Co-author contributed almost nothing and is blocking publication Alice and Bob have co-authored a paper together. The contribution (data collection, analysis, writing) was 100% Alice and 0% Bob, except that the original idea was initiated during a conversation between Alice and Bob. Bob acknowledged several times in private that he did not contribute to the project, but he claimed co-authorship for the idea and Alice did not object to that. Alice spent almost an entire year working on the project. Bob spent less than a couple of hours in total. A manuscript with both names has already been circulated, submitted and rejected from one journal.

Bob is now trying to block the publication of the paper due to a personal conflict with Alice. In the meantime, Bob became envious of Alice's early successes and decided to do everything to slow down her career, even at the expense of his own publication record. Bob is already tenured and has no pressure to publish. Alice, by contrast, needs more publications for her forthcoming tenure review. Of course, Bob never explicitly refused to submit the paper. But instead of sending it to a prestigious outlet (where the paper would have a good shot) he insists that they send the manuscript to a non peer-reviewed and unknown journal, which would not help Alice's tenure case. Of course he makes no effort in trying to find an agreement, as he would be happy not to submit the paper at all. Clearly, his decisions are driven by spite and malevolence only and he takes great care into not writing anything incriminating for him.

Is there anything that Alice can do in that situation? Does she have to resign herself to never publishing the paper? What are the risks for her if she removes Bob's name without his agreement and submits the manuscript on her own?

PS: as a response to Captain Emacs' comment, Bob's only contribution was to say "why don't we study the causal effect of X on Y?" in an informal conversation. Alice did absolutely all the rest (literature review, design of the protocol, data collection, analysis, conference presentations, etc.). But there is no evidence of this, other than the fact that Bob would be unable to answer any question that goes into the detail of the paper.

As with the another answer, I couldn't help but notice the almost literary way in which the Bob character is depicted:

  Clearly, his decisions are driven by spite and malevolence only

Unless the OP is Bob (what a twist!), she is really not in a position to make that claim.  In my experience, in 99% of all human behavior, after sufficient scrutiny, one finds that "driven by spite and malevolence only" is not the right explanation.  Moreover, I'm not sure I've ever seen an academic make a professional decision to spite someone else even though it hurt their own career as well. Regarding this the OP wrote:

  Bob is already tenured and has no pressure to publish.

Now I really think the OP cannot be Bob, because tenured people still have pressure to publish.  The stakes may be different from that of their long term academic survival, but they are not necessarily lesser or viewed as lesser by the tenured faculty.

Anyway, here's the heart of the matter in my mind:

  The contribution (data collection, analysis, writing) was 100% Alice and 0% Bob, except that the original idea was initiated during a conversation between Alice and Bob. Bob acknowledged several times in private that he did not contribute to the project, but he claimed co-authorship for the idea and Alice did not object to that.

I accept the premise of the story that Bob has done nothing on the paper past one initial conversation and is now (for some reason or reasons) acting against its timely publication in an appropriate venue.  Which is terrible behavior on his part, of course.  However, I must point out that Alice has also made a terrible mistake at some point in the process.  Bob "claimed" coauthorship for a project that someone else worked on for a year and that he had one conversation about.  That's egregiously improper behavior.  You shouldn't "claim coauthorship" under any circumstances; you should propose coauthorship and that proposal should be accompanied by specific proposed contributions.  If Alice went away after one conversation and worked for an entire year without telling Bob what she was doing, that's a mistake (and by the way, it could much more plausibly be part of what made Bob upset).  If she did tell Bob what she was working on, she should have clarified that if he wanted to be involved in the project he needed to do....something.  And no matter how they get to the endpoint, where Alice has a paper and Bob asks her to put his name on the paper, she needed to object to this.  In fact (although this is not the point), Alice's lack of objection could be construed as academic dishonesty: it misleads the reader as to the level of Bob's contribution.

This act of misleading seems to have come back to bite Alice in the behind.  It is much more awkward for her to take back sole control of her work after having submitted the jointly authored paper.  However, it may still be the right thing to do if the publication of the paper is important enough to her.  I do not see an ethical problem with Alice deciding to pull away with her work, given that it actually is solely her work.  That she may not be able to prove that to the satisfaction of all interested parties makes the action more risky, not less ethical.  If Alice and Bob really cannot agree on where to submit the paper, Alice has the right to say "I'm sorry it didn't work out.  I am taking my work with me...which as you know is everything except the original idea, which I will credit you for so that you can write a paper on your alternate development/implementation of the idea if you choose."  She should not allow the hypothetical threat of Bob's academic dishonesty (i.e., the possibility that he might tell other people that he did the work) to hold sway.

In fact, if Alice convinces Bob that she is serious about pulling away, then with any luck he will see that he has nothing to gain by pressing a fraudulent claim that the work was his that he wouldn't gain better and more easily just by allowing a joint submission to the journal Alice wants.


To become a professor in anthropology, can I get my PhD from a university in the UK and still have it be on the same level as a PhD from the US? So ultimately I want to become a professor in Anthropology, but I want to get my degree ASAP. The UK has degree programs that run 3-4 years and the US its mostly 5-7. Are UK PhD programs, especially in anthropology, regarded the same as US PhD programs.

Most UK doctorates make more assumptions about your prior preparation within your specialty than do those in the US. But they end up at the same place - qualified researchers who have proved themselves through research worthy of publication.

There should be no difference. Also, anthropology is well established in UK and has a very long history.

The UK degree likely requires fewer if any courses prior to beginning research.

In the US you can start a doctorate immediately after undergraduate school and the undergraduate degree is a generalist one here, with much less specialization and research.


How to deal with discussion of poor performance due to personal issues? I am an undergraduate student on an integrated masters degree, currently getting started on the journey of looking for potential PHD projects/supervisors. I have just written up my academic CV (by the way - this wasn't the point of this question, but one page or two? Do people care?), and I had a thought after putting the year-by-year breakdown of my grades.

My first and second year percentages are mid 60s, whilst my third year percentage is 77. This is due to the fact that during first year I experienced the onset of a relatively severe mental health issue (I hear voices in my head from people who aren't there), in second year I was undergoing treatment and trying to find what was/wasn't working, and by third year things were sorted out and I'm somehow "back on track".

I'm imagining the question "Why are your averages in first and second year so much lower than third year?" being thrown at me. This is a fair question, because third year is really quite significantly harder than the first two years, and I was also just back from a year long work placement which I undertook after second year.

How should I answer? I'm sure the answer "Personal problems" would be acceptable, but what if the question is asked "Would you mind discussing those?"? I have no problem discussing my mental health issues, and I no longer consider myself somebody who "suffers" from them, but I am aware of the possibility that in terms of PHD applications this can somehow be a red flag.

I also have no problem giving the answer "I would rather not discuss those, but they are no longer issues for me" or something along those lines.

I also thought "That is something which I would be happy to discuss with my PHD supervisor, if I get one, but is not something which is easily explicable in the time we have here." could be a reasonable answer. What would be the best way to deal with this potential scenario?

Shortly, for your CV: One or two pages is okay where I am from. But if you could put the information on one page, the question is why would you have two? If, on the other hand, there are a lot of accomplishments to be listed, of course do not omit them just to make it fit on one page.

But now to your general question, and to discuss that I would like to quote you.

  I have no problem discussing my mental health issues, and I no longer consider myself somebody who "suffers" from them, but I am aware of the possibility that in terms of PHD applications this can somehow be a red flag.

Personal problems could mean anything, not just health issues. If it were me, I would maybe try to inquire how "expertly" you have figured them out, as there is a difference between "I just started to feel better." and "My mom recovered fine from her illness/ I dealt with the problem adequatly/..."
Although, if you are fine discussing it in a little more detail anyway, a "red" flag might become a "yellow" flag.
For example, if you tell me you had mental health issues, I will try not to judge you, but without further information, I have to face the problem that I am treading on eggshells. I would not want to trigger a trauma in you or something similar. Can I work with this insecurity? I don't know.
On the other hand, if I know at least a little about the problem, it will give me a chance to watch out for you, to recognize a reoccurring problem early and be able to warn you, to not trigger said trauma, to generally be able to have an idea how to treat you right.

I don't mean that you have to throw your history at everyone, but if you are in an interview that is going well with a person that you judge to be well-meaning, it might benefit you to be honest about it.


Do 90% of all German Chemistry graduates start a PhD? Can someone corroborate the fact above? If it’s true, how did it come to such a high number, do they have some slots reserved, or is it easy to enter German PhD programs? Would it also be easy for foreign graduates (in my case chemistry) to join a German PhD program?
Source 1 (German Wikipedia):

Rund 91 % der frisch diplomierten Chemiker begannen nach ihrem Abschluss mit der Promotion.
91 % of the recent chemistry graduates enrolled in a PhD program. [This does not imply they completed it.]

Source 2 (Universität Duisburg–Essen):

Wie jährlich durchgeführte Erhebungen der Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh) zeigen, begannen in den letzten Jahren über 80 % der Absolventen nach dem Diplom bzw. Master mit einer Promotion.
According to yearly inquiries by the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh) [Society of German chemists], 80 % of diploma or master graduates enrolled in a PhD program in the last years.

