How correlated are grades in math courses with potential for research? This is something that has been troubling me for a long while now. I am an undergraduate mathematics major (a sophomore), and I wish to apply to Ph.D. programs in pure mathematics in the future. I'm very passionate about research and academia.
On basis of what I've read on this website, graduate admission committees (mathematics) select candidates on basis of how capable they are of doing research in the future, and there are several indicators for this, of which grades are just one. Everyone knows that research in math and in general is a lengthy process. It is not like working on problem sets for courses or writing exam papers in 2-3 hours. It is a lengthy process in the sense that people take months, sometimes years to solve problems and publish papers (I hope that I'm right?)
That being said, to what extent are grades and potential for research (and in turn, graduate admissions) correlated?
While getting As does signify that one has probably mastered the material, is getting a few  Bs really that bad? I'm sure this isn't something new that I've thought of, so how do graduate admissions committees deal with this problem - i.e. making sure capable and deserving candidates are not left just because of their grades (none less than B) in some courses?
P.S. We know that LoRs, and other things matter too - but I don't know how important each component is, and hence the question. This question specifically targets to ask how important grades are and how this obvious problem is addressed.

Like most things, there is some correlation, but it's not perfect. In other words, good grades are an indicator of future success, but not proof.
This is why most places look at a wide variety of things, not just GPA or individual grades. In the US, letters of recommendation carry quite a lot of weight, for example.
No, a few B grades probably won't hurt (much), especially if they are in a topic that you don't intend to pursue further. Note that true insight into mathematics isn't uniform across sub fields. For example, I had great insight into real analysis and point-set topology, but very little in algebra or even in some other aspects of analysis. But I did fine, since I worked in an area where my insight was deep.
I'll note that when I took the GRE subject test in mathematics I was extremely discouraged when I left the test center. There were so many questions that I had no insight in to at all. But that was really because mathematics is so broad that no one (anymore) can understand all of it (not since the early 20th century, I think). I did well and got into good graduate programs.
However, don't neglect the fact that good programs are very competitive.
The key is to put together a complete application (including letters) through which a reader can have confidence in making a  prediction of your future success. If you get to write a Statement of Purpose (SoP), make it forward looking, not just a recapitulation of what is in the CV. Goals, plans, ...


Do academics in the UK usually have to declare other jobs (e.g. consulting) they take on and is it public information? I am interested in relationships between academics at UK universities and private businesses.

A number of academics in the Computer Science department at my old university worked part time and were also employed part time by google. I recently found out that a number of them also work a few weeks a year on a consultancy basis for a local finance firm.

I wondered whether 1) they had to declare any such activities to the department or university (especially in the consultancy case which seems to go alongside full time academic employment), and 2) whether it's possible for others to find out about these relationships (e.g. a journalist investigating links between an academic department and a particular company).

Regarding (1), whether they had to declare depends entirely on a) the agreement with private businesses (in particular, the agreement between the private business and the academic might actually be between the private business and the university) and b) the terms of the academic's contract. I believe that many contracts permit UK academics to work for private businesses during part of their time, but I don't know how widely that holds.

Regarding (2), it is always possible for others to find out about relationships. You could rephrase your question to: can a third party find out about these relationships legally? It then depends on the contract between the academic and the private business. In particular, if the contract contains a non-disclosure clause, then someone must violate that clause to enable a third party to discover the relationship, hence, it cannot be discovered legally.


How can I ask why this European university booked me a 15-day trip for a 2-day exam? I am going to visit a European university to take a PhD course entrance exam. The university prepared a 15 day trip for me, but the written exam and the oral exam will require only one day each. Therefore, I have 13 days free. I do not know why they planned my trip like this, nor how they expect me to spend these 13 days.

How can I politely ask about this via e-mail? "Could you tell me what I am supposed to do in the rest days of the trip before and after exam?" sounds a bit too direct. Also, is this kind of itinerary normal?

This does seem strange; I'd be concerned about a mistake (though I'm not familiar with the European system). I'd send a concise note like this:

  I'm looking forward to this trip. Could I ask about the itinerary? In particular, can you confirm that my visit will require 15 days (31 March - 14 April), but the 2 exams will be only one day each? Thanks! --Nana


What to do when a professor hasn't uploaded course content for an online class? I'm a student in an online class at university, and we're now a few weeks into the course. So far, only two lectures have been uploaded—there should be six or seven. On the course discussion board, many students have expressed concern that we're behind and have asked when we can expect course content to be published. The professor has indicated multiple times (the first time was two weeks ago) that he's working on getting caught up and will post lectures soon. If I heard that once and things changed, I might believe it, but the professor still hasn't posted anything beyond those two previously mentioned lectures.

What's the appropriate way to handle this situation, and how can I ensure my success in this class?

What does the syllabus say about when the lecture will be posted? It should say something like "Lectures posted every Sunday", etc.
What you should do is copy and paste the discussion board items where students complained, and his response that he acknowledges that he missed his own deadlines, and email it to the Associate Dean (or Dean if there is no Associate Dean). One of the duties of the Associate Dean is to help students with these type of problems.
In your email to his "boss", be professional and fact-based. Merely state that the professors has not posted the lectures (fact), and you wish to have them so you can keep up (the impact to you). Don't say it so negatively that the Dean feels he has to stick up for the Prof (i.e defend the university).
Remember the goal is that you want the lectures posted. No matter how pissed you're at the Prof, don't try to "take him down". You just want the lectures, but at the same time you don't want a angry prof who'll nitpick your Final Exam answers? You can achieve your results with politeness and tact.


Mathematics journal publishing colour diagrams for free I have a paper with colour diagrams that I wouldn't like to convert to grayscale for publication. I think colour greatly helps to understand some complicated patterns. I know most journals accept colour pictures upon payment, but I'm not willing to pay for letting others publish my own work and get benefit out of it. Forum Mathematicum is a nice journal which publishes colour pictures for free, but I recently published a paper there and wouldn't like to repeat. Do you know of any other nice options? The paper is on algebraic topology bordering with quantum algebra.

I would recommend you to publish on arXiv.org (http://arxiv.org). It's a very solid online publication outlet, free, open access and especially popular in mathematics and other hard science disciplines. Liberal guidelines with no mentioning of restrictions in terms of color.


Graduating a year early and applying to a philosophy PHD: looking for advice! I am currently a second year student at an American mid-ranked liberal arts college, majoring in philosophy with hopes to attend a PHD program in philosophy (in the US) and become a philosophy professor.
I have read all the advice I can find on graduating a year early, and there is some conflicting suggestions. I also find my reason for graduating early to perhaps be more compelling than some that I have seen be dissuaded on this site. To spit it out; I am a closeted transgender person, who, if I were to come out, would likely be disowned by my family whom I am currently reliant on for my tuition. I fundamentally cannot tolerate delaying being who I am any longer than I must to graduate undergrad. I need to graduate in 3 years as opposed to 4.
Some facts about my application:

I have a 3.9x gpa, 4.0 in philosophy (which I hope to keep).
I will have taken 16-17 philosophy classes, including nearly every advanced course offered.
I conducted research last summer, am writing a paper this semester that will likely be published, will conduct research this upcoming summer, and will, both semesters next year, be conducting independent research. I will graduate with a sizable amount of research experience in just 3 years.
I have been deeply involved on my campus, and have achieved a lot extracuriccularly. (Don't want to dox myself with specifics, and know that extracurriculars aren't that important, but hope that this would diminish worries about youth/maturity and being someone just interested in my discipline).

My big conflict at the moment is trying to figure out whether or not I should apply to PHD programs next year, or spend a year after graduation in a fellowship or job before going for my PHD. I suppose I may apply to both fellowships/jobs and some PHD programs next year, and then if I don't get accepted to the PHD programs I would do the fellowship and reapply to more in the next cycle, but I am really just looking for advice here.
Thank you all for reading this mess!

Talk to your current professors.

Assuming US, it's too late to apply for most good PhD programs this year.

The academic job market in philosophy is worse than abysmal.  You should assume you will not find a permanent academic position.  Moreover, the data suggests that your chances are even worse if you do not attend a top program - though it's not at all clear that there is a causal relationship.


Does my education before master matter for phD? I am intended to apply to phD in USA (math).

The problem is that I have specialist degree in engineering (it's russian kind of  degree) and now I am applying to master program (still in Russia) in mathematics. The question is following: can I apply to phD after my first grade as a master? Does it matter where I had graduated from, before getting master degree? I am a little ashamed of place I studied in and of my assessments there. If it was possible I would prefer applying to phD to not provide any information about my specialist degree and provide information only about the place I am currently studying (courses I've passed in first year, courses I am taking for second year, when I will have got diploma and so on).

I would appreciate any explanation.

It would be dishonest to omit your first place of study (and it would be a glaring omission on an application that would probably disqualify you).

In a PhD application you basically want to convince the admissions committee that you are capable of research or learning to do research. Therefore, if you show this potential in the process of obtaining a masters, the place you studied before your masters means a lot less.

