Why have international branch campuses? There are campuses in Malaysia belonging to the universities of Southampton, Nottingham and Reading.  There is a Mauritius branch belonging to Aberystwyth University, whereas the University of Wolverhampton has shut down its Mauritius campus.  Newcastle University has a Singapore campus.  There are many more examples of UK universities with campuses in Asia or Africa.

Why do (some) universities based in the UK spend resources on establishing a campus on another continent?  Is it a form of developmental aid, to bring UK expertise to a spot where existing universities may be perceived to have less quality?  Or is there a different reason?

I don't know if this is exclusive to the UK or if it also occurs with universities in other countries — I have not seen it anywhere else.

The Wikipedia article International branch campus is not terribly informative.

So focusing on the UK to start. The universities seem to be attempting to provide UK standard university education, but in more 'exciting' locations, increasing the number of students who study with them and their global reach.

Branch university campuses are in many ways a win-win-win phenomenon. For the university, they mean more students and stronger ties with other countries. For the host nation, they’re a quick way of boosting higher education standards and attracting more students, both local and international. As for students, the prime attraction has already been mentioned: a degree at an internationally ranked university, in a location where this was not previously possible. (1, 2, 3)

Back to the question of why universities are doing it?/getting involved?
It seems to be that these branch universities are risky and liable to fail.
This article is great and discusses many factors. It predominantly suggests that branches can be financially lucrative but they have a high risk of closure. As such, it concludes that prestige and a desire for international reach that are the main drivers, citing this report.
It is true that although financially risky, there are many sources of funding for these ventures, whether its tax breaks from the home country or incentives from the host region.

Nottingham's Malaysian campus has the benefit that it can apply for funding from more than one region. Doughty says: "EU funding is quite interesting because we are viewed as both a UK and an Asian institution so we can pitch to whichever suits us best." 5

However I think this thesis offers the best view, these campuses are seen as new opportunities for universities otherwise limited to their own country.

Multiple factors contributed to Texas A&M being poised and ready to accept the
opportunity to open an international branch campus: an invitation from a host country sponsor willing to cover all expenses, existing international ambitions, and strong support from the central administration.

These campuses predominantly provide undergraduate and masters degrees because tuition fees can cover the costs, but some campuses can provide highly specialised research centres for PhDs but it is usually not worthwhile undertaking research outside of the main multi-disciplinary hub of the home university unless the research is local to the branch because of isolation and funding.
NB: Other countries have these branch campuses:

There are currently over 240 international branch campuses around the world; many of these are located in the Persian Gulf region as well as (and increasingly) in Asia ...
71 countries hosting branch campuses – up from 53 in 2012;
30 “home countries” (i.e., originating countries) for branch campuses, up from 24 in 2012.


Post PHD carrer life I wanted to ask what is the path of academic person that finished his Ph.D. in math or in Computer science what is the academic path that he can take?

Not everyone can continue with Academia or be part of the universities faculty, so does this mean the end of an academic career or can he continue learning post Ph.D. degrees?
What is the usual path of post Ph.D. in these fields?

What is the usual path of post Ph.D. in these fields?

There are two main options:

Pursue in academia as a postdoc, usually in the hope of eventually reaching a tenured academic position.
Apply for industry positions, either for research-oriented jobs (often found in big companies R&D departments or innovative start-ups) or non-research jobs for which PhD skills are required or recommended.

So if by "continue learning" OP means "keep doing research", there are options outside academia. Personally I often encourage PhD students who are close to graduating and haven't made their mind up to consider applying for a postdoc: it's a short contract which gives you a taste of the academic career path while also giving you a job experience, thus leaving all the doors open.

This question might help clarify the landscape of post-PhD options.


Referring to papers by myself and others in my thesis In citing a paper by myself and others in my thesis, suppose my surname is A and that I have a paper jointly with B and C.  I want to cite it, and normally, I would write

  A, B, and C showed that this can be done [ABC15].

However, in my thesis, it feels more natural to say

  Together with B and C, we showed that this can be done [ABC15].

Which is better?  Are there better options?

In other words, should I pretend that A is some random dude when it is in fact the author of the thesis the reader is currently reading?

For context:  This is a thesis in theoretical computer science/algorithmic graph theory/parameterized algorithms/complexity.  I prefer to use "we" as is usual in mathematical texts.

Personally I feel (and I know that there are many who might disagree) that it is perfectly fine to use 'I' and 'we' here. I think that obsessively sticking to passive voice makes papers and theses less readable. After all, you did do the work. Why hide behind the passive voice? My suggestion would be to go with option 2:

  Together with B and C, we showed that this can be done [ABC15].


How important are recommendation letters for doctoral program admission? I am now looking for a new Ph.D. position and as usually I need to provide the contact of the people to recommend me. Most of the time I need to write the letter myself and send it to the person so they can email it back to the university I am applying. As I asked my peers, this is quite a common practice. Now the question is: If everybody knows how the recommendation letters are written, how important are these letters for the admission decision?

Because I do not think it is that common! I agree some professors (especially if they overseas or know you in person) will let you write your own letter, they will read it, sign it and send it. Others will use your document as a draft only. But, the majority do not do that since it is very questionable and unethical!

Most professors write their own letters. Hence, recommendation letters are still important. Especially in cases where they can express if a student is exceptionally good, or to discuss his contribution in writing papers/proposals or even to discuss why did s/he perform poorly in undergraduate level courses (like me!).


Ethics of a journal requiring that submissions cite existing articles in the journal Recently, I became aware by own experiences and friend's stories that some international statistical journals (whose names I prefer to omit) are rejecting papers because they do not include a reference of the journal in question. This is, if you do not cite a paper from journal X, then you cannot attempt to publish a paper in journal X.

This, of course, has an influence on the Impact Factor of the journal and the administrators are trying to increase this.

Are there explicit regulations regarding these issues? Is it possible to denounce this kind of behaviour?

There are no explicit regulations regarding impact factors; the definition is too simple. (In terms of complexity, it's a lot like calculating a slugging average in baseball. So it's open to a lot of manipulation, and all of it is permissible. However, permissible does not mean ethical, and this is clearly a situation where, if true, the journal editors are trying to manipulate statistics to make their journal look better. Such a policy, if done with the intent of manipulating statistics, is deplorable, and should be denounced—via web campaigns, blog posts, open letters, and so on.

That said, there is a counterargument that is less nefarious in aim. It is possible to argue that you should, in general, cite some article from the journal you're submitting a paper to. If you can't do that, why is your article suitable for submission to that journal (let's call it journal X)? Presumably, there are a number of other journals (A, B, C, etc.) whose works you have cited instead of X. In that case, the journal could argue that your paper is a better fit for journals A, B, and C instead.

Since it's not clear for which reason the journal has the self-citing policy, I would make sure that you can determine it convincingly, one way or the other, to avoid embarrassing yourself. The last thing you want to do is spearhead a campaign that turns a molehill into a mountain.


How to let a journal know that its submission process is very painful? I have recently decided to no longer publish, or at least publish less, with a well respected journal in my field. How do I let the journal know in a meaningful way that the submission process is very painful?

The required Microsoft Word and LaTeX templates are extremely dated and do not match my (or anyones) workflow. The review time (6 months), number of reviewer (3-4), number of rounds of review (3-4), and delay from in press to available online (8 months) are all too much. The lack of communication is extreme. The online system tells you if the manuscript is on your desk or the journals desk and nothing more. Editors do not respond to queries other than to tell you it is being reviewed.

You may get the best response by using informal channels.  If you know the managing editor of the journal (my field is small enough that I often do), you might send an informal email, or even just express your concern in person.  As Ben Norris mentioned, the key is that you communicate in a calm, rational, and deliberative way.


Is the practice of lab members extensively citing each other's work looked down upon in academia? In my lab, a few of us submitted our papers independently to a conference last week. We all had referenced each other's work in our papers. I have a concern if this is a bad practice in academia. It also looks like a bad habit that has festered in our lab: the last two PhDs who passed out from our lab have a total of 15 citations for their papers, of which 13 are from within our community itself.

Is this practice of repeatedly citing from one's own micro-community acceptable? It seems unavoidable, as we are all working together, familiarizing with each other's work and trying to build on them.

It is only bad practice if the work is not particularly relevant, or if you cite your own group's papers instead of other relevant work.  The point of citations is to lead the reader to other related work necessary for some aspect of the paper (result, context, etc.).

That said, it is worth examining why those papers aren't getting cited.  Maybe nobody else is working in a sufficiently related area but it's critical background for the rest of what the lab is doing--then I wouldn't worry about it.  But if other people are working in the area (e.g. to the point that you might worry that if you take too long that someone else will publish the same results you're trying to get), it can be a sign that the results either aren't contributing to the field much, that the style of presentation isn't good enough for others to really understand what you're saying, or that the lab members aren't going to enough conferences to present.


Showing research to professor who is not my advisor I am a PhD student in mathematics. I am going to participate in a conference. I want to show my research to some great mathematcian who is a specialist in the area that I am working on.

