Is there an ethical obligation to make author order reflect conventions in your field? In some fields, authors of a paper are not ordered alphabetically; rather, their order carries some meaning related to the authors' contributions to the work. See What does first authorship really mean? for more details. In these fields, readers of a paper make certain assumptions about the role of each author, depending on their placement in the author list.

For example, in my field, the first author is typically the person who was the "main" contributor, and the last author is typically the person with the greatest supervisory role or the head of the research group where the research was carried out. The middle authors are the least important. Thus if my name is first in the author list, readers of my paper who are familiar with conventions in the field will assume that I was the main contributor to the work.

Under these circumstances, is it ethically problematic to use a different author order, assuming this is acceptable to the authors? (Putting aside issues of who does and doesn't deserve to be an author; let's assume all of the authors have sufficient contribution to be considered authors, and we are only concerned with order.) Do I have an ethical responsibility to protest if this happens on a paper where I am a co-author?

For example, suppose I co-author a paper with an undergraduate research assistant, and I do most of the work. According to conventions in my field, I should be listed as the first author. But maybe I don't really need this first-author paper, and my undergraduate student does (it would really help him get into graduate school), and I'd happily give up first authorship so that he can have it. Is this ethically problematic?

Or, suppose a senior author, Prof. Z, wants to be last on the author list. If Prof. Z is listed as the last author, the paper will be thought of as having "come from Prof. Z's group". The author who really should be last (based on having been the main supervisor contributor), Prof. Y, is OK with this arrangement (as a favor to Prof. Z, or to avoid an argument). Is it problematic to give last authorship to someone who doesn't really deserve it in this case, and should other co-authors insist on the conventional ordering?

The potential ethical issue is that readers may be misled about the role of the authors, if the order doesn't reflect the contributions that will be assumed based on conventions in the field. I'm not sure if this is a real problem, or if I'm overthinking it, though.

I don't think you're overthinking this. If your authorship decisions are made with the intention to mislead others about the respective roles and contributions of the various authors, then yes, I'd say that is pretty clearly unethical. For instance, your first example can be reasonably interpreted as a mild form of gift authorship.

It's also important to remember that authorship of papers can have real consequences to people's careers. An example that comes to mind is the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow paper, a famous paper in cosmology that provided one of the early theoretical analyses supporting the big bang theory. The work that led to the paper was part of Ralph Alpher's dissertation work under George Gamow. Gamow, who was already a well-known physicist at the time, had the idea to add the name of his friend Hans Bethe (an even more famous physicist) as a coauthor purely as a joke to make the list of authors sound like "alpha-beta-gamma". This didn't work out so well for his student Alpher. The Wikipedia article I linked to above says:

  Alpher, at the time only a graduate student, was generally dismayed by
  the inclusion of Bethe's name on this paper. He felt that the
  inclusion of another eminent physicist would overshadow his personal
  contribution to this work and prevent him from receiving proper
  recognition for such an important discovery. He expressed resentment
  over Gamow's whimsy as late as 1999.

Simon Singh (in whose wonderful book "Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe" I originally read this story), also writes in this article:

  Gamow and Bethe were then both famous names in the world of physics, so scientists assumed that it was they who had done the bulk of the work, which meant that young Alpher was ignored. In the decades ahead, the formation of helium in the wake of the Big Bang would become one of the key pieces of evidence to support the Big Bang hypothesis, but few would remember Alpher's contribution.

To summarize, since the conventions surrounding author order vary across disciplines and are inherently somewhat vague, someone who wants to manipulate author order in one of their papers to give a small boost to someone's career will probably have enough plausible deniability to get away with it without anyone making a fuss. But it shouldn't be done without a very good reason, would be unethical if done out of a dishonest motivation, and can be potentially harmful even if done for innocent or whimsical reasons.


Research on active learning in mathematics tutorial/practice classes In the country where I live, university students studying mathematics usually attend lectures, consultation with their lecturers (if they have questions relating to material taught) and tutorial/practice classes.

Years ago there was a change in the way tutorials are run. Now students work  in groups of 2-4 in front of white boards and the tutor walks around and checks and comments on the solutions written by students (on the white boards). (Previously the students would have asked questions and the tutor would have solved problems on a white board).

The change was implemented on the basis of some research that suggested possibly greater learning benefits for the students. Is anyone familiar or can give a reference to this research article/s?

I'd be interested in how tutorial in mathematics are run in other countries.

The benefit of the above practice class is that student is `forced' to participate. Or at least one student from each group since there are always students who either don't attend or simply stand and contribute very little to the group discussion (even though they are encouraged to take turns and help each other understand this does not necessarily work).

It is also hard to tell how much this helps an average student learn things. Have there been any studies on this?

In a german university where I go to, (also studying math) we have two tutorials. In one we have an exercise sheet that we work through during the course of  a bit less than 2 hours and the solutions get presented at the end by the lecturer.We also have tutorials where we go to to recieve our homework and a lecturer, you or your classmates present the solutions.


Describing graduate certificate in written bio (US based) I have a graduate certificate from a US school (i.e. - Master's level work) and this program, in addition to offering graduate certificates, also offers graduate degrees.

Is it appropriate to describe myself in a written bio (rather than a resume, in which the certificate would be listed as given), as a 'graduate of the XYX school of economics'?

It depends. There isn't always a lot of consistency to how graduate certificates holders are viewed. At some universities they are considered full alumni with all rights and privileges thereof. At other universities they you must hold a full degree (e.g., bachelors, masters, etc.) to be considered an alumni. In general, it is best to defer to the school's guidelines in terms of describing yourself as a graduate of the school or not.

However, it is always appropriate to list the certificate, i.e.,

  Graduate Certificate in Economics, State University, 20XX


Ph.D. mathematics application: Disclosing course textbooks More than one math Ph.D. program I am applying to has a section where I am to list relevant coursework. An example is as follows:

"Enter under each category list the two most advanced courses or course sequences you have had or will definitely take before you come to (School)."

Under each class title there is a blank line where I am to list a text or textbooks. (No other instruction)

My question is this: In a few of my courses, the professor has listed a textbook for the course, but whose lectures have not adhered to the structure or level of rigor of the book. The homework also did not come from the course book. If I chose to use another textbook to study out of should I list this one or the one listed in the course syllabus? My reasons for wanting to list the book I used are:

The book on the syllabus is not a good indication of the level of rigor at which the course was taught.
I haven't read a page of the textbook on the syllabus while the book I used is one I own and is the primary reference for the subject on my shelf.

Which book should I write in my application?

I am the Graduate Coordinator for a math department in which we ask graduate applicants to list their course textbooks.

I encourage you to follow the directions and list the textbooks that were used.  By and large, this is a good way for us to figure out the approximate level and content of courses like "algebra," "analysis" and "topology" with standard names but widely varying content.  A complex analysis course taught out of

  A First Course in Complex Analysis by Matthias Beck, Gerald Marchesi, Dennis Pixton, and Lucas Sabalka

is likely to be quite different from one taught out of

  Complex Analysis, Lars Ahlfors

If you feel that the chosen textbook was below the level of the course and you supplemented with a more advanced/rigorous textbook, you may as well list that textbook too, saying something like "I myself used..."

If the instructor has online lecture notes, definitely include a link to them: that gives a really good idea of what was covered.

Note to international readers: having standard textbooks for advanced undergraduate math classes is much more, um, standard in the United States than in many other parts of the world.  We certainly know that international students may come from less of a "textbook culture."  (This need not be a bad thing in itself, but it is one of several ways in which it can be harder to evaluate the profile of an international applicant than a domestic one.)


How should we approach the authors of a paper and ask them for their data? Nowadays, many papers are based on data that can easily reach several Gigas. It is understandable that these data are not incorporated into the work, nor are hosted with the publisher. What is the more acceptable way of asking them to access this data? Call + email? Email to the publishers? Making a Freedom of information request to the university?

It's very likely the publisher doesn't have the data if it wasn't published as an online supplement to the article.

You should start by contacting the authors (typically by email but perhaps by phone if email doesn't work) and asking for the data.  In my experience, many authors will happily give you access to the data, and if they are prepared to do this, a polite request will be the quickest and easiest way to get it.  Furthermore, it's most likely the case that you will need help from the authors in understanding details of the data.  If you've worked with them in a cooperative fashion, then there's a much better chance that you'll be able to get such questions answered.

There are various reasons why the authors might not be able to share their data with you.  For example, in research projects involving human subjects research the IRB approval for the study might not allow for such a release.  Another common situation is that a company has sponsored the research and considers the data to be proprietary and the researchers are contractual obligations that do not allow them to release the data.


