How to cite a multi-part blog post with separate URLs for each part? I'd like to cite a technical blog post that was published in three parts, however, the parts don't have links to each other. Should I cite them separately as if they were different articles, or is there a way I could somehow combine them? E.g., if I were to use the main title of the series, and include a list of all 3 URLs.

It's a computer science undergraduate honours thesis, if that's relevant.

You have two options that are IMHO equally good. Either cite them as one item with three links:

  [1] J. Doe: Foo bar (I., II., and III.), 2015, http://example.net/blog/1 , http://example.net/blog/2 , http://example.net/blog/3 [2015-04-17].

Or cite them as three items:

  [1] J. Doe: Foo bar, part I., 2015, http://example.net/blog/1 [2015-04-17].
  [2] J. Doe: Foo bar, part II., 2015, http://example.net/blog/2 [2015-04-17].
  [3] J. Doe: Foo bar, part III., 2015, http://example.net/blog/3 [2015-04-17].

If they were three articles in an article series, they would be cited as three items for sure. But for blog posts, no canonical citation style is established (or maybe some style mention it, but it's not a universally accepted thing); this means that any style that contains the relevant information is OK.

As for me personally, I would probably stick to the second variant, unless you commonly cite multiple items with one number (some chemists and engineers do this).


Internal PhD thesis reviewer pulled out a month before the thesis due date: Is this allowed? What to do next? I have been a PhD student in an institute for the last 4 years and now my deadline to submit my thesis is in another 40 days. When I joined the institute, official papers were signed stating that Professor X will be my first reviewer and will grade my thesis. By regulation, the first reviewer has to belong to the same faculty, but he was not from our group, and we did not have much contact with each other.

Now that I am ready to submit my thesis, he decides to back out on reasons stating that I was not in touch with him (but I was never told by my supervisor or by him that I need to regularly contact him).

Does this happen and is this allowed since official University papers were signed 4 years ago saying he will be my first reviewer?

Such situations are not uncommon in academia.  I would caution you against trying to get this person back as a reviewer, even though you have signed papers from 4 years ago.  Simply respect that person's decision to back out, thank her or she for their time thus far, and invest your energies finding somebody that will serve as a reviewer so you can graduate.  Perhaps this sounds like rather odd advice.  Just put yourself in the shoes of a person who doesn't want to serve as a reviewer but is subsequently forced to do so.  You are at risk of getting a very unfavorable review, and the 40 days could become much longer.  You have plenty of time to get somebody on board, and you will certainly encounter situations in your future career that are far more egregious.


Interview for a mathematical periodical I ("interviewer") am a mathematician and plan to publish an interview with another (very famous, much more senior) mathematician ("interviewee") in a periodical of a local mathematical organization.
I already recorded a rather informal interview/conversation (a few years back, actually) and we are now turning this into an interview-style text.
Two questions:

This text certainly does not adhere to any journalistic standards (which I am sure to exist) required of an interview. We now freely change order and contents of questions and answers to make the text clearer and hopefully more interesting; the interviewee can of course object to include anything of what was said and even add stuff that they forgot to mention in the original conversation etc. I do not desire to meet any journalistic standard but would like to avoid giving a wrong impression by calling the text "interview". Is there a standard disclaimer for such a conversation? Is it enough to just mention "this text is based on a conversation recorded in ... and edited in ..."? (I want to call it "interview" and not "conversation" or whatever.)

Who is the "author" of such a thing? The interviewer (who asks the question and types and edits it)? This seems to be the case in a "proper newspaper interview" (which this text is not). Or the interviewee (who provides the relevant part, the answers?) Or is it a joint work?

(Although the question has answers in the comments, I'm providing an answer so that this question does not remain unanswered.)
Articles that are based on interviews with mathematicians published in periodicals of mathematical societies typically have the title "Interview with [interviewee]" and have the interviewer as the author (that is, the interviewee is not an author).
As an example, see Jackson, A. & Kotschick, D. (1998). "Interview with Shiing Shen Chern," Notices of the AMS, 45(7), 860-865.
The article starts with the note: "This article is based on an interview with Shiing Shen Chern conducted on March 4, 1998, by Allyn Jackson, with mathematical help from Dieter Kotschick."  Also note that aside from Jackson, Kotschick is also listed as an author of the article.  (See this.)


How to write the Graduate Coordinator regarding admission I have received an admission offer* from a US University for PhD program with full tuition waiver plus a TA offer. The deadline of accepting the offer  is April 15. Graduate coordinator  wrote me that

  Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or
  concerns. We are looking forward to your response.

I have applied few other universities too and have not received their decisions. How to write the coordinator in a best way that, I'm very  much interested but I would like to notify them (acceptance or declining) regarding admission offer around the middle of March?  Will they take my view in a negative way?

*The official certificate of admission will come from the university, after all official transcripts and other necessary documents and test scores are received; until then, this offer is considered  unofficial. You will be contacted by the university with a request for documents and for other details, but in the meantime here are the specifics of this offer.
Students who are offered a graduate assistantship are required to accept or decline by April 15, 2016. This common deadline is based on an agreement of all institutions that are  members of the Council of Graduate Schools, as described in the April 15 Resolution, a copy of which can be obtained from http://www.cgsnet.org/april-15-resolution.

You just write "Thank you very much for the offer.  I'm very interested, and will definitely contact you if I think of any questions.  At the moment, I'm waiting to hear back from some other institutions, but I will contact you as soon as I come to a final decision."  Graduate coordinators understand that you've applied other places, and there's a relatively low probability they are your first choice.  They've also probably sent out dozens of these offers; they're not that emotionally invested in any particular one.  Honestly, they would probably appreciate knowing where else you are considering for informational reasons.

I hope you've informed all the places you're no longer considering that you've withdrawn your application and that you've contacted places you want to hear from to find out the situation.  There's no need to commit yourself to a timeline (what if you find out you are high on the waiting list somewhere else).


Why are engineering departments so large in U.S. universities? For a math or physics department at a good university in the United States, there might be 20 or so full-time faculty members, while in the engineering department, I've noticed that there can be more than 100 faculty members -- even over 200 -- and many laboratories.

Why are engineering departments so large, in comparison to, say, math or physics departments?

Is there more funding for engineering research?  If so, does most of this funding come from the government?

I'm thinking of schools with math, physics, and engineering programs that are typically ranked Top 50 or higher (more like Top 30 or higher).

Engineering, like business, is an extremely popular major because it has good employment prospects. It's also well-funded relative to more academic disciplines, because it's easier to get funding from both private and public sources for "useful" research.


Is dropping one of my major considered "bad" if I were to study related to that field? I'm a third year Physics & Mathematics student, and through the years, I have done lots of self-study in semesters/winter breaks/summer breaks.

Now the thing has come to a point that I can learn almost anything by myself as long as I have the necessary prerequisites for studying that subject.In fact, what I have observed in these last 2 years is that I barely learn anything in the lectures I take compare to my self-studies. That is why, if I didn't have to take exams, I would spend all my time self-studying the lectures I need to graduate, and more.

Now the problem is, I'm not taking not much (in fact not at all) benefit from my physics major, and it seems to me that it just wastes my time. That is why, I was thinking to drop of physics, and just graduate from my mathematics major.

However, if I were to study in a field related to physics, would this have negative impact in my future career [In fact, I want to study to in a field that is the intersection of Physics and Mathematics; so I'm not planning to go for pure mathematics]? I mean after all, I'm dropping out that major, but the only reason that I'm doing is so that I can have much more time to self-study by which I learn better.

Would this have negative impact in my future career?

Absolutely no one cares what you did in undergrad, except grad school admissions. Further, as Nate Eldredge said in the comments:

  I don't think it would so much be an issue that you dropped the physics major, as that you don't have a physics degree.

So, I think your question is equivalent to:

  Am I less likely to get into grad school for physics/math with only a math degree?

You're certainly less likely to get into physics grad school without a physics degree (though with enough coursework, it's not impossible). For math grad school, I'm less qualified to comment, but I strongly suspect that a dual degree would have more weight than one degree + coursework. So, yes, I think the second degree would help you get into grad school. Only you can weigh this reality against the advantages of self-studying.

By the way, I also wanted to comment on this line:

  the only reason that I'm doing is so that I can have much more time to self-study by which I learn better.

This has been discussed elsewhere, the consensus being that while many passionate students feel this way, few truly do not benefit from a course's structure and a professor's experience. Just one other factor to consider in your decision.


Existing publication in Google Scholar profile vanished During January 2017 I noticed that one of my publications from 2000 that had a significant number of citations had disappeared from my Google Scholar publication list. I re-entered the missing publication manually, however, the citations have not reappeared. Rather another author’s paper appeared in my publication list with several hundred citations. I noticed the same problem in a colleague’s Google Scholar publication list.

Any suggestions to resolve the issue would be appreciated.

There is nothing much to do except for things which you already did and can try again:

Add/remove the publication manually
Submit a request for correction
Contact Google Scholar directly for help about this specific problem (https://support.google.com/scholar/contact/general)

The Scholar system is highly automated, and their automatic methods for parsing/counting of citations can change abruptly and cause general fluctuations in the level of citation. I have noticed it is quite common to see my citation count suddenly increase or decrease by as much as 100 citations (and in one case it changed by more than 500).

