What are the challenges in changing a PhD supervisor after 2/3 of PhD is done I am doing good in my Ph.D. but I do not like my supervisors. The following are the reasons:

I am forced to work in a very specific area and there is almost no room for creativity. Any related idea which goes against the "vision" of my supervisor is dealt with fierce questions. If I answer them all, then I am told that until someone else with reputation does it, I should not try it as I do not have a proven track record. I am forced to continue on previous PhDs, which I did and have satisfied. But I wish to explore my ideas too.
My supervisor openly claims that he is a great researcher and expects students to worship him. He has lots of grants and publications, but I am amazed as to how little he knows in the field. I can say this because I have interacted with very good and humble professors from top universities and seen the depth in their knowledge. In comparison, my supervisor is chalk, if they are cheese.
My supervisor is cunning. He maneuvers students and gives veiled threats if required. Forces me to publish in conferences which his friends or colleagues organize, even if they are not good.
He forced his Post Doc student as my another supervisor in order to fast track his career, without any kind of discussion with me.

After two years, I have lost interest in my work and the passion has gone. All I do is push myself because I need to graduate. My creativity has no room and I hardly learn anything new. But on paper, I am progressing well because my supervisor had his way with me.

Now I have no interest in further continuing this association. I need to either quit my Ph.D. or look for another supervisor. If I do work with another supervisor at this stage, what could be the challenges?
Edit: I resolved my issue. I had a talk with the Dean. He told me about other students facing similar issues and offered me to help. He seems to have had a chat with my supervisor and suddenly I am offered more freedom. Another student had just switched because of the same reason and therefore my current supervisors had to change their attitude as this became a recurring phenomenon. The role of my primary supervisor has been substantially reduced. I have more say in what I wish to do and where I want to publish. And if I still do not like my environment it is possible to switch and school will help.

I have seen a lot of people switching advisers during my PhD. There are a few challenges I think you will face:

Your adviser, knowing his personality, won't let you go easily. He might tell other faculty there will be consequences if they take you as a student. It depends on his relationship to his colleagues and position within the department if he can make good of his threats. You should choose your future adviser from the faculty he cannot influence. If that is not possible, be prepared to transfer to a different graduate school. You may need to take a qualifier exam there again. They could also be happy to admit you if you have taken it already at your current school.
If you need to switch to a very different field, you should expect another 2-3 years as a beginner. You would graduate later.
You seem to be already burnt out. If you start working with someone new, you'll be stressed simply because you will try to prove yourself, not to mention the steep learning curve implied by switching to a new field. It would be a good idea to take a vacation before.
Some departments have rules that limit the availability of funding from teaching assistantships once you have been long enough in the program. Make sure your new adviser can support you.
If you have family, you have to make sure they understand that you were forced to switch advisers and you might finish the PhD later.

Given what you wrote, I believe switching advisers would be a good move. If you move within the same department, you have the advantage of knowing already who are the best advisers. If you don't, talk to their students and postdocs before switching.


Is it appropriate to give university lecturers Christmas cards? Are there any issues or concerns a with student giving lecturers Christmas cards? I am apprehensive that the religious connotations of Christmas might offend some card recipient(s). However, if the card is appropriate and professional I can't imagine why it would raise concerns. I wanted to gather the opinions of others in the same position as my possible card recipient(s).

Is it appropriate for students to give university lecturers Christmas cards?

The religious connotations of word "Christmas" can be confusing and depend on the region. My UK university has Christmas and Easter vacations while most US universities now call these winter and spring vacations. In the US, a Christmas card implies a religious celebration while a holiday card is secular. In the UK, a Christmas card that says "Merry Christmas" would be seen as secular and the same as a US card saying "Happy Holidays". There are of course religious Christmas cards in the UK.

The level of appropriateness (or inappropriateness) of a Christmas card depends on the level of religiousness and the recipient. While I would not say giving a secular holiday card is inappropriate, it is pretty rare. I teach probably 500 students a year and I receive on average of 1 holiday card a year from my students.


"If multiple papers are accepted for presentation, each paper requires a separate registration fee." -> Why? I have seen several conferences that specify:

  If multiple papers are accepted for presentation, each paper requires a separate registration fee.

Why? Is that purely financially motivated (e.g. an author with 2 submissions may cause another potential attendee not to come, or cost of submitting the paper to the publisher), or does it aim to reduce multiple submissions from the same author? Are there other reasons?

For most conferences, the primary costs are:

Venue
Catering
Society fees
Program and proceedings
Keynote / scholarship travel sponsorship

The price of these is wildly variable depending on the arrangements that have been made.  At the low end, consider a conference using university meeting rooms, asking people to go out for lunch on their own, using volunteer labor and keeping program and proceedings electronic.  This can be extremely cheap, on the order of a couple of dollars per attendee, even for a rather large meeting.

When a conference meets in a hotel, the expenses go up like crazy.  For a week-long conference in a major city hotel, the venue and catering expenses can easily run as high as $500/person.  These are often required to be booked far in advance, based on the number of people expected to register for the conference, and there may be limited flexibility to change these numbers if attendance falls short.
Hotels also frequently ask a conference to have attendees book in the hotel, and will ask for "insurance" from a conference in the form of a commitment to get at least a certain number of rooms booked and to pay for unbooked rooms if the conference falls short of that commitment.  This can add thousands of dollars of expenses.  These factors can operate at universities too, which sometimes demand high venue and catering fees even when their own professors are organizing.

With an expensive venue, then, a conference's organizers can thus get very nervous about whether they will have enough money to cover their anticipated expenses, if registrations are less than anticipated.  This is especially the case if the conference has had difficulty meeting its expenses in the past, and may be in trouble with its sponsoring society as a result.

Forcing people to register per paper is one response to trying to avoid this type of shortfall.  Not only is there the fee, but if you're registering a second time, you're more likely to send a second person from the group, who will likely have their own hotel room.  For a conference that may be facing a shortfall in its hotel commitments, a single registration easily can be worth $2000 in increased income and decreased hotel penalty.

Personally, I still don't approve: I think that a conference operating at such a razor's edge would do better to take other approaches to trying to make up its budget shortfall.  I can understand, however, why the organizers of respectable conferences sometimes choose to do it: it's not that they are getting rich, but that they are trying to keep from going bankrupt while they make their venue rich.


Attending job talks when you are leaving the department I am leaving my current department in the next few weeks. We are currently in the mist of our hiring season and have 12 job talks and campus visits schedule before I leave. None of the positions we are currently trying to fill are explicitly the replacement position to mine and the areas of expertise of the candidates are pretty far removed from mine. We are a large enough department, that there will still be a reasonable sized audience and enough people for the candidates to talk to. Is it inappropriate to skip the job talks and not meet the candidates, unless they specifically ask to meet with me?

Impossible to answer well without knowing more and I don't think it is appropirate to post more on a public forum!

I think it really depends on your relationships with your colleagues who you are leaving behind. In some situations it is better to absent yourself from situations where people are looking forward to the future of your old department. In other situations your experience may be helpful and it may be supportive to your colleagues who you will leave, but I guess who you want to stay on good terms with and continue to support. (I have not exactly been in this situation before, but similarish ones)


What time of day should I schedule my thesis defense? With apologies for the attention-grabbing title: of course I am not actually asking you to tell me when I, specifically, should schedule my defense. But I have heard very plausible-sounding rumors that the time of day at which a PhD candidate holds their thesis defense can have an impact on the difficulty and even the candidate's chance of passing. For example, scheduling a defense just before lunch may mean the committee will ask fewer and less involved questions, because they will be anxious to finish so they can go eat. Similarly defending in the mid afternoon may lead to less complex questions because everyone is tired - or alternatively it could cause a more difficult defense because the committee members are in no hurry to get back to work. And so on; the rumors abound.

What I would like to know: is there is any research backing up the idea that there are better or worse times of day for a candidate to schedule their thesis defense? Any anecdotal experience from people who have sat on multiple PhD committees?

Of course I'm not claiming this should be a major influence on when one schedules their defense, but people do talk about it, so (as a scientist!) I can't help but wonder if there's any truth behind the idea.

First, I have never heard of any research backing up the idea that defenses will be more less successful based on the time of day the defense is held.

Second, the best time to defend is whenever your committee can actually make it. When I defended, my goal was to get get at least three of our four committee members in same physical room (one non-chair member could attend via video). Within a six-week window, I felt lucky to find any two hour-window to schedule the defense.

Finally, you are overthinking things. Pour your energy and concern into the content and remember that if your committee is encouraging you to defend, it's because they think you are ready. Surprises are unlikely.

Of course if you are in the enviable position of having to choose a time of day, I personally like defenses at the end of the work day so that you can head out with others — e.g., students, family members, maybe even committee members — for a celebratory post-defense drink or meal.


They shared the code, but then, I found key errors in their work. How do I criticize this in my research paper? Associate Prof. X is committed to reproducible research and makes his code available. He authors a paper with Dr. Y and others.

Dr. Y is the first author of the paper and the code is shared on Ass. Prof. X's website. It is clearly stated in the paper that the code produces the graphs in the paper.

