Failing a student for attendance or grade? My problem is pretty weird to describe. This semester I didn't keep track of student attendance in classes because the university system didn't become functional until two weeks before the end of the semester. Now this student comes up complaining that he wants to fail due to absence in classes (which by the way he didn't attend at all) and not because he didn't do any assignments, and he argues that I cannot give any grade because he didn't do any assignment! That's because, for some warped logic, failing to attend classes isn't as bad as failing due to a bad grade: somehow the "system" cleans up attendance failures (but not grade failures) in the future school transcript. It is as if the student had never been enrolled in the course in the first place. Anyway, the "system" does not allow for failing students on both grounds either (that is, someone who hasn't attended enough classes and didn't achieve the minimum grade to pass). Moreover, this is an optional class and about half the students canceled their inscriptions in the first weeks.

So, the question is: should I bow down to this logic and fail the student because he missed classes (thus cleaning up the slate for him), or fail because he didn't do any assignments?

Ask an Administrator At Your Institution

I honestly think there is only one answer to give here: you need to talk with someone at your University who understands the policies of your particular institution. At all institutions I am personally aware of (having attended or read through their student handbook), there is no such thing as a difference between failing because you didn't show up and failing because you showed up and got everything wrong. But given the extremely large variance between institutions, and especially between countries, your institution may have it's own unique rules.

If at your institution there is no such thing as "fail by absence", then of course you cannot comply with the student request.
If your institution provides a policy of "fail by absence", then you need to look at the definition of what this and whether or not this student qualifies. If indeed the definition is "did not complete X% of assignments or tests, or did not attend at least Y%" of classes", and your student meets this guideline, then you absolutely should mark "fail by absence" in accordance with your University policy.

One needn't actually agree that there is any difference in "not trying" and "trying and failing", and one need not even agree that one is not as 'bad' as the other. If your institution honors such a concept, and asks you to indicate which occurred, it is your duty to answer honestly and correctly.

The student might be a nuisance or annoying, or give you no good reason for their failure to attend - and the reasons might very well be none of your concern. But if your system distinguishes between attendance-related failure and exam-related failure, then you should too. Problems with the policy should be addressed to policy makers, not enforced willy-nilly on students.

If you wish in the future to go against such policies, and assuming you have the authority to do so, you really must place this in your syllabus at the beginning of the semester so that all students necessarily understand that policies normal to your institution will not be applied to that class. You should of course check with administration to ensure you  have such an option.


Problems in coping with my PhD Supervisors I'm a PhD student at a reputable institute in my country. I joined the group of a supervisor who is good at experimental and not so good in analytical front. I also have a co-supervisor who's good at analytics and numerical stuff. Neither know my research problem well.

Initially I had lot of difficulties in understanding the problem. I was a little slow in understanding the analytics. They told me to do lots of stuff here and there. All of them failed. Now I'm in my third year, supervisors are asking me "Are you really interested in your problem, or do you want to leave the course?".

Leaving course mid-way does not make sense for me. But without getting much help from supervisors and working on my own is manageable. Sometimes I get mentally disturbed by their attitude. How do I cope with these supervisors who talk so crazily and seriously at this point of time?

I would suggest you to write a preliminary research findings report to both of your supervisors.

In the report, explain what you have done in the past two years. State the facts. Don’t point the fingers.  You describe what you have tried and why they failed. Don’t make it too long. Refer the details to the notes and the data stored somewhere else. The final section of the report is your plan to tackle the problem further.

The purpose of the report is to let them be aware of the efforts you have spent. It documents the lessons learned. With the report, your supervisors and you would have more understandings about the problem you have been working on for two years. Bear this in your mind, it is likely you would know more about the problem when you write the report.

The report will answer their questions, Are you really interested in your problem? Yes. you wanna leave the course? No. But you need their help to finish it. If they tell you they can’t help you after they read the report, then it’s time to either change the research problem or find yourself another supervisor(s).


What is the meaning of “Samuel C. Collins Professor”? I would like to know the specific meaning of Samuel C. Collins Professor in the above screenshot. It is a title for MIT faculties or the award with the same name (Samuel C. Collins)? Or something else?

It's a named professorship, which means a couple things.  Generally, endowed chairs are better paid and have some extra funds associated with them.  These are typically funded by a gift to the Institute.  In this case, somebody presumably gave a gift in honor of Prof. Collins, who was a pioneer in low-temperature work.

  Dr. Samuel C. Collins, Professor Emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, internationally known as the father of practical helium liquefiers and founder of the MIT Cryogenic Engineering Laboratory, died on June 19, 1984 in George Washington University Hospital, Washington, DC.

  In 1946, Dr. Collins and his colleagues at MIT built what became know as the Collins Helium Cryostat. The device provided for the first time reliable, relatively in expensive and adequate supplies of liquid helium. His invention was of great interest to physicists because it opened the door to extensive experimental low-temperature physics

The existence of the endowed professorship is a honor to the memory of the eponymous Samuel Collins, and it is an honor for the current faculty member who holds it.


My PhD advisor is writing most of an article without considering some of my inputs We are currently writing a first article with my PhD advisor. The research was mainly designed by him; I performed all the experiments and found a model to explain the results.

The article is soon to be finished. I am supposed to be the first author of the paper but at this point, I am more and more considering to ask my advisor to put me as the second author or maybe even ask to have my name removed.

My advisor wrote most of the article, which I already find weird given that I am the first author. This is not due to my lack of initiative, I've been explicitly told not to write some parts. It really feels that I am simply a secretary asked to check for typos, formatting issues, and to make graphs and figures as he sees fit.
When I correct some of his writing, he sometimes takes into account what I propose/correct, sometimes he disagrees and explains why, but sometimes completely ignores it (my comment is deleted and not addressed). Some of these ignored comments are not fundamental, but I find some others very important and I am really not comfortable with some parts of the manuscript (he knows this given that I wrote it in the comments).

As an example, my advisor is very excited by a small theoretical model I proposed to him once that could roughly explain the experimental results. Yet there are still gaps and unsupported hypothesis. He knows that I am very reluctant to make this modeling an important part of the paper (which otherwise present both qualitative and quantitative experimental evidence of phenomena not previously reported), but this is now becoming more and more important and is almost the central part of the article. We discussed that once, his answer was simply that I should be proud of myself to have explained something rather than be too critical.

Other examples include him writing something along the line of "when XX was observed, we systematically found that this was due to YY". Something I actually only observed once and I am not confident that it can be so easily generalized.

My question is simply how to deal with that. My relation with my advisor was great but it is becoming more and more strained (especially from my side) as this article evolves. Is this a regular flow between a student and its advisor during the writing process? This is a long, in-depth >30-page article, if this information can be useful. With my Master advisor I had written and published a short-letter (4 pages), and I was completely leading the writing.

I do not know whether this could be an answer to your question or not.

I find it completely normal, especially because it is your first paper. My advised changed 99% of the first version of my first article, and when I read now what I wrote, I laugh about it because it was really low quality. Of course, this is normal because I was new in writing papers. My advisor did not even explain the changes. Instead, he said: "check my revision, and you will learn how to write papers".  Now his revision does not exceed 1%.

Back to your case, I think, your advised found that this paper has a high potential to be accepted, and he wants to increase the chances. Even if a scholar did the experiments by himself, the adviser has an experience of many years in writing papers. In the first paper, we usually try to write all the details, believing that they are all important. In most cases, what is important for a scholar is a part, which took more time. On the contrary, an experienced researcher knows what is important and what is redundant.

Overall, It is too early to disagree with your adviser about what to write, where his experience makes the difference. Try to follow him and if you are right, the reviewers will prove it. Otherwise, you will learn from your mistakes.


What are the social norms associated with stealing free coffee? Every morning, at the institution where I work, I attend a lecture series with on the order of 100 other students. The lecture hall is very central on campus, and large meetings are often held nearby -- almost right outside -- at the same time. Very frequently, tables equipt with refreshments accompany these meetings. Again very frequently, I will pour myself a cup of coffee as I go by.

I'm reasonably certain that this is unethical (*), but what surprises me is how socially deviant it appears. Of the approximately 100 students with whom I attend lectures, I do not see any of them making use of these resources on a regular basis. I've once or twice been harshly reprimanded by a conference-goer getting coffee at the same time as myself, and I've seen people sit down to work only about 20 meters away with coffee that they've licitly purchased, even if the meeting was clearly over and the refreshments were just waiting to be cleaned up. I once walked by a table just as it was being cleared and asked the staff member clearing it if it was okay for me to take something, and he was totally cool with it. I've never seen signs posted near the tables indicating that the refreshments are intended strictly for the attendees of the meeting, though I would guess that this is assumed to be understood. My only other source for views on this matter is PHD Comics, which has published an assortment of strips centered on the topic of free food.

I know that social norms probably vary geographically, maybe even by discipline, but I was wondering what others' experiences have been as regards stealing free food. As is -- I believe -- apparent, I consider it a relatively minor trespass, but other than the conference-goers who've yelled at me I've never heard the issue brought up explicitly. So, how do you think people judge the stealing of free food, and how have you formed these perceptions?

