Does EBSCO's "Peer Review" search filter filter out junk journals? My school's library e-journal search tool uses EBSCO. In EBSCO, one can select "Peer Review" to only show articles from peer reviewed journals. Does this filter have a system for removing junk journals (i.e. journals that receive money to publish work) from the search results or will many junk journals calling themselves peer-reviewed journals still manage to get through the filter?

Yes.
However, keep in mind the various (read: broad) definitions of what peer reviewed means. EBSCO uses following definitions:

Blind Peer Reviewed - (or Double Blind Peer Reviewed) - Articles appearing in a journal are sent outside of the journal's publishing or sponsoring organization for review by external reviewer(s), whereby the either author's identity or the reviewers' identity is unknown.
Editorial Board Peer Review - articles appearing in a journal are reviewed by an internal board of editors, not solely by one editor. The author's identity may be known or unknown.
Expert Peer Review - articles appearing in a journal are reviewed by experts (either internal or external to the journal) whose credentials are known and who are experts within the subject matter of the article under review. The author's identity may be known or unknown.

According to EBSCO, you can also restrict your search to peer reviewed articles by suffixing your query with AND RV Y.


How to do a masters proposal? Suppose that I have an idea "not fully developed" of course but a sketch somehow. If I want to convince an advisor by it and let him take me seriously. What should I do?
My field of study is Mathematics. I only got an intuition that might work or not. Should I make sure that the proposal is valid before I talk to my advisor or what should I do exactly? any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Formalize the problem and identify any trivial cases.
Figure out where a result similar to your idea would be published and try to find it. Have a list of the places that you looked and where you didn't find your result. This will allow you to tell your professor something along the lines of "Professor, I checked ...noteworthy journals in your exact area... as well as ...famous textbooks in the area of study... And I didn't find this result."
Know why your idea is intuitively correct. Try to find counterexamples.
Outline your plan of action.
Be able to tell your professor why you want to work with him/her. Is it because you two work well together or because he/she is a major person in the field?
Bonus: State why your result would be (or could be) meaningful.


PhD student working as a substitute teacher | interview tips Our university is looking for a substitute teacher in Computer Science and I have an interview for the job this week.

My academic profile is making me a little bit nervous and makes me think that I might not be suitable for the job: I have a License degree in Mathematics and a Master Degree in Computer Security. Now, I'm a 2nd year Phd student in Computer Security and AI.

Keep in mind, I am really really used to reading and learning new domains, and diving in the details of each subject, and I am planning to defend my profile using this argument.

So my question is: What are the skills that a Phd student should have to work as a substitute teacher? Knowing that this Phd Student's skill set is a little bit narrow and the potential SA will teach in more general areas.

PS: I am pretty aware that Computer Security is present pretty much in every field of Computer Science (Networking, Web, Programming, etc.). And I am planning to use that to as an argument to nail the interview :).

Bests,

A good question! I would hope that more teachers would care so much as you do.

I understand you will teach undergraduates, I hope my interpretation is correct.

You should first find out what the officially requirements are to teach. This will vary from university to university (the universities I know, for example, didn't care at all - they take every (math) PhD student for every (math) course as long as they speak the local language). No proof of educational or subject-related background was required (just like for the teachers in Harry Potter). Since you are substituting someone, maybe you could ask them? If not, ask at the interview.

Some tips from me:
- think about comparable courses you liked. What did your instructors do?

are there teaching superstars in your field? Maybe with lecture videos online? Watch them and learn!
ask friends which were avarage (academically speaking) about good courses. Many professors/teachers were always great in university and cannot efficiently teach average students. On this very website, I often have the impression that the only thing which matters is to make good courses for the best students. In my opinion, educating the average well is at least as important.
Treat every (reasonable) question seriously (especially from freshwomen and freshmen). At least in math, you have to acquire a certain way of thinking which most fresh-students don't have and all instructors have. This often leads to questions from students where it's hard for instructors to understand what the problem is. (For example, to prove that a statement A doesn't hold for a set S, one gives a counterexample - an element s from S which doesn't satisfy A. While this is the most logical thing for instructors, many students do not understand why giving a counterexample is enough.) Some instructors then say things like "This is trivial" which does not help.
maybe there is a book about teaching in your subject? If possible, read it.
read about your subjects and its connection to the real world. if you follow a boring-written book which has a no motivations and does not explain why things are important (many recensions of such books unfortunately say that they are didactiacclly well written), provide these. Even of you don't find real-world-life examples important, many students will. Provide them.


Are gap semesters frowned upon in graduate school applications? Should I explain mental health situation that led to the gap? Disclaimer: not all of what follows is relevant to the question.

I am a math student currently doing a Master’s. I plan on taking a break in the spring semester because due to many personal circumstances, my mental health had severely declined (I attempted suicide twice), and I completely lost my focus.

I am really passionate about mathematics and I do a lot of extracurricular reading. I have a GPA of about 4 (from a fairly reputable school) and I have excellent relationships with the professors in my department, so I can guarantee strong recommendation letters (especially that they seemed totally fine with my current plan). Furthermore, although I am not from an English-speaking country, I have a very good TOEFL score, and to me, the GRE is pretty much a piece of cake.

Ultimately, my goal is to get into a top 5 school. I decided to get a Master’s for that very purpose. I am worried about two things: first, that I do not have an undergraduate research experience (I never had a real opportunity anyway, though I will have written a thesis by the end of my Master's); second, and most importantly, I am worried that this break which I am about to take will look bad on my application, especially that I will be having a lot of therapy sessions and that I have a lot of personal and social challenges to face, so I am probably not going to do any math whatsoever. Also, it doesn’t seem like I’m getting any job in the meantime because there aren’t many offers and most of my applications have been declined.

So my question is: would such a gap semester look bad on my application? (or at least get frowned upon by the admissions committee?)

And if so: How much should I go into details about my situation? Should I mention real-life incidents, or should I just say that I had excruciating circumstances, and I had to back off and I couldn't find something interesting to do in the meanwhile?

I'm going to give a slightly different advice from the previous answers.  I don't want to counsel dishonesty here, but I think it would be very unwise to write anything in your personal statement that suggests any mental health problems, especially if the only thing that needs explaining is taking a semester off.

I want to emphasize that I think the stigma around mental health problems is very unfair and based on ignorance.  However, the people reading these applications will have probably internalized it to some degree: if you, for example, mention attempting to commit suicide, that will be the most vivid and memorable thing from your application, whereas your master's degree ending a semester early will be barely noticeable.  I think you will probably be fine not mentioning it at all, but if you do, I would just say it is for health reasons, or to prepare for moving to another country (which are, of course, true).  One of the primary things an admissions committee will have in mind is whether a student is capable of finishing the program, while not creating a lot of trouble for people in the department. They have had pain-in-the-butt students before, and would really prefer to avoid having any more.  Mentioning "personal and social challenges" or "excruciating circumstances" (which, incidentally, sounds very strange in English; it's hard to imagine what you really mean by it) is not going to give them confidence that you won't make a lot of trouble for them.


Is validating the results of an article important before citing such an article? During writing my academic paper, I need to cite accuracy values of cited research paper.

I have been advised that if you will cite a paper, you need to read that paper entirely. But in this case, Do i need to validate results that they achieved.

Reading yes. It is important to avoid extraction of sentences or results which can be less general than as they appear at the first glance.

Validating not at all, unless you feel you must do it because something is suspicious or you think to deal with a particular or new case.

You can't validate each statement for every cited reference, and you can't do so for several reasons.
Also a referee does not. Papers exists to be used. That is an implicit form of validation.


How do U.S. research institutions typically reimburse a faculty candidate's airfare costs for multi-city trips? I am interviewing at several research institutions in the U.S. for a tenure-track faculty position all around the same time. I booked a multi-city flight to avoid having to fly back to my current hometown between each interview because that would be lame. I plan on asking the institutions for guidance on how to get reimbursed, but figured I would ask here about what I should expect or what is commonly done for this situation. As an example, say for three interviews, ideally each institution would pay a third of the cost, but each institution has its own rules and they are not bound to do what other institutions would in any case.

So, how do U.S. research institutions typically reimburse a faculty candidate's airfare costs for multi-city trips?

Related: How to buy plane tickets for job interviews?

When looking for a postdoc and visiting multiple labs, I was asked to split the reimbursement for travel costs between the institutions. The exact details of how to split were left to me.

Most institutions expect to fund the entire trip for faculty candidates, so I don't foresee any problems with you asking them to pay less than what they expected.


Why the taboo against naming discoveries after yourself? It is often considered a very bad idea to try to name a discovery (a law, phenomenon or an invention) after yourself.

On the other hand, there are many species names which seem to be a bastardized Latin of the discoverer's name. With gene names, I'm not sure, but I've seen many frivolous gene names, such as those inspired by cartoon characters. I wonder if you could get away with naming a gene after yourself if you wanted to.

In other cases, such as names of synthetic strains and plasmids, it is in fact preferable to use the researcher's name. Off the top of my head, I recall GFAJ-1 - the surrounding controversy aside, given all the work she's done, what is so wrong about her wanting to name it after herself?

