In academia, does the amount of material that one has to learn diminish as time progresses? From my own point of view, the first year of a PhD is heavily packed with new information, theory, techniques, conventions, experimental abilities, etc. Let us call all these elements "material". This new material required a lot of effort which I felt as a heavy burden in comparison to my master thesis or any previous academic experience. This burden was also complemented by requirements of the PI, funding entities, bureaucracy, etc.

The second year was also heavily packed with new and deeper material. But the burden of acquiring this new material was in my opinion, lower. This perception of a lower burden can be due to better learning methods, more experience, a more relaxed view on life, due to actually less new "material" to deal with.

I felt as if I had to sustain the same first year burden for several years, I would eventually collapse. And even though the second year burden was lower, I would not be able to continually perform at a good level under such burden.

Is there any point in an academic's life where the burden diminishes? I enjoy learning new stuff, carrying out new experiments and acquiring new skills. But the rate at which I feel this is necessary during a PhD is for me too high and I would not like to have a permanent life under this burden.

Just to be clear, it is obvious that in Academia it is necessary to acquire and master new "material" continuously. My question focuses on the "rate", if it makes sense.

The first paper I read took two months to process.
Now, I can skim through two papers for breakfast. It is not that you get more material to read, but rather you get much more efficient at skipping things you know or recognize as unimportant.

It comes with practice - try reading papers and books, and think about what are the important parts. Learn to identify the 'meat' and which techniques are used. Also, you'll notice that instead of learning 'the stuff', it is about cataloging and storing meta-information about where to find 'the stuff' once you really need it.

After a while, you realize that most of the new papers you read, you only need the gist of it, in order to reference it. Comparably few papers need to be read and understood in paragraph-by-paragraph detail.


how should I be positive about financial support? I am accepted for the January intake.I am a fully funded student.
I received the acceptance letter from university but the university has not sent me any financial support letter.
My supervisor just sent me a letter of financial support.
A financial support at $22K per  year from which $15K comes from Supervisor's grant money
and the rest from internal funding available to the graduate students in our faculty in form of research and
teaching assistantships.

Is it enough to have a financial letter from the supervisor? or Should I send the university an email and ask them to send a letter of the financial letter?

because on my personal university portal there is not any section for funding.
what should I do before starting my study? since it is really important to finance my study form very beginning. what should I write to the university and what should I ask?

Thanks in advance!

Depending upon the university, your funding may come from the department, rather than the university, and it thus would likely be the department's responsibility to send you a letter outlining where your funding comes from. (In some cases, this devolves to the faculty member.)

If you have any questions, the best place to start would be the graduate advisor or the graduate admissions officer for your program. They should know how funding letters are announced.


Phd, Graduate School, Transfer I was pursuing Ph.D. at a certain institution, let's call it X. After I started working, my experiments would fail repeatedly. My supervisor started calling me incompetent in the first two months of starting my Ph.D. Only later did I know that my experiments were failing due to some uncontrollable factor that I was not initially aware of. Later, I found research articles to support my argument and told about the same to my supervisor. Now, he was pressurizing me to do something unethical and I refused, quit the program after one year. Now, I am planning to pursue Ph.D. somewhere else, probably in the USA. Should I tell the admission committee and prospective supervisor what I went through and why did I left first Ph.D. programme?

I would not put that full story on the initial admission, perhaps you could put that time as "research" or somesuch...

If questions in an interview bring it into the open, then you should have an answer ready that is  truthful and relevant. How and what you say is for you to know...


Grammar mistakes in a PhD application I just submitted my SoPs for PhD programs in Earth Science and I realized I wrote "for these reason" instead of "for this reason". I also wrote "this inquiries" instead of "these inquiries". Now, I am worried that I'm not going to get into any grad school. I am an international student, valedictorian and I gained great research experience in my country and the US. Do you think these mistakes are going to hurt my application?

There is certainly no way that these mistakes alone will hurt your application.  If the admissions committee is concerned about your English fluency, there are other things they can look at: your GRE and/or TOEFL scores and your personal statement / statement of purpose.  If you are doing okay on those, then you have nothing to worry about.

Even if your verbal / writing / English skills do look somewhat shaky, that still should not get your application for a PhD in earth sciences automatically tossed out.  The committee would want to weigh your weaknesses there against your strengths in other areas.  What would be a problem is if your writing skills were so poor that they just couldn't understand you at all.  Based on the five line writing sample given by your question: this is absolutely not going to be the case.

In summary: don't worry, you should be fine.


Replying to a university offer I have applied to study at a UK university for a taught masters starting in 2017 September. I also obtained an unconditional offer from one university. They have mentioned to reply to the offer within two weeks. But, I would like to wait till I hear from other universities. Can I request from this university to give me more time to make the decision as I have applied for 2017 course and there's a lot of time till 2017 September?.

I also intend to apply for the Commonwealth scholarship for Master's and PhD study for developing commonwealth country citizens. In the scholarship guidelines it is mentioned that

  You must take the necessary steps to secure admission to your
  preferred universities in advance of your scholarship application.

Does this mean I have to accept the offer at a university to apply to the commonwealth scholarship or I should only have been offered a place at a university before I apply. Because in the commonwealth application I can state up to 3 universities. But I can only accept 1 offer right? So, I think I only have to have an offer from university. Is this correct?

Also, is there a way I can delay accepting the offer until I get a decision from the commonwealth scheme.  I believe the decisions in commonwealth sholarships are made in around 2017 April. So can I delay that long (From 2016 August to 2017 April) to make my decision on the offer? Do I have to pay tuition fees to accept the offer?

I would be extremely grateful if someone with experience regarding these can give me some advice on these issues.

It is not wrong to request for more time to make your decision. But, as @Nate pointed out, you may not always be granted what you request for.

If you do not receive the time you ask for, then it is a gamble you may choose to make or decide to play it safe. Many go through this sort of situation.

There is however another option. If you can't postpone your decision for the first institution, you could try preponing the your offer result of the other institution. Give a kind request to know your status of the application to the other institution to be in a position to decide earlier. This is also just a request, however it is still worth a try.


What do I do when I can't find the source of this chapter of a book so I can cite it APA style? I have found part of a book in .pdf file format and it contains some information I would like to use in my study. I'm trying to cite the book APA style, but I can't find any information on it whatsoever. I've spent ages searching around for any information I could find from within the PDF, but failed as only that specific PDF keeps popping up in the results. I can't make a citation if I don't even know the title of the book or the author.

My citation currently looks like this, with "Onbekend" meaning unknown and "z.j." meaning no year:

  Onbekend. (z.j.). Onbekend. Opgehaald van
  http://wps.pearsoned.co.uk/wps/media/objects/10977/11240737/Web%20chapters/Chapter%2012_WEB.pdf

Which is unacceptable.

The part of the book in question is here.

What should I do now?

The book your looking for seems to be:

Modern Database Management

By Jeffrey A. Hoffer, Fred R. McFadden, Mary B. Prescott

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Modern_Database_Management.html?id=cYfDQgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y&hl=en


Should I mention this health issue I had on my graduate school application? Towards the end of one particular semester, I had some health issues which forced me to travel in order to get treated. This resulted in me missing the last two weeks of courses and all my final exams. I arranged so that I got grades of "incomplete" in all my courses, until I took the exams and finished my coursework after my recovery. I ended up doing okay, but I did get a B+ in a very important course. It's hard to say whether this was the reason for that, though. Should I mention this on my graduate school application, or will it look like I'm just making excuses?

I think it is worth mentioning.  Of course, you don't need to say "my health issues caused a B+".  Just mention the health issue at that particular time, and what you had to do to complete your work.

Besides explaining your performance that semester (and a single B+ isn't very much to worry about), this shows your ability to overcome adversity and still succeed.

Here are some other questions about explaining lower grades for non-academic reasons, and the answers largely seem to agree that it is a good idea to mention the circumstances:

Will one 'C' grade due to health issues ruin my chances of admission into a top grad school?

Trauma affected my grades while in undergrad, how will it affect me getting into graduate school?


What type of workplace accommodations are departments required to make for a mentally unhealthy faculty member? We have a faculty member in my department who has mental health issues. These issues tend to flare up about three times a year, right at the beginning of the year, in January when grading is due and new teaching starts, and again at the end of the year when grading is due. In general these flair ups last about two weeks and are, to my understanding always accompanied by medical evidence that recommends a two week leave and a follow up evaluation after the two weeks. She is not the most mentally stable person at the best of times and I have no doubt that the additional stress from teaching and grading causes her additional issues. That said, her flare ups mean that her teaching generally gets cancelled and her grading gets reassigned. What type of accommodations does a department have to make for an individual who does not seem to be healthy enough, in this case mentally, to carry out core responsibilities and how does a department go about making those accommodations? I am interested in both legal and moral obligations and am located in the UK, to the extent that it matters.

