Mathematics teaching position in the UK I hold a PhD in pure mathematics and am looking for mathematics teaching positions in the UK, preferably at University level.

What would be some websites where to find such ads?
What is the standard application procedure/requirements? When are the deadlines for applications? When are the offers typically made?

A note on question#2:

I would be interested in finding out whether there are any general comments one could make regarding the application/selection process by analogy to the US postdoc application system outlined in the next sentences. In the US, in order to apply for a postdoc position [research and teaching] one typically needs to submit 3 research recommendations, 1 teaching recommendation, a research statement, a teaching statement, cv, cover letter. Most deadlines are around November, December, January and I believe most offers are made in January - early February.

Thank you.

Academic jobs in the UK are usually advertised on jobs.ac.uk website, but there are of course many others. Typically, you will be asked to submit your application online, including application form, cv, supporting documents and details of your references. Answers to other questions are more specific to each position. You may wish to familiarize yourself with the positions currently advertised on the website, to get a sense of the job market at the moment.


Reporting a student who may be psychologically disturbed Yesterday, a colleague from my school's history department brought me a student's final project from her history class. The assigned project was to produce a "creative" project dealing with a historical figure/event covered in the time period of the class (20th century United States). One student wrote a short play about the Great Depression. Another student designed a simple computer game that he ran on a Macintosh Classic II from the 1990s.
However, the student in question here (whose project I was shown) wrote a diary for a famous American serial killer.  The diary graphically details the killings this man performed, including hand sketches of female genitalia, clippings from some porn magazines, and (as far as we can tell) splatters of real blood. It is a horrifically disturbing piece of work.
The student did technically fulfill the parameters of the assignment. He produced a (seemingly) historically accurate project on a historical figure from the 20th century in the United States. (Neither my colleague nor I really wanted to fact check every detail of a 200 page diary written in scrawled handwriting and splattered with blood and sketches of vivisected women). The writing is decent, albeit rather repetitive and somewhat simple. My colleague is likely going to give the student a fairly high grade on the project.
However, the graphic and disturbing subject matter, alongside the frighteningly realistic psychopathy, have brought my colleague to wonder if she should show the project to department or university administration. We were not sure if this student just had a distinct (and disturbing) gift for creative writing or if he was actually writing from personal experience (or something?). Is it a cry for help? Is the student a serial killer (unlikely)? Does he enjoy fantasizing about vicious crimes?
We are not psychologists, so we are not going to try to psychoanalyze this student from a professional standpoint. We also want to tread lightly around punishing and censoring a student for "thought crimes." However we also do not want to become part of history ourselves by being "that one professor" who saw potential signs of a violent criminal and opted to just give the kid an A- and be done with it.
Should my colleague show this project to university administrators?

Addendum
There have been a few questions about the structure and reasoning behind this class.  This is a class that emphasizes history through the lens of "creativity." The thesis of the class is essentially that historical figures were highly creative and that we can learn a fair amount about history by examining "creativity." The class is usually taken by STEM majors as a general ed requirement. I took the class (years ago) and it actually was very interesting and I learned a lot about history.
There have been questions about the grading on the assignment. I do not know the specific metrics for grading the project. I said that my colleague may give an A- on the project as just a hypothetical filler grade. I do not know what she will grade the student on specifically. I guess it comes down to how creative we think writing the F-word 200+ times in a pornographic notebook splattered with a bloody substance is. Let's not act as if all violent porn is to be elevated to the pedestal of artistic acclaim just for the sake of radical liberality. I'm not the grader of the assignment and I ultimately cannot answer how it will be graded.

The "administration" is probably the wrong place to look. Instead, see if you your institution has some mental health staff, whether just associated contacts, or counselors, or even a dedicated behavior concerns advice function, to get proper advice. If the university is well-organized enough to have one of the latter, chances are they've also established policies requiring you to pursue this. And such an advice line would be well suited to tell you how to go about it. If your university doesn't, figure out where to report it.

Note that, unless your institution is highly dysfunctional, reporting concerning behavior and having a professional talk to the student in question shouldn't be considered a punishment, but a safety net.

As Buffy points out in a comment, the law may further require you to do some things, and avoid doing other things. While one would hope that the mental health support staff are well-informed, contacting the legal staff (University Counsel) may be useful. That said, as a non-lawyer person, I imagine most legal pitfalls concern naming the student when you shouldn't. Your initial inquiries need not include the name of the student, until you're convinced that you should.


How to respond to intentional lack of citation? I work in a field that heavily uses arxiv.org and posts papers before submitting them to journals, so it's common for people to send a citation request when they see a preprint that they think has overlooked their work. I do this pretty rarely, because I think it's often abused by people looking to pad their citation count by asking for citations from work that's only marginally related. Still, when I see work that very closely resembles something I've done, I generally send an email.

My question is what to do when a paper appears that is very closely related to my work, has not cited me, and it was clearly intentional. In this case one of the authors had a previous paper that followed up on--and cited--one of my papers, so I know they were aware of my work in the past. Furthermore, in their current paper they use a technical term that I introduced. There is no possible way that they could have written their current paper without being aware of its close relationship to my work, but they haven't cited my papers.

In this context, the usual email of the form "I have read your interesting new paper and wanted to make you aware of my related work" would be so disingenuous as to be ridiculous: they are clearly already aware of my related work. I can only conclude that they have intentionally chosen not to cite it. All of my encounters with these authors in the past have been friendly, at least from my perspective, so I can't imagine any interpersonal conflict that's behind the omission.

A similar thing happened to me once before when some authors wrote a paper that had enormous overlap with one of my papers, which they cited, and they corrected, in passing, a minor technical mistake that didn't change any significant conclusions. Subsequently they built a minor industry on this work but never again referred to my previous work, with the result that their papers that were only a very minor improvement on mine have been cited several hundred times more than my paper has. So I may be overly touchy about this sort of possibility.

At the moment I'm inclined to do nothing, because any message I could imagine sending them would come across as either disingenuous or combative. But I wonder if anyone has a suggestion for dealing with this situation.

I don't know the details of your case, but in any case like this I tend to liberally apply Hanlon's Razor:

  Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

It does sound as if they know about your paper, but it seems to me entirely possible that they could have intended to cite it and accidentally omitted to actually do so.  I think you can contact them tactfully and point out that the original source for the technical term is your paper (give the complete reference).  They will probably reply with an apology for the oversight.

If you want to be even more circumspect, you could ask a colleague in your subfield to contact them. ("I saw your preprint and it looks interesting.  The paper of Anonymous looks very relevant.  Do you think you should cite it?")

I've been guilty of such an accident myself.  I use BiBTeX to manage citations. I have a large file containing an entry for every paper I've ever considered citing.  Then for each paper I write, I include inline citations where they belong, and BiBTeX automatically picks the papers I've cited and generates the list of references.  In the case in question, I wanted to cite paper X in two places: in the introduction (as background) and in a specific technical passage.  I neglected to cite it in the introduction, but since it was also cited in the technical passage, paper X still appeared in the list of references, so when I saw it there I thought to myself "Good, I remembered to cite X."  Then in a later edit I changed the technical passage in such a way that X was no longer directly relevant there, so I removed that citation, thinking it was also cited elsewhere in the paper.  It wasn't, so BiBTeX accordingly removed it from the list of references, and it might certainly have looked to anyone as though I had intentionally failed to cite X (which was a well-known paper and clearly relevant).  The omission made it into a public preprint and was pointed out by a colleague (though not the author of paper X; he is long deceased), fortunately before the paper was submitted.

It was clearly my responsibility to have caught this and cited X correctly, and technical issues do not excuse my failure to do so, but I mention this as a specific example where such an error was due to stupidity rather than malice, and as evidence that the former could be an adequate explanation.


Reasons for a request for reference being ignored What are the reasons that emails for a request for reference might be ignored or delayed in response, a long time after the deadline by an intimate academic advisor?

Professors and other researchers are typically busy people receiving a constant flood of emails in their inbox, a great many of which are time-sensitive and important.  Yours is only one of many.

The most likely reason for somebody's failure to respond promptly to an email, then, are just the typical ones for any busy person: getting lost in their inbox, technical failures (overactive spam filter, address mixups, dodgy forwarding systems), and falling through the cracks in an overcrowded schedule.

It might also be, however, that the professor is wasn't actually as strong a reference as you thought and just didn't feel comfortable saying no.  Did you ever have a non-email conversation about the references? And if they aren't responding to email, pick up the phone and call!

Finally, since this is not an uncommon occurrence, I also recommend that for important but asynchronous interactions like references, if possible one should give 1-2 more than required.


Can I submit my paper somewhere else during rebuttal period? During a rebuttal period, with reviews that show a strong indication of overall reject, can I submit the paper to another venue (without violating concurrent submission rules)? The submission deadline in the other venue is before the final response of the current venue.

If you want to submit elsewhere, the proper course is to formally withdraw your paper. Send a note to the editor. Then you are free to submit elsewhere. Don't make assumptions.