How do I use internet comments in my research? I want to use comments on the internet to gather user requirements.

I plan to collect these comments, read them and decide what the person wants based on what they've written. These list of "wants" will form the user requirements.

For example:

  John: I hate the way the program keeps asking me if I'm  sure I want to exit.

Could form the requirement:

An option to disable exit confirmation prompts.

What's a suitable methodology for this? I need a process to follow or guidelines to do it correctly. Is it classed as qualitative research?

You would generally need to use a class of research that is indeed considered qualitative. I think the most common method would be "coding", and if you search for "qualitative coding" you should find a wide-variety of helpful primers such as this one.

A more detailed guideline on how to do this type of research would not be on-topic here, but with the right search terms you should be able to find a wealth of guides from a variety of different fields. However, no resource you find will be an adequate replacement for getting to know your own field and how  things are done there by carefully reading the method sections of papers in your area that ideally use similar methodology. If you draw up a provisional plan for what to do (creating your own sample data to go with it can be helpful here), you should have it reviewed by a suitable advisor/researcher in your area to help you understand how things are generally done in your area, and to help you identify problems and misunderstandings in your plans.


How to indicate the type of position of a letter writer? I am faculty member of a European university and I was asked by a student to write a letter of recommendation for graduate admission to a programme in the US or Canada.

Should this letter contain an information about the type of position the letter writer is holding? In my case this is a tenure track position but this fact is not stated on the department website. Should this be included in the letter? What would be the ideal way of including this?

To make matters more complicated, the type of position I have is "Assistant Professor" but the regulations explicitly forbid to use this as a title of the person holding the position.

Give your formal title. If the job description is roughly equivalent to Assistant Professor in the US (regular employee, not yet tenured) than say that, perhaps in a footnote: "The writer holds a position roughly equivalent to Assistant Professor in the US, but with no associated title).

People reading the application will probably have a rough idea of the difference between the German and US/Canadian systems.

But, to protect yourself, verify the language with your head/chair.


Do graduate schools have more courses & less of a student-teacher ratio than undergraduate? On average do grad schools offer more distinct courses than undergraduate schools?

If that is the case, then it must mean there are more professors teaching in graduate schools. And common sense tells me that there are less students in grad school than undergraduate.

Does that mean there a disparity in the student-teacher ratio in grad and undergrad schools?

I will limit my answer to American universities.

Do you mean more courses per semester, or more distinct courses that are listed in the course catalog and offered with some regularity?

If you mean the former: in any given semester, most departments offer many more undergraduate courses than graduate courses.  This must be the case for the reason you suggest: the number of students taking undergraduate courses in that department is usually far in excess of the number of students taking graduate courses in that department.

But most departments offer largely the same undergraduate courses every year (or sometimes, on a two-year cycle).  Many undergraduate courses at a large university have multiple sections running concurrently.  The most popular courses -- e.g. freshman level courses for non-majors -- are in some departments run in ten, twenty or more sections each semester.

If you mean the latter: yes, many -- perhaps most? -- departments with large graduate programs offer a larger number of distinct graduate courses over the years than undergraduate courses.  Each course is populated by a smaller number of graduate students, but graduate students stick around for at least as long as undergraduates and, unlike undergraduate students -- recall that I am talking about American universities -- take the vast majority or the entirety of their courses in a single department.  Sometimes graduate students repeat courses or stop taking courses at a certain point, but in many PhD programs -- including the one at my university -- graduate students are required to take a minimum (positive!) number of courses every semester, some of which are unrepeatable.

In fact, most departments devote much more thought to which graduate courses they are going to offer in the next year or two years, both in order to make sure to offer enough courses for their students to take, and conversely to ensure that enough of their current students will want to take any given proposed course in order for that course "to make", i.e., to meet minimum enrollment requirements and be run.


What are the benefits of taking textbook notes? Taking notes based on the textbook obviously helps to organize and summarize info in the textbook. But if I highlighted the most important areas of the textbook, and while revising I only look at these parts, won't it have the same effect as taking textbook notes (as far as summarizing goes)? Ultimately my question is, for students who have achieved good grades by taking textbook notes, what are the benefits of doing it and why is it better than just reading the important parts of the textbook?

In addition to the benefits mentioned by fgysin, you might want to include in your notes information that is not explicitly in the textbook, for example alternative ways to think about some of the textbook's material, details that are omitted in the textbook, special cases of the facts in the book, or connections between different passages in the book.


Can a person write a thesis years later if illness set in? Can a person write her thesis years later for the mere sake of doing it if illness interrupted her upon completion of graduate courses in English Literature?

It is probably possible, but would depend on the university and an advisor. Unfortunately, some places have time limits and old courses don't count anymore. But in the case of illness, it might be possible to get exceptions to such rules.

But it is a question for a particular place and a particular advisor.

But that is assuming you want a degree. You can, of course, write anything you like and possibly get it published even without a degree.


Can I ask for recommendation from a person that I am working with? 2 years ago, for 7 months, I was an intern in public health department at a famous US university. In addition to work with my mentor, I was introduced to a faculty member from the other department, called X. My mentor and I helped his team to analyze their data in that time and the project is still going on and sometimes, if his team needs, I work on their project which is not paid.
Currently, I am going to apply for a PhD position or research assistant position. I need three references or even three recommendation letters. I was wondering is it rational/polite if I ask X to send a recommendation letter for me or if I can introduce him as a reference in my CV?

Also, if I want to mention the name of someone as a reference in my CV, should I talk with him prior to send my CV?

Thanks.

I know this question was asked a while ago, but I found it while searching and can't believe it wasn't answered.

  My mentor and I helped his team to analyze their data in that time and the project is still going on and sometimes, if his team needs, I work on their project which is not paid.

It sounds like you helped in research and also have a personal relationship with him. Of course this is exactly the kind of person who can probably write a great recommendation letter or give a great reference, especially if he liked your work. Even if he isn't in exactly the same field as you, he can probably write a very specific recommendation letter pertaining to research you helped perform.


What happens if the grant requirement for open access publications is not respected? [small & short-duration grants] EDIT: I am referring to short duration (1-2 years) small grants (10k-30k $/euros) usually given to PhD or post-docs. The amount needs to cover material, conferences, publications, etc. Publishers now charge up to 10k for open access, so towards the end of the funding period when most work is being published the grantee might be short of 10k for a publication.
It is becoming increasingly common for research funded with public money to be published as open access with gold (expensive but immediately open access) or green standard ( free self archiving after 6 months). This is part of the grant agreement which is a binding legal contract.
What happens if a researcher publishes not in open access because cannot afford to pay the open access fee? Some publishers are increasing the open access fees and I have discussed with colleagues, particularly junior scientists and postdocs with limited funding, about this dilemma. Careers depend also on publications appearing in certain journals, so choosing a target journal for financial reasons seem to be a great disadvantage for younger scientists.

Will there be any legal or other potential consequences such as being banned from applying for grants from the same institution?
Will there be any non-written consequences such as being flagged as a
noncomplying grantee?**

PS: I'm not looking for advice on how to find money for paying the open access fees, there are already questions covering that topic.

I'm most familiar with the US NIH.
They write:

Non-compliance will be addressed administratively, and may delay or prevent awarding of funds.

For the most part, NIH seems focused on awareness and trying to encourage compliance, rather than strict enforcement. It seems many are not fully aware of the guidelines, which are quite new for some researchers who have published a different way for decades.
More generally, big funding agencies like to act through the institutions researchers belong to in encouraging compliance, whether for policies like this or for ethical policies like those for human/animal subjects research.
They can threaten to withhold their funds and even government funding more broadly from entire institutions, not just individuals. While cases of this threat actually being carried out are rare, it may mean that researchers find themselves more directly responsible to their institution rather than the funder. The institution has a large incentive to ensure local compliance and likely has more resources than the funding agency to follow up, as well as a broader range of sanctions.
For your particular situation, I have a hard time imagining a funding agency feeling too bad for your circumstance. If they're funding your work and demanding open access, they're implying that they expect you to use their funds towards those costs in addition to all the others (either directly or through the fungibility of money). "I spent my money on other things and now can't afford to comply with your publishing requirements" doesn't seem like a very good argument, since everyone they fund is in the same boat and since you've accepted their terms by accepting their funding.


Are PhD students still employed by the University after their scholarships/fellowships have ended but they have not officially received their PhD? Is being employed by a university during a PhD tied to receiving a salary/stipend/scholarship? Or am I considered an employee until I am awarded the PhD degree?

