Is it ok to ask professor to read my published article? I have applied for a position last month and the deadline is on March. But by this time one of my work has been published in a good journal (which I wrote in my CV as under review). The position is competitive. Is it ok if I mail the professor and ask him to read my published work? (Though the published work is not so much similar to his work). Will it add extra value to my application? (I have talked with the professor regarding his work and admission several times through email)

I think it is fine to send the article, but not even necessary to ask him/her to read it. It is enough just to make it available, with a note about where it is published. It will be read or not, whether you ask or not. It is also good whether it is closely related to the professors area of research or not.

But making it available easily is a good thing to do and should enhance the application. It shows something about your ability, even if the sub-field is different and even if it isn't read.


What is a magazine paper and how it is different from a journal paper I have seen many long papers published in magazines, such as IEEE signal processing magazine, and usually they are about a detailed overview of many papers combined together of the same author.
So I am wondering if a magazine paper is as I have described or it has to satisfy other criteria such as a novelty is required compared to the previous work.

I am also wondering, can a PhD student be a first author in a manuscript submitted to a magazine or the first author has to be famous in the field in order to be trusted by the reviewers.

Last question is if a PhD student graduates with one magazine paper will that help to get a faculty position or it is counted as a journal paper.

IEEE magazine articles are aimed at a more general audience than conference or journal papers, which are usually aimed at a small group of specialists in a narrow subfield.

They can be a way to expose the author's technical work to a broader audience, give an overview of an area, or present something that is of interest to researchers in the area but isn't appropriate for a technical journal article (for example, to explain the legal, economic, or political issues behind a particular research area).

Because they serve a different purpose from "regular" journal articles, manuscripts submitted to magazines are judged according to some additional magazine-specific criteria. For example, the peer review form for one IEEE magazine I reviewed for included the following specific questions:

  Is the paper understandable to a general ComSoc audience with minimum mathematical content?
  Does the paper format conform to magazine guidelines (max. 4500 words, 6 figures/tables, 15 references)?

in addition to more "usual" ones:

  Is the paper topic important and interesting to the magazine's readership?
  Is the paper technically sound?
  Does the paper discuss novel and original work?
  How is the presentation and organization of the paper?

A note on those "magazine guidelines": Because IEEE magazines do not publish specialized and detailed technical papers, they often have limits on the number of equations, figures, and references that authors may include. For example, from the guidelines for IEEE Communications Magazine:

  Articles should be tutorial in nature and should be written in a style comprehensible to readers outside the specialty of the article.
  Mathematical equations should not be used. In justified cases up to three simple equations could be allowed, provided you have the consent of the Guest Editor. The inclusion of more than three equations requires permission from the Editor-in-Chief.
  References should be included only to guide readers to more information on the topic; the reference list should not include every available source. A limit of 15 references is recommended. The inclusion of more than 15 references requires permission from the Editor-in-Chief. References to Web pages should be checked immediately for accessibility before submitting material to the Production Staff.
  Figures and tables should be limited to a combined total of six.

If the paper you want to write needs more equations, references, figures, or tables than the magazine guidelines allow, this may be an indication that it's too technical for a magazine article, and is more suitable for publication in a regular journal.

Regarding your other questions:

  I am also wondering, can a PhD student be a first author in a manuscript submitted to a magazine or the first author has to be famous in the field in order to be trusted by the reviewers.

Yes, a PhD student can be a first author on a magazine paper. I have a first-author magazine paper; I am a PhD student, and I am not famous :)

  Last question is if a PhD student graduates with one magazine paper will that help to get a faculty position or it is counted as a journal paper.

Magazine papers are nice because a good magazine article can rack up a lot of citations. For example, in my field of computer networks and wireless communications, IEEE Communications Magazine has the highest h-index. Similarly, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine, IEEE Communications Magazine, and IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine are included among the top IEEE journals in terms of impact factor.

But a magazine paper won't be considered the same as a journal paper, because it lacks the technical depth of a journal paper.


Automatically, and freely, download PDFs for a set of references In EndNote, I know there's an option to automatically download PDF files for the references you have in your library. Is there any way to do the same thing in some kind of non-commercial software, like for example Mendeley or BibDesk?

The answer here uses proprietary/paid software. I propose a FOSS solution that works reliably for this task.

The cross-platform software JabRef has integrated fulltext fetchers to download the fulltext for any entry in the library. Import your bib file into Jabref and select a number of entries. Then, from the Quality pull-down menu, select Lookup Fulltext documents. However, you still have to manually confirm the download in a pop-up. But this is still just a bunch of clicking 'OK's at the same spatial location (for each pop-up that appears sequentially) with the mouse. Jabref does the heavy-lifting in the back to correctly download the PDF and link it appropriately by matching it to each relevant citation entry.

The latest master build of Jabref is recommended, since there were some recent fixes to the IEEE Fetcher. https://builds.jabref.org/master/ (if IEEE matters to the OP)


Where else are teachers not paid for prep time? Last spring I did some teaching at a university. It was my first time. It was a temporary position. I was there 1 semester only. I was paid by the hour.

A couple of things caught my eye about the arrangement:

They only paid for the time I spent teaching in a scheduled group setting.
They did not pay for prep time.

By prep time, I mean the time I spent getting ready for a particular class. I saw this term being used elsewhere on SE Academia, not sure how common it is...

In what countries / universities / contexts is it common to not pay teachers for the time they spend preparing a lecture?

FWIW I was teaching an undergraduate media studies course at a private creative industries-type university in South America.

It is quite common in the UK for hourly payed lecturers to bill University for contact teaching hours only. The rate is usually significantly higher than the hour worth of a full-time lecturer, to account for (unbilled) preparation time.


Having caused a lab accident, how to mend my relationships with fellow students? I accidentally caused a fire in my department laboratory. The fire was not big, and luckily no one was injured. However, it triggered the fire alarm and sprinkler system, which led to some of the common equipment being damaged.

After the incident, the department has enforced tighter control on lab safety. For example, all students need to submit a work flow before doing new experiments and complete numerous forms to buy new chemicals. It results in a lot of unnecessary administrative work and greatly slows down our research progress. Many research students are unhappy about that, and since I caused the accident, they have begun to ostracize me. Even some 'closer' students seem becoming less friendly to me.

I know it is totally my fault, but sadly, I already caused the accident and can do nothing to change the fact. Now the problem is, what should I do to mend my relationships with my colleagues?

EDIT: As some of the comments mentioned that it is not clear whether the additional rules actually should be enforced no matter there was the accident or not. Honestly, I don't know, but it is the extra work that annoy other students, and it is totally because of me. I guess my department should have complied to the laws before, otherwise they will be in trouble...

It results in a lot of unnecessary administrative work and greatly slows down our research progress.

If you do something, intentional or unintentional, that causes more work for others, you are going to be resented. In my opinion, the best way to minimize the resentment is if you are seen as being proactive in taking on your share of the new work. I would suggest you step up and take on a significant portion of any new group work related to the fire. If labs need to be move/rearranged to comply with fire safety standards, it would be best if you came in on the weekends/nights to help people. If the department needs a fire safety officer or first aiders, it would be in your best interest to volunteer. If a new committee has been formed to deal with fire safety compliance, ask to be on it.


Which licence choose for a new academic computing language? Disclaimer: I am not sure this is the right place to ask the question, but since it is directly related to academic work, I though I'll give it a try. If it is not, please feel free to redirect

Together with colleagues from different institutions (all academic), we have been developing a new information language (more precisely a format), based on XML, to store a specific type of information. This format is primarily directed to the academic world and will be open source

My question is: do we need to attach a licence to this new format and, if yes, what type of licence is suitable for that?

Oh, no, yet another format!

Now seriously, you can legally register a format, but I don't see a big benefit from doing it.  For what I see, licensing is essentially a copyright of the actual text. In most practical purposes, having a public, freely available document explaining it, should suffice.

To support my feeling, I have been digging in some academic examples I am familiar with and they don't specify any.

If you want to be sure, you could see what other people have done, for example, OpenDocument format.


Is it ethical to withdraw a paper if it’s still with editor beyond the journal time policy? I submitted a paper to a reputable and high IF journal, which is declaring an expedited review and publication process.
Papers are usually published in about 30 days (45 at most, but it is pretty unfrequent).
My paper has been ‘with editor’ for two weeks, meaning that it has not been sent to the reviewers yet. With this timeframe I’m doubting that the process is going to be expedited as declared on the journal website.
If the paper is still with editor in the next one/two weeks, would it be ethical to withdraw it?
It’s not really important that other journals can be slower, the matter is that my paper is being late compared to the journal standards.
I do not believe the editor is considering a bench-rejection as the paper of this project have always been published smoothly and often appraised by the referees. And the paper is clearly not out of scope.

It is ethical to withdraw it until your agreement with them is finalized. But it seems unwise to me and a (very) hasty decision if you do. Two weeks in the publishing industry is just about a nanosecond. There are a lot of reasons for delay.
You won't get the two weeks back if you withdraw and will need to start the process over at another, likely even slower, journal. Why? Calm down. Take several deep breaths.
And you can ask for an update before you make any final decision.
Withdrawing won't make the editors happy with you but the paper is yours.


