How should I pursue my interest in AI and/or machine learning? I'm a first-year student at a top 100 university studying computer science. I have looked at all the different fields of software for which I can get into and I am personally most interested in exploring a career in AI and/or machine learning.

Basically, I am wondering what my college studies should look like in order to make my interest a reality. Its obvious that I need to learn computer programming but are there any other less obvious topics which I should study up on? I have heard that I need to know every field of math, quantum mechanics, physics, and a bunch of other stuff, what is the reality of this?

Last question, is graduate school necessary if I want to go into an advanced field like AI? Are there any paths other than graduate school which I can use to get into the career?

Thanks for your help.

[I]s graduate school necessary if I want to go into an advanced field like AI? Are there any paths other than graduate school which I can use to get into the career?

"Go into AI" is pretty broad. What sort of job do you want to be doing? Theoretical research? Software development? Engineering? To get an idea of what jobs are out there you can look through the job postings at Google Research, Microsoft Research, IBM Research, Amazon Research, and so on. All of these do ML and AI.

They have position all along the spectrum from things that only require undergraduate degrees to things that require PhD's. I have no experience with the non-PhD path, so I can't tell you much about that, but a lot of their internships are geared to ML/AI PhD students spending their summers there, and then those same people get their degrees and apply for research jobs at those companies.

  I am wondering what my college studies should look like in order to make my interest a reality.

I can tell you what is useful to know for ML and AI, besides programming: In computer science, you need to have a good grasp of the theory, taught in courses like Theory of Computation and Algorithms. Some schools also teach an undergraduate AI course. Machine learning can be viewed as the intersection between computer science and statistics, so basic statistics is important. A lot of AI and ML has to do with (mathematical) optimization, for that you need a good grasp of linear algebra and multivariate calculus. Some methods (like neural networks) require understanding differential equations and partial differential equations (but I would put those down as fairly optional, you'll learn the relevant material if you ever need to).

The reality is, if you are going to go to a graduate program in AI/ML, you'll learn all the AI/ML-specific things you need to learn there. What you need to know to get accepted into the program is very variable on a program-by-program basis, but the reality is that the coursework probably won't be the most important thing in the admission process. If you're going straight for a job out of college, employers probably won't care much about your coursework either. It will be all about how you do at the interview, which will be very variable on an employer-by-employer basis.

At the end of the day, my suggestion is to think about what job you want to end up doing and work backwards from there to figure out what you need to do to get it.


Legal or duplicate to publish results in both dissertation and journal Suppose one has published his results in a journal, then uses them in his dissertation, is it legal or duplicate?

Conversely, if one tend to publish some important results in his dissertation to a journal, is it legal or duplicate?

I know to publish same results in two journals is duplicate, but what about it between dissertation and a journal?

First it is important to state whether a thesis is published or not. In some countries theses are formaly published under an ISSN and ISBN number, in others it is a pile of printed paper that is seen by a very few. I am sure anything between these etxremes exist as well.

If you have a published paper and need to put it into your thesis, either as a reproduction of the printed version (the pdf from the jorunal) or you reset the final revised manuscript, you defintely must get permission from whoever holds the copyright. This could be author and publisher or publisher only, it varies between journals. The reason why the copyright applies also to re-typeset manuscripts is because the copyright covers any corrections the copyright holder has made to the manuscript.

In reality, I doubt many publishers care, but on the other hand it never hurts to get the permission in writing. since a thesis is usually published in very few copies, it usually is not a problem. But, if the thesis is also freely available as a pdf it may again be questionable and a too obvious infringement on copyrights.

The second part is quite tricky, is it a duplication to publish both in a thesis and a journal. If the thesis is an official  publication, then yes it would be a duplication per definition. I know some journals are very strict about these things. To be more pragmatic, I wold say that it depends on how the thesis is distributed. If it is printed in a very small number and not freely available as a pdf then publishing in a journal should be possible. But I am sure this can be controversial and no consensus exists as to what is a reasonable middle way. In my field, manuscriprs are published in a thesis with ISBN and ISSN numbers (printed in about 200-3000 copies) but not available as pdf. These manuscripts are then later improved and sent off to journals. I think journals in general tend to turn a blind eye to the cases where thesis materials are recirculated.


Is it very difficult for international applicants to get a Visiting Assistant Professor position in the US? I am a mathematics postdoc working outside the US and this year I am preparing for applications for positions (mainly in the US). I should also add that I am not a US citizen.

Sometime ago I have seen in the comments to a question here somebody said that tenure track positions are unlikely (though not impossible) to be offered for people working outside USA. I can understand this, since a tenure track position is meant to end in tenure, I mean, I have the impression that universities hire someone with the intention/hope that he/she will be granted tenure eventually.

I am hoping to secure a 2-3 years visiting position in mathematics so that I can introduce myself to the academia in the US, and then maybe apply for tenure track positions. But the question is, whether the same thing is true for these positions. That is, is it hard to get even a visiting position for someone working outside the US?

Also, I have a good command of English and a high TOEFL score. Do you think I should add this to my application package (e.g. mention it in the cover letter, or attach a copy of the test result, or have it sent to the universities etc.) to counter the fact that I am not a native speaker of English?

I'll mention a few important issues here:

There are relatively few visiting positions in mathematics with a certain term of more than one year.  Rather, most of these positions have a term of one year, and may be continued for another year or two if the need for the visiting position continues.  Visiting positions like this are typically created to fill the hole left by a faculty member on sabbatical leave or as a temporary replacement for a faculty member who has resigned, retired, or is too ill to work.  Generally, the plan is to get a tenure track faculty member hired during the one year term of the visiting position.  There are certainly some circumstances in which a visiting position is setup to last more than one year, but these are very desirable positions and the competition for them is intense.  Thus your chances of finding a visiting position with a term of more than one year are limited.
In order to work in the United States in a visiting position, you will need to have an appropriate visa and the types of visa that are appropriate here (most likely a J1 visa for a temporary position, but perhaps an H-1B visa) require employer sponsorship.  Your potential employer must pay fees to apply for such a visa and typically will need to retain a lawyer to assist in the process.  This can cost thousands of dollars.  Furthermore, there's a substantial risk that the visa might not be granted or might be delayed.  Because of these issues many academic departments are hesitant to hire applicants who must be sponsored for a visa.  In my experience, many universities and academic departments will undertake to sponsor newly hired tenure track faculty but don't want to do this for a visiting position.
Most visiting positions in the US are focused primarily on teaching.  The hiring committee will be concerned if you have not had experience teaching in the United States, because there are substantial and important cultural differences between the US system and higher education in other parts of the world.  The hiring committee will also be concerned if English is not your native language.
There will almost certainly be many (tens if not hundreds) of well qualified US citizens and permanent residents with appropriate teaching experience in the US who will apply for the position.

If you have a strong record of research and would otherwise be qualified for a tenure track position, then you might have a better chance of getting hired into a tenure track position than into a visiting position.


Correct abbrevation of academic titles, e.g., “B.Sc.” vs “BS” I am interested to know which of the following abbrevations of academic titles are correct:

B.Sc. or BS
M.Sc or MS
Ph.D or PhD

It depends on the degree and the context.  Different institutions sometimes have different conventions for abbreviating their degree names.  For example, Harvard writes A.B. while Yale writes B.A.  It's conventional to use the abbreviation suggested by the university that awarded the degree.

Issues such as the use of periods are a matter of style.  If you are writing for publication, you should follow the publisher's house style.  Otherwise, you can decide whether you prefer to use periods.  However, you should keep in mind what other people are doing (for example, including periods is more common in the U.S. than other English-speaking countries).


Poster orientation: Landscape or portrait (horizontal or vertical)? Which is a better poster orientation: Vertical/portrait (taller than wide) or horizontal/landscape (wider than tall)?  Assume that the content does not "naturally" fit either of these formats so as to make one choice obvious.

Are there any studies that explore the differences between these two?
If you aren't aware of any, what psychological mechanisms might underly differences in the way people perceive the research (or researcher) based on the difference between the orientations?

I'm not interested in answers that say "it's just a subjective personal style choice" but am interested in answers that detail at least some difference in what may be perceived or communicated differently as a result of a change in orientation.

If there are strong field-specific conventions, those would be good to know (because being the only person who fails to follow that structure might give an impression that this person is an outsider or doesn't understand the community) but it'd be nice to have at least some answers that can apply in a very broad multidisciplinary poster session which is too topically diverse for any field-specific orientation convention to apply.

For the purposes of answering here, please assume the two dimensions are fixed at a bit under 3 and 4 feet, but orientation is not fixed.

Related:

What are some general good principles for creating a poster for a poster session?
Default poster size

While I am not aware of field-specific differences, my personal experience leads me to believe that landscape is likely to be better for conveying information than portrait.  The reasons for this are:

People are much more visually sensitive to vertical than horizontal changes in position, due to the fact that we are largely surface-dwellers.  You'll have a much bigger visual impact from things that are near eye-level than things that are significantly displaced up or down.
Posters are typically consumed in parallel, with different people arriving at different times and looking at different parts.  A landscape format lets more people be close to the poster (and potentially the parts they're focusing on) than portrait format.