(*) I'm only "reasonably certain" because, as I understand it, the excesses from these meeting are frequently thrown out. As someone legitimately attending a conference, I've been instructed explicitly by the organizers to take excess food with me to avoid wasting it in this manner. I dislike waste in general, and I particularly abhor the waste of perfectly good food, especially coffee.

Note: I'm not 100% sure that this belongs on Academia Stack Exchange, but this is not a question about the ethics of stealing coffee; I am interested specifically in the attitudes of academics towards stealing free food. For instance, why do so few others seem to do so? People do little unethical things all the time -- arguably, speeding falls in this category -- but I seem almost alone in breaking this particular rule.

The big difference here is simply whether the meeting is over or not, i.e. whether it would have to be thrown away or not. If those who are supposed to consume it (for which, as others have pointed out, someone paid) clearly have no intent of doing so (because they left), then I think it is fine to consume it.

In fact, in that case, you would even do them a favor because noone has to clean it up. But otherwise, it's stealing. Another indication for this is the group size: With about 100 students, there clearly wouldn't be enough if everyone took some coffee.


Equal author contribution I, along with two fellow doctoral students, am about to publish a paper supervised by our professor. Our professor is listed as the last author, which of course is fair as he supervised the project.

One of us, student A, is listed as the first author, which there is not disagreement on. Student B is listed afterwards, and I am the third listed author.

The ordering of student B and I is alphabetical, nothing more. This is also reasonable, as we all believe that our contribution has been the same.

However, it is not listed in the paper that our contributions are the same. Should I insist on this before submitting the paper?

In fields where authorship order matters, the difference between second author and third author is very little, pragmatically, in terms of how people will think about your contributions.  Neither is the first author (whose name will be noticed in every citation), and neither is the last author (in those fields where last = senior).

What you can do, however, is what many journals now require, where you add a section at the end of the paper with a name like "Author Contributions."  In this section, you write down exactly what each author did, e.g.,

  R.L. performed the experiments, T.X. ran spectroscopic analysis, B.G. supplied a critical DNA construct, R.L. and T.X. analyzed the data, T.X. and B.M. wrote the manuscript, and R.L,.T.X., and B.M. edited the manuscript.

This won't change the "first impressions" that anybody has of the paper, but anybody who wants to know whether you're a significant contributor or not will be readily able to find out.


Does having external funding raise your chances of getting accepted ? ( Masters ) My UG university have awarded me a scholarship for master's degree ( I'm an international student ) the scholarship pays for all expenses of the master's degree for the whole duration of the study.

I would like to know if this raises my chances to get accepted for a masters program ? Does being a "risk free" student gives me more leeway?

It may depend upon what field you are in, but in biology in the USA most universities I know would be much more interested in a student if they brought their own funding!


How to use feedback on written publications efficiently? Whenever I submit an article, conference paper or other written document, I get tons of useful feedback from my supervisors and other PhD students. So far, I've made sure to adjust my submissions according to their good comments, and then just throw the feedback away. But I feel like I could use that feedback much more efficiently.

I would like to categorise/condense the feedback in some way that makes it easy to identify my weaknesses and common themes, and also to see whether I'm actually improving in all areas or there are some recurring comments.

Does there exist a good framework for this task? If not, how should I approach it?

Your writing skills usually improve gradually over time. It seems like a very natural approach to obtain feedback and improve papers accordingly,thereby learning important skills.

If you want to be more efficient/structured I suggest that you not try to collect and categorize all feedback you get but try to build up a collection of "Tips and tricks". What I mean is, that you could skim the feedback for general advice and useful tricks that seems to be applicable in more general form (such as "write the introduction from general to specific and write the conclusion from specific to general") and collect only these bits.


What happens when two papers prove the same result? A hypothetical situation: two (groups of) authors have independently proven the same result. How do we determine who gets credit?

There are some obvious bounds - if Group A posts a paper to the arxiv, and Group B posts the same result to the arxiv n time units later and claims to be independent; if n=10 years, then clearly Group A gets credit. If n=1 week then it's less clear to me.

Other than posting a paper to the arxiv, to what extent do talks count? What about talks containing nearly complete proofs?

ETA: I'm aware that such situations occur not infrequently; I only say "hypothetical" in the sense that I'm not personally involved in such a situation and I'm just curious to know the community's opinion.

This situation is by no means "hypothetical". If you are not alone to be interested in the range of problems you are working on, it is pretty much
guaranteed to happen to you sooner or later.

The answer to the question as posted is "on a case by case basis". No general rule applies and no universal attitude exists. You can meet everything from bitter rivalry, fight for priority, and open hostility between the "groups" (or individuals) in question to a gentleman's argument of the kind "you go ahead and publish now and I'll hold my opus for a while".

The simplest and easiest to handle case is when the proofs run on drastically different ideas and employ nearly disjoint sets of techniques. Then one may, of course, try to squawk that he was there a few days earlier but everybody understands that the real test is whose approach turns out more viable and useful on the long run (and quite often they both survive, just lead to different developments). There is no question about the possibility to publish each of them either.

The worst case scenario is when the proofs are nearly identical or one is obviously superior to another, so once you see one paper, there is no reason to look at another one anymore. If the authors know each other and are on friendly terms, they can usually figure out some reasonable strategy (combining everything into one article under all names is the most common way out). Otherwise pretty much anything can happen.

Most situations are somewhere in between. So, just apply your common sense, remember that good relationships are more beneficial on the long run than establishing priority, don't think that you (or anybody else) may really own a mathematical statement or its proof any more than one can own the wind or the light or that one can carry any "credit" beyond the grave, enjoy other people successes as your own, and you'll be totally fine.

If the question is just about "how to cite properly?", when in doubt, cite both works and abstain from any judgement about priority, etc.


No vote from department, up vote from university level committee. What does this mean? I am an assistant professor who went up for tenure, got a negative vote in my department and then a positive vote at the university level committee. I have asked a number of people who have been in academia for decades, and no one has seen my exact situation. I am unsure of what will be the eventual outcome. I am wondering if anyone has seen a situation like my own, and what ended up happening?

To put things in context, I have a solid number of pubs, some small grants, good to excellent teaching and outstanding service. I have had some difficult interactions with some of my colleagues, mostly because I called attention to racism and reported unethical behaviors in the past to leadership at the school.

Addendum - The school’s procedural policy seems to be that the decision now goes to the provost. There does not seem to be any explicit school policy on what would be the outcome. My understanding is that the previous votes are advisory to the provost. If it helps, all my external letters were good. 3 of the 6 explicitly stated I should get tenure.

This seems like an uncommon situation. Has anyone seen a situation like my own? What was the eventual outcome?

The tenure process usually has many steps, with decisions by the department's tenured faculty, the department head, the college's tenure advisory council, the college's dean, the provost, and the board of regents (or board of governors, or whatever other name they have at your school). At some schools, some of these steps may be omitted, at others there may be more steps.

A friend of mine, who happened to be a dean at the time, told me once that he's pretty sure that every combination of positive and negative votes has happened before. I know of at least one case where the department's faculty voted no and the department head recommended yes anyway.

In the end, you are right that the ultimate decision lies with either the provost or the board or regents. (Though I would suggest not taking this as legal advice -- the situation at your school may be legally different.) So you can take solace in the fact that the department's vote does not determine the outcome. Of course, the negative vote will likely be considered when the provost or the board make their decisions, and so it is still possible that you will not get tenure.

I do wish you luck in the process. Going through this is stressful, and will likely occupy a substantial fraction of your mental energies until it is resolved. After that, however, you ought to also consider what happens if you do get tenure but you have to face the colleagues in your department every day. Half of them did not think that you should get tenure. This is something that will follow you for many years to come. It will affect your standing in the department, and you will feel insecure opening your mouth every time you speak up at a committee meeting. Assuming you do get tenure, it would probably be useful to think in detail how you want to deal with this: Are there things that you think you might have done wrong in the past and for which you could atone in personal conversations with colleagues who may not have been in favor of your tenure? You might eventually find that you don't feel sufficiently welcome in the department to spend the remainder of your professional life there, even though you ended up getting tenure, and might want to look around for jobs elsewhere.


Advantages to article submission in LaTeX from the publisher's side Many journals in my field accept both Word and LaTeX formats for article submission. From the publisher's point of view, what are the advantages of using the LaTeX format for submission?

Do publishers eventually use LaTeX to typeset the final version of the article? In that case, I can imagine that having the references ready in BibTeX and equations in TeX (among other things) can save quite some time in the typesetting process, and be less error prone. Are there any other advantages?

If a publisher accepts LaTeX manuscripts they likely use LaTeX also for the final type-setting. I am sure there are exceptions but could not point you to one.

The benefits, apart from obvious LaTeX benefits such as equations and built in standards for references, numbering of equations, figures and tables etc., lie in the way a manuscript can easily be taken from a manuscript form to a finished product.

Many journals have class files that allow you to move from manuscript to essentially "proof" mode by changing a switch in the document and "re-compiling" it. This also means that the journal can go to typesetting without moving file contents to a new format or another program (not many journals are type-set in Word).