Is a general GRE test required if I have already passed a GRE Subject Test? Disclaimer: The GRE Program discontinued the Computer Science Test

If I have already passed a GRE Subject Test for Computer Science, do I still need to pass the general GRE test?

Which test should I take first (general GRE or GRE Subject Test) and why?

If I have already appeared for GRE Subject Test for Computer Science, do I still need to take the general GRE test?

Short answer: Likely, yes. If your school asks for the general GRE, then you need to take it. Without the general GRE scores, your application would not be considered complete, and, thus, may never get forwarded to the department's admissions committee. If in doubt, call or email the department(s) you are applying to and ask.

  Which test should I take first(general GRE/GRE Subject Test) and why?

It does not matter. Usually the general GRE is offered more frequently than the subject GREs, so many people take it first. There is no reason you have to do it this way. Take them in an order that is convenient for you, but do not wait until just before your application deadlines. Your scores will not get to your schools in time.


make sense of index terms in dl.acm.org website I am a graduate student. I plan to submit my master project this year.
While browsing relevant papers in my research field, I wonder how making sense of index terms on the site dl.acm.org
For an example, consider this link: dl.acm.org.

Similar to what is done at other professional societies that publish journals, the ACM has a classification system for submitted papers. Authors classify their own submissions. The system is hierarchical to provide a bit of granularity.
Potential readers use the assigned tags to find articles relevant to their own interests, and the editors use them to assign area editors and reviewers.
The tags used on this site are a bit similar in terms of finding questions related to a readers interest.


If I change my research group, can my former supervisor restrict my access to my codes that are written by myself? Recently, I quitted my current research group and I will start to work with someone else. I was in my former research group for almost three years and during these three years I wrote more 200,000 lines of codes by myself alone. These codes rest in my former advisor group repository in Github, but I have copies of them locally in my computer. I know and I understand totally that I'm not allowed to use those codes without my former adviser agreement and also he is not allowed to do so without my agreement. Recently, he removed and revoked my access to the codes that are written by myself during these three years. As I said, I don't want to use them without his agreement, but I'm wondering why he restricted my access to something that completely is written by me and from scratch. I have the local backups but it just makes me upset and I'm wondering if he is allowed to remove my access or not?

Any supervisor (including the OP's former supervisor) is free to block access to their resources, even when those resources include code written by the person being block (including former students).


Informal Meeting with Prospective Mentors at a Conference - How to Prepare? I am currently applying to doctoral programs in experimental/cognitive psychology and have recently made arrangements with a few prospective mentors to meet at an upcoming conference. I apologize if this question has already been asked numerous times before, but I was hoping to get some advice on how to prepare for such a meeting? What questions are "appropriate" to ask (e.g., can I ask what directions they plan to take their labs in, or is that presumptuous?)? What questions should I be prepared to answer? Any and all advice is much appreciated!

Be knowledgeable: know the mentors’ research papers and themes.
Be curious: prepare a few good questions to ask the mentors. Get them to talk about themselves (there’s nothing professors love more than talking about their work!)
Be forward thinking: what would you do to improve their work? What do you bring to the table? What good ideas do you have? You don’t need a 5-step research program, but you definitely need to show you can suggest good directions for future work.
Be relaxed: or act like it. appearing nervous, profusely apologizing at every turn, being overly subservient etc will make you look bad. Talk to them like an equal. If your prospective mentor has such a fragile ego so that they need you stroking it, they’re probably not fun to work with.

Good luck!


Meet with another professor in our university to discuss a paper that I wrote and her student is co-author with me Recently, I wrote a draft paper based on the results, which I prepared for final project of one my courses (I'm a PhD student). In fact, I had a project partner in that course and I thought I should put her name in the paper as well.

I know it was just a short project and I did not mean to submit it to a really high impact journal (I mean I want to submit it to Computational Materials Science journal, impact factor: 2.530). Also, my PhD adviser was one of the instructor in that course.

Today, I just sent the draft to my partner and said please read it and let me know if you want to add or modify something, but she responded back that her adviser wants to meet me and discuss the work that we did. In fact, she said her adviser does not want to be on the paper as co-author but she wants to be sure that there is nothing in the paper which may have bad impact on her.

The question is: I'm not sure it is an appropriate thing to do (meeting with another professor)  without consulting with my adviser?

I said I should consult with my adviser before meeting and know his opinion. Should I talk about this with my adviser or just give it up at all? Because I don't want to make everything complicated about who should be co-author, etc just for a small side project. Any idea or suggestion is appreciated.

It is typical for advisors to want to help emerging PhD students in their efforts to publish papers. Typically, advisors can give a paper a rudimentary review with little time or effort. You would typically recognize this support with an acknowledgement, not coauthorship (in the fields that I am familiar with).

This seems to be in line with what your coauthor's advisor has in mind. I would take the coauthor at their word regarding the fact that the advisor does not wish to be a coauthor.

In addition, you do not want your own advisor to be in the dark about this paper. It is good that you have presented it to him at a prior occasion. Prior to meeting with the coauthor's advisor, you should email your advisor about the paper and let him know you are preparing to submit it. Depending on schedule/your needs, your advisor will likely be willing to provide a brief review of the paper. If he does, he should also be expecting an acknowledgement, not coauthorship.


Finding citeable statistics I am in the process of writing a literature review as part of an application for a master's course and would like to cite Facebook as being the world's most active/ popular social media (or 2nd or 3rd happy with it so long as it is accurate).
Googling 'worlds most active social network' brings back multiple results from a variety of websites but no official press release of numbers from Facebook, or what I can see quotable articles. When faced with a problem like this:

Is there an advised, reliable way to find and cite the data? Only from a certain list of websites?
Is this fact so universal that it need not be cited?

Thanks in advance

Is there an advised, reliable way to find and cite the data? Only from
a certain list of websites?

A quick one would be Google Dataset Search.
A more 'community'-led one would be DataCite whose stated aim is to provide DOIs for research datasets.
If you need data owned by the public sector (governmental data), so-called Open Data Portals are the way to go. For instance, this one by the EU.
However, the whole area of research data management (RDM) remains underdeveloped. Thus, do not be surprised if you do not find what you are looking for.


Is it possible for an international medical graduate to take their residency and fellowship training in Singapore? I am graduating medicine in 2 years time.  I am from Indonesia. I tried inquiring what the requirements are, but I have not been getting any straight answers thus far.

I cannot find anything about fellowship yet. But, about the residency training,
The Singapore government agency says

Enrolment into Training Programmes

...
Graduands from overseas must secure an offer of employment as a doctor from MOHH or a local healthcare institution before they are eligible to apply. ...

For more details, please contact them directly.


How to get a book indexed by Google Scholar: How to upload to Google book search and what makes a book scholarly? I have seen similar posts to this one, but none of which answer my specific questions. The google scholar help documentation states:

Documents larger than 5MB, such as books and long dissertations, should be uploaded to Google Book Search; Google Scholar automatically includes scholarly works from Google Book Search.

What is implied by "uploading to Google Book Search"?
I see no way to upload to the search.
How does google scholar determine if one's book is scholarly?
Criteria for articles include abstracting and bibliographies. Since books do not usually contain abstracts, is the entire criteria for scholarly containing a bibliography? If not, what is it?
(See https://scholar.google.com/scholar/inclusion.html#content)

As at the time of writing, the other answers here are incorrect: you certainly can manually add entries, including books, to your Google Scholar profile. That is done directly on your Google Scholar profile page: there is no need to use some other indexing system.
When you are logged in to the Google account that corresponds to your profile, you'll see this "+" icon on your profile, which allows you to add records:

Select "Add article manually", and when you get to this dialog box, select "Book", and enter the appropriate details:

Perhaps just as importantly, you can also select records to delete (when Google Scholar's algorithm incorrectly adds someone else's publications to your profile), or you can select records to merge (when Google Scholar picks up slightly different citation details and thinks that a single publication is actually two, very similar, publications).


Relearning how to work (becoming much more efficient). Is it even possible? I’ve been considering a career in academia ever since I was an undergrad. I’m turning 30 this year. I think I should either get to it (PhD and beyond) or give it up once and for all.

The key source of anxiety for me is the hyper-productive nature of contemporary academia (cultural anthropology in my case). Everything I learned over the years from books, blogs, mentors, and peers leads me to believe that academia is a place where only the most efficient knowledge workers can hope to thrive.

My issue: while I love anthropology, I am a SLOW knowledge worker. I read slowly, I take reading notes slowly, and I write unusually slowly. Then there is memory; everything I want to commit to long-term memory takes a conscious effort and planning (which again, is rather time consuming).

As a HS/university student I often got on simply by throwing in as many hours as it took. However, during the MA (and especially BA/MA dissertation writing) my slow pace became a severe hindrance. I finished the BA with a 3.7 GPA (4.0 within major) from a decent R1 university. However, I was leading an increasingly unhealthy life, definitely not sustainable in the long term.