According to the German Chemical Society, apparently 90% of master's recipients in chemistry do start doctoral studies afterwards.

Partly this is because PhD "admission" is largely not an admissions process at all in Germany. Individual faculty members who receive grants can hire master's recipients as "Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter" (literally "scientific worker," but "research assistant" is a better translation). They can do this without recourse to going through a department-level admissions process, and can skip outside advertising altogether if they have an internal candidate they can appoint instead. And, since many students follow the rule of "Was der Bauer nicht kennt, isst er nicht"—"What the farmer doesn't know, he doesn't eat"), many students do their entire education at one school.

So yes, it's much easier to get a PhD position if you're already in Germany.


Postdocs (Bioinformatics/NGS data science) from university of Toronto get Salary or stipend I am bit puzzled, regarding the payment made to postdocs in Canada. I am a PhD and in my first postdoc (Europe). For my next assignment, I am in my final stages of negotiating a position of postdoc at University of Toronto. I looked over some advertisements for the position that said the salary will range from 60k to 80k.

My first question is:

In general the postdocs associated with UHN are awarded salary or stipend?
How much salary can I expect as this is my second postdoc (I need to run a family of 4, in Toronto)?

I know from my past experience that salaries can be negotiated, depending upon the need of hiring PI and your eagerness to join the team.

Could anyone provide me with inputs.

Many thank's in advance.

Postdocs at the University of Toronto are employees.  Postdoctoral research fellows are unionised as part of CUPE 3902 Unit 5.  Although some agencies would like to treat postdocs as trainees, they are not.

The salaries at the University of Toronto for postdocs vary enormously, from less than $35k/year (in humanities) to over $70k/year (in computer science).  There is no general salary scale.


what are the best tips on how to market yourself for both academia and industry I have a phd in computer science and I am applying for academic jobs. However, my specialization within CS is currently getting so much attention from the industry. I don't want to waste opportunities for collaborations and consultations with industry.
so what are the best tips to market yourself for both academia and industry? having a personal website? what to include in it ? and are there specific academic platforms that I need to be on to reach industry?

After you get an academic position, you can get in touch with people from the research branch of the companies that interest you. Doing it before you get a job may not get you as much attention.

You can do this kind of networking at conferences (both academic or more engineering related ones, such as Strata, QCon, StrangeLoop, Grace Hopper, ...).

You can also write directly to a research scientist in the company, mentioning that you work on problems X and Y and you think they are interesting for the company and would love to talk more, and you are also willing to give a talk. People at companies like it (source: I'm a research scientist at a company).

A young CS academic who wants to be visible must have an up-to-date website with all their publications, CV, links to github or other software repositories, a news section with list of upcoming talks/travels, and so on. Thus, get a website and keep it up to date. Exactly as you do with your CV.

You may want to be on Twitter and tweet about your work, and be part of the conversation. Please have a mostly-work-related-only handle.

By the way, if you get an academic position, think about postponing the start date to spend some months at a company. Doing this can have a beneficial effect both in the short and in the long term (networking, source of problems, source of funding, ...).


Is it appropriate to promote my article to a professor related to the article's field? Pardon but I couldn't find a better title for my question.

I am one of the editors of an undergraduate journal, created alongside 2  other undergrads of the same school, in which we publish upper-undergraduate articles related to our school courses(mostly expository, sharing our love about our studies). We publish the journal both online and in print, with printing costs covered by the faculty.

Is it appropriate if I publish an article related to, for instance, fluid mechanics, to pass the journal volume in which my article is featured to the professor teaching fluid mechanics in my school?? Will this be considered as a 'showing off'? I

would like to mention that the professor knows me well from the first year of my studies in which I expressed to him my interest in his field and asked for extra references for self-study.

Quite the opposite, I think. In mathematics, in the days before the Internet, people did this by mail. The mailed reprints of their published papers to their peers.

It is important to consider the time of people you interact with, especially busy people. Giving your professor a copy of the paper will take only very little time. He or she can then choose to read it or not and it would be polite to accept also the case that he/she does not read it.

In this sense, asking about feedback would be a completely different ballpark already, because that would imply asking him/her to read it.


How does a PhD student make meaningful comments or suggestions regarding a professor's work? So bobthejoe said this:

  The PhD students I remember the most are the ones who came up to me
  and made meaningful comments or suggestions regarding my work. They
  get extra bonus points if in the middle of the night the next week
  they offer more meaningful comments or suggestions.

Here's the question though: how many PhD students actually manage to make meaningful comments or suggestions about a professor's work? And how often does the professor follow up and inform the student that those comments are helpful (rather than pretend that the comments are helpful as a matter of politeness)? And if the comments are implemented, does the professor ever notify the student?

I'm saying this as someone who makes a lot of suggestions/comments to other people, but who can never be sure whether or not they find them helpful. Most suggestions seem to be discarded simply because it takes too much time/effort to implement them.

The other answers make good suggestions for the asking of questions or posing ideas to professors. Most professors are open to questions and new ideas. I personally love it when my students come to me with something that I hadn't thought of before. As for getting recognition, it depends on the relationship between the Ph.D. student and the professor.

If you, as a grad student, ask a poignant question at a visiting professor's lecture, and then the professor returns and gets his or her group working on the matter, the you will very likely not receive any further communication about the matter. You will, however, be able to determine if your question had an effect when the publication came out. If nothing else, you can have that warm little feeling that something came of your question.

If you, as a senior graduate student, pitch something to your adviser that is relevant to your project, your adviser should listen. At some point you know more about your project than your adviser does. I pitched many things to my adviser over the years. Sometimes I was shot down, and then did them anyway. One of my questions, however, transformed the direction of my thesis work. I started and finished a whole new project in my last year based on an idea I pitched.

Senior graduate students weighing in on other projects going on in their group also tend to get listened to, and occasionally acknowledged in the publication for "helpful discussions." Yes, sometimes those names are graduate students. For one example I know of, see the acknowledgements in this article. "The authors would like to thank... ...Mr. Benjamin N. Norris for helpful discussions."


Am I plagiarising if I publish something that has been independently discovered since? My field is primarily connected with computer networks. Sometime in 2016, I discovered a vulnerability which at that time was not known (I searched a lot to make sure). I experimented with it and got exciting results. However, I couldn't publish it immediately due to some-other work my prof gave me.

When I was looking for good conferences on this subject I came across a GitHub repository exhibiting the same concept but it was created just months back. The work has not appeared in any conferences/journals.

I was wondering, since I thought of it and implemented it first, can I send it to  a conference or would that count as plagiarism?

Plagiarism is the explicit use of someone's work without attribution or permission, usually with the intent of passing it off as your own.

In the present case, the mere existence of the same work elsewhere does not make your work plagiarism. If you used their work and did not give them credit, that would be plagiarism.


Changing mailing and e-mail addresses as corresponding author--which to include? I finished my undergrad last year and have since been working in the private sector.  I'm about to submit a paper with my senior thesis results.  Two questions about corresponding author information:

I'm listing my current affiliation in the private sector for various reasons.  We are moving offices, and our address will be changing in about 3 months.  Should I use the new mailing address or the old mailing address?  I know it's kind of silly since nobody sends mail anymore, but I'm curious either way.
I will probably be going to grad school in a couple of years, and my private sector e-mail will not be accessible if I leave.  Would it be passé for me to list my @gmail.com address for correspondence to ensure I'm always reachable?

Thanks!

I agree with you and shan23, it doesn't really matter, but the newer is probably better.
Well, to be bluntly honest, I tend to have a negative a-priori when I see an author of a paper with a gmail address (especially when I review it, when it's not double-blind). I know it's stupid, because it should only be about the quality of the work, but I can't really help it. Mostly because I know that there is no authentication with gmail address (I potentially could get an alan.turing@gmail.com address). I think it's ok to give an address that will change, after all, few people spend their entire career in the same institution.


Are physics and natural sciences considered liberal arts? I was surprised to see the description given for "liberal arts education" in Wikipedia as follows:

  Liberal arts today consists of four types of areas: the natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Its central academic disciplines are physics, biology, philosophy, logic, linguistics, literature, history, political science, psychology, mathematics, and many others.
  Liberal arts education (Wikipedia article)

I'm obviously talking about the modern usage of "liberal arts", not the ancient or historical term (trivium and quadrivium). I had in mind something more akin to humanities, so excluding natural sciences like physics, chemistry, even astronomy. My conception seems to be right at least by some definitions of the term. The first result I get when I search for "liberal arts" is a definition by Oxford Dictionaries:

  North American
  Arts subjects such as literature and history, as distinct from science and technology.
  Oxford Dictionaries at lexico.com

It's defined by Collins as:

  (Education) the fine arts, humanities, sociology, languages, and literature. Often shortened to: arts
  Collins English Dictionary

It's possible that the British English definition and/or the meaning of the term outside North America or USA is different. Two of the most common online American dictionaries seem to emphasize "general knowledge" as opposed to professional knowledge:

  2 : college or university studies (such as language, philosophy, literature, abstract science) intended to provide chiefly general knowledge and to develop general intellectual capacities (such as reason and judgment) as opposed to professional or vocational skills
  Merriam-Webster

  pl.n.
  1. Academic disciplines, including literature, history, languages, philosophy, mathematics, and general sciences, viewed in contrast to professional and technical disciplines.
  American Heritage Dictionary

I'm not sure whether things like physics and chemistry fall within the American dictionary definitions above, but the Wikipedia article clearly says that the natural sciences and life sciences are part of the liberal arts, and gives examples of physics, chemistry, geology, biology and neuroscience.
Liberal arts education: Modern usage (Wikipedia article)

Notwithstanding that many American dictionaries don't mention the natural sciences by name, at least the one below does:

  n.pl.
  1. academic college courses providing general knowledge and comprising the arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences.
  Random House Kerneman Webster's College Dictionary

Does anyone know whether even in America there's consensus among academics and institutions that "liberal arts" include things like physics, chemistry, geology or neuroscience?

