Overlapping sentences in methodology descriptions in separate journal articles - plagiarism? Disclaimer - I'm neither in favor of, nor endorsing plagiarism with the following question. I'm only hitting on the fact that sometimes, the interpretation of self-plagiarism can be quite stupid.

Given the well-deserved emphasis on controlling the menace of plagiarism these days, various journals and even academic institutions have insisted on various cross-check measures. Mostly, this amounts to necessitating a clean chit from some anti-plagiarism software, which (I imagine) works by comparing string lengths of some x-words in the article, with its existing database. So, if some dumb guy didn't rephrase himself, there would be common sentences, which earns him disrepute and he gets tagged as a self-plagiarist.

Now, as a ''responsible'' author, I would try to minimize such overlaps, ideally to zero. But sometimes, you can't help it. Take this context for example. (Sidenote - I'm basically a Physics.SE user.) We have used one model in two different contexts, so there is no question of overlapping content between two articles. But, since it is the same model, when I describe it, in one place I write -

  The free parameters of the wawa model, p1, p2 and p3 are fitted to baryon masses and vacuum characteristics in the wawa limit.

(''wawa'' = whatever)

Now, I don't see any self-plagiarism in repeating this one sentence in the second article, but if I don't, maybe I'm being the ''dumb guy'' in the previous paragraph. So, I'll try to work around this, finding synonyms, trying alternative descriptions, but even with all my maneuvering, that sentence was the best way to describe it.

My opinion is that, even though I'm not plagiarizing anywhere in the above context, this process is turning out to be a nuisance for me. Am I supposed to sit down and waste so much time rephrasing my sentences, when I have some meaningful information to communicate to the scientific world? (Worst still, I could've been investigating some hot problem in my discipline, where urgently communicating is invaluable.)

Also, as @mhwombat hit on in a comment, am I not compromising on the best way of putting it across, when I deliberately rephrase it, just because there is a ''plagiarism'' checker in place? That's surely not what the purpose of plagiarism check was?

I think the focus on self-plagiarism here is overwrought when it comes to describing a methodology that may be reused from paper to paper. You are going to cite the first place you wrote that sentence, and you shouldn't need to worry about changing the wording in the series of papers that use the same methodology.

Methodology descriptions should be clear and exactly the same when the underlying methodology is exactly the same from work to work. Any editor who used software to flag your words should see your self-reference/citation and give you a pass. "Self-plagiarism" of this sort is a bad label and no crime.

Edited to add: At most, you may need an prefatory clause to the effect "Following our prior methodology described in [1], the free parameters of the wawa model, p1, p2 and p3 are fitted to baryon masses and vacuum characteristics in the wawa limit." Or something similar. But that won't fool the detector software. You need to trust that an editor will understand this for what it is.


Who should I get LOR from : manager of big prestigious company where I worked 5 years back, or unknown small company where I worked recently? I am applying for MS in CS. 6+ years of work experience.

I worked for a huge, globally well known company for less than a year straight out school. This was 5 years back.

I also worked for a very small unknown company for about 3 years.

I can get letters from both, and the content of both will be about the same I think.

Which one should I use for applications? I already have 1 from my professor with whom I did research, and another from my last company where I worked. I just need to submit a 3rd one.

The badge, of whatever worth, for having worked in a "globally well-known" company is already in your cv.

And, it is just "few months work straight out of school", begging the question "coffee anyone?" (only half-jokingly).

But chances are, in the "very small unknown company", your role was much more critical, compared. And it was for three whole years.

If I was the reader, it would be this second letter that would be more believable in my eyes if it mentioned anything about efficiency, professionalism, and dependability.


Is it possible to survive as a researcher being a dispassionate person? I heard a lot of tips for (upcoming) researchers by top professors and researchers.
Almost all of them told that passion of a candidate is one of the quality that drives her research life.
All of them told the same fact in different ways. Some says that the element of surprise or shock is necessary in-order to lead research life.
It is true that anticipation/passion/element of surprise etc., may lead to a great research life. But, I am thinking the other way round.
Suppose there is a professor named dispassion. She won't get surprised or excited to the results of great researches of researchers. She is neither passionate nor dispassionate towards research or results. She does it as a routine task without any excitement or surprise.
Is it possible for her to survive as a productive researcher in academics?
Note: Dispassionate here does not refer to the unwillingness towards work. She feels that whatever results that can be obtained by research are normal or ordinary and hence she is not excited or influenced by them. As a lecturer has anxiety, researcher is dispassionate here.

The "passion" thing is a myth and a shoddy cliche.
Your true feelings need not have any effect on your career.  You just need to do the job.  In academia, there is lots of competition, so "doing the job" means doing it very well - among the best in the world.  But this requires actions, not feelings.
It can be handy to have the skill of making others believe you have certain emotions, though.
If you dislike academia, don't be an academic.  Especially don't teach if you dislike it.  There are better paying and easier jobs that are no more dislikable than teaching, but where you cannot harm students.


How to deal with inconsistent advice from my advisor? I've started writing my dissertation after a bit of a disaster with my field research.  I'm getting the type of degree where we collect our data and analyze only after, not during collection.

My advisor has me on a rigorous schedule which I agreed to because I knew she wouldn't accept anything else.  I had my first round of edits from her and then the second and the response to the two was night and day. First she said I did a great job and then she said my chapter was incomplete.  I explained to her (twice) that I wanted to wait to write one of the sections until later and she told me that she is concerned that my paper was late.

I showed her it was not late, and she said, no, she didn't actually mean late, she meant incomplete because of the section I had missed and because I hadn't written 2-3 paragraphs to cap off the end of my sections (which I consider does not render the chapter "incomplete" because I didn't even know I needed them and that's why students send their chapters to their advisors).

This is not the first time this has happened where she says one thing at one point and then another the next.  She's clearly a mircomanager, but I don't know how to deal with somebody who keeps changing their mind. For financial reasons, I can no longer live near my university and all of our communications are over email. I don't have an issue being assertive about my project, but she doesn't seem to respond to that like a lot of recommendations suggest.

I have about a year to go at this point. What do I do?

When we work on a big project that requires precise thinking and language, it's easy to get into a mindset of wanting the same kind of precision from the people around us.

But sometimes people with sloppy self-expression do have a surprising amount of helpful feedback to offer.

The less defensive you can get the better.  Try to let go of peeves about contradictions and inconsistencies, and try to leverage her comments so as to keep progressing and improving your results and your writing.


Tenure-track application - Number of recommendation letters This question is mostly aimed at mathematicians, since I am currently in the job market for tenure-track positions in pure mathematics.

Usually most of the job adverts say "three letters of recommendation" or "four letters of recommendation, one of which should address teaching", or variants of that. My concerns are:

1) is it ok to submit more than the number requested? Let's say they ask for 3 research letters; is it ok to submit 4?
2) same question for teaching letters: usually only one is required for research positions. I have two available at my disposal, since I had two employers that wrote me one. Should I submit both, or just the one that I think will be more beneficial?

Thanks!

I would not worry about submitting additional letters to places that ask for fewer.

I submitted the same number of letters of recommendation (four, I think) to all the places I applied to, regardless of how many they officially asked for.  A small number of institutions turned out to have policies that meant that they could not consider more than the number of letters that they had officially asked for in their ad.  After receiving my application, they would typically contact me and ask which letter I wanted them to throw out.  Following my discussions with the staff at a couple such institutions, I decided they were probably not places that I would want to work anyway.  They were more fixated on some administrative notion of fairness than on getting the best person for the job.  Perhaps some of those institutions just tossed my application without even contacting me; again, that doesn't sound like a place I would want to end up.

On the other hand, most institutions were happy to have additional informative letters.  Having served on hiring committees myself, I know that extra letters can provide useful additional information about a candidate, although I make a point not to be biased against applicants who submit only the minimum number of reference letters.


Disorganized and overworked professor causing disappoinment and headache About two years ago I finished my master thesis. At our university we can only choose the topic to work on and mostly it is part of a Phd program.

My topic was a mess because the faulty study design did not allow me to draw any firm conclusions, i.e. I could not answer the research questions directly.

However I discovered other interesting facts which are directly related to these questions.

Two things happened:
My advisor did not want me to include these other interesting facts, presumably because one finding was a critic of a method he often used, and probably because I openly criticized the study design.
My advisor gave me the lowest grade which still passes for the thesis even though I incorporated all of the advice he gave me -- with the exception that I did not want to exclude the critique of the method he suggested.
He told me that I focused too much on the details and he had a hard time seeing the big picture. However I could not answer the research questions directly (i.e. the big picture) because of the faulty design. (Which I told him repetitively.)

A Phd colleague of mine read my thesis and thought it was great. Other students also had problems with this advisor and one phd student even quit partly due to this advisor.

I personally do not dislike this professor but he is grossly overworked to the point where he is not even able to thoroughly plan a scientific study, causing much disappointment and headache.

Should I inform the department administration on this matter even If I am not at this university anymore?

I don't think there's anything wrong with voicing your concerns, but if you're going to you need to find a way to do it constructively while sticking to the facts.  "Much disappointment and headache" might be entirely correct, but this is more of an emotional comment.

