Is it fair to punish the student for not knowing what's in the course? A number of questions (e. g., this one or that one) discuss the situations where the student is punished after invoking, in the exam context, knowledge that's outside the scope of the course. This leads to a more general question:

  Suppose the student knows and understands perfectly all the material taught in the course, and perhaps some more. Is it fair to lower their grade for not knowing which material has been taught and how it was presented?

From the answers to the above questions, it seems that many feel that there's no problem with lowering the grade. I can think of two arguments in favour of that view:

in order to test knowledge, the exam questions have to include implicit context, notation, etc., that require familiarity with a particular course. More details on this type of reasoning can be found in this answer.
anyway, the grades are often not determined solely by what students know in the end; e. g., attending lectures, participating in the class discussions, etc., may be part of the grade. And if you have done so, surely you know what's been in the course.

Let me explain why the above arguments do not satisfy me. The first one concedes that it may be unfair, and then essentially admits a failure on the part of the professor to design a fair exam. But then, shouldn't one rather strive to make the questions as self-contained and unambiguous as possible? For the second one, we may ask, again, why it is fair to take anything but the end knowledge into account for the grade, and the answer will likely be that some version of "we use attendance etc. as a proxy for final knowledge" which, once again, brushes off the question as to how fair is this.

  Is there a coherent argument that justifies that it is fair to lower the grade in the above circumstances?

I hesitate to answer this, as my views might be taken as just a rant, but I have a lot of experience - doctorate in mathematics and 40 years teaching mostly CS. Moreover, I've thought and written a lot about student learning.

My most basic question about exams is whether they tell us what we think they tell us and I think the answer is no. It depends on the exam, of course, but too many exam questions can be misleading and it is difficult to come up with good ones unless you revise and refine old ones, taking into account an analysis of old results. In one of the other questions cited by the OP, it took several suggestions by other academics to come up with a "fair" version of a question that didn't seem to be a minefield when first written, but turned out to be.

Other issues with exams (in fields like mine), is that too often an exam is simply too simple a vehicle to determine what a student has deeply learned at an operational level. Too many exams only test what a student has managed to remember from yesterday's cram session, as the high-risk nature of the process pushed them to actual destructive behavior. Can you make an exam for which cramming isn't going to be of any use. Yes, you can, but it is very difficult. It is even harder to convince them not to cram, forcing certain things into short term memory and perhaps obscuring more fundamental things.

Another issue, especially with the predecessor questions, is that when a student taking the exam (maths) gets an idea into their head it is very difficult to get it out, even when they realize that it is the wrong solution and isn't going anywhere. The first idea dominates the thought. Given enough time (not available in most exams) they might get it right, but the pressure itself is a mind-killer. This advantages some kinds of students, but not necessarily the most able or the ones with the best grasp. It is very complicated.

I have two suggestions, the first of which doesn't scale. That is oral exams in place of written ones. Now the questioner has a chance to interject if the student has made a wrong turn and can evaluate the depth of learning directly. The student has a chance to inquire about things unstated. But (personal experience here) the student also has a chance to explain why a first attempt is wrong, which may reveal a lot more about their learning than even a correct answer would.

But, that doesn't scale well. My major advisor also occasionally taught elementary courses (say Calculus) to moderately large groups and gave only oral exams (about 5 minutes each) and announced to the students at the end of the five minutes what their grade was. But even in a few minutes he could ascertain in broad terms how well the student knew the material just from their approach.

The other means, which scales better, is to rely less on exams altogether. Toward the end of my teaching I let exams count for no more than 30% of the grade. The rest being written work of various kinds, including group work. This lowered the pressure. Students could demonstrate what they had learned by demonstrating what they could do not what they could remember from yesterday. There was little need to cram and they were all promised a question that they would find very hard and that required interpretation, not memory.

Heavy reliance on exams scales well as exams are easier to grade than projects are to evaluate and comment on. But they also advantage a certain kind of person and disadvantage others. This is especially true, and I think unavoidable, if the exam is timed and important to the grade. People freeze. People prepare ineffectively. People have other commitments that get in the way of effective exam study.

However, there is one potentially positive aspect to an exam. Students do need to review what they have learned. That is an important aspect of changing the brain to solidify learning and turn it from simple rote learning into something that can be actively used. Lots of reinforcement of the learning. So, an exam that asks them to review what they have learned isn't a bad thing as long as it isn't so high pressure that it forces bad and unproductive behavior before or during the exam. In particular, essay questions, that ask for interpretations and consequences of things learned can be useful. I wouldn't want my courses to use only exams to help with this review and refinement, but it can be one aspect. I also sometimes used take-home exams with few rules forbidding things other than actual collaboration.

Most things, especially mathematics and CS, aren't actually produced in an exam-like atmosphere. I hope you will think about that.


What makes a didactically effective lecture? I have made the experience that even the most excellent academics are often didactically mediocre lecturers. I also watched some of last years Nobel lectures and realised many laureates are actually not particularly good at teaching.

What is it that makes some lectures didactically effective and others not, regardless of how knowledgable the lecturer is?

Unless you put a lot of thought into your lectures, it's hard to adopt the mindset of a student who knows much less than you.  You may take certain concepts for granted, and you've long forgotten how you learned them, or what originally confused you.  At the time you learned them you were probably much more well-prepared than the average student, so common stumbling blocks for students were never issues for you.

This means there are a lot of professors who are good at giving talks (to people well-versed in their field), but poor at giving lectures (to people with little or no background).


What are the pros and cons of applying for graduate study in multiple disciplines? My first attempt at this question was voted to be closed. Here's another attempt at the same question which I have broken into two different questions/posts.

I am an application programmer with 3+ years software development experience. I already have a Masters in Computer Applications from a reputed university in India. I am planning to apply for universities in the US and UK for the 2014 fall semester as I feel that my job is getting stagnant and I have always wanted to study abroad.

I am really not sure whether I want to take up another masters degree or apply for business school instead. Considering my indecisiveness regarding what I want to study, I have decided to appear for both the GRE as well as the GMAT and keep my options open. The first step for applying abroad is to take the GRE or the GMAT and I want to get done with this step by keeping all my options open.

I am planning to appear for the GRE by March 2013 and the GMAT by June 2013. That will give me enough time to apply for masters as well as business schools abroad. I understand that many business schools have started accepting the GRE but appearing for the GMAT will broaden my options.

Given the above information, What are the pros and cons of applying for graduate study in multiple disciplines? Has anyone taken this path and applied for a masters and an MBA in the same year?

The main issues against such a path are the time and expense involved in doing so. Effectively, you have to complete two different sets of testing requirements, and you'll need to write two very different sets of essays. You'll also probably need to get different letters of recommendation, as the emephasis for different fields are probably not likely to be similar. If you apply to US schools, there is also the cost of applying to the additional schools in the other discipline.

Since you're an international student, it isn't likely that you'll be asked to fly in for interviews, so that wouldn't be a big drain on your time.

As for the pros, if you aren't sure which path you want to pursue, this will definitely give you more options. But other than that, I can't think of a "real" advantage to splitting your efforts in such a manner. (I guess one other exception is if there's a special "dual master's" program at one of the school's you're interested in; however, this requires reviewing the information available from each school.)


What path should I take to make my vision a reality? I love German literature, but I am not interested in literary criticism/theory; just in close-reading, by which I mean, "reading while analyzing the grammar, syntax, usages of words, etc."

As my future goal as a researcher, I am thinking of compiling some sort of detailed guidebooks that will help the reader understand how the sentences parse in a systematic fashion; for no one has ever done that, at least not in a detailed, fool-proof kind of way, as far as I know after much research, both in the university library and on the Internet.

What sort of path should I set myself upon to pursue that kind of vision?
Is it even a legitimate research goal?

Thank you in advance.

As a rule of thumb, you cannot possibly know what has and has not been done in a scientific area if you are not part of this scientific area. @xLeitix offered his suggestion about linguistics and his suggestion is good. So, search there, ask specific people about this, read the accompanying textbooks first and then focus on recent papers. It is very hard for an amateur researcher to think of something that has not been done before. It might happen occasionally but it is not that common.

Also you need to consider, that if there is not a scientific area about what you want to research, it might mean (again it is not 100% sure) that what you are suggesting is not that interesting after all. Why e.g., focus on a specific book for example and not on all books written by the same author? What are you hoping to achieve and why does it matter? These are questions that need to be answered before starting the actual research.

So, initially I would try to identify and align my research agenda according to the greater scientific area most close to my scientific interests. Once, you get a good grasp and knowledge of this specific area, you could then try to form your individual research and find what differentiates your work from the rest of the bunch. Identifying the area is a very major step, because otherwise even if your work is seminal you still need to find a journal that would publish your work. And without knowing where to publish it would be very hard to disseminate any scientific work.


Unethical requests from the senior professors and chair I am a new assistant professor.

Everyday I meet a frustrating situations here for about 4 months so far.  Main matters are as listed below.  I really do not understand this situation.  Any advice or suggestions to protect myself just in case?