Because for the state I am considered unemployed, however I have finished my thesis but I am waiting for the PhD defense, so I think technically I am still considered affiliated with the University. I need to know this because I am filling paperwork for another job, and they want to know if I am currently employed or not. It seems a gray area situation.

In the UK, PhD students are not considered employees of the university at any point, before or after submission of thesis or expiration of funding.


Are there funding sources for open-access fees for an independent researcher in industry? Since I finished graduate school (statistics), I have been pursuing research. This is on my own time, separate from my work in industry, and while my company does not interfere with my work, they give no financial support.

I now want to publish a paper in an open-access journal. (I know to look out for predatory OA journals, and the ones I'm considering definitely are not.) However, the open-access fee comes straight from my pocket and is not a trivial amount of money.

What could an independent researcher like me pursue as a funding source to cover the OA fee?

I did find this question, but I am interested in the OA fee in particular, not compensation for the work in general (wonderful as that would be).

As a formerly independent researcher I have looked into this matter before; regrettably, the answer is disappointing: Funders usually require an affiliation with a research institution. (Yes, it is paradox that 'open science' generates new exclusions, leaving certain segments of science behind; this entrenchment of new inequalities due to open access-movements was recently called 'academic colonialism', though this term may go too far.)

Anyway, there may be an alternative route. So-called transformative agreements between scholarly publishers and (country-level) consortia allow researchers from all institutions covered by the consortia to publish Open Access (OA) for free.

Now if you are well-connected to researchers at research institutions which are eligible for this waiver of OA publishing charges because they are part of the consortia, then you may ask them whether you can "borrow" their institutional affiliation. That way you would be able to publish OA without any costs. This does succeed sometimes - because research institutions also have an interest in inflating their publication statistics.


Can someone change PhD supervisor without changing research direction? Background: My supervisor wants to quit my supervision due to reasons beyond his control. He suggested few colleagues to replace him. My only concern is that I be asked to switch my current research direction to meet that of my potential new supervisor. I have spent considerable amount of reading and review, designing simualtors and coming up with new ideas and I don't want to restart all over. I found a co-supervisor who is closely related to my field and agreed on supervision (He is not affiliated with my university anymore though), but still need a main supervisor.

Question: Am I obliged to restart over and lose all my reserach?

The few times I've seen this happen, usually the new advisor in your home department is willing to let one continue on with the same research project. Beware that you'll have less support from your advisor than you might have had otherwise, but if you have strong people in the field outside your university,  as it sounds like you do, then you should be ok. Another thing to beware is that your advisor's letter of recommendation is going to be crucial if you apply for postdocs or other academic positions down the line. Having your advisor not really know your field, or understand your work in depth is likely going to lead to a much shallower, less effective letter simply because your new advisor won't be able to speak with the same degree of knowledge about what exactly your contribution is.

So, you're going to have to weight these two potential cons against the cost in time and effort of simply starting over from scratch with a new advisor.


Avoiding Working with a Potentially Arrogant Researcher I am working on a hot topic of research in a subfield, and I am possibly going to cooperate with a senior research scientist who is interested in this topic specifically. However, during our discussion, he mentioned that all research that has been done up to this point are rubbish, which, to be honest, may be correct.  I am a bit confused about whether this could be a warning sign about collaborating with him.

The question is: Could this attitude be a warning sign to not collaborate with a potentially arrogant senior researcher?

Dismissal of previous research in the field is not problematic in itself. As you concede in the question, you may even share this assessment. The possible problem, which you can't really assess from one general comment like this, is whether the researcher lets that opinion drive his research in inappropriate ways. I'd say that's a question of emotional maturity. Does this person need to be right where everybody else is wrong, in order to feel fulfilled or successful? That would be a big problem. But, being overly risk-averse, and "going with the flow" too much, could also be a problem. In science, the main thing is to look at evidence dispassionately, and draw conclusions based on the scientific method. Any character trait or emotional immaturity can threaten one's ability to do that.

TL;DR: It's not a problem in itself, but it could lead you toward some worthwhile inquiry. Focus on the person's ability to manage their strong opinions or emotional dispositions and integrate them into appropriate scientific techniques, not so much on the specifics of what those opinions or emotional dispositions are.


Can I conduct independent research and publish a paper on a H4 visa? I am in the USA on H-4 visa (family member of a H-1B visa holder which is an employee visa), waiting for my Employment Authorization Document (EAD). Can I conduct independent research and publish a paper?

If by independent research, you mean that you are not being paid by anyone and are doing it on your time, then in principle it should be allowed regardless of your visa type. Whatever "hobby" you do in your personal free time is your own prerogative.


Etiquette for publicizing postdoc position What is the etiquette for publicizing your postdoc decision on your professional website once you've accepted a position?
I've seen people write something like "Starting in Fall 2020, I will be an X Instructor/Fellow/Researcher at Y University" on their website but I don't know when these kinds of public statements typically go up. Are you supposed to wait until late in the process when most people know where they'll end up? Or if you're lucky enough to get a position early, is it ok to post then?
I'm specifically interested in comments relevant to math positions, but I'm assuming the etiquette is similar throughout STEM.

You are unlikely to offend a reasonable person by revealing you got a job.  So I would say there is not an etiquette beyond avoiding excessive boasting.  Don't talk about how you are better than the people who did not get the job.  Don't talk about how your job is better than other people's jobs.  You probably knew that.
This is not etiquette, but:  If you get a job "early" it is in your interest to keep it secret for a while.  A lot of people think that "I have a new job starting in September" is the same as "I am leaving tomorrow."  They will quit contacting you and quit collaborating with you because they are confused.  You will constantly have to answer questions about why you are still around.


PhD opportunities in Spring in US universities I am facing a dilemma regarding whether or not to apply for Spring for PhD programs at some universities in US. What are the pros and cons of applying for PhD or MS programs in Spring?

Most PhD programs, and many master's programs, in the US only offer one admissions cycle per year, with programs starting in the fall. This is in part because of the PhD program encompassing classwork as well as research.

The main issue that speaks against spring admissions is that in most programs, the coursework begins in the fall semester, and any "sequences" (where course Y depends on course X) will often begin in the fall semester. Thus, starting in the spring semester may mean that your coursework phase will need to extend longer, so there's no real advantage between starting in the spring and waiting until the following fall.

Where there might be an advantage is if you are able to use some of the time for finding a research group (if that is necessary for a research thesis for the master's degree); in some cases, you could even get a head start on the thesis work, which could allow you to finish somewhat faster.


Should I Consider Publishing in a Brand New Journal? I got an e-mail this morning inviting me to submit papers to a journal. I looked at the website and found that the journal has no back issues. It would appear to be a brand new journal. Naturally, a brand new journal isn't all prestigious, so I have to wonder about publishing in it. But on the other hand, the journal has to start somewhere.

Should someone even consider publishing in such a place?

I get the same emails as well.

Things to consider when looking at a brand new journal:

As Anonymous, Charles and JeffE commented, make sure it is not a scam and that the editorial board are well respected (well-published) academics in your field.
Make absolutely certain that the journal caters to your exact research field - try and find, or ask, what their focus is.
Find out about costs if any.

If the journal is legitimate and relevant, then consider publishing a smaller paper first, publish your main papers in well established highly ranked and highly distributed journals (especially if you are starting out in academia).


Journal review failure I submitted a review paper to a well-regarded A* journal 9 months ago. After about 6 weeks, I received a request for revisions. The email contained general comments from 3 reviewers and an attached sheet of detailed comments from one of them.
Unfortunately, two of the reviews clearly referred to one or more different papers; none of the comments were relevant to my article. This included very specific comments, such as spelling mistakes on a particular page, that made it clear the reviewer was reading another article. The third reviewer's comments were so general that, honestly, they could apply to almost any article, with comments such as "The paper needs editing for language and grammar" and "the references can be updated and expanded". I don't think the third reviewer's comments referred to my paper either (it was written and edited by 3 native English speakers and the language and grammar are pretty good) but cannot be 100% certain.

I emailed the editor to point out the mistake. I emailed the journal and received a reply to say my email had been passed to the editor. Time passed. I emailed again. And again. All my communications were extremely polite, thanking the editor for considering my article, explaining the confusion and requesting the correct reviewers' comments. There was no reply.

I contacted a colleague who is on the editorial board of the journal. He wrote 3 emails to the editor and received no response.

In desperation, I revised the paper, updating some statistics and adding a few more recent references. As much as was possible, I responded to the reviewers' comments as if they applied to the paper. I wrote a detailed response to the comments, explaining where they didn't apply and outlining the revisions. I resubmitted the paper.