That doesn't mean you can just ignore your first degree, but you are doing exactly what you should do if you want to get a PhD but have an unimpressive undergraduate record (due to grades, place of study, whatever): get into a masters program that will be more impressive and show your research potential. Try to get involved in publications and make connections with professors who can give you solid letters of recommendation.

Since you are changing fields slightly, you should also make sure that you take as a masters student all of the prerequisite coursework expected for applicants to the PhD program, particularly ones that might have been missed in an engineering-focused line of study. I can't give any suggestions for particular courses, but you should look at some representative programs you might be interested in for the future and make sure you have those courses covered.


Do computer scientists care about the complexity of specific games still? One subfield of computer science that used to be quite popular is the computational complexity of playing particular games. At the end of the 1900s there was a slew of research on this, examine games ranging from the universally known such as Go and Chess to the more obscure such as Sim and Domineering. A look at the Wikipedia page shows that many papers along these lines were published not only in specialty venues, but top CS Theory venues as a whole such as SIAM Journal of Computing, J. Combin. Theory Ser. A, and STOC.

Over the past years, there have been a number of papers along these lines, primarily targeting computer games such as Bejeweled, many classical Nintendo games, and Pokémon. These later publications tend to be not published in peer-reviewed venues, or published in venues far less mainstream than the previous wave. Looking at some algorithmic game theory proceedings and journals, I’ve noticed few have papers on particular games. Instead, they tend to focus on AI playing games or more wholistic theoretical concerns not restricted to particular games.

My questions are:

Is this assessment of history correct?
Assuming the answer to #1 is yes, has something changed in the culture or interests of computer scientists that has lead to this?
Are results along these lines no longer considered publishable?

Some context: I’m a young computer science researcher who hasn’t ever paid much attention to this field, but who has recently started dabbling in examining the complexity of games with my gaming buddies. I decided to do a preliminary literature review and was surprised by this pattern I’ve noticed.

(Expanding my comment.)

I think your assessment is correct -- it's much harder to publish results of the form "game X is NP-hard" today than it was last century -- although it is not something I've looked into.

I think the reason for this is the following.

The first few examples of NP-hard games are interesting. It means we can say "many games turn out to be NP-hard". That helps motivate research on NP-hardness and helps scientific communication with the general public.

However, once, say, half a dozen examples have been established, what is the value of adding more examples? Of course, there is value in having more examples, but it becomes more marginal. Each successive example is less surprising and doesn't really change the above statement.

Moreover, many of these proofs are quite messy -- not the sort of thing a reviewer is keen to work through.

Note that this phenomenon is not exclusive to results about games. I think there are many papers that struggle to get published today even though they'd sail in 30 years ago. For example, Karp's 21 NP-complete problems is a celebrated paper, but a similar list of NP-complete problems would struggle to get published today. The reason is simply that those 21 examples were surprising then, but are not today.

An important side note: In essentially all examples, the original game is not NP-hard because it has a finite, albeit extremely large, state space. Thus the NP-hardness is proved about some generalization of the game. Such as Chess on n-by-n boards with slightly modified rules.


Can I make a citation only in the beginning of a chapter? I asked a question related to my current thesis on mathoverflow.com and got there a really helpful answer by Iosif Pinelis. Obviously I want to cite his answer. Is it enough to put something like the following sentence in the beginning of he proof's chapter:

  The following proof based on ideas given by Iosif Pinelis in a proof on mathoverflow.com [1]

([1] points to the reference of Pinelis' answer in the bibliography of my thesis)

Do I need to cite Pinelis' answer whenever I use a notation/an idea of his post (it might be hard to tell afterwards, which are my original ideas and which ideas comes from his post)?

Thanks in advance for your answers!

First, I would modify your sentence as (Mathoverflow etc. goes into the bibliography):

  The following proof is based on the ideas given by Iosif Pinelis [1].

Then,

  Do I need to cite Pinelis' answer whenever I use a notation/an idea of his post?

For the notation, you can make an addition to the sentence above (but explain the notation in the appropriate place):

  The following proof is based on the ideas given by Iosif Pinelis [1]. The notation employed in this section shall follow closely that of the cited work (or some equivalent sentence).

Instead, when using an idea, yes, I would put again the reference "[1]".


How brief I should be when contacting a professor for a PhD position for the first time? I happened to find a PhD project that would align with my past experience really well. I would like to contact the professor responsible for the project. How brief should I be in my first email?

In addition to introducing myself and referring to the position, I would like to ask at least two questions about the project, and mention that I have been working on a similar project.

Is that enough? How would I finish the email then in a proper way? Just something like

  If you are not too busy, I hope you could discuss the matter further. Attached is my CV.

or something entirely else?

I have a very good publication record, have received big prizes, lot of experience, etc. in my pocket but I guess I should not repeat that in the email, since it is in the CV?

Professors receive a number of such emails. You must get the professor's interest in the opening few lines.

"I am a prize-winning A+ student in the department of X at the university of Y. My most recent work - my honours study of
Z - is very relevant to the advertised PhD position. I am very keen to talk to you about this opportunity, by email, phone or Skype, whenever would be convenient with you".

And then by all means ask your questions, that is good, it shows engagement. You could also expand on why your previous work and/or skills will be valuable to the professor.

You could get another professor to proof read your email to see if it hits the right note.


Graduate Program - CCNY Language Exam Got into the Art History program and see that I have to pass a language exam at some point during my studies.

Has anyone here taken the exam? I'd be taking it in Spanish.

I can maintain a conversation and am about a fourth grade reading level. I'm not terribly disciplined so I'm considering taking a non-credit Spanish course this summer to prepare. I know one's mileage may vary, but how difficult is it on the whole?

I don't have any personal experience here - but some googling suggests that CCNY only offers a M.A. in art history - and that the language exam it requires is about reading skills rather than conversation:

  Each semester City College offers exams in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Classical Greek, Japanese, and Latin. This examination tests your ability to translate a short document from your chosen language into English. You are permitted to bring a dictionary to the exam if you wish. You must register in advance for the exam. Each semester we will post the deadline for registration. You can register for this exam in the MPIR office during office hours. You may prepare for this exam in any way you choose (for example, taking a class). If you are multilingual, you will not need any special preparation.

This seems in line with language requirements in math programs - the idea being that there may be important texts in your field that either a) haven't been translated to English, or b) would be advantageous to read in the original language.


What does graduated mean in the Netherlands? I have been admitted to a Master in the Netherlands, but my diploma will be awarded after the enroloment date there. However, the university says they can process my admission if I send them an official letter stating that "I have graduated", completed my course work, and that the diploma will be awarded later.

In my country and university, the list of students that will receive the diploma is authorized by the Academic Council first and diplomas awarded later. When the list is issued, the Council gives a letter stating that you are graduating. I am not sure if such letter is the equivalent to what the Dutch University needs. Anyone at a Dutch university knows what they exactly want?

Edit: Official documments at my University are issued in Spanish, not in English, therefore I have to get the document translated by an official translator. Hereby, I want to the document to be sharp enough to avoid changes in sense or missinterpretations in any stage.

I'm Dutch and did my bachelor/master and PhD studies at a Dutch university (Utrecht), but can't claim to know exactly what they want; for that you'd really need to get in contact with the people at the university who are in charge of the admission procedure.

That said, I think they want an official confirmation that you passed all requirements necessary to get your degree, and so it seems that the council letter might be sufficient.


Will getting rejected from a graduate school affect my relationships with the faculty members at that school? I recently got rejected from quite a few grad schools.  Will this make it harder for the faculty at these schools to take me seriously if I interact with them?

In particular, I'm interested in having a particular professor at the school I will be attending as my advisor.  However, until a few month ago, he was a professor at a school I got rejected from.  I'm afraid that he will refuse to work with me, knowing that I wasn't qualified for the graduate program he was recently at.

I got hired as a postdoc at a university which had rejected my graduate application.

And not just that. When I started, I realized that they had made the right decision. The background level of the first-years was uniformly and substantially higher than what mine had been when I started. I would have gotten creamed.

You will have the opportunity to prove yourself in your first year. Do a good job, and any weaknesses in your application will be quickly forgotten.

Good luck!


What does the typical workflow of a journal look like? What steps does a manuscript typically go through from submission to publication (or rejection) in a typical journal? How are these steps referred to, in particular by editorial systems, and how long do they each typically take?

Note that this question is about the typical situation and hence not about:

Journals with an atypical workflow, e.g. those that allow for an instantaneous reviewer–author interaction.
Exceptional steps or rare occurrences such as withdrawal or clerical errors.

This is a canonical question on this topic as per this Meta post. Due to its nature, it is rather broad and not exemplary for a regular question on this site. Please feel free to improve this question.

Feel free to edit this answer to improve it, in particular to add other names you know to be used for the individual steps or to extend the maximum typical durations from your experience. The source for the diagram can be found here.

Overview

Initial Check

This step is usually performed by the journal's administrative staff. It may include for example:

Checking for missing or broken files.
Checking compliance with length requirements, if any.
Checking central formatting requirements, e.g., line numbers, if required by the journal.
A plagiarism check.
Excluding manuscripts of very low quality, such as automatic translations or manuscripts with very poor language.