1) without any credits, medical doctors want me to develop their research ideas (typically just have one or two keywords) and write the papers for them.

2) without any credits, they want me to analyze their data sets and write the results for publications.

3) my chair asks me (only myself in this entire dept) to report my research progress every week in a small meeting - with the reasoning that they need to know all of my research studies.

4) my chair does not allow me to do any research studies myself (I must collaborate with a medical doctor).

5) my chair does not allow me to attend any conferences in medical education because I cannot be their representative.

6) for the reason English is not my first language, my school doesn't allow me to teach/present anything here (I am teaching a class in a different dept now and have there been listed as an excellent teacher several times).  They ask me to support/do the other faculties' research studies.

It sounds like there is such major lack of understanding regarding your job that you need to have a discussion with the Department Chair. You need to come away from this discussion understanding how and when your performance will be reviewed, what you need to do to either have your contract renewed or get tenure, and how you will be able to do that. Hopefully this conversation will resolve the issues, although from your description it does not sound like it will. More likely, you are going to need to meet with the Dean as you hand in your resignation. You should explain to the Dean that you did not fully understand the position when you took the job and that the expectations and behavior of the department are wildly inappropriate.


Grade assignment methods to make learning efficient The way a grade is assigned in a course influences the way students study which in turn influences their gain from the course.

I want to focus on ways to assign grades which aim to eventually increase the students' gain from the course (in contrast with grade assignment methods which try to single out the most talented students).

I'll start with the questions:

  What are such grade assignment methods?
  Are there texts/papers/other resources discussing this subject?

An answer should address issues such as: memorization vs. creativity, the temptation to get help from external sources while doing homework, spoonfeeding vs. self-learning, etc.

I will now give my own example of grade assignment components:

Excercises which are graded regularly throught the semester
Exercises for self-learning with a solutions manual provided
Quizes during the semester
Strictly technical questions in quizes/exams
Questions in quizes/exams which mostly require to repeat what was taught in class
Questions in quizes/exams which require some creativity
Student presentations
Practical assignments (programming/labs)
Interviews (oral exams)

I believe all of the above may have a place in some courses with the specificed goal in mind and would like to get new ideas for grading components, for how to combine them, and to know whether any written work exists which tries to answer this question.

I am thinking mostly of courses aimed towards math and CS students and mostly about senior undergraduates, but I do not want to limit the question to these subjects and this level of students.

As a recent graduate in CS I can only provide my experience with grade assignment methods I came across during my studies.

I think the worst method is to let the grade solely depend on one exam at the end of the semester. The students will most likely put no effort in learning for this exam during the semester and will instead invest a couple of days before the exam to repeat the lecture's content.

The most promising method I came across was using (bi-)weekly assignments out of which the student had to reach at least 50% of the points. This way, they have to focus on the topic in order to solve the assignments to be able to take part in the exam.

In addition to this method, some lecturers awarded students with more than 80% of the overall points a bonus in the exam, i.e. they will obtain (let's say) 10 points bonus within the exam. I for myself think this really motivated me to invest time into the assignments and consequently into the lecture content.

Finally, there was one lecture where students could pose questions with possible answers in an online learning platform. The other students could use these questions (after review by an assistant or professor) to learn for the final exam. Students posing very good questions gained a bonus for the exam, similar to the above approach.


Should I say congratulations to my professor? What is the best way for this? Few days ago I found on a website that my professor's student won the "Golden Kingfisher Prize" for her presentation under his supervision in his previous university 2 years ago .. Do you think it is good to talk about it? And what is the best way for this ?.

Professors are people too, hence any acknowledgement of achievements and, as in this case, their part in an achievement is always a nice thing to do.

It would probably not be a good idea to make too much of a big deal of it - but an email or a chat of congratulations to your professor is a polite acknowledgement and appreciation of a significant achievement.

Most of all, know that you are working with an academic that has, in some way, facilitated a student earning a great award.  Just keep that in mind in all your future interactions with the Professor.


Graduate Internship - Collaborating with other divisions I managed to get a 4 month internship (during my PhD) in one of the major US national labs. I'm really enthusiast of this experience and I would like to get the most out of it, both in terms of knowledge and formation as well as in networking with colleague. In fact, I believe this is fundamental to eventually continue my experience at the lab with a postdoc.

My question is very simple. Do you think it would be clever to network with other divisions besides mine? There is a group, with which I'm already in contact by mail, and who study the same things I'm doing in my PhD.

My idea is to proposed them a sort of "pro bono" collaboration (since I'm already paid by my division), helping them in my free time as an extra activity.

I have two question in particular:

1- do you think that it would be appreciated? Or will I sound as an annoying climber?

2- do you think it could upset my first division? (provided that I'll give them full priority, doing parallel activities ONLY in my free time)

Thank you all in advance for your advice!

1- do you think that it would be appreciated? Or will I sound as an annoying climber?

No, I personally would not think that. Instead, I would appreciate your initiative and passion.

  2- do you think it could upset my first division? (provided that I'll give them full priority, doing parallel activities ONLY in my free time)

Here it comes the important point. It is ok to collaborate with other groups but you should ask your supervisor first. Even if we are talking about your free time it could still sound very shady to work with other people without saying anything. When you ask this to your primary division, you can say what you said to us "I would like to collaborate with lab X in this way to improve my CV, for networking [...] HOWEVER, I will give full priority to your tasks [...]"


Two different abbreviations of your name in literature I have been publishing in the past with a certain abbreviation of my name which I am unsatisfied due to draconian rules in my previous institution which wrote my name in the following way: X. Y. Z. lastname2.

Being my name composed of the following nouns: firstname1 firstname2 lastname1 lastname2.

For new publications I wish to change it to another format such as X. Y. lastname1 lastname2.

I wonder about the impact it might have in my academic profile, this is, whether articles databases would fail to index correctly both of the publications to the same person.

I also wonder what other complications this change of my name abbreviations might carry.

One of the implications that will happen is that it will be slightly more tricky to cite your works:

general confusion when citing an author with the inconsistent spelling of the name
this and this talk about initials usage
inline citations of multiple works may become weird
reference manager systems might be confused, and organizing a library would be more complicated (it is already complicated with all other caveats)

However, I have to say that the problem of the different spelling of the name in cited works happens quite often, so I would incline to say that the author being happy with the way their name is spelled is much more important.


Should I define two essential terms in abstract? A big aspect of the novelty of our paper is distinguishing among two things which are often conflated, or at least a bit garbled together in some non-standard way per application, within our community.  It’d be helpful to explicitly label and identify how we will use these (original, not repurposed) terms ASAP in the paper to bring our readers on board with how we’re tackling the problem.

It’d be useful to have the terms loaded with our meaning to use them in our abstract; so useful that I’m willing to devote the first two sentences of our abstract to this purpose.

Is this appropriate?  I haven’t seen it done.  I’m also worried that it’s a bit of a buzzkill / alienating to read an abstract which throws new language at you instantly.  If may be helpful to know my target audience is engineers and physicians.

My current solution “masks” the definitions a bit:

  In this work we draw a distinction between X, [definition X], and Y, [definition Y].  For example, in [example my community knows about] X which is [instance X in example] and Y which is [instance Y in example]. ...

I’m avoiding giving more context as it would be burdensome and make this question less relevant to others who may stumble on it in the future.

Many author guides I am aware of advise to only define something in the abstract, when it’s really needed. For example, Physical Review X advises (boldface mine):

  In particular, the abstract and introduction of each article should be written so as to be understandable by a broad spectrum of readers. New terminology should be introduced only when clearly needed. It should be appropriate and, if possible, convey to the reader an accurate impression of its meaning.

Now, you have good arguments to define something in the abstract, but an overzealous editor or referee might still be against it due to interpreting guidelines as rules.

That being said, I have seen new terms introduced in abstracts many times and most of the times this was the better alternative to me – this also applies to interdisciplinary papers relating to medicine. I have rarely seen terms rigorously defined in abstracts though.

Some further remarks on this:

The main purpose of your paper is probably not to define these terms but to analyse the differences between them or similar. Most probably there also is a practical benefit of being able to make this distinction other than clarifying communication. This should be your motivation. Also, you should write your abstract (and paper) from this perspective and not from the perspective of introducing a new terminology – which is what your current abstract sounds like to me.
Do not start with the definition right away, but motivate it first. It’s not new language that is confusing (at least as long as we are talking about two terms only), it’s unmotivated new language. If you motivate the distinction first, the reader can associate something with the terms and thus better memorise them.
By all means, make clear that you are defining something when you do. Nothing is more confusing if you do not know whether something is new terminology or not. The context should make clear that the term is new and, if it’s not unseen in your community, italicise the newly introduced terms.
It’s not important to precisely define your concepts in the abstract – you can do that later. Rather give the main distincitive aspects, so that most readers get the central idea to your distinction. Of course, if the definitions are sufficiently concise, you can use them in the abstract.