A friend of mine had a bad experience with showing her result to some great mathematician. In fact, she showed her result to the guy and he said that it was good and to keep up the good work, but two months later he put an article in arXiv and most of the parts of his article were as same as my friend’s. As such, I am bit scared to show my result to someone. On the other hand, I need to show my result to someone for completing a minor thing.

Does someone have any idea what I have to do?

First of all: you should really be asking your advisor this,  not strangers who don’t know your circumstances.

In any case: if you have a result that you feel is ready to be shown to others, why not write it up and put it on ArXiv yourself? That way no one could do this to you.


Are results that are derived simply by using more computational power publishable? Let's say Alice has written a paper that attacks a well-known problem in a clever new way. Her paper ends with "these methods work up to N = 10; for larger N, the calculations are prohibitively expensive".

Bob reads the paper and successfully duplicates Alice's results, but where Alice only had access to a 4-core desktop, Bob has a 4000-core supercomputer. Therefore he can calculate what Alice found prohibitively expensive, and get results up to N = 20.

Are Bob's results publishable? He didn't actually do anything special, he just had more computational power. On the other hand, the results are definitely new, and interesting (for whatever reason N = 20 is the point where interesting effects are predicted).

If they are publishable, what would Bob actually write in such a paper? Everything sans the result could effectively be communicated in one sentence ("Read Alice's paper"). If they are not publishable, how is Bob to communicate his results to the wider world?

I suspect something like this has happened in the past, in which case I'd appreciate a link to such a paper.

(I switched the order of a couple of your questions to give the answer a more logical flow.)

  On the other hand, the results are definitely new, and interesting (for whatever reason N = 20 is the point where interesting effects are predicted).

If the results are new, and interesting, then they are by definition publishable. The key point is they add something meaningful to the sum total of human knowledge. That’s certainly a sufficient criterion for publishability (in an idealized sense it should be necessary as well, but I fear it isn’t - plenty of things get published that don’t really meet this condition).

  Are Bob's results publishable? He didn't actually do anything special, he just had more computational power.

The concept of “doing something special” is both mostly meaningless and (to the small extent that it has any meaning) completely irrelevant to the question of publishability. Plenty of authors of excellent papers “didn’t do anything special” - they just had more patience and were willing to work a bit harder, or in many cases just got a little bit luckier, than their peers, and ended up discovering something significant. Publication is not a prize that’s given for “doing something special”, it’s simply the scientific community putting a stamp of approval on a discovery that it is correct, new, and worth paying attention to.

By the way, one can even say that a researcher Bob who works harder than his peer Alice is pretty much the exact scenario you are describing of someone “having more computational power”. In this case the computational power is of the human sort, but I don’t see why that should change the calculation.

Edit: another thought is that Bob actually did “do something special”. It’s not just that he had more computational power, but he had the foresight and intuition to realize that it would be worthwhile to apply that computational power to Alice’s particular problem rather than spend his time and resources doing any number of other things. So although it’s not really that important as I said above, even by your own criterion I think there is more merit to the achievement than your description makes it sound.

  If they are publishable, what would Bob actually write in such a paper? Everything sans the result could effectively be communicated in one sentence ("Read Alice's paper").

Bob would simply write what he did and what the results were, and what makes them interesting. If it can really be described in one sentence I’d argue that it likely wasn’t such an interesting result after all. But on the off-chance that it was indeed interesting, then it would make for a great one-sentence paper. There isn’t any rule that papers have to be longer than one sentence.


What to fill in the following gap in a journal's publication system: "The author was supported by ..." I have this question, (that could be closed because it is not a problem of mathematics):
I am a PhD student, my first article was accepted by a journal, and for the publication in the web site of the journal , there is some sentences to fill, between these senteces there is this one to fill:
"The author was supported by ......."
what to write here ?
Thanks for any answer and sorry for my english

This question asks what the author's funding is - in the case of PhD students, where the funding for your stipend/research is coming from. If your advisor has a grant that is covering your work, then the agency that issued the funding is the one you acknowledge here. If you have a scholarship, then the agency that issued the scholarship is the one you acknowledge. If you are self-funded, then you can leave it blank, or name your university.
In any case, if you are unsure, ask your advisor.


Messing up Junior Year I am a junior in high school and fear that I have messed up. In my freshman and sophomore year, I worked very hard to maintain good grades and participate in extracurriculars. I participated in robotics and research and was able to win a variety of awards. When junior year came around, I was in the mindset that I had to do as much as possible. I signed up for a bunch of extracurriculars, decided to hold 3 leadership positions, etc. The stress has been killing me for months. Recently, I had most of my competitions, and I performed poorly in all of them (except for one research competition). Also, my grades have dropped from last year (by about 0.4 on a 100 point scale). It really depresses me that I went through all of the stress for what feels like nothing. As most of the competitions are over now, I plan to start focusing on my passions again (physics and programming). Nonetheless, I feel as if I messed up my competitiveness when it comes to college admissions and I am afraid that I will look back on my junior year with regret. I don't know what to do. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Am I understanding you correctly that your grades dropped form a 100 to a 99.6?  I mean a 99.6 is still excellent work unless perfection is your standard. Regarding the extra curricular activities, pick two or three at the most, trying to do too much never works in the long run. I routinely review scholarship applications at the college where I am employed. When I see a long laundry list of activities I often question how much the student really contributed. Many students today seem to be more concerned with resume building through a variety of activities rather than developing, in greater depth a smaller number of activities. Grades still matter but don't try to be perfect, just excellent.


Is it possible to ask editor-in-chief to change a reviewer? I have submitted a paper to a peer-reviewed journal. On the first round of review, 3 reviewers had different comments and I tried my best to answer them. On the second round of review, two of them were almost satisfied but the third one had an aggressive tone and asked some questions that were completely answered in the paper or were basically wrong questions.

I answered the reviewer's comments and sent the paper, but one of my friends told me that it was better to ask the editor-in-chief to change the reviewer. I want to know, is that possible? How?

Certainly you can ask.  It's not impossible that the editor would agree, though it's pretty unlikely.

What you describe:

  the third one had an aggressive tune and ask some questions that were completely answered in the paper or were basically wrong question.

is normal.  Many reviewers take an aggressive tone. Often they ask questions that were answered in the paper.  The correct response to "an aggressive tone" is to reply in a professional tone, and the correct response to a question that is answered in the paper is to accept that you were not clear enough in the paper, and to improve the explanation.

(Note, by the way, that this one short sentence I quoted has three grammatical/spelling errors. If this represents how the paper was written, it's not surprising that the paper was unclear, and the reviewer's annoyance is perfectly understandable.)

As for the "basically wrong question" ... here's an illustration of how common the "reviewer number three" syndrome is.

I'm not saying it's good that one out of three reviewers is borderline incompetent. I'm saying that this is part of the territory, this is something every scientist has to deal with, and we don't, can't possibly, all write to the editor and demand they remove Reviewer Number Three.  Instead, what we all do is extract the useful parts of the review, accept that if the reviewer doesn't understand something it's mainly our fault for being unclear and fix that, and work as best we can with the reviewer's concerns.  In your response to the reviewer, you can clearly and professionally explain why the point is mistaken, and explain what you have done to help clarify it.

Editors often (I think; I know it happens sometimes) unofficially deprecate particular reviews, based on their reading.  They are just as good at detecting "aggressive" and outright hostile reviews, and know to put less weight on it.

But you can ask the editor to remove a reviewer. They're more likely to listen if the reviewer is not just aggressive, but outright hostile; when the reviewer makes an unambiguous statement that isn't just a minority opinion, but is flat wrong, and you can clearly show that; or when the reviewer is just completely out of their depth.

But the burden is on you to absolutely clearly, professionally, with no trace of hurt feelings or antagonism, show that the reviewer is without doubt incompetent. If you can't do every part of that 100%, don't even bother.  Deal with it the way all the rest of us do.

You may want to look at other answers to questions in the "peer-review" tag to get a sense of the community's feelings:

How common is it to get one very positive and one very negative review?
A frequent reviewer seems to have a grudge against me. What to do?
What to do if reviewers reject a paper without understanding the content?
How to proceed when reviewers reject your manuscript but you believe there is no scientific basis for their objections?

And many more.


In a 5 years PhD, is it possible to get a postdoc position with one publication? I can really use some advice I am a 5th year Mechanical engineering PhD.

I just have 1 published paper and 3 others are pending with my advisor

I was wondering if I can get some advice on what should my approach towards postdoc applications without publications be like? Almost all of the positions requires sending a reference work to prove for competence.

I think that any position as a post doc won't be awarded based simply on who has the highest publication count. There is more to it than that. Most positions expect you to fit into a given department or lab in some way and there can be a lot of expectations on that beyond research record. While publications may be important, and more so in some situations, it is unlikely to be the entire story very often.

Read whatever the offering institution says about the kind of skills and person who is desired and match your own skill set to that as best you can. It may be something as simple as expertise in a field, but there may be an expectation of participation in the educational process, especially of grad students. How well do you fit the expectations, however they are. Some special experience may be needed that you may have or not.

