Can a US university force a foreign student to obtain health insurance from a specific provider? My wife is doing her MBA at a state university, and they have a requirement that she purchases health insurance from a specific provider (which has a pricing agreement with the university, but that is still very expensive). We have been able to find insurance from other providers at a much lower cost.

This restriction does not apply to local students: they can choose whatever health insurance provider they want. Can the university legally impose this on us, or are they just trying to take advantage of us being foreign? Is there anything we can do?

According to the international student health insurance page at the Colorado School of Mines, which also requires international students to enroll in the school insurance plan, it is legal.

The legal rationale they offer is:

It's not considered discrimination to have different policies for U.S. citizen vs. international students, so long as the requirements are the same for all international students regardless of country of origin:

  "The University may impose such a requirement on all students who are not United States citizens. Such a requirement is not regarded as discrimination on the basis of national origin by the courts. See Espinoza vs. Farah, 6 FEP 931 (November 19, 1973). This is true so long as no distinction is made between citizens of different foreign countries” (Joseph Goldhammer, Resident Legal Counsel, Office of the Attorney General, Dept. of Law, State of Colorado, regarding Foreign Student Health Insurance).

Federal immigration law itself imposes certain health insurance or other requirements on foreign students:

  Most students come to U.S. institutions under an “F” visa. Federal immigration law requires that this subclass of non-immigrants provide proof of their financial ability to support themselves and the cost of their education. These requirements have not been found to violate the equal protection amendment to the constitution. (Anwo vs. Immigration and Naturalization Service., 607 F.2d 435 D.C. Cir 1979). Colorado School of Mines considers medical insurance an integral part of the students ability to support themselves. Federal immigration law also requires that exchange visitors and their accompanying spouse/dependent(s) coming to the United States on a "J" visa carry medical insurance. ( 22 CFR 515.14)

(Note that J-1 visa holders are required to have health insurance meeting certain minimum requirements, not just any health insurance.)
Courts have recognized that specifically mandating health insurance for foreign students is not discriminatory:

  Equal Protection Analysis/14th Amendment to the Constitution: The U.S. constitution requires that "no state shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law." Is requiring health insurance of international students discriminatory? Does it violate those students' constitutional equal protection rights? Case law differentiates the legal rights of U.S. citizens and permanent residents from the legal rights of non-immigrant aliens, those persons who are in the United States for a short period of time and for a particular purpose. Courts have recognized that requiring health insurance protects the students' ability to exist in the community, realizing the high costs of health care in this country (Ahmed v. University of Toledo, 822 F.2d 26 6th Cir. 1987). Further, courts have acknowledged that requiring health insurance is consistent with, and supports the purposes of, federal immigration law. “International students do not have a constitutional right to attend American universities without complying with the institutions' reasonable regulations.” (Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 1982).


arXiv or MathSciNet statistics by MSC classes and time I suppose I'm not the first person who came across this idea. I would like to compare math branches by means of numbers of articles published. I have access to two large math article indices: AMS' MathSciNet and arXiv.

My question is: Is it possible (in either of them) to get the information how many articles were published with a given MSC class, year by year?

If you use R, you can use this script I wrote for scraping ArXiv metadata.


Is mistakenly attributing something to an author that they did not say misconduct or simply bad scholarship? Related: Miscited in a bachelor thesis

In the above question, the OP mentions that,

  ...my bachelor thesis had been cited....I have been attributed a conclusion that I haven't drawn, and is indeed counter-indicated by the data I've collected.

Most people are familiar with ordinary plagiarism, where a writer will fail to cite a source for something that actually came from that source. What kind of a violation occurs if a researcher cites a source that says something other than what they claim it does, especially if done inadvertently? For example, suppose Smith (2003) found that "By applying Woot's Theorem to the equation above, we see that the area under the curve is bounded by n to the x where p>3". I, in a rush to get my paper out, mistakenly say, "Smith (2003) found that the area under the curve is always bounded.", not realizing that it had been qualified with the "p>3" condition and that the area might not be bounded in cases where p<=3.

Is this research misconduct or simply sloppy scholarship? That is, if a researcher is "caught" doing this, is the maximum penalty generally article rejection and/or a lowered course grade, or is this a grave mark against the researcher's future career in the same way a founded accusation of plagiarism or falsifying data would be?

My instinct tells me that intent must play a big part in this, and that inadvertent mistakes are simply poor scholarship while an intentional mis-cite ("I'm too lazy to find a real source for this, so I'll just claim that Stephen Hawking said it.") constitutes some type of plagiarism, but most definitions of plagiarism that I have encountered emphasize that intent is not an element, i.e. "Oops, I forgot to cite that" is as much plagiarism as intentionally printing out a copy of a Wikipedia article and submitting it as your thesis.

If this is misconduct, but not plagiarism, what specific kind of misconduct is it? Falsification of data would also seem to not apply, since a citation is not data, and a reader can more easily verify the correctness of a citation than they can verify that the data you claim to have collected in the field was actually collected by you under the conditions that you claim.

Yes, intent matters, but scholars need to do due diligence in their studies. If they don't then their infractions become more serious. There are some things that scholars should know and there are some things that scholars should do. In some cases it is just sloppiness. In some cases it is intentional misconduct.

But there is a broad area in between in which the culpability varies even if there is no evil intent in the action.

Like anyone, a scholar needs to take care. We are trying to extend the range of what is known to be true in the world. We are also trying to give originators of ideas proper credit when they are able to advance truth.

So, intent means a lot, but it isn't everything. And if you exercise due diligence but still err, it is just an honest mistake. Worth apologizing for, of course.

In some fields, such as math, it is impossible for a person to know everything. That hasn't been possible for about 100 years. So, research is needed in narrow areas to make sure that you know the background of what you are doing. So, unintentional plagiarism is possible, but sloppy.

But "sloppiness" is an infraction of its own. It isn't "pure as the driven snow". Not the worst infraction possible, but still a blot on your reputation if you do that. So "just" sloppiness might give the wrong impression.


Subcontracting courses? Would it be illegal/ against most university policies to ask a professor if you could teach their classes in exchange for food, shelter, and some access to their brain? A lot of professors don't like teaching or want to get their research done for tenure, so I feel it would be a win-win. It would be a good way to advance myself if i found a professor I wanted to work with.

There's no possibility whatsoever that this could work.  To elaborate on Pete L. Clark's answer, here are some reasons:

The purpose of a teaching requirement is to have courses taught by the professor, not to have the professor arrange for some random person to teach instead.  The administration and other faculty members would be exceedingly unhappy if they found out this was going on.  Note that there are certain circumstances (called a course buyout) under which grant funding can be used to hire a replacement lecturer so the PI can focus on research, but this can only be done with university approval in advance.  The replacement would be hired through the usual university hiring process.
I suppose this depends on the laws in your country, but I can't imagine labor laws permit hiring someone informally in exchange for food, shelter, and conversation.  No university would tolerate this, since the legal risks are enormous.
Even if it were legal, it's obviously exploitation.  Universities sometimes exploit people, but I've never heard of any university going so far as this.
What if you do a terrible job, or stop showing up, or assign bizarre grades, or harass the students, or try to blackmail the professor?  No university is going to let a random person teach a course without at least some minimal screening or oversight, and no sane professor would accept an unknown stranger's offer to teach their course instead of them.  Even if you just want to be an informal teaching assistant, there's still way too much potential for things to go wrong.

You could offer to give a guest lecture as a volunteer, but I doubt anyone would take you up on that offer unless they knew you well enough to be confident you'd do an acceptable job.  Aside from one-off possibilities like this, you don't have any options outside of the regular process.  You could try to become a graduate teaching assistant or adjunct (depending on your background), but working under the table is not an option.


Is it rude to forward an email to someone left out of the email? I've emailed a professor/TA and cced my peers or also a different professor/TA and cced another professor/TA. However, sometimes I get emailed back only to my email, not the person cced, would it be rude to forward the email to the person cced?
I'm not sure in some cases I'm not sure why they would respond only to me when the question for example was relevant to all my group members, or as well, when I email a professor (A) a question on a project I'm working on with another professor (B) but professor A only replies to me instead of professor B cced.
I want to forward the email but I'm not sure what the person cced would think of my trustworthiness, especially considering she's my professor/supervisor.

This is a bit subtle, since email client software is different for different people. A lot of people replying to an email don't take the time and effort to look at who (all) will get the mail.
In the general case, for a group that communicates frequently, you can, perhaps, establish guidelines. In the specific case, you could ask the professor that sent the email - i.e. A.
But, if the mail is about group work that everyone should see and has no personal elements, then there is little to fear. It was probably just an oversight.


Bringing advisor into summer internship project I have a summer internship in the research side of a big tech company. I already know the project I will be working on, and it has some relation to my advisor's research. In fact I believe he might be more knowledgeable than some of the researchers I will be working with over the summer.
I've already shared what I know of the project with him, and he gave me some general thoughts about it. I'd like to continue getting his input, but signed a form for the company saying I forfeit any results to the company. (I think this just means that they get credit for any resulting papers).
Is it possible/typical for an advisor to get involved in a student's summer internship project?