There is little consensus, I think. But mostly it is a matter of convenience and organization at colleges and universities. I studied mathematics. I earned both a BA and an MA at different places, one of them an R1 university. Just by asking, the degrees could have been designated BS and MS. Other places the math department is in the School of Engineering. But that is just an organizational convenience, though it might let some departments share faculty more easily when it comes to budgets and such. Some places CS is part of the math department and is a "liberal art". Other places it is part of an engineering discipline. Still other places it is different from both.

But in the US, at a liberal arts college, the student is expected to gain a broad and well rounded education. It will include both literature and science, even though it might focus somewhat on a single area.

But, your question, itself, details that there is no consensus on this.


How to put a position you could not attend due to visa problems in CV? I was offered a PhD position from university X with a research assistantship from company Y both in U.S., but I could not attend because my US visa application got refused. Now I am wondering if I can put that in my CV. And if so, how?

I would not do it.  Only list things you actually did, not stuff you turned down.


Is it possible to re-open a withdrawn article on arXiv? I would like to withdraw an article uploaded on arXiv because the proof contains a fatal mistake and, at the moment, I don't know whether it can be fixed or not. My question is:

Suppose that I withdraw it on arXiv. Is it possible to re-open it in the future, or should I start a new one?

Ps. I am aware that all uploaded versions (including the withdraw) will be always online. That is why I am waiting before doing it.

It might be best to upload a new version that's essentially a note explaining that there's a flaw in the original. Then when you patch the proof (if you patch the proof) you can post the latest version.
Since the flawed original will be there in any case, this keeps all the corrections in one place.


How much data should be shared in the collaboration? Well, I am interested to know how much data, code, results, etc needs to be shared in a successful collaboration. For example: when engineers collaborate with AI researchers to optimize an engineering problem using specific algorithms, should engineers have access to the whole optimization dataset? Even optimization code should be shared among different parts of a research team?

All of it.  If I don't trust you with my data, why would I collaborate with you?

Note: I'm in favor of sharing all the code and data with the whole world, not just my collaborators.  Once you make intellectual property public, it cannot be stolen.


Who to ask for letters of recommendation when changing fields after PhD? I want to apply to competitive postdoc programs in a different field than the one of my PhD.  It asks for 3 recommendation letters. What to do if none of my collaborators is well-known in the target field/institutes?

I do have some papers "in between fields", but I didn't have enough opportunity to pursue this interest during my PhD (so neither papers nor collaborators are world-recognized).

Except for advisor, should I aim for:

collaborators in my main field (they won't be recognized in the target field, much less - target institution),
or collaborators from the cross-disciplinary paper (they won't be recognized either, but are from the right field),
or the most recognized profs in the target field (with whom I have been talking, but not collaborating)?

The purpose of letters of recommendation is to confirm your research skills and vision.  Since you're changing fields, you really don't have anybody who can speak to your skills in the new field yet, but you may have people who can speak to your skills in your old field and how they think those may be relevant to the new field.

Much more important than your letters of recommendation, however, is establishing contact with the people that you want to work with in your new field.  Postdoc hiring is generally less like grad school and more like seeking a permanent position in academia or industry: you are not likely to be hired for your potential to develop new skills, but rather for your ability to rapidly start contributing in areas of interest to the lab you will join.

What you want to look for is thus an overlap between the two that will allow you to "pivot", contributing with your old skills while learning new skills. If you're making a complete and total switch (e.g., field botany to femtosecond laser circuits), then this might be pretty hard to find.  More often, however, there is an overlap that can make it beneficial for both you and the sort of lab you want to join.  For example, if your thesis was on mechanical stress models and you want to move into biology, then you might look for people working on anatomical problems where your stress models might be useful to apply.

If at all possible, you should get introductions to people you are interested in working with in person at a conference or electronically by third parties known to both of you.  Any PI is likely to be constantly getting cold-call emails applying for postdocs from dubious applicants, and you want something that will make you be placed into the category of "person worth replying to" rather than "spam folder."  Here is where your conversations with the high-profile professor may be valuable, if that professor is willing to make such introductions.  Your letters of recommendation are then less about making your case than about confirming that you are who you present yourself to be.


Can research rejected by journals has any chances being accepted if it is disseminated by the social media? I know it may sound somewhat out-of-order (if not outright crazy) to suggest it, but has anybody tried to use sites like Mendeley or the arXiv or some "social media" where you can upload PDFs to spread his or hers research even before publication? Has it ever been successful?

I know many scientists make profiles in diverse social medias to upload PDFs of their work (at least the ones they are allowed to) but I wonder how effective can it be if some "outsider" do the same? If I just create a Mendeley account and/or group and upload several PDFs there, write a short description what I am dealing with and the problems I face finding the right audience, do you think anybody will notice them or am I just making my situation worse? Do you think it will work? Or uploading them to the arXiv? Or just making a Google+ account? Or anything of this kind of "group sharing" of PDFs? I'm talking about papers turned away from journals because they are outside-scope and the journal is having problems to find proper experts to review them or outright deciding it isn't worth it to expand in this field. The more time passes the more I feel like I'm create a new field here and since it is brand new no journal is well-adjusted to take on it. Don't think I'm intentionally running away from the peer-review because I want to smear the academia. If enough people agree to at least view them (I'm not talking about agreeing with them just saying that there is something of a worth in them) can it spread enough to cause at least one journal to review it seriously? Can such a "buzz" strategy manage to spread awareness of an issue even if no one wants to publish it?

P.S.Please, be considerate to me and just tell me should I try it or not. Don't judge me, please, I'm just considering my options. I just want to reach somebody who can take me seriously, not get pushed back by the system because the reviewers can take the no-scope option.

P.S.2.What I am trying to publish s a paper laying the foundation of a brand new concept how complexity can arise. One which (as far as I know-I can't claim I have read everything about complexity which has ever been published-as you may know this is so HUGE field one can never claim such thing even if he reads about it all his life) contains ideas never researched before and has to include by basic thesis (3-5 pages of my core concepts) and a particular example how they are used. If I can get even one paper with the core in any journal, it will be very easy to start submitting many other papers in other journals citing it. Then I will be within the scope of these journals, but the big problem is this first one I must get in. I simply need a place which can accept my methodology and core ideas together with my example but it's this methodology which is so hard to understand and put in scope anywhere!

In my experience, even peer-reviewed publications are rarely read. There are a handful of influential papers in each field (from what I have seen) which are read and cited. But beyond these, a lot of work is only cited to keep people happy.

Therefore, I think that the chances of people reading the work without it being peer-reviewed are very slim.

If you want your work to get reviewed and it is being rejected before being read (this is what you're saying, I think), then you perhaps need co-authors that know the field better.


How is Study Abroad regarded by PhD admissions committees? Does study abroad help enhance a PhD candidate's profile or does it not carry much weight at all?  Let's say I took "regular" coursework while on study abroad for a semester, like a core course and not something research-focused.

Would my having lived in Prague or Florence or Shanghai be something that PhD admissions committees consider favorably?

The field is applied mathematics, statistics, or operations research.

I think this is too broad a question to have a really good answer, but I think the most generic one is: not really.  If your study abroad experience could provide some unique opportunity to deepen your knowledge of the field, then that might get some real consideration.  Otherwise, it probably won't be seen that differently from other classes, and in some cases viewed more skeptically if they were at a program whose reputation is less established.  EDIT: In particular, to address the last sentence, living abroad will count for extremely little.

As one counterexample, I will mention that when I applied for grad school, one graduate director explicitly mentioned my study abroad experience.  However, I think this is the sort of exception that proves the rule: I went to a very well established program specific to my field; I was going to a small liberal arts institution, so the study abroad program actually had a stronger reputation, probably; and I took a very ambitious schedule and he mentioned the specific classes I had taken, not the generic fact that I had gone.

My point is, study abroad can mean many things.  Use your good sense (or talk to mentors) about how different ones can affect your graduate school applications.