However, why is this so? Apparently, it can even advance to an extreme where many years after a discovery has become established and associated with Dr. Jones, when he writes a review article on applications of the Jones Effect he will still carefully avoid acknowledging this name.

Isn't it convenient to simply name something after yourself when no clever acronym exists? Isn't doing the work of the discovery enough to earn the right to name a thing? Doesn't the fact that the discovery is important enough to be published automatically imply that it's important enough to be named after oneself?

Traditionally naming after scientists has been considered an honour bestowed upon somebody by their colleagues. This is why there are plenty of such names in latin animal or plant names. one very good example is Strigiphilus garylarsoni, a chewing louse, named after Gary Larson, author of the Far Side.

Naming can also be subject to strict laws. In some countries, it is, for example, not possible to name official places after persons until after they have passed away. This is to prevent people to inflate their own reputation while alive (it is quite easy to see where such behaviour is going overboard). But, this is a digression.

The main point is that etiquette indicates that one does not name things after one-self, one can hope that the work is so appreciated by others that a naming occurs. It is probably also a good thing that everything we discover is not named after a person. I drove my Smith at 120 kiloJones per Dickens.


Getting back into academics after an industry stint: what can I do while still in industry to improve my research profile? I am a computer science engineer with around 3 years of experience designing and implementing large scale software systems. I chose to join a job right after my masters, to get a feel of what the industry holds. Having spent my bit here, I now want to get back to academics, especially back into my areas of specialisation. I hold a masters in computer science with a specialisation in Information Security, but no publications. I have a decent (mediocre?) GPA of 8.8 in my masters. I also managed to publish a thesis during my stay in college. However, there is no publication associated with the subject matter of the thesis itself.

What should I do to build upon my profile? Here's a list of things I'm already trying -

Contributing to Open Source Software in Security.
Changing my job to fit a more "security" based profile. However, as I have not worked directly in this area for the past three years, this is proving to be a tad difficult.
Trying to learn the ropes of ethical hacking (think bugcrowd for instance).

What I have NOT done (yet)-

Directly contacting professors/post-grads (or even peers who got into research) working in the areas I'm interested in.

I'm not sure if all this, even though time consuming, would lead to any concrete results. Can my industry experience lead to anything? Am I on the right track? What are other things I could do?

To be more specific, I'm looking for pointers to things that can be done while in the industry to construct a research profile.

I also took roughly 2-3 years "off" from academia to work in industry before starting my PhD (not computer science related). I actually think such stints are useful if you frame them in a certain way. You could talk in your statement of purpose about your journey to applying to the PhD, including why you went into industry after the Master's degree instead of continuing to the PhD. Many students struggle in their statements to convey why they wish to obtain the PhD and/or why they feel that they can ultimately finish the degree. In your case, you can talk about going into industry to figure out whether you truly want to go back into academia (the "if you love it, let it go" approach), and then talk about how what you're doing in industry directly applies to what you wish to study. I think many programs would welcome such an application.

I'm less familiar with what 8.8 means, so I cannot comment on whether this is a detriment or not. Having no publications after completing a Master's degree and 3 years post-Master's degree may be a weak spot that you should address in your application. At least in the U.S., graduate admissions can be influenced--sometimes heavily--by personal connections. To that end, I would recommend contacting potential PhD supervisors very soon to introduce yourself and inquire about any openings s/he may have for PhD students. It does take a non-trivial amount of time, but I do think it's worth it.


Is it ethical for authors to reference another paper, but not cite it formally, because they consider it unscientific? I found in a medical paper from the 1990's a non-citation like this:

  The results and terminology by John Smith, Jane Poe, John Doe, Richard Roe, Larry Loe, Journal of Scientific Papers, 12345-698 (3), are unscientific [Brown, 1997; Lawrence 1985]

So, they want to unequivocally  reference the paper by Smith et al; but as they consider it bad, they don't want to give them a citation. I have never seen that before. Also, I am not familiar with the field, so I can't say how bad that paper is.

Citations are considered as a measurement of the impact of a paper, and as such, a proxy for its quality. On the other hand, people cite papers even to criticise them (you did it all wrong, people!).

Is this non-citation ethical? How bad would the paper have to be to justify it?

As editor I would not accept this in a publication. If it is published it should be referenced. Yes, it bumps the references for the authors and yes, bad science may attract a fair amount of citations for all the right?/wrong? reasons. But, it is not up to the authors to decide how referencing should be made, journals have guidelines that should be followed. Having the citation properly referenced makes it easier for others to find the article and see it for themselves.

Furthermore, from another point of view the statement that something is "unscientific" is not appropriate either. It is an opinion. The cited paper can be unscientific but the academic way to show this is not to just say it but to prove it.

Your quote is a specific case, of which I know nothing, so the reply concerns the general case but I would react if I saw something like that in a paper I edit and I would ask the authors to stick to facts.

One last point is that if a paper is really bad, then it should be considered for retraction. That is how scientifically extremely poor, bordering on dangerous, papers are handled.


Does having publications on a completely separate field helps my graduate school application? I am currently a mathematics undergraduate with every intention to enter a top mathematics PhD program in the future. I understand that having research experiences as an undergraduate is one of the key aspects of making your applications sufficiently strong to be considered, and as such, I have participated/am participating in a couple of undergraduate research projects.
Here is the problem: While I have been interested mostly in number theory/analysis in my earlier days as an undergraduate, only recently have I realised that I'm most interested in set theory. I have completed one undergraduate research on number theory (not publishable but was published on a small, local mathematical journal), and am currently participating in a project related to PDE, which is very heavy on functional/nonlinear analysis (this project is expected to lead to a publishable article). As one can tell, these two projects have completely no relation to set theory. I also have one final project to undertake, which is my final year project, and I intend to research on set theory on this project.
Should I ultimately decide to apply for PhD under the set theory/logic department in the future, how much would my past research experiences in other fields help in my application?
I appreciate any advice provided.

Should I ultimately decide to apply for PhD under the set theory/logic
department in the future?

It's up to you. Nothing you have said indicates that you should not pursue your dream.

How much would my past research experiences in other fields help in my
application?

A lot.
When I read the title, I thought it was going to be that you're applying to mathematics but published in biology, or something like that.  After reading the question I've learned that you've published a number theory paper in a small local journal, and may publish a paper heavy in functional analysis, and you want to apply for a PhD in set theory/logic. These aren't "completely" different fields, they are all mathematics subjects and there is always some overlap.
Having a publication, no matter what the field, does show at least a bit of aptitude for research, and that you have experience in academic research and publishing. Not all undergraduate students that get into prestigious PhD programs have publications (though it certainly would help). Even fewer will have a publication in precisely the same field as their PhD.


Transitioning out of a PhD program and into research in industry After a bachelor's and the master's degree I decided to do the PhD and now I'm a first year CS PhD student in a very good University in Europe. However, I'm not living a good period of my life since I'm not finding motivation in this path, both for personal and work issues. I'd like to work in another country and find a good company where I can code that it's what I really love in this field.

However, I wouldn't like to do the task of a programmer where usually someone above you asks to develop a particular software for a client. Instead, I'd like to implement software that could be used inside the company by using personal or technical paper's ideas. It looks like this kind of work is more suitable for people who already have a PhD or who have experience with research.

With this two premises I would like to ask a couple of questions.

Is the interruption of a PhD a disadvantage for the applicant?
Is it possible to find a research work without a PhD?

TL;DR ... 1. It is not much of a disadvantage, if any, and yes, it is possible to find research work without a PhD.

I've worked in four industrial R&D computer science organizations after getting a Ph.D.  Three were considered "research labs" while the most recent one is closer to the development side (but still has a strong foot in the academic research community).

Only one of these companies hired virtually only PhD-level employees.  The others had a mix of Ph.D.s and M.S.-level people.

So I would modify @dan1111's comment to say that some don't care about a Ph.D. and some do.  And many will hire an M.S. (with or without any time spent in a Ph.D. program), though some won't.

We've certainly hired people who left a Ph.D. program with just an M.S. after changing their mind.  I don't see this as an obstacle for industry, at least in computer software.

In other disciplines, who knows?


Publishing PhD thesis at another university due to not being able to afford high publishing costs? Would it ever occur, historically, that a PhD student could not obtain his degree from a university due to the high costs of publishing his thesis, such that he would have to publish it at another university and get his degree there instead?

Emphatically, I don't see how this could happen in any subject in the U.S., nor, to my knowledge, in Europe, though I understand that there, in some cases, the actual work can be viewed as somewhat disconnected from a university.

But the point is that, in most subjects in the U.S., for example, one is not required to "publish" one's thesis in any fashion that would incur great expense. A handful of required copies, often printed nearly-for-free, and everything else is optional. Not "page costs" to journals, for example.

Further, in the U.S., it would be essentially impossible to "change universities" for any reason whatsoever, without re-doing many required activities, time-in-residency, and such. So whatever other advantages, there'd be something like a two-year delay, tuition, other things.

I really think that the question's hypotheses are iffy, possibly due to a misunderstanding of how things work. Certainly in the U.S., most likely in Europe, and I'd be surprised to hear that the questions implicit assumptions made sense anywhere in the world (though I'd certainly be interested to hear about such a thing).