Also: are there other students you can get to join you in voicing this concern?  Maybe you could all approach the problem together.


Differences between fellowships in Europe From the perspective of a young postdoc career in Europe, what are the differences between applying to a Marie-Curie, a Humboldt (in Germany), or an Emmy Noether fellowships?

Bonus question: Are there other fellowships other than the three listed above?

I am assuming you mean the Humboldt postdoctoral fellowships, since the Humboldt foundation has many different funding programs. Each of these programs all have their own application procedures and eligibility criteria, so you should read the respective application guides carefully and keep track of the different deadlines, if applicable. For example, the Humboldt and Emmy Noether fellowships have to be taken up in Germany, while the Marie Curie fellowships are EU-wide (well, it's slightly more complicated than that).

The main component of all of these applications is a research proposal, but each of them require different formats. For example, for the Marie Curie applications they provide a template describing all the sections that should be in your proposal.

The Emmy Noether fellowships differ from the others in the sense that they allow you to become a junior research group leader, i.e. they also provide funding for some PhD students and postdocs. You have to have at least two years of experience since your PhD to apply for a Emmy Noether (but not more than four). Because the amount funded is larger, I think the Emmy Noether is regarderd as the most prestigious of these fellowships (and presumably also the most difficult to obtain).

Finally, for your bonus question: yes, there are certainly many more fellowships, some field dependent, but for Germany specifically I think these are the most important individual fellowships.


Mandatory army service in the middle of PhD, will it be possible to finish PhD under these conditions? I started attending a university while in highschool, currently finishing my masters and have started working on my phd with the same (very very nice) advisors (who are aware of the following situation).

In less than a year from now, I will be recruited for a service of 5 years in the army (army service is mandatory in my country). As things look like right now, for at least the first 6-12 months I will not be allowed to study but afterwards I will be given the weekends and another half a day or a full day (probably later) every week to study/research.

Do you think it will still be possible to finish my phd during my time in the army? How would you react as a possible collaborator knowing that if you will work with someone the research is "doomed" to take much longer as the other person will not be available most of the time?

(Also, are there any suggestions for things I should do on the year left for me before the army to help my situation later?)

This is likely to depend strongly on the country, but in many country's militaries, technical expertise is highly valued.  I have known a number of people in the US, for example, whose official duty assignment was a Ph.D. program.  I do not know whether this is possible in Israel, but suspect your professors may know, and may be able to advise you.

I would thus advise you to investigate whether it is a possible to proactively reach out to the military people who you will need to deal with, and see if you can opt into a program or line of duty that might support this for you as well: it may require making a longer-term commitment to the military, but if it gets you the career you want, the tradeoff may be worth it for you.


How can I transition from industry to academia without having a college degree? I've been working in the "private sector" since my late teens. I've gathered good web-development experience to be able to find work quite easily thankfully. I was never really interested in getting a degree, I only have a high-school diploma. I was passionate enough to study for myself and learn new things from colleagues and friends.

Web-development is still my passion, however recently I've been thinking about the actual work that I've been producing over the years for the companies I've worked for. It seems as though that even if the work is fun and challenging, I still get very little recognition for it: once the work is produced, my name is barely ever mentioned. I've been asking myself if all these things I'm building are really going to change someone's life.

Then I look at academia and research. Here people are doing things they actually love and study those subjects deeply with passion and generate new knowledge to help others within a specific field.

Has anybody ever switched from an industry job to an academic job? I'm wondering if it's possible to do research without a degree. What suggestions might you have for someone in my situation that wants to get a glimpse of the life of an academic where you can build and study something you actually love and not always do what "the company" wants.

If recognition is your key desire, academia will only be marginally better for you than your current situation. Just because your name is on a paper, doesn't mean anyone is going to care about your work.

I feel like there's a couple of threads in your question outside of recognition though. I'll make some comments where I can.

To transition into academia and start working on your own ideas you'll need to probably start a degree program. Masters and PhD programs, more than anything, are training programs on "how to work on stuff".

It seems obvious right now that you have hundreds of ideas and the skills to pursue them -- but the academic context is a bit different. Research typically fits into a larger context than a single project, and you'll need to  be able to sell your ideas to people who are experts in the area; most research projects that aren't 'consumer' oriented produce papers, not projects, so you'll need to learn how to write papers. The requirement for evidence is (or at least ought to be) high, which means that you'll need to learn what kind of evidence you have for your hypothesis, how to gather it, how to present it. All of this, the politics, the nitty-gritty of putting together a paper, is what you ought to get from a degree program. You can try to do some of this on your own to be sure, but it's not an easy ride.
If you want to get a feeling for what working in academia is like, without getting the degree, I'd seriously look into the possibility of becoming a programmer for a university. This helps you get a feel for what the work, environment, people are like. It could be that if you find the right project, your influence will be sufficient that you can get the recognition you want, without having to get the degree.
Reading your question, I get the feeling of a grass-is-greener illusion. One thing that might be worth considering is: How much of the problem just your job? Could you find work at another company, in another niche, doing some other kind of programming that could be better for you? I feel like you could get 99% of your desired outcome not from academia, but from a job change. Maybe you need to go deeper into the stack; work with a company that builds the web technology you use. Maybe you need to go higher in the stack; start building client applications to the web technology you use. Maybe you need to get away from the web... perhaps start looking at transitioning into games, or hardware, or.... the list is endless.


How can I find out which universities allow a sandwich (stapler) PhD thesis? Following on from What is a "Sandwich thesis"? , is there an easy way to find out which departments at which universities will allow a sandwich thesis (aka a stapler thesis, portfolio thesis, three-paper thesis, thesis by portfolio of publications, thesis by publication, article thesis or compilation thesis)?

That is to say, universities that explicitly allow PhDs theses that consist of a collection of published or in-press articles, possibly topped and tailed by an introduction and summary? It is, to my knowledge, quite rare in the UK - does it perhaps tend to be a country-specific thing?

I accept that it will depend on the supervisor's approval too, but that's a secondary issue: the supervisor can't allow a stapler thesis if the university/department does not. My question is about identifying eligible departments.

The department where you are going to submit the thesis probably has a document of PhD/thesis regulations that specify if such a thesis is allowed. For example, my department's regulations have the following statement:

  [...] Scientific publications may form a part of a doctoral thesis. If the doctoral thesis consists of several scientific papers, a presentation of the guidelines of the papers submitted has to be added in an appropriate extent. [...]

i.e. a sandwich thesis is possible here. So you should find out if your favored departments have similar regulations and have a look in there.


Tips for being the first graduate student of a PI? I have a very high expectation of a lab that I want to join and It's highly possible for me to eventually do that after my rotation period ends. The PI is the kind of person whom I have been looking for for so long. The only concern is that the PI doesn't have previous grad students and if I join I will be the very first grad student. I know there're a lot of benefits for being in that position and that's what I want. However, for being the first grad student, what issues/problems should I be careful about since I have no senior grad student to talk to for more experience? Thanks

NOTE: in Canada and the US, the term principal investigator (PI) refers to the holder of an independent grant and the lead researcher for the grant project - source: Wikipedia

Speaking from the US perspective, there are a couple of pros and cons I can make:

CONS:

You will be the one who sets up a research environment (especially if you are only grad student of your PI, and no postdoc involves). Setting up the lab, the equipment, learning softwares, training newcomers will fall on you. And you will be expected to keep up with classes at the same time.
If your PI hasn't written a grant proposal before or doesn't have the grant to cover most expenses, you will feel the pressure getting useful data to support the proposal. This pressure will be more than what your peers feel. If their grant is not enough to fund you until the end of your MS/Ph.D., you will most likely end up in a stressful situation financially.
Even though you did your rotation with them, you probably do not have a clear idea about your PI's personality and won't have any students of them to ask.
Since your PI will not be tenured yet; if they cannot get tenure on time or their position is ended earlier than expected by the university, you might have to find another PI and even change your project completely.
The entire grad school experience might be lonely and isolating for you.

PROS:

You will have a lot of room to grow, and you will have more freedom about what you are doing compared to other graduate students.
You will learn the skills that other PhDs will probably learn in their postdoc years or later.
You will be involved and exposed to all aspects of research. This would be very valuable in both academia and industry.
New PIs are most likely to collaborate with other PIs, so there is a chance your name will end up in more publications compared to other graduate students.
Your PI will also grow with you, and there will be a learning curve for them too. It can be an excellent chance to establish a great friendship and support each other.

Overall, it is essential to establish a good working relationship and learn to say no when necessary. Do not be afraid to say when it is overwhelming or if you cannot handle it. In the end, you are the student, and they are the PI. They are there to support and advise you. I hope you have a great graduate school experience. :)


What if the typesetting process puts a paper overlength? What usually happens if the typesetting process for a paper puts it overlength? I imagine if the conference has an extra page charge, this will be applied; but if the conference has a hard maximum limit for pages and the paper is squeezed to fit it, and the typesetter makes some formatting changes that puts it over the limit, what happens?

Will the conference allow the author to make some adjustments to fit the paper into the limit? Assuming the formatting issues were an honest overlook and not purposely trying to circumvent the limit!