Of course, you should list your work in progress as such without overstating it. If the papers are written, then you have titles for the work and abstracts. Try to get something submitted so that the process toward publication is started, at least. Get good letters of recommendation, preferably tailored to your suitability for the specific positions you seek.


Will my supervisor be contacted by a conference if my submission is rejected or requires revison? I submitted my paper to conference proceedings and still waiting to get the feedback within 2 months. When I uploaded the paper they asked me to fill the name and email for each co-author in the paper. So I did as they ask and I noticed that they sent an email to all mentioned authors (including the office of my professor and his secretary) that the paper is received and still under review.

What I want to ask is If the paper rejected or sent back to major reviews will my professor get an email from them as I will get?

Some conference systems do, and some systems don't. If the system contacted all authors upon submission, one could speculate that it will also do this when a decision on the paper has been made. But it really depends on the system, and as there are so many, it's hard to predict.

But I'm going to add that it shouldn't matter: Whatever the outcome, you will have to tell your coauthors one way or the other. If they learn it from an automated email, then that is as good as if you sent them a personal email.


Is it reasonable to apply for (postdoc) positions early? When preparing an application for a position, it goes without saying that everyone wants to make the strongest possible case for themselves. Hence, it seems that the best strategy would be to wait until the last possible moment - just in case in the meantime an acceptance letter comes from that journal where you submitted the paper half a year ago or your latest project reaches a stage when it can be posted on arXiv.

However, I am wondering if this is reasonable. Presumably, whoever is assessing the applications has internet access and can easily check if there are any updates (say, by visiting the personal webpage or googling the applicant's name). Since application procedures tend to be somewhat lengthy, I would also imagine that hiring committees are well aware that the applicants accomplishments can increase in the meantime.

[The position I have in mind is maths postdoc, but I welcome a broader perspective.]

My recommendation is first that you don't worry too much about it, but I think there is an important exception: if you are applying using MathJobs, then you should apply once you have your documents ready, hopefully at least a couple of days before the deadline.  In particular, you should not wait for your references to add their letters if that is the only thing you're waiting for.  Those will show up when they are available, but it's much better for someone to see your application is there without all the letters, than for you to get lost right in the avalanche when everybody else submits right at the deadline.  Similarly, you can update your CV, so there's no reason to wait in hope of another paper to getting accepted.


Responding to low-key insult from lecturer A lecturer for a course I am attending was late for a class, and as they had sent an e-mail a few days before mentioning a different classroom, the class was confused about whether we should go to this classroom or not. I decided to send the lecturer an e-mail to clarify whether the class location had changed.

In the end, the lecturer appeared about ten minutes late. That could've been the end of the story, but the lecturer sent an e-mail today (to me only) stating that I "was the only one confused [about the matter]!". I find this rude and inappropriate - they could have just let it slide, or at least apologised for being late.

I realise that I caused some minor noise in their inbox through my e-mail - but it is not enough, in my opinion, to respond rudely.

My University is running a campaign on respect among students and teachers. I would like to respond in a way that clarifies that I think they were rude, while keeping in mind that I will have the class for the rest of the semester with this lecturer.

Should I respond - in that case, how? - , or should I simply ignore it?

Sincerely? Let it go. The tone is also not "low-key insulting" (that means a personal disparaging attack on you), it is dismissive/snotty/irritated (do not bother me with this stuff).

The thing is that you are reading a lot (IMHO too much) into this. I'm not saying that you are wrong, but it sounds that you are in danger of spending precious lifetime for collecting perceived slights. You have already used approx. 1 hour of your lifetime to ask this question, and probably several hours of suppressed anger pondering his answer.

Really, the easiest way is to think "Perhaps he has eaten something bad today/has relationship problems", or whatever. Remember: once is chance, twice is coincidence, thrice is a pattern. If it happens three times, then it is time to act.


I entered a PhD program out of fear of being unemployed and regret it. How can I gracefully undo my mistake and switch fields? I want to switch careers from PhD in chemical engineering to data scientist. How can I go about doing this without having everyone hate me?

It is one year after I started and I am feeling miserable. I really hate the lab work I am forced to do (my summer lab work was better). I didn't like any of the chemical engineering courses. I didn't like my undergraduate courses either. The courses are just dry and pointless.

I took one probability elective and I really liked it and I wish I had moved into data science or became a developer. I really like programming and I am naturally good at it.

I also have a great girlfriend for the first time. We've been dating about 8 months now. She has made me more confident and more aware of how distorted my thinking and decision making is. She is just getting a masters in chemical engineering. She is graduating in one year, so I don't mind being around her until then. I would love to move with her to Seattle post graduation and live with her up there.

I want to move away from chemical engineering and become a data scientists or C++ developer. I know I am capable of achieving these things as long as I have some motivation. At the end of the day I just want a high paying job.

How can I go about undoing my mistake of applying to graduate school and switching to a more promising career field?

Edit: Removed  personal details and added updates

UPDATES: Started my data science career!
What I did:

1) Talked to my advisers and quit.

2) Found a new adviser who allowed me to get a masters in 1 yr doing data science things related to Spectroscopy.

3) Played up research experience and coding and landed a data science internship in silicon valley (pay is 27 K for summer).

4) Took a grad level probability theory courses to improve math background

5) Continued learning data science by working on my masters thesis

6) Continued to get a free masters degree because department is short chemE TA's and by TAing my tuition is waved.

7) I no longer have an assigned office so I now work in the library, and am ultra productive.

These are my thoughts as someone who is a data scientist, but also someone who used to teach and advise students at the university level.
Becoming a data scientist

I want to switch careers from PhD in chemical engineering to data scientist.
At the end of the day I just want a high paying job.

If you want to be a data scientist and earn a lot of money, you are either going to need to start your own company and hit it big, or get a graduate degree. (Or both).
Being a (well-paid) data scientist requires much more than programming. (That is still part of it, of course. But it is necessary, not sufficient). High end data scientists usually have a pretty extensive background in statistics and probability theory. I used to work for an engineering firm as a data scientist. They converted several mechanical engineers into "data scientists" because they could program. This ended up leading to many wasted months of work when I informed them that the test they were using required certain assumptions on distributions of the population they were sampling from.
Making an impact as a data scientist is much more involved than people think. Online classes and boot camps make some people think that they can get a certificate in Python and land as a data science lead at Google or something. It doesn't work like that.
Essentially what I am trying to tell you is this: I would probably not look at someone with a 3.5 GPA in chemical engineering and very little formal data science training for any sort of high paying data science job.

I had to take a bunch of online courses and I lacked the motivation to complete them.
I know I am capable of achieving these things as long as I have some motivation.
At the end of the day I just want a high paying job.

Avoid telling a future employer this.
Ask yourself if your motivations to become a data scientist are the money or the subject. Part of any job is being self motivated by the subject matter itself.
The money in data science is not guaranteed. Some of the very high paying data science jobs also require extensive education and immense dedication to working 60 hours a week.

Leaving the PhD program

If it didn't harm my lab, I would just drop out now without even bothering to complete my masters. Because I care about my lab, I don't want to drop out and harm things.

I would not feel obligated to waste 4 years of your life so that your lab mates don't feel bad.
If you are not enjoying yourself, do not feel bad about dropping out. You will be doing yourself a large favor in the end I think. There is no shame in dropping out to do something different. People drop out all of the time from graduate programs in order to pursue something they enjoy more.
Let me absolve you of overall guilt: Your situation is much more common than you think. I think there will be many people who will support you in pursuing a career you will enjoy and be productive in. Take confidence in yourself and don't let others discourage you.
Especially don't become your own worst enemy by tearing yourself down.

Overall advice

If you are not enjoying your PhD program, your first priority is yourself. Drop out. Now. Tell the program administrators your thoughts. You do not need to ask their permission to do what is best for your psyche and career.
Look into becoming a software developer if that is something you will enjoy. A BS in Chemical Engineering and demonstrated aptitude in C++ or Java can usually set you on a pretty good career path.
Don't look back.


When bidding for papers on softconf.com as a reviewer, does it make any difference between answering no or not bidding for a paper? When bidding for papers on softconf.com as a reviewer, does it make any difference between answering no or not answering for a paper?

I.e., is there difference between:

and

?

Answering some comments:

http://softconf.com a.k.a. START:

  START V2 is an integrated web-based solution for managing peer-reviewed conferences and workshops. START helps streamline all steps of the editorial process, including paper/abstract submission, committee formation, paper reviews, on-line technical committee meetings, report compilations, author notification, preliminary conference program creation - and a lot more.

Also, what is “paper bidding”?.

I have crossposted the question at:

Quora

I can't answer specifically for this service, but in general it can make a small difference if some papers fail to get bids. For some CS conferences, if you answer no for a paper you are unlikely to be asked again if a second round of bids is needed. If you don't answer at all, then not answering will be likely treated as more like "maybe" than "no".
But, while not especially rare, it only happens at the margins.
But it is even possible that a desperate program chair will come back and beg even "no" voters for reviews in a future "ask". Even less likely though.