APA citation of a published interview I am strugging to find a consistent answer on how to correctly reference a chapter in a book, that is an interview. (The book in question is avaliable as PDF here)

The book is edited by two authors who interviewing one person per chapter. I sometimes quote the interviewers (the book editors), sometimes the interviewee.

I have seen various ways of referencing in this situation.

A) Interviewee as author - which feels right when the interviewee is quoted, but wrong when the quote refers to the question.

  Barad, K. (2012). Interview with Karen Barad. In R. Dolphijn and I.
  van der Tuin (Eds.), New materialism: Interviews & cartographies (1.
  ed, pp. 48–70). Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press.

B) Interviewers as authors - which feels right, but when using more than 1 interview adds up as multiple citations plus disguises the interviewee in in-text citation.

(Dolphijn & Tuin, 2012a)
(Dolphijn & Tuin, 2012b)

  Dolphijn, R. & Tuin, I. van der. (2012a). Interview with Rosi
  Braidotti. In R. Dolphijn and I. van der Tuin (Eds.), New materialism:
  Interviews & cartographies (1. ed, pp. 19–37). Ann Arbor, MI: Open
  Humanities Press.

  Dolphijn, R. & Tuin, I. van der. (2012b). Interview with Karen Barad.
  In R. Dolphijn and I. van der Tuin (Eds.), New materialism: Interviews
  & cartographies (1. ed, pp. 48–70). Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities
  Press.

C) Using all authors involved. I have seen this in other author's references but I have not found any guideline that suggests doing this.

(Barad et al., 2012)

  Barad, K., Dolphijn, R. & Tuin, I. van der. (2012). Interview with
  Rosi Braidotti. In R. Dolphijn and I. van der Tuin (Eds.), New
  materialism: Interviews & cartographies (1. ed, pp. 19–37). Ann Arbor,
  MI: Open Humanities Press.

The voice of the author probably needs to be identified in-text, but which of these 3 bibliography versions is correct APA?

According to the APA guidance on handling interviews, if it is an interview not done by you found in a standard source (book chapter, in your case) then you follow the normal formatting for that source (book chapter if you are summarizing the whole interview; book as a whole if you are taking quotes from the interview with matching citation in-text that denotes speaker of quote).

With regards to the book chapter formatting in this case involving multiple people (interviewer, interviewee, etc.), the APA style blog has all the details on how to capture all of the different authors in the case of a book chapter.  Most of these details apply to the idea of multiple "authors" in the book.  Interviewees wouldn't be classified as authors (i.e., they aren't listed in the front matter of the book as authors), so you don't need to worry about that in this case.

For your specific case, I would do the reference as the whole book, not individual chapters, and not listing the authors as editors as they are credited as writing the whole book in its front matter, and not listing the names of the interviewees in the reference itself (as explained in the APA guidance links):

  Dolphijn, R., & Tuin, I. van der. (2012). New materialism: Interviews & cartographies (1st ed.). Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press.

Then, I would do the in-text citations in a manner that highlights the speaker of the quotes and the location in the book:

  As stated by Rosi Braidotti, "[insert quote from interview here]" (Dolphijn & Tuin, 2012, Chapter 1, p. [insert single page number of quote]).

When you are quoting the authors of the book, not the interviewee, the in-text citation should just be:

  "[insert quote from authors here]" (Dolphijn & Tuin, 2012, p. [insert single page number of quote]).

In this manner, you keep your reference style consistent with the standard APA book reference style and you clarify the speaker of each quote using the in-text citation, which is the recommended APA method.  You don't want to cite the whole chapter in either case because the result would not specify the specific page where the quote was found.  You would only cite the whole chapter if you were summarizing the chapter's insights as a whole.


Publishing PhD Student's Provisional Report Our PhD students have to complete an interim provisional report during their first year. This report usually comprises a good literature review, a statement of the problem the student will address in their remaining time, and any results to date.

Would it be acceptable to publish -- with the student's permission -- the provisional report? It is unlikely to be find a high-impact journal for such a work, so the report is likely to be published on, say, the Department's website.

No, I don't think it's a good idea, for reasons that vary with the student's status.

Current students: by releasing information about  a student's work in progress, you make it easier for some other researcher to pick up the same project, and complete and publish it before your student ("scooping" them). This will make it more difficult, or impossible, for your student to publish their work, as it will no longer be novel - a potentially serious career impediment. Even experienced researchers tend to avoid publicly discussing their work before it is ready to publish, and for grad students the risk is greater, as they probably work more slowly than the average researcher and are less likely to win a race.
Former students who graduated: the provisional report is redundant, as a more complete and polished version of the same information is in their dissertation. They would probably prefer that this higher-quality version be the only one publicly available.
Former students who did not graduate: would probably prefer not to publicize the fact that they were a student in your department but did not receive a degree.

In principle, if a student is aware of these issues and freely consents, without pressure from you,  to posting the preliminary report, it might be okay. But it's still questionable in my view, as a graduate student may not have enough experience in academia to fully comprehend the issues involved and accurately evaluate the risks. I'd err on the side of paternalism and not even suggest it.

I think it would be okay to make the reports accessible within your department, so that faculty know what students are working on, and so that students currently writing such reports have access to examples. But I would not share them with the outside world.


As an editor, what measures can I implement to prevent image/photo manipulation? There's been a case of alleged data manipulation in a recent Nano Letters paper (initial report here; now-retracted paper):

You can surely make your own opinion on whether the images have been digitally modified, given the above snapshots (look for gray rectangles around the rods); I was careful to write “alleged” because the paper’s PI threatened legal action against the blogger who reported the issue.

Now, this case lead to a large number of comments here and there about whose responsibility it was to catch this issue (reviewers or editor). I tend to agree that the reviewer should probably have caught it, but this lead me to wonder:

As editor of a scholarly journal, what measures can I implement to prevent image/photo manipulation? And what about data manipulation? Organic Letters has made the news two months ago when they hired a in-house data analyst. Is that the way to go? Are there other measures one could take to reduce the threat of image and data manipulation?

I think a search term for this type of manipulation detection is image forensics.  Matthias Kirchner: Notes on Digital Image Forensics and
Counter-Forensics may be a starting point.

What can you do?

I think a first step is to communicate clearly what image manipulations* are acceptable and which are not:

is it acceptable to adjust brightness and contrast?
correct unequal illumination?
whitelight correction based not on a whitelight measurement but on parts of the image?
digital sharpening or other enhancement filters?
where's the border between an inset picture and a fraudulent manipulation?

and so on.

Who should detect this?

I agree that the reviewer should have commented and asked about the pictures above, however my experience as reviewer is that I often get pictures in ridiculously low resolution (I comment on that). I'm not sure, but I think that the publishers may ask for high resolution pictures when they spot such problems in the production process. However, that would mean that the reviewers may not have seen the actual picture that is used for printing.

* manipulation in the data analysis sense: calculations that change the information content (e.g. enhance contrast), and cannot be easily undone (as opposed to a transformation where the back transformation is easily possible, e.g. rotation), not in the sense of fraud.


Awaiting AE Recommendation to Awaiting AE Assignment Paper just went to this after review. Any idea what this means in terms of the paper's status at this point?

Odds are this means the AE changed. This could be because the original AE declined the assignment, resigned from the editorial board, is too busy to make a decision, and so on.

See also this question: Manuscript status changed from “Reviews completed” to “Editor assigned”


Slides for a brief presentation at a PhD Interview I am soon attending a PhD Interview (Condensed matter Theory). The interview is divided in two steps: a first interview with a selection comitee, where I have to prepeare a presentation 6 minutes long, and a second, 1.30 hours long interview with possible PIs.

The short (6' - 5 slides) presentation is supposed to deal with:

Academic Background
Previous Research Experience
Presentation of Master Project/Thesis
Motivations for this application
Career goals in your future

Slides are explicitly required.

My questions are:

I do not feel confident prepearing a slide on "Motivations for pursuing a PhD" or even future goals. I have very strong reasons, but writing those down seem... childish/stupid to me. Should I just not make slides about those things, but nevertheless talk about them? (The field use a very flexible framework that can be applied to many other problems. This means that even if I focus on one problem I can always talk about much more... I was a RA for the last 6 months and lived with other PhD students, so I know a bit already what it is like...)
I want to do 1 slide on my B.Sc. Thesis and one on my M.Sc. thesis. Of course I will be briefly presenting the kind of work I did, and tools I used, but what should I put along a short list in the slide? The fancy graphic from my thesis that I'll have no time to explain? The hamiltonian that I was studying? Or a nice drawing giving a divulgative, simplistic picture of the process I was studying? Or make them smaller and all of those 3? (they would fit)

About 2.: Since I will have almost no time to explain much about the details of my previous work, intuition tells me I would be better dropping drawings/graphs out. Yet, since I am trying to "sell myself" to the comitee, those things might be fancy and nice to add.

Any suggestion would be very welcome.

1) Remember working on a PhD is a commitment and there will be times when you will want to give up so the question is "What will keep you going?"