My understanding is that serious PhD candidates and junior faculty in my field are estimated to work 65h/week, and are expected to be high performers in terms of their output/teaching/service. This leads me to believe that at this level I can’t expect to succeed by throwing in some extra hours. I’d run out of hours to “throw” fairly quickly.

When I feel optimistic I think that perhaps I can relearn how I work – how I read, take notes, memorize and most importantly, how I write. I can learn to work faster/smarter/better. I assure myself, PhD programs are also about figuring THAT part out. They are also about learning how to cope with the workload.

At my lowest, I recollect late paper submissions, or the debilitating anxiety associated with being months behind schedule on dissertation work. Then I think: someone who wants to do this for a living should have breezed through BA/MA. If I haven’t figured out how to handle it better back then, perhaps it’s delusional to think that it will all magically come together now.

A part of me is afraid of investing many years only to discover that I can’t handle this type of work. To learn at 35 or 40 that I can’t do this job well. Please tell me what you think. For those who might have dealt with a similar problem, how did you overcome your SLOWNESS and become more effective?

TL;DR ---- I want to be a professor. Love the field. Had good GPA/feedback on past work. But I’m a hopelessly SLOW reader/writer. Is there hope?

EDIT: Regarding the question "How should I deal with discouragement as a graduate student?" This recommended thread is similar, but does not focus on the main issue important to me: the question of efficiency.

It is not possible to give you a satisfying answer. The best I can offer is two anecdotes a friend of mine told me today (and they are first hand and 100% legit).

First, he goes to the supervisor, for the second time, with a bunch of paper, asking whether he should study them. The supervisor takes the papers, throws them to the ground and walks over them. Then says: "Studying is useless."

Second, the supervisors asks him to do a computation by the next day. Friend comes back and shows the calculation. The advisor writes a line of code on the computer and presses enter. The computer shows the same answer of the computation which took several hours.

Bottom line: there is ample room for improvement in terms of speed. Achieving it might require, surprisingly, to understand less and to study less and to give up on many preconceived notions about the subject and about how research work as well as about how yourself.

If you feel like the subject is important and close to your heart, give it a try. Many people start a PhD in their 30ies. But don't be silly, do:

Ask for advice before making choices.
Think carefully when picking your advisor.
Lay out many plans B and be ready to execute them.


journals that publish urgent topics Is there any journal that publish on urgent matters? For instance, papers on epidemiological issues on animals.
I am aware of the existence of journals on the topic, however, the normal course of publishing can take minimum 6 months, the disease that I am working on, can take less than 6 months to be introduced in the area of interest.
Thank you!

Some journals are known for rapid publications, e.g. PeerJ (30 days to first decision). Some publishers offer various venues for "accelerated publications", e.g. this list at Taylor & Francis. There is another list here.
In general, you could simply ask the editor of any journal from your domain beforehand whether they would grant you an exceptionally speedy submission process for reasons pertaining to an emergency issue. It is possible that they will consider such a request.


Where to start with grant proposal writing I finished my Ph.D. in Robotics in a French institution and I am moving to Switzerland for my PostDoc.

For my new position, I am supposed to write a lot of grant proposals. I participated in writing grant proposals in the past (not many) already. I would like to know if someone of you knows a good place where to learn how to do it. I am wondering if there are books you suggest, links, or whatever comes to your mind.

For now I found these books:

The Craft Of Research
Grant Writing For Dummies
The Only Grant-Writing Book You'll Ever Need: Top Grant Writers and Grant Givers Share Their Secrets

I love learning and improving myself, I love reading, therefore any suggestion is well accepted.

Thanks in advance.

To avoid treating it as a shopping question, I'm providing other advice beyond reading. You'll see that reading can only get you so far.

I'm in the US so some of these scattered thoughts may not apply, but I wish the other some would be helpful to you.

Find a senior collaborator: As a start you may want to consider being a co-investigator with someone who is more senior. Most of the time, you should be able to find one in your department. Some may also use their previous PhD mentor as a start, which is good but do make it a point to diversify your pool of collaborators.

The senior collaborators can help you navigate the system, give comments to your work, and even share examples with you. They provide a lot more than what one can learn from books.

Gather information, make them handy: Ideas ebb and flow, establish a habit to regularly browse journal articles, have an idea taking mechanism at hand (phone, computer, notebook, etc.) Keep adding, revisiting, and thinking. You have also acquired some books, keep them around the desk so that when you want to write, you don't have to get up to look for stuff.

Build internal network: Make an effort to attend research seminars in your institute, build connections with some peers who are going through the same stage as you do. They can be from the same department, or other departments that compliment what you do.

Build external network: In the first 2-3 years this may not be as crucial, but be mindful to allocate some time and resource to connect with people outside your institute. Join some professional committees and contribute as an author or help with the committee; attend conference and present; go to new-collaborator mingling sessions.

Be familiar with institutional support: Meet with your department head and other related deans to learn about what supports are there. For instance, do you have a grant support office? Can someone draft the budget for you? Can someone provide the list of the university infrastructure which is sometimes required by grant proposal? What is the due time to hand in all your final draft? How much overhead would your institute take? Any lab space and hard/software support? etc.

Be familiar with granting agencies: Through your conversations, collect information on the granting agencies. There may be governmental or paid sites that collect and collate grant proposal requests that you can search, or be e-mailed to you based on your specified keywords. Once you have identified a request for proposal, read the document very carefully to make sure you can craft your proposal appropriately. If they have a grant manager, feel free to connect with them if you have any specific questions.

A bigger picture is also important here: for instance, how many grant cycles are there? How particular or peculiar their application processes are? How much overhead would they allow? Is there any mechanism such as STEM or new investigator privilege/advantage you can capitalize on?

Schedule fixed writing time: That's pretty much what it says. Grant writing usually got crowded out by other administrative and academic work. Schedule ahead and safeguard the time.

Have the right mind set, don't be shy: If you have gathered a group of peers, consider forming a writing group and circulate drafts for each other to comment on. If grant review came back and you want to talk about how to address the critiques, circulate that as well. The core thought to cultivate early is that your work is not you. Sometimes you may get scathing review and sometimes you may get good reviews from everyone but one person just hated it. Having a group of peers provides a channel to decompress and get feedbacks.

Participate in ad hoc grant review: As a new investigator this may not be an immediate opportunity, but if you're invited to be an ad hoc reviewer of grant proposals, consider it. It requires tons of time and work, but it allows you to get an idea on how reviews happen, and what are the topography out there. Immensely useful.

Revise, reuse, recycle: Keep this a running mill. And in the same time, keep a paper writing mill. Look for win-win in between teaching, proposal writing, paper writing, and learning. For instance, direct some students to write and submit a paper on a topic you work on; use journal article to refine an idea or compile and release preliminary work (you'll need that in the proposal); proposal got rejected by perhaps being too premature? Use the background section to write an editorial; proposal got rejected again because you're too junior and the work is too ambitious? Break it into some smaller seed grants, career training grants, or student mentoring grants. Be creative and relentless.

Draft a 1- and a 5-year plan: Now that you have more clues. Draft a 1- and 5-year plan. Be wild and have fun. Think about what you want to see done in future. Keep re-visiting and revising the plans.

Document your mood and productivity: Later you'll realize that you enjoy some parts of this process, but not some others. Having a mood/productivity evaluation would be very useful. Once you have accumulated enough data, you can start to see where you shine (e.g. you are great at conceptualizing, but very stressed when writing the statistical analyses; you love the literature review, but hated the process of looking for them.) With that, you can better identify collaborators who compliment you.

Get your hands dirty: There are a lot to do, but these can be done in a long run, go prepared but don't spend too much time to over-prepare. At a certain point (when you may still mentally think "I'm not quite ready yet.") jump in and start.


Where can I find a data set on trust in the Internet? I looked everywhere for a data set on trust in the Internet of things and I found nothing...

The articles I read didn't mention the data set used or the data set was not a public one.

I even emailed two publishers for the data set and they didn't help me.

There is a sub page about open data, you can try ask there. If it's about health, you can try looking into HINTS  which in some years might have asked questions about Internet use. You can also look into PEW, which has a branch looking into use of Internet and technology in the US. Some of the data sets are freely available.


How to frame early university troubles related to mental illness when applying for masters program after more recent successes at university? Years ago I had a really rough few years of college, inability to focus, tons of stress, manic episodes etc. Instead of going into the drama of it all, the bottom line here is that during those years I cheated in a few classes because I felt paralyzed and paranoid almost all the time; by the time I was able to move about without that weight I was into another manic episode trying to get things done but not finding a way out (at this point I knew something was wrong but not what it was). I was caught and in the aftermath I submitted a statement that I fully accepted the consequences instead of contesting my obvious guilt.

Later I would find out that I had type 2 bipolar syndrome that was untreated for the past decade and I was told that I was lucky that it hadn't gotten worse. Once I was on medication I tried college again at a different school and graduated recently with honors.