Is it worthwhile to find a teaching letter writer who can also speak to research abilities? When applying for academic jobs in the US, one is often asked for a recommendation letter from someone who can attest to your teaching abilities.

Should you try to find a teaching-letter-writer who can also speak in some way to your research? (For research-focused jobs, since you get to submit a bounded number of letters, this could be a sneaky way to get more research content into the letters.) Or do search committees for research-focused jobs generally not read teaching letters deeply/at all?

I am personally in mathematics. I am assuming the answers will not be too field-dependent (please correct me if I am mistaken), so I left it out of the main body of the question.

Search committees that I know read all the letters written for the candidates in whom they are interested, though of course some people read some letters more closely than others.  I will admit that at my "research-focused" university, I often read teaching letters very briefly.  In my defense, many teaching letters are not worthy of more than a very brief reading.  They simply do not separate out the candidate or provide any really incisive or useful information.  If teaching letters are to be believed, then approximately 99.5% of all candidates are above average teachers.  Why do I find myself skeptical of this?

That said, I don't really see much advantage to "hiding" research in a teaching letter (or vice versa).  If you get a teaching letter written by a "research professor", then they may be a little nervous about not mentioning the research whatsoever or feel through force of habit that they must say something.  But really, when we read a teaching letter we want to hear about teaching, so saying something at the beginning like "Dr. Ray has asked me to write about her teaching, and so I will" would be fine.

You speak of a "bounded number of letters".  That must be true, but the supremum may not be what you think. In most jobs that I know of, nothing stops you from submitting more letters than the number they ask for.  Past a certain point maybe it looks obnoxious: I remember one candidate for an assistant professor position that had nine letters of recommendation (8 research, 1 teaching, I think).  I felt that was a bit much but we certainly didn't disqualify the guy or write back to say how many of the letters we had burned without reading.  In fact he made the short list and almost got an interview.

I would say: if you want to send one or two more letters than the application asks for: just do it.  If you want someone to talk about your research, don't have them do it in a way that other people might not read, or might read but dismiss because they are expecting to hear about the teaching.  Just get another letter.  For that matter, it is increasingly common to get more than one teaching letter even for a research job, even though I know of no research job that asks for more than one.


Should I include PhD experience in MSc application? I have a BSc in computer science and now I'm applying to a Masters program in Human Computer Interaction. A year or so ago I left an unrelated PhD program because I didn't think it would be beneficial to my end career goals.

Should I include this on my MSc application or leave it out?

You joined a PhD program without a master's degree?

Well... a master of science is about doing an small version of a PhD. In that sense, it could be beneficial to show that you do have some experience in research.

On the other hand, the fact that you left, probably without results or something to prove how well did you do it so far, might not be so positive.

But anyway, honesty should be the most important thing, and you shouldn't hide what you have done before. Also, it is definitely more beneficial to fill those gaps on your CV with the PhD time, instead of letting them think that you were just lounging around...


Can a former employer provide a useful recommendation for graduate admission to a science program? In its online application form for graduate admission, Stanford University requires three recommenders and allows for another three optional ones. Quoting the application form:

  You must provide three letters and evaluations from faculty or others
  qualified to evaluate your potential for graduate study. At least one
  letter and evaluation should be from a faculty member at the last
  school you attended as a fulltime student (unless you have been out of
  school for more than five years). Substitutions for faculty
  recommendations may include work associates or others who can comment
  on your academic potential for graduate work.

Reading this, I feel somewhat uncertain what type of recommendations would most help my application. I'm particularly confused by the phrase

  Substitutions for faculty recommendations may include work associates...

I worked for Apple a few years back. A favorable letter from my then-supervisor might convey the impression that I'm technologically minded and enjoy ties to Silicon Valley. Considering Stanford's own proximity and close connection to the Valley, such a recommendation might be well-received?

On the other hand, I'm applying to the theoretical Physics program. My former supervisor at Apple clearly has no basis on which to judge my potential for graduate work in this field. Can anyone provide some pertinent insight into what purpose recommendations are supposed to fulfill? Would a letter solely commenting on my work ethic and team spirit help my case?

The important thing to keep in mind is that the goal isn't this specific letter, but composing the best possible application for, in this case, Stanford. So the primary question is: would a letter from your supervisor at Apple improve your set of recommendation letters? If you already have 6 letters from very qualified people that know your work well and can comment on your ability to perform at the Stanford program, a letter from your former boss might not add much. However if you only have 3 people at the moment who can really say something about you, adding your former boss couldn't really hurt. A few things in mind are:

How long, how long ago and how closely did you work with your former boss compared to the other people writing you letter of recommendation?
Was there a (strict) selection process to get into Apple? If so, the selection people at Stanford might be interested why the selection people at Apple chose you out of all possible candidates.
Did you do any research at Apple, or answer any research questions? Even when not doing theoretical physics, your attitude towards discovery and finding new knowledge might be relevant.


How to search for USA PhD Studentships? findaphd.com is an excellent website to search for PhD studentships (PhD funding on specific projects) in the UK. Also, UK universities often advertise PhD studentship opportunities in their "job vacancies" section. However, after much googling, I have yet to find similar sites or departmental advertisements for PhD studentships in the USA.

Questions:

I don't suppose there is a similar site for the USA that I missed during my search?
Are there even off-cycle PhD studentships for specific projects in the USA, like those in the UK?

There is no such site because it is unnecessary.  In Europe, a Ph.D. student is like an employee and is admitted to work on a specific project.  In the USA, a Ph.D. student is admitted in a manner similar to an undergraduate (based on general considerations) and is not necessarily attached to a particular project or even a particular advisor.

Hence, you could say that every US department has a number of studentships available each year, always at the same time (start of fall semester) and you apply for all of them simply by submitting an admission application to the program.

Thus the answers to your numbered questions are

No.
No.

Disclaimer: there are probably exceptions, but what I've written applies 99% of the time.

One additional note: I disagree with the comment below that claims that individual faculty do not decide which students are admitted.  In every program I know, a small committee of program faculty makes all the decisions.  If some faculty member (whether on the committee or not) really wants a particular applicant, that applicant will be admitted.  My own admission came on the same day that I contacted a faculty member (and as a direct result).  Of course, you should always follow this good advice when contacting faculty you'd like to work with.


How to ask a professor to supervise my undergraduate thesis research? I am second year CompSci student in Europe and in a short while I'll have to start my undergraduate thesis research. The domain I want to research is cloud computing. One of my lecture professors suggested that I contact a master's professor regarding my undergraduate research, saying that he'll be alright with supervising my thesis research. My only problem is, how do I ask a professor I do not know to supervise my undergraduate thesis research?

Just talk to them as if they were a human being. Give them the info you just gave us, ask if they are interested, keep the email short and to the point. Here is an example email, adapt as needed.

Dear Prof. XXX,

(or whatever is the appropriate salutation where you live)

I am a second year student in [field] at [university]. I am interested in [domain].
Soon I will start my undergraduate thesis research. Professor YYY, who teaches us [course], recommended that I contact you, and I would be interested in having you supervise my thesis. Would you be interested in supervising my undergraduate thesis research?
I am at your disposal if you need more information and/or would like to meet me. Thank you for your time.
Best regards,
ZZZ

(or whatever closing formula is appropriate where you live.)
I don't know if this is perfect (English isn't my native language), but you get the idea.


Simultaneous working papers strategy Reviewing advertisements for junior faculty positions, I noticed that it is a relatively frequent occurrence, when there is a requirement (or strong preference) for candidates to provide three working papers, along with other materials. Thinking about that aspect and considering the often lengthy process of reviewing papers in decent enough journals, I am considering a strategy of splitting my short-term future efforts (real efforts, not just on paper!) into three more or less related (perhaps, but not necessarily, adjacent) areas of study and preparing three working papers on topics from my research agenda simultaneously. I realize that due to parallel efforts the progress on each paper will be less than, if I would focus on a single topic, but, again, considering lengthy academic review process, following this strategy would allow me to have at some point three relatively developed working papers, which can be listed in CV, presented at conferences or workshops or to hiring committees and, ultimately, transformed into full-blown research papers.

Question: What do you think about such simultaneous working papers strategy? Please mention advantages, disadvantages as well as other potential considerations of my suggested approach.

If you work with coauthors, who will all have their own conflicting responsibilities, there will frequently be times when someone cannot work on a paper and the others cannot meaningfully proceed. In such times, you switch your attention to a different paper you are working on (alone or with other colleagues).

So, unless you work alone (not recommended), the "parallel working papers" strategy is less of a choice and more of a necessity. I personally am currently trying to juggle a textbook, two coauthored and one single-authored paper.

The same will apply to grant writing.

And even if you do work alone, there comes a time in a project when it's useful just to take a break and do something else for two or four weeks, then return to your initial project with a fresh mind.


Found an error in the title of published article (A phrase has been repeated twice) I have found an error in the title of my recently published article. A phrase has been repeated twice in the title. Considering that journal not accepted any changes what should I do about it?