Alternatively you can use other citation count resources such as Web of Science or Scopus.


Why is peer review anonymous? There have been a number of questions asked here, such as this question, or this question. The first question asked about how to find the authors of peer reviews. The second discussed the benefits of anonymity of peer review. However, I have been unable to find a question address the antecedent issue: why is peer review anonymous?

What are the historical reasons behind this practice? Was peer review always anonymous? What are the benefits behind anonymous peer reviews? Has the academic community learned from previous experiences that anonymous peer review is the best sort of process?

It also seems like a few journals as analyzed in this article (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-08250-2) performed open peer review with a sizable proportion of authorship of peer reviews also providing their identities (8.1%). In this paper the authors suggested that anonymity protects individuals from retaliation. It would seem to me that if all of a sudden all peer review were public, attempts at retaliation would be easy to identify and address. However, with the current state of the review process, one could sometimes guess at the author of a negative review and secretly retaliate. How has the academic community overall arrived at general acceptance of anonymous peer review?

The big reason for anonymous peer review is to allow the reviewers to speak their mind without fear of the authors taking revenge. Even if it's easy to identify, retaliation can happen: it's already decently common for authors to get angry when their paper is rejected for reasons they do not agree with (example). Even if the authors don't retaliate this obviously, future relations with the reviewer can easily be strained: for example, say the author and reviewer communicate several times and eventually the author decides that the reviewer's an idiot and submits elsewhere. If the author later finds themselves reviewing the reviewer's grant proposal, it will be hard for the author to remain objective.

Another issue with non-anonymous peer review is, the signature of a senior person as a reviewer can carry the implied threat of "do what I say or I will crush you". The consequences can be unpleasant for the authors, especially if they're junior. Example.

Yet another issue with non-anonymous peer review is that it's not clearly advantageous. There is no strong evidence that open peer review improves review quality (or makes it worse for that matter). Instead there was an immediate negative effect in that more people decline to review. If it's the case that there's no advantage, then implementing a fix seems rather unnecessary.


Zoom Presentation where I share screen but can annotate or scribble via my tablet I present using zoom to my Engineering Univeristy class using my Dell laptiop. I use powerpoint while sharing my Powerpoint app. So far so good.

Now sometimes based on a student question I want to scribble or draw on the slides, or annotate a point etc. Zoom does allow annotation and right now I scribble using my mouse. It works but isn't ideal. My laptop does not have a touchscreen or stylus.

What would be nice is to have a way to "mirror" the slides on my Android tablet where I do have a Stylus and then I could scribble etc. much easier and precisely.

Is this possible to set up the ecosystem in some way as to make this possible? How?  Either via zoom or the Windows OS or a third party app.

PS. I could, of course, switch to zoom on the Tablet entirely. But for multiple reasons that is NOT desirable. e.g. Responding to chats is easier from my laptop keyboard; I share other apps from laptop at times; all my files are on the laptop drive etc.

PS2. Sometimes I am forced to use Webex. So if someone knows the answer to the same question but via Webex I would love to hear that as well.

Log in to the zoom meeting both from your laptop and from your tablet. Then use the annotate function on your tablet to annotate the slides which you share from your laptop.

(You have to allow the tablet user, or generally other users, to annotate the slides, of course.  I'm not entirely sure whether you can restrict this possibility to a specific user - though you might want to try with making the tablet user co-host or the like - but on the other hand, it might have advantages if also the students can annotate your slides, e.g. in case they want to ask a question about some specific point.)

(Also, I believe you cannot log in twice with the same account - but you don't even need an account on the tablet, or otherwise you can create a second account.)


Is it worth it to add substitute teacher work in a CV? As a graduate student, i've had to substitute teach a number of times for a variety of classes.  I'm wondering if it is really worth while to add this information into my CV.  Obviously, it won't hold as much weight as teaching a full class.  But if it is worth mentioning on the CV, what category should I add it to?  Teaching?  Volunteer Service?  Something else?

I am going to disagree with Peter Jansson here.

If you mean you stepped in to cover a couple of classes here and there when the regular instructor was sick or out of town, I would say this by itself doesn't constitute a meaningful amount of teaching experience for professional purposes, and shouldn't be listed on a CV.  It may have been valuable to you, but I think it would look kind of silly on a CV.

If you were assigned as a teaching assistant for the course, you probably have a line where you describe your responsibilities in that role (grading exams, holding office hours, etc), and you could add "occasional lectures" to that line.

If you filled in for an instructor for a longer period of time, then you could consider listing it ("taught 3 weeks of Calculus 4").


Is the order of authors' names important? I am trying to publish a paper based on my MSc. thesis in software engineering.
I have considered myself, as the first name of the paper, and my supervisor as the second one, since I was the person behind everything. He was much concern about the structure of the thesis, and in scientific contribution, his share was something around %16.

But someone told me, a supervisor should always be the first name, because he has supervised the research. Is it true? But, i think it is not fair?

The questions are:

1- Does the order of authors' names convey some message?

2- Is it true that supervisor should be the first name?

The answer depends on the field of research. For example, in most areas of mathematics and some of theoretical physics, authors are listed alphabetically. In other fields this is different, and there typically the first author is the one that did most of the work. In such fields the first author position is the most prestigious one. The last author typically has a role more on the background, for example by posing the research project and/or playing an advising role.

I have never heard of any convetion where the supervisor is the first author if they didn't do the majority of the work.


Is it okay to leave a conference paper as a pre-print? Background: I just got an acceptance for a conference paper. While the conference isn't half bad (Nothing top of the domain. It's a top 80 conference in my domain as per guide2research), they are asking a hefty fee for registration and I won't be sponsored for it by my university.
Question: Is it okay to just keep the paper as a pre-print? I am extending that paper with another concept and a few more tests to submit it to a journal anyways.
In the eyes of a CS PhD (US) admit panel, does it make a difference whether I publish this paper or keep it as a pre-print?
P.S. If it makes any difference, I am an undergrad.

While @cheersmate's answer explains the difference between pre-prints and papers published in conference proceedings (however please note that none of this is necessarily true outside of Computer Science as conference culture is different between disciplines), I think it is important to mention some etiquette about publishing.
It is considered very bad form to send a paper to review, and then retract it post-acceptance. There are some exceptions to the rule (e.g. sudden illness, non-trivial errors in the results or data), such a retraction (or simply not paying the conference fees) can reflect very bad on you, as it points to:

Lack of foresight if the reason is lack of funds.
Conferences typically have publication and attendance fees. As historical fees are usually known, this is an expense that could have easily been foreseen. This is even more true during the current pandemic situation, as many conference fees are reduced to a fraction of their typical price and the conferences shifted to online events.

Lack of respect for reviewers time (if the reason is lack of funds; or lack of time to do the required revisions).
In order for a paper to get accepted to a conference, it will get assigned to an editor / session chair. That person will then need to read at least the abstract and the keywords, and attempt to solicit 2 or 3 reviewers for your paper.  They will contact more than that, and many will refuse. Finally, the editor/chair will read the reviews, and will have the responsibility of making the final decision about acceptance or rejection (it's not as simple as a ranking list where top-X get in). Indicating that you never had the intention of publishing shows a disregard for this process and the time of all the people involved.

Problems in academic conduct (if the reason is e.g. a dispute between co-authors).
It does not reflect well on anybody if you can't keep it civil with your co-authors for the period of time between submission and publication.

Problems with research rigour (if the reason is non-trivial errors in the results).
Infinitely better post-acceptance than post-publication, but... well.

If you do not give a reason, nothing good will be assumed.

My point not to make you feel bad, but that a paper that was peer-reviewed and accepted for publication, but not published (due to not paying conference fees/not presenting) does not give you any bragging rights on your CV. And while your plans to publish it in a journal certainly sound nice, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
To address your current situation: the one thing worse than retracting the paper by quietly not paying the conference fees is paying the conference fees and then quietly not showing up to present your paper. That might even land you on some blacklists on larger conferences, e.g. IEEE organised. If you truly can not find funding, I would suggest informing the conference as soon as possible for your reasons for retraction, and offering your apologies for your lack of foresight, rather than just quietly not paying.
I second @cheersmate's suggestions to look if the conference can waver the fees, or has any "student support" mini-grants, or if something might be available through your University (or even through a lab/team/professor if you are associated to one through an internship or TAing) or your co-authors. While it would have been better to do all this before submission, I hope you still find an avenue that allows you to publish your paper.


If I decline admissions at a program that doesn't allow deferment, will I be accepted next year? I've been accepted to a top 20 Computer Science department with a RA, TA and fellowship. I decided to defer my admissions a year due to unforeseen circumstances. I was informed the school does not allow deferment, and my adviser told me to simply reapply next year. If I was accepted to the university this academic year, should I be able to get accepted next Fall? My application will be the exact same as it was this year including my recommendation letters, personal statement, and research experience.

