Help picking an appropriate citing style I wrote a paper about governance mechanisms at StackExchange in which I got a lot of informations out of questions (especially on meta). I have kept all my references.

My teacher is letting us pick which style we want to use for the paper as long as we apply it thoroughly. In my other courses, we use APA but if I start writing (StackExchange, 2014) everytime I use an info out of a question, my paper is going to be illegible. From what I've read, you're only supposed to cite things that you've paraphrased, ideas, not necessarily information that you've found or researched but I do want to give credit where it belongs and I would also like if my teacher would be able to retrace where I've found things but APA doesn't seem to include such a thing as a bibliography.

I would like to:

have a bibliography at the end containing the documents I've consulted for my research
be able to have my citations as footnotes

Which style should I go for in this case?

Though I'm not a fan of it in general, in your case the IEEE style could work very well.  In the body of the paper, references are numbered in square brackets, like this: [1] and [2,3].  In the bibliography, you'd just have one entry per web page, with the URL.  If you use LaTex, it's easy to make these all active hyper links, so that your professor can click on the "[1]" to go to the bibliography entry, and then click on the URL to go to the StackExchange web page.  It's also possible to make the references hyperlinked in MS Word, but it might take some manual formatting steps to link each reference to each bibliography entry.


A negative graduate class experience and maybe some factors in cultural differences I am a master's student in the US studying international relations, and I had a negative experience in one of my classes last week. It is my last semester of my master's program, and I feel very exhausted from being a student. I have a story about what happened in one of my classes last week, and would like to know how I should cope in the class for the rest of the semester.
Situation
Last week, in one of my classes (in a subject I am not too familiar with), I had to give a presentation based on a paper I wrote. The assignment involved writing a paper based on the course readings for the week that we signed up for and presenting it on the due date. I presented, but I admit that my presentation was quite poor because of my lack of confidence in my paper. This was definitely a situation of the input being much greater than the output, which is definitely one of the greatest frustrations that anyone could ever have. I know that it is a stupid calculation on my part, but I was just planning to present in a dull way so that other people would not ask any questions; the presentation did not seem to be weighted much.
The professor attacked my presentation in front of the class and gave it as an example of what not to do. However, I would have preferred that I just receive a bad grade in private, as opposed to having to feel embarrassed in class. I could tell that the professor was quite disappointed. 'Humiliated' might seem like a strong word, but I felt very embarrassed and helpless for the rest of class.
Now, there are three weeks left of the course, and I feel like I would not want to stare at anyone in the remaining class sessions. I am considering training my mind to think of myself as a corpse for the two-hour duration of each of the remaining classes. The papers for last week are already graded, and based on what happened in the class, I am already mentally prepared for the worst in relation to my paper grade.
I am from an eastern culture, and in my culture, it is considered one of the worst insults to publicly embarrass someone; this is done in cases when the person is mean-spirited or it is likely that the people involved will never see each other again.
Questions

Is the professor's reaction common and justified in the US or other western countries in situations like mine across different fields?

How should I cope for the last few weeks of the semester?

I just can't wait for this course to finish. If such an experience were to occur, I would have preferred that it happen on the last day so that I would not have to look at familiar faces in the classroom ever again.

I'm sorry. What happened to you should be very rare, but it does happen sometimes. In US higher education I have seen otherwise good professors embarrass someone by accident (not realizing the effect of their words on the student, or saying something more extreme than they had thought through), and some extremely blunt professors who say this sort of thing on purpose (this group is mixed in whether they are otherwise kind people).

I highly doubt that what the professor did was "justified," but this may depend on the tone they used. In my opinion, intending to embarrass you for this would not be justified.

As for coping, I suggest you think about whether the professor has done this sort of thing to other people. If so, then other people know what you feel like. If not, then it is unlikely that the professor considered how his words would make you feel.

It may feel empowering to go to the professor with direct feedback that this was very embarrassing to you. I think that directness might help the professor learn but would even better free you from some of this shame. However, that's expert-level self-confidence and emotional intelligence, and not at all what I did when I was in a similar situation (grad student giving final presentation on my work, and the professor said a few slides in that my approach didn't make sense/wouldn't work; that sort of deflated me and I ended the presentation there--I was the last student to present, the class had already gone over time, and the prof was complaining before my presentation that he needed to leave.). In my case, I never brought it up, there was no direct feedback on the presentation, and I continued going to next term's class with the same prof even when I felt like I was going to cry. I felt embarrassed for a while when I ran into my fellow students from that class. But eventually I figured out my feelings, realized that professor is extremely direct (to put it kindly), and the pain dulled over time.

To prepare for your remaining classes, really be kind to yourself. If you have a friend in this class, try to arrange to come to this class with them so you're not alone at the beginning or end or class. Bring a comforting hot drink with you to class. (Or ice cold drink, depending on weather. :) ) Wear jewelry or put something in your pocket that reminds you of home & loved ones or a meaningful accomplishment. And try to remain engaged with the ideas right in front of you in the class, rather than replaying that class in your mind. If possible, finish a draft of what you need to do for the rest of the class as soon as you can, so you can mentally close the door on this class.

You are almost done with your program! I am sorry that there was this awful experience at the end, but please try to celebrate what you have done!


Self-plagiarism in Publication-based commentary PhD thesis? I am writing a publication-based PhD thesis, and the thesis will not be publicly accessible once has been finished due to classified data included. The thesis is not the traditional sandwiched thesis, it is supposed to be a commentary on my own publications.

I will use three papers in my thesis, two have been published in journals and another one is still under review. I have obtained permission to reuse the content of the two published papers for my thesis. I have two questions:

Dose reuse mean that I can use exactly the same words? like I can copy and paste the content of the two published papers? or do I need to rephrase the content?
The third paper has not been published yet. If I use the data in my thesis, can I still publish it in a journal? if so, can I copy and paste the same content?

When compiling a dissertation, copying parts or entire sections from published papers is perfectly fine and standard behaviour.

If a section is (mostly) identical with a published paper, it should say so clearly at the start. If the paper is submitted, but not yet published, you could either just treat it as published, and cite the submitted version; or you could use the text in the dissertation without further comment, and then add a note to the article that it is based on Section X of the dissertation.


How to explain blackballing by previous program in PhD application? I was recently forced out of a PhD program at XX early in the dissertation stage. Without going into details, XX acted in bad faith and also broke the law. So even though a good academic case can be made for re-admitting me, XX won't touch me.

The problem is that in order to avoid a lawsuit, XX manufactured a story about how I repeatedly failed to make progress despite their leniency. All additional information contradicting this story was deliberately omitted from my file and the people who know what really happened will not go on record about it.

So the only option is to enroll somewhere else. But it looks terrible to have been thrown out of a program after several years, with the official reason as failure to make progress on a dissertation. It probably also looks terrible say that XX lied about that, even though that's exactly what they did. I have good evidence, but an admissions committee is not a courtroom jury and will probably not want to hear that XX broke the law and lied to cover it up.

What can I do to address doubts about my ability to complete a PhD? Do I tell them what actually happened?

So here's what I see as the issue you need to overcome: If I'm told that a whole department or university conspired against a student to force them out, I usually tend to think that that is a silly allegation and that the person who makes this allegation is delusional. That's because it requires that a whole bunch of people (who also happen to be my colleagues!) would have had to act unethically, as opposed to just one person coming up with claims that have no factual basis but support their self-interest in believing that it's someone else's fault.

I have no idea which side is correct in your case, but as a member of an admission committee, a story like yours would certainly not make me excited about the candidate.

So you have two options in your explanations to the department you are applying to now:

You provide incontrovertible evidence that your claims really are what they are, and that the colleagues of the admissions committee members are all unethical blokes waging a vendetta. You may not have the space to sufficiently support your claims.
You make up some other explanation that sounds plausible for why you left that program. This may include "having had personal problems that you have since overcome through personal growth", or an admission that you really did something wrong but have come to understand by now why it was wrong and that you have learned from it. In either case, the explanation ought to be credible and probably ought to address the issue at hand in some way, though it can also be a bit nebulous.

The point I'm trying to make is that leaving a program, for whatever reason, carries with it a stigma that usually falls on the person who left the program, not the program itself. It is your job in the new application to address this.


Can this be one of my acceptable answers for "why do you want to study a PhD"? Obviously, I will mostly speak about my experience performing research at an undergraduate level and in internships and how I wish to undertake a PhD to improve my lab technical skills and contribute to known scientific research.

However, is it appropriate to briefly mention my reason for choosing the University in particular, not merely the research group? For instance, my pet hobby is the piano and I have found a couple Universities, that produce world leading research in my field, that have various performance opportunities for pianists.