To distill this into an example abstract, which does not exactly match your case, if I understood it correctly, but should illustrate the idea:

  We show that phenomenon Z can occur in two distinct flavours, which exhibit relevant differences in behaviour in [application]: [definition X], which we denote as X, and [definition Y], which we denote as Y. […]


How to describe teaching experience on an Industry Resume Does anyone have any advice for how to describe teaching experience on an industry resume?
Based on this question we all think it is valuable, but how would you frame it if you were applying to a job with a consulting firm, or as a writer/editor for a think tank? (Or anything else)

Academics do a poor job of appropriately accounting for their time as teachers in a way that industry will understand. The point of industry resumes is to emphasize what you've done meaning the skills you bring to the table. CVs do not have the same intent, serving more like a 'Table of Contents' for your career. The assumption with a CV is that people will then go to your scholarly writings and read them, but you need to present as much as possible in that 1-2 pages of a resume, and know that they are not going to read more than that.

You want to:

play up numbers or other quantifiable achievements as much as possible. The more concrete the better.
explain how what you have done has created outcomes.
use terms that are accessible to an audience that may not be familiar with your field.
bridge any gaps between the way that things are done as an academic with how they are done in industry.
give context to the environment you were working in (i.e. Harvard is qualitatively different than working at a national lab. One is not necessarily better than the other, but identify where you were working right up front.)

Avoid:

jargon, either from industry or academia, especially if you are unsure of its use.
list of accomplishments.
assumptions about how much the audience will know about the things you are talking about.
lies.

Things that teaching demonstrates, which are highly valued, include but are not limited to:

presentation skills
organization and planning
leadership
ability to train others
knowledge of the subject matter
management of budget (sometimes)
cross cultural awareness

Try to include examples of all of these things in your resume.

In general, the standard seems to be as follows

  Organization (flush left) Position (center, or to the right of Organization)  Date(s) (flush right)

  verb number in order to create outcome
  verb number in order to create outcome
  verb number in order to create outcome

So it would look like this:

  University of Fredonia, Instructor,  2010-2012

  Developed 5+ curricula including 40 biweekly helping others to master underwater basketry
  Counseled 100+ students on composition, research, career and professional development
  Integrated Blackboard, git and multimedia allowing students with different learning style maximum opportunities
  Taught underwater basketry, Pig Latin textual analysis and yarn theory

Finally:

try to fill the line (I find LaTeX is helpful for that) and don't go over one line per point if possible
no periods at the end of the lines
don't repeat verbs or outcomes if you can at all avoid it
If you taught multiple topics, and instruction makes up the majority of your resume have different entries for each topic so that the first line would read "University ..., Subject Instructor, etc."
Unless the subjects you taught are directly related to the job you are applying for, and if you need to make space, there is no need to list the topics you taught, in other words you could drop the last bullet point in the example above. (e.g. it might be worth knowing that you taught accounting if you are applying for a position that involves accounting, but the odds of any position involving "Medieval German Literature" are very low, so you can leave it out.) What you demonstrate as a teacher usually matters to businesses much more than the topic you taught.


What does “temporary faculty pool” mean? I have seen university career postings for a “temporary faculty pool”. What does this term mean?

Looking up a few such postings, it appears to be another name for "adjunct faculty".  In other words, temp work for academia.


How would you decide to publish (or not) in F1000Research or other journals with alternative peer-review methods? As pointed out by altmetrics, “Peer-review has served scholarship well, but is beginning to show its age. It is slow, encourages conventionality, and fails to hold reviewers accountable.”

Not all publications are created equal. Neither are the statuses of their authors. However, senior authors in life sciences rarely publish in isolation, so some junior researcher’s neck is always on the line (one of the many catch 22’s in academic publishing, and one I hadn’t really thought about much before).

I realize this makes the question somewhat subjective, and I hope that a variety of answers can be supplied - but if your answer is similar to an existing one, perhaps a comment will serve - thank you!

Here is some more background on my question:

An excellent article by Zen Faulkes, which doesn’t mention F1000Research but does mention Proceedings of Peerage of Science , suggests that the post-publication peer-review is unstandardized. It seems that F1000Research is trying to standardize the process within their journal, rather than relying on altmetrics. I think this is a reasonable approach: as a scientist whose job is partly to network with others, you can very likely get interested parties to review your paper (if not, then try one of the many journals supporting the traditional review method). Additionally, this publisher-centric peer review will probably attract more serious reviews; who wants to post a review on some random social networking site that few people will likely read?

If someone has strong negative feelings about your paper, then they can say so. Of course, there is a lack of anonymity on F1000Research. Oh dear, now we need to be polite (Faulkes also discusses this). I know it is a very difficult thing to be polite sometimes after multiple grants or papers have been rejected, but perhaps this is a step in the right direction.

Perhaps more importantly, the reviewers may have to defend their assertions without the editor making a summary decision about whether or not the authors can reasonably address the reviewers concerns. I think this form of review removes much more bias than it introduces by keeping the conversation open. And I don’t think this means the review process will go on indefinitely; the authors no longer need satisfy every whim of the reviewers, but only those they deem important enough so that their colleagues will respect the merit and credibility of the study.

Turning to other forms of review: I also think it is unlikely that any single review model with always be best for all people and all publications.

For instance, one type of review process that would necessarily need to be pre-publication peer review is the double blind scheme, where neither reviewers nor authors are given any direct evidence of the other party’s identity. It seems that this would not only make things more fair, but also open up the reviewer pool to highly cited authors whose input is no doubt frequently valued but difficult to obtain in the traditional peer review process. Unfortunately it does not seem to be at all prevalent in the sciences, and I know of no journals supporting it.

How would I decide?

Funding, Readership and Tenure.

Does the journal cost money to submit to, and if so, do I have any funding for said submission? Is there a means of waiving that fee if I don't have funding?
Is the journal read by the people I want to read my paper? This I'd gauge by talking to my colleagues - for example, if no one in (hypothetically) infection control reads F1000Research, then I'm not publishing there, because the point of my paper is to be read and advance the field, and it can't do that if it isn't where relevant eyes will see it, whether or not the journal gets an ideological checkmark.
Similar to readership, when this journal is looked at by a promotion committee etc., will it matter?

The latter two are, in my mind, not yet settled, and that makes me a little hesitant - bold ideological stands are for people who aren't on the job market. Beyond that, I think the primary problem with post-pub peer review is that I'm not convinced it will be at all uniformly distributed. My suspicion is that a few prominent papers will be heavily reviewed, and then the rest will have either middling, or no reviews beyond what is mandated by the journal. I'm also not convinced it's a terribly fair system - it's relatively easy to attack a post-doc or doctoral student's work, while you might hesitate to do so for Important Person In Your Field, and similarly, said Important Person may be able to be fairly rude with impunity, especially if the journals aren't terribly well known.

For what it's worth, several major journals in my field are double-blinded. I have no idea who the authors are, there are actually instructions to remove clearly identifiable information (change "Brigham-Women's Hospital" to "A major regional hospital in the Northeast United States", etc.) in the manuscript, and the reviews are anonymous unless signed.


Re-analyzed my dissertation work, how should I explain this in a cover letter to a journal editor? I graduated recently, and I am trying to get some journal publications out of my dissertation.
Unfortunately, I just found out that changing inclusion/exclusion criteria and statistical analysis would improve the quality of my study. So I re-analyzed the data with the revised methods and statistical analysis.

The number of included subjects decreased a bit. The results did not change dramatically, and qualitatively the same.

My question is...now how should I explain this to a journal editor in a cover letter?  The numbers in the results won't be the same as the ones in my dissertation.  The methods and statistical analyses are not exactly the same, but overall pretty similar between before and after making the change.

I am still considering that, in the cover letter, maybe I should mention that the work is based on my dissertation, but I made improvements upon the submitted dissertation.  Would this be acceptable to a journal editor?  If not, how should I handle this situation?

Everyone's advice would be appreciated.

Your submission to the journal will be a separate paper to your dissertation, so it is not a problem if you revise the method and get slightly different results.  Just undertake the analysis with your new method, and write that analysis up in its own right in the new paper --- the journal referee will assess this work on its own merits.  Normally in this case you would cite your dissertation as a precursor to the work in your present paper, but note that your analysis differs from the analysis in that work.  (Perhaps explain this briefly in a footnote.)


What does "The references in general are not current" mean? I submitted a paper recently and one of the major revisions that they ask for was this: "The references in general are not current."

What does the reviewer mean by this?

Your references apparently refer to literature that is too old, and probably superseded by more recent research.

Look for more recent work pertinent to your topic and include it in your paper.


Reasons for not releasing mark schemes for past exams? On my course my university provides past exam papers but does not release mark schemes and I know this is the case for other universities. I am dyslexic which makes reading hard, and for my high-school exams I used exam papers with the mark scheme as a self-study method, (meaning I attempted questions and used the answers as a source of information on that topic). Which leads to what I see as one of the main arguments against not providing mark schemes; by providing exam papers you give students an idea of what they need to study but not the information they need to know (i.e. the answers) meaning they will spend time (which could be spent on learning other things) looking in text books for answers.

So what are the reasons for not providing mark schemes to past exam papers?