I'll address the chances of being admitted again next year at a school that accepted you this year.  Certainly they aren't 100%, or even 95%, since if they were that high, then the department would save itself the trouble and simply allow deferrals.  As Aeismail points out, it also depends on the strength of the applicant pool, and that can fluctuate from year to year.  For example, in a bad economy, or if the department hires a star faculty member, it can become harder to get admitted.

Department admissions procedures vary greatly.  In some departments, having strong support from a single faculty member may be enough to guarantee admission.  That is not true in my department, and I'd estimate that the average chances of being admitted again in this department are about 75%.  (Don't take this figure too seriously, but it's a better estimate than 50% or 100%.  It's based on experience and thought experiments rather than data.)

Roughly, the top 25% of the class is admitted quickly and easily, with little debate.  The next 25% involves more discussion, but the answers are probably pretty consistent, and the main issue is ranking for things like fellowships.  It's the bottom half that involves increasing amounts of randomness.  The number of plausible acceptances - people where nobody would think it strange if they were admitted - is substantially larger than the number we will actually accept.  Near the dividing line, there are a lot of people whose applications are really pretty comparable.  We arrange them in order, after a lot of discussion, and draw lines for admission and waiting list.  The order is not completely random, of course; the stronger your application is, the higher you are likely to be ranked.  But there's a lot of arbitrariness to it, since it's a matter of small distinctions.  The trickiest cases are the applicants who have notable strengths and weaknesses, and their positions depend sensitively on who is on the committee: getting a high ranking depends on having some committee member who strongly supports your case, and nobody who is strongly opposed.  (Admissions committee are often risk averse, so opposition counts more than support.)

Overall, I'd guess that as many as half of the people in the bottom half of the list might have been replaced with someone else if another committee had examined the applications from scratch.  That would correspond to a 75% overlap between the decisions.

Of course, this figure is pretty much meaningless for individuals.  If you are a star, then you will definitely be accepted again.  If you were the most controversial and lowest-ranked person last year, then your chances of being lucky next year as well are not good.  The truth is most likely to be in between.


How to structure a theorem with dependencies on lemmata in following sections I want to prove correctness for an algorithm that is the composition of three functions.

In order to provide a readable description of the whole process, my document is structured top-down, i.e. it begins with a description of the composition followed by each part. Due to the size of the parts (the composition itself is rather trivial) the top-level view is on the same hierarchy as each part (a section of the chapter).

Because of this structure, I would like to discuss the correctness theorem in the beginning. Naturally, its proof is also rather trivial, given the (much more interesting) correctness of each part. These proofs I would like to present along each part (in a subsection). Therefore, the theorem depends on three lemmata, which are defined later in the document.

What is a good style to introduce these dependencies? Putting them before the theorem might seem a little bit "out of the blue", putting them after the theorem might disturb the flow of reading. Ideally, I'd like to introduce them on the fly in the proof of the theorem and present them later, but what is a good way to do so?

In general, it is a good idea to give your reader a "roadmap" of the approach that you will take early on.  You might even introduce the theorem itself early on, but leave the proof for later.

Once you have established your roadmap, then you can proceed in order, building up to the theorem that the reader knows is coming (referencing you plan in the narrative that connects the mathematics).

Finally, when you have all three lemmas in place, you can return to the theorem, restate it, and state the simple proof drawing on all three lemmas.


Why do Math journals provide you with LaTeX class files and instructions and they also advise you not to spend time typesetting the paper? This is what I don't understand. Journals provide you with LaTeX class files and instructions and they also advise not to spend time typesetting the paper into the exact format of the journal. What does this mean? I don't know if this applies to all journals or to most of them.

I don't know, but here's a possibly useful tip: when I get sent latex style files and complicated instructions for how to format my (accepted) paper, I usually try right away to get these files to work and to format things in the way asked of me...for up to half an hour.  If at the end of half an hour (or slightly less if I am feeling impatient that day) the task is not yet finished, I generally give up and say that I wasn't able to get the style files to work.  In almost all cases, the editor in question asked no further questions and gladly did the formatting himself.

The exception was a note I submitted to the American Mathematical Monthly, where they were extremely picky and passive aggressive about the changes they wanted made.  After at least six (not an exaggeration!) emails from a secretary of the form "For some reason you still haven't included your references in the proper format..." I lost my cool a little, gave them blanket permission to format the (three page!) paper however they wanted, and requested that they leave me out of it.  Which they did, and the note appeared a few months ago.

Moral: this is one of those tasks that will expand to take up as much time as you let it.  Given that most journals have professionals who will devote further time to typesetting your paper after you sign off on it anyway, why not sign off on it sooner rather than later?

Let me add as a counterpoint that there are some smaller, internet based journals where most of the nuts and bolts work is done by a single person, who is working hard to put out the product rapidly and well (example: the Journal of Integer Sequences).  In fact I seem to recall that Prof. Shallit of JIS spent some time reformatting my accepted JIS manuscript, which then got electronically published within a few days of its final acceptance.  He really went above and beyond, and if I have it over again I will do more on my own side.

Added: Looking back at your question, I worry that I may have misinterpreted it: are you asking about the initial submission of the paper? Definitely do not mess with any style files or publication instructions before your paper gets accepted. I agree that "instructions for authors" pages seem ambiguous on this point, but in all of my experience authors, editors and referees have a common understanding: first we decide whether we want to publish the paper, then we worry about its format and type-setting.


Is it unethical to get paid for the work and time invested in thesis? I'm a student of a technical college. My MSc. final project supervisor liked my work, so he hired me for his company. Where I live, it's actually quite common (my bachelor thesis professor also hired me for a part time job, but that was after I've finished my bachelor's degree).

The thing is, that the research I'll be doing for the thesis is closely related to my work in the company: basically what I do in the company is just application of the research I do for my thesis. Is it ethically acceptable to claim hours I've spent on doing the research and experiments for my thesis and get paid for the time spent this way?

I think my supervisor is okay with that and he would pay me without blinking an eye, but how about the university? Is it ethical? And if not, where do I draw the line between my paid job and my thesis work if they are so closely related?

That is totally fine, many people do a master thesis in an official cooperation with a company. University hasn't hired you for your studies, and the diploma is not your "payment".

Who might be in trouble is your professor and his company, if he hasn't cleared this with the university officials. Because he has a contract with the university, and they have some rights to your results, because they provided the lab, provided your professor, etc.


My paper is not shown in my Google Scholar profile It has been a month since my paper was accepted and published. The paper is not yet assigned to any issue in the journal, but it is published and available via springer.com. The paper is in the Google Scholar list of papers for the corresponding author, but it is not yet shown in my list of papers. When I search for it, no result is returned

What is the problem?

Google Scholar's automated indexing algorithm makes mistakes.  It can overlook some of your papers and it may also list some papers in your profile that are not yours.

To add a paper, press the "+" button and select "Add articles" to add articles off a list of possible matches Google found.  Or press "Add article manually" to enter title, authors, journal, etc., manually.

To delete a paper that's not yours, click the checkbox beside it and then click "Delete".


What is research, specifically in Computer Science? I have a Bachelor's in Computer Engg from India but the education system here is pathetic and I have no idea about research.
I'm about to join an Ivy league university in the US for the Master's program and I'd like to experience research now that I'll have the perfect opportunity to, but I'm not even sure if I know what research is. So I have a few questions:

When you say you're into research, what do you exactly mean? What are you doing? Why are you doing it? If not this, what else could you have done that would still be classified as research? How did you come up with the idea of what you're doing right now? What can I publish and what can't I but I'm likely to think that I can being a rookie? And most important, how do I come up with an idea to carry research on?

[This answer is colored by the fact that I'm a theoretical computer scientist.]

As an undergraduate, you are (usually) given crisp, well-formulated problems with definite correct answers that you can reasonably expected to discover in a relatively short time period, using only a very narrow range of knowledge and skills.  If you get stuck, your instructor can give you useful hints, because they already know how to solve the problem.  Moreover, the instructor can probably explain the complete solution to you fairly quickly (in, say, less than a week).

Research involves vague, half-baked, open-ended problems that may resist progress after months or even years of hard work, regardless of how many classes you've taken or books/papers you've read.  Nobody else knows the answer to the problem you're working on (or it isn't really research); nobody can even give you a hint how to proceed.  Nobody has a clue what other results or techniques will be helpful, or if you're just going to have to make up a completely new technique on the fly.  You don't know if the solution you're aiming for is actually useful or interesting, or even if the problem is formulated so that it has a definite answer.  Still, you'd better find something interesting, or you'll never graduate.

If that sounds like fun, research might be for you!


Convince my supervisor for me to switch my research field to his major area halfway in my PhD I am going to finish the 2nd year of my PhD and have been working in a field which is not the major research area of my PI. He promised there will be industrial involvement and collaboration with other professors so I agreed to work on this field, thought I have only a little bit background in the area. However all of these promises have just not been fulfilled (I did try to find collaborators myself as well). As nobody in my group is working in this field and my PI is not particularly knowledgeable about it, I feel isolated and helpless. Meanwhile, I am attracted to a field in which my PI is an expert, and several of my colleagues actively work on it.