Can I read from notes during an online PhD interview? I am preparing for an online PhD interview soon.
I took notes about every possible question that the board would ask me during the interview.
My question is : is it totally fine if i had to read from those notes (to provide a detailed answer) during  the interview in order to answer their questions ?

I would suggest you answer without any kind of visual aid: you may come across as inauthentic or the interviewer might think you are cheating in some way. Just practice your answers a couple of times until you feel comfortable.
However, you can write down your own questions to your interviewer and read them when you will be asked if you have any questions. I reckon this is highly appreciated.


Stuck without progress working on thesis - worried about failure I am a student of Indian origin. I am Studying Mechanical Engineering in a local university in north of Germany.
I am writing my thesis in a company. My task is to optimize the throughput of the line. I tried to apply 2-3 concepts on optimization to the output of the line, but my all efforts been in vain. Now I am looking at my computer screen the whole day everyday, hopping hopelessly from one research paper to another but finding nothing. I have only 2 months before my final presentation in front of the company's manager. And in it I have to prove to them that giving me this topic for my thesis was not a waste of around 1500€/month.
I am not able to sleep. For the last 15 days I haven't gone out for shopping or anything. Eating just a little bit of food only one time. Talking to no one, my family or friends. Just sitting all day in front of the screen trying to find some kind of breakthrough. I think i am going into depression.  I am afraid that i will fail this thesis.
I don't know what to do? How to do? Who to ask for help regarding my thesis and topic. I am constantly worried about what if i fail. What will happen. Should I have to go back to India without completing my Master's.
Update 28.09.2020:
Thanks a lot. I have passed my Thesis as well as my masters with satisfactory Noten(Grade). Over all 2.5 Noten for my Master Degree and 2.5(average of Report and Presentation) . Once thanks a lot this wonderful community who gave me the ideas and support in my difficult time.

Having worked with master's students in an applied research lab, I am fairly confident that you are not expected to come up with a solution that will dramatically change the production process and lead to great profits. Your stipend is not contingent on your work delivering monetary returns; research doesn't work like that.

You are engaged by them to apply your skills, use your time and energy to contribute to their problem. The magnitude of that contribution and its ultimate impact on the company could vary wildly. So steer yourself out of both extreme expectations (that you will fail completely, vs you will create a revolution through your work) and put in your honest, best efforts. Be systematic and document everything. What you see as a negative result or failure now could be a positive confirmation to a more experienced researcher at some time in the future. Don't worry too much about the ultimate outcome, but don't procrastinate either. Keep executing chunks of work, and once again, document everything.

Remember, you justify your stipend through your efforts, not through the outcomes.


Is it OK to accept that your name be included in the authors list of a paper you have done next to nothing about? Is it ethically OK to accept that your name be included as an author of a paper you have done almost nothing about when all the parties agree on the matter and there is mutual consent?

No

This is called "gift authorship" and is generally regarded as unethical.

The widely accepted Vancouver Protocol gives the following conditions for authorship:

  The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

  Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  Final approval of the version to be published; AND
  Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

If you have not done those four things, then it is not ethical to be listed as an author.


How unusual is getting a Masters degree in a slightly different field than Bachelors? Would it be out of the ordinary to get a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering and then go for a Masters in something like Civil or Structural Engineering?

I don't know a lot about how transitioning to a Masters program works.. Do people usually continue on in the same field, or is branching out common?

This depends on where you are. In the US, this would generally not be too difficult, particularly if one uses elective courses at the bachelor's level to take some of the courses in the "new" field.

Here in Germany, it would actually be almost impossible to switch as you've suggested. The reason for this is that the "prerequisite" for enrolling as master's student in a particular field is usually taken to be the bachelor's degree in the same field as taught at the university!  This is known as a "consecutive" degree requirement, and makes life very difficult for people coming from outside Germany.


What should I do if a professor says she doesn't understand my questions in office hours? I am having difficulties in math, and every time I try to go to my math professor's office hours she always seems annoyed. When I ask her a question she always says something to the effect "I don't understand what you are asking," I understand being precise with math but it's as if she purposely feigns confusion. I can ask a professor a math question in another one of my classes who barely speaks English and he seems to understand what I mean just fine. In short, this prof always talks down to me and is rude, I am struggling with the math, and am just trying my best to understand it. What should I do in this situation?

It's possible that your professor just doesn't want to help you: in that case, obviously, you need to find somebody else.  Or it may be that she just has bad interpersonal skills and comes across as rude and patronizing when she's just trying to be efficient. In any case, I'll assume that she does want to help but genuinely can't understand your questions.

Most likely, it's because you're asking the "wrong" question.  A common phenomenon is the so-called "X-Y problem", where you're asking about the wrong thing. For example, you've tried to solve an exercise but you couldn't do it. There are two basic possibilities: either you used the wrong method, or you used the right method but got stuck somewhere in the implementation.  In the X-Y problem, you start asking detailed questions about how to fix your implementation of the method when, in fact, your problem is that you used the wrong method. There's a great post about recognizing and dealing with the X-Y problem on meta.stackexchange.com.

A related phenomenon is asking questions that only make sense to people who share a particular misunderstanding of some other topic. You don't understand X so, of course, you're asking about X.  However, the root cause of this is probably that you don't understand Y.  Because you don't understand Y, the way you think X works just doesn't make sense: your question only makes sense in the context of your misunderstanding of Y.

Random (and slightly silly) example.  Suppose a student of automotive design notices that the tyres are black and the steering wheel is black, too. He decides that all wheels have to be black so there must be a reason for this and builds up some elaborate theory in his head about how black things rotate better or something. And then he sees that his friend's car has a beige steering wheel. The next day, the student goes to his professor and asks what mechanisms the friend's car uses to compensate for the deficiencies of its beige steering wheel. This question makes perfect sense to the student but is total nonsense to anybody else.

The solution is to work backwards through your assumptions with your professor, to try to find the step where you misunderstood.

Student. What mechanisms does my friend's car use to compensate for the deficiencies of its beige steering wheel?
Prof. Er... I don't understand your question.
Student. Well, cars need to have black steering wheels because they rotate better. My friend's car seems to steer fine so it must have some way of dealing with the bad rotation of its beige steering wheel.
Prof. Why do you think that black steering wheels rotate better? [Note that slight differences of phrasing in this question can make the professor seem much more or less sympathetic. "What makes you think that..." can come across as being annoyed, for example.]
Student. I'm not sure but maybe it's because [whatever]. But the tyres and the steering wheel are both black so there must be reason.
Prof. Actually, that's just a coincidence. The tyres are black because they add carbon to the rubber to make it stronger, and the steering wheel is black because the designer thinks it looks nice.
Student. Ohhhhhh.  I get it, now.

It may be that your other professor is better at answering your questions because he's better at figuring out what the root cause of your misunderstanding is.


Strategies to strengthen self-discipline as a PhD student The main troubles in my academic experience can be summarized in two popular (if somewhat cheesy) sayings:

"Careful what you wish for" and
"With great power comes great responsibility"

Throughout my high school and undergraduate education I kept (naively, I now reckon) chasing the dream of ultimate academic freedom, where I would be able to study freely and learn at will, unencumbered by artificial constraints like scheduled classes, deadlines, curricula, etc. So I went after it, first getting a master's and now a pursuing PhD, but now that the classes and assignments are finally over, I find myself unable to handle the freedom I wished for. It wasn't even a sudden change: at each step, as the external support/control structures grew thinner, I had to rely more and more in self-discipline, but I failed to recognize my ineptitude on time.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that this issue isn't new or unique (indeed, the two most voted questions on this site deal with this kind of problem), but here's why I'm still asking this question: what I'm aiming for isn't tools or best practices;
todo lists, well-defined schedules, website blockers, I've tried pretty much all of those, and I've also read a lot about procrastination, motivation, flow, etc. I've been battling these issues for several years now, and I've been through this cycle many times, attempting new tools and techniques that work for a while, only to find myself back in a self-defeating loop of procrastination. I recently decided to seek psychological counseling precisely because I recognized I wasn't able to deal with this alone.

Essentially, I recognize my dependence on a structured environment to be productive, but also (due to attempting and failing many times) my inability to create and maintain such external structures. I'm therefore looking for strategies to improve my ability to motivate myself to actually follow the rules I try to impose on myself. So rather than creating friction in trying to control my behavior, I'm seeking strategies that make it the path of least resistance to be productive and organized. My hopes, since all else has failed so far, is to use the fake it till you make it approach to eventually become an actual organized and self-disciplined person.

As an example, I have suppressed all sorts of notifications (a common advice), and don't keep my email or any such pages open in the background, to minimize the chance of interruptions. I also changed the chair in my desk to one that makes it less easy to slouch, based on the principle that body posture affects mental state. Setting defaults such as these essentially "outsources" decisions I would otherwise have to make consciously, thus depleting my willpower. I also use Beeminder to "outsource motivation", but it doesn't fit perfectly to every case. I'm interested in hearing how others dealt with the need to gradually develop the ability to self-regulate, particularly in the context of academia.