I think this situation seldom arises, so wouldn't call it typical. There might be university regulations that govern it, since your relationship to your advisor would change somewhat.
But I fear you are being a bit naive about the company's ownership of your results. It probably means that you can't publish without permission (and specific approval). It might mean, or imply, non-disclosure of what you learn. In the latter case, the company would need to establish a formal relationship with your advisor so that everyone understands and adheres to the ground rules.
I don't think there are problems necessarily, but you need to make sure that everybody in the process understands what is happening.


Asking for more than three letters of recommendation from four professors to reduce the risk of missing letters? As we know, graduate schools usually require three letters of recommendation. Some require exactly three and some don't specify this(and even in such cases, it may be still better to submit only three).

Since missing one letter can be really disastrous to applications. I wonder if it is appropriate to filling the information of four professors to request four letters, just to reduce the risk of missing letters.

For example, in the application process, I will fill in four professors' names and email addresses but due to some unexpected situation, only three professors submitted their letters before the deadline. How would graduate school consider this situation?(I think they should have been aware that I have requested four letters)

Will they be happy with the three letters they have already received and never wait for the fourth one, or unhappy because I requested four but one of four professors hasn't submitted the letter?

The two different application management systems that I've used at both a public and private R1 (intensive research oriented doctoral granting universities) don't care once you've hit the minimum required -- the application is marked complete if it meets the minimum number of items in that category even if there are other letters that might be pending.

So it's a good strategy to request more letters than are minimally required because of the strong possibility of professorial flakitude.


Using Google Scholar for meta-analysis I'm working on a meta-analysis proposal/protocol, and one of the databases I would like to use is Google Scholar because of an anticipated scarcity in papers on the topic of my meta-analysis, and I'm thinking using Google Scholar would increase my yield.  Of course, it applies that I vet the papers I select, and thoroughly assess for bias.

If one is thinking of publishing their meta-analysis, would editors take using Google Scholar badly?

Using Google Scholar is usually discouraged as your primary database in systematic reviews because the searches are not reproducible (recommended are databases that provide reproducible searches such as Web Of Knowledge, if you have access, or CrossRef). Using it as one of the secondary strategies, is not necessarily problematic but the issue of reproducibility still applies.

The reproducibility of your search strategy is important because it is your method for the systematic review (in your case a meta-analysis) and determines which effects are included.

Also note that if you already consider your literature to be scarce, Google Scholar might make it more difficult to find sources, because of the low specificity of searches (Google Scholar tends to have way more results than are relevant to the search on the later pages).


Doubts about PhD advisor and unsure how to continue tl;dr I think my supervisor has a severe lack of knowledge, does too many things instead of focusing heavily on just a few things and hence I can't really focus on my research project.

Long Story I started my PhD a few months back and was hired specifically to work on a certain project. We have a few very outstanding research groups as collaborating teams but all in different research areas.

After a few weeks into my PhD, I was hit by all the different side projects my supervisor tries to kick off. They are extremely time consuming and not research related at all. Besides, I noticed that my supervisor has a severe lack of knowledge in one of our core research areas. As a consequence, I can't discuss any of my ideas with him. As the other PhD students feel the same way, we have mentioned the lack of time quite a few times in our group meetings. And although he agreed that we need more time on proper research, things didn't really change yet. As a consequence, my motivation for the project starts to decline, although I continue to be extremely passionate about the project's overall goals!

So my question is, how I should cope with this situation? I thought about leaving his group, but I'm kind of stuck in a dilemma: I'd love to work on the project, and I don't want to let my collaborating teams down.

It's your project, not your advisor's.  Your lack of progress/motivation and supposed lack of time have nothing to do with him.
Nevertheless, you must sit down with your advisor and have a serious talk about both of your expectations. Be honest about your lack of motivation, be honest about your disappointment, be honest about your intellectual loneliness.  Ask for suggestions. Listen.
You have other senior collaborators that you can work with, so if you need senior collaborators, work with them. Ask your advisor to fly them out to visit you, or to fly you out to visit them.  Schedule regular Skype/Gchat meetings. Similarly, get to know other faculty in your department, who might serve as more experienced mentors/advisors, if not collaborators.
You're surrounded by colleagues who are excited enough about their research to want to draw you in, and you turn them away because you feel stupid?  What a wasted opportunity!  Of course you feel stupid.  Everybody feels stupid listening to other people talk about their ongoing research, because by definition, they're talking about stuff that nobody understands (yet).  You're simultaneously complaining about intellectual loneliness and turning away potential collaborators.  So what if they're not working on your project?
Of course you're constantly forgetting important things you once knew well.  It is totally unrealistic to think that you can keep everything you've ever learned/read fresh in your mind. Don't even try. Write things down. Maintain a library of papers, or at least a close personal friendship with Google Scholar. Let yourself forget details, confident in the knowledge that they'll come back amazingly quickly when you read them again.
Since your feeling is shared by other students in your group, it sounds like your advisor is a bit overexcited and has bitten off more than he can chew. All the more reason to sit down and talk with him directly, and to develop mentoring relationships with other faculty in your department and elsewhere. Also, start looking into other potential advisors, even if it means moving to another university.


Should authors omit statements / citations of well known results in response to referee requests? I am asking this question to get further perspective on an issue that has come up with a student (undergraduate, mathematics) I am mentoring.  At last summer's REU he wrote (in particular!) a solo paper.  I was not directly involved with the research, but I gave him some feedback on the writing before he submitted it for publication a few months ago.  He has now received a referee report, which is very positive and is of the sort that I would recognize as being 99% likely to lead to acceptance.  The referee requests revisions, many of which I agree with.

However, one of the referee's suggestions is for the student to not explicitly state two well-known theorems that he is making use of.  (In case it helps to know, these are Dirichlet's Theorem on primes in arithmetic progressions and Minkowski's Convex Body Theorem.)  The referee follows up by saying that even if he does want to state them, he should not give citations to them, since they are so well known and google searches easily turn up references.

My questions:

(1) How would you respond to this referee request if you were the author?
(2) How would you advise a young student to respond to this request?

I would recommend approaching a referees recommendation to drop a citation in the following manner:

First, consider carefully whether there is good reason to keep a citation in the paper at all.  The key factors to consider are reading audience and the customs of others in the field.  For example, in cross-disciplinary work I have often cited extremely basic material because core dogma known by every undergraduate in one field are sometimes viewed as nearly unbelievable statements in another field.  On the other hand, students in particular are sometimes prone to over-citation because they have been well-trained in citation and decide to err on the side of caution.
If a citation is warranted, consider whether to use the primary source or a textbook source.  Notation and interpretation change over the years, and for purposes of elucidating a well-known result, a readily accessible modern text is often a much better citation for the reader than a difficult to find or understand original.  In certain cases, however, returning to the original is important: for example, the standard interpretation of the Turing test is different than what Turing originally proposed.
Whether the decision is to keep the same citation, change the citation, or drop it all-together, in responding to the referee one should explain carefully why one made that decision.  I would be startled if a paper could be imperiled by deciding to keep a citation when a referee recommended dropping it---it's just such a minor issue, all things considered.  With a careful explanation of how the choice has been reconsidered and the final decision, most referees are likely to be sufficiently satisfied, even if they might have chosen differently.

Bottom line: no paper is going to be put in peril by a few extra citations as long as the author is reasonable in explaining their decisions.  The citations might ultimately get dropped or not, but in every case we are talking about "minor revisions" territory and not the boundary between "major revision" and "reject."


Authorship change on conference paper after conference program is printed I am a coauthor on a psychology conference paper that was accepted based on a short abstract. The first author became unable to attend the conference and offered the opportunity to present to the coauthors. I accepted and later found out that I need to prepare the slides and text for the presentation.

The first author had presented similar material to a very different audience (a practitioner audience in a workshop setting in Spanish) and offered me the slides from that presentation. The material needs considerable reworking: it needs to be adapted for a researcher audience; have a theoretical framework integrated; be shortened considerably; and be written in (or translated to) English. I should also say that I made scientific contributions to the overall project and these particular results.

My colleague agreed that given the extent of the changes, I should be first author (up from fifth author where I am currently) and he second (remaining authors unchanged). He contacted the conference organizers with the request, but the conference program has already been finalized.  The first author believes that this means that no authorship changes can be made, but I am not sure.

There will be no conference proceedings, so the conference program is the only documentation, other than the presentation slides and any documents we distribute.

Can authorship changes be made in the presented version of a conference paper even if the conference program is already finalized?  Can we list the paper on our cvs differently from how it appears in the program? Are there any written guidelines on this topic?

I have very little experience with "talk only" conference papers (and, as jakebeal correctly asks, why is it a paper if there is no paper?), but generally, the ordering of authors (or even who is an author) of a conference submission has very little to do with who prepares the presentation or who actually does the talk.