I have mentioned this problem to my PI and he agreed I can get trained about the field which I am interested in, while continuing to work on the field I originally worked on. Recently I have found my 2-year results within my original field of study are invalid, and there are fundamental errors in it.

After learning the new field in which my group is much more active and becoming knowledgeable on it, I really feel passionate and motivated about this. It is a more difficult field but I am determined to spend time on it. As I am halfway into my PhD, how should I convince my supervisor that I should switch my research field to an area in which our group is more active and knowledgeable, while abandoning my initial field completely? I am not trying to avoid solving the problem I faced in my initial field and would not like my PI to feel that is the case. I just think working on my initial field here in my group is pointless as nobody is knowledgeable on it, nobody knows what I am doing so nobody is able to give me genuine comments, and most importantly, I am not enthusiastic about it. However I know my supervisor would like to develop this field as it is more commercially viable. I need to admit I am not genius in this field and can't just work on my own without any proper supervision.

Any opinion is welcome.

PS: I would not like to change my supervisor. This would be the last resort.

Overall, I think your best argument is switching fields would be better for both you and your supervisor because you're likely to be more productive. But remember that your PhD is yours, and a good supervisor shouldn't have you do work you're not passionate about.

Maintaining motivation in a PhD is maybe half of the job. And doing research by yourself can be pretty demotivating—because, indeed, you can argue it's pointless. Arguably, part of the supervisor's job is to deal with that.

You need to decide whether the answer is to try harder or whether that's a waste of time. If further mistakes are likely, for instance, because you're unsupervised, so that the project is likely to fail, stopping might be a good idea.

Furthermore, you accepted your topic assuming collaborations would arise. These things are often intrinsically uncertain; but you can use this as an argument.

  However I know my supervisor would like to develop this field as it is more commercial viable.

First let me answer to you.

Since you're investing years of your life for research to be published under your name, your PhD should serve your goals.

This has to be balanced with external constraints such as funding. But unless you're being paid by a project forcing you to work on your old topic, constraints are only up to your supervisor.

And especially, even if he's interested in developing a new field, that doesn't mean he has to force you to work on it.

On the other hand, a PhD is also a collaboration where both parties have interest. Talking to your supervisor, again, I'd emphasize that you're likely to be more productive on the field you want to switch to, than on the field you're working on right now.

You also have alternatives to convincing him to switch right now. Since you've already spent time on your current project, and your supervisor suggests you to work on both fields, you might want to give it a try. Try to negotiate focusing on the new field for a while and revisit the issue. At that point, if you're actually making more progress (even just in learning), you might still want to switch and have a stronger case because you're making progress. Or you might realize that after all the old field was not so bad (as they say, "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence") and decide to work on both projects.

Relatedly, even though that's not your core question: If you have a short time limits on your PhD (3-4 years), you have a bigger problem and more motivation to get something out of your current project if possible. But if you have a more open-ended PhD (5-7 years as common in the US), changing topics after 2 years shouldn't be a big problem.


"Send me your paper when you're done with it, I'd love to read it" I noticed that at least in my field, sometimes professors say to students, "send me the [research] paper when you're done with it, I'd love to read it [and give comments]". That is usually taken as a compliment that the professor is interested in the student's work, especially if the professor is famous.

Is it appropriate for students to say that to professors, especially if they're genuinely interested in the professor's research? Or could it be seen as pretentious?

For context, I'm a social scientist, and my discipline is not grant-driven at all, so it is very common for students to not work with their advisors on particular projects (e.g. they work with other graduate students, or other professors who are not their advisor)

It's not practical or appropriate for a student to impose on the professor a burden of remembering to send them something at some undefined future time.

More generally, any request of a professor of the form "Do X at time Y" where Y is more than 5 minutes away, and even more so a request such as "Do X after you've completed task Z", is 99% likely to be ignored (and potentially be perceived as quite rude) unless the person making the request is the professor's superior, good friend, highly respected colleague, or funding agency. (Even in those scenarios, there is still a non-negligible probability that the request will be ignored!)

Of course, the student is welcome to keep independent watch of the professor's publications page or preprint archive where they post their papers, read the paper when it is posted there, and send them any comments they like; I don't see anything inappropriate about that, and don't see a problem with asking a question such as "is it okay if I send you any comments I have after reading your paper once it's posted online?" (although the question is superfluous -- I would just assume that it's okay and that no special permission needs to be granted).

To clarify, the issue is not the pretentiousness of the request, but the fact that it shows a rather extreme ignorance of, and lack of sensitivity to, how busy professors are and how hard it is to reliably schedule tasks that are dependent on other tasks being completed.


How do I communicate my research with a general audience more effectively? I really enjoyed my research but it happens that whenever I tell somebody about it, I have the impression I'm making it sound boring, unimportant and not exciting.

Americans have a way of telling a story, I know this kind of "performance" does not suit my habit. I'm more the continental European, a bit reserved, a bit technical. Not everything I did immediately is about curing cancer, I admit it.

I started by adapting a kind of top-down approach, first I say "Simulations", usually people feel they can relate to that. And if they wish to know more, then I can start going into some details.

I think this approach makes sense, but still, I find others can induce interest by the other person immediately from the start of their explanations.

Question: How can I communicate my research to a general audience in a way that is more exciting and interesting?

Try lots of different things. You've tried one thing, and it hasn't worked.

Treat it like any other kind of experimental research. Try new things, monitor the results, adjust your approach accordingly.

Some things that can work:

use specific examples: identify a very specific problem that they can understand, and show how you're trying to address that problem
use analogy and metaphor: find out something about what interests them, and draw parallels between that and what you're doing
be passionate: talk about the aspects of your work that you really care about, and why you are passionate about them; even if they don't understand the words, they'll understand your emotions.


Publishing Consumer Fraud I'm in the awkward position where I have been giving a data set from a company strongly indicating that consumer fraud occurs in a certain business sector (insurance). The data permits me to identify the corporations conducting the fraud.

I come from a completely different scientific background than consumer law. Therefore, my questions regarding this matter:

Is an academic peer-reviewed journal even a suitable channel for this kind uncovering?
If published in an academic journal, will I be able to name the companies conducting the fraud?
What journals might be suitable for this?
Do any similar cases come to mind which I could study?

Thanks

There are two aspects to this, one in your domain and the other outside it.

If you have a data set, assuming it is valid and accurate, you can analyze it an publish your findings. That is just science. Like any other study, your methodology is important and your conclusions must follow from the data.

But alleging fraud is a legal matter that should only be left to lawyers, courts, etc. It is not your proper role, even though your findings may be interpreted to imply fraud.

If you name companies at all, stick to facts, not allegations. Don't use legal terms, especially legally loaded terms that might lead to a charge of slander, whether justified or not. The company lawyers are better than any you could afford.

Facts, however, are facts, and can be reported and analyzed. Do that, but leave the legal implications to those better placed to follow up on them.

Let me try to be more clear. First, analyzing data seems to me to have no legal issues.

However, I warn the OP not to make statements that can be interpreted as allegations of misbehavior on the part of others. They may have an "action at law" against you if you do that and it will be expensive to defend your actions even if you are correct.

Let others form the conclusions from your research rather than making or implying accusations.

If legal authorities have some evidence of fraud they can act on it. That can bring the courts to bear, but the regulatory authorities have to act first. That would, perhaps, be a criminal matter and it would be out of your hands altogether. (Note that some improper actions handled by authorities are also civil, resulting in fines, rather than criminal. But still it is up to them to make the allegations and follow it up.)

If you make allegations and are sued, on the other hand, it is a civil matter and the courts are only involved in the adjudication of the dispute between the parties. But being sued is not without cost, even if, again, you are correct. If you allege publicly that a large company has committed fraud you may well be sued and the company probably has a highly qualified legal team that will do what it can to shut you up. If you are Jeff Bezos you can fight such claims since you can afford the best lawyers yourself. Otherwise it is a financial life wrecker.


Do citations have to be put in context? When citing, does it have to be obvious from the sentence or placement of the citation what exactly is being cited or why the citation is there? Sometimes I feel like people cite things such that you can only figure out why there is a citation after reading the cited article. Is that ok or should the purpose of a citation be obvious from the text?

E.g. should

  In the field of bla {cite bunch of reviews} people do lots of cool stuff.

be instead replaced by something like

  In the field of bla people do lots of cool stuff. For recent reviews see {cite bunch of reviews}.

Every paragraph has a purpose. The answer to your question depends on the purpose of your paragraph.

Clarity in academic writing is always good, but you should weigh whether being explicit is clarifying or obscuring the important points. "For recent reviews see {cite bunch of reviews}," may be fine if you want to direct the reader's attention to the existence of those reviews. Perhaps you're doing a metareview, or for some other reason want to track development of the literature.

But the terser version is cleaner if the existence of reviews is tangential to your point. The reader can investigate further if she wishes--hopefully the titles of your cited works make their purpose clear, so she's not digging around to figure out what they're about!--but she can also breeze past the citations to your main point. Extreme concision in citations is widely accepted. I've seen citations to my work (broadly, in interdisciplinary social science) where I was not entirely sure why the authors thought it was relevant!

