stage I have an upcoming interview/campus visit for an assistant professor TT position with a US R1 university in the sciences. They have asked that I bring a details about my desired startup package to the campus visit. I have never heard of anyone being asked for details about their startup package prior to an offer being made.

This seems to have two effects. First, to some extent my startup package depends on what is already available in the department and the interests of the department. Second, it seems it potentially changes the negotiations. With an offer in hand, you can ask for more in your startup package, since they may not give you what you want, but they won't take the offer away. If I ask for too much in my startup package before having an offer, they may not even make an offer.

I guess I have three questions. First, is it common for US universities to ask for details about the desired startup package prior to making an offer? Second, how does this change what I should include in my startup package request? Third, can I ignore this request and only give them a general outline of what I need to do my research?

I've also never seen this at universities in the US (or elsewhere in the world) but I've seen it a lot in industry. I'm guessing someone came in to 'shake things up' or they hired a consultant and are trying things differently this time. Therefore, I will answer with respect to industry which I'm guessing will actually be applicable in the end.

It is a common negotiation technique to get 'the other guy' to make the first offer with the belief this puts him in a weaker position. This seems to be what they are doing and as you stated in your question, when they make the first offer you are indeed in a stronger position.

In your last question, could you ignore their request and simply not give them a number, tread lightly on this point. Some hiring people will become angry when you don't follow the rules and will count it as one reason not to make you an offer at all (or lower your offer because you are unable to follow simple instructions).

As far as how to actually handle the negotiations, like any negotiations, it is MUCH better if you are negotiating from a stance of understanding how you can work together to benefit each other. That is, don't get locked into a 'the more I get, the less you keep' train of thought. The goal is to be creative and find a way that you can actually ADD value to the equation and then divide that new value between the both of you...leading to the win-win settlement.

The problem is if you must make some kind of an offer blind and you have no personal rapport developed with your counterpart, it is very difficult to go down the win-win path. At that point, I would see if you can find a way to change the situation and start building some kind of relationship (even a telephone call can make a huge difference with regards to finding a genuine win-win solution).

If you are stuck and you cannot have any any meaningful conversation before you give a number, then the best I can say is to make a serious statement about what you would like but make it in terms of ranges (say between $100 and $120 [replace with reasonable numbers for you] per month depending on the rest of the details). By offering a range you have retained some flexibility but allowed them what they demanded: Something.

As you might guess, they may lock in on the lower number. However, you have not committed to that lower number firmly because of 'the rest of the details' you included.

Congratulations and good luck!


Chair of my committee keep adding and changing ideas I am trying to defend my proposal and I have a very inefficient professor as the chair of my committee. He keep adding and changing ideas consistently. I get the feeling that he doesn't really know the details of my work. During discussions with him, he picks up some elements and asks me to add ideas and tasks that aren't applicable.

I am afraid that if I confront him (e.g. why his idea won't work, or what I don't like about it), he will take it personally. I spoke with one of his students and was told that he had picked a topic for her, which later on, an expert in that field deemed invalid.

He seems to be more interested in new topics that sound fancy or complex. The good part is that he is not very interested in the work itself or the result. What I mean that if I just want to please him I can through some of his ideas somewhere without much effort and he will be happy. After all, the ideas he picks are not within his area of expertise and he doesn't know much about them. But I can't do this for my proposal because it is hard to explain them to the rest of the committee members.
Any advice,

My advice is that the dissertation, and therefore the proposal, are the student's work.  It is the student's responsibility to pick a topic and execute it.  Faculty are not usually trained in project management so the student may need to act to keep the faculty member on track.  For example, you can tell the faculty member that their ideas are very interesting, but you need to complete your current project first.

More specific to your situation, a fourth year student should know more than their advisor about the student's work.


How did German universities outperform the US's and the UK's, before the 1930s? I narrowed the outperformed in this question to the US and UK, but please feel free to include other First World nations' universities (eg: Canada, France).

[Source:] The top American universities didn't really compare to the best in Germany, France, or the UK before then.

This subsequent question inducted this post.

Prior to the 1930s, Germany had some of the world's oldest and best universities. This is largely a due to historical reasons discussed in this article

But what changed in the 1930s? Rather than ask why German Universities out performed US universities before the 1930s, perhaps a better question would be "Why did US universities out perform German universities after the 1930s?"

I would answer that by saying the two events caused the change. First, the influx of refuge scientists prior to World War II boosted US Science (e.g., this article). Probably the most famous scientist to flee Germany to the US was Albert Einstein.

Second, the US funded science much better than Germany after World War II.  This extra funding was partially done out of fear of Soviet science and partially an artifact that the US economy was the only one not destroyed or heavily damaged by the war. (This article talks about US Science funding and provides more insight into this specific topic)

Also during the post-war period, many scientists choose to come to the US because of research opportunities. As described in the book Moon Shot, Wernher von Braun chose to surrender to the US because he knew only the US and Russia would have the resources for a space program (he surrender was part of Operation Paperclip). He chose the US because he would rather live here.

Similarly, many scientist immigrants continue to chose the US because of opportunities not available in their homelands. The NSF describes this here.


How to Stop Making Stupid Mistakes This has been a plague upon my performance for what seems like all my life (or all my graded life).

No, it's not an 100, it's a 98 because of calling bromine a gas carelessly.
No, it's not a 6/6, it's a 5 out of 6 because you didn't realize that such a simple question had a minor twist
No, it's not a 100, it's a 98 because you had all the right work but you mispunched the calculation.

I'm sick of making careless errors that can truly mean the difference between obtaining one grade and the other. I need to make sure that from now on, I don't, because it is killing me inside.

If it is of consequence, I don't have much time for sleep due to 6 hours minimum of work per night. I get around 6-7 hours a night as opposed to the recommended 9 for a teenager.

Any and all tips would be greatly appreciated.

