Supervisor not approving submission because of coauthor he didn't approve of Okay I'm pretty desperate here.

I'm a PhD student. I had a cosupervisor (Prof Y) that my supervisor (and head of center, Prof X) removed (without consulting me) from my project and assigned (again without consulting me) another cosupervisor (Prof Z). The assigning of cosupervisors to a PhD project at my university happens with a form that both the new cosupervisor and the student need to sign, which I did not, and thus my supervisor (Prof X) thinks he's (Prof Z) my cosupervisor, but formally he isn't.

I have a publication ready that he (Prof X) needs to approve before I submit. His major issue with the paper is the fact that as a coauthor I have added my ex-cosupervisor (Prof Y), who indeed has scientific contribution. I received an email telling me that he has not been informed that I was working with my ex-cosupervisor (Prof Y), that this is not normal practice and that he (Prof X) won't approve the submission because of this.

Does he have the right to do this? Where is the academic freedom in policing who I collaborate with to such an extreme extent?

Please let me know your thoughts. I feel like I'm losing it.

UPDATE: I've contacted the vice-dean. He's going to look into the situation as I forwarded everything to him and tell me his opinions. He was shocked that my supervisor/HoC needs to also approve submissions.

UPDATE 2: Vice-dean has encouraged change of supervisors. He will support me throughout the process and will handle all economic issues himself. I'm arming myself with all the legal matters now. I'm making a meeting with prof X to politely explain that this is happening.

UPDATE 3: I changed supervisors. I lived. I'm so much happier. Thanks for the encouragement.

To learn at submission stage who else is coauthor on a paper is unusual, indeed. So to some extent, your supervisor being annoyed is understandable. To block the submission of the paper is a rather extreme reaction though. Could there be some history between supervisor and ex-cosupervisor that you are unaware of? (e.g. your supervisor suspecting the ex-cosupervisor of data manipulation, etc.)

My suggestion would be to apologize to your supervisor for the lapse in communication, and to ask about his reason for blocking the publication. Provided that this is indeed the case, it could help pointing out that the contribution of your ex-cosupervisor happened prior to him being removed as your cosupervisor.

If this approach fails, then the right moment to speak to the vice-dean has arrived.


Can a department renege on a student's "guaranteed funding"? I was admitted to a PhD program last year with guaranteed funding for 4 years. The funding offer was structured as a fellowship for the first year and an assistantship thereafter. I'm done with my first year now, and I will be on an assistantship from this semester onwards. I was asked to sign a contract which states "although we will be able to renew the assistantship in most cases, renewals are contingent upon the availability of funds".

Given my initial admission offer guaranteed funding, while this new contract is a bit more ambiguous, which of these contracts will hold? Is it possible that the grad school will renege on the assistantship citing a lack of funds? This is quite concerning to me, and I would appreciate any advice on this issue.

I am the Graduate Coordinator of my department, so I have some experience both reading and writing letters like this.  I find the phrasing

  "although we will be able to renew the assistantship in most cases, renewals are contingent upon the availability of funds".

strange.  It is not clear to me what "most cases" is quantifying over: you are only one case.

But here's a key point: what is being taken away from you in going from a letter in which funding is guaranteed to a letter in which renewal is contingent upon the availability of funds?  In all cases the renewal must be contingent upon the availability of funds, right?  Within the culture of American universities it would certainly not be acceptable for your department to, say, go over budget on renovations and then tell a student "We're sorry, but funds are no longer available -- we warned you!"  Not having the funds to cover promises made to students would be a nightmare scenario in any department that I know of.  A subtle linguistic change in a contract would not affect that.

However, I agree that the new letter is not exactly encouraging.  In my view you are well within your rights to inquire about the meaning of it, and you should of course do so before you sign the contract.  I would discuss this with the department official who wrote the letter, unless you feel uncomfortable doing so, in which case you could act through a suitable intermediary (ombudsperson, faculty advisor...).

In conclusion, I think it is highly unlikely that your funding will get cut, but they are taking from you some peace of mind -- which is also worth something!  I'm sorry for that, and I wish you the best.


What is the best way to retain learned materials No matter who you talk to, students or professors, they all say that the materials they once learned can be quickly forgotten without further experiences that utilizes or enhances on that prior experience.

I fondly remember a professor once telling me that his final year in undergrad was the happiest year in his life, at time when he felt he could do anything, from nuclear physics to parallel programming to electromicroscopy to constructing an audio amplifier...then one year later he has forgotten almost everything.

This is more noticeable in students, where it is often exaggerated to the cliched phrase "you never actually use anything you learn in school".

This is problematic for students who aspire for higher learning because much of the material or understanding is accumulative. It amazes me how people manage to get all the way to the top of the academic ladder (PhD, Post-Doc) without losing previously gained knowledge along the way. I'm sure there were important theorems, relations or techniques that I once learnt, maybe was even an expert in, the question is how do I unlock these memories so I can be more effective in tackling the problems I have today?

How do people deal with the inevitable loss of knowledge from years of disuse? Do you start from scratch? Can someone offer good ways for retention of class room materials?

This is problematic for students who aspire for higher learning because much of the material or understanding is accumulative.

Actually, that's precisely why it's not problematic.  If you had to memorize random trivia, it would become more and more difficult as you had to remember more unrelated things, but academic studies work in the opposite way.  Because it's accumulative, you are constantly practicing and applying what you learned before, which helps you solidify your understanding.  Furthermore, the more you learn, the more connections you can see, and these relationships help you organize and retain knowledge.  Of course you'll still forget some details, but you'll forget less than you expect and recover it more easily.

My impression is that severe forgetfulness in students typically occurs when they are studying ideas in isolation and setting them aside as soon as the class is over.  Instead, it's important to play with ideas constantly.  How are they related to your past studies?  To other interests of yours?  Can you think of further applications or connections?  This can help bridge the gaps between how you learned these ideas.  This sort of exploration is almost essential if you want to do research, and it's a useful study technique in any case.


What does "university ranking" mean for a graduate admissions committee? Many questions on this website ask how university rankings affect the future career in research and graduate admissions. But it is not clear for me what is actually meant by ranking. There are various rankings of universities and many of them are contradictory.

Thus, in the context of graduate admissions what ranking does the admission committee have in their mind? How does the committee decide which is a high-ranked school and which is a low-ranked school?

In the context of graduate admissions, the “ranking” of universities by members of the committee is a purely subjective one, and depends heavily from place to place, from department to department, and from committee member to committee member. That's why you're not getting a simple silver-bullet answer to your question.

Now, most admission committee members will rather rely on their own past experience with students coming from various schools, and would probably go further and would not “rank” the same the different undergrad programs from a given university. They would typically consider things like:

how ready were past students from program X for our graduate courses? e.g., did they know and master well enough all the prerequisites for our courses
how well did these students do during courses? e.g. what sort of grades do they get (knowing that a top student from school X usually doesn't make it to the first half of your program, for example, is interesting to know for future candidates from this school)
how well did they perform in terms of research? e.g. school Y has students with excellent grades and educational record, but are they prepared for a wide-ranging professional experience that is a PhD?


How to cite a paper that looking for a journal for publication I am working on my second paper (as phd projects) which is an extension of my first paper. For my first paper, I will send it to a journal very soon. As I know acceptance of a paper by a journal is not an easy journey. Therefore, may I need to submit my paper for different journals (not at the same time) until it can find a place. My question is, how can I cite my first paper in my second one. I need to submit them at a very close time. For example, if I submit my first paper in this week (for example) then I may send the second one into two weeks (two weeks after the first one is submitted).

Any help, please?

You can submit the first paper to a pre-print sever such as arxiv. Once, it appears in arxiv as a pre-print, you will get a citation information, which can then be used in the second paper.

I don't see any other way of doing it unless it appears somewhere as a pre-print or a published article.

Further, if you are citing a small portion (such as a method or a result) of first paper, you can replicate the same thing in the second paper with a note saying

  The initial approach of this method is to appear in the article entitled 'ABC Approach for ZYZ Analysis [draft]'.


Can I use tools in beta version in my research? In my actual research work, I need some functionality that is not supported natively by any existing solid tools. So I have two choices: rather I implement this functionality my self, or I use an emerging tool which is in beta version.
So, can this have a negative impact on the acceptance of my results by the research community? (I mean when I publish it in a scientific paper)

At the end of the day, the main requirement is that you can trust the tools you're using. If you're using open-source software, then you may want to double-check that the algorithms are written correctly. If you're using proprietary software, then you may want to consider verifying results with other software for at least some samples.

Note that this is true with any open-source package. For my thesis work, I used a particular open-source analysis toolkit which was very popular in the community. They were regularly releasing updates as people investigated the software and found small glitches. During my regular use, I even helped uncover and report a moderately serious bug that would have resulted in bad output — and possibly erroneous conclusions — in a particular edge case. Always know the limits of your tools.