In the case of journals that do not have class files for use by the author, moving a manuscript from a generic LaTeX format into a specified journal format is not necessarily difficult. There are probably many different approaches to this but from a LaTeX point of view all definitions of a document are there in the plain LaTeX file and it would be easy to apply a class that re-defines the plain format to something that will yield a finished layout.

With LaTeX focus is on writing the text, not formatting the manuscript. As Editor-in-Chief for a journal that uses both Word and LaTeX, I have spent many hours weeping over hopeless Word formatting  (including field codes that do not work) that is both unnecessary and complicating moving the document to the type-setter. LaTeX is a text file and so does not contain anything that cannot be easily spotted and changed if need be.

So, to be fair, one can mess up with LaTeX as well, and I want to point at an overarching rule which is to always strictly adhere to any instructions for authors provided by the journal and not to send in material that is of a format that differs from what is asked for.

So the benefits of LaTeX is that the move from manuscript form to finished layout is simplified and reduces the amount of manual work for the type-setter. But, in all type-setting there is always need for manual control so LaTeX is not 100% automatic, just closer to it.

About BibTeX referencing: Most journals and I would guess type-setters want the manuscript in as few parts as possible. therefore many provide a .bst for the reference style but ask that you run BibTeX to produce the .bbl file (containing all references properly formatted with \bibitem formatting) and then paste the content into the document to provide a complete and correctly formatted reference list inside the document file itself.


Do medical doctors publish academic papers and write grant proposals? I know that medical doctors affiliated with universities can teach at the medical schools as professors and write chapters in textbooks.  But do medical doctors with a university affiliation also have to publish academic papers and write successful grant proposals, in order to be promoted?

Yes. Medical schools generate large proportions of the grant funding at many major research universities. Most faculty (except possibly research-only faculty) in medical schools have an M.D. degree. Research expectations for clinical-only faculty are often meager but faculty that conduct research at major universities often need to PI large grants to receive tenure.


How to determine whether a position is "faculty-equivalent"? I am considering taking a position as a "junior assistant professor" in Japan. There are certain international fellowships to which I may apply, but they require that the applicant does not hold a "faculty-equivalent position". One in particular is Switzerland based.
I do plan to ask the fellowship contact directly how they determine faculty-equivalency. However, I prefer to be as informed as possible before asking them directly; that way, I can best pose my question. For instance, it may be that the fellowship office does not have a simple definition, but may ask for several pieces of "evidence" that I am not at a "faculty-equivalent position". This would be similar to the NIH having a list of "evidence" that an early career candidate is not yet independent.
I am curious to know opinions from the academic community on StackExchange: What, in your experience, typically constitutes "faculty equivalency" (voting rights, salary, tenureship, etc.)? I am hoping to hear these opinions so I can start collecting "evidence" (possibly some that the fellowship committee may not have defined yet but would welcome) that I am or am not of "faculty equivalency".
Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

In my field (particle physics) positions considered as "faculty equivalent" positions are usually non-university permanent (or close to that) positions.
For example, in the US at national labs, there are several named fellowships and when applying to them they might state something like "this position is considered equivalent to an assistant professor at a university".
The idea usually being that the person in this position would be hired into a permanent position at the end of their fellowship, e.g., as a staff scientist.


What is appropriate number of keywords for conference paper? What is appropriate or reasonable number of keywords in a conference paper (in computer network/security topics)?

Honestly, I don't know if there is much reason other than history and tradition to continue to put keywords on conference papers.  Most people will find your paper via search engines, rather than by searching for keywords in some specialized interface, and search engine technology is good enough these days that keywords are not usually particularly necessary for improving the chance of your paper being found.

The places where I know that keywords still actually matter, at least marginally, are:

Putting in a keyword can be a good way to include a term that isn't otherwise explicitly stated in the paper (and thus might not show up on search engines).
Some reviewing systems use an author's history of keywords to help figure out which papers they are likely to be a good reviewer for in the future.

So, given all of this, how many keywords should you choose?  My own inclinations are as follows:

When required to use the ACM classification system: two, because it's a pain to look up something appropriate in their ontology, but I feel like I'm shirking too obviously if I try to get away with only one.
When I get to pick my own keywords: 3-6, plucked from the air over the course of a few minutes by free association.


When Does "Adapting" An Image Go Too Far? I am interested in using a particular figure from the literature, but I do not want to go through the hassle of paying to use a figure. What I am wondering is if I made a similar figure, how easy is it to get in trouble for copyright infringement? If I were to essentially redo the image, it would not be verbatim the same, but very similar depictions would be pulled from the image. As an example, I provided two illustrative examples where the bottom image is an "adapted" version:

The second one is in a published paper as well from a reputable journal, so I am guessing that it should be okay to go about making a similar diagram myself, but again, I wouldn't mind other opinions as too when I might start to tow the line on copyright infringement.

If this is for a book, rather than for a paper, you have another option. Many book publishers will give you a certain budget for paying royalties on figures and such. Another alternative, if you are to receive royalties from book sales is to have the publisher pay any fees up front and charge it against your future earnings on the book. The former is preferable, of course. But book publishers expect to have to pay for some things such as cover pictures and some internal figures.

I doubt that this is an option for any journal, however.


Are itemized lists discouraged in scientific papers? From my experience in biology (by experience I mean reading other papers), it seems that there is an unspoken rule that itemized lists do not belong in the body text of a paper.

I have almost never seen a paper have a bullet point list or a numbered list which is formatted as a separate entity in the body text (although I have seen them in eg. the sidebar, or figures which essentially are a numbered list). The closest I've seen is an "in-line" numbered list:

  Our paper raises three points: (1) yada yada, (2) blah blah and (3) bip bap boop. Point (2) is particularly important, because yakkity yakkity...

Are bullet point or numbered lists, formatted similar to how StackOverflow formats them for example, discouraged in scientific publication? If so is there a reason why?

It is extremely common in my areas of computer science (TCS and machine learning) to see a paper itemize a list of contributions as a bulleted or numbered list. I use it regularly as a technique to highlight and emphasize contributions and key ideas in a way that stands out.

So while any such answer is area specific, I'd say that in the areas of CS that I'm familiar with it is definitely not discouraged.


Can a published well-received research paper contain misprints? I have been reading a research paper for my university course. The paper is the PhD thesis of a student of Berkeley mentored by a reputed engineer. I strongly feel that an expression mentioned in the thesis is wrong, although it has been mentioned only once in paper and his analytical and simulation results agree everywhere, I doubt my speculation

My doubt is whether there is a chance that the equation may contain a typing error and what I think is correct and my expression has been used in calculations or since this is a highly cited paper , there cannot be any typing error and my doubt is futile. I mean have such typos ever crept earlier in such reputed publications ?

Yes, and there are a lot of reasons for errors. There is also a large machinery for keeping errors out, but they fail regularly enough. Sometimes the error is a misunderstanding by a copy editor. In printed work, even by the printer's employees.

But the biggest issue is probably how hard it is for people to proof read their own material. I struggle with this constantly in my own writing. Once you put a mistake into a paper, you are likely to read over it when proof reading. You tend to "see" what you think should be there, not what actually is there. One of the purposes of intelligent reviewers is to catch such things. But we are all human and the mistakes we make we often repeat.

If the "error" isn't thought of as serious to understanding by a reader, they may just ignore it. Or even, might "see" what they expect to see in such things as formulae. Especially if they are commonly used.

There was once a version of the Bible printed in which, among the other commandments it was stated: Thou shalt commit adultery. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_Bible


IEEE journal or conference total number of publications? Pardon me if it is a basic question but I don't seem to get the solution. Is there any way to get total number of IEEE publications for a specific journal. e.g. I would like to know the total number of publications of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering from all of its issues but I don't see any option of that on journal's home page. Is there a way to do it?

I have tried Scopus as well but It does not seem to include all the publications from this specific journal.

Any help would be appreciated.

This addresses your journal of interest, specifically.

More generally, academic.research.microsoft.com can be used to find such information for other journals, as well as conferences.

Disclaimer: As user ff524 has pointed out in the comments of this answer, Microsoft Academic Search has stopped indexing/tracking "even a fraction of papers published since 2011", as reported by this article. I thank ff524 for pointing this out.


How one legally can justify distance learning for on campus programs? A few years ago we wanted to open a new program that will be based on distance learning,  however, getting accredited for having a master degree program that is based on distance learning and not on campus is literally a bureaucratic nightmare.
First, no one allowed us to use Zoom, Microsoft Teams or other currently popular distance learning tools, second it should be some sort of  "Moodle" program with clear guidelines for each week. Third everything needs to be under guidelines of the Distance Education Accrediting Commission, in current COVID19 teaching organizational crisis we don't follow those guidelines at all.
I wonder what are legal repercussions for doing distance learning when you are not accredited to do one. Can our students with disability complain since when they needed this option we couldn't provide to them since our excuse was that we weren't ready or accredited to do so? And last but not least, can we legally organize accredited on-campus program but perform it online or using distance learning completely?