I had a student come to me trying to get back "lost points" on an exam, because the lost points dropped hm below what was needed to get an A, and he got an A- instead. This was in spite of the fact that his answers were demonstrably wrong.

When I spoke with him, he said that he needed to have the top grades in the class, because he didn't know how else he could demonstrate that he was a "good student." I had to explain to him that the degree to which he was insisting on a regrade (effectively demanding that he be awarded the points, even though they hadn't been earned) actually could hurt him in the long run, because it turns people "off"—no one wants to work with an inveterate complainer. And, ultimately, if he wanted to go further in either the academic world or in a professional career, what he needs are good letters of recommendation from people who are willing to vouch for him and support his career.

My reason for including such a long-winded anecdote here is that the underlying issues are the same: don't worry about little issues here and there. (That doesn't mean don't complain if there's a big problem—clerical errors and mistakes do happen!) Small mistakes are a part of life, and we learn more from those mistakes than from successes.

Nobody is going to think poorly of you because you make small mistakes. Just keep doing what you're doing, and try not to stress out about it when taking exams and doing your work. Worrying about perfection is a good way not to achieve it.


Can leaked nude pictures damage one's academic career? I have an ex who has posted nude photos of me online in the past, linked to my online social media, and posted my full name and where I live. I am concerned he may do so again once he finds out I'm now in a PhD program (he's very jealous of any success I have), and may link to my school bio page, or worse.

Revenge porn is illegal in my state, and the case against him is currently pending. I have also gotten the photos taken down with a DMCA letter (I hold the copyright over the photos in question). At this point, I am concerned with how a future attempt could affect my career.  I can handle the embarrassment now that I've been through it once, so if that's the biggest concern, I can deal. I just don't want to lose a career over it, given how small academia really is and how a reputation might follow one around.

My question is, if I don't change my name (I've considered this, assuming I can keep him from finding out) and my photos are circulated and discovered by faculty or students, how likely am I to be thrown out of my PhD program or later lose a job as an untenured prof? Is a name change worth it?

(If it makes any difference, they are essentially just topless portraits; I'm not engaged in any sexual activity or anything weird, and were taken 10 years ago when I was very young and foolish.)

I think you can generally trust faculty to be adults when it comes to graduate admissions and a tenure track job.

The biggest problem I would see is when you teach (future undergraduate) students. I'm not sure how you would want to deal with them.

I would say that university administrators tend to be adversity shy and could be a problem.

I would instead look to see if a lawyer might help you DMCA the sites hosting the images as well as file either a legal complaint or restraining order against you ex.  This latter bit is best asked on Law Stack Exchange.

University registrars and faculty are used to students having to change their name due to a variety of circumstances. You should be able to get new transcripts and letters issued under your new name without issue. But the abuser can also link images to your new name unless you can prevent him or he loses interest; so a name change is not a foolproof solution.


How to find size of academic literature in a given discipline? The question is related to the trend of research and focus on different disciplines.

Is there some trend assesment which shows the number of articles or conferences on a specific disciplines?

If someone would like to see the trend of research on let's say Nano Technology or Semantic Technology is there some source of information which shows the number of conferences related to the discipline and the number of articles tagged for these disciplines?

It is not that easy to determine the current trend. Many search engines for publications give the number of the search query.

It is important to continuously dealing with your area of expertise. The best way to identify the current trend is to go to conferences and read professional journals. In addition, one also needs a lot of expertise to be able to assess as something.


Signed up for conference, having second thoughts My advisor suggested that I should sign up for a conference, which I did - I now have to give a 15 minute talk.

However, the conference is taking place very far from me (+20 hour flight), and I am having second thoughts on whether I should go or not. Here are my thoughts:

Pro

Meet new people/socialize
Present my work at a talk, instead of merely a poster session

Con

Conference is only 4 days, two ~20 hours flights are very exhausting
The audience are not completely aligned with my field, so I have to make my presentation simpler than what the work actually is
Will not learn things that I directly need for my research because of the audience (they are in geology and engineering, I'm in math)

Honestly, I don't feel like going because of the above list. But I am worried that

My advisor will think I'm being annoying by "backing" out
I can't say no now, since I have been given a talk

I would be very happy to hear your opinions on this matter. Maybe I am putting too much thought into this.

I'd like to add several items to your list of pros:

Dissemination. You will make your work known to a whole new field of possibly interested people. If you're going there, I presume there is an interesting application in sight. Possible follow-ups. Lots of opportunities. Interdisciplinary collaboration. To be avid and down-to-earth, lots of citations might await. :)
Presenting experience. The best way to improve your presentation skills is giving talks. This is a good opportunity.
Connections It's always good to get to know people in academia. You might need to send them a quick e-mail with a question on their area of expertise. You might one day be looking for a post-doc job and they might be offering one (even if it's a position for an applied mathematician in a geology department). You might find a good idea for an interdisciplinary research project and apply for a grant.
Learning new things Yes, you will learn new things listening to the other talks, even if it's a different field. You might find a new related problem that you can solve. You might learn more about the applicative background of the problem that you are studying. You might find an example that looks great in the introduction of your next paper.
Tourism. When will you be able to visit again that far-away country? True, you won't see much if you are stuck in a university or a conference center, but that's still a great life experience in my view. One of the parts I enjoy the most of the academic career is being able to travel and see the world.
Money availability. Your advisor says that there is money for the trip, this time. My advice is go for it. More troubled times might come in future.
Trust your advisor. (S)he suggested you to sign up, so he thinks it's a good idea for you to go. You should trust him, it's the person who best knows the conference, your work and your situation.

I've been doing some interdisciplinary research lately. It's hard at first, but fascinating and productive once you enter it. There is a big entry barrier in getting to know each other's field and learning to use the same language, but there are lots of interesting results to gather just by putting together the ideas and methods of two different fields.