My question here is that I'm really interested in going to a masters program but I don't know how to explain my first attempt at college, the failures, and the mental illness or even if I should mention it at all. I don't want to hide things but I'd appreciate any advice on this

Your outstanding performance in your second attempt should be your focus. Don't let yourself downplay how much you've achieved this time around, because every candidate without your history will be singing their own praises. However, you should, briefly, discuss the previous attempt with as much specificity as you are comfortable in your personal statement. A past failure with mitigating circumstances should not be held against you provided you acknowledge it and your recent performance clearly demonstrates that you've overcome these circumstances.


Work flow for publishing figures under Common Creative license (in order to ease re-use in journal publications) There are already answered questions on academia.SE about the re-use of already published figures. Here, a IMHO quite simple solution was proposed but triggered the question "Why is not everyone doing it?", indicating that there could be drawbacks. In this question, I would like to base on the mentioned solution and ask detailed questions about its feasibility.

Problem

Several journals obligate the authors to sign a copyright transfer agreement. If the authors publish a figure in the scope of this agreement, they are in general (this may depend on the journal's policy) not allowed to re-use the figure elsewhere without permission of the publisher. Therefore, if the authors would like to re-use a figure in another journal article, book, etc., these are the ways to go:

don't care about copyright and publish anyway (could cause serious trouble)
modify the artwork and publish a modified version (a gray area and probably tedious)
check what the publisher's policies are (perfectly legal, but tedious and varies from publisher to publisher)
ask for permission (perfectly legal, but definitely tedious)

Why is the second option a gray area? If I am not mistaken, one still needs the permission of the copyright holder (in this case the publisher) if the artwork is derived from the original. Of course, if the authors want to plot data (copyright does not apply for data), they can chose to use different colors, fonts, line widths, etc. in their figure. But I guess there is no clear statement when an artwork is so different that it is not derived. Additionally, one has to alter the figure every time, which in some cases simply does not make sense. See also the points made here and here (and the references therein).

Solution?

The answer could be quite simple. Publish the figures under a Creative Commons license and use them in your publications along appropriate attributions. So why is not everybody doing it? Are there legal issues? Or is the work flow too complicated? From my point of view it is perfectly legal and requires the least effort (well, apart from the complete disregard of copyright). But let us get down to detail.

Q0: What is meant by figure when I have software code that generates it?

Personally, I often use LaTeX and TikZ to draw figures. In this case, is the figure (i.e., the output of the LaTeX/TikZ code after compiling) subject to copyright or the code itself? Or alternatively, is it sufficient to share the code on a public repository and use the resulting figure in the publications?

Q1: What license is suitable?

A short web search showed that the Creative Commons CC-BY license should be a reasonable choice, as it requires proper attribution but allows re-use under a different license (which I assume will be the case for most journals). Any comments?

What about the code that generates the figures? I used GPLv2 in most of my projects without giving much thought to it. But technically, I would like to allow the use of the compiled version in commercial journals, so maybe GPLv2 is too restrictive in this case.

Q2: What is the correct attribution in a publication?

As already asked here, what is the correct attribution in the figure caption, assuming that the figures are published on a repository that issues a DOI?

Q3: Is there an existing implementation of such a work flow?

Are there any tools that automate version control of the code that generates the figures, deployment of the results to archives such as figshare or zenodo, keeping track of the deployed versions etc.?

The software used to create a work does not change anything with respect to the its copyright status.  I can create a work in Photoshop and distribute it (the work) under CC-0 if I want.  The fact that someone needs to have a non-free software to open it isn't important. Where things could get tricky for something like a PS file is if each layer has elements that could be considered fair use within the overall final image may be being distributed in full and hence no longer subject to fair use exceptions.  That won't be concern for most LᴬTEX / TikZ stuff

You seem to be talking only about the final version of figures, so CC-BY should be fine.  If you want to release the LᴬTEX / TikZ code, it seems that Creative Commons is indeed the preferred license type in the community (see TeXample.net which requires user to submit their TikZ stuff as CC-licensed works).  If the code is GPLv2, though, the visual result isn't covered by GPLv2.

The correct attribution will depend on your style guide.  I don't think you would go wrong to follow whatever standard it uses for works of art unless there is a more specific format in your style guide.

I'm not aware of any workflows to do this, but they shouldn't be too hard to write if you're using that many figures that it's worth your time.


How to reference different sources in a list? I am writing my master thesis and I am not sure how to reference/cite different sources in a list.

I have a small list like:

  The benefits of an "incredibly interesting topic" are:

  benefit 1 (ref 1)
  benefit 2 (ref 2)
  benefit 3 (ref 2)
  benefit 4 (ref 1)
  benefit 5 (ref 3)

I think that putting the reference after each point is a bit intrusive, but I don't know how else can I do it.

Is there any convention of how to reference in this scenario?

I think the method you've proposed, while cumbersome and intrusive, is also the correct way to do things, as you will be assigning a specific item to a specific source. That is the point of citing original source material in the first place. So while it may be somewhat unsightly (particularly if using a Harvard-like style in which the authors are listed as part of the reference), what you're doing has the advantage of being unambiguous and completely legitimate.


Should I mention my goal of expanding my family business in my MS statement of purpose? I am applying for MS in Industrial Engineering. Do you think it is safe to mention that I have a family business which I would like to expand with the aid of IE? Or will it be useless for their purposes since they may perceive me as a rich kid with back up who does not genuinely have the want and need to study?

In my opinion, having a clear reason for going to graduate school can only help your application.  Many people apply to graduate programs simply because it is the next thing after undergraduate.  For you, there is a clear motivation and a source of focus.

With regards to this particular reason, it is not clear to me whether it would be good for a Ph.D., because of the research component.  A master's degree, however, is designed to give you knowledge and skills that can be applied outside of academia, however, and so your motivation of applying this to a particular business is a good match (the fact that it is a family business I think should not particularly matter).


How can a prospective PhD student know beforehand which universities have the most reputable teams/supervisors? I am interested in astronomy/astrophysics and cosmology. It is my understanding that choosing the best supervisor/team to work with for the PHD is more crucial than choosing the best (and most reputable) university.

If the above statement is correct. How can one identify the desired supervisors/teams? Probably the best way to to this is to read papers. The researchers that publish the most papers are clearly active in their field. But how can one, without even knowing these researchers find a way to locate the researchers who seem to be making good contributions to their field?

To put it in a simpler manner, does a website like arxiv.org and others have a way to identify the most active researchers (or teams that work on a specific problem)?

Most active does not mean most impactful or most influential.  Reading papers on your own, you will have a hard time distinguishing good papers from mediocre work.  Your best bet is to get recommendations from people who already work in that field.  Ask professors at your own university for recommendations or opinions.

If you have a specific problem you are interested in working on, then it does make sense to search for papers on that problem and do your own reading.  But you will still want to get advice from one or more people at your own institution who work in that area (or close to it).


Can I supplement my unofficial transcripts with missing context? So I have a 2 page unofficial transcripts I would like to send to Universities. One page describes marks, while the other provides the grading system. Now, since I have studied in an Indian University, I have secured 6.4/10 GPA. While this looks bad on paper, I graduated in the top 20% within my batch. My grading system has D as an average.Here
As you can see, due to stringent evaluation, its ridiculously impossible to score S+ in everything.
Now what do I mean by supplement? This image that you see above is from my semester marks card. However, if you have noticed the 'levels' column, this is crucial to providing context to my grading system. Problem here is that this is missing from my unofficial transcripts.
So, I am looking to attach the scale page from my marks card to my 2 page unofficial transcript because I don't think Adcom is going to extensively look up my University to understand the grading scale. Is this move recommended? Am I going to get into trouble for doping my transcripts with additional information? As far as I know, my official transcripts in a sealed envelope will only consist of the first 2 pages without the scale. How should I proceed with this?

I don't think there is any rule that would suggest it's bad practice to add the scorecard to your unofficial transcript. However, I would say that it is unlikely to change much. If you think it is important to address the grades, I'd rather find a way to weave this into the letter or any other free text that will accompany your application. This is likely a much better way to put your grades into context. Consider that even the percentages tells you next to nothing. In the US system see here a D generally ranges between 60-70%, so in comparison to your table it should be considered better than average? But nevertheless, if you apply will all Ds or even all Cs in the US system you will likely be dismissed out of hand. So in my eyes, a personalized note would be needed to convey the nuances about your grading system.
Of course, I am not sure if your applications offer up space for such a section.


Do academics and graduate degree holders need to publish articles or books to be respected in their fields? I've read that academics have to publish their works to get tenure or be prominent in their fields. Indeed, almost all popular scholars were known through their published works. But is it possible for academics and graduate degree holders to be prominent by focusing on the professional and practical aspects of their fields like working for the government or teaching?

Publication is the most obvious route to prominence, but others most certainly exist.  I think it would be extremely rare for somebody to be well-known and respected for non-publication reasons without having ever published (expertise, as demonstrated by publication, is often a ticket for entry to other things), but there are definitely people who are known for things largely unrelated to their publications.

For example, I have some colleagues who are important figures in their community due to their prominent role in founding and maintaining a large annual event.  They've got some good publications, but that's not the primary thing that people know them and respect them for.  This is not the typical route, but it's also quite possible.


