Continuing a PhD in a different institution I started my PhD two years ago in the UK. Now, because of the funding assigned to my project, I will be moving to Singapore for two more years. Also, instead of being placed in a University, I will continue my work in a research agency. I am concerned about the fact of being so far away from my advisors. We will hold Skype meetings regularly (I really hope so), but still it feels like all those deep discussions we have in person will not be the same (or as productive). So, my main questions are:

What are the best practices in terms of communication with the advisors when a PhD student is researching in a different institution than his/her advisors'?
What differences should a researcher expect when moving from a University to a research agency (company) in terms of daily work and office atmosphere?

I will also have an advisor in the research agency, but he has not been very interested in the project so far.

EDIT: By research agency I mean a nationally funded research institute.

Thanks.

First of all, I would like to wish you very good luck with the change. I experienced a similar situation in the past and it is a sensible one. Namely, I have spent 2 years at a nationally funded research institute in Spain to move afterwards to complete my PhD at a Public Ivy university at the US, keeping my EU advisor as PhD co-supervisor.

Second, I would like to state that my answers just reflect my personal opinion based on my experience (I do not think there are mathematically true answers to your question), although I hope that they are useful to you or any other person in the same situation.

  What are the best practices in terms of communication with the advisors when a PhD student is researching in a different institution
  than his/her advisors'?

This is really important and handling it well from the beginning can lead to success. This change will require a more diligent attitude from everyone. Some things to take into account:

Set a fixed time slot for the meetings with your advisors.
I would advise not to let meetings to be scheduled ad-hoc. I would rather fix a time weekly/biweekly/monthly with your advisors that complies with the agendas/time zones of everyone and try as much as possible to stick to it.
Document and minute your meetings, and send the minutes to everyone involved. In the case that someone can not attend one meeting, the person can catch up fast and will have the feeling of being connected.
Keep your advisors motivated (before and after your departure) Typically academic professors/researchers are busy and somehow you have to pick their curiosity and motivate them gets you more of their "CPU-cycles". Make sure they feel part of the project, keep them in the loop, send update emails regularly, etc. Hopefully you know them enough by know to be able to keep them up.
Strength the ties between your UK and Singapure advisors. Try to be friendly and always speak well of the other co-advisors -- we all get bothered at some point by our advisors, however try not to cross-complain and try to create a strong relationship between your advisors.

  What differences should a researcher expect when moving from a University to a research agency (company) in terms of daily work and
  office atmosphere?

Your questions are very pertinent, and this issue is the one I struggled more with.

When moving to a new institution in a different continent you can expect and be ready to big differences in general, some of them in terms of:

Work ethics and traditions: The amount of hours invested at the lab, the traditions towards if it is normal working on weekends... In my case this factors did not vary a lot.
Relationship habits with other students/ superiors / advisors: When I arrived to the US, I was used to have a very close relationship with my colleagues, which I found not to hold. Also, the way to address superiors in Spain was way more informal.
Level of independence at work
Bureaucracy and requirements towards the completion of your PhD
Style of research/teaching
Expectations from advisors

and really, many others that hopefully you will discover and adapt quickly to.

Honestly, the only advice I would give is, keep your mind open, accept the changes and do not get stuck or try to hold to what you have seen in the UK. "When in Rome do as the Romans"

I really wish you best of luck in your adventure.


Searching databases for scientific work/ articles I've tried reading several guides on how to search in databases to get the relevant information that I'm seeking, either is my topic hard to find articles on or I guess it doesn't exist many.
Anyway I thought I'd give it a shot here to see if you guys could help me get relevant search-results for what I'm searching for.

Basically I have the idea of doing a bachelor degree work on the topic "How is data backups being handled at municipalities?" where I want to get in contact with IT-responsible people working at municipality offices around the region where I live to answer the research question.

The work requires me to find scientific work/ articles that relates to this subject to explore what has been done before me in the area which I wish to study.

How would I go on about finding scientific work/ articles about the subject that I wish to study.

Basically how do I search databases in the most efficient way to find earlier articles relating to my subject?

Any help and advice is appreciated.

Searching for articles on a topic is a skill that you get better at over time. Here are some tips to get started:

Ask your colleagues in your field which databases they use most commonly.  For instance, PubMed targets journals in the biosciences and medical fields.  PsychInfo indexes psychology journals, etc.
Google Scholar is a very capable tool, though the scope is typically broader than a more focused search engine.
Using a few articles you already have as starting points, review the reference list and pick out additional articles cited in the work that are of interest, then go read those, then repeat the process.  After time, you'll start to have an intuition on the authors, journals, and keywords that help you construct a search.
Use a 'cited by' search - first find a particular article you already have on your topic, then find the articles that cite that article. This can open up further routes for exploration.


A PhD student is using all the work I did for my master and presenting it as his own for his dissertation I worked under a PhD stundent's supervision during my master thesis. After I finished my thesis, I continued working at this lab on the same project however just as a "research assistant" and not as a student. Now, the above mentioned PhD student is graduating and HALF of the dissertation is the project I did in my Masters and that I still work on until this day.

I must say that this PhD student does not know how to do the techniques that I used during the project and to this day he still asks me for figures for his defense presentation ( that I myself do from the data analysis that I know how to do). He helped with patient recruiting and some statistical analysis.

Our PI never talked to me about the situation and that is why it hit me until now that this student is using all of my work and presenting it as his PhD work!

What should I do?

There are two dimensions to this problem and both matter:

Ethical dimension

If this PhD student is passing a work in which you had a significant contribution (let alone if you are the main author) as their sole achievement, then it is plagiarism. However it is not plagiarism and it would be ethically acceptable if this PhD student is presenting the work as a joint work, since themselves also contributed to it. In this case they can also legitimately use the work in their PhD dissertation, provided that you are credited as co-author.
In case it is actually plagiarism, if your advisor is knowingly covering or even encouraging it then they are at fault as well, and it's potentially even more serious for an experienced researcher: their duty includes ethical supervision of their students, and that would be a clear failure on their part.
There is an important caveat that I think is worth  mentioning: as a master student and then as a research assistant, there might be some level of ambiguity about who is the main author of the work. In particular in some fields a research assistant job might not be considered as original research work by itself, in the sense that the research assistant can be seen as providing some kind of technical expertise necessary for the research. This is a potential source of misunderstanding, especially if the technical expertise is outside the skills of the lead researcher. Depending on the specifics of the case, it might be important to consider the possibility that such a misunderstanding happened and clarify it with the supervisor.

Pragmatic dimension

Assuming that all the conditions for plagiarism are met, what you should do next is ultimately your own personal choice and you must be ready for the consequences of your decision. The academic system is not perfect, and sometimes a perfectly legitimate claim for credit is not the best course of action for your career. If you hope to continue in this research group and especially with this supervisor, it's clear that accusing them of plagiarism could seriously damage your chances. Even if you don't plan to continue in this particular place but somewhere else in academia, it's difficult to anticipate the consequences of an open conflict with a researcher in the field.

If you decide to move forward, the first step would be to try everything reasonable to convince the student and/or the supervisor to include your name in the work. It's usually much better for everyone if it can be solved internally. If they refuse, then you can seek the advice and possibly the mediation of somebody else: director of research, ombudsman or any other person in the institution with this role really.


Is it true that PhD students need to work 10-12 hours a day every day to be productive? I hear a lot of people brag or complain about how many hours they have to work for their PhD. Is this the norm? And if so is this really a wise choice to make? Do students really 'work' during this period of time (as would be expected in a corporate office), or do many also spend their time goofing around?

I've read that it's only possible to do 4 hours of deeply creative work everyday. Since energy often depletes over the day, I've personally found that outside of a small number of hours in a day, the rest of my time is spent doing mechanical tasks or straining myself in vain to think about a problem.

The answer is no.

There are a lot of factors in play. With my work, a lot of it is creative so it is hard to say when I am working or not.

Do people expect students to work that many hours? Maybe, but it isn't healthy (and maybe not legal).

Do people really work the entire time they are at work? Probably not. Your productivity certainly goes down the longer you work. Whether people goof around or not isn't specific to Academia and can happen anywhere (I don't find goofing around to be a negative thing).

I too have read several studies about the limited number of hours that people have for mentally demanding tasks. In fact, I read a study about programmers that said they were lucky to get 1-2 hours of solid work done in a day. This info can help you organize your day so that you work on difficult tasks in the morning and then mechanical tasks in the afternoon. Also, studies have shown that taking breaks and going on walks can help improve your productivity.

There isn't a cookie cutter answer for everyone. It depends on yourself, the type of work, your advisor, and your coworkers.


When publication A cites B, should I cite A or B? Let's say publication A has a nice overview of a topic and cites B and C sources to back up a few important points. Should I cite A, since it provided me with B and C? Or do I have a responsibility to read these citations? What if B is a 40-page, esoteric paper that I am unlikely to read. This seems like a rabbit hole, and I'm not sure how far down my due diligence should take me.

