How to convince professor that I have read topics on my own? I am keen to apply for Doctoral program in Europe. But I have some questions.
All my mathematical interests are centred about Hyperbolic Geometry. And I am keen to apply for PhD position (or join a research group) in the particular field. I have never done the course in my masters, because my university does not offer such course. Also, My master thesis is not in that field (in not hyperbolic geometry). Also, I can not join a internship program or summer school, and reading project on the field under some professors, because this current (Covid 19) situations. Therefore, I am planning to read the topics on my own.
To apply for a PhD program I need to write my interests to that particular professor. Since I am learning the topics on my own, and I have no document for that, then how I would convince him/her that I have read the topics and well prepared to work his/her research group.
Please help me. Thanking in advance.

It's fairly easy for people to identify other people in the field. You need to demonstrate you know the topic during the conversation.
The easiest way is to read the professor's papers and offer intelligent comments when you first write to them: what is interesting about the paper and why, what you want to work on, etc.


IELTS - How is the exam handed to students? My wife and I are taking the IELTS exam in a few days and this question just occurred to me - When taking the test, do students receive the whole listening/reading/writing package or do they receive individual sections as they finish the previous section?

I ask because during my practice sessions, I realized that I would usually finish the listening and reading sections a few minutes before the time limit. On the other hand, I always finish my essay in the writing section only one or two minutes before the time limit.
Therefore, by the end of the listening/reading sections I usually end up with a combined ~6-minute spare time. I would love to use that extra time to plan and actually write my essay, but that would not work if we can only do one section at a time.

So, how does the exam work? Do students receive all the sections to answer at their own pace Or do they receive individual sections, only receiving the next section after the previous one is finished?

The IELTS test format provides the necessary details. Each section of the exam is timed separately. Normally, all the materials of a previous section are collected before the next one is distributed.


strategy to divide the class of large number of students Let us consider that one is supposed to teach a class of a large number of students (say 100 or more). I am thinking of this scenario corresponding to undergraduate students, but hoping for a general solution.

Is it a good idea to divide the class to a number of sub-classes and teach them at separate sessions(say, 5 groups of 20 students or 4 groups of 25 students)? What are the plus and minus of dividing the class?
What are the alternate ways of managing a large number of students?
Suppose, we decide to divide the class to n number of sub-classes? What are the best criteria to take into account to put students into different classes?
I can think of two ways of dividing the class based on grades. However, this looks a narrow judgement to me... Any way, first, each subclass is a Gaussian distribution of students based on grades. Second, each subclass has students within certain range of grades. Which one will be more helpful to students?

Typically, in the US, large classes are divided into sections and scheduled at different times throughout the day. Then the students pick which one best fits their overall schedule when they register. Registration times are typically done by class, nominally seniors, juniors, sophomores, and freshmen, with a later period nearer to the start of the semester to give students some time to rearrange. The enrollment in each section is capped, and students may fail to register for their preferred time, but that's just how it is.

Typically undergraduate students are not divided up into sections by grades, but there may be entirely separate classes organized for students that are on some sort of Honors track. Good grades and other things are required to get into the Honors track, but after that, there's little use of their grades to separate them from non-honors students.


Requests by PhD assistant to Master's Student - Avoiding an unreasonable request I am a master's degree student that is going to graduate in the next two weeks.

After having concluded a master's degree thesis with many econometric models in R I also decided to show the results in Latex. It is very good looking and easy to manage considering that was a 100+ pages work with many tables and plots. My thesis's professor was impressed and the dissertation looked very good at the very ending. All in all, it was an extremely hard work for me. Many analysis has been done (far more than requested), but I have learned so much during the journey that just because of this the investment paid back.

Now the problem. The PhD student who was in charge to "supervise me" wants to reproduce my work in "1 weekend". This is my one-year-long work and it is absolutely impossible to do it.

Moreover, since he is pretty statistical illiterate (he use statistical software as running black boxes), he is start asking improbable things, such as to export all input and output in .csv, or to merge data in .xlsx tables so that he can simply put them in Excel or Stata and "check" my work. And if it doesn't work to find a way to make it works.

Then he asked for all the codes, to "check" it. He want to press the button and replicate the analysis. But of course it doesn't work like that. Anyone who have ever used R, Python, etc. knows that is not that simple (just think how to solve directory repository problems...)

He also asked me to copy all the tables and put them in word format, in order to be "reproducible". To copy number by number if it is necessary because he need them.

I don't know the "bon-ton" in this situation. The professor was ok when I told him I was confident in R. This because he trusted me and my capabilities. But nobody told me that after my thesis was complete I would have needed to teach phd students R or how to replicate my analysis and solve their problems in doing it.

What should I do?

There are three people involved at least, including the professor. I think the request is not reasonable for the reasons you state. Clearly the junior advisor has expectations, but they seem to be un-doable.

You have to judge personalities, but I'd suggest trying to see if you can have a meeting very soon with all three of you present. Try to come to an understanding about what can be reasonably done in the time remaining.

Try to find a backup plan if not all expectations can be met. Don't be shy about saying why such things are unreasonable and that melding your work to the advisors preferred work-flow at such a late date isn't feasible - or even desirable. Your use of R and LaTex seem to be good choices. I don't know why the PhD advisor wants to check your work independently of you and the professor. Maybe you can get an answer to that in a three person meeting.

My personal opinion is that you have been put in an untenable position. Unfortunately, I have no say or authority in the outcome.


What if the research was failure? Planning to do PhD research about to find the link between 2 things.

What if there was no link between these 2 things?

does that mean all years of research is worthless? and no PhD degree?

is the PhD more about the results of the research or about the research itself?

It is useful to think of a thesis as answering a question. In your case that question would be: Are thing A and thing B related?

The setup of your thesis would then be:

You introduce the question
You than theorize why they might be related, and why they might not
be related.
You summarize previous research on thing A and thing B, and their
relationship
You describe the design of your approach (or approaches) to answer
that question, and what the advantages and disadvantages are compared
to what has been done before.
You describe the results.
You conclude by answering the question, in this case thing A and
thing B are not related.
You discuss some implications of that finding
You discuss some weaknesses of your approach and potential other
designs that might mitigate those weakness (but have other weaknesses
of their own).

It is definitely easier to write up, and especially publish, research with a positive finding. But the research is not a failure: You started with a question, and you ended up with an answer. It was not the answer you expected, but if you knew the answer before starting the research, then why do the research? So, this is not the end of your PhD.


I worked in a specific direction without communicating it to master's thesis advisor, problem? I am currently waiting for a meeting with my master's thesis supervisor and two people from a research institution i am associated with. The plan is to for me to talk about my literature review, and suggest possible directions for my thesis.
In a previous meeting with my supervisor only, we have already decided on a topic, but the method or framework are subject to the outcome of the next meeting. Since the research institution has a closely related industry project, it is to be expected that the decision process will be in some way influenced by the applicability to the project. To some people, this might be a limitation, but I would be glad to see parts of my work actually being useful.
I have prepared slides to give an overview of my literature search, along with suggestions on what to do next. Because I have not been too busy with other stuff, I have also implemented some methods already. In addition, I am currently working on deriving the extension of another method to our specific problem, which may or may not work. While it could be nice to have this kind of progression, I'm not sure whether it is appropriate of me to work in a direction without having checked with my supervisor first. This is especially since we might decide to do something entirely different.
I expect the supervisor to be in favor of methods that are similar to recent publications, and the research institute people to be biased towards methods that fit their project. I think the methods I have been looking at are rather geared towards the latter.
My questions are:

Should I bring up me working on selected methods in the meeting? This could be interpreted as going against our agreement to decide on a method together.
Should I update my supervisor on my progress prior to the meeting (via e-mail)?
Would it be a bad idea to steer the meeting into the direction of the methods I have  been working on, without mentioning it?

My concerns are not only having worked on the wrong things in vain, but also upsetting my supervisor for not checking in and not abiding the agreement (at least kind of).
I would rather not embarrass him in front of the other people, in case he would feel that way about me working without having communicated with him.

Additional Information: my relationship to my supervisor is somewhat formal since we haven't had too much contact up until now, but I already know both people from the research institution where I have been a research assistant for over two years.

It isn't a problem unless you make it a problem. I would think that what you have done shows initiative and would be praised normally. That should be true even if the committee suggests that you go in another direction for the thesis.
But, to me, at least, saying that you have been exploring one of the options seriously would be a point in your favor. But if other considerations are such that you should be taking another direction now, you can do that, and not insist that you follow up now on your current direction.
If they suggest a different direction, just put the recent work away for a while. You might have the opportunity to develop it further later and the experience of doing it might actually help in following up on the suggested direction.
As long as you don't fight with people, who might have good ideas as well as authority over you, then you should be fine. Maybe better than fine. Initiative is a good thing.
Likewise, a quick update to your supervisor on your recent activities should not be an issue as long as you are flexible.


Is it more ethical to hire a tutor to prepare or to cheat on a test? This question was inspired by this fascinating discussion about cheating.