I downloaded the code, ran the code and found it works well i.e produces the same graphs in the paper. However, the code was not descriptive and easy to understand (Apparently, the variables which makes it easy to read has been changed to something difficult to understand except with much effort and time). Anyway, I studied the code and was able to clearly understand the meanings of various parts of the code. I gave the variables their proper definitions while generating the same graphs

Now, I find the graphs for some figures are not provided, then mailed Ass Prof. X, who after a while informed me that first author Dr. Y will send the code. The code was sent and I was able to understand this paper.

Currently, I am about making an extension to this work. However, I observe there are some errors in several equations in the paper which adversely affects the behavior of some graphs! Furthermore, on a deeper investigation into the paper, some inferences and propositions were made based on some of the mistakes within the paper! At a time I tried contacting Dr. Y about something I wanted to know better about the paper but I didn't get a response.

The challenge I have now is, I want to present my own paper and as well make corrections to these mistakes since it directly extends this work. How do I handle this? Do I say for example: "We corrected equation (y) in [ref] and thus, the graphs behave like this?". Also, I am thinking that since I got the code for some of the graphs (via email), I should thank the authors for sharing the code (for those graphs). However, I am not sure this is appropriate as the public gets to know implicitly that the code for some of the graphs are not provided in the paper.

Note that, I appreciate and consider it as an obligation to be straightforward in my research!

I would think several times before using the word 'corrected', especially if I don't fully understand the code, as it seems from your question ("...I studied the code and was able to decipher the meanings of various parts of the code."). Understanding various parts is different from understanding it entirely, the latter being a prerequisite to improving upon it or correcting it.

However, if you are sure that mistakes exist in the code, you have two options:

(a) Point out those mistakes and share them with X and Y before trying to publish it. Once you publish, the credibility of their code goes down - if some parts are wrong others could be too. Therefore it is only fair that you convey the errors to them first. You aren't obligated to, but I think it's the right thing to do.

(b) If you're significantly extending the code, write your own-   it could be based on their code, and you can acknowledge that, but by writing your own code you take full responsibility for it, and are not propogating any errors inherent to the original code. In terms of quantum of work, I think this is more significant, and gives you more room to develop it for your particular purpose.


Mentioning times cited, F1000 citations in CV? I am applying for a faculty position and want to highlight the quality of my publications.

Are any of the following appropriate in an academic CV:

citation rate (citations/year)
F1000 Recommendations
separating a 'monograph' from other 'articles'?

If so, how should I do it?

For example, should I just put the information parenthetically at the end of the reference, like:

  Author (Year) Title, journal, vol, (> 10000 citations; 2 F1000 recommendations)

note: this question Should I put my h-index on my CV? is similar, and some of the ideas from that question apply here. However, it is not a strict duplicate because the h-index addressed there is a single metric for evaluating a candidate; my question relates to publication-level metrics, and which are useful to provide within the reference list of a CV.

Conventions may vary somewhat from field to field, but I'll answer with respect to the fields covered by F1000, where people tend to be more interested in citation metrics than in many other areas.

First of all, I wouldn't include F1000 recommendations. I don't think that people take F1000 all that seriously and listing this information smacks of trying too hard.  Under most circumstances, I'd suggest that one not include the citation counts either. As discussed in a recent question, the CV is not the place to do a sales job. If your citation metrics are strong, it is indeed good to bring this to the attention of the hiring committee, but you should do so in your cover letter and/or research statement rather than on your CV. Better yet, have one of your letter writers present this information. You could even get them to report the F1000 figures if that is really important to you. Nor would I list an h index on a CV, no matter how good it is. You could mention it in a cover letter, but again it is something that looks much better coming from one of your recommendation letters.

All of that said, if you really have a paper with >10,000 citations as in your example, this is so exceptional that it would merit a note alongside that paper on the CV. Even then, I wouldn't list citation counts for all papers but just for this one. Even a paper >1000 might merit mention on a CV if you are early career, but I wouldn't list anything in the low hundreds on the CV.

I'll conclude by noting that there is a nice economics paper by Harbaugh and To, entitled "False Modesty: When Disclosing Good News Looks Bad", that deals with almost exactly this situation. From their abstract:

  Is it always wise to disclose good news? We find that the worst sender with good news has the most incentive to disclose it, so reporting good news can paradoxically make the sender look bad. If the good news is attainable by sufficiently mediocre types, or if the sender is already expected to be of a relatively high type, withholding good news is an equilibrium. Since the sender has a legitimate fear of looking too anxious to reveal good news, having a third party disclose the news, or mandating that the sender disclose the news, can help the sender...


Use cases of org-mode as a scientific productivity tool for academics without programming needs I am a social scientist working primarily on Linux, but also at times required to work on Windows systems at the University. I have been looking to improve my productivity in the academic workflow which primarily consist of:

Collecting literature, reference-management, review notes etc. (currently zotero)
Outlining, writing long documents (currently Lyx)
Task, time and project management (currently misplaced and lost pieces of paper)

I can imagine that these steps apply to most academics, and many will share my interest in developing a more productive workflow. In my research on potential solutions to this issue, I keep being drawn by org-mode as a potential swiss-knife solution that can take care of all these needs, and be my mainstay as a personal-information-manager, organiser and text editor. But being built on emacs, I find it forbidding. I also have no need to program anything, so learning emacs seems like major overkill for my needs.

Could academics who use org-mode or a similar solution for organising their workflow give examples of how they use it? Also helpful would be an evaluation of productivity improvements that such users have themselves experienced, and the kind of productivity improvements that can be expected with a basic academic workflow described above. I am interested in evaluating whether it pays off in terms of productivity improvements in the face of what appears to be a massive learning curve, especially as I don't need any programming tools?

I am aware that this might lead to subjective opinions, so I would request academics with a similar work profile to reply based on their personal experience regarding the learning curve, possible benefits, example cases and perhaps alternatives they have found superior (preferably also cross-platform and open source).

I use Org-mode and AUCTeX (Emacs LaTeX package), to do all three tasks
you outline.  I have an Org folder that I sync across machines using
Dropbox, which I find to be a simple solution for someone who does not
use version control on a regular basis.

Organization

I separate my tasks into broad groups with each group getting its own
.org file.  For example, I have .org files for administrative tasks,
journal publications, service, research topics, and any major projects
that I am currently working on.

The structure of an .org file is relatively simple, for example a file to
track journal submissions, revisions, etc. may look something like this:

* Initial Submissions
* Accepted
* Rejected
* Revisions
* Book Chapters

Org-mode uses asterisks to denote levels of headings, and <Tab> to
fold and unfold the headings.  So expanding the revisions heading would
lead to:

* Revisions
** Paper 1
** Paper 2
   DEADLINE: <2012-05-04 Fri>

You can set deadlines for any task by pressing C-c C-d, which will
generate the the DEADLINE: line you see above.  Setting a deadline for
a task will make the task show up in the agenda view (accessed through
C-c a a), which is my main project planning tool for day to day
work inside of Org-mode.

You can also track the time you spend on tasks with C-c C-x C-i,
which will clock you in to a task and C-c C-x C-o, which clocks you
out.  The tracked time will show up in the agenda view and can be
useful for project planning or reporting.  You can also generate
separate standalone tables inside your .org files if you prefer a bit
more customization.

All of this can be done with a vanilla Org-mode install and no
customization.  I have my tasks set as multi-state TODO lists that I
can cycle from TODO->STARTED->WAITING->DONE->CANCELED.  I have my
keywords set in my .emacs configuration file with the following:

(setq org-todo-keywords
       '((sequence "TODO" "STARTED" "WAITING" "|" "DONE" "CANCELED")))

The "|" separates in process keywords from finished state keywords.
If you are looking for more elaborate reports, such as Gantt charts,
my answer to this question briefly discusses some of the options
available.

Outlining

For outlining and writing long documents, you can just create a new
.org file and outline using the * heading approach.  Org-mode makes it
easy to move headings around if you want to restructure your document
at any stage.  For example, if you had this outline:

* Intro
* Part 2
** Part 2a
** Part 2b
* Part 1
** Part 1a
** Part 1b

You realize that Part 1 should really come before Part 2 so you move
the cursor to the Part 2 heading and press C-<down arrow>, and Part
2 and all of its subheadings will move to the proper position.

* Intro
* Part 1
** Part 1a
** Part 1b
* Part 2
** Part 2a
** Part 2b

Depending on your needs, writing a paper based on the outline can be
done in much the same way.  Org-mode has support for LaTeX, both for
inline fragments and for environments.  Since you mention LyX, I would
imagine the transition to stand-alone LaTeX should not be too onerous.  The Org-mode LaTeX export does a fairly good job but if you have a document with a significant amount of LaTeX syntax, it may be better to just write the draft in LaTeX using AUCTeX, but this is beyond the scope of the question.