That said, 1) many venues restrict you tightly in the amount of space that you are allotted, and it will generally be better to use the space you've got rather than make a smaller poster with a preferred orientation, and 2) good vs. bad graphical design will vastly outweigh portrait vs. landscape in terms of impact.


What do IEEE journal prefixes mean I found that IEEE journal names have prefixes, the most prominent I observed:
IEEE Transactions on...
IEEE Reviews in...
none specific (starting with IEEE)

Do those prefixes suggest the eminence of journals?

I apologize if this is something trivial, but I struggle to find some reliable explanation regarding this issue. Understanding the nuances in the journal naming system would help me better categorize and search journals that suit me.

I apologize if this is something trivial, but I struggle to find some reliable explanation regarding this issue. Understanding the nuances in the journal naming system would help me better categorize and search journals that suit me.

There is no reliable way to use the name to conclude about the eminence of a journal. There are some heuristics, though:

IEEE Transactions are typically supposed to be the flagship journals for a broader field. Quality between different transactions varies, but from the top of my head I cannot think of an IEEE transactions journal that is really bad.

IEEE magazines (IEEE Software, IEEE Internet Computing, IEEE Computer, etc.) are also mostly very well-respected, but their scope is entirely different. They publish short papers written for a broad audience. They are heavily copy-edited (for instance, the copy editor will typically re-draw all figures in a common style across all papers in an issue), and they tend to have a large impact (because these magazines are circulated very widely). However, due to limited size, they are often scientifically more shallow than transactions papers.

Other journals, that fall into neither category, vary in quality and esteem (though they are typically weaker than the relevant transactions in the field). Their scope is typically more narrow than transactions, but the opposite can also be true.


How to achieve successful collaborations? Quite often, at conferences or while attending seminars, I will start an interesting discussion with the speaker, first on-site, then later by email, and even though at some point there seems to be some mutual interest, it almost never gives an actual collaboration (i.e. working on an actual paper).

I have no particular problem of working with different people, so I was wondering if it was quite usual to have this huge ratio of "collaboration failure"? In particular, my problem is that, although it's quite simple to have an idea, it seems quite hard to do the next step, that is to actually work with someone you have no connection, and who might even live in a different country. Are there some techniques to make a "temporary" collaboration work, or at least to detect those which are unlikely to work?

In my experience, starting a collaboration is incredibly easy: you use your network of contacts to identify someone who'd be willing and interested in solving a problem. You talk at a conference or meeting, or arrange a visit to their laboratory.

Maintaining a collaboration, however, is next to impossible. It only works if you have a history of successful results early on, or if you have already had a long history of acquaintance with one another before the collaboration began. (In other words, were you friends or colleagues before the work started?)

Otherwise, I would recommend making sure that you start off with "low-hanging fruit": problems that can be solved mutually within the framework of existing funding on both of your parts, with value for both of you. This is important because one of the challenges of getting grants is that reviewers for funding agencies typically want to see an existing record of collaboration—mutual publications and effort—before they're ready to award money to a new collaborative proposal. There are exceptions to this, but they're by no means common.

After that, you have a track record of working together which will let you grow the collaboration into something further.


Consult on the submiting format of PNAS I am now learning about the submitting process of PNAS. The instruction says that the authors are encouraged to submit the article in a single PDF file. However, I am wondering how could I create this PDF file. Do I have to transform a word into a PDF, or I should get this PDF file created by the Article Sizing Tool, which is a tool provided by PNAS to estimate the total length of the article. Moreover,could I just submit the article by using a word?

The author instructions state that "A single PDF file is acceptable for initial submissions of all research articles except Contributed papers". Further down it is also stated that "Publication-ready file formats include Word or LaTeX."

This means that depending on what type of manuscript you are submitting, different rules may apply. Word and LaTeX (the latter must be accompanied by a PDF file) are fine but for a few forms like their "Express Submissions" require a single pdf to be submitted initially. Only of the manuscript passes the initial stage will it be required to provide editable files.

You should generate the PDF from your Word document or LaTeX class files according to the instructions.


What are the benefits of doing a PhD on a case study? As I review PhD positions available in my field (environmental engineering/sciences), it seems to me that some subjects are simply big case studies. I mean that the entire research is about applying an existing method to a new place or context rather than developing a new method.

Of course, since no place is truly unique, the method will have to be adapted to it and this might lead to a significant contribution to research. But still it leaves me with the open question of what is the benefit of such a PhD for the student's future career?

I would guess that doing a PhD on a case study rather than on fundamental research leads to better job perspective outside academia, for example as a consultant, but that might hinder your chances of doing an academic career. The problem is that with a BSc or MSc you can already do consulting, so such a PhD seems pretty useless. But maybe I'm missing something of the big picture, hence my question here

Finally, are such PhD offers common in academia in general or limited to some fields/geographical areas?

Case studies offer researchers the opportunities to dig deep into the rich details of the case.  In social science, this can frequently mean being able to answer "how" and "why" questions, use qualitative data, and generate rather than test theories.  I am not a physical scientist or engineer, but I imagine that similar principles apply:  the details of specific settings can be more informative than a more generic approach.

Case studies and quantitative/comparative studies are (in an ideal world) complementary to each other.  One tries to build up a deep understanding from looking carefully at a single (or smaller number of) cases, while the other seeks to establish generality, test theories, and (depending on the field) establish causation.

That said, in my experience (again, social science), the communities of scholars who work on case studies are frequently relatively disconnected from the communities of scholars who do statistical/quantitative work.  When choosing your career path, be sure to think about which community you will be happiest in.


After successfully publishing papers during my Post-Doc, why am I now having trouble publishing as a tenure track academic? I have had my PhD in mathematics for four and a half years now, completed two postdocs and found a tenure track job at a mostly teaching university. While I provide substantial background information below, my real, general question is:

  How can I identify the causes of a decline in acceptance rate of my papers?

Background

I had a fairly good research program in geometry and topology, with 5 papers in relatively good journals and an undergraduate research paper published over the course of two postdocs.

I then took a tenure track job with 33 teaching credits a year. While I have little time for new research, I had several papers ready for submission.

These new papers are better than previous papers of mine published in the same journals; not only do I (subjectively) consider them better, but they have received citations in preprint form, and I was invited to a give a talk based on a stranger reading one of them, neither of which happened with my earlier papers.

Possible reasons

I can think of a few possible reasons why these papers are not being published:

They are just not up to shape, because I don't have the time to focus on polishing them.
The referees hate me. This may seem silly, but I am in a very specialized field, with only 3-4 people who have published more than one paper on the subject. One of these people have retired, and another openly said that he had been my referee before on more than one occasion, had rejected my largest paper, and said that he didn't like the direction I was going with the research.

Also, I had a toxic relationship with my postdoc advisor, to the point where it came down to personal insults. They said that they were furious at my past letter of reference writer for recommending me, knowing I was a 'bad egg'. Though we have since made up, I have heard reports from others about this advisor talking about me in a negative way. Also, none of the jobs I applied to with their letter of recommendation wrote me back, while 30-50% of the applications without his letter were replied to favorably, including my current job.

Chance. The reviewers of the first papers happened to be interested in those topics, and the reviewers of the current papers have not been interested.

Conclusion

How do I tell what is really the issue? A few notes:

It's very hard to do research with 33 credits of teaching, but all the work was done before I accepted this job.
The main paper (that was rejected by that referee) went through 5 revisions with the aid of an advisor before submission. I have revised and submitted to 3 or 4 other journals, one after another, incorporating each journals feedback into the new version and trying a weaker journal each time.

My goal is to just get these papers published; at my current institution, the publication of these two papers alone would be enough to satisfy all of the research requirement for tenure.

I feel for you.  I have been in the (pure math) game for a lot longer than you, and sometimes my work is still treated shabbily by editors and referees in a way that is hard to figure out.  I feel that the publication process has gotten more opaque in the dozen or so years I've been involved with it: at the beginning of my career, whenever a paper got rejected, I would come away with a clear reason for why.  I have had some truly head-scratching rejections in recent years...along with acceptances in prestigious journals, which is good for me but even more confusing in this regard.

I think that the best advice I can give to you is to find a trusted senior mentor -- someone who understands the content of your work and the sociology of your field -- and really go over your situation with them in minute detail.  I would certainly go over all of the referee reports in detail.  If any one rejection feels especially unexplained to you, please realize that you certainly can ask the editor for more information, if you do so extremely politely and while making clear in advance that you are not arguing but rather asking for more information.  (I have experienced the wildest of extremes in response to such inquiries: I have gotten no response at all, and I have also gotten "I'm so sorry, your paper was rejected by mistake!  Would you like to resubmit it?" Seriously.)

Without this specific information, we can just guess on top of your guesses.  But that's interesting to me, so I'll play along.  First, here is one piece of information that probably should have come before the end of your question:

  My goal is to just get these papers published; at my current institution, the publication of these two papers alone would be enough to satisfy all of the research requirement for tenure.