Motivation is a key factor in whether or not we stick to a task. This is the reason why they are asking you for this slide in particular. As an interviewer, I would like to know first if your motivation is intrinsic or extrinsic and then what specifically moves you to progress through a task or pursue this field.

2) Presenting in front of an audience when "something is at stake" can be nerve-racking. Your slides should be a way to quickly remind you what you need to discuss in case you block out. However, for the viewer the slides must be engaging and informative but not overwhelming. Even your thesis slides don't need to be overly technical because the interviewers are interested in whether you can present your findings to both technical and non-technical audiences, alike. I would recommend providing a high level overview first sprinkled with some technical terms but no details then as time permits elaborate increasing the technical level and vocabulary as you progress.


Possibility to supervise a student abroad? I am a student interested in doing research in the field of (transcriptomics) that is lacking in my country. There is no possibility for me to travel in the next four years due to obligatory military service.

I am concerned about emailing some researchers in the field and ask for a remote supervision (for example working with a postdoc on one of his loose end projects and communicating Online).

Does this sound good? Have you done it before?

PS. The question isn't about opinions please post your experiences if you supervised someone abroad and the academic situation e.g. is it accepted by your institute? Does it require paperwork? Is it even possible?

I was supervised remotely for my Master's dissertation, so yes, this can and does happen in academia. My situation was similar to yours: there was no one working in the field in which I really wanted to specialise at my university.

My supervisor and I communicated via email and had a Skype meeting once a week (this is the closest you can get to an in-person meeting, so I would highly recommend doing it, or at least supplement emails with phone calls). I also visited him in person twice during the project (relatively easy since we were both in the same country, about 5 hours apart by train).

In my case, it was very informally organised; the course coordinator for the dissertation agreed I could have a supervisor from another university and I had a second supervisor at my own institution who I updated regularly on my progress. There was some talk of my having to pay tuition fees to my supervisor's university but in the end this didn't happen.

However, depending on the specific rules and procedures of your or the supervisor's institutions, there may be formal paperwork to submit. There's probably someone you can ask about this, e.g. the department head or administrator.

Good luck!


How can you read an excessive number of pages in a short amount of time? I'm taking 3 online classes. Each has a book I have to read. Each chapter is around 100 pages long in all of them, and I have a week to read them. I'm not able to do some of my assignments, because I'm having to spend so much time reading. I'm having to read so much I'm not even absorbing all the material, and I'm starting to get a head ache from doing nothing but reading nonstop all day.

I'm losing my mind and I don't know what to do. I just don't see how I can absorb that much information so quickly. If you want to know what my classes are, they're World Religion and two programming classes. Yeah. Over the course of five days, I have to read 60 pages per day! And yes, I have to do it in five days, because otherwise I won't have enough time to do any of my assignments.

One trick is to find out what the prof wants you to get out of the book, and just scan the pages for anything relevant.  You can skip over paragraphs that introduce ideas you already know or present ideas that aren't relevant to the course.

Another trick is to use Amazon books to do this for you... do a search through the book for course key words and just read the sections around those words.

If you just need to learn the subject, and it's impossible to apply tricks for this, prioritize your time: study the table of contents, line by line.  Read the introduction and one chapter from somewhere in the middle.  Read the conclusion.

At the same time, read the Wikipedia articles for the subject of each book... or for the book itself, if it's well-known enough.

When you go to answer homework using any of these tricks, you will "know the book" well-enough to go back and find the answer you need somewhere in the pages.

Unfortunately I can't say whether these methods will get you anywhere: perhaps these courses really do just require more time.


Problems in making a submitted paper available to interested fellow researchers This summer, I present a paper at two conferences. I submitted the paper to the conferences earlier this year, then improved it significantly and submitted it to a journal where it is now under review.

I now presented/am going to present my paper with the updated contents, in the form more or less identical to what I submitted to the journal (i.e., no differences that would be visible in a 15-minute presentation), because it makes no sense to present the old version with certain weakpoints.

Now, I seem to have sparked interest in fellow researchers that came to me after my presentation. One wants her Master student's thesis to include a large, comparative literature review, for which she would love to receive the full version of my paper.
The other is researching in the same area and would like to "just" read my paper, without having mentioned any "specific" usage.

Can I send to them the most updated version of my paper, in the form that is currently submitted and under review at the journal? I understand that me distributing the paper when I actually want the journal to publish it and distribute it for me could be a problem.
Should I disclose this to the journal? Their guidelines for authors mention only submissions to other journals explicitly.

Furthermore, is it common practice or perhaps risky to send out relatively finished papers that are sent out to a journal? I would overlay a watermark over all pages, "do not circulate" or similar, is this reasonable?

One of the two people asked me if I submitted already, and I told her it is under review. I was not sure how to interpret that she asked this question.

I don't see any problem with sending the paper to interested colleagues. This actually a good thing and if you then mention that this is still work in progress and might occur changes in the final text, it is no problem. Additionally why do you want to indicate that they should not circulate your paper? It is still your own text and research and I guess, you want that as many people as possible can read your paper?! But by saying that they should not circulate the paper to other colleagues, this sounds strange to me (and probably, they do it anyway to some extent ;)  You can state in your CV or on your homepage that you have presented your work at conference X and that your paper Y is under review in Journal A and if your work get published, you can send the persons who got your previous version of the paper the link to the final version of journal article.  EDIT: my take on the argument above by  darij grinberg: Even if you send your earlier draft to the respective reviewer, it is not your fault and thus, not your problem that you should worry about. She/He could either indicate a conflict or interests because he or she knows you or he/she just observes the improvements of your paper and will give you further feedback.


Is it common to make seniority distinctions between coauthors of a paper in math? Twice now, I've read a paper written by a prominent researcher and some other "younger" researchers, e.g. instead of being superstars they're merely professors, I guess. In the text, he is referred to as the "senior author", e.g. in sentences that read like "In [4], the senior proved this result which is relevant to us because..."

I was a bit shocked, to be honest, essentially because I had never seen something like this in (pure) mathematics. In my mind there was always the implicit assumption that all others contributed approximately equally to the paper, which explained the alphabetical ordering of authors in (almost) all papers.

How common is this? Have you seen this before, and if so, how often?

Is it common to make seniority distinctions between coauthors of a paper in math?

This is uncommon. However it seems less unusual to refer to something one of the authors did, e.g.:

  In a previous result [2] by one of the authors, it is shown that ...

or:

  This builds on prior work of the first author [3], namely, ...

As  Andrés E. Caicedo says in the comments, I would assume that this is just a way to refer to one of the authors, similar to the above statements. That is, this is not a way to imply that they are more important, or contributed more to the paper. (If anything I would assume the senior author contributed a little less :) ) It may be a small gesture of respect, formality, or acknowledgement to the mentor of the work, but nothing more.

  In my mind there was always the implicit assumption that all others contributed approximately equally to the paper

Yes, this is indeed the implicit assumption. Moreover, referring to an author as the "senior" author does not really contradict this.


What is the best way to schedule an office hour appointment with big name professor? What is the best way to schedule an office hour appointment with big-name professor?

Directly email him.
Email his secretary, asking for an appointment.
Talk in person causally first and ask his preference (if possible).

I am in a school where some professors do not have a regular office hour, and occasionally, my email is ignored (or replied three weeks later) even if the email is short. Almost all of them have a secretary, who knows the professor’s schedule completely.

By all means, contact the admin assistant and be extra super nice and polite because they have more power than you might think. Even if they don't schedule appointments, they'll know the best way to reach him.


How to format citations for proposals with a 5-page limit I’m submitting a proposal that has a 5 page limit (12 point font!) for EVERYTHING (figures, citations, tables) and I’m wondering how best to format my citations to save space.  No specified citation format is given.

What I’ve tried to do is abbreviate common words, use initials for the journal titles (I provide a key), drop “19” and “20” from the year, and pile everyone after the 1st author into “et al”.  In some cases, I’m dropping words, eg, if they come after a colon.  My goal is to provide enough info to indicate what the paper is about and that it could be found using Google.  I put it all in 2 columns.

I’m worried that this is getting ugly  and that I might annoy reviewers that are used to a certain format.

What I currently do:

3)Doherty et al. ‘02. Surv. of resident birds in a frag. forested landscape. Eco 83.

4)Lawson et al ‘15 Env. variation and pop. responses to global change. EL.

One option is what Science uses, eg
D. G. Ainley, L. B. Spear, S. G. Allen, Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 137, 1 (1996).

But I’ve never liked this b/c the title gets completely dropped.

Another options would be to glob everything together like this
1) Barraquand et al. 2013. When can env. variability benefit pop. growth? Counterintuitive effects of nonlinearities. Theor. Pop.Bio 89:1–11. 2) Black et al. 2012. Stochastic formulation of eco. models & their applications. TREE 27 3) Bled et al. 2013. Modeling trends from North American Breeding Bird Survey data : A spatially explicit approach PLoS 8. 4) Caswell. 2006. Matrix Population models.
5) Clutton-Brock et al. 2010. Individuals & pop: The role of long-term, individual-based studies of animals in eco & evo. TREE 25:562–573.