Edit

Just to clarify some points:

Firstly I am from the UK hence the phrase 'mark scheme'. When a wrote the question (which was a while back know) I guess I was more tending towards the idea of a mark scheme as example solutions rather then a 'grading rubric'. I must admit 'mark scheme' was probably the wrong phrase to use in the question. Just to keep the question consistent with the answers, the interpretation of a 'mark scheme' as "any method that allows the student to work out what they are expected to write in the exam" works best.

Also a while back I did email the relevant people at my university about the situation concerning 'mark schemes', also explaining about my dyslexia and how I learn best. They replied by simply saying that the review the situation every year, but gave me no further information for the reasons behind it.

I'm not aware of any particularly compelling reason not to provide solutions for past exams, but here are two possible reasons:

Providing solutions encourages students to study by learning isolated facts.  If they have to look things up, then they are more likely to absorb some of the context at the same time.  (Looking things up takes more time, but you typically learn more than just the one thing you were looking for.)
Some students find it very difficult to resist looking at solutions when they are provided.  They will think for a minute or two about a problem and then check the solutions and convince themselves that this is exactly what they would have done if they had spent more time.  In some fields (such as mathematics) working out a solution oneself is usually much more educational than reading someone else's solution.  Withholding solutions is inconvenient for students, but the inconvenience may push them towards better study habits.

Only your professors can tell you why they do not provide solutions; without knowing the specific situation, all we can do is guess.  It can't hurt to ask them and to explain why having solutions would be valuable for you.  They may not have strong reasons and might decide to start providing solutions.  (And, as Dave Rose points out in his answer, you should also get any appropriate accommodations for dyslexia.)


Trends on time spent studying over the the past few decades, for students outside the US Is there any research/study/survey/dataset that looked at the trends on the time students spent on studying, over the the past few decades in different countries in the world (aside from the USA)?

I am mostly interested in the field of computer science, if field-specific, and college level, if level-specific.

For Germany the data is there in the form of the "Studierenden survey", which exists since 1982. However, I don't know if it is analysed. The datasets are available, so I added a list of links to the datasets for the different years in case you want to do the analysis yourself.

2012/13: http://dx.doi.org/10.4232/1.5126

2009/10: http://dx.doi.org/10.4232/1.11059

2006/07: http://dx.doi.org/10.4232/1.4263

2003/04: http://dx.doi.org/10.4232/1.4344

2000/01: http://dx.doi.org/10.4232/1.4208

1997/98: http://dx.doi.org/10.4232/1.3511

1994/95: http://dx.doi.org/10.4232/1.3131

1992/93: http://dx.doi.org/10.4232/1.3130

1989/90: http://dx.doi.org/10.4232/1.2417

1986/87: http://dx.doi.org/10.4232/1.2416

1984/85: http://dx.doi.org/10.4232/1.1885

1982/83: http://dx.doi.org/10.4232/1.1884


Should one introduce past work in PhD statement of interest? I wrote my statement of interests where one paragraph is dedicated to discuss my past works. But I wonder if that is necessary because it feels like repeating abstracts from the papers. And probably it will not make much sense to those who do not specialize in those topics. Should I just refer to the paper and make no formal introduction of what I did?  Since there is a word limit, it is really hard for me to explain all those ideas in just a few words without assuming any technical prerequisites, and I feel it is not really stating my interests and my visions of my doctoral studies anyways, because I'm open to other related topics as well and don't want people to think "oh, this is a XXX-guy and our faculties do not work on XXX so he is a mismatch".

I don't think Ben's answer says this strongly enough:

Your statement must include a description of your past work, if you have any.

The primary feature that PhD admissions committees looking for in applicants is evidence of potential for high-quality independent research.  The strongest possible evidence of your potential to do high-quality independent research is the fact that you have actually published high-quality independent research.

It doesn't matter whether your past research is on the same topics that you want to pursue in the future.  It's easy to communicate a change in interests in your statement with a single sentence: "More recently, however, my interests have shifted to quantum tropical M-theory."  (Obviously this sentence should be followed by a description of your specific interests in quantum tropical M-theory, written with enough maturity to convince experts in quantum tropical M-theory that you have the necessary knowledge and skills to be successful in quantum tropical M-theory, but that's what you were going to write anyway.)

Crucially, if your previous papers have coauthors, your statement (and your recommendation letters!) should focus on your specific technical contributions to those papers.  Remember that you are not trying to sell the work as good mathematics; you are trying to sell yourself as a good mathematician.

In particular, you are not trying to sell your past work to experts in your subsubfield of (past) interest, so you should not merely quote the abstracts.  You are trying to sell yourself to a general audience of trained mathematicians, some of whom are experts in your subsubfield of (past) interest.  So your description needs to be understandable to that broader audience, but still interesting enough to experts that they will want to read your papers for the actual technical details.

Obviously you should provide direct links to arXiv versions of your papers, in both your CV and your statement, so that interested committee members can read them without having to search.

[I'm an American theoretical computer scientist, which means I'm like a mathematician, except that I write less code.]


How to decide if a paper should be accepted? Different conferences have different standards of accepting papers. A paper rejected at a conference A might be best paper at a conference B (in a lower rank).

I'm reviewing a paper for a conference, that is not really related to my narrow field, that I don't know its ranking, that I haven't read any paper from previous series.

The paper is so so, not too strong, not too weak. It would be a straight reject in some top-tier conferences, but might be accepted/weak accepted at some other lower rank conferences. How do I make a decision about this paper for this particular conference?

An obvious solutions is to read a couple of papers from previous series to have a sense, but given it is not very related to my narrow field, it will take me a lot of time, and I'm having several other deadlines.

UPDATE: to answer Pete L. Clark's comments.

  So I think your first task must be to decide whether to referee the
  paper at all

I have never submitted to a journal before, but I think one of the main difference between journals and conferences is that: in a conference, the chairs can't always select the right reviewers for a paper.

In a conference, there is a fixed set of PC members. After the deadline for abstractions, the PC members start bidding for the papers they want/don't want to review. The PC chairs then have a painful task: assigns papers to PC members (there are tool supported, but mostly useless). Obviously, there is never the case that everybody is satisfied, it's very rare that you get the papers that you want to review, and it's not uncommon that you get the papers that you don't want to review. When you are a PC member, you can't refuse to review the papers assigned to you.

If the conference adopts double-blinded review, you are not allowed to assign external reviewers either. In the case you can ask external reviewers to do reviewing for you, since those external reviewers do the reviewing without any credit (at least PC members have their names in the conference's web site), in most of the cases you can only assign to your postdocs/PhD students. So now you understand why I have to review this paper, and that refusing to review papers is not an option (my boss is the unlucky PC member).

First let me say that I work in a field (pure math) that is closely related intellectually but for which approximately zero percent of papers are published in conferences.  In this case I don't see how it matters that it is a conference rather than a journal except possibly to reduce the timeline until the decision (though some journals in my field are starting to ask for reports within a few weeks!), so I will answer based on my own experience.

The main problem here is that your expert opinion has been called for on something that you do not feel like a fully fledged expert and that (as is most often the case!) it is not practical for you to fix this by substantially increasing your expertise.

So I think your first task must be to decide whether to referee the paper at all.  If you for instance you didn't understand the paper at all then certainly you should not be a referee.  If you've already agreed to do it, that makes backing out of it more socially awkward, but it could still be the right decision, as it may take some reading of the paper to find the stuff you don't understand.  If you vaguely understand it but really not enough to evaluate it in any meaningful way, again I think you should not referee it.  If you like, you can explicitly offer to referee something else instead, and I'll bet the chances are good that a different paper could be found.

If you feel that you can or must referee the paper but really feel shaky about evaluating it, then you can write a report in such a way that your evaluation will be minimized, e.g. by explicitly writing something like

  I was asked to review this paper, and so I will.  But I want to be clear that it lies outside of my core area of expertise, so my recommendations about its suitability for the conference are tentative.  I hope that more weight will be put on the other recommendations.

And then you can give a "weak" recommendation, which should then be drowned out by the others.

However, your question suggests that you are sufficiently qualified to referee the paper that the first alternative is not appropriate and the second one may not be either: you write

  The paper is so so, not too strong, not too weak. It would be a straight reject in some top-tier conferences, but might be accepted/weak accepted at some other lower rank conferences. How do I make a decision about this paper for this particular conference?

[Point of order: a paper can't be "weak accepted" by a conference.  It must either be accepted or rejected.  So here you are doing a bit of what other people have brought up: conflating the referee's recommendation with the editor's decision.]

Rather importantly, you don't say why the paper would be a clear reject at top conferences.  (Not the assertion is surprising: presumably the vast majority of submitted papers in your field fall into this category.)  Knowing that means that you have some information and insight about the paper (and more than you've told us).  In fact it might be helpful for you to tell us how you came to this conclusion.

Probably I don't need to tell you that if the paper does not contain any correct, novel work that is of interest to someone, it should not be published anywhere.  Conversely, if it does meet these requirements it should be published somewhere.  If you don't know enough about the standards of this particular conference, you can work around that by explaining you would recommend rejection in venue A but recommend acceptance in venue B (this is rather common information in referee reports, at least in my field).  Then the editor can decide where the conference lies with respect to the data points you've provided.