This is pretty key.  Before I read it, I was going to respond to your worries that you are publishing work in a very narrow field that is (perhaps!) being viewed by the same small set of people as unpublishable by suggesting that you make an effort to branch out a bit in your work.  This is what everyone eventually does anyway.  But if your goal really is to only publish the work you've already written up, that's quite different.  In particular you talk about how you have a very high teaching load (33 credits per year = more than five courses per semester?!?  I hope I got that calculation wrong) and thus don't have time to do research.  Well, you may have zero time for research during the academic year, but if you need two publications for tenure you can spend entire summers working on publishing these papers...and you probably should, if you think your tenure depends on it.  I note though that you said you needed only these two publications; you didn't say that you wanted to stop writing and publishing papers after that.

Okay, now to examine your reasons:

  They are just not up to shape, because I don't have the time to focus on polishing them.

As I said, I think you should make the time, but that doesn't invalidate the suggestion that a lack of polish is why the papers haven't been accepted as yet.  This is where you should get help from mentors and colleagues and look at the referee reports.  Based on the information given, this explanation sounds a bit unlikely to me: you've already published five papers in a very similar field, so you know what you're doing here.  Math research papers really should not be rejected for lack of polish; they should be rejected when the writing is so bad that the referees can't make sense of them, or when the writing is bad and the results are also not up to snuff.

  The referees hate me. This may seem silly, but...

Actually you sold that explanation pretty well to me: if you had a terrible falling out with a key person in a tiny field and one other known past referee has told you that you're going in a wrong direction (to weigh in on comments about that: yeah, I think that's a nasty thing to say to someone), then it may well be that your work is getting evaluated by the same small number of people again and again and they just don't like it.  If that is the case, I would again recommend branching out a bit...perhaps even without starting a new project.  Most mathematical work can be cast in various ways and in order to appeal to various people.  I find it hard to believe that there are really on the order of 4 people in the world who are interested, but even if that's true your job is then to interest other people.  You could try for instance rewriting one of your papers to be a lot more explanatory and appeal to a much more general mathematical audience, and then send it to a not-too-exalted generalist journal.  If you do this, there's a very good chance that an editor who is "out of the loop" is not going to send the paper to the same small, sour group of people.

  Chance. The reviewers of the first papers happened to be interested in those topics, and the reviewers of the current papers have not been interested.

Yes, it certainly could just be chance, and in my experience chance plays a distressingly large role in contemporary mathematical publishing.  However, even if it is just chance, you can still probably improve the situation by changing it in some way.

Good luck.


What percentage of PhD theses are rejected nowadays? What percentage of PhD theses (e.g., physics ones) are rejected nowadays? And why?

I'm only personally aware of one student who failed his PhD defense (this is at an R1 US university). After his advisor refused to approve his thesis, he went over his head and got the department chair to schedule the defense anyway. Results were predictable.

On the other hand, "major revisions" are very common, especially, I hear, in the humanities (in engineering, it's far more common to receive token feedback -- if the committee reads the thesis at all! -- than demands for substantial changes).

Outright failing a student during a defense is an extreme embarassment, for the department, for the PhD committee, for the advisor, and of course for the student, so there is every incentive to ensure that a thesis that goes to defense will pass. Moreover, since most theses these days are compilations of previously-published work, it is very easy to tell well in advance if the student is expected to pass.

So if an advisor has doubts about the quality of a student's thesis, he will either ask the student to spend more time improving it, or "suggest" the student start looking for jobs in industry.


Is it appropriate to bring some kind of gift for a host professor? I'll be doing an Internship in USA the following week, in UCLA.

I'm studying in Japan, where you should bring some kind of gift to your host professor, if nothing, for his/her kindness for accepting you as a PhD/visitor/etc.

I've seen this practice along Asian Universities (Japan, China, Singapore, India). But only in Japan professors may get offended if you do not bring anything.

A friend's professor is actually from the US (in a Japanese Univ), and when she have her a gift, the professor flipped and asked her whether this was some kind of joke or bribe, given that both of them were foreigners. Their relationship did not go so well after that.

Now, with this background, I'm a bit wary of bringing some kind of gift or souvenir to my host professor, since I'm pointing towards a postdoc in the same lab and I do not want to cause the wrong impression, but I do want to show some form of gratitude, since the Professor payed for all my expenses (lodging and airplane).

I'll tackle the easiest side of the question first: bringing nothing should not create trouble. If you are clearly expressing your thanks for the invitation, both in written before you arrive, and in person when you meet the guy, noöne should take offense.

On the other hand, bringing a gift is fine too, but:

It should be tasteful and suitable for any taste: no sake, no unusual (by US standards) food… unless you know him well enough.
It should not be terribly expensive: people like the attention, but they don't actually care so much about the gift itself. Keep it simple, that way it cannot be understood as a bribe.
Not academia-related, but still useful to remember: make sure it passes customs (I had my French gift confiscated from me once).

I usually bring stuff to colleagues who host me when I travel to other places, if only because it gives a starting topic for smalltalk (something which I'm not very good at) in a future occasion.


Go for undergrad or graduate degree in CS? I am a cybersecurity professional well employed. I am almost 50 year old so since my employer would pay a graduate or undergrad degree I thought about going back to school to enhance computer science skills and apply more software development in my career.

My background:
18 years experience in various roles in network engineering & cyber security.
BSEE, MBA
Multiple computer certifications
Intermediate level in programming (Python, C)

Question is, I am not sure I can be admitted into a masters in computer science if I am not working mostly in programming.

Would an undergrad degree be suitable or just take certification training/bootcamps in programming?

Actually, the CS undergraduate degree isn't just about programming. True that our students learn programming first so that they can build some interesting things in later courses, but there is a lot more to it. Perhaps you have this skill, certainly you have some of it with your background. But algorithms, and data structures are important as is computability theory and information theory.

You already have an undergrad degree and a masters. If you are in the US, an additional undergraduate degree would probably waste a lot of your time. But you might need to fill in a few things.

I suggest that you go visit someplace that has good graduate programs and talk with a faculty member or admissions councilor to see where you might fit in and what things you might want to do before you start formally. Some places will have flexible programs in which you can pick up the missed requirements formally.

Every place will have different requirements for a Masters. In some you will probably be a pretty close fit already. In others, not so much. But only a specific institution can tell you for sure how you stand and give you an estimate of your probable success. Visit in person so that you can get a feel for the place and they can ask you meaningful questions about background and intentions.


In a thesis, is it appropriate to allude to results obtained later on? I am writing a math thesis.

I want to provide a result in chapter 2, but formally prove this result in chapter 8. This is because I am introducing a bunch of definitions in between these chapters and they cannot be moved in front of or within chapter 2.

Can I say something like, "as we will see in chapter 8, this result in chapter 2 is true"? In other words, can you allude to the proof of a result that will be given only later in the thesis?

I don't feel like it is good practice because it sorts of destroys the "surprise factor", and it also makes the reader jump 100 pages to see the result. How should I handle this?

Is it appropriate to allude to results obtained later on?

Yes, please not only "allude" to later results, but make it absolutely clear at any point of your thesis what all the components of your argument are. You can, and sometimes should, defer the explanation of those components to a later part of your thesis. Just don't make your reader think "Huh? Something is missing here".

If you feel it is too much to ask your readers to accept a statement until it is explained in more detail, you can provide a very short and abstract version earlier. But this "preview" should only serve the purpose of making the reader aware of a part of the argument that will be explained later on; it should not be a duplicate explanation. (This could be just one or two sentences if possible, but two or three paragraphs at most and only if necessary.)

A thesis is not a suspense story. A crime novel aims for surprising plot twist; a thesis aims for a natural flow of the argument. If your readers are surprised at any point, your writing is not consistent enough.

This is also why in the standard format of research papers in most disciplines, the last part of the introduction is an outline of the entire argument.


How to use contacts on an application in an unassuming way? Recently my former master thesis advisor (I finished more than a year ago, and want to return to academia / PhD studies after my still ongoing other research job) informed me about a summer school that fits my interests and skills very well. They suggested to mention them in the cover letter in the application process, since they are affiliated with the organizing institution, as a pro-argument and a way to possibly overcoming my recent non-academic background.

However, I am having bad feelings about being to pushy with their name and the possibility of a resulting "I know someone, therefore I need to be admitted"-effect for the reader.

How do I benefit from my network without leaving a wrong impression? Any phrasing suggestions?

How about writing something like: "My masters thesis advisor, Prof. X, has encouraged me to apply for this summer school". No doubt you can adapt this to suit your particular circumstances.


How to become committee member of a conference workshop? Is there a formal process behind deciding who should be the members of a workshop committee? Or is it more about the organizers contacting people based on their experience within that particular field?

Organize that workshop
Be invited by the organizers to be on the commitee
Ask the organizers while the committee is still being formed (and be known and respected by them)


What versions of a paper do I still hold rights to? I just had my first paper accepted for publication (hooray!), but I'm wondering how copyright works for the paper. I know that for this publication, the publishing house owns the copyright of the final version, but I'm wondering if that means that I still have rights to distribute earlier versions (e.g., on academia.edu).

If so, which version? I.e., how different does it have to be from the final version?

After accepting the article, the journal will ask you to sign a copyright transfer.  This document should describe in detail what rights the publisher gets, and what rights you retain.  If it isn't acceptable to you, you can try to negotiate; your institution may have an intellectual property office that could help. If all else fails, you can withdraw the paper and submit it to a journal with different policies (perhaps even an open access journal).