It used to be the case that proceedings articles submitted to
a Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science volume were published
in unchanged form.
Regrettably, this has changed. Since a few years, Springer sends
the LaTeX files submitted by the authors to some copy editing office.
The copy editor inserts a copyright notice on the first page,
checks the bibliographic entries, and possibly makes some further
changes to the formatting of the submission. This has some
undesirable consequences. One of the consequences is that
the authors have to spend an afternoon checking
the PDF proofs that are sent back by Springer
by visually comparing them to the original submission
(and no, the modifications introduced by the copy editors are
not always sensible).
The second consequence is that the copy editing process may
change the number of pages required for the paper.
In fact, I've seen proceedings volumes where virtually every
paper had been carefully
formatted by the authors to fit into exactly 15 pages,
and where virtually every paper
used 16 pages after the copy editor had inserted the copyright notice.
But in all cases I've seen so far, this was nothing that
the authors or proceedings editors had to worry about.
In fact, making the authors or proceedings editors responsible
for changes introduced by the publisher would be absurd.


What is the expectation that one should have from reading a published paper? Is it just to check that the paper's results are correct?  Should I expect that the authors describe their methods for arriving at the right answers / solving a problem?  I've often found that on a key part of the paper, e.g., the main result, the authors just give you the data without explaining.  I then have to verify that the data is correct and the results are correct but this takes a bit of work on my part, which I am happy to do, but I wonder why these steps aren't shown on the paper itself.

Is what I described the usual expectation when reading a research paper?  That I shouldn't expect researchers to divulge how they arrived at the right answer and perhaps that is a way for them to protect their work, e.g., whatever method they came up with that worked ... could have the potential to be used again and again to publish more papers?

I also tried contacting researchers directly to discuss their work.  All of them are happy to talk - but mostly on a superficial level, e.g., "I've done X,Y, and Z, my co-author has done A,B and C."

I think there are two uses of the word "expectation" relevant to your question:

1) Expectation as in "standards": this would be the type of "expectations" a teacher might have of students: that they show up to class, complete assignments, read course materials, etc. This is the aspirational sense of the word.

2) Expectation as in "predictions of what is going to happen": a more realistic, perhaps Bayesian understanding of what publications are like in your field as you read more papers.

I don't think you are wrong to have high expectations in the first sense, especially from work published in high tier journals in your field. You should expect results to be presented clearly, empirical and statistical methodology to be detailed, and conclusions drawn to be clearly connected to the actual results and not just the predictions and world view of the authors.

In reality, your expectations in the second sense should not be as lofty. You should expect abstracts to not really tell you what limited scope the paper actually addresses You should expect to need to dig into not just the paper in hand but previous papers by the same authors and others they reference obliquely to figure out their methodology. You should expect to find conclusions that are suggested by but not shown convincingly by the data at hand. You should expect to find statistical approaches that are naive, inappropriate, or misleading.

In my personal experience, you will find authors in your field whose work you really cherish because they meet your Expectations. These won't necessarily be the most famous papers, but you will enjoy and learn from most of the publications they write. The other papers that instead conform to your expectations might be just as important, you will be held just as responsible to understand them and incorporate them into your work, but they won't be as fun, you will wonder how they ever got past peer review, and you might even start to doubt your field in general.

Don't fret! All you can really do is try to meet your own expectations.


Is verbatim copying a data collection plan with citation considered plagiarism? Cheers, I am writing a thesis using secondary data and need to report on the sampling methods used to collect the data. Am I allowed to verbatim state what is listed in the study documentation? It is fairly complex and thus paraphrasing it changes the meaning.

It isn't plagiarism, but it may be a copyright violation. Plagiarism is claiming that something is due to yourself that is actually due to another. Your citation covers that. But it may still not be proper to quote it at too much length. Laws on that (copyright) vary by location. Look for any stated license on the work or contact the publisher to be sure.


PhD in GIS after Bachelor Degree in Computer Science I have a bachelors degree in Computer Science & Engineering and have specific experience in geographic information systems (GIS). I am planning to enroll in a GIS PhD program and have searched for United States universities with GIS PhD programs. However, none of these PhD programs are offered from a Computer Science department: all programs are in either a Geography department or Civil Engineering department or Earth Science department. Should I apply to these other departments even though I come from a Computer Science background?

Can a student complete his PhD program in a university department other then the department of his undergraduate work?

When you go to a mainly geographic department, you will have to study courses for projections, spatial databases, geo-servers and mapping frameworks, which you already probably know through your job. Geographic departments have people without a programming background and therefore these people have to be trained almost from scratch, so they can do this type of research. On the other hand, many of these departments have some relatively young professors with a CS background who are really looking forward to work with CS people like you (instead of geographers) to mainly progress their research. In that sense, I am sure you can be accepted at such a program but prepare to have to take courses on things you are already familiar with.

On the other hand there are many "pure" CS professors, working on "pure" CS departments, who also do GIS related research. If you look at more CS focused GIS conferences, like ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS you will find many papers by mainly CS people on GIS related subjects. So, you can search for possible advisors there, by looking at the papers that get published in such venues in the last 2-3 years. If you find some papers that deal with subjects that you are interested in, you can find out in what universities the authors work, perhaps contact them (advice on how to approach potential advisors is scattered everywhere on this site) and take it from there. It does not always matter the "title" of the PHD (if it says GIS or not) but IHMO it is more important to work with people that do interesting things, close to your interests. So, do not exclude the possibility to do GIS research on a pure CS department.


Is it customary to discuss novel idea in front of doctoral review committee? For a PhD student in my University, there will be a doctoral review committee presentation for every six months.

Course work is for first eighteen months.

But from fourth semester, student has to present his research work. In general, the presentation includes the summary of research papers studied in the semester, details of research papers published by student, if any and the novel ideas on which the student worked in that semester.

The committee contains three persons and presentation goes off record. Then there may be chance of copying the novel idea by any committee member. So I'm wondering whether it is a custom only in my University or in other universities also.

So my question is that is it customary to discuss or present novel ideas in front of doctoral committee in atleast many of the Universities?

I have been faculty in a program that did something like this. But the presentations were more open. Other doctoral students and many involved faculty.

Ideally it shouldn't be a problem. People should be able to give candidates advice after seeing what they are working on and thinking about.

However, if it is a problem, and you have reason to fear people will steal ideas and develop them before you can, then you are in the wrong university with the wrong faculty and I advise you to make a fast exit. It is really an unethical atmosphere if this does happen.

Back when I was a grad student we had a small seminar with a few students and some faculty. There were only six or so of us. But we discussed things pretty openly. There was no problem and no fear that there could be a problem.


Is it a bad thing to send an application for a master thesis late at night? I am looking at an advertised Masters thesis/internship that could lead to a PhD. The first contact should be made by email.

Is there any chance it could be looked down upon if I send that first email late at night?

I live (and currently study) in the same timezone as that of the research group, and that will be made evident by the contents of my first email.

Officially and practically, no. Applicants often worry about things that faculty hardly have time to even think through. Your application is understandably your central focus but it can't be the faculty's with the same level of attention.

In a nutshell, on the faculty side, I really can't imagine a colleague would care about that unless there were instructions for the time etc.


Paper was accepted for publication 6 months ago without any updates since then, how should I proceed? About a year ago a paper, that me and my coauthors prepared and presented at a conference, has been selected to be published in a revised and extended form in a special issue of a reputable journal. For submissions they use EasyChair, which only gives automatic confirmation e-mails, when you upload. So there is no way to get info on current status of the submission, other then asking an executive editor via e-mail. But they didn't bother with any confirmations or status updates, unless specifically asked.
The only stated deadline was for initial submission. The upload of a revised version didn't have a deadline. And I couldn't find any timelines at the journal site. The first round of reviews, from our initial submission to submitting a revised version, took only 5 months. Then, after a month of not receiving any updates regarding the last upload, I have sent a request about the status of our submission, after which we have received an acceptance letter, which simply states that the paper is accepted and will be published in a future issue. The e-mail didn't contain any further instructions. It was 6 months ago and there were no further updates from the journal.
I would expect the next steps to be communications about the camera-ready version and copyright forms, both initiated by the editors. So it seems that now there is no point in asking them further about the status of our submission. But as time goes by I get doubtful about the prospects of our paper being actually published. I should probably note that their EasyChair still shows an option to submit to that special issue.
I've probably made a mistake by not answering to the acceptance e-mail then, but because of previous communications with the executive editor I've got a feeling that a person is quite busy and doesn't welcome unnecessary communications. So the question is whether it is acceptable to bother the executive editor with further questions about the paper's status at this point and if so, how should I word it?

Just ask for an update and an estimate of when it might appear. There isn't any special form for that. But "future issue" is pretty nebulous. For a print journal there are issues of finding a proper "fit" for the paper depending on the topic and even the page length.
And yes, you should answer emails. You've been assuming what they should do without verification. Ask. They are unlikely to send you anything if you don't. Just be polite.


Get printed copy of specific journal A simple question:

Is there a way to get a specific issue of a journal as a printed copy?

I do not want a subscription, I just want printed copies of a very limited number of issues, mainly from "Econometrica", "Games and Economic Behaviour" and "American Economic Review".