Does uploading a paper to arxiv with the same title but different author list affect citations? I have a paper on the arxiv (v1) that I'd like to update to the most recent version (v2).  The author list has expanded since v1.  If I upload v2 with the new authors, will this affect the citations on google scholar or will the citations of v1 just carry over to v2?

Search results on Google Scholar usually club together citations on different versions of the same article (see screenshot below). Moreover, since Google Scholar works with preprints, and preprint servers like arXiv have options to add or replace author names, in my opinion, this will not affect your citation count. However, make sure that when your paper gets published, the author list is updated in arXiv as well.


Writing CV's for a "summer school" course I would like to apply to a week-long master's course offered by a university in another country. The only thing they require for the application is a CV.
Since I have no significant experience in the field of the course or any publications, I have no idea what to include in my CV.

I thought about including (outside basic details) the title of my diploma work, the name of my supervisor and the main subjects (relevant to the course) I've learnt as an undergraduate. But I am wondering if it is too detailed.

I've also taken some MOOCs, but they are not strongly related either. I could include the titles of the conference presentation I've held and my language and computer skills and scholarships I've got.

Which of these would be appropriate to include?

Thanks for the help!

Of course I don't know anything about this particular course, but often, admission to summer school courses is not at all competitive, and there are seats (and sometimes funding) for more or less every serious student who shows interest.  (If it were competitive, I'd expect them to at least want a letter of recommendation.)

So basically your CV has to convince them of the following:

You are an actual grad student, and not some goofball trying to use them to get a visa.  So be sure to include your academic history (degrees and dates, honors if any) and the details of the program in which you are currently enrolled.  Definitely give your supervisor's name.
The course will be interesting and relevant to you.  Mention your areas of scientific interest (they should be at least tangentially related to the topic of the course).  List any relevant research projects, past or present, even if they are fairly minor.  Definitely include any published papers or conference presentations.
You have sufficient background to learn something from the course, and not get completely lost (getting a little bit lost is normal).  Briefly mention your GPAs and scholarships.  If it seems appropriate, list classes you have taken or books you have read that would prepare you for this course.


What are some good practices for a supervisor? I just started co-supervising a master student and I was wondering how people approach supervision.

I tend to follow what worked for me but not everyone is the same, so I'm not sure if what I'm currently doing is the best scenario. I've always had freedom to make my own decisions, so I do the same. For instance, the student has to choose between method A and method B and both are options. I don't tell him/her to choose one of them, but instead tell them to research and decide which method they think it's the most appropriate. However, I know some supervisors prefer to tell the student use method A.

So, my question is mainly how do you approach supervision? Do you give space to the student to make his/her decisions? Do you meet with them on a regular basis or let them find you whenever they need? Do you have a chat with the student to understand what does he/she want? If it's the first research experience of the student, he/she may not know what works for them.

Any tips or advice are most welcomed. Given the number of poor/complicated supervisor-student interactions I've seen and heard of I'm just trying to improve my supervision skills.

As in any teaching situation, your job is to educate, not just watch over the student. This means, that you have some responsibility that the student continue to make progress toward their goals. You need to assure that they don't get stuck, or, rather, that they don't stay stuck for long.

This will take some time and interaction - regular meetings, reading their work, giving feedback, etc.

But, you don't have to give a direct answer to any particular question. What you need to do is to assure that the student has a way to find the answer, even if it doesn't come directly from you. Answer questions with other questions, for example, so that the student can have her/his own insights.

In the example, you give, it is better, IMO, to ask the student to tell you the tradeoffs of each method, A and B. You don't need to tell them to "go away and research it". Tell them to lay out the pros and cons of each method. If they miss something in their explanation, you can help them along, of course.

But if they have no idea of the tradeoffs, then you should probably send them off on a quest of learning.

The short form is "give them the minimum they need to keep moving generally forward". This lets them develop confidence over time, make the work their own, and, still, not get (or stay) stuck.

If done well, this will also put the student on the path to intellectual independence, which they will need as they continue.


Is there something I need to do on arxiv if I lose academic affiliation When publishing on arxiv, users with recognized academic affiliations may be exempt from the endorsement process, as mentioned in arXiv primer.

Suppose that I have already published preprints on arxiv. Later, for some reason, I lose my academic affiliation. (For example, I might be between the jobs, I might leave academia.)

Do I need to inform arxiv that I no longer have an academic affiliation and should I be endorsed again before publising another preprint on arxiv?
If I change to other university/academic institution, is there something I should do on arxiv other than updating my user information?

According to http://arxiv.org/help/endorsement :

  Existing submitters will not require endorsement to submit papers on topics that they've been active in.

Once you've submitted successfully, you're in for life. If you change fields (e.g. from physics to biology or something) you might have to be endorsed.

As I understand it, the endorsement system is mainly to keep cranks from uploading crankery. Leaving academia or changing affiliations won't turn a serious researcher into a crank, so I can't see any reason why arXiv would want to revoke your endorsement.


Are very small departments necessarily sub-par? This college, which I will not name here, specializes in computer-related programs, which makes its other courses, like political science, unpopular among student applicants.  In one instance, the social science department only had three students who graduated with a degree in politics. Because of the very small student population, the school only had two political science professors who handled all the major subjects. Would you say that this is sub par college?

If you're talking about MIT or Caltech, then the answer would be that their degrees in the humanities and social sciences are equally as respectable as those from any other colleges and universities in terms of graduate admissions (in social sciences/humanities).

Part of this is that we realize that folks who fall out of the mainstream at these schools merit some attention. It takes more of an effort and commitment to do sociology at MIT than it would at U-Michigan. For example, in order to get the credits to graduate, you've also undoubtedly taken courses in that discipline that were offered outside of that institution -- in MIT's case, you'd be taking classes at Harvard/Radcliffe. That takes dedication and forethought.

Finally, we realize that students choose their undergraduate institutions based on limited knowledge and choice. We weight their accomplishments based on what they were able to do with the resources that they had.


Our paper was not published as part of the conference proceedings in IEEE Xplore, what should we do? We had a paper accepted to a reputable IEEE conference.

We have completed the copyrights form and one of the authors have registered and presented the paper at the conference.

After a couple of months, the conference proceedings were uploaded to IEEE Xplore but without our paper.

Is there anything to do about this? Is it possible to check (with the PC chairs?) why it is not published?
If the paper stays left out of the proceedings, can we resubmit it to a different venue?

If you were reviewed and accepted, signed the appropriate forms, paid to attend the conference, and presented in an IEEE conference, then you should expect to be included in the proceedings.

If you aren't, then most likely it is a result of a mistake, and can be corrected by contacting the conference publications chair.  The publications chair of the conference should have an IEEE publications contact, who has the right combination of authority and connections to help get it sorted out.  If they agree that you should be in the proceedings, then you can treat your paper as being published at the conference even if before the fix propagates to IEEE Xplore (which can sometimes take many months).  Importantly, this includes posting copies on your own site, where they can be easily accessed, per the standard IEEE copyright agreement.

On the other hand, if there is some reason that you actually did get dropped such that they are not willing to officially include your paper in the proceedings, then they are effectively relinquishing any claim on the paper and you may do with it as you wish, just as though it had been rejected in the first place.


Journal Editor does not respond about status of paper ~1 year I submitted a paper with my co-author to a Springer Journal in the area of computational Mathematics.  It has been nearly a year now and we have not heard from the editor. There was no response for inquiries made every 3 months.  I  requested status from managing editor few weeks ago but still with no response. Given the length of the wait and the fact that the journal is the right avenue for our work, I was not sure what are the right steps ( wait more, withdraw and submit elsewhere?...)

Getting no response to status inquiries at all is not normal. Make sure you're contacting the right editor. Unless the journal is dead (i.e. no new papers accepted and published), someone out there is organizing peer review. That someone should be able to answer your question. However if you're writing to the wrong email address which might not even work anymore, then your email might not even be getting read.

See if you can reach the journal office (i.e. Springer's employees). I don't know what journal you're referring to, but e.g., for AIDS Research and Therapy they say at the bottom "General enquiries: info@biomedcentral.com". Try writing there.
See if you can reach the editor-in-chief.
If you've already tried and the editor-in-chief isn't responding: search for him/her via Google, see if their email address has changed.
If you've confirmed that the email address is correct: try sending from a different email address, in case your current email address is blacklisted for whatever reason.
Failing all of the above, try contacting a different member of the editorial board.


Can the postdoc adviser withdraw our paper against my will? I'm a postdoc in Computer Science. Recently submitted a paper, co-authored with my adviser. I'm the first author, corresponding author and am primarily responsible for the content.

Less than a day before submission deadline my adviser asked me to withdraw the paper. There was no sign that he disagrees with submission before that. I was keeping him updated with the progress and asking for reviews. Today he gave me a list of unconvincing arguments why we should withdraw. When I refused, he said he'll use his legal authority to withdraw it. Does he have any legal authority to do this?

No ethics policy that I'm aware of links authorship rights with employment status. From what I know a co-author may chose to withdraw his co-authorship, but cannot ask a conference to withdraw the paper against the will of other authors. Anyone encountered such situations?

I have not signed any legal agreements regarding publication policy.