Reference Management

I use a combination of Org-mode and RefTeX (available with AUCTeX) to
manage my references and to make notes.  As mentioned in John
Moeller's answer this takes some non-trivial configuration.  I used
this setup almost verbatim to start my reference management, and I
have found that it works well.  This link was inspired by the same setup and may be useful for both reference management and writing drafts in Org-mode that contain extensive references.

I start with a master .bib file, that contains the bibliographic
material for each reference.  After adding updating the .bib file, I
use C-c ) to insert a new heading into my notes.org file.  The
customization will generate a heading with the title of the paper and
a link to the PDF of the paper.  For any notes I take on the paper, I
can use the rest of Org-mode's abilities to either have multi-heading
outline style notes as subheadings, or just write paragraphs separated
by a blank line.  The end result is an .org file with headings for
papers, textbooks, etc. and subheadings for each paper with links to PDFs and all my notes in a single file.

Tips for Starting Out

There are a few ways to help smooth the way to working with Emacs,
Org-mode, and AUCTeX.

Install Emacs 24 pretest instead of Emacs 23.  Emacs 24 has package
management included in the vanilla install which makes it much
easier to add packages without a lot of programming experience.  It
also has Org-mode included in the default install.  This link gives
instructions for a variety of operating systems.  I have been using it for awhile now and I have found it to be very stable.
Go through the Emacs tutorial, accessed via C-h t.  This will give
you the basics of navigating using the Emacs keys. It will likely
take some getting used to, especially how Emacs handles selection,
cutting, and pasting.  This will likely be the biggest hurdle if
you are used to the cutting/pasting/navigation in word processors.
Keep this reference card handy.  It has nearly all of the commands
that you will use on a daily basis.
For Org-mode specifically, look through the manual, but more
importantly look at the tutorials.  Specifically the general
introductions and the power users describe their setup sections
(the first two sections linked above).  These tutorials will
highlight the customizations made to the initialization file
(.emacs) for these users.  Even without elisp experience, you
should be able to find something close to your desired workflow and
be able to modify it with some trial and error.

When I started with Emacs and Org-mode I had very little experience
with Emacs.  A vanilla Org-mode install with no customization is still a powerful tool.  As you get more comfortable with working in Org-mode you can start to work on customization. Even with very little interest in programming there is a significant enough user base that someone may have already done something close to what you are looking for.

After I got comfortable with Org-mode, I started using Bernt Hansen's set-up with no
changes.  It is a bit intimidating on the whole as he has some extensive customizations, but he documents them well and explains almost everything he does.
Then after using it for awhile, I was able to modify
the initialization to something that better suited my workflow.  It
took some trial and error and a bit of extra time on the learning
side, but I believe that it has payed off in the long run.

Once you are comfortable with Emacs, I would also recommend the Emacs
wiki.  It has some descriptions of useful packages, some discussion,
and even some configuration suggestions to help build up your
initialization file.  If you ever get to the point in your setup where you think, "I wish I could do XXX", the odds are someone else has written a package that covers what you need.


Age of contacts for recommendation letters for tenure-track position I finished my PhD last month and now I am heading towards a non-tenure track position this year.

In a couple of years I want to apply to a tenure track position. The recommendation letters may be a mix of old and new - but I wonder what mix is most recommendable, if it matters to the committee at all. I would strongly prefer to give only new contacts for letters of recommendation.

What are your experiences, in particular, if you have been a search committee before?

The letters should all be new, even if they come from old contacts.

In particular, if your PhD advisor writes a letter, they should write a new letter.  Of course it can be a revision of their old letter, but it should include language about your more recent activities; otherwise, it gives the impression that your more recent activites are not significant enough for them to even notice.

As for the mix of old and new references, it doesn't really matter, except for yourPhD advisor.  You should choose whatever references will paint the best picture of you as a tenure-track faculty colleague.  A missing  advisor letter is generally a red flag -- it's part of your advisor's job to advocate for you on the job market, so if they don't, there must be a reason, and it might be you.  But that can be offset by sufficiently strong letters from others, and it matters less and less the longer you've been out.

(I have been on faculty search committees for many many years, including three years as chair.)


Potential postdoc advisor threatening to fire other postdocs Currently I am searching for a regular postdoc position. I visited a potential advisor some time ago. I had a good impression of the advisor except for one thing: he introduced one of his current postdoc to me and half-jokingly threatened to fire the current postdoc (said in my face and to the face of that postdoc) if the said postdoc couldn't improve his productivity.

Later the said advisor encountered funding problem and cannot hire me. Recently I asked him about the current status of his funding, he replied he was considering firing that postdoc so that he would have one open position.

I understand that, compared to PhD, postdoc positions emphasize performance much more. But telling a potential postdoc candidate about firing a current postdoc? I'm a bit scared. It sounds like a warning to me as well: if I get hired as a postdoc to replace the fired postdoc, I will get the same treatment. If the current postdoc survives and I get hired as well, this could create tension between the current postdoc and me. Is this something an advisor should tell his potential postdoc candidate? What does this tell about the advisor's personality?

Can a PI fire a postdoc?
Surely they can, and sometimes they really have to do so in order to save research money and do the best for the group.
Can PI signal to the postdoc that their performance is under review?
Yes. This is an honest thing to do. It gives postdoc a chance to improve their performance and fix things, before guns will fire.
Is it a good idea to tell this as a joke?
Absolutely not. The job contract is a serious personal matter. The discussion should be private and professional, not public and semi-serious.
What can we tell about PI's personality?
He cares about the performance of the group and he tries to manage it. He doesn't know/feel what is a professional way of doing it. Perhaps, he struggles to maintain a distance and tends to become a bit too friendly with people in his group. As a result, it is hard for him to communicate difficult decisions and unpleasant messages and he tries to disguise them as a joke.


What to write in application letter to address poor grades in Greek and Latin for classical archeology masters application? I am planning on applying to a Masters program in classical archaeology.

BUT I have a B average in Greek and Latin combined. However, I feel confident in my abilities and that because I had to work harder to firmly understand the languages that I will be a better teacher and be able to relate better to my future students.

What is a positive and effective way to address that in my letter?

Note: Unlike this question about overcoming a poor academic record in general, this question is about overcoming a specific deficiency in the introductory coursework that is considered essential for this area of study.

(The rest of my profile is as follows: I had one really bad semester when I transferred (all gen ed classes) and it totally screwed up my GPA. Since that bad semester I have built good professional relationships with faculty, done excellent work in classics, history and archaeology classes, presented several papers and did some independent studies (including one abroad on an archaeological field school). I have a clear vision of what I want to do for my MA thesis and beyond.)

As you stated a lot has changed since those unlucky days and you've achieved so many successes since then. IMO, write that you do not believe that the grade is a real indicator of your current status and as a proof of your claim you can reference your research and papers if it is available online.

Note: In case the professor of your archeology class would give you a recommendation letter it would be so valuable.


How to cite a website/manual where the authors are (mostly) unknown? For my thesis, I need to cite some pieces of software documentation. The website in question is the documentation of Kubernetes.

I'm fine with using @misc entries in my bibtex file, but obviously I need to fill in the author field.

Usually, when I can't find the author of a specific website, I look up the imprint at the bottom of the page. As the Kubernetes documentation doesn't provide any imprint, there is only © 2017 The Kubernetes Authors or Copyright © 2017 The Linux Foundation® at the bottom of the page.

To me, it looks a little bit odd to have "The Kubernetes Authors" in my bibliography. What should I do?

You can cite using @misc without Author field. To to that, you need to include a key field. Here is an example:

@misc{KubernetesManual2017,
    title = {{Kubernetes Manual}},
    howpublished = "\url{please put the url}",
    year = {2017},
    note = "[Online; accessed 04-Dec-2017]",
    key = "KubernetesManual2017",
}


Oral presentation or poster presentation, is it always our choice? (paper submission) I submitted a paper for a conference and I was just wondering since it's a paper submission is it sure that it will be an oral presentation or they can still ask for a poster presentation?

That would depend on the conference itself. You need to read the fine print or ask the program committee. Some will either just accept or reject a paper (as corrected, of course). Some have separate poster sessions with separate committees and a different criteria for acceptance. There is too much variability to make a clear answer.

However, you should not depend on that happening at any conference. It is possible that if your paper is rejected, one of the reviewers might suggest submitting it as a poster. That of course would depend on due dates.


Is it realistic for a postdoc to negotiate for a private office? If a postdoc requests a private office when negotiating an employment contract, is there a possibility the request would be granted?

The big issue in having a private office is available space.

Most departments have a limited amount of space available, and what is given to any particular research group is correspondingly restricted. There may not be a private office available to the group, in which case it wouldn't be possible to accommodate such a request. In addition, if there's a more senior person, then usually such an individual would have a "higher claim," so you might not get one.

Of course, if you never ask, you'll never know.


What should I write when I send a CV by email? Sometimes for different purpose like taking new courses or job they tell to send a CV through email. But what should I write in body when I attach my CV?

You should

Say why you are sending the CV.
Thank them for considering your application (or doing whatever they're doing).
Keep the body of the email relatively brief.