If grades, degrees, test scores are important for getting a job/internship/assistantship, even more so than the actual knowledge that they measure, I can see how cheating on a test can be considered unethical. Is it ethically better to hire an expensive tutor to prepare, say, for the SAT or for the GMAT, or for some test at school, than to attempt to cheat on the exam?

Here is some context: New York Times: Tutors Hold Key to Higher Test Scores, for a High Fee .

Assume that the tutor has no secret/insider knowledge about the test. Assume that the tutor is essentially teaching you only some tricks for beating this particular test, no real knowledge. Assume also that many people in class do not have the money to hire a tutor of the same qualification.

Conversely, is it okay to cheat for those less financially fortunate, if they cannot afford a tutor?

As further context, Princeton Review explicitly states that their SAT prep program does only one thing: raises scores. Princeton Review argues that test prep is right and ethical, because (paraphrasing) SAT is a stupid, almost meaningless thing, and those without quality test preparation are put at a disadvantage.

Measuring the ability to learn tricks (including financial ability) is actually of use to most employers etc., while measuring the ability to cheat is if anything a measure of what employers etc. want to avoid (since typically the risk/reward scheme for them is very different from individuals).

Thus, while having a tutor is not completely fair to those who cannot afford it, it is still a reasonable proxy for desirability.  Cheating is (usually) not.  So it's ethically better than cheating inasmuch as the right people for the positions will tend to be selected for them.


Submitting a trivial correction to a CS assignment/coursework (i.e. source code) I am a University student.

I had some course work which I had to submit. This work is a computer program, a very large codebase. Due to technical reasons, which are entirely my fault, I submitted the work but there were some very minor mistakes: I forgot to upload a small and very trivial code piece which the program cannot compile without. Because the program cannot compile, I suppose that it can be considered a more serious mistake or a grey area. The professor can definitely arrive to making this minor corrections from his end, but I do not think that it is fair for me to expect that out of him.

I was thinking to contact the professor via email about this. Or to wait some days to contact him in person (and later email him) to inform him of my mistake and also to submit the missing file.

I was wondering how acceptible this approach is, or if there are some general University regulations or procedures which I have to look into before even approaching my professor?

Contact your professor.  First, stop trying to trivialize your error - it's big enough that your code won't compile, so it's a serious error and that's that.  If the assignment marking requires them to run your code, then you are assured to get a 0 for code that doesn't compile, so you've honestly got nothing to lose here.  If, on the other hand, it's marked by hand without running it, then you need to address the error and how it happened.  This is especially an issue if you showed output from a previous version of the code - you submitted code that clearly didn't produce that output, and that can sometimes be construed as academic dishonesty.

Your professor has probably been around long enough (read: a few days) to understand that undergrads sometimes submit code with errors accidentally.  Perhaps they submitted the previous version by mistake, or fixed "just one little thing" and forgot to test it.  You would not be the first such student, and usually the professor will not get angry about it.

However, all of this being said, this doesn't mean that the prof needs to actually do anything about it.  Depending on their particular style, you might get ignored.  For instance, if everyone had the same deadline and it has long since passed, then submitting a correction is probably not something that the prof will allow - what evidence does this professor have that you didn't spend extra days perfecting bad code and now are ready to submit it?

But to answer the original question - these sorts of requests are made all the time, and it is unlikely to affect you negatively.  The longer you wait, the worse this gets.


Should you tell everything in a poster session if you have not published it yet in a journal? I have a poster session tomorrow about an idea I didn't publish yet but planning very soon. If people stop by and asked me in detail about my idea, should I openly discuss or not?

I certainly would. It is often very beneficial to discuss your work with somebody who can understand it. You may get some interesting remarks, suggestions that you didn't think of, or just some information that you are not aware of. Besides, the openly exhibited attitude of "I'm not telling you anything of value because I suspect you are a petty thief trying to steal my intellectual property" leaves a very unpleasant impression and the evasive moves of the sort "This would take too long time to explain" may just make people suspect that you don't know what you are talking about yourself. So if you do not want to share your ideas at the moment for whatever reason, I would just not go public with anything at all.
With that said, the chance that somebody will stop by and engage in a long meaningful discussion with you during a poster session is not too high (unless you present something really outstanding), and you certainly do not need and aren't expected to tell everything you can in the case of the usual "small talk".
Just my two cents.


How to find out the editorial times (for article review) of CS journals? Elsevier has recently lunched a tool called Journal Finder by which researchers can use paper's title and abstract, and field of study to find a suitable journal for their manuscript. Here is the sample
 in which the editorial time is 12 weeks. They surely maintain database for their own, but is there any other source we can do this for other non-Elsevier journals, like IEEE or ACM? I know WoS provides some information about it, but WoS's database accuracy is not yet clear to me since I have seen lots of inaccurate information in WoS reports (for instance, number of "review article" published is often inaccurate).

Once a year the Notices of AMS publish the backlog of mathematics research journals containing inter alia the data you are interested in.

The 2012 one is here:

http://www.ams.org/notices/201210/rtx121001473p.pdf

and the 2013 is here :

http://www.ams.org/notices/201310/rnoti-p1390.pdf

and both do list some journals in informatics including the non-Elsevier ones (e.g. the Springer's Acta Informatica).


Citing different web pages by the same author in APA I have been looking through the APA handbook and I can't seem to find a binding advise on this.

I have a couple of web pages in my reference list by the same author (a company), all without a date:

Nederbooms. (n.d.). *CGN core corpus | Nederbooms*. Retrieved on April 13, 2014,
     from http://nederbooms.ccl.kuleuven.be/eng/cgntb
Nederbooms. (n.d.). *Lassy small | Nederbooms*. Retrieved on April 13, 2014,
     from http://nederbooms.ccl.kuleuven.be/eng/lassytb

The problem is referring to these sources inline. How would I go about doing so? Let's say I refer to the first source. This is how I would do it - but I can't be sure.

  Most bananas are yellow, but some are green and some are even brown
  (Nederbooms, n.d., "CGN core corpus").

The issue is that in APA style the author and year are used in the in text citation keys and these keys need to be unambiguous. When you have the same authors, in the same order, and the same date of publication, you add a letter to the publication date. You do the same thing even when the publication date is unknown. According to the APA blog

  Also remember that if you have two or more “in press” or “no date”
  references with the same authors in the same order, you should use
  lowercase letters—a, b, c, and so forth ... The only difference between these types of references and references with publication years is that “in press” and “no date” references contain a hyphen before the a, b, and so forth:

  American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (n.d.-a). The knowledge ...

  American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (n.d.-b). A strategy to ...

  Schafer, G., & Plunkett, K. (2011a). The power ...

  Schafer, G., & Plunkett, K. (2011b). Task complexity ...

  Schafer, G., & Plunkett, K. (in press-a). The rapid learning ...

  Schafer, G., & Plunkett, K. (in press-b). Sometimes a child ...


Can I ask a publisher for a paper that I need for reviewing I was asked to review a technical paper for a journal at a large commercial publisher. The paper extends on another publication that is cited several times throughout the document. The cited paper was published at the same publisher but in a different journal. I work for an R&D department in a private company. We do not have a subscription with the publisher and no budget to buy articles (at least not in cases like this). I.e., I cannot access the cited paper. Would it be acceptable to ask the editor of the journal I review for to provide me with the cited paper?

Additional Information: The review process is double blind, so I do not know if the cited paper and the paper I'm reviewing are from the same authors. Given the specific topic, it seems likely to me. This is why I did not ask the authors for a copy. I was also unable to find a free version of the paper online.

Outcome: I asked the editor for the paper and received a copy within hours. Along with ads for a subscription of that journal.

Yes, you can. Chances are they'll be willing to give it to you.

See also: Can a referee request a paper referenced in the reviewed paper?, except your situation is simpler because the desk editor of the journal can probably already access the paper and won't have to request it.


Is it ethical to tell my teaching assistant that I like him? I, a twenty-year-old female, have come to admire the graduate teaching assistant for my summer course quite strongly. I'm extremely interested in what he has to say, I always pay attention, never use my phone and use eye contact to show interest. I do like them very much and I think about them with warmth often. I want to know about their work, I want to know what he is interested in. I would like to at least be their friend.
Despite my strong admiration I must emphasize that I have not and do not plan to cross professional boundaries until the end of the course.
I have spoken to them though it was only a short conversation about the work that was assigned to us the following weekend, however he did seem quite warm and open to conversation. Specifically he emphasizes in his syllabus to not hesitate to contact him with any questions we may have at all. I would like to be able to talk to them more without bothering them, and over stepping professional boundaries. I hopefully plan to ask them out once the course has ended, but I would still like to be able to have the chance to talk to them too as friends outside of course hours about the course material. Would this be ethical? Should I just back down? Specifically I wanted to thank him for giving me a very positive, in-depth feed back in the essay assignment that I had turned in that I got a perfect grade on.
I've been going through a really rough time in my personal life. Despite having flunked before, I made a promise to myself to work harder and to never give up on my goals. Truly their receptiveness, warmth and passion has genuinely inspired me to keep going and to study harder. I would very much like to thank them for inspiring me and being a good teacher which has helped me understand the material.