Yes, an academic paper cannot be published without the consent of all its authors (as JeffE pointed out in the comments), so any one author can prevent publication for any reason, with no appeal or recourse.  Of course it would be unethical to do so for a bad reason, such as settling a personal grudge, but there's plenty of scope for good reasons.  For example, just feeling that it's not yet ready is a fine reason.

If your advisor withdraws the paper, then there's nothing you can do about it.  It can't be published in its current form with him as an author without his permission, and you can't remove him as an author if his contributions merit authorship.  (If they genuinely don't, then you can and should remove him, but you'll have to deal with serious questions about why he was listed in the first place.  Be very cautious with this, since if other people agree with him that he deserves authorship, then trying to remove him will be a disaster for you.)

In principle, you could try to extract your own contributions from the paper and publish them as a singly-authored paper without him.  However, this may be difficult, or even impossible if there was enough joint work that cannot solely be attributed to either author.

In practice, you'll probably have to work with your advisor to fix the paper, so that you are both happy to publish it.  He presumably feels it's worth publishing after some more work, since otherwise he would remove his own name from it and wouldn't care what happened to it after that.  Hopefully you are both reasonable people and can come to some agreement.

In the meantime, if you can't convince him to proceed with the submission, I'd recommend withdrawing it yourself, since it looks more awkward if he does.  (It can look like you screwed up and your advisor had to step in to fix it.)  If he withdraws it, then you shouldn't try to stop him, since there's nothing you can say to the program committee that would help.  All you can do at that point is to make it more awkward and embarrassing for everyone, without changing the outcome, and I don't think it's in your interest to make a fuss.

I'm sympathetic, since it sounds like your advisor has put you in a frustrating situation.  He should have reviewed the paper earlier, or asked you to hold off on submitting it because he needed more time to review it.  However, his failure to be a helpful coauthor doesn't justify publishing the paper without his consent.


Is it necessary to have a background in philosophy in order to get a position in logic in philosophy departments? What the title asks.

Apparently there are some professors in departments of philosophy working on logic or semantics (e.g. William Starr or Nino Cocchiarella [retired]). Does one need to know the "real philosophy" to get such kinds of positions in departments of philosophy? Or does one only need to know logic/semantics (and not, say, treatises of Plato)? And does one have to have a PhD in philosophy, or does a PhD in math or linguistic suffice?

The correct, if not very useful, answer to the title question is no, not absolutely necessary. But philosophy departments aren't likely to advertise very often for mathematicians or computer scientists grounded in computability (an important topic in epistemology).

Like any other modern academic field, philosophy has specialization, and some departments are very specialized. So, with certain skills, but not a broad knowledge of the foundations of philosophy you would find a few positions open, but I suspect they would be rare.

Being specialized is both a blessing and a curse. The curse comes because you might not be suitable to teach the courses that need teaching, but the blessing is that you know how to go deep into some important topics.

If you have a degree already in math, philosophy might present an option if the right position came along. But it would probably be a mistake to try to build a career on the assumption that it would be easy to do so.

Also, of course, if you just love it, there is no real reason why a mathematician or linguist can't enter into collaborative relationships with philosophers on topics of common interest. Such relationships can be highly productive.


What will be the research methodology if you are developing a generic software I'm developing a generic software for the unorganised retail sector. The design is completely based on the literature review that has been conducted. The only problem is that since I'm not doing any interviews or surveys, what research methodology should I follow ? It can't be qualitative or quantitative. The end result is just the developed software.
The aim is to study why the unorganised retail is behind than the organised one. And the solution is to present a software for them to use to help in decision making. It's completely based on literature and no surveys or interviews were conducted.

Writing software isn't research. Proving that a piece of software, written by yourself or others, can be research. How are you going to show that your software does what it set out to do? How are you going to show that it is better than the alternatives? For those questions you need methodology. Questionnaires? Observations? Objective measurements? Something.

But the software itself is just a tool. Showing it is valuable is the research part.

And, of course, if it is real research then you need to be prepared for the situation that you get evidence that the new tool isn't actually better. Research is a search for truth, not proof of a predefined statement.


Recommendation Letter v.s. Ph.D. opportunity Last year, I started collaborating with a high-level professor in the field in a good but not the best institute. Before leaving there, I discussed with her a possible opportunity to having her recommendation letter. Also, I asked about the possible opportunity to becoming her Ph.D. student. She seemed okay about this, however, she told me there will be an interview.

Now, I want to send an email to her letting her know that I want to be considered as her potential graduate student while having her recommendation letter because I do not know yet what options I will have. Her recommendation letter will really help me, but I do not want to lose the chance to be considered as her potential graduate student.

I worry that my asking her for a letter of recommendation, while at the same time asking to be considered for admission as her own graduate student, might look like I am too ambitious! How does it sound to a professor? What are the possible reaction of a natural professor to this? Is it mature and rational to send such an email? If I were the professor, I will definitely realize the student is looking for as many opportunities as feasible, however, I may not consider him as a potential student. Please help me to clarify my thoughts on this point.

It is extremely common in my experience to ask a professor for a letter of recommendation while at the same time expressing interest in pursuing further work with that same said professor. I did it myself.
Professors realize that they might not be your only option. Placing their students in graduate programs (where ever they may be) always reflects positively on them.
You have actually done much of the hard work already. You have already talked with this professor about your future plans and sought to gauge her opinion on your becoming her student. If she seemed at all open to taking you on as a student, she will also be open to writing you a letter of recommendation.
I would say something like the following:

Hi Professor McGonagall,
You and I spoke briefly last year about some of my plans for graduate school. I am applying to several programs and I am in hopes that I could obtain a letter of recommendation from you. As one of my options, I am planning on applying to the program at [your university], with you as my potential advisor. Is there a time we could meet to discuss these items further? I am available any time next week on Wednesday or Thursday.
Thank you,
mathvc_

Any reasonable professor would be happy to discuss bringing you on as a graduate student and writing you a letter of recommendation for other options as well. My master's advisor did so for me; I have also done so for my own students. If this professor tells you that she will only write you a letter for her own program and is offended that you would look at other options, you do not want her as your advisor. It would be very worrisome to me if advisor was only willing to take me on as a student if I applied to no other programs. It signals an advisor who is a controlling advisor.


Academic with fellowship cannot land a permanent position in her department. Should she stay or move elsewhere? My PhD supervisor who I consider a friend is hoping to get a foothold on the academic ladder at a presitgious univeristy in the UK. She's held a fellowship for several years now and has a few more to go before it runs out. During this time she managed to build a pretty sizeable research group, is teaching her own course to good feedback and her publication record is on par with, if not better than, other junior academics recently employed by her department. However, despite applying for several junior vacancies at her department where she wants to stay, she hasn't come close to getting one. I can't think of many reasons why other than perhaps her field is not considered sexy enough and the department wants to get rid of it altogether.

I want to bring this up next time I see her. It seems it would make sense for her to jump ship and land a position elsewhere while she still holds the fellowship as I'm sure many other departments elsewhere would be glad to have her. On the other hand that's a bit unfair to her students and it may split the research group. If only a hendful of people agree to go with her, this also means that it would take her a while to get back on her feet after the move. Has anyone been in a similar situation and has any advice? Are there other less obvious reasons why a university would snub someone with a good track record who's bringing funding to the table?

Universities in the West are generally quite reluctant to hire anyone into permanent positions who had been graduate students or postdocs or otherwise temporary employees at that same university. This is fundamentally based on the idea that we don't want "inbreeding" of ideas and that it benefits departments and universities to get in people with other perspectives. As a consequence, there may not be merit-based reasons why she isn't hired -- it may all be due to not wanting to hire your own disciples.

The solution is of course to go elsewhere -- as almost all of us had to do at some point. Everyone understands that to be the system, and students need to know it as well. In many cases, one can make practical arrangements where students come along, or where someone who leaves can still advise students at their old university until they are graduated. (I have done both.)


How to read papers of professors? This is a question that has been in my mind for a month now. I am a final year M.Sc student in mathematics and applying for graduate school this year. But for applying to graduate schools, let's say in Europe, it is recommended that you should study the papers of Professors to whom you are applying. My question is how to go about reading the papers? Let's say I am interested in doing research on a particular topic (let's say X) and I have only taken a basic course on that topic X. I should have done my M.Sc thesis in X but in my university, nobody is working on X. Also, I didn't know I am interested in X until the last year otherwise I would have done some internships on this topic. With this background, there is no way I could understand the papers of a Professor who is working on the subject X for years. This is certainly not a problem in the US as you don't have to apply to a Professor, but in Europe, I think in most of the cases, you have to directly apply to a Professor. So, what to do in this case?

Thanks in advance!
Sorry for my bad English.

Don't expect to understand the whole paper. Many researchers won't manage that either anyway, without a fair amount of time. Read the introduction. That should be written in simpler/less technical words, and give you an idea of what's going on. If that's still too hard, identify the main words in the title/abstract, and see if there are corresponding articles of Wikipedia (which isn't reliable enough to quote, but in many areas is actually pretty accurate).