Edit: this answer is somewhat specific to the context of the COVID-19 health crisis and about legal justifications for various exceptional teaching strategies being adopted by many universities all over the world these days. It’s not clear if that’s what you meant to ask about exactly. If it’s not, please clarify.

The COVID-19 situation and the way universities are responding to it is an illustration of the adage that “it is easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission”. Basically the situation is so unprecedented that universities are doing whatever they can to stay operational, and leaving legal questions for later. My guess is that these will all be addressed by governments, legislatures, and regulatory bodies at a later time when the people in charge emerge out of panic mode and have time for dealing with such issues.

At the same time, the question of legality is indeed significant, and people are in fact paying attention. For example, in the US, I have heard that the visas of many foreign students explicitly forbid “online learning”. As a result, I have also heard (this is basically gossip and I can’t confirm it or cite a reference) that some institutions are referring to their current mode of operation as “remote learning” in a euphemistic attempt to pretend that that’s conceptually different from “online learning”. Silly? Perhaps, but that’s the kind of advice lawyers are giving apparently. Similar fig-leaf, CYA-style advice is being given about protecting your Zoom class meeting with a password to avoid being accused of compromising your students’ privacy. Does that mean using Zoom is technically legal in the sense of being fully FERPA-compliant? Who knows - probably not. But at least we make an effort to minimize whatever legal issues we have time to think about and energy to do something about.

But the short answer is, in the academic context as well as other contexts having to do with civil liberties, restrictions on people’s movements and many other aspects of our daily lives that are being disrupted, the law is lagging far behind. People in charge will do whatever they need to do without asking for permission, and ask for forgiveness later if they have to (they probably won’t).


How often is "too often" for emailing journal editors? Context: I submitted a paper for initial review May 2018, and not long after received a "revise and resubmit" response. I never got a confirmation regarding my resubmission, and the email I sent requesting that wasn't answered. A few months later, I checked in again, and finally was told they never received it. I resubmitted it (it's now January 2019, by the way.) Since then, I have reached out a few times to check in. Once in May - the associate editor said they were still waiting on the evaluations. I wrote again in August, only because I saw that the associate editor had changed, and I correctly assumed that the new one didn't know anything about my submission. When they did look into it, they said it was still in review. Against my better judgement, I checked in again in October (I didn't want to be annoying, but...in my defense, my previous submission had been lost, and this most recent submission had been sent way back in January.) However, I got no response. And here we are in December, shortly approaching the 1 year mark, and still no update.

Finally the question: would it be inappropriate to send another email some time soon? On the one hand, I completely empathize that people are busy and volunteering their time when serving on an editorial board, and I don't want to annoy them over things that are maybe out of their control. However, they don't have the best track record (I also consulted with another colleague who similarly had a frustrating experience with this journal) and keeping my paper in review for almost a year seems excessive (in my field the turnaround for a review is usually about 4 months). If sending another email is in order, any suggestions on how to inquire and point out the delays and unresponsiveness without sounding annoying or like a jerk?

As you point out, you've waited close to a year. You shouldn't feel bad about asking for updates after this long, especially since it's been two months since you last checked.

In your email I'd point out that it's been almost a year since you resubmitted, and you're wondering what exactly is happening. When can you expect a decision? If they can't predict that, then when are the reviews due?

If the editorial board member handling your paper is unresponsive, you could try asking the journal office instead, although it sounds unlikely the journal office will be able to say much (because my guess is the reviewers never agreed to review and/or never actually submitted a review, so the only way forward is to invite more reviewers, but the handling editor hasn't done it).


Is it logistically possible to work on two PhD research projects at the same time? Say someone wants to enroll in two unrelated disciplines: e.g. a Ph.D. in, say, Arabic Literature, and Ph.D. in, say, in Math Education.

I am not going into the capability of the candidate, or whether it is reasonable to seek multiple PhDs.

Is it logistically possible to work on two research projects at the same time?

What difficulties/barriers may come?

Well, anything is possible that isn't impossible. But the obstacles would make it extremely unlikely if they are quite different fields. It would also probably result in work that is less than superior, which the same sort of person might achieve had they focused on one field (at a time). Some obstacles:

A single university would have a hard time accepting it, so you need to deal with that. Two different universities permitting you to pursue degrees simultaneously? Maybe you need to hide each from the other. This could lead to problems if either becomes aware.

A given advisor would be likely to oppose it, thinking that the person isn't giving enough to studies in that field. Do you need, again, to hide what you are doing?

You may need to pay for at least one of the programs as getting TAs or whatever in two fields is both hard and would require too much time in itself. (Varies by country, of course)

You need to do what ever coursework is necessary in both programs to be able to pass two very different sets of comprehensive exams (many/most places).

You need, of course, to do the required research in some narrow area in two non-synergistically aligned fields.

And, if your "friend" just wants to do it as a challenge, sure, why not. Spend six or seven years (more?) chasing a crazy goal just for the hell of it. And possibly fail at both. Seven years older, deeper in debt.

Now, having succeeded, you need to find a job, probably abandoning everything you did in one of the fields. This last is what actually makes it sort of foolish. It would be a difficult (impossible?) quest to get multiple appointments in a single university and many universities wouldn't permit you to hold a regular appointment at another.

Some people do get multiple terminal degrees, though usually more closely aligned. Some people find themselves dissatisfied in the field they first qualify in and move to something else. But even these cases are pretty rare.

Fun as a thought experiment, though.


Web service to subdivide projects among students For a course I teach, I would like to assign projects to students, so that each student chooses a different project among a list of alternatives.

It seems to me that one of the simplest ways to assign them in a fair way is the following: sort the students in a random order, and then ask them in this order to choose a project among the ones that are still available.

I would like to know if there is a web service that handles this process automatically. More specifically, it should do something like the following:

Takes as input a list of 'objects' to choose, and a list of e-mail addresses.
Optionally, randomizes the order of these addresses (but I can do that off-line)
Sends a mail to the first address of the list, asking them to choose one of the available objects.
Once the owner of address #1 has chosen, takes the chosen object off the list, and sends a mail to address #2 in the list, asking them to choose one among the remaining objects.
Repeat until there are no more addresses in the list.
Displays the results of the process for everyone to see.

Is there a website where I can set this process up without too much trouble? Doodle does something similar, but without the constraint that users must choose in a specific order; it uses a first-come-first-served approach.

(Before someone suggests it, I think that this question is more suitable for this site than for [softwarerecs.se], and I would prefer not to ask it there.)

Yes. You can use Google Sheets and Google Forms to achieve all that.

Its easy enough that you can use functions like RAND for randomizing (https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093507?hl=es and https://www.lifewire.com/rand-function-generate-random-numbers-3123931) without even needing a script.

Also please consider that you should ask in 'https://stackoverflow.com/'  for the specifics as this question is sort of out of the scope of this site. I'm not sure if you can send me a message directly or if only by comments, but ask me if you wish help with this.


How to interpret reviews that focus only on grammar mistakes but a decision of "consider after major changes"? I recently received the reviews for an article I submitted a few months back to a journal. Reviewers did not comment on the results proved; i.e., they did not indicate the presence of any errors in the proofs. They only commented on grammar mistakes, which I need to correct. They also mentioned that the revised manuscript will undergo a second round of review by the same reviewers.

What is the probability of acceptance of the article?

The number of changes I have to make is : five (grammar plus spelling mistakes)

Recommendation is : "Consider after major changes".

Possibilities:

There are so many grammar and spelling mistakes in the manuscript that they pointed out a few by way of example and sent it back for English language editing before a full review. Given the quality of writing in the question, this seems unlikely.
There is a missing review that was not sent to you that has asked for more major revisions. Sometimes this happens if the reviewer uploaded their comments as a file. Log into the submission web site and see if you can find any extra review files associated with your manuscript.
The editor accidentally clicked the wrong button in the editing software and meant to send it for minor revision. This seems possible, but it is very strange that the reviewers did not comment on the results at all, and suggests a very poor review process.
The editor doesn't like the paper very much themself and has sent it back hoping for a major revision, but has been too lazy to provide review comments that would help.
The editor is particularly annoyed by grammatical errors and sent it back for a small number of minor errors to be corrected before being willing to send it to reviewers.

To me, the "missing review" hypothesis seems most likely. I would check the web site, and if you don't find another review file, contact the editor to clarify whether the grammatical changes you mention are really the only changes required.


Why do admissions committees consider the Statement of Purpose to be important? Why do admissions committees consider the Statement of Purpose to be important? Anyone with a command of English should be able to write a Statement of Purpose, in principle, so it seems a poor way to compare applicants' research potential. If I were to judge an applicant (obviously I've never been in this position), I would much sooner at grades than at their Statement of Purpose, simply because grades cannot (in general) be 'faked'.

Why do admissions committees consider the Statement of Purpose to be important?