I looked at the website of the American Economic Review and indeed they do not offer online purchase of single issues. What I would do in such an instance is contact the journal directly, preferably by calling them over the phone. Email inquiries about isolated requests of single issues notoriously tend to end up on the bottom of the endless pile. A simple phone call will likely provide you with the information you are after.

Also, I've obtained copies of dated issues on eBay and Amazon. Often a university's library empties its stock once in a while and their items appear on the market. This concerns older issues of course.

As a last, but worthy shot - Simply type in the specifics of the journal issue on Google and see what happens. Play around a little bit with notations (full journal title, abbreviated title, include the publisher, or not, etcetera).


What to do if reviewers reject a paper without understanding the content? One of my friends submitted a paper to a reputable communications journal and received some reviews a week back. The paper was rejected, but the review comments were abysmal:

The language was so bad in one of them that it was difficult to understand what the reviewer was hinting at. Besides, the comments pertained to trivial things like naming of axes and there was no comment on (or understanding of) the overall work.
The second of the three reviewers rejected the paper in one line saying it was impossible for him/her to understand what the paper aimed at.
The third reviewer appreciated the paper and its results and made good suggestions for improving the results.

The editor-in-charge has rejected the paper since the vote was 2/3 in favour of that, but my friend feels hard done as he feels the two reviewers did not merit to review the work.

What recourse does an author have if his paper is rejected by a reputable journal, but the review comments indicate a serious lack of understanding of the paper's work? Should the author write his/her grievance to an editor higher in the hierarchy (an associate editor, for example)? Or is ditching the journal and submitting it to somewhere else the only solution?

F'x has ably covered one possible reason: that it's not you, it's them.

I'm going to cover the other side of things. That is, starting from the assumption that the editor has made a good decision.

The authors should consider rewriting the abstract and introduction. If two peer reviewers didn't understand the paper, the paper may just need a savage reworking.

The authors may also wish to try working with a freelance development editor.

Finally, the authors might want to bring on board a co-author who's been frequently published: I expect that many decent-sized, decent-quality departments have at least one person whose quality of writing leads to get manuscripts getting accepted first time, pretty much every time.

And then submit to a different journal. I don't know the field, but I'm willing to speculate that there are a few reputable journals where the article could be published.


Helping filter what really matters So the other day I received an email from the department head stating:

Please list your highest degree.
Please list any professional development activities that you’ve done in the last 5 years.

He emphasized that it was for reviewing the department as a whole.

Now, I'm an adjunct so the same rules don't apply to me as the full time faculty, but it did help me focus a little bit. I thought about how my inbox is always full with professional development activities, but I don't think any of it could be listed in a cv.

Facebook? Really? But I do subscribe to 2 different Facebook groups in my area of expertise. I have since unsubscribed from them both.

Is reading the Wall Street Journal something that I can claim as a professional development activity? What about the myriad of other subscriptions? Discarded.

What should a person focus on in order to advance their career as a teacher? Is getting a PhD the bar that must be hurdled before anything else?

Here is my question: How should I approach my department chair and say that I would like to beef up my Curriculum Vitae, with the school's help?

It's a pretty big topic and here are some cluttered and clustered thoughts:

  How should I approach my department chair and say that I would like to
  beef up my Curriculum Vitae, with the school's help?

First, I would not advise going in bare hand. For i) most deans don't really know how to manage adjunct, ii) you may get advice that is not exactly up your alley but feel politically you should say yes. Instead, go with a plan.

It's hard to develop without a goal. So, think what do you want to achieve as a faculty member. And there are many things, just to name a few:

Teaching-related: pedagogical training (from general enhancement to how to deal with special students), use of new teaching technology or platform, (re)design of curriculum, organizing of local/foreign workshop.

Research-related: grantsmanship, training in new technology or skills, management, writing and publication.

More general: professional conferences, network building, public relationship/press.

If you're absolutely clueless, download their promotion package template and see what criteria are considered during promotion. While you are unlikely not in the promotion track, the contents will be helpful.

Pick 1-3 for next year. Then, before your next annual review (if you don't have one, schedule a meeting), frame them as:

  In the next (6 months/ 12 months), I would like to achieve _______ (a goal). This would bring the benefits of _______ (at least one win-win benefit). In order to do that I'd like to know if I can _______ (your ask).

For example: "In the next 12 months I'd like to implement flipped classroom format in the course XY111. This would be a timely response to our university 2030 Teaching Goals announced last month. In order to do that I'd like to attend this 3-day workshop in DC. I'd like to see if the department can allocate some stipend for this development activity."

Simply put, just follow the SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time specific.

For routine development, make sure to familiarize yourself with faculty benefit: tuition remission, access to library services, discount to other academic activities, etc. Milk that affiliation.

Think win-win or who would benefit other than you when justifying your arguments. For instance:

  Is reading the Wall Street Journal something that I can claim as a
  professional development activity?

to that I would say no because staying on top of the field is more of a routine. But I would say yes to:

  Developed 2 teaching cases using op-ed from Wall Street Journal and
  successfully applied them in course XY111. (See class reflection and
  evaluation in appendix.)

because in this case we used what we know to actively improve the quality or variety of teaching methods, while we get to experience using case teaching as a teaching development.

If these seem all very large and confusing I'd suggest talking to some other faculty members who has not vested interest in this matter.


Graduate Admissions: Teaching Emphasis I’m on my 3rd/5 undergraduate years, so I’m just starting to think about grad admissions.

I’ve been planning on applying to MD/PhD programs. I enjoy/feel comfortable in hospitals and think I can make a contribution or two in medically-relevant bioinformatics/comp. genetics.

So, one of the big pulls for me into a grad program is teaching. I would probabaly enjoy being a high school teacher or a college lecturer but it seems like an insecure career path to me, and not doing any research would probabaly bum me out after a while.

And, in theory, MD/PhD programs support that—TAing, teaching classes, teaching workshops at conferences, simplifying complex ideas for patients, etc. MSTP guidelines even mention teaching interest as an important characteristic.

But, in practice, I feel weird about emphasizing my teaching interest. Most grad students I meet dislike being a TA, professors don’t like teaching, and often it seems like they feel like teaching gets in the way of their real work. And those are the people who will be reviewing my application. I’m kinda afraid that I’ll be seen as a not-serious-researcher for wanting to focus on teaching.

Should I de-emphasize my teaching interest? If not, do you have any suggestions about how to present it on personal statements/interviews/etc?

It's sort of a catch-22 situation here. On one hand, you do need a PhD to teach at the higher education level; on the other hand, the PhD doesn't teach (and doesn't even intend to teach) you how to teach!

But I guess wanting to teach (at university level) is a valid reason to get a PhD, as I've had friends and instructors who took PhDs because they want to teach college. Of course you'll still need to like doing research (and you'll probably still be held to the same admissions standards as those who just want to do research), but wanting to teach at the college+ level seems like a valid reason to take a PhD.

I'm not a faculty member, though, so you may want to talk to some teaching faculty with PhDs at your university to see what they think.


PhD Thesis based on published articles on different topics I am in 3rd year of PhD and I was suppose to graduate after 1 year, but suddenly due to some unknown reason my adviser gave me 2 months to write my PhD dissertation. He said I have published 7 SCI journals (as a first author) and what I need to do is just compile all articles into single document.
I know it is common to publish article based on PhD dissertation.  Is it also common to compile a PhD thesis based on published SCI journal Articles? More tricky part is that out of 7 only 2 articles are written on same topic rest of work is totally different. But he insist I can create a link between all articles, which in my opinion doesn't make any sense. It something like saying apple and orange are same fruit.Let say I have no other option except compile my dissertation within 2 months. Is it possible that the PhD dissertation chapters may cover unrelated topics? Let say one part is related to Operating System and other part is related to Future Internet?

First of all, writing a PhD dissertation in 2 months is one hell of a task. You should probably talk to your supervisor about more time.

I believe it is not uncommon, as Thomas stated in the comments, that people assemble a PhD disseration from the publications they had during their time. Many people work of different topics at the same time, but usually there is something that combines them. The title of your dissertation can be very vague and cover a wide topic. In your dissertation you can split it into different chapters of sections according to your covered topics. Of course, it is good if you find a common thread and can build upon that. Even if you don't, I still think it is okay. After all, that seems to be what your supervisor wants.

If you are really unsure, there is no way around talking to your supervisor about it. Ask for his expectations and tell him about your plans. Then, you will be able to meet somewhere in the middle.


Is it OK for a professor to refuse access to individual test marks? I received a very low grade in one of my Master classes. This is not a failing grade but close to it. Such low scores are highly unusual in this  country (Japan), 90/100 or more is the norm and even a 80/100 is frowned upon sometimes. My score is much lower. Therefore, although I will obtain the credits for the class, there may be prejudice.

The strange thing is that this class was anything but hard. It consisted in about a dozen of lectures, one every week, done by different scientists. The evaluation consisted in a very small quiz (A5 sheet) at the end of each lecture, to be answered in 10 minutes. Usually the question was: `what did you think of this lecture, and how does it relate to your research topic ?’. I would answer it normally, in a few paragraphs.