How to write a objectives section in undergraduate thesis? I'm writting my undergraduate statistical thesis proposal. I wrote directly and clearly what I intend to do in my project. However the objectives section was very small, only 6 lines. It would be appropriate to give details of the objectives, even though they already being clear from the introduction?

There is a difference between what you intend to do and what you hope to achieve or learn. The doing part is about the procedure you expect to follow.  The objectives part is about what you hope to achieve or learn from it.


What to use instead of academic 'we' when describing an experiment? My research is in software engineering, but in a sub-field which is very close to social science. My papers normally contain sentences like "We conducted a study with 56 participants." and "Our previous study showed that [some assumptions are true]" and "We chose to use Cramer's V as the association measure, because [explanation why we thought it is better than other association measures]".

Now that I am close to my Ph.D. thesis, I am writing more texts alone, and the thesis is legally required to be my own work. So "we" is factually wrong. But using "I" feels immodest, and it is certainly unusual. But I don't know how to change my texts to avoid it.

I can't imagine how to apply the advice from that other answer to my case. "One conducted a study with 56 participants"? "The conducted study had 56 participants"? "A study was conducted, with 56 participants"? Unlike describing a mathematical proof, these sentences sound terrible. And how to explain my decision to use Cramer's V, when it is based on personal opinion?

Any advice how to deal with the matter outside of the world of mathematical proofs?

Another example why "I" might be needed. It is not only vanity; in the not-so-exact sciences there is sometimes lots of leeway involved. Say that I code some data. This is a very subjective process, and can be error prone. It is important for the readers to know that a coding was done by a single person, as this is considered less reliable than having somebody else repeat it and discuss any differences, and also because the coder has to take responsibility for any unusual decisions or errors.

There is a more general question on the same topic. But the accepted and highly-upvoted answer is from the point of view of a mathematician, it says that the writing style is best constrained to declarative sentences such as "Since p, it follows that q.".

The use of the authorial 'we' is very common in academia even for single-author papers, as argued by many and properly referenced in the other question that you mention.

Personally, I would keep 'we' also for the thesis without bothering. I doubt anyone would misunderstand, but if you wish you can include a quick remark in the introduction: something like Despite the use of the 'authorial we', common in academia, this thesis is the sole work of its author. In many cases you are required to state that you are the only author anyway in some boilerplate forms in the front matter.

This looks much better to my eye than changing every sentence to a contorted passive form. Readability matters.


What are the 25th-75th percentile ranges for the annual income for graduate students in the United States? And are there differences in average income between different types of fields, or different types of schools?

The diagram below says that the average income for grad students is $17k/year. But I'm more commonly seeing incomes in the range of $25k-$30k/year on PhysicsGRE.com...

Note that those statistics are often averaged over all possible disciplines, and therefore, since there is such a wide disparity of stipend levels between different schools, and between different disciplines at the same school.

At the institution I attended for graduate school, engineers had stipends approximately 30% higher than the science majors (chemistry, physics, math, etc.). Similarly, at the undergraduate institution I attended, a similar disparity existed between science and humanities graduate students.

It is also important to ask if master's students, who often don't receive a salary at all, are included in that average. (And, since humanities students tend to stay longer, they may skew the statistics even more than one might expect.)

(One final note to directly address the question: competitive national fellowships in the US currently pay between $30,000 and $35,000 per year as a stipend. I would estimate, then, that most stipends are significantly below that amount. I'd say something in the range of $20,000-$30,000 would be appropriate in STEM fields, and probably $15,000-$20,000 for full-time humanities PhD's.)


Will addressing reviewers comment and accepting drawback of work take back my acceptance? Recently I got a paper got accepted by a well-known conference (computer science). I am about to submit a camera-ready version of the paper for the conference proceedings, trying to incorporate the comments of the reviewers.

Two out of five reviewers point a problem in my research design, which is something I have felt too, but didn't weigh in much to address at my paper. Now, before submitting the camera-ready version, I feel that I should address the opinion of the two reviewers, but that would come up as a major drawback of my research. If I do so, what are the chances that it will have a negative effect on further publication?

I am new to academia and don't have appropriate advising regarding what to do regarding this.

In general, if you got an acceptance notice from a conference, then you are accepted.  At this point, it's up to you just how much to take the reviewers into account in revising your paper.

Personally, I do recommend changes in response to every issue raised, because that will generally make you paper stronger.  Even if a reviewer is dead wrong, it at least points to a place where readers can become confused. In this case, kudos to you for taking the reviewers seriously and thinking carefully about their feedback, rather than just being defensive.

Note that in some cases you may get a "conditional acceptance", and in that case you definitely have to be concerned about the reviewers' opinions of your new version.  That does not seem to be the case here based on what you have written, however.


Is there a point to setting assignment deadlines and late penalties besides practicality? Traditionally assignments handed in on paper need to be handed in at the same time due to time constraints on the instructor, to prevent plagiarism, to maintain pace since most of the teaching happens through physical lectures and if someone is behind they will miss out etc.
Since a massive chunk of grading is automated nowadays with online access to materials, not to mention practically all teaching being online for the time being, most of the reasons that make assignment deadlines necessary do not apply anymore. After all if someone demonstrates the same learning goals as the next person, what is the difference if they do it a couple weeks later? It's not like the instructor needs to spare extra special treatment time for the student doing it slower for grading or even lectures, it's all asynchronous anyway.
So what is the point of maintaining the practice? Some common arguments I see include "deadlines are part of life, students need to deal with it" or "course design requires so" which are not really arguments if you think about it. Another common one is preventing students from getting too collaborative, which also fails since time constraints do not apply anymore, given the resources and technology and whatnot - people can plagiarize entire job interviews spontaneously these days.
The only big argument that holds any water that I have seen is the issue of students suddenly hitting the end of the semester with massive amounts of work piled up and all the cramming and health issues and stress with that, so it is really for their benefit to impose hard deadlines to avoid that. Paternalism in this aside, that to me seems like more of a consequence of the persisting work philosophy of meeting smaller deadlines with whatever one can put together, rather than meeting learning objectives as completely as possible within a given semester. This in turn causes a great deal of common procrastination that it is offered as a solution for.
So what else am I missing that makes it actually beneficial to set traditional deadlines and penalties even for completely asynchronous classes?

Your proposed system reduces to the case where all assignments have their deadlines effectively at the end of the course. Courses with such a system do exist, but I am not aware how common this is.
One reason I can think of as to why early deadlines may help is the ability to give feedback. Providing feedback for each assignment before the next allows the students to catch misconceptions and flaws in problem solving approaches early, which in turn can help them perform better in subsequent assignments. While this reason still does not require that there be early "hard" deadlines (e.g. students could get feedback whenever they submit), I still think it counts as an argument in its favour as it helps in better achieving the learning objectives.


Does requesting to speed up on application process affect its outcome I got an offer for a PhD position which, due to my financial status, I can only accept if I am awarded a scholarship, which is currently in consideration. Recently, I receive a job offer which have to be answered before the scholarship announcement date. I cannot delay on that because there are few other potential candidates for that position. Although I find it interesting but it's OK if I turn an offer down as I currently have one already. Moreover, the PhD is much more important to me. So my question is whether asking the university to speed up in their consideration affects the chance to get the scholarship. If it's possible, can someone let me know how university deals with this situation?

Update: I cannot quit a new job early as it has a fixed-term, more like minimum term, contract because I will receive 3 months oversea training at the beginning so they don't want me to leave too soon.

Asking to speed up the process will not hurt your chances. They may not be able to speed anything up, but if they do/don't, they will not hold it against you. Likely what they will do is take a look at where you stand and then be able to judge if they can definitely fund you. If so they will tell you. If not, they will tell you they don't know yet. They also might tell you it is unlikely. Something like you are currently ranked 25 and we have funding for 8.


Google Scholar Citation How does Google Scholar generate the citation information of articles? (in different styles like MLS,APA,etc). Do authors have to enter it themselves?
Asking because I want to know how authentic this is and whether I can directly copy the citation as it is. without reading any style guide myself.

Google Scholar gets the information (title, authors, journal name, date,...) directly from google scholar indexed journals. It produces the different styles from that information. Usually this works quite well, however, sometimes things go wrong so it's always good to check if everything is correct.

I also recommend using a citation manager like endnote or mendeley, that way you can download citation styles directly from the source/journals, manipulate them, easily change styles and correct errors.


Research outside academia without Ph.D I had some Ph.D positions available to me after my undergraduation which I could not take owing to some personal reasons and instead chose to take an industrial job which basically is also research based. However, the environment is not heavily research based and the collaborative opportunities are less, with . The prospect of doing a Ph.D while being in the industry is also miniscule. I have published research in good journals during my undergraduation and while in job too, and deeply desire to publish more and enjoy the research process. However at times, I feel directionless and without guidance, I have to spend too much time going through relevant papers/books which at times lead to diversions which I realize at a later time. I have some questions which I would be grateful to, for the answers.
a) How should I increase collaborations in this scenario? I participate in conferences whenever I can get chance, however I feel I don't have the pre-requisite subject knowledge in depth which a Ph.D student would have. Thus I feel hesitant in communicating with researchers. For this, I try to study course books relevant to the topic.
b) How can one avoid and know diversions from the research topics in absence of someone to discuss with? What role does peer group play in a graduate school in such scenarios ?