EDIT: I think my question was a little more pessimistic than it should (and definitely too verbose, sorry!). To be clear, my previous attempts did lead to some long-term improvement, but in a rather slow, two-steps-forward-one-step-backward kind of way. I'm not claiming those techniques don't work, but I believe it would be useful for many people to have a compiled list of environmental changes that "outsource" the need to make small decisions that otherwise have to be made each time, since most productivity advice focuses on the latter.

I recently finished High School and I'm about to start University. I had a similar problem when studying for my final exams. This really helped me so take it or leave it, here's what helped for me:

1) Don't commit to doing huge mountains of work, you will only find procrastinating easier. Only plan to do a small bit and if you don't get into the rhythm of things then that's all you have to do.

2) Go for a jog/run. I would go at a regular pace until I really wanted to stop, then I would go just a bit more, to the post ahead, then to the next post and so on, forcing myself to keep going. Then, with the same attitude in mind, I would study just doing one more paragraph, and the next, and so on. Little Victories.

3) Remember: Every time you fail or feel like stopping, somebody else just gave up and each time you keep on trying, you do better and better than the people who gave up when you didn't.

I hope this helps.


Asking a professor to teach better In my mathematics program, one of the qual prep courses is being taught by a professor who, put bluntly, is not putting in the effort.

He is essentially reading from the book (which I don’t particularly like but it’s a standard text so fine), but his notes were clearly made years ago and he doesn’t seem reviewed them before class. There are often mistakes, inconsistent notation, repetition of material, a dearth of examples (read examples x.xx to x.yy in the book), etc. I know part of this is that he has many administrative duties, but still. He seems to be aware he isn’t doing great.

Is there a way I can bring this up with him politely but firmly?

I am aware the above seems harsh. I am perhaps letting my frustration get in the way of asking a good question.

I certainly don’t want to give a stern lecture, that’s why I’m posting here. I would say I have built up a rapport with this professor, I’d say we like each other and I know he is capable of teaching well. On the other hand, I feel there aren’t questions I could legitimately ask. When the last thirty minutes of one class are the first thirty minutes of the next, what is there even for me to say?

Perhaps related, I am rather confident of my grasp of the material, which I’ve seen before, but many of the students are first years, who are of course also adjusting to graduate school so. I understand that ultimately learning is in the students but this is the first grad course.

If you want to bring this up with them, you need to focus on concrete things you want done differently. "Try harder" is going to (a) antagonize them and (b) not change anything for you (except maybe for the worse). The professor, as you say, is aware that they are not putting in much effort, and it is very unlikely that they will change this habit unless forced to.

I suggest thinking about what, concretely, would help you most if done differently. If you need more in-class examples, raise the issue as "I feel the class would profit from working through more examples in class". If the inconsistent notation is a problem, ask him if it is possible to unify notation. These are not things that are an incredible effort for the teacher, so they have a realistic chance of getting addressed. Complaining and hoping that the teacher somehow sees the error of their ways isn't.

That said, there is a good chance that all complaints and requests coming from you directly to the teacher will be brushed aside. If the teacher is as badly prepared and unmotivated as you say, they are probably not the kind of person who would care deeply about student satisfaction. In that case, going one level higher (i.e., complaining to the programme manager or equivalent) is often more useful. While this will not typically improve things rapidly, it will likely improve the situation of this course over time, especially if complaints are raised from different classes (it's hard to continue to brush off student complaints if the same complaints come again and again for multiple years).


Should a mid-career faculty application include a letter from the former PhD advisor? I have been in a tenure-track position in 5-6 years and I am applying to positions in other universities, including tenured positions. For the list of references, should I include my former PhD advisor? I have some other good names to include and also I have a good relationship with the former advisor. I was wondering the pros and cons of including/excluding the former advisor in the list of reference.

In most cases it seems a good idea to include the former adviser.

I suppose an exception would be if you are now much more "established/senior" than your adviser, or if there is some serious problem with your adviser's professional reputation.


Should I mention in my SOP about one of that of my relatives studying at the university inspired me to join the same university? My cousin is stuyding in a university and I wish to apply to the same. Will it help mentioning her in the SOP that she has inspired me to apply there? Our areas of interest are different (she is more inclined to telecommunication and I am to ML). Will I be looked on favourably because she is one of the top rankers there? I know nepotism doesn't work anywhere but will it help in some way at least?

No, this could not possibly help your application. (It could possibly hurt it, if the committee feels that your inappropriate statement of purpose reflects badly on you, though this is unlikely.)


Are there other cities in the world like Boston where a large number of good postsecondary institutions are located? The really unusual thing about the greater Boston area is that so many and such good postsecondary institutions are crowded into that area. Harvard, M.I.T., Tufts, Brandeis, and others.

Is Boston unique in all the world in that respect, or is there some comparable place elsewhere?

So, "good postsecondary institutions" is a bit hard to define. University rankings are probably about the only thing less meaningful than impact factors, but they'll do to give us a basic idea here - do any cities have a large number of universities that are rated higher than the lowest one in your set?

The US News & World Report has a handy list searchable by city. Annoyingly it doesn't quite work for the US (it defines city strictly) but it's a good approximation. Brandeis is rated #280 (making it fifth in the Boston area, if you include Northeastern).

On the US News & World Report ranking, and plugging in a few likely candidates, there are

six London universities ranked higher than Brandeis.
five NYC universities ranked higher than Brandeis.
four Paris universities ranked higher than Brandeis.

So that's one higher, one equal, one close. In the specific case of London, Wikipedia has a handy table of universities by ranking. Depending on which metric you want to use, it has either five, six, or eleven (!) institutions ranked higher than Brandeis.

So with these admittedly flawed tools, it looks like London is likely to be an answer, but there are a couple more close contenders. There may be other concentrations in the US depending on how generously you define the city areas - I would guess the Bay Area around San Francisco is a likely candidate, for example.


Research paper feedback: "interesting idea but does not add scientific value" Where is the border line between a novel, creative work and work that is of scientific value? I have received reviewer comments like:

  the ideas are creative and interesting  but work adds little scientific value.

What do reviewers look for when making such comments/judgements? They often do not clearly state what was missing in the paper. My field is computer science.

In my experience this is a sign that you submitted to the wrong journal/conference. For every journal/conference there is a community of researchers that like to do research in a certain way. So if a reviewer likes your work but it does not match what he thinks valuable research should look like, that is the response you get.

For example, in my area of computer networks there are researchers who do more formal analysis and others who prefer a more practical approach. So some researchers think that if you can not provide a formal proof that your system works it has low value while for others the demonstration in a real-world scenario is essential.

Once I submitted a practical paper to a more theoretically oriented conference and it got rejected with very similar wording than what you wrote. It later got accepted at a reputable application-oriented journal. The same happened the other way around.

So try to find the community that is the best fit to your work. That can include - unfortunately - a lot of trial and error. The other option is to try to suit everybody, but that includes a lot of work and you will have a hard time sticking to page limits (been there...).


Professor wants me to accept his school's offer early I just received my first offer to a Mathematics PhD program at a reasonably good US institution, where one of my recommenders is also working. He sent me an email saying he "hopes I can accept the offer quickly". I love working with him, and have told him his school is my top choice, which is true, but I have some very close second choices whose results are not yet out (expected within next two weeks). The official deadline to accept the offer is in April. Should I politely tell him that I wish to wait for a month before accepting this offer, stating "I'm a bit nervous to accept the first offer without taking a look at one other first" (which is also true)?

In the US, "hope you can accept the offer quickly" has become a set phrase in graduate admissions letters. You have the right and their explicit permission to wait to accept an offer until the deadline they give (such as the April 15th common US graduate school deadline), and you almost universally will not be penalized in any way for taking that time if you need it (i.e., waiting to hear from other schools, going to visit days to see the place in person, etc).

When I say set phrase, I mean that every offer I received from every graduate school had this term in it, so it is actually part of form letters now for many (most?) places in the US.

What does it mean? Simple - everyone would ideally like to know as soon as possible what your decision is, so they can know who is joining. That's it. They would naturally want to know, so if you have already made your decision they would like to know and have you lock it in rather than exhibit the common behavior or waiting until the day before the deadline to submit your decision.

That's it! So don't worry about, at all. All you need to do is is reply and thank them for their offer, perhaps state your excitement at having received the offer (if you genuinely have that reaction!), and let them know you will let them know of your final decision as soon as you have made it. No need to give excuses or be sorry, that's just how this works. No need to feel pressured into deciding sooner, its a big decision and you have the set deadline for lots of good reasons. Make the decision when you have the responses you need, and if there are visit days feel free to wait to accept the offer until after you have gone and met them (especially true if you have multiple offers you are trying to decide between).

Congratulations on your offer, and good luck in your future career!


Why is it important to specify your source of funding in published papers and posters? I was reading a paper online, and in a footnote, it read:

  The author is supported by NSF grant DMS-0649473 and by a Simons Investigator Award.

Then it hit me, this information is completely useless to me as a reader. Why would I care what kind of funding the author have? The author for this instance has had every single kind of funding you can imagine, and at no time in my life was I ever interested in knowing any of it. This must be useful information for someone else.