Whenever possible, you should try and cite the original source to make sure proper credit is attributed, especially if the original work is not well known enough to constitute "textbook material". For example, you can probably skip citing Einstein's original paper on special relativity and cite a newer textbook instead, where current standard notation and more context to the theory is provided.

Some times citing the derivative work can add to the discussion in the way of a simplified treatment over the original, further clarifications, notes on implications, and so on. Keep in mind that original work is often obscure, may not yet incorporate terminology or concepts that became mainstream after it was published, etc. In these cases I would recommend citing both the original and the derivative work. In my own papers I have used sentences such as "... our treatment is based on the theory presented by Doe and collaborators in their seminal paper [1], later reviewed more pedagogically by Smith [2]." Some journal editors will ask you to remove citations if they think they are redundant. This usually applies to obvious cases such as "... according to literature sources [1-25]..", but I guess an occasional picky editor might ask you to remove some of the references even if you're using them reasonably. In that case you need to judge by yourself if its worth insisting on keeping all the citations.

To summarize, when it doubt, I think it's best to err on the side of inclusion and make sure 1) that due credit is given to all the authors that deserve it and 2) that previous work you rely on for your study can be traced back following the items provided in the list of references.


How to cite primary source that's also featured in a book This is a bit confusing. I'm currently writing a cookbook, and a chef said he would send me one of his restaurant's recipes. When he did, it was in the form of a scan of the recipe as it was featured in another book. So clearly the recipe came from him and I have his permission to use it, but it also exists in this book. Do I cite the chef, or the book, or both for this?

You might write something like "chef X pointed me to this recipe for {dish}: book Y, page Z".


Is it advisable to drop out of a PhD and look for a new one? I am someone with an undergraduate degree in physics and am currently a over a year into a PhD in maths. However I am not feeling happy for several reasons:

I told my supervisor right from the beginning that my interests were
in physics (and very specific areas of physics), yet I have spent a
year without doing any physics.
I have been studying a problem that     on the one hand seems
extremely difficult and on the other contains     no physics and
doesn't interest me, though I'm worried about souring our relationship if I tell him to his face that it doesn't interest me.
Part of what makes the problem so       difficult is that    my supervisor has
no clue how to solve the problem    and suggestions    he gives are
never useful. In my meetings my       supervisors often    says
things that are wrong and (combined with the lack of ideas on his end) it has somewhat       shaken my faith    in
him. On one occasion he got angry when I disagreed with him on something, even though I was right. I get a slight sense he resents me for this. Instead of being supervised by someone who seems knowledgeable I feel I am for all intents and purposes working on my own.
I am concerned that I have picked an area       that doesn't      interest me as much as I thought it did.

All of these things make me feel depressed and make me want to drop out and start again somewhere else, somewhere I can do research that interests me. I don't want to waste 4 years of my life simply out of a desire to "see it through." If I drop out and apply to another PhD program is the fact that you've already dropped out once damning?

[I] am currently a over a year into a PhD in maths. However...I told my supervisor right from the beginning that my interests were in physics (and very specific areas of physics), yet I have spent a year without doing any physics.

Seems like a rather obvious mismatch! Why are you in math if you want to do physics?

  My supervisor has no clue how to solve the problem and suggestions he gives are never useful.

Another bad sign. Sometimes it's worth accepting a less-interesting area in exchange for an awesome advisor. But you don't seem to like your advisor either.

  All of these things make me...want to drop out and start again somewhere else...I don't want to waste 4 years of my life simply out of a desire to "see it through."

Makes perfect sense. Also consider the quality of your work...once you have a PhD, people will care about your publications and letters -- slogging through a PhD you don't like is unlikely to produce nice publications or letters of recommendation.

  If I drop out and apply to another PhD program is the fact that you've already dropped out once damning?

Nope, changing departments is a reasonable reason to drop out. But, it would be nice if you could declare victory -- "I was a brilliant math student who got awesome grades and interesting results, but I realized I like physics better" sounds better than "I got my a** kicked at math and physics sounds easier." Consider what you can do over the next few months to salvage your year (publishing, securing letters of recommendation, getting good grades, etc.)


Teaching load in New Zealand research universities What is the average teaching load in research universities in New Zealand? I mean how many courses per academic year does a research active faculty member have to teach? Say, in Math or Science disciplines?

The standard load will generally be around 3 courses per year or equivalent, with 2-3 hours of delivered lectures per week per course. It is common to teach only subparts of courses and distribute the load over the year in that way. Usually there is a notional "student workload" by university policy for a course worth a given number of points, and working backwards from there determines the notional staff workload, but there can be some flexibility in structuring a course within that. The number of points per course can differ between departments.

Terms are generally twelve weeks long for the two main semesters, with the summer programmes and often summer courses themselves having idiosyncratic layouts (particularly because "summer" in New Zealand includes Christmas & New Year's). Many departments do not offer summer courses at all. The main semesters run approximately March-June and July-October.

There are generally tutors hired to run tutorials or labs and grade assignments and tests for all but very small or specialised courses. Those may be undergraduate students, graduate students, or full-time employees, depending on the department and course. In general exams are marked by the course lecturers themselves.

All of this can vary between institutions. In addition, there are certain parts of some universities that operate on a different model of courses, often with a larger number of shorter terms, and those will be different in numeric terms but likely broadly similar in actual workload.


Final report rejected, institution asked to return funding and prosecute my supervisor When I finished my PhD, I was working on a small grant project worth €6000 with the aim of integrating computational software and public services offered by another institution. In our final report, I stated why we did not achieve one of the objectives (due to technical complexity discovered during the project beyond the project scope: the technical complexity might be known by experts; however, we were not experts at the time of writing the grant proposal).

The other objectives were met; the grant report was finalized and left to my supervisor, who was the coordinator of the project.

Due to several circumstances, the project was evaluated after 2 years. It was rejected, as the funding was not met in part of university participation, the reviewers rejected also the project due to not fulfilling some of the objectives.

It seems that supervisor will be liable and need to return the funding, or it will be deducted from his salary.

Am I morally liable to participate in this return, even though no fraud or misconduct was done?

You are absolutely not responsible for returning any funding, certainly not at a moral level and almost surely not legally either.  You were engaged in research to the best of your ability; as you were not the person who obtained and was responsible for the funding, you are not responsible to the funder for any failures.

Moreover, I think it is pretty unlikely that the funding body will actually claw back any money from your former supervisor.  Unless there was genuine skullduggery and/or intent to misuse the funds, the worst that is likely to happen is that the supervisor will be required to resubmit a much better explanatory report.


Should I tell my professor to print a retraction if I feel it will harm my career chances? I am an undergraduate student at a university you have probably heard of who works with their professor on independent research. Recently, I noticed a rather significant technical error in one of the important papers my professor has co-authored. I pointed this out to them in one of our weekly meetings and the professor awkwardly and quickly changed the subject. I am concerned about this but haven't done anything further. I am worried that if I insist on this then it will harm my chances of getting a positive rec letter from my professor down the line when I apply to grad schools. I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place and am very unsure of what to do.

Let me start with a standard question: are you sure that what you noticed is an significant technical error? Have you considered the possibility that your professor's reaction meant something other than a tacit admission that you are right?

OK, let's assume you're right and the paper really does have a significant error. Then according to me:

  You have fully discharged your ethical duty by pointing out this error to your professor. In particular, it is not your job to "tell" your professor to fix it nor to "insist" that they do so.

Pragmatically speaking, if you do press the issue with your professor, it is possible they will write a less favourable letter for you. Needless to mention, I don't say the professor would be right to act in this way, but it would be naive to think it couldn't happen.

One commenter recommends that you discuss this with your professor's "supervisor", presumably meaning a head of department or dean. I would not recommend this: if the supervisor brings the issue to your professor, it would not take a great leap of insight to figure out your involvement, and the professor's reaction in this case is likely to be rather more negative in the previous scenario.

In short: you have made your professor aware of the problem. It is now their responsibility to see that it is resolved.


Contact info for a professor's letter of recommendation Is it okay if the applicant provides a professor's official email and the professor uploads the letter of recommendation (LOR) from the same official email, but mistakenly mentions their personal email instead of their official email on the letter of recommendation as their contact details?

Yes, it is okay for a professor to have alternative contact information on their letter of recommendation. If you are a student worried about this, you need not worry further.


What time of year do STEM professors typically work on grant proposals? What time of year do STEM professors typically work on grant proposals?

Is it always between semesters, e.g. the summer months?

Throughout the year. At least in the U.S., timings are driven in part by when funding agency deadlines are. For most NIH  grants, there are three submission windows per year. For NSF, there are one or two, but when these occur is different for different programs. Plus, in general, thinking about funding is a major task, and can't be confined to a brief span of time.


(Computer science/Machine Learning) Is it better to take lots of math classes or AI/ML courses the first year of a PhD? I just finished up my undergrad and am starting a PhD in comp vision/machine learning this fall. I don't have as much math maturity as I'd like.