When I ask the question "why do you want to study towards a PhD?", the very last thing I want to hear is something entirely unrelated to studying towards a PhD. Not because I fear that you get sidetracked (I don't necessarily worry much about that), and certainly not because I have some inherent bias against piano players, but because I worry that you actually don't know why you want to do a PhD. This is true for a surprisingly large percentage of applicants, and typically a fairly bad sign.

Consequently, if you get this question, I suggest that you explain why you want to do a PhD, and nothing else. If the question is why you want to do a PhD at exactly this university, this can be part of your answer, but it should not be the only, or even the main, answer to that question either. Quite frankly I would imagine this to be largely ignored - playing piano is not memorable enough to make you stick out from the applicant pool, and unrelated enough to virtually all fields of research that I won't count particularly positively either.


How do I create a workshop/conference? I have noticed that there is no real workshop or conference in my particular field of research, that tends to be across different fields (for instance, security and risk). There are of course general conferences where I can submit a paper, but they are very general (i.e. either security, or risk), and somehow, I'd sometimes rather gather at the same place and the same time the small community who is working on this particular topic.

So, my question is: how do I create a workshop/conference? In particular, how to define the steering committee/general chair/PC chair/PC Committee? Is it better to be attached with a major conference? (I know some conferences have "call for workshops").

I'm interested both in technical answers and in useful advices (for instance, I guess that technically, you could create PC with only postdocs, but I can imagine that in practice, you need a good ratio of established researchers).

Creating a conference is a very worthwhile activity—however, even organizing a two-day workshop can be a logistical nightmare that requires a dedicated support staff to pull off efficiently. If you don't have it, you can still get it done, but it still requires a lot of planning and a lot of effort.

I was invited to participate in the scientific committee for a workshop to be held here on campus and hosted by my institute. Even though we had the administrative staff taking care of organizing room reservations, hotel blocks, catering, name badges, preparation of the formal program, and so on, there's still a lot of work involved, particularly if you're the chair. You'll need to contact (and sometimes harass) speakers, look for funding, recruit attendees, advertise like crazy, and so much more.

However, if you can make your workshop a part of someone else's existing conference, then you can remedy many of these problems—the existing conference's infrastructure goes a long way in supporting your workshop and its goals. Frankly, if I was going to try to start a new workshop that would take on its own independent existence, that's the route I'd choose. If the workshop inside of another conference received good feedback, only then would I try to make it an independent event in the future. In that time, you'd also have figured out who the other "major players" are who could serve on future scientific committees.

The conference we started was created by our institute, so dividing up the responsibilities was relatively natural: the head of the institute was the head of the conference, and we divided up the work of programming the sessions among the members of the committee.
If you don't have that option available—if, for instance, you're the primary mover and shaker behind the workshop—that puts more work on your plate.

If you're doing a workshop under the aegis of a larger program, then I would think you would be the chair of the program. You could select other people to be on the organizing committee, but as the person doing the recruiting, you're going to be the one the others look to for guidance and decision-making—at least at first.

So I think the "founder" is going to be the general chair or the organizational chair, at least the first time around. Should the conference survive to have a second iteration, then at that point establishing some sort of successorship makes a lot of sense, because nobody really wants to go through the process of organizing all of those details every other year; it's too much work.

But, if you want to know, the order did go something like this:

Steering committee of institute decided to hold conference
Steering committee appointed emeritus faculty member as program committee leader.
Steering committee appointed junior faculty as committee members.
Program committee came up with several tentative plans.
Steering committee decided on final overall structure.
Program committee scrambled to find speakers to fit new structure decided on by SC.
Program committee puts together advertising, recruits speakers, organizes poster session, organizes conference structure, and performs other duties as needed.
Organizing team handles payments, attendance and registration issues, travel and accommodation issues, operation of conference, and so on.

The other thing to consider is that the planning for something like this typically requires on the order of 12 to 18 months, even if you're just doing an event locally hosted at your university (like ours was). For something more complicated, you may need even more lead time.


How to have a system of referencing citations so that it is short and well-styled I am familiar with writing the citation part (in different styles). However, I have typically just used superscripts like Wikipedia to reference the citation, like this[1] sort of thing. I would like to get more advanced with it to make it easier for the reader to glean more information from the citation reference.

So I'm thinking something like this (Glen89) where author is Glen and year of publication is 89. But then what if there are multiple publications in 89 for Glen, then it would be perhaps (Glen89a) and (Glen89b).

But that isn't too descriptive. I have seen some cases where they list the publisher as well, like (Glen: MacMillan 89), but that is too long and specific to books.

In general I'm wondering the rules for how to do this, and wondering where I can get some inspiration for how to write these, if not a straight answer here on what a good style is.

Don't reinvent the wheel: There are existing systems that collect bibliographic data and then produce the appropriate citation in the text. Bibtex and Microsoft Endnote are the most widely used ones. How the citation in the text appears is controlled by "style files" that are often different between journals, but every journal has its own preferred style that you should use.


How to find related work in academic writing in the most time-efficient way? I noticed that, for each research project, there comes a point where I have to consult the literature, and find all the previous research related to the current project.

Unfortunately, I seem to be very inefficient in my approach. I spend a lot of time digging through papers that are really interesting, but only of tangential importance to my current work, just to find the few papers that actually do similar things. (The pile of "cool paper, read when time" just keeps growing.)

Hence, I'm wondering: What is the most time efficient way to get a thorough overview of the literature in a specific niche of a field?

While searching for an answer I came across these questions:

How can I do a literature review efficiently? - This question is quite similar and I liked the approach. I debated with myself if this is a duplicate, but I think it is focused more on how to be sure the search was exhaustive, whereas I'm worried about time efficiency. (Also, I'm a bit curious if things have changed since 2012.)

How to locate most important literature in an unfamiliar area
- The answer provides tips on how to identify what literature generally is important in a field, but I am looking for the most cost effective (least time consuming) way to do it in an area, where I know the broad literature, but not the specifics.

I understand that you are prepared to do the work necessary for searching the literature, but that you are looking for tips that avoid swimming aimlessly and wasting time going down unproductive lines. In principle, this is resolved by having a clear idea of what you are looking for. That way, you don't waste time exploring interesting ideas that are not immediately relevant. (And since it sounds like you are intellectually curious, then almost everything is interesting.)

I have found that one of the most valuable things to focus on in a literature review is theory, which I define as an explanation of the relationship between two or more measurable concepts. So, what you can focus on in a literature review is:

Clarify the theoretical concepts that interest you. A theoretical concept is necessarily something that is measurable, whether qualitatively (e.g. Type A versus Type B versus Type C) or quantitatively (i.e. counts, dates, etc.). This is the absolutely most crucial step to identifying theory.
When you search the literature, you should look squarely for these theoretical concepts. You might not know the measures that exist in the literature at first, but at least you know that you are looking for the parts of articles that talk about measures of your concept of interest.
You ignore anything that does not talk about measures of your concepts of interest. This means ignoring articles that don't talk about your concepts of interest at all, and it also means that even if an article does talk about your concept of interest, you skip the parts of those articles that don't talk about the measures of these concepts. (That said, of course, you should read anything that helps you understand your focal concepts better, even if they don't talk about measures.)

For example, if you want to study conditions that make people feel threatened by robots versus when they warmly accept robots, the key concepts would be:

Concept A: Type of robot interaction
Concept B: Human reaction to the robot

With these concepts identified, then you would search for literature that describes:

Different types of robotic interaction (e.g. personal voice assistant versus hardware robotic device; "machine-looking" robot versus humanoid robot; robot assists work tasks versus robot replaces human job; etc.)
Different ways of consideirng or measuring human reactions to robots (e.g. a scale ranging from violent rejection, such as vandalism, to warm acceptance, such as using the robot many times every day)

The results of the literature review would be a theory that explains how and why certain types of interaction with robots provoke various human reactions. (The theory would necessarily need to be enriched with context such as human personal characteristics, legal frameworks, etc.)

What I gave is a very brief summary and illustration of a literature review methodology that I am still in the process of developing, but I have an older working paper that describes the core principles in quite some detail. Even though I have unpublished ideas on this that are much better refined, the section in my older working paper on searching the literature explains this approach that I summarized in more detail.


Citing someone directly with additional information in footnote I would like to directly quote some sentences of another author who uses a word A which is a synonym for a word B I'm using in my text. Note: I would like to use my word B as the word A is very rare.

So I placed the text of the author into quotation marks and a footnote at the word A stating that in the following the word B will be used in my text. At the end of the quotation I put the source of the quote.