So what is your paragraph trying to accomplish?


What changes after peer review but prior to final submission are acceptable for a conference paper? Suppose I write a paper and submit it to a conference. The paper gets some weak rejects and weak accepts and lots of criticism, but the conference is not that prestigious, so they accept it anyway.

Obviously, if I agree with the reviews, I will want to change the paper (which is in part what the reviews are for). But how far can I go with these changes? If the paper is computer science, for instance, I may easily run additional experiments, or slightly change the setup and re-run the existing experiments. If I submit the paper with these results, I will basically be publishing experiments that have not, in their current form, been peer-reviewed.

At what point do changes to a submitted paper post peer review become unacceptable?

Following the acceptance of a paper, I would not make any changes that go beyond "editorial"—that is, improving the grammar, or adding a recently published citation. These do not change the "technical" content of the paper.

Anything where you make edits that change the actual research or results presented in the paper should be presented to the editors of the journal or conference in question, with a request for guidance. The individuals in charge can then make a determination whether or not additional peer review is required.


How to prove/deal with plagiarism that is hidden behind bad synonyms? I have had more than one undergraduate student who I have very strongly suspected of routine plagiarism that I cannot prove. There is a certain style of writing that is just inexplicable except as an effort to avoid plagiarism detection.

I will give an example from a case I was actually able to prove. The student wrote:

  Free enterprise prejudice is changing in the current period as another U.S. racial conviction framework at a moment that African Americans are a vigorously urbanized, broadly scattered, and occupationally heterogeneous group; when state arrangement is formally race nonpartisan and focused on anti discrimination endeavors; and when most white Americans lean toward a more volitional and social, rather than innate and organic, translation of blacks' burdened status.

This was clearly an attempt to plagiarize from one of the readings in the course:

  Laissez Faire Racism is crystallizing in the current period as a new American racial belief system at a point when African Americans are a heavily urbanized, nationally dispersed and occupationally heterogeneous population; when state policy is formally race-neutral and committed to anti-discrimination; and when most white Americans prefer a more volitional and cultural, as opposed to inherent and biological, interpretation of blacks' disadvantaged status.

This kind of plagiarism is totally missed by SafeAssign, the detection tool that I have access to. When I am able to prove cases like this, it's only with much effort. Of course, I can just give students F for writing incoherently, but I would like to have these students removed from the course. I can only do it if I can prove the plagiarism.

Can anyone recommend any strategies for dealing with this?

EDIT: I of course do try to explain to the student that this is not an appropriate way to paraphrase. They typically say that they understand... and then they do the exact same thing on the next assignment.

To me it is not obvious that your example is a "clearly an attempt to plagiarize". It looks to me like an attempt to paraphrase. Most students that I see who cheat are too lazy to be bothered to change any words. If the original source was referenced, I would not pursue the academic misconduct route. Instead I would give a poor mark for writing incoherently and not showing any depth of understanding. I might also focus an activity on proper paraphrasing and how paraphrasing does not generally demonstrate depth of understanding.

If the source of the paraphrased/copied material was not referenced, then the situation is more difficult. I would probably first consider if the simple lack of a reference is academic misconduct independent of the copied material. If it is not, then you need to decide if the two actions are academic misconduct. Again, I would probably give the benefit of the doubt and conduct a referencing activity. After the activity, I would let the hammer fall.


Where can I look for post-doctoral positions in Europe? I am about to submit my PhD thesis and I will be starting to apply for post-doctoral positions, and I was wondering if you can advise me on where to look all the opportunities available in Europe. I know how to find them in the UK

More information is always helpful.  Most students who do postdocs find them in the following ways.

1) A recommendation to a company or university from the faculty of their current institution.

2) A recently graduated Ph.D. student who may know of a great fit for you at their new postdoc.

3) A place you've interned in the past that is open to bringing you on as a postdoc.

4) University mailing list for graduate students in your field.

5) Your academic network you build from all those years attending conferences and presenting your work.


How can I judge reputation of a publisher? Any rankings? Correct me if I'm wrong: identity of publishers affects quality of a publication. E.g., OUP and CUP feels like the most reputable and trustworthy in the UK, as Oxbridge are globally renowned.

But how can unknown publishers be judged, like those unconnected with any top universities?

There are no rankings of publishers I'm aware of (what criteria would you even use?); however, my experience is that academics also barely care about the prestige of the publisher. If there are any publishers at all whose names carry weight, it's CUP and OUP.

Just make sure not to publish with a predatory publisher and you should be set.


How to cite a retouched image that originally comes from an ebook on archive.org? I need to write a citation for an image -- this is not my paper, I'm just advising on the citation.

This image is the one that is being used.

It is an edited version of this image, which came from this book (page 310)

Should I cite the book as the most important and like most stable source of the image, or just do the online image citation? Or, am I capturing the full provenance of an image: a retouched version of an image found online that came from this specific book?

I'm not so concerned with citation format (I'm using Medline), but making sure I think through the citation correctly for this scenario.

You need to cite the book, as that vouches for the provenance of the image (including that it is of who it is claimed to be).

If I'd done that retouching myself, I wouldn't mention it as it doesn't change the content (it's effectively undoing some of the effects of scanning an old image).  A "(retouched)" might be appropriate, and certainly "(enhanced to show...)" if that was what you'd done.

If someone else had retouched images specifially for a paper I was writing, they'd deserve an acknowledgement, so here they deserve a mention.  I would cite the original still, but with a note (or the equivalent in your referencing style). Something like "(via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cajal-Restored.jpg, retouched by user Garrondo)" should be sufficient for academic propriety (and should cover the CC requirements were that an issue).


Are lower case sub-headings a common formatting convention? I recently presented a poster at an undergraduate research conference, and they are now soliciting write-ups for the conference proceedings. I was surprised at their formatting guidelines, specifically the requirement that all sub-headings be lower case. Ex.:

1. Main Heading
  1.1 this is a secondary heading
    1.1.2 this is a tertiary heading

I have never seen this convention. I've always thought the preferred style for sub-headings is to either use the same capitalization format as for main headings, or capitalize the first letter of the first word.

I find this all-lower case format to be unprofessional-looking, and was wondering: is this a common convention, and if so, what is the underlying rationale?

I have never in my academic life seen this convention: I have always seen lower-level sub-headings follow exactly the same convention as higher-level headings.

Do what they tell you to do (the world has lots of strange Official Requirements for Our Unique And Special Snowflake Publication Venue), but I wouldn't worry about it for anywhere else in life.


FERPA alternative for German universities Is there anything similar to US Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) that is valid for German universities, or education system of Germany in general?

I mostly concerned in preserving student's data in electronic form, e.g. am I allowed to share and collect assignments and test results, say, via Dropbox or own server? I hear in US the online data storage must be FERPA-compliant to preserve privacy in the first place, but I don't know what acts and policies govern this case in Germany.

I understand that many universities use own platforms, such as Moodle, adapted for the current needs, but what should I pay attention to if I want to go beyond?

According to the German Datenschutzgesetz and several state laws, it is forbidden to use private cloud services for storage of personal data. If you are at a university with access to ZENDAS, you can get a review of dropdox here.

A local server is fine, as long as you contact your local "Datenschutzbeauftragten" and announce the service. (S)he might have a form to fill in to evaluate the data security issues resulting from your installation.

Tehre is no specific rule for universities, but the general rules from the German Datenschutzgesetz apply for universities as well.

Platforms like moodle might breake existing German laws, it depends on the configuration of such systems (especially the tracing of activities is a problem).


addition of physical address upon paper acceptance A paper was reviewed, sent back for revision and resubmitted. Is it allowed to add a new address (current) when a paper is just accepted?

Probably.  But only the journal can say and you should just ask them ASAP.  Worst that can happen is "no".

Edit:  removed non-SE compliant sarcastic remarks.


How can I change a typo in the author affiliation after publication? I am really needing help. There is a typo on my University Name, however  the paper is already published. Is there any way to still change it? The paper has been published on ACM Platform.

I am very concerned about the reputation of my research with this minor typo. I spent a lot of effort to this research and just realize that...

First of all, calm down. This is not as big of a mistake as you think it is. Many if not most published work contains insignificant mistakes such as minor typos. If it would make you feel better, I once had a typo in my own name (I blame autocorrection).

Contact the editor. They are probably going to publish a correction or erratum. If it is already published, they probably won't fix the original published article even if it is online only. (I am not familiar with the ACM Platform.)


Soliciting citations I have now several times experienced recieving mails after publishing a preprint, from authors asking me to cite their work before I submit it to a journal. In some cases it is probably fair, but in other cases a bit of a stretch. It is of course often people I know, and who could possibly be future colleagues, so I don't want to be too snarky.

I have never done it myself. I have, however, approaced authors to refer them to my own work, after a related article had been published in a journal.

Do you have a standard reply for such solicitations?

Do you engage in this practice yourself? I imagine that it could do wonders to your citation count.

