What a demonstration proposal is? I was looking at a conference's deadlines and one of them refers to the "Submission of demonstration proposals". I couldn't figure out what a demonstration proposal actually is.

A demonstration is a showcase for a tool developed as part of a research activity. A demonstration proposal is a short paper outlining what capabilities of your tool are you going to show and why they're significant.

Normally a demonstration does not present breaking research, rather it demonstrates practical implementation of existing - but still relatively new - research.   I speak for CS.  Your mileage may vary on other fields.


Adding co-authors after acceptance I am writing a paper, need some review. I want to send it to IEEE, without the name of my co-authors. I might get acceptance. I need to know, in that case, will I be allowed to add my co-authors or not?

I am writing a paper, need some review. I want to send it to IEEE, without the name of my co-authors.

Short answer: Hell no!

Depending on the editorial policies of the venue you submit, they may or may not allow to add co-authors during the review process. Some may even accept you to add co-authors after acceptance of the paper.

However, note that in all cases, it is unethical not to have a correct/honest list of co-authors at time of the first submission. All persons who have made significant scientific (or “intellectual”) contributions to the work should be co-authors in the submitted version of the paper.

“Hiding” co-authors during the first submission, even if you intend to add them at a later point, is a clear ethical violation. It probably also violates the journal's (or conference's) policy, which typically stresses the importance of having an appropriate authors' list (and even sometimes provides criteria for authorship).

The reason that editors may allow you to add authors is for special cases. The main reason why it would be used is when, during revision of the work to address reviewers' comments, someone who wasn't a co-author of the initial manuscript has been brought onto the team. For example, if you asked someone to ran some extra analyses and his contribution warrants authorship of the revised manuscript.


Corrigendum for wrong reporting of results My paper got published in a good journal but later I noticed that in the final results table I have mistakenly written the parameters used in the previous literatures and not what I have calculated for one of the ions. I know it's a terrible mistake to do. I can't figure out how to write the corrigendum.

Thanks in advance.

Write a letter to the editor, stating that in your paper so-and-so, table 5.7 should be replaced by [insert corrected table]. Use the format for the journal, so they can publish it as a corrigendum in the next issue. Perhaps add also a corrected version of the paper, to be archived instead of the erroneous one.


PhD after a Co-op Masters program I just did my bachelors in CS and am looking forward to studying further (I want to pursue a PhD because I love studying). I graduated with a good CGPA and a good overall profile so I think I can get into a good MS program.
For my MS I am applying to different universities these days. I have noticed a few universities offering a Co-op degree. As per my understanding in this degree, I would have to work (paid) for a few terms rather than writing a thesis.

My question is whether or not I should opt for a Co-op degree as I'm afraid it might hinder my chance of getting into a good PhD program? Don't good PhD programs prefer students with prior research experience (in other words students that have done their MS with thesis/research option)?

Because the PhD is a research degree, admissions committees want to see from your application that you'll be able to be successful in research. This is easily demonstrated through prior research experience, which many students get while completing a Master's thesis. There are other ways to get research experience for people with a Bachelor's degree.

If your motivation for doing a Co-op degree is financial, you might consider looking into other methods to get research experience. Perhaps you can work as a research assistant while taking courses, or, if your University permits, do your Co-ops in a research lab in the industry. You might even spend some time after the Master's degree as a research assistant in the industry or at a national research lab. A Co-op degree certainly won't preclude you from getting your PhD in the future.

But if your motivation for doing a Master's degree is just to position yourself for a PhD program, I would recommend putting research experience as your first priority, and evaluating the various programs you're interested in based on how likely you are to graduate having done interesting research. In addition to gaining the skills necessary to do research, research experience will help you determine what sorts of projects grab and hold your interest, which will make it much easier for you to find a place that you'll enjoy doing your PhD at.

So, to summarize, research experience is very helpful for getting into a PhD program, and a Master's thesis will certainly provide that opportunity, but a Co-op program won't preclude the opportunity for research experience, although it might make the path more difficult.


Special status of some physicists in France This is a question specific to France.

Permanent positions at the university typically are either research only or research and teaching. For the latter, positions are "maître de conférences" (assistant professor) and "professeur des universités" (full professor). In both cases, you are affiliated to one (or two) disciplinar "sections" listed here. Several are related to physics : 28, 29, 30, 60...

However, there exists other permanent positions called "physicien" (physicist), which belong to a different, separate "corps", see here.

How is that so and what is the difference ?

This other kind of permanent position is very specific to a few fields of science such as astronomy, geology and probably a few other ones.

While usual permanent positions (such as something-professor) imply research and teaching, these positions add a new commitment : "observation service". 1/3 of the time should be dedicated to operate big equipments (telescope for example) for gathering and analysing data that will be useful to the community. For astronomy it implies missions on telescope sites for instance.


Asking for on site talk at this point? At this point, most US PhD programs have made decisions for many students and are considering a few.

I will have the opportunity to be at a university these days. Will it be a good idea to email a potential adviser who interviewed me and ask him to talk for a few minutes with him and members of the research group since, if accepted, I won't be able to visit at the visit days?

They have yet to decide about me - and since I wasn't accepted on the 1st wave I am getting a bit nervous...

All you can do is ask; the best outcome is they say yes, hear your talk and accept you. The worst outcome is they decline to meet you and then reject you, which is the same as if you don't ask and get rejected anyway. I don't think they're likely to reject you based on you asking politely to meet them.

Apart from that, my only advice is to try not to worry. I remember how stressful the PhD application process is. As they say, good things come to those who wait, but I'd add that good things come sooner to those who are proactive. Good luck!


What do principal investigators (PIs) look for in prospective post docs? I've always wondered if PIs look for a perfect fit for their projects. For instance, a post doc vacancy is advertised as follows:

Must have completed PhD with 3 peer reviewed journal articles.
Must have x,y and z skills.
Must have had some exposure to a,b and c skills.

Now what if the applicant has only 1 journal article and is working on a 2nd manuscript. Has x and z skills and has had exposure to a and b skills but not c but some other skills that might be useful?

So would this applicant want to apply for said post doc?
If so does how does the hiring dynamic work?
Would this dynamic be the same whether it is an engineering/science post doc or otherwise?
Would the applicant be overlooked because he/she isn't a 100% fit?

I realize that each situation would need to be judged differently but there has got to be a general thumb rule.

Postdocs have an absolutely critical and unique role in a research group.  They have more research potential than anyone else in academia, because they are both full time on research and yet experienced, not students.  They are also very expensive and a rare luxury that comes only with heavy investment from a funder or university.

The first thing I look for therefore is demonstrated proof that the candidate will take good advantage of the expensive opportunity they are being offered.  Forms of evidence:

existing publications
publications in prep.
letters of reference

These should show that the candidate has skills in what needs to be done, and the determination and internal motivation to be a successful academic.

The next thing I look for is evidence that the candidate is very likely to employ those skills in the area that I am funded for them to research.  This is done through open and frank conversations with the candidate about their research and career goals, what I need, what they need, where they intend to go next, etc.  A postdoc is at a critical time in their career, and everyone should know that they need to produce papers out of their PhD and that they may leave early if the right lifetime opportunity comes along.  I try to negotiate in advance about what research I absolutely need them to complete, what further I'd like them to complete, and to discuss writing and research schedules such that they can meet both of our needs and wants, preferably through some synergy (e.g. of the possible outcomes of this project, which would best suit both of our goals?)  I then try to agree a schedule about what research will be done when, what is the earliest date they'll start looking for their next position, when will they or we start writing the next grant or fellowship bid etc.

These negotiations give me not only a sense of how much I can expect us to accomplish if I make this hire, but also how well we can work together and how similarly we understand our responsibilities as academics.

Finally of course there is a luck element:  if there is more than one viable candidate, the one who seems likely to be the best fit wins.


If my paper is accepted in a Springer journal, can I submit my version of the manuscript to arXiv immediately after acceptance? I have read the Springer copyrights and self-archiving policy, but they are a bit confusing. For example in the first of them, you may find this:

  Author may self-archive an author-created version of his/her Contribution on his/her own website and/or the repository of Author’s department or faculty.

And here is the quote from the second source:

  Authors may self-archive the author’s accepted manuscript of their articles on their own websites. Authors may also deposit this version of the article in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later. He/ she may not use the publisher's version (the final article), which is posted on SpringerLink and other Springer websites, for the purpose of self-archiving or deposit. Furthermore, the author may only post his/her version provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website.  The link must be provided by inserting the DOI number of the article in the following sentence: “The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/[insert DOI]”.

Do I understand correctly that I can put my own version of the manuscript at my own (or my institute's) website immediately after acceptance, but I can submit it to arXiv only 12 months later after official publication? If so, it seems to me it doesn't make sense. If the manuscript is made publicly available just after acceptance at my own website, why cannot it be made publicly available at the same time at arXiv?

The short answer is: yes, staggered posting rights like this are very common - many journals distinguish between your own website, your institutional repository, and a broader repository (eg arXiv, pubmed), with different rules about what version of the article can be posted and when; some have also begun to provide a special category for sites like ResearchGate.