I am only even vaguely qualified to speak on how this is ideally handled in the USA, so hopefully this will be of use at least as a starting point. I am not qualified to say anything about similarities between UK and US law on matters such as this - and I'm not a lawyer! I think this is a very important question though, and I hate to see it going without any kind of answer at all.
In the US, there are a few related but separate pieces of landmark legislation that guide workplace accommodations for "serious medical conditions" and "disabilities" (quoted because these have specific legal definitions).
First of all, the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA):

The Family and Medical Leave Act ("FMLA") provides certain employees
with up to 12 workweeks of unpaid, job-protected leave a year, and
requires group health benefits to be maintained during the leave as if
employees continued to work instead of taking leave
[...]
Leave Entitlement
A covered employer must grant an eligible employee up to a total of 12
workweeks of unpaid leave in a 12 month period for one or more of the
following reasons:
[...]

when the employee is unable to work because of a serious health condition.

There are lots of qualifying statements, but in US academia generally the FMLA applies.
FMLA TLDR;
Specifically, this means that having to take 4 weeks off a year due to any condition legally defined as a "serious medical condition" (related to a disability, chronic physical or mental illness - see the law specifically for the definition of these terms) is not a "reasonably accommodation" at all, but a legally mandated requirement. A person who takes up to 12-weeks a year of such leave has their job protected, end of story. If this is inconvenient, the legal response is: too bad - you are a big institution, you'll figure out how to make due.
In the USA, this is really a sufficient and complete answer without considering reasonable accommodations, because taking medically necessary time off isn't considered as such.
But let's go further, because more is morally and often legally required.
Get Proactive: Reasonable Accommodations, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and the Americans With Disability Act (ADA)
In the US, a qualifying employee has the the right to "reasonable accommodations". OK - what the heck is reasonable? I'm a big fan of the Job Accommodations Network (JAN) materials, as they are much easier to read and understand than most other materials.

III.THE REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION OBLIGATION
3.1 Overview of Legal Obligations

An employer must provide a reasonable accommodation to the known physical or mental limitations of a qualified applicant or employee
with a disability unless it can show that the accommodation would
impose an undue hardship on the business.
Reasonable accommodation is any modification or adjustment to a job, an employment practice, or the work environment that makes it possible
for an individual with a disability to enjoy an equal employment
opportunity.
The obligation to provide a reasonable accommodation applies to all aspects of employment. This duty is ongoing and may arise any time
that a person's disability or job changes.
An employer cannot deny an employment opportunity to a qualified applicant or employee because of the need to provide reasonable
accommodation, unless it would cause an undue hardship.
An employer does not have to make an accommodation for an individual who is not otherwise qualified for a position.
Generally, it is the obligation of an individual with a disability to request a reasonable accommodation.
A qualified individual with a disability has the right to refuse an accommodation. However, if the individual cannot perform the essential
functions of the job without the accommodation, s/he may not be
qualified for the job.
If the cost of an accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the employer, the individual with a disability should be given the
option of providing the accommodation or paying that portion of the
cost which would constitute an undue hardship.

So, what is and isn't reasonable? According to JAN:

What accommodations are not considered reasonable?

Reasonable accommodation does not include removing essential job
functions, creating new jobs, and providing personal need items such
as eye glasses and mobility aids. Nothing in the ADA prohibits
employers from providing these types of accommodations; they simply
are not required accommodations.

What is an essential job function? There is no easy answer, but that same page quoted above provides an in-depth discussion, however I posit this reasonable rule of thumb: something is reasonable if it is not disproportionately costly, and especially if other people in a similar position have such an arrangement. If you aren't sure, get a proper Job Evaluation performed by a competent professional (your institution had better already have one on hand!).
Many professors have grad students perform a large amount of grading (with oversight and some supervision) and often use a proctor to deliver tests, for instance - so to insist that a standard way of working for other professors is not reasonable would strain the credulity of the average person (and likely any judges or review boards, should a complaint arise). On the other hand, utterly exempting a person from duties that fill a large portion of an employees work load is probably going too far.
The law in the US is often intentionally vague in this regard, for a very good reason! The goal is actively to encourage people to think of ways to craft jobs and requirements that allow anyone with a disability or chronic condition to be gainfully employed and contribute to their communities in the greatest way possible. If this means a little re-arranging or change, great - that is way cheaper than someone getting fired or having to take legal actions against an institution. With some vagueness and a "reasonable person" standard that is common in American law, this is hoped to actively encourage people to reach out a bit farther than they usually might to find a solution that works for everyone involved.
Proscriptive Moral Advice
As an institution/department, it is generally wise to recognize a pattern and reach out to solve an underlying problem. If a build-up of stress causes incapacitation and certain reliable intervals, maybe something can be arranged to reduce the stress during these times and avoid the worst flare ups entirely? When not possible, planning proactively can wonderfully mitigate the pain in the future; implicitly relying on no one getting ill or sick during high-stress times of the year is a masochistic assumption!
It is reasonable (and often advised) to seek out if a reasonable accommodation could be helpful and welcomed by someone with a serious condition or disability. A willingness to think creatively and to find a solution that everyone can be happy about is ideal.
If a huge glut of work at certain times of the years causes anxiety, can this workload be made more manageable and less all-at-once? Are department requirements/demands worsening things and creating a more difficult environment than necessary? Electronic grading systems/options, automated fill-in-the-bubble grading, Teaching Assistants to do some of the grading (when appropriate to the work), Proctors (such as by giving the tests in some classes so the professor can use that time for grading other tests/assignments instead), and staggered test schedules are widely used to varying degrees throughout the world and can be potentially helpful. Can other duties be rescheduled, such as certain evaluations, meetings, etc, to better even out the work flow?
It is possible that one person's illness can be used as a tool to improve everyone's work conditions and satisfaction, by allowing a "suck it up and deal with it" approach that was begrudgingly accepted to be challenged and overhauled. Empathy and compassion - understanding that someone would almost invariably be happy to not be ill - and realizing that the problems of having more work foisted on everyone when someone is ill is often the fault of the work system rather than on one well-intentioned individual, can make some amazing progress possible.


Trying to collect information on grad schools I'm in the process of listing and comparing all the graduate schools I am interested in. What should I be comparing, gathering, etc. And what is the best way to keep all the information together?

Here are some ways in which different schools differ from each other:

Size. Both small schools (personal attention) and big schools (lots of seminars, people to talk to) have their advantages. Which is more important to you?
Research focuses. Even large schools will be dominated by a couple of research groups. Do you find their work interesting?
Program structure. Some programs are very structured, with lots of requirements; some are more free-form. Which is best is a matter of individual preference.
Competitiveness. Some departments are friendly and competitive, some departments are friendly and less competitive. (And a couple of departments are unfriendly and you should avoid them.) Do you thrive under pressure? If so, choose a competitive place.
Quality. (This one is obvious.)
Geography. Some places (Harvard, Wisconsin, Michigan, Washington, among many others) are located in towns where it's a lot of fun to be a grad student. Some are not.
Support. Some places offer more money, and/or less teaching requirements in exchange for funding. (Typically private schools fare better than public in this regard, but not necessarily.)

All things to keep in mind when you compare schools.


How important is an (Honors) undergraduate thesis to graduate school admissions? I'm an undergraduate Honors student in a STEM major, and in the upcoming years I will have the option to complete an Honors thesis in my field, either as a research/data analysis or a literature review sort of thing. Because of other circumstances I can graduate "with Honors" with or without it, so it would purely be adding to my major, not so much my overall graduation status.

Either way I will have some volunteer experience in labs in my field, and a decent GPA, etc. Would an undergraduate thesis in my field greatly help my graduate program applications? Does it matter if the thesis is based on original research or literature review?

The part of an undergraduate thesis that helps you with graduate admissions is that it is a form of research experience. It's not so much the finished product, the thesis, but the process of getting there and putting the work in. Even if it isn't complete before your applications are due, just that you are working towards a thesis is useful if it will get you into a lab and learn among other people doing research.

In my personal opinion, a literature review isn't nearly as useful for building the skills that make you a good grad school applicant, it's a lot more like the rest of the (upper-level) coursework you do as an undergraduate.


Are endorsed undergraduates eligible to submit papers (and eventually get it accepted) to arXiv? Is it possible for an undergraduate to submit his first preprint to arXiv and get it accepted ? Assume that he/she has been endorsed.

I am asking this because so far the papers that I have observed the email id seemed to be email id of Professors of some university or colleges but of course it may not be the case in general.

Yes, of course.  The arXiv staff doesn't sit around evaluating the credentials of everyone who submits.  They reserve the right to reject even endorsed submissions, but this is unusual.

The main obstacle to publishing on the arXiv as an undergraduate is writing a suitable paper and getting it endorsed.


What should I do to get into a PhD in Mathematics in Europe without a thesis in my BSc and MSc? I'm going to apply for a PhD in Mathematics in Europe with my BSc and MSc in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics (respectively), from two top-tier (say, top 10-20) US universities with advanced courses, and good GPA. Neither of my BSc and MSc had a thesis component though, and a capstone project wasn't available to me.

I do have some research experience, but my research mostly involved computational programming and data analysis, not serious Mathematics. More importantly perhaps, none of my research experiences were independent research, meaning that I was working on a project defined by my supervisor and my work was pretty much directed by my supervisor.