I imagine that it could do wonders to your citation count

I honestly can't imagine that an unsolicited request to cite a paper actually generates enough citations to matter much.

I don't engage in this practice myself, and my response would be a cursory glance at the paper to see if it was essential (though the email should have articulated this) followed by either thanking the person for bringing it to my attention, or far more likely, simply deleting the email.


A level as entry requirement to PGCE program I would love to pursue Maths teaching but I am unsure whether I would be accepted onto the programmes and whether I should complete an A Level in Maths with a view to apply for PGCE or Schools Direct Route in 2015.

Will getting my A Levels in Maths help to get admitted to a PGCE program?

As background: I'm 26 and hold a 2.2 degree in Biomedical Science from a British university. I took my A Levels in Biology and Chemistry but only got an AS Level in Maths and Art. My work background is that I have been a carer for family members for many years.

In the UK it should definitely be possible for you to become a maths teacher with your background, but I'm not completely sure whether you would need to do A-level maths first.  I would expect that most maths teachers would actually have a degree in maths or a very closely related subject, but I don't know this for sure.

You might find helpful information on the UCAS website (the link is to the page about entry requirements for teaching).

From that page:

  Obviously, you'll also need a strong understanding of the subject you
  want to teach before you start training. If your degree subject
  doesn't link closely to your chosen teaching subject, we'd advise you
  to take a subject knowledge enhancement (SKE) course before starting
  teacher training. You can only do these in England and in certain
  subjects.


Is it reasonable to ask other researchers to send me their previous grant applications? My university administration pushes all lecturers to apply to competitive grants from a national science fund. I am new to this and do not know how to start. So I thought to ask my previous advisors, or senior lecturers in my department, who work in related topics, and received such grants in previous years, to send me their past applications to the same fund. This may help me a lot to see how a successful application looks like.

However, I fear that this might be perceived as rudeness, since my application competes with theirs. The fund is very competitive, and if I send a competitive application, it reduces their chance to win a new grant. It's like asking a competitor in a code competition to show me their code..

Is it really considered rude to ask other researchers for their previous grant applications?

In my experience in both the US and UK this is quite common, and in fact encouraged. While technically, we are all in competition for funding, research works best when it is collaborative. There are so many nuances in a grant application that vary from across funding calls, that seeing successful (and even unsuccessful) applications can be hugely beneficial. they can give you an idea as to the scope of the project, how much it should build on previous work, and how much preliminary research should be done prior to applying.

I would hope current and past colleagues will share their funded proposals and would never hesitate to ask, and in fact would be mildly offended if they did not share them. Unfunded proposals are often helpful to see, but some colleagues are more hesitant to share unsuccessful ideas that they may still be trying to improve. In addition to asking to see proposals, you should be asking for feedback on your proposal as well as offering to read the proposal's of colleagues.

One aspect of a grant proposal that is difficult for new investigators (okay they are all difficult), is the budget. Many PIs will not share the budget of the proposal with others since they include salary information that many people consider private.


Is it unwise to contact the professor directly before getting admitted to a program in US? In his answer of Details an applicant should include/exclude in an introductory letter to a prospective grad school adviser?, aeismail says

  If the program in question is in the US, for instance, you should probably never contact the professor directly until after you've been admitted into the program in question. Since admissions decisions are handled centrally, it's just a waste of time.

Now I'm surprised with this, and I think I'm not the only one. For many times, not only in this site, but also in real-life examples in my university, I have seen that my friends get accepted through contacting professors beforehand, and those professors are helpful and willing to get you through the adcom. Recall it back, they don't go to US, but I don't think US should be an exception.

Why is it an exception? Why do the "admissions decisions are handled centrally", unlike other universities in the world, where the weight of the professors is heavier? Isn't that sorting the applications by score not good as checking their ability directly through interview? And who is the most suitable interviewer, if not the one who will advise you in the future?

Let me answer this question from the perspective of our school. If a school does things differently the answer you're quoting might be very appropriate, but not in our case.

Our admission decisions are made by our department, and essentially everyone is on the admissions committee - we share the load of evaluating applications. So, there could be great benefit of talking to a professor ahead of time. If one faculty member strongly desires a particular candidate, that student will generally get admitted, assuming they meet our qualifications. (Note that, as a small school, we have enough capacity to take more students than we do because we don't get tons of qualified applications. Also, we almost always have TA funding available for qualified students. But this really varies from one university to another.)

So, this establishes that, at some schools, talking to potential advisors ahead of time can be very valuable. The interest of working with a particular advisor can also (and should) go into the personal statement. I read so many personal statements that you can tell are completely generic, with different school names copy and pasted in. So, when someone says something specific about my research area, I take notice, and I think other faculty do too.

The real issue is that I get so many requests from random students to look at their CV. Many of them have very little connection to my work and are probably mass-emailing professors. This should be avoided.

@Anonymous' answer has the right idea here. A few months ago a student contacted me with a list of publications and a precise statement of interest about my work. We exchanged a few e-mails and I looked at his work. Another student tracked me down after a talk at a conference and talked to me in more detail about the work. These were both appropriate ways to contact me that may benefit the students in the future.


Do I need to cite Mathematica in my paper? I am in the final stages of writing my first paper, in dynamical systems. The paper is purely theoretical but I use Mathematica for some images and graphical simulations (none of the actual results depend on a computation by Mathematica). The paper will be presented in a conference, where I will show some of these simulations in real time.

My question is whether I need or should cite Mathematica in my paper somehow.

More generally - had I used, say, Matlab, or an open source python library instead, would I need to cite them?

I would recommend to always cite software that you use in your calculations (no need for LaTeX, obviously).
A screw driver will always stay a screw driver, but software is a little bit more complex.

Have you heard of the little bug that may invalidate 15 years of brain research? I think in that case it would be quite nice to know which version of the software you used.

And in your case: can you really be sure that Mathematica has not a specific bug that you haven't noticed? In Version 10, I noticed that some linear-log plots were messed up and that was fixed in a later version 10.1. It could have easily happened that I had published a wrong graph, and thus I think it is quite important to give detailled information about the software that you use.


Will a spent criminal conviction affect my chances of getting a funded PhD position? I am in my third year of a Mathematics degree (UK). Where a masters is concerned, It seems like I only have to declare unspent convictions. But it is not clear where research positions are concerned.

It is spent now, has been for 12 months. I had 50 hours community service for the crime (Not a custodial sentence).

The research I would be interested in doing would be in either Applied Mathematics(Physical fields) or Computer Science. I feel ill whenever I talk about it.

The offence was an assault. I pressed charges, so did he.
Also I am interested in UK/Euro universities, not America.

Could anyone shed some light on this? maybe someone who may have applied for research positions in these fields?

If this is the wrong place to ask this question then please say so I can remove it.

I do not know about the legal situation, but from my experience from hiring and scholarship committees I would say that everything not affecting your work at university has little influence on your chances. So a pub fight gotten out of control or an excessive reaction to some perceived provocation would be no problem, theft of university equipment or sexual harassment would be a problem. In any case, not being open about whatever you did will bring you into trouble. Academia is a small world, chances are that I meet someone who knows you next time I come to England. Rumors do spread, and are usually far worse than the truth.


Why are most papers not dated? Many of the research papers that I have read are not dated in terms of publication date. By dating I mean including at least the publication year. The papers I refer to are mostly free PDFs from the internet on various topics, usually affiliated with some academic institution (mostly universities).

One can then only guess the publication date from the dates of newest references. Does this weird trend have some reasoning? If I wrote a paper or even its draft and made it public I would clearly date it.

Edit:

It seems I have missed the option of checking the PDF document properties which show a creation date. But this still does not answer the question of not including the date within the body of the document itself.

"The papers I refer to are mostly free PDFs from the internet on various topics" – then it's most likely one or both of:

It is not a peer-reviewed paper published by a reputable journal. Be careful what you read, there are plenty of quack theories out there
You are viewing a preprint, and by finding the article on the journal's website you will find the date. Also, the final version of the article will probably be better formatted, and may be better written and have mistakes corrected (this depends upon the stage of publication at which the preprint was circulated).

Many preprints are circulated prior to publication, so you may not find a better version yet. It's still really poor form for an author not to date a preprint. If a preprint is a few years old and has not yet been published, you have to wonder why.

I can not recall ever seeing a journal that does not put the journal name, date, and issue number on at least the first page. It would be very poor practice not to do this, because taken on its own it is impossible (without further research) to tell where the article came from. It's common even to date every page with the journal name, date, and issue number.

I suspect that if you're seeing this trend in most of the "papers" you read, that you really aren't reading research articles written by legitimate researchers. Ask your advisor or lecturer for the names of the most relevant journals in the field, and start from there.


Are there any PhD scholarships for 3.5 CGPAs? I have recently thought of pursuing my PhD. I have managed to make a research proposal. I have done part time MS (i.e. struggle after working hours) with thesis and managed 3.5 CGPA (85%) out of 4.0 and I managed to have one publication in an IEEE conference.