I do not think that you'd be limited in publishing your research results or finding collaborations if you do not have a PhD. You pretty much need a PhD for the academic career path, basically if you want to become a professor some day.
The major issue is if you are able to support yourself doing what you do. And if you can allow yourself to do research, and to do the research you want to do, while working in the industry.
To give an example, Peter Montgomery published his multiplication long before he obtained his PhD, while he was working in the industry, as far as I understand his circumstances.


Does a Statement of Purpose really matter for Graduate Admissions in 2021? I'm International Student applying for technical courses to universities in the UK and the USA, this might seem like a frequently asked question but I'm genuinely curious in knowing whether a Statement of Purpose (SOP) does carry any weightage when you meet the minimum requirements for Graduate Admissions (Msc).
I've seen peers with great GPA's but poorly crafted SOPs make it to top schools. Would it be possible for someone to walk their way in with just words using a flashy SOP?
Top universities get a myriad of applications, especially high demand courses. Does the admissions committee get ample time to review each applicant's SOP? or Do they have an Application Screening Process after which they review only the most salient applications?

The Statement of Purpose possibly carries weight toward admission to a graduate program.
Meeting the minimum requirements for acceptance may get you past an initial screening, but many departments have more applicants than they have space in their program. (I hesitate to say "most" or cite percentages since that could change from year to year, but you can often find this information on a program's website.) In these and other programs, the whole application packet - including the Statement of Purpose - may be considered by individual reviewers and/or a committee of reviewers before initial offers of admission are decided. Given two similarly-qualified candidates, it is conceivable that they would admit the one with a more compelling Statement of Purpose.
It's not easy from the outside to guess at an institution's internal processes, the number of applicants that year, or what they'll weight more heavily in your packet. While you may know anecdotally of people who are admitted with terrible Statements of Purpose, you don't know others who were rejected. You also don't know whether this year will be different. Given that, while you could gamble on a subpar Statement of Purpose and meeting the minimum requirements, prudence suggests putting some effort in so that you might stand out compared to your peers.


Should I submit a rejected paper as it is in some other place so that publication decision comes quickly? I am a Phd student (thesis submitted in January 2018, not defended yet) in applied mathematics. My first paper was published in February 2018 in a tier 1 applied math journal, two other papers were recently rejected from tier 1 applied math journals.

I discussed the rejected papers with my advisor, we decided that we will work on the comments of the reviewers and associate editors and then submit to some other tier 1 journals. Now that will take at leat 5-6 months and then these two paper may get accepted in 2020 in the best case, or in the worst case it could be in 2021 (generally, top tier journals take a long time).

Now, my advisor is saying that you should publish continually (there should not be gap between publications) and suggested me to submit the rejected paper as it is, but if these two rejected papers are again rejected I will be in trouble. If a paper gets rejected twice then it may be hard to get that paper accepted in future.

What should I do in this situation ? Any help/suggestions will be useful. Thanks in advance.

Ignoring reviewers' comments and simply resubmitting to a different journal sounds like a bad idea to me, for a number of reasons,

While some institutions are obsessed by quantity of publications, quality is at least as important for building a reputation (not to mention more altruistically for actually improving the state of knowledge in the field). If the reviewers have advised you on how to improve it, and if they are not obviously talking rubbish, it seems unwise to discard this advice without a very good reason.
It's entirely possible that the new journal may send it to one or more of the same reviewers as the old one did. There are existing questions on this site from reviewers who this has happened to, and the results are unlikely to be good for you if you have not changed anything. The reviewers are unlikely to recommend acceptance, and the editor may be annoyed if advised of what has happened.
Even if it does get published without revisions in the new journal, the previous reviewers are likely to read it, and it won't do your reputation any good with them.


How much do research papers in arXiv count (for graduate applications)? Wikipedia states that 'Although the arXiv is not peer reviewed, a collection of moderators for each area review the submissions.'

If a paper is not published in any other publication, does it means that it will not contribute to your C.V. when you are applying for an MS or PhD program? Because on arXiv it is not reviewed specifically implies that it does not have the same weight as compared to other publication.

Having a paper that was not peer reviewed but is available from arXiv will help you just as much, and in exactly the same way, as having a paper that was not peer reviewed and is available from any other easily accessed online source. The main things that are important are that:

You have written a paper (according to some definition of "paper").
The paper can easily be accessed and looked at by anyone wishing to evaluate your strength as a grad school applicant.

Note that the value of such a paper to your admission prospects can actually be negative if it is clearly of very poor quality, shows delusional tendencies (e.g., a paper with the title "A simple proof of the Riemann Hypothesis"), or comes across as a dishonest attempt to create a false impression that you have done something important when clearly you haven't. Setting aside such obvious exceptions, an arXiv paper will probably have a positive, but in most cases not very large, value for your applications.


PhD Advisor not responding to emails for letters of recommendation I am an immigrant in US and graduated in 2018 from a good public university on the east coast. I had a cordial relationship with my advisor during my PhD.
Currently, I am working on my immigration application that requires letter of recommendation from the advisor. He replied to my initial few emails saying that he will get the letter over the weekend/soon and after that have gone completely missing-in-action.
I have been chasing after him for almost a year now. His email is definitely working and he is super active on Twitter. I also dropped him a couple of texts on his cellphone just to be sure.
What are my options? Shouldn't the advisor have ethical/moral responsibilities? especially considering the dire immigration circumstances, and the effect this application can have on my and my family's future in the US.
PS: He is also an immigrant from the same country as mine.
Edit1: I wish it was easy to just meet him in-person. Not only are we on opposite coasts, but he is also not coming to the lab/office these days due to COVID.
Edit2: Should I raise this matter with Department Head? (My advisor is a senior professor who helped department head become department head)

You may try to either visit him during his office hours (more or less Krebto's suggestion) or you might contact someone at the department who is in close contact with your advisor. The latter worked for me a few years ago when I had to get in touch with someone who simply ignored my (and other students') e-mails. After a few weeks, I asked a colleague of his to remind that person to respond to my message. That middleman should be a friend of both, yours and the advisor.
However, as you have been sending him messages for a year already, it looks like your advisor simply does not want to write that letter. If you keep pressuring him, e.g. directly in person or through a colleague, you might eventually get that document. But its wording might not be as nice as you had expected in the first place.
Maybe, you could also ask nicely, if there are any issues that the advisor wants to clarify before sending that letter. Those might be some details regarding your research.


General advice for A-level students wanting to pursue quantum physics I am a student and I will hopefully start preparation for my A-level examinations this June. Unlike most students in Bangladesh, I plan to build my future based on Quantum Physics and thus have not received sufficient advise on what to do.

Edexcel offers many subjects for A-levels but I am unsure which ones do I need.
 So far I am sure that I need:

Chemistry (All 5 units)
Physics (All 5 units)
Core Mathematics (All 4 papers)
Further Pure Mathematics (All 3 papers)
Mechanics (All 3 papers)

Generally students take 4 subjects and ignore some units or papers but to have a good preparation for what is coming ahead, I have planned to take 5 subjects and not miss out on any unit or paper. However I am unsure whether I need statistics or not. I have understood it plays an important part in Quantum Physics (Feynman diagrams for one) but am unsure if it is really that important or not (3 more papers).

Recently, my grandfather's school friend came to visit. Despite being a geologist, he had sound knowledge of Quantum Physics (But not of the education system). He advised me to not drop Biology for my O-levels as it will play an important part in the 'Theory of Everything'. I did decide to appear for Biology in my O-levels but should I also take it for my A-level examinations? (5 more units)

P.S. Each unit requires one paper so I may have to give 28 papers (generally people give 11 papers). If you want to learn more about A-levels click here.

This may seem like personal advice but it will actually help many more students out in the world who plan to make a career out of Quantum Physics. Any help would be appreciated!

Look at the subjects required by a university that offers Quantum Physics and that you'd like to attend. Study the subjects they require.

You'll perhaps be surprised that universities don't require all the subjects you've listed. These subjects are nonetheless useful, they just aren't absolutely necessary, moreover, universities know that students have limited study time. Important aspects of subjects that you don't study will be covered at university. (Furthermore, you can study any aspects that you consider important, but aren't covered.)


Listing authors who cite me While looking for good independent recommenders I found myself in need of a tool that can automatically compose a list of names that have cited my papers. Yes there are many ways to find out which "papers" cite a given paper, but if you have multiple papers and citations, extracting author names from citation list becomes challenging and time consuming very quickly. Is there a tool to do that? If not this sounds very useful and it may make sense to build such a tool, if you find it useful too.
(I guess you don't often need to find independent recommenders from strangers, but there are a couple of use cases at least, such as green card applications, job applications, etc.)