Do you recommend taking math classes early on or classes such as computer vision/nlp/robotics early on to get a better idea for my research focus?

Based on vague phrases such as "[not] as much math maturity as I'd like", you may get a spectrum of advice on this site. You should ask people who know you and your background and an adviser in the PhD program.

Presumably, if your background (in math or other subject matter) is lacking, your new adviser will have noticed and will have recommendations how to remedy that.

Issues to consider:

(1) There are probably some CS and ML courses you will need
to take at the beginning in order to be on track to finish your degree during the time the department is prepared to support you. My guess is that these
will not have heavy math requirements.

(2) You will not know everything you need to know even when you finish your PhD, much less at the start.
Learning much of what you need to know is a lifelong adventure.

(3) Your primary objective should be to find an interesting and do-able
thesis topic as soon as possible, to finish a high quality thesis on
schedule, and to get your degree.

(4) A thesis requires original research. If you know exactly what you're
doing, how long it will take, or how much support you will need, then
the project is not research. So you need to anticipate uncertainty and
delay. Accordingly, you should not build any avoidable delays into your program.

(5) All other things being equal (which they never are), you might
consider looking for a thesis adviser who is in the middle of his or her
career, and heavily engaged in pathrbeadking work. Assistant professors may be so frantic trying to do their own
research to get tenure that they have little time to worry about yours. Some senior
professors are not entirely up to date, and may suggest topics that would
have been more appropriate five or ten years ago. A really promising
adviser may have great advice what courses to take early in the PhD program

(6) Most people who get into PhD programs are from the top of their
undergraduate classes. They cannot all be at the top of their PhD class.
There may even be some areas in which you are near the bottom of your
PhD class and you can hope for some in which you are near the top. You
may have as much to learn from some of your classmates as from some
of your professors.

(7) Soon there may be other Answers disagreeing with everything I have
said. Maybe they will be right. But these are some issues worth considering.


What is the most logical course of action if your P.I does not write you a letter of recommendation in time even though s/he said that s/he would? Context:
I am an undergrad, and working in a research group over 7 months now. I have asked my P.I (group leader) whether he would write me a recommendation letter one month before the deadline of Master's programs, and he said that he would.

Now, the deadline was yesterday, and he haven't write me any letter. I have reminded him the letter regularly via email, and he responded positively, and when I reminded him again just one day before the deadline, he said that he will write it after finishing a report, and still there is no letter.

What is the most logical course of action in this case?

I'd say your best course of action is to notify the institution that you are applying to that there has been a delay, and to find someone else who can write you a recommendation within a week's time. The admissions department is likely to have a little bit of grace period for you to work with, but probably not more than a few working days. That said, they may not accept the late recommendation, but it is worth trying.


Publishing expanded supplementary information as separate paper I contributed to a paper to a journal in the life sciences. The paper contains a lot of field-specific theory, but the main point relies on a result obtained through some new inference method that I worked out. Since the method was not the focus of the paper, I described it in a terse, but pretty general, supplement to the paper. The code implementation was not included.

We think this method and its implementation are of a general interest to the community, and would like to submit a separate second paper which will expand on the supplement, and provide new sample applications. In principle, there would be a lot of overlap: identical text in the derivations, similar notes, etc. Is this plagiarism? And generally, at what point would it cease being plagiarism? Obviously tacking on an introduction and a conclusion would not be okay (or would it?), but what about past that?

A related question is this: New paper which is very similar, but subtly different, from previous paper. However, the difference in my situation is that I won't be making any big additional theoretical contributions.

Plagiarism is using something without attribution, presenting it as your own. Self-plagiarism is related but a bit different. If you use your own past published work but don't cite the original it is self plagiarism but because it breaks a chain of citations that a future reader might need for context. The older work provides some context, including its own citations that are needed by future scholars.

But you can also refer to the older work (of your own) and cite it just as you would the work of another author. In quoting, you can also be a bit more expansive, since you won't be breaking copyright rules, assuming that you still hold rights. But you need to quote, not just copy, so that the origin is clear.

The other question is about publish-ability. That is up to the journal of course, and the new paper will be evaluated as usual based on novelty and relevance. You seem to indicate that you won't have a problem with that, so it is worth a submission.


Is having two MS degrees in the same subject, from different depts, useful? This question came up after reading some answers to this one.

Is it useful either for applying for a job or for applying for a PhD position to have two degrees in the same area on two different universities without needing more time than usual for the degree (in case of master: two years, or maybe two and a half year)? Are there advantages, are there disadvantages?

I would be very confused about why somebody needed two degrees in the same field. If the fields were overlapping but distinct—mathematics and computational science, for instance—that would not be such a big deal. But somebody with two biology degrees or two mathematics degrees from different universities would be such an exceptional case that I would want to have some explanation for this in the statement of purpose. (Why did the applicant feel it necessary to have a second bachelor's or master's degree on the same topic?)


Why don’t some PhD students publish their thesis works in a journal? I want to know why some PhD students don't publish their works in a journal.
For example, I have seen many good, high level German theses which were written around 1970-90, but were not published in any journal.

The obligatory journal publication of scientific work done for a degree, no matter what (think: "publish or perish") is a fashion that spilled over from the US to Europe and especially Germany around the late '80s-'90s. Before that, people bothered only publishing work that they felt was outstanding, and sometimes not even that.
I am aware of work that exceeded in thoroughness and quality by far other publications on the same question that were published more than a decade and half later, where the original authors did not feel that it was up-to-scratch for publication and refused to do what they felt was a "half-baked" work.
One may say it might be desirable if some this self-critical attitude would still be maintained (not in its totality, so much good work went effectively lost this way), it would save one a lot of sub-par reading and reviewing duties today. However, this ship has sailed long ago.


Just got tenured and promoted, but need to move for family reasons I just got tenured and promoted to an associate professor, the contract for which will start from Fall this year. However, my partner, who is also in academia just accepted an position in another city starting from this Fall. Our plan is to give up our current tenured positions and move the entire family to the new city (for a better environment and better education for our children). The question is: when would be a good timing for me to move?

We have small children (toddler and infant), so it seems to make most sense if we all move together this summer. I am not currently on the job market, but I am open to giving up my tenured position (to trade with a better location for the family) while trying to find something in the new city (I am ready to apply for adjunct teaching positions, contract based faculty positions, or tenure-track positions in the new city, whatever becomes available, or to find some creative ways to engage in work meaningful and inspiring to me while trying to meet our financial needs).

Now, should I at all consider the possibility of staying behind and teaching as an associate professor for a year before leaving my current job?

In other words, in thinking about future career trajectory, would having one actual year of experience as a tenured associate professor make a big difference on the prospect of future job applications? Or, would showing evidence of having achieved tenure/promotion in a previous institute be equivalently useful?

What are some other possible alternatives?

Any advice on this would be much appreciated!

If you stay behind and work for a year as an associate professor and go on the job market the next academic year, you'll be in a better situation to search for a new tenure track position than if you leave your current position and move immediately.  It's always better to look for a job from a tenured/tenure track position than as an unemployed academic with no current affiliation.  Furthermore, if you leave at this point it may appear as though you didn't receive tenure in your current position.

When/if you do go on the job market you can explain in your cover letter that you're moving to the new city because your partner is there in a tenure track position.

Another avenue to follow up on is seeing if your partner's new institution might be willing to employ you (either now or perhaps in a year from now.)   Many institutions have specific "spousal hiring" policies that might be helpful.


Is it unethical to give students a sample math test as a study guide? The students were never told this is the actual exam or this will be on the exam; my physics teacher used to give us the problems for the exam as a study guide and those were the exact problems on the test, if you studied that.

If this is a coordinated course, do I get some autonomy and do as my physics teacher used to do?

I give a mock exam that gives example questions from the topics that are covered in the exam but not the actual questions themselves.

This enables specific words or formats etc to be used in the mock so that one is sure that the students cannot say that they have not been covered...

Edit based on my comment:

For the nine topics covered, there are 15 or so practice questions which are part of the "coursework" for each topic, so there is plenty of practice. The exam questions are based on any of those questions, with a different story, different numbers or part A is the same but part B is then different etc


Should the captions in a figure list include their references? The "list of figures" page in my Masters thesis lists many figure captions. Some of these figure captions have references. Should I remove or keep the reference in the list of figures? Definitely the references are always keeping in main text of the report, I just do not know how to handle them in the list of figures.

Assuming that the thesis preparation guide from your university says nothing about this, I would approach the question by considering the purpose of the figures list.  The point of the figures list is to make it easier to find these key elements of a very large document; the caption fragment is intended to help a reader find the figure that they are looking for.  There are two typical approaches to making these such caption fragments, either of which might be reasonable:

List the exact caption for each figure, so that the list can be more complete.  In this case, you should keep the references, since they're part of the exact caption.
Make a one-line summary of each caption, so that the list can be more compressed.  In this case, you should remove the references, since you are making a digest in any case.