It is pretty common for the author to retain the right to distribute preprints.

Congratulations on your paper!


Harvard Referencing for Webinars I want to cite a webinar in the Harvard citation style.

I have found many websites talk about website referencing but could not find anything about webinars!

How do you do that?

By googling your title, I found this style valid for online videos, webinars, etc.:

  Author/Speaker (Year) Title of communication [Medium]. Available at: URL (Accessed:
  date).

The source I used was London Metropolitan University Library Services' Harvard Referencing Guide, but their stance seems to be corroborated by other referencing guides.

Adapted reference list example:

  Stepp, K. (2013) HR & the workplace of the future [Webinar]. Available at:
  http://www.slideshare.net/thetalentproject/hr-the-workplace-of-the-future (Accessed: 18
  December 2013).

Note that there actually is no definitive Harvard referencing guide, so the journal you submit to (or university for a thesis) could have slightly different requirements. Nevertheless, the above citation is clear enough, and should be acceptable in most places.


Is it possible to participate as a research assistant as a nondegree student? Does anyone have any information, either formal or anecdotal, about being a research assistant as a nondegree student, specifically with the aim of getting published?

In particular, I am referring to a situation where someone with a bachelor's degree takes coursework as a nondegree student and tries to participate in research in preparation for graduate study.

This wouldn't work for me as an employer of research assistants. Undergraduates and random people off the street rarely have technical sophistication to be able to participate in my research projects. I'm pretty sure that in most cases I'm beholden to my NSF grant terms to pay a PhD, a postdoc, or a student to do the work, since this is what we said we'd do in the grant application budget. The people may be more or less interchangeable to the granting agencies as long as the work gets done, but I believe there's more to it than that.

I don't think a non-degree-seeking person can be a/an (graduate or undergraduate) research assistant under my university's HR rules either since they must be currently enrolled as an undergrad or graduate student to have either of those titles. Also, I'm basically not allowed to have an unpaid research assistant nor am I interested in such a person. First, it's probably illegal in the US, and second, it's a bit off-puting to me that you would come, do some research, and then leave once you've gotten the publication that you think will get you into grad school. I prefer to have a deeper, longer relationship with my research collaborators than what it takes to get one good publication out the door.


How to acknowledge ideas/clue/discussions on StackExchange? Sometimes a thread on StackExchange could help your research. A technical problem, an inspiring discussion or even an idea. How can I acknowledge this kind of contribution? (considering that many users on SE do not use real name and it is very difficult to reach them privately) Has anyone done that?

EDITED according to the PiotrMigdal's comment

If you like to point out the SE contribution to your work I would suggest to acknowledge the community by any acknowledgement you consider suitable. For example:

  The authors would like to express their appreciation to the Stack
  exchange, inc. community for many useful inputs and valuable comments.

or if you like you can be more specific

  We would like to thank to community of Stack exchange, inc.,
  especially, Cross Validated group (section?) for advices regarding the data processing and data
  visualization.

Or you can combine what ever you like.

If you think that only one user was the core of the contribution, you can mention only him or her.

  Special thanks goes to Piotr Migdal, who significant contributed to
  the quality of this answer with his valuable and well-aimed comment.

In case the person would be (or would like to stay) anonymous and you would still like to acknowledge the contribution, you can write the acknowledgement to anonymous person (as well you can citate a source with unknown author). This happens typically when you refer to web-pages:

  We would like to acknowledge the discussion regarding the deep learning algorithm at Stack exchange, inc. in Cross Validated section
  (Available at:
  https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/83092/regression-in-deep-learning,
  Accessed: 44rd August 2010).

However, I think that much better would be to try to contact the person/people. You can do it either by contact info or by comments. They can be willing to step out of the anonymity for you or, what is more, have some further discussion on the topic of your interest.

And if you would like to express your gratitude, you can always contribute to SE :)


When does an editor fail? Let's assume that a journal editor has been allocated a submission, started reviewing it himself, but stopped responding to the managing editor (= you) despite a long time since the authors had sent the submission (a little less than 3 years).  The submission is longer than each of the papers accepted during the last 5 years, but historically, even longer papers were accepted. The authors are aware of the length issue, but they are concerned.  The editor's Web page gets updated (say, new teaching contents appears), so, she/he is presumably still alive, but simply unresponsive.

The journal has no written, formal deadlines in its guidelines.  How long is it acceptable for the managing editor (= you) to wait after the first unanswered message to the editor before replacing the editor? What is typical in the field of computer science?

How long is it acceptable for the managing editor (= you) to wait after the first unanswered message to the editor before replacing the editor?

If the lack of contact is unexpected and unannounced, then wait three weeks with weekly email reminders.

If it is expected or announced, then negotiate with the authors.  The authors might prefer to wait out an editor's absence if the editor has suitable expertise.


How do I tell a professor who tells me he'll send in a recommendation but doesn't that I don't need his letter anymore? My professor agreed to give me a LOR. However, despite many reminders, he has yet to send it in. I called him up a week before the deadline and he was annoyed at this. I then considered asking someone else but he emailed me asking me for supplementary documents. Again there has been radio silence from his side after that. Now, the deadline has passed. I think professors can still send in LORs and I’ve asked another professor to write a LOR for me after explaining my situation.  My question is do I email my earlier reference to tell him I don't need his LOR anymore? How do I word this email? Should I show my indignation at being taken for a ride?

If you don't feel angry at your professor, you could drop them a note once the firm deadline has passed, so that they avoid wasting time on writing a letter that's not needed anymore, or they don't feel bad about never having gotten around to doing it. I could imagine doing this with some colleagues whom I know are very busy.

In this case you could write something like "Dear professor, I'm writing back about the letter of recommendation that I originally requested from you on [date]. You had agreed to write this letter, but I have not received it. I just wanted to let you know that the deadline for submitting letters has passed, so it doesn't make sense for you to work on this anymore. Instead, I have asked [other prof] to write a letter explaining the situation."

If you will be working with this professor again and would like to set a boundary, you could add something like "It felt stressful for me to make this alternate arrangement without having a response from you about the original letter. In the future, it would be really helpful if you could respond more quickly to email about this kind of matters." Or something like this, although that's hard to word.

On the other hand, if you feel indignation at your professor, as seems to be the case, then I don't understand the purpose of sending a further email at all. What good would it achieve? If the letter of recommendation arrives at some later time, you can simply explain that the deadline has passed so you can't use it, but thanks nevertheless.


Why bioRxiv instead of arXiv.bio? In view of the need of a preprint repository for biology science, why was it necessary to start bioRxiv, instead of a biology section in arXiv?  Is there any fundamental difference between the two?  If bioRxiv becomes popular now, why weren't biologists willing to use arXiv?

ArXiv was not interested in expanding into biology (apart from quantitative bio). A 2013 Nature news article about the establishment of bioRχiv explains:

  ArXiv’s quantitative biology section, launched in 2003, has seen exponential gains in the past two years [. . .] But arXiv does not plan to expand into other areas of the life sciences, such as cell and molecular biology, and the site is not designed with biologists in mind.

In 2018, arXiv Operations Manager Jim Entwood discussed how the arXiv decides whether to expand into new subjects, saying that they ask "How does the proposed category fit into the rest of arXiv?" and that they are "fairly conservative when it comes to adding new categories".

  This comes in part from our general principles, and our commitment to those communities we already serve. We also need to ensure sustainable growth both in terms of active engagement with research communities and the financial and organizational capacity of arXiv. Decisions for category expansion are ultimately up to the arXiv Program Director and Scientific Director with input from arXiv staff and the Scientific Advisory Board.


PhD application: should I mention more than one faculty member in my SOP? So I am confused by this for quite a while. Intuitively, mentioning more than one faculty member in SOP can backfire since it put the people you mentioned into a pretty awkward situation. But in another way, it might be a good thing for the board to see an applicant is flexible. Out of idea. Looking for advice.

Thx

First, it is always a good thing to mention specific mentors by name - it helps you get recognized and demonstrates you have a grasp on what you want to work on. The fact that there are two faculty you'd be happy with shows you may integrate well, provided the research interests are somewhat similar. The best approach is to contact both of these individuals personally, by email or by phone. This proves your interest and probably guarantees your application will be looked over carefully.  I don't think that listing two potential mentors will set you back, but you could be put into a situation where you have to choose.  If that happens, congrats, you made it into grad school. I've never heard of a PI dismissing a qualified candidate because he/she applied to more than one person.


How do you get a bad transcript past Ph.D. admissions? I have a master's degree in International Studies, and a double major with Computer Science from undergrad.  My transcripts suck.  There's no other way to dress it up.  I have pretty good teaching experience, and my GRE scores are awesome, and I suspect my recommendations are as bland as everyone else's.  Basically, to an admissions committee, I suspect I'm the model of a student who is probably smart enough but didn't work hard enough.

I want to do a Ph.D. in Political Science, but the response from my applications is looking pretty grim.  Am I permanently out of the running, or is there something I can do for the next few years which will help to counterbalance my unfavorable GPA?