It is too early to have receieved a response yet. However, I have 2 questions:

1) If I get no response now, what other action is available to me? I think the behaviour of the journal has been pretty bad. What recourse do I have? The nature of the article means there is no obvious alternative journal to submit to.
2) If the revised manuscript is accepted, it will be published as a peer-reviewed article without having been peer reviewed. What are the ethics of this and doesn't it make a mockery of the peer-review process?

This sounds like an incredible botch-up, to the degree that it has me seriously questioning whether the journal you submitted to is the one that you believe it is.

Most reputable journals now use paper-handling and review systems that are highly automated, such that it would be extremely difficult to get a paper attached to the wrong reviews (like, beyond incompetence and into active interference with the systems). One reviewer sending in the wrong review I can see---two that are clearly referring to the same wrong paper is unlikely to happen unless something much deeper has gone wrong.

At this point, the appropriate course of action is not dealing with this handling editor any more, but escalating to the editor(s) in chief (EIC).  They should be responsive and able to sort this out quickly.

If you do not get a satisfactory response out of the journal leadership within a week, I would start to wonder whether you are really dealing with the journal that you think that you are. The behavior that you are describing sounds more like that of a predatory publisher: sometimes journal websites are hijacked or reasonable people (like your colleague, assuming you trust them) are tricked into supporting predatory enterprises with names designed to sound almost identical to reputable ones.  It is also the case that journals, like any other organization, sometimes collapse and fail, and it is possible that you might be witnessing the last stand of a formerly respectable institution.

In any case, if you don't get a satisfactory response from the EIC within a week, I would suggest withdrawing your paper and sending it to a different and more trustworthy publication venue. But first, if your field allows it, publish a preprint somewhere like arXiv as a precaution against possible plagiarism or refusal to accept your withdrawal.


What are examples of penalties for "self-plagiarism"? I graduated from university in June of 2015. I submitted an essay to a philosophy professor in my second year that was substantially the same as an essay I submitted to a TA the year before for one of the the same professor's first year classes.

I wanted to use my research and essay content for the second year course because I was enthusiastic about that topic and wanted to use it again. I asked the professor if I could use textbooks and information/material studied from his first year course (which also wasn't a prerequisite for the second year course) and he said that was fine. I wasn't really aware of this "self-plagiarism" rule back then and I figured he was saying it would be fine to use the content of my old work from the previous year as well. I do remember changing some parts of the essay but the two had substantially the same gist and body.

I just realized recently that I need written permission from the professor in those situations.

Theoretically, if they could prove now that I committed some sort of academic misconduct for that back in my second year, (2013-2014, I've had my four year honours degree since June 2015 and am now working in my field) what would the penalties be? Would my degree be revoked and would I be required to take another course? Would they just adjust my course or assignment mark?

I know it depends on the circumstances so I broke it down and let me know if there are any more details you need to know.

It depends on many factors. Examples of those factors: Was it a first offense, was it an undergraduate or graduate student, was it faculty member, was it for an assignment or a publication? The list of penalties can range from using the incident as an "object-lesson", a failing grade for the paper or course, a formal sanction, expulsion, loss of funding and/or termination. Each university usually has an Academic Integrity Office, so you could always consult yours to see what the penalties are based on the seriousness of the charge.


Getting letters of recommendation for a master's degree if I don't get along with my current advisor I'm currently in my final undergraduate year and I really want to go to graduate school, but there are some problems: I'm not sure if I can get recommendation letters.

< rant>
My current advisor is insane and unfair. She didn't let me take part in a conference paper that she and another student worked on. That was a very good chance for me to improve my chances of getting to graduate school, but now it's lost. She slightly modified the Caesar cipher and the other student just wrote a program that demonstrates her "algorithm", and it took him several days, while I could've done that in 4-8 hours.

Second time around, I decided(took her advice) to take the research category in a course where we have to make a project my the end of the semester. She didn't guide me or provide me with any references or resources that could help me. She just tells me "write it and I'll read it" or "look it up and understand it". I spent most the semester trying to get my head around the research topic and implement the algorithms, until I finally had to change to the development category because I was going to fail the course otherwise. Now she tells me that "she lost trust in me" and that she won't waste her time with me again.
< /rant>

So obviously my relationship with her is not very good, but what can I do now? Is doing research(or "research" in this case) at the undergraduate level mandatory for applying to graduate programs? My previous advisor liked me and my relationship with him was very good, but he left. If I could find him, can I get a recommendation letter from him? There is also another professor that is no longer at my school, can I get a recommendation letter from him as well? I've never worked on something with them or been their assistant, though.

A few points regarding your questions:

Presenting a weak conference paper is only very slightly better than presenting no paper at all. It may even be worse, if someone evaluating your application saw the presentation and came away unimpressed.
There is no requirement that you get a letter from someone like your present advisor. Such a relationship is clearly not productive for either of you, and including a letter would definitely not help.
You do need to get letters from people who can comment on your work skills, so your old advisor would be acceptable. Other people with whom you have worked—so long as it's technical in origin, even if it's not explicitly research—could also write letters for you. If you can't get three such letters, then you should get them from people who know you beyond taking classes with them. Only if you exhaust all other possibilities should you rely on people who know you only from classwork.
Finally, find yourself a new advisor, if at all possible.


I regret my choice of grad school, is it possible/common to accept an offer I turned down a year ago? I got accepted to three universities when I applied for grad school last year. There were two I was debating between and I chose one. Well, that was a HUGE mistake. The location is bad which I knew. I thought I would be able to handle that, but it's turning out that I can't...at all. The location is super depressing. There's nothing to do anywhere. Outside of my house there's always junkies hanging out shooting up. There was a meth lab around the corner that burned down. There is absolutely nothing to do, and the location is very far away from family. I couldn't see my family for some holidays which was very sad.

The location here is miserable, I honestly don't think I can handle another 5 years here.

I turned down another PhD offer, thinking I could handle this location. Well...I can't. The department here is ranked much higher than the other department. There's someone here I wanted to work with. But I don't even care about any of that if walking outside makes me miserable.

I don't care if none of my credits transfer. I don't care if I have to start over. I just can't handle this location. The only thing I don't want to go through again is applying and waiting to hear back, asking for letters of rec, etc.

I emailed the other department (who DID accept me last year, even with a fellowship) if there's anyway to transfer that doesn't require applying again.

Is this common? Is this possible? Or am I just stuck here or stuck reapplying?

There's almost a 100% certainty that you'll have to apply again. Graduate programs get a fixed number of admission slots (or fellowships to support those admits) each year. Your position was likely given away to someone or returned to the graduate school when you told them you weren't going.

As Nate Eldridge notes, you were a good candidate last year and you'll be a good candidate this year. There's a slight stain on your record regarding whether or not it was a personality conflict or something else that is causing you to abandon the other school.

If you have a good relationship with your current advisor, then s/he can address that in their letter of recommendation. Or you can ask your undergraduate advisors to note the reason why you're leaving the university.  The faculty on the admissions committee will be curious why you're leaving a more highly ranked program and admissions committees are risk-adverse, so you do need to address this somehow.


Going for a PhD after being unhappy in industry After finishing my studies, I worked as a researcher for a few months in the field of my master thesis, but was not quite satisfied with the field.
So, I tried to transition to industry. In my first job I was working in R&D as junior engineer and I quite liked it. Later on, I moved to pure software engineering and I hated it. Even though I was receiving a good salary for my experience. I couldn't stand the lack of innovation, I wasn't even good enough in my job (this is my personal opinion), I was always bored and after a while the dissatisfaction from my job made me unhappy for my life as a whole. I couldn't imagine myself doing this for the next 40 years. I quit my job and this is my last week, after that I have nothing scheduled regarding my career.
I am really very confused about my next steps and I have been thinking about finally doing a PhD. The reasons behind this is that I want to feel that I can really make contributions, bring my ideas, solve problems and not just write code lines.  I would prefer intellectual and time flexibility, as I believe that I am functioning better this way. I had never thought of following an academic career before, now it may not be my ultimate goal, but I could consider it. I know that becoming a professor is very hard, and I am not targeting such a position, but I really want to do research and not just software engineering. I would be mostly interested in doing an R&D job later, either at a company or at a research center.
I have been reading here that a PhD can be a waste of time for people that do not seek a purely academic position. I have already applied a couple of times for research positions in companies and research centers without success. Thus, I thought that a PhD could make the difference here. What is your opinion regarding my case? Is it a good idea to go for a PhD or can it be a burnout after some bad career decisions until now?