Is that correct or could it be misinterpreted as a footnote of the text I'm quoting? Should I add e.g. "Authors note:" before my footnote text?

My preference would be to avoid the footnote altogether, as I find them distracting. Keep the quote verbatim, give the source, and then explain the terminology in the next sentence of your text:

  Smith claims that "the best breakfast is a soft boiled ovum" [Smith87]. (Smith's "ovum" refers to what our paper calls an "egg.")

Another option, if you don't really care about  showing  Smith's exact words to the reader, is to make the change in the quote itself, indicating the change with brackets.

  Smith claims that "the best breakfast is a soft boiled [egg]" [Smith87].


Cumulative versus monographic dissertation I am in the beginning of my phd studies in computer science. Specifically, I am in the area of machine learning and linked data. I have talked with my professor about these both types of dissertations, however, it`s on my own which format I choose.

Any recommendations, when to choose a cumulative and when to choose a monographic dissertation? What`s your experience with each format?

If I had had a choice, I would have chosen to write a cumulative thesis.

Results are in the papers. And converting papers into a monograph takes a lot of time with relatively low added value. (When someone asks me about the result I still point to publications.)

One advantage of monographic thesis is when it is on a new field (with publications being very coherent on one topic) - then it can serve as an introduction for the others. (However, it seems that not many theses fit this criterium.)


How to emphasize special issue publications in a CV? Recently I have had a paper accepted by peer review (4 reviewers!) and received an invitation to have it included as part of a 'special issue' (which, of course, I accepted).

The question is: how to emphasize in a CV that the paper is published in a special issue (without being too pretentious about it)?

Related question: is it even worthwhile to emphasize this?

This is related to the question: How best to present publications in different areas on a CV?, would it be best placed in its own section or emphasized as part of the normal bibliographic record.

How to present this information may depend on your field.  In mathematics, special issues are uncommon, and they carry no additional prestige.  (A special issue might attract stronger papers than usual, or it might be forced to accept weaker papers due to an insufficient supply of thematically appropriate submissions.)  On the other hand, in computer science particularly strong conference papers are sometimes invited to special issues of journals.

You should emphasize the special issue on your CV only if this is a widely recognized concept in your field and it is generally considered prestigious.
I'd recommend listing papers in special issues together with other papers (but with a special indication if appropriate), rather than in their own section.
If you can give a short but compelling description (e.g., the program committee invited the top 30% of the papers at Conference X to the special issue), that could help people from other fields make sense of the designation.  This can be valuable in both hiring and tenure cases.


Guide to reviewing a scientific article I'll be reviewing a scientific article soon and I've not done this before. It'll be reviewing a popular article on an astrophysical topic. Undergraduate level but I'm open to any level of guidance.

Is there a guide/textbook out there that describes how to write such a review in science?

I suggest you look at the other reviews where your review will appear. Then you can write yours using a similar style and level of technicality.

You can also ask for guidance from the person who asked you to write the review. That might be best done by offering particular paragraphs as examples of what you might say.

I doubt that there is a "guide" anywhere to help you with this, other than general guides to good writing.


Can one get a second Master's degree in a related field (biochemistry, bioinformatics)? If one has already got a Master’s degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, can he/she apply to the Masters’ Program in Bioinformatics at another university in another country?

Broadly, yes.

Previously, I worked with students on masters degree who already had other masters degree or other postgraduate qualifications.  Some even had doctorate.  Taking a second masters can be really valuable, especially if you are seeking professional development.

It would depending on the institution that you are applying to for your second masters (such as how you meet the entry requirements etc.), so you would need to check with them for advice on your specific situation.

There are two considerations you need to make, however (this is speaking from a UK context):

Funding

Some funding, especially in the UK, whether student loans, scholarships from private donors, government money and research grants will not cover someone who is taking a qualification of the equivalent level that they have already obtained.  Check this with the university you are applying for.

Visa and immigration

I am not qualified to give visa advice, however, you should know that, at least in the UK at the moment, the decision to grant you a student visa might also depend upon whether you are taking a qualification equivalent to the level of one you have already obtained.

If you're an international student and got your first masters in the UK, your chances of getting a visa to stay to do a second masters could be nil.  Speak with a visa and immigration adviser at the institution you are thinking about.


What can I do with multi-subfigure figures on ResearchGate.net As many of us are aware, ResearchGate.net is a popular site on which researchers showcase their publications. In addition to the PDF for a published work, the site interface allows you to upload PDFs for figures, together with captions.

This becomes difficult, however, when your figures are actually made up of multiple subfigures. There doesn't seem to be direct support for specifying subfigures of the same figures and having them show up alongside each other.

What (if anything) can be done to overcome this - other than uploading each subfigure separately, or not uploading them at all?

One answer, hinted at by @Anyon's comment, is to generate, for each figure, a PDF with the subfigures laid out as they are in the full work - and upload that. Perhaps one also needs to include the subfigure captions in that PDF.

This seems like a lot of hassle, but perhaps one can make LaTeX automate this somehow.


Using Google Trends diagram in a scientific paper to show evidence of interest in an area I am preparing a paper for a conference. At some point, I want to show that one area is gaining more interest over another area. Do you think that using a google trend diagram as a supportive (not the main) evidence is a good idea ? My area of research is web information systems.

Yes, you can use it, but treat it like any other source of data.

I have been encouraged to use Google Trends data as supporting evidence by my professors.  You would need to explain the implications of the data, including caveats, just like any other type of data.  In the case of Google Trends, be careful not to overstate what it is saying.  It is only counting searches made on the Google platform, so what does this tell you directly, and what does it imply indirectly?


Should I include a short summary of my MS research in the Statement of Purpose for PhD position? I am writing a Statement of Purpose (SOP) for a Ph.D. position and confused if I should add a summary of my MS research work. My MS research work is very much related to the advertised Ph.D. project.

I googled it and found that in some SOPs people have written a short summary of their previous work but in others, they have not.

Yes, absolutely.

A statement of purpose for a PhD should indicate why you want to do research and that you are prepared for it. There is no better way to establish that than to discuss your research experience.

However, when discussing your prior research make sure not to only focus on the past. For example, explain how your prior research has motivated you to do more research in the future (via a PhD).


Should I mention that I am interested in developing bioinformatics tools in my SOP for a "Software Development/Engineering" Master's program? The program I am applying for is "Software Engineering/Development" master's program, I am really interested in this field of study, and I have already mentioned in my SOP that I wish to follow the studies up with a PhD and then want to have a career as a professional programmer. With all that being said, is there any need to give specific examples of what I can and want to potentially do when I become a programming expert? For example, developing bioinformatics tools really amazes me, should I mention that just as an example of what I would like to do during my career as a programmer?

Put yourself into the shoes of who should decide to select you or other applicants for this program.
Will she/he be interested of what you are going to do after the Master program?

Also, if you really like bioinformatics, probably you should approach it more from scientist point of view than a software developer point of view.
You should already have a strong base on biology, molecular biology, genetics and proteomics to start to develop new algorithms that give a substantial contribution in the field.


Is excluding my middle name on a graduate application acceptable? I was born in Ukraine and when I immigrated to the United States at a young age my middle name was translated phonetically. In Eastern Slavic cultures, our middle names aren't quite the same as middle names in the United States. It's not simply an "alternative name" for me. Our middle names are patronymic. They are our father's names. I do not consider my middle name to be the same as the traditional middle name used in the United States.

I am currently applying to graduate programs and I have decided to leave my middle name out. The name is long and unpronounceable by most. On top of it being my father's name, it has a suffix ending "-evich" tacked on at the end. This makes it 11 characters long and it usually gets truncated to fewer characters when seen in my undergraduate university's system. This bothers me and I would just rather then not have the patronymic middle name in my records at all.

Are there specific reasons I should include my middle name on my graduate school applications?

Here is how I handle these things:

I publish papers with just my first and last name - no middle name or initial.
My vita and website use just my first and last name.
When I fill out "official" forms, like employment paperwork and tax forms, I use the full name that is on my passport and driver's license.  This helps to avoid any confusion when these forms are compared with each other.

For a school application, I would use the same name that is on your government ID. But this is just for the centralized records. Nobody in the academic department is likely to care (or even notice) if you just go by your first name and last name in public life.