Would it be ethical to express these sentiments of admiration and gratitude to them during their office hours?

Would it be possible to date them after the course has ended since he is essentially a normal graduate student instead of a true professor?

*edit
Class has ended and we have a date planned! Thanks all for your advice!
*edit #2
We are still dating and our 9 month anniversary is coming up soon! The relationship is going really well and it is the best and most loving relationship we’ve ever been in! We are excited to grow together and the mention of having children someday has come up occasionally.
Sometimes he jokes about being my TA but he is very adamant about making it clear he didn’t like me during the course, but in conclusion we are both doing fantastic!
Thanks for all your help ! (May 7th 2020)
*edit # 3
Not sure if anyone comes across this anymore but our one year anniversary passed a few months ago and we're growing strong! I'm really happy that I went out of my comfort zone and found a lasting relationship. (10/28/2020)

Wait until after the course is over and grades are in: don't put your TA in a difficult situation.

After that, you are just two adult humans, assuming you won't have any other courses with this TA.


how to ask supervisor for a recommendation letter for scholarship? I've just started my master in Canada and I just passed one course so far and it was with my supervisor.
could I ask my supervisor to fill out a strong reference letter for me for a scholarship? or should I find another professor?

Please note that I am receiving some funding from my supervisor right now. Asking him to fill out the recommendation letter would be harmful?
how should I ask him? could you please guide me through writing an email?

In general, be polite but write as if you were talking to an actual, normal, nice person.

Your request should include some brief information about your motivation, the scholarship, its requirements, and how they apply to you. It should also help the recommender to recall who you are. And you should ask for a strong letter. If the recommender doesn't think they can write a strong letter, consider asking someone else instead of requesting a letter from them. I've highlighted those keywords in my example below.

Also, the supervisor is a good person to ask for a recommendation.

  Dear Dr. X,

  I am currently applying for the Donald Duck scholarship for graduate students in the field of comparative quackery.
  I am aware that you only know me from the course on boat programming, which I concluded with a paper on applied quackery, but I was wondering if you were able to write a strong recommendation letter for my application.

  As you may recall, I would like to continue my work on applied quackery in my MA thesis and include some comparative elements.

  The scholarship is quite competitive. It is only awarded to students who are expected to be part of the best 5% of a school's cohort. The Duck family's mission is to promote candidates with a rounded education, so it might be of interest that I am taking extracurriculars in ancient philosophy and volunteer as rugby coach at a school in my neighborhood.

  I would be extremely grateful if you could write a strong letter of recommendation until 15 January 2019. The letter must be submitted online at www.duck-quackery-studies.edu.

  Please let me know if you think this is possible, and if you have any questions.

  Yours sincerely,

  Nikki

Depending on the local culture and the relationship to your supervisor, you may want to be less formal than this. But a letter like this would work also in Germany, which has a rather more hierarchical and less easy-going culture than, say, the US.


Who decides about admission of a PhD student? I am applying for a PhD position in Canada. I have already talked to a Professor and for some reasons, he really wants to hire me as his student. The problem is that currently, I have no TOEFL score requirement. The professor told me that he may convince the graduate committee to conditionally accept me.

I was wondering how likely he can do it? Who makes the final decision about a PhD applicant?

Let me explain my comment as an answer.

The admission process works in two different ways: Formal enrolment and informal enrolment

Formal

You apply through university web link and select the research areas or supervisor. Then probably you communicate with the chosen supervisor through email(s). If things go well then you might get an interview call or direct admit.

Informal

You approach the supervisor first. Discussions or interviews may go on. If everything is alright, you supervisor would speak with the admission committee for your official admit.

In both these types of cases your supervisor recommends for the admission. However, it is the decision of the admission committee to make the final call.

  Note: I have skipped the recommendation letters related points which is a major part in both these types of enrolment.

Moreover, each University has their own set of rules. It is wise to go through the same.


Where can I search for researchers in a specific field by location Where can I search for some authors of publications or researchers in a specific filed (e.g. Computer science) and in a specific country (USA, China, ...)

For example I would like to find all people who work on Data Mining located in Iran

I suggest that you use a variant of snowball sampling.  Start with the largest, most visible research university in that country (e.g. Iran).  Do a web search for the departments most likely associated with the topic (e.g. data mining). Look at the web pages associated with the most prominent researchers.  You will find listings of their published papers.  In those published papers, you will see co-authors, many from the same university and (importantly) from the same country.  Follow the trail of co-authors and repeat these procedures with their web pages.

In a similar fashion, find conference held in this geography.  It is likely that there will be a high concentration of local participants and conference committee members. They may or may not be important in the grand scheme, but you will find them.

Using this procedure, you should be able to enumerate 90%+ of the people involved in any one specialty in any one (small) geographic region.


Can a scientific article (of an non-tested idea) in computer science be accepted in a high-ranked journal? I'm doing a PhD in computer science. I've been working in my research question for a year and a half now and I still didn't publish any article yet. Lately, I found out an idea that can improve the current solutions. I believe my idea can provide better results than current tools. But, my question is as follows: Is it possible to submit my paper to a scientific journal and hopefully get it accepted without implementing my idea (i.e. without testing my idea)?

Ideas are cheap. Most researchers have more ideas than they have time to develop them. It's the development which has value. Or to put it another way, in order to advance the field you need to convince other people that your idea is interesting, and the fact that you believe it will not be sufficient. Depending on your subfield the way to convince people may be a mathematical analysis, empirical measurement of an implementation, or a combination of the two, but you need something.


How can I cite a report written by a Congressman in MLA Style? The report is called The Path Forward: Rethinking Federal Policy on Marijuana. I have no idea how to cite this online source. It seems confusing since it isn't a bill but rather just something he wrote to inform. Website: https://blumenauer.house.gov/sites/blumenauer.house.gov/files/BlumenauerReport_ThePathForward.pdf

I searched google scholar to find your article The path forward: rethinking federal marijuana policy and from there you can cite it using several different formats including MLA by clicking the double quotation symbol as shown in the figures below:

Also in the second figure you can click the BibTeX link.


MBA applicants age limits Are you aware of any business schools that have age limits when considering MBA applicants? Schools that specifically state that candidates above, say, 35, need not apply?

No. Age discrimination is illegal for all programs that receive public funding in the United States. Since a vast majority of schools receive funding of some sort from the US Dept. of Education, you wouldn't be discriminated against based on your age - unless you're applying to a school that doesn't receive public funding.


When can a museum be considered an academic institution? I must admit that although I deeply believe museums, no matter how small, play a very important role in almost any sort of research, proving their scientific character can be sometimes quite awkward. Is there any set of fixed criteria that would allow a museum to be considered as an academic institution if met?

My answer is "localized".

In France there is a distinction between museum of arts (arts in a broad sense, antiquities being arts for instance) and museum of natural sciences (biology, paleontology, etc.). The latter is considered an academic institution: part of the people working there have the title of associate or full professor, and they can have PhD students.
In some european countries (France, UK, belgium at least), some museums are part of a university, so I think we can say that they are academic places.

The real question may be then "are you an academic if you work in an academic institution", and I guess the answer is no.


How do top graduate programs in mathematics verify the validity of an enrolee's undergraduate degree from abroad? E.g. IUM in Russia Even if the title might seem self-explanatory, I would ask you to read the entire post to understand what exactly I'm trying to understand here.

I'm from Russian Federation. We don't have a lot of departments in pure mathematics. Most of those undergraduate programs named "mathematics" are actually aimed at people who wish to teach mathematics to engineers/IT/finance people or those who themselves wish to get into engineering, IT or finance. Actually, when I say "we don't have a lot" I mean we have two and a half. No exaggeration here. My explanation is actually a bit oversimplified, but I hope you understand what I meant to say.

The funny thing is that the most renown for the quality of pure mathematics students russian school is called Independent University of Moscow. They offer free education with entrance based on how you perform during the process of education itself. It has no entrance exams, everyone can attend lectures at first, but to get the status of a "student" you must do well in a first three mandatory courses. Why did I called the situtation the "funny thing"? The reason it's degree is not recongized as an official undergraduate degree in Russian Federation. So, being called Independent University of Moscow, it doesn't an official university status in Russia.

What I wish to understand is how top graduate schools in mathematics would treat a candidate with such a diploma. From what I understand, it has a good reputation in mathematics. Many people from there were accepted to the best graduate schools in mathematics all over the world. For example, Harvard, MIT. Some of those even had their IUM "degree" as the their only degree. That is, they didn't have any official russian undergraduate degree in any field.

But IUM doesn't have a lot of alumni. So, those might look like some special cases, even expections. Besides, all recent IUM graduates had an other, an official degree from other russian university. And the latest case I know of with a man being accepted to MIT with only IUM diploma is dated 2006. Even if such a practice was approprite in US before, it might have changed now. I'm not sure.