Also known as: technical check, initial QC (AIP), admin checklist (IEEE), Awaiting Editorial Office Processing (ScholarOne), quality check (NPG)

Typical duration: A few workdays.

Editor assignment or invitation

Based on the topic of the manuscript and suggestions by the authors, an editor is assigned to handle the manuscript.
Depending on the journal, the assignment may be done by technical staff, the journal's chief editor, or automatic by submission category or author suggestion.
With some journals, editors are invited and not assigned.

Also known as: with editors (APS), editor assigned (Editorial Manager, AIP), AE assignment (IEEE), assigned to the editor (NPG)

Typical duration: A few workdays to several weeks.

Editorial assessment

The editors decide whether the paper should enter the review process or should be rejected directly, e.g., because it does not fit the journal’s scope or requirements on importance or quality. A rejection at this (or the previous) stage is called desk reject. The paper may also be returned to the authors for reasons other than rejection, such as to request more data or clearer figures prior to formal review.

With revised manuscripts, the editors assess whether the existing reviews have been addressed adequately. If yes, they either proceed with another round of reviews or jump to editorial decision immediately – this mostly depends on the magnitude and nature of the revision.

Also known as: with editors (APS), waiting for potential reviewer assignment (AIP), under review (ScholarOne), assigned to the editor (NPG)

Typical duration: This strongly depends on the journal: With some journals, it is less than a week; with others it may take a month, in particular if several people are involved in the decision or the initial quality hurdle is high.

Peer review

The editor selects a number of potential referees to review the manuscript. Should a referee decline to review or not perform the review in a certain time (as given by the editor or journal), the editor usually has to select a new referee. The main exception to this is if the other referees already provided sufficient reviews at this point.

With revised manuscripts, usually the reviewers from the previous round are selected. The editor may also decide that certain or all reviewers need not see the manuscript again, as their comments have been adequately addressed.

Also known as: with reviewers, with referees, under review, awaiting referee assignment, awaiting referee reports, awaiting reviewer scores (ScholarOne), reviewers assigned, manuscript assigned to peer-reviewer/s (NPG)

The initial selection of referees is usually comprised in the previous step. Some editorial systems give the status as with editors (or similar) if a new referee needs to be assigned and no other referee is currently assigned. Others will show under review regardless.

Typical duration: This strongly depends on the field and journal. It typically ranges from a few weeks to several months, but in some cases (particularly for highly theoretical work where intense proof-checking is expected), it may be as long as one to two years. Moreover, the key factors for the duration of an individual peer-review process are how soon the reviewers perform the review and how many reviewers decline or fail to review the manuscript. Thus, even for a given journal, there is a strong variation of review durations. Some journals give their statistics on this time (or a related one) on their webpage.

Editorial decision

Based on the reviews, the editors decide whether:

The manuscript shall be rejected.
The manuscript needs to be revised by the authors before it can possibly be accepted. If the authors submit a revised manuscript, the workflow is mostly the same as for the initial submission.
The manuscript shall be accepted as it is.
A decision requires further reviews.

Also known as with editors (APS), review completed, required reviews completed (Elsevier Editorial System (EES)), awaiting AE recommendation, awaiting decision (ScholarOne), awaiting EiC decision (IEEE), Editor Decision Started (AIP), Decision Started (NPG).
This may be followed by a short stage denoted decision letter being prepared (or similar).

Typical duration: A few workdays to a week. This may take longer with some journals, in particular if several people are involved in the decision.

Copy editing and typesetting

The article is copy-edited and typeset by the publisher. Occasionally, requests to the authors may occur at this stage, e.g., due to low-quality figures.

For some journals, a pre-copy-editing version of the manuscript will be put online at this point under a category like Just Accepted, with a warning that the current version has not yet been copy-edited and may change further before publication.

Also known as: in production, in press

Typical duration: This mostly depends on the publisher’s backlog – between a few workdays to over a year, roughly correlated with the length of the publication delay (see below).

Final proofreading

The authors are sent the paper’s proofs, i.e., the paper as it is about to be published. If corrections are necessary, it goes back to copy editing and typesetting.

Also known as: proofs with authors, Galley proof

Typical duration: Most journals request proofs to be returned within a certain time, usually between 48 hours and a week (reasons).

Publication

For some journals, particularly newer ones with an online-centric publication model, an article will be published immediately after the previous step has been completed.

Other journals with a more traditional process will queue up the publication for collation into a journal issue with other articles.  The time before this issue is published depends on the size of the journal’s publication backlog and can range anywhere from a few weeks to several years.

Many journals with an issue-based delay provide “online early” access to articles so that they are available to the community before the final issue date.  Articles thus often acquire two publication dates: one for online and one for print publication.

Further reading

IOP Publishing: An introductory guide for authors
IEEE: Peer Review and Decision Process for Authors
The secret lives of manuscripts (American Naturalist)


Is there a difference between writing a recommendation letter for MPhil programs & PhD programs? What I mean is, are there cases in which a professor might decline writing are letter of recommendation for a PhD program, but would accept writing such a letter for a student applying to a MA or MPhil programme? Is the professor seen as vouching for the student more, when he writes a letter for a PhD program than when we're talking about MA or MPhil programs? Or is there virtually no difference?

There may be a distinction between how letters are written for a primarily course-based graduate program and a (presumably more advanced) primarily research-based one.  However, in most cases, it would not be a great difference.  Qualifications such as intelligence, knowledge of the subject area, and reliability/maturity are important for both types of graduate programs.  Most letter writers would probably discuss these issues in similar terms whether the applicant wants to get into a course-based or research-based program.

On the other hand, there are differences between what a letter writer will emphasize when a student is applying to different kinds of programs.  When a student is applying for a research-based program, it will help to have letters from mentors who have worked with the applicant in a research environment, and such letters will carry a great deal of weight.  However, there are almost always going to be several faculty members who can write letters about a student's classroom performance, while far fewer (and often none) who can have worked with a student on research.

There are, moreover, some situations where a faculty member might have no problem recommend a  student for one type of program, but be more hesitant to recommend a student for other programs.  If the student has actually demonstrated that they are good in the classroom but have also demonstrated problems working in a research environment, a recommender might not feel that the student is not ready for a research-based program (like a British Ph.D. program) yet; however, this very seldom happens.


Copy pasting sentences from abstracts of other papers for describing related work This topic has already been described to some extent, e.g. here:

Is verbatim copying several paragraphs of text with citation considered plagiarism?

But I do no think that it has been completely discussed, especially in the context of related work and abstracts.

When I am writing the section about related work in my papers, I tend to describe the work of each other related researcher in a few sentences with my own words and referencing their papers. However, in a current paper that I am writing I have realised that the abstracts of more than a few papers that I want to mention are so well written and are so concise that I cannot do any better. Writing my description would be just a waste of time, and result in a less concise text.

So I am thinking about copy-pasting two or three sentences from the abstract of each referenced paper. And possibly adding, removing, or changing a word or two that may not be relevant in the context of the paper that I am writing, so it's not really a plain copy paste.

I have read that it may be a good idea to put quotes, but I find quotes, especially their immoderate use, as bad style.

Can I get in trouble for this? I would not go that far in considering anything of this as plagiarism, as the work is referenced and I am not taking credit for someone else's work.

Personally if one would do the same with my work, I would not be concerned at all, on the contrary, as long as not more than a few sentences are taken and the work is properly referenced, but you might have a different view.

So I am thinking about copy-pasting two or three sentences from the abstract of each referenced paper.

This seems absolutely appropriate, as long as you quote them correctly. Which brings us to:

  I have read that it may be a good idea to put quotes, but I find quotes, especially their immoderate use, as bad style.

It is not only a good idea to do that, it is required. You need to make explicit that those are verbatim copies. The semantics of copying text from a paper and summarizing the key points yourself are different for a reader, and you need to make this difference explicit by demarking which parts you have taken in verbatim.

  Can I get in trouble for this?

Yes.

  I would not go that far in considering anything of this as plagiarism, as the work is referenced and I am not taking credit for someone else's work. Personally if one would do the same with my work, I would not be concerned at all, on the contrary, as long as not more than a few sentences are taken and the work is properly referenced, but you may have a different view.

This reminds me a bit of a few high-profile cases of plagiarisms that were going around lately in the german-speaking areas. Often, the excuses presented by the accused authors were similar ("hey, the text I copied wasn't really that important - it was just the introduction after all!", "I cited it anyway, I just did not make clear that the text is actually copied from there", etc.). These excuses never fly. Be rigorous with your handling of sources. Everything else is just playing with fire.


In research paradigm's post-positivism can I prove the hypothesis instead of falsifying it? In research paradigm's post-positivism can I prove (verify) the hypothesis instead of falsifying it?

Guba, E.G. and Lincoln, Y.S., 1994. Competing paradigms in qualitative research. Handbook of qualitative research, 2(163-194), p.105. says, that in the methodology

positivism's experimental/manipulative methodology
that focuses on verification of hypotheses;

postpositivism' s modified experimental/
manipulative methodology invested in critical
multiplism focusing on falsification of hypotheses;

But, can I just prove (verify) the hypothesis instead of falsifying it? I don't want to fully be on pure objectivism and don't want to be in pure subjectivism so I'm considering the nature of knowledge to be in post-positivism ..