Microsoft Academic
Microsoft Academic does show such information: Click on a researcher profile, go to the tab Cited By, then look at the column (to the left of the screen) titled Top Authors. Here is an example for Christian Drosten:

If you have a profile at Microsoft Academic and claimed your publications, you can see a similar list regarding your own 'citers'.

CrossRef
An alternative approach would be the following: You could gather all the DOIs from the papers that cite you, loop through it to access CrossRef's API via https://api.crossref.org/works/{DOI}, and extract the respective author-field.


Electronic supplementary materials for scientific journals Journals require certain heights & widths for figures, however, since it's my first time preparing an article with Latex I'm facing some problems.

For example I have a total of 20 maps & I'm thinking of making a grid called (fig7) using Latex for each 8 pair of maps. When I supply
high resolution figures with the final script do I need to combine each map that I use to make (fig7) in one figure called (fig7.eps) or do I just supply each map with its respective subscript (ex: fig7a.eps, fig7b.eps, etc)?

I cannot tell for Springer or Elsevier, but a couple of years ago I published a paper in an IOP journal which contained a table with several diagrams.

I submitted the diagrams separately and included them in the table's cells with \includegraphics, as I did it preparing the manuscript. It worked.

Each journal has its own idiosyncrasies when it comes to LaTeX practices. When the guidelines do not provide enough information, my strategy is to first try submitting the files as they are, following my workflow, and if it doesn't work I resort to other solutions.


Does a 3-year PhD experience in a non-German EU university count in determining the salary for a TVL-13 (100%) position? I was wondering what paygrade (Stufe) I am likely to get for a position advertized as TVL-13 (100%), knowing that I have a 3-year PhD experience from a EU (non-German) university.
The postition's title is Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter in German but Research Engineer in English. Also, if we consider the kind of tasks/responsibilities involved in the position, it involves working in a EU project, which is something I did during the years of my PhD.
All similar posts (linked below) seem to be referring to the case where the PhD work has been conducted in a German university. So, I wanted to check if that wasn't the case, would chances of getting a higher grade be reduced or not?
I don't know if this is relevant, but unlike question (3), I paid taxes during my PhD.
Closely-related questions:
(1) Post-doc Salary in Germany
(2) Criteria of experience recognition for “TV-L 13” position
(3) Does PhD work experience (scholarship was tax free) count in Postdoc Salary contract (TVL-13) in Germany
Less closely-related posts:
(4) What is the difference between TV-L E13 and TV-L E14 positions? Is it negotiable?
(5) German postdoc salaries (TV-L E14)

I worked for three different universities in the same Bundesland (state) in Germany. Although they all followed the same general regulations, the interpretation was rather different.

one considered my PhD (on a scholarship, so not employed) as relevant experience, one not.
one said my Cambridge University (UK) degree was a Fachhochschulabschluss, one considered it as full university degree.
one was willing to negotiate (not with me, but with the institute that I should work for), one was not.

So you need to talk to your future boss and to the university that wants to employ you.


Searching for a quotation manager I’m looking for a way to manage the text of the quotations  that most certainly I will use (i.e. quote) in the future. I’m a philosopher, so this is specially handy —and even required— for the classical texts.

I'm currently using Mendeley to manage my references, which is fine for citations on daily working, but does not allow to add quotations to the library items.

I have checked Wikindx (a PHP-based manager which allow this), but it doesn't seem very consolidated… Currently, I keep my quotations in a mediawiki installation, but it is complicated and unoptimized (but at least gives me readability and long term security of accesibility).

Does anyone of you have the same trouble? Which manager can you recommend? Anyone knows if Mendeley has plans to add something like it?

TextCite: Publication Quotation Manager looks like a thing you are looking for (haven't tried, only googled it):

  TextCite is a program for organizing and commenting textual citations from texts (books, articles, or other published works) for use in producing scientific or academic publications. You can organize by publication, author, category, or outline. It works with bibliographic management programs like Citation, EndNote, RefWorks, and BibTeX, providing important text/citation management capabilities that these programs lack, while still allowing for rapid footnote and bibliography generation by means of your favorite bibliography manager. It also exports to PDF and Word (RTF).


Why are "Graphical abstracts" advantageous? Although it is optional, many publishers recommend creating a graphical abstract. According to some, this can provide greater exposure of your article:

its use is encouraged as it draws more attention to the online article

Why?

Example of an abstract including graphical abstract, from a recent issue of ACS Synthetic Biology:

Memory and Combinatorial Logic Based on DNA Inversions: Dynamics and Evolutionary Stability
Jesus Fernandez-Rodriguez†, Lei Yang†, Thomas E. Gorochowski†, D. Benjamin Gordon†‡, and Christopher A. Voigt*†‡

Genetic memory can be implemented using enzymes that catalyze DNA inversions, where each orientation corresponds to a “bit”. Here, we use two DNA invertases (FimE and HbiF) that reorient DNA irreversibly between two states with opposite directionality. First, we construct memory that is set by FimE and reset by HbiF. Next, we build a NOT gate where the input promoter drives FimE and in the absence of signal the reverse state is maintained by the constitutive expression of HbiF. The gate requires ∼3 h to turn on and off. The evolutionary stabilities of these circuits are measured by passaging cells while cycling function. The memory switch is stable over 400 h (17 days, 14 state changes); however, the gate breaks after 54 h (>2 days) due to continuous invertase expression. Genome sequencing reveals that the circuit remains intact, but the host strain evolves to reduce invertase expression. This work highlights the need to evaluate the evolutionary robustness and failure modes of circuit designs, especially as more complex multigate circuits are implemented.

I think it may be a substantial advantage. While I've never had the chance to create one, I really like them myself for a number of reasons.

When searching through volumes of literature, they are much easier for a reader to take in at a glance than a traditional abstract.
They often provide substantially more information about methods and results than can be packed into a traditional abstract.
They are ideal for sharing on social media such as twitter, making it easy for you or others to promote your work.

And after all, a picture is worth 1000 words. Which is more than one gets in some glossy-paper journals these days.


Does getting a PhD in a language 'L' from a non-'L' country have any drawback in case of academia? It is a common belief that "if you want to learn/study English, you must go to an Anglophone country." This belief is compounded by the fact that English teaching franchises are constantly advertising ELT as a commodity and their authority on that commodity. Some language schools do not even recruit language teachers other than the native speakers.

But, my question is about academia.

So, if someone acquires a Ph.D., say, in English  1  (linguistics) from a university, say, in Israel 2  (where the native tongue is Hebrew), would he be considered on par with a Ph.D. from an anglophone country in an anglophone country?

What kind of problems may he face if he moves to an Anglophonic country to be in academia either as a researcher or a professor?

Note: 1 might be any language other than [2] and vice versa.

Note-2: I am talking about academia.

Edit: the context is the following:

If someone is refused a visa in any one of the “Five Eyes” countries, does this affect his subsequent visa applications in other “Five Eyes” countries?

What kind of problems may he face if he moves to an Anglophonic country to be in the academia?

No matter where he did his Ph.D., he is likely to face an extremely tight job market, with many more extremely qualified job candidates than open tenure-track positions.

In general, to get hired, it is to his advantage to make himself and his work known to whatever sort of department he hopes will hire him. So, for example, it is a good idea to attend (and speak at) conferences in countries where he intends to apply for jobs.

It is also a good idea to take steps to "understand" the sorts of universities where one intends to apply. For example, from what I can tell, the "small liberal arts college" model seems to be uncommon outside the United States and Canada. If he were to apply to such jobs, it would be to his advantage to learn in advance about how they operate, and to learn something about what they value.


Asking a company for permission to use website data for research I'm a researcher, and I want to scrape a website (specifically, TripAdvisor) to collect data in order to use it for a research project. However, in reading the website's terms & conditions, I found that the company prohibits the user from:

  ...copy any content or information of this Website using any robot,
  spider, scraper or other automated means or any manual process for any
  purpose without our express written permission.

  -- Prohibited activities, bullet (ii)

As such, I want to contact the company to ask for permission. I've had a difficult time finding any information on how to contact the company in order to ask for permission to use data. That said, my question is, when making these sorts of requests to companies, what is the best way to ensure that I am contacting the right department/person?

Firstly, recognize that they probably placed that ToS there for some or all of the following reasons:

They want a legal basis for suing someone who tries to steal stuff from their site.
They want a legal basis for suing some idiot programmer who brings down their site because of a poorly programmed bot he wrote "for a project".
Their lawyer told them to put these ToS up because he saw them on some other large site and thought they looked good there.
...?