How to interpret quality of computer science journals that charge publication fees? I usually publish my research work at conferences in the field of Computer Science, I do not have so many papers and the question that I am doing here it might sound foolish for some (or maybe a lot) of researchers in different fields. A situation has arosen when a colleague of me wants to publish a co-join work that we have done in a CS journal. For my experience conferences charge a fee for authors when their work is accepted, but I have some doubts about the fees that I found for some journals in the field:

Some journals I have seen are free and have an open access so that everybody could read or access a research work
Other journals charge some fees for accepted works that range from 200 USD to 600 USD, they are indexed in Scimago
Other journals that are indexed in Scimago in quartiles Q1 and Q2 can charge like almost 2000 dollars for accepted article, I have seen those in an Elsevier table, or maybe am I wrong?

I mean according to some PhD students that I have talked, they told me that usually good journals do not charge publication fees, but why for example the aforementioned editorial does that? I mean sometimes a journal could be accused of predatory because it charges for publishing, but it is not almost the same with some respectable journals in the field that do the same?

Bottom line, should one aim to publish only on free fee for publishing journals? Or one should better look out for the quality of the articles accepted within a journal instead of the fees charged for publishing?

From a comment of yours, you seem to be specifically interested in the Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society.

From the website it appears that this journal is part of a set of Springer journals with an open access policy (Springer Open). This is also clearly stated in the fees and funding page:

  Open access publishing is not without costs. Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society therefore levies an article-processing charge of £695/$1085/€885 for each article accepted for publication.

Among the reputable journals there are usually three different publication policies:

Closed-access journals. Authors don't pay a dime, or they pay only if their paper is longer than a certain number of pages. Here the publication fees are covered by those -- typically libraries -- who subscribe to the journal. Only the subscribers can access the journals' content. Actually, many publishers require institutional subscribers to buy the subscription to a large number of journals, with very high subscription costs (can be in the range of 30 k$/yr).
Journal with mixed access. Here the authors choose what type of access they want. If they opt for closed access, they don't have to pay, but their paper will be accessible only by subscribers; if, instead, they opt for open access, their paper will be accessible by anybody but they have to pay a fee, which can be as high as 2-3 k$. The fees should, in principle, pay the article-processing costs (something that is questioned by many people).
Open-access journals. Here authors have always to pay a fee which covers the article-processing costs. The articles are however free to access to anybody.

I would highlight two points from the fees and funding page that may be of interest to you. First:

  If the corresponding author's institution is a Member, the cost of the article-processing charge is covered by the membership, and no further charge is payable.

And the final paragraph:

  It is the wish of the JBCS team that all quality articles will be
  published in the journal independent of the funding capacity of the
  authors. Thus, if the authors are unable to pay the APC charge, we
  recommend that they contact the editors. The JBCS team will provide
  support to find alternative ways of funding. In particular, a grant
  from the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee helps sponsoring the
  publication of many JBCS articles.


Why are textbook authors often not the most famous/cited researchers? I am not sure if this is generalizable to all subjects. What I have noticed in some of the sciences, for example biology, ecology, and environmental sciences, is that the authors of the most used textbooks are not very highly cited scientists. Perhaps they have a book which is well cited but not used as a primary textbook, however it is not always the case, as it depends on the level of the book. Of course, books written for undergraduates are not necessarily cited in research papers. Regardless of the writing skills, which are of course important, I would prefer a textbook to be written by the most expert of a field and not just by the best educator or writer, who might lack in depth knowledge. Of course, a combination of both would be ideal.

I would expect that the maximum experts of a topic would also write a book which is heavily used in class or in research, but it does not seem to be the case.

Is it because researchers with a lot of citations (i.e. experts) are mostly dedicated to writing papers rather than books? Or is it because they work at  the edge of knowledge and are not interested or capable of writing books for rookies?

You have already mentioned most of the things that are going on.

Someone who is good at doing research is not necessarily someone who is good at writing textbooks. These are different skills.
There are only 24 hours in a day, and an hour spent on writing textbook is an hour not spent on research. A person becomes a top-researcher by being strategic in the way (s)he manages her or his time. That often means not writing textbooks (see point below).
The "value" of a book differs a lot from (sub-(sub-))discipline to (sub-(sub-))discipline. Some value books (but even those not necessarily textbooks), and in some writing a book is basically a waste of time.


Referencing next section to avoid confusion I am writing one research article in the field of biology. I want to refer some concept which I am going to describe in next sections but have not described in current sentence (or previous sections) to avoid confusion. I felt it will break the flow of the article if I explained that concept in previous sections. For example,

Section 1: Some Title
... We extended this task by performing XYZ (explained in section 2.3) which will help in better understanding of this issue...
...
...
Section 2.3: XYZ
This method performs ...

I have seen few papers with such referencing. I was just wondering if it is logically fine or there is some alternative style.
This is not similar to the content which we put in supplementary data. And also this is NOT a problem of keeping it in Materials and Methods. It is just complex concept which will need separate section for its clarification.
I have found one similar post but answer was not satisfactory and slightly unrelated to above situation.

It is indeed fine to reference forwards in a document. If this weren't the case, knowing when to read a specific appendix would be very awkward... In some journals it's even the norm to provide some forward references in the introduction to explain how the rest of the paper will be organized.

Also see
Is it formal to inform readers that a point will be discussed later in the chapter?


Is it okay to upload the PDF of my non-open access papers in academia.edu or research gate? Is it legal to upload a PDF of my non-open-access papers to research networks, such as ResearchGATE and Academia.edu?

I am pretty sure that it could cause some problems, because normally people should buy them from the publisher. But I have seen many researchers put the PDF of their (non-open access) papers for free there so as to get more citations.

The current best source for answers to this question is the SHERPA/RoMEO database, which categorizes all journals by their policies.

This tells you, for most respectable journals, what you are legally allowed to do in terms of posting versions of the paper on other sites (this may, of course, be modified by local laws; for example, documents produced by US government employees are not generally protected by copyright).

For a large number of journals, you are at least legally allowed to post preprints.  In such a case, I see no advantage in flouting the law by publishing the journal's final version instead: I believe a preprint is generally sufficient to make your work more readily accessible and gain you the open access citation benefits.

As for journals that do not allow you to post preprints: you need to make your own moral and personal judgement on whether you will submit to such journals at all, and if so, the degree to which you will comply with the law.


How and from where to get feedback for my preprint? I have worked upon a project that estimates the wind power generation potential in India using simulation techniques and polynomial regression. I have written the first draft. However, everyone in my college told me that they can't review these domains as they have no knowledge about them.

From where can I get feedback on this preprint? Can anyone reading this suggest me how to improve this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Link to the article

Try to get someone who can give you general feedback, even if not an expert in the field (is the paper logical, easy to read, well written, etc.)

Also, where is this publication aimed?  What journal?  My quick take is a lower level "energy resources" type journal.

My quick reactions:

English is good (better than many science papers from East Asians).
Paper is readable, not contorted by academese.  (This is helpful in general but especially if you have a multidisciplinary topic or something with public policy implications.)  That said, you should tighten up some things like the "and so on".
I would not use an angled pie chart.  It screams novice PowerPoint user trying to look cool.  Use a flat pie chart instead.
In addition, this is not vital, but I would urge to try to organize the chart better.  For instance use different shades of blue or grey for the fossil fuels.  Shades of green for renewable (and if you can split to biomass, hydro, and WIND) that would be good.  I guess you can leave nuclear since it is not really renewable or fossil fuel.  Maybe yellow or lavender or red or black (like the radioactive colors).  Think about how you organize the slices also.  Probably the fossil fuel first (clockwise), with the slices in size order.  Have renewables last, with slices in size order (maybe emphasize wind with a bold, perhaps).  Nuclear can be in between the two. It is sort of in between the two in concept anyways (extraction based so not renewable but very long lived with waste reprocessing).  Also zero carbon but some other non-green aspects.   This is not necessary.  But just nice for graphs to be easily read to extract info (not scanning each sector with eye darting all over page).
I doubt the 24% renewables. Too high.  Check some other sources, please.
Add a graphic (and discussion) in the intro showing rate of growth of Indian electrical demand.  I was under the impression that population has been growing and also country being electrified.  You want a graphic with some decent time scope.  Maybe 1950 to 2050.  Check the Shell and BP yearly energy documents (there may even be one).  Failing that, I bet there is some India specific study that has this.  Want to show "been growing a lot".  Expected to grow more.
The resource exhaustion graph (figure 2) is laughable (sorry).  Predicting fossil fuel exhaustion is very difficult because we find more and get better tools to extract it.  Actually predicting peak coal/gas/oil is very difficult.  Your graph is way too pessimistic.  See the history of the R/P ratio for instance.  We are at about 50 years right now and it has actually grown since the 1970s (pure exhaustion would mean we had already run out, but we actually have more reserves now than we did before, even more reserves versus annual demand).
These issues in the introduction are not critical to your paper (which is on estimating wind potential in India).  But if you put stuff out that is wrong, it is distracting.  I would edit the length down (for a publication, but OK for a thesis).  But in any case, tighten up the logic.
I don't know much CFD or other computer simulation so I can't comment much  on them.  (I won't have even detected obvious issues because I just didn't weed through it.)  Get a general MechE or computer science person to look at it.
Also consider having an economist (or resource economist) look at the simulations.  Not for the economics per se but just the logic of the modeling.  They do a lot of modeling and can opine on your overall approach and communication. Then have them look at the whole paper.  They are probably more the audience than CFD crowd.
Towards the beginning of the technical (2) section, you talk about 'setting up a turbine'.  Reads like you physically built a turbine or test device.  Do you mean simulated?
Consider to add a block diagram for the sections of the project.  It's not that complicated and your explanation goes through it OK.  But it will just help guide the reader.
There seems to be something "off" in your conclusions and intro.  I thought we were going to get an overall estimate of wind production for India but it seems like it is restricted to one area.  And I don't readily see how you extrapolate that to country-wide results (considering wind variation and land use availability).  I suspect this would be a much bigger project than you planned.  But just make it clear to the reader that you're not delivering that.  Confused me.  You can still use some of the country-wide needs and have some final comments on implications.  As motivation.  But make it a little bit more clear, you have a much smaller scope.
The conclusion seems a little too strong to me.  I would water it down a bit.  You haven't really done a full country study so I don't see how you can much such a strong stance.  I would make the conclusion more about the method ("CFD can be used to model windmill potential" or the like).