Mainly, I want to gather data and do both qualitative and quantitative analysis and then triangulate the data to come up with a conclusion and prove (verify) the hypothesis. If I do that does it comes under positivism instead of post-positivism?

In short, post-positivism takes the stance that answers will change with more data and therefore prefers to reject standing assumptions rather than accepting alternatives. Instead of accepting your can say failed to reject. This leaves it in the realm of tentative working belief until more data is presented.

In length, if you are viewing the world through the lens of post-positivism then you believe that though there is a Reality out there it is not perfectly knowable. An example of this is in the moment of this writing there were an exact number of grains of sand within a given radius of the center of the planet. The quantity however is unknowable. Though it is unknowable we can easily reject the hypothesis that there were exactly ten grains of sand within a thousand kilometers of the earth's center. We have rejected a hypothesis without accepting any alternative. Let us say that an alternative hypothesis was put forward that there were 1 * 10 ^ 15 grains of sand. This alternative though certainly not accurate is much less easy to dismiss. Though I imagine a few quick calculations would be sufficient to reject it as well. We allow to stand a hypothesis that we can not bring enough evidence against to reject but we do not ever say that it is the final and true answer.


Mendeley - References in Bibliography that I did not insert (MS Word 2016 plugin) I have references in my bibliography (that Mendeley automatically generates for me) that are not in my paper. How do I get rid of them? MS Word 2016, Mendeley Plugin, Windows 10.

I have tried:

Clicking the Refresh button
Deleting the bibliography and re-inserting it

I (kind of) solved the problem. I removed citations in earlier versions of the document and for some reason they were still being inserted into the bibliography. All cases were cases in which a there were multiple parenthetical citations. I deleted the entire set of citations and re-inserted them, and it's working again.


The manuscript status suddenly changed to “Draft Status” in ScholarOne About two weeks ago, we submitted a paper to a Taylor & Francis journal that uses the ScholarOne manuscript-submission system. We also received an e-mail confirming that the submission process is complete and that the editor is considering the paper for publication.

Today, I checked the status and it has now changed to Draft Status. I have never seen something like this in my previous submissions. I would be very grateful if someone could possibly tell me if I need to contact the editor or do something specific.

We were recently informed that the manuscript exceeded the word count set by the journal and therefore was unsubmitted. We were asked to revise and re-submit the paper.


How marketable is a BS in Economics for different Masters degrees? I'm currently an undergraduate Economics student with minors in both business and mathematics. As I look towards my future, I'm trying to see what options I have and ultimately make the best decision.

Anyways, I am hoping to find out more about graduate school and the different masters degrees I could obtain. Is it fairly common for students with my academic background to get into a quality masters in finance program? Obviously I could go for economics, I was just wondering what different options I have available.

As a general rule, your exact undergrad major is less important than having strong letters of recommendation, high GRE scores, a high GPA, etc. Of course, an admissions committee will want to see that you've taken some relevant coursework and that you've done well in it. See the web site for the programs to which you intend to apply: most will spell out both the minimum preparation they expect and additional coursework they would like to see. (For example, an economics program might require that you have taken intermediate level micro and macro, calculus, and statistics.) If you are a strong candidate in other respects, you may even be able to make an argument for admission despite some missing prerequisites.

I'd suggest that you might want to focus on what you hope to do with a graduate degree and then work backward to which degree to pursue, rather than casting about for a degree to pursue. Unless the subject is wildly-unrelated to your course of study so far, you can probably add coursework to make yourself a good candidate for the degree you need.


What does "percentile' mean in this recommendation portal? I am a final year student and applying to graduate schools in the USA for Fall 2016. Recently, a professor was filling out my recommendation section in a college's admission portal.

In that portal, there was a question asking to rate the student in terms of intellect, communication ability, and such other things based on 'percentile' in class. The options were 1%, 5%, 10% and 50%. My teacher selected 50% as a higher percentile means better ranking in class. My current class ranking is 2/60 and I am worried about it. Did my teacher do the correct thing or should she have chosen the first option(1%)?

Edit (15 Nov 2018): Well this question is almost 3 years old now. Got a notification from this recently so wanted to thank all the people who answered back then. I did ask my teacher to send the correct data and consequently got in one of the Ivy Leagues in the fall of 2016. So good, baby baby..

Lower is definitely better. For example, the "Common Application" which is used for applying to undergraduate schools is pretty clear that 1% is good.

The same generally holds for graduate school applications.

You should ask the recommender to try to change it and, if she is unable, she should contact the admissions committee directly. A top 50 percent ranking will almost surely lead to you not being accepted.

If your reference writer is so unfamiliar with the US system, you may want to consider asking someone else. There is an art to writing good recommendation letters. For example, it is reasonable for a recommender to rate the "intellect", "communication ability", etc. as being top 1% even if the student is ranked 2/60 since there is a difference between class rank and "intellect", "communication ability", etc. In fact, differentiating between the two is the whole point of the recommendation letter.

If the recommender is unable to change the letter at this point, it is much better to put in a phone call/email to the chair of graduate admissions than a phone call/letter to the university. In my experience the central administration is useless and you need to get to whoever is actually looking at the applications. It is critical that the recommender, and not the applicant, makes this call/email.


Where do research labs get their funding? I'm just starting out in research and about to finish my BSc. If I stay in research I'm wondering about the economics of it: where does the money come from? I am passionate about a specific field and I want to be able to do research in that area - but I imagine to support that research I'd have to find a lab that has been specifically funded and has projects related to that field, right? And how does the funding for these labs work? Is it mostly project based with 1-2 year length after which the lab has the pressure to submit another proposal to find another project, or does it have less pressure because the lab is also funded by the university?

In essence I'm just wondering about the money flow that is keeping a research lab alive: if I want to do research in X, I'd have to find a lab that has the money to support X right?

Most labs get funding from granting agencies, governments, industry agreements, or private foundations. Some universities also provide funding in other forms.

Now, what they can do with the money depends on the conditions of the grant. Some, are attached to a specific project. They may also include a breakdown of the expenses: this much to hire two PhD students, this block to hire a posdoc, publications, experiments, computers... Some other grants are more open, and may give the PI more freedom to allocate the resources, or to work on sub-projects.

Some areas of research have economical interest, and may lead to patents and industrial agreements, that could help the lab to be less dependent on grants.

Lastly, some students may get their own funding, that may be attached or not to a specific project.

Universities do support labs, mostly by paying salaries of the staff and infrastructures.

Regarding the times, most labs apply to any grant in reach: you can never know if the grant you are hoping for will be renewed; and there is never too much money.


Finding original research ideas/topics as an undergraduate student I am currently an undergraduate student majoring in mathematics and biology. My plan is to combine both of these fields with the hope of somehow working with modeling infectious diseases through the use of differential equations and other methods.

I recently took a course in mathematical modeling and an independent study on modeling infectious diseases. I worked with the SI, SIS, SIR and other models. The main method was using differential equations to model the diseases. I've worked with very simple models that were logistic, to more complicated models such as the Zombie model.

This field really interest me and I would like to work on some sort of topic that isn't well discussed or well known. Maybe even create my own model. However I don't particularly know where to start. How would I go by finding some sort starting point? Any help in the right direction would be appreciated. I am on winter break and I have a month of free time. I'd like to use this time to do some research and write a paper on it. Something that I may possibly use in the future.

To develop something that is both (1) new and (2) meaningful, you'd have to start by reading a lot of published research to find out what is already out there. After reading widely, you'd start to get a sense for what the trends are in the field, and possibly start to see some gaps that point to open research problems. You'd also start to see what you'd be expected to do and say in a similar paper, i.e. the standards and conventions in the field, what kind of contributions a new model is expected to make, etc.

This is very difficult and time consuming for someone working alone without a lot of experience in the field. (It would definitely take more than a month!) The best "shortcut" is to find one or more advisors (perhaps the advisor from your independent study?) who can help point you in a promising direction, and give you feedback on your work.


Finding high quality copyright free icons for computer diagrams in IEEE or ACM submission I am a new graduate student in computer science and starting to submit papers to IEEE and ACM. I would like the diagrams to look as professional as possible. For example, if I am showing a digital attack on a computer network, I would  like computer and server node icons etc. I was able to find these common ones easily in many WYSIWYG graphics editors.

However, an icon of a "hacker" or "attacker" is harder to find by default since these are more 'niche' if you will. For these I notice that I can use IconFinder, however many icons have a Creative Commons license -- which generally means that I should attribute the original creator. Since I use many icons in my diagrams, it would be easier if I can find some that do not require attribution.

I noticed that the Creative Commons BY 3.0 license has a clause that says:

  You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the
  material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an
  applicable exception or limitation

Now I have two main questions:

Does that clause I quoted mean that I can use it in a paper going to
IEEE or ACM or such publications? Is that considered public domain?¹
How do you find icons that you can use freely in your paper without
the need for attribution?