This question assumes they do consider it important, but how it's actually viewed varies enormously between departments.  In mine, it's not considered particularly important for most applicants.  If your statement is pretty good, then that's good enough (nobody was ever admitted by writing a great personal statement).  However, it can matter in special cases:

It gives you a chance to address anything non-standard or potentially worrisome about your application.  It can be really valuable for you to make a case for why these things are not in fact a problem.
It gives you a chance to shoot yourself in the foot.  For example, applicants occasionally sound like arrogant jerks, demonstrate that they like to talk about mathematics they don't understand at all (without admitting their lack of knowledge), or reveal that they have no idea how graduate school works.  The first two are major problems, and the third is worrisome.

It can also be helpful to learn things like the intended specialization or advisor, but we ask for that elsewhere on the application as well.

If you apply to a department that takes this approach, then you shouldn't stress out too much about the statement of purpose.  But of course other departments may do things differently, so you can't relax entirely.


Double major workloads? I am entering Hofstra University this fall as a mechanical engineering student, and I am curious what the workload would be like if I took a second major in mathematics?

To clarify my situation, here are some points:

im simply considering it and dont have to make a decision until, at the earliest, my second semester
I am fascinated by how things work, and I have been told that math is the "purest" science in that it explains everything. I am operating on the assumption that this is accurate
while I have a passion for engineering and hands on work, I would also very much like to participate in research
math is one of my weaker subjects, so I would have to devote extra time to study, though it still fascinates me
Im a hard worker, and plan on using summer and winter class sessions to get as much out of college as I can
i intend to continue college through my masters degree at a minimum

Additionally, MechE is 131 credits and mathematics is 124. My university allows credits to apply to more than one degree. Please feel free to ask for any other clarifying info you need, and
Thank you all for your advice in advance!

I did a double major is physics and mathematics at a US university. Therefore, I think I can give you a somewhat accurate answer from my own experience. I hope you are coming to school with a lot of AP or IB credit, or some other way to get out of general education requirements. You are going to need the space in your schedule. I took a look at the requirements for the ME and Math majors at Hofstra, and there are four classes that overlap, and (if you choose the engineering math option) an additional nine hours of engineering courses count toward the math degree. That's a total of twenty-four overlap credits. That's pretty good, but it leaves an additional twenty-four credits dedicated to the math major to fit into your schedule. The total number of hours for your double major will be 155, or about nineteen hours per semester if you do eight semesters. That is quite a lot, which is why I hope you have some outside credit or take summer classes, or in some other way reduce the workload to sixteen to eighteen credits per semester.

If you are able to fit these classes into a reasonable schedule, the workload will not increase too much. I do not think that undergraduate math classes require all that much work. Most do not require essays or large projects. Furthermore, if your university's policies are like mine, you can drop out of the double major at any time, reverting to single-major status, so there is little risk in applying for a double-major. If you do double major, and find that your engineering classes are suffering because your math classes are taking too much time, I strongly advise you to drop out immediately. Having one strong major is much better than two weak majors.

Here are a few things to remember:

Neither employers nor graduate programs place a lot of weight on a double major. If you have a strong GPA in an engineering major, and have several elective mathematics courses on your transcript as well, that is just as good as a double major.
If you do get a graduate degree, employers will care way more about that than a second major.
Unless you have a full scholarship, you are paying for this. I do not presume to know your financial situation, but I feel fairly comfortable in saying that the joy of taking math classes simply because you find them interesting is not worth $40,000 per year. So do not delay graduation to get a second major.  Especially when you can check math books out at the University library for free.
I would even be hesitant to take summer classes in order to double major if they come at the expense of an internship, REU, or some other career-enhancing opportunity. A double major looks good on a resume or a graduate school application, but not as good as work and research experience.
As with all choices, there is an opportunity cost to double majoring. If you have time to double major, you could also use that time to take graduate level classes, or learn another language, or get a minor in computer science, all things that employers and graduate schools will see as valuable.
Finally, it should be noted that a double major may be viewed by future employers as a sign of a lack of focus or of scattered interests. I do not know if this is a prevalent opinion, but I have heard it before. It may even be true in many cases.


Meta-analysis using Google Scholar - are all years equally complete? Like so many others, I scrape data from Google Scholar as a part of my lit review process, so that I can have a structured data set for meta-analysis of the literature.

I noticed that for a couple of many topics of interest, the # of articles per year seems to be increasing until 2017, then it drops off sharply.

I wonder if it's really safe to assume that fewer articles were published in 2018?

Is it possible that this means that the data through 2017 is relatively "complete", whereas journals and authors for 2018 may still be in the process of being added to Google's index, thus the total number is under-reported?

Has anyone encountered this?

Google Scholar has its strong points (e.g. indexing of grey literature that is not available in any regular scholarly database), but data quality is not one of them. Of course, this is not because Google lacks the ability to create a high quality database; it is rather because publishers refuse to grant it permission to create a high-quality database that it distributes for free. Google's index is based on Google Scholar's web spider whose completeness depends on what is available from public websites (Google strictly respects websites permissions; it makes no attempt to index anything where the websites ask it not to do so with a robots.txt entry). I would not be surprised if some publishers restrict Google's permission to index details of some of their most recent publications.

With that perspective, then for any given topic, if there is a sharp dropoff during or after 2017 (its unclear which is the case the way you worded the question), I would not consider that evidence of anything. That is, it is not necessarily evidence that people suddenly stopped publishing on that topic; it is only evidence that Google's index no longer contains that topic, for whatever reason. I know that I've seen quite a few articles that have charts like that and make claims like that, but I don't consider such claims reliable. (And when I peer-review articles that make such claims, I tell the authors so.)

To make any concrete, serious claim about change in publishing patterns of topics, you would need a more rigorous and systematic database source (such as Web of Knowledge, Scopus, etc.) and at least a two-year lag to make sure that all data is complete.


Does work experience in non-related field help in grad school admissions? USA: Does work experience help for graduate admissions non-phd in STEM fields?

Someone told me yes, because if I already have a job, the grad school can be assured that I'll have a job after graduation and I won't hurt their statistics on job placement among alumni.

I disagree because I think that if the program is rigorous, all students who graduate should because of the greatness of the program be able to find jobs.

ONly if the program is insecure about their program's usefulness and quality should the program decide to admit students on whether they've already got a job. cough cough lots of MBA programs...  I believe only diploma mills would care about whether the applicant already has a job to decide whether they should get admitted.

It might have been useful to state the country you are inquiring about as this may be different all over the world.

However, in my experience, the people who oversee the admission process are not at all related to the people who create the statistics. They admit you because they believe you could handle the program - not because of some job prospects. Relevant job experience could be one factor which makes it more likely that you succeed (or not).

Indeed, most professors I know see their programms not as a way to obtain a (non-academic) job, but rather as a way to spread deep academic knowledge.  (I don't disagree with this view.) I don't see how a good academic program would by itself mean a job guarantee.

Edit: I just saw that you write "non-related" field in the title. Again, there is no yes/no answer to this question. Some professors might see this experience as positive since it might show that you have certain skills, others may see that you are not loyal enough to their field..


Language of reference entries for sources in a foreign language Must the entries in a list of sources match the language of their respective sources? For example, for a non-English text, may one include words and phrases such as "In", "volume", "edited by So-and-so and So-and-so", "translated by", pages xx-yy"?

Citations follow templates, e.g.,

  A, B, & C (YYYY) Title. In BookTitle, volume X, pages xx-yy.

To cite a particular work, you fill-in the place holders, e.g., A, B, C, YYYY,  Title, BookTitle, X, xx, and yy. Hence, words such as "In", "volume", and "pages" can remain in English.

When a template does not specify how to include translations of titles/booktitles, I think it is reasonable to include bracketed translations, e.g., original title (translated title).


How to deal when you're an actual imposter in academia? I'm a second-year PhD student at a well-ranked university, and am seriously beginning to feel that I'm an imposter in this place. My lab group is filled with people who ranked in the top 0.01 percent of examinations in their home country, have won olympiads and international competitions, and published an insane amount while maintaining a 4.0 GPA during grad school, while here I am with a scrub 3.5 GPA in undergrad and no publications.

I honestly think that admissions screwed up somewhere with my application and that I really don't belong here. I really want to get a PhD and I love academic research, but feel that I just can't compete against such people.

Has anyone ever gone through these feelings? I feel that I can't speak to anyone else about it because everyone seems so accomplished, and it'd only reinforce my feelings of inadequacy.

Own it. Channel these feelings into finding what makes you competitive and happy.

As an impostor that continues to 'make it', I have accepted that I bring something different. My undergrad GPA was 3.6, exactly, at a no-name school. I was accepted to a very good school for my PhD, and opted for a lower ranked school on the basis that I would 'have a better chance'. Likely, that was an error: I have since held a postdoc and now a faculty position at a high ranked school, with offers from other high-ranked schools. People puzzle over my CV, which is all kinds of nontraditional, but they also see evidence there that I do some things very well. I do, and these things make me competitive with the 4.0-olympiad-never-made-a-mistake crowd. Indeed, the fact that I continually make mistakes is itself a competitive edge; I'm inherently more fearless than my well-heeled peers.  This strategy has led to a career that some of my 'perfect' classmates have openly wondered at.  I wonder at it. I mean, I'm still a scrub, just a highly effective one. ;)

So, go do that.