I strongly disagree with user117219. When I started my PhD, I was not 100% sure that that was what I wanted; the PhD seemed like an OK option to me at the time. Now I'm an assistant professor, loving my job. Your mileage may vary, and it might not. No way of knowing in advance.

If your personal finances can take the salary hit that comes with transitioning from an industry job to PhD research, it can be the right move to make. You indicate that your primary goal is to do intellectually stimulating research, and a PhD is definitely one way to achieve that.


Are standard metrics of academic output skewed by the relative popularity of a field? The number of citations seems to be a good unit of measurement for someone's success in a specific field, however, shouldn't the h-index also include the popularity of a given field? For example, I've seen papers in computer science being cited thousand of times while other papers relating astronomy only a couple-hundred times.

When taking into account the actual quality of the paper and the amount of work that was put into releasing the evidence, the astronomy paper would probably be measured higher (for example). However publications within less popular fields are cited less simply because they're not as popular as other fields.

If I choose a field that is not particularly popular, I risk at perhaps not achieving the same amount of success that I would if I had chosen a more popular field.

Are standard measures of academic output skewed by the relative popularity of the field?

The comments are already spot on, but let me elaborate a bit.

Comparing h-indices (or any other "hard" metric) is already dangerous in narrow fields and downright foolish if used for comparisons among different fields. This is not only because some fields are larger than others, but also because:

Differences in publication standards. In applied CS we write lots of papers, in many natural sciences, much fewer papers get written per researcher and time period. Arguably, this is because many empirical fields require the setup and analysis of lengthy experiments, something that is not typically (but not never) done in CS.
Difference in co-author ethics. Just check around here on this stack exchange, and you will see that standards for co-authorship are not at all uniform in all fields. Clearly, fields with more loose co-authorship standards also expect researchers to be part of more paper projects, hence leading to higher h-indices on average.
Differences in citation standards. In some fields, papers traditionally have 10 or less citations. In others, multiple dozen references are considered an informal minimum, again leading to higher average h-indices.

(and this is even without going into how easy h-indices are to manipulate if you are willing to - keyword "citation rings")


How many courses should I take in my PhD I finished my masters at University X and I am continuing my PhD in the same university which allows me to transfer up to 20 credit hours of my masters coursework to my PhD course requirements which is 27 credit hours. So now I only need to finish 7 credit hours and I will be done with the PhD course requirement. I heard from couple of friends that I should take more courses because finishing my PhD with a small number of courses might potentially hurt my future by making my PhD less in value. If this is true, how many courses should I take to make a good PhD courses count?

I am interested in both industrial and postdoctoral positions after I finish my PhD.

Your success in a PhD program will be judged based on your research, not your course work.  You should take the minimum number of courses required to get the degree, and spend your remaining time performing research.

The exception would be if you are seeking a job at an institution where you would teach multiple disciplines, and are required to have taken a certain number of graduate courses in each discipline.  This would not be unusual at American community colleges.


Is it possible to automatically obtain abstracts and citations from a list of references? I have a list of about 150 references stored in my reference manager. They are from my dissertation. My end goal is to do a bibliometric analysis of these papers to visualize their network of connections based on the overlap of articles cited within each paper (and alternatively based on shared terms in the abstracts). Typically I do network analysis on papers returned from searches using the Web of Science, which generates a file containing the abstracts and lists of references for all of the papers I am analyzing. There appears to be no way to compile sets of papers using WoS other than to do a search though. This means I would have to individually search for all ~150 of my dissertation references and add them to my marked list. That is impractical. Are there any citation databases into which I can import a reference list and automatically compile a set of abstracts/references-cited for each reference?

If you have a list of DOI's and a scopus/web of science login (via your institution) they have API's available to automatically obtain this data. For example, using python, you could use the packages pybliometrics or wos to go through this list.


PhD position: got rejected - reapply? I applied for a PhD position and I was invited to give a talk about my Master thesis, but I didn't get the position, because:

Maybe my talk wasn't as good at it could be- I wasn't ready with my thesis then and I made some mistakes. I guess I could work on that.
My current thesis advisor probably didn't give me good references, although I'm not sure about that. There is nothing I can do about that- try to explain the disagreements I had with him to the committee? No one asked me about that, so I won't get that chance in the future. But I could ask someone else to write a reference letter for me.

My question is:

  Should I apply to the institution again (in few months or 1-2 years) when they have another open position? How will it be perceived?

My main concern is that the application will be reviewed by the same people I talked to, the people who took part in my seminar. Will I be allowed to give another talk on the same topic?

Also, the person who wrote to me, didn't suggest that I apply there in the future.

I'm not going to get more experience in research, because I work in a company, but I can have some publicaitons.

Note:

This is not a duplicate of this question, because I didn't withdraw my application- I was rejected.
This is not a duplicate of this question, because I was invited to the university, I had a talk with the group members and I gave a talk there. My experience isn't a problem, its the general impression, my knowledge (?).
This is not a duplicate of this question - see my explanation for the second question.

If I were in your position, instead of submitting a 'cold' re-application, I would first contact the committee and ask them for advice about what I could do to improve my prospects of being accepted as a PhD student. I have seen people do this a few times, and the strategy receives positive responses from faculty; but of course you will then have to do the work and actually improve on the things they suggest.

Re-applying with exactly the same material will probably not get you anywhere. However, if you get advice from the committee and/or from other people who are experienced in the field about what to improve or what skills/experience to acquire, and if you can demonstrate the results well, it will be noticed.


Working with applied math advisers as a pure math PhD student I'm currently applying to pure math PhD programs in the US to study theoretical PDE, especially things like fluids and waves. The issue I'm running into as I write applications is that at some institutions, the professors who work on this are split between the pure and applied programs. My question is whether I would be eligible to be advised by an applied professor and if I should mention applied professors in my statement. Also if this depends on the institution, how would I go about finding out in particular cases?

Here's my suggested rule of thumb:

If the pure and applied mathematicians are within the same department, mention everyone whose work you would like to contribute to - i.e. anyone who does any theoretical PDE work.
If there are separate departments, most of the people you want to work with should have a "primary" appointment in the department you are applying to. For instance, taking a look at UW's applied math department, it looks like Randy LeVeque is a professor in Applied Math, but has an adjunct appointment in pure math. This probably means his primary appointment is in Applied Math, but he could still mentor students in pure mathematics. Just be aware that if all the people you want to work for have primary appointments in different departments, it might look like you want to work in a different field (e.g. Applied Math).


Font size of text within image/graph for MS Thesis Can somebody suggest what should be the optimal font size of text like axis ticks, axis label, legend etc. ?

Your institution's thesis template may specify this - some do and some don't.
If not then it's really up to you.  Typically, you want it to be smaller than your main text so that it doesn't stand out inappropriately much.  Beyond that, it's a  balance for efficacy of communication: larger sizes are more legible, but smaller sizes can help avoid visual clutter.  Remember also that many of your readers may be older or have imperfect vision and have a hard time with smaller fonts.


When should service providers (core or external) expect authorship? There are a number of areas of biology research where specialist knowledge requirements or expensive equipment mean that it's more efficient to outsource work to core or external facilities. This seems particularly common for next-generation sequencing (here and here), transcriptomics and proteomics, but Science Exchange is based around this concept and I'm aware of proposals for similar models in other areas, e.g. for work with pathogens that require high containment. The Diamond Light Source offers something similar, too.

On the whole this seems like a good thing; it has the potential to reduce duplication of investment in infrastructure, increase use of nationally-funded resources and facilitate multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research. However, I've recently heard a few people assume that a commercial service provider is ineligible for authorship, even in situations where I strongly suspect they would normally include someone as an author if they were doing the work for free. I'm also aware of situations where collaborations have faltered due to differences of opinion over this.

Personally, if someone has made a substantial and unique contribution to designing the experiment, running the experiment and analysing the results, I think I'd be uncomfortable not adding them as an author. Not to mention that such a paper could easily end up including experiments that none of the authors knew how to design or conduct. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of papers out there now reporting NGS which none of the authors could actually have generated without help.

How should commercial service providers be acknowledged in papers reporting work they assisted with, and does the fact that a service is paid for change the criteria for authorship? Is this affected by whether the PI pays for the access, or if the access is paid for from a central budget?

Good-subjective answers only, please. I'm particularly keen to hear personal experiences or evidence from the biological sciences (hence the biology tag), but would welcome answers that compare and contrast this to other fields.

In materials science, there are many companies that will provide a service for payment. Examples include places such as the Evans Analytical group (once Charles Evans) for materials analysis of many types. You send them a sample, they send you results from generally standard analytical techniques. It is a purely transactional relationship - they get paid, you get the data. You generally would indicate in a paper that the analysis was performed by them, but they do not get authorship. The same goes for various other things, like ion implant houses - you send a sample, they implant with the ion species and dose. You are getting a standard service performed, not intellectual effort.