EDIT: added "trust your advisor"


Is this considered citation stuffing? I've had experiences where some reviewers comment something along the line with:

  Why didn't you cite [x]. They solved a similar (but not strictly
  applicable) variation of your problem.

Now most of the times, I have read [x]'s abstract and conclusion + skimmed it, but I chose not to include it in my citations as it wasn't particularly relevant to my problem.

My question is, if I have read [x]'s abstract, conclusion, and skimmed its content, can I write a sentence such as:

  A considerable amount of work [a,b,c,x] addressing this problem, as
  well as its variations, has emerged in the recent years.

Is this considered citation stuffing?

I think you're asking the wrong question here.  Instead of asking whether this is "citation stuffing", I would suggest you simply ask yourself whether this makes the paper better or worse (or no different) for your reader.  That is always the ultimate question that should inform all other choices.

Given that you are only proposing to add a single sentence to the paper, citing some purportedly related works, it is not onerous to read that additional sentence.  If the papers are indeed related enough to be of interest to some readers, then it is probably not going to make your paper any worse to mention them.  Bear in mind that when you read an academic paper about a particular problem, you are often interested in related problems, even if they are variations that are different to the immediate problem.  On the other hand, if the papers you propose to cite are not really related to the topic at hand, or are too far removed to be of interest, it will be annoying if you lead the reader to them on the basis of a false promise.

As to the fact that you have only "skim-read" the papers you propose to cite, that is not necessarily disqualifying, but you need to be careful.  If you're going to say that these works are "addressing this problem, as well as its variations", then you have to make sure that you read enough to be absolutely sure that this claim is true.  It is also important to have read enough of them to be satisfied that these are good papers ---i.e., you want to direct your reader to papers that are valuable for them to read.  You don't necessarily need to read an entire paper to know that it relates to a variation of the problem you are working on, but you have to make sure you read enough that you are not just guessing or taking someone else's word for it.


Can I transfer my PhD to a Masters I am pursuing my PhD and am in the first year of my program in Automotive Engineering. I completed my Masters in the same field, at the same school. I am having a tough time with my adviser and go into depression all time. I cannot take it any more. He threatens to take away my funding each day something I cannot afford. I am an international student and if I let go I will have to go back to my country and will be left with nothing. I wanted to know whether I will be able to transfer to a masters program from a PhD program. We have a Mechanical Engg. Dept in our college and the courses are common. They have a no thesis option and I can pursue my CPT and OPT. I don't know whom to pursue or call in the college regarding this. Hence I came here.

Any help is highly appreciated.

Yes, in almost all cases, a PhD student can transfer to a Masters program.  The person to contact is your department head, or dean.  This is surprisingly common, and I've personally know several people who went on to very happy careers after switching to an MS.


Withdraw CS conference paper (after acceptance) due to authorship disputes? Is it ethical to withdraw a CS conference paper after being accepted, but before the final version is due (because of authorship disputes). What other consequences would there be (like re-submitting to other conferences if withdrawal is is successful)?

These sort of things do occur and are of valid concern. It would be best to withdraw your paper with a kind apology note to the conference committee. There is not an unethical conduct as your reason should be perfectly valid and you have no gain in this act.


Publish paper without consulting project guide? I graduated with engineering degree. I (along with 2 other) had done project on SDN, and we have a research paper to publish. But our project guide(, and former project guide ) is forcing us to mention add their name as first, second author and all fee should be paid by us.

Paying fee is not a big deal, but we cannot add their name as first and second author as they have less/no contribution.

We finally decided to remove all instance their name  from the paper, and publish it. It is right, or we should inform them before publishing. In all case, we are going to remove every instance of their name. Or any other way to deal it or accept their name and get out of this thing.

We are OK with adding their names, but how should be the order of names?

Edit1

Top/first page. First comes their name, then ours. We are OK with it.

Bottom(Authors section, biography in some). They want only their name to be written.

Edit2: By less contribution I mean on scale of 10, 3 of us have 7-10, and they have 0-3

I'll assume "guide" means "supervisor." Hence, your project supervisors are insisting that they be listed as co-authors on your SDN paper written under their supervision. Assuming that their supervision resulted to an intellectual contribution to the paper, I believe you have an obligation to list them as co-authors. On the other hand, if your supervisors provided no input / no guidance, then I think you can publish without listing them as co-authors. You could invite the department head to mediate, if there is a dispute over whether the supervisors contributed.


How to notify Elsevier or Clarivate when then they are indexing predatory or very low quality journals? What is the best way to alert Elsevier or Clarivate Analytics -- for instance, if I see a potentially predatory (or just really low quality) journal indexed in Scopus or WoS or if I see recent changes that possibly indicate a lowering of standards by the journal (such as a dramatic increase in the number of articles published)?

First, Elsevier or Clarivate Analytics already monitor things like dramatic increases in the number of articles published. It's why excessive self-citation can and has lead to journals getting delisted.

However you can still write to them to highlight potential problems. If you want to do this, the best way is to use their "contact us" forms on their website. Here's Scopus's page on it, and here's Web of Science's. Be prepared for the exchange to go like any other investigation - you may be asked to provide proof.


How to propose collaboration, when I have an idea for analyzing another group's data? My field is data analysis in which i try to invent/improve algorithms to better analyze existing datasets. During my search i noticed a good medical institute is trying to solve their problem from data analysis point of view, or in other words they are working on designing methods to decipher their own data.

Based on their publications i noticed that my method might have a better result according to what they look for. So one approach is to ask them if i can have the data and try my method and in case of success i can have my own next publication.

However, i also really like to have collaborations with that institute rather than just using their data, as in my field it'd be a great value to have close works with data-experts like them.

But i do not know how to approach them? and whom to contact? In fact, i already had a short talk with the post-doc involved in their project. Should i just contact him, or better to put their adviser in the communication loop?