Advisor ignoring his Ph.D. student after getting tenure I am Ph.D. candidate, and my advisor got his tenure about 9 months ago and called me on zoom and said no one could fire him anymore, and that was the last time we talked. Since then, he has completely ignored me as his only Ph.D. student. He does not read or comment on my papers(2 paper drafts were sent five months ago). My results get continuously beaten, and I have to make changes to keep my papers state-of-the-art constantly. He refuses to set up a zoom meeting since no one is going to school; that is the only way to meet him. He was active with fundings, papers, and proposals before he got tenure.  He responds to my emails with irrelevant suggestions, or he says he will read my papers sometime next week(he expects 2-3 papers to graduate me). He is not supporting me financially anymore since his fundings are over, and I pay for my Ph.D. from pocket.  School officials can not do anything, and changing my advisor after four years of hard work will result in a complete reboot. I'm an international student and can not just quit. My goal is to get my OPT and a job. It looks impossible to graduate with this advisor... What would be the best option to do in this situation.

I'm really sorry to hear about this situation.

School officials can not do anything, and changing my advisor after four years of hard work will result in a complete reboot.

This surprises me. Every university differs, but in general you should bring these sorts of issues to your Associate Chair/Director, etc. of Graduate Studies in your department. If they aren't able to mediate with you and your supervisor, or aren't willing to, in most universities that I'm familiar with you should escalate your complaint. Perhaps you have an Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, or if there is a Faculty of Graduate Studies, there is somebody that you can consult there.
Barring this, you should seek advice from either your graduate students association. There may be informal avenues of support that you can pursue.
Most universities have policies around the change of supervisor, as this happens more commonly than you may think.


How to pursue graduate admissions in mathematics seven years after a humanities undergrad degree? The simple version:

I've been out of college for 7 years and want to pursue graduate studies in a field unrelated to my undergraduate degree but am not sure how.

The detailed version:

My college career began as a Physics major.  I made what I now consider the mistake of changing to a technically driven humanities major (Electronic Media, Arts and Communications) although I completed a great deal of my pure sciences coursework.

Years later I have a very solid job in a field that I hate and want desperately to get back to school to work towards higher degrees in mathematics.  I've spent the last five years as a systems engineer with a focus on network distributed video and have a very solid resume in my field, but my academic credentials are poor.  A 2.8 GPA (albeit from a strong school) and an unrelated B.S.

I've made it a point to keep up studies in math, participing in a great many MOOCs to try to backfill my mathematical education and keep my skills sharp.

What I don't know is how to re-approach academics.  Would I need to earn some additional undergraduate credits before applying for a graduate program?  I expect GREs will be required, but that's not a major issue as I've been scoring quite well on practice exams.

I know that I lack educational recommendations and undergraduate research, and I have absolutely no idea how to supplement this lack...

To get admitted to a graduate program in math, although work experience may suggest greater maturity, etc., the issues will be letters of recommendation and documentable standard-material background (whether in conventional courses or somehow-verifiable self-study...), and possibly a GRE subject test score if only to show that one is aware that the thing exists and is widely believed to be relevant (even while many, including myself, do not consider it a good predictor of anything much beyond multiple-choice-test-taking abilities).

Unless you've self-studied into a quite unusual state of expertise, you'll most likely not have much success in getting an idea of what contemporary research in mathematics is about, and it might be awkward to attempt a conversation with faculty about their current work. Perhaps such a thing would be feasible in other fields (I have no idea...) it is not typical in mathematics. That is, people going to grad school usually have only a general idea of the direction of their interests, even with a solid coursework background. In particular, funding for graduate work is rarely dependent upon connecting with any particular faculty more than tentatively. (Again, this is evidently unlike other fields.)

Helpful letters of recommendations would be from professional mathematicians actively involved in research, acquainted with graduate programs in mathematics, who can speak from direct personal experience both about what such programs will demand of you, and about your qualifications to meet those challenges in terms of prior preparation and in terms of interest.

Probably the way to put yourself in a position to have such letter writers is to take upper-division or beginning-graduate courses at a solid university, as a "non-degree student", do well, and thereby be able to ask the instructor for such letters. It's not the credits themselves, but the information and the certification by faculty (beyond "getting a good grade"). That is, you'll want people to attest to your future potential, beyond accomplishments to date, in the sense that (hopefully) "you've only just begun", rather than having peaked-out.

If you are an outstanding multiple-choice test-taker, getting a stellar score on the math subject test GRE will catch the eye of many! :)

Other routes for certifying that your self-study has made progress are difficult. E.g., certificates from on-line courses are not worth much, and, most often, those courses are too elementary to be relevant to graduate study in mathematics.

If you are not geographically flexible, going to the nearby universities mathematics departments and asking "what it would take" for admission, _with_funding_ (don't go without funding), and try to do it. The whole process might take long enough that it'd be wise to keep the job you have, even if you don't like it, to support yourself (and others?) through the preliminary stages of gaining entry into a graduate mathematics program.


Solutions to the lack of code transparency in economics? Like most fields that rely on statistical analyses, economics has suffered from a few well-publicized coding errors (most notably the Foote and Goetz finding that when correcting Donohue and Levitt's programming error in the abortion/crime paper the conclusion is reversed), and likely suffers from far more which are never discovered.

What solutions have other fields used to ameliorate this problem, and how might the incentives of researchers be changed to encourage them to submit to these changes?

You need the journals...

Nothing will move without it. The American Economics Review has taken the lead in requiring all data papers to make their data and source code available. Unfortunately, there's no real indication that other journals will follow suit, despite the formidable reputation of AER. Sadly, even the AER doesn't have a clear repository and not all code is available even though they require it of the authors.

Beyond that, David Card has a nice repository of sorts for structural econometrics data. Josh Angrist and David Autor should be praised for creating Data Archives that document their own work. But at this point it's still up to individuals to make their research transparent and their code available.

For what it's worth, I've been thinking about this issue a lot lately and decided to create a Google Code Project where economists can upload their code:
http://code.google.com/p/econ-code/ ... That said, I have not yet tried to publicize it and think the ultimate key to adoption lies with the journals.


Advice on choosing a CS undergraduate thesis advisor (picking between 2 profs)? I'm currently a college junior and looking to apply to grad school for CS in the fall. I'm currently choosing a thesis advisor for next year but would love some advice.
One of my options is a HCI professor who I've been working with since freshman year, but she'll be on sabbatical next year. She said she'd be willing to advise me, but I don't want to give her extra work while she's taking time off.
Another option is a professor who I haven't worked with before w/ a different research area (more systems focused), but I've heard really great things about her from other students. She also said she'd be happy to work with me, and I'm pretty interested in branching out/trying new things.
In terms of applying for grad school, will it strengthen my application to have worked with the same professor all throughout undergrad? Or is it good to show some variety of experiences? I'm having trouble because I'm also not sure which area of CS I want to pursue in the future, but it'll probably be something at the intersection of HCI and AI like Human-AI interaction or intelligence augmentation.
Any general tips/advice on how to handle this situation would be much appreciated. Thank you!

There is hardly any basis here for a distinction. Both are good. Both are willing to work with you. Both will provide a valuable experience.
You could just "flip a coin", actually, and reach a good outcome.
But once you decide, make a firm commitment and stick with it. Don't break contact with the other prof, however. Both can be valuable as letter writers.
Having worked, closely with more than one prof is probably more advantageous than working with only one, but it is, I think, a marginal effect.


Is my adviser supposed to be assigning me my research? I have just finished my bachelor's degree in computer engineering. I am doing an REU with the professor who will be my adviser this fall when I enter grad school.
Currently my future Adviser has me working on research that involves image processing. I was hoping to head in other directions in embedded computing and security.

From our weekly research meetings it seems like my adviser will be assigning me research topics through out my grad school career. Is this normal that an adviser would insist on determining the research topic of the PhD students under them. I have not pushed back on this yet but I am not prepared to go in depth in image processing. I am not a math major or CS major and that field gives me little interest.

--ADDITIONAL INFORMATION BELOW--

As far as funding goes I am currently funded by and REU(research experience for undergraduates) and am unsure of where this funding comes from(NSF, department, professor). Here in 2 weeks though I will be funded by a Distinguished Academic Fellowship(DAF) that my university graduate school awarded me.

In order to get my DAF I had to write a research proposal. I proposed research into microprocessor, GPU, FPGA unification. As I understood it from those within my department I am not required to carry out that research as the proposal is more a way for the DAF committee to see that I can write a coherent proposal for later on in my academic career.

Concerning the union of my professors research interest and mine: He focuses on embedded system design for single specific applications. It just happens that in the current path of research he is onto it involves cameras. This then introduces the field of image processing into the project.

It seems that all his grad students are doing peripheral work on UAVs that will be coalesced into a UAV platform of some sort.

This depends very much on:

How much interests and your advisor's interests align
Where your funding comes from

First, interest alignment: Starting a grad program, you find an advisor with interests that overlap with your own, do the foundational things that need to get done, then expand on it with your own ideas.  Later, when you are pitching grants, very much the same thing but with program officers: you have a great idea, and you find a way to dovetail it with their calls for proposals.  Finding the common ground between your research and others' research is a fundamental academic skill.