But this is not the only place I see funding information being mentioned. In research posters, you tend to see a list of funding sources being mentioned at the top or the bottom of the poster, like brand names with their own little logos and everything. Again, they are completely meaningless to me. Sometimes I would recognise one of the sources of funding, but there usually isn’t a clear-cut relationship between the fund and the project, especially since a lot of them are government grants.

Can someone explain to me what would motivate one to mention his or her source of funding (or going even further by thanking the fund, award or grant)?

Several reasons.

Conflicts of Interest.  If you're doing climate change research that's funded by The Society of People Who Think Global Warming is Poppycock, you need to mention this. Organizations with a clear interest in a specific outcome are much more likely to produce research that affirms their desired outcome than they do those that refute it, regardless of the actual truth of the matter.  Researchers may perform ethically compromised science to satisfy the funding agency. Since organizational bias (and pressures they exert on their researchers) may not be known until after the fact, this information should always be mentioned so that we can always make the best judgment of the results in light of current knowledge.
Part of the point of funding you is so that the organization's name is out there and associated with (hopefully good) research.  If McDonald's funds your race car, you're expected to put a sticker or something on it with their name on it. Grants often include specific language requiring you to mention the grant in any work that directly utilizes it.
So the grant agency can track work done with their money. These agencies want to know that their money is being used appropriately and for good projects. They don't want to just throw large sums of cash out there willy-nilly.  Money isn't meaningless; it's worth something. This may even be required by law: if they are funded by a government, the government is going to want to know how the money is being used.  Without such tracking, funds can be misappropriated or embezzled, or wantonly wasted on clearly sub-standard proposals.


Including a future conference presentation in graduate school applications? I am a physics student currently applying to PhD programs, having had two years of full time post-bac research since graduating undergrad. Unfortunately, by the time most of my applications were due I had not produced a publication, although one was in preparation. Recently however I had an abstract accepted for a large conference in my field, so I will be giving a presentation at that conference in a few months.

Most graduate school applications ask for any publications or presentations having to do with your research. I have two questions:

Would it be appropriate to include this presentation given that it has not happened yet? The review process for these applications will likely be over by the time of the conference, so waiting until then to include it isn’t really and option.
Would it be worthwhile to email the director of graduate studies at institutions where I have already submitted my applications and ask them to update my application portfolio with this new information?

I know that research factors heavily into admissions decisions, and while I focus quite a bit on my experience in my application already, it might be good/important to also show some deliverables from 1.5ish years of research. I also don’t want to commit a faux pas by including things that perhaps shouldn’t be. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

If it has been accepted then yes, include it, but mark it somehow (... abstract to be presented at ...). If it has been submitted, but not yet accepted, then you can include it under the heading of "work in progress".

But there is no reason not to include such things. As you say, deliverables are important. But so is showing some continuity in your research trajectory.


How are journals evaluated? How are journals evaluated?

A researcher is evaluated on the basis of his/her publications.
If a researcher has good publications in his/her PhD he/she is offered a Post-Doc position and eventually a faculty position.

My question is:

How is a journal judged?How does a faculty search committee evaluate a person's publications based on the journals where one has published?Is it done on the basis of impact factors of journals?

Let me start by saying that publications are usually evaluated not only according to their journal, but also according to the times they have been cited and to the impact they have had, which is a bit harder to gauge and a less objective metric. There are some cases where (at least where I work) the committee requires candidates to select a small-ish number of publications that they deem as the most important (5-12), and these are then read and carefully evaluated individually.

Regarding journals, the answer, as often happens, pretty much depends on the field. In many communities, the impact factor (IF) is surely important, but there are also other (often intangible) factors that come into play.

If many fields, the journals at the very top are few and well known (often Science, Nature and a few others). Papers published in these journals are usually considered to be the top of the cream. For all the other journals, the way they are considered by single scientists or committees is a combination of IF and of these people's own background.

For instance, I work in a pretty multidisciplinary field (in between physics, chemistry and materials science). Some journals are more chemistry- and materials-science-related, and these tend to have higher impact factors than their physics counterparts. As a result, I often find myself publishing in journals that, according to their IF, would be very good from a physicist perspective (>10). However, in the physics community these are regarded way lower than other physics-only journals that have a long history of publishing exceptionally important papers. A notable example is Physical Review Letters, which has published many famous papers like the original papers on the Higgs' Boson or the first detection of gravitational waves and has an IF of ~ 8.8 or PNAS, which is widely known and has an IF of ~ 9.5. I can tell you that, for many physicists, a paper published in PRL is valued higher than a paper published in a materials science journal with an IF of, say, 15 (everything else, such as the number of citations, being the same). I believe that in other communities the attitude is probably very similar: journals that are well known and have a long history will be ranked high, regardless of their IF.


Who can be my third reference for doctoral applications? I am a postgraduate student in mathematics (if it matters) who is now also applying for doctoral positions, some of which require three references.

It was a logical enough decision to select my academic advisor and my thesis supervisor to be my first two references, and they gladly accepted. However, attaining a third reference is proving much trickier.

There was no immediate choice, so I decided to contact a lecturer of mine whose course I am currently following with whom I have quite a good relationship (as the class size is also small). Much to my disappointment, he wrote back to me only to decline and say that he does not know me nor my academic achievements well enough to provide a serious reference for me.

Now I am at a loss, because the only people who really know of my academic achievements are the two people who already agreed to be references for me; so where do I go from here?

Don't be shy. While this advice works in a million context, it is especially relevant here. The only way to know if you will get a good letter, is to interact closely with senior people in the field, gauge how much they liked your participation in their classes/your work in their lab, ask them the letter, gauge their response, choose the one that answers more enthusiastically. Your first two choices were the most obvious, now you should try with other lecturers you had. You certainly did not have just one lecturer in your studies!

I was assistant professor in a research institution in my previous job, and can see several reasons why a lecturer might decide to write or not a letter for a candidate. You will never know them, you just have to ask, and use your social skills to predict whether it will be a good one.


Is it possible to cancel paper submission after one week? I submitted my paper one week ago to a journal and I want to cancel my submission. Is it possible?

It's certainly possible.  You can withdraw a submission at any point until it has been accepted and you have signed the publishing agreement.  You might upset the editor, but there's absolutely no way they will try to forbid you from withdrawing the paper.  The worst case scenario is that they will remember you as a flake who wasted their time with an inappropriate submission.  (Of course, that's not a good outcome.)

You should not plan on resubmitting the paper to the same journal, at least not if the social conventions in your field are like the ones I'm familiar with from mathematics.  There might not be a formal rule against it, but it would look really strange, and you'd get reactions along the lines of "What are you doing?  You had your shot at publishing the paper in this journal, you deliberately withdrew it, and you wasted everyone's time in the process.  Now you want to start again?"  (Only it would probably be stated less confrontationally.)  I doubt they would accept a resubmission unless it was a really important paper.

The disadvantage of withdrawing a submission after just a week is that it looks flaky, like you couldn't be bothered to check the paper carefully enough last week to detect the problem.  On the other hand, the longer you wait, the more time may be wasted by reviewers.  If you know you need to withdraw the paper, it's better to do it early than to delay.

Note that everyone will assume you withdrew the submission because of a serious problem with the paper.  If there's a minor problem, correctable without important consequences, then you could submit a revised version instead of withdrawing the paper.  (That would still look a little flaky, but less so.)

If there's no problem with the paper itself, but you just changed your mind about where to submit it, then you'll really annoy the editors and reviewers.  You shouldn't do it without a compelling reason, and I'd recommend not pointing out that you merely changed your mind (since there's no sense in adding insult to injury).  This would make sense under some circumstances, for example if you discovered you accidentally chose a predatory journal, but under ordinary circumstances it would really look bad.  You could still do it, but I wouldn't advise it unless you feel you really made a dreadful mistake in choosing the journal.


Principal Research Scientist vs. Senior Research Scientist? I notice that some schools, e.g., MIT EECS, has these two non-faculty appointments, Principal Research Scientist and Senior Research Scientist.

At least true for MIT EECS:

Both of them, just as Faculty members, are PI's and can run their own research groups. One difference I know is that Principal Research Scientist's appointment is reviewed every 4 years, whereas Senior Research Scientist's is evaluated every 5 years (as per MIT's website). Yet, this doesn't tell much.

In addition, Principal Research Scientist falls under "Sponsored Research Staff Appointments" category, whereas Senior Research Scientist falls under "Academic Research Staff Appointments". Does this tell something?

What is the exact difference between them and the Faculty members (i.e., professors)?

Why aren't they just called professors?

What are the differences between these two?

According to the MIT EECS pages, there are two tracks:

Academic Research Staff.  These are mostly shorter term (such as a Postdoctoral Fellow), and are funded externally (by grants and similar).
Sponsored Research Staff.  These are longer term appointments which are funded by the department.

Senior Research Scientist is an Academic Research Staff position, because while it is long-term, it is also a position for which the researcher is expected to procure their own funding.