That said, I understand there were exceptional cases of enrolee's being admitted to top graduate school (in US) without any degree at all, based on their exceptional recommendations or their research. I know at least three of such people (all from my country, they applied in nineteen-eighties/nineteen-nineties to Harvard and MIT). What I'm trying to understand is how do graduate schools treat the lack of the official status of a foreign school with it being a strong place with strong students and strong professors. Another nuance I'm thinking is that it is a school from abroad. I'm not even sure how to US departments verify the validity of one's undergraduate/masters degree if it's not from US or EU.

Of course, what I'm asking is about pure bureaucratic procedures. I absolutely understand that to have a chance in getting into top graduate school in mathematics you must have exceptional credentials: recommendations of renown professors or even your own research articles. But, say, one has it (for example, you can get those things during a successful process of getting a "degree" at IUM, that's the reason it has so little of alumni). But how would graduate schools treat such a potential strong candidate if his degree is not official in the country where it was obtained?

IUM (quite purposefully) distants itself from the "officially recognised" education and relies on informal recognition in a sub-group of well-established mathematicians. As an IUM graduate, you most likely will be recognised as an outstanding candidate for your ability to do maths. You will also have recommendations of internationally renowned mathematicians. Many academics will feel themselves very reassured hiring someone with IUM credentials.

However, universities do not consist of academic only, and HR departments may have their views on the process, too. It is fair to say that even the best professors sometimes have only limited influence on HR when it comes to formalities. And of course, the list of recognised qualifications is one of such things.

Unfortunately, there are no universal rules which HR departments apply. It is likely that for a particular unusual situation like the one you described, the decision will be made ad hoc by someone in HR department; once it is made, it is unlikely they will go back on it.

That is why many of IUM graduates prefer also to get themselves a degree from officially recognised university. Even if it does not give them the level of education compared with IUM, the official degree always works well to pacify the HR departments, while academics will always look at IUM degrees on your CV as something really outstanding.


Sharing an old (never used) Phd Proposal with another student Can I share a Phd proposal that I wrote five years ago with a potential student, who is currently applying for a PhD? Please note that I never used my proposal to apply to a PhD program till this moment? The person asked me to share it wants a real example of a proposal. But I feel it is my effort. Is it ok to share it? Thanks

If you are applying with that proposal, then you should not share it. How would you feel if they present it better than you and get a post while you don't? It is your work, present it and use it yourself.

Why not offer to read and help them edit their proposal? But let them write their own.


Can I use data and images found online in my project report, under the fair use clause in copyright law? I am a mechanical engineering graduate student, and am working on my final project.  I am doing a finite element analysis of a particular phenomenon.  I was hoping to find test data of that particular phenomenon using a quick google search, and sure enough, I found some.  The test data will be helpful in showing that my analysis results are accurate.  I found the report on a vendor’s website.  Can I reproduce the test data from this report in my final project?  Per the “fair use” clause of the copyright act, since this will be used for scholarship/research (no profit involved), am I covered?

Can I also reproduce images from the report?

Added detail:

Thanks all of you for your answers!  I am certainly going to cite the source of the data and images.  Tom, to explain a little more about the data - it is friction coefficient data that applies to two very specific materials.  Company A did the testing for Company B.  Company B has posted the test report on their website (they are a vendor, and want people to know how low friction their particular material is).  I want to know if I can use the friction data from the report, and one or two images from the report (properly cited).  The reason I ask, is that Company A explicitly states in the report, "This document is provided on the basis of strict confidentiality.  Subject to any statutory requirement, the contents must not be disclosed to a third party, without the prior consent of Company A."  I know that I can contact Company A and ask, but if they do not give me the right to use the data and images... am I still ok?

The following is NOT legal advice. I am NOT an attorney. You should ALWAYS consult a competent attorney about any legal matters, including this matter.

Generally, raw data is not covered by copyright law in the US. I don't know exactly what the data you're using looks like, but if it's something akin to baseball statistics (a bunch of numbers), those can't be copyrighted (though their presentation can be). If it's just raw data, you don't even need the fair use exemption as there is no copyright protection.

As for images, those are almost certainly covered by copyright law.

Fair use is a four-prong test that is measured by a court. A good way to get a sense of whether or not your situation falls under the fair use exemption is to consult a competent attorney who can compare your situation to past rulings. Keep in mind, though, that an attorney can make an educated prediction, but cannot guarantee an outcome. The four factors considered, to give you an idea, are:

  the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  the nature of the copyrighted work;
  the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
  the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

While all four prongs may be considered, you do not have to meet a specific requirement for all four. It's up to the court which of the criteria matter, or don't matter, in your situation and how much.

Keep in mind also, from a pragmatic standpoint, that copyright law would only be enforced if the publisher of the data decided to file a law suit. If that's unlikely, all this discussion is moot.

Finally, you can always just send in an email and ask. Given the nature of your work, they might just want a citation. And if they give your permission, you have nothing to worry about.

Update

@Jacob added some more details about the situation.

What struck me as interesting in the added details was the statement This document is provided on the basis of strict confidentiality. If the data is truly in need of protection, like if it is a trade secret, it might be smart to exercise some extra caution here. Having posted the data on the open Internet, the company probably could not do much to keep you from using it. However, if it's truely valuable, they may fight to protect it which could create a huge headache, to say the least.

I think I outlined why you might be able to use the data with and without fair use above. I want to add however, that does not mean you should use it without permission. Even if the data is not protected by copyright, it would be best to ask permission if for no reason other than basic courtesy.

Being turned down does not change the law. If something was not protected by copyright before you ask, it will not be protected after you ask. If something falls under fair use before you ask, it will still remain under fair use after you ask. You really have very little to lose by asking. I can tell though that you are hesitant to ask so I will suggest you do so without revealing too much information about yourself and your work. Instead of diving in with a long, detailed explanation of your research, put your toe in the water with some basic details and see how they react.

For all you know, they might be interested in your work. Since it seems like your area of expertise, this might even lead to something more like a job interview. There is a lot of potential upside.

I don't want to say too much more about whether or not the specific data is covered by copyright because this is not a place to get legal advice and I am not someone to give it. But in general, if you put the raw coefficient numbers in the prose of your work, you are probably safe regardless of fair use. If you want to copy any photos, graphics, or detailed descriptions of the numbers, you'll have to do so under fair use and/or with permission.


What are the reasons for journals to have a policy against publishing material available as a preprint? As it can be appreciated from this list of journals with varying preprint policies, certain journals consider a preprint to be "prior publication". In other fields like Chemistry, there is a strong policy against preprints.

I'm curious about those reasons, if there are other reasons, and if they hold weight.

A a chemist, I'm very well aware of this.

Here's the ACS Journal Editors' Policy on Preprints' point of view about the disadvantages of preprint servers:

  The disadvantages of preprint servers include: the potential for flooding the literature with trivial and repetitious publications, thus making extraction of reliable and valuable information more difficult; absence of peer review; possible premature disclosure with inadequate experimental details or supporting data; premature claims of priority; potential lack of proper references and credit to prior work; abuse of multiple revisions or updates; possible lack of duration and long term archiving.

Personally, I find the two concerns about

"premature claims of priority" and
"abuse of multiple revisions or updates"

the most relevant points.

"flooding literature with trivial publications" is IMHO an issue with and without preprint servers,
"repetitious publications" for me fall into the same category, as do
"inadequate experimental details or supporting data".
"absence of peer review" is clearly visible with papers from preprint servers - which is IMHO an advantage over journals where the peer review is uncritical.
"long term archiving" depends IMHO more on the responsible organization behind the server (I'm not any more concerned that arXiv could shut down than e.g. Langmuir, Analyst or Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry)

There have been "experiments" with preprint servers for chemistry some 10 years ago [1] but AFAIK they did not develop the momentum e.g. arXiv has, and they seem to have died meanwhile.
See also: Cecelia Brown: The Role of Electronic Preprints in Chemical
Communication: Analysis of Citation, Usage, and Acceptance in the Journal Literature, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 54.5 (2003): 362-371.
(the discussed server seems to be down - or at least I can't get a response).

Personal point of view on the problem

The possibility to be able to publish a manuscript on a preprint server before submitting it to a journal is not as imortant for me personally as the possibility to make the final contents of the paper publicly accessible.

Thus I can live quite well with not being allowed to submit manuscripts that are already available on preprint servers as long as I'm allowed to also publish the manuscript (preferrably the final version after peer-review) after I submitted it to the journal.

either at a preprint server (arXiv), or
on institutional, personal or project web pages
(preferrably both, of course)


Under what circumstances would a lecturer 'bump up' a student to pass? When would someone marking papers (lecturer, etc.) bump a student from just below pass up to the pass line? Do teachers consider things like attendance?

Regardless of the consideration (attendance, participation, etc.) for giving a student a better grade than they deserve, what is the justification?

One of the things I like about teaching is that while we draw fine lines at numbers such as 65.0 and 89.5, teachers also get the final word on putting grades into the system, and the ability to look at a student's performance holistically to include non-tangible paper marks such as attendance (in class and office hours), intrinsic motivation, and future goals justifies "bumping" grades for particular students.