Rather, the order on papers is usually either alphabetical or by some measure of "who did the most work" for the actual research that is being presented. Hence, a change in who presents a paper (which often happens, due to time constraints, visa problems, illness, ...) usually does not require a change in the order of authors, as the underlying work (and who did it) has not changed.


How to change career as a software engineer in UK at 30 s' age? I am BSc graduate(Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry) I have no any software developing experience. But I love to enter the field. Currently working as production planner in manufacturing and going to migrate UK.

You will want some sort of training - even self training. If you aren't a programmer already you will need to become one in some popular language. There are online courses and other face to face instruction that you might be able to find locally. It can be hard to learn from some online programs since there is less of a "goad" provided by a professor who grades your work and gives feedback.

There are a lot of self taught programmers, of course. Many of them are deficient in key areas required for actual development. Even such things as data structures and algorithms might be missing. Don't fall into the trap that all you need is some familiarity with, for example, Java or C. Go a bit deeper.

The UK has an excellent "distance" program in CS run by Open University. You can use them or other 'local' UK universities to give you what you need.

You might also be able to connect up with some open source project, initially as just an observer and later, as you learn some things, as a contributor. You can do this sort of thing from anywhere that has internet connectivity. But better if you can find some assistance. Even another person or two with similar interests so you have someone to discuss issues with.

Your background will make some parts of your learning regimen easier, I think.

Learn a lot and write some interesting programs. Large ones if possible. And don't neglect the human/organizational side of software development. Modern programs are built by teams for the most part.


PhD supervisor stalling research paper submission I am currently trying to submit a research paper to a Journal, I am a PhD student in his final year.
My supervisor, who provided the data for the research paper and has overseen the whole process, is a very difficult person.
When I submitted a Conference paper, things were relatively easy, because of the deadline for submission.

But now with the Journal paper, my supervisor seems to be stalling the process just enough time for me to go to my final examination without having the paper accepted. She is that bad of a person unfortunately. The stalling is by the constant need to change the text and edit the paper, and the never ending stream of comments.

What are my options in this case, could I submit it without her as a co-author if she continues stalling.

Update. Yes having accepted research papers is essential for the successful completion of the PhD examination.
Update. Yes it is stalling, I cannot tell exactly the specifics, but in case someone might have a similar experience and might get some answers here, please assume that this person is doing this to hurt the student's progress and examination.

No one here can judge whether your supervisor is right or wrong. Perhaps your paper really isn't yet ready. I don't know your field, of course, and don't know why it is important to you to submit the paper now rather than later.

Your first consideration should be your examinations, I think, and completing your degree. Perhaps publishing the paper is essential to that process, but you don't indicate that.

But, few students really prosper by directly going against their supervisors. It just isn't a productive career path. And, depending on your field, cutting your supervisor out of authorship might be considered unethical, but even if not, might be a career killer.

Having a supervisor who is happy with you and your work is much more productive. And giving a lot of feedback on your paper is, in most cases, a positive thing.

Once you finish the degree you get to make your own decisions, of course.


In academic papers, is it really a bad thing to not report the relatively not good results? I am going to submit a computer science paper to a conference. So the thing is fairly simple. On some datasets with 1:1 ratio, our model achieves really good performance. On datasets with 1:5 or 1:10 ratio, our models only reaches mediocre results.
I just want to report the results of datasets with 1:1 ratio in this case since they are pretty good. Putting a mediocre result (on the 1:5 or 1:10 ratio datasets) may extremely lead to a whole paper getting rejected. However, my PhD advisor told me that we have to put the mediocre result as well.
Meanwhile, the PhD advisor seems really angry about this behavior and disappointed about me, and I feel really sad because I didn't cheat, and I just not want to include the relatively mediocre results in my paper.
I think many other computer science papers do something like that, not reporting their results on some datasets if the result is bad, and reporting their results on some datasets if their result is good.
I don't get why my PhD advisor is so angry about that. Could someone tell me? I am really appreciated it.
Currently, I feel wrongly judged by my PhD advisor and afraid of the whole paper getting rejected because of this since we are going to submit to a top-tier conference.

Research is a search for truth, not for happy talk. If you have evidence of some behavior then you should be honest and report it just as it is. Don't try to dress it up.
Giving only the "best" results will sometimes mislead people and will cause them, perhaps, to waste time and effort.
You are currently the best source to give an honest and complete review of the meaning of your results. I strongly suggest you do that. At some level, not doing that is malfeasance.
I suggest that the reviewers themselves probably think like I do and won't reject a paper that is honest and complete, other things being equal. They aren't looking for happy talk either.
But you may also have an opportunity to investigate why you get different outcomes. Is it something about your model, or something special about the data? Inquiring minds want to know.


How to deal with a mentor asking for sudden tasks Consider the following conversation:

Mentor: What is your progress?
Me: blah.... blah... blah...
Mentor: Okay.
Me: What about other tasks (if any)?
Mentor: Do not worry about them, I can handle, if any. You focus only on your own
research work
Me: okay.

After a week, while I am doing research work, the mentor comes to the lab suddenly, and then the conversation will be like

Mentor: There is a class today with the syllabus X for batch Z.
Me: Okay.
Mentor: Go and deal. It will be in an hour.
Me: I am aware of X, but don't know in detail.
Mentor: Not a big deal. Carry on with today's class.

This is a sample scenario. There will be many tasks like this with very shorter deadlines.
The only issue I face is maintaining a trade-off between personal accountability and stress. By behavior, I want to be more accountable for any task done by me. But due to the shortness of time, I sometimes experience so much stress (in order to maintain accountability).
How to deal with such mentors?

This answer depends on your relationship with your supervisor. If have an honest, open relationship, I would suggest communicating your feelings in a professional and constructive way. For example,

I appreciate you trusting me to take on additional Tasks 1, 2, and 3. However, I already have tasks A, B, and C which require a significant amount of my time. I am happy to do Tasks 1, 2, and 3, but I would benefit from additional notice (24/48/72) hours in order to carry out the task with a high quality. Does that sound agreeable to you?

If you do not want to do additional Tasks 1, 2, and 3 but feel pressured to do so, you always have other options:

Build evidence of your situation and eventually present it matter-of-factually to your supervisor. For example, 'You have requested me to do additional Tasks 1, 2, and 3 repeatedly, and my progress on research and other commitments are suffering. I cannot do these additional tasks any more.'
If 1 fails, build further evidence of your situation and present it to the graduate director.
If you have the willpower to do so, you might accept your fate and make lemonade out of lemons. For example, record each extra lecture you do to add to your teaching CV. Or, at the very least, start to prepare in advance for Tasks 1, 2, 3, ... n.

Sudden tasks are not fun and can indeed be a cause for significant personal stress. It sounds like these requests come during the workday, but otherwise I would suggest sticking to a strict work schedule with dedicated days of no work.


Can I create anonymous repositories for double-blind peer review via GitHub organizations? When submitting a paper to a conference/journal for double-blind peer review, one usually has to anonymize source code, if there is any. In my situation, I have to do it in a form of GitHub repository. I know that people often do it using anonymous GitHub accounts. However, it seems inconvenient to me, and I am trying to achieve the goal using a GitHub organization, created from my main account. My question is: can you identify me given the following setup?

This is me: https://github.com/Yura52
This is my organization: https://github.com/Organizationnnnn
This is the repository with one my commit: https://github.com/Organizationnnnn/first

NOTE: if you want to use this workflow, don't forget to:

remove yourself from watchers right after you created the repository
set user settings after you clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/Organizationnnnn/first
cd first
git config user.name "Anonymous Author"
git config user.email "anonymous@author.org"
touch README.md
git add README.md
git commit -m "anonymous commit"
# you can also anonymize yourself only for specific commits, but there is always a risk of forgetting this
# git commit -m "anonymous commit" --author="Anonymous Author <anonymous@author.org>"

The fact that you created the repository is visible under your account's activity, so anyone following your account can see it in their feed. This can also be seen later by viewing your activity by subscribing to your RSS Feed.
However, generally this should be a concern for anonymizing for peer review, since the requirements are usually much lower — authors can often be identified by preprints and similar means anyway if someone really wants to find out, and reviewers are expected not to go looking for this information.
But if you have a GitHub account with a lot of followers or want to prevent anyone from checking if your account created the repository, then your proposed method is not sufficient.


Rejecting an offer of admission I'm interested in applying to pharmacy school and programs for a PhD in chemistry. The PhD programs only admit less than 10 people a year and it's more likely that I won't get in to one of these compared to pharmacy school. The issue is that the pharmacy programs provide admissions offers earlier than when the PhD interviews start.

Is it acceptable to accept an admission from the pharmacy school and then later reject that offer in favor of an offer from a PhD program? I feel bad for potentially taking up one of the spots in a pharmacy program if I won't be going there.

Read the fine print on the acceptance letter and any links provided.  I doubt you'll find a problem there.  By double-checking, you will be able to proceed with more confidence.


Arxiv Empty Bibliographic data I have uploaded a paper to arxiv. It has several citations / references.

However, when I look at the Bibliographic data, it is shown as empty..