Also, it would be naive if i say "my approach will work better than what you have devised so let's have collaborations!!", wouldn't be?

I would be so grateful if you could give me some advice on these situations!

I would contact the postdoc you previously talked with. He could be senior enough to run the whole collaboration without keeping his supervisor in the loop all the time. At the very least he has close access to the supervisor, and would prevent you from "cold-calling" the PI with your idea. Why try that again when you already have a contact? This is of course assuming the talk went well and you think he would be welcoming the collaboration.

About how to suggest it: Don't tell them that your method is better than theirs. You could tell them you have an alternative idea that might give better results. As far as you could test it, this seems to be the case and you'd like to try it out with more data, preferentially in the form of a collaboration. This avoids telling them you're better than them / they're wrong. Nobody wants to hear that, and in this case they also don't need to hear it.


How can I document depression for later reference in grad school applications? I am currently a third year undergraduate at a good university studying computer science. I am planning to apply to top graduate schools when I finish my undergrad and I need a bit of advice.

In the first two and half (5 semesters) of my studies, I took the most challenging CS/Math courses in my university and did very well in them (GPA 4.11/4.30). I also joined two research groups and have 2 publications where I am the first author, published in reputable journals. I also have a very good relationship with my 2 research advisors.

Now in my sixth semester, I decided to go on an exchange semester and things just started crumbling. First of all, I couldn't integrate well in the culture and I was left very lonely with no new friends in the area. My Girlfriend of 5 years broke up with me, my mother got into a car accident which affected her health, and I started taking depression medication due to that. I also gained a lot of weight which lead to some health problems. Needless to say, this term is coming to an end and I can't wait to leave this place. I am going to probably fail 2/4 courses, and in the remaining ones, I will barely pass. I am expecting a 2.0 GPA at best.

Now I know this won't go unnoticed by graduate school admissions. I am just wondering what steps can I take as of now to document all of this so that I can justify the poor performance in the exchange semester during my graduate application?

Your transcript should be all you need. Presumably, your transcript shows that you studied at a foreign university, and that things did not go well. If you are back to 100% next semester, it will be pretty obvious that the problems were related to studying abroad. You may then want to write something in your statement of purpose when you apply to assure them that attending grad school won't cause problems similar to what happened when you were studying abroad. This should be an easy sell, especially if the exchange program was in a very far away country and the grad program is in your home country/region.

At any rate, graduate school admissions people certainly do not want to see documentation about your health or personal relationships. They just need a believable reason for why that one semester doesn't indicate you are unfit for grad school, and the transcript showing you studied abroad far away and had some problems should address that. The only place you may run into problems is if your application is automatically filtered out before it reaches the committee -- but no way to avoid that.

The question posed in the title is a bit more challenging. You are able to attribute your difficulties to having studied abroad. For students who suffer mental health challenges at their home universities, graduate school admission is more challenging. Even in this case, however, I do not think they are interested in seeing medical or other documentation.


I'm in a religious country, and my religious supervisor is praying. What should I do? My supervisor and all his other doctoral students are practicing religious, while I am not, I am "non-religious".

We never discuss religion together, but sometimes they all leave to pray together, and leave me alone, which makes me uncomfortable.
Surely, if they knew I'm "non-religious," it would annoy them.

How do I react to a situation in which they all go to pray except me?
Do you think I have to open this debate with them, and close it once and for all?
Should I pretend to be like them, pray with them?

EDIT: I am in a predominantly Muslim country, MENA (Middle East and North Africa), and not being Muslim is not very welcomed in general. For example, eating during the month of Ramadan is not legal, and can be a source of physical or mental violence in the street. So even if my supervisor is kind enough as well as his other doctoral students, they will be disappointed if they know my situation.

I grew up in a Muslim-majority country. Do's and don'ts:

Do show respect for the religion. That means avoid doing things like comment on how inconvenient it must be to pray five times a day, don't offer non-halal food, don't invite people to lunch during Ramadan, etc.
Do do as they do, if possible and not inconvenient. For example if you take lunch together, order/pack something halal. Unless you have special dietary requirements that require you to eat pork, don't eat pork when with others.
Do dress conservatively. If your institution has a dress code, follow that. If you're female, you can usually refuse to wear the hijab if it makes you uncomfortable (depends on country however), but still dress conservatively - e.g. don't wear something sleeveless, and wear hemlines that go below the knee (this rules out wearing shorts in public).
Don't pretend to be Muslim. You can't fake it. Learning how to pray in the religion takes time; the chant is nontrivial as well.
Don't pretend to be Muslim #2: just as important, once you identify as Muslim you could be bound to obey a different set of laws. Sharia criminalizes things which are fine in contemporary Western culture, such as homosexuality. If you're homosexual but identify as Muslim, you could bring the religious police on your head.
Don't pretend to be Muslim #3: in some countries, if people believe you are Muslim, it can cause you a lot of inconvenience. It doesn't take much to become associated with the religion (extreme historical example, less extreme modern example), and once you become associated, it can be really hard to leave the religion. Potential problems you could face go up to death. In the meantime it's not just you that's affected: in many countries, there are restrictions on Muslim persons marrying a non-Muslim; plus any child born to a Muslim is automatically a Muslim.

Exception: if you were originally a Muslim but no longer believe in the religion, you don't have good options. The above advice will still bring the religious police onto you, because you're now an apostate. You would either have to pretend to be Muslim (at least you should know how to pray) or leave the country and work elsewhere.
tl; dr: Leave religious people to practice their religion and don't criticize them for it. They should do the same to you.


Is it possible to study in China without knowing Chinese? Is it possible to enroll into and complete a graduate school in China while having only English language skills, without speaking Chinese at all? In particular, I am interested in (theoretical) physics.