Second, money: if you are funded through a grant that needs image processing research done, do you think that your advisor or the funding sponsor will give you a big thumbs up when you say, "Actually, I have some great ideas for embedded security devices I would rather work on."  Nope.  If you were in their shoes, shelling out $30-60k on a student for a year, wouldn't you expect them to help get the grant completed successfully?  If you want full control over your research, become independently wealthy first.

Successfully doing your own research in academia, in grad school and beyond, involves a lot of meeting in the middle.  Given the huge disparity of research topics you mentioned (image processing versus security), I genuinely wonder about the overlap of interests.  If there really isn't much overlap, it might be worth looking for a different advisor.  You won't become an expert in one field by being mentored by a guy in another field, even if your advisor lets you run wild with any idea that comes into your head.

Update

Since more info was added about the funding and interest overlap, I can note a bit more here.  It sounds like your funding is relatively portable and not tied to a project.  In that case, you should have pretty strong control over what you want to do.  You should not be using this control to just pitch ideas and run with them.  The benefit of a PhD program (as opposed to learning how to research while living in a shack) is to apprentice with people who are experts in what you want to do.

However, having your own "batteries included" funding means you should be able to match with the best advisor for your interests. It sounds like you need to discuss the issue of overlapping interests with your current advisor.  If you don't want to go in the same direction as the lab, maybe they can suggest another group who does something that is a better fit.  Alternatively, maybe they will hit topics that you find more interesting during other phases of projects. It's not uncommon to switch advisors in the first year: I knew a professor in undergrad who actually recommended avoiding even starting in a given lab, so you could just meet with professors to find the best match.


Citation of Reports from Environmental Agency I need to cite a report from different Agencies. I have never cited a report before, and on the Internet, I only found how to cite papers, books, or theses. Can anyone give me a good example or help me with my one? This is the way I cited them:

(1) USEPA. Guidance for Assessing Pesticide Risks to BeesU.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Health Canada Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) and California Department of Pesticide Regulation. Off. Pestic. Programs USEPA, Heal. Canada PMRA, CDPR 2014
(2) European Food Safety Authority. Evaluation of the Data on Clothianidin, Imidacloprid and Thiamethoxam for the Updated Risk Assessment to Bees for Seed Treatments and Granules in the EU; 2018; Vol. 15.

But for me, it looks a little bit strange. I know there are a lot of ways to cite. This is the normal way I cite my papers:

(3) Zhao, J.; Long, L.; Weng, G.; Li, J.; Zhu, J.; Zhao, J. W. Multi-Branch Au/Ag Bimetallic Core-Shell-Satellite Nanoparticles as a Versatile SERS Substrate: The Effect of Au Branches in a Mesoporous Silica Interlayer. J. Mater. Chem. C 2017, 5 (48), 12678–12687

Most citation styles follow the basic principle of: Who-When-What-Where, or Author-Date-Title-Source. Your "normal way" of citing follows a variant of this.
Based on this principle, the APA manual (to name but one example) shows how to cite a governmental report:

National Cancer Institute. (2019). Taking time: Support for people
with cancer (NIH Publication No. 18-2059). U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services, National Institutes of Health.
https://www.cancer.gov/publications/patient-education/takingtime.pdf

The manual tells us: "The specific agency responsible for the report appears as the author. The names of parent agencies not present in the group author name appear in the source element as the publisher. This creates concise in-text citations and complete reference list entries."

Applied to your case, I would suggest your reference to be as the follolwing (in APA style, but you can change the format - such as the position of the year of publication - according to your needs):

Environmental Protection Agency. (2014). Guidance for Assessing Pesticide Risks to Bees. Federal Government of the United States. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-06/documents/pollinator_risk_assessment_guidance_06_19_14.pdf

and:

European Food Safety Authority. (2018). Evaluation of the Data on Clothianidin, Imidacloprid and Thiamethoxam for the Updated Risk Assessment to Bees for Seed Treatments and Granules in the Eu. European Union. https://doi.org/10.2903/sp.efsa.2018.EN-1378


Can I publish an improved variation of a prior method or/and the results I found using it? I am doing economic analyses of natural resources based on processes seen in the real world (geology) for my PhD thesis. The model I have built is mostly inspired from an already well-established model in the literature, but my approach on getting economic values is quite different.

In details, the original model consists of 7 study cases for which data were taken from literature. The research estimates a type of resource to be explored/exploited worldwide. The concept is not really innovative and contains many approximations. Also, the assessment methods used to calculate economic values are basic mathematics. However, it is built on strong scientific bases and requires lots of understanding of natural processes.

My own model (inspired by the prior work) focuses on 4 of the same study cases, but I have made estimates for half of the worldwide potential occurrences for the same type of resource (plus another one). My study has better accuracy and uses different assumptions to get the economic values. My calculations for 3 of the study cases are different, except for 1 (I use different data and get different results though).

Question: Is it conceivable to publish my economic results, even if the modelling concept is similar to or inspired from someone's work?

I have cited the original research for comparing my results. The research is from a worldwide specialist who is well-considered in the scientific community. I would not want to have any conflict with him in the future.

Incremental improvement of research methods is a major part of the purpose of academic research, so yes, an improved variation of an existing method is absolutely a publishable result.  From your description of the research, it appears that you have undertaken a comparison of predictive accuracy for the original method and your variation, and this has good results.

Make sure your paper gives a good introduction and literature review, with a fair summary of existing methods and your points of departure for these methods. It is okay to put your method forward as being superior to the original method it is varying (assuming you can back this up with predictive results or other relevant evidence), but obviously you would write this in a way that is respectful towards the progenitor of the original method.  There is nothing offensive to a researcher in taking a method they have developed and varying it to improve its performance.  As long as you are not unduly critical of the original research, I see no reason that your research would set you in conflict with the original researcher of the method.  It is probably even worth listing the author of the original model as a suggested referee for your own paper.


How do US Ph.D. applicants without research experience convince admissions committees that they are interested in a particular field? My question is mainly for mathematics Ph.D. application in the United States. However, the answers from any other field (or other countries) where undergraduate/master research doesn't play a critical role in admission are also welcomed (by "critical" I mean if one has no research experience, then the chance of acceptance is small).

As we know, in mathematics or theoretical physics, a solid background in some areas (like algebraic geometry) need several years to lay down and some applicants may not have research experience in the area they are interested in.

Suppose the main reason that applicants want to apply to school A is that the math department of school A has a strong algebraic geometry group, but they have no research experience in it. How would they convince the graduate committee that they are truly interested in algebraic geometry in the statement of purpose?

Please note under some circumstances it is important to convince the graduate committee that one is really interested in a particular field. For instance, if they had changed interest from another field, say analysis to algebraic geometry or they are transferring from one school to another to pursue a Ph.D. degree in algebraic geometry, or the department to which they are applying has only a narrow range of research focuses (some elite private schools, for example).

To put in another way, for an applicant without research experience in a certain field, what kind of experiences/characteristics could make the graduate committee believe that they are really interested in this field?

I would have thought that in general the time allotted for a PhD is too short (3 - 4 years full time) to spend too much of that learning the basics of your field to the level of being able to produce original research.  Not forgetting that most PhD students start publishing heavily during their candidature, so that really you would be expected to be producing publishable papers within the first 18 months to two years.  I can't imagine any mathematical academic taking on a PhD candidate who didn't already show some expertise in the field - maybe a few papers already; certainly previous studies in the discipline.  (There may be some exceptions, but I imagine they'd be rare.)  If you had read a little about algebraic geometry and wanted to research into it, you would in many cases be recommended to enrol in a few postgraduate courses first - pretty much to test your ability and expertise - before enrolling in a PhD.  Also, supervisors aren't going to teach you the area - although you may be recommended some background reading - they are just wanting to encourage your research, and also of course to get their name on your papers.


Is it worth to switch from Bibsonomy to Mendeley? What are the advantages of Mendeley over Bibsonomy?

Is it easy to migrate from Bibsonomy to Mendeley?

Does Mendeley offer equally powerful bibliography exportation?

In detail, the following disadvantages of Bibsonomy  are crucial for me:

you can not modify all your bibliographies at once, e.g. exchange in every URL field each # with \#
many references are not present, so I have to import the bibtex myself
search functionality could be better.

Does Mendeley solve these disadvantages?

Yes, Mendeley does offer export - BibTex, RIS, and EndNote XML.