Any hints of what could be wrong?

I eventually found some preprints that happened to show this bibliographic data section, e.g. 1805.02262. Clicking the What is Bibex? link, I note that the current version of the arXiv Bibliographic Explorer is 0.1, from September this year. In addition, they refer to this functionality as a project. Hence, I think you're looking at a somewhat experimental feature, still in development. Most likely then, this feature simply hasn't been able to extract the data it needs, for whatever reason. You could use the "report data issues" link to send them a feedback email to help the development forward.


Importance of publications if one decides to go industry after PhD? If a PhD student (hard sciences like math, physics) decides to work in industry after graduation, are publications important?

For transition to industry, what are the most important factors to take note of during one's PhD?

Thanks for any advice.

Publications demonstrate several things such as:

Ability to conduct, complete, and document work
Ability to communicate clearly
Interest in broadening the field's knowledge
Interest in staying aware of the "state-of-the-art"

All of these are good attributes to demonstrate with a publication record.  Continuing to publish in industry is also valuable, but it is seldom "publish or perish."

Regarding important factors: use elements of your Ph.D. to demonstrate that you can work independently to solve difficult problems.  A strong work ethic and ability to solve problems are key traits that employers are looking for.


Must a tutorial TA resolve any questions from the students? I know it is TA's responsibility to help students understand the course material. But there are always some students don't like to think independently, or maybe just not smart enough. Is it ok for TA to tell students that "I can't help you. You should figure it out by youself." for some lame questions? Would this put TA into dereliction of duty?

My job as an instructor is to help the students learn, and I try to do so to the best of my abilities.

If a student is asking very basic questions (don't call them lame ever), help them to get up to speed pointing at some reading. You should pay attention to this, since for every student that asks questions, there may be several silent ones, and it may be an indication that the cohort is missing some knowledge your course is assuming.
If they ask questions for which they know the answer, but are unsure, teach them how to validate and verify their answers.
If they ask every little step of the way, the Socratic method is an option: ask questions back, make them work for the answers. But make them helpful: use them to guide the student towards the answer.
The students that just ask very many questions, just get lower priority, since I have to take care of the whole group, but I do still help them.
Questions that are off topic can be either gently shot down and redirected, or quickly point them at some references. If you find the question particularly interesting, you can offer to give more details after class. Make sure they don't get lost in the sidetracks, though.

In general, the goal should be to try to make yourself redundant by teaching them how to not need you you. This is never going to actually happen, but it is a worthy sky to look up to.


Interpersonal skills, lab dynamics, and personality What happens to grad students who are disliked by all other grad students in their labs?

For background on the situation:

I started my phd recently, and I'm in a lab with three other grad students, a post doc, a tech, a computational analyst, and the PI. For the first three months, the three other grad students and I were incredibly close. It felt like working with best friends.

Then, my PI offered me a chance to attend a conference, and I said yes. The other students, upon finding out, got livid and won't speak to me. This has been going on for three weeks. I've asked if we can talk about it, I've asked if they feel like I did something underhanded (I can't think of anything), but they either ignore me entirely or don't respond. I feel horrible (I also have a childhood history of being gaslit, so while I don't think I've done anything wrong and confirmed that with my PI, it's hard for me to not feel guilty).

I've spoken with my PI about it because it is affecting my ability to find reagents and protocols (given that I'm the newest member of the lab), and he thinks it will change over time, but it has been three weeks and I'm still having to search through all the boxes myself to find everyday reagents.

If I need to switch labs, it's going to be easier to do it now than at any other time, but I don't have a replacement already set, and I'll lose a training grant I was accepted for.

My specific questions:

1) Does being a black sheep in the lab mean that I should try to switch labs? If I stay, how do I make sure I get the things I need?

2) Is this going to ruin my professional life? What are the consequences of having my labmates hate me enough to act like I don't exist, and how can I counteract this situation?

3) This one is more interpersonal, so please ignore if not appropriate for this forum. If this situation is my fault, how do I learn the skills to avoid doing this again?

It is incredibly unfortunate that you've found yourself in a situation where it doesn't sound like there's much you could have done to actively avoid the contention. I do feel like there must be something in the story that you're leaving out, but if I base my conclusions assuming you've included everything that's relevant, here's my two cents worth of feedback to your questions:

Being the black sheep does not mean that you should leave the lab. In fact, what you are experiencing is not unique and is something that generally happens to people throughout their lives (to more or lesser of degree). Simply leaving the group might be an easy and acceptable solution to your current situation (only you can really judge that I think), but you might want to view this as an opportunity to build your conflict resolution skills, which will be incredibly valuable throughout your life.
This is not going to ruin your professional life, but like with all events in our lives (whether fair or unfair), it will absolutely alter your career-path experience. In general, it is always best to have a pro-active mindset (e.g., "I can direct my own career path") rather than a passive mindset (e.g., "these people will determine my career path"), regardless of whether other people can influence your trajectory.
Whether or not this is your fault, you certainly can learn skills from the experience. In my opinion, the best thing you can do right now is to focus solely on how you can serve your colleagues. Having a dialogue with them could be useful, but like you said you'll mostly be at their mercy in that approach. If you proactively look for opportunities to help them in their own work and learn the ropes in the lab on your own so you can help them and generally be a "good neighbor", then they will really have no reason to maintain their animosity towards you.

I'm not sure there's much you can control beyond my points above. An enormous skill to learn in life is to not stress out over things that you can't control. Another enormously valuable skill is being able to recognize what you can or cannot control around you. Proactively seek to make the things around your more amenable to unity and cooperation, regardless of others' reaction to you. Be sincere in your efforts, not superficial or only acting to get a specific response.


I have agreed to do undergraduate research in a lab, but then I found another lab that seems more appealing. What are my obligations? I am an undergraduate student in a European University (for privacy reasons, I will not reveal any personal information that may identify me).

I am interested in research, and a month ago - or so - I have contacted a Professor from Department "X" at my university, asking whether I could be integrated in any research group at the Department. The Professor set an appointment with me, showed me the installations, the labs, the material, ... I really liked Department "X", but their research is not what I was expecting. At Department "X", they work on the field that I like, but it's not what I was expecting: here's an analogy - I wanted to study snakes, but instead of actually studying the snakes' behaviour/their genes, at Department "X" they study the effect of external factors on snakes.

Still, because at my university I wasn't aware of anyone else studying snakes - or any other animal -, I said I was interested. I've been given a few articles to read, to catch up on the latest news about snakes, and also the methodology to study snakes. She (the Professor) is expecting me to work there soon.

The problem is that I have met a Professor, who works at Lab "Y". At Lab "Y", their research is top-level, probably one of the best labs in the country. During a talk with the Professor from Lab "Y", I mentioned my interest in animals, specially snakes, and the Professor told me about his job at Lab "Y". They do not specifically work with snakes, although they also do research on snakes sometimes. The research at this lab is much more specific and they have papers in the best journals in the field (unlike Department "X", which - although their research is not that bad - is much inferior to Lab "Y").

Now I am not sure what to do. I feel like I am obligated to work at Department "X" - after all, I have made a commitment with them. Furthermore, because it's a department from the university, it is close to me, I can go there in my free time easily, and I actually hope I will be able to teach a few classes about snakes if I stay with them. However, if I choose Lab "Y", I will be in another environment, where top-level research is made. On the other hand, the lab is around 1 hour (by public transports) from my house (it is not at the university).

For that reason, I would like to hear some advice from experienced academics like you.

Unless you have formally signed some sort of agreement to work in the lab of Prof. X, you do not have what amounts to an actual obligation to work in that lab. If you so choose, you could say that you've found a better offer and work in the lab of Prof. Y.

Now, it should be pointed out that even though you've made a commitment to Prof. X's lab, if you choose to honor it (and personally, I would lean toward doing so), it should also be noted that such a promise does not mean you are committed to work in Prof. X's lab exclusively. It is entirely common for undergraduates to bounce around between different positions until they find something they like. Most faculty understand this, and so it shouldn't be a big deal in the long run if you decide to work in Prof. X's lab for six months to a year before trying out Prof. Y's lab.


What is the meaning of "in residence" at a university? I'm applying for readmission to UC Berkeley after taking a semester off.  In the Application for Readmission, one question asks, "Will you be in residence at Berkeley for the entire semester?"

Does "in residence at Berkeley" mean "using on-campus housing" or just "living in the vicinity of the university"?

This is the response I received from my graduate program's coordinator:

  It just means physically being here, so doesn't have to be on-campus housing.


Do the Publication Retraction impact on Co-authors I am a co-author of a retracted paper. It is very unfortunate for me. I just provided technical assistance in the experiment but the 1st author did some scientific misconduct and as a result, the article has been withdrawn by the corresponding author. I want to know how it is going to impact my career. I just helped with the experiment designing and completely unaware of the scientific misconduct by the 1st author and now I am suffering. Please suggest what to do. I want to stay in the same field of research. Hence, is it possible that my abilities will be judged by this retracted article?

