Should I reveal academic misconduct on grad school application? I am currently applying to grad schools due soon, and on the system I am using to apply to different schools, it asks whether an academic sanction has been levied against me. In my first year of university I did have a sanction levied against me (assignment worth 5%), however, it did not end up on my transcript. I definitely learned from my mistake, and I know the ethical thing is to answer yes, but I do know that the people who review applications have stated that many people who had answered yes, don't always get accepted. As an applicant in Canada (University of Toronto St.George), will schools be able to know if I had an academic sanction levied against me if its not on my transcript? They only require my academic transcript, and letter of references, and from my understanding this may only be on my internal files, which won't be shared without my permission. I had a friend in a similar situation, however, the sanction will remain on their transcript until they graduate, thus they will have to answer yes.

Any help is appreciated

Thank you

There is a difference between academic sanction and academic misconduct. Your question seems to confuse the two. Technically, if the question specifically asks for academic sanction, then according to your definition of a sanction as you say, you do fulfil that criteria and should mark it Yes.

However, the bar for academic misconduct is far higher and this sanction does not seem to fulfil it. Berkeley defines academic misconduct as -

  any action or attempted action that may result in creating an unfair academic advantage for oneself or an unfair academic advantage or disadvantage for any other member or members of the academic community

I can't see how you getting a zero and being sanctioned for a 5% assignment would lead to an unfair academic advantage in any way. The intent is to create an unfair advantage even if it is not technically illegal or against the rules. Remember though that college applications are the subject to much publicity in America at the moment, with high profile criminal charges led by the Department of Justice splashed across the media - New York Times article

Canada seems different, as they have a more comprehensive public system and no high profile media cases (not that I know of anyway), so the politics would be different. Such a minor 5% sanction for an assignment would not be gripping stuff. However, if you have to get a notary to sign your grad school application, then that would be a higher bar than if you just tick crossed it online. The legalities are complex and the motivation for the university or justice department to investigate an issue that seems outside the spirit of the law and more of a technicality would likely be minimal. Such a low acceptance rate of 8% will mean any reason to refuse your application would likely be significant. Good luck.


Where to add acknowledgement in Article I have written an article (2-column type), and would like to put an acknowledgement to acknowledge the non-substantial contribution of a colleague in the analysis of some data.

The structure of the article is

Introduction
Main body
-> chapter with the data
Conclusion
References

Where and how should I put the acknowledgements?

The acknowledgement is usually placed between the conclusion and the references.

You should write a sentence mentioning how the other person or persons contributed to the paper or your work.


Is patenting based on theoretical findings possible? Imagine one, as part of their academic research, makes a theoretical finding of a new material with interesting properties based on a computer simulation. The method used in the simulation is sound and has been proven to provide reliable results.

Can the discoverer file a patent based on this theoretical work or does one need experimental confirmation that the new material indeed has the predicted properties before being able to file a patent?

The relevant concept here is "reduction to practice," which means that a concept has been sufficiently realized to make it believable.  Where, exactly, this bar lies depends on which field and which country you are dealing with.

The United States, for example, used to have much stronger requirements for working models, but has recently introduced a notion of "preliminary filing" which lets one start the patent process before demonstrating a working model.  In some cases, particularly mechanical devices, the device (fortunately) might never actually have to be demonstrated in action.  In others, such as many types of biological invention, the science is considered so unpredictable that you cannot be considered to have reduced the idea to practice unless you have an actual working example.

For your particular question of computational material design, I do not know where the boundary of "reduction to practice" currently lies.  It is likely to be field-dependent (e.g., is this a mechanical macrostructure like a fabric, a simple atomic structure like a new alloy of steel, or a complex organic structure like a protein agglomerate), will depend on jurisdiction, and is likely to move again in the future as patent offices slowly come to accept the validity of more classes of models.  Thus, the overall answer is "it depends" and "talk to a patent lawyer."


I am so tired and un-focused in my postdoc. Is quitting my position a good choice? About 6 months ago I finished my PhD and started a new postdoc at a prestigious lab at a prestigious university. I was very burned out as I completed my PhD, but I hoped starting fresh I'd find renewed enthusiasm.

However, things started bad and have just gotten worse. I like the university and city and would prefer to keep on for at least a full year, but I'm having a very difficult time concentrating on my work.

My poor performance stresses me almost more than anything else - after 6 months with little to show for myself, I'm afraid of leaving a bad track record. I feel that my postdoctoral advisers just think I'm confused or stupid, but in truth I'm having a terrible time making myself work.

I have trouble keeping my focus on journal articles and it takes me hours to write short to-do lists just because I keep getting distracted. During research related discussions I tend to "zone-out" and start questioning why I'm even there, totally losing the thread of the conversation.

I know that I am actually a capable mathematician and researcher. I'm not sure what's happened to me, but I know things can't continue like this.

It takes years to get over getting a PhD. It sounds like you are having a more difficult time than some. A therapist might be able to help with the issues. At a minimum, tell your supervisor what is going on. You talk only about your work, but you need to think about how the change of city is effecting you personally. Are you living in the lab, or do you have new friends? Often during the PhD process we drop social activities that we enjoy, it might be time to start these up again.

Now that you have a PhD and a Postdoc, it sounds like you are in it for the long haul. The key is to make sure you balance the personal and work aspects of life.


What is the recommended level of detail for published mathematical proofs? Suppose I am writing a Mathematics paper to a peer review reputed journal. I have to go from step 1 to step 2 in the paper which needs the knowledge of some well-established theorem X. Can I go from step 1 to step 2 without saying anything about X?

For example, this page contains some identities related to Fibonacci numbers, which (I assume that) may be well known to reviewers. So, instead of explicitly showing the identity, I want to use it implicitly from going one statement to another statement.

Does it give a poor impression on my paper? If I need to include all supporting identities, the paper may become too long!

What is obvious to you may not be obvious to others.
Let me repeat a story I told in another answer here. I'll just repeat it, but also note that user Stella Biderman commented that the story may be apocryphal and not from KU at all.

Here is a story (real occurrence) from the University of Kansas about 50 or so years ago. A prof, quite well known and respected, was lecturing in Topology. This meant writing proofs on the board. Occasionally a step wouldn't be filled in with the statement "Of course it follows, trivially, that ...". On one such statement, a student didn't see the obvious connection and so asked. The prof looked at the board and the developing proof for a few minutes. Then walked over to the corner of the (chalk) board and started making notes to himself in a tiny script. He went into totally abstract thinking mode, ignoring the class. After a bit of writing and erasing, etc, he wandered out of the room toward his office. The students followed along, gathering outside the office. The prof started pulling books off of his shelf and consulting them - several books - several more minutes.
Then he seemed to find enlightenment and returned to the classroom. When everyone was again seated he announced. "Yes, of course. It's trivial."

The conclusion is that you should make the connections yourself, and not rely on reviewers grokking it. If they don't make the connection they will comment on it and at least slow down acceptance. It is also possible, as the story above, indicates that you might actually be making too big a step or even an incorrect one.


When may a PhD student start publishing? I am a 3rd-year PhD student in Theoretical Computer Science, having started the PhD program after completing my bachelor in Computer Science.

Questions:

Is it okay for a PhD student in their third year to start publishing?
More generally, when may researchers start publishing?

There's absolutely no single timeline for publishing papers. I've had students publish papers as first author in the first year of their PhD, and I myself didn't publish a paper until I was a fourth-year grad student, because I was working in a relatively new field and had to work out all the kinks and issues before I could start writing things up.

Research projects are unique, and have their own respectively timelines. Publish when you have something worth publishing, rather than waiting for some arbitrary clock to go off.


Can my undergraduate research thesis be published in a scientific paper? If so, how should I go? I'm starting my bachelor's degree thesis and i will do some research work. If I achieve good results can my work be published? If so , who should get the credits? I'm afraid that my prof or his research lab can publish/include my work in some their future papers without my name.

If your work is good enough, it deserves to be published. It doesn't matter if it is the result of a hobby, undergraduate studies, or your main job as a researcher.

Summarizing it to make it fit into the space allotted in a journal or conference proceedings will be a daunting task, ask your advisor for guidance and help.


Publish at the Open University as an undergraduate I'm an undergraduate at the Open University (OU), which allows me to study part-time and from home (actually even from a different country). Getting my BSc will take me other several years, but I want to start gaining experience with doing research and start publishing papers. Specifically my field would be the Semantic Web and I already have lots of industry experience in this subject, just not much academic experience yet. So I found this institute at the OU called the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) that actually does quite interesting Semantic Web work. I contacted some professors from various labs in the institute and none seem to offer remote internships.

Now to my question: how do other OU students start publishing given that there isn't really a campus and you're most likely in another country?

PS: I know research is usually accomplished face-to-face, but this relates specifically to OU which is a highly-accredited online university. There must still be a way to do research for an undegrad at OU.