Maybe say "Initial indications from this study suggest that wind power can grow in India but will be challenged to supply the countries large electrical needs.  However, a deeper study, including economics, land use issues, and wind variation by locations would be required to quantify how much wind can help."

[Even this may be too strong.  Might be wiser to just say "expanded use of CFD similuations can be a valuable part of a multidisciplinary effort to truly determine the medium term potential for wind power in India.  Such an effort would need to also incorporate added wind data, land use availability and input on economics and regulations, as well as compatibility with the Indian power grid.]


Phd at same uni as MSc, possible offer but would like to change topic/group if possible I need some advice on how to diplomatically handle this situation:

I will submit my master's thesis in a few weeks, and I am pretty sure that I want to do a PhD afterwards. Research is what I want to do.

I have gotten a "maybe" from my current advisor (Prof. "A"), as in stay for a few months as an intern to extend/publish the work (minimally paid) and we'll talk again about a PhD (this is not specific to me, he did this with all his PhDs). However, there is a different Prof. "B" that does research on some other, more interesting topics, and if I could choose I would probably want to do my PhD in his research area. Although Prof. "B" knows me (positively) from a previous project, he'd probably also want me to intern at their group for a few months before making an offer. It is only during the course of writing my thesis that I realized that long-term the topics in Prof. "B"'s group actually interest me more.

The question now is:

How do I handle this situation, and maximize my chances of getting a PhD offer without upsetting anyone? I really don't know how to approach this situation, and I don't want to seem uninterested before I have something official. Do I talk to Prof. "B" in secret? What would I ask him? What do I do if Prof. "A" asks me to sign a contract for these next few months? Should I wait and apply for US unis anyways, regardless of my average GPA (see below)?

Some more info:

I am at a top-tier European university. PhD candidates are handled as employees and usually hired by the respective professors themselves. Candidates usually finish their MSc first, it's not possible to apply for a PhD position without having an MSc. Often, students working on their master's thesis will stay on with their advisor if the thesis is good enough. I'd say about 50% of PhDs get hired this way.
My grades are OK, but not stellar. Depending on the conversion, I'm at around 3.3/4.0, which is pretty much exactly the average of all graduating MSc students here. The university is known for not inflating grades, but this number still doesn't look too good.
I'm not too keen on applying to other universities: Most of the higher ranked universities are in the US, and I'd have to wait until December in order to apply for next year. Also, that would cost quite a bit of money, take more time, and most of the top unis have GPA minimums that are above mine (e.g. MIT has a 3.6 minimum).

Two partial answers:

It's not a problem for you to ask Prof. B about the chances of you doing a PhD for him. Even if it is in "secret". You are looking for employment, and you're not obligated to tell prospective employers about the other positions you are looking at. Any professor will assume that their MSc students apply for several (PhD or industry or both) positions, especially if the professor has given them just a "maybe" for continuing with a PhD.
If you get a positive answer from Prof B., I can't imagine there would be a problem saying to Prof. A: "I've been thinking, and I would prefer to do my PhD with Prof. B because I am more interested in researching Topic X, which his/her group is doing". If Prof. A's reaction to that is getting angry, you don't want him/her as your PhD supervisor or collaborator anyway.


What to do about an important typo mistake in my submitted conference paper? I just noticed there is an important typo mistake in my recently submitted conference paper. Actually it is like inserting a "-" where it shouldn't be and of course the whole algorithm might not converge if you use the above "-" in the formula! Well, if the reviewers try to dig out the mathematical details leading to that specific formula he might notice that it was a typo, otherwise he might claim that the algorithm shouldn't work as it is not stable because of that "-"!!

Anyway, as the submission has closed, i contacted the conference chairs to update the submission with that only change and they said not possible!
I also considered putting that in arxiv, but it'll be permanent and I cannot do any future modifications in case!

What about putting the correct version of the paper in my university home page?
Is it fine?
Do you generally advise that? I mean if the paper gets rejected, how high is the chance someone else use it in his/her work and publish it earlier than me? is it risky?

p.s: The results and conclusion and the claims are all made correctly and regardless of that typo mistake

What you should do is to e-mail the organizers to tell them about it. Then, either they will let you replace the paper with a new version or they will not.

By the way, it happens quite often that papers contains some minor errors. Some reviewers will notice them while other will not notice them. It depends on how much time each reviewer spends on your paper and how attentive they are when reading your paper.


Is it okay to publish your entire work of PhD in low tier? I am a PhD student works in theoretical computer science(Algebra). I have been working on my PhD project from last five years. I am very much interested in  my work. During my Ph.D there were not collaborator were there other than my research supervisor. I struggle a lot during my Ph.D as problem finding was very tough, solving also and then writing. I even did not find the course work which I did any helpful. I was also not allowed to work outside my university I don't know why. Now at the end of my Ph.D I come to know the value of collaboration.

I have studied most of things in Ph.D. at my own. I come up with results and written those with the help of research supervisor. I have worked very hard in my Ph.D. despite of that I am not publish a single paper in top tier. All of my research paper are in low tier. I will be graduating soon.

According to my research supervisor, PhD is to train a student not to publish something in top tier. This is true for all of his Ph.D students that they publish in low tier.

I am worried about post-doc and Job after my Ph.D as many of the students in my field are publishing at top tiers. I can publish research paper at my own but not in top tier.

Question : Is it okay to publish your entire work of PhD in low tier?

Back in the old days, it was quite common for mathematics and theoretical computer science PhD students to graduate with zero publications.  Their research contributions, while valid, were not significant enough to be published.  This isn't so true now, principally because there are many more low-tier conferences and journals to publish low-significance results, so the bar of significance to be published has gone down.

As far as the goals of a PhD are concerned, as long as you have done enough research, it's a valid PhD.

However, the job market is not so friendly.  It's useful here to bring out the sports analogy.  Getting a permanent academic job is like getting to play on a major league baseball team (or a first division football team).  Getting a PhD is like becoming competent in a minor league (or lower division) team.  Not everyone who starts out playing professional baseball (or football) makes it to the top, and you need talent and luck as well as hard work.

Most people who finish a PhD don't have the right combination of talent and luck to land a permanent academic job, just because there are fewer jobs than people with PhDs.

In the current job market, in order to land a permanent academic job where research is a significant portion of your duties, you need research results that can be published in a higher-tier venue.  If you don't get them as a grad student, you might get them as a postdoc, and it even happens that people get them doing research nights and weekends while working at a non-academic job, or a teaching-only academic job.

But, just as the sports analogy suggests, while there are things you can do that will help your chances of making it to the major leagues, there is nothing you can do that will guarantee (or even make it highly probable) you make it to the majors.


How to schedule PhD defense Currently it is my job to schedule (Date+Time) my PhD defense which shall take place in approx. 2 months from now. Hence, I have to ask all committee members about their availability. How should I approach this task:

Using a tool like doodle. I worry that this is too "modern" for some committee members.
Proposing some dates and hoping that all members will accept one or more dates?
Asking for their availability and trying to find an intersection set. But what if there is no intersecton set with respect to their time?

Any help is appreciated

Scheduling anything with committee members is a big pain. The way I scheduled my defense and comps was to just send a doodle poll (like you mentioned) and have them select all the dates. Two of my committee members were very nice and checked all the dates going through almost 4 weeks and two of them never responded or even clicked the link. I just used these dates to check the availability for a conference room in the dept. and sent a final set of 4/5 days to the ones who didn't respond. After sending that a few times and reminding one of them in person, I just scheduled it on a day that I thought was OK and went ahead with that. Everything worked out great and even the person who never responded didn't protest when I picked the time and date. Good luck o
n this. I will celebrate the fact that I never have to do this again :)


Is a 12-month open access mandate compatible with a 12-month embargo period? The conditions of my research grant say that I must ensure open access to the peer reviewed publications describing project results by making them available in a repository "within twelve months of publication" (the accepted manuscript is enough).