There are other situations where you need to interact with the external entity to develop a new technique, or new twist on the technique. This is no longer purely transactional, and may result in authorship. Clearly the reverse can also happen - if you are a beta site for a new instrument and are working closely with the company to test it and expand the capabilities, you would get on any papers written by the company as well.

My analysis: if you and anybody else can walk up and pay for the service, they are not co-authors. If you have a joint project, with dollars and intellectual effort from both sides, they are. And then there is a broad grey middle ground...


Must publicly funded research in the EU be published as open access by law? I remember reading a while ago that there was a proposal going around in the European Parliament. If I remember correctly, it said that all publicly funded research should be publicly accessible.

Did the proposal pass? Is it in effect? What are the exact requirements? (e.g. "green" vs "gold" open access)

The European commission has a webpage dedicated to this issue. In summary:

All projects receiving Horizon 2020 funding are required to make sure that any peer-reviewed journal article they publish is openly accessible, free of charge (article 29.2. Model Grant Agreement). [...]
The Commission is running a pilot on open access to research data in Horizon 2020: the Open Research Data (ORD) pilot. [...]
In 2012, the European Commission published a Recommendation on access to and preservation of scientific information encouraging all EU Member States to put publicly-funded research results in the public domain in order to strengthen science and the knowledge-based economy.
The document also asked each Member State to designate a National Point of Reference (NPR) with the task of 1) coordinating the measures listed in the Recommendation, 2) acting as an interlocutor with the Commission and 3) reporting on the follow-up. [...]

So in my understanding, everything funded directly by the EU has a mandatory open-access policy. For research funded by member States, this is only a recommendation.
See also the Open Science page on the Horizon 2020 website.

To clarify this answer: "Horizon 2020" is the name fo the portion of the EU budget dedicated to funding research from 2014 to 2020. I think one of the better-known bodies funded by Horizon 2020 is the European Research Council (ERC), but more generally all EU funds going to research go through Horizon 2020 (well, until 2020). The previous programs were called "Framework Programs" (FP, e.g. FP1, FP2, FP3... up to FP7 for the period 2007–2013).


Recalling standard results in a master's thesis appendix for reader's convenience and/or self-containedness Currently working on my master's thesis, I know that I have to consider that I am writing for an appropriate audience, that is, I write for people who have at least a bachelor's degree in my field (mathematics).

However, I need to use standard results that one learns in third year (in my institution, at least). In particular, these results can be found in any "basic" textbook in the field my work is lying in.

I face a particular dilemma: either just citing the name of the theorem when I use it in the main work without giving any reference, or rewriting the theorem in the Appendix for the reader's convenience (with appropriate reference to a "basic" textbook).

Of course, my supervisors will know these results, but my peers may not remember them and a master's thesis is often expected to be self-contained. I don't expect many people to read my work, of course, but still, I want it to be as "perfect" as possible.

This question is related but it seems the OP is speaking about a basic theoretical concept they would briefly discuss in the main work. Precisely, it would not belong in the appendix, which makes the question different as I am not discussing these basic results: I just use them.

Question: is it acceptable to rewrite classical, basic results in the appendix section of a master's thesis and citing basic reference works about these results for the reader's convenience and/or for the work to be as self-contained as possible?

I shall of course ask this question to my advisor but I wanted to have different advices from professionals on this.

My answer is very similar to the one I gave to the question I linked to in a comment:  There is usually no reason not to include something in a thesis.  Your thesis is a place for you to give a coherent account related to your work on a topic.  There are (usually) no page restrictions, and it should serve as a reference document for future readers.

Many theses include a lot of review material, beyond just what might be contained in a literature survey. A thesis has to contain new material, of course, but it does not all need to be novel, and there can be a lot of merit in giving detailed explanations of known results, if the readers are not necessarily going to be familiar with them in detail.


What should I tell schools when my supervisor sent me a recommendation letter and said she has no time to upload it? I'm applying for Ph.D. programs so I requested a recommendation letter from one of my supervisors in my master's program. She directly sent me a strong recommendation letter in the email but said she has no time to upload it online.

The thing is her daughter just had a premi baby and she needs to take care of them. I worked closely with her and she is well-known in my field. Her recommendation letter will be really helpful. What should I tell the schools I'm applying for? How should I explain my situation?

Tell the school(s) exactly that (leaving out the baby and so on) and ask for advice. They may make some exception (or not). Maybe permitting you to submit. Maybe being lenient on deadlines. Maybe contacting the professor themselves (if you provide her email.)

You could also ask her to send the original email directly to them, rather than dealing with the online system.

Apologize for the inconvenience, even though it wasn't you that caused it. Just a polite ritual.

Dear x

I apologize for the inconvenience, but my professor sent me the enclosed recommendation but was unable to find time to upload it due to a family emergency. She can be contacted at y@z.edu for verification if needed.

If this is not acceptable, please advise me on ...

Sincerely X Z


Has anyone ever written a paper and put your name on it? I am a professor and researcher in mathematics and my research is kind of on the theoretical side.  Online, I discovered a mathematician who had written some papers with ideas similar to mine, and we corresponded and discussed possible collaboration.  Then he wrote an entire paper, listing both of us as authors on the front page, and sent it to me.  I didn't think it ethical to take any credit for a paper I had no part in writing, so I discontinued all contact with this person.  Has anyone here had a similar experience?  How common is this?

I am becoming very disillusioned with the pure research game.  People spend huge amounts of time on self-promotion because there just isn't that much demand for their work.

Without knowing too many details of your situation, could you perhaps give the other author the benefit of the doubt? Cutting off all contact does seem harsh (unless you have other reasons) for what could simply be a misunderstanding.

I don't know the conventions of your field, but it seems in many science fields that authors are added if they contribute intellectual ideas on the research, not necessarily for doing the research. Other authors simply add support in some fashion, so get added. It is not uncommon to have many authors on a science paper. It does in fact get tricky because one can offend others by not including co-authors.

I'm of the opinion that it's probably better to include someone who contributed in some fashion than not include them. You could argue that this dilutes research and is a "pure research game", but honestly, one paper is not going to make or break anyone's career.

Could this author simply have been trying to extend kindness, or perhaps thought you had a bigger role in the research than you actually felt you did?


Commission an animation to explain a scientific concept? I have a particularly difficult scientific concept, which, with the use of an animation, I think I could make very clear. I have some experience making little movies from piecing together figure snapshots, but in this case I lack the skills (and time) to assemble a quality animation. Is anyone aware of a website, resource, or company that will assemble movies for academic purposes? I've looked around but haven't found anything reasonable (in price, or with experience producing scientific-quality movies).

An example: an animation showing an EKG trace, and a diagram of a beating heart. Each beat moves the heart and shows up on the EKG, so you can see how the two are related.

With such a small budget (less than 1000 US dollars), you're unlikely to be able to commission professional work.

You have three options that I can see.

You might be able to find someone who's just trying to get established as a provider of such services, who might be willing to do the work in exchange for publicity which you'd have to drum up. Your project, and your department, would have to be seen as endorsing this person's services. That can all be rather tricky. If you're lucky, one of your recently-finishing students might be trying to build their business in this area.
You might be able to learn the skills yourself, or get someone in your team to do so. Some data analysis packages do have the means to create animations from sequences of charts - Matlab has this, and I'd expect its peers such as Mathematica to be able to do that too.
The sort of thing that's been done in a department closely related to the one I work in, is to hold a competition, with the prize being the funds you've got available. It can be open to anyone, or to staff and students, or just to students: that choice may not make a big difference - most of your submissions might come from students anyway. Be careful with the competition terms and conditions: pay close attention to the ownership of the intellectual property of submissions (to ensure you can use submissions without restriction); and with how the prize is described (because of potential tax implications). Your library staff may be able to help with the first of those two issues, and the finance team should be able to help with the second.

What you're after - the skill of creating high-quality data visualisations - is just the sort of skill that we look to encourage and develop in our students, so I'd have no qualms in running this as a competition for the students. The tricky question is around extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation: should they be doing it for money, or for the intrinsic reward of developing excellent data visualisation. You might want to discuss that with the tutor who takes lead responsibility for the students' academic development. It will depend, to an extent, on how close your subject matter is to their areas of study.


What constitutes "excellent" undergraduate research I am a junior right now and I plan on doing research over the summer and senior year. I was wondering what PhD admissions committees defined as good research experience from undergraduates in computer science?