If you include Hong Kong as part of China, the answer is Yes but limited to Hong Kong. English is an official language of Hong Kong. Universities in Hong Kong all use English as the media of teaching and the common language for research is English. No Physics courses are taught in languages other than English and no faculty members are not proficient in English. See this official website for reference. The best are University of Hong Kong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Otherwise the choices are limited to those high-ranking universities in China such as Peking University and Tsinghua University. In Tsinghua, most faculty members use English for publication purpose but not at all for communications in research. Most teaching and administration stuff are in Chinese. So you have to learn chinese at least in conversational level to survive a Phd there.


Posting previously published content on Arxiv I have some previously published work in the computer vision domain, and would like to upload them to arXiv to provide greater accessibility.

How can I go about finding which licence statement to select for the particular conferences my work was published in (CVPR & ECCV)?

Take a look at the copyright agreement you signed when you published the paper. It usually states under which conditions uploading the paper to other repositories is acceptable. Usually, you are only allowed to upload the "authors version" (or some variant thereof), which usually needs to contain a specific phrase like (in the case of the ACM):

  © ACM, YYYY. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in PUBLICATION, {VOL#, ISS#, (DATE)} http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/nnnnnn.nnnnnn"

There is also a web service that makes this a bit easier to figure out: SHERPA/RoMEO. There you can put in the publisher / journal, and it will give you a human-readable summary of their policies (for example, here is the page for the ACM). But note that publisher policies change, and the binding version is the one you signed when you published the paper, so the data from SHERPA/RoMEO may be incorrect.

Note that, in my experience, almost all publishers allow uploading to an "institutional repository", so even if ArXiv may be disallowed, you can still make your work accessible via your institutional repository (if your institution has one) or your homepage. But, again, check the specific policies that apply to you on that.

Finally: I am not a lawyer, but as I understand it, since you no longer own the copyright on the paper, you cannot put it under a creative commons license (which is an option on ArXiv). So, you'll have to take the minimal license they allow, which only gives them permission to distribute your work (If someone else knows this better than I do, feel free to correct me in the comments or edit the answer).

Also, you can always just ask the publisher if you want to be extra sure, but in my experience, this may be a long process (I waited for over a week for a reply by the ACM, and am have now been waiting for over a month for a reply to a followup question).


Is it ethical for students to consume Adderall during university courses, if they don't have ADHD? Assume a student in the United States who has access to Adderall despite not suffering from ADHD. Would it be ethical for them to take the drug during their studies?

Assume that the school is within the United States. When answering only the academic side of things should be taken into account – I am fully aware that taking a drug without a proper prescription is illegal.

Academia is not a competition, neither is school. It's about education and knowledge. Neither comes and goes with a few pills.

Applying the anti-doping rules from sports is therefore nonsense. What applies are the common workplace anti-drug rules.


What exactly is "nostrification" of a university diploma? I have been reading a bit about nostrification of a university diploma, but I don't quite understand what it means. I do understand that nostrification is basically validation of your diploma in a foreign country. But, does it only mean that your diploma is recognized in this foreign country (so you can actually take a job there, or you can continue to a higher education there) or it actually means that you can go to a university at this foreign country and require the same degree diploma from that university?

For example, if you have a civil engineering degree from a university in country A, and you do nostrification in country B, does it also mean that you can go to a university that offers a civil engineering programme in country B, and just require a degree diploma from that university cause you already had one from country A?

Nostrification is verification that Degree X you received in Country A has the same value as Degree Y received in Country B. You do not receive a new diploma for Degree Y in Country B.

Well, actually a university in Country B may decide to give you Degree Y based on your work in Country A, but it's certainly not standard, and usually bond to university-level agreement and cooperated studies, but even then it's often not the degree that's nostrificated, but rather the thesis, its reports etc. and the defense that's considered.

The most common reason for diploma nostrification is (1) job requirements in Country B, often in governmental jobs such as offices, schools etc.; or (2) continuation of study, for instance nostrification of Masters for the admission to PhD studies in Country B. In neither case, it is necessary to have Degree Y in Country B.


How to put multiple affiliations on a paper as the author? I work for a large company, I am also a student at a big school. My employer is supportive in terms of funding required for my studies. Although the research paper has more to do with my academic studies. What is a reasonable way to put both affiliations in the research paper? My primary affiliation is my employer and second affiliation is my school. Is it ok to put in the Author section both affiliations? And give a footnote with the details?

You should be able to put both affiliations on. I assume you are permanently employed, in which case that is more permanent than the academic address. However, if your published work is done as part of your schooling you should put that affiliation first, perhaps listing your job affiliation/address as "permanent" or something describing your employment.

The reason for putting your academic affiliation first is that it is within that you have done the work and probably received intellectual coaching and support (if you receive similar input also from work then that affiliation might be equally valid as first). Listing two affiliations is common and the reason is typically when people move between institutes and it is important to keep readers aware of one whereabouts in such circumstances. In your case you will likely be found at your company in the future (my assumption) and it therefore makes sense to list also that.


What are your recommendations to organizing online streams of lectures? What are the aspects you would recommend to pay attention to?

Specifically, we're organizing a seminar series, where we would also like to make the streams available online. It is not so important that the online observers are able to interact, so there could be some lag with the display online. In fact, having full chat interaction with observers like in "hangouts" could be risky, as someone from outside could interrupt the flow.

What are your recommendations on how to organize it? The aims of the stream is to allow people not attending to follow the discussions too and perhaps get more people interested through the shared link. It would be nice to know how many people are observing the link at the time. Otherwise, any ideas would be useful.

For example, we have been thinking about the balance of interaction and visibility of the online stream - it could be that if the stream is too comfortable, the participants might bother to show up, and just observe from home thus potentially unintentionally working against the seminar.

What are your recommendations in how to go about it?

Thanks!

This kind of questions are often closed due to being a "shopping question." And yet, I do feel it's important in faculty's life. Perhaps you can reword your question so that it's asking for "What to consider" rather than "Which software to use."