The underlying answer -

Why on earth do they do this?

On the one hand, this doesn't make sense - the PDF is the PDF and once it's picked up by a search engine, it's going to be readable wherever it's hosted. But consider it in terms of discoverability and scale:

one hundred papers from the journal on one hundred obscure personal sites;
one hundred papers from the journal on twenty well-organised institutional sites; or
one hundred papers from the journal on one disciplinary repository

From a publisher's perspective, the first option is not something to worry about, while the second & particularly third options look quite scary. Remember, what they really don't want is everyone saying "great, we can get this all from arXiv, cancel next year's subscription please". So an embargo period gets attached to the repository copies - many journals (most prominently PNAS) manage fine on a subscription basis while still making older papers freely accessible after a year or two, and so it's well-understood that allowing delayed access in one form or another will not ruin the subscription income.

Now, mass cancellation because of self-deposited papers being available instantly is a bit of a bogeyman. No-one's really shown it would happen on a large scale (and indeed arXiv suggests otherwise); library budgets are not (yet) squeezed enough that we've had to start thinking seriously about it; and in any case "big deal" subscription models often make it impractical to cancel specific titles. But it's looming as the threat and most publishers simply don't want to risk it... so they produce very conservative guidance on what you're allowed to do, and work from there.

Over the past few years, many of these publisher limits have loosened slightly as they discover the sky didn't fall, which I suppose is something. At the time of writing, at a very loose generalisation, policies for non-medical scientific journals are mostly converging along the lines of "accepted MS immediately on your own site, accepted MS in a repository after a year, publisher/proof PDF never", but there are a thousand variations.


Advisor tries to reproduce my results to ensure my honesty. Is it the norm? I am a M.Sc. student in Machine Learning, about to finish my thesis this month. My advisor wants me to meet him in person to reproduce my results under his control. It is obvious that the main reason for this action is to be confident that I didn't manipulate the diagrams, etc.

I didn't do any cheating and I have no problem with that. But it is a little annoying for me that my advisor doesn't trust me. I want to know whether this is the norm in academia or is my adviser just a little skeptical of me?

I should mention that I am the lone M.Sc. student in the lab and I am nearly sure that the advisor doesn't do that with PhD students in the lab.

As many have pointed out in the comments (Nate Eldredge, Dan Romik, Per Alexandersson, etc.), the point is not to catch you cheating (as if you were intentionally trying to manipulate your results), but rather to verify your process of obtaining such results. We all should be so lucky as to have an adviser take the time out of his/her schedule to verify our processes.

I would also like to add that -- and this assumes your thesis could/will lead to an academic publication at a journal or conference -- that your adviser's reputation is potentially on the line by attaching his/her name to such a document. In other words, by becoming a co-author on your [future] publication, your adviser is essentially saying, "Yes, I helped work on this, and I am sure of the methods and the results contained within."

The bottom line (tl;dr) is that you shouldn't take this as a personal attack. You should be thankful to have someone who can invest the amount of time necessary to ensure the correctness of the work you've done.


Fear of someone having the same idea and doing the research before you do I am a young researcher, and recently, I find that the drive to publish and advance my career has created an unhealthy mindset. In particular, I find that when I have a good idea, I am worried that someone will have the same idea, carry out the analysis, and publish before I do. While this worry has greatly speeded up my research, sometimes I feel it is unhealthy, in that my work becomes more sloppy, my analysis is less careful, I check for errors less, and as a result I'm more prone to making mistakes. I think this is an undesirable outcome, because it can potentially reduce the quality of my research results.

However, the tradeoff is real - the more time one spends vetting one's results for accuracy and making improvements large or small, the later one publishes, and the risk of getting preempted is higher. Even if one is still able to publish, not being the first will reduce the impact of your publication.

I am interested in hearing what others think about this, and approaches to dealing with and think about this issue, to have a healthy mindset and research environment.

I worked on a project during the summer and fall of 2014 that I never published. Someone else beat me to it, publishing a very good and very thorough paper that did everything I had thought to do and more.

Do I regret that time I spent on that project? Not at all. I learned some useful new methods that I have since been able to apply to other ideas. I have a much deeper understanding of this problem than I would have just from reading my competitor's paper, and I'm sure that will come in handy someday. I've taken my version of the idea in a totally different direction, and it's stronger for it.

I suggest you consider the potential consequences of being "scooped":

Maybe you'll read their work and discover that although it seems very similar, the details are fundamentally different. Great! You'll cite the work in your own paper. The fact that other people are paying attention to this area shows that it's relevant and helps motivate your paper. Also see: Scoopage
Maybe you'll read their work and discover that it actually does accomplish everything you set out to do. Now you get to be flexible and take your project in a different direction. After you've done some preliminary work in this new direction, get in touch with them and propose a collaboration, which is likely to make your own work even stronger.

Know that being scooped doesn't necessarily mean everything you have done is wasted. (This article has some more advice on moving on from being scooped.)

Also, there are steps you can take to help avoid being scooped (although you can't guarantee anything, of course):

Know your strengths. If you're working in a crowded area, what can you contribute that you already have some expertise in? If you can apply what you already have to something new and interesting, you're ahead of those people who don't already have that expertise.
Read a lot. Identify the people in your field who are doing similar work, talk to them at conferences, generally keep track of what they are working on, so that you're less likely to be caught off guard.
Be open about what you are working on: give talks, poster presentations, chat with people at conferences, etc. about your ongoing work. If everybody in your field knows "LCW is working on X," then people interested in X may come to you for collaboration instead of working independently. When you do publish (a careful, accurate, not-sloppy paper), everyone working in the area will know about it and will probably cite it in their own work.

These are measures that can help alleviate your anxiety and improve the quality of your research.


Can deadlines for PhD admission in US be approximated? I am expecting to finish my masters degree in computer science by mid October and then I was planning to apply for a PhD program this year.

My question is, how much time will I have after being done with my masters to apply? I know different US universities have different deadlines but a general safe assumption would really be appreciated.

I still haven't decided which universities I would be applying to. I am also aware of the fact that eventually I'll have to look up at the websites for the exact deadlines but for now I just needed an approximate idea of a date by which I should have everything ready for submission including my GRE scores (which I am planning to retake).

It varies greatly.

There are the fixed deadline places, for which there are deadlines starting from Nov 15 or thereabouts, all the way upto Jan 15.
There are also places with rolling deadlines, where it's better to apply early.

In general, you should have your materials ready to go in the beginning/middle of November and that should take care of most deadlines.


What is a tuition waiver (in the US)? A tax proposal in the US is reported to make "tuition waivers that many graduate students receive when they work as teaching assistants or researchers" taxable.

I am currently a PhD student at a US institution.  All regularly enrolled PhD students at my institution have tuition 100% covered, whether through an external grant working for an advisor as an RA, as a TA, or through a university or external fellowship.  Tuition is not formally waived; money is actually moving between accounts, even if (in the case of TA's and university fellows) the money is moving from one university account to another.  There is a paper record as a part of my paycheck (I also get a stipend) that shows the tuition support that is being paid out.  Currently no student, to my knowledge, pays taxes on the tuition support that is paid on their behalf.

I am wondering, in the context of the proposed legislation, what are the "tuition waivers" that would be taxed?  Is it all tuition money paid on a student's behalf, as I've described above, or is it some subset of that, or is it something else?

A tuition waiver is when no tuition charges are paid at all. For instance, at my university, graduate students on research or teaching assistantships are not charged any tuition, nor are their advisors. In this sense, they have been granted a waiver for their tuition.

Note that even partial-year tuition waivers can be significant. For instance, during the 2017-2018 year, MIT would charge over $16,000 for summer tuition for graduate students, unless they're only enrolled in research!

I have yet to see any commentary on the issue of advisor-paid or department-paid tuition counts as a "tuition waiver."


Referring to article names in text I've found lots of documentation on in-text bracketed citations and referencing list styles, but very little on the following.

When referring to names of articles in text, should the article name be surrounded by quotation marks?

For example:

  In 1990, John Smith presented his work: "A question on quotation marks".

Or, alternatively:

  In 1990, John Smith presented his work: A question on quotation marks.

In my case, the required referencing style is ACM format, if needed.

After research your question, it appears from multiple universities that the proper way to reference a source in text with ACM format is:

  So we see that Smith [1990] ...

Therefore you should not need to reference the actual article name.

https://biblioteca.info.unlp.edu.ar/uploads/docs/guia_acm1.pdf
https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~chryssis/specs/ACM-refguide.pdf
https://www.library.unh.edu/research-support/citation-styles/acm-style


Ph.D. application timing I am going to graduate in mid-October from my M.Sc. in Economics and I am starting to think seriously to apply for a Ph.D. However, since I am still completing the writing of my thesis, I have not yet started to get informed in any way about the available programs and I did not fill any requirement in terms of GRE, language certifications and so on. Therefore, my idea would be to do some research work and to send my applications in fall 2018 (thus actually starting Ph.D. in September 2019).