At the risk of sounding obvious let me share some advice that will not be specific to OU.

First, wherever you are, you can do research on your own, although it's usually a tough call while being at the undergraduate level.

A somewhat more realistic option could be locating and contacting the academics in your field at a university reasonably close to your location (so that you can at some point contact them in person) and get them interested in supervising your research jointly with the OU people or on their own.

The problem with the second option is how to get the people at your local university interested in working with you but perhaps you could get some letters of recommendation from your teachers at OU to help your cause.


What can I do about a lecturer who isn't clear enough to understand? I'm a Maths university student and I just can't seem to learn anything from one of my lecturers.

I understand we, as students, should do personal research on our subject. But he just doesn't make any sense.
He'll teach one thing, then during that, he'll RANDOMLY pull out something out of the blue WITH NO EXPLANATION.
Not even a "Well we do this because...".

He explains new concepts, like he's talking to PhD graduates.

I've spoken to him about it and all he says is "He loves teaching".

I've already failed 2 of his module exams because of this and am having to resit them.

What can I do?

Here are some ideas for you to consider.

Seek out a more advanced student who has already made it through the course, for guidance.
If the class has a TA, visit the TA's office hours assiduously.
If the course has a textbook, read it carefully.  If it doesn't, ask the professor for a textbook that is reasonably well aligned with his approach.
Make sure you have a course syllabus.  See if a careful perusal of the syllabus helps.
If you have an advisor or mentor professor, let him or her know.  If you don't have one, try to find one, by talking to another professor in the department that you think may be knowledgeable about the course content.
Let a department administrator know about your difficulties.
Consider withdrawing from the class.


How can I switch from an MBA to a Masters program in a different subject? I am an international student currently enrolled in a MBA program. This is my first semester here and I want to transfer to a different program in a different college. I have a 3-year BSC (Honors) in computing but my grades weren't great. I want to transfer to a MS in Computer Science. However, it seems that most programs require me to have taken certain classes like data structures and statistics, which were not offered in my bachelors program. My plan is to transfer from my MBA program to a bachelors program, take those classes, and then take the GRE and apply for MS. Is that possible? What other options do I have?

Contact the school and department you're interested in, send them your transcript, and ask which and how many of the credits you've already taken would be accepted if you applied as a transfer student.  Don't expect to keep too many of them.


Who to cite as referees for a post doc position? I am currently finishing my PhD thesis (in Mathematics) and trying to find a post doc position.

My PhD supervisor is a very nice person and is, of course, one of my referees.
However, most places need 2-3, so I am not sure who else to ask.

I have a secondary supervisor but we only talked once really during a formal thing. So asking a referee who does not know much about the work or the personality is a bit... weird...

I had a decent relationship with my Master's supervisor, but unfortunately we have not corresponded once in the 3+ years after my masters, so me writing  "hey, do you remember me from waaaay back then, would you please write a reference for me" seems a bit ... strange .. too.

I have published several papers already but I don't have any co-authors whom I could ask.

I have given one talk outside my university but I am not sure who to ask there. I don't actually know these people, my supervisor referred me to them and they were OK so I gave the talk.

Any ideas?

This answer applies most directly to my field of mathematics, but it probably applies to similar fields as well.

Most genuine postdoc positions are extremely competitive. You need to apply well in advance (typically, in December for a position starting the next August). Postdocs will be difficult to obtain if your thesis work is substantially unfinished a year before you apply. I am not counting temporary teaching positions for new PhDs, which are a different kind of job entirely.

For competitive postdocs, you want to have very strong letters, both from your advisor and from senior researchers at other institutions. The way to obtain such letters is to build connections throughout your graduate program, particularly in the later half. Ideally, you should plan to give one or two seminar talks at other institutions while in graduate school. In addition to disseminating your research, these talks help to get your name out as someone up and coming. Your advisor can also have a role, behind the scenes, in getting invitations.

Competitive postdocs are given to people who seem to be up-and-coming in the field. There are usually only a handful of postdocs each year, worldwide, in each particular research specialty, so the committees have a collection of strong candidates to choose between, all of whom have the minimal credential of a PhD. So, if you want to pursue the postdoc track, your goal in graduate school is to develop a vita and letters that are competitive in that environment.


How are fellowships typically funded? Recently a friend of mine who was a professor died and I am hoping to help create a post-doctoral fellowship at the university to carry on the work of his small laboratory in conjunction with others who knew him. I am hoping to understand better the typical way that fellowships are endowed.

According to my initial calculations, it would seem we need about $4 million to endow the fellowship, so that assuming a 4% return on bonds in the foundation, every year we could disburse 2.5% ($70,000 stipend to the fellow, $25,000 upkeep fee to the university, and $5,000 for lab expenses) and retain 1.5% to build the capital of the endowment to account for inflation.

Is this a typical setup for an endowed fellowship in the current academic environment?

My answer assumes the US university system, based on your stated location

Endowed funds (for positions or otherwise) are quite common at universities, so every University has an "Endowments Office" or "Office of Giving" or the like, which will most happily sit down with you to work out these sorts of details.

You will definitely need to sit down with that office to determine the details, however, because it will likely be different for every university. Factors influencing these details will likely include: public vs. private, overhead rates and structure, how the university manages its endowments, state and local tax laws, etc.

In short: get the university's experts involved.  The sorts of sums that you are considering will certainly get their attention.


What are some good ways to showcase one's research capabilities while applying for graduate programmes I would like know to what are some good/effective ways to showcase one's research capabilities, other than paper publications, when the person is out of academia and applying for schools in USA for MS(preferably MS by Thesis)

Specific to my case, I graduated 3 years ago and now I am out of academia. I do not have any paper publications. So I am looking for other good ways to show the admissions committee that I am capable of doing research. But how?

For eg., a personal website where I can list my technical essays (which are not worthy as to be published as a paper) mentioning methods I tried to improve an idea, or where I failed etc. List of research projects I did independently.

Basically I want to know how can I make myself a potential candidate for the MS by thesis programme(other than paper publications) being outside an academia and working independently.

If you are applying for graduate school, you need to show that you can do good research. More than the actual field of research, it's more important to show the ability to do good research. That being said, of course, doing research in the area in which you're applying shows that you are motivated and equipped to solve research problems in your field.

Here are some things you could try :

Reach out to a professor in your alma mater (someone you've worked with during your undergraduate studies) - offer to be a voluntary research student. Work with the prof part time, if you have a full time job, otherwise volunteer to be a full time unpaid researcher. This doesn't mean you get a freebie research position, the prof still wants to know you can do quality work. Remember, the prof is also investing his/her time to coach you, and answer questions you (probably will) have during your voluntary research term. This, by far, is the best way I know of that you can do research outside of university.
Get an IEEE membership, or use google scholar. Go through research papers in your field, and see if there are any interesting problems you can solve (there are millions of awesome problems yet to be solved :) You may think you're way in over your head, but that's how you learn. Once you have an interesting problem to solve, reach out to peers (senior students, or current graduate students you know) and professors (including potential professors you want to work with during your Masters) with your work. Remember, researchers are looking for talented and passionate people more than anything else - test scores and grades are just an indicator of that, but not the only indicators. So if a professor is genuinely interested in your work and convinced that you have potential, they will  be interested.
It's about passion, intensity and potential - less about content. At the risk of being repetitive, the work you do demonstrates how much potential and passion you have. Your work is not a means to an end  - don't "do research" with the aim of getting into graduate school. Graduate school should be a natural continuation of what you are already passionate about doing.

Good luck with your future and applications.


Ask supervisor *not* to come to viva? My viva is coming up, and one of my supervisors is planning to attend. I know that he won't be able to say anything during the viva itself, but I'm a little worried what he might say afterward while the examiners are discussing my fate. He's a good supervisor, and thinks very highly of my work, but he does have a tendency to agree with whomever he's speaking to at the moment. For example, if the examiners were discussing a small potential change to my thesis, I'm afraid his enthusiasm might get the better of him, and he might "volunteer" me to make a bigger change than the examiners expected or even suggest additional experiments which are beyond the scope of my PhD.

Does that scenario seem plausible, or am I worried over nothing? If there is reason to be concerned, I might ask my supervisor not to come, explaining that his presence might "make me more nervous" to avoid hurting his feelings.

If it helps, I'm in a small country which has an academic system very similar to the U.K. I have read Benefits to supervisor presence at viva in the UK?, but my question is a little different since I have a specific concern, and the supervisor in question has already invited himself.

In a UK viva, you are normally asked to leave the room when your examiners are deliberating your result. At this point your supervisor would also normally leave the room with you. As you said, they shouldn't say anything during the viva, and this should include any deliberation between your examiners. To be honest though, a supervisor does not want their student to fail, or have an unmanageable number of corrections, because that looks really bad on the supervisor as well. It's in their best interest for you to pass as easily as possible.