A final option is to be more conventional in the citation list and just remove citations and content from the proposal so that it all fits.

As a writer of (and occasional reviewer of) applications following this format - UK BBSRC grants - the most common approach I see is 'glob everything together', although personally I prefer to use short-format Science-style references. It comes down to personal preference really. It is so common to use the 'glob' approach that you won't be explicitly penalised for it by a reviewer, but as a reviewer I might subliminally be 'happier' reviewing the more legible version. Admittedly you can't fit as many references in but I can't remember ever having seen any application which I was inclined to mark down because too few references were provided.

(Disclaimer: this is based entirely on experience with BBSRC, other RCUK councils may differ...)


When does a PhD student officially stop being a PhD student? When does a PhD student officially stop being a PhD student? To be more specific, are you no longer a PhD student when:

you have submitted your PhD (and thus stopped working on it),
been approved for the degree, or
graduated?

I have looked on the Internet and on Stack Exchange and I cannot find a clear answer to this question. On Academia Stack Exchange, one question asks something similar but from such a different perspective that it provides no help. While I know I can ask some administrative body in the university (and have), I remain sufficiently confused about the general consensus on this matter that I would appreciate answers from experts here.

I have a personal interest in knowing the answer to this question as I am involved in a society which is only open to current students and unsure as to when I will become ineligible.

As I say in the comments and djechlin says in his answer, one's official student status is entirely determined by the institution in which the student is enrolled.  You can ask them at any given time whether you are a student, and they'll tell you.  If you want to know when you will lose your student status assuming that you complete all the requirements and paperwork for the PhD, they should be able to tell you that.  This won't have any cosmic significance though: in practice, you are probably asking them about how the computers in the registrar's office deal with the boundaries between one semester, the next and/or the intervening summer.

In terms of your intended need -- i.e., continued membership in a society -- I suspect that you may be taking the "official student status" more seriously than others will and thereby worrying yourself needlessly.  I can't think of any society that wouldn't take the student's own word as to the completion of their own student status, even allowing a reasonable grace period.  For instance, there are professional societies in my field (mathematics) which students can join for special rates (sometimes free).  In these cases membership is determined annually and the renewal process takes place shortly after a given academic year is underway.  So if you get your PhD in, say, June, then you get to keep the student benefits until, say, September or October.

A big exception to the above is immigration issues.  For that: yes, ask the university for the precise date at which your student status expires!


How does a book chapter in an edited volume compare to a peer reviewed paper? I have been invited to write a book chapter in an edited volume, relating to my field of work. I have a paper ready that I have not published and was planning to submit it soon. So, I am wondering is it worth to use that article for the book chapter, as both are on the same topic, or is it in a sense a waste of a journal paper, as book chapters might not be seen to have the same academic value? What should I do? Should I, instead, send the ready paper to a journal for a review and write a book chapter, based on a couple papers I have published, for instance?

Generally speaking, where does a book chapter stand? Is it something between a conference paper and a full-fledged journal article? Or, does does it have the same value as either of the above-mentioned publication types, in your opinion?

Like a lot of things in academia, I think this will heavily depend on what discipline you're in. In computer science for example, while there's nothing wrong with a book chapter, a paper at a conference or in a journal is typically more valuable.

The reason normally given is that papers are peer reviewed (as compared to edited), so they are somehow more 'valid'.

Having said that, there's always myriad exceptions. Writing a whole book that everyone uses is much better than a few papers. Later in the career, book chapters perhaps gain value as they're a mark of respect and prestige (once you've already proven your research ability).

As a counter-point though, from my limited experience, it seems that book chapters are much more common in bioinformatics and operations research, and thus are viewed more highly.

Talk to fellow academics in your area, their opinion will be the best guide.


Why do PhD students volunteer at conferences? Other than the possibility of waiving registration fees, What is the objective of graduate students volunteering at conferences?
For instance, I am considering volunteering at IJCAI these days and wish to do it at least once (never done it before) but do not really have  a clear motivation for it.

tl;dr No registration fees, networking and attending relevant sessions.

There has been some talk and background informationabout this already. See this, this, this and this for some background. With this background, IMHO, the primary reasons why PhD students should be volunteers for major conferences in their line at least once are:

First up, no registration fees. Yay ! Primary reason one.
Networking with other PhD student volunteers who are likely to be PhD students in similar departments working on similar stuff. For instance, most student volunteers at CHI 2013 are PhD students from HCI/CS/IS/ischools working on HCI stuff. Its great to meet with peers and bond with them. [Yay for student volunteer party !]
Possible networking with relevant faculty. This could be someone from the organizing committee or the program committee or someone else who you come in close contact with for the duration of the conference. There might be a certain someone who is a good researcher in your line and whom you might want to keep in touch with in the future. Getting in touch as a student volunteer in a conference might be one such strategy.
Picking and choosing conference sessions/tracks to attend. You could, with some dexterity be the student volunteer in charge of a track or a session or a panel which you are really really interested in watching. As a student volunteer pretty much, you stand and assist and you do get one of the best seats in the house, albeit by standing. :)


My friends wanted to kick out our lecturer At my university, there is a lecturer that my friends dislike. I think he is a genius and really knows algorithms and programming. He is easily accessible and will talk with everyone. However, some of my friends dislike him because his teaching method. He often gives difficult questions and we had troubles on his exam. They created a petition to remove him. I hope he is not kicked out by them. What should I do?

If the instructor has issues with teaching then hopefully this will be brought up to the department and they can work with him to improve his teaching.

As far as your question about what you should do, just continue through the course as you would any other. If at any time you feel like the instructor isn't providing you an adequate education, then try to have a meeting with him before politely bringing it up with the department.


What is the meaning of pre-doctoral program? I do not know the exact meaning of pre-doctoral?
Can someone be a predoctoral in university X and then goes to university Y to start Ph.D?

In some parts of the world, this is the term used for a PhD program.

Before you obtain your doctorate (i.e. PhD), you are a pre-doctoral fellow or a doctoral candidate. After you have obtained it, you may become a post-doctoral fellow.

Example: http://www.ral.uni-leipzig.de/en/home/postdocs/pre-doc-award/

In other parts of the world, "predoctoral" may refer to the period before a student enrolls in a PhD programme.

On a related note, the term "PhD" is much abused these days with students who have not yet obtained a PhD being referred to as "PhDs". This is quite inaccurate as they have not yet obtained the degree and are thus not "doctors". They are a "PhD students", i.e. studying towards obtaining a doctorate.


How fungible are personnel salary allocations in an NIH grant? I'm preparing an R01 for the NIH in which I allocate salary to myself (the PI) and two co-Is, as well as to non-key personnel including a postdoc. However, in actual practice, I think there is a good chance that I'll prefer to do myself the work that might have been allocated to a postdoc (e.g., if I prefer not to hire a postdoc because I don't find the right match).
If the grant is funded, would I be allowed to simply reallocate salary from the postdoc to myself (with a reduction in FTE)?

Generally I think yes, but definitely talk with your institution/department's grant staff about this even if you're still in the writing phase - they'll be your best friends.
For example (from NIAID but I don't think this is Institute-specific):
https://www.niaid.nih.gov/grants-contracts/putting-effort-your-application

Don't worry if your effort changes over the course of your grant. Reviewers know that can happen, and NIAID allows you to change your effort as your work progresses (with some limitations we'll discuss in a future issue).

One of the exceptions is substantial reductions in effort for key personnel:
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/nihgps/html5/section_8/8.1.2_prior_approval_requirements.htm

A significant change in the status including but not limited to withdrawal from the project; absence for any continuous period of 3 months or more; reduction of the level of effort devoted to project by 25 percent or more from what was approved in the initial competing year award.

You'll have some opportunity to firm up the budget if your award is funded and during the extensions process.


Is it normal for a Professor to make unsolicited contact with potential Masters students via LinkedIn? My friend recently moved to Canada and she holds a BSc from an overseas university. Her school wasn't world-famous but wasn't bad either. For the past year she'd been studying English and preparing for the GRE to get ready for admission into a North American university.

Apparently there is this professor in the US who'd found her on LinkedIn and is interested in having her as one of his grad students. He has been very encouraging, even keeping in touch via Skype while my friend was on vacation. He's told her that if she gets a good score on the GRE he will be able to admit her. He has also made promises of grants.

My friend is married but she is young and quite attractive. While she had a decent GPA her university wasn't all that amazing. Also her command of English isn't very good. All of this is making me suspicious about the intentions of this professor.

I have worked with some very nice professors but none of them took time on a regular basis to voluntarily stay in touch with a prospective student. I could understand why one might look for bright and amazing students on LinkedIn, but the fact of the matter is my friend did not have her full academic records published on her profile (just a few examples of her projects and volunteer work, but no grades or GPA).

Do you find this scenario normal? I am having a hard time giving this professor the benefit of the doubt.

The Linkedin channel is unusual, but not suspicious per se. Does your friend have common connections with that professor? If that is the case, she might have popped up in the "people you may know" list that he gets. Or he did a keyword search. The one relevant thing with Linkedin is that he saw a — presumably flattering — picture of her.