If you feel qualified enough, then at a certain point you do have to impose whatever standard you feel is most reasonable.  If you don't know the field very well and the paper is not interesting to you, then [assuming you've decided to go ahead with the referee job] you should recommend it for rejection: what else?  On the other hand, if you find the paper to be at least somewhat interesting you should act so as to leave the door open for the paper to be accepted, in particular by writing that you would recommend it for acceptance at journal or conference X.   Ultimately you're leaving a decision to the editorial board that they would have anyway: among papers that are publishable in absolute terms, do they want to publish these papers or those papers?  If they get a whole bunch of reports of the form "The paper is okay; it could be published somewhere in between heaven and hell; I don't really have strong feelings about it" then they're going to have a problem....but who is to blame for the problem?  Them, of course: they did not find the right referees and were not clear enough in their standards.

Let me end by saying that I have found myself in similar situations more than once: namely, I get asked to referee a paper by a journal I've never heard of, in a subfield of mathematics different from any of the ones I've thought deeply about.  And in fact I have usually done more or less the above: sometimes I turn it down (and I have learned to be decisive about this; if I gave some choice to the editor, it always turns out that they want me to do it anyway), but if I can do it I often take the job.  A paper should certainly look novel to the relative outsider if it will look so to the expert, and in some cases I have rejected the paper for not making clear progress over (even) its own citations.  More often the papers have been a bit interesting. Sometimes I have found significant mistakes: I can't remember a situation where the mistake was so bad that I outright recommended rejection, but there have been situations in which revisions have been necessary in order for the principal results to look correct.  (I don't know how this plays out for the shorter timeframe of a conference: presumably outright rejection becomes more likely.)  In fact the most common outcome is that I understand the paper well enough and think it's somewhat interesting and novel, though certainly not the kind of breakthrough to be published in a higher tier journal.  In these cases I have recommended the paper for acceptance and included in my referee report an honest depiction of the situation: e.g. if I am unfamiliar with the journal, I say so.  I believe in every such case the paper has been accepted.  This has been fine for me, since having been an author many times and an editor never, fundamentally I am more sympathetic to the situation of a solid paper being rejected than to the plight of a journal that publishes a good paper rather than a great one.  "A tie goes to the author," I feel.  Given the number of papers I've refereed, this attitude seems to be okay with the editors, who do in fact once in a (great) while cheerfully reverse my recommendations.


Forcing to list a co-author that did not contribute after publishing We published a paper, me as first and corresponding author. There was a technician who repeatedly refused to work, did useless measurements after having been forced, which he never evaluated and basically said "help yourself", never had a look at the publication during working on it, and now tries to force the group leaders to be included as co-author afterwards by lying about his contributions (still, he would have done no intellectual work but was pipetting down my protocols). Data integrity steps are not provided by the institute, so everyone could copy measurement files from the shared server. The group leaders want me to give in although they agreed with me on the phone, just because they fear more consequences from him than from me, since I was nice so far. Now I don't see why I should constantly reward such a person.

The paper is published. They agreed. Can they even force me if I (and another co-author) say no?
Would - by your experience - the journal be willing to amend at all?
Can he/they force me legally? I am not even employed there anymore.
Do I have to prove anything after publication? Can someone claim data from a shared server anyway? Is it my turn to (re)act?
Would you do some "preparing steps" from my side if not willing to give in?
Do you have any advice from former experience?

Kind regards and thanks for any help!

You might take a look here; and as for a more detailed response, let me focus on this one question:

Would you do some "preparing steps" from my side if not willing to give in?

You could ask everyone to tell you which contributions they offered based on the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT). And make sure that the CRediTs are visible in the publication as well.
On the one hand, it is possible that they will hesitate to point out their contribution in case they do not find anything worthwhile to pick from CRediT. On the other hand, you might actually end up finding one minuscule contribution of that co-author that does merit a mention according to CRediT. The "objectified" nature of CRediT might help to resolve such conflicts.
And if you have the CRediTs published as well, then the readership will at least know the variation in efforts of each co-author.


My postdoc advisor wants me to work on a topic that I don't have a proper theoretical background in. How to proceed with this? My PhD involved using a commercially available software to carry out simulations. Now I am pursuing postdoc at another lab. My current advisor wants me to develop new complex models for which I don't have any academic experience in. I have 3-4 months before he starts expecting outcomes.

I am panicking as I don't have theoretical background to do the job. This will involve studying 2 courses right from scratch. (continuum mechanics, non linear finite element analysis). This, I have to self study right from basics and I am feeling that I will fail.

I never lied on my resume. I knew this project will involve more rigor than what I had done before. But now, I feel that I should have done more coursework during my PhD. My undergrad was in different  field, so never took classes for these subjects. Now, as a postdoc in a lab, it's impossible to do actual courses in a university. I feel miserable.

Do you have any suggestions on how I should proceed with this?

I started my PhD in computer science in 2002. My last prior formal education was a master's degree awarded in 1975. Everything I knew about the prior quarter century of developments in computer science I had learned by self-education from books and papers, as well as practical experience and a couple of industry courses. Although I did take courses during my PhD studies, my dissertation research depended on basic ideas in linear algebra that I learned from books.

I find it hard to understand deciding in your 20's that you are too old to learn new basic material from books, papers, on-line tutorials, and other self-education.

To proceed, I suggest discussing your need for more basics with your advisor, not in a spirit of expecting failure, but asking for advice on what you need to know and how to go about learning it. Your advisor may recommend books, or a course you can audit.

For your long term future, it would be better to learn now how to learn without courses, and get over your current block. Avoiding it by collaboration will just leave the block in place to stop you the next time you need to add to your basic knowledge.


Should I send unsolicited applications for postdoc positions? I am currently concluding my PhD in England and I’d like to do a postdoc preferably in the US or Canada. I’d like to know:

Does it make sense to contact the supervisors when I find an interesting project or should I only act upon explicit job advertisements?

Absolutely you should, many positions aren't advertised and it could be your skills are just what the other group needed. Make sure you go for a quality over quantity approach, and really tailor each application to the group you are applying to. A well thought out cover letter (checked for spelling and grammar) and a well formatted and targeted CV puts you in a favourable position. A good approach is to send an application by post as well as by email; you will really stand out doing this. Talk about what you what you like in the group, your current situation, and how you think you would contribute to the group's research. In terms of funding, if you have some already great, if not, research what you would be eligible for and open the possibility of the pair of you developing an application together.


Is Bsc from Netherlands in Computer Science eligible for M S from USA Hi My son will be joining Bsc in computer science from TU Delft Netherlands after completing 12 years of school education from India. Will he be eligible for MS after his graduation from. US universities?

That is probably dependent on the institution.  You may have to check with each college or university you apply.  Also, check with the department too, don't ask general admissions.


What is the "books received" section in journals? What is the "books received" section in journals? Is it the books that will be reviewed later on, or the ones that were not reviewed? Who can send their books to the "books received" section, and what's the point of it?

It is what it says on the tin: a list of books that the journal has received copies of. The review editor(s) can then pick interesting titles from this list, and send them out for review for a future issue. Space is usually limited, so typically some of the books won't be reviewed in the journal. The journal might also decline publishing some completed reviews. For those cases, the list serves as recognition "of the courtesy of the sender".

As far as I know, usually anyone can send their books to the journal - be it a publisher, an author, or a reader who just happens to have a spare copy. Readers can also notify the journal about a certain book that they would like to see reviewed, or volunteer to review one, whether it has shown up on the list or not. Presumably, if readers of the journal are interested in the book, the journal would be more interested in publishing a review.


How do I find applied math tenure track positions at at liberal arts / four-year colleges? I'm having difficulty isolating tenure track positions in applied mathematics at institutions with more emphasis on teaching than research.  I've heard that 'liberal arts colleges' and 'four-year colleges' are the way to go, but it seems difficult to find ones with openings for applied mathematics professors.

I tried mathjobs.org, but there seem to be an overwhelming bias toward research-oriented institutions and I can't seem to isolate the ones with less research focus.  How do I find applied math tenure track positions at four-year / liberal arts colleges with little to no focus on research?  Do they even exist?  Or these institutions prefer pure / unspecific mathematicians for general classes?

For the record: I'm starting a job search for fall 2015.

Context: I'm a professor at a mid-sized regional university, non-research oriented, but taught for 14 years at small liberal arts colleges.

It sounded in the question like you have only just begun the job search process. I'll assume this is the case in my answer. With that assumption there could be a few things in play here.

Pretty much all small colleges have closed their searches for Fall 2014 by this point. There may be a few exceptions, but for the most part small colleges tend to adhere to the usual ebb and flow of the hiring process -- advertise in mid- to late summer, initial screening and phone interviews in the fall, initial interviews at the Joint Meetings in January, on-campus interviews in February, hiring decision in March. Unlike research universities where sudden influxes of grant money or sudden faculty turnover is more common, smaller schools deviate less from the basic pattern.
Likewise, if you are looking for a position for Fall 2015 and are early, most of these places won't have advertised yet. Check back in July. I know for a fact that MathJobs.org does get ads from smaller schools so it's not that you're looking in the wrong place. Also look at the EIMS, the Chronicle, and Inside Higher Ed.
If you are doing a search with the term "applied" it, take it out and see what happens. At smaller or non-research oriented schools, you'll see only ads for mathematicians, not "applied mathematicians" or "pure mathematicians". (There are exceptions.) In such places, like where I am, its expected that people will be generalists.