I'm aware that the norm in Europe is that students write a substantial thesis for their Master's degree, and possibly for their undergrad too, and then they'll apply for PhD. I did want to do a 2-year Master with a substantial research project, but since funding was an issue, I went with the 1-year MSc program that would fund me, and that one didn't have any thesis.

Given this situation, I'm looking for a way to fill that gap in my resume to make myself competitive for a top-tier PhD in Mathematics (or Applied Mathematics) in Europe.

First - do you think I'd have any chance without doing some sort of independent research before applying to a PhD?

Second - do you have any suggestion on how I can fill that gap?! I thought of doing an MPhil or an MRes in the UK, but financing is an issue for those programs (I'll apply for scholarships, but chances are high that I won't get one). Is there any sort of program where I can just spend some time doing a self-directed, but supervised, research in Math and get paid for that?

Edit: As for the specific countries in Europe I'm looking for, my top choices are Germany, Switzerland, UK, and France, but I'm open to other options if I find a good opportunity.

First - do you think I'd have any chance without doing some sort of independent research before applying to a PhD?

Possibly. However, it would likely involve you finding some "angle" on the basis of which you can strike up a relationship with a prospective supervisor, who could promote/sponsor your Ph.D. candidacy.

But there's a deeper issue here:

Why do you want to enter a Ph.D. program?

Hopefully, you have some subject you are interested in studying. If that is not the case, and your motivation is to simply get the title and the piece of paper - then you should seriously reconsider. Working on a PhD without focused motivation is not just exceedingly difficult, but also exasperating. You may well find yourself in the middle of it, two or three years from now, grabbing your head by your hands and asking "What was I thinking? Why in blazes am I even doing this?" - and not having a good answer.

So, do consider some independent research, or even going into industry doing something you are interested in, but with a mind to sketch out relevant mathematical challenges to study more deeply in academia. These are my suggestions for filling the gap.

  my top choices are Germany, Switzerland, UK, and France

Once you find something relevant to research, locate relevant research groups in that field (in those countries or elsewhere), and talk to them.


Blockage management for projects I am currently a Computer Science undergraduate in my final year. I think this question applies to more than just Computer Science students, so I'll make it as general as possible.

Throughout my student years, I have always found it very difficult to establish when to admit I am blocked in the implementation of a given task/assignment.

My question is: when is the correct moment to admit I'm on the wrong track and ask for help? I do not want to bother my colleagues (or even worse, teachers) with very general questions such as "How do I do that", nor do I want to take a path and find myself in the situation where I cannot even express the question because of how tangled the road to that point was.

I wonder if the time after which I have to ask for help is quantifiable, something like "If it lasts longer than 3 hours, ask for help". If there is no general rule for establishing this time, what are the factors that must be taken into consideration?

Over the course of learning (i.e. your life) you learn strategies for problem solving. When you encounter a new problem you go through your known strategies to find a solution. If one occurs to you, fine. If it doesn't, perhaps a reasonable modification of one of your strategies will work. But if that doesn't get you home then you need help. So ask.

But you will do better if you do two things. Don't ask for the answer, but, instead, for insight into how to find the answer. And then, incorporate what you learn into an expanded set of strategies.

In programming, many of the strategies are well known. Testing, edge cases, etc. In other fields there may also be well known strategies. Quite a lot of education is to expose students to these various ways of looking at problems.

But in general, it is better to ask than to thrash. And there is no reason why it shouldn't be the teacher he or she may actually be the best person to give you the minimal hint that lets you get yourself over the block. Other people are more likely to just give you an answer that will advance your thinking power much less.


What does it mean when submission system says "under review" after submitting minor revisions? Is it possible that after sending minor revisions my paper has gone for a fresh review again. I had received the following recommendation: accept subject to optional revision. The status has been showing " under review " for a month now.

Is it still with the associate editor or with the old reviewers. I got two referred comments and one guest editor comments
Sent my paper to ieee transaction

In most of the article submission systems the "Under Review" status means your manuscript is with reviewers. Most probably it must be sent to the old reviewers but there is also a possibility that editor might invite a new reviewer. It happened to me, one of my article which went through 2 revisions, 1 major and 1 minor took 1 year, and it was rejected because editor invited a 4th reviewer who raised few concerns.
Best of luck for your article.


Honorific for someone who earned a PhD in philosophy itself? I know that a PhD is now just used to mean doctorate, so what would a person who has a doctorate in philosophy be called?

Generically, a PhD is a Doctor of Philosophy, not a doctor in philosophy. Thus a PhD in philosophy would a Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (as opposed to a PhD in economics, who would be a Doctor of Philosophy in Economics).


How to put website links in "Used literature" slide of the presentation? I'm preparing a presentation for my class. Last slide should be the list of resources I've used for the material, e.g.

  Sherwani N., Algorithms for VLSI Physical Design Automation, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht 2002, -C.1, -P.1-15

I've also used some Wikipedia material. How should I write it? Like this?

  Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_design_(electronics)

No. Websites change. You should include information such as time, date, version, etc.

For Wikipedia in particular, you can read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia#Examples_of_how_to_cite_Wikipedia

For general websites, similar ideas apply. Remember to appropiately cite dates, author names, and possibly also titles for the website content (e.g., if it's a blog article, the blog title should be included). Never just post a link, that's horrible style.


My wife's contributions are not acknowledged in our group's paper that has me as coauthor. Should I speak up for her? The background is that my wife and I are in the same lab.
Recently our group did a paper together, and I am an author. However, my wife had contributed to draw a figure to a publication level. Although I am not sure if this contribution is enough to be included as an author, she is not even acknowledged, which I think is not fair.
My wife is not brave enough to speak up and also I have a better relationship with the group leader. Should I speak up for her, by saying something like "she contributed to draw a figure, and should at least be acknowledged"? What will be the best approach and wording? In person or message/email?
I am asking this question as I am not sure if this type of thing is appropriate. For example, I may not really know someone else that draw some figures but not being acknowledged. I happen to know just because she is my wife.

Update: I just talked. It turns out my group leader just forgot to acknowledge her.

I think you should talk to the group leader about the appropriateness of an acknowledgment  for the drawing (not coauthorship).
This is the right course of action for any contributor. The fact that she's your wife is not relevant, and should not be a part of this professional conversation.
How to approach the group leader depends on how you usually interact. I think a short conversation is probably appropriate. You could follow up with an email for the record if that seems appropriate.
Of course the group leader probably knows about your relationship, but that should not affect the decision.


Is it okay to do a PhD in the domain you barely know? I consider myself a Software Engineer. However, I recently accepted a PhD position in Data Science domain (i.e. which I barely know). I am slightly motivated because I believe that data can have a tremendous impact for the society. Despite of that, I still have some doubt. How do I cope with the doubt? Is it normal for every PhD student?

It's totally OK!

When it comes to PhD, enthusiasm, dedication and perseverance worth far more than prior knowledge and intelligence.

In fact, many of the people I know started their PhD without even knowing the slightest basics of their topic, but they excelled nonetheless.

This includes me. Since were in similar fields I suppose I could share my experience. I chose machine learning (ML) out of impulse because I was passionate about AI. I didn't even know the definition of ML when I started my PhD. Now, I'm recoding ML algorithms twisting them to my research needs. Moreover, I'm even teaching my students and colleagues to do the same. It's truly a magnificent experience.


Scholarships for mathematics international students I'm from Colombia and I'm ending my undergraduate in mathematics and my GPA is 3.3/4; I only know Fulbright scholarships and the scholarships that offer DAAD, my favorite fields are PDE's and Analysis. What other complete scholarships are you know? Is possible to win something with my GPA? Sorry for the weird ask but I don't know another place to ask this question.

Your best bet would simply be to apply and hopefully get accepted to a PhD program somewhere like the U.S or in Europe. PhD programs in math, or in STEM in general, almost always guarantee funding which is free tuition + research/teaching assistantships which give some salary.

Once you are enrolled in a PhD program and impress in your 1st/2nd year, then a lot more opportunities open up ranging from grant funding from professors to prestigious scholarships from big companies like Facebook or Google . Note that these programs are extremely competitive like top 1% of top 1% PhD students are accepted. That's why I am encouraging you to get accepted at a PhD program first.

I am also an international graduate student and when I was applying to PhD programs in the U.S, virtually all programs in the top 75 range had guaranteed support in the form I mentioned above. Even Fulbright would be more competitive from what I heard from its recipients.


How to effectively address conflicting suggestions from reviewers A bit of background, I am doing research in atmospheric physics and detection systems

Recently, I received a paper submission back with revisions suggested by a couple of reviewers.  For the most part, the revisions were definitely constructive, justified and most importantly, helpful.

That is, except on one particular crucial aspect of the paper where both reviewers made suggestions, that they labelled as critical for the paper's success.  However, the suggestions were directly opposite.  i.e. Both suggestions are mutually exclusive, but equally feasible.

What is an effective means to address this conflict?

I have spoken to my academic supervisor and he is not sure how to proceed either and we have double checked and both suggested paths are feasible.