¹ I realize this borders on "legal question" and someone might be reluctant in answering it. Just making it clear that I would not hold anyone or Stack Exchange liable for any advice given.

The quoted part means that you don’t have to follow the license if you are allowed to use the icon anyway (without the license).

This could be the case if the icon is in the public domain, if its use would be allowed by something like fair use, the right to quote, or similar.

In other words: the license can’t restrict you from doing something which you are allowed to do according to copyright (and other relevant) laws. Copyright licenses (like CC BY) give additional permissions (under certain conditions), not additional restrictions.

If you don’t know for sure that the icon is in the public domain, or that your use would be legally allowed, better assume that you have to follow the license.

Most licenses require attribution. All of Creative Commons’s licenses do (as they all have the "BY" component).

If you really don’t want to attribute your icons (the attribution doesn’t have to appear next to the diagram, if that’s what you are concerned about), you have three options:

Use icons that are published under a license that doesn’t require attribution. It doesn’t have to be a known copyright license, it could also be stated in the terms of a service of the icon site.
Use icons that are in the public domain. The author would have to state this somehow (e.g., by saying "public domain", or by using the public domain dedication CC0 1.0, or one of the other public domain equivalent licenses), or you would have to know that the intellectual property rights have expired.
Use icons that don’t meet the threshold of originality. Of course it’s not easily possible to know if that’s the case. Better be safe than sorry and assume that all except the most simple icons are eligible for copyright protection.


Should I provide references to a function which is used as part of a programming language? I am writing a paper, which in the application used a function from a programming language (in this case, it is OpenCV function canny edge detection).  When is or is not appropriate to explain the algorithm in mathematics/words and when or how should a function be referenced.

In this case, OpenCV explains the algorithm http://docs.opencv.org/doc/tutorials/imgproc/imgtrans/canny_detector/canny_detector.html

Should I just provide a link to this, as I did not modify the algorithm but it is an important part of the implementation decision.

Is there a standard way of deciding to reference the language, function, or original algorithm?

In this case I would opt to cite the paper in which Canny edge detection was introduced. Citing OpenCV as a whole is more appropriate than referring to a specific function, e.g. "we obtained our results using OpenCV [Bradski00]". Since you use OpenCV, you should also cite the related paper.

I would only refer to a specific function in a software package if it does not implement a known algorithm and therefore requires special attention.


How much do teaching responsibilities hinder a researcher at a small university? I would like to consider physics (theory) or math. I have two questions, but in general I would like to understand more about the following.

If a researcher joins the faculty of a small (not top-research) university, will his/her administrative or teaching responsibilities be much greater than those of a researcher at a top university?
If so, does this hinder his/her research development to an appreciable degree? Or perhaps this is not worth worrying about, and a good scholar will find a way to produce good research regardless of circumstances.

Any perspectives or evidence would be appreciated.

Yes, you will have a heavier teaching load at most small universities. Such places usually have teaching as their primary mission. Teaching is usually required at large US universities as well, unless you are completely grant funded. But that isn't the only issue.

At a small institution it is much harder to develop a synergistic core of researchers. Even if there are, say five math faculty, they are not especially likely to have the same research interests or be focused on the same field.

Things are a bit easier in the last couple of decades with advances in communication, but you still aren't likely to see deep research seminars in a topic of interest to you at a small place.

Also, note that in the US, most faculty are actually working at smaller, primarily teaching, institutions than large research universities. If you look at, for example, the list of colleges in a given state, say New York, you will find only a few large institutions and many, many small ones. It is a bit complicated since some private research institutions are actually fairly small. In those, the mission is primarily research or it is balanced.


What is the most likely cause of short, quick, and useless reviews? My theoretical computer-science paper that I submitted to an Australian (i.e., located in Australia this year) B-level (according to http://portal.core.edu.au/conf-ranks) DBLP-listed computer-science conference was accepted 4 weeks later, but the reviews are short:

5 sentences (accept)
2 sentences (accept)
3 sentences (reject)
3 introductory sentences + 3 sentences noting weak points + 3 sentences noting strong points (borderline)

All four reviews are superficial. They partially contradict each other. The buzzwords and phrases that occur there are: well organized, good presentation, minor format errors, sound results, no theorem proofs, highly relevant, well written, convincing, weak motivation, no empirical study, no clear justification of the contribution, only theoretical analysis, no explanation of contribution, no clear structure, results useful for practicioners and theoreticians.

There is nothing beyond these high-level claims in the reviews: no page numbers, no section numbers, no quotations, no citations, no related work, no examples/counterexamples. None of the reviews substantiates any of its claims.

It's the first time I get this kind of reviews. Usually, I get longer and deeper reviews that show that the reveiwers understood the technical contents of the submission at least a bit beyond the abstract and that elaborate on a technical level at least a little bit.

My questions are:

What is the likely cause of such short and useless reviews?
Is the conference really serious? (The paper submission site stayed open long after the formal submission deadline.)
Are my concerns groundless? Is what happened normal for B-level Australian conferences?
Is there any way to extract more information, say, by writing the PC chair(s)? If so, how do I formulate the message, or even what do I ask? Or is it better to keep silent and be satisfied with acceptance?

The proceedings will be handled by IEEE Conference Publishing Services.

I know that the exact answers might be hard to tell, so I'd be happy with answers based on well-informed guesses.

The basic idea is simple: reviewers have no incentive to write good reviews apart from their desire to see the conference succeed. Seeing an abundance of short, superficial reviews with a high acceptance rate indicates a low quality conference.

An alternative explanation might be that this is a non-archival conference, often referred to as a workshop. In that case reviewers mostly care about the general problem the paper presents and whether it sounds interesting/relevant. Program chairs are usually those who go through the papers to see what fits (and there’s a small number of submissions).

If it’s not a workshop, the program committee/organizers aren’t well-respected researchers, and they charge you a lot of money in registration fees, I’d consider retracting.


What to do when reviewer wants p-values, but I prefer to use significance stars to prevent clutter in table? My regression tables have coefficient estimates, standard errors, and significance stars indicating the range of p-values (e.g. two stars means p < 0.05).

A reviewer wants the exact p-values. I personally think it would make the table more cluttered than it already is, and I have 12 regression tables.

Should I adopt the reviewer's suggestion, simply because they are the ones who will play a big role in determining whether my paper is accepted? Or should I attempt to explain, saying that the p-value can be calculated from the coefficient estimates and standard errors (besides, the significance stars already give a good guide to the p-value?)

=====

Edit: I decided to get rid of the significance stars and insert the p-values. Thanks for the feedback! (Interestingly, the paper was accepted, and the reviewer recommended the paper for acceptance, but they suggested I have both the significance stars and the p-value. But I didn't take their comment)

In general you are not obliged to comply with all reviewer wishes in your revision, unless maybe the editor has mentioned such a point explicitly in the decision letter. If you don't want to follow a reviewer's suggestion for revision, just explain in your response letter in a factual way why you choose to do so, and see what the editor and reviewer think about it. You have good points for such a response in your question already.

I would nevertheless suggest to make the reviewer's life as easy as possible. Even if you don't want to have them in the paper, you could maybe add a list of p-values to the response letter for exactly that comment, stating that for the convenience of the reviewer you calculated the p-values from the data given in the paper (instead of expecting the reviewer to do this). You could also offer to put such a list in any supplementary material if the journal has such and the reviewer thinks it's important that readers see that.


What is the academic value of a white paper? I am wondering what constitutes a white paper and what is the academic value of it.

I found some information here but I am more after turning an aspect of a research into a white paper.

Currently, the research is just for internal use. I am hoping the white paper will make it more visible and reach a wider audience.

The other reason is that I can then add it to my CV as a tangible output (if that is possible).

What is a "white paper"?

Some of the things that I have seen white-papers be useful for:

Position papers, manifestos, and other intellectual opinion statements.
Disseminating protocols, techniques, standards proposals, and other things that are useful but "below the threshold" of a normal publication
Seeding discussions with program managers and other potential funders and collaborators.
Date-stamping a piece of work so you can get it out of your queue and move on.  Much better a white paper in an informal repository than a disreputable journal.

Sometimes white papers end up "upgrading" into proposals or publications of various types---sometimes very high impact publications.  Sometimes they even draw a surprising amount of citations.  Mostly, though, they are for the less formal side of scientific life.  A well-regarded white paper sort of statement can change the course of an entire field.

One thing that I think is very important is, for any white paper that you are disseminating publicly, to get it into some archival location.  There are a number of methods for this, from arXiv to standards RFCs to institutional technical report collections.  If do this, it will be much easier for people to cite your white paper, pass it around, and generally disseminate it.  And if it's persistent, you can feel much more comfortable adding it you your C.V...


How to prepare for a phone interview with a prospective advisor? I sent my initial inquiry email to a prospective advisor on Wednesday with a brief description of my background and my interest in his research (I talked about one of his papers). He emailed me back the next day and seemed very interested in my background and the fact that I took time to research him, and requested more information from me (i.e., marks, certain courses). I sent him the requested information and he emailed me back yesterday morning saying he’s sure I will be accepted into their program and asked me various questions regarding funding (i.e., grants) and plans for the future.