How to report pirated textbooks on Academia.edu? I received a notification today from Academia.edu of a recently-uploaded "paper" that was similar to one I previously downloaded.  On clicking through, the "paper" turned out to be a PDF of a pirated textbook.  (Just to be clear:  the account that posted the PDF was not the author.)  Is there a way to report this?  The info at http://support.academia.edu/customer/en/portal/articles/1734342-reporting-a-fake-offensive-or-spam-profile explains how to report a "Fake, Offensive, or Spam profile", but that doesn't seem to exactly describe this situation.

I know Academia.org is a problematic site in many ways, but this is the first time I've seen it cross into LibGen territory.

I would contact the textbook publisher. As noted by Solar Mike in a comment, they would care about the problem and have time and resources to do something about it. Part of the publisher's job is to protect their work.


How advantageous is it to have presented a poster at an international conference? I am trying to figure out how important it is for a grad student to present their research at a conference.
Let's assume the paper with the research is definitely going to be published.

Does it look better to a potential postdoctoral advisor if the work
was also presented at a top international conference? Could it be the
thing that gives one candidate the edge over another?
Is networking at a conference much more effective if you have a
poster to refer people to?
Is there any point in going to a conference without a poster?

To give you some more background, why I am asking is because my supervisor has said that I can attend a conference but they don't want me to present a poster (my data is too preliminary). However, if it was really good for my career, I would be willing to challenge them on this point. But first I really need to weigh up if the advantages of presenting outweigh the chance of annoying my supervisor. My other option is to not attend the conference at all, and instead delay going to one until I have solid results to present, but I'm afraid of missing out on this opportunity.

It's probably best to listen to your supervisor, especially if they have seen your data. If they have not, show him/her your work and explain to them why you believe this conference would benefit from you presenting. That way you have greater clarity regarding why they disagree, and you frame it as the conference benefiting from your contribution rather than you simply gaining a reputation advantage by presenting premature data.


How to pursue an MD/PhD in France after BS from the US? I am currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in biochemistry in the US. I would love to pursue an MD/PhD, but I want to move to France as soon as possible. I have never lived there, but have the nationality, speak the language natively, and have passed the bac.

What is the best way to do this? Should  finish my bachelor's degree? I have not been able to find any useful information. (I would also be open to exploring other options in Europe.)

I know very little about the French system, but am surprised you could not find anything online. I did a little poking and found what seems like the answer; perhaps you or other users can correct me if this is overly simplistic.

From FrenchDistrict.com:

  [Si] Vous avez obtenu un diplôme aux Etats-Unis, et vous désirez rentrer au pays (France), dans ce cas : Vous devez contacter le Centre ENIC NARIC de Paris, en leur demandant une Attestation de Comparabilité du diplôme étranger avec un « équivalent » Français. Cette Attestation est délivrée au cas par cas, après étude suivant une grille d’analyse très précise établie par le Centre.

My rough translation:

  [If] you have obtained a US degree and you desire to return to France, in this case: you should contact the ENIC NARIC Center in Paris, and ask for a Certification of Equivalence between the foreign degree and a French one. This Certification is granted on a case-by-case basis, after a very precise, point-by-point analysis as established by the Center.

So, it seems like if you finish your degree in the US and get this Statement of Equivalence, then you should be able to continue your studies in France as if you had obtained the equivalent French degree.

Note, however, that French doctors have to undergo substantial retraining before they can practice in the US. So, your decision is, at least, difficult to reverse. Given that you've never lived in France but suddenly want to move there "as soon as possible," I would urge you not to make any rash decisions.


Negotiating mathematics postdoc salary when having an offer with higher salary I recently won an NSF mathematical Science Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at University 1. At this University, the math NSF postdocs have a have a much lower salary and benefits than regular "named postdocs" (XYZ Assistant Professor)and during their 2 years of half-time NSF support teach two thirds the amount (despite only half the salary coming from the university). I did not get a regular postdoc offer from Uni 1.

At the same time, I have a 3 year postdoc offer from a fancy institute at US University 2, with significantly higher salary than regular postdocs at Uni 1 (which is already much higher than NSF postdocs at Uni 1), more travel funding than the NSF MSPRF, and NO teaching unless I want to.

Research wise, Uni 1 is a better fit.
Would it be reasonable for me to leverage the Uni 2 offer to perhaps convince Uni 1 to raise my salary during my NSF postdoc there to the level of their regular postdocs and maybe give me the title of a regular postdoc at Uni 1 for one or two years when I am there?
Or perhaps reduction in the number of courses I have to teach?
If so, does one go about it?

I think that there is a difference between University 1 wanting you, and having you because you come with an NSF. That makes a huge difference in whether you can leverage for a higher salary or not.

The fact that University 1 did not offer you their regular postdoc title sounds like a hint to me that they will probably not be up for negotiation. Though, it doesn't hurt to try.


How to create a collaborative list of references I am working in academia in a very wide field of research mixing a lot of different domains. This broadness is also a problem, since there is no proper references for the basis of the theory, and we have to deal with a lot of material scattered in very different places, often in the form of lecture notes, conference proceeding or unpublished documents.

Therefore, I would like to propose a collaborative online list of these references, in a light way so that anyone could add or improve the list. The best current list of references is here, which is neither up to date nor really easy to use (no tags, list by authors, etc). I would like something slightly more powerful, I though about some framework like Django but don't really know if it is a suitable solution.

I would like to be able for anyone to

sort in different ways
add tags
add or edit references entries
rate difficulty (this is a bonus)
comment (this is a bonus)

Moreover, it should be better if the list were accessible without any amount on a simple webpage.

Any suggestion in order to do such a list is welcome!

Have you thought about using Mendeley? It provides both an online interface and a client. You can add notes and tags to resources, which can also be organized in folders. You can also create "groups" to share (part of) your library with others. There is a con: it is owned by Elsevier, which I'd rather not support. There are also alternatives but I haven't tried any of them.


Is it appropriate (as a PhD student) to email other researchers asking about some details in their papers? It has happened on several occasion now, that I read a paper, understand 95% of it, but there are some niggling details which I simply don't get. I ask around, I ask my advisor, and nobody is able to help (either because they don't get it themselves or they are too busy, which is completely understandable).

I have often felt like simply writing to the author of the paper, asking clarifying questions. But these are all busy people, currently on the job market, interviewing everywhere. And another thing is they also know my (rather famous) advisor pretty well.

Would it be weird to write to them? If so, should I mention my advisor at all? I don't want to put my advisor in an awkward situation, at the same time I don't want to seem like I'm hiding some information.

I am just not comfortable asking such a stupid question to my advisor, hence asking here. Thanks so much!

As a professor, I've received many emails from graduate students at other institutions over the years asking me questions about my research. Not once has any of the following thoughts ever crossed my mind following such an email:

This student is doing something "inappropriate" by contacting me at my publicly listed email address.
This student is "stupid" or is asking a "stupid question".
Oh, this student mentioned their famous advisor. Their ignorance reflects poorly on their advisor. I will make sure to complain to the advisor the next time I see them.
Oh, this student didn't mention their advisor. Something's fishy here. I need to know who their advisor is, and preferably know it's someone famous who can help me in my career, before I dignify their email with a reply.
Etc etc, i.e. any other bad thought that suggests the student has crossed some invisible line separating lowlifes like them from (supposedly) important, powerful people like me.

Instead, here is a sampling of ways I actually react when I receive such an email:

Oh, how nice. Someone at [name of cool university] is thinking about [name of my paper]!
Oh, how nice. A student of [name of famous advisor I am friends with] is thinking about [name of my paper]!
Oh, how nice. This student pointed out a weak point in the presentation of one of my proofs. I hadn't thought of the question that way, it's quite interesting! Seems like a smart student, would be nice to meet them some day.
Hmm, I'm kind of busy with lots of other things so this email stresses me out a bit. Oh well, I'll find time to reply to it some time in the next few days. In the meantime, how nice that someone is taking an interest in my paper and has interesting things to ask/say about it.

As you can see from these two lists, basically the whole premise assumed in your question about the mindset of a professor receiving an email of the type you are thinking of sending is deeply misguided. Professors (the vast majority of them at least) are simply nothing like the scary, classist, pretentious, easily offended, thin-skinned people that a lot of students and other people seem to think they are. They are busy, yes, but the main thing that makes them so busy is that they are passionate about their work and usually cannot pass on an opportunity to discuss it with someone, regardless of their academic rank. So, good luck sending your emails! I'm sure you will be pleasantly surprised by the replies you get. :-)


How can we find out who was nominated for Nobel Prizes? While the Nobel laureates are announced each year, are there any online resources that list who was nominated?

In particular, I am asking the Academic side of Nobel prizes, especially in Chemistry, Economics, Literature, Physics, or Physiology-Medicine.

For example, Wikipedia says that Kazuhiko Nishijima (西島 和彦) was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1960 and 1961, but it is not clear where can we find the official/secondary information about other "short-list" nominees.

The Nobel prize nominations are confidential for 50 years. An official online database that has most of the nominations (that aren't confidential) can be found at the website of the Nobel prize. As of today the site claims that it covers nominations up to 1963 for all prizes*, except for the physiology and medicine prize, which has data up to 1953 only. However, it does appear to list some more recent nominations. Perhaps it's best to consider lists for later years as incomplete for now.