If you have lots of very long captions, option #2 is probably better, as otherwise it defeats the point of the index.  If your captions are all fairly short, then option #1 is probably better, since it provides a fuller summary of the contents of each figure.


What is the best "last slide" in a thesis presentation? There are some possible options as the last slide of a typical thesis presentation. I've heard of some possibilities:

A question-mark image (as the time to be slaughtered by the referees!),
A Thank You declaration (There are some negative viewpoints about these two options.),
A slide including summary of the presented ideas,
A slide reflecting the presenter's contact info (I think it does not really make sense for a thesis presenter.),
A slide including a quote (I really doubt it's the best way.),
...

What is the best practice to arrange the last slide, then?!

The last slide will typically be seen for some minutes after you finished talking – until you jump to some other slide for addressing a question. This is something that you should use. If you ended your talk with a summary (which is a good thing in most cases), leaving that slide gives the audience opportunity to reflect on your talk, remember what they wanted to ask a question about, or just let your central messages sink in. If they do not want to do this, but focus on the questions, they are not distracted by anything new that you didn’t talk about.

The main exception is if you find it difficult to orally convey that the talk has finished – in that case a thank you slide or an any questions? slide may be the lesser evil and save you from a few seconds of awkward silence that everybody needs to realise your talk is over. Note that you can use such a slide as a backup behind your summary slide – if you manage to finish your talk on the summary slide, the audience never gets to see it. If you botch it, you can quickly jump to the summary slide.

In most situations, however, I consider thank you slides and any questions? slides pointless, as they do not tell the audience anything new and are things that you or the chair have to say. A quote would distract the audience from the questions – unless you are going to read it, but then the quote has to really fit the occasion. Your contact information does not need an entire slide and can usually be fitted on the bottom of the summary slide.

Finally note that on some rare occasions, the following order of slides may work:

main talk with main results
summary and outlook
one or two appetiser slides illustrating first steps into what you just announced as future work, e.g., to show that you paved the way for something interesting.

In this case, you can either jump back to the summary slide or stay on your last appetizer slide – depending on what is more attractive.


Any advice for my first TPC task as a PhD student? I'm a 4th year PhD student (in 5 years program) and recently I have been invited by a conference organizers to become a member of the conference technical program committee (TPC) for an international conference in Bahrain. I have discussed with my PhD adviser whether to accept such invitation and he mentioned that it is good to participate in the conference activities.

So, what things I need to consider while reviewing papers since this is my first TPC task, any tips?

I found some question here but mine is a bit different.

As a reviewer, you have a dual role: you are both, a gatekeeper responsible for ensuring the quality of the programme, and a mentor to the authors for improving their own work.

As a gatekeeper, your task is to fairly evaluate whether a paper fulfills the standards of the community and this specific conference, whether the paper is methodologically sound, and (notoriously) whether the paper is sufficiently interesting to the community. The last part tends to be the most subjective, and my personal recommendation here is to not put too much stock on this item. By and large, we as a scientific community tend to overestimate our ability to predict what research will have an impact. Further, don't be too strict with regards to methodological soundness - my impression is that particularly inexperienced researchers have a tendency to be overly critical of other people's work. Finally, be careful not to recommend rejecting a paper simply because it is not the kind of research you would have done, or because the authors have chosen a different method than the one that you would use when attacking their problem.
As a mentor, you want your review to be both, honest and helpful. Don't sugarcoat your review, but make sure to highlight positive as well as negative aspects of the manuscript. If you criticise, do so with concrete, actionable recommendations. Don't just write that "approach A is bad", but suggest what else the authors could do that would be more convincing. Don't write that the authors have not taken important related work into account, but list what exactly is missing and why this matters. Always, always make sure that your review is professional and friendly - you may be tempted to give some authors some "tough love" and set them straight. Avoid this temptation at all costs.

Some more recommendations:

Don't write a super-short, high-level review. As you are surely aware, as an author it is very disappointing to receive a 5-lines review for an article that you spent a lot of time on. However, it is ok if the length and detail corresponds to the quality of the paper - for a very questionable submission that is clearly below the bar, you don't need to write pages and pages of explanations if one or two paragraphs are sufficient. For instance, if you are convinced that the method the authors use is fundamentally incorrect, there is no point in detailedly commenting the entire manuscript.
Make sure that the crucial points of your review stand out. If you write a detailed review (as you should), highlight what the most important comments are, so that they are not drowned out by smaller, detailed comments. If you recommend rejecting a paper, I suggest clearly differentiating issues led to you rejecting the paper and things that you think are either easy to fix or less crucial problems.
Give the authors the benefit of doubt. Don't assume that everything that isn't described in sufficient detail is necessarily terrible, or that every mistake in the paper has been planted with malicious intend.
Relatedly, make sure that you don't read anything into the paper that isn't actually described. Our mind tends to fill in the blanks, and sometimes all it takes is a few keywords to fill your mind with an idea of what you think the authors have done. Make sure that you are evaluating what the authors actually describe, and not what your mind imagined after the abstract.
You have a duty to try to understand the work, but if you fail to understand what the authors actually did even after honestly trying to follow, it is on the authors. Ultimately, you are a prototype reader for the paper - if you fail to follow the manuscript despite presumably investing more time and goodwill than the average reader, the paper may need a better presentation.

Overall, remember your own experiences as an author - which reviews did you find helpful? Write reviews that you yourself would appreciate, especially if you recommend rejecting the paper.


What exactly is "briefly explain your master research project" in a PhD application? (CS field) Are they actually interested in my project or do they want to know how I solve problems? How can I ace this part of the application?

Even before you try to answer this, think about developing an "Elevator Talk" about your research. The idea is that if someone bumps in to you in the elevator and asks about your research you can explain it in the two minutes you have in the ride. Think about the key question(s) you are asking. Think about how you approach the solutions. Think a bit about the current state of it.
Once you have your elevator talk you just want to translate it into a slightly more formal written form. Key Question. Approach. Current state of progress.
It doesn't need a lot of detail and should fit on less than a page.

You might want two versions of your elevator talk. One for professionals in the field and another, less formal one, for other people you meet but who aren't in the same field. The one you want in the application is the formal one, of course.


Where can I find a list of Marie Curie fellowship-funded projects? If such a list does exist, it should since the funding comes from public money. I would like to see as much information as possible. I am interested in the Individual Fellowship but I guess any Marie Curie as this might be useful for people applying for other fellowship types.

You can find EU funded projects in CORDIS. For example, a list of all Marie Curie individual fellowships funded under the Horizon 2020 programme can be found here.


What's a realistic workload per blackboard hour for teachers during the semester? There is this excellent thread about teaching workloads across the world on Academia SE: Is 100 hours per year of teaching a heavy load for a lecturer?

I would now like to continue this discussion with respect to the actual workload teaching staff face. I know that teaching is not only blackboard/classroom hours, but of hours of preparation, grading, examinations etc. Since exams and grading usually happen during the semester break at universities, I am more interested in the workload teaching staff face during the semester. Of course, creating a new class from scratch consumes an enormous amount of work, so this is not what I would like to use as baseline. I'd much rather go for your typical class of well-established contents, maybe undergrad stuff, for which only occasionally a minor update of materials is required - and not a complete makeover every year. To formulate the question precisely: What is your actual workload during the semester per blackboard hour in classes that belong to your established portfolio?

In my opinion this is hugely course-dependent, and standards vary a lot between universities and disciplines.

If your task in the class is really almost only lecturing (e.g., you have assistants that run any class projects etc., and who answer most of the "standard" student questions), and you already have everything prepared, your actual effort for the course may be close to the "blackboard time" - but even in such cases, you probably want to count in at least half an hour before each class to refresh your memory on what material you plan to cover in a specific unit.

If you have any other tasks at all in the course, "blackboard time" quickly becomes a very bad proxy for your actual effort. In my experience, course planning, answering student questions, office hours, organizing and/or holding supervision sessions, giving feedback on in-class exercises, dealing with exceptions, preparing and grading exams, or dealing with teaching infrastructure can take a large, and highly variable, amount of time. These factors are also virtually independent of how often you actually speak in front of the class. Not all classes have all of those activities, but most classes have at least a few of the above elements.

In the course I recently wrapped up, I would estimate that a maximum of 1/5 of my actual work was done "in class", while 4/5 was preparing, grading/giving feedback, and organizing. However, in other classes I have spent close to 70% or 80% of my course work time "in class". It really depends on the course, your role in it, and how effective you personally are. Unless you have good reasons to believe this will not be the case I would assume that your workload outside of class will at least be as high as in-class (i.e., assume that if you are teaching one full day a week you will spend at least another day dealing with the various paraphernalia of teaching, even if you have everything set up and prepared - if this is not the case, I personally calculate that I will spend at the minimum one full day to prepare a two-hour session from scratch).


Do you have to have a PhD to be a PI on a grant for your own funding? Do you have to have a PhD in order to become a PI on a grant for your own funding?

What if you only have a Bachelor's or a Master's degree, and are not even working towards a PhD?