Good luck!


Change of research field from physics to biology I would like to know if disciplines such as cell biology and genetics or research areas such as cancer need physicists. I am getting a PhD in biophysics, however, it did not involve biology directly. It involved spectroscopic methods on biological samples without regard to their biology.

I know those areas are broad and it also depends on my CV and publication records, however, I would like to know how likely and possible it is for a physicist to get a postdoc in biology.

While I am able to do mathematical modeling, I would like to do wet lab experiments rather than just doing math and using computer. What concerns me is that because the positions are competitive and I do not have prior experience in biology experiments I either will not have be able to enter this field or I have to enter it to do mathematical modeling.

I would like mainly to know about personal experience or the point of view of a principle investigator.

There is absolutely a need for physical scientists in cell and developmental biology as well as cancer. Take a look at, e.g. this story: https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201003/nih.cfm

I know many, many physicists who have moved into experimental biology, and PhD to postdoc is a natural time to do this. However, if you are going to need to be trained in a wet lab, you need to ensure you are moving into a group that values the other skills you bring - rigorous quantitative thinking, computational skills, spectroscopy or microscopy - enough to train you in the biological part.

How do you find these people? First, I'd suggest reading deeply in the field you'd like to go into, and seeing when people use ideas from physics (e.g. groups studying phase transitions in RNA granules, or collective behavior of cells, or entropy and information in developmental biology), or look at mechanics in detail. Those groups are more likely to be receptive to someone with your background. Other tell-tale signs are groups who are listed in "quantitative biology" programs or who are housed in Physics, Mechanical Engineering, Bioengineering, etc. If you are interested in cancer, places with Physical Sciences in Oncology centers are natural fits.

My impression is that, though there is a lot of competition for postdocs in biology, students with strong quantitative backgrounds who want to work in wet labs are hard to find.


I want to submit a paper to arXiv.org, but I'm not affiliated to an Institute. What can I do? I have a paper which I'm interested in submitting to arXiv.org.

However, the submission guidelines say an institutional affiliation is required for submission. I've graduated in physics from Unicamp in Brazil, but I didn't follow a scientific career. My current employer doesn't relate to physics.

What do you suggest that I do? Is there a way to submit my paper? Or is there an alternative to arXiv.org?

I don't see where it says that you must have a institutional affiliation,
Reading comprehension is not my strength.

It also says that you must represent your affiliation correctly. If your current employment is concerned with certain areas of Computer Science or Mathematics (and your paper is in a related area) this will probably count. Otherwise, I'd suggest entering "none", as that is the truth of the matter.

However, I believe that without either an affiliation or a history with arXiv they will expect you to get endorsed before they accept your submissions.

As for finding endorser they write

  If you're looking for an endorsement, you can find somebody qualified to endorse by clicking on the link titled "Which of these authors are endorsers?" at the bottom of every abstract.

Now all that is left is for you to convince one of these people that you are serious and competent. Assuming that you were previously affiliated with a institution in the appropriate field you should probably use your contacts there to get in touch with an endorser: they are like to suspect that anyone who contacts them out of the blue is a Not-Very-Serious-Person (tm).


How to obtain a copy of my own article from an APS (American Physical Society) journal? I recently published an article in one of the journals of the American Physical Society (APS). Our university library does not have a subscription to this particular journal, so I don't have access to the published version of the article.

On the other hand, APS allows to share the published version of the paper with colleagues and even to put it on the university website (see FAQ at APS, also this question).

In the past, other journals have provided me with an (electronic) copy of my article after publication, which I'm not allowed to share. However, it seems that APS won't give me automatic access to my paper. At least I haven't found any option on the authors page and no email was sent to me.

Is there a way to obtain a (electronic) copy of my article from APS?

I know that I could buy the article, either through the library service or our own group budget. But it feels kind of strange to buy one's own paper back from the publisher.
I could also ask someone from another university who does have access to it to send me a copy.

But is there an official way to obtain the paper?

You could ask the journal editor directly to send a copy of your publication. I will help to clearly summarise your situation. This will be something they encounter on a regular basis and if the editor replies with a strict "no", you can still ask a colleague for the download. It is your work, so the editor will likely be understanding. Hope this helps!


Paper is based completely on my thesis, but I'm mentioned in the acknowledgements only, not as a co-author, what should I do? I developed a medical device for my master's project. The general idea was initiated by my supervisor but the rest of the work is mine (Design, build up, test, measurements, results and some additional functions I added to the idea).

After finishing the master thesis my supervisor started to write a paper about my project. The information in the paper comes from my master thesis and it merely rewrites and summarizes ideas from my thesis. Additionally, all the results and discussions were also picked from it. I was away during this because I found a job in a different city. My supervisor then started to contact me and asked me to give him feedback about what he wrote and to explain the results and said that he would name me as the co-author. I was supporting until the point that I got very busy, but soon his questions become orders and he started to ask very silly questions so I stopped responding.

Finally, he threatened to acknowledge my contribution only, that is, to only mention my name in the acknowledgement and not as a co-author, because he was not satisfied with my support / me not responding to his requests for help with the paper.

The whole paper is taken from my thesis and all the results are mine on top of the added support that I gave but finally, he'll mention me in the acknowledgements only.

Is he right in doing this / allowed to do this and if not what can I do?

I am thinking of contacting the journal and explain all of this. What do you think?

I will try to give my perspective, on both sides if possible. In many countries, most incentive professors have for supervising undergraduate or MSc theses, is that some of them (or all if possible) may actually lead to a publication. There is a problem though: Most of the time undergraduate or MSc students leave the university and the paper usually can only be prepared after the student graduates. Unfortunately, at that time the student has already left academia and has really no interest in publishing, since he has more important things to do (like finding a job). This is quite the setting that the OP describes.

Still in your case, your supervisor of the thesis has started writing the paper himself and he needs your help. Initially you provided the help needed but you became frustrated because it was more work than you wanted / expected to do, because (let's face it) the paper really does not make a huge difference to you. On the other hand, you want to stop him from publishing it solo. So, both parties are partially right to be angry at each other. You do not want to take orders from him and he does not want to be treated like an idiot (who calls his questions silly) from his former student.

So, how can you fix this? For me, writing emails back and forth is not the way to discuss details for a paper. Why don't you use a better mean of communication such as skype, face-to-face meeting, phone call etc. You can there discuss all the details and your problem will be resolved. Of course he writes the paper and he will be the first author. But you get a publication and everyone is happy. And who knows? In the future you may collaborate further.


How to access Google's research My PhD research is about AI and the topic I choose is relatively new.

As far as I know, the only organisation that has worked on that area is Google.

by searching this topic there wasn't enough info of that it was done, techniques, methodology, statistics, etc.

I wonder if there is a certain process to follow so I can get access to Google's research?

Google's publications are available here: https://ai.google/research/pubs.


Do the papers go through the same process when submitted through open access This question is in reference to my question here How to know which journal is open access?

I came to know from my previous question that there are journals which are hybrid journals i.e. they support open access  and at the same time they have issues which dont charge fees from the author.

Now the question is what is the difference in publication process of the two ways in the same journal?

Suppose that I submit a paper in the journal "Discrete Maths" which supports both ways.
So what will be the process of my paper getting accepted/rejected go through when I submit through open access and when I dont submit through open access?

Does the paper go through the same process if I pay the fee or it goes through a different process?

And if it goes through the same tedious process why should the authors pay a large sum of money for it?

I am completely new in this field.So any help will be beneficial.

Open access fee payment is after the paper is accepted. This is to prevent conflict of interest. It means peer review is conducted without knowing whether the paper is open access, and it means the editorial board / publisher is under no extra incentive to accept the paper because of the article processing charge.

In other words, if you submit your paper to Discrete Maths, you should make it all the way to the decision stage (i.e. an accept/reject decision) before you are asked whether you want to make your paper open access. If you say yes, then the production process changes - for example the publisher will use a different imprint on the first page that says you continue to hold the copyright. But that happens after the decision stage. Before it, everything remains the same.

As for why pay a large sum of money for open access: open access is not meant as a shortcut to skip peer review, it's meant as a way to make your paper publicly visible for free. If you publish something in a subscription journal, only those who subscribe to the journal can read it. If you publish something open access, anyone can read it. The core "idea" behind open access is that scientific research should be free to help progress humanity's knowledge as a whole. You can read more about it on the Wikipedia page.


How to fix a mistake in an accepted paper? I submitted a joint paper and it is accepted by a journal after two minor revisions.
In the last revision, there is a misunderstanding between my coauthor and me, so the last revisions still contained several mistakes.
The manuscript has gone into production and the journal will send the proofs.