The search is pretty decent, though I often find I use Acrobat search instead - its word-stemming seems better.

Batch replacement is very weak - the only way to do it is to go into the database yourself and tweak it. Very unsatisfactory. There is some batch update, in that you can select several papers, and add the same metadata to all in one go: but that's not the same as a batch search & replace. The one batch search & replace it does do very well is that when  you get two versions of an author's name, you can drag one name onto the other, and all the papers will get updated accordingly.

I've also found the technical support to be very slow, and often unsatisfactory.

The auto-grab of references from the web is patchy, and you may find you're often correcting it. Often, its guesses seem utterly bonkers, like it's just grabbed a few general words from the title, and gone off to find the closest match for those, in some subject that's completely alien to me.

The interface is klutzy, though I've yet to find a reference manager that had an interface I did like.

Earlier versions of Mendeley did occasionally corrupt the metadata, doing things like swapping round the lead and second author - unbelievably frustrating. This may have stopped now - I don't use Mendeley so much any more, because of this and other problems.

Mendeley does have its evangelists, and it seems to have been very slick at cultivating its fanbase - more resources seem to have been spent there than on the software. The feedback forum has now become pretty much unusable - there are plenty of important things in there that have been "planned" or awaiting assessment for 2 or 3 years.


How should I interpret a suggestion to "synthesize" two sections of a paper? I have submitted a manuscript to a journal. After some months, the submission is in the revised statute.
One of the referees suggested the following to me.

  Sections 2 and 3 should be synthetized

What should I do over Sections 2 and 3?

My field is math.

Synthesize in this context means to merge the sections into a coherent whole. So the reviewer is probably suggesting that these two sections would make more sense structurally (from their perspective) if they were combined.

Beyond this, it is not possible for us to understand the exact purpose of the reviewer's suggestion, as we do not have access to the article you wrote, nor the rest of the review(s). In general, suggestions or comments in any review are best understood in context -- what is this reviewer's understanding of the paper? What is their likely background? What did they think of the paper overall; which sections did they like and dislike? Based on the answers to these questions you may get a better idea of why they are suggesting merging the sections, and how you might go about doing it effectively (or alternatively, how to respond to the reviewer if you disagree).


How should I use a five-minute presentation at the beginning of an academic job interview? I have been invited for an interview for a tenure track assistant professor position. The interview will be conducted virtually. At the beginning of the interview I am supposed to give a five minute presentation by way of introduction. Very little was provided by way of instructions for this presentation, apart from the time limit.
I don't really know how best to use this time. They have already seen my application materials (research plans, teaching philosophy etc), and will presumably have them to hand, but should I give a summary of what I consider the most important points of those? Or should I give a summary of my career so far emphasising the most relevant experiences? Or should I be trying to introduce some new information that they won't have seen in my application?

Five minutes is pretty long, so I would at least ask your interviewers if they expect you to cover completely new ground.  I don't know if academia is much different to the real world, but in the real world quite often the interviewers haven't done their homework and going back over previous ground is not unusual.  Not only that they may have reviewed so many people that they think you are someone else.  Often they think they have the star candidate in front of them and the worst thing you can do is let them know otherwise


Is there any chance for a person with BSc in mathematics to get into good graduate level theoretical physics program? I am a mathematics major without any undergraduate level courses in physics. I am lately interested in physics. Is there any chance for me to go into good theoretical physics graduate program without any background in physics?

I am not sure if this kind of question is acceptable here, though.

ADDED My concern is do Universities even accept students with math majors into physics department without physics courses?

There are students with math major (and other major) go to physics graduate school, but I think all of them have taken physics courses. The first question you should ask yourself is that why you are interested in theoretical physics. If you were the admission committee and see an applicant said that they are interested in physics but taken no physics courses, what do you think? You must explain it in somewhere in your personal statement.

The first thing you should do is to take physics courses and get good grade on all of them. Also, you should try taking few graduate courses. There are no need to take courses on all topics, you should only have strong interest in few topics such as QM, EM, SM, QFT and string theory. Some of them are very mathematical (that good for you). Doing so can demonstrate your interest in physics.

Second, you might try to apply for master program in physics. It is easier to get in and after 1 or 2 years you can apply for PhD in physics to continue your study.

One more options is to apply for math department, in particular, you should look for applied math. There are usually few professors studying mathematical physics. It is particular true for some countries that the theoretical physicists stay in the math department and experimental physicists stay in physics department. Assuming you have good background in mathematics, it should be the easiest option for you to get in those school and start studying theoretical physics.


Is it acceptable to have a research paper with no references? I (an undergrad) and 2 other profs from my department have been working on something and we were thinking of submitting our work to a conference (a pretty well known one) this week. The fact is there is no related work that has been done on the problem we are solving and therefore there is no paper which we can cite as a starting point for our work. The only existing things that we make use of are trivial definitions from mathematics (like Riemann Integral) and also definitions that are pretty well known in my area (CS). So again, we do not think there is a need to cite any particular papers for that.

Now my question as stated was - is it acceptable to have a paper with no references? Or do you think we should just mention some papers (we never had to use them) where those definitions were actually proposed?

PS: I'm sure some of you might suggest me to ask those profs. But quite frankly none of them have much experience as far as publishing papers is concerned. So it would be great if some one could give me a good advice and help me out.

Edit: Thanks everyone for the answers. Of course somewhere a little sarcastic and ridiculing, but I can understand since this is a little weird. Actually yes, I had the notion that a paper wasn't worth citing unless I use some results from it (say an algo or some theorem). But I guess that isn't the only reason why I should be referencing as many seem to suggest here. The fact is we had seen quite a few survey papers before we started this out and I was under the impression that there wasn't a need to cite them since anyone could find them. But now, things are bit more clear and I guess I should cite them and I will :)

Though I don't think there's any hard rule against having a paper with no reference, it seems pretty weird. Note that references are not only for citing other people's results (theorems, algorithms, etc.) which you have used, but more broadly to recognize other's scientific contribution. For example:

Has the problem never been discussed before? Who first realized it was a problem, stated it, formalized it?
You probably put the problem into the broader context of your field. And if you don't, you probably should. This sure requires citations on recent work on related problems, even if nothing was ever done on the one problem you're addressing.
For example, is your problem a specific case of another problem, or does it have generalization?
What are the consequences of your results/findings? They probably have some impact on other related problems, or practical consequences on real-life issues.
Didn't you or your co-authors ever do any prior work on this issue?

Finally, let's see it another way: you have solved a problem, that no one else has solved, worked on, or more generally discussed. And you did so using only elementary techniques, which have been known for so long that they do not require citation. Stated like that, it may sound like either you're a genius opening an entire field of mathematics, or you're working on a useless problem that nobody cares about. You probably don't want the reviewer to be thinking that way!


Recommendation letters for REU from grad student I am a mathematics grad student who is often the primary instructor for undergraduate courses, and I have been asked by one of my previous students to write a recommendation letter for REUs, which are summer research programs for undergraduate students. This student was in a ``Introduction to Proofs'' course that I taught. I know that recommendation letters from grad students for grad school are looked upon poorly; is the same true for REUs? Applying for REUs is rather different than applying for grad school, so perhaps it is more accepted in this case.

If the best option for this student is to have me write the letter, what should a good letter from a grad student focus on? Since I don't have as extensive a teaching record as a professor I can't realistically compare them to other students I have had-- is it enough to talk about their excellent performance in the course I taught?

In case anyone is concerned about the student, I brought up the issue of me being a grad student when they asked for the letter, and after guidance from a faculty member they still think my letter is their best option (a professor is writing a letter as well). Of course, I'll ask someone at my institution for advice also.

I am the project director for an NSF-funded REU program, so I will offer my thoughts on how the faculty reading applications for my program would respond.

Overall, we will not take letters from graduate students very seriously when considering students for admission.  The basic problem is that few graduate students have the perspective to judge an undergraduate's potential to do research.  When I look back to my own time in graduate school, I know that I would not have done a particularly good job evaluating undergraduates' relevant skills.

While a letter from a graduate student would be essentially worthless when a student is applying to graduate school, an REU program is a more relaxed and lower stakes admission process.  So getting a letter from a graduate student would not necessarily doom an application.  If I received such a letter, I would write back promptly to the applicant asking for another letter from a faculty member.  If we did not receive a replacement letter from a professor, we would not rule the application out automatically, but it would have to be very strong otherwise to make the cut (and students who are very strong applicants would often have little trouble getting a good faculty letter to begin with).

Other programs may be more willing to accept at least one letter from a graduate student, so if you feel that you have adequately warned the student about the risks in having you as a recommender, you may want to go ahead and write the letter.  However, you should definitely look at the admission requirements for the specific REU programs; if they specifically ask for faculty letters, I would suggest that you decline to write.