As Nate Eldredge points out, who qualifies as an eligible PI varies widely between different programs. However, in general, one important distinction can usually be cited: you must be a professional researcher (as opposed to a student or trainee) to be eligible to submit a direct grant. Students would normally need to have their advisors submit the grant proposals on their behalf.

You need to consult the specific rules of the grant you're interested in applying for. Moreover, if you are at an institution that often applies for grants, you should check with the local grants administration office for more guidance. They may have internal policies regarding for whom they will submit grants.

It is also important to note that different countries and different agencies have varying standards. Here in Germany, for instance, you must have the equivalent of a doctoral degree to be eligible to be the coordinating Principal Investigator of a proposal. You can participate as a team member without a doctoral degree, but not be a principal investigator.


How should I cite something that I saw in a famous internet forum (not Stack Exchange)? Let me tell you the story. I am a researcher in Mathematics and I have been the past months developing an idea that seems simple but potentially fruitful. The idea is so simple and straightforward from the current literature (at least for me) that I was even concerned that something like that was already (and) better studied. However, I was checking during some weeks and I am sure that nobody developed that idea so I began to write a paper that is now a long paper and it is in its 3rd week of preparation. I did already a lot of work.
I was in that situation when some days ago I entered in a very famous forum for math discussions  (not in Stack Exchange) and saw an image (not even a TeX document, it was a mere drawing) just an image and a post of someone describing something very similar to what I am currently studying. It is not exactly the same, though, but you can consider that my construction is some kind of particularization (the object is introduced in the post is so general that without particularize you can say very few things and I also use this in connection with other branch of mathematics in a way that seems original and novel and it is of course not mentioned in that post).
The problem came when I was checking more on the person publishing that idea (as I said just one post with a text of a few paragraphs, less than half a page) and this person seems like a bit of a crackpot in the sense that the only thing that seems to do is to stake territory out by publishing some unpolished and partial ideas in his/her blog (always really short underdeveloped ideas, never -not just one- long citable papers with actual developments and content). It is reasonable to think that if you begin to write ideas randomly at this rate at some point you will touch something interesting by mere casualty, and this is what happened, though the touch is just tangential.
Do not get me wrong: I want to cite this person as I consider that there is some value in the fact that he/she saw this and introduced it although very rudimentarily and not rigorously; the problem that I face is that I am not sure how could affect to my reputation or the acceptance of my paper to cite a crackpot-like person who could (although it is clearly not true) use this against me maybe saying that I stole his/her idea. I want to be morally okay and recognize to this person his/her novelty in that generalization, but I got there independently and actually working though the idea also and I would not like that this person could make a nasty statement about my integrity when I am really trying to be fully integral and actually recognize his/her part (tangential as I did not get ideas from the post because I reached my idea independently and hard-worked on it) in the novelty of the general case. How would you manage such a situation?
I am also thinking that citing such a source could not be well-seen by a potential journal and could lead to automatic rejection of legitimate work. I am thinking in some names of crackpots that got cited in legitimate work and then some undesirable things happened (I cannot write particular examples here because it could damage some -already damaged- reputations, but we can all think in some of the kings of viXra or GM in arXiv to fit into this non-hypothetical situation).

In the strictest sense, a citation is exactly that: A citation, not an endorsement. As a consequence, I would find it unlikely that someone would consider your paper any less just because you cite something or someone.
But then you also always have the opportunity to qualify citations. For example, you can say something like the following, which is a pretty strong endorsement of the work you are citing:

In [13], Bayer and Schmidt have previously considered this exact problem and produced an excellent algorithm to solve it. That said, while we know from their work that the algorithm has optimal complexity on average, there are also known cases where it runs for far longer than in the optimal case. This paper addresses this flaw.

Compare this with the following citation:

In preparing this work, we have spent a substantial amount of time on trying to find literature that considers the problem we address here. Very little can be found, with the possible exception of the blog post [42] that presents some ideas -- but few details and no worked out solutions -- of what we do here.

Such a statement makes it clear that you think it is related, but it's not an endorsement because you also make clear that whatever is presented there is not a full solution of the problem. This seems unobjectionable to me: Nobody can be mad at you for citing prior work this way, as you make it clear that whoever goes to that blog post will not find prior art, just ideas.


How to check whether a student faced disciplinary action I reported a fellow classmate's verbal abuse to my professor and an associate dean at my school in a previous semester. I showed proof as I was reporting the incident. Their response to me was merely that his behavior was "very unprofessional" and that was it. They never told me if and how they were going to proceed with this student's behavior.

Is there a way for me to check if the student faced any disciplinary action or not without asking the folks that I spoke with? I have a feeling that no disciplinary action was ever taken, and this was pathetically in a master's program.

No, you probably cannot find out what the outcome was.  Here in the US (and perhaps elsewhere) disciplinary actions are confidential.


Still no response from potential referees... Suggestions? About a week ago, I emailed three of my MA tutors to ask them if they can write me a letter of recommendation for my PhD application. No one has answered yet, though. I know that tutors are busy people, but really, it was just a "yes or no" answer. In addition, I explicitly stated on my email, that if they didn't feel comfortable writing a LOR for me, they shouldn't feel obliged, etc.

My question is: Should I interpret their silence as a discreet 'No' or am I to assume that they've probably forgotten or the email slipped through the cracks, and send them a second email to remind them?

Thanks for your help, it's much appreciated!

P.S. I know what I'm asking sounds a bit funny, but I'm really at a loss here, cause I definitely don't want to be annoying, but without references from my MA tutors, I probably can't apply for a PhD, at least to some UK universities.

Should I interpret their silence as a discreet 'No' or am I to assume
  that they've probably forgotten or the email slipped through the
  cracks, and send them a second email to remind them?

I think you should send them a polite follow up email. Even better, talk to them about it face to face or on the phone so you can get an immediate answer (and one that will be more likely to be positive). I had the same experience when I was looking for a reference. I didn't get a response but then when I followed up on it, it was all good. More generally, I find that busy people, such as academics, frequently let things fall between the cracks and that one shouldn't be too quick to assume the worse.


My MS thesis advisor wants me to delay my graduation for one semester. What should I do? I planned to graduate this summer, and I went through all the process of applying for graduation and my advisor signs all of these.

Now I have just 2 weeks to meet the deadline to officially graduate this summer. I have emailed by advisor to help me prepare my final results, proofread my thesis document. This is 2 weeks back, and I don't have any reply so far.
I get an email from my advisor saying that I can't delay and have to postpone my graduation next semester.  "It is best for you to make an official decision to cancel your graduation, since it is getting too close to the oral defense deadline as well as reviewing thesis."

I am OK to graduate next semester, but what I can't bear to understand is the carelessness of my advisor. I have to pay again for a whole new semester because of this.

Any advice what I should be doing at this moment?

If you don't have any problems with graduating next semester then just do that.  It will give you more time to refine your submissions and to prep for the defense.  A little annoying, granted, but it could be a blessing in disguise too.

As for working with your adviser, what's done is done.  Perhaps they were delayed in their responses but you may have to accept some of the responsibility here as well, I think.  It takes some time to make all of the arrangements for finalizing graduation.  It's not like undergrad where they can just look at the transcript and say "120cu, good to go". Heck, just getting a defense scheduled can be a major undertaking.  Especially if you're trying to squeeze in under the wire.  Stack the university processing and thesis review times on top of that and you're really cutting it close.

I can certainly understand your frustration (my M.S. was delayed by a semester due to a similarly inane set of circumstances which led to all kinds of fun) but my suggestion to you and anyone in a similar situation is to take a deep breath, relax, and use the time that you have to prep as best you can.

Aside: This type of advice question is not a very good fit to the normal SO format.  I wanted to provide a response since I suspect that many people have gotten into similar situations but have fair warning that it may get flagged.


How do I write a cover letter for a journal that has a double blind review process when I need to reference my previous conference paper? My research area is in Computer Science.

I am going to submit a paper to a journal, that has a double blind review process. The paper builds upon our previously published work in a conference paper. It has over 40-50% new content, experiments and results, and less than 30% textual similarities. This is allowed by the journal (according to their website)

I need to reference the original conference paper in the journal paper and say the current submission has X,Y,Z content, which are new and not included in the conf. paper. I would also like to write a cover letter stating that this submission contains new material, over the original conf. publication, outlined in bullets. I would like to cite the conf. paper in the cover letter too.

The journal says, all indication of author names should be blanked out. Hence, their guidelines are a bit conflicting.

So how can I write the cover letter without giving the author names away ? How can I point to the original conference paper without giving away the author identity ?

Many thanks for your help.