In my capacity as editor for a journal, I see this quite frequently. I think it is a pity that you are left on your own to try to resolve the problem. An editor should provide some indication of possible solutions in tricky situations like this. So my first advice is to contact the editor and briefly explain the dilemma and ask for some advise on how to proceed. If you can, you should also provide your opinion on what you think is reasonable. After all, you have made your study and knows its strengths and weaknesses better than most.

In some cases, I have experienced how authors have used conflicting reviews to swing their paper in one or the other direction. This is certainly also possible since the reviews, and this is important, constitute peer's views and opinions, not an absolute and definitive truth to be followed.

Lacking the necessary insight into the details of your work and the issue at hand, I would also add the following. If you think you can bring up the conflicting views in the discussion, you may perhaps add both to your paper and simply arrive at a conclusion that the jury might still be out concerning the burning issue. I realize this may not be applicable in your case, but could be one way to acknowledge the existence of several, seemingly valid views.


How to rate my level of proficiency in statement for graduate application I am completing a computer science-related graduate application for a highly competitive school in the US that has an optional section for a "skills statement." In paraphased form, here it is:

  The degree requires that you enter with knowledge of fundamental
  concepts including: (concept A), (concept B), (concept C), and (concept D). If you do not have prior coursework in these areas,
  please describe your relevant work experience or self-study in these
  concepts. Please describe how you acquired the knowledge and your
  level of proficiency.

I have a short, 1-page long statement summarizing how I acquired the knowledge through previous my academic coursework and my professional work experience with each concept.

My question is: How should I describe my level of proficiency? What would an admissions officer look for here? Would it be beneficial to pose this question directly to the school?

I have provided some quantitative data such as number of relevant undergrad and grad courses taken and years of relevant work experience, with brief summaries of each.

Should I try to rate myself on some arbitrary scale of 1-10? That seems rather pointless and subjective.

Should I try to give myself some kind of qualitative label such as "novice", "expert", etc.?

Any advice would be appreciated.

This sounds to me like a good place to follow the dictum of "show, don't tell." Giving a numerical or qualitative judgement will be useless, because they can't tell how your rating scale relates to their own.  What you can do meaningfully, however, is talk about what you have actually done which demonstrates facility with the concepts by putting them to use in classes, projects, or real work.

For example, if one of the concepts was "algorithms," then you might talk about a piece of software that you wrote that required understanding and applying complicated algorithms, or an undergraduate research project in which you created and analyzed an algorithm, or something of the like.  This will then give the evidence that the reader needs to assess you accurately, however they calibrate their scale.

If you don't have strong examples like that, then just say whatever the truth is about what you've done with the concept, e.g., "I got an A in my algorithms class."  It's not very satisfying, but in a case like that you really don't have much facility with the concept (peopler generally understand a concept much more deeply once they have applied it outside of the classroom).  Better a less than satisfactory truth than trying to guess what somebody who you've never met would think differentiates "pretty good" from "expert."


Choosing universities or programs I am currently applying for two universities for graduate studies at the US, assuming both universities accept me (Hopefully) should I choose the university that fits me better or the university which is more selective (like ivy league universities).

My concern is that smarter students will overrun me in the top university, is this a valid concern or there is no academic competition between students since the admissions office and the designated department would not have accepted me in the first place if I had a non competitive enough profile?

My concern is that smarter students will overrun me in the top university

Well, the good news is that the smarter students will be concerned about you overrunning them.  It's called impostor syndrome, and virtually everyone at a top institution has it.  (And I don't just mean the students...)

Also: being around people who are (much) smarter than you is a good thing, because it means you will learn more.  (That's why you're hanging around a university, right?)  The other good news is that in grad school, you will no longer be competing against your peers.  The bad news is that you will now be competing against the entire academic community in your chosen area of study.  So, it's probably good to have some other smart students around to talk to.  Right?

My experience as a student at a Extremely Well-Ranked School is that other students are very supportive, and empathetic to the experience of getting through a tough program.  In short: don't worry.  It will be ok.

  should I choose the university that fits me better or the university which is more selective

Isn't this a tautology?  The university that fits you better will fit you better.

A less sarcastic reply is: there is nothing that matters more in grad school (or in life in general...) than your relationships with the people immediately around you, namely, your advisor and the other members of your research group / lab.  Even brilliant students who do not have a good working environment or a supportive advisor will flounder—I have seen it time and time and time again.  In contrast, students who are not exceptionally brilliant but have a good relationship with their advisor / group tend to do well, at least well enough to move on to a satisfying career after grad school.  Prestige, fame, money, and beauty are all higher-order terms.  Pick the place where you will be happy.


What is the average number of articles written per author in a year and has it increased recently? Did anyone research the data about scientific productivity? I.e. what is the average number of articles written by author in a year in a specific field? I am  referring to average, since this is maybe easiest to calculate, but it would be interesting to see the distribution data too. This of course depends on how many journals we want to scope, but I would be interested to see any data on say most popular fields like physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, psychology, economics, etc (order is of no importance).

A comprehensive review was conducted in the field of psychology in relation to publication rates and tenure. There is also a "fun" review related to beer consumption and publication in the field of avian evolutionary biology.

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01889.x
Psychological Science April 2007 vol. 18 no. 4 283-286


Will submitting to viXra before being accepted by arXiv cause me to be blacklisted by arXiv? I'm in a position where I will have fairly inconsequential work to publish soon. I'm working in the blockchain space, where it is common for whitepapers to be posted on individual websites or github.

I'm personally very bothered by arXiv's practices of blacklisting people, and the field I'm involved in claims to be all about openness and transparency.

I'm not bothered by my work being dismissed because it was uploaded onto viXra, but I am bothered by the possibility of arXiv banning me from future contributions.

I will be able to have review/support from those who have published in reputable math journals and are affiliated with universities. However this will occur later than is practical, since I am involved in the launching of a product based off my work.

I am also planning on putting up my low-quality or prototypical on viXra in the future, because I would like my arXiv to be higher quality.

ViXra doesn't track citations easily, and I do not feel it is unethical to submit work to both platforms.

No.  As a general rule, arXiv moderators neither know nor care what's posted on viXra; it's just not important enough to spend time on.

(I was an arXiv moderator for over a decade.)


Can posting to arXiv ruin your reputation? Arxiv is permanent.  So if I publish something now, that I feel is not quite high enough quality for traditional publication, and people leave a bunch of feedback showing issues with my assumptions or methods, am I hurt for life?  As I understand it, you can't remove something from arxiv, and people can comment on your work.  So, when someone 20 years from now googles my name or domain, they will find the paper and the comments and other undesirables?

At least with traditional publication you have peer review as a filter, which can in part shield you.  Is arxiv really this dangerous?

I think your comment has very important information:

  This paper is just that. It presents helpful information but doesn't develop any ideas or utilize the scientific method.

So, it is not crappy, they are not unbacked claims; it is just nothing new. As long as you are aware of it, and it is clear you are not trying to make it look different, it cannot hurt you.

You can think of this paper as a small review or class notes.

The only thing that may hurt your reputation is if it had very serious mistakes, and you don't address them. To be safe, just ask some of your colleagues to review it, even if it is not a thorough one. They should be able to tell you if it is correct, informative, and clear. And by all means, if it is informative, go ahead and publish it.

Also, ArXiv is not only for preprints of papers. For example, I have seen philosophical dissertations on QM very non technical (a second year Physics undergrad should be able to follow), or another about the story of protein folding research in a certain institution.

Edit:

Regarding your comment:

  but are arxiv posts considered publications for what you're talking about? i could put my grocery list there if I wanted to, right?

ArXiv is not peer reviewed, so the quality threshold is not so high. You can publish not so technical pieces, or sneak a bad article that looks just fine, they don't count as official publications. But, on the other hand, they are better than nothing. Specially if you are at the beginning of your PhD, when you are not expected to have publications yet, your ArXive papers are an example of your capabilities.

No one will use the sheer number of submitted papers, but if you have some fine pieces (for example, a good, brief review of your field, previous research and terminology), can show you have a promising career for, for example, applying for summer schools or extra funding.

Depending on your field, this kind of papers can be extremely useful. For example, in Bioinformatics, most people come from a CS background (programming experts and good Mathematics, but knowing nothing about Biology and Chemistry), Biology (lacking in Algorithmics, Machine Learning, and Statistics), Physics (lots of Maths, but basic knowledge of mostly everything else)... For me, having a quick reference of the basic terminology of other disciplines would save me a lot of time, as I have to look up many simple concepts that would be obvious for, for example, a Chemist undergrad.


process of acquiring tenure When the time has passed (5 years I think) and a faculty is being evaluated for tenure what aspects play a role for anyone getting tenure or not? do comments from current students play a role in it?

Applications for tenure are typically evaluated based on

Research
Teaching
Service

Some institutions will solicit comments from students when they are evaluating teaching.  Commonly students' teaching evaluations are considered as well.  How strongly different factors are weighted depends on the institution.