Could a manuscript be under review even if the AE was not assigned? There are three things written on the journal’s home page: EIC (editor-in-chief), AE (associate editor) and ADM (administrator). The EIC is assigned, whereas the AE and ADM are not. The status is "Under review". In this situation, what can I expect? Has the EIC invited the reviewers or it is not under review?

I tend to disagree with @Allure.  I have been an EIC, and I'm an associate editor of several IEEE and ACM journals.  The manuscript was submitted only 3 weeks ago.  It is possible that the EIC just hasn't gotten to it yet, or is having trouble finding the right associate editor to handle it.  I think the system will say "under review" as long as it has been submitted and not yet accepted or rejected.

It is possible that the EIC is trying to decide whether to assign the paper or reject it immediately, but I think that's not the conclusion I'd jump to.

OP should simply be patient.


Is it okay to judge projects on the basis of how long it took to develop them I was showing my presentation on a project which I made in java/javafx to this evaluator(i'm a college student). And before I could start explaining the usage he asked me how much time did I spend on this project and I told him i did it in 20 days(which i think is a lot) . He then told me that I need to atleast spend 6 months on a project [reason being that we have 12 months to study a language which was a lie we had 9 months actually ]  and asked me to leave. He didn't even let me finish the presentation or saw what I did. So, what i'd like to know is this fair to judge a project like this or the evaluator was being unfair?

Charitably, it sounds like you put in about 200 hours of work during a nine-month period. That works out to maybe five to six hours per week. That may not meet the minimum “level of effort” expected for such a project. The evaluator may be well within his rights to terminate the evaluation at that point, particularly if this is a “project course” that amounts to a significant portion of your total credit load for the semester. Is it fair to do so? Probably not. Is it allowed to so? Quite possibly.


EU Ph.D. in Germany: Calling yourself "Dr." or "Ph.D." My question is about using a Ph.D. title/grade from an EU University in Germany.
Germany recognizes (properly obtained) Ph.D.s from other EU countries.
People with an EU Ph.D. are allowed to use the abbreviation "Dr." in front of their names without mentioning the country of origin (which is AFAIK required for some other countries) or using the original version. However, reading this information letter from the Bavarian State Ministry of Sciences, Research and the Arts, section 1.3.2. (German), you are not allowed to use both together.

I'm confused about this and its exact scope.
Does this mean a Ph.D. holder can't call him-/herself "Dr. Firstname Lastname" on a business card and then list "Ph.D." together with the other titles like "M.Eng., Dipl.Ing." on a second line? Using "Firstname Lastname, Ph.D." in Germany would not have the same effect then the first form. Not mentioning the Ph.D. at all however would keep many people wondering what kind of doctor grade you have. Maybe it only means not to use "Dr. Firstname Lastname, Ph.D.", but the business card example is very close to that.
Also, can "Ph.D." be used in one occasion and then "Dr." in a different one, or do you have to stick with one? Would it be ok to use "Dr." on your German business card and "Ph.D." on your English one? Even if both are on opposite sides of the same card?

An American using "Dr." and "Ph. D." in the same title is double-counting, just as if a German were to use "Dr.rer.nat." and "Dr."

That said, if you're going to use multiple titles, you should probably be consistent and list the PhD as one of those degrees.


Is it ethical for a PI to tell university to pay out intern's salary for an extra month after internship ends, and keep the money? There is an intern sharing the office with me. Once day his PI came to talk to him. Since there were only 3 of us in the office, although I didn't pay attention, their conversation just automatically went into my mind.

The story is like this: the intern had worked for 2 months, and he was going to leave. However, he would not let the university know that he was leaving. Instead, the PI would tell the university that the intern would work for another month. When the intern received the paycheck of the last month, he would send it to the PI.

At first, I think this was not right, the PI was stealing project money for personal use, and I needed to do something. However, in second thought, I think he might be the best one to deserve that money.

After all, he is the sole PI of the project, and there is no co-PI. The funding of the project comes from a (very competitive) external grant that he has spent a lot of effort to write proposal etc.

I think it is not very fair for the intern, since he has worked really hard, even in the weekend, so that the project can be shorten. He is going to start his PhD, and has promised to continue to work on that project in his free time.

Although it is not very fair for him, he will not benefit at all if I take any action. In contrast, he may still really want to continue the collaboration that way. This PI is friend of my boss (PI), I haven't talked much to him, but he appeared to be a nice guy. This is surely none of my business.

TL;DR: I know the PI cheats the system, but is it still right ethically given the fact that he has to fight really hard for this grant money? What should I do in this situation?

The person who owns the money for a project is not the PI, nor even the university, but the funder who has supplied the money.  The university, and through that organization the PI, is essentially granted custody of the money, and it is their responsibility to ensure that it is disbursed to the appropriate persons in compliance with their contract and the rules of the funder and university.

What you have described is pure and simple embezzlement, and needs to be reported to a responsible authority.  It's possible you misheard, but if you're certain about it, you have a duty to report, or else you are aiding and abetting the embezzlement.

Now, how to report safely is a potentially difficult issue.  If there are people in the university administration that you can trust to take action, that would be one route.  In the United States, you can also often report directly to the funder, often including through an anonymous hotline designed for just such occasions.


Phd Decision Date Gaps? 2 schools I applied to accepted me in early Feb.

The other schools I applied to have yet to respond and their sites say their admission decisions typically occur mid-march.

Is it accepted to contact the departments ahead of time requesting information on your app status given that you don't want to make the other schools wait too long?

My apologies if this is the incorrect forum to ask this question.

Most graduate schools in the U.S. follow a policy that accepted candidates are not required to make a decision until a set date agreed upon by the schools (April 15th, I believe).  This means you can (and should) take as much time to make your decision as you need.  It sounds like you do need to make your decision earlier than that deadline (but it might be worth finding out if the other schools do follow that policy and simply asked you to make a decision earlier), so contacting the other schools is probably a good idea.

Remember, however, you are making a decision that will at the very least directly affect the next four to six years of your life, who you work and collaborate with, future contacts, where you live, and what your future employment prospects are!  So, I'll reiterate: take the time you need, and get as much information as you can if you are up against a hard deadline.


Publishing in multidisciplinary open access journals in computer sciences My this question is specific to Computer Science discipline(or, Engineering discipline can also be included).

What about publishing articles, from computer science domain, in multidisciplinary open access journals?

The reason for asking this question is that I had seen on some blog that researchers do not give much credit to such articles (from computer science domain) which are published in open access journals especially in multidisciplinary journals. Some researchers have quoted that don't spoil your CV by publishing in these journals and in research community such articles do not have much respect.

What is the reputation of multidisciplinary journals in computer sciences like Plos One and IEEE Access.

It is not possible to comprehend the answer as 'reputation' is undefined.

  Both of these journals have impact factor higher than 3 while IEEE access was started just four years ago. On the other side, it took a long time to get even an impact factor for computer science journals.

This is trivial. Thomson Reuter has to generate the statistics related to the number of articles published, the number of citations, etc. for a long period of time to generate a number called Impact Factor (IF).

  What would be the reputation of the articles, from computer science discipline, published in these journals.

As @JeffE pointed in his comment, it absolutely depends on the article itself. Every article published by a specific journal should not be weighted the same.

  Can we compare the impact factor of these journals with other computer science journal having similar impact factor.

Comparing two different journals based on their impact factors is pointless and inconclusive.


I am a PhD student and hate it here. How can I warn prospective students during admit weekend without ruining my reputation? On the one hand, I want to warn students not to come to my program.  On the other hand, I don't want to be "that one," and I also don't want to tarnish the reputation of the specific people I worked with (who I mostly like).

More specifically:

I want to warn students about lack of funding, administration being uncaring towards students, certain PhD requirements being a lot more onerous than they say they are, general departmental atmosphere and culture among the grad students, general culture of the school, poor location, etc etc.

Also my school is the only top school in my field that has a "rotation system" for picking advisors, and that is generally framed as a benefit, and a reason to choose the school.  But I don't think students really realize how much rotations suck until after they've come here.

Focus on facts, rather than your emotional impressions.
Don't try to overgeneralize. Say what didn't work for you, rather than imply that it does not work for everyone (unless everyone agrees) or it won't work for the prospective student (who knows...).
You could say "I would have chosen differently" (ideally, adding the other possible options) or "overall, I dislike this program" rather than "this program sucks" or going into long rants.


"An additional review" I have recently recieved the reponse from the editor of the submitted journal. At the beginning, the editor wrote "The manuscript requires revision and probably an additional review before a decision can be made on its suitability for publication." . I'd like to know "an additional review" means the editor will find another reviewer? Or just after recieving the revision, he won't make a decision himself but send the revision to the present reviewers? Thanks a lot.

The editor is probably referring to another round of review - more than likely sent to the same reviewers, though this statement does not explicitly say so. Essentially, based on the previous round of reviews it seems the paper need not be rejected outright but requires some major revisions such that reviewers need to evaluate whether those revisions alleviate their concerns.

If the editor meant that it was to be sent to a new reviewer they would have said "an additional reviewer" rather than additional review.