EDIT:
I checked the journal website, it says :

"...Of course authors  have  rights  to publish in journals enhanced  versions of a their conference presentations. Such papers however should be submitter as regular papers. Obviously, the conference paper must be cited and it should be explained how the conference paper has been enhanced. The lack of this citation is considered a serious violation of ethics and as a
consequence the manuscript must be rejected..."

http://tii.ieee-ies.org/o/SubPostConf.pdf

The editor is not subject to the double-blindness and is usually the only one to see the cover letter. They have to know who the authors are so that they can reconnect with you once reviews are in, not try to use any of the authors as reviewers, etc. I'd submit a normal cover letter and make sure that the paper itself is properly blinded. You must cite the prior conference article you are extending, but you have to do it in the third person (e.g., "...in Rosh, et al. they show that..., in this article, we extend their work to show that ...", etc.).

If you are still confused about this issue, contact an editor at the journal and ask for clarification.


In practice, how secure is a tenured position in the US? Coming from France, where any official academic position (i.e. associate professor or full professor, or equivalent positions at public research institutes) is a civil-servant one, and therefore automatically for life, I've been always intrigued by the "tenure" system in the US.

While reading the Wikipedia article, I spotted the following paragraph:

  While tenure protects the occupant of an academic position, it does not protect against the elimination of that position. For example, a university that is under financial stress may take the drastic step of eliminating or downsizing some departments.

Does this kind of elimination/downsizing occur a lot in practice? Is it possible to "cheat" and to pretend to cut a position in order to save money just to get rid of a tenured professor? Are there some laws stating that if a position is cut, then another equivalent one cannot be created right after?

I haven't seen any statistics on how many tenure professors have been fired, but most articles on the topic treat tenure as though it's a lifetime position (e.g., this Science article, "Tenure and the Future of the University"). Anecdotally, you will likely never meet someone who knows someone else who was fired from a tenure position; it simply doesn't happen.

Note, however, that the number of tenure track positions made available over the past decade been trending downward fairly significantly (see the same article, and simply do a google search on the topic to see more).


Finding and requesting research funds from private sponsors for basic research with low short term marketability value I am currently hired as a research track scientist not funded directly by the university. As part of my contract agreement, I am required to secure my own funding in order to remain hired. However, government funding has dried up drastically over the last few years, and my best and just about only shot is to seek private sponsorships. A brief conversation with the department chair has confirmed that the department doesn't really care too much about the source of funding as much as whether I can get sufficient funding or not.

Given all of this, does anyone have any suggestions for a list of private individuals or organizations willing to fund basic research in theoretical physics without any immediate practical applications? How should I go about contacting such private sponsors, and what is the proper protocol for asking them for money? It appears most funders in the private sector care mostly about getting short term commercial monetary returns from what they prefer to call an "investment" instead of funding. How can I encourage them to think about longer term benefits which might take as many as a few generations to reap?

In my experience, sarcastic remarks along the lines of Benjamin Franklin's "What's the use of a newborn baby?" or Michael Faraday's "One day you may tax it." go on very badly to people in the private sector.

Step in their shoes and figure out what they would be gaining from giving money to you. The question is not only about the benefits as such, but who will benefit. 'One day you may tax it' may be actually reasonable to a large government, but it is absolute nonsense to a private company, who will NOT be able to tax it when other companies use it. "What's the use of a newborn baby" also implies that the adult will be useful - but it will NOT be useful to the company unless they can own & control that long-future result.

In general, if you want to get industry funding for research where the results cannot be commercialized in the short term, then anyway your results have to be valuable from them in particular, rather than the whole industry including their competitors. So if it's too early to produce a commercial product/process, at the very least the end result should be some protected IP - usually patents - that would be a property of the funding organization.

If it's an investment, then take a look at how large the return benefit would be, when would that be, and how likely it is that it will/won't work out.  If it's a 'sponsorship', well, sponsorships generally are a PR/marketing issue - in order for that to work out, the company needs your research and/or your name to be visible and known (not to academia but to their customers), so that they'd get some marketing benefit by their customers seeing (a lot of) their association with you and/or your research topic. It sometimes happens (for example, with high-end audio products; or IBM's Watson project is a case of such PR), but it's clearly not an option for most researchers.

An alternative might be private philantrophists - but that is based on individual relations, connections to very rich individuals, and your PR ability to convinve them that your research is so valuable to the world. Looking at how some other researchers have achieved such funding, it generally requires writing a popular book or a few of them, and years of public promotion of your research direction and ideas; that seed tends to grow into an ability to fundraise for continuing such research.


How to react to some students who book an appointment and do not show up? I wonder what is the best strategy to follow to respond to students who book an appointment with you and do not show up. It is just so un-nice when this happens.
I do not want the student to be upset but at the same time to honour his/her bookings.

Back when this was something I had to deal with, I would:

Always have something to do if someone doesn't show up for their appointment, or if their question gets resolved very quickly.

Write brief emails to no-shows along the lines of

Dear X:
I'm following up on our appointment today at 14:00. I hope everything is OK with you.
Let me know if your question is still relevant and you would like to reschedule.
If you answered your own question, I'm glad, but next time I'd appreciate
a heads up for scheduling purposes. Ditto if something came up and you just couldn't
make it. See you in class tomorrow, I hope!

Get progressively more direct if people missed several appointments, to the extent of refusing to make further appointments (leaving the student the option to come for the office hour I had for appointment-free visits every week).

Note the tone of the email in point 2 is not demanding of an explanation (or indicating a desire to judge whether excuses provided are adequate), but is also openly asking for a change in behaviour, without pulling rank or going passive-aggressive. Generally I got belated apologies and improved future behaviour. And a couple of times the "I hope everything is OK", meant genuinely, surfaced that something pretty dire had happened (where a pure chastising email soliciting an apology would have been cringingly tone-deaf!), including a student on the verge of an emotional breakdown where we were able to get them help.
Now, a couple of decades later, I'd still do the same -- and suspect I've written stuff not too dissimilar in tone to peers and superiors too!
Basically: be frank about what you need to change, don't make an investigation of it, and open the door to empathy.
Editing to add: Comments/other answers have pointed out potential different cultural expectations, and/or that the tone is not optimal if there turns out to have been a real emergency. Regarding the first, agreed: needs to be tempered by cultural norms. But if student behaviour feels outside of local norms, do go ahead and address it. Regarding the 2nd, also true. At the risk of going very math/stats-nerdy, there is a Bayesian prior regarding what caused the missed appointment. My answer assumes the Bayesian prior is fairly flat between emergency, forgetfulness, student self-absorbtion/failure to consider from others' point of view, and overall excessive academic stress. The tone tries to be acceptable and hopefully effective in all these instances. If your Bayesian prior is more heavily weighted to one pole, your optimal tone will change. This includes repeat offenders (where the Bayesian prior weighs more heavily on self-absorbtion), reason to suspect emergencies, etc.


VERY Slow Review process I have submitted a paper in a journal 19 months ago and the manuscript is still under review. Up to present, I have contacted the editorial manager several times but the results have not changed. They always reply "your manuscript is still under review." What should I do in this case?
Thank you for your comments.

Assuming you're in a field with a quicker response time (e.g., not mathematics), I would email the Editor-in-Chief directly (outside of the journal's system) an tell her or him that your article has been in review for 19 months and if you do not hear back from her or him within a set deadline (1 or 2 weeks) you pulling your manuscript from that journal.

I had a similar experience where a manuscript of mine sat in "under-review" for 12 months. The Editor-in-Chief apologized for the delay and promised me the review would be completed within a set deadline. In my case, the Editor-in-Chief was clearly unhappy with the Associate Editor I was assigned.

As long as you are polite, but firm, there is nothing wrong with being assertive.


From academic collaboration to research contract, best practices We started to collaborate with another research group. We make computational predictions and they evaluate them at the lab, for bioactive compounds. We have not yet established a research agreement, just talked in person, but we would like to establish a research contract with them. This is since in our country (Spain) and given the financial crisis, groups that establish such research contracts are more eligible for further funding from national government than those that publish in Nature or Science. Since we need as many contracts as possible, price is not important, we think we can offer our services for a very small fee. The point is how to convince the other groups that we need to do this not for the money, but for our future. So the question is, what is the best way to propose them a research contract?

The best way is probably to talk very openly with them about your situation and especially what research contracts mean for you. Before you make any suggestions, it would also be good to evaluate the funding situation of your partners, and whether they need your contribution so much for their research that they would be willing to put money in it.

However, most collaborations between academic groups are seen as something that benefits both sides, so it could be seen as a little bit odd that one side pays the other to do something. Still, if your partners have a good funding situation, they might be willing to (co-)fund a PhD student or post-doc in your group, who works specifically on the collaboration project. But I've mostly seen this between groups in the same institution so far, not among different institutions. If your collaborators are in industry, then it will probably be easier.

Another nice way to get such project going would be to apply for joint funding with the other research group, for example within an EU project, and set up a contract how the money from the funded project will be distributed between you and the other group. If your collaborators have good national funding sources, it may also be possible that they apply for funding with the joint project on their own, and outsource the computational part to you.


How to acknowledge someone beloved in a publication for his/her support in writing the manuscript? Is there a way to acknowledge girlfriend/wife or boyfriend/husband for his/her support in editing a Manuscript that got accepted with a great impression? I mean to say that he/she had re-written the manuscript.