Springer's conditions for the embargo period say "Authors may self-archive the author’s accepted manuscript of their articles on their own websites. Authors may also deposit this version of the article in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later."

Are these two things compatible? My understanding is that they are, because the day that comes exactly twelve months after publication is both the last day that is "within twelve months of publication", and the first day that is "12 months after official publication or later", so by making the publication available exactly that day I would be complying with both the funding agency and the publisher. But not being a native English speaker, I'm not 100% sure.

You might be able to ask your librarians to help you with this. For example, I know the University of Cambridge's have a program with which you can submit your work after which they'll take care of checking the requirements.

Given that you're at most one day in the wrong, however, I wouldn't worry too much - you're definitely working in the spirit of the rules.


Journal paper published without correction of errors I notified a journal prior to publication that there were errors in a paper. This was submitted around 3 weeks ago, the review process was quick. On Thursday I was given 24 hours to make a list of corrections to the final version I was sent. These were done but then I noticed a few errors after and emailed a revised version along with a document outlining and explaining changes. I had an email today to say the paper has been published (early access version) but its the version with the errors.
The email states changes to text can no longer be made. But they published this after I notified them of errors. This seems to have been rushed.
I emailed back within a few minutes of getting this email today but I expect I won't get a response until Monday now, so I have a weekend of worrying. I didn't expect the paper to be published at a weekend, it makes communication more difficult.
What is likely to happen now? Are changes likely or will these be denied?
I didn't see the version after they made edits, which their communication led me to believe I would, particularly as they were asking me to make a lot of changes. Nonetheless I emailed them before this was published to correct errors. It puts me off publishing with that particular journal again.

You have probably done all you can do at the moment. What the journal is willing to do is up to them.
But it may be that the "early access" version can't/won't be changed but a later final version will have the corrections.
Longer term, if you still have issues with the errors it may be possible to at least have an errata page published.


Do more people earn BAs or BSs in Linguistics? I'm interested in the proportion of BAs vs BSs awarded in linguistics in the United States, but it would be interesting to see these numbers for any field really. I haven't been able to find such stats, so even just a link to where these numbers might be found would be very appreciated.

When I was studying linguistics and trying to decide BA or BS, my professors said the BS was not as common because the majority didn't want to take the additional science based classes required. I do not have specific stats. I received my BA in '98 from U of Utah.


Advisor professor asking me for the source code of my dissertation in order to be used by another student I finished my master's degree (Computer Science) a short time ago, and I don't currently plan to continue my academic studies.

My adviser asked me for the source code of the application I developed for my final paper (and for which I received a perfect score) in order for one of students they currently advise to continue my work as part of their bachelor's final project.

This question is similar to this one Advisor professor asks for my dissertation research source code. The difference is that my work will be used (continued?) by another student as part of their final paper.

Should I do this or is there any reason for me to be concerned about this?

Update

To provide some clarification. I was not paid for the work that I did for my paper. (however I also did not pay for my master studies in case this matters). I put a significant amount of time into this (by my standards at least) around 5 months. Also, my paper was not submitted in an article, journal etc. It was only submitted to the university (without the code), and then I defended my work in front of a committee. This paper/project is the work based on which the diploma is given. The mark received for this is noted on the diploma.

In the end decided to make the repository public (with a license).
Thanks for all the answers, they made me realize that learning is based on sharing.

You developed the code as part of your curriculum. It's quite possible that therefore, the source code belongs to the university anyway. This does depend on the laws of the country your university is in.

Also, I don't see what you should be concerned about. Someone else building on your work is exactly how science is supposed to proceed. If I were you, I'd take the request as a compliment.


Not sure if a postdoc is for me. Terrible at quantitative methods I am a finishing PhD student in the field of cognitive neuroscience. During my PhD program I was underperforming than anyone else in my department (in my belief at least). Although I liked research, or at least some aspects of it, I had become so emotionally exhausted in the absence of support in many respects, and recently just wanted to leave academia as soon as I finish the degree. So, when I had started applying for postdoctoral positions in the last winter, thinking that I should at least give it a shot, I never ever expected that any reasonably-minded PI would show an interest in hiring me after looking at my CV. But surprisingly, several PIs wanted to interview me and I even got a few offers. (BTW I hope this can encourage some people who are depressed and discouraged just like I have been. I was in terrible shape in past years and needed medication at some point).

So, right now, I am considering the job offers thinking whether I really want to take up this opportunity. At the back of my mind I want to become successful again as an academic researcher although I am still feeling tired. I guess I like research in general, but I also have a serious math/stat anxiety, which is terrible. I did not have a solid training on math or stat in college (wasn't a STEM major) nor did I have experience as an RA or so like other people. I know that these are all lame excuses after all the years in the doctoral program. I am a very slow learner when it comes to quantitative aspects, and my advisor was not being really helpful in many aspects.

I think my strength as a researcher is that I can generate interesting and creative ideas. According to my advisor my works are creative. Also, I like to read others' papers and think about them in my head. I also like to write. Those things come naturally to me, although other people might also feel that way, and having a great skill set in coding and analyzing might be a lot more precious these days. Anyways, with all the job offers that I have to decide soon, I find myself worrying about whether I would be able to quickly pick things up in the new place, which is not a good sign. I will do my absolute best to strengthen my math and programming skills if I decide to give it another shot, but I am not sure if these things can be overcome. Also at this point, I might as well be happy outside academia.

I would like to hear what other people think about this situation. Thank you!

I am adding this after reading some comments below. Sorry if this was not general enough and considered off-topic. I am new to this StackExchange site and still figuring how to use it. My question, at a more general level, would be whether postdoctoral training can improve one's poor quantitative skills, especially given the fast pace of research that is required of a postdoc.
Thank you for all the great comments so far.

First of all, happy to hear you're doing better. Many people go through times in their academic career where they feel like utter frauds, it's unfortunately common.

To your question - I think the key point here is to be absolutely honest with any potential employer. Tell them your strengths and weaknesses and they will make the call on whether you will be a valuable addition to their group. If you tell someone that you would not be comfortable running quantitative analysis and rather focus on something else, and they take you, it would be unreasonable of them to later demand that you run quantitative analysis.

Similarly, if someone is willing to take you under the requirement that you learn these skills on the fly, you need to make a very honest assessment of your own capability to do so. If you can - go for it; if you feel like it'll be too much, politely decline and let them know that you're probably not the best fit for the position.

Good luck!


Are there any differences between Master's admissions and Ph.D admissions in the US? I notice that the majority of admission questions on this site regarding admissions specifically refer to Ph.D admissions. That being the case, are Master's applicants evaluated any differently in regards to focus on research, grades, letters of recommendation, etc.?  For instance, research potential is a big determining factor for Ph.D admissions I know, but the Ph.D is a research oriented degree. Is there the same focus on research potential for Master's students?

This is specifically focused on STEM fields, particularly the "E."

The difference is huge, at least in my field, computer science.  Master's programs are typically money-makers, with students paying full tuition.  Some programs are purely coursework; others require Master's theses or projects.

In contrast, PhD programs accept many fewer students, none of whom pay tuition, instead receiving stipends paid for by fellowships, teaching assistantships, and research assistantships.

Because of the difference in the size of these programs and who pays whom, PhD programs are far more selective.


Associate Professor to Assistant Professor Is it possible that an associate professor in one university be designated as assistant professor after a year in the same university? What could be the consequences of it?

Within one university this would be a demotion so it is possible but rare, and could happen if the appointment and ensuing titles were given by courtesy, i.e. the appointment is not a regular full-time appointment.  Rank associated with this courtesy appointment might then be tied to some specific commitments.

I’ve never seen this happen for a regular position: I would guess that such demotion of a regular faculty member would lead to dismissal or resignation.  For courtesy appointments my experience is that these are either renewed or not, but I know of one place where such a “demotion” is technically possible.


What latex template to use when you do not know the journal you are going to submit Usually distinct journals have their own templates for latex, some of them  require you to use specific format for pictures etc. However sometimes you write an article and you do not know what journal will be your target for submission. What temples do you use in such scenario? Do you have any custom ones or do you prefer one provided by some journal?

Duplicate of this question on TeX stacckexhange

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/514898/how-can-i-format-a-document-for-submission-to-analysis-journal/514906

My answer:

If the journal doesn't give you style files I suggest just vanilla arrticle class. If the paper is accepted they will format it. If not, you haven't cluttered it with formatting some other journal won't like.


Can anyone compare US and Singaporean higher education systems? On the surface, Singaporean university system looks exactly like US system.

Can anyone compare US and Singaporean higher education systems from their own experiences?

E.g.

Quality of lectures
Stress
Cooperation/friendliness of professors/supervisors/TAs
Campus culture
Etiquette
Creativity vs rote learning
etc.

I am interested in Computer Science.