Yes, it is possible that this will affect you unless you have a way to clearly distance yourself from the misconduct. Of course, if the retraction, etc. isn't especially public then it is possible no one will notice.

Being a student now is both a hinderance and a help. Since you are at the very beginning of your career you can likely validly claim that you were blindsided by superiors, being a bit naive yourself. You aren't expected to be as sophisticated as a professor would be.

On the other hand, I suspect that it is only in seeking your first position that you would need to deal seriously with it. Once you have your own position you are building your own reputation. But you will, likely, be questioned on it and need a good, complete, and valid response. But I suspect that if it is reasonable, then it would be accepted by most people/places.


Can I get a letter of recommendation from a professor who didn't teach me BUT I did research with? I am an undergraduate student wanting to transfer to another institution for undergraduate studies. I am a research assistant for a professor at an institution that I do not attend.

Would the university which I which to transfer to, accept the recommendation letter from this professor? Again, I have not taken any courses with this professor, nor go to the institution where he teaches.

Related (except for Graduate Admissions): Copied Letter of Recommendation?

The point of a letter of recommendation is for the receiving party to obtain third-party verification that you are, indeed, awesome. Generally speaking, people like to receive letters from individuals who know you well professionally. In most cases, teachers cannot write good letters, as they only know you as a face in the class, and never really got to know your work ethic, personality, and capabilities. A research advisor would be able to comment on all those things, and would be able to write a much stronger letter.


How can I make sure that my paper's work is unique? I am trying to write a research papers that applies the ELK stack to visualise social media data (twitter API). How can I make sure that my work was not done by someone else before? I searched in different repositories for the two titles but did not find any paper that deals with them combined. How can I assure my work is contributing in that area?

My professor is really busy person outside the campus and I can't meet him regularly so emails is the only way that I keep him informed about the progress, once I asked this question he answered, "we'll get the answer when conference reviewers send you the feedback."

Isn't that too late? How should I proceed?

The only thing you can do to ensure that your contribution is original, i.e., nobody has done the same thing before, is extensive literature research.

Use Google Scholar or Scopus to search for keywords related to your field and try to find something similar. You will notice that there is only so much literature that is closely related to your topic. If you are thorough, you should be able to say if you have done something original.

Your advisor doesn't seem to be keen on talking to you regularly. In the case that you want to continue working for him, you should probably do the literature research, write the article, send it to your advisor for corrections and hand it in. I doubt your advisor will take much time to correct your article, so you should have more experienced colleagues read your article before sending it to him. If he agrees, submit it to a journal and wait for the outcome.


How to evaluate a thesis based on papers with multiple authors I was asked to be a referee of a PhD thesis.
The thesis is completely based on several papers published in journals.
All the papers have, besides the PhD student, other authors (different authors for different papers).
Also, the field of study is Mathematics,
so the order of authors is Alphabetical, and there is no information about the contribution of each author.
Given this situation, how should I evaluate the thesis?  Is there any general advice on how to proceed in such a situation?

Let me start with a story.  At Harvard, before a PhD student is allowed to schedule their oral dissertation defense, which (as is the case in many places) is usually a formality, the advisor is required to explain the significance of the dissertation work at a faculty meeting, and the faculty have to agree that the work is significant enough for a dissertation for the defense to go forward.  The possibly apocryphal story goes that, after a contentious faculty meeting at which a dissertation was grudgingly approved, the advisor, a well-known mathematician who has had many students, remarked, "Well, this isn't the worst dissertation I've written."
The point is that, while we claim that a dissertation is the work of the student, in most cases, this claim is really partially true polite fiction.  Certainly the student is expected to understand all of it, and to have contributed significantly to it, but, in any sort of collaborative theoretical work, it doesn't even make sense to precisely separate out which ideas came from whom.  I've heard mathematicians claim that they correctly decided which idea to pursue to solve a problem based on the quality of the silences during a conversation with their collaborators, and I believe this claim.  When ideas are developed with such subtle yet vital contributions, it makes sense to just give each co-author 100% credit for the ideas.
Unless you have a policy that theses should not be based on collaborative work - and, frankly, this policy is unenforceable due to the common but not universal custom for advisors to decline co-authorship with students on papers where they would otherwise be a co-author - you really have no choice but to take at face value the claim that the thesis represents the student's work.  At the least, you can expect the student actually wrote the text of the thesis and understands its contents, and if there is an oral defense you can test whether this is true.  Beyond this, you will have to trust the student and the advisor that some acceptable portion of the ideas in the work actually came from the student.  Someone contemplating hiring the student will get more information in the recommendation letters from the advisors and the other collaborators.
It's generally understood that an advisor usually ends up spending more time advising a student on solving their dissertation problem than it would have taken the advisor to solve the problem themselves.  You might want to read between the lines of the following statement about the culture of PhD advising from the American Mathematical Society: http://www.ams.org/about-us/governance/committees/Statement_DirectingPhDTheses.pdf


Which countries have funding opportunities like ERC Advanced Grant? The eligibility of ERC Advanced Grant is very interesting, everyone from anywhere can submit a proposal, and upon approval he should work in a host institution within European Union. This gives an excellent opportunities for independent researchers, as they do not need to be employed in Europe when applying.

Are other countries (mostly I mean, US, Canada and Australia) have such call for proposals, as anyone (regardless of location) can apply? Then, upon success, he should conduct the research in the funding country.

If yes, please name (or link) the specific call for proposal.

I would think that almost every country with a well-developed academic system has funding opportunities for researchers applying from abroad. Depending on the level of the applicant, that may range from a post-doctoral fellowship to funding for a research group of several persons over several years.

Although it doesn't address the specific countries you mention, there's for example

the Newton fellowship in the UK,
various programs by the Humboldt foundation in Germany.

Generally, such programs require you to identify a host institution within the target country upon application, and to submit a confirmation by this institution that they're willing to host you (that's also how it works for the ERC grants, even for applicants from within the EU!).

In parallel to researching the funding options, I'd recommend to identify a host institution you'd like to work at and ask someone there what might be suitable funding instruments to apply for. Most researchers have a good overview of their national funding options, also those options that specifically address people coming from abroad.


How possible is it to do mathematical research outside academia? Does anyone know if it is possible for a Ph.D. graduate of mathematics to successfully do research in his/her spare time?

The work environment and conditions in academia seem somewhat deplorable at the moment---no offence intended,  but that simply very much appears to be the case from an outsider's perspective---and it just strikes me that mathematics would surely be the subject most suited to Ph.D. graduates who don't want to go there, but still want to research, as "only pen and paper" are required.

If one were really, truly devoted...how much of a disadvantage would they have compared to someone who chose to stick it out?

Are seminars entirely barred?

Is it impossible to publish?

Collaborate?

How much (more) time would someone who stayed in academia have in a day to spend researching?

Also, what about people who have not got PhDs? I would think it's more or less impossible for them to contribute very much of value if they only have a Bachelor's or a Master's degree, but I really don't know.

Publishing
In mathematics, most people will judge your research on its merits, not based on your credentials or affiliations.  So this is not an issue, if you are able to generate significant results and write them up in a clear way.
Seminars
I have seen many members of the public regularly attend seminars.  I've never heard of them being kicked out.  It's not an issue.
Funding
The primary drawback is that you won't be paid for your research if you are just doing it in your spare time.  Unless you are already independently wealthy, that means you will have relatively little time for research since you need a day job.
It is of course possible to get grants to fund your research without being in academia; there are a number of private entities in the US funded entirely by grants, and many of them include mathematicians.  But you said spare time only.
Collaboration
Another drawback is that you won't be in close contact with other researchers by default.  It wouldn't be impossible to establish that contact, but again you must consider whether you will have the time.  And people won't take you seriously unless you have serious results.
Not getting a PhD
In mathematics, even more than in other fields, it is almost impossible to make a contribution without spending several years learning what is already known.  In principle you could do that without getting a PhD, but why would you?


How to cite future conference poster session on CV? How would you go about listing a conference/symposium poster presentation that will happen in the future on your CV if the title or abstract haven't been decided yet?

For instance, the future conference/symposium for my case is university run so it is certain that the proposal submission will get approved for presenting. However, I have not yet collected all the data so I do not have an abstract or title prepared.

I have seen some people put,

Last name, first initial. (year, estimated month). Title of presentation. Poster session presented at [location]. (Planned)

I thought about preparing a tentative title since I know the general topic, but wanted more opinions or answers from those that had a better idea about this.

I've looked around a bit on the internet and found some information on this topic but it was primarily on invited talks rather than planned presentations.
Thank you in advance to those who answer!

*This is for the CV I will be turning in as supplemental material for Psychology PhD application.

With a future event so tenuous, I would recommend against putting it in your CV at all.

Even if you think your CV is thin, it will not be improved by putting in an abstract that might or might not get presented and that you haven't even started to prepare.