One reviewer has commented "English of the manuscript is very clear and is very well written".

The authors would like to thank Jane Doe for her assistance in the preparation of this article.

or some variation of the sentence above.


One student grading other students' assignments in the same course? In the US, can a student who is already enrolled in a course grade homework assignments of all other students in the same course (but not actually accessing and changing academic records)? Is it legal and compatible with academic integrity?

Two of several issues that I'm concerned about are:
1. He has not actually done his own homework (because homework submissions are not recorded).
2. By comparing my paper with other students I wasn't able to observer a consistency in grading. Actually initially I found who has graded our homeworks based on a pattern of inconsistency in grading and also inappropriate comments on my paper.

However the professor rejects my concerns by stating that he has overseen and reviewed everything himself.

In this page from USC.edu it is stated that "Please note that it is not possible for you to be both a student and a TA within the same course. Federal law [FERPA] and University policy both specifically prohibit students enrolled in a class from being able to modify their own grades or to view or modify the grades of other students enrolled in that same class." However as pointed out by Bob Brown, Supreme Court allowed in-class peer-grading.

A student grading other students in the same course is unusual, but certainly not illegal.  As to whether it is inappropriate, I would consider two cases:

Sometimes professors ask all students to do part of the "teaching" responsibilities for a course, whether that be lecturing, grading, creating course notes, etc.  The theory of this is that it forces a deeper engagement with the material, and may help prepare further skills.  When grading or similar is done by a student or other students for a pedagogical reason like this, I see no problem, as long as the professor takes into account the potential for quality variation.
If an individual student is simultaneously a class member and a TA/grader, that is much more unusual, and generally a bad idea.  In this case, the pedagogical value of having all students engaged with the process is not there to balance the expected decrease in grading accuracy and quality.  There may be certain unusual circumstances where it is appropriate, and a professor can, in fact, organize things to compensate for the issues that you raise, but in general I would be highly dubious about this practice.


How does Microsoft Academic Search generate its rankings? Yesterday, during some idle time in the office, a colleague of mine has discovered that I am currently ranked at position 20 worldwide by Microsoft Academic Search for my subfield regarding the last 5 year impact. While certainly flattering, this ranking is also quite clearly bogus, as many much more eminent academics are ranked far behind me in this list.

The Occam's razor explanation that there simply is another researcher of my name in my field can be discarded, as Microsoft Academic profile does indeed list my, and only my, publications (as well as a profile pic that they seem to have grabbed from an old university web page).

So my question is the following: how does Microsoft Academic Search actually generate rankings (of individual academics, but there are also rankings of journals)? It seems clear that not all citations and publications are considered equal (otherwise I would not end up so far to the front with a comparatively meager set of papers and citations), but how do they decide what is "worth" how much?

I am mostly looking for answers that refer to papers or web links coming from MS insiders  on their ranking algorithms. Barring that, some well thought-through speculation from outsiders is also ok :)

Edit:

I just discovered that Microsoft Academic Search seems to employ the notion of a field rating for conferences and journals, and the rating for some of the venues that we prefer seems to be unreasonably high. However, that still does not fully explain my curious case (and it still leaves open the question of how these field ratings are generated in the first place).

how does Microsoft Academic Search actually generate rankings?

Since Microsoft Academic Search, like Google Scholar, is a proprietary vertical search engine and its algorithms and ranking systems are not open source, you're unlikely to get a detailed "how" answer unless a disgruntled former Microsoft employee decides to chime in.

Microsoft Academic Search does make some details of its rankings and results system available, however. This page offers a basic explanation of the search engine's approach. For both Microsoft and Google, citations play a major part in search result rankings, which has subjected academic search engines to criticism in the past. As the Academic Search page above indicates,

  the information associated with Microsoft Academic Search author profiles is derived from the tens of millions of scholarly publications that are currently indexed by Microsoft Academic Search. Most of these publications have reference lists that Microsoft processes. The indexed publications and reference lists help create a snapshot of individual authors' publication history, productivity, and impact. As more content is indexed within Microsoft Academic Search, the accuracy and completeness of the author profile data improves.

Because Academic Search rankings can be distorted by factors including citation counts, incomplete publication indexes, and the field rating system you mentioned, it will inevitably produce some inaccurate results.

Speculation alert: it seems to me that the lion's share of ranking is accomplished through automatic citation list analysis, which is not necessarily a good indicator of

Prominence in one's field,
Number of publications (instead, it seems to emphasize how often a publication is cited elsewhere).

Finally, Academic Search is still in Beta, and I suspect that their rapidly growing index may not always be in perfect step with their ranking algorithms - in my personal experience with the search engine, there do seem to be cases of highly-ranked scholars or papers suddenly plummeting, then re-appearing again, which I assume is a consequence of ranking algorithm tinkering.


Referencing a Tapestry (History) I would like to reference The Bayeux Tapestry for a paper. Guidelines state to use "standard footnotes" and doesn't dictate any particular system.

The Tapestry is located in Bayeux, France and the exact date and the creator are not known but thought to be approximately 1070 and commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux.

What would be the most appropriate way to reference such an item?

This website from the library system at the University of Tasmania provides guidelines for citing works of art in the MLA style. Briefly:

  Citing the original work (you went and saw the Bayeux Tapestry)

Artist (Last, First). Title of Work. Date. Medium. Location of the work.

Bayeux Tapestry. ca. 1070. Tapestry. Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux, Bayeux, France. (Since the artist is unknown, leave this field out.)

  Citing a reproduction of the work (in another source)

Artist. Title of Work. Date. Medium. Location (if appropriate). Source reference. Plate/page # (if appropriate)

Bayeux Tapestry. ca. 1070. Tapestry. Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux, Bayeux, France. Everything You Want to Know About the Bayeux Tapestry. Ed. B. Ayeux. Bayeux, France: Bayuex Publishers, 2014. Plate 3. Print.


Is it OK to have a PhD thesis with shortcomings and inaccuracies? I recently defended my PhD thesis and was awarded a pass with some minor corrections. I am due to submit the final version of my thesis very soon.

The examiners were both very happy with my thesis, which explains the final verdict. However, as the saying goes, no one understands a thesis better than its author, as the person was invested in it for years. When polishing the papers to send for publication, my supervisor and I found a major issue with the thesis, which although it does not invalidate the overall findings, it would change a significant portion of the methodology in my thesis. While I am currently addressing these issues for the publication of one of the chapters, as well as my job market paper, this issue has to led to severe depression and has made me feel inadequate as a researcher. I worked incredibly hard and had a particularly difficult PhD process; so it is difficult for me to find that at this stage (post defense) I am submitting a thesis that is predicated on a methodology that should have been approached entirely differently; and frankly while in my corrections, I have in essence remedied the problem so that it fits my analysis, changing it as I had intended it to would imply changing a substantial portion of the thesis. This in turn has caused a feeling of despair and inadequacy.

I spoke to a friend who is currently working as an associate professor and he comforted me by saying that irreproducibility, inaccuracies, and mistakes, be it major or minor are very common in vast majority of PhD theses and that I should not beat myself up for this and that the said PhD title is well deserved. However, I thought I ask for some second opinion.

The thesis is a "good" one if you have passed and will be awarded your degree. Don't overthink it. You have learned something from producing it that you can leverage into future work. That is, in lots of ways, a big advantage. If your advisor is also happy and wants to work with you on any future extension, you have a positive outcome, if not a perfect one.

That the thesis "might have been better, if only..." is true pretty frequently.

My suggestion is to take the advice of the reviewers and get done. Then write a future paper extending and improving on the thesis. Don't make it harder than it needs to be. Your dissertation shouldn't be thought of as your life's best work, only its first.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. (apologies to Voltaire)


Deferring a PhD to pursue a masters after accepting it. Advice? I have accepted a fully funded PhD offer from a very good university. In the meanwhile I have managed to secure a masters offer from another very good university. (I applied to both at the same time, but was given a masters offer a week after the funding acceptance deadline for my PhD)

The opportunity to attend two of the worlds best universities is a huge decision that will affect my future in a very significant level.

Especially given that if something where to happen in the 4 years of my PhD (change in supervisor's or personal circumstances) which would prevent me from completing the PhD, I would still have a Masters under my belt if I pursue both opportunities.

I would therefore like to defer my funded PhD start date to next year, in order to do the masters. Rather than do one or the other.

I would like your opinion and I would also like to ask for possible consequences of such an action, and how best to approach it.

(I note that suspensions of studies can be available for exceptional circumstances(including work/career opportunities). I would class the masters as a career opportunity, given that is at one of the world's best university and career focused with many industry links.)

How do I very nicely request to defer my studies by one year to pursue a masters opportunity - which will enhance my career prospects greatly?

Essentially, you have to choose between the two; you won't be able to do this the way you propose in your question.