What's the etiquette for following up on academic contacts? It's happened a few times to me that I met a professor or researcher at an informal event, we had a good conversation, and they offered "help," as in "if you need any help, just shoot me an e-mail" or "let's keep in touch, in case you need help in the future." I have no idea what "help" is, or how I am meant to follow up on such an offer. Is it a sort of platitude that I am not meant to take literally?

These are usually not researchers or professors at my university, but they are usually in my field. I'm an undergraduate, currently in my final year and applying to grad school, but obviously this hasn't been the case for the past few years (and this is a recurrent situation).

As far as I see, these phrases mean what they say (which is not that much, but more than nothing). I also hear them a lot and say them from time to time. However, they do not promise anything else than some interest in your work or field.

When I say these phrases to people I just met it means that I found their work interesting and can imagine to spend more time thinking about it (but probably will not think about it on my own).

Another view is: Many people collaborate with many other people and enjoy it. See this phrase is a very low level entrance to something that may be a collaboration in the future.

More on the practical side: You may always send an email as a follow up, either with a question or something like "I enjoyed our conversation; here are links to some of my papers/other interesting stuff on the topic. Looking forward to seeing you again."


How do I reference the Python programming language in a thesis or a paper? I'm writing a scientific article and a dissertation in biology, for which I used Python for simulations. Some people in our department, especially the "non-computer-people", don't know what Python is, so I want to reference something helpful. Open-Source scientific tools such as CellProfiler usually tell you how to reference them, but Python doesn't.

How is the Python language properly referenced? Are there any articles in journals available I could link to?

In order to cite a programming language, a possible way is to cite the reference manual, including the version of the language you use (your approach might no longer work with the version of Python available in 20 years ...).

For instance, you can have a citation like:

  Python Software Foundation. Python Language Reference, version 2.7. Available at http://www.python.org

According to this thread, you can also cite the original CWI TR:

  "G. van Rossum, Python tutorial, Technical Report CS-R9526,
  Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI), Amsterdam, May
  1995."


How to Reference a Long Breakdown of a Mathematical Model from Another Thesis? I am writing my Master's thesis, and I need to describe and break down a complex mathematical (physics-based) model. This model is absolutely central to my thesis, and all of my work essentially revolves around it. I was about 5% done the task of understanding and summarizing the model when I came across a previously written Master's thesis that used the exact same model in the exact same manner as me, and includes an incredibly detailed, yet concise step-by-step breakdown of it. It is all that author's original work.

The breakdown of the model in this previously written thesis is approximately 20 pages long, far too long for me to quote it, even in part. There's really no way for me to interpret or explain this model other than the way this author has described it. This author was pretty clearly a genius... I feel like any information I add will be superfluous; while at the same time if I were to remove or greatly modify any of the information it would be extremely detrimental to my thesis as a whole.

I feel completely stuck. This breakdown of the model is going to account for around 1/5 of the total length of my thesis, so even if I were to be able to get permission from the author/publisher to copy the information, I'd essentially be taking 20% of my thesis directly from another source. That just doesn't feel right to me.

What should I do? I'm a mere 2 months away from my defence deadline (long story short I was forced to start this new thesis topic with less than a year left in grad school, so I'm extremely far behind where I wanted to be) and this model breakdown is the only thing I have left to finish before sending in my thesis for editing.

I'm quite literally pulling my hair out over this. Any help would be appreciated.

It sounds to me like your thesis just got about 15% shorter.

Rather than developing the material yourself, you need to instead put a review of the key results of the prior work as they relate to the rest of your thesis.  Presumably you needed to do this analysis because you were going to put its results to use elsewhere.  Well, you no longer need to do the analysis.  Instead, you can cite the other paper and explicitly say that you're going to review the key results that your work builds upon, e.g.,

  A detailed analysis of the X algorithm has already been conducted in [cite].  Further parts of this thesis build upon some of the results of that analysis, which we summarize here for the convenience of the reader.

Then you put in your paraphrased summary of the results you will use and the important intuitions with respect to the rest of your work.  You almost certainly do not need a reader to be familiar with every detail of the other proofs.  Likely some of their lemmas/sub-results don't need to be stated and there may be side-results / corollaries that are irrelevant to your use of the materials as well.  As such, your summary should be able to be much more terse than the original, and can be completely in your own words.  Renumbering and re-organizing material is OK as well.  You also don't need to put citations in everywhere continuously: as long as you write the prose in your own words and make it clear up front that everything in that collection of material is a summary of the material you are citing, the attribution should be quite clear to a reader.


Cover letter - why include address? I am applying for a postdoc position, and one of the required documents is a covering letter. Internet has models and templates and guides for such letters in rich supply. One thing, however, strikes me as strange: they normally contain the address. At first glance, maybe it is to be expected that a letter should have an address - but in this situation, I am uploading the file directly into an electronic application system, so it is utterly obvious what the document is, and who it should reach. I suppose almost all applications work in a similar way these days.

Firstly, I am curious if the address still serves any useful function. Or is it just a decorative element / historical artefact / etc.?

Secondly, should I actually include the address in an electronically submitted cover letter?

To clarify: I am asking about the address of the recipient of the application, not my own address. (While it is the case that I give my contact details in a separate form, I see how it could be convenient to duplicate this data.)

You can of course omit the recipients postal address, but you need to properly identify him (incl. his institute, faculty, university). Otherwise a number of people will simply discard your letter.

Definitely put your own full postal address. Email addresses, even if signed and certified etc., do not feel very trustworthy.


Asking for an extension for decision for PhD offer. And masters vs PhD? I feel in a slightly difficult situation. I have just finished a masters course in pure mathematics, having done a BA in physics prior to that. Both of these were at the institution that is widely regarded as the best in my country- and maybe the world- for mathematics. I applied for PhD programs in my area of interest, and had two positive responses:

University A, probably the best department in my country for my chosen speciality. They didn;t want to offer me a PhD, but I had a personal follow up from one of my interviewers suggesting that my application bes transferred to a second masters course. This course has a high dissertation component, so I would likely be working closely with people in the department. I received an offer for this course, but have not found out if I have funding for it.
University B, probably the third best department in this speciality in my country. They are focused on  only one subarea of this area of math, but are very good at that. Also, I happen to be interested in one other, quite dissimilar area of math. I like these areas both in equal measure, and univesity B offered me cosupervision so that I could work in either area. The proposed supervisors' interests in this second area aren't so closely matched with mine, but I would probably have enough flexibility to work on something more specific to my interest.

Now university B offered me a full scholarship, only 2 working days after I had my interview. But they only gave me a week to respond. I have not heard back from university A if I have receieved a scholarship to study there. Though it is likely (though by no means certain) that I would hear back within the next week. Hence why I was considering requesting an extension from university B. Although university B is very good at this specialty, so I suppose they may have many students applying.

In many ways this PhD at B would be convenient in terms of proximity to home and other research institutions which have people I want to collaborate with. And also it is great that I could work on two areas. On the other hand:

I am not sure whether doing the masters at university A may lead to a PhD there, which would really really boost my prospects for good postgraduate positions.
I am concerned about lack of background. Ultimately, I want to do as good research in math as possible, but I have only had a year of learning pure mathemtics. I have no problem self-studying, but it would chip away time at my PhD when I would expect to be doing paper-worthy research.
I keep getting this nagging feeling that maybe I could have better PhD positions; from universities that are more widely reputed in math in general. Though I oscillate between feeling like this, and thinking that I should be grateful that anyone thinks me capable of doing good math research having only a year of math behind me.

I am meant to respond to university B by tomorrow. I'm not sure whether I should read into their relativity short decision period or no- perhaps it is like this because they really want me, or perhaps because they have many good candidates applying to whom they could be offering the funding. In general though, I am incredibly stressed by this. I genuinely have no idea what to do. I also an somewhat biased by the fear of getting old in postponing my PhD another year.

You're stuck in a conundrum you'll encounter all through your life: You have a girl/boy friend and you wonder whether it's worth committing and getting married -- but you keep wondering whether anyone better might come along eventually. You have a job offer from a well-paying company, but you still have that application pending with Google. You have a grad school offer from University B but you're still hoping for one from University A.

The point is that sometimes you just have to commit. Your tentative second choice isn't going to wait for you forever while you're trying to figure out whether sometime (or someone) better might come through: Universities, employers, and partners make offers that are only valid for a certain amount of time because they, too, eventually want clarity and the ability to plan going forward. That's just a fact of life.

In your current position, you can of course ask for an extension, but you should be prepared to not get one. You'll then (i) have to make a decision that takes into account how much worse you think option B is compared to option A, and how likely it is that option A comes through, and (ii) find a way to make your peace with your decision. In fact, finding ways to be at peace with your decisions is what I think is the key piece to a happy life in general.


My defense is next week and and I have found an error in one of the proofs in one of the chapters of the thesis. What to do? In one of my PhD thesis chapters, I have a derivation of a theory that I have proposed in the paper. I just found out that I have made an error in the calculation, and my derivation is flawed. The chapter is yet to be submitted in a journal, so it has never been peer reviewed. I never saw the flaw before this. Do I bring it up during my defense? And what do I say if the committee asks me about it? Can that have a negative outcome on my defense result?