In the UK your supervisor is also never present without your permission. If your institution has these rules, then you can just ask them not to come. Just say that you feel it would add extra pressure that you could do without. It can be useful to have your supervisor there when you're read your corrections, as then they also know what you're asked to correct. In my viva I kind of got to argue potential changes during the viva, whilst we picked through my thesis. Since at this stage your supervisor definitely can't talk, you're in charge of your side of the negotiation.

Don't worry too much about changes. Your thesis only ever needs to be good enough to pass. It doesn't have to be brilliant, or better than anyone else's, it just has to demonstrate a significant contribution. You therefore shoudln't be asked to do more work for the sake of doing more. You should only have to change things if without them, your contribution isn't explained or supported well enough.

Remember that if your supervisor has supported your decision to submit your thesis, then there is little chance you'll fail. Try and enjoy yourself, you're unlikely ever to get to talk to two experienced researchers exclusively about your own work for such a long time ever again. Relish it!


Request not to be named as a co-author on my own paper In a semi-hypothetical situation, assume that I'm a postdoc at a certain university and my supervisor pushed (forced) me to work on a journal paper that I hated but finished eventually. I say I hated it because the work is so silly, not at par with my previously published excellent work and will be published in a mediocre journal. My concern is that it may hurt my CV and compromise my profile. I should also say that it is not in the exact field in which I have been building a profile.

Although I have finished the paper, can I possibly tell my supervisor that I don't wish to be named on it?

You certainly can refuse to be named as co-author, but at this point it's probably easier just to sign off publication, unless there are stronger reasons than you've given.

Most reputable journals have processes that require all credited authors to sign off on publication, so you can't be credited as an author if you don't want to be*. However, this may mean that the paper can't be published at all - your supervisor shouldn't be claiming sole author credit for something that is largely your work, and even a mediocre journal is likely to balk at accepting a paper if it learns that one of the authors is unwilling to be associated with that work.

Publishing this paper probably won't help your career significantly, but from the description you've given it doesn't sound likely to harm it either, especially if it's not in the field that you're aiming for. I changed career and I have several publications on my CV that have no relevance to my current career; I doubt any of my co-workers have even bothered looking them up, let alone passing judgement on whether they're a valuable contribution to the literature.

*Some loopholes may apply. I had an ex-boss who listed me and another researcher as co-authors on a poster and conference presentation, even though he knew we had significant objections to the content. While the associated journal required sign-off from all authors on published papers, this was not the case for conference material. We had to write in to request that the "error" be corrected for the published proceedings.


A team member of a coursework software development project didn't contribute in any way. Can I remove his name from the project? I am the project manager of a small team of five undergraduate developers who have been working for months on a large system for our Senior Capstone project. Four members of the team, including myself, have put in an extensive amount of work on this project. The remaining member failed to contribute anything at all to the team project (not only did this team member fail to contribute any source code, he failed to contribute in any way at all).

I spoke with this individual multiple times about how failing to contribute, or even contributing minimally, could result in having to retake the Capstone course. Still the individual made no contribution. I spoke with the Professor leading our Capstone team on multiple occasions, and provided documentation supporting my claims. This documentation, along with several peer evaluations, should give the Professor enough information to make fair decisions involving each of our grades, which is really none of my business at all.

What is my business is that this fifth team member has his name displayed on work that he did not contribute to in any way. My question then, is can I remove his name from the completed system?

Can I remove someone's name from an academic software development project that didn't contribute a single line of code?

Just to focus on the title itself; lines of code contributed is not an accurate summary of contribution. This is a variation on the workman's fallacy of "management is useless because they don't directly make the product".

For example, someone can contribute by working together with the others, and due to working with everyone in different steps, they end up not writing the code and have only contributed to the design of the application. Or testing. Or analysis.
As a second example, maybe their initial code ended up being refactored due to a midway design change, thus technically not having their contribution added to the final product while still having contributed.

I'm aware that this is not the case here, but I want to advise you to refrain from using "not contributing a single line of code" as the main justification. When I read the title, before clicking the link, it implied that you were blindly measuring value by measuring LOC which would put you at fault for using a faulty metric.

However, as this person didn't do anything at all, let's address the real situation.

Whether or not removing the name is warranted depends on whether you are being graded collectively or not. If you all share the same grade, then this person should be prevented from mooching/piggybacking off of your results.

If the grading is done individually, and the professor is already aware (and has evidence) of this person's lack of contribution, then removing the name is unnecessary. It would only be a matter of principle/pride.
While I can certainly understand your desire to not give credit to someone who did not contribute; keep in mind that doing so may come across as petty and may even suggest to outside observers that this person was being ostracized by their team mates, which can end up as a mitigating circumstance in that person's favor.

In either case, I suggest you ask the professor on the right course of action. Since they are already aware of the issue (and presumably have not refuted your claim, since you didn't mention them doing so), having the professor agree to remove this person's name from the project safeguards you from possible negative inferences about having done so.


Linking to ancillary material formatted as Jupyter nb? I'm in the process of preparing a manuscript which provides ancillary material in the form of a Jupyter Notebook (*.ipynb) explaining how we implemented some key parts of our results. I'd like to link to the nbviewer rendering of our ancillary material, especially since some readers may not be familiar with how to read a *.ipynb file. For instance, 1511.08044 provides several appendices in this way, each of which can be viewed with a link of the form http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/urls/arxiv.org/src/1511.08044v1/anc/1.energies_vs_vgate.ipynb.
This naively seems to depend on knowing the paper identifier that arXiv will assign the manuscript once published, however, such that there doesn't seem to be a way to provide a link that works on initial submission. Is there a best practice known for providing Jupyter Notebooks that doesn't introduce this circularity?

I think you're asking the wrong question here.

For the sake of persistent archiving you should put all ancillary material at a sustainably archived website specifically designed to preserve scholarly communications material e.g. Zenodo https://zenodo.org/ or Dryad  http://datadryad.org/ or Figshare https://figshare.com/

Refer-to or cite the ancillary material archived on Zenodo with the Zenodo DOI that is generated upon archival of the material. From within that ancillary material which is archived, you can link to an nbviewer prettified instance of your Jupyter nb.

Direct-linking to nbviewer from within your article is a really bad idea. In five or ten years time it's very likely that the link will be broken. Always refer to ancillary material with persistent identifiers e.g. DOIs.


Three reference letters, two academic and one professional I am applying to a highly prestigious university in the UK for a PhD position. The usual norm here is that PhD's usually (unlike the US) require 2 rec letters, however this specific program asks for 3, and these 3 are for the course itself, it's not like one is for a scholarship and the other 2 are for the application, all three are for the application.
The PhD is in bioelectronics/neuroscience, and I have 2 solid rec letters from my uni supervisors, so that's fine but I don't have a third one! so I'm thinking of asking my manager at an oil company I have worked at before, ofc the letter won't have as much impact as the first two, but would something like this be really bad? or really wrong?
Thanks in advance for your time.

A professional letter is fine. It can focus on your personality, your characteristics, your leadership, and your willingness to do hard works. All of those are highly valued by a PhD program. It would be even better if you've led some research projects under his supervision or leadership.
It would be even better better (double betters) that he assures your ability of seeking funding or other research supports (such as data, instruments, and manpower) from the industry.
However, if he cannot say those things, I would like to suggest you to find a professor in one of your seminar course or project course that you did a small research project in that course.


Do universities keep your college application materials, if you are rejected? I guess I am just being curious, but I was wondering whether college applications are kept or saved (i.e common app) by the institutions you applied to?
I assume that if you are accepted they are pretty much kept until you graduate. But what happens to the application materials of people who have not being accepted? All those applications are kept for some period of time and then disposed?
Thanks!

This would depend on many things, including the laws of the country in which the University is situated. I assume that in some places it is mandatory and others forbidden. In those places without such laws it probably is determined locally by the University itself.

I believe that in the US, many, if not most, college applications now are done electronically through an agency or organization with the applicant determining who can obtain the materials. For example, see https://www.commonapp.org. In such a case, the organization likely retains the materials, subject to the law, of course.

If you have a specific worry, about a specific University, you could ask them and get the correct answer, of course.


À la carte graduate courses I can get a small raise if I earn 7 more graduate units from an accredited school. I have no intention of earning another degree, and I could be happy with either online or in-person work. How to go about it?

I could apply to some Master's program, get accepted, enroll, and then not finish the degree, but this seems dishonest, plus I might have to take their introductory courses instead of my own choices. Would some other approach do better? Do accredited universities ever offer graduate courses à la carte?

I believe the term you might be looking for is a "non-degree seeking student". Many colleges - at least in the US - allow students to pay per credit-hour of course they take, with the explicit arrangement that they will not count towards a degree. Exact requirements, costs, and arrangements vary by University, but here is some info about the options at Michigan for example. Michigan's School of Education has its own page on this, with additional options.