There are usually only a few allowed reasons why a school will let you defer your enrollment: to fulfill a service obligation for a scholarship; to participate in a special program, such as a Rhodes, Marshall, or Fulbright scholarship; or if you have exigent medical circumstances that require you to postpone the start of your studies.

One reason that is generally not allowed is for you to study somewhere else. Just because you'd classify it as a "career opportunity," the PhD program to which you have been admitted will see it differently. They will make you decide between the two programs: if you want to enroll in the master's program, you'd have to give up your PhD admission spot, and reapply for the appropriate term in which you'd be able to start following your master's program.


Talking about career plans given short supply of academic jobs? Context: I am asked for my career plans and aims for development after graduation if I were accepted into a PhD program in pure mathematics under government funding from Country A.

Dumb question: I want to go into academia after, but given that apparently academic jobs are in short supply especially in theoretical fields or something, how should I talk about my plans after the would-be PhD program?

I have 2 ideas with my anticipated pros and cons:

Idea 1:

Say only that I want to go into academia after.

Con: Might be seen as immature like I don't have any backup plans, and I'm not aware of academic job shortages.
Pro: Hopefully seen as committed to doing a PhD

Idea 2:

Say that I want to go into academia after but also [insert backup plan here which is based on my current career ever since I graduated master's in applied mathematics last year].

Con: Might be seen as not that committed to doing a PhD or even not that sure of what I want to do after assuming the former isn't an issue
Pro: Might be seen as mature like I'm aware of academic job shortages.
Another pro: How I would state the backup plan might help convince Country A government that I am very interested to pursue PhD studies in Country A (well, besides, being a local applicant)

I guess you mean you are applying for a government fellowship to fund your graduate studies, and the government agency asks about your career plans on the application form.  My experience in the US is that many students don't really know what they want to do before entering a PhD program.  My impression from some countries where you are required to have a master's first is that most people at the master's level don't know what they want to do coming in (or at least their advisors don't know), but that people who start PhD programs at least think they want to do research.  The point is that unless someone shows real mathematical maturity in their application, I wouldn't put too much weight on what they say their career goals are when applying to a US-type combined master's + PhD program (and I guess you are talking about the US), as these goals often change anyway.

Anyway, I think you should state your plans as clearly and as honestly as you can, so if there are a couple of things you're interested in, you can mention them both, but you probably don't need to go into back-up scenarios if things don't work out with your current goals.  I expect they mean to ask: "what do you want to do?" rather than "give a strategy for your career that is achievable with a 95% chance of success."  Moreover, I don't think the job market is really that bleak in pure math in academia, as long as you are not set on anything too specific (see, e.g., https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/44187/19607), so I don't think something like "staying in academia" is that unrealistic as "getting an endowed chair at MIT" would be.

In addition, since it seems like you're not too sure what the program is looking for, I suggest you read through the selection criteria, which are mostly likely available somewhere in the application guide.


How to find out if an author is practicing pseudoscience or is fraudulent? I have had the need to dig deep into the theory of architecture and in doing so I have encountered various authors who make extremely grandiose claims about themselves and their work.

This of course is not a measure for the actual value of their achievements, but sometimes it is hard to find out if an author is just very bad at expressing themselves, want to mask their ideas with jargon in order to make them seem even deeper, or if they really are just fabricating incoherent theories.

I by no mean want to denigrate anyone, but I don't want to learn from authors who are practicing junk science. The problem with architecture are authors who talk not just about architectural theory - but connect various disciplines to it, for example psychology, computer science, mathematics, etc... I have no required knowledge of any of those disciplines - so it is impossible for me to know if they are just using complex constructs from another discipline in a way that is just "sugar coating" for their claims.

A bigger problem is that there are very few people who have studied both architecture and some other discipline in detail and are able to comment both.

In this case I am baffled by two authors: Nikos A. Salingaros and Michael Leyton. Their book make incredible sounding claims, and their homepages and Amazon reviews are full of praise that rings all kinds of alarm bells, but at the same time they have permanent positions in universities which to my knowledge are quite reputable, and they have published a lot...

Regarding Michael Leytons theory of perception and cognition, there is a detailed criticism by Hendrickx and Wageman, but as I said, I am no mathematician... Apparently there is something wrong with the mathematical side of his theory though.

Is there any way to find if I can trust these authors? They seem to gather citations from their students and other people who use their work without any kind of criticism. Do I need to go through the magazines they publish into and find out if they are peer reviewed and of good reputation? How would I go about doing that?

I don't want to pollute my work with bad science, and I am very hesitant to make any claims myself if I don't have good grounds for them. With complex interdisciplinary claims like the ones these two authors do, should I just not use them at all since it seems so hard to find out if they can be taken academically seriously?

Context: I'm a PhD student in Computational Social Science, so I'm very knowledgable about Complexity Science and related fields and how they are applied to design, architecture, organization science, and economics.  Also, my adviser is a leader in the field of Design Science, particularly how Cognitive Science and AI can be applied to understand design and designers.  Finally, I have a lot of domain knowledge regarding Pattern Languages and generative models of conception and design.

  Is there any way to find if I can trust these authors?

I've encountered many authors, researchers, and consultants who I have identified as "charlatans" when it comes to applying Complexity Science or other models or theories to social systems.  For the most part, they apply Complexity Science only in a metaphorical sense (e.g. "edge of chaos" concept), but have no basis or foundation in empirical or theoretical research.

But to determine whether any particular author is a charlatan or not, there is no substitute for you understanding the underlying theory or method. There is no reliable method for you to determine whether author A has a valid foundation in theory X unless you do your homework and develop a working understanding of theory X.  If, on the other hand, you stay with your position that "I'm not a mathematician", then you have no basis for deciding either way.  Looking at what other people say or citations will not help you, in an academic sense.

If you don't want to do the work to understand the mathematics, computational science, and formal methods that these author use, then just go another direction.  If you must include them in your papers, then just say that you have no opinion on their validity or significance because their methods/theories are beyond your grasp.

Finally, just because you don't understand the mathematical and computational methods these authors use their theories doesn't mean there is any "junk science" going on.  As Steven Covey (7 Habits) advised: "Seek first to understand."

Edit: Whether or not these authors have tenured positions at important Universities is not very good evidence regarding whether their "science" is "junk" or not.


High IF Journal From Another Field vs. Low IF Journal In My Field I will be submitting a manuscript I have, but I am having a hard time deciding between two journals that are both suitable for my paper's topic.

Journal A has an impact factor of 5.6 but is a field-specific journal in a field I am not a part of. Researchers from my field publish in Journal A rarely. Journal B, on the other hand, has an impact factor of 1.6, is a general journal in my discipline and has a section that publishes papers from my field exclusively. Researchers from my field publish in Journal B more frequently. However, Journal B is still not a standard/well-known journal in my field. Which one would be more impactful in my CV (for graduate school applications) given that I am an undergraduate student.

I know this is hard to answer without knowing my field, but this question essentially boils down to whether a higher IF journal from another field is better than a lower IF journal that is more relevant.

Let me suggest that the IF of the journal overall is less important to you than having your paper seen by the people who need to see it. I assume you are interested in citations of your work. You won't get them if the people in your field don't have ready access to your paper.

I think that a specific journal is a (valuable) benefit to you, independent of IF, which is an overall measure that doesn't really impact any particular paper.

This is especially true for hard-copy journals that have wide subscription within your field. Your paper will naturally appear before suitable readers. But even for online publication, your readers need to have ready access to at least the index of the journal in order to know it exists.

The above is opinion, obviously.


Can an editor make substantial edits and publish them without the author's permission? Can an editor make substantial edits to an author's book or paper and publish them without the author's permission?

No.

Editorial review is an iterative process in which an editor, reviews and the author(s) have open (although usually blind) exchanges about the details of a manuscript. The process relies wholly on a full exchange of information between all parties.

A helpful and detailed account of a standard editorial process may be found at the National Institutes for Health website.


Can I use the slides published in the course websites to teach in my own courses? Stanford University (and others) usually publish slides/lecture notes on the corresponding websites.
For instance, this one: http://cs229.stanford.edu/
If I teach a course in the same topic, can I just use the slides/lecture notes? Do I need to acquire permission?
I will keep the name of Stanford on the slides and clearly stated that the slides are made by Stanford professors.
Thanks

You need a license (from the copyright holder, here most likely Stanford University) to directly use their slides/parts of their slides or to make derivative use.

If the slides are publish under a license that allows you to reuse them, you're fine.
Examples would be CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-ND (careful with -NC variants, they may not be sufficient for your purpose, e.g. in my country already putting ads on a web site with a blog so it earns the server costs makes that blog commercial)

You can ask Stanford whether they allow you to use the slides (i.e., grant you a licence)

You can always use the ideas behind the slides as inspiration to create your own slides.

Be careful since derivative works of their slides/images/diagrams need a license, see above.
Your slides need to constitute a new work of your own.
Example of inspiration: "It'a really good idea to point out the 'sample focus' change from LDA/QDA over LR to SVM" - then make your own slide on that topic.