Will doing my CS PhD by distance learning make it harder to get a job as a professor? I've seen very reputable universities such as Georgia Tech and Berkley, to name a few, offering MSc degrees in Computer Science through distance learning. However, I'm not seeing the same distance learning opportunity available for PhD programs. After a Google search, I've found few well-known universities that take off-campus students - I only recall University of Florida - for PhD degrees.

I want to earn a PhD because I would like to become a Professor after that, so I want to know if doing a distance learning PhD program would harm my  employment opportunity.

Yes, it will make it harder to get a job as a professor of computer science.

A distance learning PhD is not well suited for learning certain skills that one would learn in a traditional PhD, as described in more detail at Are there any aspects of PhD work that do not translate well to distance learning?. Some of these skills are important for getting a job as a professor and/or doing the job of a professor. For example, you would not get any teaching experience in a distance learning course, and most faculty applicants are expected to have at least some teaching experience.

Furthermore, by doing a PhD by distance learning, you miss out on a lot of the networking and exposure to other academics that happens in a good computer science PhD program. This plays a major role in getting a faculty job afterwards.

The exception to this is if you were to get a job where the PhD is necessary only as a formality. For example, if you are already so well known in your field that every university wants to hire you, but can't because their HR departments insist that faculty candidates must have a PhD, then a distance learning PhD might be sufficient.


How much does reputation matter in NSF review panels? I was recently advised to submit an NSF proposal to program A rather than program B since I am more well known in area A than area B, despite the fact that program B seems to be a much better fit for the proposed work.  The (rather senior) person giving this advice strongly believes that my reputation in A outweights the good fit in B, citing examples where a proposal had almost nothing to do with the solicitation but still got funded based on the reputation of the applicant.

Question: In reality, how much of a factor is reputation in NSF panels?  Does it vary much depending on the size/type of grant? As the number of people who know of the applicant approaches zero, does the probability the grant gets funded also go to zero?

(For reference: I am new at this!)

In my experience, your ability to be believable when you say you can accomplish the work needs to be demonstrated as shown by your prior work as demonstrated by your publications in the area or your work done setting up the proposal. But otherwise your personal reputation as known by the people on the panel has less to do with it. The fit of your work to a program, however, is very important. The panel only gives a recommendation to the NSF Program Officer who will make a further recommendation to their boss which may go further up the chain. Those people will decide what projects get awarded under a program, and they have probably never heard of many of the awardees. The panel's recommendation will carry a lot of weight with the PO and their bosses, but it's not determinitive. Lower-ranked proposals can be elevated by the PO over the panel's recommendation and vice versa.

If the program is an ongoing or annual program, look at who has won prior versions of it using NSF's search page. If you know the luminaries in your field, expect to see some of their names, but also expect to see people you've never heard of. That's your clue that people with little or no reputation in the area are capable of winning awards in programs with a good fit. Read their abstracts, and see how well they align with the RFP/call.

There are very few awards in each program every year compared to the number of submissions. It varies from the high teens to low twenties across the directorates, and it's around 23% for the whole of the Foundation. The reasons for funding a particular proposal get pretty esoteric pretty quickly. I recommend finding the best fit, calling them, and asking them if you can give them a quick description to see if they think it's a fit, too. Most POs are happy to tell you if they think it's a good fit. They won't tell you if they'll fund it (they can't), but they can steer you around a bit. They may even steer you to a different program. Better to talk to them than a senior faculty member who has a hunch unless they sat on program A or B's panel last time around. If they did, they're not supposed to be telling you that.


Appropriate to write to the head of a department to ask about potential openings? I am a tenure-track Assistant Professor, coming up for tenure next year (no concerns about getting tenure). There is another university I would like to move to. Their department is of similar strength to my own, but is a better fit for my research, and is in a city I would rather live in. However I don't have any personal connections with any of their faculty members.

Is it appropriate to write to the department head, express my interest, and ask if there are any anticipated openings? Would there be any point in doing this? Thanks for any insights.

You certainly could.It's a low-risk action with the following responses in roughly descending order of probability (assuming you're looking for a tenure-track job, and not just an adjunct/visiting position):

1) The e-mail is ignored. Chairs get many strange e-mails about things that are unanswerable. This goes into the e-mail folder labelled "To respond to when I have much more time than I do now"

2) The Chair writes back with a polite letter thanking you for your interest but that there's nothing in the immediate future, promises to write to you if there is, and then promptly forgets about your e-mail which gets archived along with the other people who wrote the same.

3) The Chair writes back saying that there's an opening for exactly someone with your specific research interests, teaching background, and desired seniority. They were going to have an open search and advertise this on all of the usual sites, but because you're such a perfect fit, they're skipping straight to hiring you.

I should add that #1 and #2 combined represent about 99.99% probability and #3 only happens once in a millennium. But again, the risk is so low that you could do it and buy a PowerBall lottery ticket at the same time and see what happens.

On a more serious note, many job sites have 'alert' functions that will let you know when a job that meets your criteria pops up. I'd subscribe to those. In the meanwhile, I'd become chummy with that department if possible so that you can hear about any gossip about spots. Or try to impress them so much that they decide to do a targeted hire with you in the spotlight.


How does the pricing system of degrees in England work? I am considering studying a master's degree in England, however, the price system is quite unlike the system in the US, at least in wording, so I am uncertain how to estimate the costs.
The schools I looked at listed the fees in one of two ways:

Cost (2013-14)
£3,000

or

Fee
UK/EU: £1,000
Part-Time: £500
International: £4,000
Part-Time: £2,000

Most schools require that master's degree students complete four 30-credit modules, each taking 8-10 weeks, depending on the school, as well as one 60-credit dissertation.

Under the price system used in England, how can I estimate the total cost of tuition for an entire master's degree?
Do schools in England often apply additional costs, such as registration fees, technology fees, renovation fees, or special course fees, as is typical of US schools?

Most UK Masters degrees are a single year.  Even if for some reason you get an extension (e.g. to finish your dissertation), you will only be charged tuition for the taught year, maybe a small fee for remaining registered.  But the International fee will just be it (unless you are from the EU, in which case the home fee is it), and normally includes any bench fees.

Note the fixed tuition costs matters less for Masters students, but is a huge win over US degrees for PhDs – you normally only pay 3 years tuition even if you take 4 or even 5 years to finish.

A part time degree will probably take about twice as long and you will have to pay the fee for double the number of years.  If you are legally allowed to work in the UK, or you can telecommute to a part-time job in your home country, this can be a win.  Though keep in mind that the cost of living is very high in the UK and will probably exceed your tuition even if you are full time.

Anyway, UK universities are very keen to get Masters students, if you just email the contact for a university they will give you full numbers.


Should I provide a letter of recommendation/reference to every asking student? It's the time of year we lecturers get asked for references from graduating taught postgraduates who seek to move on to do a PhD. While I'm generally happy to act as a referee, I'm unsure whether there is a best / standard practice here. I'm naturally more inclined to agree to providing a reference when a) I remember the student, and b) the student's work had merit.

Is this wrong? Should I provide a reference even when I don't remember the student or their work wasn't particularly good?

You don't have to provide any student with a recommendation. In fact, it can actually be a detriment to the student to have a tepid recommendation. If you find yourself unable to write anything beyond what can be confirmed by a transcript (e.g., that the student did take your class or that the student got an A in the course), then that is usually a sign that you're not someone who should be writing a recommendation letter.

My personal method is if I know the student very well and s/he did good work, I write the letter. If I cannot recall who the student is, I ask for a one-on-one meeting to get a sense of why s/he is asking me for a letter. If there is a compelling reason that I (instead of someone else) should write the letter, then I usually agree with the caveat that it may not be a very strong letter because I'm not as familiar with their work. If there is no reason that I should write the letter over someone else, then I usually decline.


In the GRE, why are we allowed to use calculators and not dictionaries? Basic arithmetic is pretty trivial, but it can take time and is often very tedious for large quantities and so they allow us to use calculators when writing the GRE (Graduate Records Examination).

But shouldn't we be allowed to use dictionaries, memorizing plenty of words is pretty trivial too, and is tedious. I get that it helps improve our vocabulary, but like we use calculators when doing large calculations, we can simply pull out a dictionary when we see a new word right?

Is it because we save time by knowing the word already? GRE tests several other things including sentence structure, meaning, context etc... But wouldn't it be better if they left vocabulary off that list of things they test?

The GRE is ran by ETS, so only they will be able to answer your question about why they don't allow dictionaries.

Your same logic starts to question the entire point of these tests. Using Google is trivial and is engrained in our day to day lives, so why can't we use it on the tests?


Can I correct a mistake that the reviewers didn't spot in a paper that has not been accepted yet? Recently my paper was accepted pending major revisions (i.e., not yet accepted), and while following the reviewers' comments and revising my paper, I realized that both reviewers missed a mistake that I made in a function block diagram. What should I do?

Correct it and let them know in the joined point-by-point response?
Wait until they tell me about it?
Ask them to double check that diagram?

I'm afraid it may send the wrong message and I'd look disrespectful by showing them that they missed the mistake.