Short answer:

Know what area you want to work in and be fluent with it.
Construct an honest, compelling narrative illustrating your strengths, how you've learned from mistakes or pitfalls, and why you're a good candidate for your chosen PhD programs.
Talk to as many professors as you can about their interests and yours, especially those you'd like to work with.

More details:
There is some excellent advice here and here. Basically, Bradley Voytek (who is now a professor in neuroscience at UCSD) managed to get into UCSF (a top school for neuroscience) with an overall GPA that hovered around 2.5. As Bradley Voytek said, your ultimate goal is this:

  Do everything in your power to leave a paper trail of excellence to
  overcome your grades. Your goal is to make those grades look
  meaningless. Your goal is to have your work speak for you so strongly
  that, when people look at your grades, they feel silly for even giving
  them a second thought.

This was precisely why I was willing to give my unofficial transcript to professors at my school who asked for them (when I needed letters of recommendation). They already knew me well enough to know that my GPA doesn't reflect my true ability.

As another suggestion, if you're applying for a school that puts a lot of weight on a subject GRE exam (like the Physics GRE), you can do your utmost to score obscenely high on the test and still get in. As an example, see this guy who managed to get into Harvard with a 3.1 GPA.

For the record, I'm an undergrad with a 3.16 GPA (with 3 grades of 0.0s and 3-4 courses I retook with grades of 3.0-3.1 on the retake because I didn't even bother going to class on either class attempt). Despite all this, I managed to get into both the University of Chicago and Brown University - both with fellowships for being one of the top applicants. I also almost got into Yale in a year that was unusually competitive for them (they paid for me to visit+interview there) - but there were research fit issues involved at the end (actually - what ended up happening was that I had such intensely-defined research interests - exoplanet climate modelling - that it would have been hard for anyone there to take me individually, and everyone felt that I would be going to Chicago anyways). Click here for a rough profile of my "stats".

You should also try schools that do interviews (especially in-person interviews) before they do acceptances, since the interview is where you have the opportunity to shine (and where they can at least give you a chance). Yale is one of those schools.

You should also look into very interdisciplinary graduate programs that are expanding faster than what their textbooks (and courses) can keep up with. Newer fields also tend to be low-consensus fields, which also tend to be more tolerant to those with low GPAs. The geosciences is one of the few areas where plenty of people with sub-3.5 GPAs often do get into top schools. As the geosciences aren't taught in high school, it's often said that the Geosciences is something that you "stumble" into, and it's actually very common for people to enter the geosciences only after finding that they didn't like another major (this is often true for geoscience professors as well).

Biology is another area that's often tolerant of those with low GPAs, from what I've heard. In both Biology and the Geosciences, research fit often matters a lot more than "being one of the top applicants", so if you have a focused interest that you've demonstrated through research (and that matches the interests of faculty members who are willing to take new students), then yes, they can be willing to take you over people with better GPAs and test scores. The thing in common with the two is that they're so broad that it's impossible to put every applicant through a common set of required courses (or through paper-based qualifying exams), so their quals cannot be based on coursework. In that case, performance in prior courses doesn't matter as much. In fact, some geoscience programs (like Berkeley EPS) don't even have admission committees because the interests of faculty members are so diverse that applicants often only have research fit with a single faculty member - so it then often becomes a single faculty member who decides between applicants.

The MIT Media Lab is the perfect example of this, in fact (though most geoscience/biology programs will have more of a committee than the MIT Media Lab). The tips in this link can be quite helpful to anyone with a low GPA who wants to work with a particular adviser.

You should also look for fields with very low people-to-problems ratios. Many of these fields don't offer courses that are part of the core requirements of numerous majors, so there won't be hordes of undergrads who take their courses. Fields like atmospheric science and various areas of biology are particularly known for their low people-to-problem ratios, and the professors in them can be incredibly accessible (and are more willing to closely look at unusual applicants). More here.

Also, just write 2000-word personal statements. I wrote 2000-word personal statements for all the schools I applied for (they were necessary since I had to do some explaining), and they didn't prevent me from getting in. They can annoy some schools, but that's going to be a matter of fact if you're a highly unusual applicant.

Finally, you can always stay somewhat longer. My GPA would never recover from the early mistakes I made, but I managed to recover by staying longer and by taking a huge number of grad-lvl courses in my last 2 years. When writing your personal statement, you should always put in statistics like last-2-year GPA and last-X-year major GPA in whatever field of study you're in (I put in post-(freshman year) physics GPA of 3.77 in). Be careful not to sound like you're cherry-picking though.

If you need some extra inspiration, you should read about Stephen Smale too.

  He entered the University of Michigan in 1948. Initially, Smale was a
  good student, placing into an honors calculus sequence taught by Bob
  Thrall and earning himself A's. However, his sophomore and junior
  years were marred with mediocre grades, mostly Bs, Cs and even an F in
  nuclear physics. However, with some luck, Smale was accepted as a
  graduate student at the University of Michigan's mathematics
  department. Yet again, Smale performed poorly his first years, earning
  a C average as a graduate student. It was only when the department
  chair, Hildebrant, threatened to kick out Smale, that he began to work
  hard. Smale finally earned his Ph.D. in 1957, under Raoul Bott.

One word of caution: Graduate programs have gotten a lot more competitive in the last few years, so what applied 5 years ago (or 40 years ago, for that matter), may not necessarily apply today.

By the way, elite private schools (for whatever reason) tend not to have GPA cutoffs. If you're a student with a low GPA applying for an elite private school, you probably have something else in you that's extremely unusual, since very few students with low GPAs apply to them. In fact, when I emailed professors, those at elite private schools seemed to be more responsive to my emails (low student to faculty ratio could be a reason behind that). That said, they're not necessarily more forgiving of unusual applicants. It's often the programs that have some "weakness" in their applicant pool that tend to be more forgiving of them.

Also - I would definitely look for areas where the department is trying to expand into, but where the department has no reputation for as of yet (visits/contacting professors can help you learn more about that).

Going to academic conferences can also really help as well - but only when you can make sure that you have useful things to say. The same is also true for visiting schools before applying.


Is it unethical to cite a paper or book that you have never looked at? Suppose I see that Book X is cited by several papers with reference to some particular Fact Y. I wish to cite Fact Y. As far as I know, Book X is the only reference for Fact Y.

I have never looked at Book X. Nonetheless, I cite it like this:

'Fact Y' (see Book X)

My question is: Is this ethical, given that I've never looked at Book X?

More context for my question. I am NOT asking whether this is good scientific practice. I am NOT asking how a good scientist should actually go about citing Fact Y. I am NOT asking if this could undermine your credibility as a scientist.

Instead, I am asking this question because it seems to be a somewhat-common practice. And moreover, as far as I know, no scientist has ever been issued even an official rebuke (much less fired) for engaging in such practice. This would suggest to me that this practice is not considered to be unethical.

Of course, it is not binary as to whether a practice is unethical. But I would simply like to know whether the academic community in general considers this to be even a mildly unethical practice. Or if it is perhaps very slightly unethical, but not a big deal. Or if it is not in the least bit unethical.

When you cite a source, you are not actually claiming that you have read it.  What you are actually doing is staking your professional reputation on that source containing the information that you claim that it contains.

In most circumstances, of course, this gets instantiated exactly how you would expect: at least one of the authors has personally read the source.  There are, however, certain circumstances in which citation of an unread source is actually appropriate.  Let me give two examples:

The source is cited as a secondary source, e.g., "Feng et al.[17] claim that the species presented in the Necronomicon[18] can be found in Antarctica."  Here is is appropriate to give the bibliographic "pointer" to the secondary source even if you cannot access it yourself.
The source material may be known by a different route than the original publication.  This frequently happens with software tools and standards: for example, you might cite a standard that you are using even if you haven't read the standards document.  Likewise, if I am using a software tool, the authors often point to a particular paper as the preferred appropriate citation for the tool, and I am happy to take their word for it without reading that paper.

There may be many more cases as well.  It all comes down to this: how certain are you that you really know that the document you cite serves the purpose for which you are citing it?


Why only medicine lectures are closed to the public? In a coment, David Richerby pointed out that in his university in the UK everybody was entitled to attend to any lectures, except for Medicine. I have also found that Dusseldorf has the same policy, but no reasons are quoted.

I can think of two possibilities:

Potential missuse of the information in the class "oh, I saw a rash like that the other day, it is nothing". (But no one has died because "the condition number of that matrix is not SO bad...").
Sensitive information, like some details about patients, necessary for the education.

But they don't seem too strong. They would both apply to med students, or just people that signed up for a few courses, but are not going to be doctors (think some biologist that may be interested in taking Pathology).

Does anyone know of an official reason for this policy?

In the United States, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) greatly restricts who can see or discuss medical records. While most grand rounds tend to be obscure the patient's identity, there could be an abundance of caution. Note that there is an exemption from HIPAA for grand round presentations -- if the audience are only medical personnel (including students):

The HIPAA Privacy Rule allows physicians and staff to use and disclose PHI [private health information] without a patient's written authorization for purposes related to treatment, payment, and health care operations.  It further defines "heath care operations" to include "to conduct training programs in which students, trainees, or practitioners in areas of health care learn under supervision to practice or improve their skills as health care providers. [Cite]"

The other reason in the United States that grand rounds are often closed is the prevalence of various types of protesters -- e.g. from PETA or from the anti-psychiatry movement.