Send the journal's editorial office a note and let them know.

I made the a similar mistake once with one of my first paper after the paper had been published online (the paper had a misspelling with one of the words and my department's admin staff caught when preparing a departmental highlight). The journal was happy to fix it, even though I had already returned the final version of the manuscript and they had published the article online. I suspect the editors did not want to have a typo in an article title in their journal.


How to ask summer research advisor for publication? I'm an undergraduate currently doing summer research with an REU program. I feel that the research we've done this summer is publishable (although what do I know), and I'd like to do that, especially with grad school applications coming up. Is there a polite, yet direct way (or is it uncouth) to ask my advisor if we are going to publish this paper?

Hi, do you think we can get my work so far published as an article?

If the answer is no:

  So, what else do you think we would have to do to get it publishable?

Professors and supervisors are human beings. They won't eat you if you make the wrong question, or use a slightly unproper tone. Don't worry specially when you are in a very low risk situation, and you know each other.

(Once you get the go, don't forget to clarify and define authorship).


How to design an undergraduate internship project? I am postdoctoral fellow working on computer science and bioinformatics, and it seems I might have the possibility soon to supervise some undergraduate internship students. Internships should last around 3 months.

To do this, first I have to design some undergraduate internship project proposals to make available for these candidate internship students.

I never did this previously, so I do not know very well how to design these project drafts. There are many question marks: what should I expect from these students? What should I expect from these projects? what amount of work should I expect? What skills should I suppose the students have before joining the project? What should be the goals of these projects, both for the students and for the advance of science?

In the end, in case you were a potential supervisor, what's a good way to design an undergraduate internship project proposal?

The number one thing that I would advise you to expect is the unexpected.  The skills and performance of undergraduates is almost impossible to predict, because their work with you is likely to be one of their first deep technical experiences.  Among the key implications of this:

their true skills and background vary greatly and are often not well indicated by transcripts (and they often have little ability to self-evaluate)
their motivation and ability to act professionally varies wildly and is very difficult to judge before they are actually working on a project (they often do not really know themselves)
there is often little possibility of obtaining a meaningful reference for them

Given this, I have found that the following are very useful to do when designing a project for an undergraduate:

Do not put them on anything critical path.  Choose an interesting side project that you've wanted to get around to, but won't be sad if nothing happens on.
Create a set of milestones that starts with simple "warm-up" work, and then builds sequentially.  Make sure they will see a concrete result that they can feel proud of at each milestone.
A good rule of thumb is to plan assuming that 1 week of work for you will be 1 month of work for the undergraduate.  A really good one, though, may progress much, much faster, though, so...
Also add a set of "stretch goals" that will give a really good undergraduate a chance to do some really cool things, rather than running out of work after the first few weeks.

Every undergraduate is a roll of the dice.  Many will simply waste your time.  Many will be marginal in value at best.  But the good ones really make up for all the rest, and may become your future colleagues.


Am I allowed to write about a discovery, while pending acceptance of my manuscript on the same topic? This year, I submitted a manuscript to a journal regarding new information uncovered on a particular topic. I am awaiting my reviews and a decision on its potential acceptance to the journal.

The journal policy states that the manuscript has to be original content and not published elsewhere. By "not published elsewhere", does this also mean that I am prohibited from discussing the discovery publicly or in media until it is published in the journal (or any journal for that matter). If I write about the discovery (for example, in a newspaper), will this count as being "published elsewhere" - even if the news article and the manuscript are not the same?

This depends on the field and/or the journal. My understanding is glam-mags (Science, Nature) do indeed tend to prohibit any mentioning of the paper contents. On the other hand, for say mathematics journals it would be common to have a preprint on the arXiv anyway, so for something of particular interest, a lot of coverage can arise prior to the actual publication (see the proof of Kepler's conjecture for an extreme example).


How to calculate value of a masters? I have done Computer Systems engineering and working for a good company. I am interested in doing a masters (not really because I have much interest in theory but because it helps in career advancement.) How do I calculate how a masters will be a good decision and worth the time, money and energy? My goal is to become a Chief Technology Officer in 10 years (I have 3 years of experience right now and 1 year of experience after graduation.)

If your goal is to be a CTO (i.e. more business oriented) then the value of an MBA would be an idea worth considering. Once you reach a certain level of experience, education becomes icing on the cake. So in ten years time, if it came down between you and another candidate for a CTO position, and you had an MBA (or another master's degree), you would more than likely get the job.


Advice and tools for hosting an online journal club I have some experience with hosting reading groups/journals clubs in an off-line setting. Usually we meet every week in a room and discuss the paper for that week. However, recently some colleagues and I (~7 people) are trying to catch up on a specific topic quickly, and we want to hold a short reading group/journal club. Unfortunately, some of my colleagues are at other universities, and cannot physically attend meetings.

Do you have any advice or suggestions for tools to hold an online reading group?

My first instinct was G+ Hangout (especially with the new beta features they are making available right now). Skype is also an option, but last I checked required a fee for group video chat.

The preferred features are:

Talk to (and preferably see) each other
Have access to some sort of shared whiteboard
Easy to use and set up

There's an online Astronomy Journal Club hosted on Wordpress.

Here's my main advice: make the process as frictionless as possible. Grad students tend to have very busy lives, and journal clubs will inevitably have high dropout rates unless they have some motivation (even through guilt) to stay in and to continue participating. Keep them updated through some service that they'll constantly check even if they aren't doing science (emails end up annoying people, but Facebook, Reddit, and Google Plus might work).

It's also probably easier to convince people to set an online journal club when the journal club is about some specialized subject that only a small number of people at any particular university know about (and if they have a strong urge to talk about the subject with people from other universities).

Finally, if there's an academic conference for grad students (for my area, for example, it would be AbGradCon), discuss it with people there! Journal clubs are an excellent way to keep in touch with grad students at other universities.


Can Journals settle all legal processes related to accepted papers before publication on behalf of authors? For an accepted paper about to be produced (not open access), the author should agree to terms that all illustrations, tables etc. have recieved permissions from the copyright owner. If the author agrees, the paper takes the copyright of the Journal. The question is that, for an inexperienced author, could the journal take up the responsibility (e.g through an office) to take care of issues of permissions etc. before beginning the production process? Thus, they would look into: which figures, tables etc. require permission and they would go through the process. For instance using a Rightslink account etc.

Edit: If not, could they (at least some of them) offer advice on what and what may require permissions from an accepted manuscript?

This isn't usually done. The authors are assumed to have gotten the permissions themselves. However your question is whether the journal "can". In that case, I'd say the answer is yes. They can, they just don't usually do it. Just about the only possible exception is if the author is a famous researcher and the journal is willing to go to great lengths to publish the manuscript.


Dealing with someone who asks many questions during presentations While giving a presentation there is one person in the audience (X a PhD student and a friend) asking all sorts of questions, even unrelated ones. They are also eager to answer questions of others while just in the audience. X attends almost every talk in the department (info from colleagues) and shoots out his questions. During my first few weeks I consider this as good academic practice but had to change my opinion when the same occurred during my talk, with  about 7-8 questions asked during a 30 minute talk; some of them were blatantly off topic (like asking why I used this numerical method over the other, which I haven't even heard of). We attended a thesis defense in our department in which the protocol suggests that the defense committee should ask questions first in the time allotted to questions. X couldn't wait, asks during the talk and this annoyed the committee, one of the stood up and asked X to stop!

I talked with X, and they said they are doing this to push the presenter to their limit and described the thesis committee as a bunch of idiots. X said they were very shy in their school years and worked really hard to reach this level of confidence.

My analysis

Although questions are welcome during the presentation, X seems to ask questions for asking sake. They used to ask questions to compare a certain method or phenomenon with their line of research which the presenter has never even heard of.

How to deal with him if this continues (sure it will!) during one of my presentation? I don't want to offend, as they are one of my few mates on  campus.

Side Note:
X's questions are not dumb questions in reference to some comments. They are sometimes off-topic, sometimes seeking explanation on a particular terminology(during the talk). I feel the questions are being asked simply for the sake of asking a question.

You are not obligated to accept somebody disrupting your talks, particularly when the questions are off-topic and when much of the audience appears to be disapproving.  The basic solution is to act as a moderator for your own talk.

For questions during your talk that you find disruptive, a simple solution is simply to say, in a calm and gentle voice, something like:

  I'm going to defer that question for now.  We can come back to it at the end.

During a question period, if a person is dominating the discussion, you can say something like:

  I think some other people may want to ask questions as well, so I'm going to ask you to hold your questions for a bit while we hear from others.

The key here is to be firm, gentle, and impartial.  Your voice should make it clear that it's not about this particular questioner or about you being defensive, just about keeping on topic.

After you say something like this, most people will leave the question and let you come back to it later.  If the questioner does not, simply repeat yourself, remaining as calm and unruffled as you can, and then move on.  If the person continues to be disruptive after that point, it will be clear that they are making an unusually large problem, and others are likely to help intervene.