In a research statement for PhD admissions, should I start with the context, or directly with the idea for my research? I'm applying for a PhD in engineering and I was asked by the advisor I have chosen to write down a short program (~10 pages) about the "research" I will conduct if I get into the PhD program.

The advisor provided ten choices where the future PhD program will lay. The topics are very large and well studied in the literature. Our "task" is to choose one of them, find out something "new" inside of this big sea and write it down. I did a lot of research on Scholar and downloaded more or less 20 free papers I found interesting. I collected data and results, thought a bit about the problem and found a ( maybe ) new application that fits my interests and past studies and I think it could bring some novelty in the field I'm applying.

Now my question is, which is the best way to format the proposal?

Should I start with the context of the research, point where previous studies went and what kind of results yielded and now focus on my brand new idea?
Should I skip 1) and start in medias res with the heart of the matter?

Now my question is, which is the best way to format the proposal?

Different writers could balance these issues in different ways.  The key is moderation: you have to give enough context to make your proposal understandable, but you also shouldn't go overboard (it's a terrible idea to start a research proposal by saying "Since the dawn of history, transportation has been one of humanity's greatest challenges. The wheel and axle were a great advance...").  If you never mention until page 5 that you even have new ideas, then readers may give up in disgust before reaching that point.  On the other hand, too little context can be just as bad, since the proposal will do you no good if it's not understandable.  Unfortunately, there's no universal rule to decide the right amount.

One strategy is to look at the introductions to the research papers you've found.  If your introduction is briefer or more abrupt, then it's not reasonable to expect anyone to follow it.  If anything, a research statement should generally be accessible to a broader audience, and that may mean somewhat more background and explanation.

It can also be useful to cycle between background and new material.  For example: brief introduction, brief description of your new idea, longer account of context, more details on new idea.

Given that you are writing this for a specific professor, it's worth asking him/her for more guidance.  If you phrase it too generally ("How do I do this?") it might give a poor impression, but I think it would be safe to ask a question that shows you are seriously working on it.  For example, "I'm thinking of organizing my proposal like this: [Insert one or two paragraphs about your topic and how you plan to arrange the proposal.] Does that sound like what you had in mind?  If not, I'd be happy to rethink the organization."


If I previously failed to follow up with professors, are they likely to remember this and hold it against me if I ask them for advice again? I'm going into my third year of university, and the past year (my second year) was a very bad time for me. I was admittedly overzealous, and quickly exhausted myself with my research work, overloading with courses, and my campus job.

Between all this, I also was taking a course that required me to seek the advice of a professor, for which I talked to about three professors in my department. While these professors were happy to meet with me and talk with me, however, I didn't really follow up with them as well as they asked (i.e. I didn't show them the final product, because I ended up not doing so well in the course).

I'm wondering if I seek the advice of these profs again, how high is the chance that these profs will even give me the time of day?

You should not fear this. Faculty are very interested in students who will learn, do, and advance. However, you must "do" in order for them to believe you.  In university/college, things are earned and not given.

Be at ease with faculty.  Speak with them.
This is school. School is a place for learning. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness; It is expected; It is rewarded.

I have been college faculty (part-time) for a few years.  I know that sometimes student (or anyone) might have a bad day, week, or quarter/semester.  If they are nice, committed, honest, and willing to do something to prove themselves, I'm willing to give them another chance.  (But chances are limited.)

In some cases faculty just plain forget students. Faculty might have a regular FT job external to university (even full time faculty sometimes have FT jobs).  They might have 40 students in each of 5 classes each quarter/semester.  Too many to keep track of.

Faculty might also suggest a student followup with them, but they don't expect it.  For example, you ask for help on a paper, and a different prof gives you help and says "Let me know what grade you get."  They likely will not hold it against you.


Should I meet my professors at a celebration party? I finished my exams, the results came in, and I scored well but not in top 10. There is a celebration that all my professors will be at. I am in doubt whether I should go, because I fear my professors, who expected me to finish among the top 10, will be disappointed. Should I still go?

It's like a victory celebration organized by our institution as students have done well in the competitive exam which I also gave but could not go upto top 10.

what I feel bad that I didn't come in top 10 which my professors hoped that I would come that makes me feared and creates a dilemma. I wanted them to be very happy because of my result but I don't think they would be that happy meeting me . What should I say to them? Even though some professors won't tell but their facial expression may convey their sadness I think.

Even the students from top 10 would be there so I would feel little shy , what should I do ?
All in all here are my doubts :

  should I go ?
  How will I talk to my professors ? (I feel bad of not meeting their hopes)
  I feel shy in front of the toppers and I don't have courage to talk to them , How shall I talk to them ? ( once they were my friends but no I feel little sad of being behind )

Get over your disappointment and celebrate your achievement. It's important to give yourself a pat on the back when you've done good work, no matter if it's perfect or not. If you only look at what you didn't achieve and not at what you did achieve, your motivation is going to suffer at some point.

As for your profs: If they are not total jerks, they will be very happy to celebrate with you. Nobody in their right mind is going to hold it against you that you didn't meet very high expectations, especially not on an occasion like this. You sound more disappointed than they will most likely be. In the unlikely event that someone is giving you a hard time, just turn around, grab another glass of champagne (or beer) and high-five someone nice.


What is the role and format of the qualifying exam in CS/ECE programs where the exam is not in the form of a comprehensive written exam? I realize there are different forms that a qualifying exam can take in CS / ECE PhD programs.

In departments where this does not take the form of a comprehensive written exam:

What is the role that the qualifying exam fulfills in the PhD program in your department?
What is the approach taken in your department?
What are the perceived advantages / weaknesses of the approach?

Where I did my Ph.D., we effectively had no written qualifying exam.  Instead, students were expected to gather high marks following a certain complex distribution of classes within the first two years (there was also another component, involving giving a research talk, but that was more equivalent to defending a thesis proposal).  If you could not achieve enough high marks, then you had to fall back on a more traditional qualifier for whatever subject areas you couldn't pass out of via classes. I never knew anyone who didn't just get the high marks, and the rumor amongst the students was that if you had to use the fall-back, the professors were sure to fail you because they'd be grumpy that they had to prepare a whole exam on your behalf.

The rationale for this method comes from the department's goal for the qualifying exam: ensuring that students have a sufficiently strong grounding across a sufficiently broad area of expertise.  Given this goal, why can't high marks in key graduate-level classes establish expertise just as well as a special non-class exam?  Adding a special exam just increases the stress on students and the burden of preparation on faculty.

As a student, it was certainly much appreciated---if you're in a Ph.D. program, you're probably pretty good at classes, and so being able to tackle the whole qualifier thing just by being good at classes was quite a relief, especially compared to the stress that people I knew were going through elsewhere.  I think the faculty really liked it too, because they could deal with the whole qualifier thing just by teaching the classes they wanted to teach anyway.

As for down-sides... I suppose it means the faculty have to trust each other enough to believe that high marks actually mean a student is qualified?  Other than that, I really don't see any down-sides.  Personally, I think that the traditional qualifying exam is essentially academic hazing and should be replaced by methods like this.


Will uploading a copy of my paper to Academia.edu harm the journal it’s published in? A paper that I have just had published in a journal is already starting to generate interest. I am allowed to upload a copy to Academia.edu as long as it is not the copy-edited version (peer review came up with very few changes). On the one hand I want people to read it – and this will also promote my own interests as an academic –, but I also don’t want to take potential sales away from the journal, which I like, and whose staff have been very good to me.

Will uploading it harm the journal or could it generate more interest? I have linked to the journal in the paper page on Academia.edu.

Making the paper accessible to everyone who can't look behind the paywall might hurt the journal's publishing company a little bit by diverting some demand. However, it won't really hurt the people you have been dealing with. Moreover, the journal has given you explicit permission to publish a pre-print, so you're not going against their stated request.

At the same time, you are providing a service to

yourself, by increasing the reach of your paper and the citations that it will receive
the journal, to the extent that the preprint will attract interest to the journal and to the extent that people will cite the journal version rather than the preprint
the public who would otherwise not be able to look at the research. This applies in particular to readers outside of academic institutions and to scientists from poor countries.

Please upload your preprint to a freely accessible repository.


How do I explain work experience in a different field on my SOP? I want to pursue a masters degree in Electrical Engineering. I have a bachelor's degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, but I have two years experience as a software engineer. I want to state the reason for shifting from EEE to software in my SOP, but the main reason was purely financial; to clear my loans that I took up for my undergrad. The software job paid me thrice the amount of the Electrical Jobs. How do I explain this on my SOP? Can I state any other reason that sounds better compared to financial motives?

There are many people who do exactly this - many have worked in a field that is almost completely unrelated to the subject(s) that they are researching.  There is a major opportunity to emphasise the demonstrable tranferable skills that you developed from your work that would benefit your research.

In your situation, as with many similar circumstances, specific examples of technical skills that you used and developed as working as a software engineer that would be relevant in your research in electrical engineering.


Is it ethically defensible to attain consent on an opt-out basis in a newspaper? I frequently find notices in my local newspaper from researchers who are in the process of doing follow-up research on some study that they conducted a few years back. There, they provide an overview on the research topic at hand and give the participants a chance to opt-out of the follow-up piece. Otherwise, they are included by fetching data from their medical records.