I don't do it often, but if a student is on the line and showed me high motivation but didn't quite get to the higher grade, I will consider bumping up the grade (but I won't do it because of grade-grubbing). Sometimes, it comes down to when I'm entering the final grade into the system, and I think, "You know, that 89.3% for Alice really should be an A-." I don't lose sleep over it, and it really is relatively rare.


Should I stop applying faculty positions after I take on a postdoc job I may have a postdoc job offer. The professor for the postdoc still hesitates to make a final decision and asked me if I can confirm my commitment (working for at least one year). I have finished one-year postdoc (not at the professor's institution) and have been very actively looking for faculty positions.

If I make the commitment, does that mean I have to stop applying faculty positions, at least for the first year? I am not sure if this is common practice for postdoc-supervisors.

Don't stop exploring other positions until you have a firm commitment from the professor. The situation is mutual. You both have to agree before anything is finalized. Until then you are still free to consider all options.

By firm commitment, I mean something that you can put your signature to.


Should cheating be expected to be more common in Universities in India, and if so, how could any provided credentials be evaluated for authenticity? I was a bit surprised to see the extent of cheating going on during state matriculation exams in Bihar (one of the states in eastern part of India). Looking at the images posted at twitter, it looks like large amounts of people do not have much respect for the exam process. My experience from different countries have generally been that cheaters attempt to cheat discreetly, if not so much for any other reason expect to avoid getting caught. In this example in Bihar it seems that getting caught was not a major concern for those cheating.

In this other article about above situation, an individual is quoted as saying:

  "Any examination of this scale in any part of the country has similar complaints."

I had earlier read about corruption being quite common in India, it is just that I did not expect it have led to this type of behavior in public. For example I had an Indian friend who told me how he had obtained his car driving license years earlier without any kind of tests or qualifications by just paying a clerk at the driving license office. This sort of stories are present also in articles like this one from Reuters that says:

  (Reuters) - Mahesh Kundu paid $45 for a driving license, Rupam Bhatia $110 to be admitted to hospital and Vishrant Chandra $130 for a marriage certificate. These are the commonplace bribery stories experienced by middle-class Indians who have poured into the streets to say "enough is enough."

For one reason or another I thought that this sort of requests for money always happened discreetly and money was always exchanged quietly, "under the counter". Looking at this rather public event in Bihar made me wonder, though, about what effect the level of corruption in India may have on any qualifications earned at their universities. How would you know whether a student has actually earned their qualifications?

This particular incident doesn't happen to be an university examination. This is the final grade 10h school exam that was conducted centrally by the government of state of Bihar, India. BSEB. The given situation is being highly criticized by Indian media and Indian people as well.

Coming to the question, Yes there is a lot of widespread corruption and malpractices prevalent in India. I can't guarantee you that there had been no cheating involved in passing a student in regard to any examination. However, in Indian universities especially the top ones, the aforementioned phenomenon is quite rare. Moreover, the admissions to these  top universities is quite competitive and often based on entrance exams. You can cheat to pass an exam but you can't score enough to get a rank under 25k out of 1.4 million candidates. (AIEEE)
That said, there are various other parameters to judge a candidate as well. Even let us suppose that a student has been able to cheat his/her way throughout, there is always an interview round to any job or any position.


If I have a list of abbreviation at the beginning of a paper, do I still need to give the full word when I first mention the term in paper? Do I still need to write e.g. "willingness to pay (WTP)" when there is already a list of abbreviations containing WTP at the beginning of my paper?

I agree with Buffy 100% that it is not strictly necessary.  However, the question is raising a red flag for me.

The purpose of academic writing is to communicate ideas as clearly as possible to other human beings.  If you include the full words, does it increase the clarity of the sentence?  If you're unsure, ask a colleague to read over a bit of the paper.  My strong suspicion is that they will prefer to see the word written out the first time, and will want to use the key only secondarily (if they forget an abbreviation.)

Always keep the four C's in mind when you write: Clarity, Clarity, Clarity, and Clarity.  All else is just formatting.1

1 - And as De Novo observed, formatting is also clarity. ;)


Status change from Ready for Decision to under review I submitted a paper to Elsevier almost two months back. After 15 days I got a mail that Paper has been sent for Review but the status continued to remain "Editor Invited". After further one month, the status changed to "Reviewer Invited". After ten more days i.e around two months from the submission date, I got a mail stating "I have received all the required reviews, which I will now evaluate before making a decision " and the status changed to "Ready for Decision". After two more days the status changed to "Under Review." I am not able to understand the status of my paper. The mails I got were sent from EviseSupport@elsevier.com

The editor received the reviews, but there was some problem that meant that they could not make a final decision about acceptance.  Usually, when all the reviews are in, it is not too difficult to reach a decision, but there are plenty of cases where there is real difficulty.  The simplest explanation is that the two (or more) referees disagreed, and the editor did not feel entirely convinced by either of them.  That would mean some further evaluation of the paper is required.  If the editor is sufficiently knowledgeable about the subject matter, they might evaluate the paper on their own.  They might send it back to the same referees, to see what they think of each other's comments.  However, the most likely alternative is that the editor sends the manuscript out to one or more new referees, and that is probably what happened to your paper.

(There are other situations in which additional review might be needed, but they are less common.  The editor might feel that a referee report is clearly too carelessly done or otherwise unsatisfactory.  The referee might submit a carefully reasoned report, but be unwilling to make a judgement about whether the paper is suitable for publication.  In any case, the editor's response is probably going to be the same; they will most likely send the manuscript out for another round of reviewing.)


PhD sanity check on project description and advisor I'm an industrial PhD student (Europe) and recently I'm finding myself reflecting over some events.

As industrial student I'm working for a Company. It is important to note that the Company (superiors/supervisors) have decided what subject (and its scope) I'll be working on. Basically, it was their idea for a new product.

It is worth noting that my boss is also my main supervisor (she is doing 20% at university and 80% at the Company).

Having this in mind, I'm finding some things odd:

I had to write PhD project description (milestones, etc. ) on my own.
A year after PhD commenced, my supervisor commented that "she still does not have vision about the project".

I just want to make sanity check and establish how often this happens and is it normal thing or not.

I had to write PhD project description (milestones, etc. ) on my own.

This doesn't sound unusual to me. Writing project plans and drafting milestones is a part of graduate studies, but your supervisor should definitely be involved.

  A year after PhD commenced, my supervisor commented that "she still
  does not have vision about the project".

This is clearly unsettling for you, but sadly not that uncommon*. The unusual part is the supervisor actually saying it. Nevertheless, I think it's a serious issue and your supervisor is apparently not taking his/her responsibilities seriously.

Having a too loose mentoring/supervision during a PhD is a very good way of finding oneself in hell after 3-4 years of wandering. Your concerns are by all means valid and you shouldn't let this slip. I would suggest to politely tell your advisor that you need a more precise direction to follow, otherwise you risk loosing precious time (and money) for you, him/her and, off course, the company.

I've heard frequent bad reports of peoples pursuing a PhD with a commercial company. But as stated by @nivag in the comments, people in industry tend not to have much experience supervising students. Try to be proactive: if you feel you need more support say so, very clearly.

*I'm assuming that, being in Europe, you have a Master's degree and the PhD project is intended to last 3-4 years.


Is it OK to send the same research proposal to several professors? I am a prospective PhD student in the humanities and I have already got in touch with a potential advisor in the university I would really like to work in. I have drafted a research proposal (as I have to submit one with my application) and sent it to him for feedback.

At the same time, I am planning to apply at other universities as well, my first choice being very competitive. I have already found a couple faculty in other uni's I'd be also happy to work with (same research interests etc). Problem is they both require a research project draft when making first contact.

My question is: is it OK or 'ethical' to send the very same research proposal to a few different potential advisors? How common is it? Am I really free to contact as many advisors as I want, hear from them and then pick the one I want to work with (assuming more than one are willing to take me in, on their part)?

I know this might sound anxious but I really don't know how it works when it comes to the 'application etiquette.' Thank you all!

If you wrote the proposal entirely yourself, I see no problems with trying multiple universities. Do note the deadlines: you don't want to be in the situation that you need to choose between accepting an offer of a "lower-tier" university while still waiting for your first choice university to respond.
If you incorporate the suggestions of the faculty member of one university in your proposal to other universities, I'd at least let that faculty member know. Something like: "your university is my first choice, but as you know it is very competitive. Do you mind if I use this proposal to apply to other universities as a fallback"? This achieves 2 things: first of all it prevents a possible faculty member that might feel taken advantage of by using his/her comments to get into a different university. Second of all the advice you get might predominantly apply to his/her university, and might not generalize to other universities.


Disclosing Asperger's Syndrome in cover letter for scholarship If I want to apply for a PhD scholarship that requires a cover letter, should I disclose that I have Asperger's Syndrome? If so, how detailed should I describe my condition? It's not something that I enjoy talking about, sort of like InquilineKea. Since I was only diagnosed recently, I'm thinking of writing a few sentences that mainly highlight the positive aspects, and how it could really benefit the research group. (I have worked as a teaching assistant, and have never gone through situations like this so it should be OK.)