The 'catch' is mostly money, whether or not you can get classes that interest you (Universities might reserve some classes for their own degree-seeking students first), and whether or not courses taken in such a way will count according to your employer (you'll have to check with them on that).

As for the money, non-degree seeking students generally receive no form of financial aid or tuition assistance, and in the US I would be surprised if you could take even 1 course for less than $1000, but the exact cost will vary wildly by University and program.


Documenting code for thesis I'm making my degree thesis on applied maths. An important part of the work is the implementation of some algorithms and simulations so code is part of the work. And I mean a lot of code.

I don't have references of works like mine so I'm not sure what to do with the code. Of course, it's not going to be "printed" as part of the thesis. It's supposed to be documented on internet with the link in an appendix I guess, but I don't really know how to deal with it.

I didn't find and answer in other posts.

As Nate Eldredge has already mentioned, you should check your university's thesis guide if there is anything specific about code. If not, contact your thesis/dissertation office to see if they can help out.

I'll now speak from my own experience working at my university. I suggest to students that code be placed in the appendix material. Why? So it doesn't clutter the body.

If you're writing in LaTeX, be sure to read the documentation of any package you use to import your code. If you wish to leave it as a link, be sure to follow your university's instructions on that.


Is it wrong to cite a source I did not use? I am writing a paper for an English class on a topic that I know well. for this paper, there is a minimum requirement for cited sources but I did not meet that requirement and was able to meet the length requirement for the paper.

Ask yourself: why did the Professor put this requirement?

It is almost certainly not just to make your life difficult.

A more likely explanation is that your professor wants you to not only provide your own analysis, but to back your analysis up with others' research and analysis.

So if you were to cite a source without using it, your mark won't likely go up, because your arguments are no better supported. Any good marker will see this. So if you're trying to increase your grade, you should add a source, and incorporate it into your arguments. In any case, I suspect your paper needs work to meet your professor's expectations.


Is there a difference between "interdisciplinary" and "multidisciplinary" research? Going off of definitions on Google, it seems that interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary mean the same thing: relating to more than one academic discipline/branch of knowledge.

Is there a subtle difference between the two, in the context of academic research?

Both terms involve, as you say, relating to more than one discipline. In practice, I think most people don't really bother distinguishing between them. (I typically don't.) So one shouldn't read too much into any particular use. However, as always there are some that debate the definitions. Sometimes - especially when larger teams are involved - the two terms are treated not as synonyms, but as different positions on a spectrum. When a distinction is made, it is typically to say that interdisciplinary work more deeply integrates insights of multiple fields, whereas multidisciplinary doesn't require the same degree of integration. E.g. Choi and Pak states in a review that

Multidisciplinarity draws on knowledge from different disciplines but stays within their boundaries. Interdisciplinarity analyzes, synthesizes and harmonizes links between disciplines into a coordinated and coherent whole.

Similarly, OECD's 2010 report "Measuring Innovation: A New Perspective" used environmental science and nanoscience as examples of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research areas, respectively (link to relevant page):

Interdisciplinary research that
relies on shared knowledge is created when fields such as physics and chemistry interact. Nanoscience typifies this
phenomenon. In multidisciplinary research, various disciplines address scientific and social challenges independently
rather than in collaboration and thus share research goals. Environmental research is of this type.

The 2015 The Oxford Handbook of Multimethod and Mixed Methods Research Inquiry provides a lot more details and development of these ideas, in particular in Chapter 8.

Interdisciplinarians integrate the best elements of disciplinary insights in order to generate a more comprehensive (and often more nuanced) appreciation of the issue at hand. (This may come in the form of a new understanding, new product, or new meaning.) As we shall see later interdisciplinarians often stress "integration" as the defining element of interdisciplinarity.
[snip]
Multidisciplinarity involves the juxtaposition of insights from different disciplines. It thus eschews the integration that is so critical for interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. Multidisciplinarians are also less likely to evaluate the insights on which they draw. Multidisciplinarity can still be useful in some situations, notably where the insights of different disciplines are not in conflict and can simply be added together.


Why are lawyers not called "doctor"? I don't quite understand the education process for lawyers, but I do understand there are a number of different degrees, and one of them is 'JD', the juris doctor. My Latin is quite rusty, but I believe that is "Doctor of Law."

So why are they not called "doctor" in common practice, like any PhD is? Is the JD actually not similar to a doctorate program? If not, then why does it take the name doctor?

I understand that the JD is what they call a "1st degree" and there are even higher degrees. The LLM, for example, is a "Master of Laws", which really confuses things now because "master" degrees are normally less than "doctor" degrees. So if a JD is not not called a "doctor" for some logical reason, what about the LLM, since it is a higher degree?

I'm coming from an American perspective, so I would like an answer from an American perspective, please.

The American Bar Association has a nice explanatory essay that answers exactly this question.

In essence, in the United States, the J.D. degree is quite new, with lawyers having previously received a professional degree that was not called a doctorate.  As such, it has generally been considered problematically confusing to call a lawyer "doctor" and also possibly unethical as undue self-promotion (lawyers used to be prohibited even from advertising in many areas).


How to reply to editor's comment such as 'Such a revised paper may be refereed and there would be no guarantee of acceptance'? Is it necessary? I am preparing a detailed explanation of how I have dealt with all of the reviewers' and Editor's comments for a manuscript. The editor's comments are as follows:

  I regret I am unable to accept your paper for publication in XXX, at
  least in its present form. I should, however, be prepared to consider
  for publication a substantially revised version that takes into
  account the suggestions of the referees. Such a revised paper may be
  refereed and there would be no guarantee of acceptance. The three
  referees agree that you have obtained useful results. They raise a
  number of issues you should be able to solve relatively easily.

Is it necessary to reply to editor's comment like this? How to reply to editor's comment such as'Such a revised paper may be refereed and there would be no guarantee of acceptance'?

Is it necessary to reply to editor's comment like this?

No. This is just making sure that you understand that revising the paper does not guarantee acceptance.

You may wish to write an introductory paragraph for the editor before you address the specific reviewer comments. Here, you may wish to thank the editor for acknowledging that the reviewers consider your results to be useful, summarise the main improvements, and conclude that you feel the manuscript is substantially better for the reviewer suggestions.


Is it possible to become a research assistant just after b.tech? I am a recent bachelor of technology graduate from India and want to become a research assistant just after b.tech at any abroad university (USA,CANADA,UK, etc). If it is possible then what kind of qualifications, GPA, academics are required? Also for becoming an RA at these universities is the GRE exam necessary?

Yes.

First be admitted to graduate school.

Then convince a professor to hire you.


How to undo my paid authorship? We have a system in which, to get accepted in the program, you have to have a published research because that will add some points to your application and you will have priority.
Anyway, some investigators started to grant authorship on such publications for money, gathering a number of people and write their names on the paper as co-authors in return those people paying them.

I was naïve and I paid for such a thing. Please don’t judge me. Now I know it is academic misconduct, so I want my name to be dropped from that publication. How can I do this?

There is no guarantee that you succeed, but you can still try.

Address the legal side of the issue.
Read the terms of your agreement carefully. If it is possible to abide by the terms of contract and have you name dropped, act accordingly. If not, seek for legal advice. After all, the contract might be not 100% clean according to your country's law or international laws, and you could hypothetically declare the contract for void in this case. If the contract has not been written on paper but is a handshake deal, check for the legislation of your country again about handling such cases.
Address the academic side of the issue. For that, read the terms of the venue(s) the paper(s) went to. Check whether these terms request that each author has to contribute in a substantial way. If such a phrase is not there, you have less chances. If such a phrase is there in some form, you have more chances. In each case, write to the editor(s) and supply a corresponding justification for why your name is to be dropped from the author list.


Thesis adviser is demanding i hand over all my work My Masters adviser (computer science) is demanding I hand over all my work including data sets, code and configurations. I do not want to be overly specific just in case. This seems fishy... or am I paranoid.

Notes:

He demanded that "we" publish an additional paper in addition to the thesis. I told him that I did not have time for anything beyond the department requirement of a thesis. He got mad and now its been one thing after another each week. Now, he wants the entire project handed over. The entire experience since my decline of additional paper has been hostile.

This sounds like he sees value in the work and wants it completed. It also sounds like you are refusing to collaborate in its completion and so he feels that he has to carry it on alone. But you hold the data he needs to do so.

Whether he is entitled to the work or not depends on how much he contributed to it. But no researcher likes to leave ideas unfulfilled so he is frustrated and probably acting badly. But if you refuse, absolutely, to help, then you are probably acting badly also. Unwillingness to go beyond the minimum requirements isn't a very strong recommendation.

It would be good if the work could be completed and papers written with your name attached to them. Even if he does the work and lists you as second author in some publications you have gained something.