Does systematic search makes someone a true author for a systematic review? I have written a systematic review which all words are extremely mine. Another colleague gave me the idea of writing this review and just carried out the systematic search, but did not participate in any other parts, such as design and outline of the study, interpretations, edition or even extracting the results from the reviewed articles.
I would like to know whether his contribution is significant enough to consider him as an author or not.

Given the sparseness of the details, its rather difficult to provide specific advice. Here are a few thoughts from someone whose performed systematic reviews for last 30 years, having led teams of reviewers and review programmes, and having participated in the Cochrane Collaboration since its early days:

Performing a systematic review on your own is frowned upon nowadays. In the first place, there needs to be a good balance of content, methods and consumer skills and its very rare to possess all this is one person. In the second place, you'll be making decisions that need to be validated somehow. For example, you are choosing the studies to include and exclude. This is a crucial step and requires another set of eyes with agreements often being resolved by another (third) person.
Searching is a specialist area where research librarians often become involved. It can be the case that someone is on the authorship list not only because they've done the work, but because they can stand by that work. In addition, in the case in which reviewers seek information or modification of your search strategy, the search specialist can handle these issues without breaking a sweat.
If your contributor meets the definition of authorship, he is right to expect it.


Citing an accepted but not yet published paper Do math journals consider a paper in which most of the content referred to another accepted but not yet published paper? In a case in which this is allowed, do one need to give a copy of the accepted paper to the editor of the target journal?

You can cite anything you want, regardless of whether it has been accepted for publication or even submitted.  Of course citing preprints can make life more difficult for the referee, but there's no issue with accepted papers.  They are considered just as reliable as published papers, since they've already gone through the refereeing process.

If you rely on a paper that is not yet publicly available, then you should provide a copy for the referee.  However, if it's your own paper, then it's much better to post it online, for example through the arXiv.  (If you supply a copy for the referee without posting it online, then it gives the impression that you are deliberately restricting access to the paper.)


Sending a manuscript to editor of journal before submission to journal I submitted my manuscript to two journals online (not at the same time). During the process of submissions I was asked to determine the editor and I selected the same editor in both journals. Need to say, the editor whom I selected is a specialist in my field word (mathematics). Unfortunately, in both journals, my manuscript was rejected. In the first journal, I received no report about rejection, that is why I submitted to the second one. The second journal rejected my article with a report on the technical reason of rejection including some reasoning. Now I have already tried to solve the errors and prepared a new version of that. I would like to try to submit it again to another journal again with the same editor of previous journals. Does it have a bad effect if I submit again for this editor? Can I send an email to potential editor to ask his opinion on my new version of manuscript, then I submit it formally to the journal who is its editor? I am asking this because I suppose he probably has a presence of his mind about my manuscript and it helps me to speed out the publication of paper.

Unfortunately  this depends somewhat on personalities so a definite answer is impossible. But if your communication with the editor has been helpful/cordial then it might not entail much risk, contacting that editor.

But since you already have two rejections where the person was involved, you might want to try for a fresh look at your paper with a different editor. This is especially the case since you weren't encouraged to resubmit with revisions.

You might also try contacting that editor without sending the paper and just give the title and state that you have revised the paper with advice from the reviewer and ask for any advice they might be willing to give. Perhaps they ask to see the paper. Or not.


What does "contributed paper session" mean? It may be a silly question, but what it the general definition of the "contributed paper session" (especially in the mathematics community)? In particular, I am not sure of the following:

If I register for a contributed paper session, can I register with the paper that has already been published before in a journal (I am the author of the paper)?
Can I use my paper that has not been published yet?
Does the title/abstract of such a talk need to be the same as the title/abstract of the paper the talk is based on?
If I am not the only author of the paper, but I am the only speaker at the conference, should I list only myself as the author of the abstract?

These questions came up when I decided that I wanted to give a talk at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Baltimore, 2019.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

A contributed paper session is a session where anyone can submit a talk (rather than having to be specially invited).  The criteria for approval are usually not selective and mostly just involve a check that your topic is appropriate for the session / conference.

  If I register for a contributed paper session, can I register with the paper that has already been published before in a journal (I am the author of the paper)?

Yes, it is fine to give a talk on work that is already published.  You should include a citation of your paper in your presentation.

  Can I use my paper that has not been published yet?

Yes, this is also fine.  If you have a preprint that is publicly available (e.g. on arXiv), it would be good to give a link in your presentation.  You can even give a talk on work for which the paper is not yet finished, but this  is a bit risky, as someone in the audience may decide to work on it, and get their paper submitted before yours.

  Does the title/abstract of such a talk need to be the same as the title/abstract of the paper the talk is based on?

Not necessarily, but it's a good idea if the titles are similar.  That way, someone who attends the talk or sees the abstract will have an easier time finding the corresponding paper.  For the abstract, your abstract should describe what you will actually speak about, and so the abstract from your paper may not be directly suitable.  For instance, your paper probably contains lots of details that you won't have time to address in your talk.

  If I am not the only author of the paper, but I am the only speaker at the conference, should I list only myself as the author of the abstract?

For the Joint Meetings, all the authors of the paper should be listed as authors in the abstract.  (For projects not yet published, list everyone who is expected to be an author of the paper when it is finished.) There is an option to indicate which author is actually giving the talk.

Other conferences might have different practices.  If coauthors are not listed explicitly as authors, they should be acknowledged within the abstract, i.e. "This is joint work with Name and Name."


Is it suitable to ask for extra work concerning my bachelor thesis? I study computer science and going to write my bachelor thesis during the next weeks at a very practically working chair.
At my university most students are not able to write simple programs or algorithms (of course they are able to design them in theory).
Because I also work in the field of computer science I have many years of experience in programming. Therefore I think that the tasks I have to do will be very easy and bore me.

Furthermore, during my next semester I have enough time to work on my thesis more than maybe is necessary. I do not want to get a better grade or something like that. I just want to gain new knowledge and work in an scientific environment.

So is it suitable to ask for more difficult tasks and say to my supervisor that I would like to invest more time in my thesis than necessary? Or does it sound arrogant?

The answer to this depends partly on how supportive your supervisor is. In general, yes, it is fine to ask about making your thesis more challenging, but make sure that you do so in a tactful way, and be prepared that you might be told "no". Bear in mind that this is not just something that you are investing your own time in, someone is going to be marking your work, and this has several implications:

If you go well beyond the requirements, the marker may or may not have the required expertise to judge it effectively.
If your extension ends up involving more material, it will be more time-consuming to mark.
The task that you complete will still need to meet certain core requirements, otherwise it cannot be marked fairly against other students' submissions.

These are all barriers that can be overcome - for example, the more difficult task might involve extending the core results of the thesis in an appendix. That way, if necessary in terms of the assessment, the main part can be judged on its own merits. As long as your supervisor is reasonably supportive, have the conversation, and see what they suggest. It may be that you need to bash out an unremarkable thesis in order to meet the course requirements, but that your supervisor can suggest separate, interesting tasks to fill the extra time that you will have.


My name was misspelled in a citation, what should I do? Recently, a newly published paper in a journal cited one of our papers and managed to misspell my name in the reference list. How should I deal with this? Simply ignore this? Or should I contact the authors or publisher to mention this?

In addition to sending an e-mail to the journal, as suggested already, you should check the most common academic databases such as Scopus and Web of Knowledge/Science and submit corrections to them so that they pick up the citation correctly. They have a form to submit this kind of corrections automatically; it will then take a few weeks to apply them.

People often (way too often, actually) rely on these databases to measure the performance of academics, so it is important that they don't miss any of your citations.


Freedom of Information (FOI) requests: multiple questions or single question per request? In England and Wales at least, Freedom of Information requests are a legitimate research technique to use for obtaining data on occasions when (a) they are applicable, and (b) other avenues have been exhausted.

If a researcher wishes to obtain answers to multiple questions, or to obtain multiple different datasets, should (s)he submit:

one FOI request providing a clear list of the requested items; or
one FOI request per item?

I would be especially grateful for links to relevant advice from trustworthy sources, and for advice from academia.stackexchange members who have either made or received FOI requests.

Under a single request, you can requisition multiple data that are related.

As a guide for FOI officers (the people who will process your request), the State Government of Victoria gives this gloss:

  Practice Note 4: Multiple Requests for Access

  Summary

  Multiple requests arise where a number of applications for access are made by
  or on behalf of a person at the same or within a short period of time
  (e.g. within 2-3 weeks).