Now onto the question. The answer is "I don't know." It's because the choice of platform can depend on a lot of criteria and not many were presented in the question. What I'd suggest is to identify the education media person and the instruction designer in your institute and schedule a meeting with him/her.

Prior to the meeting, prepare the followings. These are the general information the specialist will need to know:

Is it synchronous (live with real time interaction) or asynchronous (not live or only partially live, with more lag time interaction.) For example, a live lecture that allows people to raise question at the same duration of time is closer to synchronous; an uploaded video of a past lecture with a discussion board for Q&A is more of an asynchronous design. The more details you can provide to the specialist, the more fitting the solution.
Is it closed or open? Do people need to RSVP and log in with user name or password? Or is it just a link that anyone can access?
How many participants are you expecting? Just a ballpark is fine.
Do you need onsite AV and technical support? This has impact on your pricing. But if none of the speakers has experience with technical troubleshooting, I'd suggest get one at least for the first couple sessions.

These are just the works you need to do with the education media person. On your side, there are a lot to think about as well:

Online course has very different design concepts. While some of us may think that it's just an extra camera in the lecture hall but it's a lot more complicated than that. You'd have to consider the pacing, consider if micro-lecture is a better alternative, figure out when to let participation or Q&A happen, and design online assessment and evaluation, etc. Resources are readily available on the Internet and in books. Consult the education media person for details.
The management of the class is also different. For synchronous, I'd suggest have one person do the teaching and one extra person (could be a TA) to manage the chat, collect and curate questions for you. It's often disastrous for the speaker to try jumping between chatting and teaching.
Test run, test run, test run, and test run more. If anything, this is the most important key to success. Find some friends and colleagues to join some test sessions. Collect information on their device and make sure there is a good diversity in operation systems, browsers used, microphone and camera models, desktops or tablets, etc. and make sure the system is as versatile and bullet proof as possible.
Develop an etiquette/technical support guide and circulate it among the participants or make it available as a download prior to the event. The guide should contain i) time and date of the event and details on how to log in. Screenshots with captions are great; ii) explain how to raise question (through chat, e-mail, or bulletin board); iii) explain common etiquette such as mute your microphone when you're not speaking to avoid audio feedback, etc.


Rules for affiliation for student doing unpaid research in his/her free time? Lets say an undergraduate student does some research in his/her free time and wants to write a paper about the findings. What are the rules regarding affiliation when the student tries to publish?

The student is required to include the university as affiliation, because he/she is enrolled in a program at the university
The student is not allowed to include the university as affiliation, because he/she is not officially hired/approved to do research under the name of the university
There are no rules, the student can choose
...?

I guess for graduate students / postdocs / professors it is mandatory to include the university as affiliation, as they get paid by the university to do the research they are doing!?

I don't think there are any "official rules".  (I can't even find a clause in my employment contract that officially requires me to list my university on my papers.)

But as long as you are a student, it's a good idea to list your university as an affiliation.  Even if the university isn't paying you, you do benefit indirectly from the intellectual environment and resources that the university provides: professors, fellow students, library, internet, health insurance, nearby coffee shops, and so on.  It costs you nothing to be generous.  Also, for better or worse, readers will take your paper more seriously.


MHRA: citing texts from foreign language - original in footnotes? I often insert quotes from foreign languages in my undergraduate essays. I translate them in English in the main text, but do I have to put the original text in the footnotes? It will make them long and unpleasant.

I'm currently working with the MHRA referencing style, but I wasn't able to find any information online. Any suggestion also from other referencing styles (MLA, Chicago, APA) will be appreciated.

Thanks

EDIT: I'm asking here because my teacher has not replied to this question and I cannot go to see her.

Here a few solutions, all of which should be fine unless your professor explicitly rejects one of them.  Since the MHRA (from what I can tell glancing over it) doesn't include explicit recommendations, as long as you indicate the source of your translated text and the original, I can't imagine them being so unreasonable to count off.

Option 1: Find a translation
This might not be possible, but if you can, just cite it instead.  Life made easy for everyone, unless it's a terrible translation.
Option 2: If short, include both
I would only do this if the handful of foreign words are pertinent to the discussion (perhaps due to ambiguity or double entendre), or are relatively famous.  You would probably want to quote Julius Caesar as …"Veni, vidi, vici" (p. 38), which is to say "I came, I saw, I conquered"….  For such short translations, if you did them yourself or they are well known, there's no real need to indicate the source of the translation.
Option 3: Original/translation in text, translation/original in footnote/endnote.
This prevents your main text from being too cluttered but could quickly turn into an abuse of footnotes/endnotes, especially if you have a lot of relatively short quotes.  If you just have two or three long block quotes, this might be best, though.
Option 4: Translate to English and clarify.
This is my preferred approach.  Just cite in English, but in your citation, add a little extra saying "translation mine" not unlike the common "emphasis mine" to indicate italicization not present in the original.  From what I can tell, in MHRA you actually put "emphasis added" in parentheses inside the quotation marks, so you may just put at the beginning or end "(translated from the French)" or similar.  Or, since MHRA appears to use footnotes for first citations, just include the text after the reference entry "I have translated all citations from this source to English" (or similar), and never worry about it again.


Good idea to warn students they were suspected of cheating? I am a math professor. Several of our midterm questions were posted to Chegg. We found some students who clearly used them and gave them zeroes for the exam. We also had two students where I kept going back and forth. Most of their work was fine but, in each case, there was one answer which was surprisingly close to Chegg but not so close that I thought it couldn't be a coincidence. I kept sitting on the edge and finally decided to let it go.
I've been thinking, after all grades are in, of writing these students and saying "If you were cheating, you came very close to getting caught. You should be scared about how close you came and make sure you don't do this again; you clearly know enough to pass without it. If you weren't, than I am very sorry to have suspected you." Good idea or terrible idea?