Ok I did my studies and teaching in CS, so the following is my opinion from excellent to normal.

Excellent: The excellent case would be achieving a research contribution, and a publication; with a help of a supervisor (and/or his/her PhD students). Also know what you want to do with your PhD (if you decided to do so).

Good: The good case would be for you to do a research, learn how to approach reading and writing research to some extend, and now what you want to do for your PhD (if you decided to do so).

Normal: The normal case would be the supervisor's students help you to start thinking research. In this case you will get some idea about the research and surrounding activities.


Should I be honest when someone ask which part of the paper is mine? Not sure if this is an obvious question, or if someone has asked this. If so please tell me.

Suppose I and A have a (math) paper. There are two parts, and I believe the first part is done by me, and the second part is done by A.

Now someone asked me a few questions.

Is first part your part/ your work?
Is second part your part/ your work?

Easy to see I have a few options here.

a. That is my part.

b. That is not my part.

c. That is our joint work.

I suppose, if I claim my part to be my part, I should not claim A's part as my part or our joint work. And claiming my part to be my part will also lead to a problem when we have another author B who doesn't really has his part. That is, probably we worked together and he didn't produce a part. If I claim my part, I might have to end up claiming B doesn't have a part, which doesn't seem to be good.

So the question is, how should I answer such question, when people ask me which part is mine? Also sorry for the bad presentation of the question, and any edits are welcome.

In perspective of contribution, there are only the three options already mentioned by you

the part in question is based only on work you did, or
the part in question is based on work others did, or
the part in question is based partially on work you contributed to.

In each case I would tell this frankly.  Seeing the publication as the whole thing, prior to submission, everybody who contributed substantially will read again the paper.  This is the then last (of hopefully many earlier) exchanges among the contributors to discus and to clarify why methods were applied this way, and not an other. So that everyone among the contributors sees intent and purpose of the publication, the way the "the journey is told", and the conclusions eventually drawn. (consent)

Some publications even include a little section, explicitly stating these contributions, in lines like "Jon Doe designed the experiment, Bob performed the experiment, Jane Doe performed the data analysis, Jon and Abigail P.I. equally contributed writing the paper." *) While I saw such in natural sciences with interdisciplinary work, I see no reason why such would not be possible in mathematics, too.

In an ideal world, should you happen to become the author of correspondence, you should either know every aspect of the paper, or (second best) easily know how to refer to the contributor in question.  This is indeed not a light responsibility supervisors / P.I.s have, especially taking into account the fluctuation of co-workers. (Keyword reproducible research).

*) See, as first example I come to fetch right now, page 16 of Hellinger et al. "The Flashlight Fish Anomalops katoptron Uses Bioluminescent Light to Detect Prey in the Dark" in PLOS one, http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0170489, section "Author Contributions".


Covid gap year and grad school admissions I'm a sophomore at a public university in the U.S. I'm thinking of taking a year off before my junior year, but I'm worried I'll have to explain the gap in my transcript when I apply to math grad school down the road. How concerned do I need to be about this?

The real reason I don't want to "go back" to school in the fall is that an online experience doesn't appeal to me at all. My home environment is a bit difficult and I think I'll have a miserable year overall. I expect I can still get decent grades, but I'd much rather have had four good years on campus, even if that means I have to graduate a year late.

Essentially, I'd like an answer to tell me how admission committees usually view gaps in transcripts and try to give me an idea of how this might play out for someone who voluntarily leaves college for a year because of classes being online. Some more specific questions that have crossed my mind are the following:

Do application forms explicitly ask you to address gaps in your transcript? If not, is there an expectation that applicants will explain these anyway?
Will an explanation like "I didn't want to take classes online for a year" fly? While my home environment is also a factor here, I would be really embarrassed to bring that up in an application.
How important is it that I have something to put on my resumé for the coming year? What I'd really like to do is a lot of reading on my own in math. But if it's something that would make a significant difference to my application, I could try to find work instead. (I don't really expect I'll get anything beyond a typical low-wage unskilled position, assuming it's even possible to find jobs. Failing that, would volunteering be taken seriously?)
Would expectations of progress in math be higher for someone who has a year-long gap in his transcript and has therefore had five years to graduate?

If it makes a difference, right now my impression is that I could probably be competitive for a spot at a top-ten school.

If it's felt that my question doesn't fit with the site rules, I'd appreciate advice on how to improve it.

With the COVID pandemic affecting a lot of ways of life, graduate department adcoms are more likely to be understanding of certain abnormalities in transcripts and such when they review them, at least in the immediate upcoming cycles.  These can include having to take classes P/F, as some schools have switched to that grading model as a result of having to go entirely online.  In general also, I don't believe that taking over four years to finish undergrad will be a liability either; even in normal circumstances, things can happen that graduate department adcoms will also understand, such as major changes, having to retake classes after a dismal year, etc.

That said, you will have a gap in your CV come application time, hence the term "gap year."  While you could take a break and "do nothing," a better use of the gap year/semester would be, as you said, to find work or attempt to do a (preferably research) internship.  Most are in the summer, but there are a few, especially in industry, that will take on students for the regular semester.  You mentioned your home environment is difficult, so especially if the pandemic situation improves enough, why not take the time to try and gain experience that could be relevant come time to apply to graduate programs?  If anything, do something that you could brag about to adcoms or your friends rather than spend the semester doing nothing.

Overall though, I do feel that taking a gap semester/year could be beneficial in this case.  Especially if you have just gone through a relatively stressful semester, you could use a longer break before going back into school.


Tips for making online presentation over Skype I am about to complete my PhD. My area is functional analytic/ operator theoretic aspects of quantum information. I am applying for post-doctoral  positions in various places. Recently, one group called me for presentation/ interview over Skype. It should consist of a presentation (20 minutes) and 20 minutes interview. My questions are the following:

What are the common things one should focus while presenting online, and what I should avoid (say, in my slide, or oral comments etc).
The people who called me for interview are physicists (my work is connected to quantum information). As a mathematics student, what is the best way to make myself presentable in these cases.

Some background: I have two publications, some old preprints (arxiv, on discrete mathematics, but not published and not connected with my present research) and a few in draft form (not submitted in arxiv yet). Published papers are not mathematically very exiting, but came up in some reasonably good and well reputed physics journals. Also what I am afraid is, they are not reviewed in math review (many papers from the same journal are frequently reviewed though).

I am a bit afraid, as this is my first time of appearing in such interview (and the reasons mentioned above). Advanced thanks for your helps and suggestions.

The question asks a number of things. I am going to focus on interviewing over Skype/video conferencing since it is extremely difficult to do correctly. The issues associated with interviewing is very different from presenting.

Some things to consider when doing a Skype interview

Location: You need a private setting, a good internet connection, a backup landline, good lighting, and good acoustics. I suggest investing in a off white sheet to use as a backdrop. It is also useful for the camera to be directly in front of you so that it appears you are looking at them when you look at the screen. Make sure you have your notes and a drink within reach.
Timing: You need to know when the interview is happening including the timezone and who is initiating the call. You also need to know what happens if there is a problem. You do not want to lose your valuable interview time to technical problems.
Attendees: Once the interview starts, you need to know who is in the room and where they are sitting. If there are people you cannot see, ask them to move. Ask each person to introduce themselves and make sure you can hear them. During this stage you need to get a baseline read on their facial expressions. You also need to know where they are sitting so that you can "look at them". The slight eye shift required to look at them on the screen is likely not exaggerated enough. Practice this.
Control: Make sure you know who asks each question. Ideally use peoples names so they know you are talking to them. If you don't hear the question, ask them to repeat it. Check that they can hear and see you frequently.
Gestures: You need to minimize your gestures, pointing, and figitng. They are really noticeable on Skype.


How can I promote a published article? My article was recently published after a long process of peer-review. I don't know how to introduce the new findings in mainstream science.
Can you advise me on the best way to promote my study?