In particular, for the case of Kazuhiko Nishijima you can find that he was nominated at least four times.

*The prize in Economic Sciences was instituted only in 1968, with the first prize awarded a year later. Thus, 50 years have not yet passed, so you won't find any of those nominations in the database.


How can we help cope with sleep deprivation among university students? Sleep deprivation is a common problem among college students that has become so serious that universities in the US have taken measures to help their students overcome it.

As a particular example, the curriculum of Ateneo de Manila University was planned taking into consideration what would constitute a healthy student-life in a Philippine setting, however its students still experience the same sleep deprivation problem. With this in mind, we would like to gather ideas on what measures or projects can be taken to help students in our community cope with this problem.

Unless the university is requiring students to become sleep deprived in order to complete assignments (which i'm sure it is not), then changing the course structure, reducing the number of lectures, etc, will have very little impact.

Sleep deprivation is often actually a cultural issue. Cultural in the sense that every Institute/Company/University has a culture, and new students are always brought into that culture, taught "how things are done here", and in 3 years they teach it to the next intake of students.

If the culture at your university is to work all day and play all night, or simply just work all day and all night because to be seen working is to be a good student - then you need to change that culture.

Ideally try informing the students of the dangers of sleep deprivation. Try to promote efficient learning, and a balanced lifestyle of work and rest. Try to explain that being in the library 18 hours a day, does not make you a good student. Alternatively, if you play MMORPGs all night instead of sleeping, you will fail the course, and that is your own fault.


Weighting Grades based on group size I am having students complete a presentation as a group project. Each student's grade will have two components: an instructor grade, from me, and a group grade from their group.

The group grade is calculated as the sum of five elements, each graded out of five, for a maximum of 25 points from each member of the group. Each student's 'group grade' is then calculated as the average of scores from the group.

The problem I have is that some of the groups have 4 students, some 5, and some 6. This means that weight of the score for students in larger groups is less than for those in smaller groups.

I plan to compensate for this by weighting the instructor grade more heavily. But as I think about it, even this doesn't cancel out the discrepancy.

How can I weight, or adjust, my grading scheme to make sure it's as fair as possible?

I don't see a problem with two-part grades where all instructor grades are weighted equally. Your issue seems to be that individual teammates' opinions carry less weight in the larger teams. But I don't see why that is necessarily unfair.

My suggestion would be to calculate the grades based on the same instructor weights for everyone and then make sure, before finalizing, that people in larger or smaller groups didn't get systematically different grades.


Should I be 100% truthful while writing my Personal Statement for Graduate application? Let us think about this question in my online application.

Personal Statement:
Please describe your specific area of academic interest, and explain what motivated you to choose this area.

In my case 100% true answer would be the following,

I am interested in Image Processing.
When I was searching for a supervisor, I met one of the most prominent research professors of the XYZ University Prof. xyz who works in the area of Image Processing, Computer Vision, Graphics and so on. I was interested in Computer Graphics and proposed his a topic. He told me that topic was not fit for MSc thesis to be completed in 4 months. That would actually take more time may be up to a year. Since, I didn't have any other topic in my mind, I requested him to propose a topic for me. He then proposed a topic related to Image Processing. I found that topic very interesting and saw a huge opportunity to learn about the area of Image Processing from the inside.

Is that a good answer?

Yes, the Bob version of your paragraph is a good start.  But if you want to make an impact on the admissions committee, you're going to have to find out a lot more about your topic, so that you can speak about it in more detail.


Is it standard to include a photo of yourself in a CV for a Swedish job search? I know it's normal in a lot of European countries, but I don't know which way the Swedes roll.

Swedish Wikipedia does not mention a photo: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum_vitae

This website mentions that a picture is not required in the cover letter and does not mention the issue at all in CV: http://www.yourlivingcity.com/stockholm/work-money/living-sweden-swedish-cv/

No pictures at https://www.cv-mallar.se/ or https://akademssr.se/dokument/cv-exempel

From nearby countries, photos are not be assumed in academic settings in Denmark, Finland, or Norway (based on personal experience). They do seem to be more prevalent in German-speaking countries, which do have close cultural ties to the Nordic countries.

Overall, it seems that a picture is not required, but, according to a comment from xLeitix, it would not be unusual to have one.


How can I complete the prerequisites for Masters in Computer Science on my own? My Background: I am an EE graduate, working in a Software Company from last 2+ years as an Application Developer(Java & J2EE). Recently I started thinking of going back to college and do my Master's in CS, as most of the jobs in industry require a degree in CS.

Country of Residence: India

Countries of Interest for University Applications: US, UK, Australia and EU.

I have noticed that there are prerequisites to get admitted to those programs. Specifically, I need to have completed courses in Data Structures, Algorithms, Operating Systems, Theory of Computation, Compilers and Computer Networks. My undergraduate degree did have courses like Computer Networks, but nothing else.

In some other Universities, I can get admitted to MS in CS, but then I need to complete those courses at the College before starting graduate school coursework. I understand all of those things, as I took various Computer Science Courses online. I understand all the things that there are in undergraduate Computer Science Course. So here are my options:-

1) Take a post-bacc Course in computer science. (That Costs a lot in money and Time)

2) Do Nothing and apply without requirements being completed and let them decide whether or not I should enroll in UG CS courses at college.

3) Do some online Computer Science courses on edX, Coursera and show them that.

Which one of them is more favourable to a person working in Software Industry with an EE background?

I had two bachelors in Music and Art, minors in Marketing and CS. I then held a Computer Science career. When I went into the CS Masters program 7 years after obtaining my last bachelor degree, I had several deficiencies. I was accepted with two understandings. (1) I will complete the deficiency courses that are prerequisites to Masters courses I am to take, and (2) my current career in CS demonstrates I have the aptitude to succeed despite my entering the program with deficiencies.

I believe your best option is your #2, to enter the Masters program and complete the deficiencies in your coursework. When you write your letter of intent for application to the Masters program, I would describe these two aspects as they apply to your situation, personality, and drive to complete your degree.

Your other option for the US market is your #1, to complete the deficiencies from an accredited institution, then transfer the completed coursework with you when you apply. You must be careful with this option, to ensure the University you are to apply for a masters with will accept the coursework from the other institution. Before taking the coursework, it is best to call the University to ensure the courses will transfer.

This other option is best if you are under the following circumstances:

Currently working, and can take the deficiencies at night through an online University, or through a local college offering.
You will save money/time from taking the deficiencies from the alternate institute.

Your option #3 will not work, as they require the coursework credit from an accredited institution. Internationally, they usually require a demonstrated bachelors degree in CS. But post-bacc work needs to be completed as previously described.

Otherwise, you are best to just enroll in the University Master program and take the deficiencies there.

When I took the deficiencies for my masters program, I'd take deficiency courses one semester, and then the Masters courses that required the deficiency the next semester. In this way, except for the first semester, I was taking at least one Masters course every semester. Look at the University course catalog to see which courses have the least number of prerequisites that are your deficiencies, and then take those deficiencies first.


I'm scheduled to graduate next week but my professor has gone MIA due to a death in the family... what can I do? Next week I'm scheduled to graduate from a major university. One of the required courses that I've taken over the past semester is an independent research study with a single professor.

Throughout this process I've mostly worked on my own, however, with the semester nearing its conclusion, I now need to present my research and receive a grade on my efforts.

Well, over the past five to six days, my professor hasn't been on campus and is for all intents and purposes unreachable. Of the few emails I've sent him he's only responded to one, saying that he's had a death in the family and that he'll get in touch with me the next day (which is now today but he's still yet to do so and it's currently 8pm). The death in the family happened at least last weekend, since when I tried visiting his office on Tuesday another professor told me he was out of the office due to said occurrence.

I consulted my advisor and he recommended that I send a follow up email [tonight] mentioning my concern, and that if he doesn't respond within a few hours to send another follow up email but this time with the chair of the department cc'ed.

My question is, is there anything else I can do to push this professor to respond to me and to set up a time to conclude my research project? What happens if he doesn't issue me a grade? I absolutely have to graduate this semester for a number of reasons that I won't go into; but, it would absolutely be devastating to my current plans in life, finances, etc.

I've been told that it's not within the powers of the chair to actually do something about this, just nudge the professor in the right direction, but, does the dean of the college have some kind of influence in my graduating?

My mentor for this project does instruct other courses, so, I'm kind of guessing he'll be back on campus next week to proctor his final(s)... but, I could also very well see another professor filling in for him.

Does anyone have experience with / knowledge about this? I'm kind of starting to freak out and so I thought I'd consult the masses.

Thanks in advance and sorry if any of this was ranty.

UPDATE: This afternoon I met with the chair of that department, and, about five minutes into the meeting my professor showed up in the door of the room! He was there to drop off a folder of papers for other students from his other courses to pick up, and to tell the chair that he was back on campus.

At that same time, my professor told me that he would just grade me on the results of the project that I had previously submitted to him, along with the presentation I made.