Do you think this is meaningful? In my mind, trying to write a better thesis and get some other experience in research could be useful for the purpose of the application. But I am also worried that I am kind of losing one year with respect to my cohort of graduates, thus this could be seen as a symptom of uncertainty.

How an evaluation committee would consider this timing choice?

It depends what you do instead of school.  But I would not worry about falling behind your cohorts.

A lifetime is a very long time, enough time to do and get good a lot of things.
 My rule of thumb is that it takes about 4 or 5 years to good at something new, meet an important new life goal, get bored, want something new, then start over.  And you get to keep doing these rinse and repeat cycles as many times as you like.  Figure you have a working life of about 45 to 50 years, meaning you get to have at least 9 or 10 important phases in your career.  That's a lot.

If you think of it in that context, I can't really imagine anything much less important than worrying that taking a year off in between your MS and PhD to go do something else might place you behind your cohorts.  After a few years, no one really has meaningful class of cohorts anyway because everyone follows a different path.

Your actual life outcomes will depend more on what you do instead with that year off.  Could you go find an interesting job with your freshly-minted master's or find something else you'd like to do?


What can I do with a research project that is my university’s intellectual property? I'm working on a final year project on software development. I intend to publish it as a research paper on computer science, but the university says that it will hold intellectual-property rights (IPR) over all final year projects.

Can I publish the project as an independent research paper in a journal by including me and co-authors or will the IPR of the university cause problems?

First, it would be good to know if that is a claim they can legally make where you are. It is possible that it is an empty claim.

Second, if it is a proper claim, you should learn how it is interpreted by the university. A place making such a claim should have an office at which you can learn the consequences. I suspect that all it means is that you need permission from them to publish and, perhaps, include a reference to the university in the acknowledgements.

But forbidding publication would be unlikely except in extreme circumstances and assigning it to another "author" would be unethical.

My guess is that you have a way forward for nearly any sort of publication. It is actually to the university's benefit to have students publishing.


Is it wise (and common) to publish in a peer-reviewed journal without an impact factor to prevent impairement of one's own mean impact factor? I recently found out that a team of colleagues published in a journal without impact factor, though peer-reviewed. According to my supervisor this happens sometimes when the study cannot be published in a top journal, and then it could be better to do so than publish in a low profile journal whose impact factor would drag down the mean impact factor of the papers published by that team.

Is this common? If so, which elements can specifically drive a research team to choose this option?

This reasoning is Wrong and Bad in several ways.

First, computing "mean impact factor" for a person or group is insane and should be resisted at all costs.  Even amongst IF-crazy groups, the metric is generally how many high-IF publications have been obtained (ignoring low-IF publications), not the fraction of high-IF publications.
Second, even if you're going to commit yourself to such insanity, the reasonable mathematical interpretation of "no impact factor" is "IF = 0", not "omit from data."  Thus, if you're using this crazy statistic, it should be worse to publish in a no-IF venue.
Finally, a journal with no IF generally falls into one of two categories: either it is good but very new (or just not yet covered by ISI), in which case it will likely have an IF in a couple of years and the strategy will be undone, or else is it complete trash and likely predatory, in which case it will be a worse stain on your record than a moderate-IF publication, even amongst the most IF-crazy communities.

My only possible conclusions are that either:

your supervisor is seriously distorted in their thinking, or
your supervisor is lying to you out of embarrassment to cover the fact that they published (intentionally or accidentally) in a trash/predatory journal.


Can a thesis approved by supervisor fail? What to do to appeal? I am doing PhD in an Australian university.  My thesis was approved by my supervisor, however, one of two examiners suggested revision and re-submission (with harsh criticism and no solid recommendation), and eventually failed it. The committee asked for another examiner and failed it. I would like to know if we can appeal in this situation:

My supervisor has approved the thesis,
I never had any problem in annual review, and
I have made revisions in accordance with the comments received from the examiner.

I don't see how you can successful appeal the failure based on your supervisor's approval.  The only recourse is to change supervisor, complain that your supervisor is incompetent, and get the university to waive any penalties to do with late submission.  The supervisor's job is to make sure your thesis is up to the international standard. He/she is not responsible for passing you. In your case, as three external examiners have said no, then there is no way to pass without first doing more work, and then submitting a revised thesis; perhaps sending it to new examiners.  Also, I would definitely get an experienced supervisor or co-supervisor to guide you.

The other side of the coin is that it is possible that the fault is entirely yours.  I know of students who went ahead with the submission despite having a poor thesis, and the supervisor reluctantly approved the thesis to prove to the student that the thesis is not up to standard.


PhD in Cryptography after Masters with experience I hold a masters in mathematics and philosophy (emphasis on logic) and, for personal reasons, I will be joining the US Navy as an officer doing cryptology.  I'm curious if I apply afterward to programs (math or computer science programs) specifically doing cryptology (or number theory or related) will they see my experience as a plus to my application, especially since I will not be able to say what I did (being top secret and whatnot).

Yes, it will be a plus. And no, you won't need to go into details. But get a letter of recommendation from a superior.

But part of its being a plus is that it is closely related to your academic trajectory and not something different.

And, with permission from the DoD, you can probably say some things, even if not especially detailed. You can, for example, possibly speak about non-classified papers that you found useful in your work. But more important, those non-classified papers that you want to consider for extension - whether related to your work or not.


How to allow survey participants to contact me without breaching anonymity? I started a survey yesterday as a part of an empirical experiment, using an online questionnaire. It is among the employees of the institution where I work to pay the bills (that's not the university at which I'm doing my Ph.D.).

Soon I not noticed that there is a problem with the survey. 2/3 of the responses are empty from page 3 on. These are not people who chose to hit the "exit and clear" button, because then the responses won't land in the database. They either closed the browser window, or had a technical difficulty.

Totally stumped at what is happening, I set up a second "survey" with only one question: What problems are you experiencing with the original survey?. I sent it out asking people who experienced a problem to tell me about it. And now I have three attempted answers there - empty.

Now I don't know how to let people tell me about the problem if this isn't working either. If I ask them to tell me per email, I will see who is sending the mail, breaching anonymity. The survey software runs on a university server. If I tell them to write to the university admin, they won't trust him because they don't know him and cannot know he is not going to give out their names. I don't know who I could ask from our institution to assist - nobody here is part of my Ph.D. project, and nobody has any responsibility for the university server. If I ask somebody close to me to act as "problem relay" only as a personal favor, the trust of the participants will be eroded again, because people close enough to me to do me this favor won't be seen as impartial.

Any ideas how to get the problem reported? It doesn't matter if it is technical or the questionnaire is so unreasonable that 2/3 of the participants change their mind about completing it. I need to know what is wrong, as this survey is pivotal for my dissertation.

This answer may depend on how many participants your survey has in general - but I think one of the main objectives of conducting a survey "remotely", online, rather than personally, in a controlled environment, is to gather an exceptionally large amount of participants. Therefore, I'll assume a sufficiently large number.

Note that online surveys are quite an exception here in that you never get into contact with the participants. In general, you always know to some extent who participated in the survey (hardly anything else is possible when you have to meet in person with the participants). And even for online surveys, contact details are often required if there is any compensation for the effort of taking part, or only the offer to be notified once the results of the study are ready (which is generally the least that should be offered to participants in response to the time they reserved for you).

Therefore, the anonymity assured to participants generally does not mean that researchers never learn about any of the personal data of the participants; it means:

Responses will not be connected to the personal data of participants.
The personal data will never be published in detail, just as aggregate values (e.g. age minimum, maximum and median across all subjects).
Any identifying data (e-mail addresses etc.) will be erased as soon as possible.

Unless there is just a small total number of participants, participants can feel reasonably safe that even though the researchers know both their personal data and their responses, those two won't be connected in the future.


My affiliation after I moved to another institution for Ph.D I did my Master's in A university and then moved on to B for my Ph.D.
Covid outbreak started about the time when I was wrapping up my project, I had most of my manuscript done and was pending for iterative feedbacks from my advisor at A university. Due to COVID, my project got pushed back from priority and now, as a Ph.D. student at B university, I'm re-working my manuscripts to submit to an academic journal.
I don't know what to do with my affiliation in this situation. Should I list mine as of B university? Or should it still be A?

Most of the work was done at affiliation A and your adviser for that project was at affiliation A, and now you are at affiliation B. I disagree with Buffy's answer, which is to list your affiliation as B rather than A.
The most common approach is to put affiliation A with a footnote that says: "Present address: affiliation B", or to put both affiliation A and B.
You might also like to ask your advisers at affiliation A and B whether or not to include those affiliations on your paper, so that neither adviser can get angry at you for doing what they don't want you to do or not doing what they do want you to do.


Unexpected long delay to start review process and withdrawal of article We submitted an article to a SCI journal 2 months ago. Since day 1 the status of article is "Editor Assignment Pending". In the journal introduction they have mentioned that on average 1st review response takes 70 days.
As the start of review process usually takes 5-15 days in my area of research; therefore, we sent an email after 30 days and 2nd email after 45 days but there is no response from editor. In second email we requested to withdrawal of article so we may submit it to another journal.
Can we submit the article to another journal before hearing the response from editor?
Usually in my area of research the articles goes into review process within 5-15 days and it takes 2.5-4 months to get 1st review response.