We then scheduled a phone call for this afternoon. I’m not sure what the call will entail, but what are some things I should do to prepare? What are some questions I should ask?

(I am not asking this question at the last minute because I got lazy. My email interactions happened with him very fast. I was usually told it takes prospective advisors weeks to get back to students.)

If you're interested in joining the group, then you should be able to show that you've done a little bit of prep work (which clearly you have, since you've talked about his papers).

Questions I'd like prospective students to ask me include:

What projects do you have upcoming?
What is your advising style like?
What are your expectations for graduating students?
Could I talk with some of your graduate students/postdocs?


Deadline For PhD offer while waiting for other results I have been offered a PhD position with full funding from my backup university, however they gave me a deadline of April 5th to either accept or decline their offer. I am still waiting for replies from other more prestigious universities. What should I do?

There are generally two things you can do - and you can and should do both at once.

1) Try to extend the deadline. Contact the people who've offered you the position and ask for extra time. They aren't going to give you an infinite amount of time, but ask for ideally how long you'd like - say, an extra two weeks? - with the expectation that they might be willing to give you less time than that. They might say, "Sorry, we can't extend the deadline" or "we can only extend the deadline X days" - but hey, that little bit of extra time could be very important! If you are polite it can't really endanger your offer at any place you'd want to dare attend, and they could always say yes. Just be 'reasonable' in your request - asking for an extension until days before the academic year starts won't be granted and might encourage them to give you no extension at all.

2) Contact the programs you haven't heard from and let them know you've received other offers, and that you'd really like to still consider their program - but you are on a deadline. Inquire if you'll be able to get an answer from them before your deadline. Everyone in the process understand that candidates who get in anywhere often get multiple offers, and deadlines don't always sync up. If you've had contact with a prospective adviser at the institution, consider CC'ing them as well (on the chance that they have already made a decision but the institution is being slow).

There's not really anything to lose if you act professionally, and potentially a great deal to gain. You could get an extension, you could get an early response from other programs, you could find out responses were sent but did not reach you - or worst case scenario you end up in exactly the same position as you are in right now.


Email to all potential supervisors listed on application I submitted my application for grad school with some professors as my potential supervisors. I have never contacted them prior to my submission.

Days ago I sent an email to one of them and asked him to take a look at my application and later he invited me to an interview. Interview went well but at the end he said there are some other candidates that he is interested in and he would interview them too. So I have to wait for the admission committee decisions.

In this situation, is it wise to contact other professors listed in my application and present my case to them? Some of them are working in a similar field to this professor and others have different research interests.

Please note that in my statement of purpose and CV, I mentioned my research goals which are inline with these potential supervisors' interests.

Yes, you should keep looking until you get a commitment. It would be unwise to delay. I'm sure the person you talked to isn't expecting you to ignore other possibilities or follow up on them. Otherwise you would have gotten an offer.

Of course, you may be in a place where actual admission isn't in the hands of advisors, but a committee. In this case, no one can properly "accept" you until the larger institution does. So all offers in such places, from potential advisors, are tentative. Other places, the advisors accept and hire students, but even there, until you get a commitment, keep looking.

Of course, you need to be honest, when asked, if you are following up other leads.  They will likely be aware, of course, since they know each other. This can't hurt you, and might even help.

If you are in a position to visit the institution in person, you might consider doing that and speaking to some of these professors. Email is much less effective in this sort of thing.


Simultaneously submitting, one paper got rejected, other didn’t - what to do? There is a result R and teams T and U.

Team T submitted into a journal result R, but not on Arxiv. Team U then submitted result R to Arxiv, without knowing about the submission of Team T. Team U also submitted to a journal after publishing on Arxiv but got rejected. Now the paper of Team T is already published, but later than the Arxiv submission of Team U.

What should or can the Team U do?

Team U can genuinely claim the following in a future version of their article:
"After making our result publicly available on arXiv, we became aware of a similar result obtained in \cite{teamTresultPublishedPaper}."
Team U can congratulate team T and ask the following:
"Dear Team T, congratulation on your result R in journal J. As you may be aware, we have been working independently on a similar result as your recently published paper; our article was available on arXiv on Sept 2019. We were planning on acknowledging your independently obtained result in the next revision on our article, and we were wondering if you would agree to do the same." As pointed out in the comment, this is potentially obnoxious, and might not have any benefits.
Team U can submit to paper to the same journal that accepted team T's paper. "Dear Editor, we have noticed a recently published article by team T in your journal on result R. The same result was obtained independently by our team and made public on Sept 2019, a few months before team T's result was publicly available. We are wondering about the journal policy regarding publication of two papers that prove the same result, when the public record shows that the results were obtained independently and contemporaneously."
Alternatively, instead of asking the Editor on the possibility of such submissions, Team U may directly submit the article to the same journal with a cover letter asking to be considered.
If members of team T were referees for the paper of Team U (the paper that was eventually rejected), this may constitute a conflict of interest. If a reviewer reviews a paper that proves the same result as an article written by the reviewer not yet public but currently under review, the reviewer should at least declare this as a conflict of interest during the review. Of course, reviewers are anonymous so there is no way for team U to know. Team U may contact the Editor that rejected the journal, saying     "Dear Editor, thanks for your consideration for our submission XXX that was rejected on $RejectDate. After the submission of our article to your journal, the same result was published and made public by Team U in OtherJournal. We are wondering if you could double check that no conflict of interest among the reviewers hindered the review process." this is potentially obnoxious, and might not have any benefits.

Beyond these, team U should try to have their result published. Team U can certainly claim the result in their CV, research statement etc.

There are numerous cases of independently obtained results in hot fields and many papers actually include a sentence as in 1. above. When that happens, curious readers and historians can lookup arXiv or other public repositories (e.g. PhD thesis, etc) to check the actual timeline.


Submitting a note on the falsehood of a conjecture to the journal the conjecture originally appeared in I wrote a short note, showing that someone's recent conjecture is false. Is it a good idea to submit the manuscript to the same journal the conjecture originally appeared in? Will it expedite the reviewing process?

Update: After reading the comments in here and talking to my advisor, I ended up submitting the manuscript(including the counterexample and a little improvement of the original result) to the same journal as the original was appeared in. Paper got accepted in less than 40 days. I highly believe in my case, choosing the same journal shortened the reviewing process significantly.

Submitting your manuscript to the journal the original conjecture was published in is probably a good idea. After all, if the journal published the original conjecture, then the conjecture is obviously in the journal's scope... and so should be a counterexample.

In addition, your submission may well be handled by the same associate editor, who may be able to call on the same reviewers as for the original conjecture. (Of course, it would be a good idea to get at least some new eyes to look at matters, to avoid academic inbreeding.) This could accelerate the review process somewhat.

Beyond that, you likely won't get any preferential treatment beyond what the shortness of your manuscript and the immediate relevancy of your counterexample warrant.


My class bunked lectures! My class decided to bunk today's lectures. Because there is so much chaos in my city due to heavy rain and blockage. Many student can not come and some of them are not coming due to their parents not allowing them to go. So we executed our plan.

Now, our class teacher want us to meet HOD and take permission from him and then only we are allowed to sit in next lectures.

So, my question is how should we handle this situation?
How should we put ourselves in front of him?

Preparation for meeting the HoD will depend on the individual student's situation.

Students who attempted to warn the teacher of their non-attendance should document their efforts to do so.

Students who really could not attend should document the road closures and transit cancellations that prevented them from attending.

Minors who were told to stay home by their parents should get a note from the parents taking responsibility and explaining their reasons for keeping the student home.

Anyone who did not attend without a good reason needs to think about the wording of an appropriate apology.

Students who could not attend and made at least some effort to notify the teacher are in the strongest position. Even those should be apologetic about the group non-attendance if they encouraged it.

At the other extreme, I don't see anything other than an apology for a student who could have attended, chose not to, and made no attempt to notify the teacher.


First Publication as a PhD student I'm in the process of writing my first paper as a PhD student and was wondering if I could get some general advice regarding the following:

How many Journals to consider submitting a manuscript to and how much impact factor plays a role here. Some say aim high as possible.
How much time should I spend actually writing the paper? Do I continue working on other projects at the same time as writing the paper?
What other considerations should I keep in mind after submitting the manuscript? e.g. should I be writing up another manuscript for another journal-just in case?

I would be very grateful to hear about other people's experiences, etc with their first publication.
Of course,I've read a lot of things on the internet and I've spoken to my supervisors too but I believe you can never learn too much.
My project in the mathematical sciences with applications in biology/medicine.

Thanks.

EDIT: I found the following links very useful: one, two

A Professor here.

In general, yes, aim as high as possible.  In practice, I do an educated guess as to which journal to send it to after seeing the final product/paper.  If the student is capable and motivated, then I would work with the student to get the paper into the best journal.
As much time as possible.  Papers only get better over time.   There are always avenues to improve it, technically or presentation wise.  This is where your supervisor's experience is critical.  Only he/she will be able to push your paper to the required standard and also steer you away from pitfalls.
Many directions here.  You could beef up the paper with new results, incorporate more assumptions or proof the general case :)  Alternatively, you can work on a new problem or a related problem. Problems tend to reveal themselves as you dig deeper.  All my students start on a new/related problem after they submit a paper.  They might choose to go on a holiday first though.