I am feeling scared now!

Should I mail my advisor? My defense is on Monday afternoon and I don't know what to do!

First, tell your advisor immediately. Your defense might need to be rescheduled. Suggest that if you think it wise.

Next, of course, try to provide a correct derivation.

If you have to go to the defense in the current state, yes, admit and point out the error and state that you are working on a patch. The committee might let you finish as is and clean up the problem later. They might also delay your finish until you have a correct result (or proof that it is not correct). I doubt that this is grounds for complete failure as it would be if the error is pointed out by someone else.

But your advisor might override any of this advice. That is your best source.

I've been on a final defense committee where we decided the work wasn't ready due to some flaws. The candidate just had to go back to work and we scheduled a future date. But it turned out that the meeting itself was valuable for the candidate as he got some feedback that helped him to the end.


Can late recommendation letters have a negative impact on grad school application? I am currently applying to some graduate programs. The schools I am applying to have all required recommendation letters from 3 people, and for many of the schools, the application deadline was today. Two of my professors have submitted their recommendation letters on time, but the last one - not being the epitome of a very organized person, sadly - has failed to meet the deadline. (Changing this recommender does not come into question, because she is my advisor, and she happens to be more familiar with me and my work than any other professor. Also, I cannot really ask anyone else to write a recommendation letter for me within such a narrow timeframe.)

This raises two questions for me: First, is the electronic system for submitting recommendation letters kept open beyond the deadline so that late recommendation letters can be received? (I understand that different schools may have different policies, but it would be relieving for me to know that my professor still has a chance to submit her recommendation. So I'd appreciate it if someone could inform me what the norm is in such cases. Before you ask, yes, I will e-mail the graduate admissions offices of the schools in question, too. But I do not think I can get a quick reply, as they are usually inundated with e-mails during the application season.)

Secondly, and more importantly, would the lateness of this recommendation leave a bad impression on the admissions committee?

Sometimes the deadlines for recommendations are flexible, and the references have some grace time to get them in.  In my department, we are certainly flexible, but we are not exactly inundated with well qualified applicants either.  I think our approach is pretty typical (at least for the sciences and engineering).  However, I have heard of higher ranked schools being more of sticklers for about the deadlines.

However, if the letter is accepted, then when it happened to arrive is totally irrelevant.  The faculty evaluating the applications almost certainly don't even see when the various parts of the application file arrived.  And even if somebody did see that a letter was late, if anyone were to be blamed, it would be the person who sent it in late, not the student who requested it.


Meaning of question "do you give permission to release a copy of this recommendation to another academic institution" in a recommendation form While filling in the online recommendation form for Yale regarding one of my students, I was asked to answer the following question

  If this student enrolls in the Yale Graduate School, do you give permission to release a copy of this recommendation to another academic institution upon request of the student and at the discretion of Yale Graduate School?

  Yes   No

Any idea what this question is about and the meaning/implications of choosing yes or choosing no?

The text suggests that YGS may want to send a copy of the recommendation letter to another school, given a request from the subject (your student) and the permission of the author (you). That the school seeks your consent in advance suggests that it is streamlining its process for forwarding old recommendations to other institutions. Perhaps this mechanism is sometimes used in the vetting of visiting scholars?

The worst implication that a "no" seems likely to incur would be the student having to seek out another recommendation instead of using one on file. I don't see how they could justify treating the letter's contents any differently based on the response to this question (unlike the issue of whether the applicant has waived their right to see the letter).


Stance of universities on remote video proctoring of online exams Due to coronavirus, many places have been forced to shift to remote online exams.  Have any schools issued guidance about the acceptability of proctoring online exams by requiring students to use a webcam to share a video of themselves taking the exam?  For instance, one could have students join a group video call where teaching assistants can monitor the video stream of students taking the exam.

I could imagine there might be privacy concerns about this practice.  Have any universities either adopted this practice for some of their exams or prohibited this practice?

This puts students on unequal footings. Not all students have access to webcams, a stable internet connection, or even more basic, access to a quiet room where they can work for several hours straight with no interference, for example. And what about disabled students who need special accommodation, e.g. someone to write down the answers for them because they can't move their arms, blind students who need other kinds of accommodation, etc?

Where I work, university is a public service and we can't sweep such issues under the rug. Maybe you can, but you should think long and hard about whether you want to.


Why would a conference discourage authors to submit their papers to pre-submissions platforms (e.g., arXiv) before submitting them to the conference? I asked some conference organizers whether authors may submit papers to arXiv before submitting to the conference, and got the following reply:

  though not encouraging it, [conference name] allows archiving pre-submissions on platforms such as arXiv: therefore you can upload there your article before submitting it to the conference.

Why would a conference discourage authors to submit their papers to pre-submissions platforms (e.g., arXiv) before submitting them to the conference?

The proceedings of the conference are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, so
the license isn't an issue. The only issue I can see is that it may jeopardize the anonymity of the authors (the conference review process is double blinded). Is there any other downside?

I asked the conference organizers why they do not encourage archiving pre-submissions on platforms such as arXiv, but I haven't heard back from them.

This question is different from the question Submitting ACM Conference papers to ArXiv: the latter focuses on licenses, whereas here the license isn't an issue.

Here is a nice article that explains your question from ACL2017 . Main aim is to protect double blind review system.


Is there a resource that gives the number of citations per scientist in various countries? The motivation for this question is attempting to quantify the quality of science in a country.  Getting at quality is difficult, but the number of citations is one way of trying to do so.  Is there any available resource that has computed the number of citations per scientist in various countries?

There is a data set downloadable from SCImago. They used citation data from Scopus. Here is the ranking of the 50 countries with the most citations according to them (full list downloadable from their website; data are between 1996 and 2014).

#  Country          Citations
--------------------------
1  United States    177434935
2  United Kingdom   44011201
3  Germany          35721869
4  Japan            27040067
5  France           24700140
6  Canada           22152666
7  China            19110353
8  Italy            18019464
9  Netherlands      14278721
10 Australia        13772961
11 Spain            12628097
12 Switzerland      10872269
13 Sweden           9417604
14 South Korea      7063429
15 India            6989150
16 Belgium          6691791
17 Denmark          5494671
18 Israel           5079652
19 Brazil           5036027
20 Taiwan           4790230
21 Austria          4334382
22 Finland          4295721
23 Russian Fed.     4289618
24 Poland           3491958
25 Norway           3354827
26 Hong Kong        2951215
27 Turkey           2938841
28 Greece           2702414
29 Singapore        2561645
30 New Zealand      2495935
31 Portugal         2096242
32 Ireland          1999703
33 Mexico           1962572
34 Czech Republic   1867611
35 South Africa     1774278
36 Argentina        1681700
37 Hungary          1660840
38 Iran             1504541
39 Chile            1014687
40 Thailand         976328
41 Egypt            818728
42 Malaysia         670387
43 Ukraine          635570
44 Romania          619956
45 Slovenia         611672
46 Slovakia         561511
47 Saudi Arabia     547167
48 Croatia          459356
49 Bulgaria         455406
50 Pakistan         425467

Now it's unclear from the website how exactly they attribute a paper to a country when there are authors from multiple countries. Note also that, obviously, countries with many papers have many citations. It's fun to re-order the above list on the basis of citations by published paper:

#   Country          Citations per document
-------------------------------------------
1   Switzerland      26.1
2   Denmark          24.94
3   Netherlands      24.56
4   United States    23.36
5   Sweden           23.21
6   Canada           21.4
7   Finland          21.2
8   United Kingdom   21.03
9   Belgium          21.01
10  Israel           20.56
11  Norway           20.17
12  Australia        19.49
13  Austria          19.24
14  Ireland          19.01
15  New Zealand      18.52


Whether to take a holiday or get research experience when transitioning from masters to PhD? Background:
I'm in a precarious situation.

I'm currently in the sixth semester of a ten-semester (five-year) combined bachelor's/master's program in engineering. So far I've had two relevant industry internships and have been getting stellar grades, but I lack research experience in my field. I am still unsure if I want to pursue a PhD, and I'm a bit apprehensive to make that life decision now.

All six semesters I've been taking classes and conducting research in a not-so-relevant field (mainly because research in my field is hard to get as an undergraduate) - suffice it to say after three years of this, I've somewhat burned out.

I'm currently signing up for classes for my seventh semester, which is the first semester I'm required to take graduate classes. Because I've felt a lot of academic pressure, I decided to sign up for less classes than usual to give myself a respite.

In response to this, my academic adviser recommended that I conduct research at a lab near campus to prepare me for a prospective PhD. I'm reluctant to agree because I wanted to take the semester to relax and pursue various interests I've fallen out of touch with since the start of university.

I voiced my concerns to my adviser and he is continually trying to pressure me to conduct research, citing that not doing so would be a huge missed opportunity and might hurt my chances of applying for a PhD.

Question

I don't want to leave this as an open-ended question (a la "what should I do?"), so I'll try to make it more structured:

How important is having research in a relevant field when applying to PhD programs?
Would PhD programs look unfavourably upon taking a semester to "relax," considering that a PhD requires a great deal of dedication?