Today it is very difficult to find reviewers, especially good and timely ones, unless the journal is very prestigious or rewards them highly (eg with editorials).

Having said that, this journal seems to be handled poorly. Thus, I would suggest you to pursue another scholarly venue.

If your email was clear in stating that you were definitely withdrawing the manuscript, then you can submit it wherever you want already.

Be prepared though that they may try to dissuade you stating that the revision process is already quite ahead (which could be true but not necessarily).


How big of an advantage are publications for Applied Mathematics grad school applications? How much of an advantage does an Applied Mathematics PhD applicant have if he/she has a publication under his/her belt?

Of course, this depends on the "prestige" of the journal that he/she published in. I suppose publishing in a top tier journal like Nature or Science would be a major advantage, but would the applicant be one of the first picks because of it?

More pertinently (I suppose seekers of such advice would not have a top tier journal publication), what about those with publication/publications in lesser journals?

The question is not answerable at this level of abstraction, because grad school admission is not decided on the basis of easily described rules.  If you're a coauthor on a brilliant and important paper, you may still be rejected if the committee doubts you were a major contributor to the paper.  On the other hand, some applicants with no publications at all may be accepted.

As a general rule, nobody on the committee will read the paper itself.  That would be both time-consuming and unlikely to be fruitful, since the committee probably doesn't even have an expert in this specific area.  They may get a little information from the abstract or your personal statement, but everything else they know about the paper will come from your letters of recommendation.

The letters need to indicate why this paper should help your case for admission.  Specifically, they need to explain why the paper is interesting, what you contributed to it if you are not the only author, and why your work was impressive.

This task will be easier if the paper is really good, and that's correlated with being published in a top journal, but this is not really necessary.  For example, if an undergraduate makes a major contribution to a solid but not exceptional research paper, then that could mean a lot, even if the paper doesn't get accepted to a leading journal.  Of course the paper needs to meet at least some standards - publishing in a junk journal or vanity press doesn't count.  However, the most important issue is demonstrating that you can carry out good research, not getting your name in a prestigious venue.


Is it worth seeking disability accommodations if I get good grades anyway? I have bipolar disorder and take medications that make me foggy and confused.  Because of this I am thinking of asking for extra time on tests.  But I generally score in the upper half of my classes, even when I am taking my medication.  Should I still register with the disability office?

Also, my advisor is teaching the class I'm taking, and many of the TAs are people I already know, who may think I am trying to game the system.

Edit: Also, do you think I should try to get accommodations for my qualifying exams?  Or are those not a thing?

The purpose of disability accommodations are to put students on a fair playing field. If you have a condition and if your physicians, mental health providers, and university disability office feel that it puts you at a relative and unfair disadvantage by making you foggy and confused, requesting accommodations sounds both ethical and wise. The fact that you happen to be a relative high performer in spite of your disability does not mean you are not at a disadvantage relative to your peers in this concrete way that can be accommodated for with extra time (for example).

The reality, of course, is that accommodations are not evenly distributed. In general, socially and economically disadvantaged students will be less likely to be diagnosed and provided with accommodations for their legitimate disabilities. There is also a sense that some people have that students will fabricate or exaggerate disabilities to receive accommodations that would help any student but that do not actually compensate for a legitimate disability. In this final sense, people might think you are trying to game the situation.

It would be wrong to game the situation but it doesn't sound like you are suggesting that. Despite others perception, it is both ethical and in your interests to be accommodated for your legitimate medical disabilities and I would definitely do it.


Parents attending thesis defense? My wife is defending her thesis soon, and in her department, defenses are open to the public. I will be there along with several of her friends/colleagues. Her mom also wants to come to the defense. In terms of her committee's perception, I could see this being viewed as weird or maybe unprofessional. Then again, it could be harmless, and her mom really wants to come. I also happen to be in the business of trying to keep my mother-in-law happy :)

How would this look from the perspective of her committee? Do parents ever come to defenses? I haven't really heard of this before. I want my wife to have the best chance at passing her defense, but I also don't want to come across as a grouchy husband that appears to be saying, "Your mom can't be here."

This is a Nutritional Sciences department in the United States. It is a somewhat unique situation in that students typically start a dietetic internship a week or so after defending the thesis. The internship takes months to plan for the student since it involves organization with preceptors at multiple locations.

At our university, there are three possible results from a defense: passing, passing with modifications, or failing. Passing with heavy modifications could result in a delay (of a month or more) in starting the internship. This recently happened to another student.

My wife asked me to ask this question here as she wants to focus on getting prepared for the defense. She initially asked for my gut feeling on her mother attending, and I had never heard of this before, nor had she. The defense is coming up very soon ;) and she did not feel comfortable asking her advisor a question like this so late. Also her advisor is not the most responsive to email so she might not even hear in time (I know that this will probably invoke statements that she should get over it or that she should not have picked this advisor, but this is not the point of the question). For the record, I would never tell my wife who she could or could not have at her defense. I'm just trying to be helpful :) It's encouraging to hear from the comments that parent attendance at a defense is fairly common place, so it will probably be no big deal.

Open to the public means ... open to the public (presuming they can sit quietly in a room for 2 hours or however long your wife's defense is).

Moreover, (edit though I thought I was clear), it's very common in the US for family including parents and spouses to attend PhD defenses.

My wife and parents came to my defense (philosophy PhD USA). As did a friend of ours who was a foreigner living in America with no connection to philosophy. A philosophy PhD defense at least at my institution is them drilling you with every objection and reason that they think you're wrong for two solid hours.

While I assume a nutrition science PhD has a different format, I hope that neither the committee nor the person defending the dissertation has much time to look around and see who came and to think odd thoughts about the professionalism of the candidate based on who came to their defense.


I've reproduced a paper: where shall I share the code and findings? The majority of papers don't share their code. However, I sometimes want to reproduce the results, and therefore re-code the experiments to try to reproduce the papers.

Where shall I share the code, findings, comments, and potentially some data sets, put aside from GitHub? Ideally I am looking for a common place where people share the work they have done when reproducing papers.

I am mostly interested in computer science papers.

In the field of Computer Networks, there is the Reproducing Networking Research blog, which allows anybody to contribute replications of networking experiments, or original research in a form that allows it to be replicated:

  This blog is a collection of network research stories, each of which includes full instructions to replicate experiments. Our goal is to kickstart a discussion of repeatable research in the network systems community, by showing that “runnable papers” are indeed possible, today. If every result in every figure of a paper could be replicated easily (by anyone with a local or EC2 VM), it would be much easier to build on prior code, results, and scripts, understand the concepts behind them, and most importantly: put them to practice in the real world.

If there is no such equivalent in your field, consider starting one. You can do what Nick McKeown did with the networking blog - seed the blog by teaching a class in which students are required to reproduce a published result as an assignment, and invite them to contribute it to the blog.


Correcting small errors in text/picture after publication? I got a manuscript published in November 2018 (Elsevier) and realized after reading it again today that an error has been introduced, after proofreading/publishing, in one of the equations I wrote; they have added a "Â" right after "f(x)=" which is nonsense. Is it conceivable to ask for correction now?

Also, two of the texts describing patterns in the legend of a graph were interchanged; this one is my mistake (prior to publishing).

Typically, it is difficult/impossible to correct this kind of mistakes after formal publication. The 'traditional' reason is that there are now printed copies of your article in libraries around the world, and the online copy should coincide with them. Today there are online-only journals, for which this reason is less compelling, so you might want to ask, but I wouldn't be surprised if the journal answered that it's their policy not to change anything.

For something more major, you would issue an erratum / corrigendum, but for typos and small mistakes there isn't a good solution.


Citing a popular science magazine article In one part of my paper, I give a reference to a one-page article published in Science from (AAAS).
There are some quantitative statements in this one-page article. However, I could not find any reference for these quantitative results presented in the article.
There exists a DOI number of the article.

My question :  Is it acceptable to cite this kind of article in a paper to be sent to a peer-review journal ?

My question : Is it acceptable to cite this kind of article in a paper to be sent to a peer-review journal ?

I have cited a popular science article (specifically, an article in Scientific American) as well as a citation to a fan-maintained video game Wiki in one of the best medical journals in the world.

If it's the most appropriate source, it is acceptable - and essentially - that it be cited.


I have one bad grade on my transcript and I'm thinking of applying for MS CS programs at top US Graduate schools. How badly would my chances be hurt? I am currently studying Computer Science and Engineering at a top Indian engineering school (IIT). However, I have a CD (5 out of 10) grade in one subject (System Software Laboratory) in one semester. My overall grade is pretty good but I have a bad grade for this one subject. For context, this grade is kind of equivalent to a D in the US.

There's no question it will hurt.  You already know that.  How much it hurts depends on where you're applying and whether it's to a master's or PhD program.
Top PhD programs could fill every spot with students who only have 4.0 (perfect) averages.  The reason they accept students with less than perfect averages is because they also consider your LORs (letters of recommendation) and your essays, especially, your SOP (statement of purpose), which may be enough to overcome that one bad grade.  Lesser programs accept less.
If you're applying to a master's program, admissions are generally more accommodating since they don't have to assign a faculty advisor and they know most master's students are heading into industry, not academia.