From 5.3, the SRS's funding:

  Appointees to this rank generally are expected to raise funds to
  conduct research and cover their own salaries.

Principal Research Scientist is a Sponsored Research Staff position, and is funded by the department (though I'm sure they can get their own funding also, their salary is paid by the department).

From 5.2, the PRS's funding:

  Funding responsibility resides with the department, laboratory, or center that is the locus of the appointment.

From 5.1 on the difference:

  Two types of research appointments are described in the following
  sections: long-term appointments, which are classified as sponsored
  research staff appointments, with the exception of the Senior Research
  Scientist/Associate/ Engineer position; and short-term appointments,
  which are, in general, classified as academic research appointments.

  The purpose of the campus research appointment structure is to create
  professional sponsored research staff categories with employee
  benefits and privileges in order to encourage long-term research
  careers at MIT. The concept of long-term professional careers,
  independent of classroom teaching and supported entirely from research
  grants, is not a new one for the American research university. This
  mode of research, with professionals working in departments,
  laboratories, and centers, is an important mechanism for universities
  to maintain research viability, enter new fields, and bring
  researchers to the campus.

It seems evident that Senior RS is basically the same position as PRS, but not funded by the department.  In some cases, the PRS could earn more, because (for example) a NIH-funded SRS would be limited by NIH regulations, while a PRS who is funded by the department is only limited by whatever MIT chooses to pay them.


How to acknowledge funding after the acceptance of the manuscript We got this accepted article. A preliminary PDF version of the article is available online. The final look shape of the article is still under processing by journal publisher. However, I forgot to mention my acknowledgement while others did acknowledge their respective funding.

I am wondering what should I do now to acknowledge my funding institute? Does it make any difference that I am not the corresponding author of the manuscript?

The first thing you can do is to ask the publisher/journal editor(s) (wherever the paper processing is with the journal in question) to make the addition. Since you are not the first author (assuming first = corresponding) you should probably go through that person. The likelihood of getting such changes done if the paper is published online is uncertain but worth asking about anyway.

Having your funding not acknowledged in the paper is not the end of the world so if changes cannot be made, well there are probably more papers coming later. It is of course always a god way to show the funding source where their money ended up. There might be funding sources that request such acknowledgements but there is no law. some authors never acknowledge anything. The fact that you are not first author is not terribly relevant. Any funding source adding to the total funding of the study is of importance to the results; the paper.

So in the end, I would not worry too much about it. It was an omission, a mistake; it happened, you make an effort to rectify and you will likely remember it in the future.


What leverage do universities have over sexual violence in fraternities? IMPORTANT: The allegation of gang-rape in the Rolling Stone article that formed the basis for this question has been retracted; later evidence on the matter shows that the allegation that gang-rape occurred at the fraternity was false.  Other similar events have since been alleged at other universities: Baylor, Yale and Wisconsin

Rolling Stone recently reported a horrific preplanned gang rape at a Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at the University of Virginia, with the victim's "friends" telling her afterward not to report the crime, on the theory that "She's gonna be the girl who cried 'rape,' and we'll never be allowed into any frat party again."

Under pressure, the university has belatedly decided to suspend fraternity events until January. This seems pathetically inadequate to me, but what can a university actually do in this situation that will have a significant and lasting effect on a firmly entrenched rape culture? Are there cases where other schools have done something more effectual? Supposing for the sake of argument that they were willing to completely disassociate themselves from one frat, or from the frat system as a whole, would it do any good? I assume that the frats own their houses, and the schools can't actually shut them down.

As it turns out, membership in fraternities is not, in general, strongly correlated with rape.  Rather, it appears that a large percentage of sexual assault is committed by a very small fraction of men who are deliberate predators, who tend to seek out environments where their behavior is enabled by people either turn a blind eye to their behavior or who are not willing to intervene in a problematic situation.  Some fraternities provide such environments, but many non-fraternity social environments do so as well.

Rape is committed mostly against women who know their attacker and who may even be intimate with them willingly under other circumstances (men are raped as well, but at much lower percentages than women).  One of the major recommended interventions for a college is thus to educate students, especially other men, on how to intervene in situations that are likely to be a prelude to rape.  This is one example of a broad spectrum of recommended prevention and mitigation policies, which appear to be both effective in reducing the incidence of rape and reducing the damage that compounds to rape victims in an unsupportive campus culture.

None of these interventions are particularly difficult or expensive.  The main challenges in implementing them are resistance from people who have some stake in keeping aspects of their campus culture from changing, or who are worried about potential image problems.


Good online resources for teaching students how to write a research paper What is a good online resource for a student who doesn't know how to write a research paper?  Content I would like to see included in such a resource: how to use library databases, what a thesis statement is, how to distinguish reliable online sources from unreliable ones, how to write a bibliography, how to cite sources in the body of the paper, etc.

The target audience would be first-year undergraduates, although to be honest something written for K-12 students (particularly middle school and high school) would probably be very useful, too.

Edited to clarify:  I do not mean "research paper" in the sense of "original research", but rather "Find sources about topic X in the library or online and write about them." This is a fairly common type of assignment for undergraduates (and, for that matter, high school students) in the United States in, for example, the social sciences and the humanities.

First-year undergraduates are rarely taught to write research papers; in my experience, the skill set you look for is taught to Master's students and PhD students. Look for self-help books intended for PhD students. To name a few,

Umberto Eco's How to Write a Thesis is a brilliant insight into the subject, dealing with questions such as "I am a student of some obscure subject in some distant town in the middle of nowhere, how do I start?".
How to write consistently boring literature by Kay Sand-Jensen is more of a style guide and a check list, but it's definitely a valuable extra reading.
The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research by Marian Petre and Gordon Rugg walks aspiring PhD students through every aspect of their new lives, from working with a supervisor to writing all sorts of articles to delivering a viva.

Please make use of resources in these answers: Learn to write scientific papers in medicine, Are there resources for learning how to write a scientific paper?


How feasible would it be to transition from a Master in Finance to a phd in Pure Maths? I know this sounds weird. I'm getting a Master in Business (MSc, not MBA) with emphasis in Finance (in my country you can't officially get a master in finance, logistics or marketing, they are all called Master of Business but still different based on what you want to research for the thesis).

Thing is, I really became interested in research and academia recently and have been thinking about changing my plans completely (I was working in business management before starting full-time grad school and wanted to go back to the industry, but not anymore, I found out that I like academic research a lot).

I have two college majors, one in Business and one in IT. Do you think it is possible to start a DSc program in Europe in pure maths with this background? Would I have to go back to 0 and get another, more closely related, college degree or maybe masters? I just don't want to get my hopes high and invest time and effort pursuing something unrealistic. I'll finish my masters when I'm 26 next year, if I had to go back to college for a degree in maths I'd be 30 by the end of it. Is that too old for a career as researcher?

Bottom line is that it will be very hard since you lack a bachelors in math (or even the math training of a physicist).

My advice would be instead to go work for a while.  It seems like we get a lot of degree change requests which are prompted from not wanting to leave the nest.

If you don't follow the go work advice, I would at least look for something a little closer to your training.  Something in quantitative finance or econ or at least applied math or statistics.  Not pure math.


Is it common for an undergraduate thesis in pure mathematics to prove something new? What do undergraduate students in mathematics do for their thesis, if they have done one, besides expository or applied math?

I was thinking that the kind of research they do is something applied, say using math in social sciences or a problem in one of the less rigorous natural sciences, or discussing such a problem (that's what expository is, right?).

To me it seems something non-expository or non-applied is an original contribution to mathematics, something that PhD students do.

I attended some pure math undergraduate thesis presentations. I was quite surprised: Did they prove anything new? Never bothered to ask due to fear of looking stupid. Would it be out of the ordinary to expect an undergraduate proves something new? If they did not prove anything new, what the heck are they talking about?

It seems like if it's not new, they are giving a lecture. If it's new, that seems like a PhD-level accomplishment.

I mean, do math undergraduates frequently prove new things?

I'm going to disagree with Oswald. In my experience, undergraduate students do not often prove new things in pure math. I wouldn't even say master's theses often contain new results. There are a few main reasons for this.

Firstly, pure mathematics operates at a level that is not very accessible for most undergraduates, even those doing research. Undergraduates doing research are often well out of their depth and holding on for dear life. This can mostly be attributed to just not having enough time to get up to speed with what is considered modern mathematics. Most courses in mathematics at the undergraduate level are about math from 50-100 years ago (if not older).

Secondly, undergraduates do not often have the mathematical experience to know what the right plan of attack is when faced with an abstract and new problem and they may not know how to check their work thoroughly to make sure there are no major oversights or blunders. A lot of mathematics involves lateral thinking and it takes a lot of time to build those connections. The hardest part of a pure math PhD (in my opinion) is learning how to attack a problem no one has considered before. Standard techniques that others used may not be useful at all to you for one reason or another. An undergraduate won't have the creativity to navigate this kind of issue because the kind of creativity that is needed comes with a lot of experience. Even when an undergraduate student thinks they've proved something, the nuances of their argument likely will not be apparent to them. (This is especially true when it comes to functional analytic/measure theoretic arguments - the devil is in the details.) Thus a proposed proof may not even be close to being right.