But withholding the work won't get you or anyone anywhere. Others may actually do the work following similar but independent lines of thought leaving you out entirely. Parallel, independent, work is a very common phenomenon.

If he hasn't contributed anything and you intend to finish the work independently then the story might be different, but that sounds unlikely from what you write.


Do teachers generally refer to hard-to-comprehend books? I have studied at 4 universities, and in 3 different programs.
I always observed that when asked for a recommendation for a  book to understand a topic easily and clearly, university-professors always referred to books that are not student-friendly, i.e. written for more advanced level than that of the student. Then, after several years, I discovered that there were easier-to-comprehend books available which could have helped me acquire better grades.
Is this intentional?
If Yes, why?
If No, is there anything wrong with the higher education culture of the country I am studying in?

One possible reason is that I feel the style of textbooks have changed in the last years, so that newer books are sometimes easier to understand (use more modern-day language and symbols, is friendlier to the reader etc.) (This does not necessarily imply that they don't cover as much details as the older ones or are more superficial)
But the professor, being older, does maybe not know about them or is used to the older style. And often, some old books are considered classics that all students should know regardless of whether something better came out in the recent years.
Additionally, another reason might be that your professors don't have any education in teaching and don't know much about it. Most of my professors thought the most effective way of teaching is to copy lecture notes onto the blackboard and read it out loud with a monotone voice, without any explanations or motivation because they assumed that having it written down means students know it. Those may also be the types of professors who recommend you a hard-to-read, but factually correct book.


Are there enough academic jobs for geometric measure theorists? I am considering focusing on Geometric Measure Theory, and I want to stay in academia.

Some of my colleagues told me that there are fewer and fewer people doing GMT in the US, which would result in fewer and fewer jobs for GM theorists.

Questions:

Do math departments still hire GM theorists?
Is it true that the number of positions is declining?

I don't know about geometric measure theory in particular, and I'm not sure if anyone on this site does. But I can offer one answer to the more general question "Do math departments still hire people working in Specialty X"? In particular, here's one source of information that might help you answer your question:

Identify the names of the leading geometric measure theorists in the field, and/or the particular researchers you might be interested in working under.

Look them up on the Mathematics Genealogy Project, and find out the names of students they have graduated in the past 5-10 years.

For each student, type in "[Name of Student] Math" into Google; typically, if they are employed in some math department somewhere, either their website or their department's website will be the first hit.

If you know people in the field, you might also ask them directly for their impression of the job market, especially if they or their students were on the job market recently.
Good luck!


Do professors recommend their students on LinkedIn? Do professors recommend their students on LinkedIn? If they do recommend, isn't it considered a violation of FERPA?

Professors are typically required to recommend without fear or inhibition towards the student who he is recommending. A professor will be much more candid with his recommendation when his student waives his rights to see his recommendation. In that case recommendations on LinkedIn are probably a waste for academia right?

What would your opinion be on taking a letter of recommendation from a professor who has already recommended you on LinkedIn then?

  Third, the letter of recommendation, when completed, becomes an
  education record.  Both the paper copy and e-file are education
  records… and it makes no difference where they are filed.  Since FERPA
  grants the student the right to inspect any education record, there is
  also an unwritten obligation to notify the writer of this right.

  In this latter instance, the placement office, or student, should
  initially provide each writer with the knowledge that the student has
  either waived, or not waived, his right to subsequently review the
  letter.  This knowledge may influence what the writer includes in the
  letter.  It may persuade the person to whom a reference request was
  made to politely decline to write the letter.  Unfortunately, letter
  writers do not have the same rights that students have in the
  letter-writing process.

Therefore , students generally waive their rights to view their letters of recommendation. Now, when you post a recommendation on LinkedIn, it will be displayed(provided the student accepts the recommendation). This might actually influence the writer of the letter to write a more positive recommendation than intended for the the student.

Now, an influenced letter is probably a waste for academia right? Or for any kind of work at all?

And if a professor is candid in his LinkedIn recommendation and mentions the student's performance objectively(say perhaps about the student's grades) then it does become a violation of FERPA right?

This is what I'd like to ask Professors in Academia now: If a student asks for a LinkedIn Recommendation , will it hold any value?

I have, in the past, recommended students on LinkedIn, when requested by them. This applies, in particular, to PhD students shortly before or after their defense, who were looking for a position outside academia and in the private sector. In chemical engineering, the situation of that academics tend not to use LinkedIn for looking up/assessing prospective hires, while it is widely used outside academia (and I believe this is true of other fields).

For this reason, I maintain a small presence on LinkedIn myself, because:

This is one of the ways I can help (by networking and recommendations) my former students find a job, which is part of a PhD adviser’s responsibilities.
I might want a job outside academia at some point in my career, too!

Regarding FERPA compliance, I am not US-based so I have little knowledge about it. This webpage on “FERPA Compliance [for] Recommendation Letter Writers” implies that compliance mostly puts constraints on the content of the letter (which should not include “education records”).


What is the relationship between impact factor and journal ranking As a second year graduate student, it's become increasingly difficult for me to figure out what journals are the most prestigious.  My research is very interdisciplinary, and so journals from many different fields would be suitable for my work.

Initially, I took Impact Factor as a good proxy for journal ranking.  However, I've come to learn that IF doesn't necessarily reflect the whole story.  It seems that number of citations (for an individual publication), regardless of journal, appears to be the most important metric.

However, barring that, I assume most people (in the interest of career success), would still like to publish in the best journal they can get in.

Consider a journal like Physical Review Letters.  It has an impact factor of 7.7.  However, a relatively new journal like Advanced Energy Materials has an impact factor of 14.3, almost double that of PRL.  However, I've always heard that PRL is one of the best physics journals that you can publish in (heck, Einstein's EPR experiment was published there).  So if I had an article that would be appropriate for submission to both, which would be the better one to get in?

Then there's something like Nature Physics, with its 20.6 Impact Factor, which suggests getting in here would be a more significant achievement that either of the other two.  But by how much?  Surely not by three times?

(Part of the problem is that Research Gate gives you a total IF score for all your publications, which I think biases that number more than it should be.)

This is a particularly difficult question for interdisciplinary research, because different fields have radically different citation customs and publication time-tables, which leads to the same impact factor meaning very different things. Impact factor also has numerous other problems.

Moreover, absolute ranking of a journal is in many cases less important than reaching the audience that you want to talk to, particularly in interdisciplinary research and especially if you want to reach an application community.

Rather than focusing on impact factor, I would recommend using the following method to determine how to rank journals as possible publication targets:

Pick half a dozen researchers who you highly respect and want to be the audience for this paper.
Look at the journals that they publish in.  The more frequently a journal appears, the better it is as a target for this audience.

This can also help you distinguish between targets for broad and narrow papers.  For example, you might have a methodology paper that speaks to a very particular sub-discipline.  A journal specifically for that sub-discipline may have a much lower impact factor, but may be a much better place to place the paper and it may actually end up having much higher impact and citations than if it is in a "better" venue where it is mostly read by people for whom it is irrelevant.


Can we present a same study to a different conferences? I was wondering if it is ok to present the same paper (may be already published in journals or unpublished) in different conferences? Assuring that the conference will not publish the whole research work but only abstracts in the proceedings.

It depends on the rules of the conference, but it is usually OK. You could get different input from different audiences.
Beware of publishing rights if there are published proceedings and you expect the paper to be published in a Journal that expects original and never before published before material.


Required reviews completed I have submitted a paper and I received a request for major revisions.

The first time the status changed from "under review" to "with editor".
After that I submitted a revised version of the paper. Now the status has changed from "under review" to "required reviews completed".

Why first time it wasn't shown this status?
How many days does it usually take to change the status from "required reviews completed" to next status?

Most likely this means it has passed to the associate editor to decide what to do with the reviews.  In my experience the deadline for that action is typically about a week from the time the final review is available, but of course if the editor is otherwise occupied, it might take a while longer.  Patience!


In the upper echelon of universities, is it the case that international students generally perform better than local ones? This question is aimed at undergraduate level, since postgraduate students are more mobile. By "upper echelon" I mean those that are, say, in the top 200 universities in the world (presumably there are lower-ranked universities that struggle to attract international students).

The idea is that most admission spots are reserved for local students for political reasons - it would be a political disaster if the country's best universities, especially if they are publicly-funded, teach more international students than local ones. So international students already have a higher bar to clear to be admitted. Therefore the international students perform better because they are better (e.g. they are the top 10% of their country's students, while local students are only the top 30%). Accordingly it should not be surprising, in fact it should be expected, that most of the best students of each cohort are international.

Is this the case in practice?

In the UK at least, this is not the case. Non-EU international students pay full fees so there is a strong push to accept as many of these students as possible. They still nominally meet the same minimum admissions requirements,  but very few home students come in at the minimum. Once at university, many struggle with the language and differences in learning expectations and perform more poorly.