Patented algorithm: what authors are allowed to do? I work for an industrial research lab, which requires everybody to file 2 patents a year to achieve 100% in annual performance evaluation. Once the patent is filed, the algorithm in the patent is allowed (and is encouraged) to be published in a conference.

When I started, I signed a document saying all my inventions belong to the company. When I leave the current company, what I can do and cannot do with the patents I filed.

If the algorithm in the patent is not published in a conference, can I publish it as (i) an independent researcher or (ii) an employee of another company?
If the algorithm in the patent is published in a conference, can I build an (open source) tool from scratch to implement it? can I implement it for another company?

If the algorithm in the patent is not published in a conference, can I publish it as (i) an independent researcher or (ii) an employee of another company?

You most likely signed a non-disclosure agreement which will prohibit you from publishing any work product. You can ask your employer to sign a waiver permitting publication.

  If the algorithm in the patent is published in a conference, can I build an (open source) tool from scratch to implement it? can I implement it for another company?

A goal of the patent system is to share knowledge in exchange for an exclusive right to exploit the invention for a limited period. It is country specific as to whether private or non-commercial use is excluded. WIPO's Exceptions and Limitations to Patent Rights: Private and/or Non Commercial Use (SCP/20/3) provides a useful starting point.

Requiring "2 patents a year" is dumb, it encourages quantity over quality.


Ph.D. Topic Problem- Changing Topics/Labs Even though title itself seems quite similar to other questions asked here, my question is a bit different from other similar questions. I know it's a bit long, but I do appreciate anyone who has a read through it.

I am a Ph.D. student in UK and it has been 5 months since I started. My topic was something completely new (to me) so as one might guess, I've spent these 5 months reviewing the literature and covering what I didn't know. Problems started right here.

I am working at a Research Institute that has expertise on something totally different than my Ph.D. (let's name it field A, and name my Ph.D. field B). Simply, A and B have nothing in common (except both are engineering topics, but sub-fields are different). As a result, this laboratory doesn't have the required equipment or facilities that I need for my Ph.D. most importantly, there is not a single person around me in the lab who has a single bit of knowledge about my topic, thus no practical help or chances of hands on experience. Speaking of the good parts; I am getting a proper work experience (since this research institute has industrial focus), my scholarship is a substantial amount and my supervisor (even though he is sort of clueless about my topic, he is a huge figure in field A) is quite impressed with my progress.

But, as always, I have an alternative. There is another lab in my university which has expertise on field B (my Ph.D.). In this lab, there are people who have expertise in field B and of course, director of the lab is a powerful figure in field B. I know it sounds good so far, but here are the cons of this alternative: Lab director  can't give any sort of guarantees regarding a scholarship (which means I have to pay tuition fees as well, good old UK) and  wants me to work in a new project(a new field, field C). This field C, again completely different from A and B, is a newer topic compared to B and there are lots of research going on in this field. Field B is sort of an established field, I am just trying to squeeze whatever's left out it.

So on one side, I have a good working experience, Ph.D. in field B, an impressed supervisor, yet no practical help about field B or collaboration whatsoever. On the other side, I have a group of people who have expertise in field B and C, yet no money. I personally don't have any problems about changing my Ph.D. from B to C, the only disadvantage will be losing 6 months of work and naturally, getting 6 months of extension in the end. On the plus side, I already have a paper waiting to be published (in field A though, not in my Ph.D. topic field B). Therefore, these 6 months won't be "that" lost.

So, both sides are waiting to hear from me as soon as possible. I have to make a decision by this Friday. Last thing that should be mentioned is my current lab is located in city 1, whereas the other one is located in city 2. I hate city 1 (current city), whereas I am in love with city 2.

Financially, I am promised by the other professor that depending on my performance, I can get funding. I do know I can't trust this, though I believe I can cover my expenses throughout my Ph.D. including tuition fees. So, money is not a big problem right now.

If I go to the other lab, field C will be my Ph.D. as well as my work, hence shielding me from dividing into two as I do right now for field A and B.

My question is simple, what would you do if you were me? I have exhausted my friends and my family about this issue and I need a fresh pair of eyes and neurons to help me out.  I do appreciate any questions and comments.

Whichever makes you a happier person. Life is short and not worth spending 5 years in a condition you don't like. If you have the money, go for it. If not, here is my longer answer.

The work experience you are getting in field A should not be a priority because you are there to do research, to contribute to science. Work experience in that field should be just a tool so that you can earn money and live properly. The excellency of people in field A are also irrelevant, as your research is in field B.

But, life does not always present us the best options. If you cannot get a scholarship when you switch to field B, then I would definitely stay at where you are now. You say you can cover expenses, but if you don't get a scholarship, how much will you lose in 5 years? That's a big number and imo not worth it (unless you have a million in some account)

I would stay there and from time to time, consult professors that work in field B. After some time, as you dig deeper, you will know more than those guys anyway.

It really depends on your budget I guess. I am not rich so I don't like the idea of Ph.D. level scientists' paying for it.


What do you wish you knew as a student before you became a researcher? There are a number of lessons I learnt as an undergraduate which I wish somebody had told me much earlier.

Although each of you learnt different lessons with different notions of which way is the right, please share your findings and wisdom so that an eager reader would contemplate over your advice and would not regret avoiding later in life.

Research can be great, but I learned it can be so hard.

First, Google "should I do a phd" and then "should I do a PhD in ". There are tons of people who succeeded and failed in academia and writing about it, about what's it going to be in Academia, and so on. Two examples:

Nature's special on the point of a PhD
You and your research

Beyond that, here's a few things I've learned:

Being a researcher is a career job, not so unlike being a lawyer, a manager.

After all, a paper has to change the scientific knowledge on the
topic. You're going to teach respected scientists something they
didn't know and something they thought was wrong.
I hear that in life sciences, the career aspect can extend to people sabotaging
fellow researchers (that is, competitors).

Being more intelligent does not (necessarily) mean being a better researcher. If you're admitted to a decent program, you're more than smart enough for research. Managing your work (in all senses) can be more important, even though supervisors can help you with (part of) this in the beginning. But it's also about discipline and character:

Choosing a good question to work on (supervisors can help) - the question should matter (or you should make it matter, if you can).
Keeping an overview of what you're doing is important: otherwise, you might find an excellent solution to a problem which in the end is the wrong one.
Working enough on it (keeping focus among distractions of grad school can be hard).
How do you choose which way to approach a problem? Some approaches might not ever work, but others will only work if you keep at them long enough. So you need to be tenacious, and be able to change mind, depending on the moment. You need to delude yourself that you'll succeed until you do.

A good supervisor is extremely important. Nowadays it's extremely hard to start doing research "by yourself". On the one hand, there's too much written knowledge to navigate (literature). On the other hand, there are often unspoken assumptions which you won't learn from reviewers. It helps if he's available enough for you.
A supervisor must also fit you, character-wise. You mustn't be friends, but you need to function together, and neither you nor your supervisor study how to occupy your position.
Communication is extremely important. You're supposed to learn something and then tell your peers (and the world). And nowadays, if your peers don't get it, it's your problem (because your paper gets rejected). Hence, learning technical writing was very important for me.

Of course this is what I learned, which is influenced by my weak points, my experience and my field — I'm saying this because I'm sure somebody will disagree.
I'm a programming language researcher, so I invent and design stuff (programming language). And evaluating design is hard. So much that many ideas are not right or wrong per se - you can make it right or wrong by determined work (see also this). But other disciplines probably experience similar phenomena in different form.


When should researchers who take part in the composition and editing of a manuscript be co-authors I sometimes work as a ghostwriter/editor for other researchers alongside my own research, and it occurred to me that there isn't a clear framework for crediting this work. I have sometimes appeared in the acknowledgements for writing the first draft or completely rewriting the manuscript, or been a co-author on manuscripts I only commented on or did a tiny bit of data analysis for.

On the one hand, if the editor is employed to edit the language of the manuscript only, I don't think that they should be co-authors. But should they appear in the acknowledgements? Does this depend on whether they were paid specifically for the project or are a departmental editor?

On the other hand, if the editor contributes scientifically to the manuscript, perhaps they should be co-authors. However, does this depend on whether the manuscript is basic research or (for instance) an opinion paper? In this case, how do they differ from a reviewer who comments on the substantive aspects of the paper?

This depends on the field of course, but in general it is pretty unlikely unless the "editor" has contributed to the content of the work, rather than just the wording, layout, etc.

This has been debated within the Patterns Writing Community within Computer Science. Part of the process of getting a paper accepted goes beyond editing and review. A Shepherd is assigned to each paper and the shepherd works with the authors over three or four iterations/versions of the paper to get it ready for a patterns conference. These conferences are also rather different from what most think of as conferences as they are also designed to improve the paper for publication using Writers Workshops.