No, you should not single them out. If you have evidence of cheating, then charge it. If you have suspicions then you should swallow and ignore them so as not to prejudice the students in the future.
If you want to announce to the entire class that there were a few other cases that were suspect, not naming names and not singling out any individual, that would be fine and the message would be delivered.
Some people would take such a singling out very badly. Psychologically. Especially if they didn't cheat.


Why do citations in physics journals leave out the article title? I'm not a physicist but I read the occasional physics paper. Coming from another discipline I find it odd that most article references in physics journals leave out the article title - this seems like a valuable piece of information to include for future researchers (not to mention their research assistants or library staff who may be asked to track the article down).

This reference style is recommended in the Physical Review Style and Notation Guide (PDF, p. 7) and the AIP Style Manual (PDF, p. 9) so I assume it's fairly widespread (although as a counterexample, the Reviews of Modern Physics Style Guide (PDF, p. 8) encourages an optional "long format" that does include the title).

Why does the physics community prefer this reference style, and what's the history behind its adoption?

The title is not strictly necessary to track down a paper, so it can be considered superfluous information. Leaving it out saves space, paper, and money in the printed version of the journal. It also saves on shipping. (The names of individual journals are abbreviated for the same reason. Same goes for the page range being replaced by the opening page number.) That's the historical reason, as I understand it. Speaking of history, this practice goes back a long way, and was commonplace already in the late 20s and 30s, in journals published on both sides of the Atlantic*.

One might expect this to have changed somewhat with the rise of digital distribution, and particularly the newer online-only APS journals. It sort of has. In 2015 the print journals decided to allow titles in the reference list. As for the online-only ones, I haven't had reason to check the style guide all of them. However, I know that at least one of them, Physical Review X, even requires the inclusion of titles.

While Reviews of Modern Physics is still printed (and thus should prefer leaving out titles for references according to the above logic), it's a unique case in many ways. One of these ways is that it mostly publishes few, but quite long papers. Hence, the relative savings of leaving out the titles would tend to be much smaller than in e.g. Physical Review Letters.

Even with digital distribution, many of us still prefer reading a printout, so the paper savings are still appreciated. Another reason for preferring this kind of concise referencing is that it kind of fits how some (a lot?) of us think about papers (although I admit there might be a chicken-and-egg situation here). It's Brady's PRB from 2015, not whatever the title of that paper might have had. Also, titles are quite often similar to those of related papers, and can blend together, so they don't add much IMO.

*No special meaning is assigned to these decades, I just happened to have a few Zeitschrift für Physik and Physical Review papers from this time period on hand.


Retroactively Awarding Extra Exam Time Since the beginning of the Corona Virus pandemic and the adaptation to distance learning, I have had to adapt my classes to hold exams via video calls.  In previous semesters when I've had students with special accommodations (i.e. entitlement to extra time on exams), the students would generally go to a different office where they would take the exam with a special proctor who was aware of their entitlements.  My institution however has levied this burden to instructors to keep track of students' various time limits on exams.

A student of mine with an extra time entitlement had emailed me to confirm that I was going to honor this.  I didn't have the time to respond to them via email prior to the exam, but I had sent this student a private message via the video call platform to confirm with them their extra time and wrote out instructions for submitting their exam.  This student however never read my message, and as a result submitted their exam prematurely claiming that I hadn't confirmed their extra time entitlement.  Because the video call platform doesn't record private messaging into their transcript, I have no physical evidence to show the student that I had messaged them at the start of the exam.

I'd like to know what would ethically be the right way to handle this situation.  I want to honor this student's time entitlement, and potentially give them the lost time to complete the exam, but I'm already at a place where I have to go over the exam with my other students.  I'm not sure what the correct way to handle this situation is.  It's frustrating because there was a second student who had a similar entitlement during the same exam, and they read my message and took advantage of their extra time.

You don't have to be the person who decides what to do in this situation. Actually, there are many reasons to remove yourself from making further decisions. Take it back to the administration of your Department / University, give them a fair account of what's happened, and let them decide what to do.


Having collaboration with other professors I graduated with math degree. Now I want to conduct research which is a kind of combination of two subjects X and Y. I found another professor (by googling) in different country who is working on Y. My question is that: How can I ask the professor to have a joint work? May you please give me a proper text for my request?

Professors are people, too. They are not robots to be sent a formal instruction code. Write an email like you are talking to a human. Introduce yourself, introduce your background, clearly explain your proposal. Don't forget to clearly say what is X and Y and why you think working on their combination is a good idea.

Professors are often very busy but they also value good collaborations and will respond if your idea is clearly explained and is promising.


Is there a standard format for sharing data? We are writing a paper, and want to share the raw data.
My advisor suggests that I share the data as an Excel file, but I believe that a plain text file (such as a text-delimited or comma-delimited file) would be better.

Is there a standard format for sharing data?
How do I convince my advisor that a plain text file is a better format for sharing data?

No.

Depends greatly on the field and kind of data.

Some fields do have relatively standard formats:

In Astronomy, FITS is considered pretty much the standard for imagery.
In machine learning, CSV/TSV is relatively common -- though as the data set sizes get larger and richer, other formats come into play. You can troll the UCI ML Repository to get a feeling for what's common.

In general though, I'd argue that plain-text based formats are what you want to preserve. If, happiness of happiness, your paper becomes hugely influential and you only provide an .xls file, you can bet the first thing that's going to happen is a bunch of ersatz plain-text copies will appear.

If you want to annotate your data, and that's what is swaying your advisor to Excel, perhaps consider something like XML or JSON -- easy for the computer to process and plain text based, yet free-form enough that you can annotate it however you'd like.


What does “auditing a course” mean? I am visiting an American university for a year. In my invitation letter and further instructions, it is written that I can audit any course that I want (subject to the agreement of its professor).