While corresponding to supervisors, I feel some of them like my proposal but it always comes down to availability of a scholarship. For example, I started a correspondence with one supervisor in New Zealand who was willing to supervise me but he won't give me go ahead for university admission because I haven't secured any funding and he thinks that I have no chance to win any university scholarship with this GPA. I told him that my average is 85% and I have over 5 years of relevant work experience. I asked him the minimum % to win a scholarship, to which he replied "100%". He says work experience is never a major factor for scholarship award.

Now as it seems that my GPA is a barrier to even have an admission in a university let alone win a scholarship as most of them don't want to waste their time on a candidate who won't be able to fund himself.

Situation for me looks bleak. Can't bring back the past to work hard and get better CGPA or should I start thinking of doing MS again? As for now it seems that PhD scholarships are only for the applicants with Gold medals and 4.0/4.0. Any ray of hope? Is there any chance that I'll be able to have a scholarship?

I think a 3.5GPA for graduate school is not bad at all. Though it really depends on where you are applying from. International applicants usually are scrutinized further, especially due to the shear number of international applicants and fewer funding sources for non citizens. I think it would be best to talk with professors from your university or alumni who have pursued graduate school about locating funding and which universities/programs will already have funds for students.

The other thing is the professor may not actually be that interested in you. Professors often will take almost anyone if they are free, but once they have to use their research funds, the standards increase.


Does having much knowledge in other branches help one's research in mathematics in one's own field? I am wondering if having much knowledge in other (seemingly not directly related) branches of mathematics is helpful to a mathematician in his own research. Say there are two algebraic topologists A and B. A also has some knowledge in PDE (say he knows the basics of graduate level PDE well and can even teach a graduate course on PDE) and B does not even know the very basics of ODE. Does this make any difference in their ability in doing research in algebraic topology?

I know that some fields are somehow related; for example, it will help a group theorist if he knows algebraic topology or number theory; but how about other fields that are not apparently related, such as the example that I have quoted?

The answer is yes. It helps. Mathematics is very broad. In the various major branches, such as Analysis, Algebra, etc. different insights are needed to really understand what is going on and what is important. In addition to the all-important insights, different proof techniques are common.

When you are doing real research in mathematics you are engaged in a very narrow study. But having a wide variety of ways to attack a problem, even if they might be suggested by ideas from another subfield, will give you an advantage.

Both breadth and depth are needed. Depth is usually what is most valued, but the breadth of knowledge helps you get there. So, don't completely neglect other mathematical subfields than the one you are most interested in. You don't need to be equally skilled in all of them, but being able to grasp the essential insights is a plus.


Do PhD courses in engineering fields in European non-English speaking countries require knowledge of the native language? Can a Ph.D. student who only knows how to speak English study in a European non-English speaking country (e.g., Austria, Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, etc.)  without any problems?
Does applying to these universities require knowledge of that country's language?

Yes, they can, at least in technical fields (I speak mainly for Italy, but I'm pretty sure that this is possible in other countries around Europe as well).

To give you an example, at my university (Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy), there are a lot of foreigner students enrolled in various kind of engineering PhD programs who don't speak, or barely speak, Italian. In fact, most of the graduate courses are delivered in English. However, I recommend learning Italian (or any other local language if in a different country) at a discrete level if one plans to further pursue here (or there) his or her career.


How to get the most out of an internship (in industry)? As a PhD student pursuing an academic career (but optionally a career in industry), what should I do do to get the most of a 10-week internship at a research lab?

Things I've thought of: talking with people (networking); attending talk/seminar (new ideas); giving a talk (get people to know you).

What other things can/should be done?

Let me add two important items to eykanal's great answer:

Do awesome research.  If you want an academic career, you can't ever not do this.  A good internship is not a vacation from research; it's an opportunity to broaden your research portfolio.
Cultivate references for your future job search.  Find, work with, and impress people whose interests overlap yours and whose opinions are valued in the academic research community.  These people may work at the company, or they may be visitors.

When it comes time to look for an academic job, your application will be significantly stronger if you have recommendation letters from and publications with people who don't work at your home institution.  In fact, if your CV lists an internship, but you don't have a letter from or paper with someone at your hosting company, that gap will raise a (small) red flag with recruiting committees.


Can a journal be freely indexed? Am I allowed to compile the index to a journal and publish it, or should I ask permission to the journal first?

(By index I mean a list of all articles in all issues of the journal)

It is better to ask, because it is not obvious whether you can use their materials or not. As you can see from the link there are different types of cc licenses.


What does the envelope sign after the author name mean? I'm in the process of writing a paper for an upcoming conference. The conference provides a LaTeX template which can be found here: Information for Authors of Springer Computer Science Proceedings.

Looking at the proceedings of the previous years I noticed a little envelope after the name of the first authors.

However, I was not able to figure out what it means. So my question is what is the meaning of the little envelope after the name of the first author?

With Springer journals, the envelope simply indicates that they are the nominated corresponding author for the paper.

Sources: this forum topic and a Springer 'Instructions to Authors' PDF.


About the meaning of the title Priv-Doz In Germany there exists the title Priv-Doz before the name of some professors. What does it mean? Do these professors allow to hire postdoctoral applicants?

Formally it is a title given to a university teacher, translation: private lecturer. It means you are able to teach, but not yet a professor.

In practice it is the required step-up from the PhD degree, to get a permanent position.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatdozent


Can I submit the results of a poster to another conference as a full paper? If I presented a poster at a conference that contained the results of some research, can I then write a paper using those same results and submit it to another conference as a full paper?

This depends on the customs of the field and the venue. I will answer based upon my experience from an HCI-related subfield of CS:

Conferences usually have some requirement of novelty for published works. Therefore, if a paper associated with the poster already appeared in some proceedings of the first conference, you might not fulfil this requirement. First, however, some different cases might apply:

If the poster was not "formally published" (i.e. did not appear as a (short) paper in any kind of proceedings), you should be good to go.
If the poster was supposed to be "formally published", but the conference organizers never got around to setting up the proceedings of the poster session, you're in a bit of an inconvenient situation. Your work is not published in a way that it can be cited (well, it can, but it doesn't look as verifiable as other papers and is not archived by any publisher), but it has been presented. You may want to contact the conference organizers in this case whether publishing your work again is ok, or else you may want to wrap your work in something larger (i.e. present something new, but reiterate the points from the poster as a part of the exposition).

Even if your poster was published in some kind of proceedings, there may be some options:

Posters are often allowed to present work in progress. If your poster (and the connected paper) was presented in a way to present work in progress, your new conference paper might indeed present the final state of whatever you devised. This can essentially match the content of your poster, but provide more details (see also below).
Even if the poster presented final results, the term "results" seems to be seen in a very wide sense at least in my fields, possibly in others. A full conference paper provides much more space than a poster paper, and on the poster, you probably presented different (more visual) things than you would in text. As such, you can shift the focus of your conference paper compared to the poster; where the poster focused on the results, the conference paper might discuss the methods used to obtain the results in depth, including design decisions, citations of similar experiments, a verification of the reliability of your experiments, etc. This kind of description can be useful for the community and subsequent works, and as such should provide enough new content, despite being based upon the same material as the poster.


How do you know if university is right for you? At the secondary school I went there was an implicit sense that all students were expected to go to university. For example councillors would come into our English classes to give presentations on how to make smooth transition to a university. I guess I always had the assumption that a university degree is necessary to a) make a living and b) make a living doing something you enjoy. Now that I'm a little older and a little more experienced I know this is not always the case. There are plenty of people (especially in business) who did not complete a university program. How do you decide if university is right for you? Is the correct approach to decide on the job you want and then, if university is required, get the degree for it?

What do you want to do with your life? University is one way of getting to some of the answers. Trade school or apprenticing is another, if you think that's closer to what you want to spend your life doing.

It's also legitimate to say you don't know yet -- in which case you need to decide whether starting classes would help you decide what interests you, or if doing something else for a year makes more sense.

I knew what I wanted to study (or thought I did; turns out I was close but not on the mark), but even so I decided to take a year off before college; I needed a bit of maturation time, and to switch from being the youngest in the class to being one of the older kids, for my own comfort. Spent the year doing volunteer work in a hospital (electronic repair, "biomedical engineering"), which was certainly educational in the general sense, helped build my self confidence, and may actually have helped my college application stand out from others.

"... There are nine and sixty ways / of constructing tribal lays, / And every single one of them is right!" -- Kipling


How much does topic and supervisor matter for honours in computer science when the aim is ultimately to do a PhD? I am about to go in to my honours year in computer science.

If I intend to apply for a PhD at another university when I finish, how much does it matter who my honours supervisor is? Will this make any difference when being assessed for entry at another university?

And as a general rule am I better choosing a pure (mathematical) or applied (programming/engineering) topic?

All things being equal, a well-known and respected individual in your field who can write an excellent letter of recommendation for you is better than a person who is not nearly so well known who can write a similar letter.

However, you should not choose a famous name just to have that person write you a letter of recommendation if you are not actively interested in that person's research. The obvious reason for this is that hunting for a letter of a recommendation is likely not to work as well as doing a project you're truly interested in, because the motivation to work on it won't be nearly as strong.