Some authors seem to get so much help from their shepherds that they have asked to have the shepherd included as an author. I believe that it has happened in a few cases, but is not a general rule. The shepherd goes far beyond what an editor would do, suggesting content, for example. But even there, it hasn't become a general practice. I'm currently shepherding one paper for an upcoming conference and have made a lot of suggestions, but wouldn't expect to be a co-author, for example. I would, personally, object if a shepherd asked or demanded to be made a co-author, but that is because of the nature of the culture of the patterns community.

So, if, as you say, the editor contributes content (fact, opinion, whatever), or makes the "author" rethink things generally, then it may be appropriate. But they should be acknowledged in any case.


Are informal inquiries about postdoctoral positions liable to be perceived negatively? I will graduate in 6-8 months with a PhD in physics and am looking to contact potential postdoc advisers. I will be applying to positions without an advertisement or prior contact with the potential advisers. I have been told by my current PhD adviser that if I wait until I just a few months before graduation, he will make the initial contact for me. I am conflicted because I understand many postdoc positions are planned and filled up to a year in advance.

I don't want to lose out on these positions, so I first want to make informal contact on my own. However, I don't want to jeopardize my chances of getting a position by sending out a poorly received informal email. I'm wondering specifically how informal emails are typically perceived in these situations. Are they liable to be perceived negatively by those professors expecting a more formal process?

Informal inquiries are not liable to be perceived negatively: An informal inquiry is a very good way to make first contact before sending over more formal items such as a CV, letters of recommendation and proposed research ideas. A thoughtful email with some very brief and basic information about yourself and your interest in the potential lab is more likely to be read and replied to (no information overload). After initial contact is made, the more formal process will then be more directed as information about timing and funding may be provided.


Differences between MSc Program in Engineering in TU and Research Universities in the Netherlands In the Netherlands what is the difference between universities of technology (TU's) and research universities?

Also both universities of technology and of research offer engineering MSc programs. Is there a difference between them? Is one inferior to the other in any way?  Would it be better to study a MSc program in engineering in a university of technology?

Both type of universities are research intensive, so the adjective "research" is not useful to distinguish them. In the Netherlands they are usually called "classical" and "technical" universities, which is the terminology I will use here. In general the distinction is that the universities of technology are more application-oriented, while the other classical universities are more theory-oriented. The TU's typically have closer ties to industry. Of course in current research the boundary between "applied" and "theoretical" research is not always so clear, and you will find both types of research in both types of universities, but in general this is one of the main things that distinguish the universities.

Another difference is that the TU's also only offer programs in engineering and related disciplines (with a few exceptions), while the classical universities also offer courses in the humanities and social sciences.

What is better in terms of choosing a university to study depends on what your interests are. Most engineering programs (like civil engineering) are only offered at the TU's, but programs such as computer science, mathematics or physics are offered on both types of universities, although their focus will be different as explained above.

Apart from that, there are also "Hogescholen" which in English are typically called "University of Applied Sciences" or something similar. These types of institutions are not research-oriented and typically do not offer graduate programs (or only for MSc and not PhD).


How to respond to exploding PhD job offer in Europe A few days back I had a second interview with a European university on a project that I really liked. I have also another offer from a Canadian university and am still waiting for 5 other universities for a decision.

2 Hours after the interview I got the PhD job offer. The very next day I received another email from the department head asking me for a response for the offer I received less than 24 hours earlier.

While I really like the project and the people, I can not make a decision this quickly. I asked him to give me until the the beginning of next week and he agreed. Even by then, I cannot make an educated decisions because there are FIVE decisions that I didn't receive yet.

What would be a good thing to tell the professor by the the time I have to give my answer? I there anything that I can do to have more time before making this decisions ?

Unfortunately, this is a fact of life in academic applications.  Offers come with deadlines, and often you will have to make a decision on one offer before hearing back about the others.

There are two things you can do:

Contact the departments where you still have applications outstanding.  Let them know that you have another offer, and ask them when they expect to have made a decision regarding your application, or if they are able to tell you anything about your current status (for instance, there may already be a short list of preferred candidates, and they might tell you whether you are on it or not).
Contact the department that has made you an offer, and ask if they can wait for your decision until date X, where X is late enough that you expect to have heard  back from all or most of the other departments, based on what they told you in step 1.  But be prepared to get the answer "no, we need your decision by date Y << X".  Keep in mind that if you turn down the offer, the department likely needs to move on to another candidate, and they would like to be able to do that before the next candidate accepts an offer somewhere else.

But it is quite possible that you will not have the opportunity to make an "educated decision", as you put it.  You will have to judge for yourself whether you want to accept the current offer, or take a chance on a future offer that may not materialize.


Given 0s on Assignments with suspected and dismissed cheating? Basically, I coded several assignments and a friend turned in code which looks almost identical. I didn't give him my code, and, as far as I know, he didn't even have any way to access it - but it happened somehow. Anyway, the professor said that he can't prove that I let him have the code, so he won't/can't fail me for the class. However, he'll still give me 0s on the assignments he suspects cheating on.

Is there anything I can do? I already went over the code with the professor one on one, and proved with little doubt that I coded it myself. If the suspected cheating can't be proved, does he have the authority to give 0s on those assignments? Would an ombudsman be able to change the situation? I don't want to push this too hard and end up digging myself into a hole where an authority may decide to fail me (if that's possible), but I also proved that I coded those assignments and deserve a grade.

The professor said that if he figures out how he got my code (supposedly if he sees that I didn't willingly hand it over to him), then he'd give me the points back. But since the case is already going to be dismissed, is that a decision that he can make or something I can fight back?

I'm sure this all varies based on different universities and their policies, but any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

EDIT: I was mistaken to say that the case is going to be dismissed - Its most likely going to be though.

EDIT2: Between advice here and what I've found out on my end, I think I know what my options are and what I can do.

It seems that you are being treated unfairly, but it is a situation that can only be judged and handled locally. Your university probably has appeal processes and you can always go to the department head.

In programming as in mathematics there is often only one clear way to do something and if different students  do "the expected" thing, then their programs come out similar - occasionally very similar.

"Suspicion" of cheating should never be the final determinant.

But no one here can help you. Seek a solution locally.


Journal paper and conference proceedings note appear to be identical, is this plagiarism? I am looking at these two papers in the field of astrophysics. One is this journal paper and the other is a proceedings notes from a conference.

It almost looks like these two papers are copied word-for-word, with the exception of Equation 4.24 in paper 1 (although I guess considering the flow of things, it should maybe correspond go Equation 61 in the second paper). Is this plagiarism? I understand that it varies from field to field. How does one go about determining whether it is?

Two issues:

The latter journal article does not cite the proceedings notes.
The latter journal includes two authors (the proceedings notes has only one author), and the newly appearing person is listed as the first author.

I guess this highlights the ethics issues which aren't brought up often enough.

It's hard to give a precise minimum amount of copying that constitutes plagiarism, and there are always various subjective mitigating and aggravating circumstances to consider. Ultimately, though, any official response to plagiarism should come from an organization that has a statement about what they consider to be such.

In this case, the latter article is published in The Astrophysical Journal. The publisher's ethics policy has the following points to make (all emphasis mine):

  Plagiarism is the act of reproducing text or other materials from other papers without properly crediting the source. Such material is regarded as being plagiarized regardless of whether it is cited literally or has been modified or paraphrased.

Thus here the standards are pretty loose; even inexact copying counts. Certainly a change in one equation does not make this non-plagiarism.

  Deliberate refusal to credit or cite prior or corroborating results, while not regarded technically as constituting plagiarism, represents a comparable breach of professional ethics, and can result in summary rejection of a manuscript.

Even if there was no overlap in text, loose or exact, omitting something you know to be relevant is just as problematic.

  Strictly speaking, authors are not formally required to cite unpublished or unrefereed materials, especially in cases where the veracity of the unpublished work may be in question. However, when principles of common professional courtesy dictate that such attribution is appropriate, authors are expected to honor these conventions.

Here's where that subjectivity comes into play. It's not clear how refereed the earlier work is, nor what level of "professional courtesy" is considered "common." Conference proceedings are rather rare in astrophysics, especially in the US (where the latter article is published). Most conferences are for oral talks and posters, not written papers. To the extent conferences do catalog what happened in a permanent way, one still looks to cite "real" articles rather than proceedings.

Does a proceeding count as prior work? Does it matter (with regard to professional courtesy) that the first article's intended audience was probably largely confined to Korea? These are questions that ultimately the publisher must answer, and I could find no statement of theirs addressing them.

The community or its practitioners are also free to develop their own opinions and take whatever action suites them. For example, a tendency for self-plagiarism will get a researcher noticed as producing water-down rehashings of old work and will thus lead to people not paying much attention to that researcher in the future.

The issue of authorship is only loosely related. In astrophysics, authorship is understood to be in order of significance of contribution, where in cases of large author lists people at an equivalent tier of contribution will be ordered alphabetically. At some level, there's no way to reliably tell who really did what, and so unsurprisingly I could find no official statement from ApJ about author order.