When scheduling talks in a conference session, what is the etiquette, if any, regarding placement of multiple talks from the same research group? I am the lead co-organizer of a symposium at a technical conference later this year.  The abstract submissions are now closed, and I'm working on slotting the talks into sessions.  With the number of abstracts we have in hand, I'm planning to spread them across three sequential sessions in a single chronological track. In the event it matters, the symposium scope is intentionally very broad, so the speakers in any given session may (justifiably) have little interest in attending the other sessions before/after the one in which they're scheduled.

There are a handful of research groups that have each submitted two abstracts to the symposium, with different presenting authors. All of the abstracts are in-scope and distinct from one another, so I plan to accept them all.

What is the etiquette regarding scheduling of such talks, submitted by the same research group but with different presenting authors?

Should I specifically aim to schedule them close to one another in the agenda? Should I intentionally interpose talks from other groups? Or, does it not really matter?

From the perspective of the presenting research group, it would seem most convenient logistically for the talks to be grouped together in sequence. That way, the whole group would have the option of attending just the relevant small chunk of the session, with the rest of the morning/afternoon more free to attend other talks.

From the perspective of a symposium organizer, though, it would make more sense to separate the pairs of talks, in an effort to make it more convenient for the speakers to just stay in our session track, rather than bouncing back and forth between our session and others.

It's also entirely possible I'm just overthinking the matter.

You have to plan the symposium from the audience’s perspective, not the individual research group’s.

Presenting multiple talks from the same group back-to-back or even within the same session can become tedious, even if the work is nominally “distinct.” If I were planning multiple sessions, I would avoid putting abstracts from the same group in the same session, but instead spread the pairs out evenly among the three sessions (if possible).

If your sessions are thematic, I’d still try to separate the talks within the session, so that the talks are not back-to-back, but perhaps “bookending” the session or nearly so.


Date of publication vs. date of current version Date of publication and date of current version printed on the journal papers are usually different. What's the difference between the date of publication and date of current version printed on the journal papers?

Many journals offer an "early access" or "preprint" service, in which articles are made available online directly after final acceptance but before copy-editing and typesetting (i.e., before adaptation of the article to the journal's format and paper print requirements). The date of publication is the date when the article is first made available online.

After typesetting is done (which may be a few weeks later), the online version of the article is updated with the typeset version. The date of current version will be updated here, but the date of publication will still be the date when the preprint was made available.


How to explain things in the motivation section of a mathematical paper without proper definitions? I want to start a chapter in my dissertation by motivating a mathematical operator by showing why it is interesting to look at it and what I can contribute to understand it better. However, I actually need to introduce some mathematical objects in order to correctly state everything.

I think it is a rather bad Idea to start first with a section of introducing the mathematical concepts (like measure theory) and then start the actual motivation. But if I do it opposite, then I am at a loss for words.

For example, in my motivation I would need to use a additive-finite measure space, a operator, the space of mu-integrable functions and a stochastic process.

How would you suggest to cope with such a situation?

When I was a Ph.D. student working on my own dissertation, I went to the university writing center for help and had a revelatory experience.  The person working with me sat down with the first page of my introduction and effectively dissected it to identify the problems without understanding any of my technical jargon.  They did this by reading aloud as we discussed, substituting blank/nonsense words for every piece of jargon, e.g.:

  Here we apply method X to determine whether adjective thingies can be made to wibble.

This type of substitution forces you to step back from the technical world that you have dedicated so much time and love to, and understand your narrative---or lack thereof.

In your motivation, you need to take a couple of steps back and ask: why does anybody care about additive-finite measure space ("frobs") and how it relates to the space of mu-integrable functions ("greebit-space") or a stochastic process ("wibbling").

You didn't pick these elements at random.  There must be some reason why you picked them and how they relate to the bigger community.  Are they intended to solve a puzzle that a lot of people care about?  Or a small piece of such a puzzle?  Do they unite two sets of concepts that people thought were different?  Will they help understand string theory or give better tools for interpreting MRI imaging?

You want to be able to write something like this:

  People have wondered about how to better understand frobs ever since Richard Feynman first used them to pick the locks in Los Alamos.  Although X, Y, and Z attempts have been made, none of them got very far because they were all green-colored.  In this dissertation, I examine an alternate path, reducing the problem of frobs to the simpler system of greebit-space by means of an innovative application of wibbling.  These results bring us one step closer to solving the problem of frobs, and how they can be better used to quickly and cheaply pick locks.

Now, what I've written is pure gibberish, and your motivation will almost certainly be much longer.  The point, however, is this: your goal in a motivation section is to motivate by explaining that there is a problem that people care about and that you have an approach that gives at least a piece of the solution.  Explain it in a way that your jargon can just be placeholders in the reader's mind, and it will be fine to leave the complex definitions for later.


Should I simply ignore it if authors assume that I'm male in their response to my review of their article? I received a response about a manuscript I reviewed earlier, and the authors write about the reviewer (i.e., me) and his concerns.  As a woman, I'm not so keen on this.

Obviously this isn't intentionally insulting or anything like that---it's a minor blip.  Nevertheless, it's a bit irksome, and the feminist in me is thinking that's not right; it's a microaggression (one of the everyday reminders that you don't belong here).

I could simply ignore it, but...

Question: Should I simply ignore it if authors assume that I'm male in their response to my review of their article?

There's no issues inside the manuscript: they thank the reviewers without using pronouns.

I'm particularly interested in if an editor would typically just groan and consider me a troublemaker for saying anything.  And probably not pass the message on to the authors anyway.

As a reviewer, you are supposed to comment on academic value and scientific correctness of the manuscript.

As a woman, you feel unhappy about authors not guessing a correct pronoun for you and not using an appropriate gender-neutral pronoun.

It seems that the issue has nothing to do with the manuscript and hence you are not reacting with your reviewer hat on. You are considering your response based on your role as woman/feminist/activist — but not as a reviewer. You are not reviewing the paper, you are reviewing author's communicative behaviour.

As long as you make it clear that you are not commenting as as reviewer of a manuscript, I think you can make this remark to the editor.


Should a math paper use non-alphabetical ordering of authors' names for unequal contributions? Using alphabetical ordering for authors' names is a long established tradition in mathematics.
In the situations of extremely unequal contributions, is it reasonable to break from this tradition?  Has there been any examples?  If it is common, what is the threshold for breaking from alphabetical ordering?

Edit: this answer is about pure math.
It’s not common. In 25 years of reading math papers I‘ve only ever seen one example of a paper that had a nonalphabetical author ordering. It was an English translation of a Russian paper from the 1970s written by a PhD student and his advisor. I don’t know what the story was behind this unconventional author order, but all I know is that the advisor’s name appears first even though alphabetically he comes second.

In the situations of extremely unequal contributions, is it reasonable to break from this tradition?

No. Since you’re going against the overwhelming norm in math publishing, no one will have a clear sense of what exactly you’re trying to say. Also, consider the fact that it could be that the author order that reflects the actual author contributions might coincide with the alphabetical order (for example in the paper I mentioned, it was competely random that the PhD advisor came second alphabetically and could easily have been the other way around). In that case the signal will be lost entirely.
My conclusion is that the idea of forcing this signaling mechanism on a math publication culture that isn’t adapted to it is illogical, ineffective, and will lead to inconsistent results that are only very weakly correlated with the effect you’re trying to achieve. If I were a journal editor and I received a submission that tries to use this mechanism, I would tell the authors to find a different way to say what they want to say about the author contributions.


Recommending venues and organizations in a paper Some co-authors and I are currently writing a position paper that aims to introduce Community A to a set of problems in Community B, in which collaboration between Communities A and B is likely to be helpful.  This paper is intended for submission to a peer-reviewed special issue that has invited such position papers.

There are already some meeting series that are intended to help foster such collaborations, but they are not very widely known.  In our concluding recommendations, we are thinking of including a list of them (perhaps as a table), as an aid for readers who are motivated by our paper to seek out A/B collaborations.

Is such "advertisement" appropriate for a peer-reviewed publication, particularly given that some of the authors are involved in organization of some of the meetings?

As far as the journal is concerned, this would be a thing to ask your editorial contact at the journal.

As far as the readers are concerned, I'd ask myself: what's most useful to the reader? I'd have thought that pointing to an online resource elsewhere, is more useful than a list within the article itself. In an article, the list is frozen in time, and quickly outdated, with no option of maintenance. As a linked external online resource, then there would be the option of updates and maintenance - and even if you don't expect to have the resource yourself to maintain it, someone else might take over the upkeep.

Now, you would need to be careful in how you present that online resource, so that it didn't look like spamming (it will help considerably if the resource is not seen as promoting a particular business or university). Precedent is your friend: have a look through recent articles in your target journal, and discuss with your editorial contact at the journal, to find a presentation that will be acceptable to all.