Wanna relax, then do so. Don't be somewhere you don't want to be. You have to be mentally ready to do a research. I have seen many cases of young intelligent individuals who started doing PhD, and then for various reasons gave up, because some serious work needed to be done and they want to have well... some fun (rightfully so)!

I would recommend do not burn the bridge with your supervisor as you might start doing PhD in upcoming years. Tell him/her in a meeting that you would like to finish your studies and enjoy life a little bit; before committing yourself to doing research.


What are the differences between a presentation in academia and a presentation in industry? I think that I am pretty good at presenting my work during my PhD, and I am still being invited to conferences for some papers I did 2 years ago.

Now, I am working in industry. My manager always complains about my presentations and my reports.

I tried my best to follow his guidelines, but still he does not understand my presentations.

What might be the expectations in industry different than academia in terms of presenting some work?

The comments above are correct--you're probably pitching to the wrong audience, and your presentation skills are probably not as good as you think they are. To put it undiplomatically, the great majority of (STEM) presentations in academia are horrible, but after a half-decade or so of grad school you become inured to this and recalibrate your expectations. You've probably noticed that a genuinely engaging and accessible academic presentation is often judged to be less deep and interesting than an incomprehensible one. This is not going to be the case in a business environment.

The key difference is that the focus in a business presentation is on utility: You're not just trying to convey information, you're trying to be useful to your team and to the company. What are the people in your audience going to do with the content of your presentation when it's over? They want usable information, and they want it quickly and efficiently. Here are some ways to do this:

Include a "30,000-foot view" and (metaphorically) keep it in sight throughout the presentation.
Keep the narrative of your information focused. That is, make sure it's clear why each piece of information is relevant to whatever point you're trying to make.
Leave detailed background explanations to follow-up questions.
Be parsimonious and efficient in your flow of information. Pictures are generally better than words.

I'm assuming you're in a role where you process and produce data, so that your reports and presentations are informative rather than persuasive. But many of the same principles would apply if you are trying to convince your audience of something.

A final remark: People who give business presentations practice them. You probably have access to tech for recording a video of yourself, or at least a screencast with audio of your presentation. Use it.


Do reviewers usually ask for data? (Computer Science/ Data Science / Data Mining) I know it's a free process and it depends on reviewer if they want the data and for author if they want to submit it.

Questions:

What are the chances of a reviewer asking for data?
Why might reviewers ask for data?

I have asked, or been asked, for data a vanishingly small but non-zero number of times. But I'm pretty secure in asserting that it's rare.

As for why - I would hope they would specify this when they requested it. Among the reasons would be to see if your results are genuinely obtainable from your methods. This is not necessarily just looking for fraud, etc. but checking to see if your writing is clear enough that by "following the recipe" they get the same answer.

Another possibility is they want to try an alternative analysis. For example, in my field, there is a variable selection method that is commonly used and also wrong. Generally, I ask authors to re-do their analysis with a more appropriate method as a reviewer, but it's entirely possible this won't change the answer. Having the data would let me check for myself.


Abusive supervisor & academic career I am a Ph.D. candidate in economics in the UK, and now start my 4th and hopefully final year of the program.
I currently consider changing my supervisor (SV hereafter) because of an ongoing conflict. During my second year, she matched me with a former Ph.D. of hers, "co-author" or "CO" from now on, so the three of us could write a paper together. While things started OK, CO became increasingly possessive of the project. His tone became aggressive and disrespectful, he gave me non-sensical, inconsistent instructions, lied to my supervisor behind my back about things I had never done or said (learned of this during meetings with my supervisor), and he repeatedly deleted content I produced from our draft for reasons that stood in complete contradiction to earlier agreements. Suffice to say, progress was unsatisfying.
I was baffled that SV did not intervene, but seemed to go along with him; I had severe self-doubts. Yet after a particular crappy "revision" of our draft by CO, SV shortly after told me she considers CO's input crap and admitted he's difficult -- turns out she was not paying attention and had until then simply trusted CO by default. I was relieved, but unfortunately, nothing changed afterward; while SV repeatedly agreed with my views, she nevertheless continued to humor CO, and backed him when he criticized me for lack of progress. At some point, SV finally admitted to me she has no understanding of our project topic and what we are doing, which explained a lot of her weird behaviour.
This toxic situation has taken a toll on me mentally, and it needs to stop. Unfortunately, SV is a leader of our rather small field, and I was told not having a letter from her is a red flag in job applications. Fortunately, I have done research assistance for another young prof at our faculty who appreciates me, and he would be willing to take me on as his student.
Any advice on how I can handle this gracefully? I have no reason to trust my SV anymore, and think her perfectly capable of ruining my reputation if I changed. Is there a way to protect me against this? Or should I just accept the academic trail is dead for me and look for suitable industry jobs instead?

Since you have already completed most of your PhD, your best course of action is to finish your PhD as soon as possible.  Then you will be free of CO's bad behavior.  Negotiate a plan for completion of your degree with your supervisor.  Request that this plan does not rely on CO since they are not dependable.

should I just accept the academic trail is dead for me and look for suitable industry jobs instead?

The information you have provided in the question tells us nothing about your ability to find an academic job.  However, academic jobs are in general scarce and low paying.


Request an unpublished paper owned by another (foreign) university I am a graduate student at a US university. One of the papers I need for my research is a Ph.D. thesis, owned by the University of Birmingham, U.K. (but this question is for a more general case). That thesis has never been published and is not available on the web. When searching for that paper on the University of Birmingham library website, they only have the hard copy of that paper in their library. Is there a way that I can obtain that paper?

If the thesis is recent enough that it would have been written electronically, you can try to locate the author and ask if they would be able to send you an electronic copy.  This is a reasonable request.

Otherwise, talk to a librarian at your university library.  They almost certainly have some sort of inter-library loan that can get you a copy, or access to the original.  Requests like this are part of their job and this is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask them to help with.

Related:

Requesting a copy of the PhD thesis from an author?

Is it okay to ask someone for an (electronic) copy of their PhD thesis if it is not available online?


Are course grade distributions supposed to be bell shaped? I just got done teaching my first course, and my grades are heavily skewed:

I consider my assessments to be fair and have had them vetted by more experienced faculty.  Also, the course averages are usually high in this course (mine was 83.5 or so).  However, it seems like I have a strange distribution of grades.  What might have caused it?

The distribution doesn't have to be of bell-shape. In very large scale open exams it may be reasonable to assume a bell curve. In many other situations, the distributions can be affected by the class size, mix of the students, objectives of the course, validity of the exam questions, and difficulty of the exam questions, etc.

Class size: The smaller the class, the harder to observe any discernible distributions, such as a bell-shape normal distribution.

Mix of students: If you're teaching a quantitative class and there are two streams of students from i) art programs and ii) engineer programs, you may see some other distribution like a double bell-shape bimodal distribution.

Objectives of the course: Some courses can be designed based on a fixed and stringent set of standards. For instance, if you teach anesthesiology and the passing grade for the students to take the board exam is 90%, the end distribution is unlikely to be bell-shape.

Validity and difficulty of the exam: Invalid questions may lower the accuracy which prohibits you to see the true distribution; overly easy or hard exam can move the curve towards high- and low-boundary, causing truncated bell-shape distributions.

If I have to give an assessment I'd first suggest removing the 0% as it's a special case and yet tilting the impression of the curve quite badly. For the rest, I'd say if you're teaching an introductory course in which students are expected to gain a good foundation, this is not a bad distribution. If you're teaching a very advanced course, with nearly 20% getting close to full mark then the assessment may benefit from a re-tuning.

Generally, I'd advise:

Analyze the grades and your course objectives in tandem. Just grade distribution itself does not tell if you're doing a good job.
Accumulate more data across cohorts of students. I find that after 3-4 times teaching the same course the patterns would start to emerge.
Compare to historic grade distribution (just a few years before you picked this course up) to make sure you are not way off. Consult the appropriate dean if they are.
If so inclined, try to analyze your exam items. There are special statistics to check if your exam questions are "good" questions. Most academic institutes should have an education affair office that can help you.


Why does NIH study section website robot.txt disallow search? NIH posts their study section members who review grants online (e.g. Aging Systems and Geriatrics Study Section (ASG)'s roster is provided here). I was trying to search the study sections to find whether a particular reviewer served as a study section member. However, this is not easy, because their website does not provide a search function that does this (as far as I can tell), and the website NIH study section rosters that contain grant reviewer names disallow search engines from crawling and indexing them via robots.txt.

http://internet.csr.nih.gov/robots.txt

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Clearly, I can do a manual search by going to each page and finding if any of the study section contains the name I'm looking for, or manually make a database for personal use.

What are the possible rationales for disallowing search engine indexing reviewers?

@Memming, this could be done for any number of reasons.  The two I can think of off the top of my head is 1) to prevent site slowdowns especially due to what is likely to be the duplication of information developed by indexing the NIH site and 2) to protect (to some extent) the privacy of the participants.