You likely fall in the second category (and maybe the fourth, I don't know what other things they're protecting themselves from). To that extent, you have to convince them that you aren't an idiot who will run amok on their servers. If you're aligned with a well-known university then maybe you'll have more luck, but even then it'll be a stretch... this is a for-profit company, not a research institution. Even if you can convince them that you're not a total idiot, they still have very little reason to want to grant you this permission. Your pet project will gain them nothing, and may in fact demonstrate something bad about their site that they don't want public. The "I'll share my findings" argument really doesn't go very far... companies have their own interests, governed by many things, including politics, agendas, egos, and what have you. Your powerpoint presentation that may be done in a year or two that will probably be too technical for a business VP to understand anyways won't give them any business value.

The point of all the preceding words is just to convince you that you have quite the uphill battle here.

All that said, I would just start calling every "contact us" number I can get my hands on. Definitely start with the numbers on the "Contact Us" page. Don't be afraid to send a written letter! For phone calls, I like the phrase Jack St Claire used in his comment: "I have a weird question."

Success is easy to determine. Check your mail... do you have a letter (written or electronic) from the TripAdvisor legal team permitting you to perform the research? If no, then you haven't succeeded yet. Keep trying! Perseverance will be key here.


Has any research been done into the marks awarded by markers using different strategies for exams with multiple questions? I think anyone who's ever marked an exam with more than one question or section has wondered how to attack it, i.e.

Option 1) Mark all of the questions in a single script before moving onto the next student's script; or

Option 2) Go through each script and mark all the question 1s, then 2, and so on.

Idle rumination gives good points and bad points for each side (and possibly some more approaches), for example 1) means you can get through it faster since you're in 'question 1 mode', then 'question 2 mode', ... (i.e. less time spent switching your brain between different topics), and is likely more fair in the sense that you can consider all the answers to question i at the same time and make sure marks are distributed in a reasonable fashion.

On the other hand, marking a script at a time means you get used to a student's hand-writing, and may perhaps give benefit-of-the-doubt (or not) depending on the understanding that the student has shown previously in the same paper (but hopefully not on the basis of external bias from knowing anything about the student aside from what is on the script).

It would be interesting to see whether one technique or another tends to correlate with higher marks given by a marker, or fewer challenges once the student receives the script back (in cases where that happens), for example.

A brief search via scopus, arXiv and popular general-purpose search engines does not turn up anything particularly relevant. Does anyone here know of any published research on the matter?

The question we'd like to answer is:

How should exams with multiple essay-type questions be graded?

Note: It isn't possible to answer this definitively due to unavoidably large variations in grader performance and exam structure.

Each course topic, exam, and set of graders is going to be unique and your own experience and judgment are likely to yield better results than any prescription of what you should do.
This is a large part of the reason both teaching and assessment are challenging and generally require a lot of experience, testing, and adjustment to get right.

While you're own views should necessarily be more relevant for your teaching situation, here is One perspective to consider:

Ideally, we strive to consistently award the same amount of points for the same level of written work. However, it is likely that our impressions about the abilities of individual students (from lectures, office hours, etc.) actually have a negative impact on the overall consistency and reproducibility of the results when marking written exams.

Whitfield et al. compared oral evaluation results to written exam grades and found that facilitator impressions of student knowledge overestimate the performance of the weakest students.

  [Whitfield, 2002] "... there is little overlap in the factors which
  account for facilitator’s ratings and actual student performance ...
  Our conclusion from these studies is that an assessment given by a
  facilitator for student knowledge is not likely to be useful."

The take-away is:

knowing which student's answer you are grading will make the range of scores wider (lower reliability) for the same work, and generally lead to higher grades overall.

For the most reliable grading:

the grader should mark answers non-consecutively and randomly from the entire set of exams in order to:

reduce the chance of identifying the student that provided the answer
reduce the comparative influence from one marked answer to the next

The following articles look promising for further investigation, however, I don't have convenient access to these texts, so they are offered without comment:

"The interrelations of features of questions, mark schemes and examinee responses and their impact upon marker agreement," Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, Volume 18, Issue 3, 2011.

"Towards a model of the judgement processes involved in examination marking," Oxford Review of Education, Volume 36, Issue 1, 2010.

"Double-marking students' work," Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, Volume 19, Issue 1, 1994.

"Responses to written work," Educational Review, Volume 30, Issue 2, 1978.

"A further study of the reliability of English essays," British Journal of Statistical Psychology, Volume 7, Issue 2, pages 65–74, November 1954.

Related SE questions:

double marking
---- keeping focused
---- avoiding bias


Can I still update my camera-ready submission on IEEE-CPS after the deadline? I have already submitted the camera-ready version of my paper to a conference within the deadline. However, although it is now multiple days past the deadline, the submission is still open on the IEEE-CPS site with the option to edit my submission.
I would like to update my submission (to correct a minor mistake), but I am not sure if I should do so.

If they permit it then feel free to do so. The worst that would happen is that the update is rejected and the current version is published. Especially so, if they say "option to edit".
Of course, an edit that would seem to require another round of review or that changes a major result will have serious issues. But a "minor mistake" shouldn't disrupt things until they "go to press".


should one add to the CV papers that appeared in conferences with no proceedings? Should I put on my CV papers (or "talks") that appeared in (peer-reviewed!) conferences that have no proceedings? Should I avoid duplicates if the same paper also appears in another conference (with proceedings)?

Should I make it clear that the conference has no proceedings, or just list it in the "Conferences" section? If it changes anything, my field is Computer Science.

EDIT:
some conferences are peer-reviewed but have no proceedings. Call it workshops if you wish. You submit a paper, and a committee  selects 30%-40 of the papers - each submission gets a slot in presenting the results during the conference/workshop, however no formal proceedings is issued.
(I'm surprised no one heard of such conferences; maybe I'm using the wrong terms; sorry for that)

I assume that you're in computer science, since otherwise you probably shouldn't list any conference papers as publications.  So I'll answer as a computer scientist.

No, you should not list such papers as publications in your CV, because  those papers are not actually published.  Moreover, there is likely an expectation that the same paper can be published at a different conference. You must not list the "same" paper at more than one conference.*

I know of several conferences/workshops like the one your describe in computational geometry (my home field), including EuroCG, the Fall Workshops, and the Young Researchers Forum at SOCG.  At all three venues, submissions are lightly peer-reviewed, only a subset of submissions are accepted, and a booklet of abstracts is distributed to participants and/or on the web.  But no formal proceedings is issued at these events, because it is expected that accepted papers will later appear in more polished form at a more formally reviewed conference.  (Some early iterations of EuroCG did have formal proceedings, despite the expectation of later publication, but other conferences were unwilling to accept papers that appeared in those proceedings.)

As others have said, it's perfectly fine to list those talks under "Unpublished Workshop Talks", especially early in your career.  You might even include the acceptance rate if you want to emphasize that the venue carries some prestige.  Alternatively, if you did publish the paper elsewhere, you might include the phrase "Also presented at ..." after the publication info.

*...but journals are different.  In most subfields of computer science, conferences papers can be published later in refereed journals, usually in a more expanded/complete form.  Even so, I recommend listing each paper only once in your CV, including all publication venues for each paper, rather than listing the same paper once under "conference papers" and again under "journal papers".


Publishing thesis as a book One of the answers here says that some researchers in humanities publish their thesis as a book. Could the same be done for example in physics, chemistry or math degree?  By book I mean the whole thesis, not just a handbook with selected material.

And if it is possible - could the thesis on which you would defend your degree be written in a book format, i.e. be ready to go to the print shop immediately? Or do supervisors and reviewers expect the paper to be just a "big article" and having complete book in front of them would confuse them?
I also suppose that the book should not be printed(at least in many copies) prior achieving a degree, correct me if I am wrong.

Definitely don't print it before achieving your degree, in case you have to make major corrections (in which case the book would be a wasted expense).

In the UK, at least, it's usual for the final copy of a PhD thesis to be bound as a book - so in some respects, what you say about "ready to go to the print shop immediately" is already surpassed. However, that is not to say that the internal format of the work is that which would be expected for a normal book, and I imagine that this --- as well as perhaps writing to be accessible to a slightly wider audience --- is what is normally involved with somebody publishing their humanities thesis in book form.

The question that you perhaps need to ask yourself (or better explain to us) is: Why do you want to do this?


What arXiv CC licenses are compatible with American Physical Society publishing? I'm having some trouble understanding exactly what the American Physical Society (APS) transfer of copyright agreement does and does not permit, and I was wondering whether someone here may have a clearer insight or previous contact with them to know exactly what their position is. Their copyright FAQ is, I feel, not clear enough on the subject, and it's not quite clear how I should contact them about this.

The relevant paragraphs from the copyright transfer agreement are, I think

  2. The nonexclusive right, after publication by APS, to give permission to third parties to republish print versions of the Article or a translation thereof, or excerpts therefrom, without obtaining permission from APS, provided the APS-prepared version is not used for this purpose, the Article is not republished in another journal, and the third party does not charge a fee. If the APS version is used, or the third party republishes in a publication or product charging a fee for use, permission from APS must be obtained.

and

  4. The right to post and update the Article on free-access e-print servers as long as files prepared and/or formatted by APS or its vendors are not used for that purpose. Any such posting made or updated after acceptance of the Article for publication shall include a link to the online abstract in the APS journal or to the entry page of the journal. If the author wishes the APS-prepared version to be used for an online posting other than on the author(s)’ or employer’s website, APS permission is required; if permission is granted, APS will provide the Article as it was published in the journal, and use will be subject to APS terms and conditions.