Because my final grade is so low, and because I was very surprised, I asked the responsible professor for the details of my marks. I would like to know how well I performed in each individual test. Unfortunately, he refuses categorically to provide me with this info. Is this legal or common behavior? What should I do?

I read (skimmed) through the statues in Japanese law and the associated statutes it links.

Moreover, a legal case called the Toyama Daigaku incident clarifies that universities have large leeway in these matters. Here's the opinion of the Japanese supreme court:

  大学は、国公立であると私立であるとを問わず、学生の教育と学術の研究とを目的とする教育研究施設であって、……一般市民社会とは異なる特殊な部分社会を形成しているのであるから、このような特殊な部分社会である大学における法律上の係争のすべてが当然に裁判所の司法審査の対象になるものではない。

Translated:

  A university regardless of whether it is a national or public university or a private university is an education institution with the objective of the education of students and academic research ... Since these differ from normal society precisely in being founded to be a special type of society, the features of these institutions with respect to this special society, of course, do not fall within the purview of the court to investigate.

While I think it's terrible,  I can find no basis for requiring the professor to supply you with the rationale for the grade you received. If anything, there's wide berth for professors to determine grades.

Your specific institution may have more precise rules but most of the institutions I looked at specified:

60% as passing
15 class sessions of 90 minutes each
grades based on some combination of classroom attendance, tests, and papers

(this is also the same where I am teaching).


Can one submit overlapping grant proposals? I plan to submit an NSF CAREER proposal this Summer.
From what I have heard, the review process will take several months, and most likely I won't receive a decision until the next year.
In December, I would also like to submit a regular NSF proposal that describes exactly the first 3 (out of 5) years of the research plan in the CAREER proposal.
So I will have two overlapping proposals being reviewed at the same time by the end of this year.
The reason for the overlap is that both of these describe a project that I feel very passionate about.
I will focus on this project in the next 5 years no matter what.
So if the CAREER proposal is not funded,
I would like to have a shot to be supported by a regular grant as soon as possible.
Plus, it seems CAREER is very competitive,
so my chance of getting funded is not much above zero.
My question is:
Will the two overlapping proposals be in conflict with one another?
If not, what is the right way to clarify this situation to the program officer and panel?

From your description, there is too much overlap.
One option is to figure out how to split off pieces of the project that can be done in parallel.  I’ve currently got a CAREER award that focuses on a core theoretical topic, a standard NSF grant (with a collaborator) that focuses on how this theory interacts with non-ideal physics and measurement, and am part of a team on a third (special-program) NSF grant for which my responsibility is using the theory as a framework to guide my collaborators’ hardware development.
The work on each of these grants drives forward my overall research agenda, but is distinct enough from the others that there is no conflict on the grants.
Definitely talk with your program manager as you develop your proposals —they can give you feedback as to whether they agree that your ideas are distinct before you put in the full proposal effort (and having a good relationship with them is always a good idea in any case).


How to find ways to proofread English in papers As a non-native speaker of English, it can often be hard to spot some of the errors that a native speaker would find. For a long time, I've been thinking about getting a native speaker to help me with proof-reading my texts (articles, theses, application, etc), but I don't quite know where to look. What are some good ways to get proofreading for your texts?

For example, are there any websites on the Internet where one can exchange proofreading services between different languages? (Say, if you help me proofread my text in language x, I'll help you with yours in language y.)

Yes, Elsevier publishing group provides professional language services, like editing. You can find about it here

I also found this website which looks good, and it's cheaper and quicker, I think.


How will the graduate committee regard two different TOEFL or GRE scores sent to them? Suppose a student gets two GRE and toefl scores and he can't decide which scores are more suitable for sending, so he sent all of them anyway. The students may want to decide recipients of their scores even before they know their scores just to save money(ETS allows up to 4 free recipients but they must be decided before or on test dates).
His scores are:
GRE

V 152 Q 168 AW 3.5
V 158 Q 164 AW 3.0

The student improved his score a lot in verbal reasoning and dropped in Quantitative Reasoning and analytical writing since he focused too much on the preparation of verbal reasoning.
TOEFL

Reading 29 listening 27 Oral 20 Writing 25
Reading 27 listening 24 Oral 24 Writing 25

The total score of the first one is greater but the second one is better in speaking session, which is important for getting TAships.
My question is, in such cases, how will the graduate committee consider this student's scores. Will they feel annoyed by having to look at two ETS transcripts? Will they only look at the latest scores?

This mainly depend on what department you want to send application, for match,cs etc the quantitative reasoning is main interest for english, literature history the verbal and writing skills matter. Also if they are asking score as total and also for each module then its easy however some universities doesnot say about how they weight GRE score

As for toefl it also depends on the criteria set by the university e.g they can ask a total score of x with no less then y in each module. As when i was applying it was actually ielts and mentiones that ielts band 7 is required with no module less then 6.5, so if your score is crossing in any results the minimum criteria you can apply using that


PhD thesis: novelty at the time of proposal but not submission Location: India
Field: Neuroscience
Background: A few years ago, at the time of joining my PhD, I submitted a proposal which was eventually approved by the institute and the ethics committee. At the time when I proposed this work, there were barely a couple of papers on the topic and it seemed quite novel. Now, I have submitted my thesis and have just received my reviews from two external reviewers. During this time, as expected, many other people have got into the field. Unfortunately for me, I have not been able to publish my thesis results yet, so I have missed out on cashing in on the head start.
Now, one of my reviewer is questioning the novelty of my work. There are still a few novel aspects to my thesis in the sense of how I have approached the problem, although some of the novelty has been lost simply because there are some recent papers that have shown similar, if not the same, results. The important point is that most of these recent papers are in the past 1-1.5 years.
Typically in the kind of PhD program I am enrolled in, one submits a proposal and then works on them till they submit. Modifications are usually not the norm. Part of the reason why I couldn't finish my thesis before these papers started kicking in is wanting to be much more sure about the results (given that I come from a completely different field with zero background), lack of (enough) data at the right time, learning the ropes of the game, and intermediate lack of funding situation (committed funds not arriving at the right time), etc.
Question: In programs like the one I am enrolled in, can one justify novelty based on the fact that when the study was initiated, it was quite novel and that it is only in the past 1-1.5 years that people have started publishing? Another way to look at the question would be: are there any good ways to "post-hoc" justify novelty?
A similar situation (without the PhD context) would be that a reviewer recommends rejection of a novel paper after a similar paper got published (while your paper was under review).
Additional note: my advisor agrees that there are still novel aspects to my thesis and they feel that the reviewer is "asking for too much from a PhD thesis"
Edit: The reviewer has recommended the thesis; this means that I will be writing a response to the comments I have received (including making some corrections/changes as needed) and then there will be a viva/defence

If your advisor thinks your thesis is acceptable at your school (which seems to be the case) then it's their job to do what's necessary to make that happen. Perhaps that means telling your committee why it is OK even though some of what you discovered has been published while you were working.
Standards for a thesis are not the same as those for publication.


Enquiring status of postdoc application Is it a good idea to ask the person who one has applied to for a postdoc position about the status of that application? If yes, what should be the "reasonable" time period after the deadline of the application to enquire about the position.

Is it a good idea to ask the person who one has applied to for a postdoc position about the status of that application

More of a necessity than a good idea.

  What should be the "reasonable" time period after the deadline of the application to enquire about the position.

I'd say this depends on:

(As OP has suggested) The amount of time that has passed since the deadline.
The amount of time before employment is set to begin.
The information published beforehand about the application procedure.
Whether it's the academics or the administrative staff whom you intend to ask
The number of expected applicants for the same position

but if you have not been instructed to await a reply in X time, it's perfectly reasonable to write and ask after, say, min(1 week + 1 week * round_up(log_8(number of applicants)), 0.25 * time between application submission and work start).

That's a very rough rule of thumb, and perhaps not super usable. Another way to put it is that you should write after having allowed a generous amount of time for your application to be processed, but no later than you need to make serious decisions based on the reply. It's not improper to say that you need to know because, say, you have to decide whether to move to another country or not, enroll your children in school for the next year etc.


Will taking a vacation hurt your academic career/recommendation letter? I’ve been curious about this question for pretty long. I’m not in academia, but I heard from my friends who are in PhD programs talk about not wanting to take a vacation or ask for vacation approval, fearing that it will hurt their advisors’ evaluation on them. As far as I know, they’re very hardworking and dedicated people (with no problem to work overtime, on weekends, on call etc) who aim to publish as many high quality papers as possible, but it seems a little bizarre for me to understand, if taking a vacation really shows sign of tardiness in academia? And would that hurt their publishing speed (sorry I can’t think of a better word to describe what they want)?

I apologize in advance if this question is off-topic, please suggest anything to improve my question/vote for close if it’s the case.

The question has several possible answers. The right one depends e.g. on the country, the region, the university, the field, as well as the research group and the 'culture' promoted there. The answers you can expect here will therefore be mostly based on specific examples and cannot be regarded as universal.

I for instance want my PhD students to take vacations if they feel it is necessary, and they also simply have the right to do so. My reasoning is that they will come back with some extra energy, motivation and fresh ideas effectively increasing their research output. I do not know if this is true though. [Actually, I do not care if it is true. There are more important things than maximizing research output at all costs.]