To me, this practise seems questionable. If I were to guess, only a minority of the people involved in the previous study are likely to come across the notice.

Is this ethically sound? If not; what are the alternatives?

You'd need to obtain the first informed consent and examine the wording. If the informed consent does state that the collected samples or information may be used for other research-related purposes and the new projects will be announced on some specified channels, then the researchers have fulfilled their due diligence.

The problem being the general participants are really not very well-informed when it comes to providing biological specimen or medical records. For example, most of them may not realize that their samples can reveal a lot more as technology evolves. Unlike a questionnaire or an interview, the respondents know clearly what's written and said, but they may not realize what their blood or DNA can reveal, or what they can reveal a few more years down the road when molecular technology further develops, and the researchers want a re-analysis.

The researchers are usually not to blame, however, as they are probably equally clouded by the ever-changing hot topics. There are many occasions that a study was set up to test compound A, but fearing that compounds B, C, D... etc. may be the next scientific focal points, the researchers may opt for writing in the "opt out from reanalysis" statement into the consent form even they are not entirely sure what are to be reanalyzed and even if that analysis will ever happen. As for why opt out but not opt in, part of the reason is cost control: It's extremely difficult to track people down and collect a consent form again. For that, I can empathize.

If you will potentially be one of these studies' participants and are worried about this opt out mechanism, do realize that you don't owe them anything and you are completely free to walk away or require an amendment to limit the use of your samples, or request your sample or copies of record be destroyed after the study. The worst is that they will say no and you'll walk away without a chance to participate or receive the stipend. However, you'll have your peace of mind.

So to answer your question, this practice is defensible as other mechanisms can be cost-prohibitive. However, I personally do not feel it is entirely fair as I am doubtful that the participants fully know the consequences and their rights when it comes to giving biological samples or related medical records. Guidelines are being developed, and hopefully more education on how to be an informed participant will happen.


Do I need to check references of the paper with cross checking softwares? I've finished writing a paper with 2 co-authors. As everyone participated in the writing, I thought there might be some ( maybe unexpected) plagiarism in the paper. So I checked the paper with Cross check software, for some reasons I couldn't supply all of the paper to the cross check program at the same time.
Therefore, I divided the paper in 4 parts in which, each part has almost 2,000 words.
The plagiarism level found by the program for part 1,2,3 and 4 are 12%,20%,1%,16%.
So my questions are:
1) what is the overall plagiarism level of the paper? In other words, should get the average of these 4 parts or get their summation them?  (assuming that each parts has 2000 words.)
2) lets assume the last part only contains the references (16% plagiarism level detected). Do journals take the plagiarism level of the references into account as well?
3) what are the thresholds of the most popular journals? (IEEE,Elsevier,John wily, Taylor & Francis)

Overall levels of plagiarism are completely irrelevant. What matters is whether there is at least one clear-cut case in which an extended phrase has been plagiarized from one of the sources. If so, the paper is unacceptable. In principle, one could have 1% similarity and clear plagiarism, or 20% similarity and no plagiarism.

Once you look it in this light, it doesn't matter what the program does with respect to the references. Properly formatted references will look the same in any paper and so duplicating the text of any single reference is not considered plagiarism. (You can plagiarize references, however -- if I were to copy a set of important citations from another paper and then repeat them in order as if choosing them were my own work, this would be plagiarism.)

Of course, plagiarism checking software only catches the most obvious instances: direct plagiarism of blocks of text. One need not copy text exactly to have plagiarized.

Finally, if any of the major publishers have "thresholds", they are being foolish.  As the software producers plainly admit, we are still at the point where a human needs to look at the instances reported by the program and make a judgement call about whether one is dealing with an actual instance of plagiarism.

Edit: Given the comment below, it appears that some publishers are running submissions through a plagiarism detector upon submission. I suppose it might make sense to have a high cutoff above which everything gets rejected as probably plagiarized and not worth the editors' time -- but if they do that, "beating the plagiarism checker" is not what you need to be doing as a researcher. The last thing you want to do is submit a paper that slips in under the threshold yet contains instances of plagiarism that will come back to haunt you later.


Should I be worried of being accused of cheating? So I just took a very simple, all-multiple choice test. I will straight up say I did not cheat, put bags phone etc across the room from where I sat, and the test was very easy. I marked all questions that I’m not sure of with an asterisk, and then when I went over the test papers, I wrote down the questions in the palm of my hand so I could check for answers immediately after handing in the test and getting out of the room. This is something I suddenly wanted to do so I know what I did wrong immediately and get a slightly clearer idea of how I did. I probably should’ve just asked the TA for an extra scrap of paper to make it transparent but I didn’t think of it at the time. I handed in the test and waved him goodbye. I’m not sure if he saw that stuff was written in my palm when I waved at him, but he just said like have a good one. Now that I think about it, this is far from cheating but probably an ambiguous move that might stir up misunderstandings. Just in case I took a picture of my palm with the contents to show that the contents are not like cheat reminders, just a list of the questions I didn’t feel confident about in the test so I could check them later, but still I’m worried that misunderstandings will crop up later and I will be swept into confrontations. Should I be concerned about my academia integrity standing?

Also it’s not an exam, not sure why the testing tag shows up like that. It’s a normal quiz.

I'm going to just guess here that there won't be any problem. If there were, you'd likely have been challenged when you left the room. I'll also guess that no one even noticed.

You seem to have a decent sense of what is allowed. If you are challenged, just tell it like it happened and your thinking about what you did at the time. No one but your instructors can judge, but I think the issue is past you. Probably fine to just relax.

But note, also, that none of my statements are definitive. Too hard to make firm statements from a distance.


Is it okay that my supervisor insists for me to work from my room at night? I am a female PhD student in the end of my second year, and my supervisor has been acting weird lately. He asks me to run the experiments from my laptop and not from my PC in the lab (it does not affect the test), and he does that when it's 11 or 12 at night.
We usually do a voice call to discuss work, but very recently he asked for a video call and it was late at night… and just today he insisted that I work from my room and not from the lab.

I just want to know what you guys think. I don't know if it's a culture difference thing or that I should really be careful. I think it's really weird considering that I've been working with him for two years and he wasn't even nice to me.

This sets off all kind of red flags. In the absence of an extremely good rationale, this is very strange and entirely unacceptable. I would recommend that you make an appointment with your graduate program director and discuss the situation ASAP. That person will have more background about the situation and more perspective, and can offer you better advice than we can here.


Do social behavorial and economics (SBE) PhD students get funding in the US? I am a Banking and Insurance graduate from India with 7.5 years of banking experience. I wish to pursue a combined MS and PhD in the SBE field. Do universities in the US fund such PhDs? By the way, I am on an H4 visa.

Yes, U.S. universities often fund these Ph.D. positions, though my sense is that there are fewer funded positions than in STEM fields. It would be very rare for a MS to be funded, as far as I know, and often opportunities for teaching assistantships (funding through teaching classes to (usually) undergraduates) are reserved for people in doctoral programs as opposed to master's programs.

Also, usually I hear these fields referred to as "social science," with the NSF being the only entity I associate with the term "SBE".


What suggestions should I make when reviewing a poorly written paper? Since I need a break from the reviewing...

Often in my field I review papers from researchers in Asia (reviews are not double blind) which are poorly written. By poorly written, I don't mean that the prose is not pleasing to the eye, that there are problems with how the writing flows, or that there are innocuous typos or spelling mistakes. Instead, the grammar used by the authors differs seriously from normal English, and often produces significant changes in the meaning of sentences.

Usually such papers are ultimately readable, but one has to go back and re-read sentences or paragraphs several times to infer the meaning (and this is with strong knowledge of the research area!), so I generally won't reject a paper solely for this reason. However, I would feel remiss in my duties as a reviewer if I didn't instruct the authors to improve this aspect of the paper. I'd like to provide helpful advice for the authors without just giving them a laundry list of the errors.

Typically I highlight a few places where I had significant trouble understanding what they actually meant to say, and suggest seeking a professional editor before publication.

Are these reasonable things to suggest?

What other suggestions can I make?

To comment on language is fair, to suggest improvements and even making corrections goes beyond what can be expected, depending on the degree of problems. There is of course a fine line between when something can be salvaged with a little editing and where things start to lose meaning. Many journals and publishers provide services (albeit often at a cost) for non-native speakers. What you can do is to try to help the author(s) if possible by providing examples and making minor corrections. But, it is not your job to be a service. You should state your opinion about the paper, clearly separating the scientific aspect (indicate if your think the science holds) and the language issue. It is particularly potent to state when the language obscures the scientific message. In the end it is the editor who should decide what must be done.


What should a proper email signature look like for graduate students? So far, what I have is

First and Last Name
Title

Group/Lab Name
School Name
Address and Phone

I'm especially confused about the "title". I'm not sure if it should say "Graduate Student", "Research Assistant", or "PhD Candidate".. What do you think is more appropriate?