The latter one looks pretty inclusive, but it does not specify whether all licensing schemes for e-print servers are acceptable or not. Similarly, in their  I am worried, in particular, by a note in the arXiv license help page:

  The Creative Commons Attribution license in particular, permits commercial reuse and thus conflicts with many journal agreements.

In particular, posting to an e-print server may be construed as overstepping the rights granted by point 2 of the agreement, since it can be used by a third party as permission to republish it in print and charge a fee for it. If that is the only objection, then choosing a CC Noncommercial-ShareAlike license would be compatible with the above.

I have two specific questions about this.

Is my reading of these publicly available documents correct? Did I miss important information either on these or other publicly available resources?
Does anyone have specific experience with them regarding this question? Is there some specific contact for these matters?

(I believe the non-exclusive license to distribute, which is the most restrictive arXiv license, is definitely compatible. This question is mostly about the Creative Commons licenses.)

I don't think you can use any CC license with such a publishing agreement.

Point 4 allows you to post the article to preprint servers. This covers the non-exclusive distribution license that Mangara mentioned in a comment: You permit arxiv.org to reproduce the article on their website. Importantly, you don't grant any rights to anybody else with this license.

If you put your article under a CC license, you would grant anybody the right to reproduce it (under conditions depending on the exact type of the license). Whether it is published on arxiv.org or not doesn't really matter here – arxiv.org will just be one of the potentially many users of this license. Looking at the arxiv help page, this is hidden behind the specific wording they use. For the non-exclusive distribution license:

  grant arXiv.org a non-exclusive and irrevocable license to distribute the article

which makes it clear that you are giving permission to arxiv.org and not anybody else.

For the CC license, they say instead:

  certify that the work is available under either the Creative Commons Attribution license, or the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license

that is, you don't give a license to arxiv.org specifically, but to the general public, and arxiv.org is just going to make use of that general license.

I don't think your publishing agreement allows you to issue a CC license, even the noncommercial one. The publisher does not allow you to grant a license to anybody, just specifically to "free-access e-print servers".


Telling my bachelor thesis supervisor about my mental health issues I am in the process of writing my bachelor thesis, but my mental health has been in very bad shape lately, although I'm starting treatment soon. I am confident that it already had an effect on my productivity, and I can see the treatment procedure also affecting my productivity in the future. It was therefore advised to me by the "student advisor" (a member of my faculty that advises students about general concerns) to let my thesis supervisor know about my problem.

However, I am not sure how to go about doing this in regard to how specific I should be in describing my issues. One possible option would be to let him know that I have some sort of mental health issue. The benefit of this would be that he might be somewhat more receptive and understanding of my decreased productivity (and possible other problems). On the other hand I'm afraid it might be a bit harsh on him, because he might me reluctant to mark my thesis as insufficient or to have tons of negative commentary. (realistically speaking, I'm sure everyone involved in grading my thesis will understand that me not passing will not affect my health positively, to say the least) How should I approach this problem?

It was ... advised to me by the "student advisor" to let my thesis supervisor know about my problem.
However, I am not sure how to go about doing this in regard to how specific I should be in describing my issues.

I'd say you've done the right thing by speaking to somebody in an official capacity. That first conversation can be the hardest part! Assuming that this "student advisor" is a member of staff (in your department?) I would suggest speaking with them again, and discussing some of your concerns about "how specific" to be.
If, however, I am misunderstanding the term "student advisor", and the person you spoke with was instead somebody in a counselling/support role, I would suggest speaking with an appropriate member of academic or administrative staff -- in my experience, that would be a "Director of Studies" or similar, but the Dutch system may differ!
Either way, "the university" should be able to tell you what is an appropriate level of detail, especially if you have concerns about putting your supervisor into a conflicted position with regard to your grade.
When it comes down to actually talking to your supervisor, I would suggest that beforehand you set yourself a minimum level of detail that you feel is necessary to convey, and a maximum level that you feel comfortable with. That might help you feel a little more in control of the situation. As for what exactly you say, you can then go with whatever seems comfortable (for both parties) when you're having the actual conversation.

One possible option would be to let him know that I have some sort of mental health issue. The benefit of this would be that he might be somewhat more receptive and understanding of my decreased productivity (and possible other problems).
On the other hand I'm afraid it might be a bit harsh on him, because he might me reluctant to mark my thesis as insufficient or to have tons of negative commentary.

If I remember rightly, when I was in a similar situation to you my supervisor was wise enough to ask me what would be (un)helpful in terms of negative commentary etc. Your supervisor may also volunteer to have that discussion; however, if not, you can always bring up the topic -- if you fear that he'll be reluctant to give you (constructive) negative comments, you can say explicitly "I don't need you to be gentler with your comments; I just wanted to let you know that this is the situation, and that accordingly I am having some difficulties" (or whatever wording best addresses your concerns and desires!).
As a quick personal note (which, hopefully, helps anyone having doubts about talking to their university regarding mental health issues) I should say that after years (and several degrees) dealing with these kinds of problems, I've never regretted talking to a member of staff about my mental health; I do, however, regret the occasions where (I now know) I could have let somebody know that I was having problems, but didn't. It's very easy to be nervous about these conversations, but they're often the best way forward.

N.B. While I have been in a similar situation, I should note that in my case it was/is a PhD thesis (and is in Britain), so my supervisor is not the one responsible for final grading of my thesis. However, your concerns regarding what level of detail to go into sound very familiar to me, as does your worry about putting your supervisor in a difficult position with regard to his comments on your thesis. So, hopefully, this answer remains helpful.


Recommending a paper for rejection, then publishing my own My question is similar to this one

I am an editor for a lousy paper and I found a better algorithm than theirs. Must I share it with them?

although there are some small distinctions that (I think) make for a different question, which I write below:

I was a referee for a paper submitted to a high-caliber journal.  For two cycles, I had recommended "major revision" because I felt like the problem was a useful one, but the writing was a mess and the methodology was needlessly complicated.  After the third revision, I recommended "reject" because I worked through some analysis on my own, over the course of a couple of months, that the methodology was actually fatally flawed in a way that made the manuscript unpublishable for this particular journal.  I shared this finding with the authors and they were understandably upset (and quite contentious about it), but they did not identify any flaws in my reasoning.  The editor wrote me a note to thank me for an "extremely thorough and helpful" review.

In the time that has passed since then (just under a year), I have continued refining the analysis that I did, to the point where I now have a result of my own that is probably publishable in a lower-tier journal.  The authors of the original paper have not made their manuscript available online, with the exception that the contents of the original paper are one of the chapters of the student co-author's dissertation, which is publicly available on the university's website.

Is it ethical for me to submit my paper to a journal, citing the dissertation and giving it credit for introducing the problem?  On the one hand, the material that inspired me to study this problem has been made public, but on the other hand, I feel guilty for the amount of time that the authors spent on revisions that were ultimately fruitless, and this could lead to the original paper having a much more difficult path to eventual publication (somewhere).

Is it ethical for me to submit my paper to a journal, citing the dissertation and giving it credit for introducing the problem?

Yes.

  On the one hand, the material that inspired me to study this problem has been made public,

Yep, that sounds like a winning argument to me. If it’s public, then anyone may use it as inspiration for new research. Credit must be given to the source of course, as you yourself say you intend to do. The fact that you came to learn of the ideas through your work as a reviewer a year ago is irrelevant and I see no good argument in favor of disclosing it. The ideas are now public, period.

  but on the other hand, I feel guilty for the amount of time that the authors spent on revisions that were ultimately fruitless,

Guilt is sometimes a worthy emotion, but I don’t see what role it has to play here. As the reviewer, you did your best to shepherd the paper along on its route to publication in the hope that it will reach the threshold of publishability, selflessly investing time and energy with no expectation of getting anything in return. Sadly, things didn’t work out that way, but it sounds like everyone involved acted in good faith and no one is to blame, least of all you. It would have been very different if you had developed the follow-up research while you were reviewing the paper and intentionally sabotaged its publication in order to publish your work first, but that’s clearly not what happened.

  and this could lead to the original paper having a much more difficult path to eventual publication (somewhere)

That is too bad, but that is life. For you to voluntarily refrain from publishing a good scientific idea just to leave elbow room to other people who may or may not ever want/need/make use of it, would be damaging to yourself and (presumably) to the scientific community.

As for the idea of offering coauthorship to the authors of the original paper, that sounds like a reasonable option to me, but based on your account I don’t see that you have any ethical obligation to do so. In fact, depending on whether you feel they really deserve that type of credit, that may itself border on the unethical practice of gift authorship. Whatever you end up deciding, in my opinion coauthorship should not be offered as an act of charity or for irrelevant (even if true) reasons like “PhD students need to eat” as someone mentioned in a comment.