YES.  The responsibility for correctness of the paper is yours not the reviewers’.  The reviewers may help you find errors, but that is secondary to their main function: recommending to the editor whether to publish.


Publishing an 'ok paper' to arxiv I worked on an interesting project as a PHD student. It was rejected from a top conference with all but 1 reviewer agreeing that it was an ok paper but not good enough for that conference, because more work was required. The other reviewer said it was in top 15% papers. Do the reviewers mean "trash paper" when they say "ok paper" ?
 I don't have the time to finish it because I have switched my research area. In the project, I also collected and processed a large amount of data which would be useful for the computer vision community. Should I just put the paper and associated data/code on my website? Or should I put it on arxiv? In either cases, I wanted to acknowledge and include a link to the reviews from the conference. Is that a bad idea? The review process was double blind and hence the reviews are anonymous.

Have you considered submission to a journal? As reviewers are not identified, it is reasonable to trust their judgement that the paper is "okay", and of course "okay" at a top conference in CS could still be quite good, especially as it's within the top 15%. Although perhaps the top-tier journals would render a similar judgement, there may be a venue where it is appropriate (I'm not familiar with the computer vision area), and you could publish without an excess of additional work.

Alongside this you can (usually) always put a preprint on ArXiv, few journals or conferences take issue with this now, which allows you to make it available in the meantime, regardless of what else you decide to do with it in the future.

However I would definitely not include the reviews. Although there is no rule against doing so, particularly as the reviewers shouldn't be identifiable, it contributes nothing to your research - the reader should be assessing the value themselves. The inclusion of reviews would only indicate that you want to boast about your work, or that you want people to accept it because someone else said it was good.


PhD position interview: How specific should my idea of the topic be? I just finished my master in Geophysics with some help from here ;). Now I applied for several PhD positions in Natural Sciences and just got an invitation for a personal interview for one of them.

The topic of the position is described in the call but over all it seems very general to me (I really have no experience if that is common for PhD positions).
During the interview I’m supposed to give a 10-15 min oral talk about "specific research questions and methodologies" I suggest to focus on and about "results of a first paper".

I have some experience in one of the methods mentioned in the call and could probably come up with a quite elaborated idea for a paper (though I would have no idea if everything or anything would work the way I propose it, never having worked on a paper)

My understanding is hat even older scientists need time and work in a topic to figure out what exactly there paper will be about. So probably I should just kind of suggest a focus topic within the broad framework of the topics covered in the call?

I guess my main question is: How specific should I really be?
(because I should obviously try to avoid boring my interviewer by only repeating part oft he call)

I should probably also mention that I have only three days to prepare.

The way I interpret the topic you were asked to present on is that they want you to present on some work you have complete such as your first paper (or possibly a masters thesis if you have not published anything).

The idea of this is probably to get an idea of how you think/do research and provide a nice introduction into finding out what your interested in.

From your question it sounds like you think they are asking for something else. Now I could be entirely misunderstanding what is asked for (I just have your question), but if you are unsure I would suggest you send a polite email to clarify what the talk should cover.

For what you should say in the talk I would try and answer these questions:

What was the motivation for the research (why is it interesting)?
What did you do?
What are your results/what do they show?
Why are the results significant/interesting?


Cite or reformulate perfectly formulated sentences? I'm just writing my bachelors thesis and I need to reference to a book for an in-depth derivation of something.
The concluding sentence in this work is just perfectly formulated, there is no way of making it shorter or more precise. I wonder whether I should write something like

As [4] points out, it can be shown that
the enhancement in the second-harmonic power is given [...]

With the bold text being the quote from the book or reformulate the sentence, making it somewhat less precise? Is this even enough attribution when copying the sentence verbatim or do I need to put quotation marks?

Yes, you should use quotation marks for direct quotes unless you use some other clearly expressed convention for quotes. Bolding doesn't naturally imply quoting. With quotes you may still want to bold the text, or not.
Also, your "citation" is a bit weak if it only points to the book and not to a particular place within the book.


When peer reviewers are public/open, are they less likely to be critical of a manuscript? I have been peer reviewing scholarly manuscripts for more than 10 years, and I am always concerned that the quality of my reviews might be impacted by the fact that my name is made public to authors or other people, instead of the typical scenario in which authors are blinded to the reviewers' identity. This is becoming more and more commonplace in the open access era.

For instance, some journals let authors but not readers know the name of the reviewers. One example is the British Medical Journal (BMJ). Specifically, the BMJ website clearly states:

"For research papers, The BMJ has fully open peer review. This means that every accepted research paper submitted from September 2014 onwards will have its prepublication history posted alongside it on thebmj.com. This prepublication history comprises all previous versions of the manuscript, the study protocol, the report from the manuscript committee meeting, the reviewers’ signed comments, and the authors’ responses to all the comments from reviewers and editors."

A similar approach, in which the peer reviewer's identity can be disclosed to authors on a voluntary basis, is followed by journals such as PLOS ONE ("Will authors know who is reviewing their manuscript? Reviewers’ identities are anonymous unless a reviewer indicates otherwise"). Other journals, instead let everybody, even readers, know their identity (e.g. World Journal of Meta-Analysis).

There is some, albeit limited, research on this (e.g. van Rooyen et al, BMJ 1999 and DeCoursey, Nature 2006).

I favor the approach followed by the Baishideng Publishing Group (fully open model), but I am wondering what is the opinion and insight of the ACADEMIA community.

I have a similar history of reviewing papers at around eight years, though in the fields of engineering and robotics. Between the official reviews for journals or conferences (which are almost all single blind and in rare cases double blind) and informal reviews for colleagues, I would say I differ only in level of tactfulness.

The stakes in the official review process, however, are higher and I would not agree to review if my name was to be released.  I’ve rejected papers based on lack of contribution (to the extent where there were missing citations of seminal papers or even their own previous work to make the current paper look more significant) as well as lack of fundamental understanding of the involved system or experimental processes.  These types of issues are not things that can be easily fixed and the review becomes more of a statement of ‘start over’ with the associated large investment of time, money, and/or resources.

Peer review requires an already rather generous donation of time by those who participate. In an open peer review there is additionally a very real fear of retribution, which only the well-established can easily ignore.  My personal experience follows the results of the previously mentioned van Rooyen et al. – review quality in an open process stays approximately the same, but the number of willing reviewers decreases, potentially drastically.  The open review process certainly has some value, but I don’t consider it to be widely practically implementable with the current reviewer arrangement.


Can I use an independent research to get a master degree? I have an undergraduate degree, and I do some of independent research on my own, so I was thinking if universities have some kind of offer where I can use it, and I mean in exchange for my research I'll get the master degree without following the course, or anything that looks like that, any resources or references where I can look ?

There is the possiblitity to get a research-oriented Master, which is the thing closest to what you asked for. Here is the link to one example course that I found during a quick search:

http://www.findamasters.com/search/masters-degree.aspx?course=15956

You didn't state which field of study you are interested in and in which area of the world, so this is probably not precisely what you are looking for. However, as Nate Eldredge already wrote, you can't expect to spend only a single day at your Master's University. They will want to make sure that you meet their standards, and typically, this involves at least a moderate course load for a Master's degree. Also, the degree of independence in research that you are asking for is probably not the same than the one that you get there.


Academic referees: course organisor vs project supervisor? I am currently applying for a PhD at a University in the UK.

As part of the application process, I am asked to give the name of two academic referees.

During my recent Master course, I had the opportunity to undertake several (at least 3) projects within different laboratories.

My question: is it preferable to ask one my past projects supervisors to serve as an academic referee (who supervised me for some weeks only) or should I ask the Master course organisor (who has a better overview of my work and achievements during my Master studies) to be academic referee?

You should provide the names who know about your academic background and research ability very well. So he/she could be your Master degree professors or supervisors. In my point of view, you should provide a name who was your project supervisor as well as professor.

As per your question, I can suggest you the following two names.

One from your master course department (who has a better overview of your work and achievements during your Master studies)
One who supervised you for some weeks. Because short term project supervisor would write good about your research ability.


Reviewer of PhD thesis doesn't allow me to write in the first person singular In my PhD thesis, I often used the first person singular during the description of the problem and the discussion of the results. One comment from the reviewer states that because I did not use the third person, the entire thesis must be revised accordingly.

I understand that in a journal article one should use the third person to describe the problem and discuss the findings. However, I always supposed that one can use the first person in a PhD thesis because I saw many researchers doing so. Could anybody give me a suggestion about how to deal with the reviewer who doesn't accept my choice to write in the first person?

There is an annoying truth here: What's OK in a PhD thesis and what not largely depends on the reviewers. Some people in academia have a huge inflated ego and prefer things to be done as they suggest, and the reviewer in your case is possibly among those people. You don't want to fight with them on this kind of issue.

If the reviewer has other comments that tend to create additional work without clearly improving the thesis, you may consider exchanging the reviewer.


Ethics of the mention of Nazi weaponry for a computational physics task A colleague of mine and me are organizing a 3-day preparation course for undergrad students to prepare them for their upcoming lecture about computational physics (the course in about 1.5 months).
This course takes place at a German university.