Am I required to hand out private encryption key to head of institute? I am a PhD student at a German university. Motivated by a longer absence of a (technical) coworker due to illness, the accessibility of data of the members of my institute has been discussed for such cases. My computer is owned by the institute, but I am the only one using it, and I have completely installed and configured it to my liking. In particular, I am encrypting my data. I do have some private data on that computer as well, e.g. emails since my private email account is linked in my email program, but also some music, and perhaps a few photos, my private PGP key, etc. The setup is pretty similar to some of my colleagues.

Now, I was asked to either physically or digitally hand over my private encryption key (or password) in order to get access in some emergency case. Apparently, my colleagues have done so already. I feel very strange about this, since I grew up learning that passwords should never be given away. I have raised my concerns, e.g., that this would also enable access to private emails or other data, and allow to send emails in my name.
But these were marked invalid, since private data has nothing to do on my work computer (even though everyone uses it that way).
Alternatively, I was told I could unencrypt my hard drives.

My questions are:

Am I required to hand over my private encryption key by law?
Morally, how would I best act in this situation?
Should I hand over a wrong (digital) private key and hope that this situation would never happen?
Instead of rebelling, I am thinking to give access to part of the system only, i.e., put certain data in an encrypted container that they cannot access? I do not have to mention this anywhere if I hide the container good enough...(maybe that is not even necessary).

It is probably worth to note that no one is really involved in my research topic, i.e., no one really depends on my data. I could however imagine someone to be interested in possible (unpublished) results in the case I am gone.

This seems like an X-Y problem. Why is important work data only kept on a computer on your desk, in the first place? I would expect it to be on a Git repository, or on the shared storage space of a workplace server.

Once you fix this problem, the issue you mention becomes irrelevant: your data will not be lost if your disk suddenly becomes inaccessible.

So a practical way to address the issue could be offering to put more of your work data in shared servers and git repositories, so that the problem disappears. Ask your superiors which data they are worried about, and offer to keep them online preemptively.


Using Wikipedia definitions in research paper I'm writing a research paper in finance. I'm taking help of Wikipedia  definitions for the introduction part. Do I have to mention it in the Appendix part?

I would recommend that you do not use Wikipedia definitions---they're good as a starting point for informing yourself, but aren't generally considered reliable enough to be citable literature.

Instead, follow the references provided on the Wikipedia page to back up those definitions, and you should be able to find a more primary-source document that is appropriate to take definitions from and to formally cite.


Asking Professor for Letter of Recommendation before finishing class I'm currently in a class with a professor that I'm confident has a good and positive impression of me. He also often singles me out as the student who "always does well". I'm applying to masters programs for the fall and want to get my applications in early. Is it okay to ask for a letter of recommendation mid-semester?

Yes, it's fine.  You could visit office hours a couple of times, to get to know him better, to make up for the missing second half of the semester.


How should I deal with feeling dumb? I am a graduate student in mathematics at a top school. Most of other students achieved gold medal in International mathematics olympiad for high school and/or other similar competitions. Most did their undergraduate in the very best school.

I came from a very modest educational background but worked really hard. I did not participate in IMO or other math competitions and if I did, I do not think I would have done well. I attended a not well-known small university in Australia.

Now that I am surrounded by all these gold medalists, I just feel that they are way beyond me and I am so dumb when I compare myself to them. How should I deal with this feeling?

I have thought about this too. I am also a math grad student. I went to a liberal arts college in the US. I took lots of non-math courses, didn't take any graduate courses, and didn't do any extra math activities like the Budapest semester. At some point I made a list of the math I learned as an undergrad and what I learned in grad school and it is a huge amount more in grad school. Another thing that helped was realizing that some of the grad students who, based on impressions, would do very well, never finished the program due to various reasons.

One thing that could help is to befriend grad students with whom you could let your guard down. There can be a lot of posturing, but much of it is quite obvious. Grad students who do that can still be helpful to talk to. It also helps to talk to faculty members whom you feel comfortable chatting with. They can really help you feel more at ease. I was at a workshop/school once and overheard a senior faculty member telling his math professor friend that by the end of a math conference, everyone feels like an idiot. So what if some grad students know more than you? At some point when you specialize you'll know a lot about quite a lot of things, and find joy in looking back at your accomplishments.


Combining research related work and dissertation topic en route to PhD I am finishing up a part time masters degree at a mid tier state school. I am really interested in moving on to a PhD at the same institution. I have enough credits beyond the masters and I have a science related role at a large company. I was hoping to kill two birds with one stone by somehow carving out a topic that would leverage my current work. I would self fund obviously, but I wanted to ask the community to see if anyone had been successful in merging work with their thesis topic. Also what is the best way to try and set up a scenario where one works and completes a thesis level project?

It sounds like it's time for you to have a chat with one or more possible advisors to start exploring possible research areas.  One of the most important roles a PhD advisor plays is helping the student find and define a research topic.

Looking in my crystal ball at your future, here's what I see: a very small chance of being able to kill two birds with one stone.  It could happen, if the stars all align in a very fortunate way; but please don't count on it.  For thesis research, you have to be free to follow your nose.  You can't afford to box yourself in.

You may want to consider a somewhat different approach from the self-funding idea, and apply for a teaching or research assistantship (and quit the job), or get your present company (or some other company) to pay at least your tuition, with an agreement that you will work for them for x years after graduating.


Central dot as decimal point in top journal The Lancet, one of the top medical journals in the world, requires 'Type decimal points midline (ie, 23·4, not 23.4)'. Does anyone know why this is? As a mathematician, I'll always read 23·4 as 92. Seems odd to me that such a high profile paper would insist on such a strange formatting choice, which goes against the SI standard, so I'm guessing there's a good reason for it.

This notation was more common historically, particularly in the British empire. My guess would be that the Lancet, being an old journal founded in England in 1823, is sticking with it because of tradition rather than a really good reason.


"Awaiting Editors Decision" what could it mean? I submitted my paper to a engineering journal. It underwent a major revision and then a minor revision. The minor revision was some grammatical stuff. Now it is in the "Awaiting Editors Decision" mode for the past one week. I am sort of tensed about it. What does this mode mean for a journal review process in general?

Once you submit your revised manuscript the editor handling your manuscript will look through your revisions to assess if they are satisfactory. Since revisions were in response to a minor revisions verdict, it seems likely that the next step would be accept unless the revisions were not satisfactory, in which case additional revisions might be necessary. In any case, the editor is now assessing your manuscript.

You write that the paper has been in this mode for a week. For any normal journal and thereby workload of their editors, you should not expect any change in status within such a short period. In "my" journal editors have three weeks to reach a decision on how the process should proceed. If the status remains for longer than, say, 3-4 weeks, you can start to consider contacting the journal and ask about its faith. But, please check if the journal has any specific time limits for their processes. Some do, some don't. The bottom line is that you are premature to worry at this stage.

EDIT: As Strongbad points out in a comment the term "Awaiting Editors Decision" strictly indicates that the paper has passed reviewers. this is indeed the general case,  also in "my" journal. So in your case, the signal is, as I was, albeit not as clear as I intended, aiming at above, that no additional review is necessary and the editor is assessing the paper for submitting the final verdict.


What does "Remuneration: Expenses" mean in an internship description? While reading an internship description it mentions Remuneration:Expenses with 3 months duration. What is the interpretation of this? Does it mean if I get accepted I won't get paid? In general, is it worth applying for?

It sounds like you will be reimbursed for your living and travel expenses, but you will not receive a salary.

As for the wisdom of taking such an internship, that's impossible for us to judge in the context of your career.


Evaluate the effectiveness of a set of CS lab exercises for education I am a PhD student studying wireless networks/telecommunications, and I have developed a set of lab exercises related to the field. We have used them with > 100 students so far in B.S. and M.S. classes on computer networks, wireless networks, and wireless communications.

With the first few cohorts, I asked them to rate each exercise with respect to:

overall rating
difficulty of lab exercise
how interesting the material was
experiment design

and to rate self on knowledge of topic before and after the lab. I also ask for general open-ended feedback ("How can we improve this exercise?" "Any other comments?") and recently introduced automated systems to measure exactly what students are doing in the lab. This gave me a general sense of which exercises were interesting to students, and which they thought were useful. Now I am looking for a way to evaluate how effective the labs are at educating students - not just their popularity.

I've been doing some reading in CS education research (although education research is not my field, so I can't devote too much time to getting up to speed on all the methodology), but I haven't come across a study design that I think would be a good fit for my scenario. I am under some constraints:

I'm not the instructor for the class.
I just run the lab exercises via a website. I don't meet the students in person.
I don't have the ability to set up a "control group" by offering one section of the course with the lab and one section without.
I can't ask my students to do a lot of work that is only for purposes of methodology assessment (e.g. I can have them fill out a short pre-class survey, but not much more then that). I can ask them to do some things that are also learning assessments (like quizzes on the lab topic).