Does working in a research group with poor funding means poor future prospects post graduation? Background:
I am pursuing PhD in a Canadian University in mechanical engineering.
My PhD work is computational and I work in collaboration with experimental groups. I am in my 4th year and I have published two journal papers till now. The funding in my group acquired by my PI is always in collaboration with some experimental professor in our department.
These experimental professors have direct contact with big industries and other large universities. It always feels as if my group is piggybacking on the influence/success of the experimental groups.
Now my advisor has good standing in computational mechanics research community, but I don't think she has the influence to acquire funding without the help of the experimental groups. All the past members of my group were Chinese and they have got academic positions in China and few are pursuing postdoc. I think many wanted to stay in Canada and enter into industry but couldn't due to poor contacts of my advisor. While the graduates of the experimental group go into both academia and industry due to their advisor's closer contacts.
Goal: I want to be in academia but I am also open for research scientist position in Industry.
Issue: However, I have a feeling that considering my research group has poor funding record, it means I will always have poor future prospects post graduation.
Question: Is this analysis true?

This is hard to judge without knowing a lot more about why there is a lack of funding. It might be a local problem, in which case you might be fine. But if the funders generally don't value this field or even this line of inquiry within it then you could wind up in trouble. In that case, you need to be prepared to be flexible in the lines of inquiry that you commit to.
There is an especially sad case at the moment. The woman  Katalin Karikó who did the fundamental research (mRNA) that led to the development of two of the current COVID-19 vaccines, was, if I understand it correctly, denied promotion to full professor at the University of Pennsylvania since she was unable to attract sufficient funding for her research. Finding no future there, she left for industry. Moreover, her research shows promise for attacking cancer generally, which is a pretty big deal.
This was extremely short sighted on the part of Penn, of course, but at top universities funding can be a critical issue. And, of course, it is also proof that even the funders of research don't understand the nature of research and the impossibility of a guaranteed outcome. There can be a certain risk aversion that is counterproductive, though funds are limited.

I suspect that Penn is kicking itself at the moment as it doesn't share in the recent mRNA patents. Perhaps that is a suitable comeuppance.


What is the "goal" of the PhD? I am little confused about the goal of PhD in the middle of my PhD. I used to think that PhD is equal to Research but in the middle of my PhD I find out that it is much more than only research. It involves TA work plus some other academic work and research also. Before joining the PhD my goal was to publish something revolutionary during my PhD but I believe that PhD is a process in which you do three things ( according to my seniors )

Work on some problem you find interesting
Write and submit to some conference
If rejected again submit after modification

This is a typical PhD process. The above three steps will help me to get me a PhD, but it does not let me make a significant contribution which will help in finding job after PhD (postdoc, etc.).

Question:  What is the "goal" of the PhD? Is it more than the above three mentioned steps? How to ensure that at the end of PhD I will have something significant research contribution? Do I only need to worry about this or my research supervisor also?

A PhD is about research. Of course, there are some other things - for example, in some universities you have to take classes because it is assumed that they help you with your research. TA is - in the universities I know - necessary to get money. Some supervisors also see their PhD students as their assistants and assume they help them with things not related to the research (e. g. with teaching, without compensating the student).

The goal of a PhD is to write and defend a PhD thesis. If everything is done correctly, this implies that the PhD student has substantial knowledge about her subfield and has made a groundbreaking contribution (but the ground that she breaks may be small!) Moreover, the student should learn in her PhD to be a professional researcher. This includes things like publishing, going to conferences etc. Those are then the things a PhD graduate will be evaluated on if she applies for academic jobs.

Your supervisor should, of course, also help you to become a successful researcher. However, it she does not care about you, the only thing you can probably do is to change your supervisor. However, you being successful is also good for her career.


Why aren't faculty applications peer-reviewed? Research articles are peer-reviewed. Funding is based on peer-review. Academic dissertations are somehow peer-reviewed (external examiner).

Everything is based on peer-review in academia. I wonder why the faculty applications are not peer-reviewed.

Disclaimer: I know peer-review process is rarely used in some systems, but my question is why it is not as common as letters of recommendation?

They are.  Applications for faculty positions are typically reviewed by a search committee, which is made up of academics.  This is a form of peer review.

It is true that sometimes the applicant and search committee may be from the same institution when a job application is reviewed, while funding agencies and journals often do not permit that situation.  The reason is that it is not feasible to eliminate all potential conflicts of interest.  In other words, it is hard to obtain external reviewers for something like a search committee.  Also, the members of the search committee know more about their institution's needs than an external reviewer does.


Is it possible to work full time and do a part time PhD in software engineering in England? Is it possible to work full time and do a part time phd in the area of software engineering in England saying that I want to use my job earnings to pay my tuition fees? And if I start a part time PhD funding myself this way then how difficult is it to get some funding from the same university (waiving the tuition fees at least) so I can quit job and focus totally on my PhD?

Answering the question as asked, the answer would be yes. There are part-time PhD positions available at many UK university Computer Science departments. There are currently part-time PhD students currently attached to many UK Computer Science programmes and the regulations and fees are arranged for both full-time and part-time students. However, that being said, the situation is far from being that simple, as indicated in the many comments.

The majority of part-time doctoral students are likely to be experienced industrial practitioners who are enhancing their qualification portfolio with a PhD or are working for a commercial research based organisation and have linkage between their work and a potential PhD. It is less likely, and indeed less acceptable that the student is working purely to fund the PhD. This will be considered by the university to be an unacceptable situation which does not give the student sufficient hours to perform the necessary work.

There are also further hurdles to this route. One is employment. Would an employer take on someone who is planning on a part-time PhD? Perhaps; but if you are not from the UK or the EU, then there is the issue of study visas and work-permits  to contend with.

If it is finance, then as also mentioned in comments many departments have fully funded PhD research positions available and often advertise these in the academic press and online. The main database of these funded positions is hosted on behalf of UK universities at jobs.ac.uk and in that database there are 94 advertised PhD positions in Software Engineering as of today's date and four of those are advertised as being for part-time students.


Do you have any paper academic calendars or planners to recommend? I wanted to ask if you have any specific paper calendars or planners which cover an academic year (October - September) and which you can recommend for PhD students? Thanks a lot!

This may not seem relevant, but it is something I've found very useful/indispensible over the years, both for studying and for teaching. I actually required some of my students to use them.

It is called a Hipster PDA, which is nothing more than a few index cards and a spring clip to hold them together. I discussed it in answer to another question at CSEducators here. See that link for a fuller description and a further link to pictures, etc.

The reason it is so valuable is that it is both simple and flexible. It is easy to carry everywhere and can be rearranged as needed. Cards can be added and discarded. Valuable cards can be saved in a card box. You can use it for class notes as well as planning. You can use it to take quick notes in meetings or to jot down email or phone numbers, etc.

One advantage of it as a note taking device is that it forces you to condense what you hear in lecture rather than to try to capture everything. This makes your brain work harder, which aids learning.

At the end of a class, for example, you can make a card listing the two or three most important ideas from that class. Review that card at the beginning of the next.

Another advantage is that you are writing the notes, not typing them. This sounds backwards until you realize that writing by hand engages the brain in a different way (and more deeply) than typing.

You can develop your own "header" system for labeling the cards (dates, classes, ...). You can use different colors of cards for different things. You can carry the most currently relevant cards with you. You can spend a few minutes of otherwise "dead" time reviewing notes.


Small mistakes in research or personal statement I have recently submitted required documents to apply for a postdoc position. One of the required documents was a personal statement. Unfortunately, after its submission, I found two grammatical mistakes, for example I used present tense of a verb instead of past tense. It does not make a big change in the meaning of the sentence. What do you think about bad effects of these mistakes?

No one can really say except the one that reads your application materials. Likely it will have little effect, unless the field depends on correct use of language in an essential way. Even there, however, people make mistakes and other people recognize that they do.

But a good plan for the future is to have a colleague or friend read your materials before you send them to comment on things they find confusing or incorrect.

You can, of course, send a note of correction if it is in any way important. "I am the king of the world" is a bit different from "I was the king of the world."


List unpublished masters thesis in preprints section on CV? After I've defended my masters thesis, if I haven't published it anywhere, should I list it in the preprints section on my CV?

This question addresses how to list a thesis on your CV, but generally is speaking about dissertations that have already been completed.  The basic conclusion is to list theses in their own separate section.

For your situation, with a nearly complete dissertation, it would be appropriate to list it the same way, but for its date list the future date when it is anticipated to be finalized.  This would look something like:

  Master's Dissertation: thesis title, September 2016 (anticipated).


Mediocre/Poor letter of rec from well-known professor vs great letter from not as well-known professor? I'm planning to apply to graduate school next year after working a year in industry (software engineering) but have received advice to get my letters of recommendation and other application parts sorted out asap.