The third day of this course will involve a "do-it-yourself-day" where the students can choose between different projects to do.
We are in the process of creating these projects.
Usually, we are creating them independently of each other and uploading them to our course-site and inform each other we added a new project. Sometimes we'll also talk about them to discuss specific tasks etc.

So I made a project to calculate the trajectory of an artillery from the WWII.
It's perfect for an academic task because it has a high velocity and goes high into the atmosphere so the students must do the calculation with air friction and height effects like decreasing temperature and pressure.
I almost completed this project to be ready to be uploaded but my colleague has moral concerns since its a weapon and was used by the Nazis.

I don't have that many concerns since its a purely academic approach to this and it's not like we are calculating how much damage it can do. Also, the approaches used to solve this task are not so unlike the approach to get a space shuttle again safe to Earth (which is much more complicated though since I didn't choose it) for example.

Q: Are his concerns justified and should I abandon this project?

(I'd also be glad to new proposals, it should be fast and go high to use friction and height effect.)

German citizen here. My feeling is that your example is not at all outrageous or morally problematic per se; but it might lead to some raised eyebrows in the given setting (a German university) and for quite understandable reasons.

You use a German WW II weapon simply to illustrate some computational problem. That is, you don't make any evaluative statement about nazism, German WW II aggression or even warfare and weapons in general. Neither is your problem about making weapons more effective, which could then be seen as an implicit value judgement.

It is also, fortunately, no longer "taboo" to discuss the nazi past. German political culture has overcome the lead-heavy immediate post-war period, in which the memory of the atrocities that Germans had committed was actively repressed together with everything that reminded of them. To be sure, there is a (perhaps large) minority that prefers to rationalize, relativize or even idealize the nazi regime and its crimes. Some of these guys have a strange fascination for WW II memorabilia and nazi paraphernalia. Here it can be hard to draw the line between hobby historians and hobby revisionists.

So as your student I would wonder: Of all the examples that you could have chosen, why this particular one? If the course was about military history or WW II, the choice of example would make immediate sense. But since it isn't, your example seems quite arbitrary. (Wouldn't other projectiles or objects have similar physical properties?) This would probably lead me to conclude that the example is "just and example", but I couldn't quite help to speculate a bit about your motivation and perhaps your historical-political attitude. Less so, however, if you are not a German.


Is it a good idea to express my gratitude to a co-author with a gift card? I am an undergraduate level student planning to put out a research paper for publication. The second author is a PhD student who has helped me to do much editing (including re-writing my entire paper into a concise and expressive form, and also the numerical simulation part). I think he helps me a lot. My friend suggests to me to buy him a gift card at the end to express my gratitude. I am wondering would this be a good idea or not?

Others may differ in opinion, but I personally think that gift cards are a poor choice for expressing personal gratitude.  The problem is that gift cards are effectively cash with spending restrictions.  Your colleague has invested time and energy in helping you, and giving cash would essentially be saying how much per hour you feel their time is worth.

Instead, I would recommend offering something like taking them out for a fancy lunch, which invests your time and gives the two of you a chance to do some informal bonding and building of your professional relationship.  Unless, of course you don't actually want to spend time alone with this colleague (many possible good reasons for that), in which case I would still recommend looking for some way to express gratitude that shows an investment of time and caring beyond just money.


Does a year of entrepreneurship in an unrelated field affect an MS application? I did my Bachelors in computer science. I have been working for 1.5 years in a reputed software firm working on distributed systems, information retrieval and such fields.

I want to apply for MS in CSE (distributed systems or ML) next year but before that I want to start my game development company which has been a dream. It might also help me earn a lot of money which I will need to study further. Game development is largely software engineering, but has nothing to do with distributed systems or ML. If my game development start-up fails I will happily do the MS right away.

Will switching from my current "related" job to a somewhat unrelated field trigger an alarm? Am I at a risk of getting rejected?

How can I patch things up if I have to after my game development gig?

I think you are forgetting that you do not necessarily need to self-finance your graduate study.  A teaching assistantship would take care of your tuition and would give you a stipend to live on (frugally).  Teaching assistantships are not hard to come by in the field of CS -- as compared to some other fields, because universities generally need a fleet of TAs to grade and/or teach the undergraduate classes.

You may want to consider putting in some applications for grad school this coming December - January.  You can always quit your current job after collecting a strong recommendation from your current supervisor.  Then you would have February - August to try out your entrepreneurial idea and see how it goes.  If it's taking off and you're really enjoying it, you can always cancel (or possibly postpone) the grad school plans.


What is the preferred GRE Writing score for MS/CS student? I am planing to apply to study in graduate school, major in computer science/engineering. I just took a GRE test, this is my 1st time, and the result is pretty...not so good :(

Most schools, the science or engineering related program, reveals the average or preferred GRE scores for quantitative and verbal sections for admitted students. But it seems they don't care about the score of Analytic Writing section. Really?

To be honest, my writing score really bumped this time. I want to know if there's a preferred score range for this section.

There's a reason it's not listed--there is no preferred score, it doesn't really matter.  I am not an expert, but I feel like the writing score is something that can only hurt you, not something that can help you, at least with respect to science or engineering graduate programs.

More concretely, I can see a very low score preventing you from getting into a program, but I highly doubt the admissions committee saying: "Well, he got a great score on the writing section, that really differentiates him from other applicants; let's admit him."

For a foreign student or non-native speaker, doing well in the writing section probably carries a little more weight than it does for native speakers; nonetheless, I believe that the above still holds.


Professor does not provide feedback, grades, or lecture - Do I have the grounds to file a complaint? I am in a graduate level (online) mathematics course. At the beginning of the course, the professor told us to post all of our homework solutions to the online learning forum which is open for everyone to see.  While I do not have any issues with this per se, we are not graded on the homework nor are provided any feedback.  The lack of involvement on the professors side has led to many students not even posting worked through solutions (i.e. provide a couple steps and skip to the solution).  Moreover, we are given weekly reading out of the main text (usually a chapter) for which we are supposed to read, then watch the recorded lectures, and finally complete our problem set.  That said, the lectures do not actually cover the reading in the book or provide any worked through examples.  This is a theory based course and none of the proofs are worked through in the lectures either.  The lectures simply consist of the professor reading aloud the theorems and moving on.   The course costs nearly $5k and I am wondering where the value is.  It would seem that the cost of the course is to have access to material, most of which is openly accessible to anyone with internet. I could just as easily buy the book and read it at home for free and get just as much out of it as I am going through this course.  I know this is a bit of complaining on my part but I admit I am very frustrated that this has happened in more than one class.  Do I have any grounds to go "up the chain" and file a complaint?  Is a complaint of this matter likely to fall on deaf ears?

Yes, do complain. The value of a teacher is precisely to do things reading books and  watching videos can't do: Answer questions, give feedback, help with gaining insight. If a professor does none of these things, then they're paid for a service they're not providing, and that should concern their employer.

So do go to the department head and complain about it. At the end of the semester, also make sure that you state your complaints in the course evaluation most universities have.


How formal should I be when sending an email to the University's staff? I'm about to write an email to the department of an English speaking University (I'm not a native speaker) to clear up some doubts I have regarding enrollment. I have never spoken to them before. How formal should I be?

My questions: is it OK to use contractions ("I've... I'm...")? Is it OK if I try to throw in one or two polite jokes or should I be strictly formal and as objective as possible? Does anyone suggest a template for such an email?

Thanks!

From a US perspective, I think the most important thing is politeness and clarity. "Official" contractions should be fine, as long as the writing is otherwise grammatical. ("You're" is fine, while "ur" should be avoided like the plague.) (There is a slight possibility that this differs at some very formal British universities(???) but it should be fine at any U.S. university.)
I would steer clear of jokes by email, since you haven't met them before and the communication is across a language (and culture?) barrier.
When I email people I don't know who work in staff positions, I keep in mind that they're busy and often deal with demanding people or people who are upset. I usually try to keep the "polite" parts of the email at the beginning and end, so the other parts are clear in the middle.

Good morning,
As a prospective graduate student [from country or university, if relevant to question], I have a few questions about enrolling in the English department that I hope you may be able to help me with. If there's a better person to contact about these questions, I'd really appreciate it if you could direct me to them. [If it's a question about funding or visas, e.g., it's quite possible they would probably have to refer you to another office.]

...
...

[Possible additional clarification about what you have already tried, e.g. "I saw on the department web page that all applicants must have taken an introductory British literature course (link to that webpage), but it did not specify whether courses taught in another language ('English Romantic Poetry in Translation') or about specific areas (like 'Irish Literature' and 'Indian Literature: Colonial Era' would qualify)."]
[If you're attaching any files, have a really good reason, and explain them here. E.g. "In case it helps answer the question, I am attaching the descriptions of the British literature courses I took, with my own translation of the descriptions from [my language]. The original versions are online at [link], [link], and [link]."]
Thank you for your time. Please let me know if you need any additional information or clarification.
Thank you very much,
Your name