[That all being said, at my university most of the grand rounds are open unless closed at the request of the speaker or for other reasons. However, they aren't advertised so you would have to be a department member or on the mailing list to know when and where to go. They are also behind the security umbrella of the university, so you would need an ID card to get past the guard at the front door of the building. So whether you call that 'open' is up to you.]


How should I let a professor know that I don't want to work for her? I am interested in the research of two professors, (one more so than the other) at a university I am applying to for PhD (let's call one Ms. E - less interested and Mr. K - very interested). I met both the professors and both seemed to be interested in getting me on their research team. I had a second meeting with the Ms. E and she asked whether I was talking to any other professors. I told her about Mr. K and that was it.

Next thing I know, Mr. K under whom I was actually planning to work, emails me saying I should continue my application under Ms. E.

Now I am confused as to how to navigate this problem. They both had planned to pull some academic strings to get me in as soon as possible (I am an international student) and both have promised me funding. I had not verbally committed to anything with either but only told them that I was interested in their research and wanted to talk to them about it further.

How should I let Ms. E know that I would rather work for Mr.K?

It isn't much clear as to why Mr. K would insist you to work with Ms. E. It might be either of the following

It might most probably of Ms. E's suggestion/influence.
They might be on the same team (@virmaior's point)
Mr. K has just got another student he prefers over you.

To figure out why and how to react bases on why, @demitau's suggestion would be most appropriate; speaking openly with Mr. K should provide a solution.

If the answer to the last question is what you require (how to let Ms. E know I'd rather work with Mr. K?) then the most diplomatic approach is to say something like this: state that you feel much honoured to work with her. But it seems you current research interest are much inclined to that of Mr. K. Hence the decision.


Meaning of "Study curriculum with rankings" I have decided to apply to PhD studies and in one part it says that my CV should contain: "Study curriculum with rankings".
What does that mean? because they are also asking me to submit my studies transcripts.

Study curriculum means the list of titles of courses/subjects and their contents, credits, and so on. In other words, the syllabus.

The term 'Ranking' is generally associated with the institution. Probably they are asking for the ranking of the university/college you attended. 'Ranking' may also imply your position in the class of X number of students. It may also simply mean the semester-wise serial number of courses.

You can have a look at this link.


Would a PhD from a foreign country hurt you in U.S. academia in terms of job offers? I'm about to graduate from a terminal masters program in the United States.  The most prominent PhD program I've gotten into has been at Trinity College Dublin.  I want to go into U.S. academia rather than Irish academia, but the PhD programs I've gotten into the U.S. have been second-tier.

Is there a disadvantage in terms of hiring prospects?  My main concern is that I might not be taken as seriously in the U.S. since European graduate schools have very short (by U.S. standards) periods of study.  I've heard 3 years of graduate work is typical for Irish universities in my field, while U.S. schools you might study twice as long.

tl;dr First-tier Irish university or second-tier U.S. university for my PhD?

1) I don't know what you mean by second-tier, but TCD isn't at the level of Harvard/MIT/Princeton/Berkeley.

2) The answer does depend on what your range of acceptable careers post-PhD is, because the answer is different for different segments of the job market.  For research positions, it won't matter much, though you have to be careful not to work in an area that is poorly represented in the US.  For primarily teaching-oriented positions (and many US PhDs in mathematics take a teaching position, permanent or temporary, straight after finishing - certainly more than those who take postdocs), you are unlikely to be considered a serious candidate without US (or at least North American) teaching experience.


Is it OK to write first initial of some authors on a paper and full first name of others? Suppose there are two authors Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton on a research paper. Is it OK to write them as A. Einstein and Isaac Newton or vice versa? Similarly, if there are more authors, is it OK to write initials of some of them and not all? If it is not OK, is it wrong and unacceptable, or bad?

My question is about writing the authors' names on the top, with the title of the paper.

Usually, this is determined by the style guidelines of the journal or conference, so all author names should be formatted in the same way. There are cases, however, where one author consistently uses an initial as his first name, or even, where an author has an initial as his first name, leading
to a non-uniform formatting of authors' names (e.g.,
Deepak Kapur, G. Sivakumar, Hantao Zhang: A path ordering for proving termination of AC rewrite systems or Zhou Chaochen, C.A.R. Hoare, Anders P. Ravn: A calculus of durations).


Is it common and acceptable for a postdoc to leave before contract ends? Is it common and acceptable for a postdoc to leave before his/her contract ends, for whatever reason? How early should a prior notice be submitted in this case?

Usually, a postdoc is a normal contract between an employer and an employee, and as such, terminating it earlier than its date depends on the contract and/or the country. It should be normally specified on the contract, otherwise the laws of the country should apply. For instance, in the UK, I have had a notice of 1 month, in Italy, it was 3 months.

It is normally acceptable for a postdoc to leave before the end of the contract, although it depends on the situation. If the employer does not provide any guarantee for further employment, and if the postdoc has found another offer, starting earlier than the end of the current contract, then that's the rule of the game. If the postdoc has found a much better offer (for instance, a permanent position), then that's also the rule of the game. If personal reasons are involved (going with a partner, going back to home country, etc), that's quite fair.

By acceptable, I mean that the employer should normally not make any problem (assuming the legal obligations are fulfilled), and might even be supportive in the end of the contract. A case that might not be acceptable is to leave in the middle of a contract, breaking some work commitment (e.g., an experiment to run) for a reason that might not appear very strong. But in the end, it depends a lot on the relationship between the postdoc and the employer. The point to remember is that Academia is a small world, and that in general, it is worth keeping good relationship with former employers. In doubt, talk with your current employer, or with a mentor at the place you're working at to know what the rule normally is.


The challenges of learning when there are no tasks I like exactly this format:
Knowledge -> Task -> Knowledge -> Task

And the knowledge is required to do the following task. Not more. Not less. Therefore you know that the task is solvable and you do have enough knowledge. In other words:
Knowledge1 -> Task(requires only Knowledge1) -> Knowledge1+Knowledge2 -> Task(requires only Knowledge1+Knowledge2)

How do you call this method of teaching?
Books and courses that I see are all the same:
Knowledge -> Knowledge -> Knowledge -> Knowledge -> Knowledge -> Knowledge -> Knowledge -> End.

I think I have to read till the end, even summarize in mindmaps, just to realize later that I have no idea where to start.
Therefore I need to create my own tasks in between.
But I don't know whether how I solve my tasks is accurate.
How could I handle this?

I think you could propose for yourself such a task solution of which you could publish in some community.
For example, if you're studying French, you could translate something form French to your native language and publish on Medium


How to Cite Online .pdf Publication in Article? An entry in References which does not look good, here the url

where I am unsure about

having second name as "A." there; I would not necessary have it at all but the problem is that you do not necessarily know if it is the second name
URL: ... does not look good
having URL as red does not look good

Sure

year missing, so should be 2015

I remember that you do not need to provide url sometimes at all, but not sure.

The URL is required, as is the date of access and the date of creation (if it's available). I don't think the colour is really a necessity; however, what does matter is that you are consistent throughout your piece of writing. I normally use dark blue or black. I try to put it with that kind of serif-y "programming language" font, e.g. using the \url{} package in LaTeX.

The style of citation changes the way you cite electronic sources.

For MLA:

Editor, author, or compiler name (if available). Name of Site. Version
   number. Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site
   (sponsor or publisher), date of resource creation (if available).
   Medium of publication. Date of access.

for an entire website. The rules for MLA change slightly for other types of website citations.

For APA:

Author, A.A.. (Year, Month Date of Publication). Article title. Retrieved from URL

for websites with a known author. For websites without an author, and other types of electronic source citations, the rules are different.

For this website in particular, I would say it's closest to MLA-type citation but that perhaps it's missing the name of the institution that it's credited to. I haven't checked the website, so perhaps it's unavailable for some reason. Check the MLA link above to see the proper way to cite this particular PDF, as the link has multiple citation fashions which depend on the type of website / online material it is.

I think they were going for something like this (using the 'single web page' MLA):

John A. Schroeder. "System Study: Residual Heat Removal 1998–2014"
     Idaho National Laboratory. INL, Décember 2015.
     Web. 3 August 2016. URL: http://nrcoe.inel.gov/resultsdb/publicdocs/SystemStudies/rhr-SPAR-unreliability-external-2014.pdf

However the most important thing (second to making sure to cite, of course) is that the author is consistent throughout.

And finally, according to google scholar, the article is a 'tech report' and the BiBTeX citation is thus:

@techreport{schroeder2015system,
  title={System Study: Residual Heat Removal 1998-2014},
  author={Schroeder, John Alton},
  year={2015},
  institution={Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)}
}


What to do when wrongfully accused of cheating? For a couple of days ago I had an in class online quiz consisting of multiple choices. I had read and prepared for the quiz and got a 80%, not too well but not bad either.

Several days after the exam I got a email from my professor saying that two different persons had come to him and told I was observed cheating by searching the web for answers. I met up with the professor and he blamed me straight away for cheating. I never talked with him before but he sided immediately with the other side rather than me, even though he had no "past impression" of me. He tried to scare me to admit to something I did not do while I repeatedly told him I did not do it. He made me very uncomfortable, saying I should drop the class and so on...