In reality, the PhD students often do not take the amount of days off they could. In many cases this is because they are so involved in their research that they do not want a vacation. I sometimes send them away then. It could however also be due to pressure they feel from their supervisor. This pressure might be real or not, and often enough it is real. But: At least where I work most supervisors are convinced of the benefits of an occasional vacation. With these people, it would be a big mistake not to take a vacation when necessary and instead keep working until motivation is gone -- especially if that is only the case because you do not even talk to the supervisor about it because of fear of the outcome of the conversation.


Is it a bad idea to get a PhD? Hope this doesn't fall into the category of personal advice, but I just have  a general question about academia today (particularly in Philosophy).
I have read many articles on the internet indicating that it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find a tenure track position in a relatively highly ranked university (top 100 nationally, say) after completing a PhD in today's job market, even from a very highly ranked program. Is this true, and is it a bad idea to get a PhD if the only thing I'd be able to do with it is teach? Does the internet exaggerate how difficult the market is? Would I have to move across the country, potentially, to find a T.T. position somewhere? Thanks.

A PhD is a research degree; it’s a piece of paper that says “this person is a competent researcher”. If you want to go into a field where being a researcher is important (e.g. corporate R&D), then it’s worth your time to get one. If you’re not, it probably isn’t.


Can computer science student do PhD under supervisor in mathematics? I am masters in information security. I want to do PhD in cloud security. I am currently studying homomorphic encryption. My supervisor knows abstract algebra and has PhD in mathematics(abstract algebra). Can I do PhD under her supervision, seeing that she only knows abstract algebra which is required for homomorphic techniques?

Any guidance will be great help.

The answer is Maybe...

I know quite a lot of person, which are currently involved in a PhD. Since it is about cloud security, it might be useful to have a supervisor knowing algebra, since cryptography is more in the domain of mathematics than of computer science.

Since you seem not to know what you should expect from your supervisor, you might want this person what she thinks about this.
Ask her something related to the following :

What is the role of a supervisor in this PhD ?
What do you expect from me ?
In which area would you think your expertise will help me in this PhD ? Will I not struggle on the computer science's side ?

It might help you understand what you will do, what she will help you with, etc...

Hope it helps.


Can you use herein to refer back? As the title suggests, I would like to know if it is correct to use 'herein' to refer back. For instance, I have used the phrase 'in this paper' several times in a document and I wish to use another term to avoid repetition. Instead of saying 'In this paper we presented' I would like to say 'Herein we presented' is this correct?

It is fine as long as the reference is clear. Use the language to express your ideas as best you can. But if there is any doubt, make it explicit. A friendly reader might give you some advice on clarity.
You can also use "therein" for a more remote reference.


Stay put or enter the US application process I am an American who came to Europe last fall to do an MS which would complement my BA, since the field of study for my BA was different than my current one. My original plan was to apply to PhD programs in the US this fall, but recently I was offered a PhD position by my current adviser. I have until this summer to decide, which means I can either stay where I am now or decline the offer and cast the dice in the US application process.

In itself, my current department is not particularly well known in the US, where I would ultimately like to work. However, my field is small and my adviser is somewhat influential. Moreover, the advising is high quality. My adviser and I generally meet for one to three hours a week to discuss my work. I genuinely like my adviser, her insight, and the work I am doing. If I stay here I would also have connections to a lab in the US which is among the best in the world for my field. I would spend some time there as needed/desired, and the other members of my dissertation committee would likely be from this lab.

There are several US departments where I originally planned to apply. They have good faculty, have a large number of students in the same subfield, are close to other institutions doing related research, etc. In short, if I were accepted to one of these schools, I might sleep sounder knowing that others have tread my path, and at least some have had a good outcome (solid reputation, decent job, etc.).

My situation can be problematized as follows. The offer from my adviser is obviously an opportunistic move on her part. As a friend of mine put it, “she sees a talented young scientist and wants to snatch him up before someone else does.” Regardless of whether the characterization is accurate, that's a way of looking at the situation. My task is to decide whether the move is the right one.

Has anyone had a similar experience or just care to share some insight?

While shane's argument has some merit, there is another important factor to take into consideration: time to degree, which is very much inequal here.

If you accept your professor's offer of a PhD position, you would in principle be able to start your PhD research as soon as this fall. If you were to decline the offer, you'd definitely have to wait a full year to start the PhD program, and then at least an extra semester or two, depending on the course requirements in your field. So there could be up to a two-year delay before you do substantial work in your PhD field, depending on whether or not the department will waive your master's coursework. This may or may not be enough to sway your decision.

Additionally, you should look at all of the "peripherals," including things like:

how much teaching duty would be combined as part of the PhD position (this can be substantial, depending on your advisor's or department's teaching load!);
what the benefits and support associated with the position are relative to the US programs you're considering; and
what are the chances someone with your record will have to get into a comparable US program.


Dealing with potentially bad response from supervisor upon leaving with MSc for different PhD program To keep it brief, I am thinking heavily about leaving my current PhD program with a MSc after 4 years to embark on a PhD in a field I am more interested in, as I have grown to dislike my current field. There are a series of problems within my group, from a completely unaware and ambivalent supervisor, to internal issues, to a general lack of quality of life due to many factors. All of that bundled with my desire to pursue my passions has left me wanting to move on to a different school.

I am, however, worried about my supervisors reaction if I ask him to do so. I know from past experience he has been pretty hostile to students who have wanted to do this, and furthermore, if he gives me a reference letter, I don't know how good it will be. I know I am a good student with good technical and research skills, but he is so absent from the group here (as he directs another group overseas, where he spends 95% of his time) that I feel that he doesn't even know what I have been doing/am proficient in.

I am wondering what your advice is in dealing with this sort of situation; do I suffer through, and leave with a PhD in a field and topic I resent? Or do I go on to do what I love, at the risk of being extradited by my supervisor, potentially leaving me unable to do so? It really is a classical dilemma, and I am genuinely worried either way.

Thank you.

This is all opinion, so it is only worth what you pay for it, of course. But I would first consider how long it will take you to finish your current degree. It is pretty miserable being miserable for three more years, but if it can be done in a year then it might be best to just tough it out.

There is no reason, in principle, why you can't change fields later, either gradually, from a paid position, or abruptly. If the fields are different enough you may need credentials there, of course.

If you do complete the doctorate, then your old advisor's opinion about switching won't be of concern, only his/her opinion about the quality of your work.

However, another alternative, if you have picked out a different university, is to quietly explore with them the possibility of switching. If you can find a compatible potential supervisor there, the current situation may not be a detriment to switching. Personal contact is probably best here as it enables you to make judgements about how much to reveal about the current dilemma.

But if completion is a long way off, then quality of life would seem important enough to make a break, even if not all of the consequences are positive. But only you can balance the forces.


Communicate Author or Publisher for asking detail? I have trouble finding out an expression in a theorem (click here to the problem)of a paper by Yann Bugeaud (page 12) , and I tried to contact the author through his e-mail but he didn't reply (don't know whether his e-mail is invalid or he ignored intentionally).

I already asked this question on Math Stack Exchange without success. I have also posted it to math overflow, but it seems to me, it will not get much response.

Under the circumstances should I contact the publisher/editor of the paper or is there any other way to get the detail of the paper?

The editor and publisher will have no special insight into the contents of the paper.  The publisher doesn't even have any particular mathematical expertise at all.  It is a waste of time to contact either of them.

You speak about "the detail" as if you think that a more detailed version of the proof is out there somewhere, and if you ask the right person they will send it.  I think it's more likely that no such version ever exists.  The author may never have written another version - or if they did, there's no reason to think it exists anywhere besides their own notes.

Asking on MathOverflow was a good idea, and you can also talk to others in your field who may be familiar with the paper or the techniques involved.  But this is more a matter of having them help you figure out what's going on - not a matter of sharing knowledge that already exists.


Should you talk about your other research areas in a tenure-track job talk? I'm invited to give a seminar talk on a topic of my own choosing during my tenure-track position interview. Am I supposed to make it a "true" seminar talk about one specific topic, or should I also (briefly) discuss other areas I'm working on?

(The other research areas are somewhat remote to the actual topic of the talk, so it's not easy to naturally integrate them.)

No, a job talk is not just a regular seminar. You'll need to focus more on selling yourself, your field, and your research agenda, not (only) present some interesting research.

Generally speaking, job talks tend to have the following coarse structure:

Speaker Intro (who you are, keep this part short)
Research Overview (your overall research agenda)
Deep Dive into one topic (select one topic and go into details)
Outlook (what do you plan to do in the future? what's the impact of your research?)

(1) is more of a tradition, I think most listeners don't really care about this part as the info you give here should be pretty much visible from your CV anyway. (2) is important, as it should show the audience that you actually have an agenda that goes beyond what you did in your thesis or in your good papers. (3) is not much different to a regular conference or seminar talk (4) is again pretty crucial, as you'll need to sell not only that your work is good for somebody in your field, but that your field is one that is of great interest to the faculty and science in general.