There are plenty of options when it comes to promoting your work, both amongst fellow scientists and the general public.
The first and most obvious is giving talks about your work either within your own institution or at other universities. If you're really keen to do this, don't wait for an invitation to speak. It's ok to email the organiser of a department's seminar series and ask if they have any free slots in the next few months. Most seminar organisers I know are very grateful when someone volunteers to speak, as it makes their organisational job so much easier. One bonus of the pandemic is that everyone is giving talks online at the moment, so you can probably give more talks than usual and in locations that might normally be too expensive to travel to for one fifty minute seminar.
Related to this is speaking at conferences. The typical conference season is the summer, but again with everything being online at the moment, more and more conferences are happening at different times. Talking at an online conference is obviously not a good replica of meeting in person, where it's much easier to strike up casual conversation about your work in the queue for coffee, but it's better than nothing.
Furthermore, you can try using social media. In my field, it's quite common to write a Twitter thread explaining your results when you publish a new paper, so you could do something similar. This only works if most of your followers are fellow academics; if your only followers are friends from school or fellow football fans (for example), they may be less interested. Personally, I prefer to write a blog post about my work and then draw people's attention to the post on Twitter. A friend of mine makes Youtube videos. This is your chance to get creative!
Finally, if your work is sufficiently high-profile, you could get in touch with your university's press office and ask if they will write a press release for you. This is presumably a more difficult process to go through but is clearly an excellent way to promote your work to a much wider audience than just academics.


Can I do my graduate studies in Computer Science with computational physcis bachelor degree? I have graduated in computational physics with gpa 3.1. I need to do my graduate studies in computer science in USA or Europe.

The best advise I can give you is to check what the prerequisites for graduate studies in computer science are. Check the homepages of the programs of different universities in the USA or Europe.

Some might require a degree in computer science or a related field, other just a certain amount of points related to computer science.
To find out if a university considers computational physics as a related field you have to ask.

I am European, so I can't tell you if a GPA of 3.1 is good enough or how it affects your ability to get into a university in Europe.

You have to check and find out yourself.
After graduating you should be able to do that.


How to shorten the list of authors in case of joint first authorship? Articles often put a shortened list of authors at the top of the page (e.g., J Smith et al.).

What is best in case of joint first authorship (for example: John Smith, Jane Doe, ... 5 more authors)?

Should it be "J Smith, J Doe et al." or simply "J Smith et al"?

For things like the list of authors at the top of a page, the authors don't put those into their own manuscript at all: they are added in by the publisher during layout. The publisher will work to their own style guide. That style guide may be based on some combination of tradition, design aesthetics and user feedback.

In those rare cases where the author is responsible for putting these in, here are the rules, in descending order of precedence.

Do what the style guide says.
If that's not clear, ask the editor (for a journal paper) or your supervisor (for a thesis)
If you still don't have a clear answer, do what other recent documents that are most similar to yours have done (so for theses, this would be the most recent theses in your department)
If you still don't have a resolution, use your own aesthetic judgement.


Do I need to sign the cover letter to the editor? When submitting a paper to a journal, often a cover letter to the editor is submitted as well. When this letter is sent by mail / uploaded to the journal's website, do I need to sign the cover letter? And if yes, how? With a certified electronic signature, or with a digital scan of my handwritten signature?

No, you don't need to sign it. (At least that's been my experience with every journal I've dealt with.) My cover letters just tend to be PDF files (uploaded to the journal site) that end like

Yours sincerely,
< List of authors (printed names) >


Failed the preliminary PhD exam because the committee members rejected my already accepted publication My paper got accepted in a very high-ranking peer-reviewed conference and will be published in the proceedings. However, my university PhD committee members are saying it is ‘weak’ and they did not accept that as one of the required publications for PhD, so I failed the preliminary exam. How should I deal with this situation?
EDIT: I am taking the doctoral course at a Japanese university. My academic advisor, unfortunately, will not be of help in this regard, as we are not on good terms (I guess he gave up on me once I mentioned I might not proceed the academic career, so it was partially my mistake).
One paper about an experiment I conducted has been chosen for publication in conference proceedings of an internationally high-ranking university, but the committee and my advisor chose to evaluate it as insufficient nonetheless.
I have two more papers with a high probability of getting published (final stages of the reviwing process), but due to the pandemic situation the review process is taking longer.
The official rules mention only that the thesis should be partially be published in national or international peer-reviewed journals, but do not say how many articles are required, and if they should be already accepted at the preliminary exam, or when I hand in the thesis.
Usually there should be a way to retake the preliminary exam, but my academic advisor did not make any such offers, instead recommended to leave this university and try my luck at another one.
Could anybody tell me if there is a possibility to retake the exam and apply for my Ph.D. at the same university, or what the necessary steps would be to apply for the degree at a different university (Japanese or otherwise)?
Any help would be much appreciated.

The advice to find a different university is probably the best you will get. The standards of the committee are apparently very high, as one would expect.
You could appeal to your advisor or to the committee, but it seems doubtful that any other action would work. Even an appeal to higher authority at the university might result in bad feelings that won't help you get your degree.
See if you can salvage good recommendations from this mess and find a way to move on. It isn't the end of the world. Many students change universities mid-stream.
I actually left one program in a somewhat similar situation: a dispute over a single answer on a prelim exam. I wound up at a better university with a much better advisor.


How should undergraduate student respond when the PI of their lab asks them to provide feedback on a research paper? I worked on a research project earlier this year with a group of people. The paper has been written up (not by me) and sent to the team to review it, give feedback and approve it before it is submitted for publication. I am just an undergraduate student and this is my very first experience with this. Most other people on the research team are much older and more experienced than me; so I do not have any critical feedback to give. The paper seems great to me.

Anyways, I am wondering how to state my approval when I email the PI? Replying with “I approve of this paper” seems too entitled for me since I am so inexperienced. So what would be the best way to reply back with my approval?

A reply such as "Thank you for the opportunity to review this; I see no changes that need to be made."  is appropriate.  This confirms that you

Read the paper and
Are in agreement with the content and presentation.

As a participant in the work and especially if you're listed as a co-author, point 2 is important.  However, point 1 lets the organizer know that you've completed your task so that they needn't wait any longer on your feedback.

An additional thought:

  Most other people on the research team are much older and more experienced than me; so I do not have any critical feedback to give.

Don't let age or experience of other team members influence how you perform your review.

You have every right (really, a responsibility) to raise any issue you identify so that it can be addressed.  Furthermore, I've often found that less-experienced team members tend to make very rigorous reviews of all the details, often catching details that others miss.  Take this as an opportunity to dive into the work and learn the intricacies of it (especially the parts you weren't involved with).  This will allow you to gain understanding of the field and allow you to more effectively perform another type of review: that of the overall nature of the work and the cohesiveness of how it's presented.

Also, as you perform the review, you should bring questions to your team members.  They understand you have little experience (you're an undergraduate, that's expected).  However, displaying interest in the work and gaining knowledge in the field is a good thing.


How to deal with a leech student? I've been on a couple of research projects with a few professors and have had some success recently and plan to do more collaborative work through the end of this calendar year.  One student is constantly leeching off of me and imposing himself, such as wanting specifics about my work, specifics about private meetings between me and my research advisors, wanting to come to lab while I am there to do some work. (he is not part of the lab.)  How do I tell this person to back off and do his own work, establish his own connections and stop creeping on me and stalking my every move in hopes of leapfrogging me, just because I've had some recent success?  Do I have to continually say, "this is private and ongoing research that isn't published yet"?

Your time is yours to control. If someone just wants to meet to learn about your field, it's polite etiquette to give them a brief meeting and let them learn... it is a learning environment, after all. It sounds like your situation has progressed well beyond that. I would simply tell the student that due to your own time constraints you cannot continue meeting with him. Consider redirecting him to the department chair/administrators, where he can ask about the process for joining a lab.

For what it's worth, if it's really beyond academic interest and he's just a stalker, that changes things a bit. Definitely work with whatever resources  your university makes available to figure out how to deal with a stalker.


Is it acceptable for professors to listen to music using headphones in the workplace when expecting student contact? In my institution, I see a lot of research students and staff members listen to music using headphones in the workplace. It is a matter of personal preference, and I cannot see a problem in that while it doesn't interfere with communications at work.

Is that behaviour acceptable for a professor during a time in which s/he expects students to approach her/him?

Yes, of course. As long as they turn it down so that they can talk over it when the student comes by, why would it be unacceptable to have music on while they are waiting? If they are listening on headphones while waiting, it would be preferable if they could see the student approaching, but there's nothing unprofessional about it even if they don't. The student can knock on the door, wall, floor, desk, etc. in order to get their attention.


What is the next step after received acceptance from the Editor I received an acceptance from the Editor by email, but when I checked the status of my manuscript in the journal website it is "Editor Decision", even after week of receiving the email.

what does that mean? and should I talk to the Editor?

If the editor emails you an acceptance, the paper is accepted.  Don't worry about the website not updating.

The acceptance email should contain instructions as to what you have to do next: presumably, make any changes suggested by the reviewers and submit a final version of your manuscript.  If it doesn't, wait another week or so to see if you get an email that does have the instructions (this might be sent automatically by the management system when the editor updates it). If not, email the editor then.