He was being very childish and immature, I told him it was unfair to take someone’s word over mine when there was no prior relationship, he just started working here. He kept threatening me and I told him I would never admit to something I did not do and it is wrong to accuse someone based on a rumor, this means that I could potentially wrongfully accuse someone of cheating and they would be in trouble.

I am very scared now and I suffer from social anxiety, I have been scared to show up to class as I feel the professor is out after getting me. After this incident, he has also given me very bad grades, borderline failing me, even though I am a student with a 3.5 GPA and very hard working. Also he has been talking about me "cheating" to other students, started a rumor about me that has spread among several classmates, which makes me very uncomfortable being around people.

I have gotten several reports from classmates that he has shared this private matter with them. Whatever I do in class now is not good enough; he keeps on punishing me with bad grades and gave me a zero on the quizzes, making the class hard to even pass. I have no clue what to do in such a situation, and as mentioned before I suffer from heavy social anxiety and I am scared of going to class.

We had a quiz with the same format as the other one shortly after with same amount of questions from a different chapter, I had to finish that quiz while he was looking at me and I got the same exact result as the previous one. I thought that would be proof enough, but he told me that he believes the other person more than me, without giving any reason for why.

I don't want to be labeled for something I am not or punished for something I have not done. Is he allowed to talk to other students about such a private thing? What about my rights? What can I do?

First, you should check and read the entire academic dishonesty statement at your university. This should give you an understanding on how the university normally treats these types of issues. Actually being proactive on contacting an office of academic integrity or student conduct, depending on its name at your university, can help you understand what the standard route for a professor to take for academic integrity.

While it is appropriate for a student to come to a faculty member to talk about another student's cheating, it seems to be a red flag for your instructor to ask others about your cheating by name.  A vague announcement about seeing that people are not looking at their own papers or looking at their phones is appropriate, but actively singling a student out for their academic misconduct could violate one's privacy in a case of academic dishonesty. This is something you should check with your university though.

Another person who may be of help is the undergraduate chair of the department in which this is occurring, but it seems in the comments you have tried.


How do you cite articles from a "database?" Cochrane reviews are great to cite in academic publications due to their systematic nature but I have no idea how to cite them in APA style because there's no obvious volume or issue to use in the citation. Here's a reference I've already tried, albeit awaiting on the volume and issuing numbers I'm meant to give.

Linde K., Berner M. M., Kriston L. (2008). St John's wort for major depression.
The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD000448.pub3.
PMID 18843608.

The first two sources of information about such questions are

The publisher of the database may have specified how they want to be cited.
In fact, The Cochrane Collaboration has such guidelines:

Cochrane Policy Manual: How to cite our products
Cochrane Reviews: How to cite Cochrane Collaboration products

The APA style guide may have said something already about this data base.
This is also the case:

How to Cite Cochrane Reviews in APA Style
They explain how a journal article style should be used with year as volume and monthly issue:

  Singh, J., Kour, K., & Jayaram Mahesh, B. (2012). Acetylcholinesterase
  inhibitors for schizophrenia. Cochrane Database of Systematic
  Reviews, 2012(1), 1–101. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD007967.pub2

If these would not have lead to the required information, a more general idea is:
Following the DOI of your example, I end up at a page of the Cochrane library that also has a tab "Cited by". You could have a look there how other people actually cite the report.
If all this had failed, I'd propably have gone for a technical report style citation.


What metrics do universities use to evaluate their performance? I am curious how different universities evaluate their performance.  I am curious to know if there is a standardized (or even just generally accepted) set of metrics that universities use to rate their performance or to determine if their college is succeeding ("succeed" being a very open term here and likely varying between institutions).

What does it mean for a university to perform well? (High graduation rates?  Low dropout rates?  High endowment?  High fill rates for their classes?)  Is this even a well defined question?
What sort of metrics do universities typically use to evaluate themselves?

I keep mentioning universities but knowing how two year colleges approach the problem is also interesting (I'm less interested in the primary/secondary schools).  The question is also not location specific and might even be more intriguing to see how non-US universities measure themselves.

The strategy of my UK university seems to be to improve on all available metrics that do not require them to spend more money. At our most recent faculty meeting we were told that we needed to simultaneously increase our student numbers, increase our admissions standards, increase the number of contact hours, and decrease our average class size. They also pointed out that we should also strive to increase our grant capture and publication rates.

I think from an inward facing perspective universities evaluate academic staff on on whatever makes them look the weakest, while from an outward facing perspective they evaluate themselves on whatever makes them look strongest.


Are public universities in the UK required to follow the UK NARIC guidelines in assessing the qualifications of foreign PhD applicants? I recently learned about the National Recognition Information Centre for the United Kingdom (UK NARIC). It's a UK agency that assesses international academic qualifications.
According to UK NARIC, a Master's degree from my country is at best equivalent to a British Bachelor's Degree with Honours. Thus, it seems that before I can apply to a PhD program in the UK, I will have to complete another Master's degree in the said country.
My question is, are all public universities in the UK required to follow the UK NARIC guidelines in evaluating the academic credentials of prospective PhD applicants? Or, can these universities still opt to assess PhD applications on a case-by-case basis?
Thanks in advance for your answers!

No. Universities (almost all UK universities are public) in the UK are not bound to follow any standard or rules when evaluating prospective PhD applicants. Even the requirement for a Master's degree at all is at the discretion of the admissions panel (in fact at least half of the students have supervised had only Bachelor's degrees).


Are small conference posters bad etiquette? I am displaying a poster at a conference. The board is 4 feet wide and 8 feet tall. My university offers 1 free small poster print per semester. I used their service and my final poster is only 3 feet wide and 2 feet tall.

The conference had no specific sizing requirements on their website. I contacted the conference organizers and they said it's small, but OK. This is my first conference. I still have time to pay a private printer for a larger size, but don't want to spend money if I don't have to. Is it bad etiquette to have an undersized poster?

A 2' tall poster is too small. I would not recommend a poster smaller than A0 size (about 3' x 4') nor larger than 2A0 (4'x6'). For a 4'x8' portrait orientated poster board I would recommend not less than 3' wide, but would not go all the way to 4' since often the boards are displayed in an accordion style resulting in lost width. As for height I would go no more than 5' high. While you do not need to be able to easily reach the title, no one likes reading at their knees. In other words, A0 size would be slightly small, but okay.

Depending on the material, I would suggest looking at large format black and white printing. For example, staples will do a 3'x4' black and white engineering print for $7.29.


What is a correct way of evaluating the effectiveness of criteria for admissions? Most colleges and universities in the US base their admissions on high school grades plus a standardized test (SAT or ACT). To decide whether a particular piece of data X is a good admissions criterion, people seem to focus on how well X correlates with college grades. (This may be freshman grades or total college GPA. Some people think  success in getting a degree would be more appropriate. For the purposes of this question, I don't think these distinctions are relevant.)

Isn't this correlation a completely incorrect way of evaluating X as a tool for admissions?

It seems like an apples-to-oranges comparison. A student who has low X is admitted to a nonselective school, where standards are low and they compete with other low-X students. Grades at this school measure how well they did based on the low standards prevailing there. Students who have high X are admitted to a selective school. A "B" grade at Berkeley is not the same as a "B" grade at Cal State Dominguez Hills. A high-X student goes to Berkeley and gets a "B" in calculus. A low-X student goes to CSDH and gets a "B" in calculus. This shows up in the statistics as a lack of correlation between X and grades, since the students differed in X but got the same grade. But isn't that misleading, since the grades mean different things at the two schools?

Is there some more logically justifiable statistic to use in evaluating whether X is a good admissions criterion?

Define "effectiveness of criteria for admission". Collect data on the potentially relevant independent variables. Do statistical analysis on the resulting data set.

Be careful, you'll probably be considering just the people who were admitted, so the results will be skewed.


How to turn down a Postdoc scholarship offer after signing a contract How you as professors would prefer to be informed in this case? That is, how to turn down a Postdoc fellowship offer that you have already signed a contract.

The reason in my case is I get an even better offer at another fellowship foundation. But the fact that I contacted the professor, we applied for the fellowship together, I got it and accepted it, make me feel quite awkward...

I upvoted both of the other answers, but in my heart I agree with xLeitix: academics live and die by their honor in a much more extreme way than is the norm in the contemporary Western world.  I should admit that my views on this are more absolute than those of some of my colleagues (with whom I have had occasion to discuss issues of reneging on signed contracts).  When I hear people say that it is okay to behave absolutely unethically -- even illegally, but counting on the fact that your former employer is not going to hunt you down and pursue a surely thankless legal action -- because they have to look out for themselves first, it really worries me.  Such a person is baldly stating that ethics can be thrown out the window when the consequences are important...which is of course the time when ethical considerations matter most.

What stops a person who has reneged on a job from reneging on a future job?  What stops them from engaging in unethical academic behavior in any of a hundred different ways?  Beyond the student level, academia is almost entirely self-policing.  In my field, if someone releases a preprint, and I respond by saying that I have independently proved the result but hadn't released it publicly yet, there will be some followup questions and discussion, but unless I give them an excellent reason not to, people will believe me. In science, every time you write a paper describing an experiment you did, you don't submit a videotape of yourself doing the experiment, you submit a written description of the experiment...and people believe you unless they have an excellent reason not to.  Whenever you submit a paper, it gets sent to a referee, whom you trust not to try to steal the work.  And so forth: only a small amount of "justified unethical behavior" brings this crashing down.