Changing advisors within the same department TL;DR: I have better “chemistry” with a different professor doing extremely similar research to my current advisor. Is there a way to switch professors without leaving ill feelings?

I have a question similar to this, but I didn’t feel that the answers listed adequately cleared things up for me.

Background

I must declare whether I will work with my university-assigned professor or another professor by the end of the year.

Current Advisor

I am currently working with my university-assigned advisor. This professor was my first choice for an advisor due to their research interests, which align very closely with my own. However, upon spending more time working with this professor, I've discovered that our working methodologies are very much misaligned. My research interests have been moving away from my initial advisor's, though I believe that this could at some level be motivated by my struggle in staying motivated with this professor. I have absolutely no ill feelings towards this professor – in fact, I would say that we are on friendly terms...but this does not help the problems we have in communication. However, this professor was instrumental in getting funding for me for my first year, and also played a large role in my acceptance at my (extremely competitive) university and department.

Potential Advisor

In my first semester, I took a class from another professor in my same department. This professor’s research interests have significant overlap with my initial advisor, but branch out in the same direction that I believe I may be interested in. I achieved the highest marks in the class with this professor, and they inquired about my current research status (i.e. they let me know they had hoped I wasn’t already working with someone so they could invite me to work with them). When they first discussed this with me, my current concerns hadn't arisen yet, so I informed them that I was happy with my situation. However, I took the opportunity to do something akin to independent study with this professor the following semester, and found that our personalities mesh extremely well – I feel much more able to communicate with this professor, and am more motivated in completing work for this professor than my own.

My current professor has much more funding, and has had much more success in publications at our university (including multiple which I have helped author), though they are about equal in seniority.

Concerns

The only things stopping me from switching professors are the following:

Due to how similar their research interests are, it will be obvious to everyone involved that I would be switching mainly for personal, not research/academic, reasons.
I fear potentially losing funding, as the second professor appears to be struggling to attain funding.

Questions

What steps should I take prior to deciding to change professors? The second professor involved does not currently have any graduate students, so I am unable to “confirm” my suspicions with them about this professor’s communication style.
Should I ultimately decide to change advisors, is there a way to approach my professor such that all parties involved are aware that the switch is done for communication/motivation reasons, and not any sort of personal dispute? Or, perhaps, is this something I should even worry about?

I have shared my concerns over our poor communication with my current professor, but despite efforts from both of us, things have not improved. Furthermore, I certainly do not expect my professor to adopt a new advising style; I recognize that we may just not be a good fit.

I'd say try to be up-front about what you're contemplating with both professors, beginning with the current advisor. Unless your current advisor is new to the position, he'll be well aware that sometimes people just don't "click" as you might expect. If you can do some work with the second professor, you should be able to get a better feel for how you two mesh. Definitely be respectful in communications and make an effort to finish anything your current advisor expects you to finish before transitioning. I'd probably also ask up-front about your concerns of funding to make sure you've got the information to make an informed decision.


How should I choose the name of my past degree in application when the options do not not exactly match my degree? I am applying for PhD for a certain university (Canadian), and in the form there is a question about the academic background. In the options I see things like Bachelor of engineering, bachelor of engineering with honours, bachelor's degree general, bachelor's degree 4 year, and bachelor of science. There are similar options for the Master's degree: Master of engineering, Master's degree, and master's of science.

I completed my undergraduate study in 4 years and my degree is "Bachelor of science in engineering".There was a project in the final year. I am doing a "Master's of science in engineering". This is thesis based degree.

Which of the above options should I choose? In my country we only have Bachelor of science and Master's of science so I don't know what these things mean.

By "I see things like," I assume you mean "the options are," i.e., the list of options you have given is exhaustive. I shall also assume that you are an engineering student, with a degree at "Bachelor of science" level and you are currently studying at "Master's of science" level. The question about academic background is looking for your highest qualification, so I would list "master's of science."

You could call the university to confirm!

EDIT. I do not agree with compass's remark that a UK MEng degree is provided in lieu of a Bachelor's and has the same study length: UK BEng degrees are typically three years, whereas UK MEng degrees are typically four years. It is possible that compass is attempting to compare Bachelor's degrees between different countries.


What is the advantage of the two-column journal format? I am a mathematician whose work often connects with physics, so I often have to read papers in physics journals. I find that the two-column format popular with physics journals annoying, and based on the following questions on this stackexchange I am not the only one that feels that way:

Difficulty reading scientific papers in two columns

How best to present long equations in two-column papers?

Do two-column format journals publish one column for special cases?

I contend that the two-column format is impractical for long mathematical equations and is harder to read, since your eyes have to move in a pattern different from most other printed texts. But I suppose that there must be some advantage to the two-column format, given it is so standard in some branches of academia. But I can't think of a single reason why it would be better than a single column printed page! Enlighten me, please.

There's a widespread belief that shorter lines (fewer characters per line) are  easier to read, because the eye doesn't have to move as far horizontally from the end of one line back to the start of the next.  The left edge of the text (assuming left-to-right languages) may already be in your peripheral vision.  Thus it's easier to visually find the correct line to read next, and avoid accidentally rereading the same line or skipping lines.

This is the justification for the extremely wide margins that LaTeX uses by default in one-column styles, for instance.

I don't know offhand if there is research supporting this belief, but maybe someone can fill me in if they know.

Two columns makes it easier to have short lines, without resorting to small paper size, large font sizes, or huge margins.  Thus you still get a high density of text per page, and it keeps page counts down (and the associated costs).


Is endowing a professorship less effective in a lower-ranked university than in a higher-ranked one? This is a follow-up question to What does it take for a lower-ranked university to compete with a top-ranked one?.

Wolfgang Bangerth's answer says that "Faculty will generally only go to places where there are also good students, and the best students go where they can historically expect to get an excellent education." Does this mean that if I want to endow a professorial chair, and I want the endowed professor to produce world-class research, I should do so at a top-ranked university instead of a lower-ranked one? The argument being that, to produce world-class research, one presumably needs top faculty, top students, and money. The endowment covers the money aspect, but there's still faculty & students, and if those gravitate towards top universities then it would presumably also make more sense to endow a chair at a top university.

If the answer is "yes", top universities such as Harvard and Oxford already have billions of dollars in endowment. Is there any way out of this rich-get-richer situation? (I'll ask this as a separate question if it is unrelated to the present one).

An institution rank is a not necessary a very good measure of how strong its academic programs are. The ranks take that into account, but also consider how good business it that school, how good is the connection of the institution and industry, the endowment, what do the alumni get to do with their degrees, etc.

The strong institutions are strong because they answer a need of society. For example, my graduate school had a strong chemistry program because the graduates could easily get jobs at the nearby chemical plant which was a part of a giant corporation. On the other hand, we had a so-so physics program because there were very few companies interested in what we were doing. Those few companies, however, were in microelectronics, so the few experimental groups in my department were doing that. My point is, lack of local resources was a problem.

A much worse case is my undergraduate school. The physics program shrank from 150 to 20 undergraduates per year simply because the demand for low-paid school teachers dropped significantly over the last decade. The demand for physics graduates is very small in my city because most industry is low tech, or outsourcing. This means many people with physics degrees have insecure jobs at university, or have to move abroad for work and study, or simply leave the field.

Which brings me to the professor endowment at a low ranked school. I, and a few of my colleagues, got starting grants, or just regular grants that we tried to use to form a research group. We hired students, and even postdocs, but we couldn't retain even the average ones simply because there is little opportunity in this place for a young scientist, and the salaries are small in my field. So, we get to retain only people who don't mind salaries or aren't well enough prepared and those who have no choice because of family or other issues. I got to retain no one, thus far. So, three grants so far, no group yet.

Another problem with professor endowment at a low rank institution is the biblical problem of new cloth patch on old cloth. You can put a Ferrari tire on an old Ford Escort, but it won't matter at all. The Ford drives just the same. Worse even, a strong group in a weak university stands out and attracts jealousy, and lots of it.

As an anecdote, one of my friends had a million EU starting grant he won in a national competition. The department head simply blocked all his attempts to bring new people in the group simply because he could. Not to mention the titanic amount of paperwork that the grant generated -- about two big metal closets of signed papers and reports over 3 years.

What I'm getting to is that yes, the endowment of a professor at a low rank university means a lot less than at a strong one. The low ranked university most likely has a poorly performing bureaucracy, possibly a toxic academic environment, weak connection with local industry, or nonexistent local industry, is in a relatively poor area, etc. Then, the faculty ends up squandering his endowment, because he can buy equipment (often overpriced), but can't create a research group because he can't maintain a healthy flux of people, some coming in to study, some going out to new jobs.

Oh, and a fun fact about truly low ranked places. You may get a grant now and form a decent team with reasonably good collaborations and everything, and then your country won't have another grant competition for three years just because.

Edit -- response to comment about money squandering:
For example, you get 1 million over three years. You could buy a 500k equipment you need, but you can't because you only get 333k/year which you have to spend by 31st december. The institution won't help you because it's a lot of money and complicates a lot the accounting, so you end up spending 333k on smaller stuff you don't really need. By the end of the year all money have to be spend, or returned to the government.