Since it is not common in my country, I have no idea what this auditing process is. What should I do?

Is it an official process with official report, or do I simply attend the class like students?

It usually means that you can sit in the lectures, but that none of your work will be graded/marked and you won't get any credit for it. Some universities have official forms that record the fact that you audited a course. Others just do it through personal consultation with the instructor.

During my first year of grad school, I audited a codes and cryptography course my senior-year undergrad friends were taking. I sat through the crypto part and then bailed on the codes. It was nice. I know a little about RSA and Elliptic Curves now. I got to hangout with my friends and I didn't have to do any work. I think I'm a better educated person for it, but it doesn't really affect my career.


Does it matter where you go to medical school? There are many reports out there that say you should not go get an MBA or JD unless you are going for the Top 5 or Top 10 schools respectively. The rationale is that the lost salary and tuition does not make up for the expected NPV difference (get a professional degree vs. do not get a professional degree).

I have never heard this about medical schools. It seems reasonable to assume that most patients do not inquire about their doctor's alma mater and that there is a lot of standardization in the final board exam. Also, most medical schools have an extremely low dropout/failure rate (<5%). However, there is huge variability among the selectivity of medical schools,  ranging from an average undergraduate GPA and MCAT score of 3.35 and 20 respectively, all the way up to 3.89 and 38.

What advantages does a Duke M.D. have over a Marshall University M.D.? Am I correct in assuming that the average salary distribution over all US medical schools is relatively flat?

I disagree. There are very little differences between medical schools so long as you do well on your STEP I through STEP III exams. Basically what really matters is how you rank compared to the national average.
I have interviewed residency candidates from around the country-their alma mater means very little to me. Their STEP scores and extracurricular activities matter as well as their personal statements. Don't worry about medical school ranking-just worry about Step exam scores-that will really help you get into any residency program you want.


I wasted six years of my life getting a PhD degree. What should I do, and how will I survive? I struggled with low self confidence throughout my bachelors, masters and PhD in chemical engineering. After spending two years in Masters and six years in getting a PhD degree, I am lost at what I can do with my life.

Initially, my plan was to be in academia. Though I love doing research, I don't see that as a possibility anymore.

I did not do well in my PhD. I have only two first-author journal publications in ~2.5 impact factor journals. I did not acquire significant skills. I am bad at programming, and I have a 3.7 GPA. I did not learn to drive or learn any foreign language. I did not improve my health or developed a new hobby. I even did not spend time on having a relationship. In short, I have done nothing over the past six years.

My PhD supervisor has given me a postdoc position. And I feel extremely inadequate. I feel that I won't be able to do anything after my postdoc year, and I will just be a burden and disappointment to my parents.

I am an international student living in the US.

I don't know what I should do. What should I do?

It looks to me like you did not do so badly as you think. Two publications and 3.7 GPA are not so bad. It might depend on the field, it might not be the best ever, but I have seen much worse. If your supervisor offered you a postdoc position after having you for 6 years as a PhD student, it means that they consider your work useful.

You might be suffering from impostor syndrome. Do read the question and the answers in that link and see if you identify.

If you are not sure now, you have plenty of time during your postdoc year to decide whether you want to continue in academia or get a job in industry. The pros and cons of both options have been discussed extensively, as a quick Google search for "industry vs academia" shows. I personally agree with this source.

And, in most cases, the answer to "I have wasted X years of my life because I did not do Y and Z" is "do not look at the past and do Y and Z now". Especially when, as  in your case, Y and Z can be done at any stage in your career life, such as learning languages, programming or driving.


How you choose the literature you read (Advice) As new researcher and having started my PhD studies less than one month, I would like someone experienced to give me some advice.  As researcher, which are your habits concerning research papers you read.
How you choose the literature you read ? Do you 'follow'  journals/ research groups/conferences/topic?

Are there tools for this reason?

Starting good literature habits at the beginning of your PhD is excellent. Here's the method I use:

-First, I created a publication alert for litterature highly specific to my study subject. I used Web Of Science for that, but only because my library subscribe to it. I think you can create similar alert using Google Scholar. I try to keep really up to date with that list because it is centered on my project.

-Second, I follow some journals relevant to my research using RSS feed. Each time there is a new articles in those journals, I get an alert. There is multiple RSS feed organizer software. I personally prefer to received them in my email inbox using Thunderbird. I'm not very good at keeping up with that list, but I try at least to read the article title, to know if something relevent wasn't find by my citation alert. I also got alert from BioRxiv.

-Finally, I follow researchers on Research Gate and thus I receive alert when they publish. I chose to follow the researcher I most often cite.

Keeping up with the literature is hard! I think organisation is part of the key.


Is it acceptable to postpone my admission in a PhD program for a year? In my country, we have to do a year of military service after graduating. The service starts in January. If I applied for a PhD program and get accepted, I won't know till March or April, after I have entered the service. Will the university accept postponing my admission for another year?

I will apply before the service, in case I get excused.

Postponing admission is likely to be approved, but it may depend on the finances of the program.  Usually this sort of decision would be made on a case-by-case basis.


What is the best way to turn down a Postdoc offer? I've been recently offered a couple of Postdoc positions, and I was wondering how you as professors would prefer to be informed if a candidate would rather work with another institution.

I know we are professionals, and these things are to be expected, and probably the professor has another candidates to choose from, but I just want to be as respectful and professional myself as possible, so how would you turn down an offer, or would like to be turned down.

Keep it short and honest.

For example,

  Dear So and So, thank you for your offer for a postdoc at Blah. It's
  an attractive offer, but I've decided to take a position at Foo-Bar
  instead. The work you're doing over at Blah is very interesting and I
  look forward to interacting with you in the future.

Of course if you have more than one rejection to send out PLEASE PLEASE don't do it generically. Tailor it to each place individually. It takes a little more time, but it's a fair exchange given that they took the time to give you an offer.