  Given these constraints, how can I effectively evaluate the educational tools I've developed? (specifically, learn whether they actually improve students' understanding of the course material)

Update:

I don't have access to a comparable cohort from one year to the next, or between two sections. In the end, I came up with a set of questions that I think will help evaluate the exercises, even across only one group of students, all of whom are participating in the lab; I describe this in my own answer.

You are adressing a topic which (in my humble opinion) is one of the most difficult ones: How to measure effictivenes of teaching methods.

The only good way is to have a control group (and make sure they are large enough, randomly asigned, subgroups represented equally, et.c). In most practical situations this is just not feasible. (I have the same problem at the moment).

What I plan to do (so it is just an idea, not proven to be correct - fedback is wellcome!):

ask students who did the class twice how they liked the new format and whether it helps them in learning
Compare outcome.

I think 2.) is the one we should aim for since the ultimate measure of successful teaching is compentent students leaving the university. Since it is hard to measure their competence late in real life situations, the only thing we can do is measure their perfomence by tests / exams. So I'll compare the results of my current group with the one from last year and look for failure rate, attendeance at test, ... Given that your tests are comparable, this gives at least an indication.


Effects of changing majors in undergrad on graduate admission I'm posting this on behalf of my friend. I'll address my friend as 'I' in this question to make it more readable.

I'm currently an undergraduate studying podiatry outside US. Over the course of 3 years, I've moved around to 5 different universities, studying 5 different majors, in 3 different countries, for personal reasons. I've finally settled down in one country, but I've quickly realized that I'm not interested in podiatry. I'm thinking of applying to US universities for masters program in speech pathology, which is vastly different from podiatry. Since I know that I won't be pursuing further degree in podiatry, I'm thinking of changing to another school (my school does not offer anything related to speech pathology), but I'm afraid that with so many transfers in my record, another transfer may not look favorable in grad school admission.

My question is:  Is it better, in terms of admission to master's program, to change school to study something more relevant to grad school major, or stick with the current school and get over with undergraduate?

Finish a degree. Any degree. Then supplement the completed coursework with things that will enhance your grad school applications.  You're almost there -- just get it over with, and then figure out what additional courses you'd like to take or audit.

Note also that many colleges and universities will limit late credit transfers.  I imagine they want a degree from their institution to reflect their institutional identity.


How to cite Nature's "Supplementary Information" papers? In one of my works I cite several times this kind of publications, but I don't know the recommended procedure to refer to them at the end. For articles I usually take bibtex code from Google Scholar or a similar site, but these papers do not figure there. I'm not sure even whether the best writing practice is to cite them or just to cite the main article, when referring to some specific information that is not published in this main article.

Supplementary information is always part of a paper. Just cite that paper as you would normally do. If you want to specifically mention in your text that you are referring to supplementary information you can just call it by its title, something like "(Supplementary Figure 2)".


Should I Quote Scholars (Dead or Alive) in Past or Present Tense? In a research paper, when quoting previous literature on a given topic, should the scholar and position quoted be presented in past tense? (i.e. Johns suggested ...) Or should it be simple present tense? (i.e. Johns suggests ...)

Also, what if the scholar is no longer alive? Should I then quote the dead scholar and his/her position in the past tense or present?

I've tried looking everywhere for this and I cannot seem to find an answer. (Please note, the paper is in Chicago Style.)

There is no universal answer to this question.  Different writers take different approaches, and either one may be acceptable under the circumstances.

What you should try for is consistency, both internally in your own work, and within your field of study.  The first one is easy; whether you are going to refer to what another scholar said using the past tense or the "historic" present, you need to be consistent throughout.  All references should be handled the same way.

The second point, external consistency, is a little trickier.  You should look at how other people in your area of research deal with the question.  If there is a consistently preferred usage (whether it's past or present), you should probably adopt it yourself.  On the other hand, if different writers use different tenses, then you should feel free to choose whichever one you feel sounds better in your work.


What are the boundaries between draft, manuscript, preprint, paper, and article? In the terminology for a peer-reviewed publication to be submitted to a reputable scientific journal, what are the differences and characteristic properties of the following?

draft
manuscript
preprint
paper
article

My own take on it would be that my text is a draft until I submit it to a journal, at which point it becomes a manuscript.  When the manuscript is accepted it becomes a preprint, and when it gets published it becomes a paper, which is synonymous to article.

Would that be an accurate summary?  Would anyone have corrections or additions?

paper = article: In the academic meaning of the words, papers and articles refer to the same thing: a published piece of writing. The term is used for journal papers or journal articles, which means they have been published by a journal, but also for less traditional publications, including self-publication (“Dr. Who just published a great paper on the intricacies of time travel on his webpage”) and e-print repositories such as arXiv (“check out the latest paper by Galileo on arXiv, that guy has mad ideas!”).

Some journals have different categories of “articles”, and differentiate between letters, communications, reports, reviews, and full papers (sometimes abbreviated as just “papers”). In usage I have seen, paper (or article) used as a generic term covers all of those: you would say, for example, that “letters and full papers are two types of articles”.
A preprint (more commonly used without the hyphen) refers to the distribution, in advance of formal publication, of something that will be published in print. The preprint may differ from the final publication.

Preprint status does not always indicate that the work has been formally accepted for publication. It just means the authors intend to publish it in a more formal venue (journal, book, etc.) but wanted to distribute by other means beforehand (preprints used to be distributed to colleagues as photocopies, but are now mostly circulated by email or repositories).
A manuscript is, in the New Oxford American Dictionary's words, “an author's text that has not yet been published”. Any piece of writing that you have not published in any way (but intend to) is a manuscript.
A draft is the same as a manuscript, except that it insists on the unfinished state of the manuscript.

Summarizing, I could say:

  Here's the draft I've been working on, please amend it with your corrections. Once we have done this final round of revision, I will upload the manuscript to the editor's website, and we can start circulating it as a preprint to colleagues whom you think may be interested. Once it is accepted and published, we'll just send them the published version of the paper for their records.


Is it okay to struggle with the content of research paper you are reading? I am a PhD student works in computational theory. I have been doing coursework for nearly three years and right now I am starting to reading research papers. I am making progress very slowly, taking about two to three months to read a paper:  even after reading it, I have questions. I have to actually verify every and each sentence of the paper which requires mathematical knowledge, and I have done enough mathematics coursework. I am getting feedback that I am reading too slowly. I have tried to work hard as much as possible, but it is not giving much results. Although there were many times in the past in which I am able to complete the incomplete proofs given in research paper. Struggle basically means completing the incomplete claims or theorems of the research paper.

Question :  Is it okay to struggle with the content of research paper you are reading? and Is it going to improve with time? How to be efficient in this situation?

What seems to me little troubling here is I am in a surveying phase (reading research papers), then I will move to publication phase. So first I have read the paper then only I can work on them. I don't How much time other PhD students take to read a research paper. If I am taking 2-3 months for just one paper, is it okay?

Reading a paper shouldn't take long. Now, completely understanding the proofs and details can take a really long time, even months. Specially depending on your background, and on the technical tools/ideas the paper is using. It is okay to take that long.

There are two questions you should ask yourself:

Do I need to completely understand the paper I am reading?
Do I need to prove every line of every paper I read?

The first question is related to reading or skimming through a paper, a more agile read of the paper to understand the main ideas and conclusion. This should allow you to figure out if this is a paper that is useful to you and your research, and if it is, then you move on to the 2nd question.

If the paper is important to you/your research, and contains techniques/ideas that you must know and be comfortable with, then it makes sense to completely understand it and spend a lot of time with. Even still, ask yourself if you need to prove every single statement, or if there is a more important body of statements  that you actually care about, so that you do not need to prove every single thing.

It is okay to struggle with what you are reading. And it is also ok to ask questions to smarter or more senior people about it. If you get super stuck ask them for help, and ask them for intuition regarding the result (why is it useful? where did the idea come from? where can it be applied). It is okay to ask! (See Paul Garrett's answer here!)

It is going to improve with time. As long as you work hard, and learn the theory/ideas, you will eventually start to see things repeating here and there, and when they do you will be able to read papers much faster (and, more importantly, identify what is new and where you need to put more attention). Experience and knowledge will naturally lead to efficiency.

Keep working, you can do it! Good luck!


is it possible to have different research topics for the MSc and PhD? Here is my case, before I studied my master´s degree I managed to write a research paper jointly with a Professor (not from my university) on databases. After that I pursue my master´s degree in CS, but on neural networks rather than databases. The thing is that I would like to do my PhD in databases with the professor I wrote the research paper with. Do you think that I can have problems with the admission committee? I would not like to go to study a PhD without any financial support at all.

I don't see why there should be any problem with this whatsoever. It is quite common for students to move around topics, particularly if you are switching between programs or universities. If everybody agrees that you are a good candidate for the position in question, then it shouldn't really matter too much that the topic is not an exact match.