The fact that the bulk of the content of the latter paper was written by the second author years ago would seem to be strong evidence that the authorship norms of the community are not being followed here. A journal has every right to object to this (or any other feature of a submission), and maybe they would take action if notified, but I cannot be sure. The practice of gifting authorship, either to help students' careers or to help one's own, is thankfully not so common that strict guidelines have been set up to deal with it.

Finally, an update on this particular case. The journal was notified of the earlier article, and it has indeed issued a retraction for plagiarism. There does not seem to be any mention of gift authorship one way or the other.


Google Scholar and books Why does Google Scholar results categorize some books as [BOOK] and some as [CITATION] - what's the difference?
In addition, why are there apparently no citations to some well-known books even though Google includes these in books.google.com? I.e. they should show up in Google Scholar search results, but they don't.

I can only muse about the inner workings and motivations of Google, but:

Google Books is for all kind of books, not only scholarly books. And since deciding whether a book is scholarly is something that cannot be automatised just like that, it is arguably less bad to miss some scholarly books which are in Google Books than to have all of Google Books’ books in Google Scholar.
As already indicated this answer (hinted at by mhwombat), being categorised as citation in Google Scholar essentially means that the only trace Google Scholar has of this work (in a scholarly context) is that it is cited by some other work. In particular, Google does not even know that this piece of work is a book and not any other type of publication (e.g., if you export such a citation to BibTeX, its type defaults to article).
Google could link its databases and include all books in Google Books in Google Scholar if it manages to match them with a citation, but this might not be such a good idea either as non-scholarly publications are also cited sometimes – just look up some random, very popular pieces of fiction and see whether they got cited.


Is there a celebrity culture in academia and should we discourage it? I work in STEM, and in recent years I have been troubled by this trend in academia where certain individuals are elevated to the status of celebrities. Their appearances alone draw crowds in the hundreds and their "latest" interviews are almost taken as edicts directly from God and are debated endlessly. They are sometimes literally referred to as "Heroes" or "God (fathers)".

Sure, there has always been certain academicians (especially authors or professors) who are popular, and I think we should acknowledge them. But I don't understand the point of celebrating certain individual just because of what he or she is doing, or what this person has done or achieved in the past. The whole point of academia is cross-examination, and no person has absolute say in anything. I think people have lost sight of that. Plus, I don't believe in the "self-made" researcher.

What really prompted me to write this is when I discovered a serious error in a widely cited paper by a very prominent scientist (who has published books, been on TED talks, etc.). How can the paper be so widely cited given such a glaring and serious error? I am also troubled by some recent "non-sense" work from the same author. But this is just one example out of many (countless). I have seen people citing the work of a famous person despite the content or quality of the work, and then doubling it down by defending the indefensible. This also connects to the well-known debate over the meaningfulness of citation count.

But am I just imagining all of this? Perhaps the power in academia is more diffused as compared to what I have been exposed to and these so-called "Gods" of academia are more frequently challenged than what I know of. And ultimately, if this celebrity culture exists, then should we discourage it?

Academia is an extremely primitive and immature system in many ways, driven disproportionately by emotion and status over merit or egalitarianism. You will be reminded of a lot of academic social behavior if you read about the social behavior of the other primates.

However it is a unfair to suggest that people are simply acting as smitten teenagers swooning over big-shots because they have their own academic reality show. It is a social system which is behaving rationally in rewarding those who move it forward (or some new direction which at the time seems to be forward). Papers are almost a sideshow (written by underpaid postdocs), and citation count is merely a proxy metric for this. But impact, that which citation count tries to measure, is a very real and valuable thing; how well you can attract lots of funding to a research direction, as well as attract lots of other researchers into that direction, determines how important your career is to the system. And, in the absence of other sources of information, makes for a decent predictor for how important your work is currently and will be in the future.


Referring to myself in my thesis I am not an English native speaker and I wrote my thesis in English. If in the title page of my thesis I would like to write

Advisor: "The name of my advisor"

M: "My name",

then what should M most commonly be?

My choice for M is "student" but am not sure of that.

Note: The common culture of my country makes me write the title page as what I show in my question. I may very well be considered "improper" or even "rude" if I do not do that, and consequently would incur unnecessary judgements.

For any specific thesis, you should check the regulations of the institution the thesis will be submitted to. There are often strict rules about the formatting of the title page.

I've not come across the advisor being listed first. The format I'm most familiar with would be something like the following:

  Why there are no Frogs on the Moon

  Neil Armstrong

  Advisor: Dr Thomas O. Paine

There's no need to write a word before the author's name. It is understood that any title page will contain the title and the author so any name that is not explained as being something else (e.g., "Advisor:", "Editor:") must be the author. You see the same with academic papers: the authors are usually not explicitly described as authors; it's just implicit that the list of names below the title is the list of authors.

Note also that the name(s) of the author(s) usually come before any other people who have contributed to the document. Authorship is regarded as by far the most important contribution.


How to provide price comparision of commercial products I'm in the middle of finalizing my thesis. The goal of it was to develop a system that perfroms certain set of tasks.
There are already commerical products that exist as hardware and/or software solutions.
As a part of my thesis, I want to do a pro/cons comparisions including the cost of the commercial solution. I can get specs from producers* and compare them easily. The problems comes to the price of the product.
The only way I can obtain prices is to cross-check distributors/retailers' websites that are selling those products.

How can I reliably provide price comparision of a product if there are no papers discussing the cost of the system?

Is referencing website(s) enough?
Prices are often omitted in catalogues and thus can't be used as a reference.

I've tried to research the problem on my own but the closest one does not answer my question fully:

How to cite prices in academia?

*I'm aware that some of them might be colorouzied as part of marketing. I've already secured that part via relevant references.

I have cited prices in academia.  Is very relevant in energy, etc.  I was OK with approximate prices because I was comparing items with orders of magnitude different price, so figuring exact prices, discounts, was not critical to the report.  The info was not public, so I had to run a couple customer interviews to get it.

You could also consider to just buy a copy of each (if reasonable) and charge to the grant.  Also allows you to do testing, etc.  One other option is to just have some app do website scraping for the prices.  There are services that do this or you could just write your own.


Found two errors in submitted manuscript I very recently submitted a manuscript to a journal and found that I had mislabeled y axis on three panels of a many panel figure (put relative activity (%), instead of fold change in phosphorylation). Additionally I noticed that instead of PIP2, I put PIP3 in a signaling schematic. do you think the paper will be rejected for such errors if all other things are okay?

I agree with @Alexey B. and believe that, unless the typo has a very negative effect on the logical foundations of your paper, it will not cause the rejection of your paper.

Also, usually, you can contact the support staff of your journal and ask them if they can help you fix the issue. I made a rather similar mistake in a chart in one of my papers and for that, I contacted the support staff of the journal (published by Elsevier). After discussing the matter with them, they asked for the correct version of the chart, asked the editor of the journal if a modification is allowed and modified my submission.


Do you acknowledge someone mentioned in your paper/presentation that is in the audience? Say for example you are giving a paper at a conference and someone you name in your paper is in the audience. Is there any expectation that you make reference to this persons presence when giving your presentation?

For example say the text in your paper is;

  Professor X, in his paper on Human mutation...

would you change it to something like;

  Professor X, who is with us today, in his paper on Human mutation...

If you're merely referring to someone's work who you don't know very well or haven't worked with, I wouldn't. If they are someone who is well known then it's likely that people will recognise that they are in the audience and that you are referencing their work.

If it is someone you have worked with or someone in your lab, then they usually get a shoutout. For example, a PI presenting work that is primarily done by a grad student or postdoc is likely to point this out and point out the person if they are in the audience. The reason for this is that it is beneficial to that person to be recognised. It encourages others to talk to/network with them because of the work they've done.


Math Phd vs Job Offer (struggling very hard in my mind) I was offered a math PhD position with full funding by a university in Canada (which is currently on a strike), and I was also offered a position as a math teacher in a quite prestigious high school in Macau. The wage of the school is comparable to the PhD funding in Canada. I am struggling very hard to make a decision, as both positions are not easy to get. (The fully funded PhD positions are very competitive for international students)

Since I am a beginner in the area of academia of math, I am not quite sure what kinds of quality I need to look for in a graduate program to make me more well-prepared to look for a academic position in colleges. The research topics my prospective advisor do match my interest very well, but does the prestige of the school play a very big role also? Or the no. of publications is more important?
Clarification of this will probably help me make my decision.

These are two very different fields. You have to ask yourself: do you want to be a math teacher or a math researcher? Note that a PhD gears you for research positions. While professors teach, their main duty (at a R1 university) is actually research (this fact is seldom known to undergraduates). Your ability to get a professorship, get tenure, etc. is all based on research. If you are going to go down the PhD track, the choice is for a research-based career. Ask yourself if that's what you want. Choosing a career path based on what you want to do with your life is so much more important than whether a school or department is "prestigious" (which is highly variable depending on the subfield, your adviser, the fellowships/grants you get, etc.).

Caveat: there are positions at 4-year college, i.e. get a PhD and get a position to teach undergraduates.