Also remember that your audience is going to be not only from your field, so you cannot overwhelm the audience with a lot of technical detail all the time. Some advice from my PhD advisor was: part (1) everybody needs to understand, part (2) needs to be understood by the people that work in reasonably close fields, part (3) should not be entirely comprehensible for anybody but you, part (4) needs to be understandable for everybody again.

(the comment re point (3) was of course somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the idea is that for (3) you will really need to sell that what you are doing is not only important, but also difficult and interesting, which means you shouldn't oversimplify here)


Setting expectations regarding hourly pay and research work schedule when busy with coursework I am a Masters' student and I have been working with a Professor and one of his students for about three months now, and just recently I asked him about a possibility of funding me. He said he would be able to do it, but expects me to submit a proposal for the semester with other expectations, that I would discuss when I meet with him. He also added that the expectations would be slightly different now that he's ready to fund me. That certainly makes sense.  But I can imagine on some days, particularly when I have my coursework exams I cannot contribute much to the Research work, and I'm not sure if I'd meet his expectations then. Should I explicitly talk to him about this or is it understood? Also, the pay will be on an hourly basis and is it a good idea to:

negotiate pay per hour / number of hours per week if it's less than my expectation, say 17-20 hours;  ( I used to work (unpaid) on an average for about 25 hours a week, but university restricts only up to 20 hours)
ask him what he'd essentially do during those weeks of exams etc?

If this is the U.S., then you wouldn't talk about number of hours or pay scale in the proposal.  (I don't know about other countries.)  I imagine that what he has in mind is a brief description of a topic, or some topics, that you are interested in working on.

In my experience, professors are very understanding about the ebb and flow of the student's time commitments.  It could be helpful, however, to let the professor know in advance which weeks are the ones where you know you'll be tied up with exams, etc.


Why are [some] professors ambiguous about material that is actually tested on exams? I've noticed a majority of professors that I have had will tell students something along the lines of, the exam covers Chapters 1, 2, 3, or the exam covers topics X, Y, Z. Sometimes this is ends up being so broad that it is unlikely that students will even see all the material that is fair game on the exam. It also likely ends up with some material being more prominent than other material which means playing the guessing game.

Why are professors hesitant to tell students more precisely what they expect them to know?

I do realize that not all (perhaps even most?) professors have not written the exam at the point of informing students what is covered. However, given that undergraduate course material is fairly static, would not the professor be expecting the students to have the same knowledge as the previous students?

There are at least four worries, in my experience:

The students may be trying not to study any more than they absolutely have to study. So if the professor says something isn't on the exam, they won't study it.
If the professor says what is on the exam, but doesn't explicitly mention something, and then that thing comes up (even as a minor part of another problem), the students may complain that "you said that wasn't on the test!". This can happen even if the professor really made a good faith effort to say what was on the test, and the students simply misunderstood.
The professor may not have written the exam yet, and so she doesn't know the exact topics that will be included.
Someone else may write the exam, if there are many sections of the course taking the same exam. In that case, the professor may not be permitted to say what is on the exam. When I was a postdoc, they didn't even show us the common calculus exam until just before it was administered.

There are various strategies to cope with these worries. A common one, as described in the question, is to just say that the exam can include everything from the class, which is not very informative but is otherwise harmless.

There are other strategies, as well, such as making an exam review packet that includes more than the exam possibly could, and then selecting exam problems based on the review packet. But these don't help with the issue of common exams written by someone else.

By the way, if turnaround is fair play: we professors often ask the dual question: why do students so often ask what will be on the exam, when they have just had a class on the same material that will be on the exam?  As you can imagine, we may feel that we have already told the students what we want them to know, by designing the course to include it!


Can I use my first name instead of last name? I am a Korean with my first (given) name comes last and my last (family) name comes first, just like many other east asians. So, I write my name as "Aaa Bbb Ccc", where "Aaa" is my family name and "Bbb Ccc" is my given name. There are literally several millions of other Koreans who also have "Aaa" as their family name, and many of them spell it in English in the same way. Imagine citing a paper written by a Korean with family name Aaa. How can people possibly distinguish hundreds of Korean researchers with the same name working in same field? For this reason, I want to use my given name (which is still quite common, but far less common than my family name) instead of my family name. For example, I want to be cited as [Bbb Ccc, 2020] instead of [Aaa, 2020]. Is this possible to do? I don't mind to be called as "Dr Bbb Ccc", and actually I prefer that way; imagine being called as "Dr Aaa", where there are 8 other "Dr Aaa"s in the same department! Of course I have to deal with other problems, like being called as "Bbb" or "Ccc" which is just like "von" and "Neumann" instead of "von Neumann"; but I think that is less annoying than being one of those "Aaa"s. Is it possible?

Use a digital identifier such as ORCID - https://orcid.org
It would be impossible to address all the different naming conventions so you can distinguish yourself in every subgroup. But with ORCID, it would be easier to track your publications and work compared to sifting through your duplicates on google or a database.


3 follow-up emails over 2 weeks, and the potential supervisor still wont respond to me? so i have this pool of potential supervisors who I am super interested in their research.

I have formulated the best introductory email - short, concise and relevant to their research- . No response! I sent back a follow-up email which had my old email in addition to my CV, still no response! I even called , but no one picks up the phone, and whoever picks up the phone is a clueless assistant who tells me to email the supervisor and ask him/her myself.

I even visited one the labs and spoke to one of the researcher's post-doc students who volunteered to edit my emails and told me it was a good one. But then again, no response.

how is that even possible ? I dont live in the university's city (Toronto) so I cant even stalk them in their offices.

any idea why is this happening ?

N.B

The time period is 2 weeks. I sent an introductory email, next week I followed up with another email.

EDIT- For those of you who tell me not to "harass" professors, it is not harassment so please use another word. It is the applicant's responsibility to secure a supervisor for Biomedical engineering program by emailing/calling potential PI . To prove my point on following up , one supervisor who works in a hospital told me that the hospital email service filtered out my email. If I hadn't called him to inquire about my original email, I wouldn't have moved on in my research knowing that his lab is indeed "full". Applicants are not expected to simply sit and wait for supervisors to "notice them" and hope for the best , I must put myself on the map. I don't see why professors don't get much heat -like I am getting in this post" from harassing sponsors for grants !

I ignore such emails all the time. And I'd feel threatened/harassed if the email writer kept emailing me, contacted my students or postdocs, or showed up to my university.

The reason I ignore them is because there isn't much to say. I don't want to give you false hope because I can't guarantee your admission (even if you're the best one out of everyone who contacted me, there are plenty of strong applicants who don't contact anyone) and so, what could I possibly tell you? It might be nice to acknowledge the receipts of emails such as yours but I get hundreds of (mostly junk) emails and your email, being from an unknown sender, gets buried in the pile, and I usually just forget to reply.

So, stop stalking professors and focus on writing a good application and getting good grades. If you've emailed them once and if the email was good, they've read it and you've done your best. Any further communication will only lower their opinion of you.

EDIT: now that I re-read your post, I'm also noticing that your style of writing is quite familiar. This style comes across as immature at best, and entitled at its worst. For example, your spelling, grammar and punctuations are not quite correct. You're also narrating in a quite dramatic way, which is not how most academics write. If your email reflects the tone in which you wrote the above post and the subsequent comments, that may have had a hand in why your professor did not respond.


Can I switch grad schools early in MA? I am currently almost one semester into a graduate program at a school in Michigan.  However, I just heard back from my dream school in Florida. Am I able to stop my program at one school and start at another?  I don't even mind starting fresh seeing as I'm only 2 classes deep into my MA.  Any help/suggestions/opinions will be greatly appreciated!

You can do whatever you want.  If another school accepts you into their program and you'd rather be there, I don't see a problem.  Of course, there exist circumstances in which switching might have downsides, but you haven't told us enough about your situation for any of us to judge them.  Sounds like you just want someone to tell you it's OK to switch, which I'm fine with doing.


How to set the threshold below which students get a failing grade in a university-level course? What criteria (in light of the best practices or teaching experience) should one consider when deciding the passing percentage of the course?  (By the passing percentage I mean the grade threshold below which the student will receive an F)

How should the threshold below which students get a failing grade depend qualitatively on these criteria?

My classes are typically curved to the median.  To grade, I first set what I think should be the median grade, based on my assessment of the class as a whole.  Then one half of a standard deviation away from the median is one half-letter grade (e.g. if the standard deviation is 10 raw points out of 100, then 5 points would move an A- to a B+).

Using this scale, an F is simply someone who is a certain number of standard deviations below the median.

Several points:

I explain my general scheme to students on the first day of class,
    so that expectations are clear up front. There is some wriggle room
    at the letter grade borders.
I typically look for clean breaks
    between student performers (i.e. if one cluster is 2 points above
    another cluster, then it makes sense to separate their grades).


What are the advantages and disadvantages of Preprints.org compared with arXiv? Preprints.org is a new site for sharing preprints of papers.

arXiv is one of the longest standing, stable and mature places for many people.

I'm wondering where to upload a paper (which is already open access on GitHub, but not very visible).

One downside of arXiv: Google Scholar seems to direct people to the arXiv and not the latest versions.