Once upon a time I was myself in the position of having accepted -- via an email correspondence, not via filling out a contract -- a postdoctoral position.  Just a few days later I got offered another postdoctoral position.  The first position was a great one, but it involved moving to Canada.  The second position was probably even better: it was at a top 10 math department in the US.  (Financially the second position was significantly better.)  But the first position was one that I hadn't even applied for originally; rather, my thesis advisor had made some phone calls and the offer came quickly: people had taken some trouble on my behalf.  What did I do?  I told the people offering me the second job that I was grateful for their offer but had to turn it down because I had already committed to another.  In retrospect, I still feel like the second offer might have been even better for me.  But a tremendously eminent mathematician went on the line and offered me a job when -- for a few days -- no one else would.  Anyone who knows me knows who this person is.  I can be a prickly person at times -- I certainly felt like the "loud American" during my 2.5 years in Canada -- and I imagine that this guy and most of his colleagues know me as slightly eccentric but professionally reliable.  Having people know you as professionally reliable is really priceless if you plan on staying in the profession: for instance, we later arranged for someone to transfer part of his NSF postdoc from this Canadian department to my own department.

What should you do in academia if you want to back out of an agreement?  It's simple: you immediately contact the party you've made the agreement with, you explain why you want to back out of the agreement, and you see what they have to say about it.  They're not going to be thrilled, but they can convey to you how much hardship they will actually incur by your backing out of the agreement.  If it is only a moderate amount, they will probably give you their blessing and the agreement can be mutually dissolved.  If however backing out of the agreement would turn out to really be a significant, tangible, medium or long-term loss for them, then you should honor it.  The OP has done something in the comments which he surely does not realize sounds absolutely obnoxious to more senior personnel: he's made all kinds of assumptions that his reneging will not be so bad for his employer.  And he's making them in the face of evidence that this employer actually did go to trouble: applying for a fellowship is certainly trouble!  If this is an externally funded position then it cannot easily be filled with someone else, and the faculty supervisor may well already have made plans and committed resources for the OP's arrival.  Or maybe not, of course.  Ask!

Finally, the OP doesn't seem to understand why getting a tenure-track job offer might make a difference.  The difference is that every postdoc wants to get a permanent job eventually, and every postdoctoral supervisor and institution wants that out of their postdocs.  Therefore, if you ask to renege on a postdoctoral job because you'd like to take a tenure track job instead, it is much more likely that the response will be: "Bummer for us, but congratulations for you!" or "Well, can you come work here even for a very short time?  That will inconvenience us minimally, you'll get some further training and experience, and we'll be able to say that we placed our postdoc in a tenure-track job.  It's a win-win!" It is however still possible that reneging on a postdoc for a tenure-track job may be unacceptable to the employer.  If they tell you that, then you go back to the tenure-track job and say "Look, I really want this job, but I have some prior commitments.  I am the type of person who honors my prior commitments even when it conflicts with my short-term best interests.  Surely we can work something out?" It is likely that the position can be held open for an extra semester or year.


Children in the Classroom As a new semester of school approaches I have begun updating my syllabi for the classes I teach. I have lately used a clause in the syllabus about no children in the classroom as I feel it is a distraction to both me and the other students. Having been in classes both as a student and as an instructor where children are present, I find it necessary now to have such a written statement.

However, there are a few parents who dislike such a clause. Some of these young parents feel that they should be able to bring their children to class, as they otherwise would need to drop out of school because they do not have enough money to hire a sitter. I feel that this is just "how it is," and is part of being a responsible adult.

Do other universities have policies about children in the classroom? How can I reach a happy medium of not coming across as a complete jerk, but still maintain a level of education in my classroom?

Added: I am of the feeling that we many times need to make a rule because of that "one person" who ruins it for everyone. My stand as it is right now is that we need to come down firmly in writing, then adjust with leniency as people show they can handle having their child in class. I am not ridiculous about my classroom rules, but I prefer to give it straight, then relax the standard if needed.

Also, as a matter of scope, I teach at a conservative Christian university. Many of the students married young and have a child or two.

In my years of teaching in Asia I have had one class session where a student brought a child with him. It was an exceptional case but I was surprised he did not ask for permission. The child was well behaved (maybe 7 years old) and sat in the back not disturbing the class in any way. For this reason, I let it slide and I might be willing to accept it happening in the future.

However,  I do make it quite clear to my students, I am the captain of this airplane and I will not tolerate ANYTHING which negatively impacts the learning environment. This includes anyone who disturbs the learning process in any way. I agree with Pete L. Clark - it is not a childcare issue. You need to focus the students on it being a learning environment issue. If a student does not turn off their ringing phone, out they go. If someone dresses in a way which distracts students or me, out they go. If anything exists which negatively impacts the learning process for even one of my students, out they go.

I'm pretty strict on this and I don't generally have problem because of that.

Back to your core question: How do you maintain a level of education while not being a jerk? You focus on the real issue. The real issue is not kids, the issue is disruptions. While you can be forgiving and understanding, to do so in a way which negatively impacts your students should never be accepted.


How to cite Stack Overflow surveys How should I cite the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2020?
If possible in BibTeX format.

This question was originally asked in meta Stack Exchange, but it was closed for being considered off-topic.
Emphasis is mine:

DO NOT USE this tag unless your question's about the Developer Survey's integration with sites other than Stack Overflow. Most questions about the annual Stack Overflow Developer Survey should be asked on Meta Stack Overflow, not here.
https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/survey

This question was also asked in Meta Stack Overflow.

You can either:

Include this as a footnote.

Use this website https://www.bibme.org/bibtex/website-citation to generate website citations for the Bibtex generic citations.

The following is I generated for the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2020.
@misc{stack overflow, title={Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2020}, url={https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020}, journal={Stack Overflow}}


How to deal with graduate school rejection and overall academic failure? There has been a lot of buzz about how difficult it is to achieve tenure, however, even getting into graduate school seems harder every day. My case (and the case of a lot of people too): I graduated early from school in a developing country and decided to study Biology with more passion than reason (low salaries compared to a Doctor or an Engineering). I completed in four years a five years Bachelor's in a top institution of my country, with some national awards, grants and scholarships. My GPA was among the best %5. I did research since my second year and established good relations with my Professors (their letters of recommendation are fine without bluff).

I applied to some MSc in Europe and US and got rejected the first time. I got the only available (bad paying) job until the next admission period. I lowered the stakes for my second round of applications and got rejected again. With two consecutive rejections, I am starting to think that I am ineligible for any graduate position. Especially considering that I have been off academia for two consecutive years. Why? A MSc in my country, even at a top school, has no international worth. Furthermore, it doesn't have worth in my own country as few positions are available.

I know I have weaknesses:

My college is top in my country, but almost unrecognized internationally. The awards I got have no international value.
Although I was in that 5%, I had a harsh beginning. The first page of my transcripts has some bad scores (~2.8, lowest) along good ones (~4). That first page causes a bad impression.
The extra course load is irrelevant for the admission committees.
I specialized myself too much. While some students attest experience in three or more projects, I focused on one big project since the beginning.
Few publications and conferences. In my country, there have been almost no conferences in my field in years and I cannot travel abroad for a presentation.

My future is staring to seem bleak: no job in my country, no graduate school abroad. Overall, I feel a complete failure in what I loved. What should a person in my position do? Should I try again or set new professional goals?

I also did my undergrad in the most prestigious university in my country (a developing country) albeit in engineering and started graduate school in the U.S. I have some suggestions for you.

First of all, you need to apply for about 10-20 schools to have a chance. Do not focus on the most prestigious universities (Harvard, MIT, etc.). This was something I had issues with, I didn't want to settle for less than the best because I was in the best university in my country. The truth is, at least in the U.S., there are many many good universities.

Do your research and find schools which you would think would be a good match for you. To get a start you can look at a ranking for your major. If you are looking at the U.S. there will be graduate school rankings for your major published by U.S. news. They can give you a good idea of which schools you may have a better chance of getting into. Once you find the programs you are interested in look up professors and research groups in those universities and even try to get in touch with them and let them know you are interested in their work. Don't just blindly email them, familiarize yourself with their research, read their publications, and try to discuss their work in your emails. Be specific about what you like and what you are interested in and they may help you out and give you suggestions to steer you in the right direction. Take note that professors receive tons of emails from prospective students on a daily basis and often won't read them, so don't get discouraged if they don't respond.

Finally, something I did not see you mention was standardized exams. If your undergrad classes were not taught in English you would have to take the TOEFL. Most U.S. universities also require taking the GRE general exam. For biology, you may also have to take the subject test as well. Focus on getting good scores in all of these tests. Even in the sections not related to your major such as the verbal section of the GRE general test. Often grad schools will be reluctant to offer admission to students from foreign countries who do not have good verbal scores even if for majors like biology.

If this is really your dream, don't give up. Good luck :)