Sometimes, you try to buy your equipment when the project starts. You get your money, but not at the beginning of the year. You get them sometimes late in October (it happened to me and four of my colleagues twice already in three years). To buy the equipment, the law requires you to make an auction. The procedure goes for a few months, but cannot end later than 4-th December because the ministry of education must close the financial year. You lose money again, or settle for buying other stuff you don't really need.

Another way of squandering, which works especially well for research institute is paying salaries to your research team. You can't really form your own research team as a senior researcher unless you already have one. So, if you get a grant, you will need to take members of other research team an pay them to work on your project. You are lucky if you get three people whose specialization allow them to bring a meaningful contribution to your project. Nonetheless, you have to hire someone and pay them. You could try hiring new students and postdocs, but you'd be lucky if you found more than one guy at a time willing to work for the sum you're allowed to pay. So you hire one student who does something, you pay two-three guys who can help and another 4 whose only contribution is a friendly attitude. More than that, when you apply for grants you need to nominate the research team beforehand (except for postdocs and students).

After one year and half, the student leaves to study abroad, the helpful guys get involved in other projects and neglect yours, and you have a 6-12 months of funding left. Then you spend another 2 months to prepare a decent grant application to continue funding the work you started and you get a second chance at starting a group.

Another way of wasting research money is buying overpriced equipment. The local shady companies always seem to know beforehand how much money you have and make you offers for the whole sum. When the auction comes, the others magically withdraw and you are stuck with a take it or leave it bad offer. For example, not so long ago I proposed an experiment for which I needed an impedance analyzer. We got offers from the local shady scientific instruments company. They asked for 30k for the thing. Luckily the funding was withdrawn and I didn't have time to make that mistake. Quickly looking through experimental papers, I realized that similar experiments worked out very well with used 2k analyzers.


How to find out salary for faculty positions in private universities? Public university salary information is usually available online.  What about private universities?  Can average salary by field and rank be found at least?

Context: US/North America, mathematics

For the US and mathematics in particular, the American Mathematical Society conducts annual salary surveys, broken down by various categories: public/private, highest degree offered in the department, rank, etc.  For example, in 2017-2018, at "large" private PhD-granting mathematics departments, the mean salary for new hire assistant professors was $94,675.


Where can I go to get IRB approval? I want to conduct research independently once done with school.  Where can I go to get IRB approval?  I know that some businesses have collaborated with universities to get IRB approval but want to know more.  What is the process? Do universities normally give IRB approval to non-university members?  Where else can I go?

Most university IRB's won't involve themselves in research that isn't conducted by employees and students of the university.  The alternative (widely used by pharmaceutical companies) is an "independent IRB" (the term is an oxymoron since the IRB isn't part of the institution that is doing the research...)

See the consortium of independent IRB's web site for some information about these IRB's.

http://www.consortiumofirb.org/


Should I mention studying during high school in academic CV? I am a postdoc, applying for tenure track jobs in mathematics.
I did my bachelor degree as a kid (was 14 when started).
I wonder if I should/could mention this in my academic CV?

In my academic CV, I have included all my university education, which naturally includes my undergraduate degree.

I don't think it makes any difference that you started when you were 14. You came out with the same piece of paper as everyone else in the end up.


Are scientific contributions of the article listed in the abstract? As the title says. To put the contributions (explicitly) on the abstract:

Is considered good practice
Irrelevant as long as you correctly describe your paper? Source Research Guides
No, explicitly mentioning the contributions is not considered good practice and should be avoided.
Other?

Here is an example of a paper I published on ArXiv. Would you say that the abstract is Ok? Please see I put the main emphasis on the contribution (I use the contribution as an excuse to then explain all the work done).
NOTE: Please don't confuse with the contribution of each author to the article! An article should have something new, therefore we can say a contribution to science.
Some article's have a specific section for that reference. Others just mention it reference but my question goes if it is good to mention it in the abstract or not.

As this question is somewhat subjective and there might not be a CORRECT response. If after some time I consider fit there is not a precise justification (some indisputable reference for example) I will mark as a solution the response that had more upvotes, supposing the upvotes reflect what the community thinks.

In light of the example you linked, you should indeed state your contributions, but there is no need to state that these are your contributions. So instead of stating "The contribution in this paper is considering problem A using method B", you should use "We consider problem A using method B". Doing this would have easily saved 20 words in your example without changing any of the meaning. Even more importantly, the useless words are in the beginning, which is the only part of the abstract you can actually be sure that people will read.
The default assumption on a paper is that you are presenting something new and that new thing is why people should be reading your paper, which is why will be prominently mentioned in the abstract. So the default assumption when reading an abstract is that all results mentioned describe scientific contribution. There is thus no need to explicitly mention it.
There are of course things in the abstract that are not new contributions, but they are generally made obvious by phrasing. If your abstract starts with "We survey some recent results in ..." no one expects that the results mentioned afterwards are new. Or if you are (in)directly referencing using "The well known problem of ..." then no one will think you came up with the problem. But if a sentence starts with "We show that ...", then any reader will assume that you claim to be the first one to do so in this context.


Should one mention multiple, albeit somewhat unrelated research interests? As the question implies,  I have two main research interests in the natural language processing and computational genomics domains.  While I have a preference for the former,  I am also very interested in the latter.  I ask because I am not sure if it would look like I am too unfocused for a PhD. Many professors seem to have multiple areas of interests,  some of which are not too related, but nonetheless I want to make sure that mentioning multiple interests will not hurt me.

If you can convey your enthusiasm for the overlap of these two somewhat distinct areas, you will be ahead of the game. A PhD candidate is expected to extend the limit of human knowledge, and one of the better ways to do so is to research within the overlap of two (or more) disciplines. I would tend to see having more than one area of interest as being an advantage rather than a disadvantage. Of course, as your question implies, a multiplicity of interests can backfire by causing a candidate to appear unfocused. Focus on the overlap, and make your application shine!


how to evaluate the quality of scientific journal? Hope that the question is not a duplicate, I could not find anything similar.

I am doing a PhD in mathematical economics but I usually look at math journals and I am trying to adapt some technical methods from there to economics when it is necessary.

What I am always curious about, as I am not familiar at all with mathematics journals, I don't know which journal is a good quality journal in mathematics (as there exists a huge bunch of journal in mathematics, if I am not wrong)  I don't know if the paper published in the journal is a really credible reference.

Besides Google Scholar citations, what are the best ways to understand if a journal (in the field of mathematics or other) is a well ranked journal ?

There is no straight answer, since as Tom commented, "good quality" can have several meanings. Further, a journal can be considered good for a specific domain and not for another.

What I usually do:

Check the impact factor (and compare it with "known good" journals),
see some of the published works (Usually to discard automatically accepted stuff that has horrible english and worse results...)
Talk to other people with more experience. In your case, what do you advisor thinks? Or any other professors that usually publish in that area?

Another interesting concept is if the journal is correct for your work.

Nature is an awesome journal, but I caters to specific domains and requires a very high quality article. Sometimes it makes more sense to send the work to a "less good" journal that is specific to your domain and which "matches" the level of your work. As long as there is a proper review involved, it works.

(For instance, sometimes you don't have time to further develop something, or there is not much more to be done/improved, etc... instead of "losing" the work, you publish it in a "reputable", "less good" venue)

The ability to match  work <-> journal is important and comes from experience. If you don't have it yet, ask for the help of someone who does. That's why advisors are there! :)


How should faculty implement STEM classes that require hands-on lab experience in online learning platforms given COVID-19 pandemic? I am a STEM teaching assistant. I know some professors were using physical class materials in engineering classes. How do you think they should respond to COVID-19-forced online education and still ensure the quality of their classes?

It is a purposefully broad question. I was curious to hear what you think about the near term or futuristic/ideal approaches that could change STEM education.

Use video demonstrations of each section of the experiment and the results and use those for discussion.


Meeting professors at conferences I am a phd student in computer science, starting in september my last year.

The next week I will join a conference not far from my home university, where I am not presenting any paper. The main area of the conference is pretty close to my phd topic, and there will be there most of the top professors of the area.

I would like to take this opportunity to talk with them, present them my work and share a couples of ideas, but I have some doubts on how to engage them and on what to share with them, in particular:

Even if I have read some of their papers, I have no specific questions on them, and I don't know if it makes sense to read a bunch of paper in this days just to find a viable reason to talk with them.
A possibility would be to write them saying that they are important for my phd and I would like to share with them my research, but I don't know if this is going to interest them.
Last I have some unpublished ideas that I am planning to work on the next year. Is it risky to share these ideas with them?

Needless to say, the main purpose to meet them for me are:

Find possible coauthors
Find possible post-doc locations

I would suggest the following for an early-career scholar:

1) Figure out who from your current university is going to be there and identify any other attendees you already know. Let them know you will be attending and hope you run into them.