Lastly, not many undergraduates in pure math do research because the gap they have to overcome between coursework and modern mathematics is pretty substantial. Those that make contributions in pure math are those that are very, very talented and have very thorough backgrounds (backgrounds that rival master's/PhD students).

Undergraduates in pure math are not expected to make contributions. That is not what research is about for them. Introducing an undergraduate to research serves a couple of different purposes: it introduces them to more advanced topics and it gives them a taste of what research is like so that they can make an informed decision about whether or not graduate school is right for them. As such, the theses are more like surveys of a specialized topic in mathematics. There is a lot of independent learning involved and there may be some unique examples, insights, and connections contained therein. They may not be presenting "original" work, but poster sessions are there to present what they've learned regardless of whether or not it was original. So yes, it is kind of like a lecture. They are undergraduates and far from being experts in their field.

Note that I am not saying that no undergraduate ever produces new results in pure math (there are some high school students that are better than most PhDs), but it is not a common occurrence and is not expected or considered the norm.


What can be done about a disruptive classmate? There is a classmate who repeatedly interrupts the flow of lectures in various ways. We assume he has learning difficulties of some kind due to how he acts and because he has an assistant with him in most lectures.

Generally, it will be things such as asking an excessive number of questions. Often, in the middle of going through something, he will interrupt and ask the lecturer to repeat something said or written half a page ago–or will interrupt to try and jump in with the answer to the problem we are working through as a class. Or a question on a semi-unrelated topic, or on a different method of solving the problem will be asked.

The issue with these questions is they will be blurted out in the middle of an explanation, breaking the flow, and are extremely common, taking valuable time away from the lecture.

Additionally, he will often tell the lecturer to stop or go back a page so he can take a photo of the screen with his phone–and will often take up to 4 minutes before the lecture can go ahead.

Our lectures are recorded and posted on the student's area of the university website within a day, and previous years lectures are also available–with both the written and spoken information.

Overall, I would say these disruptions take up around 15 minutes of each 50 minute lecture.

It is probably useful to note here that I myself have learning difficulties–which means these are incredibly distracting and disruptive to me personally, more so than my classmates–although in conversations I have gathered that several others are also feeling this is impacting negatively on their education.

You would handle this the same way you would handle anything in class that impacts your ability to learn.  You contact the instructor, and suggest that there is something disruptive going on.


How to convince people of the time required to perform PhD research? I have found that while many have some appreciation of the level of research in a PhD (usually by saying "that's way over my head" or something similar) and I have not really had a problem with getting impatient describing my research.

Edit to add: this is reflective of my own experience, mostly studying/researching part time and working full time in an unrelated field.

The query here is how to convince people of the time required for completion of the PhD, and the continued dedication needed in order to get the intrinsic tasks complete.  In some cases, it is not 'a 1000 word book report'.

For example, my PhD (now just submitted) was highly experimental, each set of observations were 3 hours each, and I had to do about 100-120 of them (usually on weekends as I work full time). After which, I would have to do 6-12 hours of coding/data analysis.  So many did not seem to understand that time was required to do the work properly - and were perplexed when I tried to explain.

Edit to explain why I felt the need to explain, this reason I would imagine is true for many - friends and family, people that you respect, may wonder why am I seem to be ignoring them, why am I 'obsessing' over this project, why did I decline the invitation to wherever.  They may worry that we are 'hiding' behind the study.  They question why we spend so much time on our research, often not due to any jealousy, but not understanding the time commitment needed for research.

I am not after opinions, but are asking what are some strategies that can help educate people of the time required to perform PhD research, particularly for part time PhD students working in an unrelated field?

I often draw parallels to elite athletes since most people easily realize that athletes need to train and spend much time getting to where they are (and they usually also have some talent for their sport). The point is that to become good one has to spend lots of time and energy training. How easy it will be is unique to each person. Hence, it is also difficult to say how much time and effort each person needs to complete a PhD. Not that one has to be the best, but one has to be good enough to be at the top. Another aspect that I find useful in the parallel is that athletes usually love what they do, and it is an internal force that drives them. I sincerely believe that some such drive is necessary to complete a PhD without having to torment yourself too much.

When trying to explain the time perspective to prospective students the parallel might not be enough and it is usually difficult to make people realize the interest driven part. This is, in my case, due to the fact that people decide on trying to go for a Phd for many different reasons other than just a genuine interest in the subject. I will add that I do not mean such a drive is the only way through but it certainly helps.


Would I get into trouble if I give out "too many" A grades? In the next semester, I will be teaching for the first time
a seminar course which is composed of about 25 students.
I am not sure how to respond to prospective students
who have asked me about the grade distribution of the course.

For courses with large enrollments,
I have the impression from my colleagues
that I have to follow the "typical grade distribution" at my university,
which is something like 25% As, 50% Bs, 20% Cs,
and some Ds and Fs if the students really did poorly.

However, for the new course that I am teaching,
I am wondering if I will be given more leeway in the grade distribution
because the course has a small enrollment.
I would like to give grades based on the students' performance.

So if many of the students perform well,
I would like to give 90% or even 100% of the students
A grades (A-, A and A+).
Conversely, if most of the students perform poorly,
I would like to be able to give a low proportion of A grades.

Every semester,
a committee made up of members of my department
which will meet to discuss the grade distributions
of each and every course offered by our department.
I am hesitant to recommend grades that deviate too far from
the "typical grade distribution" at my university
because I am afraid of receiving pushback from the committee members.

Questions:

Should I fight for the freedom
to assign grades according to my academic judgment,
without necessarily following
the "typical grade distribution" at my university?
Is this a fight that I could win, and if so,
how do I go about winning it?

Update

I had forgotten to include an important and relevant piece of information.
The goal of the course is to teach students
how to analyze and present business case studies.
Consequently, by its nature,
the evaluation of the students' performance in the course
will tend to be more subjective,
rather than objective (as it would be for a course on say, calculus).

The grading of the course is based purely on continuous assessment;
we do not have a final exam for the course.
(Given that the purpose of the course is
to develop students' presentation skills,
a written examination does not seem to be
the right way to assess students' learning.)

You won't get into trouble if all your students earn grades of A.  It has always been my hope that I'd have a class with all A grades, or even all A and B grades.  It has never happened.

If you "give out" all grades of A, someone, perhaps your department chair or the committee you mention, is going to ask you to explain yourself.

Your course (presumably) has a set of learning outcomes.  You should assess your students against those learning outcomes, at a level of difficulty suitable to the students' standing, e.g. a greater level of difficulty for seniors than for freshmen.  When you've done that, the grades will take care of themselves, and if everyone earns an A, you've done an outstanding job with the course!

Edit: based on the update to the question:  For the purpose of providing useful formative feedback, you need to assign a grade to each piece of work you assess.  Doing so has the added benefit of covering your posterior.  Such grades should be assigned according to a rubric that the students have seen before beginning work.  There is a brief example of developing such a rubric here.

Even in a course such as you describe, grades can be assigned granularly and with objectivity.  If you've done that, your students will thank you and your defense when questioned by chair or committee is that the students got the grades they earned and earned the grades they got.


Whom should I ask for letters of recommendation? I am an undergraduate in an engineering field in the United States planning to apply to graduate schools, but am struggling to figure out who I should ask for letters of recommendation.
Currently I have the following options who I think would be good.

Professor who I have done related research with for a while and published a research paper with.
Industry research internship advisor (has a PhD) in a tangentially related field who I worked with for one summer

However, generally graduate schools require 3 letters of recommendation, and I'm thinking this would have to be from a professor I took a class with. This is where I have a problem— despite having good grades, due to being generally a quiet person, I'm not sure I got to know any of my professors well enough for them to write an outstanding letter of recommendation. I also can't really think of anyone else to ask a letter from.
Would having one "generic" letter from one of my classes kill my application?
Also, would a letter of recommendation from industry be seen in a good light if it was relating to my lab research skills?

Ideally, you do want letters of recommendation from academia.  That being said, graduate schools (especially for PhD programs) are all about research and not so much about coursework, so you would want a letter to describe how you have the potential to succeed in a research setting.  The industry connection may help you do that, but you haven't provided too much detail on how you worked under that person.
I mentioned this in a comment above, but have you done anything outside of research where you interacted with professors (including TA'ing a course)?  That is also a valid source of getting a recommendation letter.  In addition to this, who would you be thinking about for that third recommendation letter from what courses and why?  It's never too late to try and send a quick e-mail and/or have a conversation in their OH to try and see if you/them remember each other.  Maybe talk about how interesting their class was, what your plans are in the future, or maybe how interested you are in their field/research.  (As a recent graduate, I occasionally try to send a quick e-mail to get advice from professors, especially since with COVID things are largely virtual, and maybe see if I want to ask them for a recommendation down the road, since I am also in the same boat)
When would you be applying for graduate programs?  Maybe you could try to TA a class or get an additional research experience in before you do so, and by extension, that third recommendation letter that you need.