Of course, it's also possible that the editor messed up the English, though I think that is unlikely in this case; the situation sounds pretty clear because of the need for revisions. If a paper needs to go to another reviewer for an editor to make a decision that would usually happen before any revisions (this would normally happen if the previous reviewers disagree, or if the previous reviewers indicate in their review that there are parts of the paper they did not feel qualified to assess).


Are proceedings of this conference really published by IEEE CS CPS? Today, I got the following e-mail from info@snspconf.org :

Conference invitation to [my name]

  Dear [my name]

  This is Senlin Yan, the conference secretary of the 2018 International
  Conference on Sensor Networks and Signal Processing (SNSP 2018)(Oct. 28-31,
  2018, Xi`an University of Science and Technology, Xi`an, China).
  We have got to
  know that you have published paper with title [one of my papers],
  it is quite inspiring and related to our conference topic, on
  behalf of SNSP 2018 organizing committee, I sincerely invite you to attend our conference.

  Winners of the Best Oral Presentation in each session will be awarded a free registration to the next conference.
  Active Reviewers are candidates for Technical Program Committee next year.
  Attendees can enjoy a free tour of Terracotta Army in Xi`an.

  If you are not available for attendance, could you please help us review one or two papers?
  It is highly appreciated if you kindly forward this conference information
  to your colleagues or friends in this field.

  For more information, please visit
  http://www.snspconf.org

  or contact
  info@snspconf.org

  Best Regards
  Senlin Yan

I have no intention attending this conference or reviewing one paper (I do not even work in Sensor Networks and Signal Processing), but I wanted to know if it was just some kind of spam or a real conference. Actually, the automated e-mail made me think it was some kind of academic spam asking for my bank data if I'd anwer, but it seems the conference exists (at least the website does).
as they prentend its proceedings are published by IEEE CS CPS, I searched on the IEEE website and I did not find any reference to this conference.

So now my question is as follows :

does IEEE really publish the proceedings of this conference which does not fit IEEE standard?
Or is it a scam, and should I inform IEEE their name is used for dubious purpose?

The IEEE Computer Society Conference Publishing Service is a service available to conference organizers to help them publish conference proceedings, nothing more. The services they offer to conference organizers include: collecting copyright forms from authors, validating that submissions are in proper format, getting DOIs for the papers, and submitting bibliographic data to indexing services.

It doesn't mean that the conference is endorsed by the IEEE or IEEE Computer Society.

See their FAQ.

It does not mean that the conference is sponsored by IEEE an IEEE society (when you refer to an "IEEE conference", you probably mean one that is sponsored by an IEEE society):

  CPS publishes proceedings of conferences that are not sponsored by IEEE Computer Society, IEEE, or any other IEEE society.

The eligibility criteria for non-sponsored conferences are listed here.

It does not mean that the proceedings will necessarily appear in the IEEE digital library:

  CPS-published conference publications are submitted to IEEE Xplore and the IEEE Computer Society Digital Library (CSDL). All conferences and conference proceedings must meet IEEE's quality standards. IEEE reserves the right not to publish any proceedings that do not meet these standards.

Conferences that are technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society are listed on its website, in its conference calendar. This conference isn't, because it isn't sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society. It doesn't need to be sponsored to use IEEE CS CPS as its publishing service.


How to respond to an unsolicited offer to publish work I have posted on arXiv? Approximately one year ago, I submitted some of my research work to arXiv.

Recently, I got an email from Lambert Academic Publishing saying that they are interested in publishing this work and stating that their services are free of charge for authors.

I don't have much idea about different journals and publications. It would be great if someone can project the benefits of moving to publish in such academic publications. As arXiv already provides open access, is there any need of publishing somewhere else also?

As you become established as a scholar, you will receive more and more of such invitations, most of which are either scams or trash publications attempting to trick you into giving them content.  A small fraction, however, will actually come from legitimate colleagues who are inviting you to a special issue, editorial, or similar such opportunity.

Thus, when receiving an invitation, you should thus begin by evaluating the quality of the venue and the person who is inviting you, just as you would if you were choosing where to submit without an invitation.  Be aware, however, that some disreputable publications will lie about the identity of people involved, and that some careless academics may have been tricked into lending their name to disreputable publications.

In the specific case of Lambert Academic Publishing, I will note that they appear on Beale's list as well as a number of other highly critical analyses, including on Wikipedia and this site.  You can make up your own mind about their credibility, but I wouldn't recommend soiling your C.V. by publication with them.

Finally, to answer your question about arXiv vs. other publications: being in arXiv is fine for being accessible and citable.  If your work is good, however, I would recommend submitting to a reputable peer-reviewed journal.  If you are published in such, it will improve the reputation, notability, and value of your publication.


Are salaries for academic jobs in New Zealand negotiable? The academic salaries and compensations in new zealand universities seem tobe fairly low compared to most other countries such as US, UK, Australia, etc. Is it however possible to negotiate the starting point in the prescribed academic levels (read: salary levels)? Are the salary levels also related to the No of years post phd?

Your starting salary is indeed negotiable for New Zealand positions. Whether you get what you ask for will usually be tied to your relevant experience. This last point is related to your further question about experience post-phD. For research positions, your research output during your years post-PhD will be a strong driver for what your starting salary will be.


Professor keeps students tests. No taking notes home when reviewing them. A friend of mine has a professor that does not allow the students to take home their graded test. The process the teacher has is like this:

Students come to class and the professor has everyone put everything away except a pencil. The tests are handed back and the students are allowed to see what they got wrong, and make notes on the test itself and ask questions. At the end of class, all tests are given back to the professor, and the students are not allowed to keep any notes made. Students may go to office hours to "visit" their test again if they would like.

The online quizzes are also peculiar, as they only show if a student got a question right or wrong, leaving out both the correct answer and the answer the student gave.

The reason the professor is so secretive about the tests is she allegedly reuses the tests. As such, she doesn't want students to be able to get last semester's test and be able to cheat from it. The professor thus far has been rather terse/short with students when they ask about how she runs the class. As such, only a couple students have asked her about these things.

My questions are:

Given the circumstances, is there any point in trying to ask the teacher to do things differently so that students can better learn from their mistakes?

Would talking to the department head be beneficial or would that be pointless and possibly rude?

Talking to anyone other than the professor them self comes off to me as pointless because there are typically no similarities between how each professor handles their course material.

A common reason in some of my courses was this: some questions come from a publisher's test bank, and the university has agreed that materials containing the questions won't be distributed. It doesn't make sense to me at all, and end up a way to continually reap money as banks change, ultimately never helping the students.

What I would do is schedule regular office visits if it's within her time to do so to go over the course material you're struggling with. My suspicion is she's rather set in her way. Yoou definitely don't want to go over her head as this would earn some demerits!


Improving my profile for cs phd admissions (math undergrad) I'm a third year math major who is very sure he is not capable of succeeding in a math graduate program, as my GPA is good but not stellar (3.8, will probably fall to around 3.6-3.7). As such, along with my exposure so far (detailed a little below), I want to move to cs for my phd.

I worked as a data scientist for a startup for 7 months, and I'm going to work as a machine learning engineer for another startup part time while doing school part time. I'm in host matching for an internship at Google for the summer. I plan to continue to work part time as a machine learning engineer and go to school part time.

I have done very well on most of my bread and butter mathematics (A- to A+ in my most recent linear algebra, calculus, abstract algebra) but I have done relatively poorly on my midterms for analysis and graph theory and I am expecting a B+ overall for both. I have taken an honors introduction to computing science sequence and I've gotten A's on both. I am taking a undergraduate introduction to machine learning course, and a graduate reinforcement learning course. I plan to continue with math up to measure theory.

My university has a very strong reinforcement learning lab and I plan to start working there in the summer full time if I do not get an internship at Google, or I will take a year off to work in the lab part time and work at the startup part time. I have already communicated this with the lab and the startup and they are fine with it.

What can I meaningfully do to improve my application, assuming that I will have my SOP and reference letters secured by the lab? Is there any must take courses for phd's in this space that are not detailed on the graduate admissions (like real analysis for most physics phd admissions)?

Also, what are the repercussions to staying at my own university for my graduate degree? I really enjoy it here and my university is quite good at the fields which I want to study, so I would be happy staying here.

My goal is to get into a top 50 phd program, and my pipe dream is to go work at the big research labs (brain, fair, openai, etc).

As far as marks and grades go, that will depend very much on where you apply. Checking the admission requirements for the 'top 50' PhD programs is the best advice I could give there. I'm assuming you're US based given you're referencing GPA, midterms etc, and providing you want to remain in the country looking up admission requirements should be then straightforward (the same would apply in any country with regard to undergrad marks and PhD admission expectations).

As you're intending on moving to computer science, the most important thing to have would be programming experience. Some of the 'exposure so far' that you detail might imply you have done actual coding, but it is not clear. You should definitely explicitly highlight what experience you have there on any application you make (and it would help if you did the same here!) If you are a competent mathematician (or scientist, or engineer for that matter) making the move to computer science should be well within your capabilities but it will, again, depend very much on where you apply as to how much foreknowledge they will expect / require you to have. I myself moved from chemistry research to being a C++ computer game engine programmer and I know plenty of programmers who have started out with degrees / careers in maths, engineering etc before ending up in computer science masters programs. Switching straight into a PhD may have more stringent requirements, but that'd be another thing to check on with the particular places you want to apply to.