I have already told my professor about the AS, but was hoping to get further advice from folks in this forum.

Edit: This is what my careers advisor thinks. I want to show that I can add value to the research group -- these attributes are directly and indirectly related to AS.

  I certainly think if it is something that you can manage well you don't need to disclose it at the beginning of the application process. If it's something that affects your working then you should disclose it. Either option I would present it in a positive manner. Ultimately you want to sell yourself for what you can do for them and how you can add value. Whether you disclose it in your letter or at a later stage of the process is up to you. Just keep it positive.

I would think not.  While it would, by default, be considered illegal (in the US, at least) to discriminate based on an asperger's diagnosis, putting it in your application makes it valid information for them to make an assessment of your worthiness.  There are extremes to which this cannot be taken, but they are legally allowed to discuss all (legally) provided information, and they will have extra leeway in defending against discrimination suits on data the applicant volunteered.  If you tell them your age in your application, then it is not illegal for them to talk about your age during the hiring process; if you do not provide it, it is illegal.  You are rather explicitly saying "here's a fact about me, so please take it into consideration in determining whether or not to hire/admit me".  The law does not require them to magically bleach their memories of what you have clearly and explicitly given them and pretend the elephant in the room isn't there.

Some applications may have a separate form in which you can disclose "diversity" information such as race and ethnicity.  These are supposed to be kept anonymous and unavailable to the actual hiring committee.  They are just meant as data collection methods to establish they are compliant with laws regulating discrimination and diversity.  If this form asks you about mental health matters, you could certainly feel free to respond to it if you are comfortable with doing so.

I personally wouldn't volunteer any protected information if there wasn't something else in the application that made it sort of obvious, and could be very negative if left unaddressed.  A prolonged period of unemployment may warrant some sort of comment, for example.


Which ACM copyright license to use? ACM now offers authors of published papers a choice of two copyright licenses: the "traditional" ACM Copyright Transfer Agreement or the ACM Publishing License.

How should I choose between these two licenses?  What are the advantages and disadvantages to the authors of each license?

I care a lot about maximizing the ability of others to read the paper (e.g., maximizing my ability to make my paper available on my web page, institutional repository, etc.); are there any relevant differences between the two licenses that affects this consideration?  Are there any other important differences between the licenses that authors might care about?

First off, please note that IANAL.

That said, the Copyright Transfer Agreement is what ACM used to be doing to everyone: when you publish with the ACM, you transfer your copyright to them, and thus lose ownership of your creative work. The ACM has been receiving criticism for this as the Open Access movement has gained momentum.

The Publishing License seems to be their response to this criticism: with the Publishing license, you retain copyright yourself, and instead grant ACM a specified list of rights:

An exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable and sublicenseable license to publish, reproduce and distribute the work in any way they feel like — including to hand these right on to other parties.
A non-exclusive permission to publish, reproduce and distribute any software, artistic images and auxiliary materials.
These rights “infects” any minor revisions (derivative work with less than 25% new substantive material).

I don't actually know what the exact implications here will be — the conditions are restrictive, but the copyright remains with the author.


Master thesis - rules for italicizing I am writing my master thesis in English and I understand that usually italics are used to put emphasis on a word, because it is an important or a newly introduced technical term. But I still ask myself if I have to use italics for these two cases:

Variables' names. For instance, let's suppose that I have a complex equation and the variable n appears inside this equation. If I am describing the equation in a text paragraph, and I am talking about n (e.g. "if the value of n is large enough, then..."), in this case, should n be italicized?
For programmers: should class names and data types be italicized? E.g. "a variable of type UInt32 is used".

I'd say the typeface should match the one used in the equation or listing, so that the entity always appears the same no matter where it is located.

If you're using Latex, variables from equations should be put in math mode, i.e. $n$. Class names and data types should be inline code, e.g. \lstinline if you're using the package listings.


Etiquette for reaching out to previous students of advisor I have a question that isn't immediately relevant to me, and I'm not sure will be important in the future as I am quite happy with my situation. It is however something I have thought about at length and I've yet to come up with a set of general guidelines. I am a graduate student in the United States studying Mathematics, and am currently working with an advisor who has graduated ~10 students in his career. He has in the past mentioned a couple of the students, both in the context of research and current careers.

Is it appropriate to ask my advisor's former students questions regarding my relationship with said advisor? If this is a normal practice (as the question below would suggest), what is the etiquette to use in this situation? In particular, I am asking in the case where the previous students have all moved on and already graduated so email seems to be the best method of reaching out. Also, given that these conversations could contain sensitive information (i.e. questions regarding funding options given to the student, or grievances with said advisor) what would be the "kind" way to prevent the "sensitive" parts of the conversation from being relayed back to the advisor? Finally, would it be wise to reach out to some of these former student's at some point in my studies just for introduction and networking purposes? It is unlikely that our research interests would line up exactly, but it is an opportunity to contact people who have been through the same experience.

A specific case that is could become relevant in the future:

One of my advisor's recent students went into industry, and if this was something I considered in the future, would it be intrusive to email them and ask about their transition from graduate school to industry? In particular, would asking questions specific to my advisor's thoughts on this transition be appropriate? Also, related to the sensitive part, if for whatever reason I didn't want the advisor to know this was something I was considering would it be okay to ask the former student to keep this between us?

Note, I thought there would be many threads with a similar question, but the closest thing searches brought up was this link.

I can only ask myself how I (a PhD scientist in industry in the US) would react upon receiving such a mail from one of my former advisor's current students.

If the mail asked for general career or technical advice, I would be happy to respond. In this case, there is really no need to ask the scientist to avoid mentioning the contact to your advisor -- (a) I probably wouldn't anyway, and (b) if your advisor would be upset by this, then you have bigger problems.
If the mail was asking for advice in dealing with the advisor, I would really look at how it was written. Tact and concision here goes a long way. For example, "Bob has been shouting at me 3-4 times a week and I am not sure how to proceed" is something I would want to advise you about; many details about the complicated lab politics are something I would prefer to avoid wading into. In this case, adding a brief note requesting that I don't broach the issue with your advisor directly will not do any harm (though, there is always a 1% chance that the mail somehow ends up in front of your advisor -- which is all the more reason to be tactful).
If the mail were asking for a brief phone call, I am less likely to respond (I hate phone calls and love e-mail; YMMV). But, if you simply must share things that absolutely cannot end up in front of the advisor, a phone call is your best bet (even if the advisor finds about the phone call, at least he won't have the transcript; this gives you a lot more flexibility).


Is it immoral to read scientific articles if you find them as pdf on Google without having access to some official libraries? I like to learn things even outside my university degree and I wonder if it is moral to read articles found online on blogs and other sources?

There's nothing morally wrong with reading blogs and most online sources, so I'm going to assume you mean published articles and books.

When it comes to journal articles and books, it depends. Many articles that are freely available online are legally published / published with the author's permission. Others are not. Obviously papers posted on the author's website, or websites like arXiv are okay, but for other listings it's a lot less clear. It's up to you to make your best judgement as to the legality and the morality of the access you have.

This also of course presumes that you think it's moral to support closed-access journals. Some people feel that closed-access journals are a bad thing and should be opposed. To those people, doing anything other than seeking out illicit versions would be morally wrong.


Graduate school applications: Should your answers be exhaustive or selective? Should you see graduate schol application questions as opportunities to provide relevant positive information about yourself, or as fiats to list absolutely everything in a category of your experience?

For example, here are a few questions from Harvard's GSAS application (I don't know what, if any, general instructions are given--such as whether it says "Provide complete answers to each question" or "Please provide the following information"):

  Academic Honors/Fellowships
  List any articles, books, and other material published, and any    inventions.
  Other universities (Program/Department) to which applying
  Employment experience (including part-time) since secondary school

With some of these (#1, #2) it seems easy to believe one could choose which examples to report. That is, you wouldn't be ethically obliged to list that you once published a crossword puzzle in your town's local paper, or that you won the Latin prize in high school, even if both are true. Instead, it seems reasonable one would list the honors and publications providing the best evidence of one's qualification for the program.

By contrast, some of these (#3 and the submission of transcripts, for example) would seem to suggest that a thoroughgoing answer is expected. Others (#4) are in a gray area--it's not clear to me which approach should be taken.

There is usually a statement at the end of the application where you must affirm that your responses are "complete and accurate." However, I don't really understand what this means in light of the nuances above, and in the absence of clearer specifications. Please help!

Should you see graduate schol application questions as opportunities
  to provide relevant positive information about yourself, or as fiats
  to list absolutely everything in a category of your experience?

From reading some other posts of yours, I am aware you are finding it quite tedious to fill out your applications.  Therefore, for you at least, it is easy to choose the right option:

opportunities to provide relevant positive information about yourself

Your motto should be

" Get 'er done."