Quality. Comparable, and certainly not inferior. The curriculum is not substandard and its graduates are able to meet international standards. You can expect to learn everything a US undergraduate will also learn, up to minor differences that depend on the department's unique specialties (this does not apply to graduate studies). For example, Singapore undergraduates are capable of passing the GRE.
Stress. Stress comes when you have high expectations for yourself and want to meet them. Accordingly, you can get as stressed or as not-stressed as you desire, by adjusting your expectations. This is no different from anywhere else in the world.
Professors/Supervisors/TAs. No different from elsewhere in the world. Professors are in general an approachable lot.
Campus culture. Within the class itself, the most important difference is that in Singapore, students don't participate that much during lectures. A lecturer who says something like "can anyone tell me what the significance of ____ theorem is" is likely to be met with silence. If students have problems which they need help from the professor, they're likely to approach the professor after class. Outside of class, attitudes tend to be pretty conservative. In the US a "free hugs" campaign might work; in Singapore, nobody is going to participate. You might have trouble making friends since you'll probably have to initiate the conversation (especially if you're not Chinese).
Etiquette. What is regarded as polite is generally transferable across cultures. Because Singapore is a mish-mash of cultures, Singaporeans are pretty accommodating, and you'll probably have no problems.
Creativity vs. rote learning. You already have a question about this.

If you're thinking about studying in Singapore, here're a few more factors to consider:

Singapore is one of the world's safest countries. Crime rates are extremely low. Every now and then there will be mass shootings in the US, including at university campuses, but those never happen in Singapore.
Singapore's public infrastructure is one of the world's best. Everywhere is easy to get to in Singapore. The high population density makes public transport sometimes crowded especially during rush hour, but it also means you will generally be able to e.g. find food at 11pm at night, get top-class medical care, and enjoy all sorts of entertainment. Singapore internet speeds are some of the world's fastest.
Singapore's university infrastructure is also excellent. In fact after having visited lots of universities, including several of the world's best (by THE / QS / ARWU ranking), I've not seen anything that beats Singapore's infrastructure. The lecture halls are well-equipped, well-maintained, and modern; the campus buses run frequently including on weekends; the libraries are stocked with floors upon floors of books, etc. It's as though the Singapore government knows its universities are not yet regarded as among the best in the world, but they're determined to make sure they have the facilities to get there.
Singaporean universities apparently operate with a Bell curve. That is, the average grade is a B. This might come as a culture shock if you're used to everyone in a class scoring 80+.
Staff-to-student ratio is relatively poor. There are tens of thousands of students.


Does a bad paper get rejected very fast and if a paper is under review for long time, should one expect at least reasonable review? My question is regarding applied Math journals (for example SIAM). Is there such a thing that a bad paper gets rejected very fast? Also if a paper is under review for more than 6 months, then should one expect at least a reasonable review (Although it may get rejected at the end)?

No.  There are tremendous differences across journals.  A "bad" paper can get rejected within hours after submission, or 6 months after submission.  Good papers can also get rejected within the same timeframe.  Some reviewers are very conscientious and complete the reviews quickly, but the paper can still sit with the editor for a long time.  Or, more often than not, you have multiple reviewers on much different time schedules.  Some journals do a very good job of triaging papers, so a rejection of a bad paper may happen quickly.  But you will learn that "bad" is a very subjective viewpoint.  I suggest that you do not associate the quality of the paper (i.e., good vs. bad) with the time under review.


How does one determine priority, prominence, and impact with regard to books, rather than articles? My background is in physics where almost 100% of the scholarly work is reported in peer-reviewed publications. Within that framework, I understand how to determine who has priority regarding ideas, how influential a paper is, how prolific an author is, etc. at a glance by looking at publication dates, citations, impact factors, etc. Usually, the only books which are written are textbooks or those aimed at a popular audience.

My experience, though, is that not all fields are this heavily skewed toward peer-reviewed articles.

Question:

In fields that rely significantly on scholarly books, how can someone quickly determine the impact, reliability, etc. of scholarly books and scholars whose work appears primarily in books?

You can still check how widely the book is cited in academic literature (no matter, books, papers, reports, or conference papers) with the use of Google Scholar.

Warning. Google Scholar may be misleading sometimes because it indexes virtually anything that is claimed to be academic even if it doesn't belong there. Sometimes you may come across academic crooks. See for example this guy. More than a thousand citations. But if you check him in Scopus, you will find that he is only cited 5 (five!) times by papers in journals of some quality. So, be careful.


Should I communicate to a researcher that I'll apply for a postdoc position is his lab in approximately two years? I started my first postdoctoral position one year ago in a new university.
In two years (or so), I'd like to apply for another postdoc position in another university, in a research team that works on subjects that are quite similar to mine.

Sometimes (like once a year) I meet at conferences the group leader of this research lab to which I'd like to apply in two years.

If I met him again, should I tell my intentions to him?
Should I say to him that I'd like to apply to his lab in two years?

For similar questions here on Academia, I read different points of view: some people wrote "It's better he already knows who you are when your resume will arrive on his desktop", while some other people say "The more you wait, the more scientific results and published papers you get, the better you resume gets... so it's better not to apply to early, when your resume is incomplete of your future accomplishments"

What do you think?

Sure, why not?  Telling him you are planning to apply is not the same as applying.  He is not going to make an evaluation right now, so the drawbacks you mention don't apply.  You might also ask him what he regards as good preparation for working in his group.

The only part of this that looks bad to me is that you are planning in advance to do a second post-doc, rather than even try for a permanent position.  But I understand that may be the norm in some fields.


Where do the responsibilities of an MS GRA doing a thesis actually end? I am doing a MS thesis in an engineering lab and I am fully funded by my advisor (tuition waiver plus stipend). We are a small lab and my professor is aiming for tenure. I am ahead of schedule and almost done with my thesis.I am good at programming and completed the project in 3 weeks (my professor thought it would take at least 3 months). Now, my professor is asking me to work on other things which involve developing apps for her other projects. I have protested by saying I am an GRA and I should only be concerned with my thesis project and my work in all other large projects in the lab should be at my discretion.

My advisor replied that I am pretty lucky to work for her since other professors have graduate students who work on 5 projects simultaneously (which of course is load of crap, I have other friends working in other labs who only work on their thesis). The other time I protested, my advisor said that since I am supposed to work 40 hours a week in lab, the project should be completed within 2 weeks easily. (These projects which my advisor wants me to do require some 80 hours of programming sometimes since I first need to learn the language and then write code for it). It's not that I don't want to develop apps, but I am more interested in writing journal papers for IEEE with deadlines in November, and I need all the time I can for that endeavor. I raised this issue but my advisor said that getting accepted in IEEE is remote, so I should concentrate on writing apps since there is a very good chance for her to get funded if I develop them.

I know that even if I refuse development, my advisor might throw a fit but my GRA will be intact because no advisor fires a student who is about to complete thesis. Also, I had asked my advisor if she would be interested in helping me with getting a PhD after thesis and she flatly said no. The advisor said I should probably go back to industry and work for 3-4 years and then decide on PhD. It seemed more like an excuse to make me get out of the lab. So it's pretty obvious there is no chance of a long-term relationship with my advisor.

  I am trying to understand what are the other job responsibilities of
     an MS student doing thesis?  There is no chance of working with my
     advisor after MS, so why should i work on her projects? I can very
     well try to get some journals papers published as it might help in
     getting a PhD admit elsewhere, or should I just develop her apps
     because I work in her lab?

Edit: There are 3 people in my lab now (2 MS students and one PhD student), but I am the only programmer.

tl;dr Your adviser is not wrong. There are plenty of additional responsibilities and duties of maintaining a matured lab affiliation even as a MS student.

I think you went about it a wrong way. A little hill out of a molehill has been created.

Being a GRA in a lab does not mean that the buck stops with your thesis research. I am a member in a medium sized lab based in a ECE department.  Typically, we have 4-6 graduate students, 1-2 post docs and a gaggle of undergraduate and masters students at most given times.

My Responsibilities:

Thesis research. This is primary and takes up most of my time.
Collaborative research with another graduate student. This is my secondary project and takes up a little bit of my time.
Giving talks in the lab about our works in progress.
Guest lecturing for my adviser in his courses when he is away.
Mentoring REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) students when they come in summer.
Mentoring undergraduate and masters students from my own university in their own and lab projects.
Helping other lab members out with analysis - typically quantitative and some qualitative.
Reviewing articles written by other lab members.
Social engaging with lab members and lab visitors.
Designing presentations for lab funding reports and reviewing said reports.

I am sure I have forgotten a few more "responsibilities" but I can assure you that my work does not begin and end with just my own thesis research. It sounds like a lot but I can assure you that it really isn't and the situation is quite typical for my university and department. I have an excellent work-life balance. Now, I am a PhD student but once upon a time, I was a MS student and I had similar responsibilities.

The situation you describe is not atypical. I have seen folks in labs (which develop apps as a stepping stone to doing research) spend a lot of time actually developing the app. You are right. It takes time.  Being a member of the lab means contributing to projects which are not just your own. It is a team effort.