How do I fix the mistake?

(1) Should I contact the journal immediately and send revised manuscript?

Or

(2) should I wait the proof-reading version and ask the journal to fix my mistakes?

I prefer the first option, since this is faster and pointing out the mistake in the proof-reading version is more difficult than fixing the original manuscript.
The manuscript is written in LATEX.
However, I also understand that the first option will be a problem to the journal.

Send them both a revised version and a detailed explanation what needs to be changed. Depending on where your submission is in the production process, they may prefer the former or the latter. Do it as quickly as possible.


Whether to share at thesis defense where I have submitted pertaining papers to I have submitted journal articles that come from my thesis.

When defending the thesis, is it a good idea to give the names of the journals to which those pertaining papers were submitted to?

No, when defending your thesis there is no reason to give the names of the journals to which you have submitted papers based on it. It would not benefit you in any way (since they have not been accepted) and you will be embarrassed if the papers are rejected.


Citing published papers while using their pre-print versions Is it unethical if we cite a paper with mentioning the publication venue (e.g,. author, "paper title," journal name, year) when quoting or mentioning some idea from it, while we have not even seen the paper in its final published form and what we have read is indeed previous versions of it (e.g., because we got it from the author's homepage, arXiv, etc., which are not copy-editted and may have some differences with the final version)?

If yes, what is the solution? (Having many references without any publication venues and e.g., by mentioning the url of the file we have, makes our paper ugly)

I'm going to answer from a (theoretical) computer science perspective.

For historical reasons, in computer science, the "published version" of the paper is likely to be much lower quality than the arxiv preprint. Conference proceedings typically have terrible page limits. Usually 8-12 pages are allowed, but I have heard of 4-page limits. Formally, the published version is not a full paper, it is an "extended abstract".

The standard practice in has become to cite the conference paper but to read the full version on arxiv. It's the only thing that makes sense given our publication system. I rarely bother to find the published version of papers I cite, even if they are readily available.

If it's standard practice in computer science, I struggle to believe that it is unethical in other fields. The arxiv version should be good enough and, if it isn't, it's the authors' responsibility to update it (or withdraw it).


If I am interested in specializing in theory of computation, should I be looking for a PhD program in CS or math? I took a Theory of Computation class years ago through my university's math department that I really enjoyed and found interesting. If I wanted to further pursue study/research/specialization with Theory of Computation what what kind of Ph.D program should I be looking for? Computer Science or Math. I am leaning towards Math grad school since I not inclined to take take classes about Database and OS design.

Has the prevalence of computer science programs in major universities during the past 30 years made the new researcher in the Theory of Computation normally a CS grad student or is it normal for pure math grad students specializing in theory of computation?

Generally speaking, in the US, the theorists will be in the computer science department, but it will not be hard to make arrangements for you to work with them as a student in the math PhD program.

Would you prefer to TA and eventually teach introductory programming courses, or calculus courses?  That's probably going to be the biggest difference (especially down the line after you graduate) between the two options.


Conference sponsored by a top conference? How related two conferences are if B is sponsored by A? If A is a top conference, does this make B a worth-trusting conference also? For example, SIGCOMM is a top conference in computer networks & communications, and CoNEXT is sponsored by it. Does that automatically make CoNEXT a quality conference?

I'm not sure what it means for one conference to sponsor another. In the particular case you mention, "SIGCOMM" is both the name of a conference and the name of a group within the ACM that sponsors that conference. So it's likely that SIGCOMM (the group) is sponsoring CONEXT, rather than SIGCOMM (the conference).


Changing supervisors in graduate program Suppose that a student joins a graduate program with supervisor A. The supervisor has a bad reputation in the research group with a history of not caring for his students, e.g. professor goes to sabbatical on a regular basis and does not skype with his students, replies to emails from students in 5 minutes, does not help students with their coursework, expects students to comment on his research work, expects students to be independent, etc.

Incidentally, after a few months, he becomes more interested in the research interests of supervisor B in the same research group.

In this case, it is standard procedure for the student to be officially co-supervised by both supervisors A and B even though the student's projects are all supervised by supervisor B.

Now consider an alternative scenario. The student becomes more interested in the research interests of supervisors B and C.

In this case, is it standard procedure for the student to be officially co-supervised by supervisors B and C? In other words, does the student leave supervisor A completely?

How common is the second scenario in graduate programs?

Does the switch leave a bad impression of professors (in the research group) on the student?

The idea of a graduate (or PhD) program is to form the student into an independent researcher. This normally includes the liberty of the student to choose his own projects and research. On the other hand, the student also has to learn about funding, e.g. it might be that he only gets money if he works in As lab at least XX hours a week. This also counts as learning experience: If the student wants to work elsewhere, he might need to acquire new funds for it.

Regarding your question what of it is standard or not, that highly depends on field, country, university, even institution. Thus it would be best to ask your advisor, other students,... about how it is handled.


Dissertation topic in one field and degree in another field? Feeing kind of stuck here. I started out as a math PhD student then switched to engineering. I thought by doing so I would be able to learn new skills and expertise in that particular field. But I quickly realized my advisor had a side interest in a math-ish field that is tangentially related to his main area (maybe that’s THE reason I was hired in the first place) but obviously his knowledge is limited in this new field.

Somehow I managed to publish 3 papers in engineering/applied math journals (by fluke? I thinkso) but since everything I know about this field is self-taught I don’t feel confident in my knowledge. I don’t know enough math to become a mathematician nor can I claim expertise in this engineering field I am supposedly in and time is running out.

My biggest fear is actually that the committee members are going to think I have been doodling around doing some unrelated math stuff and reject my dissertation (does this happen? My advisor doesn’t seem worried about this possibility at all). What are my options here really? I suppose if I manage to graduate I will just get a regular job outside of academia, but I do want my degree as I have been here for too long.

You write that you do not feel confident in your knowledge. However, experts in your field have put your knowledge to the test, and deemed it worthy of publication in a journal. Not once, not twice, but three times. Trust those experts. If they think your knowledge is good enough for three journal publications, then the committee members are highly likely to think similarly positively about your dissertation.

A solid background in mathematics is fertile ground for an exceptional career in any engineering discipline. If you stop worrying about the limitations of your knowledge, and instead accept that everyone's knowledge is by definition limited, you have a bright future ahead of you.


Is certified translation of diploma an absolute necessary? I will apply for a Ph.D. position, and the university is asking for an English version of my transcript record and diploma.

My diploma/transcripts records are in French and the cost of a certified translation is enormous.

Is it possible to send non-certified translations? I would, of course, precise that they can ask for a certified one if necessary

Only they can answer the question as it is their rules that apply. But I think you propose a good solution. Send them a "faithful" translation that you can prepare at little cost. Offer to send a certified copy if necessary, but mention that the cost of such a translation is high.

But you might also be able to have your university provide an English language translation or even to assure the recipient that your translation is accurate.


Should mathematical symbols and equations be included in a word count? I am currently in the process of finishing up my Master's thesis which requires me to disclose the exact word count.

My thesis contains a lot of mathematical symbols and equations and I am not sure whether those, together with table and figure captions, should be included in the final word count or not.

I know how many words, inline math and display math (in LaTeX terms) elements my document contains, but I am just not sure whether to count them or not.

My university has not given any guidance on what to include in the word count, so I am wondering if there are any general rules that apply in this situation? The only thing I could find on the internet was from APS Journals:
 "The word equivalent for displayed math is 16 words per row for single-column equations. Two-column equations count as 32 words per row."

Any guidance on this would be greatly appreciated!

To me, the key question is this: what is the purpose of the word count?

If the purpose is to fill in a blank that says: "word count goes here", then just take the simplest approach that will give you a number and don't sweat the details.  Personally, I would run "wc" on my LaTeX source in such a case.

On the other hand, in some cases word count is being used to determine how the length of your document relates to a minimum or maximum length.  If it's actually strict, then they'll generally provide clear guidance; if it's an approximate guideline (which is usually the case), then again, just take a reasonable approach that will let you conform and don't sweat the details.


Where to draw the line when giving feedback? When teaching undergraduates, I find myself trying to balance making them stretch to produce good work and giving them guidance. I must admit in my own undergraduate and graduate studies I rarely if ever asked for feedback (plenty of missed opportunities for me). That might color my judgment on this question.

This question is somewhat related to this other one Drawing Lines when Giving Ideas to Undergraduate Students; however, this question is more focused on when to give feedback and when not to.

I generally do quite a few in-class activities (and am considering automated online no-penalty testing) and I consider those ample chances for students to gain feedback which does not affect their final grade (formative feedback). Most modules in my department are assessed by one written report. While I do have the ability to change how my modules are assessed the question still remains:

Does reviewing drafts and giving advice on how to improve their graded submission (prior to actual submission) maximize student learning?

I am interested in any research in this field as well as expert opinions.