As for topic, if possible, I would recommend picking a topic in the general area you wish to pursue as a PhD student. Note that it doesn't need to be the same topic—but if you want to do, for instance, theoretical CS, it's probably better to do a theoretical CS project than something more applied.


Uploading paper drafts before first-time publication I am half-way through a Masters degree in Logic and Philosophy of Science following a BSc in Astrophysics. Although I've dreamed for years about getting a paper published, I still haven't submitted anything for publication. The reason why I hadn't submitted anything was very clear to me as an undergraduate: I chose to pursue theory over experiment right off the bat and, although I got to fiddle around with very ground-breaking mathematical techniques, I quickly realized that my knowledge of modern physics was not up to par with the foundational work I was pursuing. I intend to pursue a Ph.D. in theoretical physics focusing on quantum gravity and want to wait until I have taken the relevant courses in particle physics and general relativity before putting my old research results in the context of the current consensus view.

In the meantime, I pursued a detour into the philosophy of science because I am fascinated by and very passionate about the foundations of physics. My experience in philosophy has been remarkably different. Besides my application essay, I have written two term papers that I am very proud of. I deem them to be of publishable quality because I went beyond the mere expectation of "meeting the examiner's criteria" and actually took a deep dive into the literature to produce novel research. I think they are ready for the peer-review process, but am hesitant about what to do with these drafts.

I first came across ResearchGate, and later Academia.edu, while doing literature searches, but quickly realized that a number of my current and former professors are active in these sites. I've been seriously considering uploading my drafts namely because I feel that I've been too secretive of my ideas for too long and it's time to get them out. I do, however, have some reservations. These lead to my question:

Would uploading my papers to "social media sites for academics" interfere with the peer-review process of reputable publishers? (e.g. Elsevier, Springer) I understand the purpose of these sites is to share ideas with as broad of an audience as possible, but they do not carry the weight towards career advancement that a publication in a "good journal" gets.

There is also a related follow-up question:

Is there a right time to get out a first publication? I used to be intimidated by people who published one or two papers during their undergrads, but these were mostly collaborations with an established research group. Conversely, I have friends who didn't publish their first paper until they completed their P.h.D.

Am I overthinking all of this?

Thank you so much for your time.

In my view, you're overthinking all of this.

Unless you've got strong mentors collaborating, your first papers are likely to be terrible. Your work might be wonderful, but writing scientific papers is a specialized skill, and you haven't really practiced that skill yet if you haven't had a paper go through scientific peer review.  So if you want to publish, you should start submitting and start building those skills.

My strongest advice here would be to try to start working with one of your professors as a mentor (and likely co-author).  They are likely to be much better able to assess what is needed to make a good publication out of your work. If you've actually accomplished something interesting, they are more likely to offer such mentorship.

If you have a very strong ability to withstand rejection, you could also go ahead and just submit your papers to what you believe is an appropriate journal (make sure it's actually reputable, and not a predatory piece of junk!).

Finally, the biggest red flag to me in what you've written is talking about being secretive about your work. Even if you're onto something wonderful, you should be thinking about this as not as your magnum opus but as just the first in a very long series of publications that you will make over the course of your career. Being secretive is often a trap, which causes people to think their work is more important than it is because they aren't getting outside feedback on it.

Let go of the fear, find a mentor co-author or send in your manuscripts yourself, and learn from the (likely harsh) feedback that comes from the reviewers.


Some collection of students' theses or dissertations I want to looking for information in graduating level. Is there any collection or library which provide students' theses or dissertations of many universities? Googling just find library for each university.

For British doctoral theses, check out the British Library archive. Many full texts are available.

As Ri49 says, you can see TEL for theses from France...they claim 42000 full texts so far....


Asking for recommendation letter before beginning internship I will be going for my undergraduate thesis under a professor (at a different institute than my home university) in May 2018. I will work with him from May - December 2018. I plan to apply to graduate school (for my masters) for fall 2019, so applications will be done around November 2018.

Since some professors have different policies of writing recommendations for students (for some 6 months is a short time of work to write a good letter, some have other conditions), I am thinking about asking the professor whether he would be willing to write recommendation letters for my applications during November, provided of course he is satisfied with my work.

I thought this would be better to get out of the way beforehand, so that he will know that I am willing to do substantial work during this time, and am willing to take on as much work as he feels is necessary to do before he can write a strong recommendation letter. This will also help me strategise for graduate school admissions and prevent me from being put on the spot if he refuses to write a recommendation in November.

Is this (asking about recommendation beforehand) a standard practice? I feel he shouldn't mind because I am trying to cover all my bases and plan for my future. I feel it will be better for the both of us if we agree on all such conditions beforehand.

You're hugely overthinking this.

It's normal for an undergraduate project student to ask their supervisor for references
It's normal to be making applications, and requesting references, before your course of study is complete

Consequently, your future supervisor knows that he may well be asked to provide a reference for you and doens't need "warning" of that fact now. Asking him now won't cause him to increase your workload, although it's unlikely to do any harm (context: OP seems to consider an increased workload to be good) either.

That said, once you know what you're applying for, you should give him details and ask him if he is willing to provide a reference well in advance of any deadlines. This will give him time to prepare a reference letter (or whatever's required) and will enable him to tailor it to your specific applications; it will also prevent him being caught unprepared if they just phone him and ask him about you.


Resubmitting elsewhere without any key change when a paper is rejected While not necessarily being an expert, I have extensive experience in biomedical scholarly publishing as author (>500 scholarly papers published) and reviewer (>1000 manuscripts reviewed).

Most of my manuscripts have been rejected several times before eventually getting accepted and published, as this is quite typical of cardiovascular research. Indeed, I mostly dedicate myself to incremental research, such as meta-analyses and observational clinical studies, and often submit first to a top tier journal (e.g. with impact factor above 10), then trying to lower impact journals.

I now tend to favor not changing substantially my manuscripts after a rejection, even if accompanied by peer reviewers comments, as I feel that in most cases this has to do with a priority judgement rather than with the work strengths and weaknesses. Of course, I address major mistakes or issues, but I typically avoid adding ancillary but time consuming analyses in such cases.

Is this acceptable and efficient, or actually unethical and disrespectful of the peer review process?

If the reviewers pointed out inaccurate citations, false or missing attributions, or statements in the paper that have been pointed out to be false or seriously faulty (and that you agree are false or seriously faulty), then it seems to me that you are ethically obligated to respond to these before resubmitting.

If the reviewers point out what they claim are deficiencies in your paper but these are subjective and/or you disagree -- e.g. poor writing or organization, insufficient motivation -- then it is up to you to decide whether to address these before you resubmit.  If you take them seriously enough, it is probably more efficient to do so, since the next reviewers could have the same issues.  In fact the next reviewers could be the same as the present reviewers, and if their serious critiques go unanswered, they are not likely to look more favorably on the new submission than the old one.

However, if the principal (or sole) cause of rejection was simply that the paper was not a good fit for the journal -- either by a mismatch of subject areas or simply by not being strong enough -- then it's plausible that this can be remedied by resubmitting immediately to a different journal.

When it comes to my own journal submissions, all of my rejections were said to be because the paper was not strong enough for the journal it was submitted to -- I imagine that the majority of rejections for sufficiently prestigious journals are for this reason -- sometimes accompanied by other commentary by the referees.  Probably more than half the time I have resubmitted without revision to a different journal.  This has worked relatively well for me: the papers usually get published after one or two more tries, and I have received absolutely no negative feedback about this.  In fact, most of the time the rejection letters I get explicitly mention resubmitting to another journal.  Sometimes they mention taking the referees' comments into account first.  When they don't, I read this to be a directive from the editor to resubmit without changes.


Is it a bad idea to do research with multiple different professors at the same time? I want to go to graduate school to study computational molecular biology and biochemistry.

During my first three semesters as an undergraduate I finished my distribution requirements and started doing research with one professor.  During my fourth semester I started doing research with two more professors (working in computational biophysics and  computational linear algebra).  My work with two of these three professors has already led to work that will be published soon.  I am considering starting research with yet another professor (in statistical genomics).

Is it wise to begin research with yet another professor?  I fear that having engaged with too many professors makes my resume read like that of a dilettante rather than a promising computational biologist.

There comes a point where a person will be spread too thin – that's inevitable. Only you can really say how much you can take on before your workload starts to interfere with your academic goals and achievements.

If you're already doing the work of two students, I'd be cautious about expanding that to three.

  I'm spending around 9 hours a day on research right now with ~3 hours in class, 1 hour eating, and 4 hours free time, on week days, and even more free time on weekends

You make it sound like those four hours of free time are being wasted, when they might not be. Perhaps your brain is appreciating that rest more than you know. And I don't see any time allotted for physical fitness; besides being good for your health, fitness can be good for your mind.

If you decide you want to try a third project, you should be honest with yourself, and up front with the sponsoring faculty member from the outset. "I'm already working on two other projects, so, to be honest, this might turn out to be too much for me. But I'd still like to give it a try." Such a disclosure might make it a little harder for you to find someone willing to take you on, but it might help save your reputation if you find yourself in a position where you've bitten off more than you can chew.