  He's told her that if she gets a good score on the GRE he will be able to admit her.

On that point again, I'd give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it's a wording issue and what was really meant was that with a good GRE score, admission in the local program is likely.

  He has also made promises of grants.

This is rather standard for grad students to have their tuition and stipend covered by a grant.

  keeping in touch via Skype

This, this. I have a hard time finding sound reasons for a professor to invest time and effort into communicating with a potential grad student, who did not even apply, by videoconferencing. This being said, Skype offers free international calls so it might be just for this reason.

So, there are sketchy aspects to that story, but nothing decisive. If the position is really of interest to her then maybe she should try investigating further. For example contacting the local graduate program admin and ask about the admission process, ask the alleged funding body for grant criteria, etc. in order to have multiple channels of communications. If she sees mismatches in the prof's story and theirs, that could give an additional warning.


How can I adapt my scientific writing for the modern web? Papers written for conferences and journals are today mainly available as PDFs. There are several usability issues with the PDF format, one of which is that it is not especially well suited for the modern way of reading on screens. Unlike e-book formats such as epub or mobi, it doesn't adapt to a for the user desired text size, and is especially broken for e-ink readers that cannot rely on zooming and swiftly moving around as you scan for referenced figures and tables.

Thus, I would like to contribute to the death of the PDF to the best of my ability. All my scientific writing is already done in either Markdown or LaTeX which can then be exported using Pandoc to several different formats, but this only works as long as you don't try to use anything beyond the most basic of features in LaTeX. I guess I could in this manner upload all of my papers to a blog for general consumption, but I'm not sure this is the most appropriate way. One problem is that I won't actually use a lot of the power the web brings, e.g. direct links to cited sources, without requiring extra effort in the conversion step.

I am sure I'm not the first one thinking about this. Are there already people doing this, and if so how? Is there an ongoing discussion about the future of academic publishing in the age of the modern web?

For journals, at least, many now publish online in HTML.  This includes many large cross-field publications including well-known venues such as Nature and PLOS ONE,
to name only a few of many.  Your paper will generally be available in PDF as well, but the default that the journal steers people to is generally HTML.

An action you might then take would be to choose to submit only to journals with HTML publication of this sort.


Would I be disqualified from academic positions in mathematics if my PhD is in cognitive science? I'm currently working on a PhD in cognitive science, but my research and interests straddle the line between cognitive science and mathematics. Right now, I am most interested in pursuing an academic career, and I've begun looking at job openings for postdocs and assistant professorships just to see what's out there (fully realizing those exact positions will be long gone by the time I graduate). I noticed that some positions listed in statistics/mathematics programs seem to fit my overall interests and skills; however, they almost universally state that a PhD in mathematics or statistics is required to apply.

When the time comes to apply for positions, should I even bother applying to the ones where my PhD is not technically among the ones listed on the job opening? Obviously, if my PhD was in a completely different field than the position in question, my chances of getting it would be low. However, what about positions where my research is within the scope of the field in question, even though my PhD is not (e.g., my PhD is in cognitive science, my research deals with statistical approaches to study cognition, and the position is in a statistics department)? Would I be disqualified on a technicality?

In mathematics in particular, the question that search committees will have about you is your willingness and ability to teach a variety of undergraduate mathematics courses.  If you have significant experience teaching main stream undergraduate mathematics courses, then you should make sure to highlight this in your application.  If you have no such experience, then it will be a significant negative factor in your application.


Adding a short (and interesting) observation to a submitted paper About six months ago, I submitted a paper for publication. The paper is somewhat long and technical, and I believe that only a small number of researchers will bother reading it (nevertheless, I do believe that my results are nice). I still haven't heard from the referee, but I tend to believe that the paper will be accepted for publication.

A few days ago, I observed that the main results from my paper provide a completely new proof of an old classical result in my field (actually, they provide a new and significant extension of that old result). The proof of this observation is only one paragraph long.

My question: How should I publish this new observation?
I can add it to my old paper and resubmit it, but even if it's not too late to do so, I'm afraid that my result won't get noticed (as the long paper will only attract a small number of specialists). On the other hand, uploading a one page long paper to arxiv might make me look funny, and I don't know if any reasonable journal will consider publishing that ridiculously short note.

Relevant biographical information: I'm currently a postdoc. I want to get a decent TT job, so (sadly) it's kind of important for me to impress people in my field.

I can add it to my old paper and resubmit it, but even if it's not too late to do so, I'm afraid that my result won't get noticed (as the long paper will only attract a small number of specialists)

It is certainly not too late to do so -- you haven't even received a first referee report yet.  I suggest that you add the extension of the old, classical result to the present paper.  There are two aspects here:

Rewriting the paper:

If you just tack the new result / proof on at the end of a long paper, indeed it might not get noticed.  So don't do that.  Rewrite the abstract and introduction of the paper so that your new result / proof gets much more prominence: if the deduction is only a paragraph, you could even do that in the introduction.  This is a great way of selling the results of a long, technical paper!

Resubmitting the paper:

You could either send a new version of the paper to the editor and ask them to send it to the referee or you could wait for a referee report.  In my opinion, either one should probably work here: the changes are not going to bother the referee, and if the paper gets accepted, neither the editor nor the referee is going to be bothered by a new version with the same technical guts but with superficial rewriting so as to permit a nice new application.  What I would say is: since you know how to improve your paper and it hasn't been accepted yet, the smartest move seems to be giving the referee access to the improved version before they make up their mind...if the editor is on board with that.

So: I would suggest writing a new version, sending it to the editor, and seeing what they think.


Who gets accepted to top universities to do a PhD (STEM fields)? I would like to ask what are some general requirements, level of know-how, etc. that students must fulfil/have to get accepted in the top universities? I'm particularly interested in the STEM fields.

While I understand this varies per position, I would assume that this can be answered with either statistical information or experience.

For example, assume that a student has good grades, a publication or two, 1-2 letters of recommendation. Any chances?

This probably varies by field.  I went into an Engr/CS department.  I will say that grad school apps are a bit of a crap-shoot at top schools.  There are certainly "talent picks" (e.g., people so amazing many schools would grab them without knowing where they'd fit), but in my experience top programs often have labs that have particular needs and "draft" PhD candidates who might fill them.  If you expect to be funded with a stipend through grad school (and in my opinion, in STEM, you should be), somebody in the faculty needs to step up and allocate their limited grant funding on a candidate within the first year.

Since your tuition is going to be paid by one of the profs on the faculty, there's obviously going to be some level of preference toward students whose interests and skills match their needs.  Hence, part of your likelihood of being accepted (and most of your probability of being funded) depends on who will have slots for PhD students and how those slots match up with your interests/skills.  Or, in other words, you need to convince somebody that you are worth at least $70k over 4-6 years (in reality, more than that, as professors invest their time in training you to be useful).

In that light, you're really not applying for a "top grad school."  You are actually applying to one or two labs in a grad school... with no idea if they can even take you on board.  In my opinion, your statement in your application should directly reflect a lab (or two) that you would want to do work with.  The whole remainder of your materials help  support the claim that you would be an asset to those labs.  This also means that you generally need to apply to quite a few grad schools if you want to get into a top one.  Unless you know a program closely already, there is no way to know who has funding coming in, who is on sabbatical, or a hundred other things that could sink an otherwise solid application.

Obviously, good grades, good GRE scores in relevant areas, and prior research experience are all your first foot in the door.  But none of them are enough, on their own.  You need to write well (e.g., have a good statement), have great independent work ethic (e.g., leading teams, not just working on them), and your letters of reference need to be excellent.  You'll also need three letters of reference at almost any top school.  I don't think I applied to a single place that took less than that (though that was some years ago, so it could even be up to 4 in some programs!).  If you can't find three profs who will speak highly of you, you're in trouble.  If having a personal reference vouch for you even crosses your mind, don't even bother applying to a top program.

Finally, if you're applying to MIT or a few other places, you had better keep track of all the texts that you have ever used.  They ask you to list them.  Which is a huge pain to try to rustle up 3 years later, for the record.


Asking for Co-First Authorship So recently, my PI submitted a paper that I and another graduate student have worked on for the past year.  The graduate student and I contributed equally on this project, in creating figures, getting data, writing the manuscript, etc., and he agrees as well. However, the first authorship is going to my partner, but I think it would be more fair if we had co-first authorship.
I want to bring this up and ask my PI, but I'm not sure what she'll say. How should I explain my situation to her?

I want to bring this up and ask my PI, but I'm not sure what she'll say. How should I explain my situation to her?

You're thinking about this wrong. It's not the PI's decision. You don't have to convince her, as she has no greater role in establishing authorship than any other, except of course by being the mediator between her own students.
Everyone on the author list has to agree to the ordering (and co-first-authorship). If the present first author agrees you should share first authorship, that's the big hurdle. I would suggest having him email all authors saying something like:

Monolo and I have discussed their contributions, and we would like to submit this paper as co-first-authors.

No one is likely to object, unless you're trying to jump from seventh author to first.


How do I cite / write about something someone has just said during a presentation? I once attended a scientific conference with a few hundred participants. There, the CEO of Frobcorp, Inc.1 gave a keynote speech on what their product is about and how they accomplish certain things.