All the best ...


Bad relationship with PhD supervisors, should I have them as my recommenders in job applications? I am about to submit my thesis. At the moment, I am looking for jobs, but my relationship with both of my Ph.D. supervisors is not good. Now I am facing another complication where I have to find a recommender for a job. I am too scared to get them to be my recommender, yet I will probably have a reason as to why not them.

My supervisors have shown many reactions which indicates that they dislike me, for example, scolding, ignoring emails, blaming, and talking behind my back. Nevertheless, I always act nice to them and say that I agree with them that it was all my fault.

I did not change the supervisors because of my stupidity in thinking that nobody will accept me as my research field is tiny. These results in me feeling as if they all tried to dish me off from this program, but I was too stubborn.

Edit: To give a note that I risked using one of them which turns out not as bad as I thought. Sometimes, the HR just wants someone to provide an honest feedback, and sometimes, the sup may just want an alumni

Not having the recommendation of the PhD supervisor is going to raise some flags, especially in academia. However, you can get recommendations from other senior people you collaborated with on research papers if you published any. Those people should be able to write decent recommendation letters for you. If you apply for non-academic jobs, you could also ask for a recommendation letter your boss from a previous job if you had one, or your diploma/masters thesis advisers.

Also, if you only have your supervisers to write you recommendation letters, you could still ask one of them who seems nicer. Even if they don't like you and think you're incapable, they would like it even less to have an alumnus flipping burgers. So, they might write you a reasonable recommendation for a non-academic job even though they might not be willing to give you a good letter for an academic one.


Do graduate admissions simply see the 'letter grades' for a course, or can they see the numeric grade and/or exam scores, too? Not a long question, but I'm curious if grad school admissions (I'm more concerned with master's programs instead of PhD programs, right now) take into account only the letter scores of courses taken ("A", "B", etc), or if they also see if you were very close to another score, i.e., an 89 in a class would be a B, but it's 1 point from an A. Or to them, "a B is a B, no matter how close you were to an A or a C"?

Also, do they see specific exam scores from courses, too? For example, in a class, on each test I got a better score, and ended up with a great score on the final (100%). Will this be taken into account, or will it never be seen?

I realize this could be dependent upon specific admissions boards, but I would guess there's a "status quo" for how things are done.

The information we get about grades comes from the official transcript that you arrange for the registrar to send to us.  Whatever information is recorded there is what we see.  At the vast majority of US institutions I'm familiar with, this means letter grades only, converted to a numerical GPA using the four point scale.

Based on what you write, perhaps "plus minus grading" does not exist at your institution (as it does at most, but not all, American institutions: apparently it was introduced at my university only just before I arrived, and there are occasional weird -- though minor -- holdovers from the former state of affairs).  If it does exist, then it goes on the transcript and is used to calculate GPA.

More information about course grading could come from individual faculty members in the form of their recommendation letters.  It is fairly common for such letters to include additional information about performance, including performance on individual exams.  In general if you got a good grade in a course but feel that your actual performance in that course was outstanding in a way that the grade does not reflect, then the instructor for the course is a good candidate for a recommendation letter.  In your case you might want to consider getting a letter from the instructor of the course in which you did better and better, culminating in 100% on the final exam.  This is exactly the kind of academic trajectory that admissions committees want to see.


how to indicate citations from the same, long document at different pages I am proofreading a grant from another researcher. This is going to be submitted to the NIH which follows AMA guidelines. A particular, long report is providing her several of the researcher's citations. I asked for page references to some of her stats since I couldn't read the whole thing, and I needed to verify her correctness in interpreting them. This document is hundreds of pages long and she cites 3 different sections in the article.

1) Is it necessary for her to indicate the actual pages in the citations

if so,

2) How to cite the same document at several locations?

When citing a specific page or pages of a longer document (not generally necessary for published journal articles although that may also be mandatory in some fields) one adds the page number to the reference. In the Harvard system one would write "Smith (1969, p. 24)" or "(Smith, 1969, p. 25)". There are as far as I know no hard rules when such references should be made but an author should consider the readers of the work they produce and facilitate finding the information cited as well as possible. In a short article of 10-15 pages this would not be difficult but in longer works one should consider providing pages. The point of references is after all to provide sources for information used in the article and one should not have to read an entire book to find it.

If I understand the second question correctly, citing different pages in a specific document is done as above and the reference in the reference list will be just the document itself; no need to refer to page numbers there. The reference list provides the litterature to find and the in-text referenes will provide information on where in the literature you need to look.


Which one is more beneficial, working independently or collaborating with other researchers? Some people claim that working as an independent researcher is more useful than collaborating with others, since you will be the star in that field and maybe get more funds. Others disagree, and think that collaborating and publishing more is more useful. What are the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches and which one is more beneficial?

I'm trying to coin a phrase: interior point maximum.  Well, the phrase already exists: it means that the function you are trying to maximize which is defined on some closed, bounded interval [a,b] does not have its maximum value at either a or b but rather at some point c somewhere strictly in between.

Most functions one studies in calculus have interior point maxima, though there are obvious exceptions: especially if the function is increasing its maximum is at b, and if it is decreasing its maximum is at a.  Perhaps this is because the methods of calculus only speak to interior point maxima: the basic observation is that if the function is differentiable, an interior maximum must occur at a stationary point, i.e., for which the instantaneous rate of change is zero.  (Famously, the converse is not true.)

What's the point of this math lesson?  It's this: when we step outside of math class we tend to completely forget about this phenomenon and try to stare off into space and figure out which of the two extreme points, a and b, is better.  But in many real-world situations it is actually pretty obvious that the maximum must be at an interior point.

To me at least, the current question is a case of this.

If you never collaborate, then you never benefit from anyone else's expertise.  In research we almost never do exactly what we want: rather we collect various pieces of what we want to do, and then have to make hard choices about how and when to combine those pieces into published work.  If you can find someone else whose pieces are complementary to your pieces, then you both benefit tremendously form collaboration, because academia (justly) rates complete solutions more than twice as highly as half solutions.  This is, to me, the best argument for collaboration, and it already shows that "no collaboration" is not going to be your optimal choice.

Another argument for collaboration, not nearly as good, is that it allows you to increase your multiplicity: in a given year, maybe you can write one paper all by yourself, or maybe you can write one fourth of four papers and put your name on all of them.  In some academic cultures, depending upon how you play it, you will get more credit with the second option.  However, there is no inherent advantage to this -- in other words, there is no added value to those outside your circle of collaborators -- so this is really rather specious.  (But it works, to a certain extent...unfortunately.)

Another legitimate benefit of collaboration is that your collaborators get to know you and know your skills.  I have several collaborators that don't write as many papers as I do and are perhaps not as high-profile in the community as I am.  I wouldn't have thought they were anything special if I hadn't worked with them -- worked with them because they brought to the table key pieces that I could use to advance my work.  Whenever anyone asks me about these people, I say how great they are.

If you always collaborate, then people begin to wonder whether you can in fact write a paper / complete an experiment / do one unit of substantial academic work by yourself.  If you always collaborate with the same people, and especially if they are more senior than you and/or have other papers without you, then a lot of hard-nosed academics [including me] are going to suspect that you are not the brains of the operation and eventually wonder whether you may not have been gifted coauthorship.  The details of this must be entirely field dependent, but I am in a field in which senior people usually don't get added as coauthors unless their intellectual contribution was decisive [in many cases, this means most decisive], so if I see someone with a sequence of strong papers all of which are joint with their eminent thesis advisor and no others, then I really need to hear their thesis advisor describe specifically and cogently the value added by their student.  (In some fields collaboration is not an option, it's a reality.  But this seems to nullify the question: if a = b, you can maximize the function.)

So it seems clear that it's an interior point maximum: it will be best for your research if you collaborate x% of the time for some 0 < x < 100.  As with all interior maxima, one way to figure out x is: take a rough guess as to what you think a good value of x would be, and then explore the nearby space.  Definitely do at least one collaborative work and at least one solo work and then evaluate how they went.  At the risk of ruining my meme, I will say though that in this case the amount of collaboration is less important -- if you make it safely between 0 and 100% -- than the type of collaboration.  As above, you want to choose collaborations that qualitatively augment your work.  You do not want to "trade papers" or get involved in projects just to have your name on one more paper.  Definitely make sure that you are bringing something to the table whenever you collaborate: you really don't want people wondering whether you've added anything of value.


How to report an author who doesn't share the last name but had similar first name as mine, is adding my articles in his profile on google scholar? Recently, I got to know that a person who doesn't share the last name but had a similar first name as mine, is adding my articles in his profile. Ironically, my most recent published article didn't appear in my profile, but it already appears in his profile. When I inquired and requested him to remove my articles from his profile, he just ignores my emails. How to handle is the situation? I found his LinkedIn profile, should I contact his school? How one can trust the "google scholar profile" of a researcher; especially if it's that simple to add other person's work and there is no way to report or flag fraud etc. This man has 8000+ citation; who knows he is adding other people articles, maybe to achieve some short term goals.