"Awaiting AE recommendation" before first notification of acceptance or rejection What does "Awaiting AE recommendation" mean for the first notification (not after revision)? I sent my paper to an IEEE Transactions journal and I am waiting for the first notification and the status is now "Awaiting AE recommendation." Could I conclude that my paper is accepted?

AE stands for Associate Editor. According to the process described in IEEE Transactions, "Awaiting AE recommendation" status means that the AE has collected all reviews from the reviewers who were assigned to review your manuscript and that the AE's decision for acceptance is pending.

After this phase, the AE would send her/his report to the EiC (Editor in Cheif), for the final decision on accepting the manuscript for publication in the journal based on the review results and the report from the AE.

You would find more detail of the process here.


How do I approach professors for reading courses? I am studying mathematics in a UK institution and it is not as common (or not common at all) for undergrads to do reading courses with professors as it is in the US. I would like to ask what would be a "good" way (sorry for the lack of adjectives to describe this) to approach professors regarding this matter? I have in mind what the topic will be and the main book I would be reading which matches one professor's field of interest.

How can I make an introduction that is not considered as "awkward" and when would be a good time for me to approach him if I plan to do my reading course starting from, say the coming October.

Besides, how would I know whether he would be willing to guide me as most professors seem to be very busy and one hour per week/two weeks is non trivial for them.

Moreover, what if he's going to be in sabbatical (although I won't know until I ask)?

Thanks in advance.

PS: A reading course is basically independent study, asking a professor to guide you through a topic/book etc, which is not graded nor having any credit.

I think the best approach would be to find out when the professor will be in his office and approach him and ask (or wait outside his class until class ends). I think he would appreciate having someone be interested in his work and maybe agree - after all, a university is meant for knowledge sharing right?

You're right, if he is on sabbatical then there's nothing you can do. You will probably have to show that you are really interested and aren't there to waste his time.


If I use most of the references from a thesis but not the exact same sentences, is it plagiarism? There is a PhD thesis which is inline with my MSc thesis topic.

The author has collected and classified a huge number of references for the background.
While I am writing the background section, if I use the references he used, but not the sentences and organization, is it still plagiarism?

I am talking about 50-60 references out of 250. They are very well classified and right-to-the-point.

I also cited his thesis. However, referring to one thesis for 40 references is silly.

What should I do?

Working from a bibliography in another paper is not plagiarism.  It's actually a  good research technique.  As you read those papers, check their bibliographies, too, and so on.  Pretty soon you will have thorough coverage of the subject.

Do note that you cannot just plop those 50-60 or so references into your own bibliography but do nothing else, nor paraphrase what someone else has said about them, but without reading them.  That's called reference padding and is academic misconduct.  You have to actually read the papers.  When you do that, you may find that some of them don't fit your needs as well as you may have at first thought.  You will also find it easy to write your own thoughts about those papers, and so will not have to worry about paraphrasing another author.


Professor who I requested an LoR from told me to look for someone who knows me better, but would write me one if I couldn't find anyone I made a post yesterday regarding when I should send a professor a reminder regarding a LoR request. Well, he actually got back to me today and told me that (translated and paraphrased from Korean):
"(small talk) I think it would be best for you to ask someone who may know you better. I'm afraid I may not know you well enough to write a detailed and strong recommendation letter. However, if you can't find anyone else I'd be glad to write one.
"Since I don't know you that well, it would help if you sent me your CV, SOP, and a one-page document laying out what you want me to specify or emphasize.
"Again, I strongly advise you to request a letter from a professor who knows you well, as that would lead to a stronger letter."
So yeah, it's not exactly an ideal response, but was expected. The problem I had is that I'm a MSCS student but am not originally from CS. Being busy with my own advisor and lab/projects has somewhat hindered me from becoming "close" with other professors. This particular professor I asked is one of the three who I've had interactions with a little more than the classroom level (I very briefly worked on a project with his lab mates, but it didn't turn into anything). The other two have stated they would write me letters already.
There is a postdoc in our lab who I've worked with, but I'd rather not ask a postdoc.
How negatively is this going to affect me? I don't think I really have a choice, and I don't believe this professor is someone who would write anything negatively about me, but I guess I would like some perspective from people who have been on both sides. Thanks.

If someone suggests you find another person to write for you it is advice you should take unless you have no other options.
The best letters come from people who know you well enough to speak both positively and enthusiastically about you and your prospects. This professor has some reservations.
But in the case that you really have no other options, then try to follow up with them. A mediocre letter might even be worse than no letter at all, but it is hard to say.


On "short technical paper" Several month ago I received the decision letter on my manuscript which was submitted to a credible journal. The paper was rejected; however, one of the reviewers suggested that the paper is better submitted elsewhere as a short technical paper. So, I've searched but couldn't find any prestigious journal that receive such type of papers. Is there any specific type of journal/magazine for such papers (in computer science)?

In most scientific disciplines, there are different journal tracks for "short papers" and "full papers."  Some of this may be leaking into computer science at this point, but at present the main mode of publication for shorter results in computer science is still typically a conference paper.

If you have not yet published your work in a conference, I would suggest looking for an appropriate conference to publish it in.  Depending on the size, some conferences even have "short paper" and "full paper" tracks---for example, one of the ones I regularly publish in has 10-page IEEE format full papers and 4-page IEEE format short papers.

If you have already published in a conference, then perhaps you should ask yourself whether this work really needs to become a journal paper. It is perfectly acceptable to have a piece of work published in a good conference and then not to extend it to a journal paper.


About to submit my PhD thesis in 4 months, feeling lost about my future and inadequate for any job. What should I do? I am about to submit my PhD thesis in 4 months and have to move on from being a student. I am already 30 (so a sort of mid-life crisis catching up). I feel that I made a really big mistake in entering academia and should have not gone into masters 7 years ago. I feel incompetent with no area of expertise. I am a mathematically and technically weak PhD student in a field of research where being proficient in analytical and theoretical analysis is the only required skill for research. I think I am technically screwed up.

My question is just vague. What should I do, and are my future prospects as limited as I foresee them to be?

Thanks.

Your future prospects are not nearly as limited as you perceive them to be. Right now, you are trapped in the cult-like thinking of academia, which causes you to believe that the only measures of life success are high-octane research output and grant dollars. But these beliefs are false.

If things really are as you have described, then it may be true that you won't be competitive for academic jobs and postdocs. That's fine. Your training will make you an attractive candidate for other jobs in other fields. My guess is that you have a lot of coding skills, and perhaps a lot of experience in data analysis. These abilities are in high demand, and with time, you will be able to position yourself to compete for them.

My suggestion is to take some time away from your PhD studies, if this is possible, before you submit your dissertation. You need to get away from the cult and the patterns of thinking which are currently suffocating you. Visit family or friends, take time alone, play video games for a few weeks straight--whatever you do, clear your head. You will gain the perspective you need in order to identify goals you feel comfortable with and excited about, and once you understand what those are, you will be able to develop a plan to reach them.


possibility of transfer from a fixed-term Lecturer to a continuing appointment Recently, I have got an Lecturer position in a UK University. However, when I got the offer letter, it said that "The appointment is for a fixed-term of five years, with the possibility of subsequent transfer to a continuing appointment." It seems to me that this is not a permanent position.

I am wondering how much possible one can transfer to a permanent position after five years. Is it suitable for me to ask this kind of questions to my Head of School? Thanks.

I suspect what it means is that if there is a position available you will be welcome to apply for it but you may not get it.

You are certainly entitled to ask the head of school for clarification.


A discipline being superfluous? I heard for the second time today that a discipline is "superfluous". This comment was made by a young assistant professor, who does not do research in this discipline. Just to be fair to the commenter, that was not a serious comment, but just a casual remark.

However, I think deep in his mind he believes that this discipline is "superfluous". And deep in my mind I have the same doubt from time to time. Can a discipline be superfluous? How do you know whether a discipline is worth researching or not?

PS: In this case this discipline is HCI (human computer interaction), but you could replace it with any other discipline.

Superfluous usually means unnecessary. So the person is claiming that a discipline is unnecessary. Presumably, this is a claim that can be investigated further: does research in that discipline have any kind of external impact ? does it affect other related disciplines ? Is there at least a path from the questions being asked to some future impact ?

In fact these are all good questions to ask about any discipline, whether it's deemed superfluous or not. And these are good questions to ask about one's own research in a discipline.

p.s While this is off topic, there's a common feeling among CS folks that HCI is either fluffy or superfluous. All of these people are also forbidden from using a Kinect, any video game console, a tablet interface, or even a smartphone.


Is there a code of ethics for Ph.D. supervisors? I'm a Ph.D. student in Germany, I got my M.Sc. degree in Finland, I have friends in different countries doing their Ph.D.s, especially in the US, and there are also my fellow students in our group. So I have had the chance to learn about people's experience with their Ph.D. And there's one thing I see frequently which is annoying and frustrating: Ph.D. supervisors (people on tenure track/group leaders/senior researchers/...) are apparently not trained for this job and the job happens to be a very difficult one.