Standard practice when merging papers on arxiv I and another author have decided to merge our manuscripts into one paper.
Both of us have already put preprints on arxiv. How should we handle the merging on arxiv? Is there a standard practice?

I can think of three options:

 Create a new submission for the merged paper.
 Upload the merged paper as a revision of both of the original preprints.
 Withdraw one of the original preprints and upload the merged paper as a revision to the other.

I worry that option 1 might look like we are spamming arxiv by uploading three papers when we really should only have uploaded one. Option 2 is undesirable because then there are two versions of the exact same paper on arxiv. Option 3 is asymmetric.

Has anyone had a similar experience?

Option 1 should be fine if you add appropriate comments and withdraw old papers.

Here is how we did it recently:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.04963 (merger)
http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.2109 (withdrawn)
http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.2667 (withdrawn)

In the merged paper, it is important to add a comment; otherwise you will probably trigger https://arxiv.org/help/overlap


How to cite in two languages combined with acronym at the same time in Harvard style Let's say one is writing an academic paper, and one has to deal with two languages and possibly acronyms. How would be appropiate to formate the citations in the text using Harvard style?

If one is writing if for example German, and one wants to mention a company/institution that is located in the UK.

So I would format it like this:
company name in English (acronym in English)

But in the case one has a German translated version of the company name I would format it as follows:

  German translated name of company (English name of company [English acronym of company])

Alternatively:

  German translated name of company (English name of company; English acronym of company)

Alternatively:

  German translated name of company (English: English name of company [English acronym of company])

But does this last example seem like overdoing it? Sometimes though the German translation is not widely known, or the English name is more common. Also some companies are commonly referred to with acronyms.
Let's say that the readers of you paper don't know/understand English, then the German translation would tell them what type of company it is, for example: The Electrical National Company of England in German.

When it comes to certain physical processes or geographical locations the same applies, would one use the same rules as above (replace company by process)? For example certain languages don't have direct translations of the English words, because English might have a wider vocabulary. In these cases one can experience that even lecturers and professors use the English terms (in lectures in the local language), because the English terms are more commonly used/known and maybe due to lazyness. But what if there actually is an appropiate equivalent term in the language you are writing, then it would make sense to include both versions right? Even the English acronym if there is one.

What do people normally do when encountered with this challenge?

English and German/Italian/etc. are not on the same footing in scientific writing: English is commonly accepted as the international language of science (most, if not all, top journals in all fields are published in English), so writing in English, one uses the appropriate English terms (but giving in addition names of companies in their original language, to make e.g. online searches easier, is totally acceptable). So in such a case (from my own experience), one should go with

  English translated name of company (name of company in the original language, original acronym)

When you write in German, Italian or any other language, the hidden assumption is that you adress the text mostly to the native users of that language, so should make it as easy for them to follow as possible. So in this case one could write

  German/Italian/etc. translated name of company (name of company in original language [e.g. English, but in case of French companies it should be the original French name], original acronym)

with the name and acronym in the original language again to facilitate online searches.


How many hours a day on Mathematics as a successful student? My motivation to ask this question actually comes from here, receiving negative reactions for 12 hours a day or even 7 hours spending time on Mathematics.

A person usually spends 4.5 years to accomplish a BSc plus a MSc coursework. Books that I found to study in pages (BSc+MSc) approx. are:

Calculus (760)
Algebra (450+940)
Topology (510+540)
Analytical Geo (210)
Real Analysis (610+520)
ODE (440)
Complex Analysis (480+350)
Differential Geo (510+420)
Logic (260)
Number Theory (480)
PDE (320)
Total: 7800 pages.

Supposing spending 30 min per page of studying and 2 hours per page of exercises, so it takes  (4/5)×7800×0.5+(1/5)×7800×2 = 6240 hours = 5.5 hours a day in 4.5 years (excl. Sat+Sun) for a student.

The problem is:

1- I think that a Mathematics student has to learn more than I have listed, for example other subjects in Mathematics.

2- a Mathematics student has to spend on other than studying texts, like attending classes, other courses (e.g. computer) as well.

How a typical university student in Mathematics spends a few hours in average on studying and knows a lot Mathematics and  is able to start research, which I am not capable of? It's a paradox, or maybe I am not smart as other?

Thank you.

PS I am not officially a uni student yet, but I had to spend 12 h/d on average to study the mentioned books which I am pretty sure are less than what a uni student covers in their studies.

I am afraid that your computation is not even wrong.  You might as well ask how many hours a day you need to practice dribbling in order to be a professional basketball player.

Mere knowledge of mathematics is just one component of being a professor, even a professor of pure mathematics.  To become a successful mathematics professor (or any type of professor, really), you need a lot more than just to have studied many textbooks: you need scientific creativity, you need vision, you need to be able to communicate and write well, you need to be able to teach, you need self-discipline, you need some broader understanding of how mathematics fits into the larger world, and you need many more things besides.

Moreover, one of those many things that you need is skill at extracting knowledge from texts.  The deeper your understanding becomes, the more that you will be able to see the structure of the content that you are reading, to analyze which parts are critical and which are accessory, and the less that the computation you present makes sense.

In short: yes, it takes a lot of effort on mathematics to become a professor, but the process and challenges are very different than you think.


Intellectual Property Rights When Moving University I am considering moving institutions (from a one UK University to another), but I am concerned about what Intellectual Property (IP) rights my current institution may retain. Some of my PhD students, one of whom has been funded by my university directly, would move with me, or at least I would like them to. I am also unclear about the rights they/I would have to the research they have already done. Their projects would naturally remain similar, but I see no obvious commercial potential, and have no intention of trying to find some.

My questions are:

The University's policy is clear that they own all Intellectual Property I produce during my employment. I assume this can't apply to projects that have not got to the point of being protectable/tradeable but where one project begins and another ends is not always clear. Many of these projects naturally build on work I have published, or is in the process of being published. How can I tell/establish what exactly they have rights to?
How do I 'leave' them with what they own so that I can make a clean break.

In general you should be fine:

Your research is published, so everyone (including you) can build upon it.
You do not have any patents (which would remain at the university)

The only thing might be software written at your institution or hardware built during your work. Those remain at the university as long as you do not agree on otherwise. But usually, one becomes smarter over time so this might be a good point in time to re-implement some stuff...

On the other hand, your work might be worthless for your university when you are not there - e.g. no one will digg into foreign research code... So you should have a good position for negotiations.


Is it acceptable to compare your experimental results with the claimed results from another paper? Consider a scenario where one (say Mr. X) has implemented a method for solving a problem, experimented it on a dataset D and obtained significant results. The obtained results seem to be better than a set of results published in a paper P in a reputable journal J which solves the same problem experimented on D by some another author.

Mr. X decides to cite P and directly compare the claimed results published in it with his own.

The question is how much necessary (in the perspective of a reviewer) is it for Mr. X to reproduce the results published in P by himself if he is to publish in

a) the same publisher as journal J?
b) a totally different journal publisher?

Most importantly, what would be the case if J is an IEEE journal?

In theory, if a result is published you can use it as is.

In practice, it is better to replicate it yourself. That way you can really make certain you are comparing like with like. Research often involves a very long chain of decisions that cannot all be published in an article. Good research documents that somewhere else, but it is easy for honest mistakes or omissions to seep in. So that way it could easily happen that Mr. X's design is subtly different from the design used in paper P, and the difference in result are due to that difference in design rather than the difference in method. You can rule that out by replicating the results in paper P yourself.


Postdoc position "on hold" due to covid-19 I am currently in a job in the US (on STEM OPT). I had a postdoc offer from a large US university that was supposed to start April 16. I signed an offer letter for a two year contract. We were in the process of deciding which visa to apply for (H1/J1).

Today I got an email from the PI (HR copied) saying she would like to put the position on hold until things settle down. I asked for a clarification on what "on hold" meant and whether the offer letter was still valid. The HR replied this (PI copied):

  As for the offer letter you signed (due to redacted’s current
  situation) please consider it void until future notice.

  Professor [redacted] will contact you if you are still being considered
  for the position.

This is the last communication I had with the HR or the PI.

What does this mean? Since I have the signed offer, when things do settle down, is the university legally obligated to offer the position back to me before anyone else? Or the university is formally rescinding the offer and I should just move on? Can they do that?

EDIT: Some answers have asked about my eligibility to work in the US. For clarification: I’m in the US now, in my current status, I can work in the US till the end of May. If the university applied for an H1B (which is typically approved for non profit), I could stay in the US as long as I didn’t leave the country (in which case I would have to get a visa stamped). Things could have gotten more complicated with J1, so we did not discuss much about that.

A signed offer letter is normally a valid contract.  Usually it is the only contract document.  Only someone who has read the offer letter can give you a perfect answer to this question.

They have announced their intention to break the contract.  That is illegal unless the offer letter says otherwise.  Moving on is probably your best option.

There are two possibilities:

The university is unable to pay you, so they are forced to do something that could potentially cause them a lot of harm in the form of bad press or litigation.
They did this voluntarily or out of incompetence, in which case the university is a bad place to work and you are lucky not to be working there.

In either case, you should look for employment elsewhere.