It truly was complete luck [on my part] that my professor showed up at the same time that I was there. And, the conversation between me and the chair didn't get far enough for him to tell me what my options would be; so, I can't update you all regarding what my university's policy / way of handling this would be.

Thanks again for all the comments/advice.

My question is, is there anything else I can do to push this professor to respond to me and to set up a time to conclude my research project?

I recommend that you don't send your professor any more communications than you already have, and in this case, it is completely inappropriate to "push" him to do anything.  The death of a loved one in one's family is a major traumatic event, and a large degree of sympathy and forbearance is appropriate.  With respect, it is a much bigger deal than what are relatively minor concerns over graduation.

At this point you have already sent multiple emails, and it is clear that the professor is not able to perform his work duties right now.  Rather than contacting him again, contact the Head of Department, describe your case, and request a plan to have your assessment pushed forward in the absence of your professor (e.g., with another supervisor allocated).  Make sure you write your request in a way that is sympathetic and kind to your professor, but which acknowledges the reality that he is not presently in a position to assist you.  If you have been advised that there is nothing they can do, then you have been advised wrong, because that is clearly bullshit - a Department Head has the power and responsibility to replace incapacitated staff with other staff members who can do their teaching/supervision work.

If the Department is unable to assess you prior to your expected graduation time, this might end up being a case where your graduation is delayed.  Accept that and put it in perspective.  No-one you love has died, and the worst possible outcome for you here is that your assessment gets delayed, and you end up graduating one session later than you otherwise would have.  If this occurs, and you are worried that it will hamper your ability to apply for later positions (e.g., jobs, post-graduate degree, etc.), ask your Head of Department to write a "to whom it may concern" letter that you can give to potential employers, explaining that you are due to graduate at the next conferral and that your graduation was delayed due to a staffing issue through no fault of your own.

One last thing: remember to buy your professor a nice card or some flowers consoling him for his bereavement.


How many referees is too many for a journal or conference paper submission? I recently reviewed a paper for a Math/Comp-Sci conference. The author's response came back with responses to 12 referees.

Am I wrong in thinking it absurd that there are this many referees on a paper?

For one, I, like many researchers, expect a paper to have about 2-3 referees, so make a rule of refereeing about this many papers for every paper I publish.  I will cannot referee 12 papers for ever paper I publish.   What does this do to the referee pool?

Secondly, having so many referees seems to make the decision of any single referee as insignificant. If I spend 2 days on a paper, as is not uncommon in math, I would like to think my opinion counts for more than one vote in 12.

Finally, responding to 12 referees is quite a burden for the author;  especially if referees make suggestions about style or presentation, which could be contradictory.

I am not just ranting. Is there another side to this that I am missing?

I fully agree that 12 referees is too many. 2 to max 4 referees is fine. More referees will indeed leave the authors with conflicting comments, and does not contribute to the quality of the review.


How to build healthy working relationships with my male colleagues as a young-ish, attractive-ish woman? I'm a PhD candidate from Asia currently visiting a prestigious university in Europe. Recently I've noticed quite some "strange" behaviours of male "colleagues" around me (by "colleagues", I don't mean that we work on the same projects or from the same office. They are just people who work at or visit this place: faculty members, PhDs, or research staff).

For example, these gentlemen seem to be giving me a bit of extra attention: following me to the pantry; "appearing" several times at the same time at the place that I'd show up; or even try to wait for me when I leave. (Please don't suggest that I might be overreacting - I am quite confident that I'm not exaggerating here.)

Honestly, I am more annoyed than flattered. I want to focus on my research and want to be able to have healthy, normal, constructive working relationships with these people. I don't want any extra attention other than that I am a dedicated and capable researcher, and a nice person in general. However, because of these strange behaviours, I have to try to distance myself from some of them who I have had some friendly exchanges before. I've become a bit cold and unapproachable to them - I guess I am trying to say that I am not interested in anything romantic, and I don't want any attention in that matter. I guess some people might say, well, just tell them openly that you are not interested. I simply am not able to do that: first, they don't say anything or do anything that would allow me to bring up this topic; second, some of them might not even really want to pursue a relationship (they are married, or too young/too old for me anyway), but just kind of show some sort of admiration I guess.

However, I also feel very uncomfortable about that. I am by nature a nice and friendly person. I really feel bad about being cold and unfriendly to other people. Also, I want to have a circle of contacts that I can talk with about my research and their research, and get feedback and/or inspiration from that. I am not sure how I am able to have that type of positive working relationships in this kind of situation.

To clarify a few things...

These male colleagues are decent, respectable, and in some cases, brilliant and achieved people. There is no inappropriate advance from them or anything creepy in this (or it would be rather easy to handle the situation). It is just the continued, affectionate attention that is making me uncomfortable.
I am not sure this is associated with my newness or novelty. I have been here for eight months now and I did not notice this kind of attention at the beginning. Instead, I noticed the association with me slowly building up myself professionally here. I'd assume these male colleagues are slightly more refined than the general public and would look a bit further than a pretty face for a pretty mind (not that I am suggesting I am any or both of these). If this is true, then I would assume this issue would not go away as time goes by, but might hang around or even intensify as I become more established as a capable researcher. In that case I would have to find a solution for myself in the long term.
After second thought, I guess I wouldn't be able to take the "dressing down" advice. I like to dress in a classy and elegant way and that makes me feel good (it is like I enjoy making my room clean and nice and that makes me feel good). I don't see anything wrong with it and don't want to punish myself with other people's reactions to me. In fact, I have become more convinced that the solution to this type of issue is not to make women less feminine/attractive. There should be other solutions where we can be ourselves and still be comfortable around male colleagues. I don't know what those solutions are though.

Please give me some advice on how to handle a situation like this.

If there are any female faculty that you trust, I would go and talk with them about the situation. This would accomplish a few things.

Documents your concerns if anything ever escalates.

Allows for you to share your concerns with another person, who may be able to give you insight specific to your situation.

Allows you to verify if your colleagues are indeed being more than "just friendly." (As in, a third party may be able to silently observe some of the behavior and verify what is happening).

May open avenues administratively for departmental intervention such as a general email about sexual harassment or the like.

You do not even need to mention specific people in your conversations. This faculty member does not even need to be in your direct department.
I also would be prepared to "friend zone" these men if necessary. One challenge with female/male relationships is that it can be very difficult to read soft signals. There were girls I knew in school (I am male) that I wanted to get to know better. I would chat them up after class. And, I'll admit, I even went walking by their apartments a few time in hopes that they would be outside and we could talk. I did not have any nefarious intentions; I just wanted to make them like me. Even if they brushed me off a bit, I was not always really fast at taking a hint. I would just think they were having a rough day, or were busy. (Sometimes this actually made me want to stick around them more to make them feel better—I was naive). However, when one girl directly told me "I am only interesting in being your friend" that is when I realized that I was bothering her. We went on to have a congenial relationship at school, but did not do anything outside of school. Be prepared to directly tell your colleagues that you are only interested in keeping your relationship professional.
While you may not really want to directly tell these men that their attention in not wanted, that will honestly be the most effective way at fixing the situation I feel. This is especially true if you do not want to radically alter your lifestyle (e.g. leaving school at 2 a.m. so that they cannot wait for you).
If your colleagues are decent guys, they will not ignore stronger signals that you are not interested in their attention in they way they have been giving it.
If your colleagues are still too dense to take a clue (or blatantly ignore it), this is when it could be helpful to have an established dialogue with a female faculty member. You may need to initiate an administrative intervention.
Do not be afraid to sever a relationship if you have to. No one does themselves any service by trying to be friends with someone while simultaneously trying to keep their distance from them.
The clothes thing is odd, but I'm honestly not sure what you could do about that. The department cannot begin sending out emails saying "No one may dress like Lily." If you see someone that is blatantly copying you, I would call them out on it. Perhaps if they see that, yes, you did notice their clothes, and that, no, you were not amused, they will stop matching your clothes. This could be done in a joking manner if that makes it easier:

Woah Jim, you are wearing the exact shirt I was wearing yesterday! Have you been in my house? (said while chuckling and in the presence of other people)
I see you're wearing plaid. I have one ugly plaid shirt that I only wear on laundry day. Do you like wearing plaid? It makes me sort of dizzy! (Ha ha ha.)

In closing, the fastest way to get this unwanted attention to end is to end it directly, either by telling the men themselves, or getting a person in authority to do so.


How handicapped am I in graduate admissions if I graduated from a lower tier university? Due to a combination of factors, I ended up going for my undergraduate studies to a relatively unknown university that was close to me geographically.

Let's say that I have a relatively standard background for someone trying to apply to top tier schools for graduate studies (some research experience, some low to medium quality publications, very strong grades, good recommendation letters). Then how much does the alma mater have an impact for someone like me? I obviously know that it is still possible to be accepted, but how much of a disadvantage am I looking at exactly?

You don't mention what field you're in. At least in the social sciences at my R1, we look at various factors. The admissions committee knows that people have to choose the college that they went to for various reasons other than just academic excellence.