It seems that it's quite common to hear terms like arrogance, micro-management, exploitation of students' capacity, lack of respect, etc. attributed to a supervisor. I'm personally living with it, but I would like to be able to formulate all these thoughts in a meaningful and mature way. I need to have a clear understanding of what I'm going through.

Now I have one specific question (but I'd also appreciate knowing other ways of approaching it): is there a worked and published text on the supervisor-student relationship? like a code of ethics? I don't really know what to name it.

There is nothing commonly accepted. And you are right that nobody receives formal training in how to supervise a Ph.D. Academia is really still very much in a medieval mode here, where you learn from your master (your own supervisor), potentially work under other masters (changing labs) and then are deemed worthy to have apprentices of your own, who you will treat roughly as your master treated you.

However, if you Google for "Betreuungsvertrag Promotion" or "Doktoranden-Betreuungsvertrag", you will find quite a few templates for formal agreements the supervisor needs to sign in some German universities. The key word being "needs to" - this is compulsory for the supervisors.

Unfortunately, these agreements only cover things like regular meetings between the candidate and the supervisor, and that the supervisor will give good advice and in general ensure that the Ph.D. can be attained within n years. This is all very nice, and any decent human being should already be doing all that is in there, but it's all rather vague. In addition, I seriously doubt that anything like this would be taken seriously in a potential lawsuit.

Bottom line: the good supervisors already do everything that's in these agreements, and the bad ones won't start once they have signed this.


Awkward situation with editor several month after submission: advice I am observing from some distance the following situation.
Two young mathematicians -- call them A and B -- submitted a paper to a quite strong journal and indicated a much senior colleague C as a possible handling editor. The corresponding author of the paper is A. Several month later C writes to B alone and hints that (s)he might decline the handling because of a conflict of interests. After some astonished requirements from B, C states plainly that the reason is the pending review for the same journal (s)he is awaiting from B. Since, in C's opinion, B is working too slowly on the review, (s)he, C, can't conceive how (s)he will be hurrying the reviewers of B's (and A's!) paper. In C's opinion, this constitutes the conflict of interests.
I have several questions about this situation.

(Definition) Is the trivial fact that C got annoyed by B not corresponding to C's expectations (B gets of course no money for reviewing) sufficient to constitute a conflict of interests?
(Strategy) What are A&B's options concerning their paper? It is pretty clear that B will now finish the review of this not-particularly-nice-to-review (unnecessary long, very heavy, very  technical, not that exciting results) paper for C as the first priority. But will this save their own submission to this journal? C most probably has good memory; (s)he can decline the publication anyway. Would it be better to withdraw the paper right away?
(Ethics) Some details in C's behavior are suspicious. Why didn't (s)he claim the conflict of interests immediately when (s)he got the paper of A&B on the table? At that point, B has been already reviewing the paper for C. Why is C writing only to B? To me, it looks like C is blackmailing B: now C gets from B what (the review) and when (quickly) (s)he wants and frees themselves from all work concerning A&B's paper. This way, C is "punishing" B (and btw A who has nothing to do with this review) for not standing to C's expectations by prohibiting the publication of their really nice result in a really good journal. Am I too paranoid here? Should  A&B write to editor-in-chief?

No, agreeing to peer review a paper for an editor would never cause the editor to have a conflict of interest.  A conflict of interest would only occur if the author somehow incentivized the editor to make a decision on a paper.  B providing (or failing to provide) a peer review is not an incentive to an editor, and it is unrelated to the decision on the paper written by A and B.

If C declines to handle the paper, some other editor will handle it.  This likely has no effect on you.  Probably it is best to do nothing for now.  I suggest that you not request C as handling editor in the future since they seem unprofessional.

If C were to directly violate the journal's policies, you might complain to the editor in chief, but it does not appear that has happened.  Don't complain now.

If C said "I will not handle your paper because you did not complete your peer review" then no, you are not being paranoid.  If C said "You should not complain that your paper has not been handled because you did not complete your peer review" then you are being paranoid.


Resource for learning about research funding system in the UK/Europe I am currently considering to take up a tenure-track job in computer science at a UK university. I have little (i.e. no) experience with the research funding situation in Europe.

Is there any resource where I can start reading up on the research funding opportunities and the general system in place in Europe/UK?

Without any experience, and without knowing your nationality (from EU or not) and your publication track; I would recommend to ask from the institute you will be working for any available fundings. Most UK universities do provide some fundings for various projects they are involved in. The best way to do this is to ask your research group manager for any recommendation.


How should I list someone as reference? I am writing an application where I should indicate my relationship with those that provide references for me. How should I describe the following: the person has never been my supervisor, however as he knows my PI very well, he is familiar with my work and we also had several lengthy informal discussions. How could I summarize that on an application?

Thank you for any help!

Something like Colleague might work. Something like "informal advisor". It depends a bit on how much room you have to detail it, as well as the closeness of the relationship. If the person has a good, independent, reputation, then something like that should do fine. At some future point you might be asked to expand on it.


When should one publish code publicly on GitHub: during or after journal review? Similar to the following question, I have developed a code to produce results in a manuscript that I've written which I wish to now share with the community. But this manuscript, which is currently on arXiv, is still under journal review (which has taken several months and still sits with the referees). Therefore, I was wondering if I should put the code publicly on Github while the manuscript remains under review or only after the manuscript has been fully accepted/published by a journal? Does the right answer depend on the journal? Is it better to wait for any reason(s)? Any and all insights are welcome.

Particular to your situation, I think the exact answer is highly dependent on some missing information:

How do you plan to license the code once released?
Do you have some sort of agreement with the journal that the code is part of the manuscript that they will own the copyright to?

In General: When should one release the code relative to publication? Before! (Allow me to explain)
My knee-jerk response was "why isn't the code already on GitHub (or another hosting site)"?
By publicly posting the code, publicly affiliating yourselves to it, and having a time-stamped "paper" trail of commits. I would expect this provides a good hedge against being "scooped", similar to, but more robust than, the old signed-and-dated lab books for maintaining development records in the case of IP/patent disputes.
I work, directly or indirectly (and often in a very minor way) on computational chemistry code, but we write the code and store it in a GitHub repo where it's public facing and has open source licenses. The code either gets cited in papers that use it (not necessarily well - see this question) and/or there's an article written up detailing the software that provide details specific to it (and maybe even later publications of new major versions with added features, e.g. RMG and RMG 3 with actively-developed source here)


Are there writing style guidelines as to the use of "some of us" in a journal paper? I wonder if there are any arguments for or against the use of "some of us" in a research paper. In a paper by "(myself), S. E. Cond, and A. U. Thor" about an "Update on previous research", I wonder if it would be OK to write

Some of us have previously shown that ... [1].

[1] (myself), S. Other, and A. U. Thor. Previous Research. Fancy J.

I usually write "we" to speak about the set of authors of the current manuscript, so I don't see any problem myself. But there may be, so: are there any rules I should follow?

This probably depends on the area of research, but in mathematics, the sciences, or engineering, "A subset of the authors..." might be better. "Some of us..." is a little informal for my tastes.


Letter of Recommendation from PhD Student for Masters I am an undergraduate student at an American university and am applying for an Msc at LSE for the 2021-2022 school year. I need advice on a letter of recommendation. I already have one professor who is writing me a LOR, but am having trouble finding a second professor. Here are my options for the second LOR:

A PhD student who taught a class on anthropology. She can write much more personally about my work, work ethic, analysis, and character since she knows me on a much more personal level. I'm applying to LSE's international migration program, and in her class, I wrote several essays on the topic (Partition of South Asia, identity formation in diaspora, etc.), so she can directly write about my work in this field. She agreed to write me a LOR, but encouraged me to first look for a Professor.

The second option is a history professor. I got A-'s in both his classes, and he knows me fairly well on a personal level. But I don't think his LOR would be as strong as the PhD student's. I reached out to him and didn't heard back. I just sent him another email.

According to the LSE website, an academic reference is "tutors who have taught you at university" and "who know your work well, and who, preferably, can comment on subjects or skills relevant to the programme(s) you are applying for." I know LSE pays quite a bit of attention to personal character via LORs and personal statements, so I don't know if it would be more beneficial to have a professor who has more prestige and credibility, but who doesn't know me personally vs. a PhD student who has less prestige and credibility, but knows my personal character and work ethic much better.
Any advice would be appreciated. Especially those with experience with LSE admissions.

I think your potential writer (1) gave you good advice: look for a professor first. However, if they can write a strong letter for you then certainly it's better than nothing; your second choice may not actually be a choice if they never respond.
I think if you were submitting at least 3 letters of recommendation, it would be less of an issue for one of them to come from a non-professor, but with only two letters I would suggest you think hard about other options for the second letter. If two letters is only a minimum and you can submit a third, then I think including your option (1) as one of those would be totally fine.
It's important to recognize that recommendations for graduate school aren't primarily about your performance in an undergraduate class, they are about your potential as a graduate student. Professors are more likely to have experience teaching and mentoring graduate students, so they presumably have a better background to evaluate potential in that area.
I did write some recommendations as a graduate student for my undergraduate students, but I wrote them in concert with a professor who also signed the letter.