There is one piece of information that was mentioned during the keynote which is quite important to me. I would like to include it in a paper that I'm writing. (Or in my thesis at a later stage.)

Now, this being a keynote, there were just a few slides with stock photos on them, so I don't have a physical reference to what was said there. I do however know that hundreds of others have heard the same piece of information (unless they were just checking e-mails during the talk).

How should I include this?

Does a sentence like the following make sense, or could it be dismissed for lacking a reference?

  As explained by the CEO of Frobcorp, Inc., during a keynote speech at the ... conference, they do ... to improve their Frobber™ product.

I of course understand that this may depend on whatever field of science this is going to be published in, what the conference or journal is, and what my supervisor thinks.

1 Yes, this is completely made-up.

I'd use the form for symposia, adjusted slightly to reflect that it's a keynote speech with only one speaker.

For the APA style, see the second block in this blog entry:

  Symposia

  A symposium is a bit like a live-action edited book: Several authors come together under the leadership of the chair to pool their knowledge about a topic.

  Krinsky-McHale, S. J., Zigman, W. B., & Silverman, W. (2012, August).
              Are neuropsychiatric symptoms markers of prodromal Alzheimer’s
       disease in adults with
         Down syndrome?
   In W. B. Zigman (Chair),
       Predictors of mild cognitive impairment, dementia,
         and mortality in
       adults with Down syndrome. Symposium conducted at the meeting
       of the
         American Psychological Association, Orlando, FL.


How are letters of recommendation handled when they come from a member of the admissions committee? I've asked three professors from the school I did my undergraduate studies at to write letters of recommendation for me.  However, one of the schools I'm applying to is that same school.
In other words, lets say I went to Harvard as an undergraduate, asked three Harvard professors for letters, and then applied to Harvard's graduate program.

It seems kind of weird to me that my letter writers will review the letters they wrote for me as part of the committee review of my application.  And I know at least two of them are for sure on the committee, the third I'm not sure about.

Undoubtedly, this is something that happens all the time, but I was curious how this situation is handled by the committee.

Of course, there are more committee members than the three who wrote recommendation letters for me who don't know me as a student as well, so it gives them a chance to learn about me.

I'm just wondering how this influences their decision, or, rather, how they can prevent it from influencing them too much.  I know being accepted won't be a guaranteed thing, but how can you not accept someone that you yourself have recommended?

I've seen this situation.  In our department all faculty vote on admission decisions (we don't have a separate committee that is delegated to make these decisions.)  The faculty who have written recommendations have typically argued in favor of admitting the students they've written recommendation letters for, but it would also not be surprising if a faculty member who recommended a student felt that other candidates were better qualified when it came time to make final decisions.

It's one thing to say "I think student A is well qualified for our graduate program and a TA." This is not inconsistent with "After reviewing all of the candidates, I feel that students B and C (with BS degrees from elsewhere) are the most deserving of the two available TA slots." or even "After discussion with other faculty members, and reading all of the recommendation letters, I've agreed that student A should not be admitted to the program."

It's important to understand that these are group decisions, and that faculty committees often operate by discussion and consensus rather than by simple vote counting- a lot can happen during such a discussion.

As an applicant, there really isn't anything that you can do about this- the faculty in the department will deal with it as they choose.


Pre-tenure faculty - should I ignore all possible troubles to get tenured? I'm a tenure-track assistant professor who started in this fall. I heard that I should not get involved in any issues or conflicts to get tenured.  However, I am unsure about this situation.
I was in a romantic relationship with a professor in the school I was a graduate student in over 7 years in Illinois.  Recently I realized that he has been double-dating with a professor in New Jersey.  Actually their relationship was over 10 years.  Both are in my study field and they are pretty well-known.
I immediately broke up with him during this COVID-19. However, he keeps all of my stuffs in his place -- mostly books and personal stuffs (total about $5,000 books) and does not pay back the costs I spent for his trip (total about $15,000).
He says "just let it go".  He threatens me that he would contact my department chair and dean not to reappoint with me for my tenure if I bring any issues regarding my stuffs and the cost he doesn't send me back as well as his double-dating.  His point is "just stop contacting him".  Actually the relationship started because he kissed me during his office hours; he asked me to meet on Saturday to talk about my research and then he took me to his place....
The most important thing to me at this point is to get tenured in my current position.  Is it wise to let it go as he insists.  Or is it better to bring an issue like contacting his department chair to report his problems?
I'd truly appreciate your response -- it is very complicated because I am pre-tenured and all in the same research field.

It is probably worth stating this up front: The relationship you describe has the appearance of an abusive relationship -- and I'm also going to say that I'm sorry you find yourself in this situation :-(
Part of abusive relationships are threats that, in many cases, can or will not actually be realized. While I don't know for sure, my best guess is that your former partner does not actually have much to gain from contacting anyone about your tenure: It would certainly reflect very poorly on them to have been in a relationship with a student, and whatever they would have to say about you would come over as poor taste and sour grapes, not deep insight in your abilities. As such, my best guess is that your former partner is not actually going to pull through with their threat, even if you moved forward with retrieving your possessions with the help of a lawyer.
The second part to keep in mind (and that is something you should definitely take pride in!): Your current department hired you for a good reason, namely that you are qualified in your work! They want you to succeed, and will support you in it. The advice to stay out of contentious topics is probably good, but your colleagues are there to help with get through personal things such as this as they have no stake in it. You will have friends in your current department, or at least people who have good intentions. You can rely on them to find a way through all of this.
My suggestion to be on the safe side would be the following. Write an email to the department head or another senior professor in the department in which you lay out the situation to make sure that it's on record before anyone might hear from your former partner. Maybe something like this:

Dear < department head >
I'd like to bring to your attention a situation that is primarily a personal matter but that might also appear in our professional lives. There is nothing for you to do at this moment, but I want this to be on the written record in case it ever comes up again.
In short, while I was at A University, I was in a relationship with professor X. The end of this relationship was contentious, and I have received threats from X as well as professor Y at B University (with whom he has apparently also had a relationship) that they would try to sabotage my career by writing to you about me.
As mentioned above, there is nothing for anyone to do at this moment. My goal is simply to ensure you know about the threat in case you do get emails from X or Y. When the time comes, in a few years, to thinking about letters of evaluation for the purposes of tenure, I will likely also request that neither X nor Y will be asked to write.
Sincerely, user128851

The point simply is to make sure the issue has been recorded in writing before anyone ever gets an email from X or Y, so that if they ever did, they can find the appropriate place for this email: The trash bin. It will also make sure that your department -- which, remember!, wants you to succeed -- will disregard anything coming from the direction of X or Y when it comes time to decide on your tenure. For example, in a faculty meeting about your case, if someone brings up that they heard bad things about you from X, the department head will say something like this: "We will need to disregard what you have just said. A few years ago, user128851 told me some personal details about her time at A university. I can't tell you what they were, but I will share that she and X had disagreements and that X threatened her. I believe that what X is now saying about her is not something we should trust." And just like this, the issue is gone -- the important point is to get out front of anything X might ever say about you.


How to most effectively get good at a new topic? I have recently had a change of interest and would like to focus on a different area within my field. That being said, I want to stress that the area happens to differ quite a bit from my current area. I am not too far in my studies, so it's not like I am changing my PhD thesis midway or anything like that.

However, I would like to know how I can most effectively get to grips with my new topic. I am obviously not completely new to it, but I have so much more knowledge in my old topic and am now worried that it will be a disadvantage, because I might be competing with people for PhD spots that have had their focus for many years and thus much better writing samples etc.

Any advice on how to become good relatively fast?

The simple answer is: Review Lectures, then read the referenced books / papers (in this order).

There are a variety of good lectures on free course websites out there. (For example on youtube or coursera.) It'll give you a good introduction and - more importantly - will tell you what is relevant to know about in this field.

If you can't find a lecture or at least slides, try to find a few (recent) PhD dissertations in the field and read their introductions / related work / background chapters. These are usually available for free and they will give you a good overview of what is considered relevant.

You could then move on to study recent research papers, but - depending on your prior knowledge - you may not know half the methods that have been used here.

In any case, find out which are the most relevant conferences in this field and see which Professors publish there a regularly. (The Prof. is usually last on the author list). From there you'll hopefully find the most key people in the field and check out their websites and latest publications to see what they are working on.

I'll have to stretch that the right approach will largely depend on how well you are familiar with the basics of the field already. You may have to study a few books or some additional mathematics course work relevant to this new field you are interested in.

Since you appear to be going to university - maybe it's also a good idea to just ask the Prof. most relevant to this field on campus for references and guidance. They will most likely know who's book and publications to read. Maybe this should actually be the first thing you want to do ...