One of the factors that I look at is trajectory. Someone who went to a public high school, then a community college, and then transferred to a public university, with perhaps middling grades the first year but then quickly ramps up to stellar grades by the time they graduate is very interesting to me -- much more than someone who got all As at a good school but doesn't seem like they pushed themselves very hard.

With the portfolio that you describe for yourself, I'd say you wouldn't be eliminated in the first round, but you'd struggle in the second and third rounds to stand out. How you stand out is up to you. I'd work on a stellar statement of purpose -- one that strongly articulates why you want to go to graduate school to study what you want to study.

Again, this is in the social sciences at my school (a large private R1), your mileage may vary.

Part of this is because brilliance by itself isn't enough for grad school in the social sciences. Perseverance and autonomy and the ability to get knocked down and get back up are also critical.


Last minute master's application? I've been gearing up to apply to grad school for some time now. Switching fields, working full time and other considerations mean that I keep pushing back my goal of applying. I have been strengthening my qualifications (small publication, open source work, git hub), but I still haven't applied.

I just ran across an interesting program that has the deadline date of March 15th. I'm tempted to just try and to get everything together in a month. I'm worried about being sloppy, or there not being any room in the program at this late date.

Is there any disadvantage to applying this late? Would it be more prudent to wait for fall, continue to work through the spring on improving and apply then?

If you apply before the deadline, then I wouldn't consider it late.

Depending on the university and department, they might not review applications until after the deadline or they might review them as they come. So long as you make that deadline though, it should be fine! You may find this question helpful regarding the benefits of applying early.

I would certainly encourage you to apply now if you can. On a side note, I applied after my university's deadline and was still admitted but don't do that :)


How to know which citation style is applied? How to know which citation style is applied, if googling its characteristics does not reveal the name?

In specific, do you know what is the name of this citation style?

  Merlis, Timothy M., and Tapio Schneider, “Atmospheric dynamics of Earth-like tidally locked aquaplanets,” Jounal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems 2 (December 2010); DOI:10.3894/JAMES.2010.2.13.

Authors: roman
Title: roman in quotation marks, with ending comma inside the marks
Journal: italics, with issue date in roman

The style is taken from the book What If? from Randal Munroe. I'm translating it so would like to know its style to know how to put the translation of the reference properly.

I don't know an easier way than including the reference in http://www.citethisforme.com and then changing the reference style to see, if I can find a style equal to the one I'm looking for. Unfortunately, the amount of reference styles is very large.


Referees ask for more content but this lengthens the paper dramatically So, my situation is as follows: I submitted a paper to a journal and continued to work on that line of research, specifically on the open problems I mentioned in the submitted paper.

Now, in the received reviews the referees call for more content in the form of addressing one of the before mentioned open problems in particular. I am fine with adding more content, especially since I have already done the work.

However, the solution to the problem fills an additional 25+ pages, an amount which would pad the paper to a very long length. I am not sure of how to proceed as I am quite convinced that merging the two projects would be too long for the journal.

I don’t know if I should

merge the projects and hope for it not being too long,
disagree with the referees opinion in my revision and state the situation,
contact someone and get information before conducting the revisions?

Maybe as a more general question, how is it in general perceived to get a large lengthening in return to a call for more content?

First, share your concerns with the editors. The reviewers may not have realized the extent of the work. If they agree that a long paper is fine, then write the long paper. If they don't want to do that then consider breaking the work into two papers with one referencing the other. You could even submit them simultaneously to the same journal.

But it would probably be worth checking that with the editors also. I'll guess they would consider that to be the better solution, but it is their call.


How can we recognize accurate scientific results when things like p-hacking are so common? Research has shown that most of the published studies in various fields are false. For example, the Reproducibility Project: Psychology only managed to confirm 36% of previous 100 psychology studies had a statistically signifiant result the second time. Also, only 6 of 53 studies considered landmark in cancer were successfully replicated. In these circumstances, when such a quantity of false studies pass the peer-review process in most scientific fields, how can we filter authentic information from fields we don't have expertise in?

First thing to consider is that research can never provide absolute certainty. Any result you find is only preliminary. You can have various degrees of preliminary: a single study with an acceptable but not brilliant design can provide interesting clues or first steps for a larger project, but not much more. It is right and productive that these studies are published, but don't treat them as truth.

Second thing to consider is that the problem is not necessarily with the articles themselves, but with the lack of replication. So, if you find a result that interest you, try to find replications. If none exist, then you need to be more careful.


How do I deal with an old reference letter from an advisor for job applications? I wrote my graduate advisor asking him to updated his reference letters for me, but he has yet to respond. I e-mailed him again, but he and I did not have the best relationship, and I am worried that now that I have graduated, he may not do this for me. I was curious about I should do in the situation that he refuses to update it.

I have been told it raises questions when a letter is not included in applications.

His old letter is stored on mathjobs.org, and the last date was probably April of this year. I was curious that, if I have to, would it look bad if I use the old letter?

If anything, since I have deadlines coming up, can I use the old letter as a placement? I was told I can mention that a letter should be updated soon in my cover letter.

Not exactly an answer, but a couple things to note.

Letters on MathJobs expire eventually; I think you can see the expiration date on the "cover sheet" page. It will be very awkward if it expires partway through the application process.

Also, note that your advisor will be able to remove or update the letter at any time, which could be a problem if he is really vindictive - he could replace the letter with something unfavorable.

So in short, regardless of how an old letter looks to the committee, it may not be wise to use the letter against your advisor's wishes.


Can I be admitted to a master's in the USA after a 3-year European bachelor's program? I am an Indian citizen and I'm planning to go for my bachelors to Germany. Since schooling in Germany is 13 years in length, I'll study 1 year in India before going there. I wanted to ask that after completing my Bachelor's in Germany, will I be eligible to apply for Masters in USA straightaway right after my BS (I plan to pursue a BS in Computer Science). I had this doubt in my mind as BS in Germany would be 3 years compared to that in USA which is 4 years.

The answer to your question is yes, no, and maybe. It all depends on where in the US you want to go.

As Brian indicated in his answer, these are some universities that don't accept a three-year bachelor:

San Jose State University
University of Idaho

However, there are certainly universities that do accept a three-year bachelor:

Stanford University
University of Minnesota
Columbia University
New York University (Wagner)
Almost all business schools accept a 3-year degree (including Harvard, MIT), source

And then there are who evaluate the three-year bachelor on a case-by-case basis:

University of Michigan (Rackham Graduate School)
UNC Charlotte

Certainly, this list is incomplete. So, do your own search if you like to apply in the US, and if a university does not state anything about the three-year bachelor, ask their Graduate Admissions office.


How to counteract poor academic instruction and demanding workload at German university? I am an undergraduate student at a university in Germany. I already hold a bachelor's degree in an unrelated field from a university abroad, and I also have a solid secondary school background with above
average grades in my school transcript. So I consider myself as having the necessary skills for academic success, in general. However, I am extremely frustrated with the state of my current studies.

I feel the teaching quality is very poor and the syllabus in any given subject is overly demanding. My biggest concerns are

poor teaching quality that manifests itself as insufficient instruction. An example would be the use of PowerPoint slides. The slides are, as a general rule, borrowed from other academics and often contain numerous mistakes or inconsistencies. I would expect a professor to spend more time at the blackboard actually showing how a problem is being solved visually step by step (as I often see in different online lectures from some other universities which turn out to be more helpful).
Unnecessarily demanding syllabi and mandatory homework assignments in
most courses. On average, according to my own observations, a 3-hour lecture covers about 30-50 pages of a textbook on technical/mathematical topics. The recommended curriculum for every semester includes 5-6 courses which sums up to 150-300 pages of scientific reading on a weekly basis to keep up with the requirements plus weekly mandatory practical homework assignments.

I would really like to get any feedback or ideas as to how I can act to either change the situation at the university (it's quite ambitious but someone has to do something) or improve my strategies in dealing with it.

There is already an answer for your question on how to change the situation. I add another to your other question on how to improve your strategies in dealing with it. My view is from teaching mathematics in Germany, so its not clear if it applies to other fields as well.

What you describe as "very poor teaching quality" does not strike me as "objectively poor". You describe short "classroom teaching" and "heavy mandatory homework". I may go as far and say that this is not a bug but a feature. It is on purpose. German universities generally work like this in that "teaching" does not happen so much (few hours per course per week), and "learning" happens mostly outside the classroom. Students are considered adults and they are suppose to plan their time and allocate enough time to learn the subject.

For example, when I teach mathematics, the whole "module" usually consists of four parts:

The lecture. There I am at the blackboard and present things. I explain definitions, state theorem, put them in context, prove them and provide some examples. That I "spend time at the blackboard actually showing how a problem is being solved visually step by step" usually does not happen. I work through examples that may be similar to homework questions but this is slightly different. This is about 2 to 4 hours a week.
Self-study. The students do this on their own, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups (which I encourage). This happens whenever the students want to. The students are supposed to work through the lecture, check if they got everything right and probably fill in some details. This is also about 2 to 4 hours per week but this varies individually.
Homework. I give problems for homework. The students have to learn to use mathematics and not only know it. The problems vary from "standard calculation" to "tricky calculation" to "simple application of a definition" to "tricky proof". The student can do homework whenever they want, they can ask me or a TA basically any time if they have questions or get stuck but they have to hand it in on time. This should take roughly 4 to 8 hours a week and is the largest chunk.
"Exercise classes". Here a TA works work with the students on the homework. Students present what they have, can ask questions, get additional explanations. This is about 2 hours a week.