Don't assume malice. It appears to be unlikely that this person is doing this actively. The more likely scenario is that Google's algorithms add these publications to their profile automatically and they are not maintaining the profile at all. Since they don't care about Google Scholar and are probably the typical busy professor, your attempts at contacting them about it are just filtered out as noise with hundreds of other emails.

If you really care about this, you'll probably need to address this issue to Google (but according to other posts on the internet they seem to be known to not care and to not fix).


Is it OK to reuse part of the related work section published in a previous paper? We published paper A before. Now, we are writing the camera-ready version of paper B, which is closely related to paper A. Therefore, we currently reused around 50% of the related work section from paper A. Would this be acceptable? Thanks!

Short answer: No.

Medium answer: It can feel silly to find new phrasings for sentences or paragraphs that say essentially the same thing, but the alternative is unfortunately self-plagiarism. You can and should make a comment like "the following subsection is largely adapted from [other paper]", but even with that, the text should be different enough to not be considered a quotation. There is some wiggle room with technical definitions that can't be rephrased without a loss of clarity, but other than that, err on the side of rephrasing.


Feasibility of enrollments in a Masters program at one university and a PhD program in another university Is it possible to be enrolled at a Masters program at one university and a PhD program in another university?

Is one allowed to  do this? Or is this not possible in general?

Maybe, but why? Different topics?

In any case, you'd have to check the rules of both universities.

As a supervisor/employer of PhD students, I would not want my student doing this. A PhD is a full-time job, requiring full-time commitment. Financing is scarce and I wouldn't want to waste it on someone who is not fully committed.


How the US Dept of Education define a school year for purposes of Pell Grant eligibility? I applied for a pell grant for the 2016/2017 school year.  My question is, what is a school year to the US Dept of Ed?  Is it Fall 2016 - Spring 2017 or is it literally any day in 2016 or 2017, so long as school is in session?

I would love to attend the summer 2016 semester, but if a school year begins in fall, then I guess I will have to wait.

Yes and no.

You can only use your Pell grant money for summer classes if you've already been enrolled in classes  the previous year:

To be eligible for using this federal aid for their summer courses, students must have completed 24 credit hours toward their degree programs during the prior fall and spring semesters and have received passing grades, and they must enroll in at least 6 hours of courses during the summer.

So if you want to attend summer classes in 2016, you had to have 24 credit hours of schoolwork done at the same institution during the 2015-2016 academic year.

Campus Explorer, Pell grant can be Used for summer college courses, starting in summer 2010.


A couple questions regarding graduate studies I am currently a first year physics undergraduate in a obscure university in a obscure country. My goal is to continue on to obtain a PhD in physics from the best university I possibly can in order to put myself in the best possible network of researchers and academics so I could maximize the quality of my own research. However there are a couple of questions I have.

a) Considering the fact that I've failed my first year at the university and am retaking failed subjects, how is that fact going to affect my prospects of continuing my education (Masters and/or PhD) ?

b) Since it impossible to get research experience as an undergraduate in my country, what can I do to make up for that as an undergraduate?

c) How actually is important undergrad GPA for graduate studies? How are GPA scores interpreted in admissions, meaning what admission officers use them for?

d) Considering that my interests are in theoretical physics, is it really important to be in a high ranking institution, and if so why?

In addition to ensuring that you get high grades on your retake (as stated by scaaahu), I would recommend that you get involved with research projects early on and try to get publications out of them-this might compensate for any poor performances in your undergraduate studies. Since you've mentioned this is impossible in your country, perhaps you might want to try and do this abroad during your holidays. Also it might still be possible for you to attend conferences and submit abstracts or posters. It is not the end of the world if you've failed some courses in your first year. In some universities, the first year doesn't count towards your overall GPA. I would advise that you check this with your university.

Generally speaking, the higher the ranking of the university is, the better your career prospects. Of course, if you work with "important people" or highly respected research groups in your field, it might not matter so much.


Is it ethical for advisors to automatically coauthor papers? I work in a field (Philosophy) where co-authorship is uncommon and advisors and grad students very seldomly co-author a paper. I've seen a lot of posts on Academia.se though about the ethics of co-authoring papers with mentors, such as this question.

My sense is that it must be somewhat common in the natural sciences for the head of the lab/dissertation advisor to be automatically added as a co-author to every paper that his or her graduate students produce.

My questions are:

Is this really common, and if so, in which fields?
Is this really ethical?

My view is that adding your name to something that you had no part in creating is just plagiarism: it's taking credit for the work of others.

The opposite argument, that the work wouldn't have been possible without the PI's grant funding also cuts no ice. I wouldn't have been able to write my dissertation if my parents hadn't had sex, but that doesn't mean they should get credit as coauthoring my work.

That's the way it seems to me, but maybe somebody from these fields can give us a better rationale for (what seems to be) the widespread practice.

Edit:
Another argument against the practice. Suppose I'm a billionaire who knows nothing about science, but I take it into my head that I want to be (regarded as) a famous scientist. Suppose I just spend billions of dollars to fund other people to do research. But, I ask each of those people to come and report to me for fifteen minutes ever week about what they've worked on, or discovered that week. Then, every time one of them finds a result, I demand that my name be added to the paper as a co-author, since we have "discussed" the work in progress and it is, after all, by my grace that the funds for the work have been provided. Suppose I just have hundreds of these postdocs, producing thousands of papers a year, all of which I am a coauthor for.

Now ask yourself if I really deserve to be regarded as a famous scientist at all? It seems to me that I don't, because I haven't done any of the science--I haven't suggested any research methods, I haven't designed any experiments, I haven't collected any data, I haven't even helped junior researchers know the shape of the existing literature. You might regard my existence as good for science in some sense--you might think of me as a beneficial patron of the sciences. But you wouldn't think of me as a scientist, right? And you wouldn't think I deserved to be considered for a Nobel Prize, or membership in the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences, or whatever. If I demanded that I be given those awards because of the thousands and thousands of papers that I have coauthored, which have been cited tens of thousands of times, you would call me an idiot, right? We give those prizes for discovery, not for being rich. The same thing is true of tenure too. You shouldn't be able to buy your role as a tenured professor. You should have to prove that you, personally, are capable of making a serious contribution to your field. And of course you demonstrate that capability by publishing papers.

So when a prof is automatically added as a coauthor to a paper that he or she did not contribute to in any way except financially, then she is trying to buy a reputation as a scholar, or the other perks like tenure or membership in the AAAS that come with that reputation in just the same kind of way that the absurd billionaire is doing.

No, automatic co-authorship is not ethical – irrespectively of the discipline!

The following is from the "DFG Proposals for Safeguarding Good Scientific Practice" (pp.82f, emphasis added), which, for instance, strictly forbids "automatic" co-authorships and gives a couple of common negative examples:

  Authors of an original scientific publication shall be all those, and only those, who have made significant contributions to the conception of studies or experiments, to the generation, analysis and interpretation of the data, and to preparing the manuscript, and who have consented to its publication, thereby assuming responsibility for it. [...]
  Therefore, the following contributions on their own are not sufficient to justify authorship:

  merely organisational responsibility for obtaining the funds for the research,
  providing standard investigation material,
  the training of staff in standard methods,
  merely technical work on data collection,
  merely technical support, such as only providing equipment or experimental animals,
  regularly providing datasets only,
  only reading the manuscript without substantial contributions to its content,
  directing an institution or working unit in which the publication originates

  Help of this kind can be acknowledged in footnotes or in the foreword.

In fact, DFG (the German Research Council) requires you to sign strict adherence to this ethical code on each and every grant proposal. Other funding agencies have similar regulations.


Can I use British English in an Australian conference paper? I have written a peer-reviewed paper for an Australian academic conference. The reviews are favourable with a number of small and helpful suggestions. However, one reviewer has criticised the use of the word "amongst", saying it is archaic and should not therefore be used in a technical paper.

In British English, "amongst" is more commonly used in everyday and technical language, and to my (British) ear, it fits better than the alternative "among" in the context that I have used it. In fact, it was introduced to the language more recently. However, in US English, it is less often used and could be considered archaic. Australian English has many similarities with American English, so it may be considered archaic there too.
My question is whether the paper should be "corrected" to Australian English as it is an Australian conference, or if "correct" UK English should be allowed from a UK writer?

I am not trying to pick a fight, and the acceptance of the paper is not at stake - this is merely a suggestion from the reviewer - but I am interested in what would be considered the correct approach.

My question is whether the paper should be "corrected" to Australian
  English as it is an Australian conference, or if "correct" UK English
  should be allowed from a UK writer?

British English is acceptable in US-based or other places conferences that do not use British English. Each conference writes their requireements in the Call for Papers. Mostly, international conferences require English. But it is unreasonable to require specific English. Even if it Australian-based conference. Any English is acceptable. Just be consistent in the whole text on the English you choose.