I'm not in academia, but my email signature looks like this:

If someone wants to know my name, it's sent in email headers and shows up at the top of the messages. If someone wants to know where I work, they can look at the part of my email after the @ sign.

And of course, if I'm contacting someone for the first time, I'll tell them who I am and why I'm contacting them in the body of the message, so there's no need to repeat it at the end of the message.

Here's an article similar to the one that convinced me to stop doing this. Basically, by including a signature, you make it harder to read an email. This is normally just annoying, but it becomes extremely frustrating in long email chains or mailing lists, since no one bothers removing signature when they quote people. So, save everyone the trouble and don't send it in the first place.


My Department head is very condescending - anything I can do about it apart from leaving the new job? I have been facing the following "problems" with my department head at an undergraduate institute. I joined it just under a year ago and am already facing (what appears to be) a lot of negativity from her. Here are my main problems:

1) Last semester, she would always come to me/email me telling me what a couple of students said/complained about me - mostly being that I am tough and expecting them to study more - well, it is Physics, you can't just enter the classroom as if you are entering a cinema and expect entertainment - one has to be prepared! Anyhow, I am pretty sure she was asking students "how is the new guy?" which encouraged this behaviour from students - she implied it once during lunch.

2) Towards the end, she failed to put an end to disruptive (and borderline racist) behaviour from one of the students in spite of my complaints, but kept on encouraging it instead of nipping it in the bud when it happened first.

3) Moreover, I am continuously discouraged in collaborating with another department - I haven't had any problems with them so far.

4) A few months ago, when I sent in the new syllabus for this semester (it has to pass through the Dept Head before being posted on the website), she said she wasn't OK with it - it didn't have anything unusual!

5) And now, when I wanted to add points for interaction in the syllabus for the next semester - as positive reinforcement (instead of penalising students), she gave a straight no, and asked me to give her a scientific paper proving that it is effective! I mean.. really?

6) To be in students' good books and get good feedback, she is encouraging a manipulative student - she helps him in doing homework and he will be taking a summer "reading course" with her. So, now this student doesn't have to sit in my course or pass it, and yet complains all the time which is encouraged by her.

I know these things are pretty vague but are definitely giving me a lot of negative vibes... Any advice as of how to face this situation? It looks like she is building a way to get my lose this job or make me go... Or am I just being too "sensitive" about it?

PS - She pretty much has the regular Dept Chair power -- my annual performance review should pass through her, teaching assignments pass through her, etc.

PPS - The disruptive student's concern was that the grade on the website wasn't correct where as everything was as it is supposed to be - she acted like a middle-man everytime he was trying to cause trouble instead of either directing him directly to me or atleast recommending that or telling him that disruptive behaviour is not OK. The manipulative student gets a slap on the wrist for blatantly lying about grades, quiz, etc, she helps him in getting his homework done - he is supposed to do it on his own!

Department chairs should solicit feedback from students and they should insist that teaching practices be based on evidence.  That's normal.  But it sounds like this department chair is using these mechanisms to be a bully.  That's bad.

My advice would be:

Document everything.
Consult your university's omsbudsperson.
Study up on your institutions procedures.  There may be something that keeps the department chair accountable, such as an election.  We do not know your institutions specific regulations.
Develop good relationships with the dean and other faculty in your department.  The chair often has little power on their own.
Look for a new job.
Keep in mind that department chairs often have no training for the job and may not like being chair.  Do not be surprised if they are bad at their job.


OpenOffice Vs. LibreOffice Vs. MSOffice for academic writing What office package is good for academic writing purpose? These three are the most popular for a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) style rich text editor.

PS: Avoid LateX reference please. This question is for lazy writers like me who wants to write rapidly and with ease!

If you are in a field with lots of equations, the journals you are going to publish in will almost certainly take .tex.  So write in LaTeX.  Otherwise you will not be writing your equations rapidly or with ease (compared to those who know LaTeX)*.  Use a front end like LyX if you want some WYSIWYGness.

If you are in any non-equation-heavy field, use MS Office, for the simple reason that every journal takes .doc files and only some take other formats.  OpenOffice and LibreOffice are not yet compatible enough for publication-quality work.  (I have tried repeatedly.)  It's not that OpenOffice/LibreOffice can't do the right thing, it's that the journals only support Word.  And so either your manuscript will be full of errors that you have to hope you will catch and correct when you get page proofs, or you will have to end up using Word anyway.  Kind of sad, but that's the way things are (and have been for the past decade).

*Once you know LaTeX, everything is faster and easier, especially because you can save old solutions for formatting, shortcut macros, etc. etc., and import them with a cut and paste.  But it does take a non-negligible amount of time to learn, so if you're too impatient to learn new skills or under a very tight time deadline right now, LaTeX is not for you.  Unless you're doing equations--LaTeX still does those enough better that you may as well just use it regardless.


Switching majors at a critical stage I'm about to finish my 4th semester as a pure mathematics undergraduate. I took one introductory course to programming in my first semester, and another more advanced one lately. Although it was only one course out of several others I took last semester, I spent much more time on the computer than on the math books, and I conjectured that I would probably be happier as a programmer than as a mathematician.

The problem is that I spent most of the past 3-4 years doing nothing but mathematics. Practicing problem-solving, developing critical thinking, establishing deep knowledge in foundational mathematics and growing very good general knowledge about advanced math topics and history of mathematics. Besides, I get top grades in my college, and I do like what I am doing.

In brief, I can see myself as a promising person in the world of mathematics. I am confident that in comparison to most of my peers, I am more powerful in this domain. And this, in particular, is what makes me hesitate about even thinking of switching my major.

Above all, I enjoyed that programming course much more than I enjoyed any other math course that I took (except, perhaps, metric topology and some abstract algebra). And I have a feeling that this is what I should truly go for.

What is the best decision that could be done? Especially that I still have only one year to get my Bachelor degree. If I would switch my major, I'll have lost one year of my life because of the regulations in our college.

Thank you.

Change-of-interest among mathematicians is more common than many would have imagined. Reasons vary, some decided to do something more applied, some decided to work in the industry for the better pay, some decided to work in a more dynamic environment than the academia...

I can assure you that the time you spent on mathematics is time well spent for your intellectual development and that your advanced math training will be a valuable asset wherever you go. Even though you may not be solving abstract algebra or real analysis problems for your future career, it's the analytical skills that you're equipped with that will make a difference between you and other candidates. Mathematicians, if well trained, develop unique insights to problems and are often highly detail-oriented.

If you want to switch to computer science, there are a number of Masters Programs in computer science that will accept non-CS majors. In fact, if you have taken sufficiently many advanced courses in computer science, you may apply to grad school in computer science right away without going through the (often exorbitantly costly) masters program. Many of my classmates have done that and successfully transitioned into computer science.

Last but not least, speak to your academic advisor and discuss your situation.

Good luck!


Does a lecturer have the right to prevent students from making their notes public? A lecturer does not make slides or lecture notes available (e.g. on the course website) in an effort to force students to show up at lectures.

However, many students learn the material just fine without attending each and every lecture. It also seems unethical to force us all to show up, even though the attendance is not a requirement because we may just choose to do something else and there is no rule against it.

As a response, some of us have decided to write extensive notes together and put them up on a filesharing website, and we've notified other students of this using the course websites' discussion forum. The lecturer has now messaged one of us (the one who made the post on the forum) and told him to stop doing this.

What should our response be? Does the lecturer have any say in this? Are we in the wrong?

You don't say where in the world all this is taking place.  As usual, both the country and (in some cases) the specific university matter, as the laws vary and (probably more significantly) the academic culture varies.

  A lecturer does not make slides or lecture notes available (e.g. on the course website) in an effort to force students to show up at lectures.

An instructor does not have to make slides or lecture notes available full stop.  Academic culture seems to be changing in the direction of lecturers giving slide presentations, and since you are showing your slides exactly as they are, not making them available to students seems a bit more conspicuous than not giving out your lecture notes.  But many instructors still do not use any special materials and feel that it is up to the student to get the content from the lectures.

It is a common sentiment among instructors to do business in a way that does not make it too easy or appealing for a student to skip class.

  Some of us students feel this is a terrible policy: many students learn the material just fine without attending each and every lecture, so it is not a necessary policy, and it also seems unethical to force us all to show up, because what if we just happened to have something more important to deal with on some given day?

Unethical is very strong.  Again, your location probably strongly informs the academic culture, but e.g. I don't know of any American university where the instructor who claims that students should, in general, come to class would not be supported by the administration.  At my big state university, there is a blanket attendance policy, to the extent that there is a statement from the administration that students are expected to attend class.  This gives support for individual instructors to create their own specific attendance policies.  In my undergraduate classes I have often had mandatory attendance policies, to the point of factoring attendance into course grades and also to the point of (rarely, but it has happened) withdrawing students from my course for very poor attendance.  On the other hand, I was a postdoc in Montreal, and at Concordia University in particular it was expected that instructors would give students the option of a "100% final": that is, the entire course grade would be the final exam.  When I taught a course there, two students exercised this option: one got an A, the other an F.  If you don't know, ask the question "Can the instructor require attendance?" to an administrator or academic advisor.  You should get a clear answer.  If it's yes, then you have no leg to stand on about this policy.  (Yes, that does not stop it from being unethical, but if you really feel that way: don't attend that academic institution.)