2) Make sure you go make yourself available right from the beginning. Spend very little time in your room. Arrive early, hang out in the lobby near the conference registration area or wherever the coffee is. Go to all the breakfasts, lunches, etc.

3) When you see someone you know, go up to them, say hi. Mention that this is one of your first conferences and you are really interested in meeting people. Ask if there is anyone that they would recommend you meet. Then ask them to introduce you. This especially works if you are at the opening reception or something like that.

4) Repeat! If a chat is going well, eventually ask the new contact if there are others at the conference who are interested in your topics that they think you should meet.

5) Also, of course, go to talks. After the talk, make an effort to talk to the speakers with follow-up questions, etc. You can also follow-up with speakers if you see them in the hall later, etc. If these chats go well, you can even ask those people to introduce you to others they think you should meet.

6) After the conference, follow up by email.

The result of this strategy should be that most of your introductions will be peer-to-peer "warm" introductions, not out-of-the-blue "cold" introductions. This should make people a bit more willing to chat with you and make you appear to be more of a junior colleague and less of a grad student.


Is wrong salutation by editor in email reply considerable? I sent a research paper to one of the reputed journals through email to the editor.

I used the salutation Dear editor  and didn't specify anything about my academic position either in email or in my research paper.

In response to my email, the editor replied to me as Dear professor.  I am thinking whether to reply to the email again saying that I am not a professor or not to reply. Is it considerable? Since I am a beginner to this publication stuff, I can't figure out the etiquette of email.

It's very common for editors and such people to address unknown researchers as "Professor" or "Dr" without checking that they actually hold such a position.

It doesn't mean anything; just ignore it.  There is no point in replying.


Are P-hacking and hypothesising after results are known considered misconduct in academia? This question is inspired by a comment to another question where I asked for help on how to argue against P-hacking and hypothesising after results are known (Harking). Someone questioned the classification of these two behaviours as misconduct, and my general experience (around my close academic circle) is that many see these two activities as part of the way we do science.

Here is what I refer to by P-hacking and Harking.

P-hacking is when someone collects more data, changes the specification of a statistical model, change the analysis sample, or does other changes to the study until the results become statistically significant. Many of these things can be done with a justification, but the p-hacker (p-fisher) does them solely with the intent of obtaining a significant result. In doing so, he or she risks capitalising on statistical error (type 1 error) and publishing results that are basically a false positive.

Harking is when someone generates a scientific hypothesis about the data after seeing the data. It would be innocuous if the researcher acknowledged the exploratory nature of the study and sought to confirm the findings in another set of data (or if he or she used cross validation techniques). It becomes a problem when researchers pretend that they had the hypothesis a priori and that the study was done to confirm it, hiding the exploratory nature of the study and conferring more strength to the results than they actually have.

I am not asking for opinions on whether these things should or should not be considered misconduct. Rather, I would like to know the overall position of scientists in fields where statistics are used. I know of no survey on how scientists view these two behaviours, but I welcome answers that include such data.

The Declaration of Helsinki was updated in 2013 to "mandate" that research involving human subjects must be pre-registered. While not perfect, pre-registration prevents many of these statistical manipulations. The idea of pre-registration is that publicly stating your hypotheses and the details of how they will be tested in advance reduces questionable statistical practices. For example, changing the number of subjects, the inclusion/exclusion criteria, or the statistical model are not allowed.

From my understanding, failure to comply with the Declaration of Helsinki would be considered unethical in Medicine, while in other fields the pre-registration aspect is being actively ignored. For example, articles are now being published with disclaimers like "this research was conducted in accordance with the 2013 Declaration of Helsinki except the study was not pre-registered".


how to answer "Where did you draw the line on what you included in your literature review?" during the phd viva? I am preparing for my upcoming phd viva and came across a list of questions that might be asked during the viva. One of them asked "where did you draw the line on what to include in your lit review". I was a bit confused by this question and I was wondering if you could provide some guidance on how to structure the answer. Thank you!

One simple answer is (leave away those aspects that don't apply to your situation):

First, I systematically thought about the different directions in which related work may exist. To make sure I did not miss any relevant directions, I consulted with my advisor/other researchers and checked the related work of the related work I initially looked at. For each identified direction, I considered a handful of prominent papers, until a point was reached where new papers did not add substantially new ideas, but just variations of the ones I already had covered.


Chasing up response to PhD offer I'm asking this from the perspective of the future supervisor. After a round of interviews I approached the highest ranked candidate. My error was not including a deadline in the initial email.

Now a week has passed from the last response I got from the candidate. I have sent another reminder recently. However, my patience is running out. I understand that of course the candidate might be trying to buy some time to make up their mind, and probably waiting for other offers.

Are there any other options apart from sending an ultimatum? If so, how much longer should I wait to filter out external reasons for the lack of responses? I.e. sickness, unforeseen events, etc.? This is in Europe.

Do you have a phone number for the candidate?

If you contact them by phone you will know whether or not they received your communication, rather than email where, as you say, you don't know if they may have experienced extenuating circumstances preventing them from responding.

If they are indeed waiting for other responses, they might be more likely to mention this on the phone rather than in an email.


Effect of duration taken to get phd degree when applying to faculty positions? In my university, PhD students usually talk 3 years to finish their thesis and got PhD. However, I worked very hard, and I finish all courses required and my thesis and I can get my PhD within two years of starting my PhD program. My advisor is okay to let me graduate. I am planning to start applying for faculty positions. My Question is do you think this has a good impact or bad one when applying to tenure track faculty positions? I have been interviewed with a research committee and he asked me how I get PhD in two years.

This answer reflects a North American perspective at an R1 or R2 university - answers in other parts of the world may be different.

If I saw someone who completed a PhD in two years I would want to know things like:

What work did they do before their PhD? (Did their prior experience make the PhD faster?)
What were the primary contributions of their PhD? (Are the contributions significant?)
How many of their contributions were their own versus their supervisors?
What teaching experience do they have?
How well will they work with other students and faculty?
What leadership have they taken during their PhD?

There are of course many other qualifications to evaluate and questions to be asked.

Hiring a faculty member into a research/teaching position is always a bit of a gamble that they will be able to continue to do productive research and teaching. With just two years of a PhD, there may not be enough evidence of what will happen in a long-term position, and this could hurt your chances to get a position. (This also depends on the strength of the advisor and the letters of recommendation.)

In Computer Science the approximate qualification I use for a PhD is that a student has learned to do independent research. That is, they can formulate the ideas and experiments for and write a complete research paper more or less independently. (And get the paper accepted in a top-tier venue.) I'd be looking to see evidence of this in a faculty application.

So, would a two-year PhD have a good or bad impact? There isn't a single answer. It depends on the answers to the questions above and other cultural factors. But, I would look very closely at someone who had completed a PhD that quickly, as 4-5 years might be more typical in my field.


Supervisor has said some very disgusting things online, should I pull my name from our paper? I’ve been interning at a research lab for 8 months now, putting upwards of 10 hours a week into our project. We find out if our first of three papers was accepted for a significantly-sized conference soon, the next two will come in March. Basically, I’ve put a lot of work into this project and it’s almost over.
I looked up my supervisor’s name tonight because I wanted to read his other papers, but instead I found a lecture he gave a year ago on why homosexuality should be classified as a disease. He said tons of disgusting things in the lecture and I don’t want to be affiliated with him, especially because I’m still in undergrad so I don’t want this following me around forever.
Should I pull my name from the papers at the last minute and lose accreditation for the hundreds of hours of work I put in, or do I leave my name in and risk having a reputation as “that guy who worked with the huge homophobe”, and maybe having a harder time getting into grad school?
Could really use the advice. Thanks.

I don't think you need to pull your name from the paper(s). You're junior enough, and there are enough odious high-ranking people spouting nonsense online, that people won't blame you.
I WOULD start looking for more mentors ASAP. You need stronger letters of recommendation, as some people are going to question his judgement and ability to objectively evaluate you. Also, this guy clearly has done a bad job managing his professional image, which means he might have bad judgement about professionalism in general. If you learn professional norms from him, this might do damage to your development as a researcher. This is red flag land, and the sooner you can disentangle yourself the better.


Editorial perception/bias regarding preprints in bioinformatics The quality of a journal manuscript submission being equal, does posting a preprint on arXiv or bioRxiv hurt your chances of publication in a journal? I'm asking about bioinformatics, for journals such as

Genome Biology
Genome Research (CSHL)
BMC Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics (OUP)
PLOS Computational Biology … etc.

So what's the perception regarding having preprints of a paper for the journals in the above list? Do you think it could hurt ones chances slightly for acceptance?

I checked the policy of these journals, and preprints are not considered prior/duplicate publications, and are allowed. On the other hand Cell says they will consider it, but want you to talk to the editor first about your motivations etc. Doesn't sound very open to preprints. And ISMB partners with Cell Systems as far as I know.

In my experience, preprints are the norm in bioinformatics. I do not know how journals perceive them, but these days I rarely read a new bioinformatics paper I have not already seen as a preprint. If a reputable journal has a bias against preprints, it cannot be very significant, because most papers I find interesting have preprints.