You see, a small lecture of 4 hours a week will indeed mean about 18 hours work per week. Also, all four part serve their own purpose: In the lecture students shall learn the content and see how the theory in built up. In their self study they strengthen their understanding and "learn to learn mathematics on their own". In the homework they learn mathematical skills, i.e. to actually use mathematics to do something. Also they learn to write down mathematics. In the exercise classes they learn to communicate mathematics (orally) and also to present mathematics.

The lecture is the only place where an instructor has the lead. In the other parts the students are responsible for their learning. Not everybody can do this. Some people fail because than are not able to plan their time, do not have the discipline to work on their own or just don't manage to come to office hours to ask questions.

So in short: I as the lecturer are responsible for good teaching but the students themselves are responsible for their learning. That's sometime tough the realize but once you do, it may really help.

Problems start when the lecturer does not take his responsibility for good teaching serious, does not answer questions, give bad lectures…

So how to deal with this: Take the responsibility for your own learning. Demand good teaching but not expect that the lecturer will show you how to do your homework. Do not come to office hours and say "I have no clue where to start" but ask "I am stuck at this point. I tried this and that but I still stuck. I can make this technique work."


Four papers accepted for publication however not published due to some monetary issues? I have successfully got my papers accepted in different journals. However, due to some money issues, I couldn't get them published. Now I have my final project presentations.

Will it hold value for me? I have slogged day in and out to accomplish this, but money constraints have shattered everything.

How do I manage my presentation in such a scenario?

EDIT : I do have all the email conversations and acceptance notifications and  do have the feedback as well.

Reputable journals will waive publication charges for authors who cannot pay them, so you should ask about that.  If everything goes well, then that will simply solve your financial problems.  I see only two ways you can get stuck:

(1)  The journal insists you can pay, perhaps because your advisor has plenty of grant money, but your advisor refuses.  In that case you have a serious problem, and it is much deeper than just paying for these publication charges; you need to sort things out with your advisor.

(2)  The journal does not have a procedure for waiving the charges.  In that case, the journal acceptance is worthless.  The journals in this category are money-making operations with no academic validity.  Nobody will care that they accepted your paper, because they just wanted your publication fees.

The first thing you need to determine is which case you are in.  For example, one valid reason for an advisor to refuse to pay is because the journals are not reputable.  If you are in that case, then you need to rethink everything.  Otherwise, it sounds like you may be in a complicated situation with your advisor.


How does peer review detect cheating when replicating a study isn't an option? Disclaimer: This is the third incarnation of my question because the previous two have met with silence.
Adapted to this site:
For a scientific study to be accepted as "truth" the standard process is peer review. When the subject is something like math where you can follow through all the steps and recreate the logic in your head, that works great.
But what about cases when that's not an option - for example, research into the efficiency of a vaccine or a new drug? After Phase 3 trials the pharmaceuticals company releases the data which is then scrutinized by (I'd expect) both peer researchers from rival companies and government agencies. But how can they detect that it's not all or in part a lie? There is after all a huge financial motivation for the company to do it. Even when the reviewers are highly motivated to find any traces of fraud, what is the actual process by which they do it, if they can't replicate the study itself and compare the results?

I take issue with your first statement, that for a "...study to be accepted as "truth" the standard process is peer review". The purpose of peer review is not to be the judge of what is true or not, but to evaluate (simply put) whether a study is well-conducted, is using adequate methods, is acknowledging relevant previous research, and if the conclusions are supported by the data and analysis. Another way of putting this might be that peer review is about validation of the claims made, but not about validation of truth. Some other thoughts and guidelines on the purpose of peer-review can be found here; on scope and responsibilities, from PNAS (see "Peer Reviewer Instructions" and "Reviewer responsibilities), and a relativly clear statement on the scope of peer-review, from The Royal Society (see "Reviewing instructions").
In a scientific context, "truth" is something that follows from repeated studies that confirms previous results, and is based on a network of theory and observation that is (to a large extent) congruent. However, generally, I would say that it is more appropriate to define the scientific method as a way to search for "truth", than a method to determine what is "true" (opinions will probably vary on this though).
When it comes to cheating, especially with regard to data, the possibilities to detect this during peer-review is limited, even in the ideal situation when data has been made fully available. If researchers for example fully fabricate data, or tamper with raw data, this will not be caught in peer-review, since only the modified data will be avaliable. Add to this that the time available to peer-review is very limited, so a full statistical re-analysis of the data is not possible. This is also one of the reasons for the need of replicated studies and other studies with supporting evidence before results are accepted as "true".


Citing only e-books in Bachelor thesis I want to know, are e-books (digital version) comparable to physical books in citations? Can I use only e-books instead of real books for finding citations, notes to put in my Bachelor thesis?

Yes, you can. There is absolutely no difference in the citing a digital material of the same printed book as a reference. You may cite the e-book just the way you would do with the printed book. This applies not only to your bachelor thesis but to all publishable content. Just make sure you get the edition and the page references, pp, right (if any).


Is it OK to only invite one of three co-authors of a previous joint paper to do another joint paper? I have co-authored one paper with Professor A, PhD student B and PhD student C. B left the best impression on me as the most friendly, productive and hard-working. Now, I want to do a joint paper again. Same as last time, the subject is not in A's area of expertise (nor B's or C's), though it's highly related, but I am hesitant to work with A as he tends to rush and push to publication before getting the paper to perfect (or very near perfect), and he is usually busy so I doubt that he will spend much time on it anyways. C is OK, but probably can't contribute much to the paper. Besides, I think two authors may suffice and be optimal.

Now, A is B's adviser (maybe C's too) and was my undergraduate mentor. I don't want to induce any hard feelings to A and C if they find out they, but not B, are left out of this joint venture. In the end, I did present my draft to A and gave glimpse of it in a presentation where A, B and C were present. Another reason why I choose to work with B who is a PhD student is (this may sound silly) because I think this will actually help her career, as opposed to working with a professor or working alone, as I don't intend to pursue an academic career and am just doing this for fun. Plus, the second author can act as a serious peer reviewer, so this will benefit my paper as well.

How should I do about this?

It is absolutely fine to not work with A and C as long as

all the work and ideas in your paper are yours (and B's).
your preferences on who to work with are based on academic and research skills, Making decisions based on their race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, etc. is discriminatory and hence unacceptable.

I feel it is dishonest to add A and C to the list of authors in your paper just to keep them happy.


"Soft" ways to contribute to the research community in a new and growing field I am doing my PhD research in a new multidisciplinary field within Computer Science. It is new in the sense that there are still no tools/implementations publicly available and several workshops co-located with different conferences. Many papers targeting this new area, have been published in different conferences and journals.  As a PhD student and besides the scientific contributions, I would wonder what other soft things I can do for the field?

So far I have developed a tool for one of the main models in the field. I am documenting it to make it public. I thought about maintaining a bibliography. but not sure how beneficial it is.

You should remember that as a Ph.D student, the instruments at your disposal are limited. Having said that, maintaining a bibliography is a useful way to collect all relevant information in one place, especially given the multidisciplinary nature of the area. If you do this though, be careful to

make sure things are always kept up-to-date. There's nothing more annoying than a half-baked reference page
Be very liberal in what you include in the bibliography. It shouldn't be perceived that you're being a gatekeeper for the area.
If possible, provide some structure to the bibliography: sections, maybe some annotation, etc. Depending on how web-savvy you are, you might be able to create a form for people to enter information in themselves.

The primary benefit for you will be access to the entire body of work in the area, and some credit for maintaining the page. There will undoubtedly be name recognition benefits if you are perceived not only as the librarian, but as an expert on the topic.


What happens if you don't get tenure? I've heard different takes on what the convention is when an Assistant or Associate Professor does not achieve tenure. Can you just remain at your existing position and continue to teach and conduct research? Can you reapply for tenure again later? Is it more conventional to leave the institution for another tenure-track position at another institution?

This is in regard to US universities, but perhaps an answer articulating what is common in different countries is best.

In my experience (in math, in the US), no you cannot remain in your current position (for long).  While tenure is historically a means of protection for faculty from political forces, and thus a tool to provide academic freedom, pre-tenure periods often function as a sort of long-term provisional hiring period to make sure you're right for the university/department and getting tenure is sort of stamp of certification of your worth to the department and university.  So if you fail to get tenure, the reason is typically because someone decides you're not performing well enough in your current position.

That said, the university will typically give you another year in your current position which gives you time to look for jobs elsewhere.  People who don't get tenure usually move somewhere else, or have trouble getting another job.

Note: Sometimes people go up for tenure early (before the specified date in your contract).  I don't know what the standards are for consequences of not getting tenure then--when I've seen people go up early, they got tenure.