There are no professional or academic repercussions as such to carrying out doctoral research in the same place you studied for your undergrad degree. However, moving elsewhere will most likely expose you to new ways of thinking and working, which is generally a good thing where research is concerned!


How do online resources compare to resources obtained from extension programs from top ranking universities? I am a self learner because quite frankly I like it better and my brain seems to absorb material more efficiently that way . MIT, Harvard, Stanford and many other schools offer free online courses, which I have been taking for the past few years. Schools such as Harvard and MIT however, offer extension programs where you can pay a fee(usually around 2-4k) to obtain current courses. My question is, how viable do these extension programs hold against the older resources obtained for free? Although older, I do find the material to be consistent and hold over time. so as someone studying computer science, what exactly am I being deprived of by not buying these extension programs, or attending the actual school itself?

You're being deprived of everything traditional paid schooling is supposed to provide, other than the material itself.

Contact with faculty
Collaboration with peers
Formal evaluation and recognition (i.e. a diploma or certificate)

Material that is two years old is not going to be out-of-date. Even in a field like computer science, classroom instruction just does not move that fast. Even when things do change, it's more likely that the contemporary technologies are going to change than the essential course material (e.g. switching a class from Java to Python).

Note that online-course technology and methods is evolving rapidly, so newer paid courses might be better organized for online learning. A lot of the free online course material is essentially videotaped lectures. Newer systems use a self-guided learning approach with autonomous evaluation and feedback.


How to deal with students who didn't attend the exams? My course require students to take 2 mid-term exams and one final exam. What should I do if some students didn't attend the first mid-term exam or the second one. Should I mark them Zero or repeat the exam for them? What is the best strategy in this regard?

Update: Although I gave them instructions from the beginning of the course. Some of them said that they were absent when I gave those instructions. Some of them said that they were sick and some said that they had an appointment with a dentist at same time of the exam, for example!

I will talk from my own experience:

Being absent in the first class, is by no means a good excuse, back in my student days (before ubiquitous email information and professor's webpages) if you missed the first class, you would at least ask the sensible question of when the hell the midterm exam is.
As a student, their prime responsibility is to, well.. study! And while I understand that some of them would have conflicting issues if they have to work (which are usually solved if you have a nice enough boss), other scheduling issues like an appointment with the dentist (that can be done any other day) are also not a valid excuse.
Being a teacher of a 50+ student class, has a high likelihood that at least one of them may be sick the day of the exam, in those cases (hell, I've had teachers that were sick on the mid term's day), I agree that there should be some kind of Doctor's certificate around.

If you think the absence is somewhat justified, you can always make them retake the exam.

In my school, most teachers would make the student do this over finals.


will lack of experience make it impossible to change my subject of study? I'm 33 years old and I have my master's in physics from a relatively good university in my country.

I have 6 years working experience as a foreign commercial executive which I hated every minute of it, but I needed to make some money. I have to add that I have visited different factories in different countries during the missions I went.

About two years ago, I resigned and diligently went for learning everything about electronics and microelectronics which were always my desire. Now, I feel quite confident in embedded systems programming and everyday I study so hard whatever related to digital electronics but I have not yet applied for a job in this field.

I know this is what I always wanted.
I have average grades in university and good GRE.

What are my chances to get admission for PhD in electronic engineering in one of US universities?

Age won't matter much.

"Experience" may matter. Any program has prerequisites, and there's really no way to jump to PhD without that essential knowledge.

I don't think you're going to get into the PhD program without first getting a Masters or having equivalent work experience. The Physics background plus independent study may be able get you into a Masters program.

I suspect you'll have better odds if you do the Masters in your own country, and then apply for a PhD program (in the US or elsewhere).


R - citing a package within a package I am writing my own R package which relies heavily on several others (namely 'biomaRt', 'grasp2db').  I feel as those who use my package should also cite these packages because the code I wrote would not be possible without them.  Do I add this to the citations function for my package or because 'biomaRt' and 'grasp2db' are listed as an 'Import' is this somehow already covered?  Thanks very much for any guidance.
Kate

I like the idea of reminding people calling your package's citation to cite also (at least the important) packages you package relies on. (I even remind people of the citation function in my package's startup message).

However, for the actual implementation I see two viable ways. The less obtrusive and very easy to implement one would be to print a message
Please do not forget citing "biomaRt" and "grasp2db" as well as they really do the work for myPackage..

The second possibility would be to call citation ("biomaRt") and citation ("grasp2db") as part of your citation function. However, this may be less trivial than it seems as citation() is not only about printing the relevant information but it also generates citation objects. Thus, you'd probably want to assemble and return a list of bibEntrys.
The non-trivial point is that IIRC some bibliography functions ignore all but the first bibEntry for a package - while others don't and in addition, you'd want to avoid duplicate entries which users would get who automatically collect citation ()s of all loaded or attached packages.
Also, depending on how many packages your package depends on, the output of your citation () may be long and cluttered.

=> I'd probably go with printing a simple reminder.


Is it ethical/legal to obtain journal articles from reddit? My university's subscription is really limited (I come from Lebanon). I never found any paper related to my research or essays using the database that my university is subscribing to; even the basic pioneering papers in business. Yesterday, I started writing my master's thesis and the very basic papers behind my topic cannot be accessed through my university's portal (cannot simply ignore them) and I, obviously, don't have access/cannot pay for individual papers. What to do in this case? Someone here recommended a Reddit page that provides and shares papers upon requests. How legal/ethical is that? The page claims that all the shared papers are based on the concept of fair use.

Eventually, I have 3 options: Follow this way, adopt a bad scholarship behavior by not tracking down original references to check myself (which is out of the question) or I just go home and forget about writing a master's thesis or a literature review because it's almost impossible to access those papers without the help of option 1. As for emailing individual authors, well none have replied so far so it isn't always a practical option as I cannot wait days for 1 particular paper to be received (if any).

Legally, I am not sure --- it depends on the laws on the country as well. Ethically, I don't see anything wrong about it. Academia is about building and sharing knowledge: if anything, I would consider it unethical to put papers behind a paywall.


Should I post the data my project was tested on in the paper? I created an algorithm for predictive analysis based on text. I'm making a paper out of it. I have the textual data my algorithm was tested on and compared with other algorithms tested with the same textual data. Should I post a link of this data in my paper or should I just state that I have tested it and here are the results?

If you can make the data set available to the community in some way, you are doing it a good service, because it will allow other people to use your dataset for comparison and for their own new works.  If they find it useful, it will also help you, as the people who use it will cite your paper as the source.

I would thus say that yes, if you have a good way to either post it online or attach it to your paper as supplementary information, this this is a good thing to do.


What to do when a journal publishes a paper plagiarizing one's work but doesn't care about it? Recently I caught a paper which had plagiarized my paper. Several sentences had been copied from my article without citing my article. Some of the copied sentences had been shuffled, so the words were the same but the order of the words had been changed. Some other sentences were exactly copied from my article. Besides, all the copied sentences in the new article appeared in approximately same places to the original sentences used by me in my article. I am not inexperienced in academia and without any severe bias, it was quite obvious that they have picked my sentences. Even the citations at the end of my sentences had been used in the same order in the new article... Moreover, the style of my sentences were unique to my article and not inspired from another article. So it was not possible that those authors were copying from another source other than my paper.

I said all the above points to the editor of the journal. I also highlighted all the copied sentences and put very detailed comments beside each highlighted sentence in the new article and attached the new article and my article to the journal editor so he could see for himself. He didn't respond. So I searched for and found the email addresses of all the editorial members of the journal and emailed them the same letter, frequently. All the emails were correct and running. Only one of the addresses bounced my letter. So I am pretty sure they have received my emails.

However they again didn't do anything about it, nor they did respond to me... So I wonder what else can I do?

I intend to report them to as many authorities as possible. I know a couple of them, but don't think they will do much about it. I need to know what can I do about it? What those authorities are legally able to do? And that should I sue them in court or not? The plagiarizing journal is in Turkey (not my country) and I don't know can I sue them in a court of my country? Are there other routes for filing copyright theft complaints?

Any suggestion is appreciated for when the journal tries to hide the plagiarism or doesn't care about it.

Document everything.
If you can't get a reply from the editors of the journal, write to the publisher. Or if it's the journal of a learned society, contact them.
You probably can't act alone, but you may get more powerful allies (deeper pockets) on your side. There are others around you who have a vested interest in your work.

In particular, the journal where you published your work… given that you transferred them the copyright, I suppose they might act in their own name against the plagiarist. Even if it does not escalate all the way to a legal action, the publisher of the plagiarized work might respond (or respond faster) to a well-known publisher.

Your employer may also have an interest in helping you enforcing your copyright. They may also have a legal department who can advise you on this matter.