Easiest way to get a bibtex citation of a paper that scholar is still not showing its proper published paper? For some reason, even papers published in very places like ICLR, still don't get updated on scholar, for example "HOW POWERFUL ARE GRAPH NEURAL NETWORKS?" paper still shows as arxiv in scholar.
so what is the easiest way for me to get the bibtex citation of these type of papers that scholar still don't update their published place, other than writing it myself? (I know, I'm lazy)

One technique for me (currently writing my PhD thesis, so did this a lot of times recently, works more than 95% of the time) is to google and go to the conference/journal/openreview page and get the citation there. I look for a button called "cite" or "export citation" or sometimes it is hidden under another button, e.g. "tools". Usually I first skim the page for a couple of seconds, then hit ctrl+f and search for the phrase "cite", if it does not find anything then I look for different buttons such as "tools"...
For your example: If you google (here) the name of the paper the first hit after the arxiv one is the openreview webpage: https://openreview.net/forum?id=ryGs6iA5Km. On this page there is a small button "Show Bibtex" right under the title. When you click on it it opens a small window with the bibtex entry as written below. This takes me about 10-15 seconds, definitely faster than writing it yourself!
"
@inproceedings{
xu2018how,
title={How Powerful are Graph Neural Networks?},
author={Keyulu Xu and Weihua Hu and Jure Leskovec and Stefanie Jegelka},
booktitle={International Conference on Learning Representations},
year={2019},
url={https://openreview.net/forum?id=ryGs6iA5Km},
}
"


Is there any evidence that graphical abstracts are beneficial? I've seen some journals now require (or at least suggest) including a graphical abstract for publication. In particular, Elsevier/Cell seems to advocate strongly for graphical abstracts as they can draw attention and attract readers.

There seems to be anecdotal evidence that this is the case. But, is there any study that supports this assumption? Does a graphical abstract lead to more readers, more citations, more media exposure, or improvement in any other metric of "impact"?

The only study I've found that tackles this question actually finds no evidence of this being the case when analysing papers published between 2014-2015 in the journal Molecules.

I'll note that you aren't going to get citations just because your abstract is "interesting". Especially if it is just interesting "visually". Your work has to contribute to a thread of research that someone else wants to extend. A casual reader might say "cool", but that won't result in a citation.

But you need interested readers who are working in your field and whose work will benefit from your own. You need to reach them, of course, but the venue in which you publish would, it seems to me, be far more important than any "flash" in an abstract.

No, I don't have any research, but would doubt much if any effect. Spend your effort where it does the most good.

Places like Nature get a lot of sophisticated but relatively casual readers who just want to be kept up to date. A visual abstract will help them. But they aren't the ones doing the work that will cite your work.

So, yes, beneficial to the casual reader, but not necessarily a citation builder for yourself.


GDPR and predatory/spam journals As the new general data protection regulation approached, I got a ton of emails from services I'm using asking me to give my consent.

My question is, would the new law help me to get rid of the million emails I receive from journals that somehow got my contact information and want me to publish, become an editor, or speak at a conference?

To be clear, it is a theoretical question. I know that each day more and more of these journals appear and there is no way to get rid of them all. But I wonder if I could send them a standard text like "As you know the law.. please delete my contact information".

However, I'm suspect the new law doesn't apply to people that are outside the EU.

It might help, if the people writing those emails are law-abiding.

However, since, a large proportion of such emails are trying to get money out of you by fraudulent means (publication fees or conference fees), they're probably not fussed about breaking another law as well.


Quoting a typo: Do I really have to do "sic", or can I just fix the sentence? I've got an upcoming work in which I quote a couple sentences from a scholar's book.  There's an unambiguous typo in it; the author just switched a few words around.

Do I really have to quote him verbatim, adding "sic" to point out the error?  Or can I just "quote" him, with the typo fixed?

Academics are old-fashioned people who care about things like truth, facts, and accuracy. By making sure that everything you write between quotation marks is what the person you quote actually wrote (with "[sic]" inserted as appropriate), you will contribute your small share to perpetuating these values, which, although temporarily out of fashion these days in some parts, have served humanity well and will continue to do so in the future.

It may seem silly to resist the urge to make a correction when it's just a typo, but it's a good way to get yourself and others into the habit of speaking truthfully and accurately. So please write "sic" rather than correct the quote. Silly as it may be, in a small way it makes the world a better place.


What is the h-index exactly and how does it work? What is the h-index, and how does it work ?

The h-index is a measure of the impact of someone's publication list. An h-index of 10 for example means that the person has published 10 papers with at least 10 citations. The total number of papers published may be higher, but only 10 will have 10 or more citations.

Critics argue that this measure disadvantages young researchers who did not have time to publish a lot and whose work has not been published for long and thus may not have attracted many citations. Other criticisms include that it makes a researcher focus on how to increase the citation count for a paper that may be not that good but would increase the h-index.

For more explanation, see for example the Wikipedia article.


Is there a bias in top tier PhD admissions at top tier universities to favor those with undergraduate degrees from other top tier universities? Out of 9 applications to graduate schools ranked in the top 25 according to US News, I was accepted to only one PhD program in Electrical Engineering, and just barely (see note below). According to my GPA, GRE scores, letters of recommendation, and previous relevant research/industry experience I thought that I had a much better chance of being accepted to these programs. The only thing that I can see that sets me apart from many of my peers is that my undergraduate alma mater is pretty obscure (barely top 200 R2 university).

Here's some extra information about my application in case something else here sticks out:

Undergraduate Majors - Dual Computer Science & Electrical Engineering

Undergraduate GPA - 3.97

Research/Industry Experience - Two summer internships at NASA resulting in two conference publications. Four years as a professional Electrical Engineer doing R&D for a defense contractor which resulted in two more conference publications.

GRE - 166 Quantitative, 159 Verbal, 5.0 Writing

Maybe these schools are just monumentally difficult to be accepted into? I'm curious if anyone here has some insider insights.

Note: The reason I say just barely is because, after not hearing back from most schools, and being rejected outright from 3, I called the one I was most interested in going to and told them if they still had me on their list of viable candidates and were willing to make me an offer that I would accept. I received an offer letter the next day, two weeks before the deadline. I received rejections from the remaining schools not long thereafter.

Excuse my short answer: absolutely.

Obviously, a school with a good, or even a great name, will give a candidate a big boost in his/her application. This is a rational decision: the recruiting committee wants to minimize any risks and they don't have much time to delve seriously into the history of each candidate. So if you graduated from a top school with excellent credentials you will have an edge over those with equal credentials but lesser perceived schools.

Good references from colleagues of faculty in the department you're applying to, and good ties with your school are also strong factors for admission.


Shortening my name on papers I have the following basic questions regarding my name on a research paper.

Is it compulsory to write the complete name on a research paper (if it is a long name)?
Is it acceptable for an author to use a sligthly different name on a paper than on a previous paper?

For example, if the author’s name would be K. Manoj Kumar Reddy and the shortened name would be K. Manoj Reddy.

It is best to be consistent with how one writes his/her name in a paper. If the author usually writes his/her name in full (or vice versa), then you should follow that pattern. This makes it easier for other researchers and software to verify that two papers were co-authored by the same person.


Under what circumstances it is appropriate to add a team as a co-author, and how should I do so? I would like to be able to recognize contributions in cases where the contributions of individual may not warrant co-authorship, but where the work would not have been possible without the diverse contributions of a community (e.g. developers of an open-source software).
I am particularly interested in the case of non-peer-reviewed white-papers, conference abstracts, software, and documentation, but also where it is appropriate in the peer-reviewed literature.
In the cases of writing an article, such documents could be placed in an appendix or archive. But citing "First author et al 2015" instead of "Acme Team, 2015" seems to promote the team while demoting the implied importance of the document (i.e. within the document it can look like padding if the references are to my self).
What is the appropriate context and method for using a team rather than individual name as the author? Is it possible to obtain a unique identifier, such as Orcid or ResearcherID that identifies a team of contributors rather than individuals?
Some prominent examples of this style of attribution include:
R Programming language:

R Development Core Team (2008). R: A language and environment fo statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. ISBN 3-900051-07-0, URL http://www.R-project.org.

IPCC

IPCC, 2014: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Field, C.B., V.R. Barros, D.J. Dokken, K.J. Mach, M.D. Mastrandrea, T.E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K.L. Ebi, Y.O. Estrada, R.C. Genova, B. Girma, E.S. Kissel, A.N. Levy, S. MacCracken, P.R. Mastrandrea, and L.L. White (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 1132 pp.

And some conferences, e.g. the American Geophysical Union, allows team citation:

A research team may be referenced during the submission process in the Title of Team field, in lieu of adding the names of individual team members.
...
Scientific teams are permitted within an authorship list. Such teams and their members should be formally defined entities such as instrument, field or laboratory experiment, or mission teams. Examples: include "Scientific Team of ODP Drilling Leg XXX" , "The Cassini Imaging Science Subsystem Team".

It's not immediately evident in your question but I gather that you are asking about how to cite other people's work. Or possibly previous work to which you partly contributed.

Referencing previous work serves the purpose of giving robust information to your reader to locate said work, not to attribute credit.

In that very aspect of your academic work, don't be creative. What's relevant is the citation style imposed by the journal or conference you are publishing in, or your institution's guidelines for theses, or at the very least, the standard citation style that you chose for that particular document you are writing.

See similar questions having the same answer:

How to cite papers where the names are sorted?

Style in citing two authors in the same sentence