Your adviser has actually given you a sanity check in terms of getting a PhD admit and in terms of what other graduate students usually do. Getting a paper accepted in a prestigious IEEE transaction is quite a considerable effort and takes a long time. It seems to me that your adviser does not feel that your research will be accepted into such a venue. I also think you hit a nerve somewhere when you argued about quantum of hours and projects to be worked upon according to your GRA deal. It doesn't work like that. You are not a unionized worker.

Research takes as long as it takes.


Should grading take all students' performance into account? This question is partially related to this question.

By trying to understand which one is the correct way to grade an exam I came out with this doubt. Should each exam be considered as independent or should a mark be assigned based on the other students' performance.

As an example

if all the students final exams are from 80% to 100% correct should be considered the fact that the exam was too easy while grading it?
if all the students final exams are from 30% to 60% correct should be considered the fact that maybe the exam was too hard while grading it?

To resume, while preparing/grading the exams should the results respect somehow the normal distribution or should each one be graded independently?

EDIT:

Based on my career as a student for every exam we had statistical results from all the students (min, max, avg) with the grades distribution. Most of them respected the normal distribution. So what it is not clear to me is if it depends on how the teacher create the exam, on how it is graded or just on how usually students perform.

I'm going to give this from a student perspective, so take it with a grain of salt. But I can say that I would hope I was graded independently of any of my peers on a given assignment*. Simply put, I want to be evaluated on my progress relative to the course objectives. I'm not interested in my progress relative to everyone else's.

* That being said, once the independent grade is assigned, I don't care about or mind any post-grading corrections (a.k.a. "curves"). But again, that's after my exam is independently graded - so I can at least see the raw grade first.


How to handle a bib source with no author? I am writing a paper in English and have a couple of sources that have no author. In German there would be the abbreviation o.V. standing for ohne Verfasser which translates to no author in those cases.

How is this handled in English papers? Would an appropriate translation be n.a. standing for no author? Is there a way in Latex to automatically put something in place by just providing a bib entry without an author?

Instead of:

@online{cloud-ide04,
    author = {n.a.},
    title = {codeanywhere},
    publisher = {Codeanywhere, Inc.},
    urldate = {2018-03-26},
    url = {https://codeanywhere.com/}
}

Rather do:

@online{cloud-ide04,
    title = {codeanywhere},
    publisher = {Codeanywhere, Inc.},
    urldate = {2018-03-26},
    url = {https://codeanywhere.com/}
}

Modern Language Association (8) dictates that when one piece of information is missing from a citation, one simply skips that piece of information within the citation.

For example, if I published a book called "Dogs", the final citation would start:

  Fey, Mercurial. Dogs.

If I had published it without an authors name, the citation would instead start:

  Dogs.

Both citations would then continue with editors, volumes, and publishers.


How to ask for a non passing grade? In one course I got a lower than expected grade. If the professor wants, he can give me a non passing grade and this won't be on my transcript (non passing grades are not on our transcript). Of course I have to retake the course.

Many of our professors do it, but a few usually doesn't.

How I can polity ask him to give me a non passing grade?

I cannot say I agree with the practice: students should be responsible to know what they're doing as regards their studies, which, among other things, implies that they must have a sense as to how well-prepared they are for an exam (and they should also bear the risk and the consequences of occasionally making a wrong assessment). By setting a grade-threshold and ask the professor to give a non-passing grade if the threshold is not reached, the student effectively sheds this burden of responsibility off him or herself.

That said, the usual practice is to ask such things before grading (for example if the exam is in paper and not electronic, students note that on the paper they hand in). Asking for it afterwards... well, if the professor is friendly to the practice, start by apologizing for not letting him know in advance and then ask what you want to ask.

But if the professor is not friendly to the practice, consider living with the consequences of a lower-than-expected grade in your transcript.


Do Research Papers have Public Domain Expiration Date? Do research papers have a Public Domain Expiration Date? simmilar of what happens to literature books
For example, let's consider a research paper of James C. Maxwell: XVIII.—Experiments on Colour, as perceived by the Eye, with Remarks on Colour-Blindness, it is stored in here: link to www.cambridge.org website
It says: "Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1857" and if I want to purchase the article, it would cost me: USD35
This is an article published more than 150 years ago. How long do I have to wait in order to download it and use it for free?

From your question:

This is an article published more than 150 years ago. How long do I have to wait in order to download it and use it for free?

From a comment you posted:

Yes, I know I do still have to cite it, but I can't download it or use it for free. I have to pay even when it was published in the 19th century

As Buffy and anpami note, the original work probably isn't under copyright. But even if copyright has expired, there's no guarantee anyone will make it available for free. In particular, there is no obligation on the publisher to provide free (or indeed any) access to it.
In this case, there is a link to a PDF version from the Semantic Scholar page.


Are you required to declare past conflicts of interest? This question is triggered by the recent allegations about Willie Soon failing to declare conflicts of interest in his papers on climate change. It got me wondering about situations where an obvious conflict of interest existed in the past, but doesn't exists anymore at the time where a paper is published.

Are there generally accepted practices on when to declare past conflicts of interest, or is this entirely up to each journal? Requiring disclosure of decades-old conflicts of interests does feel a bit silly to me, but making them disappear if they just happened shortly before one worked on a paper seems rather problematic as well.

Usually the consideration is not about the funding received when the paper was published, but received while the work was being done. To illustrate: if a grant is won after a paper is submitted, but before it is published, it would be strange to see it declared as a conflict of interest.

But if a researcher persistently receives funding from a particular source, and then takes time off from that funding and uses those windows in funding to publish material in support of that source, then it would be inappropriate to stay silent about that funding: doing so would be against at least the spirit of the rules about declaring conflicts of interest; and may be explicity against the letter of the rules, when the papers contained work that was done during the funding period.


Why not make students reproduce work? Typically, PhD theses are expected to have novel results. As science advances, it is becoming increasingly difficult to accumulate enough knowledge to begin a project that pushes the boundaries. Original findings are often published as papers before the defense, thus the thesis has become valued for its indication of technical expertise, not the discovery itself.

Since ancient history, redoing the work of masters has been seen as a very effective tool for training. It so happens that there is also a need for reproduction studies, but few are willing to do them.

Why don't PhD theses consist of reproducing important, recent, controversial research? Has anyone tried this?

Note: I am deliberately leaving open to interpretation whether the student would reproduce their own advisor's work or that of a researcher from a different group, and whether the original researcher is to assist in this and to what extent.

A chapter that does that is fine; I had one in my thesis. It can for example serve to set the stage for your original work. But someone with a PhD has to be able to do more than just repeat the work done by others, and the thesis has to show that capability. Replications are valuable, but a thesis consisting solely of replications won't show what it needs to show.

Instead we should try to find a way to make replications publishable (especially if they show what is already known) and worthwhile for established authors, rather than diminishing its value by delegating it to students.


Does one have the right or just the privilege to extend the PhD study period due to parental leave? Assuming somebody is employed as a PhD student, I found several references to PhD study period and parental leave, but the wording is rather weak.

  The study period may only be extended if there are special reasons for it. Such grounds may be due to illness, leave for military service, work for trade unions and student organizations or parental leave. Ordinance (2010:1064). [automatically translated, highlights mine]

Notice may instead of must.

The Regulations for doctoral studies at Umeå University states:

  5.4.  Parental    leave

  ● Parental leave shall always be reported to the employer in accordance with applicable law and agreements.

  ● When
  parental leave is cited as a special reason for extension of a
  doctoral studentship or term of a doctoral grant, the period of
  parental leave is counted from the day it is validated.

  The Dean makes the decisions on these matters.
  [highlights mine]

Notice that the Dean has the final word.

The PhD Student FAQ from the Stockholm University Student Union uses stronger wording:

  This means that you have the right to get prolongation for the time that you are on parental leave so that you don’t lose out of any time for your research.

Can anybody point me to a regulation, a legal precedent or anything similar clarifying whether prolongation of PhD study period is a right or a privilege?

The word 'may' does not preclude refusal. It means, it is possible to extend.

In academia, in general, if there is good reason for extension of PhD, it is always allowed. Pregnancy is a good ground for extension and it would be very rare for a student to be penalised for getting pregnant.


Working at a Liberal Arts College in Mathematics I am finishing my Ph.D. in mathematics and am currently applying to many different schools. I would like to customize my cover letter somewhat for liberal arts colleges.

In general, what defines a liberal arts college? What is it like to work at one? My university career has consisted solely of reasonably large state institutions with a research focus. I have only the vague notion that liberal arts colleges focus less on research and more on teaching.

What kinds of achievements/work should I point out to a hiring committee at a liberal arts college? The answer to this may be obvious based on the answer to the previous question, but a little redundancy would be appreciated.

In general, I tend to think of the difference between a college and a university is the presence of graduate programs and multiple "schools" at universities, while the focus of a liberal arts college is the teaching and development of undergraduates.

Research experiences for undergraduates are considered to be important parts of the modern experience, so having experience in those areas are considered useful, but is by no means the dominant concern.