I'm conflicted on who I should keep in contact with for letter-writing purposes-- a professor from a top-ranked school (I plan to apply to this school for  PhD) that I did a summer REU with after my sophomore year but that I didn't see very often and where I don't think I made any real contributions even though he said I was doing a good job (my impression was that he says that to everybody who does research for him). Part of the reason I don't think this would be a good letter was because I did a lot of the work from home (he recommended I do this since I was far and I had a medical condition that made it difficult to commute) so he didn't really get to see my day-to-day work. The work that I was doing was also largely grunt work like running simulations and writing programs to handle data.

On the other hand, I have close relationships with 3 professors at my institution (I attend a small non-research-focused institution):

1 of which is my advisor and I have taken 2 courses with
1 I did an independent study with and did really well in his class, which is largely related what I want to study in grad school
1 of which is new and I'll begin doing research with him soon but hence won't have much time to do research with since I'll be graduating soon (though I do plan to ask if I can continue to collaborate with him on research after I graduate)

I also did an REU (not a well-known school or professor) after my freshman year where my supervisor said that I would do "stunning work" in graduate school, so I could get a strong letter from him, but this was a long time ago so it probably doesn't carry much weight.

So my question is-- should I take a probably not great recommendation from a well-known professor, or strong recommendations from not very well-known professors who know me well and I've formed strong connections with more recently (junior/senior year versus summer after sophomore year). Will it raise flags if I don't seek out a letter from the well-known professor?

Always go for the recommendation from the professor who knows you better. A letter from Albert Einstein that goes "mayradio0508 was never late to class and has nice handwriting" will not carry any weight.

Having said that, it sounds like you underestimate what this professor will be able to say about you. Running simulations and writing programs to handle data is something you do in research! The professor has also said you did a good job, which is a good sign. Besides, of the other three options you mention, it sounds like none of them can comment on your research ability (the third one can, but you've not started doing research with him).

If you're concerned he won't be able to say something good about you, you could always ask him: "Prof so-and-so, will you be able to write me a strong recommendation letter?"


Early Career Publishing strategies? (Keep publications to a minimum before tenure-track job?) I read that whatever you publish before beginning a tenure-track job does not count towards tenure, so it might be wise to wait with those publications until a tenure-track position is reached. (I read this in the book The Professor is In, by the way)

On the other hand, I would imagine that a tenure-track position is obtained quicker (or: at all), if one has publications, and to have more publications seems generally better than to have less publications (with some other assumptions here, regarding equal journal impact factor and so on)

What do people think? Is there a strategy which might make more sense than others? Does it make sense to hold back? Or not really?

edit:

Here is the quote I am referring to in the book, I hope it is ok to share this here:

  “Write your dissertation with an eye to the publications that it will
  become. As I have said, you need at least one refereed journal article
  while you are still ABD. At the same time, be aware that publications
  that date from before you accept your tenure track job do not
  typically count toward tenure. So the balance is delicate indeed. You
  must publish enough to get a job without prematurely exhausting the
  supply of material you will need for tenure. That is why I recommend
  writing a master’s thesis, which will give you material for a
  publication without cutting into your dissertation material.”

From: Kelsky, Karen. “The Professor Is in : The Essential Guide to Turning Your Ph.d. into a Job

I read that whatever you publish before beginning a tenure-track job does not count towards tenure,

The first part may be formally correct at some universities, but this restriction is impossible to enforce in practice.  Your reputation has a high-quality researcher doesn't depend on only your faculty publications; it depends on all your publications.  The people who write your tenure letters will write about your best work (in their opinion), regardless of when you published it.  Pretending that your pre-faculty publications simply don't exist would be stupid, even if it were possible.

A much more accurate statement is that your tenure case will focus on your publications since being hired as an assistant professor.  Faculty publications are more important, but that absolutely does not mean that pre-faculty publications don't matter at all.

(I am assuming a reasonable tenure process, where the committee actually makes a good-faith effort to assess the quality and impact of the candidate's research record, as opposed to merely counting CV bullets.  Sadly, some departments are stupid.)

  so it might be wise to wait with those publications until a tenure-track position is reached.

This is absolutely wrong.  Competition for tenure-track faculty positions is fierce—a typical tenure-track position, even at a mid-ranked department, attracts hundreds of applicants.  Submitting anything but the strongest possible application is foolish.

Candidates for tenure-track jobs are judged primarily by the quantity, quality, visibility, impact, and reputation of their research record.  All else being equal, applicants with more good publications are much more likely to be hired than applicants with fewer good publications, not only because they have longer CVs, but because they can attract stronger recommendation letters (because the references have more research to talk about).

Normally, of course, all else is never equal, but here I'm comparing your changes if you publish more versus your chances if you publish less.

In my experience*, getting a tenure-track faculty position is considerably more difficult than getting tenure.  Most PhDs do not get faculty positions; most assistant professors do get tenure.  Worry about getting the tenure-track faculty position first.

(*I'm a full professor at a highly-ranked American computer science department; I've written dozens of tenure letters and have many years of experience on hiring and tenure committees.)


Should you cite a summary in the introduction that's based on information to come? If a paper starts off by saying:

  "Technology X offers a number of advantages within Y, including A, B,
  C, D and E."

do benefits A-E have to be individually sourced if they are justified later in the paper? Should I try to find a review paper that supports the claim?

I think this depends on the technology you are writing about. For some cases, the advantages might be well known (Example: computers make it easier to do calculate complicated things) and would not have to be explicitly "proven".

If the benefits are not as perfectly clear in your field, you should definitely include a source on them. If you cannot find one which includes all of them, try to verify them indivually by providing a source or explaining why you consider them advantages (list reasons).

In case you show them to be benefits later in the paper, mention that you will do so later on. This clearly isolates them to be part of your work rather than a prerequisite.


How should I organize my life towards a PhD in the next year? After graduating and working for a few months I decided that I will quit my job to pursue a master's and then a PhD.

Before doing any applications I want to spend time reading the literature in computer graphics (what I want to study) and select a few topics and potential supervisors to then apply to their schools. And I also want to implement some papers in the field both to understand them better and to add them to my portfolio.

I want to spend at least 6 months just doing this process of reading papers and teaching myself as much math as possible.

My main concern is that on paper, what I would have done is stop working after 6 months and then not work for another 6. Ultimately I want to maximize the chances of getting approved for a master's at whichever university I finally go to. And although idealistically I know what I need to do to learn more and be more prepared to do research, I am very scared universities may see this as a sign of laziness.

I have been going to paper readings at the university of Toronto to try to be more exposed to current research. But once I quit my job I will have to move to a cheaper city and won't be able to do that.

Is there anything I can do, short of solving a millennium problem, to maximize my chances of being approved for a grad program?

Get a job that allows you to do work in or related to the field you are interested in studying in - in a worst case scenario, do such work as a volunteer.

Self-study work you do is highly highly unlikely to be any value to an admissions committee, regardless of any "reports" or "implementations" or other work you attempt to produce - no one will have time to review things like that.

What you need to do is build evidence that you are capable of doing academic research. Evidence means references - people in positions where they can vouch for your knowledge and capability. Self-study will provide you with no references. Spend a little time searching around Academia.SE for all of the people who are asking what to do when they don't have enough references and are trying to apply to graduate school. Don't get in their position, there are few answers.

The ideal jobs would be in academic labs doing work similar to what you want to do in grad school under greater supervision. At my institution, these positions are typically called "research interns" (though they are paid positions) or "research specialist" - I have also seen titles like "junior scientist/researcher" - these are positions that typically require a bachelors degree and often go to recent graduates of the institution but are available to others. However, depending on your field, these positions may be rare or not exist at all.

If there is no such position available in your field, you are still much better off continuing to work another job while doing self-study.

Master's programs may require less research experience - in that case, you are likely already in a position to apply to masters' programs, where you can get precisely the experience I am describing to prepare you for a PhD. This includes systems like in the U.S. where it is common in many fields for people to apply directly for PhD programs without a master's degree.


Can I quote books and articles I found online in my Master's thesis? During lockdown I found some books/articles online for my thesis. Am I allowed to quote them or is it unprofessional? Should I find a paper edition and quote that instead?

You want to reference reliable material - whether physical or virtual. If you read an article online in a refereed journal, or quote a standard book in your field that you read electronically, credit both the physical reference and the url in your bibliography.
References to, say, wikipedia or blog posts or unrefereed work you stumble across on someone's website may be problematic. To use them you have to make a case that they are correct and reliable.


Asking search commitee for a specific teaching topic I have an on campus visit for assistant professor position in CS department. The search committee sent me an email that they will soon send a topic for teaching demo. I am thinking of asking her to give a teaching demo about a specific topic. Is that proper to ask?

If the search committee has decided to assign you a topic, you should teach the assigned topic.

If they ask you to choose a topic, then you should choose.

The committee makes the rules, not the candidate.