  As a response, some of us have decided to write extensive notes together and put them up on a filesharing website, and we've notified other students of this using the course websites' discussion forum. The lecturer has now messaged one of us (the one who made the post on the forum) and told him to stop doing this.

If the instructor wants or requires you to come to class, then look at from his perspective: he is not going to be pleased if he sees students brazenly making arrangements to avoid coming to class.  You are rubbing your lack of respect for his wishes in his face.  This is a bad idea.

  What should our response be? Does the lecturer have any say in this? Are we in the wrong?

Well, first I want to say that you haven't actually given a good reason for not wanting to come to class.  You say "what if we just happened to have something more important to deal with on some given day" but...do you?  If most students attend, say, 90% of the lectures, I'm not sure why you need a filesharing program: you can just copy your friend's notes for the few lectures that you missed.  On the contrary, a filesharing program looks like a systematic plan for the students to avoid the lectures: again, you may have the right to do so, and you may have good reasons for doing so, but...do you actually or are you just being difficult about it?  I have taught at the university level for almost 20 years, and in my experience: there is a high correlation between coming to class and student success.  Even if you win a battle not to attend class, the victory seems rather pyrrhic to me.

However, if you feel strongly that it is in your best interest not to attend most or all of the lectures and your right to do so is supported on the institutional level, then: check to see whether there is any institutional policy against students sharing lecture notes.  I would highly expect there not to be such a policy.  Assuming that's the case: yes, you can share lecture notes.  I advise that you contrive to do it more quietly.  Giving your instructor even plausible deniability that you are not sharing your lecture notes should go a long way towards defusing the situation.


4th year PhD student(24 years old). I am lost Lately I have some issues with my academic life and my life. I am not doing anything. literally anything. This week, I was home all day, doing nothing. Just sleeping. I am seeing a therapist, but it is not that helpful. I am going to give you some background. I hope somebody could help me out here.

I am a 4th year PhD student. My major is electrical engineering and I am 24 years old. I started my PhD when I was 21 and everybody was telling me that "you're smart ", "you have a lot of time ahead of you", " Just chill", etc. I came to the states, leaving all my family behind to achieve my goals. And look at me now, I literally achieved nothing.  (I finished bachelor when I was 21).

All my life, I used to do the minimum to get the work done. So instead of going to MIT or Stanford, I ended up in a university with ranking of around 40, which is good for me. With that being said, I gradually started to decrease the amount of effort I put in my work. Getting to my 4th year of PhD, I only have two conference publications.

My therapist is telling me that I value the work I do. But I am not organized at all. I don't have a schedule. When I wake up in the morning I don't know what I want to do. When I go to the lab, I stare at the monitor and I don't know where to start. I procrastinate. So I open youtube, Instagram, Twitter, ... . Anything that help me ignore the reality. I am using my phone at least 10 hours per day. I want to change, but something big inside me is preventing me to do that. It hurts me when I see myself, achieving nothing. Sometimes I try to start. I go to a new place. I do some scheduling for what to do the next day. But it remains on the paper. I feel like I don't have the power to continue. But there is a flame inside me, which I know is still alive and I can do it. I am lost.

My advisor is kind. He's telling me I need to publish. He told me that I need to graduate next spring (2020). But he doesn't push me or anything. He tells me to go to him if I had any questions, so he could lead me through my work.

I really don't appreciate the things I have now. When I look at my situation, I pity myself.

I don't know what to do now. I really appreciate your help and answers.

It's a common opportunity/risk of a grad program that you have the cover to spin your wheels.  I blew a quarter once.

A small piece of advice that worked for me.  I enjoyed the childish pleasure of seeing my byline on published articles.  Maybe you can use publishing to motivate you?

My advice is to write up and publish any work that you have/can.  Just literally start a computer file, name it, add the various sections as headers (abstract, intro, etc.).  Then hit save.  You're started now.  Then work on WHATEVER PART IS EASIEST.  Not in order, not in logical progression.  But whatever moves (could be conclusion first).  After all, the darned thing is in a computer...you can always edit it!  This is so much better than the typewriter era.

If you don't have any data, I suggest to write up an outline publication of what you will publish when you get data. You probably know at least enough to do a decent intro section, citing the literature.  I have found that having the paper started can actually motivate the experimentation.


What are some options for a graduate student abandoned by Ph. D advisor? I'm currently doing a PhD in applied mathematics,  I'm about to start my final year.   The problem that I've been working on for the last 2 years was originally proposed by my advisor and one of his colleagues.  The direction of research wasn't that good,  the problem had already been studied by previous researchers and there is very little one can add to what's there already.

I discussed this with my supervisor early on,  but he suggested I persevere because he saw some promise in our approach.   In these 2 years I have struggled to find something worth mentioning,  and have only produced meagre results at best.   What's worse is that my advisor has virtually no interest in what I do.  I don't think he's actually read any of my work, or even read any of the surrounding literature.  His advice has not been so useful.

Without anybody to guide me and without a clear problem to work on I feel really lost and a bit cheated especially considering the amount of attention he gives to his other students.  I'm no genius but I've consistently helped his other postgrads do their own research (in completely different areas), and while our advisor has guided them into publishing several papers each, I'm sitting here clueless,  with absolutely nothing to show for myself.

Sorry about the rant,  but I'm really lost.  Any advice would be appreciated.

There are two questions to answer:

  If you got another project from this advisor, would you stay?
  If you got the opportunity to switch advisors, would you leave?

If you are willing to stick with this advisor, you should bring up your dissatisfaction—and perhaps suggest a plan of action to "migrate" to another topic. (Can you, for instance, use the methodology on a different problem where it might be more successful?)

If that isn't an option—and to be honest, I suspect it isn't—you should work as aggressively as you can to find a new advisor and a new research topic, while if possible staying under the radar. You don't want to create a situation before you have somebody firmly in your corner who's willing to support you.


How can I effectively switch fields from physics to math post-undergrad? I recently graduated with a BA in physics. Towards the tail end of my undergrad career I took the Putnam exam (scored 28 w/o having taken any upper div math), and subsequently took a couple core math courses (one quarter of real analysis, one quarter of proof-based linear algebra). These were the probably the three most enjoyable learning experiences I've had in undergrad, and for the past month or so I've been trying to think about how I could possibly switch to a research career in mathematics but it seems very unfeasible due to the small amount of core classes I took and my inability to do any substantial math research both due to lack of knowledge and lack of faculty connections.

Right now I am taking a gap year working in a physics lab. I am technically able to audit more core math courses at my undergrad institution but wouldn't reasonably be able to do more than two (maximum three) more. I could self-study but am worried about the lack of grades to reflect my learning (although I could take the math GRE and hope for the best). It's my understanding that I'd need a strong foundation in analysis and algebra before being able to do any sort of meaningful research, so my hope is now to get into a master's program where I could fill in my gaps and start working on research, but even these programs require a much more thorough foundation than what I'd be able to build on paper. Is there any way that I could switch to math at this point, with the goal of entering a math PhD program, or is my best bet to try to do theoretical physics and segway that into mathematical physics?

Thanks in advance for your time and answers.

Sure; apply to a graduate program in math.  Most such applicants have no publications so far, so that will not hold you back.  Take the GRE.  Mention your Putnam score.  If you are in the US and are applying to a US school, you have a good chance of admission... not Harvard or Berkeley, perhaps, but at many good schools.  You may be asked to take some make-up undergraduate course work at the start; but with your Putnam score I am thinking this will easy for you.  And many math programs will let you do that after admitting you as a graduate student.  Write what you wrote here in your application.

Another thought.  Maybe try your own university.  You have met some of the faculty already.  Email the math department, see if there is a recruitment committee for new graduate students; talk to one of them and see what they say.


Tips for moderating a panel discussion: Optimum number of panelists? I will be moderating a panel discussion (60 min event) later this Semester. Was wondering if there are any tips that people may have?
I have read some of the relevant questions on Academia SE. e.g. This and this  but would love more insights.
e.g. What's an optimum number of speakers? Typically in the past I've moderated panels with two or three panelists but this time it seems we might have four.
Is four too many? i.e. I worry each speaker gets too little time or the discussion becomes too disjoint.
Would love comments about what others feel. Even if you have not moderated a panel I am sure most of us have listened to one.
What are things that you love and hate?
e.g. Personally I feel panels almost always give too little time for audience questions and that's usually where the most interesting part lies.

4-6 sounds right, but you have to have a good moderator.
Don't let them ramble for 10 minutes, or you will burn all time on the intro.
Prepare good questions, slightly controversial or provocative is ok, but don't force them to become defensive, that's no fun, this is not "The Weakest Link" (a show where more and more  "weak" candidates are dismissed, usually condescendingly, from the selection)
You may want to try out the topic with your organizers and see how it works. Practice the moderation and the transitions and how you will handle the audience. Ramblers are not exclusively on the panel.