One suggestion, have you tried using Google to search the site?  Search is not the same as indexing.  So if you're looking for sections with "Joe Brown" you can try searching "Joe Brown site:csr.nih.gov".  I was able to get results with this approach using a name I picked at random from the study sessions.


How do I not get impatient when other people ask me to describe my research? I mean, I really should be glad when they ask me this question. But inevitably, different people will ask me the same question many different times (over many different interviews), understandably so, and response fatigue does start to set in. I just wonder how other people can manage to be so patient when I ask them the same exact question (that they've probably answered hundreds of times by now).

I guess one of the things that has always driven me (despite an initially subpar educational background) was that I was always extremely averse to any form of redundant stimuli or repetitiveness. This helped carry me from a crappy middle school into UChicago/Brown. But I do need to get used to it a bit more as my role changes.

Your job, as an academic, is twofold:

Do amazing research.
Write it up and convey your results to other people.

It sounds like you view (2) to apply only to others who are already in your field and are completely familiar with everything you've done. You will find that, in the entirety of your field, there are probably just a few dozen people who are intimately familiar with every details of your field, and only a few hundred who are really familiar with what you do. Everyone else — academic, layperson, village idiot — will require an explanation, and you should do them the favor of explaining it to them.

To more directly answer your question, you should always have two answers ready to the question "what do you do?":

An elevator pitch, as described elsewhere. This should take ~15-30 seconds to say and would give a very high-level overview of your work.
A more in-depth explanation, which would take about 3-5 minutes, which conveys what you do in more detail. Generally speaking, less time than that and you can't convey any useful information, more time than that and you're giving too many details. After your in-depth explanation, either the person will say, "oh", and move on, or they'll ask questions and you can have an intellectual discussion.

(Note: the following point is somewhat debatable.) I've found for myself that it helps to visualize the person you're talking to as paying your salary; if you're on a publicly-funded research grant (i.e., any governmental grant), their taxes are funding your research. It gives some perspective.


Asking for a recommendation letter (Post-Doc) when you have Bipolar Disorder I'll be defending my PhD soon and I want to ask two professors for a letter of recommendation. They both know that I've been responsible with my work lately and I've made an impressive progress. The problem is: I behaved in an embarrassing way during most of my years in grad school. I'm so ashamed that I now avoid social contact with people in my department.
My problems during grad school were serious: suicide attempts, several hospitalizations, manic delusions and substance abuse (marijuana). Last Summer I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (after dealing with years of misdiagnoses). I was then put on a mood stabilizer, got better and started working every day to compensate for the time I lost. I finished my dissertation and I submitted two papers for publication.
Considering all the problems I had during most of my years in grad school, do you think anyone would ever write me a letter of recommendation? How should I ask for it? Should I explain the professors why I'm now stable?
Thank you!

Depending on the level of trust you have, you might consider revealing some of your medical history along with assurance that the issues are under control and won't result in future problems. But you also need to let them know whether it is ok or not for them to pass on details in letters. This is probably not advised. A LoR saying you had previous medical issues, now resolved, that affected performance is about as far as anyone should go. But make sure you set the limits.

However, also consider whether your recent performance, especially with letter writers, is good enough that they will discount/ignore the earlier problems altogether, and only write about your current performance and your likelihood of success.

And, even if you decide to tell some people, it might be best to limit the details. The important message is really only "medical condition", "now resolved". Beyond that may be more personal than you are comfortable with.

You might even consider asking them, provided your relationship is strong enough, whether your past performance would color their recommendation. If they hesitate to say no, then it might be more useful to give them the key message - medical, resolved.


Will a letter of recommendation from a postdoc fellow be valued for applying a PhD program? My master thesis supervisor is a postdoc fellow. And I plan to do a PhD program after finishing master degree. Is it matter to my PhD application with the letter of recommendation from her (my supervisor). I mean whether the members of the PhD application committee will think that she does not have enough knowledge and skills in research to evaluate my research ability? And therefore, they will not highly evaluate my application?
Many thanks in advance for your answers.

What the admission committee looks for is specific and reliable information about the skills of the applicant.

Specific. If a postdoc fellow, or any other member of a team worked with you long enough, they usually can describe in some details what you achieved and how your skills and mindset helped you to achieve this. The more specific examples they could provide usually the better. In academic reality sometimes students spend more time with their TA's than their Profs, and I think people in admissions usually realise that.
Reliable The letters from Profs are usually considered as more reliable than the letters from colleagues of moderate rank, and not without a reason. Indeed, if a Prof would decide to praise his student more than they deserve, it would be noted, remembered and all further letters from him would be taken with a bit of salt. Therefore, Profs are really responsible for providing actual information to each other in a small world of academia. RAs and TAs do not necessarily feel that their academic credibility is at stake, and can be more inclined to "help" the student by over-assessing their abilities and achievements in their reference.

The balance of these two factors makes the game. My suggestion is --- go and ask that postdoc to write a reference for you, but also ask them to be very specific about everything they write, and only put in their letter the information which can be justified by some evidence.


Listing industry related honors and awards on a CV I'm in the process of getting my PhD as part of a transition from industry to academia. During my time in industry I received a number of awards that I've typically listed in one form or another on my résumé. What is the protocol for listing these on the academic CV? Should they just be put in a generic "Honors and Awards" section, or broken out by industry, academic, etc?

Since it may be relevant, the awards loosely breakdown as follows:

Awarded within the department
Nominated by department, awarded by higher level management
Annual award from the highest level of a multi-national organization

These were also a combination of individual and team awards as well.

I would recommend that you add to your C.V. any awards that are relevant to your potential and performance as a researcher.

For example, one of my colleagues was recently given an internal "Entrepreneurial Award" for developing a significant line of business around research that he has been leading.  Even though this sounds kind of "businessy," it would be a good award to list on a C.V. because it is actually about his abilities as a researcher.  On the other hand, another person at the company was given an award for their flexibility in handling scheduling challenges of National Guard employees, and I would not recommend listing that on a C.V., since it is not relevant to scientific ability.

Finally, it's a good idea to add a short explanation on your C.V. for any awards that are not obvious from their title: e.g., "Best paper at Conference X" needs no explanation, but something like "Entrepreneurial Award" or "Hertz Foundation Fellow" should have a few words saying what that means, for those who aren't familiar. (See this answer for more on explanations)


How to obtain US Bachelor degree based on my old university credentials? I learned a math course in a Russian university many years ago. For silly discrimination and other silly reasons I didn't finish it and didn't receive any diploma.
Recently (2020 Oct 27) I have confirmed my education by the US standards: 100.50 semester hours of undergraduate credit, grade Point Average is 3.54 based on a 4-point scale with A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, F=0.
I want to receive the US Bachelor in mathematics. What can I do? Can I do it without passing any additional courses/exams? How much may it cost?
Note that despite of having no funding and no access to libraries and scientific databases I did a very advanced math research (some of which is peer reviewed and published). Essentially, I am a PhD with lost diploma.

No real US university will award a degree to a student who has not taken any courses at that university.  What you want is not possible.
To award a degree, you must earn credits from the university.  Typically, this is at least half the total credits required for the degree.


Taking money for your research outputs? As an academic working at a university, is it wrong to (personally) accept money for your research outputs? Would this be a bargain you would be happy to take?
EXAMPLE: Suppose you are a Mathematician with valuable algorithms or expertise (e.g., quantum-era code breaking, fancy AI, ...) and you are offered a (secret) contract of $150,000+ in additional salary per year to give access to an external entity (e.g., company) all of your research before it is published. For example, your mathematical proofs and working computer codes. You give them the right to patent any results, to use the codes for their own purpose, and potentially veto the publication of any result they would like you to keep secret.

As an academic working at a university, you do not have unlimited freedom to enter into arrangements of the sorts you describe, but are limited to what your university’s policies will allow you to do (which at my university would certainly not include the hypothetical secret agreement you described). And at established universities those policies have been carefully crafted to balance the university’s rights and its mission of public service against the academic’s desire and right to pursue side interests, including for pay, and also taking into account the fact that such side projects also often benefit society and thus advance the university’s mission.
So the answer to your question is more boring than you might imagine: that is, if you are following the university’s policies, then generally speaking it’s not wrong (unless you are being particularly crafty, misleading in reporting your actions or intentions, or are otherwise pushing the limits of what’s acceptable in a way many people would consider unreasonable); and conversely, if your actions clearly violate university policy, well, I don’t want to generalize too much since one can always think of exceptions, but that’s a pretty good sign that you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing.
Here are some relevant policies from the University of California system, in case you want to go deeper into this issue: 1, 2, 3.


Is there any free alternative to Mendeley desktop app on Windows? I have been using Mendeley for a very long time now. I use it for organizing and reading articles. I just noticed that it keeps removing files randomly from the folders and groups. I don't know the exact reason for this. I wonder if there is an alternative to the Mendeley desktop client for Windows.

Zotero is a free (and open source!) alternative: https://www.zotero.org/
There is a plenty of other tools (just google 'citation managers'), but I believe that Zotero's open source nature renders it preferable to all alternatives - including Mendeley, which belongs to the large commercial publisher Elsevier.