Arguments for giving feedback before submission

Students may genuinely not understand what is expected of them (although I do feel I cover it quite well in dedicated review sessions)
Students may work harder when things are made crystal clear

Arguments against giving feedback before submission

Students may end up looking to the teacher for too much assistance and will, therefore, become more dependent where we want to foster independence
Students may be lazy and simply wait for the teacher to tell them exactly what to write seek excessive hand-holding when deciding what to write.

In student surveys asking for what students would most like to see more of, students primarily choose to have more feedback of their drafts prior to submission. This is unsurprising since (almost) everyone wants a better grade. However, I'm thinking that reviewing of drafts is actually hindering student learning.

A first point is to ask what is the purpose of the activity to be graded? Is it to test student's knowledge, or is it to provide a learning activity? If it is the former, then feedback before grading seems counter-productive. If it is the latter then the feedback is necessary to provide the sought effect.

I am experiencing this problem with student theses. In the system where I work, the thesis is considered an individual work and grading it should take into consideration qualities such as originality and independence and yet the student has a supervisor who should provide input. The task is caught in the middle between examination of a task and a learning experience; and each supervisor has their own take on where the limits are. So why is this such a mess?

The key lies in failing to define what is a learning experience and what is a test of knowledge or understanding. Hence it is necessary to try to define these points so that the division becomes clear to all concerned. The key lies in deciding the balance between the two. Feedback provided after grading is, in my opinion a lost cause since students have moved on to other activities and very few probably run through the comments. Better is then to, for example, build in the feedback into the grading. This can be done by setting a preliminary grade and stating that successfully working through (not just any work-through) comments to improve the task will provide additional points or step up to a higher grade. This may be incentive enough for most to do the extra work and for those who do not want to, well that will be their decision.

So a key ingredient will be to build in the feedback--improvement into the grading of the task. exactly how to do this will of course vary depending on the task at hand.


How to mail the editor asking to withdraw my submission? How do I say to the editor that I want to withdraw my paper from his journal?

I had submitted a paper to a journal 10 days back. When I checked recently, the status was showing "Under Review".

But just today, one of my friends found a serious flaw in one of my results!  Now I need to withdraw my paper from the journal so that we both can review it and then send it again.

I also want to include my friend's name as a co-author because he helped me a lot.

Can I mail the journal editor saying I want to withdraw?  It has been only a 3-4 days the status is showing "Under Review".

Until you give up copyright to your work it is yours. Yes, you can withdraw it. However, you might be better served by sending a note that you have found a flaw and expect to have a revision of the paper within X days, where X is reasonably small. Ask how to proceed and ask if the editor can just put the paper on hold for the interim.

I can't predict the response, but it might be better than withdrawing it altogether. But, yes, you can do that.

Adding the colleague as a co-author should also offer no difficulties.


Research Design Help: Measuring the effects of plagiarism intervention (Background: I am a full-time EFL instructor at a university in S. Korea. I want to do independent research, as most faculty would not be interested to collaborate with someone who only has an MA.)

Korea is known as the plagiarism capital of the world. Since I work with student writers there, I am very interested in the subject. I am trying to devise a research project which can measure the efficacy of plagiarism intervention strategies, namely teaching paraphrasing, summarization, and citation skills. I have done a small literature review and have ideas for getting student perspectives on plagiarism using already validated surveys. However, since I want to focus on effect, I was wondering if anyone had suggestion on how to actually measure this?

I was thinking some kind of pre-test/post-test, but would really love some more ideas.

Edit: to expand on the pre-test/post-test idea, I had thought about giving them a number of short paragraphs which they would need to paraphrase and cite correctly (assuming paraphrasing is a vital referencing skill) pre-intervention and then post.

I am just improvising on the fly here but does Korea have software like TurnItIn which measures (in a few different ways) the level of plagiarism in a particular paper or a set of papers usually from online sources.

If you do, then you could think about devising an experiment where, in a class, you inform the students that you will be trying to reduce their "plagiarism tendencies" and take a pre-test perceptions survey. Next, you set a particular class paper as an assignment and note the different measurements on TurnItIn (or equivalent). Then, you make your intervention (in whatever form you choose) and finally set another class paper as an assignment and note the different measurements on TurnItIn this time. Finally, you set a post-test debriefing and follow up survey.

I think this would make for a very nice repeated measures model (from the TurnItIn or equivalent data) and some nice latent variable analysis from your surveys.

I hope this helps you in some meaningful way.


Would graduate committee be more favorable to a barely passed grad course or no grad course at all while undergrad I recently completely messed up a graduate level class I'm taking.

There is little hope that I will get a reasonably good grade out of this course, therefore I'm contemplating dropping it. Even I don't drop and get everything to 100%, I will wind up with around 65 at the end. Horrible.

If I drop it, my GPA will be preserved but I will have a lot of explanation to do to my recommenders for grad school, and it is kind of awful that it would most likely to be the first course I will take in grad school. I'm glad I found out how hard it was while still being an undergrad, but I'm not happy at all that so much efforts were spent for a miserable result.

Would grad committee look more favorably towards a barely passed grad course you took as an undergrad, or no grad course at all but reasonable gpa.

The big question that both your recommenders and the admissions committee will wonder about is what this experience predicts for you in graduate school.  If you do poorly when taking a grad class now, will you be able to do well in grad school?

One factor may be preparation.  Maybe you were enthusiastic but overly ambitious, and in another year you'll have the experience and preparation needed to do well.  This is the reassuring scenario.

Another possibility is that you're just not used to be challenged by courses, since the undergraduate program was not very demanding.  Now that you know what you face, you'll take it more seriously and do better.  It's entirely possible, but this scenario is more worrisome.  Lots of people say "oh, next time I'll work harder," but this is easier said than done.

And there are even more worrisome possibilities.  For example, maybe you just didn't like the material and couldn't bring yourself to engage deeply with it.  This could be a symptom of lack of preparation, or it could be a sign that this field is not a good fit for you.

I'd recommend dropping the course.  In grad school there's no value in barely passing a course: if you need to learn something, then you need to really learn it well, not just avoid failing.  This means a bad grade on a transcript won't impress admissions committees, and it means you're going to have to go back and learn this material properly in the future anyway.  Probably you should take this course in grad school.  If you don't take it, then you'll need to put in some serious effort to master the material on your own.

Meanwhile, you should think about what went wrong and how to explain it to your recommenders, so that you reassure them regarding your future in grad school.


Professor Title in Application? On my grad school applications for an American Statistics MS, the application asks for the Professor title. I've always referred to my professors with the "Professor" title, but I'm wondering if title on a grad school application is concerning their official position / ranking in the department?

For example, one of my professors has a PhD from my Alma Mater but on the department website, it indicates she is a Lecturer. Should I indicate she is a Lecturer on the application? Or is it still appropriate to list her as a Professor?

Another one is indicated as "Professor & Graduate Vice Chair". Is it relevant to include the Graduate Vice Chair part or should I only include Professor?

Please point me in the right direction or provide some clarity if you can. I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks!

Refer to the official departmental website and use the official title. If the departmental website itself is inconsistent (sometimes happens), pick any designation.


What is the the history of Qualifying Exams in the US? I've been trying to do some research on the history of Qualifying Exams in the US; but, unfortunately, I've not been able to find anything other than the occasional quote, and nothing before the 1950s.
What's going on here? Were they not common practice before the 1940s and 1950s? If not, why? What instigated their creation? I'm just speculating here, but were they a response to GIs returning to academia after the war?
In short, I'm asking... what is the history behind the Qualifying Exams in the US?

In the United States, Ph.D. qualifying exams or quals (also called comprehensive exams or comps, preliminary exams or prelims, and other terms) date back to the late 1930s and proliferated in the postwar period, according to Leonard Cassuto (Chronicle; also noted in the "Comprehensive Exams" chapter of his book The Graduate School Mess):

Comps seem as old as graduate school itself, so that tampering with them might appear the equivalent of rewriting the sacred scrolls. But comprehensive exams in the United States date back only to the late 1930s. They proliferated when graduate populations grew too large after World War II to manage by dissertation alone. Between the GI Bill and Sputnik-related research spending, the number of Ph.D.'s tripled in the 1960s. Against that backdrop, the dissertation defense became more of a formality, creating a need for so-called barrier exams beforehand.

Comprehensive exams had already existed in some departments for undergraduate students, but there was a lack of standardization for curricula at different colleges. For example, a graduate of another university who wanted to earn an MA from Princeton would have to take their senior comprehensive exam covering the undergraduate curriculum at Princeton. Economics professor Richard A. Lester, in "A Critique of Our Colleges" (The American Scholar, 3(4), 1934), uses this example to attack the insularity of graduate education at the time, which favored students from its own institution.
Still, occasional evidence for earlier PhD qualifying exams can be found. In a review for Jacob Viner: Lectures in Economics 301 in Journal of Economic Literature 52(2) (2014), a footnote cites PhD qualifying exams found in the Albert G. Hart papers at Columbia. "Hart had been a graduate student at Chicago from 1931 to 1936," indicating that PhD exams were in place in the economics department at the University of Chicago. That does not indicate that PhD exams were widespread, but only that deep dives into institutional archives might uncover earlier examples that Cassuto may not have been aware of.