  If there is sufficient commonality between the requests, they can be
  considered as a single request to determine whether it is a
  "voluminous" request under section 25A(1).

  Each request should otherwise be treated individually, in the usual
  way.

  If it is not reasonably possible to notify a decision to the applicant
  on each request within 45 days, subject to the FOI Act, take practical
  steps to consult with the applicant about priority of requests and to
  possibly reduce their scope.

  Note: references in this Practice Note to sections are references to
  sections of the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Vic) ("FOI Act")
  unless otherwise stated.

I have experience requisitioning such data (i.e., warranted by FOI) from commonwealth government law enforcement agencies.

The specific protocol (e.g., email, web form[s], and/or paper form[s] to submit) for filing a freedom of information request will depend on the agent or agency to whom you're submitting it.

Typically, the agency will ask you to state the specific data you want under a single subject heading so that the scope of their response is appropriate to your request.

See How to make a freedom of information (FOI) request by the UK Government Digital Service here: How to make a freedom of information request


What does 'published elsewhere' mean? I want to send a paper to be reviewed in an academic journal. An early version of this paper is available on a website as part of a grant I received. The early version is not in a journal nor is it reviewed. But one can read it online. The grant programme encourages publication of findings in peer-reviewed journals. However I am not certain whether or not this is considered 'previously published' material? Any advice?

That's probably OK (hard to be sure without specifics). In several areas, it is quite common to post preprints (e.g. in the ArXiv https://arxiv.org/ ) and those do not prevent one from submitting it to a journal. Some areas (e.g. CS) are even OK with publishing preliminary versions in conference proceedings. What is not allowed is to submit a paper previously published in another journal or even submit a paper to more than one journal simultaneously. I think everyone frowns on that.


Projects funded by German Research Foundation---teaching duties I am interested if teaching is a part of duties for people employed on the positions funded by the German Research Foundation (SFBs in particular). To the best of my knowledge, these are pure research positions. However, what is the legal status?

As far as I know, you shall not teach within your contract as doctoral researcher in a DFG funded SFB. The reason is simple: There is a project proposal and the DFG gives money to do the work that is described in the proposal. If the proposal does say that the PhD student should work on the research project (and does not say that teaching is part of the job) you shall do that and nothing else.

However, there are several caveats: This applies to all the part of your job that is funded by the SFB. It is not unusual that your position has mixed funding, e.g. 50% comes from an SFB (or another DFG project) and 50% comes from something else. You should not do any teaching in your 50% that are related to the research project, what you do in the rest of the time is another matter. I also know that it is indeed common that PhD students in DFG funded research projects actually do teach somehow (e.g. as a TA). (Probably it is worth noting that PhD students who are funded directly by the university always have teaching duties in Germany.) Maybe this is allowed under some circumstances, but I could not find any regulations by the DFG that are explicit about this. The only thing I found is this part:

  4.9.2 Eigene Stelle
  Personen, die mit einer Eigenen Stelle durch die DFG gefördert werden, sind verpflichtet, sich  mit  ihrer  vollen  Arbeitszeit  dem  in  der  Bewilligung  genannten  Projekt  zu  widmen.  Darüber hinausgehende Tätigkeiten für die aufnehmende wissenschaftliche Einrichtung (insbesondere  Lehrtätigkeiten  oder  projektfremde  Dienstleistungen  wie  beispielsweise  klinische Routinetätigkeiten sowie die Mitwirkung bei der Patientenversorgung) sind im Rahmen der von der DFG finanzierten Stelle nicht zulässig. Solche Tätigkeiten können außerhalb  der  regelmäßigen  wöchentlichen  Arbeitszeit  der  von  der  DFG  finanzierten Stelle im Rahmen des für die wissenschaftliche Einrichtung geltenden Nebentätigkeitsrechts ausgeübt werden.

This is a quote from the "Verwendungsrichtlinien" of the DFG an applies in the case where you write a proposal to fund your own position. The relevent sentence says that no teaching or non-project related service is allowed.


Why are there not fewer, better funded PhDs? (In the UK) This may seem like a naive question, but its one I've had on my mind while working through readying my applications for a PhD in the UK. It seems bizarre to me that PhDs here are not funded by default - from my point of view, a PhD is effectively a job. It is a sort of long term graduate program for working in academia. From this point of view, it seems absurd that one could end up being in a situation where they might actually have to pay to pursue one.

One possible answer is that universities are simply admitting more students than they are capable of funding. If that is the case, then why is it the case? Surely having fewer, better funded doctoral candidates would not only improve the lot of many "students" (employees, in my view), but it would also have beneficial impacts on the employment prospects in academia for PhD students after they finish, since there will be fewer people competing for the same number of openings.

What are the incentives and cultural motivations here that keep the system as it is? How different is it in other countries? (I have heard, but been unable to decisively verify, that many European unis treat PhDs as the jobs they are).

Universities themselves fund very few students. My faculty (which has 7 departments I can think of off the top of my head, and probably over 250 PhD supervisors) funds 2 students a year. These are used as strategic investments, either in a particular area the faculty wants to expand in, or more often as part of the start up package for a new academic.

So in answer "why not fewer, better funded PhDs", the answer is that any fewer would effectively be none.

In STEM subjects, a large number of PhDs are funded by external funding bodies, such as the government funded research councils. For example my department get 4 or 5 students a year from a Biology and Biotechnology Reserach Council (BBSRC) Doctoral Training Program (DTP). Importantly, government funded PhD studentships are only open to European (soon to be only British) citizens. Then there are CASE studentships that are financed jointly by government and industry. In both these cases the university has no say in how well resourced the studentship is; but they do earn the tuition fees that are paid by these outside agencies.

After our DTP and CASE studentships the most common way for a student to be financed is by a foreign government. These studentships generally are very well resourced because the university can more or less ask for as much as it likes. However payment of the student's stipend is down to that forigen government.

Finally if the student REALLY wants to do a PhD (so they can have a career that requires it one supposes), the university doesn't really care where the money comes from, as long as they get their £18k a year, they are happy and will tell supervisors to supervise them. Depending on the institution and the rank of the supervisor, various levels of compulsion might be applied to encouraging the supervisors to supervise a fee paying student. Supervisors are also often happy to take foreign students because the research funds they bring can see the rest of the a research group through a tough patch.


Using relative numbering for tables and figures I'm producing documentation for an A-Level Computing project. Throughout my project I've been numbering my tables and figures relative to the chapter and section they're contained in. So for example, instead of doing:

  2. Design

  ...
    2.3. Object analysis
    Figure 4 - diagram of objects

I've done:

  2. Design

  ...
    2.3. Object analysis
    Figure 2.3.1. - diagram of objects

I'd like to know if the latter style of numbering is considered bad practice. Should my figures instead always be absolutely numbered? Or should I use absolute numbering and restart the number for each section? I'm not required to conform to an academic style, so this is more for myself.

If your school does not have a specific scheme in place for such reports, then you are free to use whatever scheme you feel most logically identifies things. Personally, I prefer the longer style of numbering, because it helps me to orient myself through a large document. It's certainly not bad practice, although it's somewhat unusual to "drill down" all the way to the subsection level.


The content of my manuscript is too complicated to be rewritten in the format of a journal. what should I do? My manuscript is actually a new theory, consisting of four chapters, 15,000 words, so it cannot be rewritten in the form of a journal. If I delete some of the content to fit the format of a journal, readers will not understand the ins and outs of my theory.
What should I do? Can I publish it as a monograph? Does the monograph also have a scientific credit, and can be cited? Is it possible to publish a monograph without peer review?

ADD:
See below comments. I really appreciate all of you! I will take your advice. I will divide my manuscript into four themes, and submit the most creative ideal first avoiding arguments.

I am not worried that some people say that I maybe a "crackpot" because my manuscript has no "imagination" but LOGIC and math. I am an independent researcher, who thinks outside the box.

I just want to make a contribute to science. But I have no idea how to make a connection for these four themes when my manuscripts under peer review process.

I am sorry. The answer to your question is: rewrite it. If you wish to communicate your ideas you need to make it easy, not hard, for the reader. No-one is going to read 15,000 words to understand the ins and outs of your theory without some kind of motivation. What motivation are you going to provide: 'Trust me: you won't understand this unless you commit to reading 15,000 words'? Why would anyone bother?

Try to imagine explaining your theory to someone you have met on a social occasion. What is the theory about? Why is there some question arising in that field that you have put so much work into? What is the question? What is the answer?

If you get that far, you might be asked 'Why do think that is the answer?'.

If you can imagine that conversation then you will have created an abstract of your work. that might give you some clues as to how you might break down your work into manageable chunks for publication.