One upside of arXiv is that it is open, stable and mature.

In summary, where should I put my preprint for maximum benefit?

Update

Thanks to the first link in the 'correct' answer below, I think I've discovered the OSF affiliated preprint services. See here for more info: Preprint services other than arXiv (for other fields)

Check it out (and potentially submit your preprints) here: https://osf.io/preprints/

You should generally use the service that most people in your field uses. In my subfield of physics people follow the daily postings on arXiv, so that's the natural choice for me. I imagine a preprint would be effectively invisible if posted elsewhere, except to someone who happens to be browsing my Google Scholar profile, ResearchGate profile or website. One could perhaps post to both arXiv and Preprints.org for wider dissemination, but that might confuse e.g. Google Scholar's citation counts so I'm not sure if it's a net benefit.

Advantages of Preprints.org

Much wider field coverage.
Can assign DOI to preprints. (Given that arXiv identifiers play essentially the same role, I personally don't think this is a large advantage, but some people seem to have a preference for DOIs.)
Has a comment system. (The closest thing on arXiv would be emailing the authors.)

Disadvantages of Preprints.org

No flexibility with license. All Preprints.org preprints are posted under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. This makes some sense as Preprints.org is designed with open access journals in mind, but really limits the set of journals the manuscript can be published in.
It's not clear to me how Preprints.org would handle misleading comments. One might prefer not to have those on the same page as the preprint.
It's run by MDPI, a publisher that's been rather controversial in the past. Although they claim that Preprints.org is run on a not-for-profit basis, it remains fully funded by MDPI, which may or may not be a sustainable and lasting investment. (Compare e.g. the discontinued Nature Precedings.) In contrast, arXiv is operated by Cornell University (which at least I consider a more respectable entity), and has proven to have lasting power.

Unknowns

One can volunteer to screen preprints on Preprints.org. Is that more or less robust than the screening by arXiv moderators?


3 Year Master's Full Time? How strange is it to want to spend three years on a Master's degree to take an extra six courses? A lot of programs have different curriculum for introductory PhD students vs introductory Master's. I want to be able to take some of those PhD classes, and I want to have spare room for exciting electives both within my Master's and outside it in associated fields.

When is this not possible, and does spending an extra year in a Master's program sound bad? I'd simply end up spending all my time  self-studying the extra material after a two year degree anyway.

Edit: I don't know how I'd feel applying for a PhD then dropping to a Master's in a couple years to have a separate core sequence. I don't want to waste anyone's time.

Edit: I'm not enrolled yet. Funding would hopefully be a combination of resident tuition and a TAship/RAship.

Many master's programs do have a term limit associated with them. However, many master's programs may require additional classes, particularly for students coming from other backgrounds. So you should definitely check the specific programs you're interested in enrolling in, to see what is specifically allowed.

But extending the master's or PhD program just to take classes seems like a poor use of resources. One of the goals of advanced education is learning to become an expert in a new subject. After a while, you should be able to get much of the same content that you would from enrolling in a class through self-study.


How can someone achieve GRE waiver? How can somebody get an admission in a graduate science/technology/engineering program US university without GRE?

At this level of generality, I think all one can say is the following:

Look for programs that do not have a GRE as part of their admission requirements.
For departments that do require it: if you have some specific reason for being unable to take the GRE, or for not having scores that meet their criteria, contact someone at the department and ask how to proceed.  (Admissions information normally includes the email address of a contact person.)  In many cases, you will include some explanation in your cover letter or statement of purpose.
If a department requires the GRE, and you don't have a compelling reason for not taking it, or for doing poorly: don't apply to that department.


How to gain strength for an exam I have been studying for 2.5 years which is only 15 days away? I have been preparing for a very important exam for 2.5-3 years. And now I am completely exhausted, the exam was scheduled to happen in May, but due to COVID-19 it got delayed to September end. This delay and uncertainty did break my motivation a bit but I still kept on pushing, and now I'm completely exhausted. I don't have the strength to go and take the exam. I have prepared well for the exam, and have been putting about 7-8 hours each day with very little breaks in between, so acing this exam does mean a lot to me and my future also depends on it. But I just don't feel like taking the exam. Even my preparation has been suffering due to this for a week or two.
The exam is just 14 days away, so I don't want to take a break as this time is very crucial to revise the material, but obviously I'm unable to focus on it, which is worsening the situation and acting like a negative feedback loop.
It's like in the saying "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe", now I have worked hard to actually get a sharp axe, but no energy to actually use it. Please help me, what can I do to get out of this situation.
With the amount of effort I have already put in preparing for the exam, and with my future depending on it, I really don't want to mess this one up.

Take a two week vacation. Do things you enjoy. Relax. Exercise. Watch TV. Sleep.
The gain from any studying you can do in two weeks will be minimal, compared to the previous three years. The gain from going into the exam rested, relaxed, and with energy will be immense.


Is it possible to write a masters thesis in 10 days? Was it ever possible for anyone to finish writing a master thesis in 10 days? I've been struggling for a long time now to focus on my writing due to several personal problems and I'm running close to my deadline so I'm starting to freak out. I welcome any suggestions at this point.

If by "writing" you mean to do the research/experiments/studying and then write the thesis then no.

If by "writing" you mean transforming your well organized notes into one document, then yes, maybe if you have great discipline.

If by "writing" you mean to start to write-up from not-so well organized notes, then most probably not.

If you want to try to make it, stop hanging around on the internet and start working.


What is the correct way of citing scientific publications? The APA citation basics write:

If you refer to the title of a source within your paper, capitalize all words that are four letters long or greater within the title of a source: Permanence and Change. Exceptions apply to short words that are verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs: Writing New Media, There Is Nothing Left to Lose.
(Note: in your References list, only the first word of a title will be capitalized: Writing new media.)

(my highlighting).
I realize that this is a matter of choice and convention, but as I read scientific publications in Computer Science, it strikes me how often these practices are mixed.  In the document, the "capitalized" version is predominant, but in reference lists, they are quite often mixed.
When I was in school I remember being taught that this was the right way of writing headlines, so I understand those who force bibtex to cite this way by curly-bracketing first letters.
But what is the reason for this convention?  Is it fair to say that it is incorrect?  Otherwise, how can it be argued to use small caps in the reference lists?

Each venue has its own set of rules. Sometimes it can change from within the same publication (on special issues and such).

Therefore, sorry, there is not straight answer. Check the guidelines of the journal/conference you are currently aiming...

ps: I don't remember ever mentioning the title of any work in my articles. At most "The method X was introduced by A et. al [1]".


What is the etiquette for repeatedly emailing questions to an author whose work I'm building on? I am doing my master thesis on wireless networking. I am working on the source code, which the writer of one of the articles provided to me.
Initially, I sent him an email and I asked him to send me his C++ source code . So he did. But the problem is, there was no documentation for his code and he is the only one that knows anything about this codebase. As a result, I totally depend on him. Last night I sent him an email and I asked him a question about his code and he replied to me very quickly, only three hours later. Probably, I will need his help again.

Before my last night's email and after spending one month working on his code, I saw  minor progress to my work. But after  yesterday's mail and his guidance, my work was significantly accelerated. I will probably need his help again maybe another two or three emails in a week. But I am afraid he will become angry with me for sending him a lot of emails.

So what should I do? Assume you are the source code programmer. Do you think he will become angry about my emails? Or he will be willing to help (since I will cite his article)?

Although your intentions are probably good, you seem to take advantage of the creator of the source code. He is not your personal debugger nor he must be the one writing the code for your thesis (especially for free). He has written a paper and he has given you his source code. That is all the information you need to know. Read his paper (or his paper slides if they are publicly available) a hundred times, till you know every little detail of it and then look at his code (another hundred times) until you correlate everything between the paper and the code. Of course this will be slower than sending him a couple of emails but it is YOUR thesis not his. Only when you do all this and still there are unanswered questions, then collect all the possible questions you might have (including queries about his code and his paper) and then send it him ONE email, with all your questions. Anything more than that is exploiting his kindness. This kind of back and forth emails with questions is one of the many reasons why many people are unwilling to share their codebase.

Since he is probably a nice guy, you should consider that in the future you might collaborate with him or need his help. Being pushy or lazy (and delegating your work to him because you do not want spend 1-3 weeks refactoring or studying his code more carefully) is a sure way to burn bridges with him. And you really do not want to do that.

On the other hand, if after giving you access to his source code he understands (by your email) that you did everything humanly possible to understand his code and paper and just want some extra help, he will be willing to assist because: a) you seem to appreciate his work b) you seem to understand his time constraints c) you are also a smart, hard working guy worth collaborating with. And this is the message you need to convey.


How do I get rid of google scholar recommendations I find google scholar recommendations for me to read to be of very poor quality. They are also distracting and are seldom refreshed. How can I disable this function or have the recommendations hidden?

Two possibilities:
1.) Open Google Scholar, open the left-hand menu and click on Alerts. You will then see a list of all alerts you receive. Click on "CANCEL" in each row.
2.) If you wish to cancel a specific alert: At the bottom of each alert e-mail, there is a link called "CANCEL ALERT". Click on it and confirm that you wish to cancel it.